Dueling Saints

Today is the Feast of St. Joseph so my husband Joe  is celebrating his feast day. Since he had Sicilian parents and their heritage included a tremendous devotion to St. Joseph,  the observance involved emptying the furniture out of a main room,  constructing a huge altar with 3 tiers, draping it with the colors for that year (kind of like a prom theme) and then loading it up with all kinds of lamps, candles, flowers, statuary, etc. Once the novena began the house would fill up nightly with Italian ladies who would sit in the rented folding chairs before the altar, pray the rosary and singing feast day songs at the top of their lungs, all in a  pre-WWII Sicilian dialect. At the end of the hour they moved to the kitchen and had coffee and pastries and chatted. It was a thing of beauty.

Small but Sincere!

The feast itself was a consummate tribute to Sicilian culture and cuisine.  Maria’s version of Pasta di San Giuseppe was a marvel of cauliflower, fava  beans, chick peas, and other ingredients that made a chunky, creamy white sauce served over  homemade pasta.  It was not for the faint of heart – you either loved it or hated it. (I loved it.) The rest of the dishes were largely seafood based (it being Lent and living in a fishing community) and side dishes included battered artichoke hearts and stuffed, sun-dried tomatoes – long before those became “popular” here in the U.S.  It was no wonder my Irish heritage was largely ignored as St. Patrick’s Day got lost in the shuffle.  As the years passed, and Maria did likewise, the festivities moved to other houses.  St. Patrick’s got back on the map, but not in ways I ever anticipated.

I love my Irish heritage and I’m a bit of a purist.  My grandma, Margaret Carroll McGill,  was born and raised in County Kerry and she told me I never had to wear green on St. Patrick’s day because I had true Irish blood. (Somehow I got it in my head that my blood turned green on St. Patrick’s Day and I always wanted to prick my finger to see it bleed – and see if it was green.)  My mother never made corned beef and cabbage because 1) she probably didn’t like it and 2) it really isn’t an Irish dish.  Irish bacon and colcannon are more proper, and I”m not a big fan of any variation of colcannon I’ve ever made.   My observance of St. Patrick’s Day centers around using my Belleek china or having a pint of Guinness (no proper Irishman would be caught dead drinking green beer).  My husband? The Sicilian prince?  Loves corned beef and cabbage. When I say “loves” corned beef & cabbage, I mean “would marry it“. He has a serious problem.  This really happened:

Joe:  I went to the store and picked up some groceries.

Me: Good, we were getting low.  What did you get?

Joe: Well, I bought a nice slab of corned beef!

Me: Really?  (Jokingly) Just one?

Joe:  Well, actually I bought two and thought I would freeze one….

Me:  Seriously?  Two?

Joe: Well (pointing to the refrigerator) …. there might be three in there.

Me: THREE?  There MIGHT be three?  Are you serious?

Joe: Well, we never have leftovers to make corned beef hash and I know you like that.

Oh yes, I’m sure he bought it for me.  He does that a lot. He will come home with a ham and say, “Look what I got you!” (Ham = oxygen to him.) In Sicilian culture, food is love. He shows his love for me by bringing home food he loves. Whatever. He cooks it (I refuse to) and enjoys it with as much relish as he does his feast day pasta.  March is his favorite month.

These days our altar is small but very sincere. We used to have a little silver tray to hold the mass cards of people we had lost, but as years passed we graduated to a lovely crystal bowl. After this round, I think we need to find a bigger bowl.  In twenty-five years we have collected a lot of those little cards. It is with great love and many tears we go through and review  them, but we always try to remember how lucky we were – and still are – to have loved so many wonderful souls. We pray for them, for families and friends, and this year for the new Pope Francis on whom the future of the church hangs in precarious balance. He will need all the help he can get.  I have set aside many of the beliefs taught to me in my youth, but I have hope in him. Besides, who better than the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi to guide us going forward?

Ninety for 90

My Aunt Addie is turning 90 in April. To celebrate this milestone, her kids arranged for each of the 90 days preceding her birthday to be marked with a unique gesture of love from one of her kin. I am one of the privileged members of my extended family to be invited to do so – and I say privileged because 1) I adore her and 2) there are waaayyy more than 90 people in my family to choose from. We are a proper and prolific Irish clan.

Aunt Addie has always been on short my list of people who I want to be when I grow up. My earliest memories of her involve big family gatherings in Madison, Nebraska, and how she and my Aunt Helen were in the center of it all, coordinating the feeding, caring and oversight and sleeping arrangements of a ton of hungry cousins.

In addition to raising large families, they were both nurses. I remember how competently and efficiently they managed the day when their mother (my Grandma McGill) had a stroke. I was in my early teens and pretty honked about not being able to play the cool organ Aunt Addie had in her house because they were trying to keep things quiet for Grandma. (Sorry, Grandma.) Once, my younger brother Steve was with her in a restaurant and they ordered coffee. When the waitress poured and Aunt Addie took a sip, the war-horse nurse in her came out when she said, “Oh, I could VOID coffee warmer than this.” I think Steve spit his out when she said that, but it was such typical stuff from her. Aunt Addie kicks ass. A few years ago she went to see my Dad in the hospital. He was whining about wanting to go home. Once approved, she put him in her car and took him back to his assisted living facility, got out her walker and made the long trip to his room with him, got him settled and adjusted his catheter, grabbed her walker and made the long trek back to her car. (She later told one of my siblings that she wished his room was closer to the entrance.)

Aunt Addie was widowed early, but she pushed right on and maintained. She was the first one in the car for a trip to the casino, and still is – she loves to gamble. She makes it to family events, keeps track of who was who and does it all with astonishing humor and good grace. One of the best parts of going home to see my family is a trip to Madison to see her. I could sit at her kitchen table and listen to her for hours. She radiates wisdom, humor and good times.

My most precious memory of her is when Mom was in the hospital /hospice with pancreatic cancer. They cousins brought her out to Lexington so she could see her sister one more time and I was sitting in Mom’s room when Addie arrived. Mom was pretty narc’d up at that point, but when Addie came in she raised her arms and thickly murmured, “Oh AAahhhdiiiee.” Addie sat on the bed and held her little sister and talked to her, touched her face and the love was so unabashed and naked I had to look away. I’ve never witnessed such strength in my life. I weep now as I am writing this, remembering her grace, how she didn’t lose it, she didn’t cry, she just poured out such love and kindness and goodness. I’m sure she cried a river of tears later, but those last moments they had together were spectacularly beautiful. We should all be so lucky.

Back to the matter at hand – what am I going to do for my “Ninety for 90″? I thought about doing several different things, but many have already been done. She’s had cakes, pies, flowers, phone calls. Chicago White Sox memorabilia, gift cards, lunches and dinner out – all kinds of great stuff. Since the economy is sour, one person minted her a trillion-dollar bill . She took it to the Senior Citizens lunch and presented it to pay for her meal. (They didn’t have enough change.) Oh, and did I mention she is hand writing proper thank you notes to each of us for her gifts? She is grace personified. Wish her a happy birthday!

 

To Tree or Not to Tree – Update

This past January I reflected on not having put up a Christmas tree for the past 10 years,  ( To Tree or Not to Tree ) so I thought I should begin the holiday season with a happy update.

We have a tree!

It’s a small one, but it’s lovely and full and vintage and smells sooooo good!  It takes up gallons of water and sheds needles and tinsel every time I come near it so it’s perfect. Wait – TINSEL?  Oh yes, I did the tinsel thing. I bought it as a joke – the packages were $1 – but when I finished trimming the tree in those lovely vintage 40′s and 50′s ornaments I thought, “What the hell – try a little!”  Well, a little became a little more and while it does not look like the tinsel fairy threw up on the tree, it is tinseled and it looks wonderful.   Normally I loathe the stuff but for some unknown reason this year it just seemed… right.

When I come downstairs in the morning and saunter into the family room with my coffee and my iPad,  I smell the tree’s fragrance and I smile. I sip coffee and unlock the Angry Birds Seasons episode of the day and look at my tree and feel peaceful. Evenings are good, too, with the teeny blue tree lights that make the silver tinsel look blueish. It soothes me to see that icy blue in winter because it brings back a favorite childhood memory.

While driving home from a visit to Grandpa and Grandma Major, the sub-zero cold of a Nebraska night made for a spectacular, star filled sky. The clear, dark sky made the white snowy fields turn a kind of blueish tint.  It was like a fairyland, and to a young girl at Christmas it was magical. Everyone else would fall asleep, Dad would be driving at breakneck speed (it was legal then) and I would ask him to keep making the headlights change from dim to bright – and he could do it with no hands!  I though he was a genius – little did I know the button to toggle  the bright headlights was on the floor by the brake. I thought he was magic. The night landscape was enchanting. Such a simple thing, but I have remembered it – vividly – my entire life.

Many, many years later I was driving around Gloucester looking at Christmas lights, feeling homesick and miserable. Then I saw it – a big house with a massive front lawn lit entirely by….blue lights.  The snowy front lawn had that same blueish tint. I pulled over, got out of my car and snuck around the hedge and just stared at the whole scene. (It was very late, no one was up.)  I got a little weepy.  Happy weepy. I felt better.  I got back in my car and went home. *

I’m one of the fortunate few who aren’t driven to distraction by the holiday shopping  and the stress of holiday cooking.  I love to cook – so does my husband – and we really have limited resources so gift buying is at a bare minimum.  It’s very liberating to take such control over the holiday madness. It is a gift unto itself. Light those Advent candles and enjoy every ritual of the season.  I truly am, for the first time in many years.

*Happy Update #2 – I later met the owner of that house and he has since become one of my dearest friends. He still puts up the blue lights but now I enjoy them with a cocktail in my hand beside a roaring fire – he is also a kindred, pyromaniac soul.  Every year, every time – it’s magical.