A Ghost of Christmas Past

Will the sappiness never end?  Sorry, but it IS Christmas time which just turns me into a simpering wimp.  Or maybe a whimpering simp.  I can't help it.  Here is my most potent Christmas memory.

T and I have been together for a long time. In fact, this will be our 45^th Christmas together. The years provided many good Christmas memories for us, but I have a particularly warm and fuzzy memory of Christmas Eve 1978. That one holds special meaning to me not because of anything we received, we were young with limited resources, but because of the uniqueness of it; Christmas Eve 1978 had a nearly perfect Christmas “feel” to it.

Setting the Stage:

Our daughter, M, was 6 years old. T and I were both 26. T had spent the first half of 1978 living in in New York City where he and his band mates were trying to make a go of it. We were physically separated, but we were still together. I stayed put and kept the home fires burning where I had a job and where little M was attending kindergarten. T came home one weekend a month to visit. It was really hard on all of us. The idea was that if the band worked out then M and I would move there, too. Truthfully, it was a relief when the band broke up and T came home. He got a job at a record store after he came back.

Christmas Eve 1978:

He had to work on Christmas Eve. After the store closed at 5:30 p.m. there was a holiday party for the employees and their families. We lived about 10 city blocks away. That seemed like a comfortable walking distance back then. It must have been one of those periods where we did not have a car, or perhaps it had broken down? It is hard to remember. T had walked to work. M and I probably took the bus downtown to meet him at the party. The buses did not run late, so we intended to walk home together, which we did.

The party was great fun, very festive. It was dark and snowing by the time we left, but not bitter cold. The night sky was filled with big, heavy snowflakes. One of us was only 6 years-old, so as trite as it sounds we made a game of catching the snowflakes in our mouths. T hoisted N onto his shoulders and the three of us proceeded to walk home in the dark, in the midst of the most beautiful snowfall I can remember. Houses were decorated and multi-colored lights lit our way. 1978 had been a struggle, a crossroads, a difficult year for our little family. We were happy to be together. We laughed and talked all the way home. I will never forget how magical it felt to be the three of us against the world that Christmas Eve.

Sometimes I miss snow

Zig Zag

In one week it will be Christmas. I think I am ready. I believe all my purchases have been made and the packages are wrapped. The tree and decorations are up. Our Christmas cards are mailed and I made the fruitcake! My daughter makes most of the Christmas cookies now, so I do not have to worry about that. All that is left for me to do is make frosted cut-out butter cookies with my grandkids. Oh yeah, I also have to clean the house. Aaaack! There is still that.

I am kind of a quirky house cleaner. I like to clean a couple different rooms at the same time. If I only do one room I end up getting bored. If I run from one room to another, doing a little bit here and a little bit there, eventually it all gets done and I keep myself amused.

My husband is a different kind of animal. He also cleans, but in his true-to-form linear fashion he concentrates on one room at a time. He likes to move directly from point A to point B. I prefer to zig zag my way through life. We both get to the same place eventually. 

Nutty as a Fruitcake

I made fruitcake for the holidays. I know – Ick.  Many people hate it. I like my mother’s dark fruitcake recipe, which I make without the icky stuff she put in her version. I use dates, dried apricots, raisins and walnuts. No red or green candied cherries! As a result, I feel disgustingly superior and virtuous.

Only my daughter and I will eat fruitcake these days. I could easily skip it, but this is my first Christmas since Mom died. I miss her and I really wanted to make it. It will make my daughter happy. Maybe I can talk my granddaughter into trying it? Stranger things have happened.

Mom made fruitcake every Christmas I can remember until the slow progression of that hateful Parkinson’s Disease made it impossible for her to bake. Then I started making the Christmas fruitcake. I would send her one in the mail, just like she used to to do for me after I got married and moved far away. They weigh a ton, so the postage probably cost more than the ingredients; but it was my special gift to her. I felt I was honoring her in the making of it, and I knew she liked that I was carrying on her tradition. As a mother and a grandmother I understand that now.

Food-related holiday traditions are the legacy of the common woman. As long as someone is still making our recipes we have achieved some form of immortality.

Of course, as a daughter (or son), you have to make these things a little different than your mother did. We must put our own spin on it to reflect our uniqueness, our modernity, our necessary and never-ending rebellion. Who among us actually wants to BE their mother? Not many.  We adjust and tweak to insure we are different. How much we have to tweak depends on who our mothers were.

I must confess that I stopped making them a few years ago, in 2012 - that fateful year when the fruitcakes I made went moldy. It made me so mad, that mold.  I threw a big, stinkin’ fit and stopped making the effort in subsequent years.  I guess I showed them! Now I regret that and so many other things. I was not the best daughter I could have been.

I cannot go back and make my mother a fruitcake for 2013 and 2014. Instead, I made a memorial fruitcake in 2015. I am storing it in the fridge because in Florida I do not have a cool basement, or any basement for that matter. I am going wild with the brandy. If it gets moldy I am going to throw it out without saying a word. I am keeping my anger in check. This is now a ritual, a sacrifice, an act of love. From here on in it is the making of fruitcake that is important, not the eating of it.    

It occurs to me that she may not have liked my version of the fruitcake. As I shamelessly bragged above, my version does not include candied green and red cherries, and who knows what other carcinogenic or candied crap she used to put in her version. She never believed those things could be bad for you. She liked the bad stuff, my Mom. It used to drive me crazy.

She definitely did not soak her cheesecloth in brandy. She used apple juice and wrapped the cakes in muslin. I am quite sure she also liked thinking that her fruitcake was better than mine. And, of course, it was. To be completely honest I miss the red candied cherries. I probably should not admit it or the thought police might come and haul me away. Out of sheer orneriness, let me say it loud and proud: the red candied cherries were my favorite part. I was a fool for not realizing that earlier. Next year I will put them back in.

I just realized that instead of giving her the fruitcake she wanted, I gave her the fruitcake I thought she should have. Aaaack! It is a good thing she loved me, because I can be insufferable.

Mothers understand these things, though. At least I do when my daughter now makes many of "my" Christmas cookies just a little bit different than I did. To become our grown-up selves we must separate from our mothers.

I am beginning to understand why a mother will always love her children more than her children will love her. Otherwise, none of us would ever leave her and no one would ever grow up.  It is as it should be.

Seeing and Not Seeing

I love Christmas. I love everything about it except for the rampant materialism. I DO like giving and receiving presents, though. I am not the kind of person who is against giving Christmas presents. I am absolutely, 100% FOR presents.  What I am against is wanton excess - unless, of course, it is displayed on the front of your house for the world to see.

Most of our neighbors started putting up the outside Christmas decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving. I really want to bitch and moan in a self-righteous, disapproving way about how early they get their Christmas on; I certainly feel cranky about that issue. But I think not. Not this time, anyway. I get tired of being self-righteous and judgmental. Today I am going to take a break.

In fact, I love seeing normal, everyday people decorating their houses. We could all benefit from using our imaginations occasionally. I am encouraged when the Average Joe is inspired to spend a few precious hours on his/her day off decorating the house. I think of outside Christmas decorations as legitimate folk art.

I have this wacky idea that most people have a need to express themselves creatively. I first experienced the "public display variety" of self-expression when I was a child, back in the 1950’s. On June 14 (Flag Day) all us neighbor kids would take rolls of red, white, and blue crepe paper and decorate our bikes. I lived in one of those post-WWII housing developments where all the parents were the same age and each house was filled with rambunctious baby booming children. My friends and I would then get on our fabulous patriotic bikes and parade our handiwork around the block in a proud and colorful parade. We were so freakin' cute!

When my mother was in the assisted living home each resident decorated the outside of her or his door with signs, dried flowers, wreaths, and more. Each door was different and decorations changed with the seasons.

The residents clearly wanted us to see their doors. But you know, there is a little bit of Miss Havisham in all of us as we age. At first glance those doors seemed super damn creepy to me! I have an overactive imagination. Crocheted Santas seemed to be staring blankly into my eyes as if trying to steal my soul. Wildly perky dancing reindeer invited me to come hither. And that was just at Christmas. At Easter there were ratty birds nests affixed to some doors. Crazy felt and wire birds challenged me to look deep into their googly eyes. And the signs said things like, "Come In!"

Honestly, it was hard not to look the other way and not see them at all. I made a sincere effort to fight that urge. I could easily have looked at each door with a critical eye and been put off because I was not really looking at the doors with a mind to see them. I was blinded by my fear of aging, my fear of sickness and of death.

What a coward I was. I was only visiting that place. Those old folks were living their final days and facing those fears head on. They were trying to let their light shine in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The least I could do was look at their parade of handiwork.

I tried to enjoy those doors and really "see" what the residents were showing me, because in a real and tangible way they were presenting me with a gift. Being judgmental is unseemly at best. In the context of receiving a gift it is always bad manners.

I was an art student back in the day. I had a professor who tried to teach us there is no such thing as bad art, there is only art you do not understand. He was trying to introduce us to abstraction at the time. Making us rethink our perceptions was a helpful exercise in that context. It challenged us to take a deeper look and get beyond our knee-jerk expectations of what art is "supposed" to be. I am not sure if he was right about there being no bad art, but I liked the sound of it. I still do.

His concept freed me from some youthful conceits and those stubborn literary hang-ups that were keeping me from really "seeing" the purely visual. Art doesn't have to tell a story. It is more than simply illustration. It can stand alone, without context. Once I surrendered to the visual I suddenly started seeing art everywhere. And I was drug free, dammit! Well, most of the time. :)

So…I like nothing better than driving through our usually homogeneous subdivision streets during this time of the year, oohing and aahhing my way down each block. I silently thank each householder for taking the time to entertain me, for wowing me, for strutting their creative stuff.  

Everyone does it differently. Some houses are garish, some are beautiful. Most of these houses shine in living color, others are resplendent in snowy white. A few VERY special ones are ridiculously over-the-top and I would drive ten miles to see one of those - with or without my grandchildren.

Standards and good taste be damned! You may not decorate as I do, but if you choose to decorate your house (or your door...) for the holidays you simply cannot do it wrong in my book. I approve! Go wild! Because if not now, when?"

Not the least bit creepy, right?

The Cold, Hard Truth

It is a comfort to have friends who will always support me, always be on my side. I have only had a couple of friends like that in my life; they have been few and far between. I treasure them, those rare souls who are willing to love me without pause. We all need friends like that.  However, I also like having a few friends in my life who will tell me the cold, hard truth.

Sugarcoating the truth does not count. I am not subtle. You must be direct with me. In fact, you kind of have to hit me over the head with a fully realized idea otherwise I will probably not see through the coating. Just don't hit me too hard or I might hit back. Sorry! It is an involuntary reflex.

Like Aretha I need some respect. A little respect goes a long way. Consequently, I prefer the cold hard truth served up with a dollop or two of pure intentions. Truth is a tricky business and is best delivered without hidden agendas or axes to grind. I wish I was better at both delivering and receiving the truth, because sometimes it can be such a gift.

I think the trick might be in leaving one's ego aside. I am not only talking about the person who is receiving the truth (that is a given), I am also talking about the person who is attempting to deliver it. Sometimes our egos get in the way of our effectiveness. 

Which brings me to George Jones singing The Cold Hard Truth. I do not usually listen to country music, but I definitely have some country favorites. When it comes to music I try to keep an open mind. Good thing, too, because otherwise I might have missed this old man singing his damn heart out:

Thanksgiving 2015

Today I am thankful for visitors and holidays, because without them my house would never get cleaned.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who is celebrating this holiday.  A special shout out to those of you who are cooking and cleaning up a storm this morning because you have a job and could not get the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off.

The Resurrection of Lake Apopka

Florida is all about water. Being a peninsula, it is surrounded by water. The rainy season is akin to the deluge.  In fact, one-fifth of the State of Florida consists of water. There are 30,000 lakes in Florida, and about 75 of these are considered large lakes. We are lucky in that we live near a big lake and spend a lot of time biking, hiking, wildlife watching there.  If you read my earlier blog, Alligator Days, you will see photos of a very small area of this lovely lake and the canals that exist nearby.

Lake Apopka is either the third, fourth, or fifth largest lake in Florida, depending on what you read. Sorry to be so vague, but the www-based uncertainty on this subject is massive and searching for precise information has kept me frustrated for more hours than I care to admit.  I give up.  It is either #3, #4, or #5 and that is the best I can do. 

Lake Apopka used to be a huge tourist attraction, famous for fishing camps and world-class bass fishing. At one time there were as many as 29 fishing camps on the lake, attracting tourists from all over the country hoping to catch trophy-sized bass. Now it has the distinction of being Florida's most polluted large lake.

Interestingly, it was once the second largest lake in Florida.  However, in 1941 a levee was built at the north end of the lake. The levee drained 20,000 acres of Lake Apopka. That reduced the size of the lake dramatically. The purpose was to add farmland, aiding in the war effort to produce more vegetables.  It was a well meaning effort that set the stage for disaster.

There are still people around who remember the lake as once so pristine you could see the bottom, but by 1950 it was already becoming murky with algae. Phosphorous and pesticides from farms bordering the lake, especially ones on the newly drained north end, continued to seep into the water. Local communities discharged treated wastewater into the lake up until the 1980's. By the early 1960's the fish began dying. Then, in 1980 a local pesticide company illegally dumped significant amounts of toxic chemicals into Lake Apopka. 

In the early 1990's a group of environmentally minded local folks from a variety of interest groups came together to form the Friends of Lake Apopka (FOLA). Their intention was to find ways to buy the drained farmland and reclaim the land from the farms who were discharging phosphorus laden water into the lake basin."

The St. Johns River Water Management District "and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) purchased almost all of the farms for restoration between 1988 and 2001."  Apparently 15,000 acres of drained farmland were purchased.

What an amazing effort. Buying all that land must have cost a pretty penny. Thank you real estate interests, environmentalists, business interests, taxpayers, state and federal governments. I am not being sarcastic. I love it when people come together, step up, and do the right thing; especially when it is a very hard thing to do.

The fish were not the only creatures who died because of the lake's polluted waters. Fish eating birds did, too, even years after restoration began. At one point in the 1990's the new stewards of the lake tried flooding the drained land. "The birds returned by the thousands. Unfortunately, pesticide residue in the fish they ate killed almost a thousand white pelicans, wood storks and great blue herons, and the land was drained again."  It boggles the mind.

You find American Alligators in just about any body of water in Florida. It doesn't have to be a lake. I have seen them sunning themselves alongside man-made retention ponds in area subdivisions adjacent to the West Orange (bike) Trail.  Here's one I saw last week:

Alligator on lower left sunning itself beside a subdivision retention pond

Alligators in Lake Apopka are famous for having suffered reproductive abnormalities and growth defects from the polluted waters.  Fertility issues related to pesticides significantly diminished the numbers of alligators in the lake between 1980 and 1987.

Alligator at Lake Apopka, October 2015

An alarming number of farmworkers from the vegetable muck farms formerly established at the north end of the lake subsequently developed lupus.  This was likely caused by overexposure to pesticides when picking, cutting, and packaging the vegetables grown on the muck farms.  Of course, it could also be from the crop dusters that routinely flew overhead, dusting the fields and the people working in the fields with pesticides. What kind of person sprays pesticides on their employees?  

For a year and a half we have lived near this big lake. It is 12 miles long and nearly 8 miles wide. We often bike to Newton Park, a small city park on Lake Apopka just off the West Orange Trail. I have only seen a boat on the water twice. About a year ago we saw a small water management boat on the water, but just last month we saw a sailboat!  That was exciting.

Sailboat on Lake Apopka, October 2015

It is now 2015 and returning this lake to health is still an ongoing project. Although things are definitely getting better because of restoration efforts, I often wonder if it will return to full health in my lifetime. FOLA says it will. I hope they are right.

Recent news coverage said that in the 20 years already spent actively trying to bring the lake back to health “Taxpayers have dumped more than $200 million into Lake Apopka, and it’s still one of the sickest lakes in the state.”  The good news is that a new treatment is being used and it seems hopeful. The problem with the lake is that there is significant muck accumulation at the bottom of the lake (up to 15 feet deep in certain areas). The new treatment involves pumping oxygen into the water and then using bacteria to “eat” the muck. The news story quoted above indicates that if this new treatment works it might only take 20 more years before the lake is healthy again...

I am not an expert on any of these matters. I can only tell you what I have read and comment on what I have observed. If you are not the type to be moved simply by the loss of the lake's natural beauty or the loss of wildlife, then perhaps you should consider the loss to the local economy. There are no fishing camps anymore, so all those potential tourists are not coming here to spend their money in the towns surrounding the lake.

The FOLA people deserve massive kudos.  They have a respectful practicality regarding restoration and they are currently concentrating on Ecotourism. There are now at least two beautiful nature preserves carved out of the land surrounding the lake. Biking and hiking trails invite us to commune with the natural world. A new one-way, car-based drive takes people on self-driven explorations along the many canals that must have been created for the orange growing industry once prospering around the lake. I like to think of this drive as an alligator safari.  Last time we took that drive we counted 31 alligators! Native trees and other flora have been planted in a respectful effort to return the land to the way it once was. 

Perhaps we still cannot eat the fish, but at least now we can enjoy being near the lake. It is an amazingly beautiful lake to look at. That is, as long as you do not look into the dark pea green color of the water...

View from the dock at Newton Park on Lake Apopka.  The water in this picture is less than 2 feet deep but you cannot see the bottom.

A Winning Personality

I have been sorting through my failures and taking inventory of my limitations now that I have the time in retirement to tackle all this self-indulgent nonsense.  I must say it is a thankless job and it is taking a whole lot longer than I thought it would. 

I guess one of my problems is I like to win.  I am trying to figure out if this is a character flaw or a virtue.  Actually, I quite like that part of myself.  I think I will keep that.

Why am I subjecting myself to this torture?  For one thing, I am trying to learn how to become more comfortable with failure because failure is often the fertilizer for new ideas. A new idea or two wouldn't kill me.

I am also trying to get to know myself at 64.  I am probably not too old to change.  If I find some qualities I really cannot stand I might try to change myself.  A little.  Just a little bit.  Yes, it is that damn change thing again!  Now I suppose I am too comfortable with change and will become addicted to it.  Sheesh.

I am pretty clear on how we gain knowledge.  Wisdom, of course, is something else. I am not exactly sure just what wisdom is or how you become wise.  If I figure it out, I will let you know.  Or perhaps you will tell me?  Either way is fine with me.

Paris, 13 Nov 2015

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées   

Like everyone else, I was glued to the TV and my iPad last night hoping for more information.  Hoping for clarity, I guess.  I had a hard time falling sleep, thinking hard about the families who had received the bad news that their family members would not be coming home from the concert or the restaurant.  I thought of good and evil.  I wondered about the nature of both.

 

“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth

Geraldine Page as Mrs. Ritter

I am always surprised when people assume I am a sweet old lady. No one ever mistook me for a sweet and unassuming teenager or a sweet middle aged woman.  I may look like a chubby, gray haired, little old woman now, but I am no lady. I have written about my distaste for "ladies" before.  You really cannot make assumptions about old folks.  We are just like we were when we were young, except slower and more wrinkled.  OK, maybe we have gained some weight, too.  Oh well!

Some older women are sweet and kind.  Others are a bit like Geraldine Page's character, Mrs. Ritter, in The Pope of Greenwich Village.  You never know who we are until you take the time to get to know us.

Here's a clip from that movie with the great Ms. Page. I really love this character and this scene.  In 1984, when this movie came out, I was 33 years old.  At the time I was an employee union organizer trying to bring collective bargaining to Cornell University in order to demand some respect for women in traditionally female jobs.  I was pretty tough and sure of myself.  That is how I wanted to stay. 

You know how it is when you are young.  The thought of aging horrified me.  Not only did I not want my youth to fade, I did not want to become a vulnerable and sweet old lady.  That seemed to be the only older woman role model when I looked around back then.  The character of Mrs. Ritter was something of a revelation to me because, even though she was older, alone, and grieving the loss of her son, she remained a badass woman.  I love Geraldine's interpretation of this character.  A lesser actress might have made a joke out of her.  She's no joke.