Holidays For All of Us

It hasn’t happened for a few years, but this year, one of my children asked me if I missed celebrating Christmas. The short answer to the question is, no, I don’t. But, naturally, there’s more to that answer.

In the span of my life, I spent my early formative years in the nursery of the First Presbyterian Church in Mansfield, Ohio. I sang in the church choir because my best friend’s father was the choir director. And I loved the music.

Then I fell in love with a Jewish man whose father lost many of his siblings – and parents – in the Nazi extermination camps. And I began an exploration of his religion and practices. Before we married, I studied and learned how many of the underpinnings of the rituals of our Judeo-Christian heritage grow from the same core belief in an omnipotent being we humans have named God.

I easily and readily embraced the practices that have now informed the past forty years of my life – Friday night meals with blessings and candles. Holidays that mark the seasons of the calendar, and an amazing matzo ball soup taught to me by my mother-in-law.  

My father understood the pursuit. We had long conversations about what it meant to become a Jew. He worried about how our future children may be treated in a world that, overall, doesn’t welcome differences or diversity. But his overall religious philosophy was centered on how people behave rather than what people say they believe. Rather than a rejection of my childhood, he recognized my conversion as an embrace of a meaningful pursuit of building a family intent on repairing the world, or tikkun olam.

“Mary Margaret,” he always called me. “There are good people and bad people in this world of ours. What’s important is how we treat each other because that’s where the meaning of life lies – in the spaces between us and the acts we perform.”

In that pursuit of treating others well, there are many traditions of this season I hold to. I still pull out my childhood cookbook with my 12-year-old handwritten cookie recipes from Mrs. McConnell. And I still send texts to Janny and Julie to let them know I’m making one or another of them as a treat for neighbors. In this long night/short day part of the country, sharing a batch of sweetness is always a good plan.

I still love Christmas music – playing on most of our radio stations throughout the house. Of course, many of my favorites – Silver Bells, White Christmas, Let it Snow, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – all were written by Jewish composers.

So, do I miss all of the hustle and bustle of the heavily decorated, well-tinseled expectations that fuel so much exhaustion for so many at this time of year? Not at all.

Instead, I relish this period of time when this country slows down, emails stop, and there’s a collective exhale. We celebrated the weekend with takeout Chinese and many movies.

And I respect the true joy so many of my friends and family will find in the meaningful activities surrounding the birth of a Jewish infant who became the inspirational leader for one of our globe’s major religions.

Achieving 66

Although this is not an image of me and friends, it is an image of how I plan to age - with lots of color!

Like most of you, I’ve spent my life merely becoming a year older after each full rotation of the earth around our sun. Until this year.

This year feels more like an achievement.

Achieving a year older rather than merely becoming a year older is a recognition that not all of my friends, family, or peers will get to experience their 66th year on this rotating planet of ours.

Over the past few years of stressful change, we’ve lost a few dear friends. Not to COVID. Those friends recovered. These lost their lives too soon to cancer – that damned disease that is stealthy, irrational, and just evil.

So, I planned to spend a week celebrating the gift of aging - and in the midst of all that, our sewer pipe collapsed.

We discovered the problem during our annual sewer line clean out by the company called Ron the Sewer Rat. No joke. These guys are always amazing. Always on time. And have been our preferred providers for 30 years. They found what appeared to be a partial collapse, and told us to quickly get on the calendar by one of the repair companies that specialize in these repairs.

Calls to the city Water and Sewer Department provided helpful and timely assistance and we got on the schedule for some time in January. As part of that process, we needed three bids with one of those companies requiring a video of the length of our sewer line to the street.

Two weeks after discovering the partial collapse, Ron the Sewer Rat returned to videotape our sewer line. If you haven’t seen a video of the 90 or so feet of a sewer line, it’s a combination of fascinating mystery and disgusting recognition that fortunately doesn’t last too long.

And that’s when we got the bad news. The partially collapsed pipe had given way and had moved into an emergency situation. This wasn’t just a small collapse that granted time to plan for future repairs. No. This was a full-on collapse that unknowingly threatened an equally full-on sewage back up into the basement we’re renovating as an exercise room for our aging selves.  

The calls to the city took on added urgency and were met with rapid help. We spent 48 hours in that difficult space of using little to no water that would wash down our pipes. No showers. No laundry or dishes washed. And very, very few flushes.

And then the trucks and the plumbers showed up with backhoes and jackhammers, and within 6 hours of breaking open the street, the flow returned to our pipes.

I’m finishing the week of achieving 66 with a greater sense of gratitude and recognition that although we may encounter sewage in our lives, there are always people out there who can provide help when called on.

And I’m grateful to still be here to need their help.

Gratitude for Memories

A Thanksgiving at Grandpa’s Farm with Aunt Ruth, my mom, Cousin Dick, Grandpa, Cousins Bill, Susie, Bruce, my brother Tom, and me - Dad taking the photo as usual. (Don’t you love my mom’s glasses?)

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving weekend. The ingathering of family and friends, the prescribed menu, the tryptophan-induced naps, watching the parade with the kids checking out flyers for Black Friday sales… all of it.

And this year, I’ve been reflecting on all of the changes I’ve experienced with the holiday over my ever-lengthening life – everything about it comforting.

We never actually experienced the Norman Rockwell image of the Thanksgiving meal, with all the dishes arrayed perfectly on the table and well-dressed people sitting still for the group photo. There was always a “Wait! I forgot the brussels sprouts!”, or a “Weren’t you going to bring the green bean casserole?”

My earliest memories were Thanksgiving at Grandpa’s farm with all of the Alleshouses. Too much food made it onto the table, the women did the dishes while the men went to the living room before rousing singing at the piano, with mom insisting on just one round of the Halleluiah chorus.

The middle years were with my mom’s family, usually at the Pcioneks. Those were louder and less musically so. Yet equally chaotic – still with the warm feeling, however.

There were a few lonely Thanksgivings where I felt too busy or had to pick which time to come home to my family. One was in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and one was at college in North Carolina. Those are the only two where I remember feeling sorry for myself and resolving to never, ever miss an opportunity to be with family over that long weekend.

Once I became the mom, I did everything I could to ensure my family could make it here for the long weekend, and that friends had a seat at the table. It turns out, the only critically important ingredient for a good Thanksgiving weekend is that – family and friends.

I used to think it wasn’t the holiday without turkey, stuffing, and the rest. It’s not that at all. I’ve done dozens of turkeys with stuffing in the bird and out. Mashed more potatoes than I care to count. We’ve had gourmet versions of recipes best followed from a soup can. And we’ve even ventured into other cuisines like Italian.

It doesn’t matter what the menu is, as long as it invites people to the table to gather. And this year, I’ll gather up memories of Thanksgivings past. Drop notes, even texts to family in other parts of the country. May even do a Zoom with a few.

And we will gather – with a few on Thanksgiving Day, more on Friday, then a few more on Saturday evening for the rare event of Hanukkah beginning the next day – an opportune celebration of “Thanksgivukkah”.

Whether it’s turkey and pies or latkes and dreidels, I wish all of you a warm, comforting weekend of making memories with family and friends.

Our Ghost, Kitty

A story for Halloween, 2021 - Photo by David Dibert on Unsplash

This summer, while sitting on our porch, I heard crunching twigs behind me and noticed my daughter’s eyes widen as she loudly whispered, “Mom. There are two men walking across the lawn.”

I stood up, turned around, and saw that, indeed, there were two men walking with focus and intent toward us. So, I did what any Minnesotan would do, and asked, “Hi. Can I help you?”

 “Do you mind me asking – how long have you lived here?” said the elder of the two.

An unexpected question, perhaps, but he seemed friendly enough.

“Well – we’ve been in this house for 30 years now,” I replied.

“Oh – wow,” he said. “Well, my name is Tim Dunn and…”

Before he could get out another word, Jacques and I both said, “Ah – you’re one of the Dunn boys.”

When we first moved into the neighborhood, we had heard stories of families current and past and all of the houses up and down the block were referred to by the most notable families who had lived in them. Even today, we still do that. There’s the old Eckley house, the old Cooney house, and the old Phillippe place evoking memories of times past. And we had bought the old Dunn house.

The man on the lawn smiled and nodded, saying, “Ah so you’ve heard of us, then.”

Indeed, we had. In fact, there had been two generations of Dunn boys in the house – both the father and uncles of the man on our lawn, and then he and his brothers took up residence sometime later. And now, here he was with his son visiting town to show him where he had spent his early years.

“This is probably going to sound crazy, but my father died this past year and since he passed, I’ve been thinking a lot about his ice skates. You didn’t by any chance find any skates when you moved in,” he asked. “I just remember an old wooden box in the attic where my father and his brothers kept their skates. And me and my brothers would stuff them with socks so we could skate over at the park.”

Well – 30 years is a long time. We had done a lot of living and made a lot of changes to the house in that period, but there was a vague memory of the dark reaches of the attic eaves that could, perhaps, have hidden treasures.

Jacques took this as an interesting challenge and we learned the Dunns were traveling on west of town, but would be back through Minneapolis by the weekend. So, we exchanged numbers and said we would text if we found anything.

Within a couple hours of their departure, Jacques had scrounged in the attic, found the old wooden box, bravely reached in to the dark expanse, and found the Dunn brothers’ skates – all three pair.

That, my friends, isn’t the best part of the story. It was what we learned when Tim and his wife returned to gather up the skates a few days later that makes this a good Halloween tale.

After sharing memories of his early childhood, of his grandfather who had originally owned the house before selling it to his father, Tim then told us of the grandmother he never knew, Catherine Dunn, or Kitty, as she was known.

To be fair, we had heard stories of this ill-fated Mrs. Dunn since we bought the house. In fact, at the closing in 1991, as we lay down our pens, the prior owner spoke up and said, “Well, now that you own the place, I should probably tell you about the ghost.”

She informed us that there was a woman who appeared while they were doing renovations on the place. One night, as her partner went to get a drink of water, he had seen a woman standing in front of the cabinetry waiting to be affixed in the kitchen. The glowing woman dressed all in white stood and faced him with a quizzical tip to her head.

He simply answered the implied question by telling her that the cabinets would upgrade the kitchen, and that they were hoping to have the place renovated for a family to buy within the next year. At that, the glowing woman nodded, smiled, and walked out through the wall of the house.

I’m sure our faces showed our surprise, as the prior owner said, “Oh. Don’t worry. We are sure she’s friendly. In fact, we think she’s the original Mrs. Dunn, who died while shoveling when she slipped and hit her head. She just stayed around to watch over the place.”

And now, here was the grandson of the original Mrs. Dunn telling us her story. Apparently, Catherine was an energetic spitfire that everyone called Kitty. She easily kept up with her active sons and husband, and when she died, her heartbroken husband married an older relative named Madonna who had a tough time managing the busy household.

After several years, Madonna convinced her husband to let the then young adult sons take over the house while they moved to a smaller, quieter home in St. Paul. That’s when Kitty, the ghost, was most active overseeing – and protecting – her sons.

Ultimately, it was Tim’s father who got married and remained in the house after his brothers moved on. And they stayed there, raising their three children until Tim turned 10 and they moved to Florida.

“Did you ever encounter Kitty’s ghost?” asked Tim, after he reiterated his family history. “Because my mom is convinced Kitty saved my sister’s life.”

Here’s the story. Tim’s younger sister always sat in her high chair in the corner of the kitchen, which, at the time, featured a drop ceiling covering up pipes from above. It was a spot that was out of the way of the active family swirling about the kitchen.

Then one day, as Tim’s mother was stirring a pot on the stove, she felt an urgent need to move her baby daughter in the chair to the other side of the kitchen. It was unexplainable – and also incontestable – it just had to be done. So, she picked up the chair with daughter inside and set her down on the other side of the kitchen.

Instantly, the ceiling caved in right over the spot where her daughter had been moments before. Tim’s sister was saved, and Tim’s mother – to this day – thanks the mother-in-law she never knew for that.

As we hand out candy this weekend, we will be thinking of the kind overseer of this house named Kitty. And wonder whether some day in the future this will become the Old Koppel House.

Testing, Testing 1-2-3

My six-week view - with nail polish graphically added by friend Marty Harris….

I always suspected I wouldn’t be the easiest of wives to live with. Since it’s nearly impossible to avoid acquiring the characteristics of one’s mother, and I come from a long line of women with perfectionist tendencies, it was clear that my control freak behaviors could be challenging.

Regardless, we have somehow completed 39 years of marriage and were preparing to celebrate success with dinner out at one of the few places that took reservations on an outdoor patio. Exciting that is, until I slipped on a well-traversed step on our staircase, and landed in a bundle on the aptly named landing with a weirdly angled ankle and a head whacked on a windowsill.

Turns out my head was harder than my leg bone, and after two days of thinking it was just a sprain, we went to an overwhelmed ER where it was confirmed – I had fractured my fibula and was told to only walk on it when necessary.  “Walking” in this case involved lurching unevenly with a neighbor’s old crutches, leg strapped into a Franken-Boot contraption with its hard plastic shell Velcro-ed into position.

This is an unnecessary test to a marriage that was just about to slide into its 40th year.

There are some tests one can predict.

 There are lists of life stressors and I’m pretty sure we’ve experienced most of them. We’ve moved seven times, lived in four states, raised two children, and balanced the preferences of a strong introvert with the tendencies of a raging extrovert.

And only one of us recognizes that there is a right way to set a dining table. A proper way to load a dishwasher. And only one way toilet paper should roll.

And now, one of us was forced into sedentariness in a four-story house, with bedrooms and office on the second floor and all food and engagement with the world on the first. The first pain-filled week is a fog of ibuprofen and Tylenol and awkward hobbling.

After that, I was a tad more demanding. My morning coffee? I requested my collagen peptides be added to the first cup; just a tablespoon or so of cream, please; and oh, the toast? Not just any old spread.

I am equally demanding with my requested supply of water. It needs ice, and constant refills to sustain my preferred state of hydration. Oh – and my Zoom happy hours didn’t stop, so Jacques had to learn which bottles of wine to open, and how to mix martinis and Rusty Nails.

I quickly learned that regular requests to “Just text me!” with any needs were less helpful when his phone was in the same room as I. After consultation with the kids, I did resist however the temptation to get a little bell to ring for service. Seemed a tad excessive.

The good news is that we seem to have weathered this test – so far. Only once or twice throughout this six-week experience has Jacques gone on a simple errand that somehow required many hours away. And when he returned, he looked so refreshed and relaxed that I avoided asking where he went – and just smiled, while handing him my water glass – again.

Time in These Times

The Astronomical Clock in Prague captures my current sense of time…

I’m struggling with time. The concept of time, the experience of the passage of time, remembering the time of day, remembering which Blursday it is – all those links with time have become a struggle.

We’ve come to the end of another really long yet curiously rapid week and I find myself wondering if I’m the only person who is experiencing time in a very different dimension at this point, a little over a year in to our constricted life of COVID.

Intellectually I know that May has just begun. If the weather isn’t clear on that, then my multiple calendars help keep me on track there. But if you ask me when it was that we all got together for that thing at the place we so enjoyed, well, anyone’s guess is better than mine.

It could have been in 2019 just before That Year. Or you could be referring to something that happened in the 1990s. Somehow That Year of 2020 has wiped out all perspective when it comes to time. Side note: I began writing this the first week of March, and that just goes to show how time is getting away from me.

I have scribbles on my calendar that note some of the calls and zooms and even an outing to a grocery store that have occurred. But without ink on paper staring me in the face, I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether those events happened yesterday, today, or a year or two ago. 

What is happening to my planful self? I think I remember having a stronger grasp over time. Knowing what was supposed to happen this week and next. Knowing when it was time to schedule the dentist or a doctor’s appointment. Remembering that I hadn’t had a shower for more than a day or two. All of these actions require a grasp of time. And I think I’ve lost it.

If you know me well – or at all, I suppose – you know I’m a raging extrovert. I get my strength, my energy, from gathering with friends and colleagues for conversation and laughter. One of my favorite activities is gathering close friends plus a few new acquaintances around the full length of our extended table for a long, languishing meal punctuated with stories and jokes.

It may be that my unmet need to plug in to the energy of friends has warped my sense of time. Or it may be that time truly has warped so that these days that feel like weeks and weeks that pass as quickly as a day are part of our new normal as we become new versions of our selves.

I’ve had the opportunity for a few chats with psychiatrists in the past several weeks as part of my work at the University. There has been some media interest in how we will adapt to the world as it begins to lurch open, slowly and carefully. These psychiatry professors are professionals who have built their careers around seeking to understand the science behind our emotional and behavioral selves. And they are finding that this COVID situation is presenting whole new fields of study around the supports we’ll all need to re-establish a sense of equilibrium moving forward.

While the scientists and physicians pursue their research into what it will take to give us back our balance, I’ll continue to struggle along. Between setting timers on my watch, alarms on my phone, dings and buzzes on my computer, not to mention color markers denoting “Things to Do” on my desk top calendar, I am well-equipped to continue moving forward in pursuit of deadlines and appointments.

And maybe – just maybe – this loss of the perspective on time is less related to Our Year of Pandemic than it is to our having achieved the age of Medicare. And maybe – just maybe – as each year of life becomes a shorter percentage of all that occurred before, I’ll need to focus those color markers on a wall sized timeline to track Big Events and Doings so I don’t have to guess when we traveled with Those Friends to That Place we so enjoyed.

Words Matter

U.S. Constitution Word Cloud Map, by Romero Gomez

When we were kids on the playground at Woodland School, in the midst of raging games of four square and tetherball, we would reply to the taunts of playground bullies with a sing-song rhyme, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.”

I’ve been thinking of that saying over the past week or so, realizing the fallacy of that idea. Words can have – and have had – a powerful impact on our civic life in this nation, painting images of threats, real and imagined, designed to influence action and genuine harm.

A note of disclaimer here. I’ve made a living and a life based on the use of words to share news of our times as a journalist in DC, on behalf of corporate and government leaders as a public relations practitioner, and for the last twenty years or so in university and academic medical center settings on behalf of science.

I’m very familiar with the power of repetition and redundancy, with the power of words to influence opinions and ideas. Repeat an idea over and over with resonance and power, and it will be shared broad and wide as fact. Even if it’s not.

That’s why I’ve maintained a sense of care and awe when using words. Initially, it was based on the oversight of corporate attorneys at the networks who wanted to ensure our reporting didn’t lead to a lawsuit. “Do you have the facts? Have you confirmed with more than one source? Are you ready to stake your reputation on this story?” This was before the Federal Communications Commission had eliminated the Fairness Doctrine – yes, I am that old – and network attorneys worked hard to uphold its standards and concepts.

In the past few weeks, we’ve heard and watched what happens after years of using words to attack and vilify those we don’t agree with. We hear our political leaders weaponize language against those in the other political party. And that violates the core of a civilized society. Any time someone begins a sentence with “All…” be prepared to be skeptical. All Democrats don’t agree on anything. And last week, we watched brave action by some Republicans – so All Republicans aren’t any one thing either.

I’ve lived long enough to have grown up, received an education, married, raised children, and enjoyed a career during the service of twelve U.S. Presidents. Seven have been Republicans, and five have been Democrats, with one more elected this past November. A little addition shows I’ve lived 38 years with Republican Presidencies and nearly 28 with Democrats in that role.

We can argue policy directions, the impact of regulations, whether the Income Tax initially passed by Republicans, or the Social Security and Medicare acts initially proposed by Democrats were wise. We can also disagree on whether public lands and national parks should remain development free forever, or on the wisdom of large infrastructure projects. This is what democracy is designed to do.

It is the words embodied in the core tenet of our constitutional democracy that established a country based on the rule of law – and the concept of justice – that deserve our close attention now.

These are the powerful words we need to hold tight – (as originally written) –

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

These words, misspellings and all, were written nearly 235 years ago and resonate with the promises they seek for our nation. And as I listen to the soaring rhetoric delivered powerfully by Martin Luther King, Jr. just half a century ago, I once again recognize that words can inspire and unite to greater purpose.

Choose your words wisely, my friends.

Today...

from the Minneapolis Star Tribune

I write when I’m happy or moved. I write from my experience of life. And today, I write from a place of horror, sadness, and strong resolve. 

I never thought I would see gangs of thugs, incited by the President of the United States, break into the U.S. Capitol to ransack and destroy the very building and institution established to represent our increasingly fragile democracy. And yet that’s what is happening right now.  

Yes, the British tried to destroy the Capitol building in 1814 – yet here we sit in our homes across the country in the 21st Century, in the midst of a pandemic, with easy access to instant visuals of lawlessness by our own citizens reacting to a call to action – from the President of the United States. 

Pause a minute here.

I’ve written before about my staunch standing in the moderate middle. And I have friends from across the range of political partisanship…all people I care about deeply.  

But today? Today we’ve seen what can happen when we truly cease to think for ourselves.

There are those who may not like the outcome, but Joe Biden won the Presidential election. The 2020 election had more oversight, more reviews, more recounts, more legal challenges, more safeguards in place to ensure people could exercise their constitutional right than we’ve seen or experienced before.

I was a poll observer on election day, and I watched people show their IDs, register on site (as is legally permissible in Minnesota), and swear a legally binding oath before exercising that right. All legal challenges have been knocked down – by both Republican appointed and Democrat appointed judges. All Secretaries of State – both Republican and Democrat – have certified their state’s results.

And only one man – who has worked to promote absurd lies – has refused to agree with the outcome. Unfortunately, this man has promoted those lies as well as promoting violence – and today we witnessed the result.

Let’s pause again here. Take a deep breath, and realize this is not who we are. Not who we are as a people. Shirtless white men in head gear rampaging through the halls of Congress? To what end?

Today is a stark reminder of the privilege white Americans still enjoy. Imagine for a minute the different militarized response if the hordes moving onto the Capitol grounds had been black or brown.

Today is also a day to hug your family, and prepare for the hard work we all have ahead in rebuilding the fragile democracy of our fractured nation.