Learning to carry each other
November 29, 2007 at 8:28 Peter wrote a moving post on his site about caring for an elderly neighbor who was taken to the hospital this week when she fell and broke her shoulder and arm. She’s been in intensive care, and Peter has been caring for her cat, visiting her, following up on her medical issues, and trying to round up her family, who seem content to keep their distance and let a “stranger” tend to their mother.
His post raised the question: Who will be there for you on the day you go crashing to the floor?
It struck a nerve because on Sunday as I went through addresses and wrote out Christmas cards, I was overcome with tears over all the family members that I’ve lost or lost touch with. My dad was the oldest of eight children, but all his siblings are dead now. I’ve continued to send cards to the spouses they left behind, but I haven’t heard back from them in years. I have only one aunt remaining, on my mother’s side. My parents and one sister died when I was still in my 20s.
I have about 40 first cousins, but only have contact with a few of them, usually at Christmas. I’ve lost touch with some of my grown nieces and nephews over the last five years. I have more than a dozen great nieces and nephews, most of which I’ve never seen and who probably have no idea I exist. One of my sisters has only made contact with me once in the last three years—sending a Christmas card.
For years I worked hard to keep far flung family members in my orbit. I wrote letters, sent e-mails, made phone calls, mailed Christmas cards, shared photos, hosted reunions, and never forgot a birthday. It took a lot of energy, and sometimes I was hurt and disappointed when my efforts to maintain our ties failed. After I turned 40, I made a conscious decision to let go of my expectations and accept that some relationships were simply over or not going to be close ones. I resolved to put my energy into the relationships that were bearing fruit in my life and cherish the broad circle of friends that have become like family to me over the years. They are what my life is all about.
When Peter asked, “Who will be there for you on the day you go crashing to the floor?” I had to admit that I don’t know. I have a husband, I have children, but there are no guarantees that they’ll be there when I need them.
All I know for sure is this: When the people I love hit the ground, I plan to do everything in my power to help get them back on their feet, or at least let them know that even when they can’t stand, they’re loved and not alone.
November 29, 2007
The Good Samaritan's Nightmare
November 25, 2007 at 9:52 On a recent post, Tj, a commenter, left a list of new traditions to try for Thanksgiving. Most of them involved some sort of community service or reaching out to individuals and bringing them into your home.
Many of those suggestions are activities I’ve embraced in years past. I’ve attended community church services, visited nursing homes, prepared and served meals at a homeless shelter, taken in an abused woman, been a Meals on Wheels volunteer, participated in countless holiday “sponsor a family” programs, made stuff for charity bazaars, bought stuff at charity bazaars, worked in a thrift shop, been a youth group leader, a Sunday school teacher, and done all sorts of other volunteer work for my church and my children’s school. It’s all been good.
But there was one time in our life where E and I’s outreach activities backfired and became a nightmare. We were the Good Samaritans Done Wrong.
It all started when E joined a commuter van pool that took him to work every day. On the van, he met S, a woman in her 30s or early 40s who had had a series of health setbacks and had decided she would no longer drive. S was a chemist and worked for E’s employer. She was also a bit of a self-centered weirdo, which is why most people in the van pool steered clear of her. E didn’t get the memo on S and her personality quirks and being an affable and compassionate man, befriended her.
In the beginning, it seemed OK. Everyday E would bring home stories of what S had been through medically and how she was all alone in the world. We felt sorry for her. We didn’t notice at first that despite living and working in one place for years, S had NO FRIENDS, NO FAMILY, NO ONE who was involved in her life on any level. Y’all, there was a reason for that. We should have gotten a clue at this point.
It wasn’t long before S, who owned a car and had a driver’s license, started asking for rides places. E took her grocery shopping, took her to doctor’s appointments, took her cats to the vet, took her to the bank, etc.
And S never thanked him, never offered money for gas, never offered use of her car, never offered to pay the $3 bridge toll, never did anything to make helping her easier or more pleasant. S just came to see E as her private chauffer.
I occasionally helped S out, but I confess she rapidly got on my nerves. Her “helplessness” was ridiculous. If she didn’t want to drive, she needed to move to a place where she wouldn’t have to. Instead she lived in a rural area that was an hour’s drive from work, 25 minutes from a grocery store. To further complicate matters, S wanted to keep using the doctors, vet, and service providers that she’d used years ago when she lived in another town about 45 minutes away. This would be fine if she was driving herself places, but she refused to either drive there or move her services closer.
I was the first to play hard ball with her, telling her I’d happily take her and her cats to the vet only if she used a local vet (there were several to choose from). She was upset I even suggested it, and couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to spend 90 minutes driving her to and from a vet appointment.
E, tired of receiving constant calls to take S to the post office to pick up her mail, bought her a mailbox and installed it on a wooden post at the end of S’s driveway so she could begin receiving her mail at home. S came out of her house and criticized E’s work and said she wasn’t going to stop getting mail at the post office. We did, however, stop taking her there to pick it up.
The van pool broke up, in part because the driver got tired of dealing with S, who insisted on lying down and taking up an entire bench seat on her way to work, forcing the other van pool members to cram in close together on the other seats. She also annoyed people in conversation and created a lot of unpleasantness and friction.
When the van pool broke up, S was left without a ride to work, and you guessed it, E began driving her, picking her up at her house and dropping her off daily. While she had paid to ride in the van pool, she refused to help E with gas or tolls because E “had to drive to work anyway.” She also got in the habit of asking to stop at a pizza place on the way home. This meant E had to wait around 30 minutes after work with S while the pizza was prepared and boxed for takeout. When E suggested she call ahead from work so the pizza would be ready for pickup in advance she said, “That would be a long distance phone call! Do you have any idea how much that would cost?!”
E signed up to play soccer in an adult league and told S he would not be able to drive her home on practice days because he’d be going straight to soccer from work. S was indignant! She said, “I can’t believe you’d put playing soccer ahead of taking me home!”
Then, not surprisingly, S was fired from her job as a chemist. Actually, she was given “medical disability,” which I’m guessing was the safest legal way to get her off the payroll for being obnoxious and a little crazy.
However, as irritating S had been up until this point was nothing compared to how unreasonable and demanding S would become when she was home all the time. She started calling the house regularly, and I began trying to extricate us from a relationship with her. She’d ask for a ride and I’d grill her on why she needed it and lecture her repeatedly about finding a long term solution to her transportation issue. She either needed to get behind the wheel of her car again or move to a place with public transit. Period. S would have none of that, and I wouldn’t drive her.
E, who had far more patience, still gave her rides sometimes. Once she called in the midst of a major winter storm, when we had 10 inches of snow on the ground and more falling. She “desperately” needed milk, and E went out onto snow covered roads to get it for her. I was furious with him because the roads were dangerous.
Now that she was on disability, she had a reduced income, but she didn’t change the way she lived. She was single, didn't have kids, and lived in a three-bedroom house in a private suburban development that collected homeowner’s dues. She couldn’t afford it, but she wouldn’t move to a townhouse or apartment. She loved to catalog shop and would have all sorts of things delivered to her door. She racked up a lot of credit card debt. Keep in mind that S on medical disability was still collecting more money monthly for not working as a chemist than I was earning working full time in publishing. Yes, her disability pay exceeded my salary. She wasn’t getting a lot but she was getting enough to support herself if she made adjustments.
But S didn’t want to support herself and she was not a woman who made adjustments. With E and I trying to get disentangled from her, she began making the rounds with local church groups, telling them her sad stories and looking for food, monetary handouts, rides. She received all sorts of things from the local food pantry and from area churches. But S being S, she began complaining about the quality of the free food she was receiving and criticizing the people who were providing it. We invited her over for Christmas dinner one year and she spent the afternoon critiquing my cooking and telling me I should have put chestnuts in the stuffing. Soon she’d worn out her welcome with many of the generous souls who had helped her.
One day S called me at home to tell me she didn’t have anything to eat. I started asking her questions: Do you have flour? Butter? Eggs? Rice? Milk? Bread? She had all these things. The problem was she didn’t have her favorite cereal, Fruitful Bran, and that was what she wanted. She told me she didn’t have any cereal at all and she had no money. I looked in my pantry and I had a box of Raisin Bran and one of Kellog’s Fruit and Fiber, unopened. I told her I wasn’t going to take her to the store and buy her cereal, but that I’d give her either of the new boxes of cereal I had in my pantry.
You guessed, she said “No.” She wanted what she wanted and would accept no substitutes. She hung up with me and called the guy who used to drive the van pool, looking for a ride and for someone to buy her cereal. He also told her no. She then started calling grocery stores telling them she didn’t have anything to eat and would they donate a box of Fruitful Bran to her? They all said no, except for one little Mom & Pop store in the area, which I knew was having hard times itself. S called looking for a ride to pick up her free food and I refused to take her on principle. No problem, she got back on the phone, working her contact list, looking for someone who would indulge her.
Eventually, her phone was disconnected because she didn’t pay her bills. Initially I was relieved because she could no longer call us at all hours of the day and night, but then she started appearing at my door in person. This was even worse. I could always hang up the phone, but I couldn’t get rid of her as easily in person. Finally, I stopped answering the door if I didn’t want to deal with her, and when I did that, she began tapping on my windows, peering into the house, and calling to me if she suspected I was at home. She’d come around the back of my house, go into my fenced yard, and try the French door. I’d become someone who was hiding in my own house.
This had gotten beyond ridiculous. At one point I learned that someone in the neighborhood had gotten a restraining order against her, and I thought, "That's an option!" Five years had passed since we’d first met S. FIVE YEARS. Nothing about her or her situation had changed.
Things finally came to a head one weekend when I was hosting a family reunion at my house. I had at least 30 guests. S came to the front door and began ringing the bell. I told everyone in the house not to answer the door. Then she started on the windows, and finally she came around back and walked straight into my house through the unlocked French door.
I completely lost it. All my pent up frustration with her outrageous behavior and expectations made me lose my cool and shout, “You need to GET OUT of my house! This is my family reunion and you are NOT welcome here!”
I physically grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around, opened the French door, and sent her out. She protested the whole way.
I was seven months pregnant and the outburst gave me the shakes. I had never, ever in my whole life confronted someone that way. I was upset and embarrassed and forced to explain to all my guests the long twisted history we shared with this woman, someone we had tried to be kind to who had completely abused the relationship.
As much guilt as that outburst put on my conscience, it was amazingly effective. S finally stopped coming to the house, calling us, or bothering E.
Sadly, our experience with S made us reluctant to become directly engaged in helping strangers. Since enduring the Good Samaritan’s Nightmare, we mostly work through our church or charitable organizations and don’t directly bring people into our home or our lives (though we have made exceptions).
Have any of you ever played Good Samaritan and regretted it?
November 25, 2007Feels like a holiday
November 23, 2007 at 9:43 I wasn't looking forward to Thanksgiving. It's the day I most miss my parents and siblings and also because celebrating American holidays abroad highlights the fact that I'm an expat, not a native. Since we've moved to Belgium, we've always traveled the week of Thanksgiving, but this year that wasn't possible. Another reason I wasn't looking forward to Thanksgiving is that every weekend in November has been a long weekend for the kids, who have missed seven days of school due to American holidays and teacher work days. I was concerned that yet another long weekend would leave them bored and out of sorts, but so far, so good.
First there was the pleasant surprise of sunshine and blue skies yesterday morning, a gift during the gray and rainy season. I took a long walk with my iPod putting bounce in my step, and then came home and set my daughter E-Grrrl up to make her very first pumpkin pie. Because I need to ship out Christmas gifts to America next week, E-Grrrl and I spent time wrapping them, a task I love because each package becomes a little seed of joy that I plant in a plain brown shipping box to bloom later in the hands of friends and family.
Thanksgiving memories
November 21, 2007 at 8:44 As a child in New York, Thanksgiving was a cozy holiday with lots of warm memories. How my parents managed to produce a full blown feast from that tiny kitchen on Long Island is a miracle, and where we all sat is lost to memory. The Cape Cod my father built in the 1950s was a small house. There wasn’t a single room in it that could accommodate us all.
My mother’s sister was married to my father’s brother, and on Thanksgiving my aunt, uncle, and my double cousins often came for dinner from New Jersey. My Italian grandmother’s birthday was in late November, and we celebrated it the day after Thanksgiving.
Mom typically made the pies the day before, her apple pies oversized with big bumpy crusts. She made the crusts with margarine, flour, and ice water, rolling them out on the kitchen table with a long wooden pin that her own mother had used. The apples were bought by the bushel from local farmers, peeled and cut into big chunks, not thin slivers. Seasoned with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sweetened with only a handful of raisins, my mother’s pies were tart and natural. I miss my mother's apple pies desperately.
The plain pumpkin pies of my early childhood later morphed into pies with added coconut or pumpkin-apple pies. Sometimes my mom cooked and sieved fresh pumpkin, but more often she used canned. We had mincemeat pies when I was small which evolved into mincemeat-apple combos and then disappeared altogether as I got older, I think because mincemeat had fewer and fewer fans around the table, and my mom always complained it was expensive.
Our turkeys were enormous and stuffed with browned sausage bits, celery, onion, raisins, apple, and white bread, which my parents toasted before tearing it apart. The sweet potatoes were simply baked on the racks around the turkey. We normally had broccoli and cauliflower with cheese sauce, mashed potatoes, and canned jellied cranberry sauce. My father normally made the giblet gravy, and we had cider to drink. My mother had decorative stainless steel serving bowls that she used at the holidays, including a special dish and serving utensil for the slices of canned cranberry sauce. You never see those dishes anymore, but for years my mom always gave them as a wedding shower gift. I have all these dishes of my mom's and use them on the holidays.
After dinner, I remember there being bodies sprawled on every upholstered surface in the house as people napped off their turkey hangovers. My dad and uncle would sit at the table for hours, often engaging in depressing conversations over glasses of whiskey. They seemed to have a propensity for gloomy discussions on Communism or the Second Coming or the next Great Depression. They scared me to death. It was no fun hanging out with the grown ups in the dining room!
Thanksgiving in Virginia was different. The houses we lived in had room for people to spread out. Thanksgiving afforded me a chance to see my grown sisters and their families, which added a whole new level of excitement. It was fun to see the Northern and Southern nieces and nephews get together and have a complete sense of family again. We often went walking through the country side after dinner, a new tradition that I loved.
After I went away to college, Thanksgiving was never the same. When E and I were first married and living in Oklahoma, we had many variations of lackluster Thanksgivings. The first Thanksgiving was fun because it was novel to just be with each other and cook the whole feast ourselves. Then it got old—fast. Everyone we knew spent Thanksgiving with their families and we were never invited to join and didn’t have anyone to invite.
One year I invited an Army lieutenant who critiqued every aspect of my cooking. Another year we attended a church potluck dinner on Thanksgiving and rattled around in a mostly empty parish hall and went home without leftovers. But maybe the worst year was when we joined a friend and his new girlfriend at the Holiday Inn for Thanksgiving. What was worse—eating Thanksgiving at a hotel restaurant or having to listen to his loud insipid girlfriend and her over-the-top social climbing friends?
Then there was the Thanksgiving I spent all alone because E had already moved back to Virginia and I was finishing up my last semester of university in Oklahoma. No dinner invitations came my way. Everyone had plans. I went to a community Thanksgiving dinner at a church that year too and by 1 p.m. my dinner was over and the whole empty weekend stretched before me with only my two dogs for company.
Once we moved back to Virginia, Thanksgiving was bittersweet. I had longed to live in Virginia for years but shortly after I moved back, my parents' health failed. I remember their last Thanksgiving, with my sister visiting and cooking a vegetarian feast next to Mom’s traditional one in the kitchen.
Some people feel all their losses at Christmas, I always feel mine at Thanksgiving. It is by far the toughest holiday for me to get through. We had some happy times with my brothers family after my parents died but mostly we were alone. In 2001, an attempt to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with E’s family dissolved into a really ugly family quarrel among some family members that left everyone upset and several people in tears. After that debacle, my girlfriend Lynn declared that I had had way too many horrible Thanksgivings, and she invited us to join her extended family in South Carolina for Thanksgiving weekend, something we really enjoyed.
In 2004, E’s sister, her husband, four boys, and E’s mom joined us for Thanksgiving weekend. We were packed in tight but had a good time—until my son A ate sour candy at a movie theater Thanksgiving night, washed it down with soda, and later threw up his entire dinner all over the bedroom he was sharing with his four cousins. Now THAT was memorable, especially since the other boys SLEPT through the whole incident while E and I took turns with the nasty cleanup, holding flashlights, trying not to wake anyone up.
Is it any surprise I haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving since then? Here in Belgium, each year we plan a trip that covers all of Thanksgiving week, and we explore a new city and pretend the holiday doesn’t exist (which is easy to do in Europe because Thanksgiving doesn’t exist here). But this year, money is tight, the exchange rate is horrible, and E has done so much business traveling this fall that he’s not eager to leave home. So here we are. Tomorrow while the rest of Belgium goes to work and school, I’ll make a Thanksgiving dinner, working with the ingredients I can get here, and I’ll try to create some good Thanksgiving memories for my kids.
Tell me about your Thanksgiving memories. The best, worst, or a favorite food or activity.
November 21, 2007
Getting ready for ready, set, go
November 20, 2007 at 9:07 Today we had a meeting with the housing liasion to work on getting a timeline and sequence of events established for exiting our rental house here in Belgium.
There are laws governing notification of the landlord, protocols for pre-exit housing inspections, final inspections, and the turning over of the keys. The chimney must be swept and the furnace serviced and certificates stating that has been done obtained. There are different procedures to be followed for notifying the phone company, Internet service provider, and cell phone carrier. There's a method for ensuring payment of the final electric, water, and gas bills.
There are letters to be prepared in Dutch and letters to be prepared in French. There are issues with shutting down bank accounts and stopping automatic payments. There's a set method for getting a return of our letter of guaranty. And of course, there's all the stuff related to canceling renters insurance, adjusting coverage, blah, blah, blah.
Then there's the careful orchestration of household goods and car shipments, borrowing furniture to use, finding a place to live for a few weeks between exiting our house and moving to America, ensuring that medical and school records are in hand, and that everything is in place on the other end when we arrive. I am so glad we already have a house and know where the kids will be going to school.
These are the days when I'm grateful that E is the most anal retentive person I know. An international move requires the skills of someone who is detailed oriented and determined in following through on every task and ensuring it gets done and done on time. I'm great at organizing and list making and putting things in motion, but I'm just silly and naive enough to believe that things will get done because I put them in motion and jumped through the hoops on my end. I never expect to have to follow up and make sure the worker bees and bureaucrats do what what they're supposed to do on their end. E, who has worked as a civil servant all his adult life, knows all about the importance of the follow through and follow up. He's tenacious like a pitbull but affable like a cocker spaniel. He knows how to grease the wheels politely.
So as we cruise into the start of the holiday season, I'm making a list and checking it twice, and that list has nothing to do with Thanksgiving or Christmas preparations....
November 20, 2007
Writer Grrrl
November 18, 2007 at 14:29 One of the joys of being a parent is watching your children's aptitudes and personalities unfold. It's impossible to describe how satisfying it is to be part of the process of seeing someone take ownership of their talents, to have a role in helping them discover and cultivate their best selves.
I have always encouraged my children to think and to question and to consider how their choices and actions impact their own lives and the world around them. Often as they mull things over in their own minds and share their thoughts with me, I'm struck by how much I learn from them and how much I've learned about myself in the process of being their mother.
My 12-year-old son is reserved and quiet but a keen observer with a sly sense of humor. He was born a scientist and an engineer and is cautious but calculated in assessing risk. He's single minded in pursuing his passions and an adept problem solver. He's very in tune to emotional undercurrents in situations and great at arguing his case with intelligence and finesse. I share his love of science and emotional intelligence, and I'm in awe of the engineering skills he inherited from his dad. My son always gets my jokes, no matter how finely nuanced the humor, and often in social situations, we exchange knowing glances across the room, confident we're thinking the exact same thing.
My 10-year-old daughter is self-assured, bright, and mature beyond her years. She's often described by teachers as wise, not just smart. She's a peacemaker among her peers, spiritual, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others--a good citizen of the world. She has a mile-wide nurturing streak, and her vibrant and clever sense of humor completely undoes me at times. She's a list maker, organizer, and goal setter. And she's turned out to be a writer, which bonds her to me all the more.
Like me, she always has a small notebook with her so she can sketch out ideas or write whenever the spirit moves her. The other day when she got off the school bus, she told me she'd written a poem in her notebook, which was inspired by a bare-limbed tree she saw on her way to school:
The Nest
There it was
Amidst the branches was a home
The birds
The cold nest abandoned
Perhaps they went south to France
Whatever the reason, it sits
Alone and frost covered
The branches reach out like gnarled fingers
Reaching into the early morning sky
The frost looks like a fairy dropped glitter
Over the cold hard earth
That nest is a place of memories
Hopefully they will be restored next year
For now it is alone
The nest.
E-Grrrl Things we might have said...
November 17, 2007 at 8:30 “Wait a minute, you’re telling me you won’t swallow pills but you’ve chewed and eaten tripe, adrenal glands, beef tongue, and brain?”
***
While sharing physical symptoms: “I wouldn’t worry. You’re just a freak of nature and a medical abnormality. You could be a subject for experiments! A medical breakthrough!”
***
Comparing our unshaved legs: “Why be ashamed? There’s a lesbian somewhere who would find our hairy legs VERY sexy.”
***
About Belgian cuisine: “I don’t know where the reputation for fine food comes from. In my experience, every dish they do, another culture does better.”
***
About speaking the truth: “So I was being interviewed by a Flemish university student for a project she was doing, and she asked, ‘Who holds the power in your country?’ And I told her ‘White men in dark suits.'
Di, thanks for the memories.
November 17, 2007
Swamp cake
November 16, 2007 at 7:48 The first night Di was here, I received an e-mail from K, sending a recipe for a unique chocolate cake, "just in case you and Di are in the mood" for something chocolatey. Well, K, let me say this, no matter what you've heard to the contrary, real women are ALWAYS in the mood--for something chocolatey. 
The recipe for Chocolate Eclipse cake came from Mollie Katzen's Web site and defies all the normal cake baking conventions. No eggs, just a wee bit of butter, and a magical process where the cake creates its own fudge sauce during the baking process. It has unsweetened chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and cocoa in it. Don't drool on your keyboard.
There was a line in the recipe that I loved: "Pour on the boiling water. It will look terrible, and you will not believe you are actually doing this, but try to persevere."
Those words said so much to me on so many levels. I couldn't get them out of my head. I saw making this cake as a challenge AND a life lesson. But yes, Mollie Katzen wasn't exagerrating--it looks like a disaster!
My daughter took one look at this and said, "That's not Eclipse Cake, it's Swamp Cake!"
Yes, it is Swamp Cake. Look at the eerie mist lingering above the pan.
Hmmm, after it's baked, it looks like cracked earth.
Cut the cake and flip the slices over to see the "sauce." My son said the spongy, fudgy texture was mud-like. So it's official, K. From now on, we're calling it Swamp Cake at Chez V.
November 16, 2007
A cozy kind of life...
November 15, 2007 at 6:25 Di took the train to my corner of Belgium to spend a few days pursuing creative projects and sharing secrets. After an entire week of heavy clouds, rain, and wind, the sun kissed the blue sky good morning and stayed all day.
We walked along tree-lined paths in the park until our knees hurt, sipped tea, had a late lunch and listened to the children re-cap their days and work on maths. After dinner was served and the darkness stuck to the windows, we lit a fire, and looked at books and checked our e-mail and read our blogs.
When the kiddos were off to bed, the wine came out and the conversation deepened, and we spoke of the people we love and the women we want to be while the cat watched the fire burn down and the hands on the clock pushed the night toward morning.
After midnight, the chips and salsa made an entrance and the wine made an encore and I sent Peter a "wishing you were here" e-mail. When I stumbled into the shower and fell into bed with wet hair at 1:30 a.m., Di was tucked into her attic bedroom under the stars, tapping away on her laptop. Ah, the writing life is a good one.
Today it's cold but the sun is shining and there's snow in the forecast for tomorrow. I'm warm inside and out, lapping up the sunshine and the company.
November 15, 2007