Jim's Jottings, December 1

Jim’s Jottings for December 1, 2017

Tales of Holiday Repasts-passed… When we arrived in Morgantown 37 years ago, we left the small remnants of family in Oklahoma, and California. Time passed and with it both sets of parents, my two aunts and a cousin or two of Bonnie’s lineage. Only once in these 37 years did we travel in winter to have Christmas with family…that would be the year before my mother died (1983). It came as quite a revelation to arrive in West Virginia and find friends and students by the score that were born, raised, married, divorced, educated and pretty much stayed put for their careers…right here, or in some tiny, remote village in any direction, and everyone, everyone knew what county they were from. It still amazes me how many people trek to Morgantown from Preston County, Bruceton Mills, Reedsville, Deep Creek, et al, to work.

This year, I found myself reminiscing about those family get-togethers that most of us had to attend. We saw the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s fine production of “The Humans,” a week or so ago. The plot unfolded in an apartment in New York inhabited by a young, unmarried couple, welcoming the girl’s sister, mom, dad and grandma…for Thanksgiving. Chaos and family drama ensued, as it so often does. Herewith, a few whisps of memory from Jim and Bonnie…

Bonnie’s family lived in a big old house in Alhambra, California. At one time, grandparents and siblings lived nearby, so the tradition developed that the extended family would gather at one of three houses on a regular rotation. The really wonderful thing was that Bonnie’s grandad and her father, were guitar-pickers and after dinner and/or football, they would all gather in the great room and sing old songs. When I came into Bonnie’s life, I got to spend only one holiday with these wonderful folks. Bonnie’s parents were FDR liberals, while her mother’s two local brothers were staunch to really right-wing republicans, so one year, with fisticuffs about to start, Mama Harriet-all 5 feet-two of her, wedged herself between her two very tall brothers and decreed that from that moment on, there would be NO POLITICS AND NO RELIGION          RAISED on pain of banishment! Singing and football resumed.

We had been married less than two years, lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Alhambra and decided to host as many of our family members as could or would come to us for Thanksgiving dinner. This included my mother and dad, grandma and aunts and an uncle, Bonnie’s mom and dad, a cousin or two and our two cats. We figured out how to seat 12-14 people around one long table that took up our dining and living areas. We had acquired one of those commode-type things that, when you opened the doors, revealed storage and the mechanism that telescoped out as a kind of roll-top desk rolled out to make the table top. We cooked like mad, and, to our great surprise, everyone was on their perfect behavior and seemed to have a really wonderful time.

Other family dinners on my side…not so much. My step-dad had 3 sisters and two dead brothers, and his mother was the matriarch. Each year, we traipsed to one of the sisters or to grandmas for one or both holiday dinners, everyone bringing pot luck and the host providing the bird. One year, my dear aunt Win had spent hours preparing one of those layered Jello salads that was contained in a many-tiered mold, intended to be upended on a serving plate and trimmed with holly and such. Well, I was given the task of putting it on the serving plate but no one had instructed me about how one would release the Jello mold, whole.  I was happily spooning the Jello into a bowl when my aunt came in and started shrieking bloody hell! Dad came in ready to kill something and just broke into hoots of laughter, at which his sister proceeded to beat him without mercy with a large wooden spoon. Ever after, the story of my ruin of the Great Molded Salad was told to great merriment at future dinners. One of the other sisters was quite a dreadnaught. She and her mother were both insanely talented seamstresses/dress designers, but aunt Ella also considered herself a true chef, so, each year, when the table was loaded down with the potluck, she would ALWAYS speak up after surveying the table and say, “Well, I just can’t think what is the best thing on this table unless it’s MY cauliflower and eggplant casserole!” Dad really, really wanted to kill her…

Unlike Bonnie’s sports-mad family, my folks cared nothing for such things, but, one year, dad and uncle Paul, a crusty truck driver, got into a Jalapeno eating contest. Both of them grew their own—it was California—and both were the kind of macho men that would sooner die than admit they were beaten. So, they started offering each other these tiny little peppers and chomping them down like popcorn. It didn’t take long before both men were dripping sweat, faces beet-red, tears rolling. After just a few minutes of this, all the women had gathered to watch as, finally, both men at about the same time tried to ask for water or cold beer or anything…but both voices were gone and the wives basically dragged the two guys into the nearest bathroom, turned on the shower—cold—and pushed them in together. My mom and aunt Win shouted that they could come out once they had regained their sanity, or voices. Win observed that she hoped they didn’t get the crazy idea to come out naked!

That one time we drove to Oklahoma to spend Christmas with my mother, step-dad and aunt Chris in the old family house, the drive to and from Morgantown was, itself, an adventure because of the fierce ice-storm that hit the night we spent in a motel west of Memphis. We actually made it onto the road the next morning, the highway was pretty much OK, and every single blade of grass, every wire and fence was coated in ice that all looked like diamonds gone wild in the bright, cold sunlight. You’ll have to take my word for this awesome sight because my lovely Minolta camera was frozen in our trunk for 3 days. My mother, by then, was suffering from several smoking-related cancers and had been under the usual treatments, but it was obvious that her days were numbered, so word got around that we all had to come home this one, last holiday.

The old house in McAlester, OK, was one of those Sears houses from 1902, built to house my maternal grandparents for their whole life together. They were both gone, but my aunt Chris had nursed grandmother and then stayed on in the house, with my folks living upstairs in what had been an apartment. They moved back home for mom’s treatment from their retirement home in Arkansas. What stays with me from that visit, other than the piercing cold leaking in through every window and crack, was the work mom and Chris had done all year, making hand-crocheted and needlework ornaments for the tree. Many of the ornaments had some special significance or symbol from our lives…dates and shapes and such. The day after Christmas, mom had us all in the living room and took the pieces off the tree and handed them to those they were meant for. Each one of us must have gotten 15-20 of these little gems. The dinner? Well, that’s another story. My mother was a great cook, but one year, maybe when I was in college, she just came into the living room and announced that she had cooked her last Thanksgiving dinner and that dad had better be prepared to take us out to eat! Christmas remained a potluck for a few more years. After that final Christmas, I saw mom one more time, but had to get back to my job, so she passed in the late spring, her hospital room filled with daylilies and irises from grandmother’s garden. At her funeral was the last time I saw my step-dad, who had been devoted to her and just kind of died inside when she died. He lasted a miserable five more years.

Bonnie and I had to establish our own traditions after our parents had passed away. My adoptive father, PapaJack Held, loved going to local inns in the country, so most years we would find these places and get to one of them, weather permitting. The Summit Inn, Penn Alps, and a couple other old places that would decorate and welcome guests. The Silver Tree Inn at Deep Creek, and even the lodge at Alpine Lake. I’ll bet you could add to this list. What we really enjoy doing is recalling the past, sometimes with photos taken or just with the verbal memories we bring back to life…people we’ve known and loved, people we’ve known and lost, pets, whose hi-jinks still bring a chuckle. Our little church always has a Thanksgiving service that includes time for expressions of gratitude that rather sets the tone for the day.

We hope your recent holiday was warm, loving and filled with new memories, and we wish for you all the joys of the holidays to come for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa—whatever is on your calendar. Don’t forget to give the gift of YOU to each one you name friend, relative, spouse, son, daughter and this town and this world. Your light is needed.

Just Jim [with Bonnie]