Judy – Page 97 – Dear Liza

Christmas Eve Conversations

Dear Liza,

Yesterday was Christmas Eve. Auntie Bridgett was working at the art gallery and I was getting the house cleaned up for Christmas Day. At about 3:00, I walked to “Straight out of New York” to pick up our traditional Christmas Eve pizza. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a selection.

I texted Auntie Bridgett about the situation. Maybe “Pizzacato”, the pizza place closer to the gallery, could do better. Their website said they were open Christmas Eve until 4:00. I let Grandpa Nelson what I was doing and walked as quickly as I could up to Burnside Street to check it out.

I saw Johnny, a very pleasant homeless fellow, outside Whole Foods with his cart and “Merry Christmas” sign. I said I was off to buy pizza, and could I buy him a slice or two?

“Honey, they’re closed,” he said. “They haven’t been open all day. I was gonna get my dinner there, too.” He seemed worried. “Where’re you gonna get your dinner?”

“Oh, we’ll figure something out, I guess,” I assured him. “You?”

“I’ll head to the Pearl. There’s a nice Chinese place there.” He smiled and we wished each other Merry Christmas, and I headed to the gallery to talk with Auntie Bridgett.

“You know,” she said, “We have a lot of food at the house. There’s sausage and cheese and crackers, fruit and veggies and fruitcake. We can make a buffet!”She was right, and that was what we decided to do.

Meanwhile, it was an hour before the gallery closed. I looked at the art, she tidied and organized. At about quarter to five, she noticed a box of cookies someone had given to the gallery to share, but no one had eaten any. “They’re going to go stale,” she said. “We ought to toss them out.”

But with so many people without even a proper supper, that felt wrong. I took the box and went looking to offer Johnny cookies to have after his Chinese dinner, but I couldn’t find him. I figured he had already caught the bus to the Pearl.

Unwilling to leave without giving the cookies to someone, I walked to the Laurelhurst Theater where a lady named Jennifer makes her camp. She has all sorts of health problems but refuses to leave the outdoor life. I offered her the cookies and we chatted. She showed me her new down sleeping bag, donated by a generous person. She was having a merry Christmas, she said.

Heading back to the gallery, I spotted Johnny. I told him about the cookies and Jennifer. He smiled sadly, knowing her story better than I did. Then his face lit up. “Hey, I was thinking of you,” he said, and held up a bag from Whole Foods. “I went in to the market to get a cup of coffee and the folks there gave me this for Christmas.” I opened the bag. It was full of unopened packages of sausage, cheese, and bread. “I thought about you not having your pizza, and I’ve got my dinner already. Would you like this?”

I was stunned at his kindness. This fellow who sleeps in the cold by his shopping cart had come into extra food and worried that I wouldn’t have a dinner. He really was the good soul I thought he was.

I smiled. “No, thanks, we got it figured out. Maybe you could share with Jennifer?”

He shook his head. “She don’t eat cheese or meat,” he said. “I’ve offered her lots, but she just eats sweets, her cigarettes, and her wine.” We were both sad, thinking of Jennifer, sick and stubborn. He reached behind him and put the bag of food on a small sidewalk table, part of the Covid conscious outside dining area of a darkened restaurant. “I’m going to leave this here. The fellas will come by later. They’ll find it.” I figured he meant other homeless folks, and asked, “How will they find it?”

“They’re pretty thorough,” he grinned. “Well, thanks again for the offer,” I said. “Have a Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” he said.

And we parted company, with me wondering at the sweet strangeness of it. Each of us was trying to take care of someone else, and were richer because of it.

It felt very Good King Wenceslas. And that’s not a bad feeling.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Christmas Eve in the Neighborhood

Dear Liza,

The rain stopped Christmas Eve, and we got to go for a walk. It was long-underwear, extra scarf wearing cold, but clear and dry. I put on my light-up coat so we didn’t get killed by traffic, and we headed out.

We had expected, with everyone being in lock-down, that there would be more decorations than usual, but there weren’t. Maybe folks are feeling sad, not being able to visit and travel. Maybe they are saving money this year. But for whatever reason, there were fewer houses all lit up.

What there was, though, was pretty nifty. This house goes nuts every year, and I think they add more lights every year, as well. They are lit up from their front fence to inside their front window, and it is staggeringly bright.

These are very traditional decorations. Some of them, like the gingerbread people cut-outs on the far right, I remember from my childhood.

Other houses use a more unconventional set of things to celebrate the holiday, like this “Baby Jesus as television static” nativity scene. It was surreal and wonderful.

On the same porch was this just slightly possessed Easter Bunny, escorted by Malchior and Balthazar.

Then around a corner, we saw a truck idling in the middle of the very dark street. A man was calling to some other folks… offering candy canes at the end of a long handled fishing net.

Holy Smokes, it was Covid Santa, out and about! He and Mrs. Claus, all dressed up in their finery, were ho ho ho-ing around the neighborhood. What a nice surprise!

With that, we figured we had seen the best Christmas Eve could offer, and headed home for hot toddies and “Charlie Brown’s Christmas”.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday, sweetie. I will see you soon.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Reflections on the Rain in Laurelhurst

Dear Liza,

For the last few days, we have been in a river…. an atmospheric river, to be exact. This is a system of very wet air that has blown up from the tropics, bumped into our cold air, and is just dumping water like crazy. This is a lot of rain, even for drippy Portland.

So of course we went for a walk to lovely Laurelhurst Park. The hillsides are muddy and very slick, so I stayed on the path. The last thing I need from 2020 is a busted bottom. The puddles forming by the path made perfect mirrors to appreciate the majestic trees and gray skies.

Firwood Lake has had a particularly thick layer of duckweed this year, looking more like a soccer field in some areas. But at the east end, a surreal swirly effect is finding new ways to be beautiful.

And just as I thought the swirly green and black water couldn’t get more weirdly beautiful, a raindrop plopped in and created concentric circles.

Life is beautiful, even (or maybe especially) in the rain.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Accidental Cat Games

Dear Liza,

I told you about our advent calendar, where we keep track of the days until Christmas. Auntie Bridgett made us these cute bags and we put candy, trivia questions, or puzzles inside.

Last night we got a ball toss game. Since I used what we have at home for the game, it had yogurt container targets and three sheets of tin foiled rolled up into balls. We three took turns aiming for the targets, with the closest one counting for one point and the furthest one counting for four. The stairs in our house made it even more interesting.

And of course, any time balls are getting tossed around, Mouse the cat gets very interested. She watched for quite a while and then decided that this was really a game for her.

She hunkered down, pounced around, and even batted balls away from the targets. She is a very good goalie. Finally she cornered one and held onto it, bringing the game to a giggly end.

Who needs reindeer games? We have cat games!

Love,
Grandma Judy

Fruit cake!!

To be honest, I have never cared for fruitcake. The ones of my childhood were dark, heavy, full of unidentifiable green bits and always seemed to be stale. As a fan of my mother’s freshly-baked goodies, fruitcakes just didn’t cut it.

But Auntie Bridgett loved them, so about ten years ago, I decided to give one a try. Making it a team effort and dedicating an afternoon, we tackled the formidable recipe in The Joy of Cooking. It includes pounds of currents, raisins, citron, and nuts.

Chopping, soaking, and dredging fruit, separating eggs and whipping egg whites, not to mention finding enough bowls to hold all these measured ingredients, literally took hours. But anything is fun if you do it with someone you love.

That first year, not knowing one whiskey from another, we added a very expensive whiskey, Glenfidditch, to the fruitcake. We got properly chastised by Grandpa Nelson for using our best whiskey, which he had bought for our dear whiskey -loving friend Rick. The result was an unintentionally expensive, but mighty tasty, cake.

Over the past ten years, we have made fruitcakes most years. We mix and bake them right around Thanksgiving and give them the first dose of whiskey. We now know to use cheaper whiskey (last years Black Velvet didn’t measure up, but this years’ Evan Williams seems promising) .

We wrap the cakes (the recipe makes two) in a few layers of plastic wrap and place them in a Christmas themed-tin, and find a safe spot out in the garage. They are brought in once a week for another dose of whiskey.

We have veered away from Irma Rombauer’s recipe. No currents or citron at all, none of the weird colored dried fruit, making up the difference with more nuts and sultana raisins, and adding orange juice as well as whiskey.

This year, trying for a lighter cake, I even added a teaspoon of baking soda as a raising agent, knowing that even eight whipped egg whites don’t have the power to lift all that cake. We’ll see how that works out.

This past Sunday was its last dousing of whiskey, and it will sit in the cupboard, smelling fabulous, to be tasted Christmas eve.

Yummy Christmas!

Love,

Grandma Judy

What Comes in the Mail

Dear Liza,

Since our family and friends are spread up and down California and Oregon, and giving gifts in person is just not possible this year, we have started sending more gifts of food. Companies like Pittman and Davis, Hickory Farms, Harry and David, The Fruit Company, Temecula Olive Oil Company, Nut Cravings, and Barnett’s make and send pastries, nuts, and fruit that are not inexpensive, but always delicious. Food is the perfect gift to send to folks you love but don’t see very often. It doesn’t clutter up the house (at least not for long!), it is always the right size, and it makes for interesting snacking.

This year, with so many wonderful treats coming to our front door, I have gotten good at making whole meals out of them! The Chipotle cheese from Auntie Bridgett’s brother became a spicy quesadilla, eaten alongside an orange from her Aunt Chris. Afternoon snacks of almonds and dried fruit from your own family make for healthy mid-afternoon eating, and the lemon olive oil from Julie will help turn some weary kale into a tasty salad.

Besides the professionally packaged gifts, we have gotten boxes full of wrapped presents. Auntie Christy and Cousin Kyle sent theirs padded with pages and pages of the Los Angeles Times newspaper! It was so much fun reading the articles. She even included the funny pages, and we saw that that clever woman does the LA Times crossword and Sudoku…in ink! Very impressive.

Of course, with three of us in the house, and all of us ordering some things that we couldn’t find in town, the new rule is, if it’s not addressed to you, don’t open it! We don’t want to spoil the surprise.

I hope you get lots of wonderful presents!

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Tale of Two Pianos

Dear Liza,

My friend Ruth wrote a blog at ruthinmanart.com about the challenges she is facing in trying to sell her second hand piano. This got me thinking about the two pianos in my life.

The first one came very, very used from an elderly friend of my mom’s. Madge was moving to an old folks’ home and couldn’t take it with her, so when I was ten we took custody of her huge 1902 Jacob Doll upright.

My brothers had already taken up guitar, so it was decided that I should learn to play the piano. Our next door neighbor gave me lessons for a dollar a week. I studied for about two years, and learned to read music, but didn’t have much drive for perfection. The piano was more a noisy member of the family than a fine musical instrument, anyway. Here it is, getting banged on by Cousin Lynn in 1969.

My father loved to hear me play, or maybe he just thought I ought to. When I ignored it for too long, he would say, “Well, I guess it’s time to give that Ol’ piano away…” and I’d sit down and bang away for a while. I’d play country songs for him and the Moonlight Sonata for Momma. It made them happy.

Still, once I was in high school, it was cool to be able to read music well enough to play the songs from Jesus Christ, Superstar. When I went away to Long Beach State University, the old piano stayed at my parents’ house. I played it on weekends when I would visit, and when I married Grandpa Nelson in 1974, they bought us a Wurlitzer spinet piano as a wedding present. The old upright, they said, was too heavy and fragile to move around as much as college students do. Besides, the spinet fit into our tiny apartment better.

The spinet followed us from Long Beach to Eugene to Salinas, where it was played by your Daddy David and Auntie Katie, and much later, by you!

And when Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett found us a home here in Portland, they found one with room for the spinet. I don’t play very often. I am painfully aware that it sits against a wall we share with our neighbors and I resist inflicting my playing on them. But it is there, in tune and ready whenever I am. It reminds me of my folks. It is a part of me.

And I’m glad to still have it.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Beyond Circles

Dear Liza,

When I was starting to paint this year, my goal was to make something look like I wanted, making the picture on the paper match the one in my head. I practiced with flowers and faces, going literally from finger painting to things that mostly looked… right.

And now that I can do that, I am experimenting more. The circle cutter Auntie Bridgett loaned me has been my latest toy. I love circles, and am enjoying grouping them together, layering them, and even painting over them.

This week I started with some orange and blue watercolor, then lay down some softly colored circles. It sort of looked like sunset-y clouds. To make it look even cloudier, I put white acrylic paint on very softly with a textured meat tray. It was pretty, but what if…..?

I wanted to keep going with the layers. This is where I am noticing my change in attitude. Instead of thinking “what if I mess this up?”, I realize that so far I have invested a few hours of quarantine time, some old magazines, and a tablespoon of paint. So if I mess it up, NO BIG DEAL.

So I lay on another meat tray textured layer of blue, then a few more circles. I loved the layers and texture, and it was starting to whisper to me as to what it could be. Instead of making the picture in my head first, I was letting it lead me along.

I softened the colors with a bit of white acrylic and added a “hillside”of white tissue paper. The pink circle was in the right place to be a setting sun, but it needed to be more orange. A circle cut from a tea box fixed that.

After staring at what had become a snowy hillside at sunset, I saw that it needed some silhouetted trees. I studied other folks’s work and Auntie Bridgett gave me some pointers, and I went for it. After putting in some close up trees and some further away, adjusting my sky color and putting in some shadows, I am pretty happy with it….. for now. I’ll go do something else and have a look later.

So I guess my lesson of the week is to not limit myself as to “just” the pictures I see in my head. The ones that emerge on the paper can be so much more!

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Christmas Carol

Dear Liza,

Christmastime always makes me think of Charles Dickens. In the 1800s, he wrote stories about life in London. Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist made him popular all over the world.

But to me, his greatest work is a novella he wrote in a hurry just before Christmas in 1843 because he was out of money. This was A Christmas Carol, in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Starting with the eerie line, “Jacob Marley was dead, to begin with” , he weaves a tale of greed and regret, love and loss and redemption, that warms my heart every time I read it.

When I was teaching third grade, I used this story as the basis of of our literature lessons in December. I would read an abridged version of the story aloud over the course of several days. We would brainstorm words to describe Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge and then track his movement on Christmas Eve from reality to dream-like state, then back to reality. The story follows a classic Hero’s Journey, with the unlikely hero returning to real life with his reward of self-awareness and the joy of redemption.

For art lessons during those weeks, we learned about drawing faces to illustrate personality traits. Scrooge’s anger showed in pinched lips and wrinkled brows; Tiny Tim’s eternal optimism shone from his thin face.

And, in my humble opinion, the best re-telling of this story was made in 1992 by Brian Henson and his team of geniuses, The Muppets. Yes, the Muppets, Jim Henson’s puppets that we know and love. So, after we had analyzed and explored the story, we would watch the movie!

Human Michael Caine plays Scrooge to Kermit the frog’s Bob Cratchit, Gonzo’s Charles Dickens and a cast of mice, cows, and Christmas ghosts. The silliness of the Muppets softens the grim tale of Scrooge facing his greatest failings and his greatest fears all in one evening.

And because the Muppet version of the story includes songs, we interpreted lyrics. We noticed that songs sung by Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim have mostly words like “gift” and “light”, where the song describing Scrooge is heavy with words like “grim”, and the painfully true line, “There’s nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being alone.” I would write the songs out on long sheets of paper and circle words as we discussed them, creating a ‘Found Word’ poem in the process.

And of course, the overall message of hope for the future shows that while we cannot undo mistakes of the past, every day (in this case, Christmas Day) is ours to grasp and move forward with.

As you can tell, I loved teaching this story. Seeing students who were struggling with English grasp a new word because of its emotional impact, or hearing small groups singing the lyrics at our class party, brought tears to my eyes.

I recommend The Muppet Christmas Carol to anyone older than 7 and on this side of the grave.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Mushrooms!

Dear Liza,

It is ironic that we have gotten to know more of our neighbors during the Covid quarantine. We exchange baked goodies with John and Stacy across the way, and have waved at tiny baby Jack, born just a few weeks ago.

And we have gotten to know Jason. He is a chef for one of the local restaurants and has been very generous with his supply of mushrooms. Since I am pretty much a mushroom new-comer, this is very exciting.

First he gave us a small bag of dried Candy Tops. These are tiny and brown, and look very much like the forests I walked through as a kid, camping by the Rogue River. They are a species that only grows here in Oregon, and are highly prized because of their unusual smell. If you close your eyes, you could swear you were sniffing a bottle of maple syrup! Jason directed me to some on-line sites and there are a dozen recipes for Candy Top caramel, cookies, and other goodies.

And then came the Chantarelles. These are more widely known, and even I had heard of them. Large, fat, and meaty, these have a more traditional mushroom taste. I cooked them up in plenty of butter and a bit of pepper and oregano and made a nice mushroom sauce for our Turkey burgers last night.

It makes perfect sense that in this wet, cool season, the forests should produce such a mushroom bounty. Mushroom hunting can be a dangerous thing, though, because poisonous mushrooms often look like wholesome ones. We are so blessed that our neighbors, who know which is which, share theirs with us.

Ain’t life grand?

Love,

Grandma Judy