Christmas in Ohio

Christmas for my family was a search for perfection.  The annual objective was for this Christmas to be the best ever.  Each year hopes were high that the decorations would be the most beautiful in the neighborhood, the roast beef would be ready at the same time as the mashed potatoes, the dessert wouldn't be burnt or fall, the traditional cookies would actually be eaten, no fights would erupt and most of all everyone would give and receive the perfect gifts.

I suppose this illness infects most families then and now. It is the one period of the year when each member of the family must be indulged. Each person must receive a gift guaranteed to delight. The gift that will make him/her happy. Except the men who didn't want anything and didn't like what you did give them so they got ties. They hated the whole emotionally fraught mess that usually broke any budget and resulted in tears of disappointment and frustration. They tried to keep this to themselves.

The lesson learned from Christmas should be that you couldn’t make anyone happy. Unless that person was a child.

Of course even though the men were expected to find the cash to pay for all the special presents, they also had the onerous, even frightening task of buying perfect gifts for their wives. Men hated Christmas not for the money spent but for having to perform the dreaded duty: shopping.

My mother dreamt of the perfect gift from Daddy. I think she imagined one of those huge expensive boxes you would see in the movies that Cary Grant gave Katherine Hepburn or Carole Lombard. The box would have a giant ribbon and inside would be pink tissue paper and a mink stole.

I remember the year Daddy brought home a pretty wrapped box a week or so before Christmas and said it was for Mama. He had a grin so I knew it was trouble.

She looked at that present 10 or 12 times a day wondering what it was. She picked it up and studied it over and over. It was heavy. It didn't shake. It was solid. It was about a foot tall and ten inches square. She decided there was something small like jewelry hidden in some heavy wrapping because it was fragile and needed protection. The heaviness was to put her off the scent. It wouldn't be a mink stole. No stole would fit into it. She thought it could be something for the house. She hoped not but at least this year he had thought of her and gone to all the trouble of shopping and buying something just for her.

You know where this is going of course. What surprises me now is what is continuously surprising about married couples: how little they knew each other.

Apparently in the early years of their marriage she had been embarrassed by his gift of extremely sexy underwear which she opened in front of her mother in law who was visibly shocked.

She already hated Mama for taking her Anthony away without being Italian and didn't want to know what went on behind bedroom doors. It seems Mama didn't want her to know either. Grandma might have been Italian but she didn't approve of sex. Maybe if Tony had married Anna Verna, the nice Italian girl she had hand picked for him she would have given the lingerie a pass.

So you can see Daddy had tried and failed at giving Mama presents. I remember adoring the very high-heeled ankle strap sandals made of wood with adorable little scenes carved into the heels he had brought home from the Philippines after the war. I coveted them in the worst way. I begged to try them on. They didn’t touch Mama’s feet. “Ankle straps,” she said. “Only floozies wear ankle straps.”

Perhaps here is the place to talk about the disapproval of my other grandmother. She not only disapproved of sex she disapproved mightily of my father who made the terrible error of being the son of a foreigner. A wop. An Italian.

.

I remember once asking Mama if sex was nice. She answered, “Yes, but don't tell your grandmother.” I didn't know which one she meant. It could have been either one of them.

So Mama and Daddy had a good relationship in at least one area. Still they didn't know each other at all.

Which takes me to that Christmas morning when she tore off the wrapping and revealed the 20-pound candy cane Daddy was so pleased about. He laughed and grinned waiting for her to enjoy his joke.

She didn't.

After that it became my mission to help Daddy atone with the perfect gift for Mama.

I dragged him into department stores where he drew the line at going above the first floor. He would actually groan at the sight of the escalator. So I chose first floor items: a black onyx cameo ring one year. A high-end leather I Miller pocket book another. Something tasteful and classy reflecting my mother as I, with a woman’s eye, knew she would love.  

She always made a fuss. But it was sort of half hearted. She knew. And Daddy knew.

And I got everything on my list.

Don't Mess with My Heroines

Wow! I was shocked a few weeks ago my daughter and daughter in law launched into an attack on Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. They had nothing good to say about the master of Thornfield Manor.  

Now granted this was during a football game and I can’t really even remember how we got on the subject. But they thought he was interested in Jane just because of her naiveté. The rich sophisticated lady he had been dating (did they date in the 19^th century?) would have figured him out along with his secret madwoman in the attic thing right away.

"He only wanted Jane because he felt he could manipulate her," they said.  My lame response was “Gee, sure he was a jerk, I know, but wasn't he purified by the fire?”

“Well, that,” they said, “when she returns  to him all she’s got is an invalid to take care of.” Was this when I started sputtering? “I am sure, absolutely positive, he gets better and becomes the man Jane deserves.

Remember right after Jane says ‘Reader, I married him,’ she tells us that he could see their child Right?  

Right, indeed. He remained a jerk to these two charming critics.

I thought it was interesting that this generation of women born of those of us who had experienced the women's movement of the 70s were so judgmental of the patriarchal Rochester. I left it there.

Yesterday reading Death in a Strange Country one of the mysteries in the  Inspector Brunetti series written by Donna Leon, Brunetti's wife, a professoressa of English literature, and a very liberated woman by any cultural standard (except for the fact that she frequently seems to prepare two incredible meals in a single day), described Jane Eyre as a "cunning, self-righteous little bitch".

Where have I been? What vale of BBC/PBS reruns has ruled my interpretations of this 19th century classic? I thought I was as liberated as the next working girl. But wow I've always admired Jane.

Self-righteous, I will grant Signora Brunetti. Of course she was self-righteous. Where would she have been without her righteousness? Cunning? Now that’s out of left field. How was she cunning? She seems anything but. Did she beguile with her piety? She refused to marry him with a wife in the attic and ran away and suffered quite terribly. What a diva!

Maybe the moral here is you can mess with the heroes of the books I love,

but let my heroines alone.

I would like to point out, heroine wise, that my anger skipped right past Ms. Leon and went straight for Signora Brunetti, who I might say is usually a heroine of mine. She talks about  Henry James so much the Commissario is jealous. To me she is at this moment in the kitchen of their fourth floor walk up in Venice stirring her marinara with one hand and a copy of Portrait of a Lady in the other.

Maybe she should re read Jane Eyre.

Shopping for the Featureless Car

Featureless, perhaps is not the best word to describe the kind of automobile Jim and I were looking for. Perhaps basic transportation is more appropriate.

We wanted a car without bells and whistles. One with standard manual transmission. You know, those old ones you shift yourself. The kind we grew up with.

The type of car we wanted should have hand cranked or roll up windows because we are convinced that someday we might drive into a lake and be unable to open power-assisted windows to escape. Never mind that I don't swim.

It should get terrific mileage and be capable of living on the streets of NYC. It shouldn't look fancy. It shouldn’t be desirable to anyone but us.

This is not a popular kind of car.

Our sweet old Mazda Protégé 2002 fit the bill. It had roll up windows and the ignition worked with a key. You had to manually lock and unlock the doors. Our grandsons thought all this was hilarious.  Friends said things like “I didn’t know they still made cars like this.” They helplessly waited for us to lock and unlock the doors.

The CD player was a newfangled contraption to us when we bought the Protégé thirteen years ago. We weren’t too happy about it because it replaced a tape player and left us with lots of nice tapes we could no longer listen to in the car.

The Mazda didn't talk back, something Jim particularly liked. No GPS for Jim, the human compass, who remembers directions and seems to know where he is at all times. Not an ability I share. I kept atlases in the glove compartment and drove around a lot until I saw a major department store. Then I knew where I was.

The rear window was wiper barren.

It was a good car.  It didn't need a major repair outside normal maintenance in the all its 13 years. It stood by us through long trips and traversing the Cross Bronx on a daily basis. We took care of it and it took care of us.

Sometime over the years we started calling it Car.

But at 140,000 miles, and a lot of dents and scrapes, it was time to say good-bye and shop for a new basic car.

We thought that environmentally speaking we should go for a Prius, but wow - talk about bells and whistles. Forget it.

Two sub-compacts, the Honda Fit and the Mazda 2 seemed closer to filling our requirements.

Everyone loves a Fit they say. And we were quite pleased with how our Mazda had performed.

So we headed north to a Westchester Mazda dealer to be told that absolutely no one wanted a Mazda 2. It was too basic. It was withdrawn from the American market and sent back to Europe where it belongs.

We looked at a Mazda 3, the Protégé’s replacement model.  Although it was bigger, fancier and more expensive it had a lot of appeal until we learned that it no longer had a CD player. CD players are passé. Now that we have built up a new collection of music on CDs they tell us the Mp3 player is taking over.

We would actually have had to buy a fancier model to get the downgrade to a CD.

We looked at the Honda Fit, but the salesman’s face turned from warm to cold when we mentioned manual transmission. “That will be hard to find. They just aren’t out there. No one wants one,” he repeated a few times.

Finally we went to the Nissan dealer who had the least fancy car on the market: the Nissan Versa Note. Real hand cranked windows, no extra windshield wiper, and it even used a real key to open the doors.  No power anything. And a CD player came with it. It was cheap too. You could sort of fit four people in it. Our Mazda accommodated five.

You would think we would have jumped at this opportunity to practice what we preach. But we went home and did some research and found that Consumer Reports wasn’t impressed by the Note’s performance on the road and Car and Driver mentioned that the wheels failed to grip the road.  Plus it had the tiniest trunk I have ever seen outside a Fiat 500.

I, not so secretly, yearned for one of those cute little things. The Fiat 500 is all about adorable. But small, very small, as in miniscule.  I love the commercials for the slightly larger Fiat 800 that comes equipped with an Italian family to teach you how to be Italian. But we couldn’t afford the espresso bills.

So it looked like we were going to have to pay more to get less. Basic is just not popular. Big, strong, safe, easy and fun are what is wanted, which pretty much translates into an SUV. Or something sleek and expensive.

I suggested we forget our values and go for a flashy Mazda Miata roadster. Hunter green with tan interior. Would need a garage though. Even in today’s almost crime free NYC you can’t park a sports car on the street and expect it to survive. And no room for anybody but us. Where would our daughter and her dog fit?

Which brings us back to the Fit. And Queens. We found a plain Fit at a Honda dealer in Queens. Seems basic is OK in Queens. They had at least four basic models on the lot to choose from, all of them with standard transmission.

The one we chose is nice. Gray. CD player. Decent size trunk. No GPS. I have my smart phone now anyway.

We will just have to get used to the power windows and try to stay away from large bodies of water.

It’s small but not too small. In fact the salesman, who was at least 6’4”, fit into the back seat with Jim and me. Pretty much.

It’s parked on the street right now. Another gray vehicle among all the other gray vehicles.

Jim wants to name it Car Junior. Want a ride?

Aging with Benefits

I see myself as a couch potato. I don't exercise enough. My favorite activity in the daytime is reading and in the evening I watch TV.

But it seem as though everything I read in the newspaper or hear on the TV screams Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!

I am plagued with guilt.

So you can imagine my glee when Jane Brody, in her NY Times column, quoted a Dr. Jungwha Lee, “You don't need a gym membership to promote good health. Build movement into your daily routine. Don't park right next to the store. If your job involves prolonged sitting, set an alarm and stand up every twenty minutes. Use a remote printer. Take a lap around the floor after using the restroom. Go for a walk during lunch.” *

Hey! I’m not doing so badly after all. I am sure I am more fit than I was five years ago and I have been losing a little weight lately too.

After reading that article I figured out why. It’s memory loss.

Yes, memory loss has accelerated the amount of walking I do each and every day.

Think about my typical day. I walk around my apartment at least five times a day in search of my glasses. Then there is the time I put in going from closet to closet trying to remember where I hung my coat. I have to look for keys, gloves, and scarves not just in the closet but anywhere I might have deposited them when I used them last.

The timer I set to remind me something is on the stove repeatedly summons me to the kitchen.

And since I can’t remember recipes, I keep resetting the timer over and over. I must get up from the couch at least 15 times to check on a casserole baking.

My appliances are aging too and don't work as well as they used to. Take my oven. I can’t trust the temperature gauge any more and because I can’t see well enough to recalibrate it, I get more exercise getting up and down to check the temperature while I am baking.

When my TV remote broke, did I fix it? Of course not. I kept forgetting to get it repaired so I have to get up off my couch to change stations. See what I mean?

The old cold water tap in one bathroom is so hard to turn I use two bathrooms every day. One for hot water activities like washing my hands the other for drinking water and brushing my teeth. Coupled with the fact that I don't remember where I left my toothbrush, soap or towel, I get a lot of exercise roaming from bathroom to bathroom to locate things.

Then there is searching for pens and pencils. That takes miles of steps.

I am in shape before I ever get to the door to go out.

And all l had to do was grow old and lose my memory.

I think I’ll get a pedometer to scientifically track how many steps I take each day so

I can write a book and go on the “Dr. Oz” show to tout my new exercise routine: “You Can Get All the Exercise You Need Through Age Related Memory Loss.” I would make millions.

There are so many advantages to aging, I don’t why I didn't age sooner.

*Jane Brody, “Keep Moving to Stay Ahead of Arthritis,” New York Times, April 27, 2015.

10,000 Steps

I have been walking almost every day now for over a year. I’ve worked up to three miles.

This seems like plenty to me but the current ideal for fitness is to walk 10,000 steps each day.

I have thought of buying a “Fitbit” or some other pedometer to see if I actually do walk those 10,000 steps  that are so highly recommended. Apparently, the magic number is 10,000. If you take that many steps each day, you are guaranteed good cardiovascular health.

Why not buy a cute little gadget to tell me how many steps I really am racking up?

I have many reasons for not purchasing one:

1.   I have tried pedometers before and they never work.

2.   Hooking one up to my computer is daunting. I have so many other problems with the darn computer, adding a new gadget seems like asking for trouble.

3.   .I know I will tire of it and it will become another expensive plaything staring at me accusingly in a few months.

4.   .Figuring out how far I have walked by various routes gives me something to think about on my walks.

Pushing me further toward such a purchase was a spate of articles declaring that walking in the morning doesn't carry one through the whole day. Sitting for the rest of the day will still wreak havoc with your poor veins.

You have to be up and about all day.

This is really depressing. For these reasons:

1.   .I feel like I deserve to fall down onto the couch the minute I return home from my walk.

2.    I read an awful lot. This is an activity I do not associate with walking.

3.     I mean, I don't even sit up to read. I lie down.

All my virtue gone.

It’s not like I am completely sedentary after my morning walk. I never watch TV until the evening. I perform household tasks, run errands, meet friends in other neighborhoods etc.

But now I feel like I am lying down on the job of keeping those veins open and healthy.

So I will get a pedometer.

Or not.

Maybe I can do this without one.

On my most recent walk, I counted how many steps I took in one block. Approximately 100. So, that means my 60 block walk would account for 6,000 of the 10,000 steps I need to keep my veins open. 

So how to get in the rest?

I counted how many steps it takes to walk from my computer into the kitchen and back. It was 50 steps. So if my math is correct, in order to get my additional 4000 steps, I only need to make 80 round trips into the kitchen and back.

For snacks maybe.