The US tends to have a lot of whimsical “holidays” in honor of just about any food, activity, relationship, etc. imaginable. March 14 is celebrated as “Pi Day” because Pi is 3.14…
The celebration entails eating pie. While Brent often bakes for Pi Day, this year I bought a suitably dedicated cherry pie from Wegmans.
Wishing an equally delicious pie to all those celebrating!
When E and T were children, we started celebrating the New Year with them at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, which is 7:00 PM in our time zone. We would have a toast with sparkling cider or grape juice.
Not being night owls, we still follow that tradition at our house. B found an online feed from the BBC of the celebration in London, with the chiming of Big Ben and fireworks along the Thames, this year not only celebrating the New Year but also recognizing the 50th anniversary of Gay Pride, the death of Queen Elizabeth and beginning of the reign of King Charles, and support for Ukraine and for all those suffering around the world.
It’s especially meaningful to celebrate with London with daughter E and her family living there. While we were watching the broadcast, E sent us a video of fireworks being set off in her neighborhood.
For a moment, it made the distance between us feel smaller.
Happy New Year to you, wherever you are on the globe. May peace, love, and care for each other increase.
On Saturday, September 17, 2022, I went back to my hometown, Monroe, Massachusetts, for their bicentennial celebration. There will eventually be a proper post about the fun and meaningful day I had there but I wanted to give a little shout-out today.
These welcome signs are new. This is the one at the Massachusetts/Vermont state line about half a mile from where our house was back in the day.
Here in the US, this past weekend was a major event for lots of folks. Sunday was the Super Bowl, which football fans watch for the game and lots of others watch for the innovative commercials and the halftime show. It’s a long period of time so there tends to be be lots of snacking with chips and dip and wings and pizza and beer and such. Some people are binging on winter Olympic viewing, instead of or in addition to the Super Bowl. Many people also moved their celebration of Valentine’s Day to the weekend, encouraged by restaurants who are still trying to re-build their business as the pandemic (maybe) winds down or, at least, this most recent wave.
Things were pretty quiet at our house, though.
We aren’t big football fans. We have only been watching limited amounts of the Olympics, mostly figure skating, and often via DVR so we can watch the events without all the ads and commentary. I admit that I usually watch more Olympic coverage but the complications of Chinese politics and the bizarre participation of Russia with the doping problem still hanging over them make me less enthused about these particular games. The threat of Russia to Ukraine is also casting a pall, especially since Russia has previously used the time of the Olympics to take military action, hoping the world was too preoccupied to notice.
We did observe Valentine’s Day, but quietly at home and on Monday instead of over the weekend. As I am at a point in my grief process where planning celebrations is still difficult, spouse B did the lion’s share of the work, with daughter T contributing thoughtful cards and candles for the table. I did bring home a pot of mini-daffodils and some dairy-free chocolate for B and T, a token nod to the tradition of flowers and chocolate for Valentine’s Day.
B planned and executed a lovely dinner for the three of us. He made individual Beef Wellington with mushrooms rather pâté, served with fresh sautéed green beans. For dessert, he made white chocolate mousse, which was rich and delicious. He chose that because I can no longer eat cocoa but still enjoy the luxurious melt-in-your-mouth-ness of cocoa butter.
A sweet and quiet Valentine’s Day suits me.
Thanks to B, it was what we were able to celebrate.
A gift from my sister to honor our dad, known here as Paco, on his 96th birthday last week. ❤
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/03/31/one-liner-wednesday-had-to-run/
Today is March 17, which is usually celebrated as Saint Patrick’s Day. Although it is a feast day for Saint Patrick in the Catholic church, it is generally celebrated in the United States also as a secular holiday with parades, Irish food, and, in many cases, way too much alcohol.
This year, with COVID-19 social distancing protocols in place, things are very, very quiet. Paco will still get to have corned beef and cabbage and potatoes, but he will be eating it in his apartment instead of a dining room filled with his senior living community friends wearing green and sitting at tables decorated for the occasion.
Fun fact: Paco’s middle name is Patrick. He finally got to visit Ireland, the home of his grandparents, last fall.
B’s side of the family had some different March 17th traditions. B’s dad was an elementary school principal who had a running joke with his students and staff. He celebrated March 17th as Evacuation Day, which commemorates the British leaving Boston on that date in 1776 after an eleven month siege, under pressure by the Continental Army, commanded by George Washington and bolstered by cannons captured from Fort Ticonderoga. Parts of Massachusetts celebrated it as an official holiday, although not the western part of the state where his school was located. He used to make an announcement on the public address system in the morning and even designed an evacuation day card which he printed with his then-new dot matrix printer.
He also used to buy an “evacuation day” bouquet for B’s mom, known here at TJCM as Grandma. After he passed away, B and I continued the tradition of giving Grandma evacuation day flowers, first ordering them delivered to her home from their favorite local florist and then bringing them in person after she moved to our area.
In 2016, we changed it up a bit and gave Grandma a planter. We had no way of knowing that she would pass away after a heart attack a few days later. Our daughter T, who has a special affinity for plants, took over care of the planter, eventually having to separate the plants into different pots as they grew too large.
Today, the African violet and the kalanchoe from the planter are in full bloom.
On the dining room table, is an evacuation day bouquet that B bought for T.
The fourth Thursday of November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
With so many changes in our family in the past few months, our Thanksgiving was quiet, with just spouse B, daughter T, and my dad Paco here for dinner. B did all the cooking – turkey, two kinds of dressing, mashed potatoes, rutabaga, acorn squash wedges, baked onions, and cranberry orange relish, with apple and pumpkin pies for dessert. It was a lot of food for four people, but we all enjoy having the leftovers. We are in the process of making turkey stock with the carcass and vegetables, something I learned from Nana growing up which has recently come back into food-fashion.
We ate midday here and, at almost the same time, daughter E was eating a Thanksgiving dinner, five time zones away, in London. She had made turkey and trimmings and pies for her daughter ABC, spouse L, and his parents with whom they are making their home. It’s nice that E and L want to keep some United States traditions to pass on to ABC, along with British ones. She is a dual citizen, at least until adulthood. It will depend on the rules in place when she turns 18, whether she will have to renounce her US citizenship to remain in the UK.
Still, she will always be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and remember the Thanksgiving celebrations of her childhood.
Today is my parents’ (Nana and Paco here at TJCM) sixty-fourth wedding anniversary.
And it is snowing, which is a bit odd for us here in the Northeast US on April 19th.
My parents married on this date for two reasons. It was Easter Monday during a time when Catholic weddings were prohibited during Lent. (While not currently prohibited, they are still discouraged.) It was also Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts where they lived, so it was a day off work for my dad and many other workers. They thought that they would always have their anniversary off work, which they did until the Monday holiday bill was created, moving holidays from their actual dates to a nearby Monday. (Patriots’ Day commemorates the battle of Lexington and Concord which began the Revolutionary War.)
Today’s celebration will be quiet.
[Three days pass.]
I started this post on the 19th. The plan was for me to spend most of the day at home until late afternoon when we would pick up dinner to bring to Nana and Paco. I was hoping to get this post out and do some other catching up and errands, but Paco wasn’t feeling well, so I went up to Nana and Paco’s apartment mid-morning to assess the situation and call the doctor’s office.
Later in the morning, Nana’s hospice volunteer visitor arrived. She brought a pink gerbera daisy with two blossoms as an anniversary gift from her and a gift bag from hospice with a bottle of sparkling apple juice, two glasses, a rose made of cloth, and an angel figurine. It was so sweet of her to visit and lift Nana’s spirits; we were sorry that Paco was napping and not well enough to be with her when she opened their gifts.
When I hadn’t heard back from the doctor by early afternoon, I called again and they decided to fit him into the afternoon schedule. I took him to the office, fortunately nearby to their senior living community, leaving Nana under the care of her aide. The doctor made some medication changes and Nana and Paco both got afternoon naps.
My husband B and daughter T arrived at about five with food from a favorite local Italian restaurant. We set up their tray tables side by side on the couch with lasagna for Paco and bucatini for Nana. Nana and Paco got to enjoy their 64th anniversary dinner, topped off with sharing carrot cake for dessert.
They got to hold hands.
They reminisced about their honeymoon in New York City, seeing Bob Hope and the Rockettes at an 8 AM show.
And we had the privilege of being there.
I am grateful that they had this anniversary together, one more precious moment in their long life together. The precariousness of the day underscored that the much-discussed “quality time” is a gift that appears in our lives, sometimes planned and created, but more often appearing at an unexpected time or in an unforeseen way. A cuddle from a toddler who is usually too busy to stop her activity. An important discussion with a teenager during a routine car ride. A walk in the woods when troubles temporarily recede and clarity and peace return.
A time when holding hands means the world.
Today, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving. We are celebrating with a traditional turkey dinner with two kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes, rutabaga, baked squash and apples, spiced cranberry-orange relish, and apple and pumpkin pies.
We are doing most of the cooking at our house and bringing everything up to Nana and Paco’s apartment for dinner. In past years, we either hosted them here at our house or joined them for dinner in the dining room at their senior living community, but Nana doesn’t have the energy to be out of the apartment, so we are bringing Thanksgiving to her.
We are very grateful to have Nana and Paco with us for another year of celebration and, for the first time, to have baby ABC with us! She is too young to eat any of the Thanksgiving dishes, but she will certainly bring many smiles to our day.
B and I are also very thankful to have both of our daughters with us. Given that E and ABC will be moving to the UK, possibly in the spring, we are unlikely to have them here at Thanksgiving time again for a long time, if ever. We are hoping that T will find a job in her field that is within driving distance, so we may be able to have her join us for the holiday on a regular basis, but, like everything in the future, it is a bit of a mystery.
But this Thanksgiving, six for dinner – with a baby being bounced on knees and cradled in our arms and playing on her floor quilt – is the perfect number, for which we are all filled with gratitude.
This was our first Christmas season without Grandma (my mother-in-law) who passed away in March.
It was also a quiet Christmas for a number of reasons which I won’t enumerate here.
It was sometimes difficult to navigate the season, trying to balance happy memories of how much Grandma loved Christmas, especially decorating, with how painful it was that she wasn’t able to be here with us.
I think each of us had at least one crying jag in the process.
Some things just felt right, though, such as putting the carol singers that she made for us on the cupboard filled with her teacup collection that now sits in our dining room, instead of on the mantel in the living room.
And making her pecan puff recipe.
I am also thankful that last year, our daughter E and her husband L were here celebrating Christmas with us. It was a precious time.
None us knew that that Christmas would be Grandma’s last.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “first/last.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/12/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-3116/
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