Adventures with Jell-O

Cutting tiny squares

  
    The church choir was having a talent show called "American Originals." Since the accompanying Jell-O  contest was my idea, I felt I had to compete.

Americana vest

      When is the last time you  made anything out of Jell-O?  I have only one old favorite, and it would be fine if I never tasted it again.  So I asked my sister Florrie for the recipe for Mom's famous Jell-O dessert.  She sent it, along with production notes and hints.
     I shopped carefully, reading the labels to avoid the newfangled sugar-free version.  On Friday I made 3 types of Jell-O, thinking about my grandmother in the 1930s in New York City. Gelatin was the first dish she taught her daughters how to make.  I was also remembering my grandfather in Annapolis, who called Jell-O "shivering Liz."

Shivering Liz

    On Saturday morning, Judy carefully cut the pans of cherry, grape, and lime Jell-O  into tiny squares, and pressed a graham-cracker crust into the bottom of a large Pyrex dish.  I whipped a pint of heavy cream, and folded the Jell-O squares into the cream.  The mixture filled the Pyrex pan almost to overflowing.
     Judy dressed in her finest Americana vest, which has genuine suede panels in the front.  It was at that point that I realized that Mom's Jell-O dessert was meant to be served immediately, not transported by car to a potluck.  Judy wore a washable jacket over her vest, and we placed a large towel on her lap.   Then  we set the dessert  on her lap.   We took off for  the church, 15 minutes away.

Salmon Jell-O

    "It's a good thing I took physics in high school," commented Judy, the pan in her lap overflowing with liquefying whipped cream and shivering Liz.  "You're going downhill now, so I raise my toes slightly.  Now you're turning left, so I raise my left knee."  I drove gently, remembering  the urban legends about driving instructors who required learners to drive with full glasses of champagne on the bench seats next to them.  I was laughing the whole way.

Americana Jell-O

    We made it without spilling to the church, where Mom's Jell-O dessert took its place among the many contest entries.  It made a good showing in the taste category, but it could not compete in the "most unusual" class.  That division was won by the fish-shaped salmon mold, which contained not only salmon but green olives and dilly beans.  The overall winner was  Pat's red,white and blue squares.  How did she do that?
  

Tourist season theater

This is a job Judy used to do

     I scored a plum job at the spring cleanup of  the library beach cottage in Manzanita.   We are supposed to clean for 6 hours, which is difficult for me to do in one day. I get creaky.  My usual strategy is to claim the stand-up jobs like washing windows and cleaning the pantry.  This year the organizers offered me a task that  is fitting for my status as  by far  the oldest cleaner.  I got to do the laundry.  
    Sue and I stripped the 11 beds of quilts and sheets and mattress pads and  bed skirts.  We took down the curtains and liners and took up the bath mats.  We emptied the trunks of the spare comforters, loaded everything into the Prius, and headed to the laundromat. It is a large, clean place with marigolds and Russian sage planted along the front walk.  Sue was relieved to see that we were the only ones there on a Saturday morning.  She knew we wanted to monopolize the machines.
    We propped the front door open to keep the place cool, and  filled all the tall  stainless steel washing machines with  our dirty linens.  Sue is much shorter than 5 feet tall, so she had to stand on tiptoe and stretch up  to pour the powdered soap into the slots on top of the machines.
     Four hours later we were still waiting for the heavy comforters to get completely dry.  We tried putting only one item into each huge dryer.  Sue cleaned every lint filters over and over again.  Still, there were damp spots.  I thought that the quilts would surely get dry outside in the sun and the coast wind.  I hauled chairs outside, and draped comforters over them.  Then I wheeled one of the carts outside with a quilt hanging from its upper rod.  I gave up on that idea when the comforters blew off the chairs and the cart started rolling across the parking lot.
    Just as I had returned the chairs  to their exact homes in front of the coffee table with magazines arranged in precise lines, a woman bustled in from a side door.  "This open door is making a wreck of my heat upstairs, "  she said, not looking at us, and she closed the front door.  The she proceeded to unlock a closet, get out a broom and dustpan, and start sweeping the floor in front of the first row of washing machines.

Runaway quilts

    "Soap all over the floor, there's soap all over the floor.  What did you do, pour it out?"  She kept on just loud enough for us to hear, but still not looking at us.  She swept all over the large room, including under our feet, talking all the time while, not looking at us.  Then she got out a mop and started mopping.  "This soap will never come up, and I just painted this floor, too."   The woman swept and mopped and muttered for almost 30 minutes.
    Sue explained that she couldn't reach the soap dispensers on top of the machine, that she looked for a broom but couldn't find one.
 "I lock them up, or  they steal them," was the reply, still with no eye contact.
     It was a fine piece of theater in Manzanita, Oregon, permanent population 601.   It  made me remember the bumper sticker that I have seen on cars at the coast, If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?

Unnatural acts

Herta

     I have long regarded exercise as an unnatural act. Walking is a normal human activity, but calisthenics?  Running?   I mean really, why should I choose, on purpose, to make my body think that a saber-toothed tiger is chasing me?  That can't be good.

41 machines in one room

      On the other hand, it's dismaying not to be able  carry the grandbabies around as much as I would like, or to be sore for days after 15 minutes of gardening. So last summer when my walking buddy Sheila proposed that I join her cardio and strength training class at the local gym, I agreed.
     We meet twice a week under the direction a our trainer Herta, who has heard all the jokes about her name.
      We start out in the cardio room. I was stunned to distraction  the first time I walked into the big, windowless  room.  There is a row of exercise bicycles and rowing machines, behind that a row of treadmills, behind that a row of things you step on , behind that a row of Nordic tracks, all facing the 5 televisions on the front wall.  Off to the side are contraptions that look like jungle gyms.  At 4 clock in the afternoon, there are purposeful, sweating  people pumping away on all the machines. Most of them are watching the TVs. Somehow they are able to ignore everybody else and concentrate.

How do I work this?

Equipment

     After we  warm up in the cardio room, we proceed into a training room full of weights and benches,  kettle bells and fitness balls and ropes and pulleys.  Herta plans sequences of exercises for triceps, biceps, core, quads, (oh, the vocabulary!), usually two minutes at a time.  Somehow she gets us going and keeps us going.  I call on my 1950s Catholic school training:  there is no individual option. You just do what the group does, and you believe.  Herta is spare with praise and encouragement, so last week when she cheered my progress to 7.5 -lb hand weights, ("No more 5s for Maggie!")  it was sweet.
     I no longer get confused in the cardio room.   I step onto the treadmill, the one machine I know how to work, and zone into my own little TV-watching bubble.  Then I hurry into the training room and  do whatever Herta tell us to.
  I've changed my mind about exercise.  When I see the old men  joking each other along on the machines, or the kids with Down syndrome in their karate uniforms, or the guy recovering from a stroke, or myself getting stronger, I think we are engaged in noble work.   We are all hoping to stay upright for a long, long time.
  

Silent Hallelujah

Mt. Hood at dusk

  When  John and Rose visited us on their way home from a camping trip,  they offered to help  us hang our new curtains.  Rose measured precisely, and John worked the drill and the screwdriver until the finished project almost met Rose's exacting eye.  All the while, we talked and laughed.  I was a little hoarse with laryngitis, but happy.

John hanging curtains

      No sooner had they  pulled out of the driveway to go home  than Judy turned to me and said, "Stop talking!" She explained patiently but firmly that people with laryngitis can damage their vocal cords by talking.  There was only a hint of glee in her eyes.

Our local florist

    For the next four days, I didn't talk at all. I cancelled two planned phone calls with  friends back east and skipped choir practice.  Sheila and I still went for long walks, and I could see that it was disconcerting to her to have me  not reply to any of her stories.  As soon as we came into the house for our coffee, I started scribbling notes, trying to make the talk in some way a dialog.
     It was no problem to do my errands without talking, and gratifying to be mute when a clerk called across the room, "May I help you?" I think that's rude.   I always resist shouting back, and wait for the clerk to come closer.  This one had to come all the way to my side, and read my handwriting.

Our cherry tree

Pieris (Andromeda) at front door

     I have kept silence for days at a time on religious retreats.  There, the purpose and intention of the silence was to quiet the mind. This time, I let  my busy mind roll on as usual, and just didn't talk.   I was never lonely, because so many people, near and far, living and dead, populate my  inner awareness.  "Jack, how's your belly?  Marie, you're going to be all right.  Ann got a new job, good for her.  Aunt Helen showed me how to dice onions this way.  And that Mary Jean's florist--still in business after twenty years.  When we got married, and they insisted that Judy get a boutonniere to match my corsage."  My usual mind was not quiet at all.

    It's been a month now, and I still cannot sing.   I missed singing the Hallelujah Chorus with the church choir on Easter, and all those rousing Easter hymns.  I tried a few notes, and then had to soothe my throat by sucking on a cough drops.

Judy in new gloves

    Judy and I celebrated spring by buying new garden gloves.  Then we drove around Mt Hood, and came home to  appreciate our blooming yard.

New Jersey diner

Vonnie with Aunt Marie

     Vonnie, Rose and I drove from Maryland to New Jersey to take Aunt Sister and Aunt Marie out to lunch.  Although their grief at Uncle Flurry's death was close to the surface, both women teased and joked with Vonnie with light,  quick responses that I haven't seen from them in years.   Vonnie has been their rock (as she is so many people's rock) during the years of Uncle Flurry's illnesses.   I expected to see the aunts depending on her, but was surprised and happy to see them having fun with her.

Aunt Sister plays with Mickey, her parakeet

     Both Aunt Sister and Aunt Marie had their gloves, scarves, and purses near the door ready to go when we picked them up.  Aunt Sister also had ready a bag of mysteries to pass on to Marie's daughter-in-law and a big tub of Ice Melt , "Because Marie has all those steps."  We followed Marie's clear and perfect directions to the Allwood Diner.
      I helped Marie up the stairs and through the heavy doors of the diner, and then the audiences began.  The host, the waiters, the busboy, all stopped to talk to Marie and give her their condolences.  As we made our way slowly to the large booth in the corner, an elderly man sitting at a table with a woman in a purple turban asked Marie how she was getting along. "We went to grade school together, " the turbaned woman told me,  "I meet him here every week.  He makes me laugh." They looked like they had settled into their table for hours. At another booth, a woman in her 60s was sitting with her grandson.  Marie knew both the woman and the grandson, and asked about his college studies.

Allwood Diner, Clifton, New Jersey

     The waiters and waitresses at New Jersey diners  could give lessons to casual dining staff across the country. They are  familiar and friendly, but with perfect timing when taking orders or serving or refilling.  None of this "I'm Chad, and I'll be your server today."  They just serve.  Our waiter asked, a little hesitantly, "I don 't mean to be personal, but it looks like you are part of the same family." He took a bad photo of us, and agreed silently to hold the check for Rose and me so that there would be no struggle over it at the end of the meal.
      It took even longer to leave the diner that it did to go in, because Marie had thank-you notes to give to the employees who a gone to Uncle Flurry's funeral.  We took Marie to her house, and then Aunt Sister to hers.  They live 15 minutes apart, but will have trouble seeing each other now, because neither of them drives.

Lookin' good at the diner

     As Vonnie drove the 4 hours back to Maryland   ("I know you're a good driver, but I like to drive.  I've made this trip  many times in the past few months.")  we speculated about what it would be like to  be  old and frail and maybe forgetful and living alone.  How do habits help when you have dementia?  If you make your bed every morning and clean your house every Saturday now, will that help ground you when you feel fuzzy about what  day it is?  And, how is it that we and our friends grew up in families of 6, or 8 or 9 children, and yet there are so few grandchildren?  How will we fare?
     At one point we were counting our blessings.  Our children are thriving, we have good marriages, it looks like we will  all be able to retire.  Then Rose began. "I almost hate to say this.."
From all corners of the car came,
"Don't say it!"
"Don't say it!"
"I won't say it!"
 It is very bad luck, at our ages, to talk about good health.
    

Sister/cousin weekend

Sisters and cousins at Rehoboth

Beach town in winter

Gettysburg cousins

     It was crazy, but Rose and I did it.  We got on a plane in Portland and flew across the country  to spend a weekend at the beach with our sisters and cousins.  We landed at National Airport on the Potomac. In the soft evening light  I gawked at the renovated Depression-era airport, the Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial, and all the big government buildings that I haven't seen in years.  Saint Ernie picked us up drove us up 14th Street and out New York Avenue.  Riding through the city on that route   took me back to my college days.   We arrived to a warm welcome at Ernie  and Vonnie's house, greeted by Bert, the Corgi.

    The next morning the 5 sisters  took off across the Chesapeake Bay bridge to the Delaware shore, chattering and laughing  the whole way.  At Rehoboth we were joined by our cousin and cousins' wives from Gettysburg.

Fooling the eye

Sisters

    We ventured once to the beach and said hello briefly to the ocean.  Florrie drove us through the old Dutch seaport town of  Lewes, where we saw a trompe l'oeil shed.  Most of the time we sat by the fire and ate chocolate and cookies and wondered at the mysteries of our children . We pondered the unknowns of our mothers' and grandmother's lives. Florrie regaled us with stories of shopping for her daughter's TV-worthy wedding dress.  Chris told the heartbreaking story with the happy ending of finding a new house to move to after 25 years in the same place.
    As we moved in a pack, talking and  laughing, from house to car to  hotel to restaurant  and back again, I blurted out, "I used to think I was peculiar. Now I think it might be familial."  That became the refrain of the weekend--"It's familial."

Rock Princess

Rock princess, 5th birthday

Morning dance

    Maxine planned to have a Rock Princess theme for her 5th birthday party.  Isn't "rock princess" an oxymoron?  I think more about Rock Queens.  I wanted to go to the party as Tina Turner, but then I looked at my legs. Oh, well.
     David and I went  to La Mexicana  store in Bryan  to buy Maxine a true princess dress. The place was crammed with gowns and tiaras and silver shoes for girls having their First Communions or Quinceaneras.  The young clerk looked at the dress of Maxine's that we had brought with us, heard our description of very tall 5 year old, and suggested the perfect dress.  It even has a hoop skirt, which the clerk assured us Maxine will want to wear under all of her dresses.

Unwrapping

     Maxine woke on the morning of her birthday, put on her wings, and started dancing. After breakfast she spied the pile of presents from family. She tried to sound out the names of the givers.  Simone, now 9 months old, helped with the unwrapping.  The princess dress was  big hit.

Gym party

Taking a break from crawling

          Maxine's birthday party was held at a gym, with all 22 kids and their brothers and sisters and parents scrambling over the mats and equipment.  I've come to know the parents of her friends, and I liked seeing them again.  Simone, who is just beginning to crawl, had lots of space to roam.

Coloring the tote bag

Hard to say goodbye

     The following days saw Maxine constantly busy with the craft project kits she had gotten as birthday presents. She became absorbed in coloring a psychedelic tote bag.   I worked with her to put glitter and jewels on mirrors and tiaras and wands.  My more important job was keeping Simone occupied.  We played peek-a-boo and upside- down -baby and blow- the- hair -off -the -forehead.  When I left to fly home, Simone gave me a big, open-mouthed baby kiss on my cheek.