Happy Memorial Day

But what does that really mean? Happiness? Bar-B-Ques? Picnics? The beginning of Summer? Families and friends? Memorial Day is celebrated in many ways but often the intent, the importance, and the pain and sorrow it has brought are often avoided or forgotten!

Memorial Day, begun in 1868, is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who had died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

For many years I would post a photo on Facebook trying to commemorate the day and make a comment or two. But it took many years and perhaps a maturity that comes with age, to be able to say (hopefully without offending anyone) "I support our troops and those who have sacrificed their lives on our behalf ... but I DO NOT support war in any way for any reason."

Last night I got to thinking as I drifted off to sleep, and I get most of my ideas for these posts from that period of the day, about the number of deaths due to war, not only soldiers but also civilians. This thinking is paired, I am sure, with all the deaths we have been hearing about due to COVID 19 and more to come.

What is war? War is defined as an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives. Has the world ever been at peace? Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.

Why do we go to war? A question well worth asking but not going to be addressed here :-)

How many people have died in war? At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history range from 150 million to 1 billion. 

To use a comparison I previously used in a post about COVID 19, the common yellow school bus we are used to seeing holds approximately 100 seats. To transport the dead of twentieth-century wars, it would take a line of one million and eighty thousand yellow busses. 

To transport the dead from the high range of people killed throughout all of human history, there would be a highway of ten million yellow busses.

And that is not to count all those who died as civilians or not directly but as the result of war.

Again, I say, "I support our troops and those who have sacrificed their lives on our behalf ... but I DO NOT support war in any way for any reason."

Merry Christmas

Ten days since I posted. Busy with the holidays. This year celebrating like in the old days. Well not quite but more than the last three years since Gregory passed.

First a long weekend with Mark and Colleen from Augusta, MI.

Next, five days with JD and Lindsey, Great Nephew and his girlfriend from Fort Worth, TX.

Then, for coffee and Christmas cookies, friend Susan from Point Reyes Station, CA.

After the 25th, looking forward to "Jewish Christmas," a time when friends Jan, Jake, Cheryl, and Larry and their kids, Isaac & Jessie, Whitney and Nick, and Emily got to enjoy "Gregory and Michael's Christmas." Also, we order out Chinese!

After the 1st, looking forward to friends, former tenants at 2635 Poplar, Patricia and Ken and their family Janie, Henry, Trishie, and Randy for dinner.

Friend Pat will be in town for us to celebrate the holidays sometime early in January.

Year one after Gregory passed, I did not decorate for the holidays. Grief won out that year.

Year two after Gregory passed I avoided taking down our decorations from the top shelves in the laundry closet. Instead, I purchased a live 3-foot tree, already in a watering tray and stand, from Home Depot. New ornaments and tinsel from Michael's Hobby and a few new strings of Italian lights decorated the Charlie Brown-esk tree. After the holiday, I gave all the "trimmings" away. A few weeks later I left for Mexico for a month.

Year three after Gregory passed, the Christmas boxes once again stayed put in the laundry closet.

Instead, I purchased a lifelong dream by getting a "Z" Scale model train. This is the smallest one made and can fit in a briefcase. I set it up on my desk creating a little Christmas village with newly purchased brush trees and an assortment of little buildings I had sitting around the house.

I also couldn't pass up buying a Victorian Era style miniature Christmas tree. It is about 6 inches high, decorated with teeny tiny ornaments and red ribbons, and surrounded by little gifts and things. I placed it on a revolving pedestal.

That year, a few weeks later, I again went to spend a month in Mexico.

This year, with all the visitors and for some reason feeling joyous with the season approaching I decided to resurrect Christmas and down came the boxes. Used maybe half of the decorations but the house looks quite festive and I am enjoying the season. The train and Victorian tree are out also.

I baked cookies: Oatmeal Raisin, Chocolate Chip Walnut, Peanut Butter, Snicker Doodle, Adeline's Walnut, and Great Grandma Barbara's German Spice. I went to TAGs bakery and got red and green butter cookies and date nut bars.

This year no Mexico, am content to hold up in Chicago, in the condo, in the cold weather and snow! So Joy to the World, Peace on Earth, and Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanza, Happy Winter Solstice, Merry Festival of Pretty Lights, and Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas 2017

Great love brings great grief. Especially at holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. But it does get better and joy wins over sorrow. This will be my third Christmas without Gregory, I am sad and miss him, but I am OK.

Crumedgeon

I hate being a Curmudgeon ... but apparently not. So here it goes. I know that I am not alone in the thoughts that will following. Let me slowly weave my argument before I get to the point.

I get e-mails and hear announcements on the radio and TV. Facebook is full of them. I guess they are necessary and for most people they are appropriate, but they grate on me and raise my hackles.

Don't forget Mom on Mother's Day!

Remember Dad on Father's Day.

Buy that special diamond ring that says love is forever for that special person on Valentine's Day.

Is today someone you love's birthday? Don't forget to tell them you love them with a Hallmark Card (or now an electronic dancing, singing message.)

You know the drill. I do not want to waste my time counting the number of times I get to hear this during any specific period of time.

Well here comes the Curmudgeon part, and I do not hold it against those of you who are not affected by this, but I know many who are!

My mother is dead. She died at the age of 91 on March 27, 2010. She died on my birthday which I actually consider a blessing. She began her next journey on the day she helped me begin mine.

My father is dead. He died at the age of 88 on March 25, 2005. We loved each other but were never close in what might be fantasized as an ideal father/son relationship. The older he got the more difficult and irrational he became, most likely due to old age dementia.

The person I love most in the world, my Gregory is dead. He died on October 4, 2015 due to Dementia/ Alzheimer's related causes. We lived with the diagnosis and his gradual decline for twelve years. The last two were lovingly supported at the Lieberman Center in Skokie and the last three days, as he prepared to leave us, I was at his side.

Many other family members, much loved and missed; many other friends have left this world; the approach of my seventy first year causes me to evaluate how I want to spend the time left to me before I begin my next adventure.

So while I do not really consider myself a Curmudgeon, it is difficult for me to hear all about gifts, and loved ones, and fathers, and mothers, and Valentine's Day and Christmas Presents, etc.

One does not buy gifts for one's memories but maybe that could be worked on. Maybe if the idea spreads, I will become a millionaire? 

Actually for Christmas, I did buy Gregory a box of his favorite cookies and some chocolates which I kept by his remains which live in his Grandma Carrie's sewing box and now that the holiday is over, I will proceed to eat them. 

Maybe my gifts are gifted more in the true spirit of love and remembering and not in the spirit of commercialism or impressing the receiver with how good the giver is. 

I do buy flowers for my mom and dad and for Gregory's as well which are placed next to their photographs and a lit candle for Mother's and Father's Day and on their birthdays. Often I remember other family members and friends on the anniversary of their passing. 

So maybe I am not really a Curmudgeon after all! Whew, I am relieved.

Halloween/Day of the Dead

Halloween and Day of the Dead, while two different holidays as celebrated by two different cultures, come together on the shelf in my front hall. Many of the items shown here have been purchased at the National Museum of Mexican Art  in Chicago's Pilsen Neighborhood.

Part 1: What is in a fall day?

Fall carries with it for most of us such feelings, emotions, senses so as to enrich the eventual coming of winter. For many it is a favorite time of year with its smells of leaf decay, feel of chill in the air, sight of colors all bounded by russet, sound of leaves crunching and thrashing underfoot.

To see piles of leaves as tall as I am, piled in the street waiting to be vacuumed up by large trucks the city sends around overwhelms me. As a child we used to play in these piles, popping out to scare and pretend fright. A carefully collected assortment of reds, oranges, yellows and still greens would be pressed into the dictionary or arranged on the dining room table by a supportive, nurturing mother.

Then there would be that acrid, sweet, memory filled smell of leaves burning at the curb now outlawed because of pollution. But what wonderful pollution it was. A bonfire to celebrate your efforts at gathering the seasons discard, only to regather again in a few days or the next weekend.

You can still get a peek at this memory now and then when you are driving in the country past a farm where a burn is burning, apparently still allowed. I always stop the car, roll down the windows, inhale, and exhaleingly sigh.

Always a great time in the fall, during the autumn, is taking a walk in the forest preserve down a path covered almost to disappearing with the effects of the season as the colors of the leaves remaining on the trees disappear into a vanishing point far away. Sometimes over dressed, sometimes chilled and underdressed with the unpredictability of the season we would find a fallen tree to perch on and amaze at the wonder.

Then there are the Jewish holidays celebrated during the fall: Rosh Hashanah (a solemn holiday beginning the calendar year with repentance from sin and the hope of renewal,) Yom Kippur (a fast day of prayer and collective confession,) Sukkot (a holiday to celebrate the harvest and move into a temporary hut in the back yard,) Simchas Torah (a holiday to celebrate finishing the reading of the Torah scroll for the year and starting it over again to symbolize the never ending nature of Jewish law.) 

Trips to the apple orchard, some two or three hours outside the city, were and still are always a festive event. Never went to pick them off the trees as many do but rather to walk through the chilly barns with bushel basket after bushel basket and box after box of every type of apple you never realized existed.

There is something romantic about those one handled bags in which you would fill your selection to purchase. One price for a filled smaller bag, another price for the larger filled bag. At the place we go you could sample any apple you wanted until your tummy growled. There was also freshly pressed apple juice to sample in cups that were too small and necessitated a refill.

Candy, candy, candy at Halloween is a good way to continue the season. Costumes and Trick or Treat and parties and candy by going from door to door to beg for more. "Trick or Treat, Money or Eats," we would chant as kids. Costumes and parties as we grew older took over the trick or treat but we would always squeeze in a few requests on the way to our party.

Now as adults, we buy candy to pass out to those who frequent our doors but more importantly, I think, is that we can buy our own candy, our favorites, and fill our own bowl without having to beg or trip over the hems of our costumes. We can snatch a piece or two whenever we want.

Memories. Ah memories. Fall. Autumn. And we have only gotten to the end of October. In another post, I will reminisce about what is in a fall November day. 

Happy Holidays

Christmas 2013

Halloween has just been here and gone, Thanksgiving is three weeks away, and even though I begrudge the stores already beginning to show Christmas, my internal clock is thinking, anticipating, and living Christmas. I cannot blame it on the much too early commercial promotion of the holiday so I have tried to look at my personal why?

The answer is that I am excited about potential. Christmas time for me is a time filled with creativity. A time when you can tap your inner theatrical set, exhibit, or window designer self as well as your inner chef and good samaritan to create love, beauty, and magic. A time when "over the top" is not always enough and when too many lights, and glitter, and color, and clutter, and lots of cookies and "cute" are all OK.

There is a magic is recreating and retelling a story with its accompanying tradition that is basically filled with love and sharing. Love of family, love of life, love of children. There is a magic in the retelling of the Story of Christmas, the birth of Christ, the miracle of Mary.

People really are able and do light up the several weeks of Christmas (for some beginning the day after Thanksgiving) even when for most of them a large portion of life is hurried, sad, difficult, routine, whatever. There is some truth in reminding ourselves to "rediscover our inner child at Christmas" and in "trying to make it Christmas all year long!"

For me, the small treasures placed strategically around the house, on the tables, balanced on picture frames, on the top of a toilet tank, hung on walls; bring wonder to my days. Enjoying the artisanship and craftsmanship put into creating little things representing the holiday is astounding. The idea of a tree decorated with twinkling lights, glittery objects, and years of memories is thrilling.

Then there are the traditions. Making cookies. Giving gifts (not going overboard with these but rather trying to wrap up something that will show you care.) Having friends in. Cooking special meals. Traveling to see family. Sitting near the fireplace and listening to familiar holiday songs. Or maybe singing these songs around a piano or the radio or while traveling in a car.

For a brief while, the intensity of the cold outside is matched by the warmth inside: inside your home, inside your heart, inside your mind. For Gregory and me, our Christmas begins the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until the end of January. Two months. 1/6 of a year. And with my anticipation, it lasts for almost three months or ¼ of the year!

The three foot, out of the box, already decorated and lighted Christmas Tree goes up. Dozens of Nativity Scenes are displayed. The oversized mercury glass ornaments are hung in a row on the fire sprinkler pipe that crosses the living room. Pine candles scent the bathrooms. Gregory's paper mâché Nativity scene, which he made when he was eleven years old and which his mother saved for him, adorns the table by the front door. At least half a dozen, one foot high, antique bottle-brush trees decorated with miniature antique German ornaments line the library table in the living room.

We bake cookies: butter, peanut butter, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar, and Great Grandma Barbara's German Christmas Cookies. We don't give each other many gifts but rather a few, precious small ones and of course some dark chocolate. We invite neighbors and friends in for cookies and hot chocolate. We entertain our "Jewish Family" as we have been doing (+/- 25 years) since the God-Kids were born. We entertain our "Gay Family" as we have been doing for 30+ years. We watch "A Christmas Carol," "It's A Good Life," and "The Polar Express." We listen to hours of Laurie Lines piano Christmas music CDs.

We always have our "Christmas Cry," remembering the family and friends and pets who are no longer with us, remembering the 37+ years we have spent celebrating Christmas together, and being overwhelmed at our love for each other which really does shine through all year but even more during the celebration of Christmas, and yes we do try to keep Jesus in our holiday - not bad for a Jew and a recovering Catholic  - and try to live our lives with the love and compassion that he taught.

Shanah Tovah

May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year. Shanah Tovah. May your new year be sweet and abundant! Rosh Hashanah - Happy New Year.

Fondly, Michael and Gregory