Bad at Shoes

I am shoe-style impaired. I go from UGG boots in the winter to flip-flops for the rest of the year and then back to UGGs when it gets too cold to wear flip-flops. I have worn UGGs since way back before they were fashionable. They were even clunkier back then. Sometimes I wear my Birkenstock’s for in-between weather. I like footwear that feels like I’m not wearing anything on my feet.

In the 1980s, when I decided to get out of technical theater and find a desk job as a writer, I went on a job interview at a publishing company. At that time I was intimidated by footwear and didn’t think I had enough money to buy fashionable shoes. I went out and bought one pair of plain black flats to wear to the interview. My feet hated them, but they looked presentable. As I waited to be interviewed, I snuck peeks at the shoes worn by the three secretaries in the office. They were out of my league when it came to shoe styles. I wondered how they could afford such fancy shoes on secretary salaries. Then, as if I had conjured the conversation with my thoughts, they began discussing their shoes. As it turned out, all three of them bought their shoes at thrift shops. None of those fancy shoes cost more than three dollars, which was less than I had paid for my black flats.

A few months ago, I went to meet the CEO of a company to discuss my involvement with them as a grant writer. Corporate is not my usual stomping ground. I was self-conscious about wearing something appropriate. I bought a pair of black, open-toed flats at Payless Shoes. Unfortunately, I tried them on in the store with thick socks and when I went on the interview I wore nylons. The shoes wouldn’t stay on my feet; but I didn’t discover this until I changed out of my flip-flops in my car in the parking lot. I figured I could manage if I walked slowly and didn’t move around much while at the office. The CEO and I hit it off fabulously and he hired me for a part-time job on the spot. When it came time for me to leave, he said he wanted to walk me out to my car. I panicked. I wondered if the deal would be off if he saw that I couldn’t keep my shoes on. It took all my concentration to make it across the parking lot without losing one of them. He must have wondered why I walked so slowly.

It’s a good thing I work at home, because my usual work footwear is bedroom slippers in the winter and nothing in the summer. I’m getting better. In October, I bought a stylish pair of low-top black fake-leather boots (sort of Peter Pan boots) that are all-purpose and look terrific. On the same shopping jaunt I picked up a couple of pairs of dress-up shoes, flats with sequins (one pair black, one pair royal blue) and I wore one of them for New Year’s Eve and danced in them and lo and behold they were comfortable. So perhaps, at this late stage in my life, I am coming to terms with my shoe fashion impairment. My new low black boots even passed the scrutiny of my stylish daughter. Her stamp of approval makes me feel as though I have arrived.

Pause to Notice the Miraculous

In my first blog of the new year, I want to pause for a moment to reflect on one of the many miracles that tend to slip past in the hurry and scurry of the everyday. The Chinese call the years when one is raising children and managing a busy household (not to mention working fulltime) the “years of rice and salt.” They are the years between childhood wonder and the reflections of elderhood. And they can rush by too quickly if we don’t take the time to reflect, recognize, and appreciate what we are seeing as it appears in our line of vision.

Our friends Jan and Mark drove up from the Bay Area to be with us for the New Year. Their two grown daughters, Cat and Liz, came with them. I have not seen Cat since she went away to college, five years ago. I have known Jan and Mark throughout our rice and salt years. We had been friends for quite some time before Cat was born and I saw Cat right after she came home from the hospital, which was an event of significance because Cat was born 10 weeks early. At birth she weighed less than a bottle of ketchup. When Mark called to tell us she had been born, my heart sunk. I wondered if she would live. But Jan and Mark recognized Cat’s remarkable spirit from the moment they laid eyes on her and never waivered in their faith that she would keep breathing in that incubator, that she would live, grow, be smart and capable, and flourish. And she did all that. She’s a vivacious, brilliant, funny, sparkly, red-headed, 20-something aspiring screenwriter who kept us laughing at breakfast on New Year’s Day with her original sense of humor and skill at storytelling.

Seeing Cat at the New Year gave me pause as I remembered what she looked like when I first laid eyes on her. Of course every person is a miracle, and who am I to say that one may be more of a miracle than another. But say I will. I know that Jan reads my blog—so hats off to you Jan (and Mark). Job well done. You recognized that miracle the instant you saw it. Not everyone does.

Holiday Cooking

Cooking heaps of delicious food has gotta be one of my favorite things about having my children come home. I love to cook for them. These days, Ron and I are on such a careful and restricted diet that we eat most contentedly at home. I have figured out how to adapt many recipes. I have now perfected the gluten-free pie crust so that we had an apple pie that Sudi declared one of the best I have ever made (with no wheat in the crust). Whoa. I think I have arrived. I also managed to figure out how to make the Whiskey Cake without flour and it was a hit at Thanksgiving in Oakland. Christmas Eve was enchiladas and guacamole. Christmas Day was Ron’s fried chicken, biscuits, latkes (with apple sauce and sour cream), green beans, and leftover mac ‘n cheese. Tonight? Lasagna Casserole (gluten-free). We are still working our way through the gluten-free chocolate cake and apple pie. I’m going to make a pumpkin pie this evening. Getting hungry yet? Visit my recipe blog (Amy’s Recipe Project). I started the recipe blog one year ago on January 1. I’m still working it. One day I’ll turn the recipes into an e-book. In the meantime, check out some of the treats I’ve already posted. This week I put up my mom’s Tutti Frutti Pie, at Dad’s request. It’s not gluten-free, but not everyone is avoiding gluten. And if you can’t eat gluten, there are plenty of other goodies on the blog for you. Search “Bernice’s Whiskey Cake” – I promise that you won’t be disappointed.

Jewish Christmas Eve

It has recently come to my attention that many Jews, particularly of the New York City variety, have a tradition of eating out Chinese food and then going to a movie on Christmas Eve. Crazy. Where I grew up, in Upstate New York, there was no such thing as Jewish Christmas Eve. My family did nothing on Christmas Eve, unless it was one of the nights of Hannukah, and then we lit the menorah. The first Christmas that Ron and I lived together, he went out and bought a little Christmas Tree for $5 on sale on Christmas Eve. Then we called his mom and opened our presents together while on the phone with her. We had no ornaments for the tree. Before we had children, Ron started a tradition of making me cheese blintzes every year for Christmas Dinner. What else do you make for a Jewish wife on Christmas?

Once we had children, Christmas became more magical every year while they were growing up until we had many traditions: choosing and cutting a tree on our property at the Ranch, decorating the tree with all the ornaments the children made over the years (or that were gifted to us—a Jewish wife does not bring Christmas tree ornaments to a marriage), baking holiday cookies, leaving milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve (and lettuce for the reindeer), going to the Christmas sing-along at Hopland School, gleeful secrets, hiding gifts, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, Ron making fried chicken and biscuits for Christmas Dinner, Sudi getting up at 4AM to see what he got (I always had to leave one gift out for him to open and play with until the rest of us woke up), eggnog, the living room floor completely covered with wrapping paper (Golda and Ella, the cats, playing in the paper), friends coming to visit and sharing Christmas Dinner with us, watching movies, playing board games, setting up the train set and adding all the new pieces that were in the stockings, eating too many Reese’s peanut butter cups, listening for hours and hours to Ron’s huge collection of Christmas music, and on and on. We have been so blessed. With our children in college, we have scaled back on gifts in recent years. Our children now say that all they really want for Christmas is Dad’s chicken and biscuits. As a Jew, looking back on 30 years of Christmases with a Christian partner, I am grateful that Christmas entered my life. I wouldn’t trade our Christmas Eve for Chinese takeout and a movie. Embracing Ron’s cherished holiday has enriched my life. Christmas is so much bigger than its Christian roots. It’s the celebration of gratitude, sharing, caring, and love. It can be embraced and appreciated by anyone, no matter what their religious or spiritual beliefs. So yes, come all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. Come ye to the celebration of the best that we can be for each other, the celebration of the intrinsic value of every human spirit.

Kitchen Table Politics

In this huge runaway world, it is rare that one small person feels like she can make a difference. This past week I sat at my kitchen table, surrounded by friends, and we did just that. Dec. 10 was Amnesty International’s annual Write for Rights Day. I have been an AI Freedom Writer for over 30 years. One of my favorite AI stories, which occurs rarely yet consistently every once in a long while, is that story of an abused and tortured prisoner of conscience, locked away in a dark place filled with despair, who is miraculously released and subsequently relates that one year at Christmas a guard opened the cell door and dumped bags and bags and bags and bags of cards on the floor of the cell. The cards read “Do not lose hope, you are not forgotten.” And they came from all over the world. From the kitchen tables of people like me.

It has been a year and a half now since my friend Liz started our “Code Pink Book Group,” made up of a handful of women like myself who have written, marched, been arrested, spoken out, and in some small way tried to protest injustice and violence. At first we read books by and about people in countries the U.S. was bombing the shit out of. But then we wandered off into other territory, reading both fiction and nonfiction (mostly nonfiction) about all sorts of politically charged issues. We meet once a month, have a potluck dinner, some of us now bring our spouses, and we have a lively discussion about the state of the world as well as whatever book we have read together. It took me a long time to find the right book group for me. But this one is it. And this past week I printed out the letters for the AI Write-a-Thon and my book group signed and addressed 65 letters at my kitchen table. From our hands to the desks of powerful officials. From our hands a tiny drop in the ocean, to be met by other drips and drops, to grow into a wave, that will perhaps save the life of a good man or woman on the other side of the world.

This is how lives are saved and how the world is changed. At the kitchen table.

Afterthought:
A big shout out to the Nobel Committee for awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo (imprisoned outspoken literary critic). Last year I shook my head in bafflement when they gave the award to Obama, a sitting U.S. president who was waging a war against the Afghani people. What has he done to promote peace? I wondered if the Nobel Committee was on crack or something. They have restored my faith in their judgment and the real purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize. Shame on China for squandering its best and brightest. (Go to the Amnesty International website to sign a petition for Xiaobo's release.)