Born and raised in NYC. Congrats, ya big galoot. Your evocative description of the December subway scene made me weep briny tears into my morning coffee. Greetings of the season to you, and a blessing on your house.
Merry Christmas from Georgia, the home of two Democratic US Senators. Was wondering if you could use the word, "peregrination" in one of your delightful columns? At 72 with a curiosity and at least a small flame still buring for learning, I wanted to hear from you about this small trivial matter of peregrination. Hang in there and trust you or your team will not dismiss this comment as too tedious to respond.
Hello Garrison, I feel sure that wandering is the correct context as I cannot find it related to falconry in my Webster’s. Also best regards to Fred Newman a high school friend. Selah.
Leaving the Lord to his alarm clock, here in N H we have snow to share. I agree that old friends and some of their memories slip away. Thanks for the picture of snow caves and Christmas morning oranges (I still deny spitting the seeds into my sister's hat.)
I don't share the rest of your memories, but I do drive stick shift! though my next car, if there is one, may perforce be automatic. "Standard" shift cars are hard to find these days. I not only enjoy driving stick, I figure it's a theft deterrent.
So much of this is either me or my Dad, Paul Weeks, one of those reporters who typed on a Remington at the old LA Daily News and talked about the glory of an orange in his stocking in his boyhood North Dakota. His blog is still up at typosgalore
I get that. It's an inevitable part of a long life, something that doesn't happen if you die at 30.
The story reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandmother when she was in her mid 90s. She said she was lonely, and I said, "But Gram, you have all of us." (Meaning her busy family of children and many grandchildren and our friends. How could she be lonely when her life was full of us?) "I miss people my own age," she said. She had outlived her husband, every one of her friends, all of her siblings and cousins and even some of her children. She had no one who shared the same memories and life experiences.
I have a small taste of that already. The nine-year-old gives me a blank look of incomprehension when I explain that we didn't have cellphones, we had one phone per household, phones attached to the wall or on a cord, with the receiver on a short cord, and the phones had rotary dials, (gotta explain what those were) and often we shared one phone number with another household. It's so much better to remember that and laugh with someone who, first-person, got that.
But it's life; best to enfold the joy and sorrow and live in the present moment. I got that, too. Thank you!
One of my great-grandparents got pneumonia when he was near 90. The doctor said he could have survived but my mother told me he said that he'd outlived 3 wives and all his friends so he didn't try to recover.
Mellissa, I 'get' your comment! My adopted mother died of pneumonia. It is my believe she caught it on purpose, it was winter, cold, the last time I saw her, her windows were wide open, I stood at her bedroom door freezing in my coat. She laid there in her hospital bed in her bedroom with only a sheet, she did not was a blanket. Her room had a terrible smell which I learned later was the 'death smell' a few get. She should have died because of her heart, but death cert., didn't mention that at all. She and my adopted dad didn't get alone, she had few if any friends left, and I was living married in another state (not that that made any difference to her) she gave me a five piece set of luggage as my high school graduation gift with a note, 'now you can leave,' and I did. She was only 53 years old. I read Mr. Keiller's stories enjoying many of them, but cannot relate to all his childhood stories. Many do, and I get that, happy that so many did, knowing that many didn't. Life is complicated at best for all of us. And this time of year has for the most part always been difficult for me, no happy holidays in my childhood, not one! It got better later, but now, a bit older than Mr. Keiller, I have out lived most all I knew who cared about me as I cared for them. I for the most part am confined by heath and injury's. Getting any kind of health care where I am is pitiful unless you have pockets of money! I hear it is like that everywhere which is wrong, but it is what it is, as I sit here waiting to hear when I can get a knee x-ray referral because of a bad fall I had last week.... Too bad I and many can't get into the TV medical show hospitals - ha ha.....
We still have a phone attached to the wall, with the receiver attached by a cord - not as convenient as the wireless phone units, but it's super when the electricity goes out! I miss rotary dials, but not so much party lines - my brothers used to torture a neighboring girl to tears by listening in on her conversations with her boyfriend and guffawing in appropriate (or inappropriate?) spots. I'm still trying to get used to text messages, but at least I've gotten beyond painfully tapping away with one finger with my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth. :)
A lot of things in this post resonate with me, especially the smells! We always had oranges in our Christmas stockings, and a bag of chocolate coins. I don't know if my father realized they were Hanukkah tradition. We didn't find out (from DNA test results) until almost 20 years after he died that he had ~1/8 Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
I just bought a package of 8 navel oranges (for $3.99) which I will use in making panettoni using my own recipe and frosted orange cookies using my late mother-in-law's recipe. My husband, his children and grandchildren all love them. (I do, too, and have made them in lemon and lime versions as well.). I adapted her recipe to make orange frosted cupcakes, which are almost as good, more healthful, and less work.
I had stick shift cars for almost 50 years, until my most recent one, a Honda Civic Hybrid, was 18 years old and I decided, at age 71, that it was time to get an automatic. I now have a Kia Niro Hybrid which is a mini SUV that averages over 50 mpg. I though about getting a plug-in EV, but I was afraid
that it would have been too stressful to be worrying about whether I could find places to charge it away from home.
I never went ice fishing, but my father used to play hockey with his friends on various ponds in Concord, MA (including Walden) and my sister and I and the other men's children used to skate and freeze while waiting for our fathers to get tired. They usually kept going until it was too dark to see the puck.
While we never had to make a cave to wait for the bus in we did play "fox and geese" in the paths we made in the snow in our front yard. I was a lucky kid as the bus stop was in front of our house because originally it was the middle house on the street and they never changed it through the years when we got more houses in the neighborhood. When I was too old for games we could actually wait inside by the door and my father would yell "bus!" when it came around the corner. Naturally as a teenager occasionally I was still upstairs brushing my teeth and had to run down and grab my books and lunch and run out the door!
Knocking on all my friend’s doors; can Candy, Rosalie, Brenda come out to play? Playing dodge ball in the street and knowing it was time to go home when the street lights turned on, drinking from the hose when we got thirsty, being prepared for the first grade in kindergarten, not preschool…the sunset that often comes just as we’re leaving our neighborhood supermarket and at the end of our street in the city, room for a full sized Christmas tree in my daughter and my beautiful home after years of being transient and sometimes homeless, Pam, who I run into almost every morning when I walk my dog; she is always pulling a cart and stops to talk and thanks me for hearing her.
Past and present flowing one into the other, but for the life of me I’m not sure when or how it happened. I often long for simpler days when I built snow forts with my father and now he is gone and I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. More often than not women in Hollywood take desperate measures to stay young, but as my daughter says, “Time marches over us all whether we like it or not” and she likes it that I am letting the hair on my temples go grey. It’s just better to go with it and stay in touch with the now whatever it holds. It doesn’t mean we are erasing our fond memories of the past, whatever they might be.
Born and raised in NYC. Congrats, ya big galoot. Your evocative description of the December subway scene made me weep briny tears into my morning coffee. Greetings of the season to you, and a blessing on your house.
Merry Christmas from Georgia, the home of two Democratic US Senators. Was wondering if you could use the word, "peregrination" in one of your delightful columns? At 72 with a curiosity and at least a small flame still buring for learning, I wanted to hear from you about this small trivial matter of peregrination. Hang in there and trust you or your team will not dismiss this comment as too tedious to respond.
Does this refer to wandering or to falconry?
Hello Garrison, I feel sure that wandering is the correct context as I cannot find it related to falconry in my Webster’s. Also best regards to Fred Newman a high school friend. Selah.
❤️❤️🔥
Leaving the Lord to his alarm clock, here in N H we have snow to share. I agree that old friends and some of their memories slip away. Thanks for the picture of snow caves and Christmas morning oranges (I still deny spitting the seeds into my sister's hat.)
Thanks for the lovely Christmas message.
I don't share the rest of your memories, but I do drive stick shift! though my next car, if there is one, may perforce be automatic. "Standard" shift cars are hard to find these days. I not only enjoy driving stick, I figure it's a theft deterrent.
Honda makes a stick shift Accord. We have 3 in our family.
Bless you and your writing, every day. Thank you - especially for oranges in the dark except for the Christmas tree lights ...
🔥🔥❤️
Aww loved this, so many wonderful memories
This post makes me glad all over.
So much of this is either me or my Dad, Paul Weeks, one of those reporters who typed on a Remington at the old LA Daily News and talked about the glory of an orange in his stocking in his boyhood North Dakota. His blog is still up at typosgalore
I remember the oranges!🧑🏻🎄🍊
I get that. It's an inevitable part of a long life, something that doesn't happen if you die at 30.
The story reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandmother when she was in her mid 90s. She said she was lonely, and I said, "But Gram, you have all of us." (Meaning her busy family of children and many grandchildren and our friends. How could she be lonely when her life was full of us?) "I miss people my own age," she said. She had outlived her husband, every one of her friends, all of her siblings and cousins and even some of her children. She had no one who shared the same memories and life experiences.
I have a small taste of that already. The nine-year-old gives me a blank look of incomprehension when I explain that we didn't have cellphones, we had one phone per household, phones attached to the wall or on a cord, with the receiver on a short cord, and the phones had rotary dials, (gotta explain what those were) and often we shared one phone number with another household. It's so much better to remember that and laugh with someone who, first-person, got that.
But it's life; best to enfold the joy and sorrow and live in the present moment. I got that, too. Thank you!
One of my great-grandparents got pneumonia when he was near 90. The doctor said he could have survived but my mother told me he said that he'd outlived 3 wives and all his friends so he didn't try to recover.
Mellissa, I 'get' your comment! My adopted mother died of pneumonia. It is my believe she caught it on purpose, it was winter, cold, the last time I saw her, her windows were wide open, I stood at her bedroom door freezing in my coat. She laid there in her hospital bed in her bedroom with only a sheet, she did not was a blanket. Her room had a terrible smell which I learned later was the 'death smell' a few get. She should have died because of her heart, but death cert., didn't mention that at all. She and my adopted dad didn't get alone, she had few if any friends left, and I was living married in another state (not that that made any difference to her) she gave me a five piece set of luggage as my high school graduation gift with a note, 'now you can leave,' and I did. She was only 53 years old. I read Mr. Keiller's stories enjoying many of them, but cannot relate to all his childhood stories. Many do, and I get that, happy that so many did, knowing that many didn't. Life is complicated at best for all of us. And this time of year has for the most part always been difficult for me, no happy holidays in my childhood, not one! It got better later, but now, a bit older than Mr. Keiller, I have out lived most all I knew who cared about me as I cared for them. I for the most part am confined by heath and injury's. Getting any kind of health care where I am is pitiful unless you have pockets of money! I hear it is like that everywhere which is wrong, but it is what it is, as I sit here waiting to hear when I can get a knee x-ray referral because of a bad fall I had last week.... Too bad I and many can't get into the TV medical show hospitals - ha ha.....
We still have a phone attached to the wall, with the receiver attached by a cord - not as convenient as the wireless phone units, but it's super when the electricity goes out! I miss rotary dials, but not so much party lines - my brothers used to torture a neighboring girl to tears by listening in on her conversations with her boyfriend and guffawing in appropriate (or inappropriate?) spots. I'm still trying to get used to text messages, but at least I've gotten beyond painfully tapping away with one finger with my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth. :)
❤️❤️🔥
A lot of things in this post resonate with me, especially the smells! We always had oranges in our Christmas stockings, and a bag of chocolate coins. I don't know if my father realized they were Hanukkah tradition. We didn't find out (from DNA test results) until almost 20 years after he died that he had ~1/8 Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
I just bought a package of 8 navel oranges (for $3.99) which I will use in making panettoni using my own recipe and frosted orange cookies using my late mother-in-law's recipe. My husband, his children and grandchildren all love them. (I do, too, and have made them in lemon and lime versions as well.). I adapted her recipe to make orange frosted cupcakes, which are almost as good, more healthful, and less work.
I had stick shift cars for almost 50 years, until my most recent one, a Honda Civic Hybrid, was 18 years old and I decided, at age 71, that it was time to get an automatic. I now have a Kia Niro Hybrid which is a mini SUV that averages over 50 mpg. I though about getting a plug-in EV, but I was afraid
that it would have been too stressful to be worrying about whether I could find places to charge it away from home.
I never went ice fishing, but my father used to play hockey with his friends on various ponds in Concord, MA (including Walden) and my sister and I and the other men's children used to skate and freeze while waiting for our fathers to get tired. They usually kept going until it was too dark to see the puck.
❤️❤️🔥
While we never had to make a cave to wait for the bus in we did play "fox and geese" in the paths we made in the snow in our front yard. I was a lucky kid as the bus stop was in front of our house because originally it was the middle house on the street and they never changed it through the years when we got more houses in the neighborhood. When I was too old for games we could actually wait inside by the door and my father would yell "bus!" when it came around the corner. Naturally as a teenager occasionally I was still upstairs brushing my teeth and had to run down and grab my books and lunch and run out the door!
Not quite tears in my eyes, but watery, for sure! Thank You, Sir
❤️
Excellent piece.
1. I think we have a ‘sanity recession.’ (And a friendship one.)
2. ‘The grimness of urban hustle’: gorgeous phrase!
3. Love the sensory details, like the peeled orange and other smells; also the Christmas music
4. You make me miss Manhattan
#4
Yeah!!
Knocking on all my friend’s doors; can Candy, Rosalie, Brenda come out to play? Playing dodge ball in the street and knowing it was time to go home when the street lights turned on, drinking from the hose when we got thirsty, being prepared for the first grade in kindergarten, not preschool…the sunset that often comes just as we’re leaving our neighborhood supermarket and at the end of our street in the city, room for a full sized Christmas tree in my daughter and my beautiful home after years of being transient and sometimes homeless, Pam, who I run into almost every morning when I walk my dog; she is always pulling a cart and stops to talk and thanks me for hearing her.
Past and present flowing one into the other, but for the life of me I’m not sure when or how it happened. I often long for simpler days when I built snow forts with my father and now he is gone and I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. More often than not women in Hollywood take desperate measures to stay young, but as my daughter says, “Time marches over us all whether we like it or not” and she likes it that I am letting the hair on my temples go grey. It’s just better to go with it and stay in touch with the now whatever it holds. It doesn’t mean we are erasing our fond memories of the past, whatever they might be.