It's the Thought that Counts?

Just got the most thoughtful early birthday present. My friend Mary Ellen wrote in for tickets to a taping of The Rachael Ray Show in NYC on December 5th for me and my daughters (Rose, Julie and Ya-Jhu), and the tickets came yesterday morning! Those of you who know me as a cook know how often I use Ray's recipes (several times every week), so I'm as excited as a tween girl going to see Taylor Swift!!

I am lucky enough to be surrounded by gifted gift-givers. I marvel at their uncanny ability to choose exactly what the recipient would love, without outright asking them, so there's the wonderful element of surprise. Included in my Gifting Hall of Fame are my husband and kids, who never fail to come up with presents that others were dreaming of. I'll never forget the year Rosie (who was REALLY young) saved up enough money from her baking business to buy PJ his heart's desire, a Gameboy Color (remember them)? There had been a typhoon near their factory in Asia, so shipments around Christmastime were extremely limited. Undaunted, Rose went on eBay and found the coveted toy, paying much more than she should have, but so delighted to give her brother this treat.  Yaj is also stellar in this department. For someone who hasn't known us that long, she ALWAYS picks the perfect things, accompanying them with the cutest notes. And, truly, no one tops Julie. She is so 

Christmas 2012, largely a Julie Seyfried production!

savvy and clued-in that, last year, I gave her my credit card and asked her to do the Christmas shopping for me. She did an incredible job, and everyone got what they actually wanted (and she came in under budget).

Which leads me to my confession. I am a dreadful shopper. I mean well, really I do. But mine is the unfortunate combination of unobservant and perpetually low on funds come birthdays and holidays. I can only guess at what my loved ones would like, and my guesses are invariably wrong. I stand in the mall, paralyzed, Nat King Cole crooning "Chestnuts roasting..."on the sound system. Finally, in desperation, I purchase either something they already have (and I didn't notice), or something that isn't their taste at all. Everyone is always so nice, and acts like they're pleased with my offerings. But I know better.

So here we are again, heading rapidly into “the most wonderful time of the year.” Others of my acquaintance have squirreled presents away since last January, and now have only to wrap and label and put under the tree. I have purchased zero, a state of affairs likely to continue until December 20th, when once more Nat King Cole will provide the soundtrack to my in-store panic attack.

Rose delighted with a gift (not from me!)

I hope my family and friends know how much I love them, how grateful I am for them. I hope they will forgive my misguided efforts to buy for them. I promise to include the gift receipts for quick and easy returns!

Out of this World

Rose and PJ--a starry night on the beach

I’ve got to tell you, I am completely nutty about outer space. From  Close Encounters... at the movies, to Mary Doria Russell’s incredible book The Sparrow, to stargazing on the beach at night, I am enthralled by the sheer majesty and scope of the universe.

In the heyday of NASA, I followed each manned space flight eagerly. I remember watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. It was July, 1969, and we were staying in a TV-less cottage in Normandy Beach, NJ. Our next door neighbor, Dave MacDonald (age 95), had a television set and invited us over. He had served in the Spanish-American War, among other amazing life events, and I wondered how he would react to this most momentous occasion. As it turned out, he fell asleep just before “one small step for man,” and his guests were left to marvel as Old MacDonald snored in his recliner.

More recently, I was fascinated by the discovery of a planet much like ours, in another solar system.  Gleise 581 g, dubbed the Goldilocks Planet by scientists (“not too hot, not too cold, just right” for life), could indeed harbor, or have harbored, life similar to ours. Looking ahead hundreds, if not thousands of years, wouldn’t it be cool to pop by and visit this place and (possibly) this people?

In fact, in 2008 a digital time capsule was launched, containing snippets of our Earth culture, from messages from world leaders and average citizens, to the music of Beethoven, Bach and Chuck Berry. It passed Mars in 4 minutes. This boggles my mind—a communication that reaches another planet quicker than my kids respond to a call to wash the dishes!

One week our adult ed class at church wrestled with the question: where is God on maybe multiple sentient being-sustaining planets? What does this do to our comprehension of the Bible? Is the God of Israel the be-all and end-all, or the God of a people limited by their understanding? It was an interesting conversation to say the least.

I believe that when we are threatened by the possibility of extraterrestrial life, we put our human limits on a limitless God. Why is it impossible that God who we believe created everything that is, cares for life forms elsewhere? Could God send a Jesus to them, to enter into their pain and offer them life eternal? Why not? 

Father Francis Delano, Many Worlds, One God: "Any person possessing a religious faith that conveys an adequate idea of the greatness of God's creative ability, of humanity's humble position in the universe, and of the limitless love and care God has for all His intelligent creatures, should not be afraid to look at the evidence....that indicates that we humans are not the only ones in the universe having intellects and wills capable of knowing and loving God."

And from the movie Contact: “I guess I'd say if it is just us...it seems like an awful waste of space.”

Amen.

"Neptune" from Gustav Holst's "The Planets"

A Big Pill

I did something to my arm about four weeks ago, and it’s killing me. It feels like pinched nerves; I can barely lift it without intense pain. It has interrupted my sleep, and makes it hard to type at work. If this keeps up, I tell you, I’ll have to go to the doctor within the year! Meanwhile I struggle wincingly through my routine, willing this whatever-it-is to go away on its own.

I don’t do the whole injury and illness thing well. It’s a good thing I rarely get sick. In the past 29 years I’ve had pneumonia once, had maybe two stomach bugs and one bout of the flu. I think, given my house full of children, that’s a remarkable track record. 99% of the time, I’ve been able to soothe fevered brows and clean up from upset tummies without catching anything myself. Even when the entire household comes down with the same disease, I remain the last mom standing, as it were.

baby sister Carolyn

As a little girl, I was usually fit as a fiddle. My sisters, on the other hand, got everything that came down the pike. C had the mumps as a baby, all on one side of her neck. She was just learning to stand up, and I recall seeing her hoist herself up in her playpen—and promptly fall over on her swollen side. And poor Mo! Perpetually plagued with one thing or another, all her life. Maureen was such a sweet, motherly child that, in school, she was always the one who helped the kid who’d just vomited. Of course, she would promptly catch whatever that kid had, and be twice as sick.

Through childhood I breezed, with nary a broken bone or serious fall. My secret? The bare minimum of exercise. One would be hard pressed to sprain anything while sprawled on the sofa watching Petticoat Junction.

Nowadays, on the rare occasions when I do get hurt or become ill, I am the most impatient of patients, a giant pain when in pain. I insist on maintaining my daily schedule at all costs, stubbornly shooing away all offers of help. No, I don’t want any damn ginger ale! Give me the car keys! I’m going to work! And do NOT suggest I take medicine! Apart from the two pills I must take daily for

the sum total of my medicine cabinet

my mental well-being, I refuse any and all cold remedies, temperature reducers and stomach settlers. I wish I could say it’s because I prefer a holistic regime of vitamins and health foods, but in fact my diet is only so-so, I am a big meal skipper and a caffeine fiend.
 
At some point, I know, my body will betray me, and I will succumb to the various viruses and ouchies that others have as a matter of course. For now, though, I will keep on cancelling doctor appointments and refusing to believe I am not immortal.

Note to my kids: do as I say, and NOT as I do!

Boo!

Tomorrow morning, for the umpty-umpth time, I will be the Halloween witch for the Christ’s Lutheran Nursery School classes. Every year, I need less costume, makeup and attitude adjustment to play this part. My annual shtick is to pretend to be a witch from somewhere else (Texas, Ireland), where the Halloween customs are comically different (the families give the trick or treaters pockets full of grits; everyone dresses like leprechauns and speaks Gaelic, etc.) The children take great delight in correcting me: “No, no, we don’t  DO that! We don’t give people our money when they open their doors to us! We don’t collect dirty laundry at every house!”  I enjoy these visits, but dread the holiday they presage.

You see, I never got into Halloween. I’m not a big candy eater, for one thing (except for Mounds bars. I buy big bags of these each October, ostensibly for the “kids,” but really I squirrel most of them away for me).  For another, my formative years were spent on the lower East Side of Manhattan, not the safest of places even in the 60s. “Trick or treat” involved our parents ferrying us up and down in the elevator for an hour or so, stopping at the apartments of elderly neighbors who gave us poorly-wrapped cookies and mushy apples, all of which went straight to the trash can as soon as we got home. So I have no fond memories of bonfires and pumpkin patches and neighborhood parties, far from it.

Thank you Aunt C!

When the kiddos were born, I braced myself for October 31st, knowing I would have to do my duty, traipse around town with my tiny ghosts and goblins, and purchase pounds of Snickers and Twix to parcel out to other friends’ tiny ghosts and goblins. And of course, my offspring all LOVED everything Halloween, anticipating the spooky fun for weeks. Our house decorations amounted to spider webs (the real ones, not store-bought!); our jack o’lantern was hastily carved immediately prior to our first night visitor. My creative sister C was responsible for some of our more successful flights of costume fancy: Sheridan’s lobster, Evan’s spaceman. Rose took the cake for most personally inventive: one year she was Olympian Kerri Strug on crutches (just Google Strug); once Rosie was the Declaration of Independence. Every year, I pretended to be charmed by the parade of doorbell-ringing scavengers “don’t take the whole basketful, kids! Kids! I mean it!” and thrilled by the bounty my children brought home (does anybody really eat malted milk balls?) And every year, I rejoiced when it was time to turn out the lights and go to bed.

Rosie and her candy jackpot

 Lest you think I’m a total killjoy, I adore Christmas and happily fuss at Thanksgiving. I’ve even done my Easter bit, with egg dyeing and such (one year we did Ukrainian pysanky—just Google it). But there is something about Fright Night that doesn’t sit well with me.  Let others revel in the dark side!  Boo to All Hallows Eve, I say!

Eye of the Beholder

Note the date--still not cashed in!

In my desk drawer there is a lovely gift certificate to a spa, courtesy of my kids. It’ll expire if I don’t watch out. I could use it for a facial, a massage, a mani-pedi, and I haven’t. So what’s stopping me?

In my bathroom there is:  toothbrush, face scrub, cold cream. My entire beauty routine!! I should probably be using anti-aging thises and thats, to trick Mother Nature and give me back a few years, but I don’t. So what’s the problem?

In my closet: a “gently used” pair of running shoes. And I do mean gently. I’ve gotten so out of shape that I huff and puff even bending down to tie the laces. So why aren’t I hitting the road?

I’ve thought about it a lot recently. I’d love to claim I have no personal vanity, but that’d be a huge whopper. Oh, I care how I look, all right…I just don’t want to put any effort into it. And to be totally honest, I have my physical appearance and my history of bipolar disorder inextricably intertwined in my head. You see, when I was at my worst I became completely obsessed with clothes and makeup. I got all dolled up to empty the trash, and took an inordinate amount of time primping before a trip to the grocery store.  I even wrote a poem about it, way back when:


MAKING UP

A small part of my old cosmetic collection

Looking at our household budget
Over the last year
It wouldn’t surprise me
If the item purchased most
Was lip gloss
For so many years
I was an actress
Makeup was part of my job
And every single time
I couldn’t wait
To scrub clean after the show
It felt like magic
Presto
Here is the girl again
The real girl
Under the layers of powder and paint                       
Now
I wake up
Naked
And so disappointed
My real girl isn’t in there anymore
Instead, I’m this--this
Same, sad, nasty, twisted thing
Damn
So
every day
I write a note
On my face
Help
In thick black mascara
Please save me
In pinkest blush
I’m dying here
In the brightest blue eye shadow
And everyday
I sign it
With a slick red lip gloss kiss
So far no one has answered
Maybe tomorrow
I’ll use green eye shadow instead

Luckily, shortly after that poem was written I got the psychiatric help I so desperately needed, and for the past several years I have been on a pretty even keel. But there has to be a happy medium, right? I can spruce up a bit without being Maybelline’s Most Valuable Customer.  And trying to look my best on the outside doesn’t mean I’m hiding something shattered inside.

So I think I’ll set my alarm a little earlier tomorrow morning, and try to go for a run.  I might even slap on a little foundation and yes, lip gloss too, before I leave for work. And it doesn’t matter who sees me. I’ll do this for myself. 

The ABCs of Us

Affirmation for Orchestra, the composition that got Sheridan an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer when he was 18.  Proud moment. 

Budapest: Julie’s latest stop on her backpacking trip. 10 countries by the time she’s through! How can Oreland possibly compare?

Julie and friends in Salzburg, Austria

“C”: our nickname for my sis Carolyn. Best sibling and best aunt ever.

Delmarva: My favorite creation of my favorite husband. Steve as Cinderella’s stepsister still makes me roar after 30 years.

Enough cereal: There never was when they were growing up. And I’d buy five boxes at a time! Now our household has shrunk appreciably. Why hasn’t my grocery bill?

Francium: At USNA, Evan studied the nuclear structure of the isotopes of this element. Where did his brain come from? To me, francium sounds like something yummy from France.

Evan physics award Naval Academy 2008

Giovanni McMenamin. Otis Spunkmyer:  When she was little, these were the names Rose chose for her future children. Why do I think there’s a chance those are still her names?

History: PJ plans to teach it. Steve reads mountains of it. I am doomed to repeat it.

Intrepid: My children. I am very trepid.

Joanie: Mom’s been gone 7 years. When I miss her, I turn on Dr. Phil at full volume. Brings her right back.

Kitchen: We have the world’s tiniest. Yet when everybody’s home that’s where we gather.

Lacrosse: PJ eats and sleeps it, plays it even in Germany. Refs kids’ games, hopes to coach. Oh, did I mention he enjoys lax?

PJ playing for the Marburg (Germany) Saints

Music directors: Sher and Ya-Jhu each play organ and direct the choir at a different Lutheran church. Sunday afternoon chats involve sermons and hymns to a humorous degree.

Nature: Everybody in the family but me LOVES nature. I love to hike from the car to my front door.

Only child: What I’m sure each kid once in a while wished to be. They now love being part of a big family. Yay!

Piano: an important part of our home. After dinner was always melodious; the kids would play so I wouldn’t make them do the dishes!

Quiet, too quiet. What our house is, after so many years as a five-ring circus.

Rabbits:  Julie’s Stoli and Stevie. We miss them, sorta. For our next pet, I vote pet rocks.

Sound: Rose’s world as an audio engineer. Her work life is full of words that baffle me. I finally learned what a Foley artist is (Rose is!)

Rose's album cover

Taxi service: Steve’s. Available 24/7. To Trenton train station. Out for milk on a rainy night. Thanks, honey!

Underway: What I’m glad Evan no longer is, now that his submarine days are behind him.

Vegetarian: Seyfried fail. Rosie tried being one. Julie did too. Sirloin steak keeps calling my name.

Wonder: I am filled with it. Wonder where my keys are. Wonder where my shoes are.

Xtremely: xcited that we’ll ALL be together for Christmas.

Yaj: My daughter-in-law, brightens our lives just by being her sweet, talented self!

The kids in Lewes

Zilch: What my family could do to make me happier than they already do.

We Are All Tattooed

I gotta tell you honestly, it took me awhile to get used to Rosie’s tattoo. I’d ridden with her through unusual

Rose's famous tattoo

hair colors and piercings of body parts I’d
always believed God never meant to have pierced (eyebrow, tongue). But this was different. This was permanent. Here's what Rose wrote for the NPR Studio 360 website feature "Occupational Ink":

In school for sound design and audio engineering, I had a professor who stressed the importance of "checking phantom power" (48 volts). To protect delicate microphones, he said, we would need to be careful about making sure the extra power supply was turned off before plugging them in. "If there's one thing you should tattoo on your arm, it's 'check +48V'"
So I did.
Now, living in New York, as an active engineer, my tattoo is a funny inside joke- and a reminder of how hard I've worked to realize my career dream.

These days, several years down the road, I don’t even notice her arm adornment; or if I do, I recognize it as a familiar feature of an appendage I’ve loved Rose’s whole life.
 
In Costa Rica this summer, the kids loved it when we painted their faces. Mariposa (butterfly).

Costa Rica face canvases

Corazon (heart).  Granted, we used washable paint, and it all disappeared at bathtime. But the children wanted us to paint statements on them in bright colors: this is who I am, this is what I care about. They ran around giggling, delighted with their temporary tattoos.

I very much enjoy reading, and hearing, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. This Denver-based minister leads her flock at the House for All Sinners and Saints. Hers is a really fascinating Lutheran voice. She’s a former stand-up comic, and a recovering alcoholic. She loves the liturgy. Her congregation is inclusive to the max. To her, God lives and loves and suffers with us. And Nadia has tattoos. Lots of them, all over. Religious, many of them. Her body is etched with the symbols of her faith.  I wonder (not really, I know the answer): would I be so bold as to be inked? (nah, too chicken of course).  And yet…

And yet. I AM tattooed. We are all tattooed. From the minute we are born, with our downy new baby skin. We have birthmarks, and then freckles. The little touches that help make us all physically unique. Later, our skin bears the scars of sun and of time. Each laugh line, every wrinkle, is a tattoo, an irreversible marking on our bodies. Some of us try to stave off our tattoos with sunscreen, or with Botox, but eventually the marks appear anyway.

So, what do our life tattoos say about us? That we are not blank canvases but full, rich ones. So let us celebrate the message we have for the world, spelled out on our flesh: we are here, living fully every amazing day that we’ve been given. At any age, we are God’s works of art. Beautiful and beloved. Just look at us!

Toughest Day of the Year...

…for me, is today, September 30th. For you see, my mom Joanie died 7 years ago yesterday, and my darling sister Maureen died 32 years ago tomorrow. Today, I live in suspension between grieving for what had happened, and grieving for what was still to come. It’s an uncomfortable place to be.

I spent Mo’s last day on earth, totally oblivious. I awoke to an early AM phone call from sister Carolyn. There had been a car accident in Atlanta. C was heading to the hospital and would call soon. I prayed. Let her be OK. Please God. And then came the answer to my prayer: C calling back: “Elise, can you come home today?” I remember flying to Atlanta that afternoon, praying again—this time that I would die too. That prayer wasn’t answered the way I wanted either.

Mo on her last day

Every year on September 30th, I would focus on my Mo. I’d play Billy Joel (her favorite) and cry. I’d re-read the box of letters I have from her, the last only days before her death. And so the September 30ths passed, decades full of them.

Then came September, 2006. Mom was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor. The doctor told us it was terminal, but that she’d likely live for weeks. Mo’s anniversary was approaching. Mom announced abruptly that she would be in Heaven with Mo by October 1st. No one believed her. And yet… at 2:15 PM on September 29th, Joanie reunited with Mo at last.

I want to write about the miracles: the sorrowful email from the boy driving the car Mo’s last night, who tracked us down through a website. Mo’s appearances to my grandma (Grandma hadn’t been told Mo had died). The many times in the past 7 years that I have felt Mom’s presence as if she were just in the next room.

But I find that miracles in this day and age are a pretty hard sell. All well and good for you, people seem to say. It’s tough to swallow, though. And I totally understand, because that doubter was once me, too.

Just as we create our story, day by day and action by action, so I believe God creates us, not once but constantly. Joanie and Mo created beautiful stories. It was crushing to come to the end of them. But is it the end? I firmly believe it is not. Somewhere, maybe just out of sight, my mother and my sister live on, waiting for C and me to join them. I’d love to scribble my story fast and make that day come sooner, but I can’t. So on I live, in the blessed story that has grown to include five amazing children. I am so comforted by them. I can wait.

I look at the clock. 4:50 PM. Come on, September 30th! Be done for another year! Let me put my mourning in mothballs because otherwise I couldn’t bear it. And Mom? Mo? Watch over us, until we meet again.

Joanie

Stuff for Sale

Just got a call that I have been dreading. A neighbor’s son had contacted me weeks ago about a “project” he was working on. Could I give him a few minutes of my time? Certainly! I’m all for imparting some of my wisdom to the younger generation! I imagined a school assignment that required interviewing a person old enough to remember Herman’s Hermits (moi).

Nay! Turns out the lad has a different agenda. He’s out to sell me Cutco knives. I flinch, because I’ve been down that road many times before. My premiere foray into the world of razor sharp kitchen implements was a presentation by a young actor who was working for us, and still, surprisingly, falling short of making a decent living. So he shilled for Cutco. Next came the daughter of a woman I hadn’t seen, no joke, in 20 years. She, too, arrived on my doorstep with an assortment of cutlery. More recently, our dear young friend Hannah came a calling. She had a refreshing attitude: just let me cut some rope in your kitchen, blurt out my spiel, and we can all go back to our lives. Halfway through her Cutco speech, her cell phone rang. It was the offer of a better job! Hannah literally threw her knives in the bag and then and there called it a career.

For the record: my knives are old, and probably not as sharp as they could be (but then, neither am I). I am emotionally attached to each one of them—paring, chef’s, serrated—and have no intention of adding to my collection. But Cutco pays for every booking, even if nothing is sold, so why not listen to the kid?

My father was a furniture salesman, and not a very good one. He made a modest living selling Danish Modern sofas and tables to stores. We ended up furnishing our various homes with his samples, our living room adorned with chairs of black leather and chrome that you’d need a crowbar to get out of, and Rya rugs so thick that you wanted to mow them. I watched him come back from many a road trip, tired and defeated, and I vowed never to sell anything.

But here I am, selling myself at every turn. Buy my books! Book me as a speaker! I loathe this part of the business and wish I could hire someone to take my place. It gets really old. I wish I had a better product to offer. I lack the confidence to pound on doors, to cold-call, to do what I know it takes to successfully hawk wares. It’s a hard-knock life, being a salesman, and I applaud those brave enough to attempt it.

The Cutco Kid will be here any minute, showing me how his butcher knife saws through wood. I doubt I’ll buy, but I give him lots of credit for trying. I will sit, listening patiently, as I wish others had sat for my dad, long ago.

Tom Cunningham, salesman

Bumpy Landings

Over this past weekend, our family packed up, cleaned up, and left Lewes until next summer. After a two hour drive, we unpacked, cleaned up (how DO these houses manufacture dirt on their own while we’re away?) and settled back in Oreland for another year. It may have been a relatively short hop, but it was, as always, a bumpy landing.

Not that everything at the shore is peaches and cream. But there’s always the soul-soothing walk on

Four out of five--best we can do these days!

the beach to quiet racing brains and calm frazzled nerves.  The slower pace infects even the most ambitious among us, as the screened porch and afternoon naps beckon.  But as the last days tick inexorably by, we rev up to our usual frantic activity level, and we fret about what awaits us back in PA.

This September, the Seyfrieds are all about leave-takings: Rosie is off to Seattle for a visit this week; PJ just embarked on a semester in Marburg, Germany; Julie leaves Thursday for a 2 ½ month European backpacking trek which will take her from Italy to Finland, with several stops in between. Both Rose and Evan moved into new digs Sunday (Evan in DC celebrating the first time ever that he can afford to live without a roommate).

on the boardwalk, back in the day

We are NOT the masters of the smooth transition. When the kids were little, the first days in Delaware were tearful as they missed their rooms, their friends at home. Along about week two, they finally adjusted, and the next six weeks were happy indeed. Like clockwork, though, they fell apart when it was time to return to Oreland. Our heavy-laden trip back up Highway One (High chairs! Cribs! Playpens! Bikes! We would have benefited from a U-Haul just to transport the toys alone!)  was further burdened by the inconsolable weeping coming from the car seats in the back. Steve and I annually settled in for at least a week of nightmares and disorientation as we returned to a town without ocean breezes: “I miss mine beach! I miss mine boardwalk!” tiny PJ used to say, with deep emotion if not grammatical accuracy.

Today, Mom and Dad, too, experience bumpy landings. Steve returns to countless hours of booking shows, rehearsing, and preparing for his drama classes. My church schedule goes directly to insane, with so many things going on that I almost (but not quite) regret going away at all. It doesn’t help that it’s still really hot and we have no air conditioning (unlike the delightful AC in the Lewes condo); I easily sweat off the five pounds I’ve tried to lose all summer.

The only constant in life is change, right? Yes, but that’s not always good news for us creatures of habit. Nevertheless, our circumstances do change, often, and we must adjust.  And by and large, as Evan would say, “it’s all good.”

And so we come to the end of the runway, taxi for a bit, and prepare for takeoff again. Fasten your seat belts, everyone!