Memories of Baskets & Eggs

There will be no Easter eggs, no baskets, no chocolate, no colored grass, no Easter egg hunts, no talk of the Easter rabbit in this house. Those days are long gone, but I remember them as if they were yesterday. I was reminiscing with my girls and asking them if they remembered any of it. They tell me yes, but they weren’t there for all the behind the scenes effort I put into pulling off a great Easter year after year. 

As only grandchildren on both sides of our families, my girls were spoiled for every occasion and birthday. I am as guilty, if not more, than anyone, of over indulging them their every wish. The fact that they were always so good and sweet and well behaved, only made me want to reward their behavior all the more. So when Easter rolled around, they got baskets from my mother in-law, filled little baskets with chocolates and colored eggs for the girls to find. When we went to my mother’s house, my brother had huge baskets with all sorts of little toys and even summer outfits in them. And when they woke up Easter Sunday, we had our own traditional ritual.

Every Easter I would cut out a big bunny head and color in the face. I made it a card and, inside the card, were instructions and clues to their Easter egg hunt. Every room in the house had a number of plastic eggs filled with chocolate treats. The little poem in the card revealed the number of eggs in each room so they could be sure to find them all. I would place the bunny card out side their bedroom door to find when they woke up. I must had hidden, with no exaggeration, at least 60 eggs of all sizes, all over the house. They loved the hunt for eggs more than the huge baskets waiting for them in the living room! I shopped for weeks before Easter, trying to find two of everything for their baskets. Little purple and pink stuffed bunnies, Barbie dolls, Slinkies, Jacks, Silly Putty, Jump Ropes, Stickers, jewelry, all sorts of little items I knew they would love. We sure made the most out of every Easter! After all the morning hunting and opening baskets and breakfast, we would get dressed and head over to my mom’s for dinner and spent the day with family. Those were special times. Times we took for granted when they happened and didn’t appreciate enough. It’s always the way in life, you never know what you got till it’s gone.

I would love to go back and revisit the days of Easters past, but that’s not the way things work. If you have young children and your parents are around to celebrate with you all, treasure these moments. Parents pass on, children grow up, and the holidays are never the same. “Used to be’s ain’t what they used to be,” as my mother would often say…and she was right.

Pictures and Memories...

 I dedicate this blog to my friend, Angela, who inspired me to write it.

When my kids were born I got obsessed with taking pictures and videos of them all the time. I wanted to captured every change in their growth, every facial expression, every holiday, the time spent with grandparents, their baptisms, communions, graduations and on and on. I took plenty of pictures and videos, but we never look at them. Time marches on and in this busy world we never have time to sit still and look through photo albums. A few special pictures hang on the walls of our home, and thousands are packed away just in case we want to look at them. But I realized, as great as pictures are, they are no substitute for our memories. A picture can only trigger a memory, not save it.

Our memories are not in those pictures. Our memories are in our minds, in our hearts and in our souls. They are not flat, two dimensional pieces of paper. They are vivid and alive, they have depth.  They are the keepsakes of our emotions, of our relationships, of the stages of our lives, of where we have been, of what we have accomplished, or what we have learned. They are a composite of who we are as human beings. Some pictures may be worth a thousand words, but memories are priceless.

Pictures are great, but they only capture a second in time. Memories are so much more than a picture. They last longer, they are filled with emotion and details that can never be fully represented in an image. That’s why I love blogging about my memories. I can paint a picture with words that no artist’s brush can come close to putting on canvas; that no Kodak moment, no matter how special, is going to reflect completely. As I write about my memories, they trigger other memories. I may only have time to write one a day, but at the end of a year I can have a book filled with my most treasured possessions. And as I get older, pictures will fade, my memory will fade, but my words will always be vivid and live on forever. 

When you show others your pictures, they will say, “that’s nice,” “looks like you had fun,” “you must be very proud.” They can only guess, based on their experience, what you are thinking and feeling. They can’t know what is behind the picture, what happened before it was taken or what came after, like your memories can. For example, I have a picture of my mother holding our first puppy, Caesar, forty-one years ago. It’s a great picture, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. If you read my blog about how we got that puppy then you would see the difference between a photo and the full memory. My mother never intended to get me that dog, but because my cousin made a remark that anger her, she got me the puppy for spite. When people read that blog, they can picture my memory themselves, as though they were there. If I showed them the picture they might say, “that’s nice.” (Link to Caesar Blog Caesar and Mom )

I have tons of memories that pictures could never do justice to. I have a picture of my daughter opening her ipod at Christmas. The picture doesn't show you her shock or tears of joy when she saw it because she really thought she wasn't getting one. Then there was the year my girls opened their Wii and the picture captured their momentary glee, because they didn't expect it since they were sold out in every store.  What the pictures didn't show was the fact that I called around and searched online for days, using a Wii tracker, to find it on Amazon before it was sold out again. Another year the girls got Toy Story characters that Burger King was selling weekly. I have a picture of them with their dolls, but not of my husband and brother eating hamburgers for four weeks trying to collect them all for the girls. Everything has a story that a picture cannot tell.

Not everyone likes to write, but I would encourage you to try to record your memories. I think it’s a wonderful way to preserve them and pass them down to your children and grandchildren. I realized how much my own girls never knew about me and my family until they started reading my blogs and the “memoirs” I wrote before they were born. Even back then, in my twenties, I realized that my memories would fade one day. Time has a way of doing that. One day I might even be looking at my mother and Caesar’s picture myself and say, “Isn’t this a nice picture,” and not remember what came before or after that moment in time. But now that will never happen because I have preserved the whole experience in words. And if I recall more of the details, I can revise whatever I have written. 

My children will be able to tell all the stories that I heard as a child to their children and grandchildren long after I am gone. I would have loved it if my mother and father had done that for my brother and I. But back then people didn’t write their memories down, they talked and talked and talked about them. And I’m glad I was listening and had the sense to save their memories for my children. We don’t have many old pictures of my aunts, uncles and grandparents so we don’t know how they looked as children. But we know who they are; my children “know” them without ever having met them, in the words and stories I took time to write down. 

Words paint a picture in a way that nothing else can. Preserve your memories with words. Pictures are great, but they fall far short of capturing the richness of the experience. 

Memorable Christmas Moments...

Sometimes when I think back to Christmases gone by, certain memories stand out amongst the rest.  We always plan to make every Christmas special, but somehow they take on a life of their own, especially when unexpected things happen.  I thought about some of my past Christmases and thought I’d combine a few to make a blog.  My memory ain’t what it used to be.

When I was a kid, we lived in a six family house on the second floor. In the two first floor apartments were the three cousins were grew up with.  My brother and I always got lots of presents, things from our lists that we really wanted, and they were all toys.  Santa did right by us every year!  And every year, when we were done opening presents, we would run out in the hallway squealing with delight, holding our favorite toy, and yelling what did you get for Christmas to my cousins.  My cousin Paul always said the say thing every year, “I got underwear.”  I thought he was kidding, till we got dressed and went downstairs, and there, under the tree, were open boxes of underwear.  I almost died laughing this morning when I thought of that.  I’m sure he got other things, but the underwear is all that stands out in my mind.

Then there was the Christmas when my older daughter, who was six years old and in first grade, came home complaining that her back was itchy.  I picked up her shirt to see what was clearly chicken pox.  I said, “Uh oh, you have chicken pox. You finally caught it.” She was horrified and very dramatic about it.  “Oh no! Am I going to miss the Christmas party at school?”  The Christmas party was only a couple of days away and there was no way she would be over it by then.  My heart broke for her as I tried to break the bad news to her and cheer her up at the same time. There was nothing to do about it, but let it run it’s course. She didn’t get too bad of a case of chicken pox, so she was able to enjoy her time at home playing, watching television, and listening to me say, “Whatever you do, do not scratch your face!” several thousand times.  

Another year I became possessed and decided to get a puppy for Christmas. I always loved Pomeranians, but didn’t do my homework.  Yes they are cute, but they are not couch potatoes like we are, but that’s a story for another day.  In any case, I bought everything a puppy would need, as their gifts and, of course, a puppy.  My friend kept it at her house until midnight, Christmas Eve.  Then my husband and I put him in the box and wrapped it before the girls woke up early in the morning.  When they came downstairs they saw a big box in the middle of the living room and didn’t know what to make of it.  Probably the little sounds the puppy was making in the box got them curious.  My younger daughter interpreted the sounds as chirping and thought there was a bird in the box.  I told them they would just have to open it and see.  Well, they were really surprised!  My younger daughter took him out and cuddled him.  My older daughter kept her distance.  The puppy squirmed so much she put him down on the floor and he promptly ran right into a wall and stunned himself, like they do in the cartoons. Once he snapped out of it, he began terrorizing my older daughter, who was up on the couch screaming with her insulated gloves on for protection.  My younger daughter was laughing at her sister most of the day and enjoying her new puppy the rest of the time.  We named him Rudolph, Rudy for short, after the reindeer. When my mother came over and saw Rudy, she told me I was crazy. Rudy spent a good part of the day trying to chew on my mother’s socks.  That was not helpful at all with her negative attitude.  We had set up a children’s playpen in the other room, for Rudy, so that we could enjoy part of the day. This way he would have a safe place to play, eat and sleep and, he could see us without getting into more trouble. 

Unfortunately, he managed to get in a lot more trouble over the years.  Rudy has chewed through a television cord, ate my wallpaper in the same spot two times, broke the arm on my dining room chair, destroyed the playpen, escaped from the house twice only to come back a few minutes later…I better stop thinking before I have a stroke.

It’s 13 years later and this dog still has not calmed down.  He still thinks he is a puppy and wakes us up at 5:30 am every morning because he wants to go out. If anyone out there is thinking of getting a puppy…do your homework first! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Gifts...

It’s been a very long time since I wanted a “gift” for Christmas.  For years my focus has been on buying to right gifts for everyone on my list.  My gift was seeing their faces when they opened their boxes and got what they wanted or were surprised and excited about what I picked out for them.  That has been enough of a gift for me.

I was thinking back on all my previous Christmases this morning.  A lot of preparation that goes into this holiday: the shopping, the cooking, the baking, the cleaning, the wrapping, the decorating…we get so focused on all of that so much so that we lose focus of the real meaning of Christmas Day, the birth of Jesus.  On top of that, we are so focused on all the things we need to do that, as mothers, we hardly have time to appreciate our loved ones.  

After I had the girls, we had Christmas at our house, so they could play with their new toys and everyone could enjoy them.  My parents and my in-laws came for dinner.  We were up early and watched the girls open their presents. The rest of the day I was in and out of the kitchen cooking and getting rid of dirty dishes.  Even though I tried to prepare as many things ahead of time as possible, it was exhausting trying to get everything on the table while it was all still hot, clearing the table, washing the dishes, then preparing for dessert and coffee.  The day always went so fast and by the end of it, when everyone went home, I was dead tired.  I really hadn’t been able to sit down and enjoy the day with everyone else, but my satisfaction came from knowing I had given them all a gift they may have taken for granted…memories.  I wanted my children to have happy memories of their childhood, surrounded by family, the way I remembered my Christmases. I’m not even sure if they still remember those Christmases.  I like to think they do.

I tried to instill the Christmas spirit in my girls from when they were very little.  Every year I would sit with them and we would make “gifts” for everyone and wrap them up.  I wanted them to get the idea that the best gifts were the ones that came from the heart, not the store.  In today’s world that’s not so easy to do.  How can a macaroni frame compete with an ipod?  

As the girls got older and wiser, making gifts was not an option.  Instead we focused on finding just the right gift for everyone, so that some real thought went into it.  The grandparents never needed anything.  So we decided that every year we would make a gift basket filled with all kinds of snacks they wouldn’t buy for themselves.  My mother loved pignoli cookies (pine nuts) which were very expensive, about $16 a pound. We would buy her a pound of those every year.  I also got her shrimp.  She would not buy it for herself and my father.  About a week before Christmas I would drop off a pound or more of jumbo shrimp.  Of course I would get yelled at for wasting money while she took the bag from me and started the cleaning process.  But that’s just my mother, she has to yell about the price of everything. But, I knew they would appreciate these delicacies more than any robe or sweater.  It’s not that they couldn’t buy them for themselves, it’s that they wouldn’t buy them for themselves.  My mom always had the idea that she had to get bargains when she shopped and also she wanted to leave us as much money as possible, so she denied herself many things in her lifetime for those two reasons.  It was impossible to change her thinking so I finally found a way around it.

I don’t have many people to shop for any more.  My husband rarely wants or needs anything, still we try to get him a little something.  Of course, I have my two girls, who never want anything so it’s up to me to hound them till they do.  My brother is a whole other blog.  Every year I have been buying him new clothes because he generally likes to dress nice when he goes out. This has been going on for a very long time.  I have gotten him shirts, pants, jeans, belts, gloves, sweaters, sweat shirts and sweat pants, jackets, socks, slippers, pajamas…and lots of them.  Yet, when he comes over every Sunday he wears the oldest, most worn out stuff he has in his closet.  It drives me crazy!  I know he has stuff in hanging in his closet with tags on them.  And still he refuses to get rid of these old clothes no matter how many new outfits I have given him.  Mind you his birthday is in February and he gets even more for that.  Anyway, I just have four people to shop for and try to please, and since none of them want or need anything, it’s not so easy.

Last week we managed to get a little something for my husband and my brother too.  My husband loves to read and we found two books we hope he will enjoy.  My brother is getting a more clothes.  I can’t say what it is right now because with my luck the first time he reads my blog it will be this one.  I got the girls a few things each, but didn’t succeed with the “big” surprise gift.  Maybe next year.

I hope you all get the gifts you want this year. But, in the middle of all the confusion and chaos, take a few minutes here and there to enjoy your family and the smiles on their faces and know that you are giving them memories that will live in their hearts for years to come.

Shopping For School…

It’s that time of year again when many of us early birds get out there and shop for school supplies and clothes for the kids…only I am done with that. Some of you may be reading this and feel envious of me, but I am sad about it. I actually enjoyed going out every August and stocking up on all the new supplies and picking out the new fall clothes and shoes. But my “baby” is in her last year of college and already has everything she needs. There is no need for me to go out to Staples for anything, except maybe a package of pens and some folders, if that.

I was in Staples the other day, looking around for some legal documents and saw all the sales on school supplies. I got distracted from my mission for a few minutes, picking up the new pencil cases and looking at all the colorful notebooks that I won’t be buying. My husband got me back on track. I found the legal documents, but they were outrageously priced! It’s just a few pieces of paper, but they wanted $11 for it. I am thinking I must be able to find them online somewhere, so I leave. I leave, but not before I have another look around. I see the colored plastic folders and have to pick a couple up. I decide, before I get carried away, to walk out the store. I am sad to leave empty handed, knowing I will probably not be returning any time soon.

There will be no shopping for clothes either. My “baby” has her business clothes and her scrubs already. She needed them for the summer already, it’s a 12 month program. She is all set. My older daughter is shopping for last minute things for her vacation. We may not even get to take our annual trip to the outlets, to walk around and window shop before having a nice dinner out. Time is running out for that too. Don’t mind me, I am just not ready to give up being a “mommy.”

I’ll be going through the same thing at Christmas too. I’ll pop into Toys R Us and look at what I would have been buying this year, if they were still little. That’s my personal secret tradition and I make my husband suffer through it with me. I’m sure he “loves” looking at the latest Barbies, the newest games, and the hottest toys. But he humors me anyway.

Don’t be too quick to wish away the school shopping trips. They are special times that won’t be coming again any time soon.