Perpetual Holiday Happiness

It’s a bittersweet day when we carefully wrap our holiday ornaments to store in the attic. But years ago, as I was about to take the stockings down, I thought, “If I put these away, there won’t be presents in them until next December! That doesn’t make sense.” So I left one up, where it stays all year. And every so often there’s a present in it.

Sometimes Bob or I will say to each other, “Have you checked the stocking?” It’s never anything big – maybe a candy bar or a crossword puzzle book.

Every Christmas, we have an elegant dinner by candlelight. This year, as I felt glowingly aware of the uniqueness of the day, time stopped for me in a moment of bliss. And I said to Bob, “Why can’t more days be like this?”

“They can’t,” he said. “This day is special because it comes once a year.”

“But that’s just in our minds. Life’s too short to limit celebrations to what it says on a calendar.”

We were savoring Yorkshire pudding when Bob said, “If we had this more often, we wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Who says? Every summer when you bite into a lusciously ripe home-grown tomato, you close your eyes in a state of nirvana. Would you want one tomato a year?”

“No,” he laughed. “But holidays are different.”

“I think you’re wrong. It’s all what we tell ourselves. I don’t want to wait until next December to feel holiday joy.”

“But that’s when the season comes.”

“Why hold off until a certain date to rejoice?” I said. “We don’t need an excuse to celebrate. Can’t we make our own tradition of, let’s say  . . .  having the first day of each month a make-your-own holiday? It doesn’t have to be a huge deal. And it’s only 12 days a year. We could do something special, like order take-out Chinese – and eat it by candlelight.”

This Christmas, Bob gave me a beautiful glass snow globe. When I gently shake it, snowflakes softly whirl around a dainty evergreen tree. On each limb is a tiny red candle. It’s magical to watch the snow swirl as it slowly settles around the tree. And it brings back memories of when I was a little girl and I’d watch snow twirl around a ballerina in a globe, making her seem alive as the flakes made their way toward her pink ballet slippers.

I’m not putting Bob’s gift away, even though it’s a Christmas scene. It’s too beautiful to store in the attic. So it will rest on my mantle where I can treasure its beauty. And my favorite ornament, a hand painted Oyster shell from Wellfleet and of course the stocking, will stay downstairs so we can savor more bliss all year long.

I don’t want to miss any potential for festivity. Why would I? Where is it written that corned beef is only for St. Patrick’s Day or maple-glazed ham for Easter? Plus, must we wait for friends’ birthdays to give them a present?

And so, we made a pact to celebrate the first day of every month. “If we don’t set the date, we may not do it.” I said. It may be for us or a treat for a friend.

And frankly, I think making our own traditions is just as meaningful as conventional rituals. Because they don’t come from a calendar. They come from the love in one’s heart.

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Twenty-five Years on Cape Cod Bay: A Love Story

I had to hypnotize myself to stay still as I laid on my back in the broiling sun at Sandy Neck Beach. It was dreadfully uncomfortable. But how else was I to get a deep tan on my one hundred and four pound body? And breakfast or lunch? Not in my repertoire. Maybe a handful of peanuts for dinner, but that was it. I intended to attract the perfect mate, and if I had to make myself miserable to do it, then so be it. That was back in 1975, when I was twenty-five years old.

The majesty of Sandy Neck’s six mile stretch of sand dunes eluded me then. The plovers, coyotes, the wildlife in general didn’t interest me. What did they have to do with my manhunt? But that year, I did find Mr. Perfect.

I was a mental health worker at a local hospital where he was a physician. He was just right for me. Smooth talking and confident. Incredibly handsome with thick dark curly hair and deeply set brown eyes. He never knew the extent of the research that went into my attempt to capture him. I knew when his rounds would take him to the floor where I was working so I could coincidentally meet him in the hallway. I bought Jackson Brown albums and memorized the lyrics so he’d think I loved his favorite performer too. The only catch was his live-in girlfriend.

I didn’t mind making our dates around her work schedule. During the weekends, when I couldn’t see him, I dated a different kind of man. Someone who couldn’t pay the rent. A blond, blue-eyed fellow who sold Native American jewelry at flea markets and bookstores.

We’d loll together on Sandy Neck Beach. The blue of his gaudy turquoise necklace stood out against his tan. I hated the jewelry, but I liked Bob. When we were together, I never silently pre-tested what I was planning to say through the “is this clever and sexy” filter. Through Bob’s tutelage, I  began my love affair with this beach on the bay. When the tide was out, we’d walk west toward the canal. He’d point out the beautiful round shells of the sand dollars. I would take the empty shells home and soak them in bleach so they’d turn white. And I’d keep them in a little crystal bowl in my bathroom.

I never went to the beach with the doctor. But who could blame him for not going with me? How could he take the chance of being seen with me in public? When his girlfriend worked nights, we’d listen to music at his house. No matter how thin I became, I was self-conscious about how I looked when I was with him. And I always woke up the next morning ruminating over all the stupid things I had said the night before.

One summer night, when I was agonizing over when I’d hear from him again, I had a change-of-life moment. I sat on my couch in my one room efficiency, and thought about the good times I’d been having with Bob. How much fun he was. How I could call him whenever I wanted. How I never hated my behavior or my body when I was with him. I realized then that the marker of a good relationship was how I felt about myself when I was with my partner. I remember saying out loud,  “Are you nuts?” And like Dorothy and her slippers, I discovered that what I’d always wanted had been right in front of me all along.

Bob and I married a year later.

I no longer wanted to fry my skin in the sun. I wanted to walk for miles on Sandy Neck with my husband and our first dog, a stately German Shepherd named Lisa. The beach was no longer just a summer oven. It was a winter haven. A place, it would seem, to get away. But in reality it was a place to come. To connect with things that are important - the earth, the waves, the sands. All things that change every second but never essentially change at all.  

Although Cape Cod Bay will outlive me, this brief earthly love affair provides me with essentials - constancy in spite of change. I suppose this is what some people mean by God.

The same year my dog died my father did too. I hated going back to the beach. I couldn’t see further than Lisa's gallop and smile. Only to slowly deteriorate until she could no longer walk at all. The same thing had happened to my father. With a walker, he was able to escort me down the aisle at our wedding, but his footsteps would one day be silenced. Both of them grew very angry and insane when their legs stopped working. And in the end, neither went gently into that good night. I have mourned the both of them for nine years and still have found no peace.

Eventually, I forgave the beach for reminding me of my loved ones’ absences. I began to profoundly appreciate how it would always be there to give me sustenance through the awful times and peace through the good - ultimately being my Provider beyond the lives of those I adored.

On a small harbor on the bay, I set up my therapy practice and for twenty-two years had the privilege of sharing in peoples’ turmoils and triumphs. But outside my window, the waters beckoned, tempting me to distraction with the playful harbor seals and the bobbing mergansers.

I had a fourteen year old drug-abusing patient who wanted to be anywhere but in a therapist’s office. It was easy to grow aggravated with her monosyllabic answers to questions concerning her not-very-disguised suicide attempts. Sitting face to face would never work. We had to meet the beach, which would act as an objective third party. So one fine crisp autumn afternoon, I invited her to join me in a walk along the waters, with a promise from me that we needn’t talk. The truth is we didn’t wind up talking much, but it turned out that lengthy back and forths weren’t necessary. She and I kept in touch for many years after therapy officially ended. With the aid of the sands, I learned that she’d flourish if she wasn’t pushed so hard and that she needed a lot more space, both literally in her home and yard and figuratively in her preference to keep her thoughts to herself. With her by my side, and more importantly me by hers, I talked with her parents about her desires. Eventually, she was able to do that herself. Which was what she needed to be able to do all along.

Working through others’ conflictual life stages helped me to face my own. That is probably why many people go into the profession in the first place. But this, my life’s work, also passed on when it was supposed to. There came a time when I had simply done it enough. I hated to leave my office by the sea. It was a perfect place for my type of work. A cocoon surrounded by water, like a womb.

My last night of that career, Bob and I took a long walk as the sun set on the bay. I felt relief. I felt sad. I loved many of the people I saw. It was hard, and still is, to explain why we needed to disconnect. The relationships fulfilled both my patients and me, but it came time to move on, and find our answers elsewhere.

That same year, with Bob, I learned about the eastern stretch of the beach.  Once, when we took our 4-wheel drive truck the whole six miles to the very tip of Sandy Neck, we saw an enormous rainbow that arched across the entire expanse of the horizon. We collected empty sea clam shells that day, which we eventually used as garden borders. On the trip out to the end, we saw families around their campers having cookouts, playing horseshoes or just doing nothing. I had always characterized the folks who camped there as a rowdy all-male circus, consisting of scoundrels who would gladly drive over plover nests if they wouldn’t get caught by the rangers. This was certainly my form of racial profiling.

Five years ago, in my forty-fifth year, we bought one of those little portable homes. And another world opened up. Glorious nights on Sandy Neck Beach included campfires and hikes through the moonlit dunes. It’s still the only place where my insomnia takes leave, as I fall asleep listening to the music of the waves.

As dusk languidly rolls in among the pink and purple hues of the sand flats, campers light their fires. From miles away, I look as one by one the campfires light up in succession as the ranger gives his permission. I imagine each family at peace, watching the flames against the background of the sun setting over the ocean. There’s a world on Sandy Neck Beach that’s separate. It’s a commune of folks most people know nothing about, who relish the serene, mesmerizing solitude of the long stretch of wild shore.

But a question from a friend, “Have you ever seen the phosphorescence?” opened me to yet another new dimension. I wonder how many small worlds exist adjacent to mine, as I walk right by without noticing.

The phosphorescence. After our barbecues, we walk twenty or thirty yards to the edge of the beach where it’s eerily dark and quiet. We stand on the shore and swish our hands over the top of the tranquil water’s edge. And there they were - a million tiny lights like silent fireworks under the swirl of our hands. We do it again and again and again. Tiny lights of plankton glisten along the trails of our fingers. And then we step back, and look at the horizon in the darkness. In the distance, we see a brilliant line of lights on the crest of the waves, undulating from left to right then right to left in the most spectacular light show that could possibly be. And we’d think - how could this be in our own backyard without us knowing about it until we’re almost fifty years old?

And that, of course, brings me to the gist. Turning fifty this year. Now, I have a new dog, a goofy adorable Golden Retriever, who likes to find pieces of rope on the beach and toss them in the water. She seems devastated when they’re gobbled up by the sea. She turns to me with a “Can’t you make it better?” look. She has given me the gift of renewal.

Every day, Bob and I walk along Cape Cod Bay. And at fifty, I learn that renewal knows no age limits. My recently discovered joy of writing opens up realms like the plankton did, reminding me that an infinite number of new worlds exist alongside me. I’m not happy that each year brings me and my loves closer to death. That concept is probably at the root of most madness. But I think there is one choice to be made of the following three. One is to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” One is to deny the truth of our human existence. One is to accept and flourish in actuality.

I have yet to develop the wisdom to choose number three. I’m still raging, I think.

Now, as I walk by the bay, I see myself twenty-five years ago, tiny and tanned, and I have a conversation with the young girl that was me. I tell her to look at the sea as something more than cool water to make the tanning process bearable. I tell her that she’ll have many joyful years with a partner who thinks the sun rises and sets on her smile. I say that she’ll have three dogs, at least, that will honor her by sharing their lives and their deaths. And I say that no matter what happens to make her cry, there is the comforting continuity of Cape Cod Bay. 

But she dismisses me. She’s caught up in the presence of her life. She tells me, in simple terms, to stop agonizing over things I can’t do anything about. To stop fighting the march of time. To keep discovering new worlds and new loves. She says I’d be foolish not to. “What’s the point in doing otherwise? You’re still going to die in the end anyway,” she states in her sassy twenty five year old know-it-all style.

And so, I will walk along Cape Cod Bay this morning and every dawn and dusk that I can. I’ll heed the shore’s relentless reminder that there are certain things that, in my heart, won’t ever, ever go away from me. The waves on the sand and the loves of my life.

And instead of ponderous footsteps, I’ll play tag with the incoming waves.

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An Evening of Darkness and Light

I was watching the Millionaire show when the screen went blank.

“Oh no!” I banged the remote on the table. “Bob!” I called out to my husband.

He ran in the room, clearly alarmed. “Are you OK?” he said, looking around for the emergency.

“No! There’s no TV!”

“You scared me to death,” he said, shaking his head. And in that instant, we both realized all the electricity in the house was out.

Bob was thrilled. “Isn’t this great?” he said, picking up the canvas wood carrier. “No heat. No lights. No computer.”

“No VCR.” I hung my head. 

“Where’s your spirit of adventure?” he said. “Before we got married you loved roughing it.”

“Before we got married, I lied about a whole lot of things.”

He went outside to the woodpile.

I lit both of our antique glass oil lamps on the mantle. After all, I had to have light so I could read People Magazine. I don’t subscribe to it because I’d be embarrassed for my mail lady to see it. So I sneak it into my shopping cart, cover page down.

By the time Bob came back, the soot from the lamps had made indelible black round spots on the ceiling.

I stood on the couch to light our big beautiful brass kerosene lamp that once hung in a general store. It didn’t take very long for the room to fill with smoke and only took another half a second for the glass globe to shatter. I’m really not sure why everybody says that times were so much simpler years ago.

Bob lit a fire in our old wood stove. He got the flames going by using wooden bellows. “We have a house full of antiques from your parents,” he said. “Won’t it be fun to use some of them?”

“Oh yeah. A blast.” I looked over at the chamber pot and prayed Bob wasn’t referring to that. “We’re going to starve to death, you know. You cannot eat without a microwave.”

“What happened to the nature girl I married?”

“She split. You should have read the fine print on the marriage certificate.”

“It was in Hebrew.”

As the winds howled and the thunder growled, so did my stomach. For the first time, I was glad that Bob enjoyed his hobby of throwing away good money on heavy cast iron frying pans at antique shops and flea markets. He took one down from the wall and put it on top of our wood stove.

“My great-grandmother used skillets like these,” he said, wearing a red and white checkered apron. He dons this frilly thing whenever it’s a special occasion. But it definitely does not make me weak in the knees, if you know what I mean.

“She was a cook in a logging camp in New Hampshire, you know,” he said.

“You might have mentioned that a few thousand times.”

“I remember hearing the story about how she hitched a sled to a team of horses and rode twenty miles in a blizzard to get supplies for the camp.” He looked down at a spot near the hem of his apron. He went to the cabinet, opened a bottle of club soda, poured a little on a paper towel, and blotted the spot. “What story does this night make you think about?” he asked.

I looked up from my magazine. “How Anne Heche broke up with Ellen DeGeneres. Anne just starred in that movie with Harrison Ford. Now, what the heck did Ellen think was going to happen?”

Bob, ignoring me, worked his spatula like a conductor’s baton, punctuating the end of his sentences by raising it in the air and pointing at the ceiling dramatically. “Every morning at dawn, she’d get up before all the men. She used to melt lard in a frying pan, just like this one.”

Then he quickly opened the fridge and got out the bacon.

“We’re going to die if we eat that,” I said.

“The electricity’s only been off for twenty minutes.” He opened the package. “Tell you what. I’m cooking this bacon. If you don’t want it, don’t eat it.” Then, he slowly and sensuously pealed off eight slices and put them in the pan. Most everything Bob does, he does with passion. Sometimes this gets a little weird, if you ask me.

The bacon began to smell like ambrosia as the winds continue to roar. I started to wish the electricity would stay off for a while. Bob took out the cooked bacon and slowly fried thick slices of sourdough bread in the pan. I stared at the flame in one of the glass oil lamps, wondering how many people had sat by this very same lamp on a long, dark night.

Then I looked around for something to do.

“I know you’re bored,” Bob said.

“Look, I’m as much a pioneer as the next woman.”

Bob walked over to the hutch and got out the stereoscope. I think that’s what you call our wooden viewer with a handle, that you put pictures in and they appear in 3D. “Tell me we’re not looking at three dimensional photos of dead bodies in coffins again.”

“No. I bought new ones!” he said. “The Great Chicago Fire!” I grabbed his hand as it headed toward the drawer and shook my head.

So for the next ten minutes, I agreed to look at pictures of visitors to the Grand Canyon. The first twenty were interesting. After that, I started playing de-focusing games with my eyes to get the tourists to appear as if they were smiling and waving in mid-air above the canyons.

Bob put the cooked bacon on the bread and topped each piece with a hunk of sharp cheddar. It only took a minute for the cheese to ooze lusciously over the bacon and down the sides of the bread.

He put quilted place mats on the floor in front of the wood stove where it was warm. Then he lit white candles in my parents’ brass Sabbath candlesticks. "Do you want to try my great-grandmother’s recipe with or without the bacon?” he asked.

I mouthed the word “with”.

The lovely light from the glass front of the stove cast an oval around us.

It was the best tasting and most romantic dinner I ever had.

After supper, I got the pillow from my side of the bed, doubled it up and laid back in front of the stove while I watched the flames. Bob pulled the oak rocker over and took out his embroidery. I watched him carefully separate the threads.

My husband would have done just fine and perhaps even flourished, living in the 1800’s. The piece he’s been working on for over a year will, when he’s done, read:

                   “Keep cleane your samplers.

                   Sleepe not as you sit.

                   For sluggishness doth spoile

                   The rarest wit.”

How lovely to have had this night to live a twinkling of times past. A time when hobbies and artwork replaced the internet and one hour lingered into two. I lolled in front of the dwindling wood stove flames. It was a moment I would remember long after it was inevitably gone by.

While Bob continued to work so steadfastly on his project, I secretly went around the house and turned off all the lights that had been on before we lost electricity.

That way, at least for one lovely, lilting, dreamy night, no one would know when the power came back on.

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The Present. The Past. The Prozac?

“What the heck is that?” my husband Bob asked, as I put four eggs in a metal basket, then placed them in the small round porcelain appliance.

“It’s a Hankscraft egg cooker,” I said. “It was my mother’s. I think it’s from the fifties.” I put in a little water before placing the top on and plugging it in. After it started to steam, I got very excited. “When the steam stops, the eggs are soft boiled!”

The steam stopped. I carefully removed the eggs from the basket and sliced into one. It was raw. “They must have had a lot of salmonella in the fifties,” Bob said, and proceeded to take the remaining three eggs and put them in the microwave. After a minute he took them out and sliced into one. Do not EVER do this!

In a comedy of terrors, egg confetti exploded onto the ceiling, the floor and all over my eyeglasses. Fortunately, the cat flew out of the room in time.

“At some point,” Bob said, while picking yellow and white egg bits out of my hair, “you might want to consider getting over this ‘living in the past’ problem of yours.”

I’m turning fifty this year, and I’ve developed this nostalgic need to appreciate the past. I know what this is about. I want to stop time. But failing that, I want to bring the past into my present, not just to keep the past alive, but to have a sense of continuity for things that are a part of my generation that will live beyond me. It does continue meaningfully, doesn’t it?

We cleaned up the egg splatters. It took three hours. Afterwards, I slowly sat down on the couch, holding my lower back due to imaginary back pain.

“You’re talking yourself in to this funk,” Bob said. “You’ve  never looked so good. Fifty doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at death’s door.”

“Believe me, Bob. Time’s going fast.” I pinched the skin together on the back of my hand. I let go. It stayed pinched. I took off my slipper and rubbed my new bunion. “I need tea. Can you brew me some with a Prozac infusion?”

“OK. That’s it,” he said, and yanked me off the couch. He spent the rest of the day doing his “glass is half-full” shtick. My tendency lies toward the brooding “half empty” side. I think his, in my opinion, naiveté and optimistic approach is precisely why, at age twenty-six, I decided I wanted to spend my life with him. He is good for me.

Before dinner, Bob found me listening to the same Zenith Bakelite radio that occupied the space next to the yellow bread box in the kitchen when I was six years old. “I love this,” I said, as I hummed along to an emotional Billie Holiday and watched Bob stir fry chicken and broccoli.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing a station other than one that only plays torch songs,” he said, clearly aggravated at me at this point.

“OK.” I turned the dial to WPLM and began to sing along softly to Ol’ Man River.

“I get weary, and sick of tryin’  . . .  .” Then I stood up, looked at the ceiling and belted out, “I’M TIRED OF LIVIN’, AND SCARED OF DYIN’  . . .  .” Bob rolled his eyes, then rushed to the radio and shut if off.

I set the table with my grandmother’s Steubenville china. I’ve learned lately that it’s good to use the good stuff. Plus, like so many things, it makes me feel a continued bond with grandma. There’s more to antiques than materialism. Much more.

We sat down. “Let’s talk about something fun, for a change,” Bob said. “How do you want to spend your birthday?”

“Having a colonoscopy.”

A piece of broccoli fell from his mouth to the plate. “What?”

“Everyone’s supposed to have one after they turn fifty.”

“Oh great. I’ve got a good idea. You have a colonoscopy and I’ll have a root canal. Then we’ll have cake.”

After dinner, I carefully washed Grandma’s plates and placed them back on the display shelf. I feel differently now about the things that I have that once belonged to my loved ones. Like my father’s brass humidor. Inside it, I keep the tiny prayer book from his funeral and the torn piece of black cloth that the rabbi pinned to my collar as a heart-wrenching symbol of mourning. It still tears at my soul to this day.

And there’s my grandfather’s medicine scale. To an onlooker, it appears simply as a beautiful antique - a reminder of the past. To me, it symbolizes much of his life as a Russian Jewish immigrant, who couldn’t get patients to come to his New York City medical practice until he Americanized his name from Katzen to Kassen.

And the portrait of my paternal grandfather, which has his name embossed on a brass plaque underneath his picture. Mores Perel (1880-1935). When he came through Ellis Island unable to speak English, he couldn’t spell the name Morris, so it was spelled phonetically and that’s how it stayed.

After dinner, I soaked in a soothing hot bath and gave myself a lecture. “You’re going to die anyway,” I said to myself. “You can either spend the rest of your life bummed out about the inevitable or you can enjoy every moment you can.”

Soaking wet, I climbed out of the tub and reached to the back of the towel cabinet to find an old bottle of lavender bath bubbles. I returned to the bath and settled back while the bubbles slowly reached the level of my chin. “You’ve got a wonderful husband out there,” I said. “You owe it to him and to yourself to do your damnedest to put these unnecessary blues behind you.  Don’t waste any more time getting depressed about something you can’t do anything about!”

And so, feeling pumped, I got out of the tub, dried myself off and put on my favorite blue and white striped flannel nightshirt. I trotted into the living room to find Bob. He was standing on the couch so he could wind his grandfather’s old Seth Thomas pendulum wall clock.

He was crying.

“What’s the matter?” I ran to him. He apparently turned wrong because he fell off the couch and landed on the floor  . . .  still crying.

“My grampy used to wind this clock,” he wiped his eyes on his sleeve.