The Year My Kids Killed A Turkey

The year my three children were six, five and four years old, we almost didn't have Thanksgiving. Traditionally, my parents always had the holiday at their house, complete with excessive amounts of food, jokes and gags that had been lurking in the rafters since I was a kid, and the chaos that only comes from too many cooks in one small kitchen. But that particular year my father was recovering from eye surgery, and my mother announced to everyone who usually came that Dad couldn't have all the noise and bother of extended family. Secretly, I wondered if she was simply seizing the opportunity to have a quiet day off from all that cooking. And for a brief moment, I considered taking Thanksgiving off, too, but that was before my mind shifted into high gear for an adult daughter which means that I began to plan a way to save Thanksgiving for all of us.

The need for dad to have quiet was real. Solution: cook the meal at our house, bring it over in time to quietly and efficiently serve it, and then carry the remains back home for clean-up. All mom and dad had to do was sit in their chairs and eat, and I figured they had to do that anyway.

The second need was for my children to grasp the reality of dad's need for quiet. Solution: I had already instituted whisper times for days when my migraine headaches made me feel like I was at a NASCAR race for six or seven straight hours. The little guys were really good about whispering even when they were playing together. We would have a whisper Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa's that day.

The last, and for me the hardest need was to replace the hype and excitement of the holiday for my children in a way that wouldn't make my plan a sacrifice and thereby a punishment for them. Mothers have to think on their toes, make quick decisions, and then carry them out in ways that benefit a diverse group of people. I still think my plan was sheer genius. Solution: I would let my children kill our turkey that year.

On Thanksgiving morning, I got up before dawn to make pies and homemade bread. By the time the little guys got up, the sun was shining on the eight inches of snow in our yard. After breakfast, I sent the four and five year olds in to watch holiday cartoons on WGNTV. Sarah, the six year old, was pulled into the bathroom for a conference.

I explained to her that since she was so grown up (children of that age believe all kinds of lies from their parents) she would have to be in on my plan. This she relished and would have done almost anything I told her to do out of the sheer excitement of being considered an adult.

And so around nine that morning, I announced during a cartoon festival commercial break, that the three of them were now going to go outside in the backyard to kill a turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner.

There has to be a hunting instinct in every human, whether it's the hunt of a good bargain at Kohl's or hunting a spider or a mosquito or a mouse. We love the hunt, and my kids were almost delirious at the thought of killing anything.

"But we don't got no guns," my son, already a practical thinker, said.

But even he wasn't smarter than his mother. I pulled out of a Harvey's dimestore paper bag three shiny cowboy six shooters that shot deadly red caps which I demonstrated. They were impressed. Anything that made smoke could kill, they reasoned.

I laid out the plan. Sarah was in charge. Matt was her first lieutenant, and Rachel was the troops.  Sarah would take them out into the backyard, where it was reported that turkeys lived, and they would sneak about until they spotted one. They could hardly contain themselves. This was high adventure. This was something they had never even dreamed could happen. They put on their little hooded snowsuits, grabbed their silver guns, and walked out into the wilderness behind our small house in the heart of town.

Sarah carried out her part like a champion. After letting Rachel and Matt stalk crows and sparrows for a while, she yelled, "Turkey!" a few random times giving all of them reason and opportunity to shoot their guns and smell the smoke from the exploded caps. Then, when they were starting to get really cold, she yelled, "Turkey" one last time. "You shot it, " she announced. As the smoke was clearing she told the little guys to go over by the back porch while she went to see if the turkey was still alive.

She pronounced it dead and also too bloody for them to see, and they obediently covered their eyes while she completed the deception. She had with her a paper grocery sack with a can of cranberry sauce in the bottom. After making a lot of noise about how gross the turkey carcass was, she held the bag closed in one hand and supported it with the other.

"Come feel how heavy it is," she told them just as she had been instructed. Each little hand had to feel the weight of the "dead turkey" can of cranberry sauce which made them feel pretty successful as hunters. The three of them marched into the kitchen, still brandishing their deadly weapons, and announced "We killed a turkey!"

Some homemade frosted cinnamon rolls and milk lured them out of the kitchen to the TV in the living room where they watched "A Huckleberry Hound Thanksgiving" while I gutted and plucked the can of cranberry sauce. In reality, I put a small turkey roast into the oven and began to work on the side dishes. Soon the aroma of turkey began to fill the house. It really felt like Thanksgiving. We had made homemade greeting cards for Grandma and Grandpa, woven construction paper placemats, and even decorated paper napkins.

Finally the turkey came out of the oven, small and rectangular in its aluminum pan, but definately smelling like turkey. Matt asked, "Is that it? Is that all there is?" Rachel said, "Yeah. All the rest of it was advertisements," a comment I made in disgust over the Sunday paper each week.

We must have seemed a little caravan that Thanksgiving as we walked to my parents' house eight blocks away. I knew the walk would heighten the excitement and would give them a sense of the journey they were taking. Each child carried what they were able to and I carried all the rest. We arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's house loaded with just enough turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, candied sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce (the can from the paper bag,) and pumpkin pie to make one simple but satisfying meal for six hungry people. Over dinner, in their soft, little whisper voices, they proudly told Grandma and Grandpa how they had killed the turkey we were all eating. Later, as we walked home in the near darkness of late afternoon, the turkey hunt was all they talked about.

My dad fully recovered from his eye surgery, but thank heaven, none of us ever recovered from the delight and wonder of that Thanksgiving when three small children, armed with deadly dimestore cap pistols, killed the game that fed their entire family.

Is It Wrong To Put Up Christmas Decorations Before Thanksgiving?

Thirty years ago, the answer would have been a resounding "yes." Maybe even twenty years ago there would have been more yes's than no's. But we are in the age of instant messaging, on-demand movies still fresh from the theater, online Christmas shopping, do-it-yourself photo Christmas cards and shopping clubs that select and wrap your gifts for you, and then neatly send them to the appropriate giftee.

In short, we are a busy world, and we want as little bother and discomfort as possible. No one can fault us for that. We have a lot on our minds. War, earthquakes, epidemics, politics of all kinds, our own families and their many issues and needs, the horrors of high unemployment and foreclosure rates, and for some, the death of a dream. Really. Who is going to lose sleep at night pondering what is the correct week of the year to start their Christmas decorating?

And yet, we all feel a little happier, a little more peaceful, a little more hopeful when there are those bright twinkling lights strung on even the least number of windows or bushes in our yard. We have a sense of anticipation at the mention of Christmas even if the checking account is in name only because once the deposit is made the money is magically gone in a few days. We look forward to dragging out the boxes of ornaments and garlands and knick knacks that have become a tradition for us and our children. We dust off the Christmas video collection and decide which ones to watch when. We look through photo albums at Christmases from days gone by, and once again remember grandma and grandpa, cousins, aunts and uncles who are no longer with us, but forever have that holiday joy shining from their faces on a piece of Kodak paper.

Is it wrong to put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving? No, more than ever, "we need a little Christmas." We need the face of the Christ Child smiling through the gloom of our tomorrows. We need the memory of the Wise Men travelling a very long way to bring expensive gifts to a poor family. We need to remember that God first gave the glad tidings of His Son's birth to poor shepherds, whose social class wasn't too much different from that of today's migrant workers. 

So put up that tree. Hang that garland. Set Santa out in the fifty degree sun where the summer's zinnias still are struggling to stay alive. Bake a few cookies, look through your Christmas card list. Watch IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and a couple of your favorite Christmas flicks, wrap a few gifts even if you have to regift, shout: "Merry Christmas" in the middle of the day, if only to yourself or the dog, and remember that hard times will come and go, but Christmas is forever.

For sure, decorate before Thanksgiving!

Mary Esther and Louise Enter A Beauty Pageant

MaryEsther looked at herself in the little mirror she kept in her apron pocket.

"Do you think I am still beautiful?" she asked Louise.

"What?"

"Wake up, Louise. I asked if you thought I was still beautiful? Am I? I need to know."

Louise stretched and adjusted her prescription stockings.

"Of course, you’re beautiful. Why do you ask?"

"I just saw in the paper that there’s going to be a beauty pageant at the fairgrounds next week. Maybe I should enter it."

"Why?" asked Louise.

"The winner gets a savings bond and a kiss from the mayor. What do you think of that?"

"You mean Charlie Fletcher would kiss me if I was the winner?"

"I mean he would kiss me if I was the winner. That’s what I mean. So I need to know...Am I still beautiful?"

Louise thought for a moment. This was becoming complicated.

"Why can’t we enter the contest together? Then we could both have the savings bond, and Charlie could kiss both of us."

"That’s a good idea. It would be much more fun if we both did it. And you’re beautiful. I always thought so. Especially when you get all those hairs between your eyebrows and use your wrinkle cream."

"We’ll need new clothes. That will cost money."

"Not if we go to the Salvation Army store. They always have fancy dresses."

"In our sizes?"

"Hmmm," said MaryEsther. "That could be a problem. I think it might take two of them to get around me."

"That’s a brilliant idea! We’ll each buy two dresses and sew them together.There’ll be lots of room."

"But we’ll need make up. What will we do for make up? We don’t wear any. Just cornstarch to get rid of the shine. We’ll be under all those lights. Remember Nixon. We’ll need color."

"Let’s ask Shirley at the funeral home. She does everyone up so good."

"Yes, Shirley will make us look like beauty queens. Oh, I know we’ll win for sure now."

As the ice cream truck passed the house, MaryEsther and Louise could be seen smiling and snoozing, possibly even dreaming of glittering crowns, applause, and a kiss from Charlie Fletcher.

View Master Reels

I've been cruising Ebay for Christmas decorations, and, of course, once you're on Ebay, it's a little like being at a six acre flea market. You really can't stop looking after ten minutes. For me, Ebay is both a shopping mecca and a historical archive. I have found old decorations we had as children, things like Glass Wax Stencils (which we are using this year,) and even photographs of our town and others going back over one hundred years. I don't suppose I need to extol the good points of Ebay to anyone who has explored its millions of offerings. Suffice it to say, that for me, at this point in my life, with daily restrictions that don't allow me to leave the house to shop for an entire day, Ebay serves more than a purpose: it is a commercial and recreational lifeline. 

One of my recent Ebay finds has been vintage View Master reels. (I still have my little red View Master viewer in the old toybox upstairs.) I've ordered several sets of reels....Washington, D.C., The Nativity, Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation, National Parks, Space Exploration, and others. When I was a child, we had the Washington, D.C.  and Nativity reels, so when I looked at them once again this week after fifty-five years of not seeing them, it was a memories moment. I could actually feel that I was a child again. The years seemed to melt away, and in my mind I was sitting in the old family living room the way it used to be: cold, linoleum floors, very little furniture, my sisters also children, and my parents young again.

In the intervening years since I last looked at my own View Master as a six year old, I have, like most people, put away certain aspects of my childhood, placing them on neat storage shelves in the back of my mind. I have, after all, been raising my own children, moving on with my life and career, focusing on current events, family and friends and my grandchildren, and really not giving any thought at all to things that happened to me so long ago.

Big moments in history have crowded out the little ones...things like the assassination of a president, space travel, wars, the economy, new administrations every so many years, and world events. Even a sale at Kohl's tends to take an upper position in my memory hierarchy over what I received for Christmas in 1958. My life has a kind of rhythm to it, like the wheels of a locomotive, and once in motion, it takes something like a brick wall to make us stop or at least to slow down and remember. Really remember.

We all mentally admit that those memories are there. Yes, I was six when this or that happened. Yes, I felt good or bad when this or that person came to visit. And maybe that's the way it should be for the most part. There is a name for people who only live in the past, and we don't want to be that. But, in this present high-tech, frantically mobile, ever striving for more world that is ours, are we living at such a breakneck pace that we have no time at all for the memories, for the pondering why, for the gratitude for, or for the dreaming what if?

The View Master reels we each have stored away in our own minds are far more entertaining than the commercial ones. We each have pictures of our parents and grandparents, childhood friends, school, first pets, first jobs, first accomplishments, first loves. We have memories of weddings and funerals, reunions, and vacations. We have memories of conversations with people no longer with us, perceptions that were our own even if they were inaccurate or silly, and hopes and dreams that maybe still can come true if we pull them out of storage, dust them off, and put them in a more visible place in our life.

If we are, indeed, never too old to dream, then I believe we are also never too old to remember, because in remembering, we are embracing the essence of our own life to this point. Yes, some of those memories may be painful, embarrassing, or condemning. But we are no longer children. This time we can look at those memories with the clear eyes of adulthood, examine them for truth and fault, and realize that we were only children then, or, at least, younger than we are now. We can hug ourselves and walk on knowing that there is one less weight on our shoulders. Yet many of our memories are delightful, joyous, funny, tender. Re-experiencing those memories is like going home again, to a home that we know does not exist anymore, and the wonder and feeling of belonging that comes from reliving them is a gift we should not deny ourselves.

Why not try a memory afternoon, or hour the next time you want to take a short trip? Settle back on the couch with a good cup of tea or coffee, and let the memories come back. Pick a year, pick a place, pick a person, and let the past become a part of your present, if only for a short while. Let the blessings of whatever good you can find in the View Master reels of your own past make you a better person in the present. Tell yourself, as George Bailly did, that you really have had a wonderful life!

A Recipe For A Good Recipe

This last year I learned that I had a sensitivity to wheat and dairy products. A few months earlier, my doctor put me on a low fat diet for my gallbladder. A few months before that he had put me on a restrictive diet for diverticulitis. As the gravity of these restrictions accumulated, I felt an increasing sense of panic every time I had to cook. What if I cooked the wrong thing and made myself sick again? What if I became too sick to work? What if this new thing I just bought wasn't what I needed and, in fact, backfired? What if I never would be able to enjoy real food again? What if? What if?

I bought recipe books for each of the several restrictions I faced. Any one of them provided healthy, tasty and photogenic meals, but collectively, they allowed me to eat cardboard with a little salt and pepper (but not too much pepper.....and better with no salt.)

I found myself bracing for the ordeal of cooking the minute my eyes opened in the morning. There was a lump in my stomach as I scanned those restrictive diet books and tried to make sense out of all of their no no's. Mind you, I have loved good food from infancy. I can recite my favorite recipes in my sleep and to anyone who will pause long enough to listen. So not being able to eat my old standby's, not being able to eat in restaurants, not being able to snack in front of the TV at night or graze throughout the day....well, it was just not what I was used to, or as my grandson used to say when he was six, "It's not fair!"

For a while, I pouted inside and smiled outside. That never works. The pouts always sneak out through the cracks in your skin and glue themselves to your face. Then I tried complaining, but the problem with that approach is that everyone has their own problems and no matter how glazed over their eyes are or how fixed their sympathetic expression while you rail about the trials and tribulations of what you are bearing, they still just wish you would shut up.

Next, I went through the "poor me" cycle. This was a disaster because I started believing it, and then it took me another several months to feel "not poor" again which meant I was right back where I started. I can say now with some authority, that when you truly don't know what to do, the one thing you should not do is what everybody around you tells you to do, because most of the time people tell you what they have read or what they were told by someone who knew someone who had something similar to your problem or they will tell you what they think will make you happy whether or not it really will change your situation for the better.

So what did I do? I started by making lists of my favorite recipes. I highlighted ingredients that were verboten, and researched things I could eat to replace or create a reasonable substitute for each. I experimented and used Gary as my guinea pig. If he didn't turn purple, emit smoke through his ears, or fall over backwards, it was edible and added to the OK recipes list. 

I also made a list of all the ingredients I could think of that were safe for me to eat, and I started making up recipes using only them. That was actually the smartest thing I could have done because making over an old recipe with new, sometimes less exciting parts, has the tendency to leave one longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, but making something new always has a sense of adventure about it.

And that was the key that opened the door for me: I started looking at the half full recipe, not the half empty one. I quit lamenting what I could not have, and embraced what I could have. I also began thinking of food as fuel and tried to make the best fuel for body. The result? I felt felt satisfied, refreshed, and happy. I also lost quite a bit of weight.

If you're ever in the area, please stop by and I will serve you tea or coffee and some of my chocolate chip biscotti, or a slice of apple/pumpkin cake. If it's lunch time, I'll make you a toasted sandwich or a cup of soup, and if it's dinner time, you might be offered ham and three bean casserole, or turkey chili, or roasted chicken and sweet potatoes, or any one of a hundred combinations of the simple and tasty food items on my "yes" list.  You see, a lot of small yes's always add up to something good.  

MaryEsther And Louise Get A Job

(Note to reader: Mary Esther and Louise are elderly women who are the way many of us are turning out to be: a bit fuzzy in the attic, but well-intentioned. They are also somewhat ego-centric which comes from living in their own little world for too long. This is the first of a number of MaryEsther and Louise sketches. Enjoy!)


One day MaryEsther and Louise were sitting in their rocking chairs on the front porch. They had been sitting there for quite a while when Louise sat up straight and said, "We need some money. We never have enough money, don’t you agree?"

"Yes," replied MaryEsther. "That’s true. Maybe we should get a job. What do you think?"

Louise thought for a minute. "What kind of a job could we get?" she asked.

"Oh, I don’t know. We can do lots of things, don’t you agree?"

"Well, of course. Just because we’re old doesn’t mean we’re stupid. We can do all kinds of things. So what job do you think would be best for our skills?" she asked.

MaryEsther scratched her chin with one finger. She pulled at a whisker thoughtfully.

"We could be executives. They make the most money. What do you think?"

"Yes, it should be something important because we know a lot. We raised children, and we had husbands. That took some brains. It counts, don’t you agree?"

"Alright, we’ve narrowed it down to being executives. But do you think a company could use two executives like us ? Because I can’t drive anymore so I’ll need to ride with you," said MaryEsther.

"And I can’t climb stairs without a little help," said Louise, "so, yes, we’ll be executives together at the same place.There’ll be two of us, so we’ll do more work."

"And we’ll make more money," added MaryEsther. "Now that we’ve settled that, we need to think about what clothes we're going to wear. What do you think?"

"Well, Sunday best, I suppose. What do you think?"

"Yes, my gray silk will do, and the navy polka dot is good. If I wear a sweater over the gray silk, I can wear it three times and the polka dot twice."

"And the next week, you can switch and wear the polka dot three times and the gray silk twice. That way you won’t wear either out too soon," said MaryEsther.

"That’s right," said Louise. "What will you wear?"

"Well, I have the black dress I wore when we buried Herbert. It makes me look thinner, too. And I have some very nice flowered house dresses. I’ve worn them to church. If a dress is good enough for the Methodists and the Almighty, it will be just fine for work. Don’t your agree?"

"Oh, yes. You’re absolutely right."

MaryEsther and Louise both closed their eyes and rocked a while.They were making good progress.



(Stay tuned for further adventures of MaryEsther and Louise.)

Lessons in Grace

When we moved here, I wanted to have a cat. My mother said I couldn't unless it was exactly like my sister's cat. Looking back now, I can see that was another red flag that mom was losing some ground. Not wanting to clone the famous Fifi, I gave up on cats for the duration, but still there remained a longing in  my heart for the cuddly companionship of a cat. I'd had cats all my life, and I knew the comfort a furry little body could give, the delight I had felt when such an independent creature chose to be interested in me, the almost parental feelings that come from waking in the morning to see that little face inches from my own on my pillow.

This house is on a large lot, larger than almost all of the other houses in the neighborhood. The house, however, is fairly small for a two story. When I was a child, my parents gardened. Vegetables mostly. It was not long after WWII, and my parents weren't wealthy. Food was a big priority, so we gardened vegetables and fruit, and then we canned everything for the coming winter. When my dad died almost thirty years ago, my mother scaled back the gardening. And then, little by little until we moved here seven years ago, she let things go. Eventually she let a neighbor's son have her vegetable garden, such as it had become, in exchange for a few tomatoes and some squash and cucumbers for her table over the summer.

I took great pleasure in restoring the vegetable garden. Each year, I added one or more flower gardens filled with perennials. The yard began to take on a city park atmosphere and once I had moved my piano studio here, it became a favorite place for students and parents to walk about and play while waiting for lessons.

It also became a favorite place for the large raccoon population in this part of town to forage. We soon became aware of their destructive little habits from both our neighbors and our own powers of observation. But when my next door neighbor mentioned shooting them as a solution, I decided to intervene on the masked marauders' behalf. I began to feed them.

Every night now for years, outside the kitchen door on the large side porch we place a cake pan filled with dry cat food, table scraps, stale bread, and sometimes peanuts. And they come. They come down the wrought iron railings from the kitchen roof. They come up the steps. They come in groups. They come with their babies. They eat. They wash their food in a water dish. They make an awful mess. And they are the closest thing to a pet I have had.

A few years ago, two very fat possums joined the happy fray. I have taken photos of our dinner guests. I have even been a few feet away from them out on the porch. But they have never been so tame as to let me pet them or hold them. I'm afraid I became a bit fixated on raccoons for a while. I followed several raccoon blogs with passion. I spent months on Ebay looking for the most perfectly stuffed toy raccoon, and I actually found one and bought it. But cuddling it was no different than cuddling a teddy bear, and I was left to watch them through the window or door. They were never truly mine.

Then last spring, about eight months ago, a little stray cat wandered up on the porch on a cold day. It had patches of fur missing, runny eyes, and dried feces stuck to its tail. Whatever my first instincts were, I shoved them aside in consideration of the health and well-bring of the children who came up those same steps six days a week for their piano lessons. A sick animal is a potentially dangerous animal. So I shooed it away, and it left.

But not for long. A few days later, it was back. Still sick. Still dirty. Some of my students had drawn on the concrete porch floor with sidewalk chalk, mostly pinks and blues, so when the cat rolled around on the sun-warmed porch floor, it became pink and blue. I tried to shoo it away this time, but it wouldn't go. So I brushed it off the porch with a broom. I noticed it back again later that afternoon and it had found the cat food we put out for the raccoons. I almost shooed it away from the pan, but I thought that if I could feed raccoons, and everyone knows how dirty and germy they are, I could let the sick little cat have some of the cat food, too. I just didn't want to encourage her in any way to come near the house.I moved the food and water pans down onto the driveway in front of the garage which took away the fun I had watching the raccoons play, but kept the cat at a distance, too.

The summer came and with it great gardening and sunny lazy days out on the porch. Once in a while the cat, who was filling out with regular good food, would walk across the porch giving me a wide berth and looking my way with very distrustful eyes. I knew she had not forgotten my broom. We had a mutual respect for each other's space and that was that.

Until the day in July when I was sound asleep in my chair on the porch and the cat jumped up into my lap and began to purr. I can't describe how night to day my feelings for this little creature changed. Suddenly, I wanted her. She had come to me. She was dusty from living in my vegetable garden and playing in the raspberry bushes where the baby bunnies lived, but I thought, for the very first time, how pretty she was.

Soon she came when I called her. She loved being with Gary and I. I made her a little bed out of a wooden packing crate from the garage and stapled a towel over part of the top like a little canopy. I put a soft fleece blanket inside and sprinkled catnip on it. I placed a little green catnip mouse inside. She loved it.
First thing in the morning when we came outside to eat breakfast on the porch, she was there. On the suggestion of a seven year old student, we named her Gloria. She was officially our cat. Of course, the fact that we now wanted her after not wanting her didn't seem to register with Gloria. She still had a dreaded fear of the broom, any fast motions on our part, and my husbands shoes. In short, she wasn't very trusting.

One day in August when the walnut tree leaves started falling early as they do every year, I held the kitchen door wide open for the longest time while Gloria sat on the porch observing. Then, in a moment that was a history-maker, she chose to come inside slowly, crouching more than walking and looking over the inside of the kitchen with frightened eyes. She walked through the bathroom, looked into the tub, and hurried back to the kitchen door where she cried to go out. This process was repeated many times in the next few weeks, each time, however, Gloria found more and more things to sniff out and explore, but always coming back to the door to leave.

The next time she came in, I had a bowl of water and a bowl of cat food on the floor by the refrigerator. This caught her attention. She sniffed, ate and drank nothing, but took note of another food source.  And this became the next pattern in her and our life. Until she decided to come in and eat, and then there was a new ritual. Breakfast. She sat outside the door waiting for us to come out so she could come in and eat.

Fast forward to today, a cold November afternoon. Gloria is outside, having spent the night on our bed, sleeping on my feet. It is sunny, so she may still be playing in the garden which is mostly dead, but still jungle-like enough to delight Gloria's hunting instincts. If the sun goes behind the late autumn clouds and she begins to feel the chill in the air, she will probably go into her heated cat house on the porch. Gloria now cries to wake us in the morning, and usually Gary lets her out. She spends most days coming in and out. She loves canned tuna and she runs to the cupboard where I store canned goods if her bowl is empty. She knows us very well. She knows her new home very well. She has found hiding places in closets and in cupboards. At night after my last student, I call her and she comes running through the open door and for the night she is mine to cuddle and hold.

And so, after seven years, I have a cat. I have Gloria, not a Fifi look-alike. I didn't go out to the pet store or the Humane Society to find one. She found me. She found me in spite of my first thoughts about her. She stayed with me in spite of my broom. She came to me with an offering of affection when I had kept my distance from her for whatever good reasons. And now, I am the beneficiary of that stroke of grace that gives to us what we do not deserve. And I am grateful.

Out With the Old

We've lived in this house, in these two rooms upstairs at the address where I grew up, for seven years next month. We left a spacious tri-level home in Wisconsin to be here for my mother, who at the time was eighty-five and concerned about living alone any longer. During the first five years, we watched her grow more frail, more forgetful, less able to do things for herself. Then she fell. Whether she had a stroke first and then fell or fell and in the struggle to get up had a stroke no one knows. But she has never been the same since that day. She went to a rehab nursing facility for three months during which our world turned upside down.

We reorganized the house, making the living room both a living area and an eating area. We remodeled her bedroom to add a free-standing toilet and pedestal sink to accommodate a wheelchair. We bought her a second TV for her bedroom. We bought a hospital bed, gait belts, walker, and stocked the house with every other item the rehab people suggested. We filled the freezer with prepared meals two months in advance. I left the studio where I gave music lessons in a prominent music store and moved my studio to a back bedroom at the house. None of this could have been possible without my daughter Sarah, who worked tirelessly alongside me to strip wallpaper, paint, decorate, move, sort, haul, and make livable several spaces that had served as storage for thirty years' junk.

And then my mother came home. Interestingly, she didn't want to. In fact, she argued strongly with the doctor, the nurses, us, and anyone else who would listen. That she would feel that way was a great surprise to her family since she had always dreaded living in a nursing home. But here she was, fighting tooth and nail against returning to her own home where she had lived for over sixty years, a place filled with photographs, memories, comforts that a nursing home could never offer.

Who knows what changes go on in the mind of an elderly person, particularly one who has a had a stroke. We had no choice but to try to make it work. And mostly, it has.

Since that first stroke there have been several others. We're not sure of the number because she has small ones and she's had more than a few. The result has been a steady decrease in her ability to remember people, places, events, even family members. She has settled into a world of cable TV and regular meals. She counts on things like her telephone, her electric lap blanket, now and then visits from her pastor, and, most of all, Gary who is her lifeline to the world outside her two rooms.

When we moved here, we brought far too many "worldly goods" with us. This, in spite of the fact that we rid ourselves of over half of our things before we moved. The remaining half was placed in a very nice storage unit and after scarcely a year, was joined by the furniture and considerable belongings of Gary's mother who entered a nursing home in Illinois as a permanent resident. When she died two years later, we added to our storage mountain all of the considerable contents of her nursing home room. Until a few months ago, all of that stuff sat, through hot weather and cold, both being reasons we didn't want to spend time there sorting through things. Not until recently.

A few months ago, a match was lit under our toes. I'm not entirely sure what the match was, but both Gary and I felt the urge to purge ourselves of extra trappings. For the last year, we had been sorting and donating from the things we had in our two rooms and in my studio, and those forays into clutter-diminishment had given both of us a sense of euphoria that chocolate never had. With little left inside the house to get rid of, we turned our sights to....the storage unit.

Mind you, it is the largest unit we could get. One could park a truck in it, or a small sailboat, or seventy coffins. It is large. It has furniture, dozens and dozens of boxes, an oriental carpet, off season clothing, personal effects of three generations of Gary's family, and lots of the common garden variety of junk.

As of this afternoon, we have taken seven carloads to the local Goodwill Store. Our goal is to take a truckload of the furniture there, too, and hopefully by mid-winter to scale down and trade our jumbo not-so-economy sized unit for a much smaller one.

We've learned some interesting lessons from this experience:

1.) Nothing is truly valuable in itself. Everything is relative to a memory or a person. My mother has taught me that. She is surrounded by beautiful things that mean absolutely nothing to her because the memory connection is gone. Things that once were her treasures are, for the most part, part of the scenery and no more.

2. Quantity and quality really aren't the same. Having four red sweaters isn't half so pleasant as having the one that hangs in my closet now. By its oneness, it means more to me. The same goes for all those casserole dishes, books, dvd's. Less is more and I find I am enjoying the things I have because I can focus on them instead of not seeing the forest for the trees.

3. There is a feeling of stepping closer to eternity in letting go of things willingly. You've heard the minister say at funerals, "For we brought nothing into this world, and we take nothing out of it," or more quaintly put: "You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse."

4. People are more important than things. My mother-in-law had a lovely custom in the last years that she lived alone in her apartment. She took the time to look through her own considerable belongings, and she made little piles of things for various family members, her niece, her nephews, her son, myself, friends, neighbors, former co-workers. In giving away these things that meant so much to her, she was insuring the future of not only her things but the sweet memories that were attached to them.