family | LINDA C. WISNIEWSKI

Tag: family
- It’s Just Christmas
  
  Posted at 10:21 am by lindawis, on December 10, 2020
  Yes, it is. December, that time of year when all around the Western world, people party and shop for pretty things and sing and eat delicious sugary goodies. But not this year. Not if we want to survive. The Covid pandemic has put a big wet blanket over the holiday season.
  
  Which has me thinking about all the less than perfect Christmases I have seen. My mother must be speaking from beyond, because I am thinking of her stories about Christmas during WWII, a lonely and bleak holiday clouded by anxiety over whether her husband and brothers would ever come home again. I am also thinking of my single parent years, and the December night, dark and cold, when I drove after work to Toys R Us to get a boy astronaut Cabbage Patch doll. I had called all the toy stores to find one (no internet back then.) Those were the years we drove, my boy and I, two hundred miles up the NY Thruway to spend Christmas Day with my parents and my also divorced sister and her three kids. Nobody seemed particularly happy. Her tearful little son threw his new cowboy hat on the floor in disappointment. I longed for the week after Christmas, when back at work, we could eat cookies and nothing was as urgent as it seemed the rest of the year. More recently, we all came down with norovirus. Nobody cared much about presents that year, or even eating.
  
  All this reminiscing is meant to make me feel better about not getting together with friends and family as we hope to ‘stop the spread’ of this deadly virus. But really, it’s reminded me that the best Christmases were quiet. The year I spent the day alone with my new boyfriend. The year I was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, pregnant with my first child, as my husband earned a master’s degree. We went out for dinner in a restaurant lit with twinkly lights, just the two of us.
  
  People I know are today grieving the loss of loved ones. Most of us are making it through this time with varying degrees of worry and longing for better times. But it’s just a day, this Christmas. A day like any other, if we wish. Or a day made special if we like. This year, I hope for a soft, relaxed and quiet Christmas Day, a hearty meal shared with our two sons, a card game or two, and if the weather cooperates, a nice long walk. Comfort and love, nothing more or less than that.
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments | Tagged anxiety, Christmas, family
- Lipstick Print on a China Cup
  
  Posted at 1:19 pm by lindawis, on March 23, 2018
  Photo by Pexels
  
  Coffee doesn’t like me anymore. It upsets my stomach. But whenever I see someone walking down a city street, lidded paper cup in hand, I want one.
  
  In my early 20’s, coffee and a cigarette started my day. On the way to work, I stopped in the lobby of the Erie County Welfare Department to buy a coffee and a buttered roll before stepping into the elevator. In college and away from home for the first time, coffee made me feel alert, ready for anything. Safe. An anxious kid, holding and sipping that hot dark cup of Joe made me feel sophisticated. Like I belonged to the tribe of grownups.
  
  This thread winds back to my two aunts at our family’s Formica kitchen table, talking and laughing. Their coffee was light and creamy, and the rims of their cups held the print of their red lipstick. Cigarette smoke plumed from an ashtray. They cared about me and I loved them back.
  
  Follow the thread even farther back to an open house at Bigelow Sanford Carpet Mills, my Uncle Clarence standing beside a loom so high it reached far above his head, or so it seemed to me. Laughing, he offered me a cup of coffee and I was mute, serious. My father said it was a joke, my uncle was only kidding. I was too young for coffee, for sophistication.
  
  I grew up to love the bitter taste of strong black coffee, but now it bothers my stomach. I switched to decaf then tea in the morning. I thought I’d build up a ritual with tea, evoking England, gentility, scones….
  
  But old habits are hard to break. Once or twice a week, at coffee hour after the church service, or during a morning of writing, I treat myself to a cup of Joe. Because I’m forever captured by the image of red lipstick prints on the rims of china cups. The stamps of women who loved me when they were younger than I am now.
  
  *************************************************************************************
  
  What about you? Is there a habit you can trace to your childhood? Comment here and I’ll put your name in the drawing for a copy of The Collection: Flash Fiction for Flash Memory. One of my stories is included in this beautiful anthology of stories for the memory impaired (or the short of reading time!)
  
  The winner of last month’s drawing is Marielena Zuniga. She gets a signed copy of Anna Quindlen’s novel, Miller’s Valley. Congratulations, Marielena!
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in anxiety, home, memoir | 19 Comments | Tagged aging, anxiety, family, home
- Bits of Christmas Light
  
  Posted at 5:23 am by lindawis, on November 24, 2017
  My Jewish friend once said he felt left out at Christmas, that the sparkling lights on the trees and buildings “are not for me.” A teacher we both knew told him about the pagan origins of the festivals of light celebrated around the world at the darkest time of the year. “The lights can be for you if you want them to be,” he wisely said. But what if all is not peace and light?
  
  It’s a fraught time of year, I find, with trapdoors of angst, regret and disappointment. If I’m not careful, I fall in. Flashes of memory come and go. Dear faces I’ll no longer see. Sweet voices I won’t hear again.
  
  Some years, I was so lonely I couldn’t wait for the holidays to be over. Other years were so frantic with shopping, traveling, and family dysfunction, I was too tired and anxious to be full of good cheer. A close relative used to joke with me about wanting a Thanksgiving table like the one on the wine commercial – big, happy family, everyone getting along. Then we’d laugh and say: “Those people are actors!”
  
  This week, as I dug out my fancy salad recipe for Thanksgiving, I remembered my mother working hard in her kitchen. She was a good baker, but got pretty strung out when she put on a holiday feast. I wish I could have understood her better when she was still alive. Next month, when I bring out my vanilla-stained cookie recipes, I will think of my mother-in-law and her son’s favorite peanut butter cookies with a chocolate kiss in the center. I wish I could talk to her now.
  
  I’ve come to realize that these winter holidays can be just what we need “if we want them to be.” No one knows where the path may lead, but there are things we can hold on to regardless.
  
  Often, it helps to write or read about them. In the absorbing new novel, An Uncertain Path, by Sandra Carey Cody, an unexpected and tragic accident links the lives of two young women, unknown to one another, and sets them on a path they never imagined.
  
  We had an unexpected loss in our own family this month, and our path through the holidays will feel different. But that’s okay. These days, Change is my new middle name. My perspective has shifted quite a bit. I focus on the things I love about Christmas: spending time with friends and family, making and sharing traditional food, listening to special music, driving around to see the lights, attending a Christmas Eve service.
  
  I don’t care anymore if my holiday season is as good as anybody else’s, or like the ones gone by. In the fullness of time, they all run together anyway. My wish for you is that these short days are filled with all the peace, love and warmth your heart can hold.
  
  Now it’s your turn. What’s the most important part of the winter holidays for you? What can you do without?
  
  ***********************************************************************************
  
  Post a comment and I’ll put your name in the drawing for a signed copy of An Uncertain Path.
  
  **********
  
  The winner of last month’s drawing is Donna Galanti, a wonderful writer herself! She gets an autographed copy of A Time of Fear and Loving by Alice Orr. Congrats, Donna!
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in balance, book, cookies, fiction, home, novel, pain, peace, philosophy, simplicity | 16 Comments | Tagged Christmas, family, home, writers
- When Things Were Not So Different
  
  Posted at 3:17 pm by lindawis, on April 5, 2017
  The following is a blog piece I wrote last year and never published. I think it’s time to let it out into the world.
  
  Today I went to a life celebration for one of my memoir students. Lee was 93, a sweet and gentle man who smiled at his own frailties and took seriously all my suggestions to make his writing better. The gathering was small but filled with love and laughter as his family recalled his attention to detail and his endless storytelling.
  
  It’s been a tough week here in the U.S. of A. Another mass shooting, angry ranting in the media, social and public, about the merits of gun control and the true tenets of a religion whose extremist members are suicidal would be killers.
  
  Added to that is the ever present fact that I’m not getting any younger. No moisturizer or beauty sleep will iron out the wrinkles on my face. No amount of zumba or chiropractic will stave off forever the aches in my back and knees. I feel the pressure of time. Enjoy life, now, while you can, I tell myself. Use each moment to live your best life, there may be no tomorrow.
  
  How can I reconcile my desire to accomplish certain things, to savor each moment, and to rewire my brain for happiness with the outside world and its horrors?
  
  Can I stop watching the news? Cut off my social media? I’ll know it’s there anyway.
  
  Hearing about Lee’s long and full life, at the funeral home this morning, at the lunch the family hosted afterward, and in his stories in my memoir class, I understand why this man was so loved. He was kind, he was gentle, he was tender. He lived through another horrific time: the Second World War, and worked as a young scientist on a secret project in the desert, far from home. And went on to establish a family and a network of friends, a home and a lifetime of useful work.
  
  My mother once told me of the sad and lonely wartime Christmas holidays, for three or four years in succession, when she missed her husband and three brothers, all of them in mortal danger, knowing she’d only hear from them weeks after a letter was written, hopefully always by them and even then not knowing for sure they were all right.
  
  We’ve been through tough times before. The world is like that. This is our time, and we can hide from that truth or use our time here to make our patch of earth and sky, the place from which our light shines forth, warm and suffused with love. A comfort. Like Lee.
  
  :
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in anxiety, balance, life stories, memoir, memoirs, pain, philosophy, writing | 11 Comments | Tagged aging, anxiety, family, history, memoirs, society
- A Simply Christmas Birthday Cake
  
  Posted at 12:14 pm by lindawis, on December 20, 2014
  At Christmas, or maybe just because it’s the end of the year, I try to make everything perfect. Big and little worries come out and tug at me to fix them. But I can’t.
  
  It’s just a holiday, that’s all, I tell myself, albeit a big heavy one laden with all kinds of expectations. It does not have to be so fraught. Like December 26^th, it’s just a day until we make it something more.
  
  Going downstairs this morning, I saw the photos of my family on bookshelves, some gone, all of us older, and perhaps because I was ruminating on life’s imperfection, I saw them in their flawed beauty and I loved them. Each one has strengths and quirks and weak places, traits that make them who they are. And I wonder whose story shall be next. My mission as a memoir writer is to bring them all to light.
  
  Do not worry and whine about how hard it is, I tell myself, or how widely your words are read. Love it and do it.
  
  In the kitchen, I see the cookbook, open to the page for Simply Cheesecake. My husband wants it for his birthday cake. He and Jesus have the same birthday and guess who has felt overlooked on December 25^th since he was a little boy?
  
  The origin of the recipe is lost in the mist of time. It has been published in two fundraising cookbooks, one for my faith community where you are welcome if you are open-minded, and one for Dining for Women, a nationwide giving circle of bighearted women. Openhearted church, generous women: two communities where I am welcome, with or without my perfect cheesecake.
  
  Lighter than the densely packed New York style, my cheesecake can be served with or without topping. My husband has chosen strawberries and whipped cream this year, and I plan to whip the cream myself, no pressurized can of chemicals for me. This will be a pure and natural gift of love. I slowed my worried mind and made a list of what I’ll need, and felt calmer, knowing I can grab that list and go, or even let him, the one who actually enjoys grocery shopping, take it and run.
  
  Sipping my coffee, relaxed, I remembered that when I slide that cake into the oven, I will bless it with the sign of the cross, a salute to my mother, who made the sign before the open oven door whenever she baked. I wonder if she did it as a salute to hers.
  
  Feeling close to her, I look down at the cheesecake recipe in the open cookbook on the table before me. “After one hour, turn off the oven,” I read, “and leave the cake inside for one more hour. Do NOT open the oven door at any time!” I never have, in all the years I’ve baked that cake. Will it “fall” if I open the door just a crack? Why chance it, I reason, after all that mixing and blending of cheeses and sour cream, eggs added one at a time, vanilla. Even when it’s done, after two hours in the oven, one with the heat turned off and the DOOR CLOSED, the cake needs to set, to cool on a rack then chill in the fridge. I don’t question the magic and the mystery.
  
  My thoughts turn to the friend who tells me every time she bakes this cake, and I realize: This is my specialty. I don’t do everything well – who does? – But this I enjoy, both the making and the serving. It is my birthday gift to my husband– this year we will light long thin candles for him to make a wish on – and the Christmas dessert for the friends who will join us for dinner. All this cannot be rushed. And it’s damn near perfect.
  
  photo credit: Flickr.com by quinnanya, Creative Commons licensed.
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged birthdays family, Christmas, family, home, writing
- A Veterans’ Day Salute
  
  Posted at 3:30 pm by lindawis, on November 11, 2013
  My cousin Wayne rode into town with his mother on the Sunday afternoon train and arrived at Grandma’s house wrapped in a whiff of danger. My sister and I were good little girls who knew how to behave. We sat on Grandma’s porch glider, careful to push off gently, toes to the floor, rocking slowly with just a tiny squeak on the backstroke. When Wayne arrived, things got kicked up a notch. His bottom bounced onto the seat and he pushed off the floor with both feet, the glider squeaking like a rusty gate. Wind whistled past our ears.
  
  The grownups said to stop it right now, but Wayne couldn’t resist temptation. A few minutes later, he’d start again, faster and faster, until we heard an awful scraping sound as metal hit wall. “If I catch you doing that again…” his mother frowned.
  
  “Let’s play inside,” I suggested. Wayne dumped a bag of green plastic soldiers onto Grandma’s coffee table and arranged them into battle scenes. Then he showed us his bag of war comics. For my sister and me, he was the perfect Sunday playmate, who brought us the fun kind of danger where no one got hurt.
  
  After high school, Wayne joined the army and was sent to Vietnam where he earned three Purple Hearts. When he came home, we watched an antiwar protest on TV. “They ought to send ’em all to Vietnam!” he said. I was a college student, against the war. I didn’t know what to say. I loved my cousin, but he wasn’t playing soldiers anymore. I wished we could all go back in time and sit on Grandma’s glider again. Our eyes met and his grin collapsed. “Nobody should go there,” my cousin said, looking at the floor.
  
  Previously published in a different version in The Rocking Chair Reader, Adams Media, 2005.Image courtesy of Gualberto 107, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net.
  Share this:
  Share
  Tumblr
  Pinterest
  LinkedIn
  Email
  Twitter
  Facebook
  Like this:
  Like Loading...
  Posted in life stories, memoir, memoirs, peace, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged family, peace, war
- Follow LINDA C. WISNIEWSKI on WordPress.com
- Sign Up For My Newsletter
- Blog Posts
  - Carol Ann and the Lumberyard October 19, 2021
  - Get It Down (While You Still Can) September 17, 2021
  - Blue Chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace August 11, 2021
  - Summer Mornings July 16, 2021
  - Good Enough is good enough June 17, 2021
- - Twitter
- Follow me on Twitter
  My Tweets
- Subscribe to Blog via Email
  
  Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
  
  Join 902 other followers
  
  Email Address:
- My Facebook Page
  
  My Facebook Page
- Blogs I Follow