Die, downsize or decorate (original title)

Joy in giving new life to gently used appliances and furniture

Published 01/02/2014 12:00 AM

Updated 12/30/2013 03:04 PM

I have four refrigerators. Well, actually I have three since one is a humongous upright freezer we bought when Geraldine Ferraro ran for president.
After the power outages following Hurricane Gloria, an entire summer season of frozen tomato sauce succumbed to nothing more than dozens of bags of red water in that freezer. It stopped working shortly after Bush, the son, took office. We always meant to have it repaired and even moved it to our new home 10 years ago, but sadly it's become a repository of fix-it good intentions.
Next to the dead freezer is a 35-year-old beer-fridge we got when my sister-in-law's mother passed away. It's a side-by-side and the narrow freezer compartment has provided us the space we have occasionally needed after forays to BJ's to stockpile and save money. The fridge part has served us well during numerous family get-togethers, as a place to store platters and drinks. That behemoth still works but because we're down to a household of two, we often give it a rest and only use the brushed stainless trend-setter in our kitchen. Plugging in the old one would be like resuscitating prohibition, it's possible but cruel.
Recently, when my husband's sister purchased matching appliances for her beautiful new home in Waterford, we got her old fridge (which is actually quite new). It's stored at her house until we get rid of the well-insulated metal armoires we have in our basement. Just getting the two huge appliances out will be a chore left to son-in-laws with strong backs and an affinity for cold beer. I'm told it will cost us $20 to drop them off at the transfer station. It will be money well spent considering the space we gain for our new/old fridge which is now taking up a parking space in my sister-in-law's garage.
Not only do I have four fridges, I have four couches, too. Two new ones in our living room and a loveseat and a sleeper in a spare bedroom. The sleeper belonged to my daughter; she got our two old couches and the loveseat was part of a set which belonged to my mother.
I was with my mother, (may she rest in furniture showroom heaven), when she bought that set. The four pieces, together or apart, have resided in various dorm rooms and starter apartments until the chair and ottoman finally made it into a big green refuge bin at a local transfer station. The couch is alive and well somewhere in New Haven and the loveseat, dressed in a deep red Bed Bath and Beyond excuse for a slipcover resides in a spare upstairs bedroom. It will probably last forever since no one sits on it.
My kids have eyed my new couches and have stated that they like the color and style. I think they're waiting for the day my new stuff becomes old, I redecorate or downsize. They'll get to fill their own spare bedrooms.
I used to do that with my brother's living room furniture. He'd buy a new set every few years so when he got a delivery, I got his barely used old furniture with the understanding that a few years down the line, his old would be my new again. It's sort of like borrowing from someone else's past, you get to use and enjoy that which has enhanced the life of another.
The kids already know if their fridges die we'll have a really nice spare in the basement they can use, if we can muster the strong backs to get it here. Die, downsize or decorate I like how our family sheds and shares. Enough said.

Ding, Dong, Donate (original title)

Ringing the bell and running like hell

Published 12/12/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 12/09/2013 01:06 PM

There are 18 of us - extended family members who gather for gift-giving on Christmas Eve.
For years, during our Thanksgiving get-togethers, 16 of us have been exchanging names for gifts. Two members of the bunch are kids, so their names don't get thrown into the hat. They get gifts from everyone; we're all named Santa.
There was a time when we used to buy a little something for everyone, but we decided a few years back that one non-essential/essential gift made more sense than a Stop & Shop bag full of stuff worthy of what a $5 bill can buy at the last minute.
This year we switched things up again. Because we are all at a station in life where, if we want it, we can afford to go out and buy it for ourselves, we decided to not buy for each other, but for someone else. We're donating.
Hold on, we're not a bunch of goody-two-shoe-do-gooders, we're a group of adults who have decided that the little we spend on each other might mean a lot more to someone less fortunate.
Some of us are donating to big charities, the in-your-face ones that hit you up every time you go to the grocery or department store. Some of us have picked families to help and some of us are practicing random acts of kindness. Deciding where our donations are going has been a blast.
As we went around the room on Thanksgiving Day, and talked about what we were thankful for, and how we were going to spread our good fortune, I thought of my grandfather, (my dad's dad), a man who passed away three days after my first birthday. He was legend in our family.
During the Great Depression my grandfather was the only person with a job on the street where he lived in Roselle Park, New Jersey. Every day he'd take the bus into New York City because he worked at Twentieth Century Fox. I don't know what his job was but for the entire depression my Pop had a job, fed his family and most of the street.
He'd fill a cardboard box with groceries, place it on the front porch of a neighbor in need, rap on the door or ring the bell and run like hell. No one knew who was leaving the food. Because he was the only employed breadwinner I'm sure they figured it out but not one time did anyone speak of the guardian angel feeding the families on Walnut Street. My grandmother said he'd race home out of breath and excited. He loved helping and loved that no one knew it was him.
When I think of my grandfather, a World War I doughboy about the age my own children are now, I am so in awe of his selflessness and am so proud of my heritage. My father said his dad never spoke of the years he fed the families, never sought thanks, never expected or would have accepted a pat on the back for what came natural to him - to share.
As I bob and weave my way through my own workday in a place collecting for a huge and awesomely wonderful charity I am astounded by the public's generosity. The few folks who turn their noses up and lecture me about all the ringing bells and red buckets just don't get it. I feel sorry for them, not because they might need the same services someday they snub their noses at now, but because they are denying themselves the wonderful feeling of filling the box, ringing the bell and running like hell. Enough said.

Revisiting the tradition of rainbows on the wall (original title)

Rainbows on the wall

Published 11/28/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 11/22/2013 04:48 PM

 

"When I die you get the crystal," my mother said.
I was 10 and she thought if I believed the glass would be mine someday I wouldn't mind helping her set the table. I didn't mind, I loved doing it.
The hand-cut crystal serving pieces came out of the cupboard three times a year: Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Like a family ritual my mother and I would wash, rinse and carefully dry the exquisite pieces, set them on the holiday table in the sun and watch as reflected rainbows of color danced on the dining room walls.
Preparing for a house full of family and friends was fun and exciting. When I was older, with a home of my own, the torch of entertaining passed to me, so I actually got the crystal many years before my mother passed away. I didn't use all the pieces like she did, but they became the constancy of tradition.
This year, for no particular reason other than I've been cleaning and sorting, I decided to hand over some of the pieces to the next generation, my daughters. It's easy sharing the objects I remember as a young girl. Handing them down before I'm gone is a privilege. I get to see the continuity of things; to tell the stories of the objects again and I get to peruse the cupboards of memories that will never fade as long as there is someone to remember them.
I kept a few small pieces, not because I'll actually use them anymore, but because I like the way they look and I'm not yet ready to shed it all. The girls took what they wanted and the shelves were clean. I can't imagine my modern daughters using the heavy hand-cut and etched oval and round bowls to hold vegetables during future Thanksgivings, but I'm sure the smaller vases will often hold flowers.
Thinking of future Thanksgivings reminds me of one of the most memorable of my past. It was a huge endeavor attempted by my mother and father shortly after they moved to the farmhouse of their dreams in Montville in the late 1960s. I had just returned home from a year in South Africa so it gave me a chance to see family members I hadn't seen in many months.
Just after my parents moved into the farmhouse my father gutted the kitchen, tore down walls and installed a bank of six windows over the place where a kitchen sink was supposed to go. Those beautiful windows overlooked the rolling hills and small apple orchard behind the house. My father convinced my mother that the kitchen would be finished by Thanksgiving. It had to be, two dozen members of the family were showing up. The double ovens were installed and the fridge was temporarily placed in a back laundry room. The rest of the kitchen, with the beautiful windows and scenery, was empty.
Because you can't cook for 24 without a sink and a stove, my dad mounted a kitchen sink on two by fours and shoved a stove up against the wall and plugged it in. A huge picnic table, with benches, was placed in front of the kitchen's fireplace and two other tables were set up. Because the walls had been removed it was one magnificent room. Using her best china, silver and all the crystal, the formally set tables were exquisitely beautiful in the rustic setting.
The house was full of family and the tummies full of food. The men napped after, and the women washed dishes. I was part of the drying crew. There were no countertops so each wet plate was passed one by one, for us wipe dry and place on a shelf in the laundry room. The crystal was placed on the highest shelf until Christmas.
Our family often recalled that Thanksgiving as one of the most memorable. The kitchen was finally finished by Easter.
I'm hoping my daughters will use the crystal with their own beautiful dishes. On a crisp linen tablecloth or on picnic table, in a house or in a barn, I hope the pieces are used and continue to make memories.

Hello world, I'm going to be a nana (original title)

Brush up on lullabies, there’s a baby on the way

Published 11/14/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 11/11/2013 01:07 PM

Graffiti the walls, hoist a banner, shout, sing, skywrite it, I'm going to be a grandmother.
Becoming a grandmother is not unusual, it happens all the time, but not to me. To say I am over the moon is putting it mildly because this little one will be our first. She's a girl and I could not be more pleased.
My generation of women is unique when it comes to birthing babies and having grandchildren. It was not unusual for women raised during the sixties to find themselves pregnant right along with their daughters. Not me of course, but some women I graduated with are great-grandmothers. Now some women don't get pregnant until AARP membership becomes a beacon of reality at the end of their next decade.
Today, women have choices. My generation realized a shift in roles. As a young girl I was told to marry a rich man and he would take of care me. As a teenager, the mantra of my parents changed: "Get an education so you can take care of yourself."
My mother often said, "For a long and lasting marriage financial dependence does not a firm foundation make." Sure mom, but now it takes two incomes just to make it from the produce aisle of the supermarket to the milk case.
I was an older mother, (not the norm back then), having my daughters when I was in my mid and late 30s. I remember a school function I attended when my oldest (she's the pregnant daughter) was in first grade. A woman walked up to me and exclaimed with great satisfaction how pleased she was that she wasn't the only grandmother attending that day.
"I'm the mother," I remember saying with a bit of attitude. At the time I felt offended. Did I really look like a grandmother? My definition of a grandmother was based on my own. They both wore aprons with a little chain of safety pins on the bibs. My Connecticut nana always had butterscotch hard candies in her apron pockets and my New Jersey nana had a dust cloth crammed in hers. I don't wear aprons, I don't dust and I never really liked butterscotch. I'm a Werther's kind of woman.
When I mention the impending event, every woman I know, who has trod the path I am now delightedly floating down, has told me that being a grandmother (and they always lean close and whisper this part), is even better than having your own children. You get to enjoy them, spoil them and give them back. You don't have to suffer the effects of a kid up all night after eating too many M&Ms.
I overheard my pregnant daughter talking to her pregnant friend about what they are going through. The friend was asking my daughter's advice because she's been pregnant a couple of months longer.
"Hey, ask me," I said, "I've done this twice you know."
My daughter advised me that everything is different now. Ah ... I don't think so. Whether you give birth in a fancy hospital with your husband by your side or in a cave while he's out stalking dinner, the process is pretty much the same, although you're supposed to let babies sleep on their backs now.
My daughter has registered at two large stores for baby gifts; baby accoutrements can match any kid's haul going off to college for the first time. The whole registry thing is amazing, I mean, you can register for birthdays, graduations, weddings and anniversaries, plus new home and holidays.
I want a grandmother's registry, no aprons or butterscotch candies on mine, just lots and lots of love. Never 'enough said' on love.
CAROLYNN IS STOCK-PILING M&MS AND DISPOSABLE DIAPERS. EMAIL HER AT CP.ENOUGHSAID@AOL.COM.

A temporary electronic slowdown a good thing (original title)

Electronic slowdown a good thing

Published 10/31/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 10/29/2013 01:07 PM

I came downstairs this morning to my family sitting in the living room, drinking coffee and eating breakfast, while staring at a blue television screen like it was a campfire. A message on the screen read, "One moment please."
"What's up?" I asked.
"Cable's out. We're waiting for it to come back on," was the response.
My husband told the kids not to touch the TV because I would fix it when I got up. He said I know about that kind of stuff. Actually, I know nothing about that kind of stuff, but he knows even less.
So I unplugged plugs, disconnected cables and then hooked everything back up. Then I did what every trapped-in-silence and out-of-touch cable customer does, I called (1-800-my-TV-computer-and-phone aren't working). We bundled, so I used my cellphone to make the call.
The familiar female cable company voice electronically promised to send a refresh signal.
When I mentioned that the cable employee said it would take 40 to 60 minutes to complete the channel lineup, the living room squatters scattered like teenagers at a party when the cops arrive.
I sat down with my coffee and a magazine. They had to leave for work but I had a few hours before I had to go in.
One by one they dressed and departed. My daughter, the first one out the door called about a minute down the road to tell me that there were five cable trucks at the end of our street.
I waited in a house almost as silent as the house after Gloria and Sandy. The power was on so I could hear the whir of the fridge and last night's chicken boiling in a pot on the stove for soup. Because online access was compromised I was unable to check my email, favorite blogs and couldn't access Facebook. That is a good thing because those are tremendous time-suckers.
I remember life before electronics. The phone was black, heavy and had a dial. Television was new - we had the first set on our block - and like the phone it was black plastic and huge. There was no remote, we didn't need one. With three stations, two watchable and one snowy, my brother and I were the remote. We watched what Dad wanted to, anyway.
Back then TV stations signed off at midnight. Accompanying a picture of an American flag waving in the wind, they'd play the national anthem. Then the screen would flip to a test pattern and implode to a tiny dot in the middle of the screen. On the rare occasions when I got to stay up late and watch "Sea Hunt" on Saturday night my mother would yell to go to bed when it was over. I'd press my cheek against the screen and stare at the dot and yell back that I'd go to bed when the dot disappeared.
For kids television revolved around "Mickey Mouse Club" at 4:30 in the afternoon and "Sky King" and Shari Lewis on Saturday mornings. That's when it started actually, the television as background noise filling in the empty silent space that was our days. My childhood memories are always accompanied by Western shoot-em-up sound tracks in the background.
Now, life is never quiet and we are rarely out of touch. With network, satellite and online streaming we have ear buds, earphones and surround-sound to drench us constantly in music and news.
The house is still quiet, the soup still boiling and I am loving the temporary electronic slowdown, even though I am drawn to my computer screen like a fly to a light bulb. Enough said.

Ciao, that's hello and goodbye in Italian (original title)

It's time for a new passport

Published 10/17/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 10/18/2013 12:28 PM

We're going to Italy, at least that's what my husband, his cousin and a couple of his friends decided. I'm ready. I'll go. Just sign me up.
Problem - when the decision was made, my husband and I didn't have a passport. In this day and age of global interactive initiatives between cultures, who does not have a passport? Even Elmo has a passport, or at least his picture is on a passport cover.
It's finally time to expand our horizons and travel beyond our borders. The last time we left the country Ross Perot was running for president and we went to Nova Scotia and did the whole Cape Breton loop. We were allowed out and back in on the legitimacy of our driver's licenses. Now we need a universal form of identification which supersedes the legal viability of all current IDs, including our Connecticut driver's licenses, credit cards and every supermarket, pharmacy and other store rewards card hanging from my key chain.
Obtaining the paperwork was easy, it's online and in a little cardboard stand-up in the post office. We can do this, I thought, until we realized we needed to find our birth certificates. No problem, I knew right where they were.
Observation - you know you're getting old when your original birth certificate is so out-of-date you may not use it as an actual certificate of birth and must obtain a new one. The new ones are called the "long form" birth certificates and $20 and remembering which towns we were born in, got us new ones.
So, I filled out the information needed to apply for my passport. I was instructed to use a black pen and only to fill in the designated areas, using my best penmanship. My husband used a black pen but because his idea of written communication looks like the beach at low tide after a flock of emaciated seagulls have been fighting over the same clam, it was barely legible. Then we were off to AAA for our passport photos.
I had combed my hair, applied foundation and even eye makeup. I always do that for a driver's license, I mean really, I'll be stuck with that photo for so long why not primp to get my passport glamour-shot right. Even with a morning's worth of preparation I still looked like my mother subsequent to an afternoon of gardening in the middle of July.
I had an old passport. Barely out of my teens, I got to spend a year in South Africa. I handed the old passport in with my application and photo for a new one. The post office employee gathering our paperwork humorously declared my old passport ancient. He loudly exclaimed to a lobby full of customers who were impatiently waiting behind us, as we declared ourselves non-subversive, that he hadn't seen that color passport cover in a reeee-ally looo-ong time. I got it a year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Maybe I should have slipped it in a nice little Elmo cover.
Once we handed in everything to prove we were, who we said we were, we had to raise our right hands and swear to an oath. Mr. Post Office-funny man recited so fast, that all I could do was nod and say I do or I will. I felt like I was checking one of those little (nobody reads the fine print) "I agree" boxes on the computer. All I know is that I love my country and I certainly won't do anything to subvert her.
Aver detto abbastanz, that's "enough said" in Italian, I think.
CAROLYNN PIANTA IS EXPANDING HER ITALIAN BEYOND WORDS SUCH AS LINGUINI AND RIGATONI. EMAIL HER AT CP.ENOUGHSAID@AOL.COM.

To Downsize or not to downsize, (original title)

House stuffed with family memories

Published 10/03/2013 12:00 AM

Updated 09/30/2013 05:26 PM

A friend of mine went from a large home with four bedrooms to a more manageable smaller house with three. Another shed four acres, a formal dining room, five bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and a two-car garage, for a double-wide with a carport.
It's called downsizing and it's something I want to do - now. Problem is my big house is full, not only with rooms of furniture but with people. The people, children with spouses, I'm not worried about, they're looking to upsize just as soon as they can, it's the stuff we have accumulated which concerns me.
We have lived in this house going on 10 years but a lot of the stuff we brought with us has been around for the more than 30 years we have been married. Do we really need my husband's beer stein collection stored in Huggies diaper boxes? They were packed away when the spare room in our old house became a nursery 29 years ago. To be fair, somewhere there's a demitasse spoon collection of mine which has more than 300 spoons from all over the world. I haven't seen them since before I was married but I feel an odd kind of comfort in knowing they reside somewhere near the beer steins.
My attic looks like the local town's transfer station on a Saturday morning, without the big green dumpsters.
It's like an archeological dig up there, the floor sectioned off by kid and college year; books and bedding tells me who and when, by how far back the piles reach. I have half a dozen sets of extra-long dorm sheets for the years our children actually lived on campus; a new set each year was mandatory because color tastes changed and lack of laundering habits did not. There are comforters, clothes baskets and enough plastic bins to fill the storage aisle at Wal-Mart - actually they came from Wal-Mart.
We have funky multi-colored lamps and a papa-san chair that went from dorms, to apartments, and back to the attic so many times that I'm not sure where it is now, probably in one of those big green dumpsters.
Adding to the college flotsam and jetsam are the good, the bad and the totally unnecessary detritus of four households. Our daughters and their husbands have stored their accumulations up there while their upsizings have been put temporarily on hold. Our mound of still-sealed boxes from our move a decade ago remains stacked in a corner alongside a few leftovers from my mother-in-law, may she rest in organized peace.
I want to rid ourselves of our stuff.
The plan each year has been for all of us to proceed to the attic to peruse, sort, throw away, and organize. Attic cleaning is tricky though, it cannot be effectively accomplished in any season other than late fall, although late spring might work. Summer is too hot; the decorative Christmas candles became lovely red and green blobs sprinkled with silver and gold glitter. Spending time up there in July would be deadly. Winter is too cold. I'm sorry but wearing my down parka, gloves and a scarf are more conducive to snowshoeing than attic cleaning; three pair of snowshoes are hidden up there, too.
If I think about what actually has to be accomplished regarding the cleaning, editing and organizing of the attic, basement, closets, cabinets, drawers, cracks and crevices we have filled with the tangible collected memories of our lives, the task is daunting. I might actually consider staying put until my leftovers are stacked next to those of my dear departed mother-in-law, may we rest in peace in hoarders paradise heaven.
Enough said.
CAROLYNN PIANTA HAS ORDERED A DUMPSTER. EMAIL HER AT CP.ENOUGHSAID@AOL.COM