Yesterday and Today
Just don’t forget to blink, open your eyes and live for today.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Table For One
A former colleague of mine had remained a single woman into her early 40s. She owned a renovated beach bungalow. A lovely wardrobe of designer clothing. Drove a cute two-seater sports car. And her vacation time from work actually involved going on vacation, to a beautiful island or an extended stay at a spa resort. She treated herself well; setting “a proper table” at night which included a glass of wine and fresh flowers she bought twice a week from a vendor near our building.
As a mother of three school-aged kids, I couldn’t help being a bit envious of her Sex and the City lifestyle.
One day after work we wished each other a good-night. I harried off to gather my children, while she, with her stylish gym bag slung over her shoulder, headed in a totally different direction.
My Working-Mom-Part-2 ritual began. Three pick-up stops in a minivan followed by tug-of-war homework assignments while getting dinner on the table before baths and cleaning out backpacks. The Monday through Friday three ring circus. Still, the best part of every day was having our family around the table. Where everyone recapped their day. Caught up on schedules and who needed what by when, usually news to me.
“Mom, the bake sale is tomorrow. I said you’d make brownies with frosting, and sprinkles.”
At midnight, waiting for the brownies to cool, I romanced about my colleague. Probably soaking in a hot bubble bath sipping Chardonnay, while I made bologna and cheese sandwiches, then folded a load of warm laundry.
With the shoes and backpacks lined in a row by the door and the brownies wrapped, the dog patiently waited for me to call it a day. Instead, I poured a very tiny glass of red wine — to relax, you know.
One by one I shut the house lights. Then checked the bedrooms. The low breathing of my sleeping children brought a sense of completeness; another successful day — one where nobody broke a bone and the house didn’t burn to the ground.
Before going to bed I glanced around the living room with its scattering of books and puzzle pieces and Barbie doll body parts. The moonlight danced around it all, including the soccer cleats someone would forget tomorrow.
On the coffee table beside me, the pure and delicious scent of fresh lilacs, my favorite, filled the night with spring. Harvested from a neighbor’s yard, they had been a gift delivered with love by my seven-year-old daughter.
For a few minutes, in the quiet stillness, I sat alone enjoying my table for one. A final taste of wine, the smell of lilacs in the air and I headed off to bed. In the totally right direction.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original Graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Quote: Oscar Wilde
Enjoy the small things
After years of talking about it, my father finally planted a small vegetable garden — a few Roma tomato plants and some native strawberries.
He took tremendous pride in the two planter boxes he made from reclaimed lumber. Each day after work he toiled and watered his small piece of earth with great care.
We hardly paid him any attention when he tried to interest us in the virtues of composting. But bursted into hysterics when he told us pinching back “the suckers” made plants fat.
Our attitudes changed the day he bolted into the kitchen and made a big announcement to the family:
“We have strawberries! Get ready. I’ll be right back!”
We gathered around the kitchen table, wild with anticipation.
My mother washed and dried the largest ceramic bowl she owned. It was old Earthenware; a few chips on the brim with thin pink and blue stripes. Then she instructed one of us to “Get the colander. The big one.”
Small bowls lined in a row where all six kids would get our share of the tastiest, most juicy berries we’d ever eaten. This was Dad’s promise. And he kept his promises.
For weeks we’d heard plans for his bounty’s division: gallons of strawberry jam and night after night of strawberry shortcake for dessert. Even strawberries and cream — like proper English people, which we were not.
Dad entered the kitchen, with all the suspense of a good mystery. Hands behind his back, he smiled at us.
Why did he make us wait? How could he hold a humongous bucket of strawberries like that? Dad could do anything!
Then from behind his back he slowly brought in front of him…ONE strawberry. The largest, most brilliant colored, perfectly ripened strawberry I’d even seen. It equaled the size of my youngest brother’s fist. I swear it did.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” Dad asked us.
We clapped and agreed it was.
My mother looked around him. For a big bucket. A basket full. Something worthy of her cleaning out the great big bowl.
We’d expected bushels of strawberries yet he was as thrilled by his solo harvest as if it had been a truckload.
“That’s it?” she said.
What may have deflated a weaker man didn’t touch my dad. He sold the story with such excitement that the rest of us joined in without question.
Here’s the thing: He could have eaten it in the garden by himself. Enjoyed the warmth of it, the sweetness all alone, and later told us: It was just one strawberry.
Instead he made a production out of it. Held it up for all of his family to inspect. Expressed thanks to the strawberry as he gently washed and dried the FRUIT of his labor while my mother put away the empty bowl.
Dad placed the strawberry on the cutting board like an offering to the Gods. Then he sharpened his prized fishing knife while we patiently waited. Finally, with great skill he cut the very first berry in EIGHT EQUAL PIECES — one for each kid and one for mom and him.
The teeniest strawberry I’d ever eaten. And the best.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Be going forward always
The past holds valuable lessons and wonderful memories. Cultural traditions. Rituals. Ethnic foods. A namesake or piece of long-held property. What we know of our personal family history tells us about who we are and how we got here. That’s all. Our present and future depends on what we do with it, and is our responsibility of what we wish to leave behind.
We seek ancestry records to fill in missing links and often the findings are amazing because they are unexpected. Revelations bring our past up to date with our future. It centers our place on this planet. I am a descendant of these people who traveled here from there.
Discovery isn’t always pleasant. To learn that you are not royalty or heir to some ubiquitous island in Pacific can be a bummer. But to learn that your distant relatives were horse thieves or slave owners or tortured by radicals makes one feel tainted. Or learning that so many died at an early age from influenza or other easily treated disease, by today’s standard, makes one sad.
We dream of being Royal blood, to confirm what we’ve always felt: I am a Queen. Or at least in my bloodline.
By chance I met a woman who I learned was a distant relative of mine. It was exciting at first, until she presented “facts” that my father’s family were “the bad seeds” and she was from the better side of tree.
More recently I attended a bridal shower and was seated at a random table with no one I knew. We made polite conversation throughout the dinner. The woman directly across from me engaged in a random conversation about painting and artwork. I’d painted a gift for the bride. I showed a few of my sign paintings to the woman. One was a six foot reclaimed barn board with the city name Gloucester and the distance 20 miles underneath. She asked if I lived 20 miles from the city.
“It’s a translation of my mother’s name – 20 miles means Ventimiglia in Italian.”
She thought a minute about this and asked if I knew another family that she thought she might be related to. Indeed I did. I told her the connection to my mother. She gave me her maiden name, a common name in the city that branched out across the city. Her maiden name was my grandmother’s maiden name.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s play the game…Who is your father.”
He shared the same name as probably 100 men in the city.
“Who is your grandfather?”
She told me but said he never went by his given name.
I leaned over towards her and smiled: “Did he go by the name Scotty?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
I said: “Uncle Scottie is your grandfather?”
“Who are you?”
“Etta is was my grandmother.”
“AUNT Etta is your grandmother?”
Instantly I had a new relative. A close relative. Discovered by chance?
It turns out she’d done extensive research on our family tree. That night I discovered by Italian roots were quite shallow. That we are more than 80% Celtic. News to me.
Because we are shoots from the same tree doesn’t make our past our future. Respect those before you. Thank them for getting you here.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Appreciating vintage beauty
I’m not old. I’m VINTAGE. There’s a huge difference between the two.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Don’t blink
This moment could become the best part of your story…
And the reason is because you get to choose what you will do. You get to make all the decisions.
This is how it went for me:
During the summer the neighborhood kids would choose sides to play sandlot baseball (or some other game) in the city park. There were two captains — the popular, strongest, most athletic, BOY — and the line-up of the rest.
You sort of knew your rank before the captains started to pick the best players.
The fat kid. Slow kid. Four-eyed geek guaranteed to whiff. The GIRL…we knew we’d be chosen near the end. You could hear the groans of the captains and their near full roster when the fat kid and me parted ways to opposing teams.
“See you on the bench,” he said.
Lucky to be on any team and never a chance of ever being captain.
As an adult you don’t need to wait to be picked in order to become captain. Whether you become a team of one or a team of many, it’s your vision that becomes the driving creative force. You get to pick the players and create your own team.
Many people are comfortable being “players” because then you don’t need to make any choices or decisions. You follow the captain’s orders. Get a hit or draw a walk — just get on base to advance the vision of the captain. Do that and you’re a player. Do that and you won’t warm the bench.
It’s seducing to watch the captains we admire excel at the thing we want to do. It’s also safe, and boring, okay if your goal isn’t to become a captain some day.
But you don’t want to be a bench warmer or a player.
So, when the inkling of opportunity presents itself, that is the moment to put on your courageous jersey. Decide to choose yourself as captain. Then you get to pick your teammates and call the plays.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Finding Awesome #1: The Gigi Bird Song
The BeF.A.T. (Be F-g Awesome Today!) Lifestyle is all about finding the awesome in every day…
My grandbabies call me Gigi. So sweet.
Until I looked up the meaning of Gigi and found this definition in the Urban Dictionary:
Gigi: The best woman you will ever meet in your life and regret losing when she leaves you. If you leave her you will never forget her and always wish you were back with her. She is too cool for all the fools. A Gigi is hot and finer than any other and she doesn’t even care because she doesn’t need to rely on her looks to get by in life even though she could if she wanted to.
I have no idea what scorned woman wrote (and submitted) this but I think it’s Awesome.
To further my lofty grandmotherly status among children under five years old, there is a bird outside my house that sings my name. The kids picked up on this one. “Gigi, Gigi, Gigi” the bird screeches, over and over from early morning until dusk.
It was cute, at first. Now that the adults are aware of the bird and its song, it’s rather annoying. To an insane level. But not to the little kids.
“Gigi!! Your bird is singing your name!” and they call back to the bird: “Gigi, Gigi.” Over and over.
The day will come when the grandbabies are too cool for this Gigi bird. And it singing my name no longer gets them all charged up.
But today, this Gigi bird finds their excitement: Awesome.
[NOTE: We’ve investigated (thank you internet) the sounds of sparrows, wrens, goldfinches, swallows, mockingbirds, bluejays, cardinals and warblers and haven’t found the Gigi bird. If you know the name of a New England bird with a call or song that sounds like “Gee-Gee” help us solve the mystery. Thanks.]BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Birds images: iClipArt
Watch It All For Free
My grandmother preached the age-old adage that the best things in life are free. Whenever there was a Full Moon or painted sky she’d call on the phone and beg us to look out the window or go outside to catch the beauty before it disappeared.
Because of her I also learned to appreciate blue hydrangeas in full bloom, the Big, and Little Dipper on a crystal clear night and summer rainbows…
I happily carry on this tradition, often to the annoyance of my family and friends, especially when I instantly text pictures of sun rises, on weekends.
This is the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean today.
Barefoot on the cool deck, from the pre-sun rise until its final ascent above the horizon, I sipped hot coffee and welcomed the morning dew that tickled my toes. The scent of salt filled the air and landed deliciously on my lips. Sea birds danced on the sand to the rhythm of the waves unfazed by the changing sky or my presence.
My camera phone captured a fraction of the sky’s grand display — no justice to the pinks, purples, oranges and reds, and its reflected strokes of color on the water.
The picture is a tiny bit of the whole moment. When we are present in the moment all of our senses come together for a truly magical experience. All for free.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Image: Stephanie DelTorchio
Call Your Mother
Mom and me at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
I pulled a bag of blueberries from the freezer to make some muffins. Due to favorable growing conditions and some savvy harvesting, from time to time I can relive a bit of the past season, until next summer’s crop. The cooler air and barren trees are bitter reminders that people, too, come and go like seasons in our lives. My mother and I planted a relationship seed of our own one spring that did not survive another season. As crazy as she made me, I’d give all the blueberry crops in the world, to share a muffin with my mother. ***
The spring before she died, my Mother and I spent three glorious days as travel companions to beautiful Sedona, and the awe-inspiring Grand Canyon National Park. And it took eighteen months of self-directed primal scream therapy to reconcile my sanity from a trip which included sleep deprivation, several apologies, a foreign relations nightmare and one gigantic (I mean really, really big) blueberry muffin.
To say Mother traveled as well as a constipated three-year-old is an insult to toddlers everywhere.
“How long do we stand here watching that thing go around and around until our bags show up? I’m tired,” she said, keeping the conversation lively. “Where’s the bathroom? Look at the car rental line. We only have three days.”
Two seconds after tossing the bags in the trunk, she proposed a plan to split the trip’s expenses. “Food, travel, the hotels – everything,” she said.
We’d charge all expenses to my credit card. Later, my Dad would reimburse my full credit card bill, and I was to give Mother back half, in cash. They don’t teach enough of these creative money strategies in school. Still, my parents stayed married for fifty years.
From Phoenix airport and for the two hour drive up the mountains to Sedona, the car window remained down while Mother chain-smoked and criticized the shape of the clouds.
The unseasonable chill prickled my skin, a nice respite from my mother’s sermon on hot flash cycles and drooping vaginas.
She promised the plague of menopause would one day turn me into someone she would admit to not knowing.
Midway on the drive I pulled into a Verde Valley rest stop. In twenty-four hours no more than a one-ounce bag of airline peanuts had passed my lips. Whereas my mother survived on black coffee and Snickers bars, I required food with a shorter shelf life. When my tuna on toast arrived, she cut it in half. The splitting began.
That night in the motel room she lit a cigarette and opened the balcony slider which overlooked the picturesque Sedona highway traffic. She insisted fresh air at high altitudes improved her breathing and the coolness tempered her flashes.
I piled blankets, extra bed sheets and four bathroom towels over my shivering body. She pulled off half.
Somewhere in my dreams came a whisper: “It’s hot in here. I’m turning on the fan.”
At one a.m. I woke to the sound of chattering teeth. Mine. Mother hovered over me still whispering: “The whirling noise from the overhead fan is keeping me awake.”
At three a.m. the fire alarm went off.
Mother hurried to crack open the door. Her eyes darted in a REM sleep pattern I envied. In her most diplomatic Boston tone she said, to no one in particular: “What the hell are you people doing? Practicing a God damn Chinese fire drill?”
I nudged her away as twenty buses full of Oriental tourists descended on the motel. Men and women scurried up and down hallways in short quick steps. They dragged over-sized luggage and slammed doors with the choreographed precision of Rockettes. Several nodded politely as they passed by, shouting in a language we did not understand. But I’m sure they wondered if this American mother and daughter had weighed the pros and cons of traveling to Arizona together.
In the morning, before the drive to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, we stopped at the Coffee Pot for breakfast. I looked forward to eating a hearty meal in preparation for the day hike planned for myself. The waitress set a plate of pancakes, bacon and eggs in front of me and an empty plate and coffee for my Mother.
As Mother reached for one of my pancakes, I pricked her hand with the fork. She didn’t flinch.
“I had six children with no anesthesia.”
“Listen, lady,” I said. “You’re going to make out financially in this deal. Get some food.” She helped herself to a pancake and shoved half the bacon in her purse, for later.
The waitress handed Mother the bill, who handed it to me.
For years the family heard Mother’s slim bucket list included a hot air balloon ride. Here was the chance to cross it off. All went well until the pilot fired up the burner. Just say, it would have been easier to rip a leg off a raw chicken than it was to get one of hers in the basket. I apologized to the captain who refunded my money despite the posted ‘No Refund’ policy. He offered a few extra bucks if I could stop her from frightening the other riders in line.
“Don’t do it,” she said to the people. “They can’t even steer the thing. You’re gonna fall from the sky and die. Is that what you want?” She glared in my direction and threw both hands in the air, a well-known Italian hand gesture, basically telling me where I could go.
Except for the frequent click of a cigarette lighter, for the next two hours we drove to the Grand Canyon in silence. At one point when I cleared my throat, she barked back. “We’re not talking right now.”
We sat side by side on a bench at the Visitor’s Center and admired the spectacular wonder before our eyes.
“It looks fake,” she said after two minutes of reflective silence. “How long are we going to stay?”
Despite security barricades, I seriously contemplated sneaking underneath to hurl myself over the edge. Instead I handed her a bag filled with cold drinks, a sandwich she could split with a park ranger or transport donkey for all I cared, a pack of cigarettes, three candy bars and a trashy romance novel. She’d be good for a month.
Approaching the path to the Bright Angel Trail, I turned back and caught her smiling, watching me. She pivoted away, lit a cigarette and buried her head in fictional affairs of the heart. When I returned hours later she was in the gift shop making conversation with the clerk, securing her twenty percent senior discount, waiting for my credit card.
The next morning, as we waited for our flight at the airport, I bought us coffee and me a muffin. My mother tallied up the credit card slips and bitched over our seat assignments.
“The airlines made a mistake,” I said. “So they gave you a first class seat. Just enjoy it.”
“What about you? You’ll be in the back of the plane all alone.”
“I think I can live without you for a few hours.” I said this as I unwrapped and buttered a blueberry muffin the size of an eight-inch layer cake. My mother eyed the thing but kept her poker face as she slid our three day tab across the table.
“I’ll get your father to write you a check. We should plan another trip.”
I brushed her words away. My focus was on the gargantuan baked good sitting like a mountain between us. It took two hands to place half in front of her. The irony of the moment hung out there. Our eyes locked.
“That butter is going to kill you,” she said, fiddling in her purse for a cigarette.
I pointed to the butt between her manicured fingers. “Really? And those aren’t?”
She held her cool eyes on me for a long time. Her voice softened a tad. “I have offered to share everything with you this whole trip and you wanted everything all for yourself.”
“Oh, yes, arrest me for eating a whole sandwich, all by myself.”
“You’re not funny,” she said. “Someday I’ll be gone and you won’t be able to share anything with me.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop, the one she always dropped. My mother kept her soft side in a secret compartment. It came out on rare occasions, like fine china, and this moment didn’t seem too special. She had a flare for the dramatic sometimes, and I thought this might be one of those times. Still, I took her lead and caved, and let my sarcasm fade.
“Mom, I would like to split this blueberry muffin with you.”
Her eyes sparkled. She nodded and managed the only full smile I’d seen in three days. Then she grabbed her first class ticket and stood up. “Fuck you,” she said and faded into the crowd.
***
The oven timer went off and the coffee was ready. I cut and buttered the muffin, and then pushed half aside. In the spring, a new crop of blueberries will bud and bloom. I’m hoping there will be lots to share.
P.S. If your mother is still around, call her. If she’s no longer here with you, send her a good thought today. The muffin’s on you.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Imagine: Personal
Have Family Dinners
As a kid dinnertime at our house meant everyone sat together without baseball caps or cell phones. This was the Dark Ages when nobody but professional baseball players wore hats, and the only phone in the house was hard-wired to the kitchen wall, regularly in use by our “party line” family whose name was not Siri.
My mother had three dinner rules:
Rule No. 1
We tell no unhappy stories.
Rule No. 2
We’d better have learned something new or interesting that day to share.
Rule No. 3
Dessert is part of the meal.
Rule No. 1: Baseballs hurled through the neighbor’s window, C’s on report cards, the overflowed toilet from a paper wad the size of Ohio that required an expensive emergency plumber, were off limits. My mother felt commuter traffic and a long work day warranted my father some peace until he’d been fed and liquored.
Rule No. 2 wasn’t so much a rule as my mother’s thin support of Dad’s pricey investment in a set of Encyclopedias.
“You want your children to be educated, don’t you?” said the well-dressed door-to-door salesman. My mother, her arms crossed, shook her head and nodded towards the ratty old refrigerator while my Dad signed the deposit check.
Before my father arrived from his long commute, mom fleshed out what we’d prepared to share during dinner. Mostly we answered, “nothing”. She pointed to the rack of books occupying her sewing machine’s former space.
“So what did you learn today?” my Dad eventually asked, and we’d go around the table.
My older brother, who liked numbers but struggled with retention, went first. “Dad, did you know according the 1968 census,” he began with great confidence, “the population of Nepal is…”
Standing behind Dad, my mother, the charades champion of the world. She hoisted fingers over her head, trying to force a correct answer. One index finger sprang up, then the other, followed by a circle motion.
“One…one…circle…!” said her playing partner. She shook her head.
A few of us laughed while my father zoned out to grate some cheese over his pasta.
“No,” my brother corrected, “just a point.”
My mother nodded, yes. Good answer.
“One, one, point. Then a zero. Nine. That’s it! The population of Nepal is one, one, point, zero, nine.” By the time the team finished, the population of Nepal had doubled.
My mother slid Encyclopedia number 15 under the dish rag. One kid down, too many to go.
Dad’s eyebrows lifted over his glasses as he twirled his spaghetti. “Hmm. Very interesting fact.”
When he looked at me I announced that blue and red make purple, as if my recent discovery would revolutionize the art world. “I see,” he said, emptying the wine bottle, looking for dessert.
Rule No. 3: My mother was not only a fabulous baker, but a diplomatic server. She believed dessert was part of the meal and not a reward for finishing your plate. That said, she could slice a piece of chocolate cake as sheer as Chantilly lace. No matter the portion size, we’d savor and moan each little crumb.
Dinner ended with the daily newspaper and mail. My mother took extraordinary pleasure in slamming the next Encyclopedia installment bill on the table.
Side note: Today with everyone connected to their smartphones at the dinner table, if families still make eating meals together and sharing what they’ve learned today a priority, it’s likely Siri knows the population of Nepal.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: Richard Loader
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