Amanda and Tony

   

Amanda and Tony Saccitello

 A little after 4 in the afternoon on March 10^th, 2012 in a garden in the town of Bogart, Georgia, all eyes turned to the bride who had just made her appearance at the far end of the garden path. All eyes were on the bride. That's how it always is. The guests all stand and turn to drink their fill of the beauty of the bride. The gasp of that moment. We all turned and looked.

     Except for one person. The mother of the groom told me afterward that when everyone else stood and turned to look at the bride, she did not. The mother of the groom kept her eyes on her son – her thrill was going to be to see his reaction the second he saw his bride.

     The guests stood, Tony looked down the path. His mom watched Tony's face. And she knew the moment Amanda came into view because Tony's eyes instantly filled with two big tears! The gasp of that moment!

The Groom and Bride and their Moms

     Happy third anniversary to Amanda and Tony – may you continue to bring tears of joy to each other and to the rest of us who love you so!

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Chestnut Ridge Park

     If you went down Zimmerman Road to the old 219 and crossed 219, Zimmerman became Herman Hill Road which then went up a big hill. Once you got to the top, you were no longer in the Town of Boston but in Orchard Park. A couple of miles later, Chestnut Ridge came into view – a recreational park for all! The hills and gullies and trees of Chestnut Ridge made it a popular place in both summer and winter.

toboggan chutes at Chestnut Ridge

     In summer, the Valley Circle Lane neighborhood sometimes had a big picnic at Chestnut Ridge. A cabana would be reserved near a baseball field. The adults would all bring food – salads, chips, kool aid, and the men would grill. Hot dogs. A baseball game for all ages was played; horseshoes too. I liked hanging around with the women and babies, hoping to hear the grown-ups gossip.

     It is not a park where one pitched tents or parked RVs or spent the night – it is only for daytime picnics and sports. 

     Hiking too – there is a place at Chestnut Ridge called the Hundred Steps – stone steps had been put into the side of a gully which led down to a creek. I never walked the Hundred Steps – maybe someday, if they are still there. And there was a fenced off part of the park where deer lived and were not hunted.

     Sometimes the Girl Scout Troop I was in went to Chestnut Ridge for a cook-out, and probably a project for a merit badge or two. I mostly remember the hot dogs.

     The public restrooms at Chestnut Ridge were especially memorable – brick buildings similar to any park restroom you may have frequented anywhere else. But I don't think these were cleaned very often, and they smelled. My Mom probably only made this comment once in her life, but I adopted it as a family saying and utter it often when some odor is especially bad, “It smells like the bathrooms at Chestnut Ridge Park in here!” And we all know that smell!

     Winter at Chestnut Ridge is when all the grills and picnic sites disappear beneath a blanket of white snow. Then the hill becomes the prominent feature of the Park. The hill is very high and steep.

     At the top looking down, on the far left is the bunny hill for beginning skiers. Moving a little to the right are two giant chutes for toboggans and stairs up the back side of the chutes, up, up, up – at the top was an area to set and load up the toboggan, and then there was the slide to the ground and the continued slope down the hill. Awesome! To the right of the toboggan chutes is the part of the hill where folks can ride down on sleds or saucers.

     My parents tried to spend at least one afternoon at Chestnut Ridge every winter, or rather, Dad would take us kids. We had a sled which could hold two, and we had a saucer. I knew how to steer the sled, but I would still manage to run into people at the bottom of the hill. It was cold and fun.

     We only gazed in wonder at the tobogganers, and it never occurred to us to venture over to the bunny hill to try skiing or to go inside the warm lodge for some hot chocolate.

     College, however, brought more experiences. LR's uncle ran the concession stand inside the mysterious lodge at the top of the hill in Chestnut Ridge Park. We even worked there a few Friday nights and Saturdays in the winter. It was neat inside, and I saw lots of people I had known from my younger years. Laura got me to try on the skis for the bunny hill one time, but I opted out of actually, you know, going down the hill on them.

     And then there were the toboggan chutes - ! I think alcohol was involved.

     The spring of our freshman year, the kids from the class had a picnic at Chestnut Ridge Park – a replay of the baseball, horseshoes, smiling faces, and the hot dogs.

view from Chestnut Ridge Mike and Eric in 2009

68 20150309 Chestnut Ridge Park

Hotel New Hampshire

     Something in conversation recently reminded me of The Hotel New Hampshire. The book by John Irving. I'm not a big Irving fan, and I stopped reading his new books many years ago. 

     From what I can remember, The Hotel New Hampshire is about a family that at some point in the story runs a hotel in Vienna. And in the hotel, terrorists are plotting and carrying out atrocities. 

     While reading the book, I found the terrorists to be disturbing, but they did not make me uncomfortable enough to make me put the book down and walk away. 

     Does that mean I'm indifferent to, or accepting of, terror in the world? 

     I have to ask because while the terrorists were on one floor of the hotel doing their plotting of evil, on another floor two of the main characters of the book – a brother and sister in the family running the hotel, give in to their attraction to each other and begin an incestuous relationship.

      And that bothered me enough to want to put down the book and walk away!

      But when I did that, I could imagine John Irving laughing at me - “terror in the world, okay, but incest! Whoa! That's just too distasteful for your reading pleasure!”

      It is the disappointment in myself I was facing – the reality that I was more disturbed by incest than terrorism.

      It is one thing to have to face that truth about myself, and it is quite another to have an author rubbing my nose in it.

      Yet I'll admit that is what a good writer should do.

      And I still feel the rub.

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Third Grade

     My third grade teacher was Mrs. Miller. She was young, tall, brunette with a Mary Tyler Moore flip in her hair. She was a Yankees fan, and she let us know that from the very first day. We all became Yankees fans too. Googling the 1961 World Series today, I see that the Yankees beat the Reds - so I guess that explains all the excitement in the room at the beginning of the school year.

     I liked Mrs. Miller a lot. One memory that has always stuck with me is the afternoon the class lined up to go somewhere, and the teacher asked for a volunteer to stay in the room with her to decorate the Christmas tree. We all raised our hands, and Mrs. Miller picked me! There was no special reason to choose me out of all the other kids – I was a random choice, and I knew that, and yet I have never forgotten that Mrs. Miller picked me.

     We had a delightful time trimming the tree together, and I asked her about Santa Claus. She was non-committal on that one.

     My grades got better that year, and more confidence in my academic abilities seemed to come along at the same time.

     Third grade is also remembered fondly because I had a boyfriend. He had red hair and freckles and seemed to like me too. We wrote love letters to each other, and I guess that was a pretty big deal because all our parents thought that was sweet, and Mrs. Miller encouraged the letter-writing. Mom kept two of the notes stashed away with my report cards all these years – and now I have them – one letter is written inside a pencil-drawn heart with an arrow going through it – inside it says “I like you very much! Do you like me?”

Love Letter from Third Grade

     It is probably scandalous to admit to, even after all this time, but secretly, I had a crush on someone else - the bad boy in the class! I don't remember if he behaved badly, or if it was his dangerous look that made me think of him as the bad boy. He was the new kid in town with no apparent friends and no appearance of wanting to have any friends. He was quiet and turned away from any attention. His hair came down to his eyes, and he gave the impression of brooding. It gave me a bit of a thrill to be attracted to him

     After third grade, the bad boy moved away – never to be seen or heard from again. But I had seen that I was capable of being untrue to the boy who had written me love letters.

     While my confidence in academics was growing, the thought that any boy could ever like me slipped away. After third grade I became gawky around guys. Forever.

66 20150307 Third Grade

Physics

   

my elegant husband

This past weekend Mike downloaded a physics book on his kindle called The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Mike is looking forward to learning more about string theory and stuff like that. And he asked me if I know what the Theory of Relativity is? So I recited the obvious stuff to Mike like the entire energy of the universe is relative to the mass of the universe times the speed of light squared, and we will never be able to go faster than the speed of light and that means space travel as we imagine it can never happen and that is sad, so Einstein has to be disproved so Star Trek can be real.

     Mike said, “so you really understand all of that?” 

     Oh my gosh, all the fuses that started to go off in my pea brain! I grabbed a pen and paper, “Let me get all these notes down for my memory-a-day blog before the sparks stop glowing!”

     My understanding of physics is, was, tenuous at best.

    When the spaceships are passing each other going at almost the speed of light – yeah, I can't wrap my brain around that. (I try, and then my whole body starts shaking, just like when computers in Star Trek go up in smoke because Captain Kirk has spoken illogically to them!) Sometimes I can almost see what the theories are painting, and then when I have to do the math to figure out which spaceship gets where first, well, it all slips away – kind of like someone else is pulling the universe strings leaving me in the dark.

    The day in physics class when we took our exam on all this stuff, there was one particular question about two vehicles going almost the speed of light, and I think the moon was involved, and somewhere in my thinking, I concluded that it was a trick question and my answer was nothing more than a paragraph of why the whole situation was not possible.           When I turned in the exam and walked out into the hall, my teacher was standing there smiling at me. I asked him about the trick question only to find out, of course, that it was not a trick. Sigh.

    What did I learn in college physics? There are no trick questions, just tricky solutions.

    That summer, after two semesters of physics, one with a B and one with a C, I had to meet with my adviser. It was the end of junior year, and many of us would be applying to other schools after graduation. And these other schools would be looking for recommendations from professors and advisers – so Dr. S. was trying to get to know everyone.

     He and I chatted for a little bit, and finally Dr. S. went over my grades. “Tell me more about this C in Physics,” he was expecting a sob story about some relative dying or anything to explain why I did so poorly when obviously I was a bright and intelligent young woman deserving of so much more!

     “Dr. S!” I began to babble, “I earned every last bit of that C! My pea brain can only grasp C's worth of the material. You did not ask me about the B! I did not deserve the B, but my blood, sweat and tears went into that C of second semester!” Dr. S realized he would not have to worry about any recommendations for me. And he was right.

      Hopefully Mike will grasp the material in the Elegant Universe without much difficulty – but right now he is telling me about bouncing photons, bouncing himself as he talks about them, and the speed at the front of the train versus the speed at the back of the train, and I'm afraid the train tracks might take him to a whole other quadrant of the universe, and without the capability of Star Trek travel, how will we be able to pluck him back to our little corner of the world again?

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The Icicle

   This is the classic family story about Eric and the icicle written up a few years ago and told for many years before and since. When I was in the fourth grade and nine years old, my Mom got a job as secretary in a law office which was not too far away.

    From the time we got home from school until Mom got home a little after 4:30, we kids would be on our own. There was a phone number where Mom could be reached - but only only only if we had an absolute true emergency! Mom's boss would not like it if his secretary was getting phone calls all the time from her children – or so that was what we were told, of course, so we wouldn't be making nuisances of ourselves.

     Clark was in first grade at this time, and Eric was not yet old enough to go to school. A neighbor, Rita, who lived two houses away on Valley Circle Lane, was going to watch Eric during the day, and when the bus was heard dropping us off after school in the afternoon, Eric would walk home.

     One day in the coldest part of winter – winter in North Boston, New York meant lots of snow, high snow drifts, and cold – very cold, Clark and I got home from school and took off our boots in the back room – the room between the garage and the kitchen. It was getting to be about the time Eric would show up – and when Eric appeared at the door – his upper lip was split open and blood was gushing and gushing out! After walking home, he got to the back door and glanced up and casually grabbed one of the big icicles that had been hanging from the eave. The icicle came loose, slipped through his hand and sliced through his lip!

     Eric was crying and bleeding, and I did not know what to do. I thought I should maybe call Mom, but what if this was not enough of an emergency? Then she would be mad.                Finally I decided to call Rita, and she could tell me if it was the kind of emergency to call Mom about. Rita and her husband came right over to the house, and Tom took Eric to the doctor who was just down the street from the law office. Then he called Mom. A few minutes later, Mom walked into the doctor's examination room and fainted!

     Eric got some stitches and a dandy scar. I got a talking to about the fact that what happened to Eric did indeed constitute a genuine emergency. But there was never again an incident quite as serious as that one.

After I wrote this story in September of '08 (and found an older rendition of the family classic written in '88) Mom sent a paragraph that she had written up about those early days of my being in charge – this incident took place in the summer – so we were not in school, but the three of us were home all day, and here is Mom's paragraph: There was the summer Dad and I decided we no longer needed a sitter and Denise was old enough to be in charge. How well I remember that very first day after walking home from work and seeing Clark and Eric sitting on the front lawn, looking very sad and weepy. I asked what the matter was and they replied that Denise had not allowed them into the house for the entire day. After asking if they had lunch they told me Denise had opened the door at noon, handed them each a sandwich and closed the door. I believe a short briefing with Denise on the meaning of being in command ensued.

64 20150305 Icicle Story

Magic Beans

     When I was a kid, on summer Sundays, there was often company over for dinner – either my mother's relatives or some of my father's relatives. And Dad would grill while Mom made potato salad, usually a tossed salad, and a dish that we all would come to endearingly refer to as Mother Des Soye's Delicious Variation of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans.

     Grandma Brown was a brand name for commercially sold baked beans. We got them in cans off the shelf at the A&P. What we did not know at the time was that Grandma Browns Baked Beans were not sold throughout the whole country. When Mom and Dad moved to Florida, the beans were not on the Pilgrims Pride shelves there, nor are they sold where we live now, in Georgia!

     So much we had taken for granted helping ourselves to Grandma Browns Baked Beans back in those simpler times in Western New York!

     Well back then, Mom would open a big can of Grandma Browns Baked Beans and spoon the contents into a casserole bowl. Then she would add some ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, a chopped onion, and some molasses and mix them all together with the beans. Mom would smooth out the concoction, and on the very top she would put four strips of bacon. The casserole bowl went into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.

Within a few minutes of being put in the oven, a most wonderful smell of the beans cooking would permeate the house! And when the oven was opened to remove the finished product, the bacon was bubbling on top! A joy to the eyes, the ears, the nose!

     Now there are a few recipes of Mom's that just cannot be duplicated. Her potato salad is one glaring example; in fact, Mom refused to share her potato salad recipe because she feared people would be angry with her if they could not get it to taste just like hers! (She finally gave me the recipe for her potato salad one day when she was getting chemo and in a reflective mood – I did not want to appear overeager by hastening to get paper and pen to write it all down, so I endeavored to memorize it – since then I can make the potato salad and it almost tastes just like Mom's!)

     But Mother Des Soye's Delicious Variation of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans is a recipe that was not only lovingly shared, it is very easily duplicated, and, it tastes just like Mom's. In fact, I don't even have to put the ingredients together to taste those beans, all I have to do is think about them, and I can taste them and smell them exactly the way Mom made them!          They are that wonderful!

     These days, I might get a can of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans sent to me in a Christmas package from relatives still in Western New York. Or a can might come with family that visits occasionally. And when I get a can of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans here in my Georgia home, I put it on a shelf in the pantry and save it for a special occasion.

The last special occasion for which I opened the can of beans was the night before Amanda and Tony's wedding three years ago. The rehearsal dinner was in Athens, but there were lots of relatives around Lawrenceville not going to the dinner – so they were all invited to our house. There were of course lots of other goodies being served. But just before the guests arrived, I took the can of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans off the pantry shelf, opened it, and spooned the contents into a casserole bowl.

     Then I added some ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, a chopped onion, and molasses. That is what the jar of molasses in the cupboard is there for Mike. He sometimes asks why we have molasses in the house – the special baked bean recipe is the only reason why. I mixed everything together in the bowl, smoothed it out, and then lovingly placed four strips of bacon on the top. I put the dish into the oven at 350 degrees, and within minutes, the smell of wonderfulness permeated the house.

     And when the beans were removed from the oven the bubbling bacon touched all my senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, and the invoking of memories of family gatherings of the past mingling with the family gathering of the present turned on the fifth sense – I could feel the love!

     Mother Des Soye's Delicious Variation of Grandma Brown's Baked Beans are decidedly our family's version of the story of the magic beans!

63 20150304 Magic Beans