The good knife—and other unquestioned "truths"

In earlier posts, I’ve mentioned how I had scorned some of my mother’s opinions, only to find myself thinking her way decades later. Here's another example.

Whenever I’m hand-washing my kitchen knives, I reminisce about conversations with my mother in the late 90s, when she was selecting a set of knives for us for our anniversary. She named two common brands she considered inferior—her disdain was so strong, she might as well have uttered “ptooey!” after each one. Then she announced, “Wusthof!” And that’s what we received—and appreciated.

This morning, as I wiped the sponge over my Wusthof paring knife, I found myself thinking, decisively, “These really are the best knives…” But would I have thought this way with no earlier maternal prompting? Maybe not. Or maybe so. They are fine knives.

Now I’m wondering what other, more significant biases—good and not so good—I hold without question, ones that didn’t come from my own research. There are probably hundreds (thousands?). I promise to notice them for what they are as they come up. But will I be able to see them objectively and then form my own opinions?

I was past 60 when my mother passed away, so I lived through many years of her strong opinions. (More often than not, these opinions were informed and good ones; this was hard for me to admit.) It’s challenging to re-examine such long-held beliefs and come to different conclusions—without feeling a little guilty. But I’m going to give it a shot.

A personal guilty verdict. 50s-era byproduct?

I’ve been at home with a cold today—a very timely cold since it’s also snowing with a promise of one to three more inches later. I have my laptop at home, and I have wireless Internet access and a way to get into the company network (when it’s cooperating), so I decided to work from here.

But why is it that I felt guilty that I wasn’t in the office? It’s the three-day week of Christmas (our offices will be closed on Christmas Eve too), so hardly anyone was around, including my boss, who’s on vacation. And I was working! But I feel that I’m somehow letting everyone down if I’m not sitting behind my desk doing the same thing.

I’ve concluded that this may be a generational quirk. Do those in the younger generation and the younger than younger generation feel the same way when they’re out sick or otherwise not in the office? I doubt it, but I have not asked around or studied the topic. I think our generation still reveres and sometimes fears authority figures, be they bosses, teachers, or group leaders.

Leaders (and doctors) are now almost always younger than us now—even the President has been younger than me, since Bill Clinton. Still, relative age doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to wanting to please those in command and have them look favorably on me. Otherwise, why would I quickly put a serious look on my face when the boss comes by and I’ve been gossiping with my colleagues? There’s always that “Jiggers! He’s here” dialogue in my head on those occasions.

I work hard, get my projects done, and meet deadlines, so I’m entitled to a little coffee klatch at times. But I can’t seem to slough off that pang of conscience. Is this pretty common among those in our sixties? If so, it may be attributed to the 1950s mentality. This was the era of my coming of age, and attitudes about life—and what you could or could not (not ever!) do—were formed and cast in concrete then.

I haven’t discounted the fact that this may be my own personal quirk. But I’m still wondering if it’s also the attitude of others, of many ages. Remind me to bring this up next time I’m standing in the hallway talking with a group of my coworkers (that is, until you-know-who walks by).

How now, slim brow

Peering into my lighted magnifying mirror (with which I have a love-hate relationship), I noticed—not for the first time—that my eyebrows are getting skimpier. There are also a few white hairs among the brown, which, because they’re nearly invisible, only intensify the look of a fading brow.

This requires more skillful application of taupe pencil or brown powder or whatever product the make-up gurus are touting these days—not to mention the clear brow gel that we curly-headed lasses need to keep us from looking like late-middle-aged werewolves.

But here’s a sixty-something’s irony: The eyebrow concern I’m focusing on today is the exact opposite of my childhood issue. You see, I was one of those tweens with a unibrow. The hair wasn’t bushy in between my eyes, but it was certainly present and noticeable. This was before I was allowed to tweeze, and I wasn’t all that bothered by it.

Once, at camp, we were sitting around a campfire, laughing and having a great time. A girl I was particularly fond of was next to me, and we were teasing each other good-naturedly. (I haven’t seen her since and I couldn’t remember her name if my life depended on it.) Then she stopped and looked closely at my face. She put her index finger up to my brow and drew a line from right to left. “You have eyebrows all across your head,” she said, not unkindly. And in spite of my usually poor self-image, I took it for the friendly statement of fact that it was meant to be. But I couldn’t get to the age of tweezing fast enough.

Eventually, I learned to tweeze my eyebrows. (An early harrowing scene in which my mother tried to tweeze my older cousin’s eyebrows while said cousin screamed in pain—a bit too dramatically, I realized later—made me vow never to let anyone else pluck mine.) I have enjoyed adequate eyebrows ever since…until now.

When I mention this to my contemporaries, they commiserate but are quick to point out that, on the plus side, they hardly ever have to shave their legs or underarms anymore. Such is not the case with me. It’s so unfair.

Don’t believe a thing I say…

…and don’t take that title literally either. I caution you though to listen with a grain of salt when I tell a tale from my long-ago past. While I, like many of my peers, can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday or what movie I saw on TV a week ago, we’ve always seemed to be able to describe vividly things that happened to us 30, 40, and 50 years ago. Even events in childhood can leave a lifelong impression if they made us happy or were particularly upsetting.

But now, when I dredge out an old—very old—story or statement of fact (I thought) and it’s pointed out to me that I have the details wrong, I start doubting all of my memories.

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a high school friend. When our conversation got to our guilt over not getting the proper doses of physical activity, I recalled how my grammar school gym teacher called me and others who couldn’t do our chin-ups “motor morons.” I started to relate how that label affected me ever since, when my friend interrupted.

“That was our high school gym teacher, Mrs. [whatever her name was]. And I was a ‘motor moron’ too!” This friend had not gone to grammar school with me, and if she remembers being so labeled in high school, she must be right about when it occurred. I had been occasionally telling this story in recent years, and all this time I was blaming the wrong teacher. Although I’m over the motor moron accusation, now I’m worrying over what other memories my mind has screwed up.

Even more disconcerting are the times I start relating an incident of the past only to realize I can’t remember how it turned out, or in what order events occurred. When my best friend and I wrote a silly love letter using a fake name to Ricky Nelson, we taped two aspirins to the top of page two because, we wrote, “you may get a headache after reading this.” But did we actually mail it? (I used to know that, I swear.)

Sometimes I’ll get hung up long before the end of the story. I start to describe what I enjoyed most on Sesame Street while awaiting the birth of my first child, and then I remember reading recently that the wonderful PBS program debuted in 1969—when my daughters were 5 and 2. How can that be, when I’m picturing myself watching the show in our one-bedroom Skokie apartment, one hand on my mounded belly? If that memory is tangled up in my mind with another one, I suppose I’ll have to drop that bit of nostalgia from my repertoire.

So, with the exception of my December 13 post on my reaction to Hebrew at five, I advise you to raise an eyebrow when I begin to reminisce. Listener beware: I think someone reshuffled the cards in this sixty-something brain.

What makes a 5-year-old laugh—then and now?

Last night, at our Chanukah celebration, I watched one of my 5-year-old grandsons giggle softly as his father chanted the Hebrew blessing after lighting the candles for day two of the holiday. Although he’s heard these words many times before, this time it made him snicker. I didn’t get a chance to ask him if it was the words or something else that seemed funny, but it reminded me of an occasion long ago.

I was also 5 years old, and I was attending my older cousin’s Bar Mitzvah party. He began reading his Torah portion aloud, in a sing-song voice, and it must have been my first taste of Hebrew because I thought it was the funniest string of “gibberish” I had ever heard. I began to giggle. The odd, alien syllables—some with a “ch” sound (not unlike throat-clearing)—were hilarious. My laughter must have been infectious because I heard my slightly older cousin next to me start to laugh too.

I have no recollection of my parents or other relatives shushing us, but someone probably did, with some serious scolding. After all, why would I remember this incident and not the dinner, dancing, gift-giving, and hugging of that night? But the important thing is that I did remember it. I also teased my cousin, now in his mid-70s, about it recently. I’m sure he was amused to find out that all I can recall about the momentous occasion of his “becoming a man” was that he spoke in (foreign) tongues.

Sexting: not recommended for the older crowd

Despite my constant carping on the atrocities of aging, I continue to look for reasons to be grateful about being older. A recent newspaper article prompted this one.

The story cited these survey results: One-fourth of teens and one-third of young adults admitted to “sexting,” or sending nude photos or videos of themselves by cell phone.
Isn’t it wonderful that, at the age of sixty-something, we’re not remotely tempted to do this? Think about it—the horror, the horror.

And who would we send these unsightly images to? Certainly not our spouses. They get enough of the jiggles, lumps, and bumps morning and evening. And if we’re single, do we really think we can tempt a potential partner with an artfully posed veiny, splotchy corpus vile? (Don’t bother looking it up. It means “A person or thing fit only to be the object of an experiment.”) I didn’t mean this literally. I just wanted a fancy way to say “a body we wouldn’t want the world—and certainly not a would-be suitor—to be able to view, enlarge, and gasp at.”

I’ll continue to have my photo taken while wearing my most flattering outfit, which is not my birthday suit. What’s flattering is becoming more specific every year. I still expose my neck, but how long will it be before I start tying on a colorful scarf or bulky jewelry to conceal the cragginess and lines? And that reminds me of my late mother, who would put her hand in front of her neck when posing, much like an ingénue of early films. We teased her about it and she took it with good nature, but if she wasn’t wearing a turtleneck or neckscarf, that hand would be splayed below her chin in almost every photo. I try not to emulate my mother in actions that we laughed at, but even if I wanted to, I don’t think the back of my hand would be a suitable substitute for an old neck. But that’s another story.

Thanksgivings past and present: It’s all good.

On this Thanksgiving Day, as I’m primping for our 4:00 p.m. reservations at an area restaurant—just the two of us—my mind wanders back many years. If this were the Thanksgiving version of a chapter of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Thanksgivings Past would be taking me soaring over these scenes:

It’s the early 1970s, and I’m alone in our modest Skokie bi-level home, trying not to think about the turkey dinner with more than enough trimmings that my mother has prepared for the family and that they are all feasting on now. I’m nursing the 24-hour stomach flu and am grateful that this year’s holiday takes place at my parents’ home, allowing me to send my family off to enjoy it and to wallow in my miserable symptoms by myself. (To this day, I associate late November with this gastrointestinal malady, so it must have happened more than once.)

Next, my ghost and I float over a scene in the late 1970s, and I’m basting the turkey one last time before taking a minute to answer the doorbell. It’s a cousin I’d lost touch with for years and whom I invited after one of us contacted the other. Like many Thanksgivings, I invited someone who was not usually on our guest list, someone who otherwise would have nowhere to be with family and friends on that day. It was fun to have this newcomer at our dinner table, and I suppose I felt noble extending our hospitality.

My ghost and I skip the 1980s and hover over a mid-1990s Thanksgiving dinner. I’m living with my second (and current) husband in a three-level townhome in Rogers Park, and we’re continuing my tradition of having an extra guest or two. This year, I’ve invited a woman from work and her college-age daughter whose family lives across the country. The conversation is lively and stimulating.

We swoop into the twenty-first century and see a scene in my in-laws’ home in Munster, Indiana. We’re dining with my mother-in-law who, like me, is not so fond of cooking, and the rest of the family who’ve come in from Wyoming. For past holiday dinners in Munster, my father-in-law, who learned to cook whle working at a dining hall in his college days, always prepared the feast. But this time, he’s in late stages of a terminal illness, so we ordered turkey and trimmings from Boston Market. My father-in-law is too weak to dine with us. He makes a brief appearance at the table and then retreats to his bed. That night, he falls out of bed several times, and although there are enough people there to help lift him back up that night, it’s determined by his sons that he should be moved to a hospice center because my mother-in-law cannot do this on her own. He's taken to the center that night. A few days later, after long visiits with family and his beloved poodle, he quietly passes away.

We’re looking over a scene a few years later in a cozy Munster restaurant, where my husband and I and my mother-in-law are remarking over how good the meal is and how many people are also dining with their small families in this neighborhood place. This is the first time I’ve had dinner out on Thanksgiving, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how satisfying it is. As always with my mother-in-law, the conversation sparkles with her youthful enthusiasm and love of topics like anthropology, modern music, and the latest movies. For a few minutes, I wallow in nostalgia and the fact that I’m not with my kids and twin grandsons. They traditionally attend a large family dinner on their father’s side. To keep that sadness in check, I think of all the holidays we do spend with all of them—including the other side—as well as the fact that we’re making my mother-in-law very happy.

Unfortunately, she passed away after a brief illness just before last Thanksgiving. So this year, it’s just the two of us, and we’re still thankful. We expect to have a great feast, charming ambiance, and good one-on-one conversation. Maybe we’ll start planning the holiday party we’re giving in December.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Past is now satisfied that I’m feeling pretty good about this holiday and its predecessors—the good, the not-too-good, and the ugly (stomach flu)—and takes off. In all cases, whatever other emotions I felt, I’ve been thankful for the family and friends I’m lucky to have.

There's no need for a visit from the Ghost of Thanksgiving Present. We're good.  (I cancelled the Ghost of Thanksgiving Future. I'd rather not know...)