Christmas in Brooklyn

 

When I remember the Christmas of my youth, I conjure up the aroma of pine trees stacked outside grocery stores. The store owners built a stand with wooden stakes and rope. The trees arrived after Thanksgiving and stayed up until Christmas Eve, when my parents usually bought a tree. Prices came down when the store owners wanted to get rid of all trees before he has to dispose of them himself.

On Christmas morning we attended Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church, a cathedral-like parish church big enough to rival St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. The massive organ stood at the back in the choir loft. As the choir master played, the Christmas hymns vibrated through the church. I felt the sensations surge through my body as I sang out “O, Holy Night” and my favorite “Angels, we have heard on high” I especially liked the part that strung out Glor-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-or-ia.

 

When I reached teen years, I attended midnight High Mass on Christmas Eve. The aroma of incense wafted on currents of air to settle on the congregants who sat with heads bowed, and knuckled their chests “mea cuppa”

Every year, my parents bought a big jigsaw puzzle and after our Christmas dinner, we cleared the dining room table and set up the puzzle for the whole family to work on. It stayed up all week and we worked on it bit by bit until finished. Then it stayed up a little while longer so we could admire our handiwork.

So when I remember Christmas of my youth, it’s not the presents I got that stands out; it’s the activities that brought the whole world closer.

 

New York Christmas

I watched the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree the other night on TV. It brought back memories of Christmas in New York where I lived the first 50 years of my life.

 

Every year I looked forward to our annual Christmas trip to Manhattan. As a teen I went with my school friends, then with my boyfriend and eventually with my husband. 

When my children got old enough to enjoy it, I took them every year. A week or two before Christmas, we took the train to 34^th St. From there we walked up 5^th Ave. and admired the displays in store windows. Some had animated toys, Santa and elves, electric trains passing through a miniature village with windows aglow. Tiny ice skaters twirled like ballerinas on a miniature mirrored lake. A Jack in the Box jumped out and sneered its clown face at the startled children peering through the glass. 

 

 

We made our way to Rockefeller Center to admire the giant tree festooned with thousands of lights. We strolled the Rockefeller Gardens and Promenade lined with pine trees and illuminated white angels blowing through long golden trumpets. Vendors, selling roasted chestnuts or big crusty pretzels sprinkled with crystals of kosher salt, kept their wares warm in portable ovens on pushcarts. We usually bought the pretzels and held them with paper napkins in our gloved hands. Easier to eat, they didn’t require peeling like the chestnuts. The steam from the warm pretzels mingled with our breath to smoke its way into the frigid New York air. We stopped to watch the ice skaters, on the rink below the bronze sculpture of Prometheus. They displayed their abilities for the blasé New Yorkers who showed their appreciation with hoots and hollers.  Applause by gloved hands would get lost into the muffled sounds of traffic.

 

We ended our tour with a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Hundreds of poinsettia plants graced all the side altars as well as the main altar. We sat in a pew and drank in the peace and aromas of the church. A Nativity scene sat to the right of the main altar. Statues of the Holy Family along with shepherds, sheep, angels, camels and Wise Men spread out across the marble floor of the Cathedral.  When we warmed up enough to venture back out into the cold, we made our way to the train that took us home, full of Good Will toward all.

 

 

Life Lesson

 

Happy Thanksgiving

to all.




....next to Godliness

It has occurred to me that taking a shower requires more time than it used to. In my youth, I took a quick shower, toweled off, dressed and out the door in about fifteen minutes.

            First of all, nowadays I need more time to assemble the accoutrements necessary for a complete cleansing ceremony. That includes unscented body wash, and a face wash for delicate and dry skin, loufah mesh to scrub away dead skin cells, and a special purple shampoo for gray hair. It promises to be gentle on my aging locks.

            Next I place a rubber mat on the floor of the shower stall; even though it has a non-skid surface…I don’t trust it. Then I assemble two towels, one for body one for hair, face cloth and terry floor mat. I stand outside the stall, reach in and turn the water on, adjust the temperature back and forth until just right. Only then do I disrobe and enter the shower.

            After I use the face and body washes, I shampoo twice and rinse well. Next I use a conditioner that smells like lemon, wait five minutes while the lemony mixture softens my hair and rinse again. Then I turn the water off.

I open the curtain, reach for the first towel and wrap it around my head turban style. Then shawl the second towel over my shoulders. Before I leave the stall, I wipe down the walls with the squeegee I keep for that purpose.

            After toweling off, I sit on a third towel placed over the closed toilet seat. I raise each foot to carefully dry between toes. When did I start to pay such close attention to my toes? Then I use a pumice stone to rub across callouses on my feet. Now comes the various creams; moisturizing cream for the face, dry skin lotion for the arms, legs, and feet and 1% hydrocortisone cream for scaly elbows and multiple itchy spots. Finally I cut and apply moleskin pads to corns and tender places on my hammer toes.

            All this takes time. In winter it becomes more time consuming. Because I hate feeling cold, I take my portable electric heater to the bathroom ten minutes before I plan to shower. I keep the door closed to warm the room. I tend to stay in the hot shower longer, loathe to step out into chilly air.

            When I worked in a nursing home years ago, I didn’t understand why the elderly patients hated the bath. Ah….the ignorance of youth.

What's in a Name

1935 Andy, mom holding Mary and Dottie

 

I’m not sure if it snowed the day of my birth. I know that it held the typical cold of a February night in Brooklyn, the kind that pulls tears from the eyes and chaps cheeks into red flags. My mother, Anna, labored for three days to bring me, her third and last child, into the world. The labor took so long because of my birth weight of nine pounds, or so I’ve been told. I wonder about the truthfulness of this, since my older siblings weighed twelve and ten pounds at birth. How could a mere nine pounds give Mom such a hard time?

            My siblings’ births took place at home without benefit of accurate scales so I doubt the veracity of their weights. I have to believe my birth weight because I see it recorded on the very official looking birth certificate from Park Slope’s biggest and best hospital, Methodist Hospital, on the corner of 7^th Ave. and 6^th St. This momentous event in my life occurred without fanfare on February 9, 1935 at 3:45 AM.

            The matter of naming the new baby girl created another conflict for my parents. My grandmother had been called Mary Ann. When my sister arrived nine years before me, Mama wanted to name her Mary Ann after her mother. But Daddy like the actress Dorothy Gish, hence my sisters name...Dorothy.

            A year after Dorothy’s birth and eight years before mine, my brother entered the world. They named him Andrew Jr. after my father. I wonder why they didn’t call him Douglas or Gilbert after the hottest male stars of 1927.

            When I came along, Mama again wanted to name her daughter Mary Ann. By this time Daddy liked Loretta Young. Mama insisted on Mary Ann and Daddy insisted on Loretta. They finally reached a compromise. I became Mary Loretta. Mama didn’t really give in that easily. It didn’t matter what name my birth certificate said, she called me Mary Ann throughout my childhood, and so did the rest of the family. I attended school before I knew my correct name.

              The great depression had crushed my family’s standard of living and depleted their finances. Franklin Roosevelt, in the white house, put his “New Deal” into operation. He promised a turnaround in the economy with a glut of alphabet letters, NRA, WPA, CCC, TVA. My father, Andrew, had been out of work for months and the family received “relief”...welfare in those days. When the WPA (I believe the letters stand for Works Progress Administration) came to New York, my father, an iron worker, finally got work building bridges, parks and offices in the City of New York. The work, although sporadic, at least brought some money into the household.

During her pregnancy, Mama received medical care from the hospital clinic. The cost for pre natal care and delivery totaled $60, but even this amount, Daddy couldn’t pay. He ignored the hospital bill in favor of the grocer, landlord, and I must confess, for Daddy, the local bar & grill. For years, when my parents got into an argument, Mama flung an accusation at Daddy.

            “You never paid for Mary Ann. You spent it at the bar instead.”

            Hearing this, reinforced my belief that parents bought babies at the hospital like candy in the corner store. I thought they went to the nursery and chose a baby like I chose licorice or chocolate. Since I wasn’t paid for, was I stolen? Or bought on the installment plan and Daddy didn’t make payments? Would the hospital come and repossess me? I never voiced these fears to my parents, and in time came to understand what “not being paid for” really meant. It had nothing to do with me. Parents seldom realize how much what they say affects a listening child. I often wonder if I’ve committed the same insensitive sin. Probably.

 







Country Oasis

 

Our annual vacation took us from the hot streets of Brooklyn to our green oasis in the Catskill mountains. Our family rented a stone cabin in Fort Montgomery about ten miles south of West Point, New York.

We had no electricity or running water. Kerosene lanterns gave us light in the evening. Our drinking water came from a well and a rain barrel caught run off from the roof for washing. An outhouse sat about fifty feet from the cabin and chamber pots sat under each bed for night time emergencies.

The small front yard had a three-seat swing. I can still hear the creak of that metal swing on its hinges. 

             L to R Me, cousin Margie, mom Ann Fahey 

Mom cooked our meals on a wood burning stove. I remember I sat at the kitchen table, rolled newspaper and tied them into knots to augment the wood fire. A stove top toaster with four sides needed supervision or else the bread would burn black. Mom never wasted food. She used a butter knife to scrape the burnt areas and slathered peanut butter and jam on it to hide the scraped areas. We didn’t care\. Everything tasted better in the pristine mountain air.

Some of my best early memories center around summers in Fort Montgomery. I never felt at a loss for something to do. Although I had playmates, I enjoyed exploring on my own. I loved the surrounding woods and spent a lot of time alone in fantasy in the quiet of the forest. I got to know my way around pretty well and had a play area set up in a small clearing. I erected a teepee with scattered branches and put large stones around it for seats. I loved the smells and sounds. I loved the way the sunlight filtered through the trees and created patterns of light and dark across the ground. Fascinated by the woodland life, I marveled at all kinds of insects, salamanders, birds and an occasional snake. I once became frightened when I came upon a rattler - or it came upon me as I played. I heard the rattle before I saw the snake and beat it out of the woods fast.

Another time I found a small garden snake and wanted to keep it as a pet. I knew that I wouldn't be allowed to, so I hid it in my mother's teapot. When she went to make tea, the snake coiled out of the spout and sure gave her a fright.

 In retrospect, I realize that my penchant for being alone might be rooted in those happy childhood times. I've never felt lonely.

Yes, we didn’t enjoy modern conveniences and had to endure primitive accommodations but this was our country oasis from an otherwise sweltering city summer.

L to R Aunt Josie, cousin Eddie, cousin Delores, cousin Margie, Uncle Jack
Front kneeling, brother Andy, me in front of Uncle Jack
Rear: father Andrew Fahey

We Are One

 



As I drove along Orcutt Rd. in San Luis Obispo, I thought I saw a bundle of clothes in the gutter. When I got closer, I realized the clothing contained a person. I quickly parked my car and approached.

            “Are you all right?”

            She opened her eyes and nodded yes. Her brown, leathery face suggested many hours spent in the sun. Wisps of black hair mixed with gray peeked out from her wool cap. Surprisingly, for a homeless person, she wore a warm jacket and ski pants; her feet encased in running shoes. Silver and turquoise rings adorned her fingers.

            “Are you in pain?”

            She said “No.”

            I whipped out my cell phone and dialed 911.

            A crisp voice answered “911. What’s your emergency?”

            “There’s a person lying in the street.”

            “On Orcutt Rd?” the operator interrupted.

            “Yes.”

            “You’re the third call we received. The police have already checked her. She’s fine.”

            “She’s not fine. She’s lying in the street.” I insisted.

            “Ma’am, she’s fine.”

            “I can’t leave her here. I’m afraid she’ll get run over.”

            “I’ll send the police again” the operator assured me.

            I tried to coax the woman up so I could get her out of the gutter. She wouldn’t let me help her up..

            “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep last night,” she said.

            Another car stopped and a man came to the rescue. His strength got her to her feet and with the woman between us, we got her to the sidewalk. Her legs wobbled and we needed to hold her from falling. The man tried to get her to sit on some nearby bushes.

            “No!... dogs pee on that,” she said. Meanwhile urine ran down the legs of her trousers onto her shoes and sidewalk. She smelled dreadful.

            “Let’s get her to those steps,” I said and we half walked, half dragged her to some wide steps. The man plopped her down and left.

            “What’s your name?” I asked.

            “Gilly”

            “Do you have somewhere to go tonight, Gilly?”

            “No.”

            “The homeless shelter is less than a block away. I’ll take you there.”

            “I don’t want to go there.” She seemed adamant.

            “Why?”

            She mumbled something about “a hundred and twenty nine days probation.”

            “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”  She dismissed my question with a wave of her hand. I wondered what kept the police so long. They should have arrived by now.

            I felt helpless. I didn’t know what to do for this poor woman. All I could think of was prayer.

            “Gilly, will you pray with me?” A nod yes.

            So I took her hand and prayed aloud and promised her I’d continue to pray for her. She nodded. I had to leave her sitting on the step and it brought tears to my eyes. The police never came.
No Matter her condition, she's a fellow human being.

I am she and she is me. We are one.
 

           

           

The DMV

While waiting in the DMV on their uncomfortable molded plastic chairs, I struck up a conversation with a woman seated next to me. She held a large envelope filled with pages protruding in disarray. She looked disorganized and harried. 

“What number did they call?” she asked.

“G17, I answered and pointed to the screen above the counter.”

“What did I do with my number? She mumbled looking through her many pages. Oh, here it is, G46. I’ll have to wait a long time.”

“I just got back from Jordan and I forgot about this appointment.”

She took out her phone to show me pictures. “I rode a donkey down a steep hill into an ancient area. It’s the only way to get there.” She looked so enthusiastic and happy about her adventures.

“Wow that’s quite a trip. How long was the flight?” I asked.

“Oh, we stopped off in Vienna before heading back and went to a concert in a palace there.”

She went on to tell me that she almost died last year. She went into the hospital for knee surgery and developed pneumonia. She needed a tracheotomy to breath and since she couldn’t swallow, they inserted a feeding tube for nourishment.

It seems this poor woman had one mishap after another. The feeding tube became blocked, her fever spiked and she went into a coma. She stayed hospitalized for three months, near death’s door. Then she needed to learn to walk again and had an additional two weeks in physio therapy before going home. The whole process took six months to recover.

“So, I decided to travel to all the places I have always wanted to see, since life can be fleeting.”

I completely forgot about the uncomfortable chair and long wait at the DMV.

They called my number and I bid her good luck and went to the counter.

I thought about her all day. She went through such an ordeal but still had a very upbeat attitude. She smiled and shared her happiness with me.

What a lesson!

 

A Kiss Before Dying

 

 

 



“You’re bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning,” he said peering at me through coke bottle glasses.

        “Behave yourself Claude,” I answered. “You’re ninety-five years old but you still have an eye for the ladies, don’t you?”

        He threw his head back and guffawed. “That will never die.”

         Due to severe arthritis, Claude needed to use a walker. His wife had recently died and he had no one to care for him at home. He came to live at the Assisted Living Facility where I worked. Although physically deteriorated, mentally he had the alertness of a teenager, with the same likes and dislikes too. It seemed at times all he had on his mind was sex.

        For some reason, he singled me out for his special affections, although he liked all women and wouldn’t say no to anyone else he fancied. Every time he looked at me, I could see a twinkle in his eye through his thick lenses, like a lantern in a lighthouse.

        He greeted me each day with “Give me a kiss good morning.”

        I’d jokingly snap back “Not now Claude, I’m busy.”

         He usually answered “I’ll wait.”

        Claude stood over six feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds. He loved good food, good humor and all women good and bad, not always in that order. His shock of full and unruly white hair gave him a boyish quality.

            He liked to sit at my nurses’ station and talk about his wife. He got wistful and misty eyed.

        “I had the best wife in the world.” 

        “I think you must have been a good husband to get such a good wife,” I told him.

        “She was so wonderful to me; I had to be as good to her.”

        “How did she like you flirting with other women?” I asked

        “I only joked around. I never cheated. I wouldn’t risk hurting her.” He spoke seriously. “She knew I was faithful”

        Months later, his failing health necessitated transfer to the adjacent skilled nursing facility. I made it a point to visit him often. The only other visitor, his daughter, was past seventy.

        When Claude turned one hundred, the staff gave him a big birthday party. The local newspaper sent a photographer and reporter. Everyone wished him a Happy Birthday and gave him a birthday kiss.

        He asked me. “Are you finally going to give me a kiss? It’s my birthday.”

        “All right.” I bent to kiss his cheek and with speed of a man half his age, he whipped his face around and planted one right on my mouth. I bolted up as if shot. Claude roared with merriment.

        “Gotcha,” he laughed.

         Eleven months later, Claude’s stamina gave out. I visited him the day before he died. His body had weakened but not his mind. When he saw me, he smiled, too weak to raise his head.

        “Give me a kiss,” he whispered. 

        And I did.