Never Had a Cake

      In her later years, when my Grandmother was living in St. Augustine in a house not far from my mother's place, Mom would drop by often, and of course, on Granny's birthday, Mom would make a big deal out of her big day. Now Granny was usually in a good mood, but once in a while, she would have one of what we now call trigger moments. And one year when Mom said, “Happy Birthday!” Granny started talking about how she had never had a birthday cake – ever! Mom told her she was quite mistaken – Mom had gotten something special for Granny every birthday that she was in Florida – did that not count?

      Granny then shrugged her shoulders and said, “The twins had a birthday the week before mine – and so all the celebrations and cake went to them – by the next week, no one cared that it was my birthday – so I never got a cake!” Oh my gosh! Her birthday took her all the way back to her childhood – Granny still had a grudge against her twin brothers for getting all the attention (or the perception of them having gotten all the attention) at birthday time! There was no convincing her that there were plenty of birthdays since then that she, Granny, was the center of attention and had her very own cake.

      When Mom told me that story I started to laugh because of course I myself had made many of Granny's birthday cakes over the years between my college days and her moving to Florida.

      One day during my sophomore year in college, I was walking through the Sears parking lot between classes. A junior, who was a business major I knew from the rathskellers and TGIF drinking parties at the school, was walking by, and we stopped and chatted for a while. All of a sudden he asked me to the concert that weekend! Before I realized that he was asking me on a date, I said, “Oh I can't, I'm hosting my grandmother's 70^th birthday that night!” He said okay and walked off.

      And then it dawned on me that I had just turned a guy down for a date – and with such a crazy story!

      But it was true, and I could not have changed plans – so my answer would not have been any different. He did not hate me after that, but he never ventured to ask me out again – and that was probably a good thing after all.

      After Mom told me the story of Granny proclaiming to have never had a birthday cake, I enjoyed the irony of my having given up a date for Granny's 70^th birthday, with cake, only to have her lament later that no one ever celebrated her birthday!

      The slight that Granny felt when her twin brothers got more attention than she did was a long time ago. My missing a date? Not so long ago (comparatively speaking)!

      Clearly I have my own trigger moments!

      May be someday we shall all have finally baked enough cake in this world to make everyone happy!

97 20150407 Never had a cake

Granny's Birthday

My Grandmother and me 1981

     Today is my grandmother's one hundred twelfth birthday - my mother's mother – born Doris Elizabeth White, in 1903. One of my grandmother's nicknames was Dolly, and I often call her Dolly in stories I tell about her. The Elizabeth which is my middle name comes from Dolly's middle name.

     Dolly was born in West Bromwich, England - she had 5 older siblings and a year or two later, a younger sister. Their parents,  Hannah and William White lived on an estate with a 99-year lease. The stories Dolly told of those times sound absolutely idyllic - they were in a park with a creek winding through; there were farm animals and farm chores for all the kids to do every day; and Dolly and her brothers and sisters had a lot of fun together. In 1914, when Dolly was 11, the 99-year lease was up, and it was expected that William would sign on for another 99 years – but he was worried – concerned about events going on in the world, and he was worried that war was coming and that England would be one of the battlefields. William wanted to get his family to safety.

      So the family got on a boat – the Empress of Ireland. And as World War I loomed, the Whites crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and then the ship took a course down the St. Lawrence River. The story they often told was that Granny's sister, Flo, had been kind of sickly on the farm in England while all the rest of the children were usually healthy and hard working. But on the ship, while crossing the Atlantic, everyone in the family was seasick the entire voyage – except Flo and the patriarch, William!

      The family disembarked on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario – where they were going to make their new home. Later they heard that the Empress of Ireland sank in Lake Ontario a day or so after the family had gotten off!

      Dolly often talked about the new home at the top of a hill in Grimsby, Ontario. There was always a lot of activity at the house – with all the siblings. She said she had never been bored a day in her life!

      There are two stories I remember Dolly mentioning about her growing up in Grimsby – the first was about Dolly running down the hill on a hot summer day and buying a glass of buttermilk at the bottom of the hill, and that buttermilk was so cold and so delicious and quenched her thirst wonderfully!

      The second story was the time, I think it was at the local fair, Dolly saw they were selling peanut butter! Peanut butter was a new phenomenon – Dolly wanted to try it – she liked peanuts and she liked butter – so it would have to be a tasty combination, wouldn't it? But she said it was just awful – thinking back on it, Dolly realized that there was probably no sugar in it – it tasted nothing like the peanut butter we know today!

      My grandmother lived all but four years of the entire 20^th century – from a time before peanut butter to the days when her great-grandchildren were using computers at school. If only I had captured more of her stories!

96 20150406 Granny's Birthday

Easters

1988 Dewey, Oklahoma

      One year when I was quite young, maybe even as old as five, I got up one Sunday a couple of weeks before Easter and looked out the front window at the snow-covered lawn. I was looking for rabbit prints in the snow – because even though I believed in the Easter Bunny and believed in the baskets he put together and delivered to every house on Easter morning, I did not give the Bunny credit for being bright enough to know when Easter was – I mean, he was just a rabbit, how could his calendar be the same as humans? That particular Sunday I was convinced that the Easter Bunny could have come early – if I saw his prints in the snow, I would have started looking in the house for my basket.

      The combination of the words snow and Easter in the same sentence tells a lot about Western New York. When I grew up, there were a lot more white Easters than white Christmases! In fact, I remember more rainy Christmases than snowy ones, and I remember that any pretty Easter clothes I might have gotten would be covered up with a winter coat for church!

      And at our house, Mom and Dad hid entire Easter baskets – one for each kid, which we had to hunt for in the house. The baskets had candy and colored hard boiled eggs and usually one chocolate bunny of a good size per basket. I don't recall how the baskets were individualized – I do not think our names were on them – but maybe a name was on a colored egg – or we recognized an egg we had colored ourselves.

     The Easter basket story that got the most mileage over the years was the Sunday my parents hid Eric's basket in the oven – he could not have been more than two or three that year. And the oven was one of the forbidden places in the house – we were to never touch or open the oven door. So even after all these years, it still does not seem right that Mom and Dad teased Eric each Easter about the time he could not find his basket in the oven!

      Easter evening, we would get together with my mother's family, at our house or my grandmother's or my Uncle Jim and Sharon's place – and there would be a meal, similar to the Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings we had.

1989 Plano, Texas

      When my girls were growing up, they had baskets that were out on the table on Easter morning, and Sarah and Amanda went on a hunt throughout the house for plastic eggs filled with chocolates like M&Ms or jelly beans. And Grandma Mary, my mother, sent them each an Easter dress every year, and Grandma Kay would send them each a summer outfit. Not only a great tradition, but the gifts made for wonderful photo ops!

      This year, Amanda arranged for family that is nearby to come here for dinner – these days our holiday dinners are in the early afternoon, not suppertime. We won't be having chocolate or baskets or even hard boiled eggs. But there will be ham and smoked turkey, salads, and lots of desserts. We'll talk about the Easters of yore and the sense of holiday will feel just like those old days!

95 20150405 Easter

Sixth Grade

    There were two sixth grade teachers at Boston Valley Elementary School, and I got the one that I had been terrified of since first grade. Mr. Friar. He's the one who yelled at me for not smiling when he was taking class pictures back in first grade. I'm not sure if he remembered me from then or not. Mr. Friar's reputation throughout the school was that he taught and expected grown up stuff from his students! So of course, parents loved him, and my parents, especially, would not listen to any complaints from me about him.

      Mr. Friar requested us all to have a brief-case for carrying our books and homework. And we dutifully did.

      Each year the class went on a field trip to a bank, and the kids learned how to write checks!

      For social studies, we each had to do a special project for every unit and present it to the class. I envied the kids who did those flour and salt maps – how talented they were! One project I remember doing was a handwritten story of “a day in the life of a serf girl” which I wrote out the morning it was due in school before class started – totally lame – but Mr. Friar was too busy to watch the presentations that day, putting someone else in charge who did not rat on me as to how awful my project was!

      We also had an international day wherein everyone brought in a foreign dish to sample different foods from around the world – I asked the neighbor next door who was from Hungary for a recipe, and as I recall, I took a pitcher of something to drink for the international day festivities, but I do not remember now what it was.

      There were certain positions of responsibility that some of us had. On library day, which was once a week, the kids were supposed to report to me as to whether or not they had remembered to bring their library books from home that day, and I would turn in that report to Mr. Friar. When my folks heard about this, they called me The Library Rat Fink! My response to this, even after all this time, is that I was just following orders.

      Another job I had was to sit in the Main Office of the school, at the secretary's desk, and answer the phone or take care of visitors, for 30 minutes while the secretary was at lunch. This job was shared by, I think, five girls from each sixth grade class – so our turn came up once every two weeks. I was in charge of the schedule for the girls (seems odd now to realize that only girls were chosen for this task!) - and one time while writing out the schedule and marveling at how neat my penmanship was that day, I realized that I had accidentally left out one girl's name for one rotation. I did not want to start over because the list would not be as neat the second time around, I was sure. Maybe my classmate would not notice. But of course, as her turn was coming around, and M did not see her name, she mentioned it to Mr. Friar who was quite irritated with me and ordered me to rewrite what was left of the schedule. 

      It was really not a good idea to have sixth graders sit-in for the school secretary at lunch-time – once a girl from the other class was there at the same time I was, I don't know why, but while I sat at the desk stressing over saying the right words should the telephone ring, the other girl was going through the file cabinet behind me and reading stuff about the other kids, sharing some of it with me!

      While I wanted fifth grade to move slowly, (for reasons other than liking fifth grade), I wanted sixth grade to go fast – to get through with Mr. Friar and be done with him forever. But every day seemed so slow – stressful – was that day going to be one with a lecture about how we needed to grow up – be in our face about it? He used to say it was okay to not like him at the time, because he knew we would all like him later, when we were grown and reflect on how grateful we were that he was so strict and demanding – we would wish our own kids could have him for sixth grade.

      I'm much too stubborn for that.

94 20150404 Sixth Grade

The Driveway Cedar

      The cedar tree has been growing out by the end of the driveway since 1993. When we moved into the brand new house in the brand new subdivision late in '92, ex-hubby wanted to put in $600 worth of landscaping because the builder would reimburse us for $300 of it. And the cedar tree was one of the items planted. It looked more like a bush in the beginning, and it was different – totally not Pleasant Valley Sunday!

      I do not know if ex-hubby had been pruning it to keep the bush look, but after he left, over the years, the cedar shot up vertically while continuing to bush out at the bottom. It looked kind of funny – but it was green and unique, and another landmark for folks to find our house on the street, and I loved it for all of that.

      The ivy crept around the bottom, holding in the occasional piece of debris that might roll beneath on garbage pickup day. And the fluffy branches were encroaching into the neighbor;s yard. Some parts of the tree were yellowish, and it did not look all that healthy.           So I guess you can't blame Mike for wanting, these past few years, to take the tree down.

The 2015 Cedar Tree

      And right after putting chain saw to the ivy around the mailbox last weekend, Mike got started on the cedar tree. It didn't take long before he came to me in the backyard and said that the tree had more than one trunk – maybe four or more! We just didn't see them through the thickness of the foliage. Mike seriously considered pruning down to one trunk and seeing what would happen.

      As parts of the cedar tree came down, Mike loaded them into his truck for disposal elsewhere. The bed of the truck was full when he got to that last trunk – and so Mike decided to leave it after all.

      Can you say Charlie Brown Christmas Tree? It is no longer encroaching on the neighbor's yard. The ivy is not choking the trunk or clinging to litter. There are four, or maybe even more, angry stumps staring at us accusingly as we drive in or out of the driveway. If you are looking for a landmark to find our house – this is a good one. It is green, and it is unique, and I love it.

      A memory of a cedar tree once planted in a new yard, and a story of its rebirth!

93 20150403 Driveway Cedar

Spring Break

   

The El Matador Hotel - Postcard

 Even when I was in college, spring break was a big deal with students going places – mostly Florida. It did not occur to me, however, to want to go somewhere for spring break because I did not work while going to school – so there was no extra money, and I knew better than to ask my parents, since they had two sons soon approaching college age, and it would be poor form for me to set a precedent. As the oldest, being a good example was always a source of pressure – more self-imposed than parent-implied although I do remember a few times in my life when I was told to be a good example for the brothers.       By the time Clark and Eric were in college, however, they seemed to be very independent, each following his own road – if they had wanted to go somewhere for spring break, I think each would have found a way – and neither would have used the “well she got to go somewhere” - logic, I don't think – but I could be wrong. I could ask them now.

      And, as it turned out, I did go somewhere once for spring break. With money I asked Dad for.

      The January of my junior year at Canisius, kids were all talking about Florida for spring break, mostly Daytona, but other places too. My friend from both high school and college, Lynn, had signed up for a trip to Acapulco! Somehow she had found out about a teachers group (not from the college) that was organizing a trip, and Lynn was going with two other girls we had known in high school. (And none of them were aspiring teachers!)

       I was in the college cafeteria one day that January of junior year, pouting, but not real sincerely, to a classmate about my not having any money to go anywhere for spring break, and he turned to me and said, “Ask your Dad.”

       Well it just so happened that Dad was working nights and weekends that year – like a second job – helping a friend complete work on a contract. He was making lots of extra money. So one night on the phone I asked him if I could go to Acapulco for spring break – totally expecting him to say no, but with the slightest chance, because of the extra cash, that he might say yes. He said, “Sure”! After that I called Lynn and asked if I could invite myself along on her trip. And she said, “Sure.” Upon reflection all these many years later, inviting myself along seems like something between bold and rude – but I did ask, and Lynn said yes.

      I did not have a passport, in fact, I had never even flown on a plane! But we were assured that all we would need to get into Mexico was our birth certificate. So I carried mine in my purse. 

      And I got on my first plane.

      We stayed at the El Matador, a hotel built on a hillside – the building was only 1 guestroom thick – so all the rooms could overlook the city and the ocean. The room I shared with Lynn was on the second floor and directly over the open-air bar, and the bar extended into the built-in pool.

      Every day we sunbathed at the pool. Every afternoon. and well into the evening a mariachi band played right below our balcony (I can still hear them singing Billy Joel's Honesty!) and we felt like they were serenading only us while we watched and listened at a safe distance from the American male wolves otherwise known as the college boys on spring break!

      We ate at the recommended restaurants. We stuck our toes into the Pacific Ocean – also a first for me – and took a short sight-seeing cruise to see the mansions along the cliffs off the coast.

      We went to the famous flea market, and I got souvenirs for the whole family with money that Dad gave me that I had left after food and cabs. I got Mom a turquoise ring. I don't remember what I got my brothers, but I think I got a ring similar to Mom's for myself. And I got Dad a coconut with a face on it. Sometimes Dads are difficult to shop for. But he displayed the coconut on his dresser for many years.

      One day, at a restaurant in Acapulco, we asked our waiter what Cita means. When we walked around town, young men would call out of their passing vehicles, “Cita! Cita!” and they would smile and wave. We had looked in the Spanish/English dictionary, but could not find the word cita. The waiter broke into a grin and said Cita is a slang term for Honey! 

      You know, I took two years of Spanish in high school and a third year in college, but learning Cita on the streets of Acapulco is the Spanish I hold nearest and dearest to my heart!

      We could walk down the hill from the hotel to get to town, and we would walk back up again. But along the way, the poverty of the area was blatantly apparent. We passed shacks that we knew whole families lived in – with no electricity, and no running water. It was a humbling dichotomy – the people of the shacks of Acapulco and the silly American girl mooching off of her father for spring break to catch her first ride on a plane and her first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean and her first trip to an exotic city.

92 20150402 Acapulco

She was planned

     When I went to college. and for the year afterward when I worked at the agar factory, I lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of Buffalo. Home, where my folks lived, of course, was in North Boston – in the suburbs 20 miles south of Buffalo. And I was at home quite often – especially on the weekends of my agar factory employment – I had no social life. And it was often the case that friends did not know if I was at my grandmother's or my folks' house at any specific time.

     And so it was sometime after college that Mr. Perfect, had wanted to get in touch. He had phone numbers to my grandmother's house and my parents', not that he called either of them all that often – nor were they memorized. Most likely my phone numbers were in one of his dictionaries next to the word meretricious.

     And he, along with most of my friends, were a little leery of calling my home. A caller would be at the risk of teasing from one of my parents should Mom or Dad answer the ring. They loved to goof on anyone. And so if either parent answered the phone when someone called and asked for me, especially a gentleman caller, well one never knew quite what to expect.

     So it is a wonder, looking back on it now, to realize that Mr. Perfect, or anyone, ever dialed our number.

     But one day, Mr. Perfect called on the phone, at my parents' house.

     Dad answered the phone.

     Mr. Perfect, not sure if he would find me at home, asked, “Is Denise there by chance?”

     And without missing a beat, Dad responded, “No, she was planned.”

     From that moment on, Mr. Perfect was in awe of a master! The quickness, cleverness, timing – what a perfect response.

     It was also just about the nicest thing Dad ever said about me!

91 20150401 She was Planned