Living with Holidays

I’m not looking forward to the holidays. Thanksgiving was good, but after reading a story in today’s New York Times about a new recreation center for cancer patients at Sloane Kettering, I understood why I feel sad.

Flash back to Thanksgiving 1989. I have vivid memories of my first husband, Jerry, our then 13 year-old daughter, Daphne, and I celebrating the holiday at the home of our dear friends and neighbors, Evelyn and Ken. After more than three months of chemotherapy following a diagnosis of B-cell lymphoma, Jerry’s appetite had returned.

Granted Evelyn and Ken always set a splendid feast, regardless of the holiday. There was nothing these friends wouldn’t do for us, and they had been there for us the day that day in late August when doctors at Mass General delivered the bad news. They also shared our joy when Jerry had a “near normal” CAT scan in mid October.

Jerry was scheduled to complete his chemo in January, after which he, Daphne and I were booked for a celebratory vacation in Boca Grande, Florida. Our hopes and dreams were shattered on the second Friday after Thanksgiving.

The fever and night sweats Jerry had had when first diagnosed with cancer had returned. We sat at Mass General, waiting for him to have another CAT scan. The power failure that swept through radiology made the waiting especially harrowing. After the scan was finally done, we were told it wouldn’t be read until Monday.

When Jerry called me at work on Monday, I begged him to stay at his office until I could pick him up. He suggested we go to Legal Seafood for lunch. I was too devastated to do anything other than take him home where we awaited a call with hospital admission info.

By this point Hanukkah was approaching. As crazy and irrational as this may sound, I was determined to make sure Daphne got her holiday gifts. As Jerry retreated to his study to make arrangements for his patients, I whisked my daughter off to the Chestnut Hill Mall. She wanted some things from the Gap, including a heavy cotton tennis sweater, and we got them.

Jerry’s brother and sister-in-law, wanting to shield Daphne from the horror of watching her father die, insisted that she spend Christmas vacation with them and their daughters at their home in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile Jerry was having salvage chemotherapy. Seeing all the Christmas decorations plastered on the room of his hospital door only served to remind me that we were in an institutional setting. On New Year’s Eve, I arrived to visit him with a split of champagne and two flutes.

Jerry died on January 6, 1990. To this day, I remember Rabbi Emily telling Daphne that we would now be a single parent family, but with one key difference. Dad had loved us very much, and did everything he could to stay.

2010 is upon us. I’ve been married to Dennis for nearly ten years. Daphne is a journalist living in Orlando with her husband and colleague, Etan. This Thanksgiving we gathered at their home – along with Etan’s parents, Janice and Don, and Jerry’s sister, Helene, and her husband, Steve. I found it very comforting to be there, and I think they did too.

Long before Jerry became ill, I’d suggest that we take a cruise. Fearing a bout of seasickness, he would reply: “Some day you and Daphne will go together,” implying that we would have fun times even after he was gone.

It might just be coincidence that my daughter and I selected January 7 as the day we leave for a week together in Paris. Still, anticipating the trip will get me through the holidays.

Another Happy Day in Paradise?

ORLANDO – Since Daphne moved here in 2005 to take a job writing for the Orlando Sentinel, I’ve visited at least once a year and sometimes twice. I’ll admit to an odd type of affection for Central Florida, and bristle when friends assume I’m going to spend my vacation at Disney World or Universal – though Dennis and I have been to both just once. We’ve also done Cypress Gardens, quite a kick for an aging water skier who hasn’t skied in nearly a decade.

But to embrace Central Florida is also to admit to being fascinated by life’s seamier side. The fact that I see a bare-chested hitchhiker as I approach I-4 East, heading downtown to pick up Daphne, is unremarkable. What triggers the old cynic in me is his sign, “I have cancer.” It makes me think of one of my daughter’s old editors, Mark, who warned a reporter to be sure to ask a family of alleged Katrina victims for drivers licenses before buying their story.

This year we have returned to the Hotel Peabody Orlando, known for its twice-daily display of ducks in the lobby. For me this particular hotel’s allure is four-fold. The Olympic pool, where I swam a mile this morning in the pouring rain, is rarely crowded.

The gym, though certainly no match for Health Works, my all women’s gym back in Boston, has a working StairMaster, Concept II Rowing Ergometer, and some treadmills. Jim, an elderly but fit guy manning the desk, finds it difficult to absorb the fact that Dennis has a different last name than mine, and finds it necessary to attempt a joke I don’t find funny.

Because it’s so close to the Orlando Convention Center, I know the Peabody will offer good rates at Thanksgiving time. Finally I like the B-Line Diner, just off the lobby. The ‘50’s style jukebox, there on previous visits, has been replaced with a pleasant stream of all the Motown hits I’ve got on my iPhone.

Though horrified that the “plain” yogurt I requested actually contains corn syrup sweetener, I’m having a love affair with the blueberry and granola pancakes with Valencia orange syrup. If I have the latter with an order of Canadian bacon, this should tide me over until dinner.

The downside is that the Peabody is now under construction, poised for an illusory economic rebound. This means that the Venetian blinds in the B-Line Diner are closed tightly, ostensibly blocking out an ugly view of construction cranes. The fluorescent lights are barely adequate for Dennis and me to read our newspapers.

When I read the Sentinel, I see the seamier side of Orlando in full relief. Sarah Palin was in town yesterday, and some senior citizens camped out all night, just so they could be first in line to get the special bracelet that would allow them to have their Sarah Palin books autographed by John McCain’s running mate. Pass the emesis basin!

As I said, it’s Thanksgiving week, and a personal-injury attorney named Lou Pendas is giving away 1,000 turkeys to the first 1,000 people who show up at his office, not too far from the Barnes & Noble where people camped out for Sarah Palin. Yes, I do have compassion for the people who have to depend on a turkey giveaway. Lou is probably correct in thinking that if these people get in an accident, they will remember him.

Another item in the Sentinel… “Mom gets 2 years in son’s drowning.” According to the story, one Dorthea Bechard, a 36 year old mother of four, became a mother of three after her two year old, Sabastian, fell into the pool of her apartment complex. Mom was reportedly sleeping off a night of getting both drunk and high.

On a similarly sad note, a 25-year-old mom with four children ages six years to two months, perish when their mobile home in Ocala goes up in flames. I can’t imagine her life was any bed of roses before this tragedy.

The theme parks always provide news, and on this particular day I read that OSHA has slapped Universal with a $3,750 fine – chump change for a corporation that size – following the non-fatal injury this summer of an employee working beneath the Dueling Dragons roller coaster.

Things could be worse. This summer the Sentinel focused on a rash of groping incidents at Orlando water parks. At least one of those incidents led to a charge of open and gross lewdness, with the defendant claiming he was doing nothing more than adjusting his European style bathing suit.

Even Winter Park, Orlando’s immediate, very rich neighbor, has its share of malaise. Like many of its northern counterparts, the shop once featuring Rolex and Mikimoto is now blanketed with “Going Out of Business Signs.” Even the Lilly Pulitzer store, providing the wardrobe staples for rich matrons, is empty.

Another happy day in paradise?

R.I.P. BRIGHAM'S

News of the demise of Brigham’s, a Massachusetts chain eatery best known for ice cream treats, burgers, BLTs and fries came to me via a Facebook post earlier this week. For my FBF, Mary Wynne-Wynter, the loss of Brigham’s evoked an even sadder memory, the closing of Bailey’s.

A Boston institution, Bailey’s was a chain of ice cream parlors with dark wood paneled walls and hot fudge or butterscotch sundaes served in silver dishes. One of Mary’s FBF's commented that an important ritual of childhood shopping trips with mom was a stop at the Brigham’s in Downtown Crossing.

Yesterday’s Boston Globe captured the human impact of Brigham’s filing for bankruptcy after having been scooped up by a private equity investor. Focusing on the Brigham’s in Arlington, one of the last to survive, the story captured the pain inflicted on minimum wage workers blindsided by the loss of their jobs during a horrendous economic downturn. One server felt especially sad that she never had a chance to say goodbye to her regulars, including a blind woman who depended on the server to read her mail to her.

I got takeout cups of ice cream at the Brigham’s in Arlington on just one or two occasions, if only because it was part of a tiny strip mall adjacent to the parking lot for my dentist. Ice cream is my preferred anti-anxiety balm before dental visits. A few years ago, amid a scare for some sort of food-born illness, the Globe reported on restaurants with one or more infected kitchen workers. After seeing that particular Brigham’s on the list, I never returned.

Besides, for a while Arlington had a JP Licks, a much newer, better Boston ice cream chain. And let’s be clear about one thing: Brigham’s was never a destination ice cream vendor, but more the default when I was famished and couldn’t really decide what I wanted to eat. If you’re not from Massachusetts, the closest comparison I can offer is Friendly’s. Dennis has dubbed the chain Fiendly’s for its blah, tide-me-over offerings when there’s absolutely nothing else in sight.

Still I’ve lived in Boston long enough to have some fond memories of Brigham’s. When I first began working for a non-profit on Beacon Hill, I used to enjoy walking down to the Financial District with a friend and colleague named Barbara Powers. Sitting in a booth with red vinyl upholstered benches, we enjoyed gossip, overcooked burgers, and fries nearly every day at the Brigham’s on Congress Street.

My eating habits have changed with my metabolism, and I now dine most days at a vegetarian restaurant with absolute black granite tables and a skylight. Though the salads and whole wheat wraps help keep me trim, they lack the comfort of the junk I enjoyed at Brigham’s.

5 Secret Self-Indulgences

I smiled when I saw how much scrolling I’d need to do on Amazon.com to get through the long list of self-help books purporting to help people “unlock” the happiness within. The truth is that I was hoping to find a reference to what I think was a Harvard psychologist who did a study indicating that happiness depends more on simple pleasures like being able to walk to work than having vast wealth.

Had I found the reference, it would have documented what I already believe. In that vein, I share five things that make me happy:

1) Being able to eat dinner at home with Dennis after a long day at work. Dennis is a sweetheart who’s always ready to offer dinner out, and we do plenty of that. But there’s nothing like being able to eat in the flannel pajamas I got on sale because the fabric is emblazoned with wrapped Christmas gifts, and perhaps unfold whatever broad sheet newspapers we didn’t get to read during the day.

2) Staying at a hotel when we visit family. Nothing beats being able to toss your towels on the floor – confident in the knowledge that housekeeping will replace them with dry, fluffy ones. Obviously this would be boorish behavior on the part of a houseguest. Besides, Dennis and I love sleeping on a nice, firm mattress.

3) Walking out into the cold morning air in my sweaty gym clothes – sometimes adding a long, down coat for warmth – and heading to Starbuck’s before driving home to shower. The very clean, all women’s gym I joined in July has a whirlpool, steam room, and sauna and provides nice towels, which itself can be a source of self-indulgence. But during the week I don’t think I could stand the pressure of needing to organize my outfit for work, makeup, jewelry etc. the night before, just for the purpose of saving time by showering at the gym.

4) Going to the movies on Christmas Day. Having consumed way too many calories at holiday receptions by the time December 25 rolls around, I enjoy walking a mile or two each way, depending on which theatre I select. I often tell Dennis to respond to invitations with “we have plans.” He’s all too happy to oblige because he’s likely to want to spend the day painting in his studio. We can cap the day off with dinner for two at home or a Chinese restaurant.

5) Purchasing Vitamin Water @ 3 for $3. Vitamin Water now costs $2 at the vending machine at my gym, and I think $1.50 at Whole Foods. All of which is to explain why I go nuts when I see it on sale at CVC, and yesterday stocked up with 18 bottles of the stuff Dennis believes is the ultimate bobo self-indulgence. The reality is that I usually purchase regular water for the gym because I don’t need the extra calories. But as I’ve explained to Dennis, the Vitamin Water is great when I get to the gym starved on a Sunday after having had a big breakfast but no lunch.

Letter Never Sent to Mom

Dear Mom,

Please expect a package from Apple. Hopefully it will arrive before Thanksgiving and give you some comfort about you and Dad not being with any of your children for the holiday. The package contains a photo album I made on my Mac, something surprisingly less labor intensive than assembling an album the old-fashioned way.

You and I have never been close, and regrettably each of us is rarely able to fulfill the emotional needs of the other. With you having passed your 87th birthday and me aspiring to the maturity permitting me to accept that which I cannot change, I wanted to fulfill a simple request you made.

Earlier this week, during the course of one of our infrequent telephone conversations, you told me you had never received any photos from Daphne and Etan’s wedding, just one year ago tomorrow. Had I less of an edge, I would not have chosen to tell you that if Dad hadn’t installed what I consider to be an insane configuration of firewalls and anti-virus software on his Dell computer, you might have received the high resolution pics I’d e-mailed you shortly after the wedding.

Your request came only after you began the conversation by asking me about the weather in Boston. I’m not sure whether you realize that questions about the weather or what I cooked for dinner drive me up the wall, because I consider them attempts to evade any real efforts at communication. The kinder gentler side of me responded by saying: “Mom, you didn’t call me to talk about the weather.”

Surprisingly you said you only wanted to talk to me because I’m your daughter and you love me. It was a rare moment of candor that touched me enough to make me want to make something for you.

We spoke a little about whether you and Dad will return to Florida for a month or two this winter, and you told me you preferred to stay in your retirement community in North Carolina, where you know people. I also told you Daphne and I are taking a mother-daughter trip to Paris in January, and you seemed happy for us.

I offered to burn you a disc of wedding photos, and you seemed eager to get it. I also said that I might not get to it for a while, which was my way of warning you not to bug me about it. But then I realized that the chances of you and Dad ever ordering or even viewing photos from the disc would be slim.

It also occurred to me that you wanted to show the pics to people you know. And unless you’re walking into the dining hall with Dad’s Dell desktop, you can’t do that with a disc.

Never the artsy crafty type, I’m not going to tell you the book I made you is especially professional looking. Had I taken more care, each photo would have been arranged to reflect sequential phases of the wedding. But when I got to the end of the Apple template for photo albums, I realized that I didn’t have enough pics and went back to find more.

Dad is likely to be lukewarm when it arrives and say something like “very nice.” Or if he expresses any real interest, he will want to know the technical details of how I put the book together. As a mother who put her daughter’s very worst finger paintings on the refrigerator, you will compensate with your highest praise mode, suggesting the creator of the book is an artistic genius. Frankly, neither response will feel right to me, and that’s more my problem than yours.

Love,xxxxxBonnie

Mom-Daughter Parisian Time Machine

The last time Daphne and I toured Paris together was April 1985. She was eight years old, dressed in Oshkosh denim jumpers and Raggedy Ann socks that elicited smiles from fellow travelers on the RER. Last month I was elated to see Facebook pics my daughter and her husband posted on their first trip to Paris as a couple.

For a long time I ruled out returning to Paris on the grounds that it’s too expensive -- given the present value of the U.S. dollar. But about ten days ago I changed my mind. Chalk it up to my feelings of nostalgia evoked by seeing Meryl Streep playing Julia Child overjoyed by the sight of French food markets. Or Daphne and Etan’s vacation pics.

My daughter and I will be going to Paris for a week in January. At this point in her life, Daphne has already been there six times and knows a lot more about the practical details of international travel than I do. Etan’s formidable consumer tech expertise is also a boon to planning. So I handed my credit card info over to my daughter and put her in charge of booking flights and a hotel in the Marais.

My husband, Dennis, has put his blessing on the trip. He has also warned me not to try to relive the three trips to Paris when Daphne’s dad was invited as a guest of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, and she and I got to tag along.

Those were glory days in our lives and this trip in January will be a different but equally special experience. In a curious reversal of roles, Daphne has told me that I’ll enjoy Paris more with less – at least as far as luggage goes. Following the Rick Steves model, she travels with just a carry-on suitcase, allowing her to take public transportation between airport and hotel.

My daughter’s dictum made me anxious enough to attempt a dress rehearsal last night. Modifying her instructions so I could try for a bit more, I was able to squeeze four pair of jeans, seven turtlenecks, one sweater, one pair of comfortable shoes, seven sets of underwear and socks -- along with a pair of ski pajamas and a belt into a carry-on. That left just enough room for my Nikon SLR inside a camera bag that will double as a purse.

I’ve sacrificed the running shoes and exercise clothes I’ve always packed. Please tell me I’m not just rationalizing when I say that Daphne and I will walk enough to burn off all the calories we plan to consume.

On the other hand, my daughter has suggested that I take my Macbook. She’s absolutely correct in thinking I’ll want it for dumping digital photos, posting Facebook updates, and doing research on places we may decide to visit spur of the moment. I’m praying the hotel really has free wi-fi.

The Macbook will fit in my Timbuk2 bag. I hate squeezing liquids into those tiny bottles, but I’ll do it because if I don’t, I’ll need the giant check-in suitcase that Daphne says is not my friend. After reading Etan’s recent article about using one’s iPhone as a navigational device – made easy by a short-term international data plan – I wondered about the trusty old Plan de Paris par Arrondissement: Paris Street Guide by District.

My daughter says she has the Plan, and it’s still a good idea in case technology disappoints. Bon voyage to us!

High Tech Tools Help You Navigate Vacation

Death of a Facebook Friend

My dates are a bit hazy, and serve more as place markers than as documentation. The last time I saw Carole was nearly a year ago at the retirement party for a woman she had hired as a receptionist in 1989 -- when she was office manager for the non-profit at which I work. When you work at an organization for more than twenty years, each one seems to blend into another. But it seems to me that Carole retired in 2001.

A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer sounds like a death sentence. So when I heard Carole had been diagnosed in 2004, I thought it was terribly unfair that the woman who had worked two jobs for most of her adult life was stricken just as she said she was going to take life a little easier. I want to think she took the trip to Ireland she'd always dreamed of, but I can't be certain.

Still when I saw her last year, I would have had no idea that she was living with such a serious illness. She told me she was on Facebook and the two of us agreed to “friend each other.” I now feel a bit guilty that I never had the opportunity to write “Happy Birthday” on her wall or comment on that photo of Carole with her grandson at the hockey rink.

When I think of Carole, an image of a petite woman with short, thick white hair, engaging blue eyes, a voice made gravelly from years of cigarette smoking, and a heavy Boston accent comes to mind. Her first job was as mother of seven, and then ultimately as “Grammy” to fifteen. Her paid employment included 17 years in the customer service department of Sears before coming to the non-profit housed in an old townhouse on Beacon Hill, a place worlds apart in terms of workplace culture. I was 38 when she arrived, and she was 51.

Carole was in charge of hiring administrative staff, and we sometimes clashed about the qualifications most desirable for my assistant. Having grown up with few of the opportunities I’d been given, Carole’s sense of social justice seemed to demand that I recruit an assistant without a college degree.

My tone probably could have been kinder when I explained to Carole that being an assistant in the communications office of our non-profit required a higher level of polish and writing ability than that of a clerk at Sears. But I'm still thanking her for preventing one of my first news conferences from turning into a disaster.

As per my request, she ordered a mult box to accommodate reporters from all the broadcast outlasts I hoped would be attending. When I asked her to have the box set up in a charming space with Oriental rugs and antique furniture, she responded with her own question: “Bonnie, where are you going to plug it in?” Carole was right. The mult box needed to be in a modern space, a lot less charming, but with the appropriate electrical outlet.

Despite our differences, we shared confidences. Early on, Carole told me she had six boys, but that she had once had a little girl named Patricia. While crossing a busy street with an older playmate, her daughter, a second grader at the time, was struck and killed by a car. It’s the kind of thing nobody every gets over, and Carole still struggled without letting the grief incapacitate her.

Knowing I row on the Charles, Carole later told me she had grown up in what was then a working class section of Cambridge, in a triple decker right near Magazine Beach, and attended Catholic schools. Her father had been lost at sea during World War II, and her childhood had not been easy.

She loved saying her husband, Ritchie, looked like Stacy Keach, and he did. Though neither of them were fancy people, she indulged him when he bought a yellow Cadillac, and he her when she wanted a second home in New Hampshire where he began carving duck decoys. As a couple, they vacationed in Disneyworld, and loved it.

I hoped I could say something that would make Carole feel better the day she walked into my office perhaps a few years after my own first husband had died of cancer. Perhaps she thought that because I had been a doctor’s wife, I might have some explanation for the memory lapses Richie had been having. He was only in his fifties at the time, and I honestly hoped that the stresses of an economic downturn might be causing him to be distracted. Six months later, a group of us headed to Saugus for Richie’s funeral. Lung cancer had metastasized to his brain.

Last Thursday, I got a Facebook message that I thought was from Carole. Alas, it was from her son, Richard, who had gone into her account. He wanted me to know that after five years of battling pancreatic cancer, his mom had died. Details about funeral arrangements were included.

My husband, Dennis is part of the Greatest Generation, and thought it weird to spread the word via Facebook. As a boomer, I thought it was very sweet and loving of Carole’s son to use Facebook – in addition to more traditional means such as Legacy.com and a death notice in The Boston Globe.

After sharing the news, via both Facebook messages and email with people I knew would want to know, I wrote on Carole’s wall: “May you, Richie and Patricia rest in peace in one home. You lived for your children and grandchildren and your love for them always showed. You will be sorely missed.”

Can't Stop Reading About the Craigslist Killer

Photo Credit: Dailycomedy.com

It began with a book-signing party at a restaurant in Milton, MA promoted on Facebook by a friend who’s a veteran crime reporter at the Boston Globe. The etiquette of going to one of these things is that you buy the book. But now that I’ve actually started reading Seven Days of Rage – The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer, by Paul La Rosa and Maria Cramer, the young Globe crime reporter who covered the Craigslist killing of a woman advertising her exotic services on Craigslist, I can’t put it down.

Be assured that I will be at my office at 9 a.m. this morning and ready for the public relations work I love doing. Still if I had a double life where I could play hooky today, I’d stay home and read the remainder of this 209 page very quick read. Though I’d never stoop to watch the soaps, I was fascinated by the accounts of the Craigslist killing when it occurred here in Boston last April, and titillated when it turned out that Philip Markoff, the guy charged in the murder, was a student at B.U. Medical School.

I especially like the book’s account of the defendant’s “cyber stupidity,” explaining how his identity was very quickly determined in an age of Blackberries, text messaging, cell phones, and email. And that’s the part missing from all those True Detective magazine stories that were a staple of Grandpa’s leisure reading.

A physician who saw patients seven days a week at his office on New York’s Lower East Side, Grandpa loved reading about crime. Though he sent Grandma out to get The New York Times for stock quotes, he relished the Daily News and other tabloids providing regular coverage of mayhem and murder.

Mom thought it was disgraceful that her father-in-law, “an educated man,” would read what she considered trash. But I guess Grandpa felt he had nothing to prove. I confide that because of the many newspapers I read each day for my work, I don’t read as many books as I should. My night table has a stack of books on issues less exciting than crime, and I’ve read 80 per cent of each – with no desire to play hooky to finish any one of them.

Our Bill of Rights says that everybody has a right to a fair trial, and I have no idea what the defense team of Philip Markoff has in mind. Given the evidence disclosed in the press and the recently released book about the case, will his lawyers go for a trial, playing for the fumble? The notoriety of the case makes it seem unlikely the Suffolk County D.A. would allow for a plea bargain. In a world of legal texts, the defendant could be exonerated.

Though it’s almost time to get ready for work this morning, I’m looking forward to additional details about Philip Markoff’s engagement to that good-looking blonde from the Jersey Shore who stood by her man for about a week. Assuming I get home early enough to pick the book up again this evening, please don’t disappoint me.