20 posts tagged “family”

So, my sister is coming from Maryland to visit for Thanksgiving.  We did a lot of prep work this weekend to prepare, but I'm always looking for omens as to how the week might go.

Well -- both Penny and my car are sick.  Penny had to take a de-wormer (ick) and my car needs new brake-pads (ka-ching).

At least Penny gets to sleep and I get to drive around in a 1-series loaner.  Now how'd they know I was eyeing up one of those....

Hope everyone has a great week!

For months leading up, the Beloved would ask me, “What are your family traditions for being at the beach?”  And I would tell her that we had zero experience with spending a week together at the beach as a family (PLENTY of experience with day-trips) but very little in extended stays.  In some ways, we were going to have to establish our own.

We got to the East Coast with very little problem in which we stocked up for supplies and had a birthday dinner for me at my favorite cheesesteak place in NJ and took a leisurely drive on Saturday to Sea Isle City, where we convened with my brother, his family and my sister to begin Down The Shore—2009.

I hadn’t been to Sea Isle probably since I was 17 and I thought it looked great.  Our  house was a stone’s throw from the beach and really comfortable – and it’s clock set the correct tone for the vacation.

We had great weather --- warm with a calm warm ocean early in the week, turning cooler and rougher as Hurricane Bill passed by out in the Atlantic.

Our days were pretty easy… we’d all trundle out of bed for a slow wake-up with coffee, cereal and the paper.   By 10 or so, the first wave of folks would head down to the beach.  I would tend to stay back on the deck under the umbrella, choosing not to expose my pale, SPF70 slathered skin to the sun and surf until after 2 pm.  We’d hang on the beach, watch the waves, seagulls and people, go for a swim and head back for happy hour and dinner.  (As you might have guessed, I was in charge of happy hour… ).  It was all very civilized.  We ate out a couple of nights, walked the promendade, played games.  It was great.

One day, the fam went up to Atlantic City to see an airshow – and while I love my family dearly, standing out in the sun for 5+ hours was not a choice I was willing to make.  As an alternative, the Beloved and I took a tour of the other southern shore towns – Avalon, Stone Harbor, Wildwood and Cape May.  It was a great trip and highlighted how different each of the towns were.

One of the reasons for the trip was so that the Beloved could see Wildwood – probably the last remnant of “tacky boardwalk” left in The Garden State.  I’d last been there after graduating high school – some friends and I rented a house for a week.  There were still lots of crappy t-shirt shops and amusement piers and tram cars.

We stopped and got pizza and drank it all in.  We finished up by driving over to The Villas, the town on the Delaware Bay side where my grandmother had a house for so long.  Not nearly as upscale as the seaside towns, the Villas was a great place to end the trip – really bringing the week full circle.

At last, the week was at an end (how quickly it goes by) and we all bought souvenir shirts and gathered on the slightly-Bill-touched beach to say our farewells.

We all thought we would do it again – perhaps a new tradition in the making!

One of the fun things about this past weekend with my family is that my sister gave me a file of pictures and memorabilia that my mom had kept with her while she lived her last years with Barb in Maryland.

I took the opportunity to scan a couple of pics of my not-yet-mispent youth this morning.   I'm sure there will be more later -- though  I must say that the hair, fashion, and eyewear choices of my pre-teen and teenage years were --- errr --- unfortunate.

There’s been a lot of discussion this past week about what peoples’ favorite dish is for Holiday meals.

And yesterday as we were going about our tasks of feastly preparations, I realized that there was another aspect to a favorite “dish” that I hadn’t thought about.  Here are my favorite dishes.  They are Buffalo Pottery and depict exotic “asian” vignettes.  Full of birds, stylized trees and pagodas, I’m sure they were meant to bring a little of those then-practically unknown foreign lands to American tables.

I inherited these two serving dishes from my mom when she passed away a few years ago.   On the back of each piece is the Buffalo Pottery emblem and date of manufacture.  The platter was made in 1909 and the serving dish is a little blurred, but I think it’s 1910.

They were the “special” service that came out only on really important family meals – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter.  They were her mother’s before her and her mother’s before her.  That’s nearly a century of tables and family get-togethers that tie a turn-of-the-century farm in lower Delaware to a turn-of-a-different-century home in southern California.

That’s pretty cool.

To say that I am thankful for all the wonderful things in my life is the biggest understatement that I can think of – other than perhaps that I have been more blessed than I could possibly have hoped for.

I love and am loved everyday -- which has been the most wonderfully unexpected joy for someone to find at this time in life. I am healthy and happy (if still working on the wise-thing…), have a wonderful family and great friends and am still curious about life and honestly do look forward to every day.  Did I mention that I was blessed?

I am also thankful for all of you that stop by here.  What a great "experiment" this blog has turned out to be.  I enjoy sharing things with you and am grateful and honored that you share yourselves with me.

The Beloved and I hope that everyone has a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving!

Today would have been my mom’s 84th birthday.  Also, she died three years ago this week, so she’s been in my mind a lot.  So, I thought a little about what my mom might like/dislike if she were here with us this week.

Dislikes:

The media coverage of this campaign.  She would say that too much time is spent covering each side attacking the other – that it’s terrrrrrrrrible.

The greed and stupidity that precipitated this current financial crisis… though honestly, it wouldn’t have affected her – we never had any money, and the little we had was in nothing more complicated than a savings account or CD.

Likes:

The Phillies in the World Series!  She’d be soooo excited about that.  Especially if she could pick up the radio broadcast with Harry Kalas.  She would have really liked last night's 3-2 win in Game 1!!  She would also really like that the game was over at 8:30 here on the west coast.

Going to Sea World – she loved going there especially after she realized that I’d be happy to push her around in a wheel chair.  She loved seeing the Shamu show and dolphin show – and the wheelchair got her special seating.  Bonus!

Going out for pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) – which was something she learned to like very late in life.  I was always proud of the way she tried new things.

Hearing me play the piano.  I think she would have really gotten a kick out of that, and like a good mom, she’d say that I sounded great (no matter what I sounded like).

Happy Birthday, Mom!!  I love you!!

On the penultimate leg of our east-coast swing, we journeyed from my sis’ place in Frederick MD to the “Northern Neck” of Virginia where the Beloved and her brother had arranged a 50th wedding anniversary dinner and party for their folks.  On our drive over, we stopped and had our great visit with the “P’s” and then made sure we would be ready for happy hour when we got there by patronizing on of southern Maryland’s drive-thru liquor stores!

The Northern Neck of Virginia is a peninsula between the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock River to the south as they empty into the Chesapeake Bay.  It’s really quite isolated and sparsely populated for being pretty close to Washington and the I-95 corridor.  As we drove along, farms became more prevalent than suburbs ultimately giving way to little fishing/retirement homes tucked along the many tributaries of the two rivers that crenellate the whole area.  I’d never been here before and it was really a lovely place – a nice cross between being in the south and being down the shore.

The hotel where we stayed was right on its own little inlet and had lots of activities, including a boat ride out onto the Rappahannock, kayaking and crabbing for the kids.

One of our excursions of note was to Christ’s Church, a small but gorgeous Georgian church built in 1735 (originally Anglican, but now Episcopalian as being Anglican wasn't so popular during the Revolution...).  The architecture was beautiful and we had a great tour and visits with one of the docents on site.

The weekend was a big success – the Beloved-In-Laws knew the family would be there, but didn’t know that we’d secretly invited other family and close friends making the weekend quite the she-bang.  It was really a great, fun weekend.

 
*bonus points for anyone that noticed that google-maps indicated Villas, NJ – where my grandmother’s house had been.

When I was growing up, we had a summer family tradition – no tradition isn’t quite the right word – "ritual" seems more correct.  Every (and I mean damn near every) Sunday during the summer, we would pack up the family and head “down the shore”. 

Specifically, we would drive down and visit my grandmother at her summer house and then head over to Cape May for several hours of beach time.  We’d then head back, get cleaned up, all go out to dinner (to the same restaurant) and then head home – often arriving back to the Ancestral Betz Home after 10 pm.  Did I mention that my father worked six days a week and that Sunday was his only “day off”?  Wow.

Now Dad liked to drive and since we were going to take all of Sunday, he liked to take the back roads down to The Villas. (The Villas -- where my grandmother's house was -- is a small town on the bay-side, just a few miles from Cape May, which is on the ocean side…).  We would stop at road-side produce stands (New Jersey is afterall the Garden State, you know) and pick up tomatoes and peaches for Nan and ourselves.  When I was about 12, Nan sold the Villas house, my brother married, my sis moved out of the house, and the ritual stopped.

So, while we were home and visiting my brother and his family, we decided to re-visit the family tradition.  So that Sunday morning, we packed up the family and headed down the shore – I even convinced my brother to attempt to find the backroads that Dad had so consistently kept to.

It was great fun.  We only got turned around the wrong way once (ok, maybe twice…) and we made it to the Villas in what we thought was surprisingly good time.  We went to see where Nan’s house had been (sadly re-sided in icky blue vinyl and the lot where I remember playing sub-divided), and went the few blocks down to the bay – an area that had seen better days.

After that, we were off to the beach (with me covered by both sunscreen and umbrella).  The lifeguards weren’t very busy as the water temp was abnormally cold, but we hung out for a while enjoying the sights and salt air, and the Beloved and I took a walk, watching kids play in the sand (just like when I was a kid…) and even New Jersey surfers (never there when I was a kid…), until a late thunderstorm sent everyone scurrying for their cars.

We had a great seafood dinner (sadly the family ritual restaurant was no more), and got ice cream, and headed back.  It was a really great day full of old and new memories.

I think Dad would have approved.

Alright – we’re off (very early tomorrow morning) for our summer family tour!  We’re heading back to the East Coast for almost two weeks.  The main reason to go is for the Beloved’s folks’ 50th wedding anniversary – we’re meeting them at one of their favorite places on the “Northern Neck” of Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay.  Should be fun – that’s a part of the Bay I’ve never seen before.

Before that though, we’ve scheduled a brief visit with my brother in NJ and a longer one with my sister in MD (I still haven’t seen her new place that she moved into last Spring, mostly because I didn’t go back for Christmas/New Year’s last year…).   And, of course, we’re going to cram in as many visits with friends as we can get.  Should be hectic (and a lot of driving…), but we want to make the most of it.

We’ll probably have pretty spotty internet contact, so don’t drop me from your neighborhoods because I’m not commenting or posting, or force-quit our scrabulous games because they’ve gone “inactive”.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Cori’s excellent reminder that “Memorial Day isn't about hamburgers, beer, and friends -- it's about remembering what it took to ensure that we could have hamburger, beer, and friends” got me thinking…

Our parents used the mantle above the fireplace in the Ancestral Betz Home in Camden, NJ for immediate family pictures – nearly the entire space was filled with various school portraits of my brother, sister and me.  (The only exception was at Christmastime, when they’d come down and the Nativity would go up.)

In fact, there was only one picture that wasn’t one of us children, a faded sepia-colored photo of a young sandy-haired man in a dress-shirt uniform.  That man was my mom’s older brother.  My uncle Franklin, a man I never met.

At the time of America’s entrance into World War II, my uncle had had signed a contract to play baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies.  But when the war started, he enlisted, volunteered for submarine duty and was assigned to the USS Herring (SS-233) as a motor machinists mate.  The submarine had successful tours in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

On its last patrol, The Herring had torpedoed four Japanese vessels, but was sunk off the Kuril Islands on June 1st, 1944, losing all hands.  My uncle was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.  He was 21 years old.  The Herring was never recovered.

My mother didn’t talk much about her older brother – mostly saying that he knew how to make everyone laugh – but you can tell that she looked up to him so much (mom was a teenager when the war started) and thought of him often.

One story she did tell was that her mother had come to them one morning and said that she knew that Franklin had died because she had seen him in a dream crying out for her amidst flames and steam.  So, no one seemed very surprised when the “Navy Car” pulled up to the house to inform the family some weeks later.

So, while I certainly plan on enjoying this holiday weekend, I will spend a little time saluting the sacrifice of my uncle Franklin, who I saw every day in our living room and would have loved to have gotten to know.