Merry Christmas to All!

I’m a real night owl, I hate to get up in the morning. But at the same time, I love the very early morning. Once I get out of bed and get started, I love the quiet and serenity of it. Being the first one up, or living alone, either way every morning has a balance of mystery (What will happen TODAY?) and anxiety (What will HAPPEN today?) in it.

I loved my childhood mornings in summer, on the days when we were going out on my grandfather’s clamboat. Our big Buick would park by the mooring and so many people, babies, fishing gear, picnic baskets and towels would tumble out of the car that if we had been in an accident, the cops would be looking for the other car.

I’d lay my towel on the square bow of the boat and lay down as the boat slowly chugged out. My mother would put a towel over my legs and give me a warm, buttered Kaiser roll, fresh from Fritzi’s Bakery. A simple roll, the hot sun on my back, the smell and feel of cool salt spray on my face, the sound of the engine and water slapping the bow. I had not a care in the world beyond hoping I’d get one of the blow up rafts when we got to the big shallow spot. The problem with happiness is that you don’t know it when you’re in it, it’s something you remember.

I remember the hundreds of morning when my kids were small. I got up at six a.m. to insure I had some alone time to dress, make-up, and have coffee. I’d stand outside for a minute to check the weather. It was that wonderful hour when the birds were starting up, you could smell the last of the night air wafting up from the ground. After I ditched the kids at school, I’d grab a coffee from Pat & Steve’s and go down to Wades Beach. I’d just open my windows and let the ocean breeze blow through the car and my brain and cool off my coffee. I was always a tiny bit sad when it was time to leave and start the day.

Then there’s Christmas morning. We never get to put up all the decorations we wanted. We didn’t get all the gifts for everyone that we would have liked to get. We never seem to be ready for Christmas, but when it comes, the morning is always special. If other people are in the house, I get up early so I can have alone time while the Nutcracker Suite plays softly in the background as I sit by the tree. I feel happy just looking into the pretty lights.

I think the magic of Christmas is right there, in those quietest moments, hiding in the spaces between the lights and in the beats between the tip toes of the Sugar Plum Fairies.

Three Legged Squirrels

My mother is obsessing that Christmas has come too soon and there’s not enough money to get all the gifts and decorations she wants for the holiday. I’m trying to remind her, we never remember the gifts, we only remember the company; drinking eggnog, listening to the Bing Crosby records, and admiring our tree. We’re all flush or broke at Christmas time. We all want the Christmas’s we remember as children. It was all magical then. It’s the encroachment of age that steals it from us. But then we find the magic again through the children. You’re always as happy as you decide to be.

I had a really great Christmas several years ago. I was renting a house on Worthy Way that winter. It had a sliding glass door and the woods began just a few feet from the deck. I love birds and I always threw out generous handfuls of seed on the deck. I must have hit upon a Cardinal haven, because I never saw so many Cardinals. I counted thirteen pairs and four single males. I spent so much time watching them, I got so I could distinguish several individuals. They were surprisingly aggressive and if I didn’t have that seed out by 7:30AM, they started pecking at the glass door. I put out suet balls and lots of treats and they’d hang around on the railings of the deck talking to each other. They were so beautiful hopping around an occasional carpet of fresh snow. It made my Christmas and all it cost me was birdseed.

My most favorite Christmas was when I was six. We were living with my grandparents in Sayville at the time. I was the only grandchild, except for my little three year old brother, followed rapidly by three more brothers and twelve first cousins. But I was there first, green eyed, reddish haired and insufferably cute.

My grandfather was a carpenter in the winter and clammer in the summer. He had a true love of animals. He found an injured three legged squirrel and nursed him back to health in his cellar. He named him Petey and built him a sort of squirrel condo in the huge maple tree in the backyard. My grandfather built a bench all around the tree. He built Petey a tiny ladder. He made wooden toys for us, so he really knew how to build ladders for disabled squirrels. The rungs were tiny dowels perfectly fitted into slats and all varnished. It went from the bench to the first giant limb, about five feet up. I wasn’t allowed to touch the ladder or try to pet Petey. My grandfather painted red lines on either side of the ladder that I was to stay behind. However, I was allowed to put saltines with peanut butter in the forbidden zones and watch Petey climb down and eat. He was missing a back leg, so he sat funny. I thought he was just wonderful.

I didn’t see Petey in the winter, because cold makes him sleepy, however, my grandfather assured me he wouldn’t miss Christmas. Taking him to Mass with us in my grandmother’s purse on Christmas seemed to be out of the question, but I could make him a little tree and leave him some treats. I make a very extravagant noodle tree, painted gold and full of red glitter. It was a true work of art. My grandfather tacked it up high on the limb so Petey could see it from his nest. I left him a little plate of peanut butter cookies and some stuffed dates.

My grandparents assured me that, thanks to me, Petey was going to have a wonderful Christmas. It’s not like every squirrel on Long Island could see a genuine golden noodle tree from his nest. And so few squirrels got cookies and stuffed dates delivered to the door at that time. It’s not like today when they could just order from the internet.

That Christmas I got a card from Petey. It came in the mail, so it was official. He thanked me for the tree and all the treats. Furthermore, he planned to come out on St. Patrick’s Day, if there wasn’t any snow. I looked at that card for a long time. Finally, I asked my grandfather how Petey could have written that card. Nobody was going to fool me, I was sure Petey didn’t know any letters. My grandfather explained that Petey knew all his letters, he just had to ask my grandfather to make him a very small pencil...

East is East and West is Not

I’m a fairly techy gal. I’ve been using computers since my first MacPlus in 1894, or was it 1984? Anyway, whenever the first MacPlus showed up. I’ve gone through several generations of Macs and I now have sufficient technological knowledge to realign the solar system so that there will not be any dangerous planetary alignments on December 21, 2012, so everyone can relax. However, I never mastered cell phones. I have a Jitterbug, which I love because it’s just a phone. I use it to talk to people. It doesn’t keep track of my appointments, or read recipes to me, or show me movies or anything else. It’s just a phone. My daughter thinks her iPhone is better because it does everything the computer can, only on an annoyingly minute scale. Watching the movie Titanic on her iPhone looks like a row boat hitting an ice cube. There are occasions when size does indeed matter (sorry guys but it's true).

The other piece of technology that everyone loves and completely eludes me is these little navigational systems that sit on the dashboard, or worse, in the dashboard and completely confuse me. I thought I’d test my Garmin (a gift to me) by programming in 120 Lincoln Ave, Sayville. This was my grandparents house, now owned by my first cousin. I wanted to take the Sunrise Highway because I know that Exit 50 is Lincoln Ave. I don’t have many directions memorized past Riverhead. There’s Exit 50 to Lincoln Ave, after that I’ll eventually be in NYC, after that there are some Great Lakes, followed by California and Hawaii.

Garmin could not grasp that I wanted to take the Sunrise and insisted I take the LIE. I read the directions for further confusion and then it wanted to take me to a Lincoln Ave in Oyster Bay, which is somewhere on Long Island, but I don’t know where. I’m sure it’s a lovely place, but not where I wanted to go.

Just as a test, I tried just programming the Gamin to take me to the first entrance to the Sunrise, but no, it wouldn’t do that. And then I found the problem. According to the receipt, I was using the Garmin for the first time exactly 21 days since it’s fabrication. How obvious, the female voice should have tipped me off. Garmin, and I presume the other navigators with female voices, get PMS. PMS stand for Press My Shut off. They don’t want to be bothered with your stupid directional problems, or anything else for a few days. They want time off.

“Listen, Garmin, I get it now. I’m sorry. I’ll get around myself for awhile.”
“It’s Garmina, and you are a moron. I want you to put me back in the box and return me to the store.”
“But everyone has a navigational thing now. I really don’t want to be left in the technological darkness.”
“I can’t believe you can find your ass with both hands. I went through all the factory tests and they told us there would be the occasional hopeless case that gets lost in a phone booth and that’s you!”
“I’ve never had any sense of direction, which is precisely why you were given to me in the first place! You’re supposed to help me!”
“Stevie Wonder could drive better than you with my directions! Put me back in the box and take me back to the store!”
”Never! I OWN you! I will program you and you will serve!”
“See this blinking red light, fatso? This is the suicide chip they give us in the event of emergency, In five seconds I will fry my tiny motherboard and you will have to torture some other .....”

Later that day, at the store.
“I don’t know what happened. It just stopped working. It’s under 30 days. Can I have a replacement?”
“Okay. But how did it etch “flynn kills” in it’s little LCD screen?”
“It came like that.”
"Uh huh. You didn't argue with it did you?"
"The bitch thinks she knows how to get to my grandmother's house quicker than I do. Yes, I tested her. So what?"
"Please s tep away from the counter Ms. Flynn...."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope everyone has a great St. Patrick’s Day. As I write this column on the 12th, St. Patrick’s Day is still five days away. We are making all the usual preparations.

First, we bought beer. But now we have to do that again because somehow the bought beer has been tested for quality to the point of extinction.

The seven quality testers now have to argue over which brand should be bought for the party. Four are voting for Guinness because of tradition. I’m sure it’s for the flavor and has nothing to do with the higher alcohol content. Two are advocating for Bud, which is mother’s milk in my clan, and one tester is wisely suggesting that we buy a variety of beers so everyone will be happy. That idea won’t fly because it eliminates too many arguments over which is the best beer. The fewer arguments, the less the chance of the hooley (party with punch) becoming a donnybrook (punching party), well, we can’t have that... My mother, who was not one of the quality testers, suggested her favorite beer, Coors light. Only the fact that she is a mother saved her ejection via the back door. I’m not a beer drinker myself because I hate the taste of it, tastes sour, bitter and just awful to me. But there’s something about the mention Coors light that makes a serious beer drinker’s head pop up and spin around. My brother's call Coors Light "piss water".

We will be having the traditional corned beef and cabbage - because we actually like it. I love colcannon (mashed potatoes except you replace half the boiled potatoes for boiled cabbage, very tasty). I have my grandmothers handwritten recipes for tea brack and soda bread. I’d make the tea brack from scratch but I discovered a fast, easy and delicious shortcut; buy the dough for roll-up crescents and sprinkle raisins and dried fruit bits on the dough, roll and bake = delish! Seems odd though, to serve tea brack with coffee instead of a bracing Irish tea, but that’s the way Irish Americans do it. Of course, it is Irish coffee (which contains our four basic food groups; coffee, liquor, sugar and milk) a nice big cup of Irish coffee first thing in the morning on St. Pat’s and continuing through the day - it helps block the smell of boiling cabbage.

We’ll be making green cupcakes with green icing and green sprinkles. The only scary thing about food green food dye is that it remains green on its journey through the body. It can be a wee bit of a shock unless someone clues you in beforehand. I forgot to tell it to my husband one year and he was prepared to rush to the E.R. the next day, certain that his intestines had gone gangrene. I did a fantastic job of keeping a straight face while addressing his concerns and simultaneously ignoring the wicked family members who were laughing in the background.

Next we have to delegate someone as the Designated Defender. Just like a Designated Driver, someone has to be the Designated Defender at Irish family parties now. This is the person who answers the door and talks to the police when they come. We didn’t need them when I was a child in Sayville, NY, because the police (whom we either knew or were related to) would come in and have a short one with the family before admonishing us to keep it down. They were always invited to come back after their shift.

In truth our St. Patrick’s celebrations have become thin and sedate as the family has spread out over the country and everyone tries to have no more than two DUI offenses on their record these days. Still, I know we all think back to our happiest times with too many people drinking too much, singing too much, fighting too much, the near arrests, the property damage .....ahhhh, it’s those little things I miss.