Close to you....a story of he and I....Part 3

Compromise.


Wondering why I wrote the story of my Love and the Shan-gri-la potential trip?  We perhaps might not have gotten engaged, or at least for awhile longer.  I was not happy at Cal State Hayward where I was going to college.  I only choose it because it was not away from my Love.  I felt that if he did go on the trip then there was no reason for me to stay at a school I was unhappy with.  Of course I had only been there a few months, barely enough time to decide if I was just going through a rough beginning or that it really was just a commuter college without a chance to have the college experience I had read and hoped for.  I thought of places away from the area.  Maybe out of state in a more interesting town than Hayward. 


When the trip fell through and I knew my Love was not leaving I thought I would still change schools.  It simmered in my mind on the back burner while we kanoodled together and became engaged.


Fast forward to the engagement party.  Mom's idea.  Not one friend of mine was invited, not that she asked me if I wanted any of my friends to come.  Just family and a few of her friends.  Lovely white cake with white frosting, blue trimming and two gold wedding ring designs on top.  I received many tea cups as that was what every young bride to be traditionally would be given.


Next thing to tackle was a dress.  This took many back and forth talks.  I never did step into a bridal salon.  I looked at a few magazines but not a one was what I wanted.   Remember I am thinking of the white peasant top and gypsy skirt.....


My mom had become quite chummy with a woman, Irene, who had a very respectable women's clothing store in Oakland.  Tres chic, with off the rack styles as well as Couture made to order clothing.  For the past year Irene had been redefining my mom.  A make over.  Mom was smitten with the attention she received by Irene.  Goodness only knows what her bills were from this shop but it wasn't cheap.  In that year I had gone to get my hair done upstairs in her store by the nicest, cutest, friendliest guy, Gary, who was just one of several who worked there.  My first time being around gay guys.  Let me just say when you are 18,  and are given so many compliments as well as an innocent kiss and hug every time I came in and every time I left...I felt like I was in a Disney movie in the happy part.  Like in Sleeping Beauty when she is out picking flowers singing with the animals and her Prince comes along.  Yes, that happy.   They were young and hip which worked for me.  Irene's store had some young items but not many so I didn't shop with my mom there.  Irene would say she was my "Aunty" which if you knew this woman, you would much rather be on her good side than her bad.  She was always delighted to see me (well, my mom was a good client), and I would look for her or ask for her when I had a hair appointment to say "hello".  


I think mom must have cried on Irene's shoulder of my desire for a hippie dress to be wed in.  What to do, what to do....I have to say that Irene was more like a Fairy Godmother, because in quick time she arranged for my mom, herself and I to fly to Los Angeles and meet with the fashion designer Ruben Panis.  I didn't have any idea who he was only that I was being treated to weekend to find a wedding dress and attend the wedding of my Love's cousin.  


Ruben and I hit it off right away.  He had a small shop and sat down with me to ask what kind of wedding dress I was interested in.  He asked me many questions of styles and designs, as well as era's of clothing that I liked.  Then I was measured from every angle of my body.  Frankly I had no idea what he would come up with but I sort of had an idea it wasn't going to be the peasant top with the gypsy skirt.  I knew this because at one point in talking about my Love he liked the idea of an open front shirt for him.  Something romantic perhaps, something that would match my dress. 

I thank "Aunty Irene" for giving me the whirlwind weekend that she did.  She was a feisty, hard business woman, but she had her soft spots for us.  

** Another good tune from the early 70's that rocked on the radio and even if my wedding was years later than when this song came out, when you're getting married...any song with marriage in it begs to be sung.

Close to you...a story of he and I....Part 2

I need to back up.  Tell a story of what preceded our engagement from Close to you....a story of he and I...Part 1.

My Love was a man who fell in love with sailing after my Papa asked him if he would like to help crew on his sailboat.   Years later he met a doctor friend through his brother, who had a 35 foot sailboat that he would go out on and sail in the San Francisco Bay.  Many times I went as well with this wild group of friends, sailing to Sausalito for lunch or for a sail around Angel Island and by the San Francisco waterfront.  The doctor, who worked as an Emergency room Doctor and was a Vietnam Veteran,  had dreams of traveling to exotic places, not just sailing in the bay.  Therein lies the dreams of those who sailed with the doctor, of going along as crew on his adventure.

The year before our engagement became a quest for the doctor to find his dream sailboat and the destination became the South Pacific islands of Tahiti.  You might as well have laid a path to Shangri-la because my Love was just as swept up with this idea.  There were trips up and down the coast of California to find the perfect boat.  At last they found her.  A beautiful 50 foot sloop named the Atlantis.  She had a steel hull, mahogany interiors and teak decks.  She was brought back up to the Richmond Boat Works for a complete overhaul.  My Love and several others spent many months working on her.

The Dr. decided he wanted to rename her, something you just don't do with boats.  He renamed her Mae-Ya-Nang which my Love was told meant in Thai, the Thai Goddess of the Wind.  My looking it up Mae-Ya-Nang actually is believed to be a guardian spirit who lives in the prow of the boat and "requires proper treatment in return for protection against misadventure".  Just note this.....

In the end my Love did not go on the trip having talked to our good friend Joel who did begin the trip. They had sailed to San Diego first to pick up crew when apparently there was trouble from the beginning with mechanical problems.  Joel was so bothered with that short journey that he decided to bail out on the trip.  We later heard that they made it to Tahiti but only on the return through Hawaii did the final and ultimate fate take place.  They ran aground on a reef.  Having been to Hawaii I find it hard to imagine having that happen,  but having been to Tahiti and two of the other islands there, I could see this happen as there are many reefs around the islands. 

My Love may have not made that trip at that time but we made our own journey to Tahiti a couple of years after we married.  I wrote of this awhile back.  Here and here are the links to two of those stories....which reminds me I never finished that story!

This song by Joni Mitchell was one that was on my mind when I would think of my sailing Lover....

Close to you...a story of he and I...Part 1

     My baby will be getting married in just a bit over 10 months from now.  We've known since last year but now, now the months and days are upon them and I am filled with bliss.  My Love and I wonder of what plans they will make for their special day and how different it will be from ours.

     This is our year that we will have been married 35 years and though it sounds a long time ago, it feels on some days like a lifetime and on other days a blink of the eye.  Those 35 years ago our parents were healthy, happy, and active.  Now Papa is gone, my mom is merely a shadow of the woman she was, my Love's parents have approached the stage of memory tricks and failing bodies.

     My Love and I so young, I just 19 and he 24.  So much ahead that we could never imagine our future beyond that day.  That we would have four children that would add so much to our lives, test our patience, amaze us with their theatrics and humor, pull us to our knees with concern through illness and teen years.  Now our first born will be married.

     When my Love and I got engaged I was 18 and a freshman in college.  We came from the generation that shook our parents up with freedom of choices with our bodies and our minds.   My Love and I had been living together off and on since I had moved out into my own place.  We still had separate abodes, mine an apartment my parents got for me and my Love lived in a converted garage (not very charming mind you).  I had been dating him since I was 16 and though we didn't rush into a physical relationship, eventually we did.  It was only natural for us to stay together but we also new that it was frowned upon by our parents and their generation.

     Given that my mom had a huge hissy fit when she discovered that we really were planning on just moving in together, that the previous years of her knowing we were having sex (she did get me on the pill), let us go off for "honeymoon weekends" as well as a very long extended trip to Canada between my junior and senior year in high school, was as far as she could rationally deal with socially.  Her friends might find out.  I wouldn't say we choose to marry because she didn't want us to live together, only that we were quite in love and it felt as natural as could be to become married.  No one twisted my Love's arm or held a shotgun to his head.   My only frustration is that I can't remember how he proposed to me.  It wasn't some exotic location or over the top planned event.  It was his honest heart that spoke to me.

     When my mom learned that he had proposed she was a crazed woman of planning.  Those that know my mom can only imagine the possible hyper state she must have been in.  Tim hadn't gotten me an engagement ring thus she popped out several old diamonds from family heirlooms that we could choose from.  Off to Shreves in San Francisco to have a setting made for it.  My Love and I, the dog and pony act, went and nodded heads for the simplest gold setting we could find.  My diamond is from her father's tie stick pin.  A couple of chips that flaw it's value but the sentimental girl I am loved it.  I have no idea if we would have otherwise decided on a diamond engagement ring had she not offered one.   I was no help to her potential wedding plans.  I had my ideas and she had hers.  What happened was a merger, though not always agreed.

     My idea was simple.  My Love and I, in a meadow, with old oak trees surrounding it.  I would be in an off the shoulder peasant top with a gypsy full skirt that fell to the ground.  Barefoot.  He would be in an off white, button down (but chest exposed by 4 buttons) shirt with his coolest pants he wanted to wear.  His blond, curly locks long and I with my late 70's hairdo.  It would be just us and nature.  We would say our own vows or just fall into each others arms. The dream wedding for me.  My hippy heart longing to express itself.

  *** This video...this was my song for my Love.  He never knew this as I was shy to share this with him.   Fits exactly how I felt about him all those years of dating.....

Sweets?

This is the recipe that did work and I did bring for the New Year's party.  It came from Cooking Light magazine and healthy it is but it also tastes amazing!  A mere 133 calories per square....not bad.

Cranberry-Oatmeal Bars

crust:

1 Cup flour

1 Cup quick-cooking oatmeal

1/2 packed brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

6 T. butter, melted

3 T. orange juice

cooking spray

filling:

1  1/3 Cups dried cranberries

3/4 C sour cream

1/2 C sugar

2 T. flour

1 stop vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. grated orange rind

1 large egg white, beaten

1)  Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2) To prepare crust:  Combine flour and next 5 ingredients (through cinnamon) in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk.  Drizzle butter and juice over flour mixture, stirring until moistened (mixture will be crumbly).  Reserve 1/2 cup oat mixture.  Press remaining oat mixture into the bottom of 8 x8 baking pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray.

3)  To prepare filling:  Combine cranberries, sour cream, sugar and remaining ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring well.  Spread cranberry mixture over prepared crust; sprinkle reserved oat mixture evenly over filling.

4)  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes or until edges are golden.  Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.

Check your brain at the door....

"If you can't take the heat, don't go in the kitchen".   Is that the saying or one of my Ellenism's that I have twisted up?

Today I am suppose to bring dessert to my sister by marriage's home, the amazing cook she is, for our long standing New Year's Eve party.   Now any other time I might be able to pull off a flashy dessert but I am in the middle of a head cold so my brain is not functioning to well.

She asked for chocolate cupcakes.  Simple, right?  Maybe my heart wasn't in it for chocolate or the cupcakes (say what?!), that and I couldn't remember which chocolate cupcake recipe I used last that turned out perfecto.  Oh Lord not now, don't fail me.  I pull out several recipes and not one clicks in my clogged head.   Nothing registers.

I decide in the end,  after sifting through my dessert file for a half hour, on the Hersey's Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe thinking that I know that it will taste yummy.  I have never made cupcakes with it however.  As I prepare the batter I remember the overflow issue when making the layers for the cake.  I make sure to under fill the paper liners and put the first batch in the oven.  Tick, tick the timer goes.  I check through the oven window and notice the rise and then I have my first dreaded feeling.  They are going to spill over and why did I forget that the recipe does this?   That was why I went to using a Springform cake pan versus a regular cake pan since the sides are higher.

The timer rings and I test with the toothpick for doneness.  Yes, they are done but they sure look ugly, all flat and pockmarked.  Thank goodness I will have frosting on top to cover that up.  I put the next batch in and allow the first one to cool.

After a decent time of cooking I try, yes try, to remove the cupcakes.  The tops are glued to the cupcake pan and I am moaning of what to do.  I grab a small knife and attempt to lift the edge enough to allow them to come out.  Muffin tops anyone?  Because that is what is going to happen if I do it this way.  Okay.....now I decide to cut off around the rim and the side of the cupcake and forget the glued edges.  Did I say they were ugly?  Now I have crumbly edges and knife marks in the stupid paper liners.  Already I am wanting to chuck the whole lot of them into the garbage.  Husband in the kitchen is being ever so quiet and not making a comment one way or another of my endeavor to make simple cupcakes.  Oops he finally says it, "It can't be that hard to make cupcakes".  He is reading the newspaper and really hasn't been watching me.  I grit my teeth as the second batch timer goes off.  More ugly cupcakes stare me in the face.

I decide to make the frosting that goes with the recipe.  I've done it countless times and it always turns out.  Big mistake this time as I softened the butter instead of melting it as the recipe says.  What is with me today?  I blew it big time now with the frosting that I had hoped would cover the pathetic cupcakes.  The frosting is not looking like it should and my tastebuds feel this is all too sweet.  This I did chuck into the disposal.  Happy to see it melt away under the hot water coming from the tap with the wroom of the blades below.

Now what?

Advice.  If you can't laugh at your cooking...don't cook.  How many failed recipes have any of us done?  I bet more than we are willing to admit to.  Isn't that how we learn?  Sometimes our loved ones get to try them as testers, to see if it will be part of the family meal rotation or if it will take a "never to be fixed, ever again" recipe.  Like meatloaf, which I do not fix anymore.  No one liked it.  Stroganoff isn't looked at too fondly either.  I liked them but I was outnumbered by the clan.  I don't mind in the end.  I don't fix Beef Tongue anymore though my husband loves it.  I can't bear the smell let alone the texture or color.

The cupcakes and how to redeem them comes from my wise son who says not to waste them but make some new frosting.  Yes, I will make a new frosting, a white one that I will follow the recipe just as it says.  I still don't want them or like them, they will be a joke for the evening.  I did a totally different recipe for tonight....ahhh I will share that one on the next post.  It did turn out triumphantly!

 I leave you with a fading tradition that dear hubby heard on NPR.  Perhaps next year we should do this one for the holidays.

Happy New Years to all!!!!

The Nutcracker

     The house lights begin to dim, a settling in our seats, murmuring voices fade and the orchestra begins the overture.  I can see the side view of the cherubic faces of my daughters, one, two, three as we sit in the three rows of our box seats at the Opera House.  My mother and Papa, my Love and I attending the Nutcracker with our little girls decked out in their holiday dresses with black Mary Jane shoes, and their hair pulled back with bows.  The music swells and the heavy velvet curtain opens.  The magic begins.  We are caught up in the story that has entertained us for so many years.  

     Our tradition started when K. was three years old.   First just my mom/Nana, my niece and K., and thereafter we all would go.  Nana and Papa would get box seats for us.  We would take the side stairway up to the level that the box seats were on and walk till we came to the correct numbered door.  Opening the door one would enter into a dimly lit petite sitting room with a few chairs.  A velvet fringed curtain opened out upon the box seating with the sweeping view of the theater.  Before the show, the girls would lean over the balcony rail to peer down at the orchestra seating, their eyes would swing over to the stage area,  look upon the orchestra pit where the musicians would be warming up, and look up to the higher balcony seating.  They would wait ever so patiently.  

     Each year the story became more firmly ingrained in their minds.  What were the favorite parts?  What might have changed this year with the story?  Those dear happy times, even when trying to get them each dressed and out the door on time to pick up Nana and Papa or most times have a limo pick us up at their home.  

     At the Intermission, Nana would always have brought peanut butter sandwiches cut into shapes (no crust) of little horses from a cookie cutter.  Godiva chocolate and Champagne, maybe some cheese and crackers.  There would be 7-Up or Coke for the girls.  Every year.....the story was all of the day not just the ballet.  My mom created a dreamy scene of joy for her Granddaughters.  Those fleeting years when magic and dress-up went hand in hand.  Were they not little Princesses off to the castle (the Opera House), to pirouette in their full fancy dresses.  Even I felt the grandeur as we would walk up the front steps of the columned facade, pass through the large doors, and into the grand lobby.  

     Our daughters took all this without how out of ordinary this was.  They never were ill-behaved nor acted spoiled.  Just delighted to what to them was a Nana event.  Somehow the magic and desire to go began to pass.  Perhaps seeing it year after year lost its charm.  We tried seeing "A Christmas Carol" but didn't like the ACT production, which left us down rather that elated.  And then we stopped going.  

     The last time we all went was when R. was a wee little guy.  He hadn't a clue what he was to see.  He sat upon my lap as he didn't want to sit on the chair, Papa to our side.  All was well till the big dancing bear came out of the box, which was a new twist they did for a number of years.  That was enough for R. who promptly had enough.  He and I sat in the sitting room for a time, with Papa coming in to ask if he would sit with him.  We tried to show him that the bear was gone but R. would not go back to the seat.  In the end I moved the sitting room chair near the velvet curtain of our box area and we peeked out to watch the ballet.  Needless to say that was the last and only time R. has seen The Nutcracker.

     The very last time we saw The Nutcracker was several years ago.  One of the girls wanted to go and thought it would be nice to do just a girl time with Nana.  Nana bought the tickets and we were already to go.  The day of the show she cancelled out on joining.  It wasn't the same without her.  It wasn't the same not sitting in the box seats, without the peanut butter horse shaped sandwiches, the Godiva Chocolate, the Champagne the fullness of the holiday theme, of the comfort of family tradition.  It was gone.  Oh yes, we had a good time together my daughters and I.  But I felt it, that bleed in my heart.  The memory of Papa in his jacket, tie, ascot, his aftershave lotion, his pleasure of watching his Granddaughters, of even the year when R. didn't really see the show but entertained us in a new way which is forever in our memory.  

     I drove to my mom's last week, listening to The Nutcracker, memories flooding me.  The tears of missing it all, the tears of how much I really enjoyed it all.  How much I appreciated that yearly gift they gave us of going to the ballet.  The dinner out afterwards at Trader Vic's in Emeryville where we would talk about the performance.  All the hustle, the bustle, the stress of preparing for that day, it was all worth it.  

    In my dreams I hold a magic light.  It is a light that guides me with a child's hand in mine as we walk into a door, into a small room and I pull the curtain back for them to see where they too will watch for two hours a story of dance and delight.  I will make peanut butter sandwiches made from a horse shaped cookie cutter.  I will sip my glass of champagne and gaze on my family surrounding me.  

**** My dear niece duly noted a treat that I forgot to add!  How could I have forgotten the Petite Fours?  Nana always bought them at the Cake Box Bakery in Lafayette, still the best to me.  Yes, of course that was dessert after our other goodies.

Sugar Plum Fairy by P.Tchaikovsky - Glass Harp LIVE (HD)

For your holiday listening enjoyment!