Christmas Memories

Every Christmas, I create a little pink shrine in memory of my mum.  In another life she could have been an interior designer with a great eye for style.  Years ago we could only afford an artificial silver tree and simple baubles from Woolworths.  Somehow Kathleen, my mum, managed  to turn the tree into a work of art with a magical ‘snow’ village at the base.  I think she brought some unique ideas from her years living in the USA.  Over the years the tree became barer but she cleverly disguised this with silver tinsel.

After I was married, she gifted me all the original decorations except the pink and silver baubles.  My aunt in San Francisco had died and left her siblings a small legacy.  It was enough for my mum to buy new sofas, curtains and carpet for the living room.  It was a tasteful mix of pink and white – so the Christmas tree had to match.  My mum barely survived on a disability pension for her chronic mental illness.  Although I said nothing, I was irritated that she had spent all the legacy on luxury and didn’t save any of it.  It took me back to my teenage years when I used my scholarship money to buy the extended family gifts just to ‘save face’.  I felt that she should have at least offered me a part of the legacy (which I would have refused) to make up for the worst years of neglect.

I inherited the pink and white baubles after she died in 2002.  They included a hilarious yet sad collection of cigarette packets which she had covered in luminous white craft paper and wrapped in pink ribbon (to resemble tiny wrapped gifts).  At least there were no little miniature whisky bottles.  I am quite sentimental and our little tree is decorated with the old family decorations and others that we have collected on our travels.  There are red Peruvian engraved seed balls and little camels from Abu Dhabi.

I have some wonderful memories of Christmas, before and after my mum’s mental breakdown.  We lived with her mother, Nana, and she stabilized life.  Our whole extended family would gather on Christmas Day and it was really enjoyable, although there may have been the regular undercurrents at family reunions.  It couldn’t have been easy for a defeated married woman to live under her mother’s house again but they got on quite well given the circumstances.

One Christmas I caught them both laughingly knitting tiny clothes together.  I was chased up to bed but on the 25^th, I unwrapped a beautiful French baby doll with an adorable knitted layette.  The gift was ostensibly from Santa Claus but I had spotted the busy elves who made her clothes.  I wonder how many hours they spent knitting the layette with love and affection.

Another year, my mum, Nana and uncle (who still lived at home) collaborated on decorating a dolls house.  My mum flirted with carpet salesman to get sample books for tiny rooms.  My uncle put in electricity, then they fully decorated it with furniture and wallpaper.  It was occasionally a little fraught in our house with two adult siblings living together with their mother and ‘the child’, but they shared a delight in giving me the best Christmas they could.  Sometimes they could have been a bit more practical as I often had holes in the soles of my shoes, filled with cardboard.  In retrospect, my inner child would always have preferred the magical Christmas gifts.  My uncle was very good at paying for my expensive ‘special’ shoes since I was born with a club foot.

Then there were the bad years.  Nana had died and it was just me and Mum who was considerably more unwell.  Too much of our household income went on cigarettes and booze.  I was ashamed of our deteriorating situation and went to great lengths to save money for Christmas.  The gifts I received then were essentials – night wear, bath products, gloves and hats.  I have no memory of the gifts my mum and I exchanged at that time.  Eventually she stopped drinking but kept smoking and got her finances in order.  I was proud of her for achieving that but still resentful of the unhappy times.

I left home as soon as I could; met and married Teddy in under a year.  Miraculously, Christmas became delightful again.  Teddy and I are both only children, so we decided that we would always celebrate Christmas together – his mum and dad, my mum and us.  His parents were aware of the previous circumstances and were so generous.  For years there was a mountain of presents under the tree, many for my mum.  We reciprocated as best we could.  After a few years, I took over hosting Christmas and everyone traveled to our house.  My mum had started getting obsessive about having a perfect Christmas; it had to be the perfect Xmas pudding or side dish.  She relaxed when she was in my house and the vibe was calmer.  Then Teddy’s mum started behaving strangely with paranoia and obsessiveness.  It was the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  Around this time, I finally was diagnosed with a mental illness – a mixture of OCD, anxiety and depression.  Talk about a dysfunctional family!

I managed to keep up the tradition of family Christmas for about 20 years until my mum suddenly died.  To this day, I still feel relief that I don’t have to stress about Christmas.  All the planning would take a toll of my health.  Even arranging our simple Christmas decorations can wipe me out.  I do miss my mum but not at Christmas.  It is a struggle not to become morose, dwelling on some deeply unhappy occasions with too much liquor and harsh words.  Before she died, we spoke to each other every day.  I miss talking about simple stuff; shopping plans, what color suits me best, sharing gossip and her excellent advice (that she rarely followed).

I create the little pink shrine to honor her love for me and mine in return.  Both wavered at times but that’s life.  There is no need for forgiveness but sometimes I wish I could forget more.  Teddy and I still laugh at my mum’s craziness at Christmas time – we named her the Christmas Nazi.  To be honest, I have inherited her irritating ‘everything has to be perfect’ traits.  Learned or inherited; who knows?

If you take anything from this post, please to be kind to yourself.  No great expectations, lots of laughter to distract from uncomfortable family conversations and most of all LOVE.  It doesn’t matter if you are on your own, volunteering , going out to a swanky restaurant or surrounded by a gaggle of relatives.  Teddy will be volunteering with wolves on the 25^th and I will stay in my dressing gown all day.  We will watch a movie or two and eat too much sugar.

Rest in peace, my dear complicated and special mum.  May you be surrounded by beautiful pink baubles in the hereafter.

Mum on the right with her sister Gretta in Miami

Which suitor did I choose?

It was Valentine’s Day 1976 and I received two anonymous Valentine’s cards.  I can still remember my excitement.  The cards and envelopes were scrutinized as deeply as a Forensic Files crime.  If it was in 2022, I would have extracted the DNA from the saliva on the envelope…  Shortly after I received the cards, two boys in our ‘Glee Club’ asked me out and then I was convinced who sent which one.  But was I correct in my analysis?

I was so mortified by the Dragon card and the pink ‘tail’.  At 15 years old, I understood the implication but I was horribly naïve despite a clinical Roman Catholic health education which, as intended, put me off everything sexual.  Thank goodness Nana had passed away the previous year.  She would have declared it vulgar and made me wear a Burka to school.  Our uniform, which included regulation American tan tights with white knee socks on top, should have been enough to tamp down the boys’ lust!  My mum laughed out loud but I could see that she was thinking, “who sent that?”

The Tiger card was so different – sweet, beguiling and innocent.  The sentiment was delightful and the sender knew I loved all kinds of kitty cats.  The true love of my life was Tibby, my first cat.  I talked about her so much in school, that at our 25-year school reunion, old school mates asked me how she was?  She crossed to the rainbow bridge many years before. 

Kerry, idyllically happy with textbook and sleepy Tibby

Of the two suitors, only one appealed to me. V was an exotic half breed like me.  He was half Italian/half Scottish with black hair and pale blue eyes.  At the time I thought I was half Spanish/half Irish but I turned out to be a Heinz variety.  The other boy, W, was averagely handsome with a vague resemblance to Starsky of Starsky and Hutch fame but there was zero attraction from my end.  With that in mind, I determined that V. had sent the tiger card as he was a soft spoken, kind natured boy (liked by all mothers).  By process of elimination, that meant W. had sent the ribald Dragon card.  I turned him down and went out with V.

My short courtship with V. started so well.  He smelled so good and seemed interested in going further than first base but we didn’t.  We sat for hours listening to Tangerine Dream. His mother did not like me.  I can’t think of any reason for her to feel like that but I suspect she felt very uncomfortable with her oldest son, aged 16, having lustful thoughts for the pretty senorita.  She was lucky that Nana is always in my head or we might have got to second base…

After a few weeks, I was bored and dumped poor V. by kissing another Glee Club member in front of him.  My girl friends castigated me and I remember them comforting V. who was crying in the kitchen.  I didn’t even feel an ounce of regret – hormones make you behave terribly and I was only 15.  Later I went out with another Glee Club Member, M.  I dumped him on a boat halfway to an island on a school trip.  He spent the rest of the trip miserable.  What a heartless floozy I was… 😊

Much later I discovered there were some other boys who had a wee crush on me, so perhaps the senders are still anonymous.  Maybe sweet V. send the rude one – I could still extract the DNA… I hope you have a HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!!

Holding Hands

Don’t we look adorable?  This is my ‘cousin’ Craig and I on the wall of our boarding house (B & B) in Portrush, Northern Ireland.  It was my first vacation since we traveled from San Francisco to Europe when I was a toddler.  My mum, dad and little Kerry traveled around Europe like hobos before landing in Glasgow at Nana’s house.  Dad disappeared back to the USA and that was that.  It was hard for my mum, as a separated yet married lady, to get a decent job.  She was well qualified but unable to work for a bank (because of her marital status) despite having been a foreign exchange teller in San Francisco.

Eventually she found a strange new career as a Private Investigator for a company that would ultimately be bought out by the Pinkerton Agency.  She specialized in corporate retail fraud and was particularly gifted as she could switch accents (from UK to US).  She was also as sharp as a whip. At the agency, Mum became life long friends with a lady in a very similar position.  She too was separated from her husband, had two young boys and was living with her parents.  They bonded immediately with each other and our families.  Marie, my mum’s friend, adored my Irish Nana and my mum adored Marie’s mother who was Greek. Ironically both of them found living with their own mothers difficult, which was understandable.

The salary at the agency was below par but they saved up enough money to go to Ireland in 1964.  I was 4 and Craig was 5 years old.  I think the older brother was 8 years old.  We stayed at this lovely three-story house.  My mum and I had one room; Marie and the boys had the one next to it.  I was at a perfect age; not yet old enough to be intimidated with school and full of exuberant zest.  One evening after Marie and my Mum were having a drink in the lounge downstairs, they came up to find me in the middle of the boys’ bed.  I am certain they did not invite me…they were well behaved, shy little boys.  On another occasion, at the beach, the boys were horrified or amused when I ripped off my swimsuit and rocketed into the waves stark naked.  I can remember my mum laughing and chasing me with a towel.  This was a regular habit in our house and the phrase my mum used to keep me in line was, “The Moon will catch your bottom!”

Recently I was clearing out boxes and found old birthday cards from my ‘cousins’ when I was 5, 6 and 7 years old.  Over the years we went on at least one more joint vacation in Dumfries.  My mum and Marie often went on two-week work projects, mostly to Aberdeen and Belfast.  They must have loved being alone and yet together.  After my mum died, Marie confided in me that Mum had already started drinking too much on their trips.  Marie would leave my mum alone with her whisky while she went to bed.  There was no alcohol allowed in our house except at New Year.

I don’t think I had come across the photo above until I opened an envelope of my mum’s.  It could have been sent after her death.  If you look closely at our hands, you can see that I am firmly grasping Craig’s hand in my little paws.  We were probably told to hold hands so they could get a cute photo.  I laughed out loud, looking at the image, vaguely remembering that I snuck into bed with them.  If I was young enough for Tinder, I could have tagged myself…warm, affectionate and dominant! That irrepressible Kerry did not reappear until my late teenage years.  Below is a photo of Marie and my mum (right) on an evening out in Glasgow.

Mum on right with faithful friend

Easter 2020

It’s hard to wish anyone a Happy Easter this year but I hope you are able to find small moments of joy.  Teddy took this photograph of me on Good Friday while we walked around the containment pond.  On route we chatted to some new neighbors across the fence, we met a fisherman who caught a foot long bass fish out of the pond!  Whoo Hoo!  We high fived from 10 foot distance – I have only ever seen heron sized minnow snack.  Then we moved aside while a community minded neighbor mowed the walking path with her son so we could walk more easily through the long grass.

I think you can see from the look on my face above that I am struggling to keep being vibrant although the little Zen cairn made my heart happy.  Just like all the vapid celebrities, I have no makeup on and a baseball cap to hide my hair…  As we sat down last night to watch yet more Netflix or Prime, I commented to Teddy that this is probably my worst Easter ever.  Immediately I felt guilty for comparing my luxurious life to anyone else’s this year.  How awful to be in a refugee camp or to be any of our first responders.  As I mused, I remembered my real worst Easter which was in 1970.

We lived in prefabricated metal public housing that was unbearably cold in a Scottish winter.  In the autumn of the previous year, I started getting chest infections consecutively.  My health and lungs had been compromised from babyhood in part from my mum having tuberculosis during her pregnancy with me.   In our community there was no choice of family doctor and ours had many complaints about his incompetence.  My mum pleaded with him to refer me to a pediatrician but he blankly stated that she was neurotic and continued to prescribe antibiotics.  By midwinter my Nana and mum had created a little bed for me in the nook of the fireplace of the living room which was the warmest place in the house.  I woke up every morning with dried mucus covering my whole face like a veil of illness.  My breathing was terrible and I missed months of schooling.

In desperation my uncles gave my mum £40 (a fortune for us) to visit a pediatrician privately.  He also worked for the National Health Service, as do most private surgeons, and I was in hospital the next day.  By this time 6 months had passed and it was almost Easter.  There was no room in the children’s ward so I and 3 other little girls were placed at the end of a Victorian long ward full of ladies with cancer.  I was terrified by the older ladies barely holding onto life and the strangeness of the situation.  The two little girls opposite me were sisters and had been flown in from one of the outer Western Islands.  Was it a twofer or were they both genuinely needing their tonsils out?  It would have been very expensive back then to fly in from Barra.  They were relentlessly cheerful and kind to me in their soft accents from speaking Gaelic.

My mum tried to visit every night after her very long work day and I think I sobbed every visit.  When I was wheeled to surgery, alone, I asked the surgeons if I was going to die.  They removed my adenoids and tonsils – a complaint was made about our family doctor who we still had to see because of no options available.  In those days they made you eat scratchy toast to heal up your throat – ow!  All the food was awful and worst of all – it was EASTER!  Family and neighbors rallied around with an array of chocolate eggs that I could not eat.  All except a little egg box full of Cadbury’s Cream Eggs with a sixpence underneath each from my aunt Cathie and uncle Donal.  I was able to suck the cream out of the eggs even though I couldn’t eat the chocolate.

Eventually I went back to school although I had some home tuition.  I had no voice for weeks and I struggled to catch up.  But I did, and life moved on.  It was so stressful for my poor mum that she had a major mental breakdown after this and never worked again.  I am so grateful for the all the kindness given to us at that time.  One of the greatest sacrifices was from my mum’s colleague’s son who donated his extensive collection of rare American comics to this sick little girl.  Richie Rich and his friends made me so happy.  I still love the gift of a magazine – it feels like a treat.  The taste of artificial cherry that disguised childhood penicillin makes me feel sick, as does the smell of a hot toddy.

Kerry’s egg shaped cyst behind her lungs

In retrospect, I realized that my peculiar egg shaped cyst behind my lungs may have made me sicker than I would normally have been.  It looks like a portent of doom, doesn’t it, but the cyst has shrunk back to the size of a raisin.  There is always light at the end of darkness.  Hollywood endings are rare but we will overcome our current sickness and learn how to make our lives safer.  I had the Catholic Last Rites when I was less than a year old but so far, so good.  Keep faith in humanity.

I send springtime wishes to all of you, whatever your faith or lack of.  Be well.

My simple holiday decor

Many years ago I had a 7ft Christmas tree decorated with endless ornaments, some antique, with snow, a village and a train underneath! Now I can’t maneuver a giant tree out of the attic and some of the excitement of the holiday season has disappeared with less relatives and animals on this earthly plane.  The boxes of baubles make me feel sad, however, so I try to spread them all over the house.  Our bedroom above is decorated in blues, beige and a touch of pink – so are the baubles.

Even my perfume tray in the bathroom has a cat angel – why not??

Teddy has a maritime penchant so the other bathroom is decorated in blue.

Chandeliers are decorated – even the sparkly rocks are festooned in tinsel (Teddy is a geologist)

Teddy’s study (below) has to be decorated…

…and then mine (this sketch was drawn by my employer when I was 21)

Just add a Swedish Horse to add some color to the brass candles with Norwegian candles.  The clock, a wedding gift to Teddy’s parents in 1948, is always at 1.50 pm because the humidity killed the mechanism.

Even the spare bedroom is not ‘spared’…  Teddy painted the landscape many moons ago.

This is my Nana’s beloved walnut glass cabinet brightly lit by a glass container filled with red baubles and lights.

This year was going to be treeless because it doesn’t seem like Christmas without cats ripping off ornaments or peeing in the ‘snow’.  Then I felt compelled to decorate a tiny little tree and I love it.  I hope you have enjoyed my homespun little tour – it doesn’t have to look like an interior designer was involved for it to feel like the HOLIDAYS!

 

Merchant City, Glasgow

This is the Tron Tower in Glasgow’s Merchant City.  Tron is a Scottish word for a weigh beam, essential for all trading cities. It is derived from the old French, ‘troneau’ meaning balance.  This general area is still called Trongate.  The original building was a Catholic Church ‘Our Lady and St Anne’ constructed in 1525 which later was ‘Reformed’ as a Protestant church. The tower was added in 1628 and is all that remains after fire in 1793.  A previous devastating fire in 1652 destroyed much of the Merchant City buildings – most of them had wooden frames. Glasgow had various peaks in its history but much of the wealth came from trading tobacco, cotton and shipbuilding.  Daniel Defoe, in his book ‘A Vision of Britain Through Time’, wrote –

‘Glasgow is, indeed, a very fine city; the four principal streets are the fairest for breadth, and the finest built that I have ever seen in one city together. The houses are all of stone, and generally equal and uniform in height, as well as in front; the lower story generally stands on vast square dorick columns, not round pillars, and arches between give passage into the shops, adding to the strength as well as beauty of the building; in a word, ’tis the cleanest and beautifullest, and best built city in Britain, London excepted’.

Let’s not forget, however, that this wealth was built on the back of African slaves.  I doubt there is a country in the world that does not have a dark history.

This rather sinister building is the Tollbooth Steeple built in 1626. It was attached to a later demolished town hall, court and jail.  Public hangings and other ghastly punishments were a spectacle for the medieval locals.

Glasgow Cross, between High Street leading to St Mungo’s Cathedral, Gallowgate and Saltmarket.

Interior and Exterior of the old Glasgow Fruit Market

When I was a child this was still the bustling Glasgow Fruit Market.  The father of one of my first school friend’s worked here.  Every day I looked with interest in her lunch box to see what exotic fruit she had.  Now it has been transformed into a bustling, glamorous event space with bars and restaurants.  On the day I visited, there was a craft fair in the middle.  One of the artists, a man of my age, noted that I had a silky voice with my mutated transatlantic vowels.  A silver tongued merchant methinks…

Alleyway or Wynd. Good for ‘winching’ on a dark night. Google it in Glasgow dialect…

I graduated from college in this very building in 1980 – Glasgow City Halls.  I always feel a tinge of regret when I think about my graduation. Family issues made me choose not to continue with a post graduate qualification. In time I could have lectured at my alma mater. One of my fellow students did exactly that with lower grades.

He spent two years wallowing in unrequited love for me because I thought he was gay and he didn’t make his intentions plain. Maybe this is the ‘troneau‘ in life. He got the dream job but not the girl.  Speaking of dream girls, I have a new admirer at work.  He thinks I am too beautiful to work with the masses.  It is hard to know how to respond but perhaps I should retire to my brown recliner throne and have Teddy bring me sugared plums?

 

My heart is broken

Mrs. Stripe playing with mum in the dappled autumn sunlight.

Life has been very challenging recently and I hoped that three bad things were enough but not so. Last week we had to have our beloved Mrs. Stripe put to sleep at the veterinarians. I had mentioned previously in a post Mrs.Stripe and the pharmacy that she had severe muscle deterioration in her hind quarters which along with arthritis was causing her pain. On the last visit we shot her up with everything available and it was lovely to see her vibrant spirit emerge when she was pain free. The medication stopped working despite doubling the dosage and she was struggling to breathe through snuffling from an unrelated allergy problem that we could also not treat. Teddy and I talked about what we best, especially given that she was at least 15 years old and a feral street cat. We both agreed that we couldn’t bear to see her in pain and she finally made the decision for us.

I was sitting on the sofa, the night before we took her to the vet, and for the first time in her life she sat on a human’s knee. I looked at her in astonishment but she just settled down like she had always done it. The heat emanating from my knee must have soothed her poor little joints but I had no doubt that she was saying, “Please make the pain stop”. It was a sad day at the vets and almost all staff was in tears both at our sorrow and losing such a special patient. Even in her last days she played with her knitted catnip Spiderman, mewed plaintively for treats and even seemed to smile. She often made us smile see the post Resolution No 1 – wash more.

The house is in mourning and her daughter, Toffee, who is 13 years old, is wandering around the house crying. Zhenny, our other cat, has retreated into closets; occasionally giving us the odd cuddle but mostly biting us. We have euthanized many older pets but Mrs. Stripe was possibly my favorite. I became very mentally unwell when we moved to Egypt and when I caught glimpses of her in the garden it lighten my burden. She is probably half Egyptian Mau but has a bit of European Ginger which gave her fur the most gorgeous Titian highlights. She was exquisite and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I had no intention of looking after her until she had an injury. See my original post about our first meeting – Mrs. Stripe. Right to the very end of our posting in Cairo I wasn’t sure if she wanted to come with us – she was essentially a wild animal. One day she just made up her mind to stay in the house and we had to rush to get her neutered and vaccinated for the trip to America.

The veterinarian placed her in a beautiful blue shroud and we have buried in her beloved garden. Like most immigrants from third world countries, she loved her adopted new land and the odd new creatures she observed such as skunks and raccoons. She loved us and we will always love her. RIP Mrs. Stripe.

Mrs. Stripe’s shroud on her favorite ottoman