My interesting life

 

Some of my friends almost visibly wring their hands over me, spending my days at my computer, sometimes not leaving the property for days (I do have plenty of company). Several years ago Jacob asked one of his parents, “What does she do all day out there? Play on Facebook?” He should read this post. It’s true, some days are a bit boring—like when I’m bogged down in a manuscript that isn’t going at all the way I think it should. But today, I’ve been amused by the variety of projects that came across my desk.

Yes, there’s politics—if you know me at all, you know I speak out at injustice, and these days I see a lot of it. Hot topics with me today are the school voucher bill about to be considered in the Texas Senate and the appalling reaction of Texas leaders to two mass shooting within a week. So yes, I wrote to my state representative about the bill some legislator introduced to give trauma training to third graders and install bleed stations in third-grade classrooms. Third graders? I cannot abide the acceptance of violence with no effort at prevention. And tonight I’ll write my state senator protesting the school voucher bill which, to me, is a sop to the rich and part of Abbott’s program to undermine public education, which it will effectively accomplish. The proposed stipend will not enable many more families to choose private education, and unless things are changed, there’s no accountability for how the money is spent.

A year or so ago, I did the basic writing for twelve tile plaques to be placed on the exterior walls of the Will Rogers Memorial Center, chronicling Texas history. Since then, the text for those plaques has been rewritten, edited, amended, and whatever by a variety of hands including those of my good friend Carol Roark who knows far more about Texas history than I do. Today those captions came back to me once again (I think this is the second time), now in final form. Perfect. Would I just check punctuation. So I did, found lots of capitalization problems and a couple of sentences that just didn’t make sense. If you cut out extraneous stuff and take a sentence down to subject, verb, and object, nonsense jumps out at you. So back they went.

And then a newbie writer sent me a copy of her work-in-progress, a historical mystery set in Chicago. I forgot I had volunteered to be a beta reader because I’m always interested in Chicago history. I’m glad to do it, though—along the way others have helped me, and I’m glad to pay it forward.

I also had on my to-do list for today an evaluation of a manuscript under consideration at a university press, so I wrote up my notes, filled out the forms, and sent it off.

And finally, this evening I go an email from the Southwest Writers Collection containing the unpublished manuscript of a young-adult novel I wrote years ago. It had to do with the house of a childhood friend where life, at the time, seemed much more exciting than my staid household. The friend I wrote it for died several years ago, but her older sister wants to read it. So I’ve sent it off and saved a copy for myself, which I’ll read when I get to it.

With all that reading stacking up my project tonight is to finish the mystery I’m reading so I can clear the decks and review the forthcoming mystery by a friend, which I’ve promised to put in this blog, and read that Chicago novel. The mystery is a thriller, which is not my usual fare—I don’t like to be scared or depressed when I read. But this is absorbing. When it gets tense, I just take a break.

The Burtons are at the Paschal golf team’s end-of-year dinner tonight, so I’m on my own. While they eat Italian food, I’m thinking about what I can do with a can of sardines. I have plenty because for a bit every time I put anchovies on the grocery list, Jordan came home with sardines.

Not a bad day. Not boring at all. In fact, a lovely way to spend a rainy day. We had a slow drizzle much of the day—perfect for those new plants that were put in yesterday. Not so perfect for Sophie who has declined to go out except for one quick and desperate trip.

Christmas isn’t what it was

The Alter grands with gingerbread houses,
Several years ago, apparently in Austin.

The other day I read a blog about memories of Christmas with four little ones and the logistics of figuring out equal presents and stocking gifts. I wanted to say, “Hold my wine!” When my four were little, their Jewish father was still part of our household, so we celebrated Hannukah and Christmas both. Do the math—that meant eight days of gifts for four children for Hanukkah, plus stocking stuffers for Christmas morning, plus “out” gifts (something big and showy that Santa left, unwrapped, under the tree—or beside it or at least in the same room), and then individual, wrapped gifts under the tree. In that day, before spread sheets, I made my own flow charts.

For some reason I remember particularly the year that the “out” gift was oversize (I mean huge) Tinker Toys out of which Joel built a life-size playhouse for the kids. And then, of course there was the year they discovered their unwrapped gifts in the guest room closet—it ruined Christmas, they confessed, but I guess every kid does that once. My memories of those Christmases are of hectic confusion, gleeful noise, lots of planning, a frantic Christmas morning, a huge turkey dinner—and sweet exhaustion at the end of the day. Nothing will ever be quite the same again, although when all sixteen Alters celebrated together when the grands were little, it was joyful, mass confusion.

Jean said to me tonight at supper, “Christmas just isn’t what it used to be,” and I replied, “Of course it isn’t. Things change. Life moves on.” This is the season when a lot of us, particularly those of us who are in our golden years, look back on the past with longing. I have several widowed friends who are lonely, missing their spouses. One wrote of the difficulty of filling time right now, and finally confessed, “I miss my soulmate.” Of course, she does, and it must be a bitter, deep down missing that I cannot fathom. I resisted the urge to say, “You have memories of a lifetime with your soulmate. I, long divorced, have no such treasure to call on at this season.” But I have a large family of children and grands—that is my joy. My point is that each of us comes at this Christmas memory business from our unique history. The memories I treasure are not the same as the days you may miss.

But my rather harsh message to Jean and others is, “Get over it!” Of course, Christmas isn’t the same. The world isn’t the same. Everything changes, grows, moves on. Life isn’t static. Part of growing old gracefully (and yes, Jean, you really do a beautiful job of it--sorry to use you as an example) is that things aren’t like they were twenty or thirty years ago. One of the compensations of aging, to me, is calling up memories and, yes, dwelling on them. Live in the past for a few moments. Treasure those times.

But also look around you. Count the blessings you have now. This year, I will not spend Christmas surrounded by Alters—it is what we call in the family an “off year” and my four and their families will spend the holiday with their in-laws: Colin and his family will be in Tomball with Lisa’s mom, our beloved Torhild; Megan and group are flying to Belize with Brandon’s father for some scuba diving and who know what else; Jamie and Mel will welcome Mel’s parents and Eden, home from school, but will spend their first Christmas without Maddie, who is going home with her boyfriend, Trevor—they were with us last year in Austin. Maddie’s family will be sad and miss her (and I know she’ll miss them) but that’s another example of things change: Maddie is building her own life. And next year we’ll have another Alter Christmas. (Why does that make me hear in my mind, “Next year in Jerusalem!”)

Jordan and Christian will welcome his family on Christmas Day, and instead of going to Tomball as I usually do on “off” years I’ll stay here. Jordan is determined to go to midnight candlelight service at University Christian—I am still waffling, but to do that would be to recapture a bit of Christmases past. We haven’t been here at Christmas for ten years, so this is important. But with flu, covid, bitter cold weather, and late hours, I may opt to watch it on my computer. That’s okay. That’s one of the choices I can make about my own celebration of Christmas this year.

Christmas this year, any year, may not be what it was, but for each of us, it is what we make of it. I wish you all the blessings of the season, the joys of the Christmas message, and lots of sweet memories and warm dreams. Hey, maybe a bit of eggnog too.

Some thoughts on marriage

 

Jordan and Christian
married seventeen years tonight

I have not been married for some forty years, so I am not of the school that thinks a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle (I once said that to a man only to see him slam his fist on the counter in front of us and say, “Right!”—five minutes later, he came back and sheepishly said, “I just got it.”) At any rate, my personal thoughts on marriage aside, it is a delight tonight to offer congratulations to Jordan and Christian on their seventeenth anniversary. As I said on them on a card today, they make marriage look good.

Christian staged their anniversary evening carefully—they went to the Amber Room, that secretive cave for cocktails at Wishbone & Flynt. Then it was home where he cooked lobster, shaved Brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes. In what I thought was a really sweet approach to family, they included Jacob in their dinner, down to the lobster tail (that kid who can be a fairly picky eater loves lobster, crab, and shrimp—he’s not a cheap date!). Meanwhile Jean and I ate chicken hash and artichoke hearts in a sauce, and I didn’t think either were my best successes. But they were okay, and we had lots to talk about and catch up on.

But the day’s events have made me think about love, marriage, and loneliness. My friend Babette Hale is facing her first Christmas alone after the death of her husband, beloved Texas columnist Leon Hale who died at ninety-nine last spring. She posted a column today about being alone and yet not really being lonely (The Book in the Drawer (bookcracker.blogspot.com) and, as I wrote her, it spoke directly to me, even though I am not a grieving widow. My ex-husband died some eight years ago, and while I mourned because of a lot of good memories, it was a far cry from losing someone you’d lived with and loved up to the moment.

I am of course at the age where a lot of my women friends, both close and personal and online, are being widowed. And I am watching how some handle grief. I admire those who can clearly grieve and yet carry on with life without a lot of dramatics. Jean has always been clear about that—she loved Jim deeply, she wishes he had not gotten Alzheimer’s and that life had taken them in a different course but given the reality she will carry on. And as she said to me tonight, she feels he is always with her. That is a kind of devotion that makes me almost envious, though there is one man from my past that I think is always with me—as I am with him.

Today I talked to an old friend who lost her husband recently. We have been distant since pandemic, okay really since trump’s election, but I felt the need to call her and voice my support, let her know I had been thinking of her. To my surprise—relief? —she sounded upbeat, hearty, laughed at a few things. She said, “I miss him desperately,” but she was carrying on with life, has already moved into a condo in the building where her daughter and son-in-law live. My admiration is great, and I am hoping we can renew a forty-year friendship.

Some women bleed all over the internet about their grief. I wish I could comfort them. I even wish I could understand them. I want to preach: get ahold of yourself, move on, treasure the memories but have some respect for yourself. Truth is, I am not in a position to do that, because while I have loved more than one man, some deeply, some on the surface, I have never lost a true love to death.

But loneliness I know about, even though I have the most supportive family network any woman could wish for—four children, their spouses, seven grandchildren. We spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, usually Easter together, and without their support, I would not be living independently in my cottage (hats off to Jordan who really makes it possible). But still, like Babette, I know that I am alone, that I am responsible for myself. It’s a strange time of life, and one in which I think each of us makes that choice: I will be happy, or I will be sad.

I remember my mom in her eighties (which I where I am now) saying, “All my friends have died.” I’m not quite in that sad a place, but it’s a problem for me to grapple with. And sooner or later, for most of us.

The treasure of friendship

This lovely orchid on my desk greets me every morning.

I’ve always known my friends are important and valued, but I’ve had two strong and different lessons in the healing art of friendship recently.

For years it’s been my custom to go to dinner with Betty on Wednesday nights, a ritual we both enjoy. Recently as circumstances dictated, we added Jean to our plans. This week we were to go on Tuesday, since I had Wednesday-night plans. But I begged off. I just couldn’t think about what I wanted to eat, wasn’t sure of the idea of a restaurant. Lately I’ve become a bit afraid to venture out for fear of an instant need for bed or bath.

So those two ladies brought their cheerful selves and supper to me. When Betty asked what I wanted I replied “Soup,” so she said Panera. I looked at their Tuesday soup selections and chose corn chowder, broccoli cheese, or tomato basil and asked to be surprised. So Betty and I had corn chowder—it was delicious, though I only ate about half.

We talked about a lot of things, and we laughed a lot, but we did not spend a lot of time talking about how I feel. Because I spend a lot of time idly at the computer, I told them bits of trivia they hadn’t heard. We talked about my latest possible/probable project—shh! Can’t tell yet—and I described the dog kerfuffle of the other day. It was light girl talk, but it made me realize a few things: I’m tired of eating alone, I get lonely in my cottage all day every day, and my imagination runs wild when I spend too much time alone.

Today was a totally different experience, and one I worried about. Friends from Houston were coming to take me to lunch—since I seem to wear out as the day goes on, we switched supper to lunch, These are people I’ve known professionally through Texas Institute of Letters and other connections and, more recently, on Facebook. Babette Hale and I share several interests—we both write fiction, though her is more refined than my mysteries, we are both interested in food, and we love dogs. I think that’s where we forged an online friendship—over my Sophie, and her lab, Rosie.

Leon Hale is a longtime (over sixty years) columnist for first the now-defunct Houston Post and then the Houston Chronicle. Now ninety-seven, he’s been retired for four long years—shoot, he lasted longer than I did. Leon’s columns were personal—whatever struck his fancy, interesting people he met, food, animals, you name it. He mostly wrote six columns a week, and he has a wide and loyal following. He has several collections in print, a cookbook memoir, and at least one novel, Bonney’s Place.

To tell the truth, he is a revered grandfather of Texas letters and together they are a high-powered literary couple. I was a bit in awe, especially of Leon, but we had a delightful lunch and the conversation flowed freely. When he looked at me and said, “They tell me you cook on a hot plate. Must be a big one,” I knew we were off to a good start.

We were gone to lunch for two hours, and I never once thought about bed or bath, never felt sick. Didn’t eat much but liked what I did. When they brought me home, I told them I’d felt better today than I had in a couple of months. The healing power of friendship, good conversation, and a little bit of food.

A lot of lessons learned these last two days. Now to digest them—I use the word advisedly