Christmas at our house

Once again the family gathered at our house.  I’m always honored and actually thrilled they want to come.  Erik arrived a week before Christmas.  Paul and family came four days before Christmas.  And the family participation was completed when Arne and family came from Palo Alto on Christmas Eve.  We all crowded into our house celebrating the biggest holiday being together.  It was the first time we were altogether since Erika’s graduation party in June 2024.  We were twelve for dinner on Christmas Eve as Justin, Arne’s friend joined the family.  After dinner, the tradition has become watching a movie.  This year, the group chose “Home Alone.”  We packed into the living room to watch.  After that, we brought out the air mattress and piles of bedding so Arne and family could find places on the sofas and the floor for Christmas Eve sleeping.  

Paul and Paula volunteered to make breakfast on Christmas morning.  It is different than it used to be when the grandchildren were little.  Now, they have to be woken up and prodded to open their stockings.  As all of them are now teenagers, sleeping late is their way.  We started opening the pile of presents one at a time around 9:30 and didn’t finish until after 12:00.  It is a time of that always falls into something close to chaos as we all sit around watching the festivities.  Around noon, Karna gathered up their gifts, the children and Arne and Boba, the dog and they depart for the other grandmother’s house for more presents and lunch.

Here, we all tired out from the intense morning of togetherness around the tree, we all found something quiet to do.  Paul and Paula made lunch for us and then they cooked dinner too as I was too tired to do it.  It is wonderful to have them step up and help out with the meals.  

This Christmas, I’ve enjoyed watching the grandchildren.  Each one is unique, fully themself.  Liam is clearly happiest in Bob’s shop where he goes as soon as he can.  This year, all he got for Christmas were tools for use in the shop.  Currently he is excited about the metal lathe, and is cutting threads in pipes.  Elsa was busy in the kitchen baking gingerbread cookies and making frosting and decorating the gingerbread men.  Usually all the granddaughters love to bake and decorate cookies.  But this year Elsa alone was busy doing this.  Sonja stepped up to help with dinner preparations.  When I called to Bob to carve the Christmas ham and he didn’t come, Sonja stepped up and carved the roast.  She isn’t afraid to take on new tasks and is happy to help out.  Her focus has been on gourmet food and we ate in the Japanese restaurant on 4th Street, in the Burmese restaurant in Palo Alto, in Saul’s deli in North Berkeley and Benchmark Pizza in Kensington.  This year, Erika was more reserved than before, spending much of her time reading a very thick book she brought.  She and Paul did step up and wash the dishes from the dinner and one night played music together.  I enjoyed watching Erika on a walk we did a couple of days after Christmas.  She ran ahead, bursting forth in a fast sprint to see how fast she could run.  The electronic road sign recorded her at 14 mph.  And the next time I spotted Erika, she was up a tree, way high up.  Funny girl.  

I love to see each of them doing what they love.  It was a great joy to be together with the family for Christmas.  On the 5th day of Christmas, very very early, Paul and family plus Erik departed for Palm Springs to catch some sunshine and explore the desert of California.  Bob and I sat in the quiet and remembered the highlights of the wonderful busy time we all had together and I wondered if I am getting too old for such excitement.  .

                                                

    

                        

Celebrating the Season

 This last week before Christmas week has been extraordinary!  We have been out for five out of seven days.  Fitting into this rigorous social schedule, I’ve managed to shop and stock up the larder for the coming big meals when the family comes to us for Christmas.  I’ve wrapped Chrisatmas presents and even gone to my exercise classes.  

The social rush began last Tuesday night when Bob and I went to the Berkeley City Club Holiday Party.  People were dressed up in holiday finery- sequins abounded along with holiday sweaters..  There was a piano player up on the stage tinkling out holiday tunes enhancing the atmosphere.  And a great holiday buffet dinner.  I enjoyed this Mixer more than the last one in that I had more reasonable expectations and just enjoyed chatting with women from my exercise classes.

Wednesday was a day off.  Thursday night we were invited to Sharona’s together with Audrey and Christos.  The lively conversation wound around a number of themes, but best was stories of their autumn trip to Europe.  Erik arrived from D.C. just in time for dessert.  

Friday night was a special Christmas party with church folks.  The house was over the top decorated with elegant decorations.  Everywhere I looked there were beautiful interesting  Christmas treasures from around the world.  I enjoyed spotting their Christmas ornaments which included little bubbling lit tubes which I remembered from my childhood tree.  Elena and Anthony had the whole party choreographed:  first was their singing of unusual Christmas songs, then eating and drinking, then we all sang Christmas carols together and finally we had a White Elephant gift exchange.  It was all good fun.

Saturday, we went to the San Francisco Gay Men’s chorus at Zellerbach on the UC campus.  I didn’t know what to expect but hoped for a good spirited concert.  That was it in spades!   I guess everyone expected that as the noise the audience made before the concert began was the loudest I’ve ever heard.  When the curtain went up, there was a large chorus of perhaps 150 gay men all wearing pink satin hats.  The first number, “Pink Christmas,”  flaunted pink with elves dressed in pink and even a pink Santa.  The music and show was exuberant.  There was a chorus of a dozen reindeer and three red-nosed Rudolph’s and a jingle (a collective) of a dozen Santas that juggled mirrored disco balls as they pranced around.  My favorite was their rendition of  Silent Night.  As the music began, the chorus began signing not singing.  It brought tears to see these men so perfectly in unison moving their hands so gracefully.  It brought tears to my eyes.  The second verse was even more powerful as the music group was silent.  So the whole hall was silent with 150 men signing.  They moved from that into a Lady Gaga extravaganza for their final number.  We enjoyed the concert very much.

From there we went to BART to go to Nancy and Larry’s for dinner.  Nancy called to tell us there was a power failure at their house.  That explained the delays we experienced getting in to the City.  Several stations were closed.  Getting off at 16th St., it was lit but a couple of blocks up the hill, it became very dark.  At one corner we passed a stalled out Waymo taxi confused by the dark.  Nancy’s house was lit with a variety of candles.  As our eyes accommodated, we enjoyed the ambiance the candles created.  Nancy was clever and cooked her dinner on the gas stove.  It was a dinner we won’t soon forget together with our dear friends.

On Sunday our socializing was over, we were busy with last minute details before the family arrived.  Karna invited Paul and family to their house in Palo Alto to celebrate Liam’s 13th birthday.  Erik, Bob and I also went down to give Liam a hug for his birthday earlier in the afternoon.  I had a nice walk to a park with Elsa.  Later, we greeted the tired family as they got here around 9:30 pm and our family Christmas began.  

                                                            

                                                         

Preparing for Christmas

Usually, I give over the whole month of December to prepare for Christmas.  This year, the preparation began even earlier.  The last Sunday of November, Thanksgiving weekend, Arne and family wanted to come over to have the kids decorate our Christmas tree. That’s never happened before. “Gulp,” I said, “Bob we better go to Home Depot after church and get our tree,” which we did. The family arrived mid-afternoon and Bob and Liam were soon working to prepare the tree to go into the tree stand.  Elsa and I began to look at the bins of my decorations.  When the tree was up, she and I decorated the tree.  It was a very sweet time.  She put on the lights and wrapped the gold ribbon around it as I pulled out ornaments.  She wanted to know the history of each one.  After a while , she said “you really have a lot of ornaments.”  I took that as a hint to stop talking so much and just to put on more ornaments. I’ve not had anyone help me decorate the tree for a long time.  So that was a thrill.  Liam had retired to the shop to work on the metal lathe which is his current passion.  Finally when he came up, just before they left, he added a group of bright red balls to the tree.  It was a wonderful gift to me to have them here to help.  This year our Christmas decorations were out early, starting my preparations.  I was happy to give them Advent calendars which Liam had requested.  

The weeks that followed have been wonderful.  Time to attend my favorite exercise classes at the Berkeley City Club.  I like to invite friends to come and experience my pleasures.  I invited a couple of swimmer friends to swim and have lunch.  I joined them in the pool and swam ten lengths, the longest swim I’ve done in probably more than 30 years.  We had a lovely long lunch celebrating a friend’s birthday.  But I was too enthusiastic and have suffered hip muscle strain.  I guess I have to remember how old I am. 

Music has been very present in our lives.  We have attended wonderful concerts, including a brass concert in the past weeks.  We especially enjoyed watching on zoom Erika  playing her clarinet in the Winter Wind Concert at Smith College.  

I started my Christmas baking and now sweet smells fill the house.  I do love to bake and so far I have made pumpkin bread, persimmon bread and a batch of cherry-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies for Arne.  I have collected most of my Christmas presents and now must just wrap them. .  Bob wrote the printed Christmas card and I finished writing personal notes on them all.  This year, I am inspired in my artistic endeavors from a class at the Berkeley City Club.  Some bright red Christmas card envelopes from last year’s cards caught my fancy and made a collage in my art journal. 

This week, we have four nights out for which I am excited.  Erik will be here in three days.  Paul and family come on Sunday and then the Christmas spirit will have arrived.   I am thrilled they still want to come and happy to make the preparations for them.  Christmas Eve, Arne and family come and it will be fun to have the whole family here.  I will be the first time we’ve been altogether since Erika’s graduation party in June 2024.  I look forward to special times, going to the Berkeley Bowl, cooking, baking and walking, if it’s not raining.  Preparing is a big part of Christmas celebration.  I’m enjoying taking it slowly and in stride.  Anticipation is the word for me now.  I look forward to making special memories this Christmas.  

                                                                        

 

Thanksgiving Rhythms

Thanksgiving has been one of my favorite holidays for a long time.  I love its focus on gratitude and eating together.  I love sitting together after the meal and just mellowing out chatting with those feeling the same.  Maybe it’s the amino acids in the turkey meat, maybe it’s the full stomachs, maybe it’s just the day and the company.  Maybe it’s the perfect blend of quiet and activity.

In recent years we’ve been invited to my friend Sharona’s for Thanksgiving dinner.  This year was no exception.  She lives in a small backyard house thats hardly bigger than a double garage and yet she somehow can handle having a lot of people.  This year, we were only fifteen at her long table.  Over the years, she has created a Thanksgiving manual in which she has written down what must be done each day and even the time it needs to be done to create a stress free Thanksgiving dinner.  So while she and her daughter Rebecca worked hard for four days buying and preparing the feast and setting her table, here at our house, it was very quiet.  I’ve been thinking about how important to quiet is.  It’s one of the gifts of being old, I think, really enjoying the quiet times and just being peaceful.  Bob and I went for a walk instead of eating lunch wanting to build up our appetites.  

Four o’clock was the time we were to arrive.  Sharona’s family made up two thirds of the guests and five of us we there as special friends.  I always feel honored to be included in a family tradition, especially Thanksgiving.  The noise level raised as everyone arrived and we all talked.  The young grandkids seemed just to bounce around adding to the general excitement

Sharona sets a beautiful table.  She has dried pressed leaves she’s collected on walks for place cards.  The pale green napkins matching the tablecloth are folded fancily and put on the plate.  As soon as we are seated, she has a tradition of naming those who have died in the previous year in the circle of our lives.  Everyone is invited to participate.  How special it is to remember them in the context of thankfulness.  And then the meal begins.  There are so many different dishes of food, I had to be careful not to take too much of any one thing lest my plate would overflow.  There were two plates of turkey, light and dark meat, cranberry sauce, gravy, roasted potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes tasting of bourbon, green beans with French fried onions on top.  Brussel sprouts shredded and spiced,  pans of stuffing, and biscuits.  The quiet returned as we all turned to our food and then slowly the conversations began again.  After dinner as the plates were cleared, people got up and moved around, changing seats to be near to someone they hadn’t yet spoken with.  And the desserts were brought out.  After the feast, somehow we all had appetite left for more.  Three of us had brought desserts.  There were two pans of persimmon pudding, one with raisins and one without, apple tartane, chocolate pie, pumpkin cheesecake and Tunisian almond cake, plus whipped cream and vanilla ice cream.  Such abundance! I know we all felt truly fortunate and blessed in so many ways.  In these hard times, it is especially sweet to be together focusing on each other and all of our incredible blessings.  Four hours after we arrived, we all piled up plates of left-overs and departed.

Back home, the quiet stood out in stark contrast  to the whole Thanksgiving feast.  As an introvert, a balance between activity and quiet is important to me.  I need the quiet,  just to be, to access my inner calm and peace and to reflect.   I find I’m slow to process happenings, finding their gifts only in my quiet time.  Thanksgiving day was a perfect balance of quiet and meaningful fun activity and then quiet again.  I’m especially grateful for that balance.  

Friendship

 Over the last month, I’ve been thinking about how important friendship is.  My friend Sharona tells me we are social beings and that studies show a lack of friends actually shortens life expectancy.  As I have grown older, friends seem more important to me than ever and yet it is harder to make new friends at my age.  Perhaps that is because as we age, we slip into being more isolated.  Two months ago I joined the Berkeley City Club because it is closer to home to exercise than Oakwood gym  in Lafayette which was a 10 mile drive each way.  I’d been a member of Oakwood since I recovered from my broken hip in 2009.  I remember when I asked my doctor what I could do to avoid further broken bones, he told me to join a gym.  He cautioned me that his wife told him one has to like the gym or you won’t go.  So I traveled around the area visiting gyms and sniffing their locker rooms.  Oakwood is where I ended up.  In the last couple of years, my “exercising” had mostly become chair yoga classes twice a week.  I had buddies in the class, friendly people I’d see each time.  We’d greet each other by name and over the years, they became my friends, even though we didn’t know much about each other.  On my last day in the class, I didn’t want to lose these long time buddies.  So I told Kathy, one of them, I wanted to keep up our friendship.  She did too and so we exchanged contact information.  A couple of weeks ago, I invited her over to see my garden and took her to lunch at my new gym.  Then she invited me to her house in Lafayette to have lunch and see her garden.  It is so fun to get to know the story of someone who is already a friend.  I feel lucky to have made the transition and to have Kathy as my friend.  

Now at the Berkeley City Club, I’m already getting to know the women in my fitness classes.  A couple of weeks ago, Denise, the instructor in one class had us go around the circle and say our names and what we liked best to do at BCC.  Last week I got invited to join a group of fitness buddies who have lunch together once a month as the restaurant.  The group is called the “Use it or Lose it” group referring to our fitness but also the $30 we are charged at the restaurant, encouraging us to eat there.  Here again, we went around the table introducing ourselves and telling one thing about us.  It was incredible to learn about the interesting lives they have had.  I already feel welcomed and a part of the BCC women.  I look forward to making new friends there.

But like the plaque on Bob’s wall says,  “Friendship:  Make New Friends, But Keep the Old.  The New Are Silver, The Old Are Gold.”  I am so grateful for my friends!  They are my treasures.                                                        

                                                                            

In the Presence of Greatness: Nobu Tsujii

My Music buddy, Sharona, and I went to our first of the season concert at Zellerbach on the U.C. Berkeley campus tonight.  First, we had a lovely relaxed dinner at my club.  Neither of us knew anything about the pianist.  We’d chosen the concert strictly for the program.  Our seats were the best in the house, in the second row of the Mezzanine on the left center.  We both had perfect views of the stage.  

The woman next to us primed us for the performance.  She and her husband had gotten tickets 5 months ago.  She came up from Cupertino and has held this performer, Nobuyuki Tsuujii, in awe for a long time.  He is blind from birth, that really sets him apart and also a winner of many international competitions.  We were excited to hear him.  The first piece wasn’t my favorite, but the second was Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29, the Appassionata.  As the musical emotions flowed, I wondered about how he could learn such a piece with so many notes.  I wondered about how his brain is wired, since the visual cortex takes up so much space and his would be rewired for touch and sound perhaps.  As he ended, he immediately stood up and the crowd roared and cheered.  The second half was equally amazing and he showed his virtuosity, playing the lyrical Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite and then a Prokofiev Piano Sonata.  As he played, I realized I was listening to a true genius, a savant Sharona called him.  His talent is astounding.  I wondered about how his parents nurtured his great gift and how his teachers taught this blind student?  

Best of all were the encores, he played three!  The first, the 1st movement of the Moonlight Sonata, left the crowd cheering and clapping wildly.  He came out again and played a second encore, a jazzy piece.  The crowd loved it and loved him and he smiled the biggest most beautiful smile, one so big it was easy to see from a distance.  When he came out the third time to continuous applause, he sat down and played Lizst’s La Campenella, a dizzinngly fast piece.  The crowd loved it and the applause never stopped.  But this fourth time when he came out, he put down the lid on the piano and we knew it was over. He loved the cheering crowd and the crowd loved him.  What a night!  What an amazing performance.  It’s one II won’t forget for a long time.  I’m going to watch the documentary made about him, “Touching the Music” on Netflix.  I know I was in the presence of greatness tonight!  Back home I studied a sculpture we were given by our friend in E. Lansing of a big ear.  He made a big one like this one for Stevie Wonder, another blind musician.  Now it will also remind me of Nobu Tsujii and the wonders of what human potential is.  

Expanding my Vision

 After my water aerobics class this morning, refreshed, I headed out to N. Berkeley BART.  I always love riding BART because among other things, it expands my worldview.  Today, a woman in a light purple T-shirt sporting the Golden State Valkyries logo on it came and sat next to me.  I had to tell her I liked her shirt because I liked the Valkyries so much.  The Golden State Valkyries is a first year team in the Women’s NBA based in San Francisco.  They play at Chase Center, like the Golden State Warriors.  I asked her if she went to their games.  She said yes, she had season tickets.  I told her I cried when I saw the first game on tv because the women were so strong.  My seatmate said, we ARE strong!!!!! All my life I’ve been told and under the impression that women are the second sex, less strong and in my head less important than the other sex.  But these women basketball players were beautiful and feminine and so very very strong.  The team did incredibly well this first year.  

I was riding BART to go to Oakland to meet Arne for lunch.  We were in touch by text when I got there and I walked the couple of blocks to the restaurant.  I got there first, at least I thought so, so I sat down and got a table.  I texted Arne I was in the restaurant and he texted back, he was too.  But I didn’t see him anywhere.  He said you’re in the wrong Mexican restaurant, I’m across the street.  So I got up and told the waiter, I was in the wrong restaurant and found Arne in his favorite place, Las Bonitas.  It’s a restaurant where everyone knows him, remembering him from when he worked nearby.  He ordered me fish tacos.  I was famished from my exercise, I guess.  Goodness me, did they taste good.  We had a nice time chatting about this and that and even the other thing.  I told him all about the Berkeley City Club and all the fun things I’m doing.  He told me about how his family is going to Tahoe for skiing the week after Christmas.  Then how he just got invited to play volleyball in Tucson, so the family is going there for a brief time just before school starts up again.  They’ll see my sister and her family.

Walking back to BART, he told me he really likes this restaurant not only because the food is good and they are so nice but because they feed homeless men on occasion by letting them eat for free.  I followed him into the BART building where it was like he was a rock star.  Everybody stopped and greeted him so warmly and me too.  He took me up to the 10th floor to see a CPS grad from his class who is Chief Counsel of BART.  We found her and she came out and greeted me so warmly.  I guess Arne’s charm is rubbing off.  She remembered how much fun she had in Marine Biology.  Yes, it was fun, but I reminded her you learned a huge amount.  The world down in Oakland felt very warm hearted and loving to me.  But, hey that’s just what Arne brings out in people.