A strong branch was broken from our family tree when my brother, John, passed away recently.
I was fortunate that he was one of my trio of brothers, John, Bill, and Bob, to guide, protect, and tease me—never allowing me to take myself too seriously.
But shortly after I left babyhood their repertoire shifted to include harsher means, physically and emotionally.
When I was about 8 years old, John, the eldest, played his part when he meant only to scare me by aiming his slingshot loaded with a small rock at me. His aim was off a little and the rock slammed into my shoulder, sending me crying to my mother.
In one of the last times we met together we recounted that spring day, each arguing agreeably about the details.
His personality was a quixotic combination of practicality and creativity, modesty and resolve.
He worked hard and was extremely competitive whether at his job or at play.
I remember one evening when, as adults, after he‘d won game after game of double solitaire, I, who hadn’t played the game for years, asked for leniency. His reply was, “No way!”
I vowed I wouldn’t stop until I’d won at least one hand. Did he lighten up just a little? Eighteen hands later, it was long after midnight when I gave up.
On the other hand, John was generous with his time, offering wise counsel to not only me, his kid sister, but to subsequent generations, including my sons, Steve and Peter. Peter is now imparting what he learned from John to my 11-year-old grandson, Theo.
One of his favorite aphorisms was: “The only way to finish a project is to begin!”
Another was by Dr. Suess:
“Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!”
I tried to encapsulate John’s characteristics when I wrote the following chapter in Lost Without The River:
All of us seem to have packed a bit of the earth from our father's farm, which had been his father's farm, into our souls before we scattered away from that small, none-too-prosperous homestead, across the United States, around the world, into our financially and emotionally varied states of success.
John, I think, probably packed a chunk of dirt twined through with roots from the bank of the river. He laid his trap lines there each winter, fished from its banks each summer, and, generous with his time as a high school senior, took his kid brother and sister ice skating, guiding Bob and me down the twisting, treacherous river by a full moon's light. That night was as close to perfection as a few hours can be.
An Unforgettable Image
In early July 2021, I was riding with my brother Bob in a truck on North Dakota Route 168, about forty miles from the Minnesota state line. There were only a few small towns that had shrunk from a population of 3,000 to only twenty or thirty houses. Bob explained that this downfall began in the eighties with the drop in demand for sugar beets, and had been exacerbated by the poor growing conditions in more recent years, and now by the pandemic.
It was the last hours of twilight, both of us were very tired after getting up early and already having driven 400 miles that day. We seemed to be the only vehicle on the road, except for huge semis that, going much faster than the 70 mph limit, left our truck quaking. I saw bright white at the edge of the road reflecting from our headlights. It was a hitchhiker, standing, beard unshaven, wearing wrinkled clothes, shirt sleeves ragged at the wrist, and a small rucksack slung over his shoulders.
I’d been sleepy, trying to stay alert to watch for deer that might bound out in front of us. But now, the thought of this man who seemingly no one cared about, spending the night on the side of the road tore at me, and I became wide awake.
“Bob, I hate to say this, but do you think we’d dare pick him up?”
“I would’ve turned around and done just that, but there’s no place in this truck for him to sit. Not even in the front. No place to put the stuff jammed between us either.”
“How far is it to the next town?”
“Oh, probably twenty miles,” he said.
I couldn’t see any houses, or buildings of any kind.
“What will that man do tonight? Where will he sleep? Where will he get water and food?”
“He probably won't eat. Unless he finds a few dropped kernels of corn that the birds haven't gotten. He may find a spring. I hope he's wise enough not to drink run-off water. That's all been tainted by the chemicals used to keep the weeds in check."
I stayed silent, tormented by what this man's night would be.
"He’ll have to look for a dry place, and hope that he doesn’t get set upon.”
“Who would do that!”
“I assume he’s a migrant worker who’s been abandoned by the boss who brought him across the southern border. When crops are poor–and I’ve never seen them so bad as this year–the big guys, knowing there won’t be any profit, just pull out, letting the workers fend for themselves.”
"He's probably looking for work on a dairy farm near here,” Bob continued.
The lack of government regulation of migrant workers means that they toil long hours in adverse conditions for little pay. They often live in unsafe accommodations that are overcrowded and unsanitary. They accept this because they have no other choice.
During the summers that I was a college student decades ago, I worked at the Big Stone Canning Company, located on the South Dakota-Minnesota state line. Each growing season, the firm employed seasonal migrant laborers from Mexico to pick the crops. When the early vegetable season had ended, they moved on to the sugar-beet fields of North Dakota, returning to the canning company after that to pick sweet corn.
I saw the minimal housing conditions, and witnessed the men, women, and children working long hours in the hot fields. On Sundays the families attended Mass at Saint Charles Borromeo Church in Big Stone City, joining the congregation just as my family did. They sat on folding chairs in the back of the choir loft. Bob remembers that, although their clothes were worn and patched, they were clean, and he says the matriarchs made sure that the children were respectful. Bob adds, with a wry tone in his voice, that they were better behaved than the parish’s children–including him!
If I were to make a gallery of photos that I was unable to take in 2021, at the top of the list would be the man standing by the side of that North Dakota road.
Why Shrimp on Christmas Eve?
Since the time of Christ, fish was a part of the culture of the Catholic Church. Saint Peter and Christ’s disciples fished on the Sea of Galilee. When I was growing up, the church forbid eating meat on Fridays.
The Christmas Eve tradition of eating a festive meal composed of only seafood, traditionally seven unique types, was, over centuries, carried with the migrations of people from Italy into central and eastern Europe where ancestors of my mother, Myrtle Chaussee Hoffbeck, resided. In the eighteenth century my ancestors crossed the Atlantic to settle in Quebec, Canada, and then, after a dangerous trip across Lake Superior, to Ft. Pierre, SD.
My mother, Aunt Marian, and Uncle Brit were raised after their mother died by their maternal grandmother in Pierre, SD in a French-speaking household. For practical reasons, she reduced the number of seafood recipes from seven down to five.
My mom did her best to follow the Christmas Eve tradition of multiple seafood courses, though she had to pare down the menu from five fish dishes to three. The first course was always oyster stew, the second dried cod, and, substituting for fresh salmon, the final, salmon patties.
When my Uncle Brit moved to Alaska shortly after World War II, he sent Christmas packages to our family. One year, among gifts for all of us, were two large cans of oyster stew. The oysters had been farmed in huge open crates off the Kenai Peninsula. When my brother Bob and I drove the Kenai Highway in 2002, the fisheries were still thriving; we saw the giant crates in the water not far from the shore.
Enclosed in Uncle Brit’s package was a note explaining that this would be the best oyster stew we’d ever tasted. My mother opened one can, and following the directions, heated the contents. After tasting the stew, she added a little cream and liberal amounts of salt and pepper, but the stew remained gummy and tasteless. I wasn’t the only one at the table that night that had trouble finishing the serving. My mother, who never was able to throw food away, placed the second can in the pantry. Months later when Brit and his wife came to visit, she served samples of her stew and the Alaska oyster stew to Brit. After only a few spoonfuls, he readily admitted that my mother’s was far superior.
When I married, I further “revised” the traditional menu by excluding the oyster stew and the dried cod and by adding shrimp and baked salmon. In the following years in order to have the meal ready to serve when we returned from church, I only served dishes that could be made ahead and kept in the refrigerator. I added French potato salad (which my mother made in the spring using new potatoes from the garden), and a baked sweet potato casserole.
Year by year, I kept embellishing the menu with different items: cucumber salad which added sourness to contrast with the delicately flavored shrimp, large baked stuffed mushrooms to awaken taste buds with spices, and three sauces. The mushrooms had to be pure white. Finding twenty of the just-right size often required a trek to more than one market. Making them involved a series of laborious tasks. One year, in the interest of time, I substituted another recipe that required no scooping, chopping, sautéing, or basting, and that could be made in a quarter of the time.
As we sat down to eat, my youngest son asked, “Did you leave your mushrooms in the kitchen? If you tell me where they are, I’ll go get them.” He was visibly disappointed when I told him they didn’t exist. At the end of the meal there were still several of the fake variety on the serving dish.
My mother always placed a dish of cranberry sauce on the table and I continued that tradition. Olives (my favorite) became another must-have. They go well with the baguette that keeps the French on the table.
Ashes and Rose Petals
Beautiful View
Lightning, thunder, and torrential rain the night of July 9 seemed to prohibit the ceremony from being held outdoors on the west shore of Big Stone Lake the following day. When we arrived the next morning it was cold and rainy with a stiff breeze. The decision was made: The entire event, to begin at noon, would be held inside. Then at 11:30, a few patches of blue sky appeared, and soon the sky was clear. Bob, Mike, and Patrick scrambled to empty the canoe—two-thirds full of water—but it was impossible to clean it in time, so Patrick would have to paddle a pontoon while Bob did the honors later.
It was too late to move the indoor set-up, so the memorial service and luncheon were held in the lodge’s dining room.
Pastor Barbara McKewin of the Tabor United Methodist Church in Big Stone City opened with prayers and a wonderful remembrance of Helen. Even though the two had never met, Pastor Barbara had done her research by previously talking to members of our family and reading the entire memoir, Lost Without the River. When she spoke it seemed as though she’d known Helen for many years.
Then I read my eulogy, Bob gave a short talk about how he and Helen had bonded while traveling thousands of miles together, and Bill explained the Hoffbeck and Chaussee genealogies. John, who wasn’t able to attend, had written a poem in Helen’s honor which Bill read.
Fresh in many of our minds was the beautiful serenity of our sister Patt’s service that had been held in the same place several years earlier. On that day doves flew above the small raft that carried her ashes down the lake. Helen had asked for her service to be similar to Patt’s, a violinist playing the same songs and the same hymns being sung.
On this day, noisy fishermen vacated the adjacent dock only moments before the lakeside ceremony. As it began, a group of pelicans resting on the lake to the south paddled toward us. There was only the sound of nature as Pastor Barbara gave a blessing and Bob scattered the cremains following with ninety-two rose petals. As he did this, doves circled above. Then Mary released scores of butterflies that flew out as the violinist played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
The Irreplaceable
The Loveliest Blossom
With a heavy heart I write this. Our family tree has lost one of its sturdiest branches. Family matriarch, thoughtful and loving caregiver, zany companion, my dear sister Helen passed away last month, at the beginning of spring. My brothers, John, Bill, and Bob, mourn with me.
From my earliest years I was aware of her love and thoughtfulness. Helen planned my first birthday party when I was six and stayed up late that fall sewing dresses for my first school term. After she graduated from high school and moved to Minneapolis, she continued to help me. When I moved to Thailand to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer, she wrote long letters keeping me up-to-date on people and events, and reminding me—always—to stay safe.
Helen loved the natural world. Once, when staying in her small house, I arose just as the sun was rising. I found Helen at the kitchen sink, looking out the window. I joined her and asked what she was admiring. “Everything. And I’m thanking the Lord for the gift of another day.”
Helen especially loved flowers, wherever she found them: in gardens, in flower pots, along the roads, in paintings, and on china plates and teacups. She was a founder and life-long member of her district’s flower club, and helped plan educational programs for members and guests. She took a topic of a series especially to heart. Its subject was the profound value of imperfection in humanity and life, exemplified in the Japanese flower-arranging practice of ikebana. She and I shared that belief, agreeing that stems and objects slightly off-kilter were always more pleasurable to the eye than those upright and neatly cropped and pruned.
Each spring Helen and I would report on our sightings of irises, crocus, and columbines. Helen always commented on her blossoming peony bushes, describing the colors: white, pale pink and deep cerise, and her lilac trees: purple, white, and one tree, bearing the blossom’s namesake, lilac.
That is, until her peony bushes grew so lush and thick that they became home to nests of voles. After years of trying to eliminate the pesky animals (every way short of poison), she grabbed a shovel, and after days of hard labor, dug the bushes up, and placed the rhizomes in a rusty children’s wagon at the end of her drive with a “Free” sign.
During those same years, lilac roots were invading her house’s foundation, allowing rain water to leak into the basement. She managed to chop down and saw off the trunks and branches of the trees, but the roots proved a tougher adversary. After trying every tool she owned, she borrowed a plumber’s pipe cutter to break through them.
I was stunned when she eliminated the peony bushes, devastated when she tore out the lilacs. But Helen balanced practicality with emotion, and humbly recognized that nature had won.
Yet it’s the little things that Helen did that I cherish the most. Last week as I was going through keepsakes looking for photos of Helen, I came upon a slim illustrated children’s book about the first weeks of a fawn growing up in a woods. I remembered that, in July of 2014, I’d arrived in Minnesota from New York late the night before my husband’s funeral which was to be held early the next morning. Everything, everybody had been rushed. Guests, all of whom had also gotten up early and driven for hours, were arriving singly or in pairs with only minutes to spare.
The opening chords of the organ processional were thundering through the nave of the abbey church, and my sons Steve and Peter, Peter’s little son Theo, and the guests were all standing when Helen hurried up to us. She gave me a quick kiss and smiled at Theo.
“This is for you,” she whispered, and handed him a small paper bag, a ribbon at the top. It had contained the small book I found last week and a roll of Lifesavers. Later she told me the reason she’d arrived so late was that she’d been searching for that age-appropriate book. Her thoughtfulness helped a sad, rambunctious, talkative three-year-old sit still, remain quiet, and stay in place during the two-hour-long solemn service.
Helen and I laughed often, and, always, we compared and appreciated the beauty of the seasons in Minnesota and in New York. We talked in detail about the first trees and flowers to bloom, sightings of butterflies and songbirds, the first leaves to change their color in autumn.
The very day I learned that Helen had passed away, I spotted stems of crocuses and dwarf irises pushing up from the soil in flowerbeds on my street.
“I’ll have to tell Helen,” I thought. “She’ll like that.”
Soothing the Midwinter's Soul
When as a young woman I lived abroad, in both Lebanon and Thailand, there were flowers everywhere. Masses of red and purple bougainvillea tumbling over walls, pink and lavender hibiscus bushes decorating doorways, flame trees, their scarlet blossoms silhouetted against monsoon clouds. I missed that perfusion of colors and scents when I moved to New York City. Green plants didn’t satisfy me. I wanted blossoms, especially during the long winter months. I began to buy one or two narcissus bulbs and try to time the planting so they’d blossom during January.
When those long dark days drag on I’ve found the best antidote is to watch the drama of a paper-white bulb being transformed into a slim green stem topped by a fragile whiter-than-white blossom.
During my child-raising years in Manhattan, flower shops sold narcissus bulbs. A store at the corner of my street showcased them in a woven basket at the entrance. When my sons were in school I’d stop there, stoop down, taking my time sorting through the container, looking for small bulbs with only a bit of brown stem showing.
I’d place the bulbs in glass vases and use them—as I’m sure many other city parents did --as a months’-long botanical lesson. One day I held the clear container up so that my younger son, Steve, could see the amazing tangle of roots around the river stones that I’d planted the bulbs in.
“The minerals in the stones substitute for minerals in the soil,” I explained. “See how the roots wind round the stones. Don’t they look like white and green snakes?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I‘d wondered at the time about his nonchalant reply because Steve was in the “Why?” phase, when an answer always elicited another “Why?” in a seemingly endless stream.
At bedtime, he fessed up. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I pulled your plant up so I could see everything better. But I stuffed it back in,” he assured me. Puzzle solved. I’d been surprised that morning when I’d found it leaning precipitously to one side! As the stalks grew I used chop sticks, tying stem and stick together with twist ties to hold the stalks upright.
As the years unfolded, so did my search for narcissus bulbs. There was a wonderful nursery near our country house in upstate New York that was famous for the fine quality and overwhelming variety of bulbs. A sign near the door proclaimed: “We sell only the best!”
Baskets and mesh bags of tubers and bulbs-- tulips, daffodils, dahlias, amaryllis, and many other kinds--were lined up on benches outside and on tables inside. I was surprised to find garlic tubers next to the gladiolus, alphabetically, if not aesthetically, correct.
People would travel hundreds of miles and spend hours deliberating or arguing about which and how many to buy. Because the bulbs need time to settle in before the ground freezes, the bulb-buying frenzy began in mid-August. On weekends the store would often run out of baskets and customers would grab one of the bright red children’s wagons the place provided. Another sign ordered: “Return baskets and wagons to place of origin!” The first time I read the sign I wondered, “And just where would that be? China, perhaps?”
Sometimes a toddler rode merrily along in a red wagon until she was pulled off by a parent to make room for another bag of bulbs. Children’s desires were secondary those days; the quest was on for just-the-right bulbs.
If you got carried away and bought scores of them, the woman at the cash register would eye the loot, and with a quick mental estimate, pronounce, “Those’ll cost you slightly north of $300.00,” while moving her head down to a small upright folder that warned with a sad face: “No returns!”
More than once I watched as a customer reluctantly chose several and placed them in the “Return to Shelf” box. This very real “sign language” was necessary because the staff didn’t have time to answer questions. From the time you entered the store until the door slammed shut behind you they used body language, a nod—up or down—pointing with a finger or a shoulder, or a sway of the torso depending on which body part was free to help guide you through the process. There were two women behind the counter. One tallied the take, the other took your money. A tiny sign said: “We prefer credit cards.” The woman didn’t have time to count out change.
There was no air conditioning and the store would become terribly hot. As the lines grew, generally pleasant customers would sometimes become irritable. When one afternoon everything came to a halt, a man grumbled, “Well! Where’s the cashier?” The second clerk snapped back, “She had to take a break. She’s a human after all. Unlike you!” Those were the only cross words I ever heard in that wonderful place.
The first Christmas we would be celebrating in our new country house I was especially eager to have the plants bloom precisely the week of the guests’ arrival. I wanted to brighten the rooms that were not fully furnished, and hoped the fragrance of the blossoms might mask the strong smells of new paint.
In late November I planted them in soil, river stones providing for drainage below, in large blue ceramic pots. The refrigerator had not been installed so I found a place near the outside wall in the basement, hoping the cool temperature would help delay their growth and blossoming. I’d read that placing paper bags over the tops of newly sprouted plants could further retard their growth. At the supermarket I requested paper bags and tied them over the plants before we left for the city.
The day we returned was rushed and I had no time to check on my plants. When my elder son, Peter, pulled up to the house and asked how he could help, I told him to go down to the basement, describing the room, and bring the narcissus plants up. He came back empty handed.
“ I didn’t see any plants down there. What do they look like?”
“Oh, I said, “I forgot to tell you. They have brown bags over them,” and I explained why.
He tilted his head, his lips turned up at the corners, and asked, “Is that what you did with Steve and me when we were little kids?”
When he brought them up, together we ceremoniously removed the bags. Long pale green, spindly stems that had been held vertical by the bags fell over hitting the floor with a squishing sound. Chopsticks would be of no help. We placed them in corners of the rooms in an attempt to hold them off the floor. Each day we’d check for blossoms. There never were any. Lesson learned: Torturing plants by depriving them of light doesn’t work.
This year my list of Christmas gifts had been short: two books and a paper-white bulb. Mail was delayed by weeks this holiday season. It was January before the last of my gifts arrived. It was from Peter, his fiancée, and my grandson, Theo.
A small glass container was packed so tightly in a double-weight box that it took my friend Diana and me ten minutes and two broken fingernails to get it out. Stuffed into the round vase was a mesh bag of dirt. No sign of a bulb. Directions called for adding water to the bag and squeezing to mix the “non-dirt vegetarian soil” with it.
“I think this is going to be messy,” I said. “Best done over the kitchen sink.” As I carried the bag we heard a large thump and the bulb went rolling across the floor. It’d been pushed up so hard under the dirt that it hadn’t been visible.
“I think we should put aprons on,” I said. We are of two different schools, pro-apron, anti-apron. Diana never wears one, proving she’s right by never getting a stain on her clothes whether cooking or eating, whereas even when I’m most careful I always smudge my clothes.
Although the triple-strength plastic zip lock bag was meant to pull apart easily, the top band was so tiny that neither of us could get a fingerhold. We tried to slide a paring knife between the sides, resorting to increasingly stronger and more pointed knives. At last, we succeeded. Now we were instructed to puncture four holes in the bottom of the bag. Once again we took up knives and—finally--punctured the bag.
After adding a small amount of water, the directions stated in an oh-this-is-so-simple tone, to squeeze the bag to mix the water with the nondirt soil until it resembled bread dough. I kneaded the bag until my hands ached, and then passed the bag to Diana. As she bore down with all of her pent-up frustration the color of the water leaking out of the punctured holes changed from clear to pink. We thought this was just the soil’s color. Then it changed to a brighter shade, and when she pulled her hand away from the bag, a long ribbon of crimson blood flowed out.
“You’re bleeding! Are you okay?” I folded a dish towel up, and pressed down on the gash clearly visible at the top of a finger.
”I’m fine. A little blood doesn’t bother me.”
“Even when it’s your own?”
“Not at all.”
In an attempt to rinse the mud and blood mixture from her hands, some of it splashed onto a sleeve of her linen shirt. I grabbed a kitchen towel and dish soap and tried to remove the large stain. Most of it faded, but one spot remained.
“Out damn spot!” I intoned, as I continued to work on it. “Merchant of Venice.”
“Oh, Barbara. That’s not MOV (actor’s parlance) that’s “MacBeth!”
With a bandaid affixed to Diana’s finger, but with the bulb not yet in the dirt, we discovered an additional small strip of paper instructions. The black type on gray paper was so pale we’d assumed the paper was blank.
“Maybe we should take a break before we continue," I suggested.
“No way! We’ll finish. Then we’ll eat.”
We squinted to read these additional instructions. Roughly stated: If we didn’t want the growing spike of the plant to grow high and tip over and break, we should make a solution of 5% alcohol by adding water to 40% proof hard spirits, such as vodka, and stir that mixture into the dirt. That supposedly would stunt the spike’s growth.
“Maybe there’s some vodka way back on that high shelf,” I said, and began to search. “I think we need to do this. There isn’t enough dirt in the container to hold a chopstick upright and after all of our work and time, the plant stem will fall over and break.”
“If you do find some vodka, we’re not giving it to a plant,” she said, “I’m going to drink it!”
We spent fifteen minutes cleaning up the floor, counter, sink, and our hands, and then I ordered pizza. As we waited for the delivery, wine glasses in hand, I said, “We could have boiled this wine down to make the mixture they suggested. Now, how much wine would we have needed to make it 46% proof? Can you do the math?”
Diana gave me a look, but didn’t even bother to answer.
I left container-with-bulb on the table. The next morning, even though I was afraid the spot might be too cold and nip a tender shoot, I placed the container with the bulb near a window where it would get hours of direct sunlight. Unfortunately, there were very few sunny days. Each day I’d check on the plants progress. It took weeks before there was any hint of green, and the stem seemed stuck at two inches. But when it reached three inches it took off and hit twelve in four days.
Now as I write this, Lent has begun. It’ll be Easter before we know it--in the snap of a kabuki fan. The fragile white blossom of my recalcitrant bulb waves at the end of a not-too-long stem with no need of a chopstick to prop it up. I recognize it was indeed worth the time and the effort spent, even my friend’s blood, to implant it. Though maybe I should check with her about that.
Glass Wings of Hope
A new mood has overtaken my neighborhood. With the new variant of COVID-19 and the inability of many to obtain a vaccine here, everybody I know is nervous and seems to have become afraid. Residents in my apartment building who used to stop and ask how I was doing, masked and at a social distance, of course, now only nod and keep on walking. My only social contacts occur when I pick up the mail in the lobby. A highlight of my day.
It was disappointing and discouraging the other day when I encountered a woman who has three school-age children. Previously she’d stop and chat—the older kids joining in and laughing at a recent occurrence. This time she was alone. She immediately drew back and said, “We’ll talk another time.”
I have a generous neighbor on my floor whose job it is to verify the freshness and safety of home-delivered groceries. Each week he receives quantities of food—milk, eggs, bread, and cheeses--far too much for him and his wife to use. That day he called asking which items I’d like. In a paying-forward fashion, I give the items I don’t need to a friend, who in turn passes some of her bounty to another person. I do my best to return my neighbor’s kindness by giving him an occasional box of chocolates or a bottle of wine.
Our first weekly exchange involved an in-apartment conversation about not just the food but how each of us came to be living in Manhattan and in the same building. On subsequent visits we talked about what countries we’d visited and good-naturedly argued about what regional cuisines were the best. That day it became a silent affair: door was left ajar, three hard raps, my “thank you”, his “you’re welcome,” and then a firm click as he pulled the door closed.
“Alone again,” I said out loud. Early in the pandemic I was embarrassed to find myself, not just feeling my anxieties, but expressing them vocally. But now, ten long months into the pandemic, I’ve become an advocate of that practice. As infants we do our best to encourage “conversations” with our caretakers. The sound of another is key to a human brain’s development, and to sanity, itself, I reason.
During that week New York City had opened Covid-19 vaccinations to all residents over sixty-five. We’re talking about more than 700,000 people in Manhattan who qualify. Unfortunately, I’ve had an anaphylactic attack which heightens my risk numbers and requires me to be vaccinated in a hospital. That afternoon I’d spent hours calling my doctor and searching hospital websites hoping that I’d learn where I might register. The only advice I received was to call the city’s helpline, which circled right back to telling me to call my doctor! I went to bed that night very discouraged.
The next morning I learned that four of my friends, because they had the ability to get the vaccine at large facilities, had been able to get a time-slot for not only the first dose but the second dose as well, whereas I hadn’t even managed to get registered at a hospital. Then I learned that the city’s allotment was running very low: anyone like me who hadn’t already registered might have to wait months until there was sufficient vaccine to be inoculated.
I’d been given two photos as Xmas gifts that I planned to have framed. In an attempt to cheer myself up the next morning, I went to the piano and as I was shifting family photos around to make space for the ones to come, there peeking from behind a photo was a Xmas angel!
For everyone, I assume, unpacking decorations before the holiday season is filled with a sense of anticipation for the approaching days. But packing them up has none of those emotions. For me, it’s just something to get over with. As the years of my married life have continued, the number of these items seems to have grown exponentially. Decorations of colored construction paper made by small hands to be hung on the tree, placed on a table, or placed in the kitchen, ones with a personal message given by friends and colleagues. And I added to these when I began collecting an ornament for each of my sons from every country my husband and I visited. Somewhere along this timeline I resorted to categorizing: boxes for glass balls, boxes for especially fragile items, a box for the stockings and tree skirt, a somewhat battered camping bag to contain wound-up strings of twinkly lights, a small sturdy box for the creche I’d picked up in a French village, and a box full of angels.
For eleven months of the year these boxes reside high on a shelf right next to the ceiling. Getting them down and back up requires a ladder and four pairs of hands. When I say I hate this task, the words fall only slightly short of honesty.
This year because I’d be alone for the holidays, I decorated minimally. Only a few small silver trees, some red bows, and a scattering of angels. Each year I’d vow to locate all of these ornaments on the first try. But always, always after the fragile items were wrapped with tissue paper, the boxes closed, carried, and lifted into place, I’d find one or two more. On the grandfather clock, or in a son’s room, or on a high shelf. Along the way I learned to have not one, but two people, follow me in search of ornaments hidden deep in the tree’s branches. This year because I didn’t have a tree I thought it’d be easy, and I was determined to get them all on the first swoop. How had I missed this one!
I picked the free-standing angel up. Her wings, banded by silver, were of stained-glass, not the typical medieval colors of dark blues and reds and greens, but of pinks. Those medieval artisans labored for years in a painstaking, multi-tasked technique to create those breathtakingly rich colors. In contrast my angel’s handblown glass wings are in hues of soft pink. When I held her up to the light the wings’ colors changed to hues of foxglove, the underside of a magnolia petal, and the faintest hint of anemone purple. Magnificent! These amazing modern colors are achieved by an enameling process that rivals the patience and precision required of those earlier masters. Deviate the fire’s temperature by only a few degrees in the banding-silver-to-glass process, and the glass shatters.
My first reaction upon discovering her had been one of frustration for I’d have to pull out the container of wrapping paper, swath the angel in tissue paper, and then wait—who knows how long?—until my building once again allowed workmen to enter apartments, call down to the front desk, and request a worker to help place it on the high shelf with the other decorations.
But my annoyance melted away as I discovered yet another color. I decided to leave the angel where she is, peeking out between my special-occasion family photos. I’ll leave her in place until I’ve received the second dose of the vaccine, until residents of my building linger to talk again, until my neighbor brings the groceries into my apartment and stays to chat.
I placed the angel back on the piano.
“Now here you go,” I said.