Things

Last night, the Hubs was making his dinner in the kitchen and I heard a hearty "SHIT!" which could mean anything, so I hesitantly asked "What happened?" and he came to the doorway between the family room and kitchen holding up a 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup in one hand and its handle in the other. I said "Well, we've had it for 30 years. I guess a replacement is due." So now I'm thinking: what else do we have that's been here -- well, with us, if not in this physical location -- for 30 years?

Let's see. My parents gave us a set of Farberware pots and pans as our engagement gift. Still there, still using them every day. (Well ... I don't use them every day, but someone does.) I still have several pieces of Tupperware from the first year we were married because that stuff pretty much lasts forever, and if it doesn't, they're supposed to replace it. Unless you microwave the old stuff, which we have, so that warranty's pretty much voided. But the bowls are still good anyway.

I've got the brandy snifters, or whatever they are, that Edith gave us as an engagement gift, because really, what house is complete without such things?



(and as you can see, they're still in the carton in which I tried unsuccessfully to unload them at numerous garage sales over the years.)

When we got married, we bought two things: a good Sony TV, and a queen-sized bed. Both gone, both replaced, although the bed only a few years ago. All the rest of our furniture was hand-me-down, mostly from my 92 year old Uncle Joe (Edith's father, btw), who had recently passed away. All that's gone now, too.

I have a step-stool that an elderly neighbor gave me once, around the time I was engaged, probably Depression-era. Funny what you keep and still use.



The good dishes are still around, somewhere, but never used. I never got silver, and I liked the crystal we got, although it wasn't expensive; that's somewhere, too.

I have LOTS of stuff older than 30 years, of course, but those things came to us later, long after we were married, like my parents' furniture, and their piano and stuff.

Today I decided that, life being short and all, I would try to see if I could make this a part of my regular daily wardrobe:


It was my grandmother's, although my mother had it re-set somewhere in the seventies. (Or let us say that Shirl convinced her mother, who was still among the living at that time, to have it re-set. I don't think grandma particularly cared, though; she wasn't going to wear it anymore.) I've never been the kind of person who could get away with wearing a diamond ring every day, although lots and lots of people I know do that. My own engagement ring is an antique, not especially valuable but very pretty, but a bit too fragile for everyday wear, so I've never really gotten into the habit. Anyway, as long as I'm talking about old stuff, here's the story of grandma's ring.

When she and grandpa got married, which was New Year's Day, 1916, they were two immigrants who still lived with one relative or another, worked hard in the glove factories in upstate New York, and who, let me tell you, had no money for diamond rings, let alone anything else. They worked hard, had a baby a year later (Uncle Sol), moved to New York City (but never the Lower East Side, only the Bronx), had another baby (Shirl) and, what else? Worked hard. I've written before about Grandpa Sam's saintlike character and miserable business sense. He was never more than a worker, albeit a skilled one when the glove business was good (he was a cutter), but it wasn't always. Ida was an incredible household manager, and did a little of this, a little of that, to bring in extra money. Sometimes she took in foster children, not through the state or city, but to help out someone out who needed to park a kid someplace for a while and pay for his upkeep. When her own kids were grown, she would go work as what you might call a mother's helper, to stay at someone's home when they'd just had a baby and help out for a couple of weeks.

But once her children were grown and the Depression was over, she made the extra money to buy extra things, since Sam's work was stable, and one of the things she wanted was a diamond engagement ring. So she worked, and she saved the money, and she bought it for herself, I believe in 1946, for ... funny. She bought it for her 30th anniversary. I hadn't even made the connection until just this minute.

So I think I should wear it now. Feels right.

WATCHING THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #1541

Just a Quick Meme

that I got from Mary. It's the Family Meme.

1. Who's the oldest living member of your family? I believe the oldest is Cousin Edith, who turned 90 in December. I really think of her as my aunt, as if she were my mother's older sister, but in fact she was my mother's first cousin. And my father's second cousin. (It's a long story, available elsewhere here.) I think that my Aunt Honey, who was married to my mother's brother, either just turned 90 or is just about to.

2. Who's the newest? Newest born would be my own first cousin's 5 year old twins (that would be Aunt Honey's great-grandchildren), but most recently added to the family would be Wonderful Niece's husband G (married just over two years) and W.N.'s brother's fiancee, K, who is part of the family although they're not technically married yet.

3. If you could spend a two-week vacation with one family member, who would it be? My sister.

4. The old saying goes, "you can pick your friends, but you cannot pick your family." if you could choose one of your friends, who would you 'elect' to become a member of your family? That would be my OldFriend, who has been a de facto memer of the family since 1961, when we moved into the house across the street from her.

5. Who in your family can you just NOT stand? Well, Edith was always very hard to take, even when she was younger, but for real CAN NOT STAND status, I'd have to go the family of my father's middle sister. Her son is a great guy, but both his parents and his older sister were best avoided.

6. Do you have a member of the family who is currently suffering an illness? Many. The two 90 year-olds are not well, although Edith has Alzheimer's but is still physically strong and healthy. Aunt Honey is sharp and clear but terribly frail, and lives in a body wracked by osteoporosis, arthritis, and emphysema, although she is a long-time -- maybe 30 years -- survivor of breast cancer. And then there are the rest of us; you know, everyone's got something going on.

7. Do you have a family member that you've lost contact with? Who are they, and why do you not currently have contact? Many. Certainly that whole generation of my mother's cousins other than Edith are long out of the picture, and I'm not good with keeping in touch with either Edith's son or Aunt Honey's younger daughter. But we're all in the grapevine, and we hear things. I did see Edith's son last year when his brother died. But it's not all me; they don't keep in touch here, either.

8. Do you have any famous family members? Well, no Paris Hiltons, for sure. There was someone who was one of the major radio announcers in the 30s and 40s, and his wife, who was a character actress. (She played Lucille Toody on Car 54, Where Are You?) There was a distant somebody who was implicated in a huge government scandal in the early 50s. (Bernard Shine, I think, who tried to bribe government officials with vicuna coats.) My eldest nephew is, I think, a locally well known character in San Diego. I think that's it.

WATCHING THE DAILY SHOW :: ENTRY #1510

A Christmas Story of Us: Jack and Shirl

[copied from dland]

Christmas, 2002 will be the first day in almost 60 years that my father will not be celebrating – or at least, taking note of – his wedding anniversary. Jack and Shirl were married on Christmas Day, 1943, and Shirl died in May, just four days before Jack’s 83rd birthday. And so, for them, a Christmas “Story of Us.”

They didn’t meet on a Christmas, but close. In 1941, Jack, a college graduate since the previous June and unable to get the job this should have gotten him because of a low draft number, was coming to New York for the New Year’s weekend for a fraternity convention. He would be with all of his friends again, and all their girlfriends, his included, and they would have a great weekend in a hotel in New York City. There was only one problem: his girlfriend’s mother thought this sounded as fishy as it sounds now to you and me, and said she couldn’t go. So here’s Jack, a really good-looking, smart, nice-Jewish-boy college graduate with no date for the fraternity weekend. What to do?

His sister suggested that he write a letter to a cousin who lived in New York, about their own age, whom he had never met, and ask her if she could fix him up with a date for the weekend. No dummy, this pretty and popular girl seizes a golden opportunity and tells her plainer cousin from the other side of the family that she’s got to go. This guy is great. (Remember, she’s never met him.) So Shirl decides to go, and her mother is easily convinced since she’s actually met Jack’s parents in years past, in fact, before Jack and Shirl were ever born, since Jack’s father’s first cousin is Shirley’s mother’s sister-in-law. (Got that? Here, it’s easier like this: Edith had a first cousin on her father’s side named Shirl and a second cousin on her mother’s side named Jack. When we draw a family tree, it only works if we roll it into a tube, since both sides meet at Edith.)

I digress. Edith takes Shirl shopping at Klein’s, where they pick out a fabulous weekend wardrobe that probably cost a total of $10.00. And Shirl gets packed off to the hotel. She told me years later that there was one room for the guys and one room for the girls, but several of the girls were not exactly … behaving. There was certainly drinking, but they were all 21 or over. That very first night, Jack got so drunk that he was sick for hours and hours. This, by the way, is the last time Jack has ever had a drop of alcohol, New Year’s Eve, 1941. It is also the last time he danced.

Weekend over, he went back home to Massachusetts, waited to be drafted (he had already taken his physical on December 8), broke up with his girlfriend, and started writing to Shirl, who started writing back. When he got leave from the Army, he visited. Mostly they wrote. They actually told us only a few years ago that from the time they met to the time they got married, they only saw each other about ten times, although each of those was a weekend.

They got engaged on March 25, 1942. Jack had finished basic training by this time, had been stationed in a variety of places around the country, learning to shoot German planes out of the skies with anti-aircraft artillery, and was still writing, writing. And then, he got stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey, near Trenton, only a couple of hours by train from New York City.

It was 1943 and Christmas was coming. Jack was an officer, a second lieutenant, and, not surprisingly, the only Jewish guy in his outfit. So when his commanding officer said something about there being no passes for Christmas, except for unusual circumstances, he probably never expected Jack to step up. He asked if he could have a 24 hour pass on Christmas so he could get married. After he got it, he called Shirl and told her that if she could plan a wedding in one week, they could get married before he was shipped overseas.

It was a gamble, sort of. Jack wanted to marry Shirl, but thought it would be better to wait until after the war, so she wouldn’t end up a widow, or married to someone crippled, or worse. She said she would marry him anyway, regardless of injury, so why not marry him before? Whatever happened, she would love him anyway and they would be married. So he gave her one chance, one day, and she ran with it.

She planned a small wedding, in a rabbi’s study (which is to say, a religious ceremony, but not a big fancy one.) There were only about a dozen people at the ceremony, their two families, and then a few dozen went out for lunch afterwards. Jack’s family came down by train.

Here’s the honeymoon: they went out for dinner to some Hungarian restaurant (we have a picture taken by the roving photographer) and then to a hotel. But remember, it was a 24 hour pass. So Jack had to leave at midnight to get the train to get back to Fort Dix on time, I guess by 6 AM. So here’s Shirl, on her honeymoon, alone in the hotel room in the middle of the night. After an hour or so, there’s a knock on the door, and to her amazement, there stands one of her new sisters-in-law, telling her that, since there’s a shortage of hotel rooms in New York, due to the war and the holiday, and she’s knows that Jack’s just left, can she spend the night here? Really. My mother spent more of her honeymoon night with her husband’s sister than she did with her husband.

Jack spent their first anniversary sleeping in the barn in France, surrounded by potatoes, soldiers, and shellfire. He spent the next 56 of them with her.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas as such when I was growing up, no tree or anything, but each year we would go out to dinner, or into the city to see a show. Maybe that’s why I felt Christmas was still a special day, even though it wasn’t really a holiday for us. It was the day we celebrated Shirl and Jack. Since I’ve been married (and for a couple of years before, so now that’s 27 years) I celebrate Christmas with my in-laws, although I would stop by to see Shirl and Jack in the morning to wish them a happy anniversary. Since my in-laws moved a couple of hours away, I haven’t had time to fit in both. Don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. It may snow hard, eliminating the drive to south Jersey all together. I could spend the day with Jack, if I wanted to.

What will it be for him, Christmas 2002? Does he miss her? Is he glad her suffering is over? Does he wish that his was, too? Will he even stop and notice the day, or mention it to anyone? This is the generation that won the war, remember. They don’t let those pesky emotions get in their way. They just do what they’ve got to do.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jack is the best, and he is my hero. Let the day be whatever he wants it to be, and let it be easy for him. He’s earned it.

Merry Christmas to all. Happy Anniversary to one.


ENTRY #32