Category Archives: family

December 6, 2010 · 8:53 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Fig Newtons and a Cup of Tea

We called her Nana Julie but I don’t recall why; her name was Julia. My other grandmother was Nana Car… because she was the one that drove.

Obviously.

I will take no responsibility for the naming as I am sure my brother was responsible for these. He was brilliant.

This time of year I think of them both often. Perhaps because we are in the middle of the first Hannukah without kids home and the holiday seems so quiet. Or maybe it is because a blustery winter day like today reminded me of Nana Julie’s kitchen, with it’s Dentyne in the cabinet – both red and green, no one liked the green – and this cookie jar on the counter. The counter tops had this great 1950s boomerang formica and there was always a Pyrex glass coffee pot on the stove to boil water.

When she died I took very few things from her house, but this cookie jar was one of them. It was always filled with Fig Newtons, and they were ALWAYS just a little stale. It was not until I was grown that I knew that Fig Newtons were supposed to be soft. I still sort of miss the stale ones.

We kids loved that kitchen. My grandparents lived close by, and near the beach, so we spent many of our childhood weekends at their house. I cannot even imagine how many cases of Fig Newtons and Dentyne we must have polished off through the years. And now that I think of it I am not sure if she ever had any other cookies or candy in the house. I AM sure we did not care one bit.

As a young adult I was fortunate to still have the Nana’s in my life. They were close; they called each other ‘sister’. I feel so very fortunate to have had them for so long.

Nana Julie’s solution to any problem was to make a cup of tea and then sit down and talk about it.

This afternoon it was chilly, I was losing my motivation and I had this undying craving for Fig Newtons and a cup of tea. There was something so very comforting about that snack. As if she were right there in the room with me.

I suppose she was. Perhaps they both were.

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November 30, 2010 · 10:41 pm

Monkey Feet

Can you pick up a beer bottle with your toes? No? Well then you do not have monkey feet.

My son, on the other hand, was able to pick up that bottle with his lengthy digits with great ease. (no, he could not bring the bottle to his lips, that would make him double jointed).

Please do not underestimate this great talent. At the very least I am sure he is eligible for Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks. Like all idiotic parents of our generation, we like to encourage what makes our children unique. You know, ‘we all have talents…blah, blah, blah’. I am surprised he was not trophied for this as a young boy.

It is amazing how long those toes are. His big toe actually looks like my thumb! It is uncanny.

Moral of the story: never dare an 18-year-old to do anything; chances are he will find a way to do it.

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Filed under absurdities, body image, carry a camera, danny, family, humor, magnet for the absurd

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November 28, 2010 · 9:17 pm

Doody Babies

I know, after the holiday weekend I am supposed to keep the warm and fuzzy alive and tell you all how special my holiday was. How wonderful it was to be with family and friends. How everyone sleeping in their own beds and having my kids home was absolutely the best. How perfect the table looked, how the Chambers oven earned itself another year of life by actually cooking the turkey in a reasonable amount of time (define reasonable).

But all I  really want to share with you is my son and two nephews and how after eating the holiday meal they felt it was important to pose in this photo with their…

doody babies.

My son has gone so far as to name his Chester (we do not know why). He would be on the right with that more than concerning stance of a true pregnant woman. Look at the way his hand is bracing his back. You would actually think he was pregnant!  All three of them look quite authentic. When I posted this on facebook someone commented on the patriotic touch of the red, white and blue. Um, yeh, well ok.

Just curious, does stuff like this go on at anyone else’s holiday dinners? And have any of you ever heard of doody babies before or is this just our family? (you should hear our table conversations)!

 

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November 24, 2010 · 12:23 am

Gelatinous

Tonight’s word is ‘gelatinous’. In an attempt to get a head start on Thanksgiving I decided to make the cranberry sauce tonight. Happy to have Jana and her girls in the kitchen we set out to make the easiest of holiday recipes.

Not.

It would appear there was too much water. Or not enough sugar. Or just plain beat cranberries. But in no way did this cranberry sauce possess the (here it comes) gelatinous consistency that we expected.

We were, however, happy to be able to use the word gelatinous more often than humanly possible.

There were years when I used to burn an apple pie, then have to bake another. I suppose the cranberries were tagged as ‘it’ this year.

 

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November 22, 2010 · 10:57 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – If these walls could talk

Home. It’s more than just a house. Sometimes it is not even the ‘right’ house. Certainly not the dream house. But definitely home. With its drafty windows, ancient kitchen and not enough space… I still take comfort within these walls.

This is the place where the kids came home from the hospital and now come home from college. Where I walked the floors with them as teething, croupy, bronchitis babies and walked the floors again alone waiting to hear that garage door open when they started to drive.

And now this house – that has been so quiet these past months – is starting to come back alive with laundry and the smell of bacon. One kid home, first with a stomach virus and then a with her boyfriend. (21-year-olds get better quickly). And the other kid will be home before Tuesday comes to a close.

Not only have my children been gone, but their friends have been missed almost as much. I cannot wait for the door to open to those man-boys who love yodels and hug me till I almost fall over. Who initial the fruit and leave notes in the cup cakes and whose humor keeps me laughing all night long. I long for a foyer full of big sneakers and the shouting of video games in the basement. I can’t wait to have a late night kitchen full of  young women who want to bake and hear all the plans of the lives they will soon enter when they graduate. I am thrilled to line this house with air mattresses and make breakfast for the masses.

There is now life in rooms that since the summer laid silent. And if these walls could talk they would tell the tales of a family that has grown up here. The years seem to echo in these walls, and as I walk through them things catch my eye that make me smile. For instance, the photo above brings me back 20 years. That would be a drip of Baby Tylenol on the wall in my daughter’s room. We have painted it twice since then, but it would appear that Tylenol trumps Benjamin Moore and it keeps bleeding through. It is a reminder of the strong will she had as a baby that serves her so well as a young woman.

If these walls could talk they would tell you that maybe this family never got to upgrade their house, but they have certainly built themselves a warm, solid place filled with love that they can always call home.

To my beautiful kids: don’t believe what they say…. You can ALWAYS go home again.

Happy Thanksgiving all. May you and your families feel at home no matter where you may be. And may your turkey not be pink when you carve it.

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November 15, 2010 · 8:50 pm

Time To Cry Tuesday – Four for Twenty

It is a bittersweet fact that as your kids grow, the time you spend as a family shrinks. If you have done your job well, their lives are full. If you are lucky, yours are as well.

We are four people with very full lives. Not one of us is the type to be idle or feel lonely. We have a great extended family, many friends and rich lives. We work hard and play hard.

Blah. Blah. Blah. Ok, so that is all academic. And though it is true on some level, after 21 years of being a family unit, you crave that time when you can be together. And you learn to appreciate the moments for what they are… fleeting and precious.

This weekend we visited our kids at college. If you don’t follow this blog regularly, my kids are away at school together as a freshman and a senior.

They love it. I love it more.

Parent’s weekend = fly. drive. eat. reverse. repeat.

But for twenty precious minutes, just the four of us sat on the couch in my daughter’s apartment and were simply US.

In all caps.

Nothing special was said. (oh except when my son told us about his human sexuality class and said he now knows more about the vagina than he ever cared to know – now that is something you rarely hear from a 18-year-old boy) There were no real heavy parenting moments. We just WERE. (again in caps)

And to me, there is nothing better on this earth than a little time with just us four…

even if it was only for twenty.

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November 14, 2010 · 8:51 am

Hoosier Daddy? – Big 10 Football

Ah, Big 10 football and a rainy morning in Madison, Wisconsin. The late morning kick-off is no reason not to pre-game when you are in college. And for the young woman on the left, the mid-40 degree weather and drizzling chill was no reason to wear sleeves either.

This apartment was a half a block from Randall Stadium and there were no shortages of cheers from the crowd as they passed them by. You have to love the spirit of college football; and the complete joy they get from being fans.

This was the last home game my daughter, the senior, will attend as a student and marked the end of the first season for my son, the freshman. With a final score of  83 to 20 this home season went out with a bang. (this is not the official last home game which takes place Thanksgiving weekend, but it is the last one for my kids). UW set a school record and tied a Big Ten record for points scored and scored more points than any other FBS team this season.

I must apologize to you all for not getting the best shot of the day, which was the two guys walking down the street in the freezing cold rain in nothing but sneakers and badger g-strings.

I know, I am slipping up, sorry.

 

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October 20, 2010 · 11:16 pm

Can it fit in a toilet?

This is the first question that Gary asks when told about a small dog. He is not a fan. (can you tell?) Being a big dog kind of guy I think this is his way of saying if you can flush it then there is no real argument for it having any pet value. I always sort of worry that he might actually try it one day. Then again, he used to call them puntable dogs and I never actually witnessed him drop kicking one, so I assume it is just his slang.

Anyway, this post is not really about small dogs. It is actually about toilets. And the crazy things that accidentally get flushed down them.

It seems that when shit happens (no pun intended), it usually happens in a big way in my house. We don’t like to do single crises. You could say we are calamity over-achievers.

So, as a quick overview, in the past few weeks I have been diagnosed with vertigo (it passed thankfully, except in extreme circular situations or when I hold my head funny), I chipped a tooth on a piece of toast and the biggie, my dad needed to have his pacemaker changed. He has had it done before, but being a long-term multi-issue cardiac patient it is a bit tricky. In all the confusion of family staying over and rotating bathroom schedules somehow the cap from the air freshener found its way into the bowl just as the water was going down.

Now, you may say to yourself, that cap is too damn big to go down a toilet.

Wrong!

Down it went and off to the hospital we went, with a call into my plumber of 22 years. Who, by the way, has still not returned my call from 9 this morning. So, yes, he is no longer on the preferred vendor list here. But another lovely plumber with some kickass blue super sonic gloves, a really cool telescoping mirror (kind of like the one the dentist uses, Dr. Jimmy, but a little less sterile) and the ever famous…

toilet vacuum! Yep, this baby sucked that cap right out of the toilet like it was nothing. And I am proud to say I now have the cleanest toilet in town. Kind of like a toilet colonic, if you will.

Of course I had to ask this guy what was the oddest thing he has ever seen flushed down a toilet? His answer?

False teeth.

EW! On so many levels

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October 18, 2010 · 11:57 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Badger Fever

 

photo: Jana Levinson

For those who do not know, I have two Badgers. That would be a freshman and a senior at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And these two bleed red. Well, ok, we all bleed red but they bleed Badger red. Go red. Camp Randall sea of red on game day red.

And if you follow college football, then you would know that this past Saturday night the #11 Badgers beat #1 Ohio State in the game of the decade. As my daughter described it, the place was electric from the moment of kick off. As well it should have been since they scored in the first 12 seconds of the game. The level of intensity never let up. As you can see, they rushed the field at the end of the game; something she had never seen in her 4 years there. Her friend who was visiting said this was up with the top 5 days of her life and she was not even a student there!

But this is not about football. Well it is, but not really. This is about belonging. About a sense of place and feeling a part of something that is way bigger than you could explain, yet it feels like it is simply a part of who you are. My kids are lucky to have had this at camp. And now in college they have what feels like camp on steroids.

81,194 people jammed into that stadium, all chanting, cheering and praying together for that win. For their team. Their school. Their culture. Damn, it does not get better than that.

We go through that crazy college app process praying that our kids will find a place to ‘be happy’. A place they feel they belong. A place to grow that will shape their lives, not just in the classroom, but out as well.

I am a firm believer that much of what they learn there is not academic. The community of Madison has been as strong a teacher for my daughter as her professors have been. I can only hope for the same for my son.

Everyone gets hung up on the career prep in college. Sure we want them to get jobs and be fulfilled and self sufficient. But maybe part of what makes them ready to go out into the world is to know WHO they are, not necessarily WHAT they want to be.

And that, my friends, is something to think about.

 

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October 8, 2010 · 10:59 pm

The Mangler

Get ready for some really ridiculous posts. This weekend my mom and I are on a road trip. I told her we would be like Thelma and Louise. I thought it was funny until we were stuck in our 4th traffic jam on I-95 in as many hours and she told me she was going to take out a gun and shoot herself in the head. “Mom? Did you actually take me seriously and bring a gun on this trip?” I figured this one was going to be kind of hard to explain. Luckily she was only kidding.

We decided to take this trip to suburban Boston to visit my aunt (her sister) and my cousin who is like my sister. This is a very special trip as the 2 sisters have not seen each other in 5 years!

Dinner was a riot as we reminisced about our past and brought up names and stories of people long gone. Ok, who remembers Nana and Poppa’s phone number? Bang! We all recited it as if we had just called them. As my friend Joyce would say, “Just don’t ask us what we had for breakfast or what our kids’ names are.”

The most bizarre memory of the night was that of ‘The Mangler’. (my brother is going to love this as I believe it was housed in his bedroom for many of his formative years). Now wait till you hear what this thing is. It was a machine used to iron. It had knee pedals and you fed the clothing through the hot metal roller to press them. Yeh, I know, sounds like the perfect item to keep in a toddler’s room, right? And the name Mangler? Well, if you fed you fingers into that sucker instead of the clothing…

Hello Mrs. Z, this is social services! Yes, we were wondering why you thought it was ok to have this piece of equipment in the room of your young child.

Never! Remember this was the late 50s/early 60s. The era when you not only did not wear seatbelts but you let the kids hang out in the back of the station wagon on long car rides – without seats, let alone belts! When pregnant women smoked and drank coffee and lines like, “go play in traffic” were uttered when kids complained they were bored.

I find it rather funny that the helicopter generation was raised by the what the hell generation.

All kidding aside, my childhood memories are great ones. We always felt loved and secure.  There was always family around and we had a lot of laughs. Right and wrong were not so hard to distinguish. None of parents wanted to be cool; or be our friends. They were our parents, and if we screwed up, we paid for it.

And no, not with the Mangler!

 

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