Egypt Buff

My mothers’ family was gifted with beautiful voices and the ability to play musical instruments. My Dad’s family, not so much, they sang enthusiastically but flat. I always wanted to play the piano so… when Alek took lessons so did I. This ended when we moved to Fresh Meadows as the house did not have the room for the piano. Alek still made music in the school band playing the baritone horn. The darn thing is a baby tuba. After the first practice session he played in his room.  He was quite a good player but really a baritone horn is LOUD.

Those days are long gone and a new generation has arrived. Little Katherine has a very good voice and rhythm looks forward to the music lessons she will start in the third grade. They start the kids with the recorder to learn the notes.  Tom is in the third grade and has started. I thought “This is nice.”  Well I was wrong.  Tom now must practice in the guest room. The piercing sound of the recorder is worse than the baritone horn.

My son Alek gave Katherine a recorder for Christmas.  Now I have  squeaking  coming from two recorders. Isn’t this just ducky.  Perhaps this is revenge for making him practice in his room.

I love music, recorder practice does not qualify.

This year I was bound and determined to get the shopping done before the 23rd of December. Well the snow storm has put a spike in my plans. It is still possible to get things done if the driveway is not iced up,  really we only have 3 or 4 gifts left to get. Today we will leave around 9 a.m. to try to get a parking space. Once we are at the mall we will not move that car until we have finished! I never liked the Walt Whitman Mall but today I think I love it.

It is cold and the snow and ice don’t look as if they will melt soon, but the driveway is pretty clear so we will go out today.  Meanwhile at least the snow reflects the sun light and made the first day of winter beautiful.

For the last 10 years or so we have lived in our son Jan’s house. The one job  Leo & I were always did, was put up and decorate the Christmas tree.  Last year health issues kept my husband from setting up our Christmas tree.   The tree was put up by our son and he did a great job. We always put tons of lights on the tree. The lights alone were beautiful, the ornaments were the icing on the cake. We are all healthy this year but Jan will put the tree up again.

Tom and Katherine are ‘helping’ Dad to do this and so a new generation will carry  on the tradition. Jan has decided to put fewer lights on this year.  That is to say that we will be using many, many more lights that sane people use, but not excessively more than sanity dictates.  Once the ornaments are on the tree we will again have the best tree anywhere.

Now I have no excuse. I must start the Christmas cookies and make the Coquito. Coquito is the Puerto Rican eggnog  and is so very tasty and so very easy. This is a combination too good to be believed,

My mother didn’t talk too much about the Christmas in Puerto Rico. The Three Kings Day celebration was more festive. We forget that Advent was (and is) a solemnn time in the church year.  Christmas was for church, after that the parties began. People would go house to house singing carols and getting louder and louder until they were fed. On Three Kings Eve children would leave carrots,  hay,  and water for the camels. In return the Magi would leave gifts.

Once we moved to the mainland Christmas was the holiday we celebrated. Perhaps the camels were too tropical for the cold gray north. I don’t have memories of specific Christmases just scattered images.  The old fashioned lights that looked like candles, if candles were clear glass with colored water and lights in them. Angels’ hair– fiberglass hanks that were teased out and spread into webs that caught the light and spread it into halos. Glass light bulbs that could go out and you knew which ones could be individually replaced.  The angel hair looked pretty but like all fiberglass it itched like Hades. Stencils for the windows that were filled in with a window cleaner called GlassWax. It made cute frosted images on the window and when you wiped it off the window was clean.

The one gift that I remember is my Dale Evans cowgirl outfit! It was the whole deal. A skirt, vest, shirt and best of all– the guns and holster.   As  tomboys my friend Marie and I usually beat the boys at every game, but Cowboys and Indians needed guns. When Marie and I got our outfits we were in kid heaven. Now we could play every game and beat the other side there too. So strange as I now detest guns.

I hope my kids and grand-kids have as warm memories when they are my age.

Seems too soon for the leaves to be tuning again. The summer that wasn’t has just passed and here we are facing winter again.  We have trimmed some trees so that the sun could get down to the grass but I really miss the masses of red oak leaves that are no more. Also, sadly, we had to cut down some mature oaks from the back as they were suffering from some sort of tree disease. Miss them too, but it’s better to cut them down than have them crash down and cause damage.

Our dear cousins from Oz is attending a medical conference in St. Louis in the next week. Wish we could meet them there, but too many things got in the way. They are real favorites of ours and Australia is so far away that St. Louis seem a good bet for a reunion. Wish things had worked out better.

The sun is trying to break through the clouds now. Hope it does. We are full up of cloudy rainy days. We need the sunlight a lot more than some rain right now.

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I sometimes wonder what my mother would think of the house we live in. When we came to the mainland my mom had sold her small house to afford the airfare. We moved into a tenement apartment and lived there for 16 years. When My husband & I bought a house in Queens Mom & Dad lived with us. Together we raised our kids. It was not always easy but really rewarding. Four adults ( 2 generations) raising 4 kids works really well.  At least it did for us.

Now my son and lovely daughter-in-law are doing the same thing. Hope it works out half as well this time. However, the size of the houses are very different as well as the size of the property. You could fit 5 of our old house in the space of our property.  Not to mention the number of rooms and bathrooms in this house. My Mom would be so very proud of all 4 of her grandsons.  I know I am.

Which leads me to my grandparents. My grandmothers could not be more different. One was passive aggressive and outlived her husband. Not a mean feat for a woman who had 10 children in the early 20th century. The other was a strong willed woman who RULED her family, even as she was dying from T.B. She died a few months before I was born.

My grandfathers were also very different men. I only knew my mothers dad as my paternal grandfather died 6 months after I was born. However I have heard plenty about him. He was handsome, well read, and catnip to the ladies. My poor grandmother how she could put up with such a womanizer? I most likely would have killed him. I would get off IF I picked a jury of wronged husbands.  He was sad he didn’t get to name me Marina. A name from one of his favorite books-War & Peace. My grandma said nonsense! That was the name of his Russian girlfriend  in San Juan. Who knows? We can’t ask at this late date.

My dad was really close to him as they went together on my Abuelo Luis’ job. He was an inspector of public works until he became ill. He then would read poetry to the ladies who worked in the tobacco factory in our town. This made a bit of money to supplement his state pension. It also gave him the company of much younger women.  No, not for that, for the delight in their company. He really liked women as persons. I guess that was the secret to his success with them.

My Mom’s dad was very different. He was married 3 times, and faithful to each wife. I had an uncle who I only knew in pictures. A dead ringer for my abuelo. My aunt Ileana is 3 years younger than I am and we get along great.  Cesario was a poet and racontour loved to have poetry competitions with his friends over a few drinks.  As he grew older he kind of became every kids grandpop. Evey kid in the town knew him and liked him. Whenever we met it was hugs and kises all around. I was his first grandchild and that was special to him. I just wish we saw each other more often.

It didn’t hurt that my mom was the only one of his children to stand up to him. She would argue with him to see who would give in first. Lord only knows who would win.  There are too many tales of those two arguing about this or that to sort it out, but they loved to argue with each other. Interestingly enough Mom was meek as a lamb with her mother. That must have been one strong woman.

I like Mocking birds their song is lovely and they are fun to watch. That said I am really ticked at the ones on our property. It’s O.K. for them to hassle each other, as two maniacs do all day long, but when they chase cardinals and purple finches away they have gone too far! Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done with these avian paranoids.

On a different but equally annoying subject, the rabbits are winning. My daughter-in-law has planted a veggie garden with corn, tomatoes, and sunflowers. The sunflowers were for Tommy who really likes them. Last year the bunnies ate well but we didn’t. This year we fenced the veggie patch. The rabbits bit through the fence. Three times.

No mater that we check it regularly they still bit holes in the plastic fence. They are neater than some people in their cuts. Perfect rectangles no messy tears or wobbly lines. They have eaten all the sun flowers and two of the tomatoes, now they have started on the corn. Next year the fence will be made of metal, no more nice guys!

This has been the wettest June in NY since the weather bureau started to keep records of the weather. I keep thinking about the deforestation of the rain forests. It changes the pattern of the principal air currents and causes all sorts of unpredictable variations in weather and climate. Enough already, I want sun and warm weather. This is June for goodness sakes

Any way, the birds are doing their best to cheer me up. So far we have seen purple finches, cardinals, blue jays, mockingbirds,crows, redtailed hawks and even one lovely meadow lark.  The purple finch is red not purple. They look like and  are about the size of a large sparow with red heads, necks, and backs. A family has taken residence near our bedroom window and wake me every day. I love the purple finch, it sings me awake every day. The song is lovely and it is sung just around the time we wake up anyway.

Next week is the last week of school that means lots more time with the grandkids. Love it.

This is  to be the week that relatives are in my mind. Got a call from my cousin yesterday, she and her sister are planning a birthday party for my uncle Ruben. He will be 80 years old in August.  Two years ago the lot of us Rivera s ( my mom’s family name) were in Chicago for Titi Cheya’s 90 birthday.  Now it’s Tio Ruben’s turn to be surprised. Family from all over the US & P.R. will be coming, there are a lot of us. My grand father had 4 daughters and 5 sons so there are a lot of cousins.

This now has me thinking of my mom’s  sister Ana. She was a school teacher and librarian in our home town school. I would stay with her when I visited Naranjito.  All my boys met her and loved her. She was the “wacky” sister. Not really, its just she took life light heartedly. She laughed often and loudly, but when you needed advice on ANYTHING she was the one to go to. Down to earth  and sensible, even wise.

When she was ill we were lucky enough to visit her while she was still home and up and about.  It was tough when she died and that visit to my home town was the saddest I’ve ever taken. Haven’t been back since. I miss you Titi Ana

Well it’s been some months since I have written anything but there have been a few things keeping me busy. So, now we begin again.

Lately I have had my great aunt on my mind. Pepita was my dad’s aunt. Unusual for Puerto Rican women in the 30′s she was a professional (teacher) when well brought up  upper class women  did nothing but get married and raise kids. She never married and kept her farms running and earned her own way as a teacher until her retirement. She even bought some farms from my grandfather, her brother, when the properties were in danger of going out of the family’s hands.

My Dad admired her and I adored her.  Even though we met only when she visited N.Y. or I was back in our home town of Naranjito.   She was way ahead of her time, proud, independent , and self reliant. She was the only person I ever met that had her own pre-dieu  in her house. Very devout.

As most Morales were,  she was a great card player. I mean she could have been a pro. I never played poker with her but I did make the mistake of playing bridge with her, her companion, and my Aunt Zoraida. Lord in heaven the woman knew who had what card after the first bid.  I prayed to be the dummy and God heard me. I was able to escape with my self respect intact. Of course the dummy doesn’t do anything but lay out their cards.

They played  for pennies and she managed to donate $300 to $400 to the parish every year from her winnings.  Now  remember she played against her niece who was a really good card player. All the Morales relatives were good at cards.  My uncle Jorge  made his living that way. Really, he was a bartender at a San Juan  hotel but made more money in card games. American tourists were a real revenue stream for him. I really miss him as well. Always funny, and with a smile that hid a really pessimistic world view. Another Morales characteristic.

Well that’s all for now, I hope to be better at this from now on.