Tree Bread

12 December 2012

Yesterday was another day of Holiday Baking.  (I've blogged earlier this season about baking my grandmother's fruitcakes--and I did, indeed, deliver one to my mother in the nursing home where she's now recovering from a fall: she munched as eagerly as I.)

I've been making these tree-shaped sweet breads for a long time now--thirty years or more?  I think so.  My mother had made similar things back when I was a wee lad who loved Christmas for two very irreligious reasons: opening presents, not having to go to school.  It was indeed the sweetest holiday.  Presents and no homework and no getting up early (except, of course, on The Day, when my brothers and I all awoke before any other animals in town).  Dad, by the way, always annoyed us on Christmas morning: We could not begin opening presents until he appeared, and he would not appear until he had shaved.  Picture: a cluster of three boys around the (open) bathroom door, watching Dad shave in his maddeningly leisurely fashion.  Oh, did he know how to manipulate the moment.

As a kid I even (sort of) liked church services at Christmas.  The decorations, the music, the pageantry (such as there was in our Disciples of Christ denomination).  I remember one weird Christmas Eve service, though, in Des Moines, where my parents were living at the time.  It was the early 1970s.  Vietnam.  While we marched forward to take communion, they were flashing slides of the war on a screen--grim images from battle, from bombing raids.  Most sobering.

And, of course, the food.  We almost always had a turkey--though Dad would sometimes get a Smithfield ham, too.  Mashed potatoes.  Sweet potatoes.  Green beans.  Cranberry sauce.  Rolls (store-bought).  And--for dessert--pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, my grandmother's steamed pudding (I'll be blogging about it a little later on).  Naps.

Oh, and some years my mother made an unintentionally phallic salad.  On a salad plate (bottom to top): a circular slice of pineapple, a banana (sliced to it would stand on end), a red LifeSavers sticking out from the bottom side of the banana, a maraschino cherry atop the banana.  It was supposed to look, I think, like a Christmas candle.  It didn't.  (Ours sort of looked like the photo--but Mom used pineapple for the base.)

Anyway--on Christmas morning--after Dad finished shaving--we did our opening (never on Christmas Eve, despite the desperate pleas of the Three Young Materialists).  And while we opened--some years--we ate tree bread.

I don't know where Mom got the recipe (probably from a magazine--or a friend), but we had it a few times--and I loved it.  (I am a bread-o-holic, by the way.)  Later, married, a father, I decided to try it myself.  (Little Steve loved the look of it.)  But there were years when it was less than ... edible, I fear.  (Though I resolutely ate it anyway--It's fine ... really!)

When I started using the sourdough starter I acquired in Alaska on a visit in 1986, the bread presented new challenges.  (A heavy dough rises more slowly--and, impatient, I sometimes started shaping-and-baking before it was really ready.  Not a good idea.)

But now I've got it down pretty well.  Haven't messed it up in quite a few years.  (Notice I'm saying so after I've baked it.  Must avoid The Curse of the Overconfident Baker.)  The process takes hours.  First, I have to "feed" the starter (8-12 hours).  Then mix the starter with the other ingredients (white, wheat, oat flour; honey; salt; melted (soy) butter; slivered almonds, candied fruit, dried/sliced apricots) (up to an hour).  Kneading.  Setting aside to rise (current batch went nearly four hours).  Cleaning up.  Shaping (form "ropes" of dough and string them back and forth on the baking sheets).  Another rising (two hours this time).  Baking.  Cooling.  Cleaning up.  Storing for Christmas.  On Christmas: warming the bread, icing it (powdered sugar + water), sprinkling on the glaze some more candied fruit (it looks like decorations--really).

Each year I mail one to my brothers for their use on Christmas mornings (the years I'm not with them).  No one ever says squat to me about them: good, bad, thanks--anything.  (Brothers!)  Oh, I take that back.  One year Richard said (on the phone! on Christmas Day!): The tree bread was better this year than last year.  Nice.

It's not our son's favorite, either.  As I said, he's always liked the look of it, but he's never liked nuts (almonds, remember).  In fact, he may be the only American child in history who does not like peanut butter--smooth or crunchy.  But Steve--bless his nut-hating heart--does eat a piece, every Christmas morning.  Feigns pleasure.

Joyce and I, though?  We eat it with lupine animation and manners.  Not a pretty sight.

"Memories ... like the corners of my mind ...."

Have you noticed that no one has to remember anything anymore?  Well, those of us with smart phones, that is.  Stuck for the name of that abducted girl in The Searchers?  Click on that IMDB app.  (Natalie Wood!)  Can't remember who Millard Fillmore's VP was?  Quick Internet search.  (No VP: He assumed office when Pres. Zachary Taylor died in 1850.)  Can't remember if it's preventive or preventative?  Check that American Heritage Dictionary app.  (It can  be either.)  And on and on and on.

I noticed this past weekend that my mother, whom I was visiting, was annoyed at my constant checking of things on my iPhone.  Perhaps she was thinking: I paid for this guy's college education--and he has to carry around a little external brain to remember anything at all?  Well, one of my former teachers (I think it was Mr. Brunelle, a high school English teacher) once said something like this: An educated person [he probably said "man": it was the early 1960s] is not one who knows everything but who knows how to find everything.  So, Mom, you didn't waste your money on me between 1962-1966.  (Well, actually, you did waste some.)

As I've gotten older, of course, my quick recall has evanesced.  I used to be really good at games like Trivial Pursuit.  Now I'm lucky if I can remember what day it is.  It is helpful having Joyce in the house. (Confession: I had to go ask her about preventive a few minutes ago: We had looked up the word just last night on my iPhone--and today I couldn't remember what the damn word was!)  But not always.

An example.  Exactly a month ago we were celebrating my birthday at the Pufferbelly restaurant in Kent, Ohio.  (Confession: Just now I couldn't remember the name of the place and was about ready to fire up Google when the name came crawling like an embarrassed dog back into my head.)  While we were eating that November night, we were talking about our memories of Kent (a town we love); we had met there in the summer of 1969 at KSU; we had lived there together (married!) from 1969-1978; etc.

After dinner, we were going to see Glen Campbell, now suffering in the early stages of Alzheimer's, who was performing at the old Kent Theater--where Joyce and I had seen many movies together, including Let It Be and Woodstock and Young Frankenstein.  (See my earlier blog on Campbell's show.)

And then we were remembering the old series of movies sponsored by American Express--the American Film Theatre series--celebrated modern and contemporary plays filmed (with all-star casts) and shown only in select theaters around the country.  1973-1975 (Thanks, Google.)  We had seen some of them in Kent.  Joyce thought it had been at the downtown theater; I was sure it was out at the University Plaza.  Then we tried to remember some of the ones we'd seen.  I remembered Butley and The Iceman Cometh and a couple of others.  (Complete List)

We both remembered we'd seen an Albee script, too.  Which one?  Neither of us could remember. I did not check my iPhone: This was a romantic evening, you see?  Inappropriate to check email and Facebook and Twitter and Linkedin and ...  Though I very badly wanted to check, my iPhone whispering at my side like my Evil Twin: I can help you!  It'll just take a second ... then you'll know!

Bravely, I resisted.

And promptly forgot all about it.

Until last night.  We were driving down to Green, Ohio, to visit our son, who'd just had some unpleasant oral surgery (sort of superfluous, isn't it, the word unpleasant?).  Joyce--commenting about something which I cannot for the life of me remember right now--used the phrase a delicate balance.

And I, a month after the fact, cried: That was the Albee play we saw in the American Film Theatre series!  And Joyce remembered, too.  And we glided toward Green feeling awfully good about ourselves and our patently undiminished capacities.

Link: IMDB info on the film: A Delicate Balance

PS--Until I just checked on Google, I'd always heard Barbara Streisand singing "Memories ... like the corals of my mind ...."  Honor bright!

"Last scene of all ..." (Part 2)

The Seven Ages of Man

The most extensive and intensive experiences I had in nursing homes were the years that Joyce's mother, suffering from Alzheimer's, was in one facility  in Aurora, then another near Akron.  But Joyce has written about this so wonderfully well in her book In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey (1996) that I will add nothing to her words--except a link to her book!  (In a Tangled Wood)  Okay ... I will add only this--how astonishing it was to watch, over a period of years, one person disappear and another one emerge.  And how Joyce profoundly loved them both.

And now ... my own mother.  This is not her first time in rehab, though.  Some years ago she was in a bad one-car accident, broke her neck, and had to wear one of those "halo" devices for some months.  Those were not the happiest days of her life.  It frustrated her deeply to have to live like that--unable to move much, dependent on others.  She had/has always been a fiercely independent person and prided herself greatly on her health and overall physical condition.  In her 70s she was hiking long portions of the trail along the Pacific coast in Oregon with groups of her friends.  She swam every morning in her 80s.  Walked everywhere.

And then ... injury and years caught up with her, grabbed hold, would not let go.

There is anger in nursing homes--some is medicated away, some percolates.  When I was visiting my mother last week, an angry resident was out in the hall near her room.  I don't want to be here! he was saying.  I don't need to be here!  The attendants spoke with him softly, gently guided him back to his walker, which he'd tossed aside.  Let him vent.  Did not argue.  They didn't need to.  He knew his situation.  But he hated it.

The therapists are trying to get my mother to use her walker more prudently.  She doesn't want it at all.  She tries to get by without any help--or with a cane only.  But several falls in recent months have landed her right where she doesn't want to be.  I walked down the hall with her and a therapist the other day.  Short steps.  The therapist urging her to lift her feet--not shuffle them.  Mom was trying, ferociously trying.  But tiring after only half the hallway.  I slipped the wheelchair behind her.  She sagged into it, resting.  Then the long, long walk back to her room.  A Pacific coast trail ...

Two things: Older people--like the rest of us--need touching.  There's something about it, isn't there?  The human hand.  The touch.  My mom was never a very physically affectionate woman.  But I had my hands on her a lot this past weekend.  She seemed to like it.  Reached for me now and then.

And this: Why do so many people talk to the elderly as if they're children?  Urging them on as if they're learning how to stand or walk or write the letter A?  The "cutesy" little language we use with toddlers?  My mother is not a toddler.  She is a woman who lived through the Depression, who raised three sons during World War II and Korea while her husband was often away, who taught English in junior high and high school, who went back to grad school--nights, summers--until she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh, who taught doctoral students at Drake University, who ... who hiked at 75 the trail along the Pacific coast, who looked out over an ocean, drew in her breath with astonishment and wonder and gratitude, and has now plunged on, into the tangled wood.

"Last scene of all ...."

That well-known "seven ages of man" speech that Jaques makes in As You Like It has become less amusing as I've gotten older.  I liked the "mewling and puking" parts, earlier.  The schoolboy and lover sections.  The soldier.  Lately, though, as I have moved through those stages he calls "the justice" and the "lean and slipper'd pantaloon," well, those parts are just not so entertaining, you know?

Before we proceed, here's the whole speech:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

This past weekend I visited my mom for a few days in the nursing home in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she's recovering from a fall.  (Nothing broken but her pride--but that is no minor matter in a 93-year-old.)  And I got to thinking ...

Nursing homes terrified me when I was a child.  Among my early memories is visiting my great-grandmother Osborn, who was deep in dementia; she had no idea who I was.  Which, at the time, was for me a great relief.  She said things that made no sense, looking wildly at me from her bed, as if I were some creature that had wandered out of a bestiary.  She surely saw the same look in my eyes as I regarded her.

Later, a boy of nine or so, I visited my grandmother Dyer in a nursing home in Oregon.  She, too, was losing her grip on reality, but I remember she convulsed me with a story about a man she'd known who'd been struck in the head by lightning.  He wasn't ever the same afterward, she said.  And I fell down on the floor laughing--an act that horrified my mother but delighted my grandmother, who began to laugh wildly, too.  When I stood, I saw in her eyes that she recognized in me a kindred spirit.  The feeling was mutual.  Fellow creatures in the bestiary.

My great-grandfather Lanterman would have nothing to do with nursing homes.  And so--for a time--he lived with us in Hiram, Ohio, then with his daughter, my grandmother, out in Oklahoma, where, visiting, I asked him how he was doing.  A thoughtless, youthful, arrogant question.  He was living in bed at that point.  He looked at me as if I were the daftest damn creature on the planet: "I can't even wind my goddamn watch!" he barked at me.  And Grandpa Lanterman's bark and bite were still formidable, even into his 90s.  I backed away, wary of fangs.

My dad never wanted to be in a nursing home--but he spent his final months in a couple of them.  He was not happy about it.  But my mother simply could not take care of him any longer, and his medical needs were accelerating as he got older.  One thing that happened that amused his sons and annoyed his wife: He lost many of his social inhibitions--and freely flirted with the young women who dealt with him in the nursing home.  One day I was sitting with him, a young woman entered, and Dad perked up immediately, saying to her: "You're fine ... how am I?"  Dad never said things like that when he was younger (was he thinking them? probably? ... definitely?), but they flew from his mouth more and more as he neared the end.


TOMORROW ... a bit more ...

What I Experienced on the Road Home Today

I left Becket, Massachusetts, at 5:30 this a.m., arrived home in Hudson, Ohio (566 miles), just about 3:00.  Pretty good time for that long, long trip.  (I take the cheap way--I-80--not the quicker way--I-90).  And along the way ... some sights, sites, ruminations ...

• Both brothers, older and younger, crawled out of bed to wish me well on my journey home.
• Full dark, no stars (to quote a recent Stephen King title) while coming down Becket Mountain Road, my timorous eyes seeing deer everywhere, leaping in front of me (none did).
• Lovely Taconic Parkway, where I experienced the sunrise.  Joyce used to have some relatives who lived in Stanfordville, NY, in a grand old farmhouse.  Uncle Gene was a country lawyer; Aunt Kathy, an authority on wedding protocols (she ran a bridal shop in NYC for years).  Both smoked like coal-fired power plants.  Neither had a driver's license.  We felt for them both a depthless love.  Theirs was the Bull's Head Road exit on the Taconic.  I cannot drive by it without you-know-what happening to my eyes.  When I am alone on the road, as I was today, I always call Joyce at the Bull's Head exit.  That way I know my damp eyes will have two companions back in Ohio.
• Tongues of morning sunlight on the slopes of the Catskills.
• Many dead deer--some very recently--all with looks on astonishment on their faces.
• Quite a few Dumb Guys; no Smart Cars.
• Some frustrated carrion crows trying to dine on a possum-too-slow in the high-speed lane.
• A McDonald's employee, probably smiling while doing so, who gave me a cup of room-temp coffee, a condition I did not discover until I was back on I-80 near Clarion, PA.  I said some very bad words.
• The prisons on I-84, just east of the Hudson River, near Beacon, New York.  Not a good place to pick up a hitchhiker.
• The rest area at Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, a rest area that features--at both areas, eastbound and westbound--wood carvings of bears.
• Attentive hawks in high trees.
• Always wondering if my E-Z Pass unit is functioning (why isn't that light turning green?).
• A creepy guy who entered that dark Taconic at the same time I did; he stayed in the left lane, about 100 feet behind me, for many miles.  I wanted a roof-mounted rocket-launcher.
• Another creepy guy who drove parallel to me on I-80 in Pennsylvania for many miles.  A dark, dirt-caked pick-up with dark windows.  I wanted a roof-mounted rocket-launcher.
• A semi pulling a trailer of new cars; he pulled out in front of me as I was heading for the on-ramp from a rest-area, getting ahead of me.  I wanted a roof-mounted launcher.
• My driveway in Hudson--a woman I love, a wide smile on her face, coming to the door ...  Opening it.

Leaving a Bookstore Empty-Handed

I've patronized quite a few bookstores in my life--the good, bad, ugly.  And there have been a couple from which I've rarely managed to leave empty-handed.  A word about them in a moment.

These days--the experience is much more rare.  The only large store near us now (a BAM) has a lot of books; I just don't want very many of them.  Joyce and I go there to browse occasionally, but the browsing rarely leads to a meal.  Bestsellers--teen vampire novels--memoirs by celebrities--political screeds--lots of games and cards and other clutter.  We prefer our little local shop, the Learned Owl in Hudson, Ohio.

There's a Barnes & Noble about forty minutes away, too.  Sometimes we go there and are more likely to leave some cash behind (larger, more interesting inventory).  But not always.  Not nearly always.

It wasn't always thus.  Near us were two very good stores--one an independent (Booksellers), the other a very well stocked Border's.  Unfortunately, they were close to each other, and Booksellers died first, in 1997.  A shame.  Joyce and I routinely went there for a half-dozen years or so, every Friday night after supper.  (They also, by coincidence, had a great apricot scone.  Coincidence, mind you.)  I'm surprised we didn't--by ourselves alone--keep them profitable.  But we didn't.

And then our Border's went the way of the entire chain when it folded in 2011.

Here in Lenox, Mass. (where I'm visiting my mom), there's a great little independent shop--The Book Store.  I'm not there a lot--a few times a year--but I'm certain I've never left without something in hand.  They don't have a large inventory (it's a small space), but they have a very interesting one (to me).  Yes, they have bestsellers, but they also have books you haven't heard of, ones you've read about somewhere but have seen nowhere else, lots of literature and history (the good stuff!).

Today I was there--intending to buy nothing, just accompanying my older brother, who also loves the place.  And then I saw on their Shakespeare shelves a little book called The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly, 2010, by Doug Stewart--about the prevalence of Shakespeare forgeries in the late 18th century.  Oh, and this particular copy was signed by the author.  And I now have a charge of $26.50 to deal with ... later.

And, once again, I left The Book Store with a package in hand and a new debt--a debt of many layers, many meanings.

'Twas the Night ...

I had a moment today ... but first ... some flashbacks.

When I was a child we had in our home that 1942 recording of Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians performing "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," a musical version of the famous poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas."  Our records were 78 rpm, so we had to flip the things over to hear the other side after a few minutes (I can't remember how many individual records there were--maybe just one or two?  Just checked: There were 4 records!).

I loved listening to that recording--now available on YouTube: Link to Waring recording  We played it all the time during the Holidays, and I pretty much memorized it.  (I just listened to the YouTube recording--the first time I'd heard it in more than a half-century; do I need to tell you what happened to my eyes?)

And when I was in third or fourth grade, my teacher (either Mrs. Ziegler or Mrs. Rockwell--depends on which year it was: cursed memory!), discovering that I'd memorized the record, decided it would be nice if I would recite it for the parents at our little Holiday gathering at school.  I thought that was a grand idea, too--until she gave me the original text to review, and I saw that Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians had added words, subtracted words, moved parts around, changed words--added a new "night-after-Christmas" ending.  Uh oh.  (Link: Text of entire poem)

And when I saw those lines that commence with "As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly" (words not in the recording), I was befuddled and bewildered.  I could make no sense out of them--even when my mother tried valiantly to explain them.  But I labored on, trying to un-learn what I knew, trying to shove into my brain the "real" words and progress of the poem.

Then came the Big Night.

There I was, wearing my little suit-and-tie, up in front of my classroom, a room jammed with all my classmates, with their parents, other family members.  My parents and brothers were there.  My grandparents (who lived just blocks from the school).  There were some carols and so on (by the way--all of this is unthinkable in a public school nowadays, isn't it?).

Soon--all too soon--it was My Turn.  And as I walked to the front, turned, and looked at all those faces, I blanked.  My memory was ghost-town empty.  Tabula rasa.  (Locke was right!)  I looked around.  Smiles and encouraging looks from everyone.  Then ... from somewhere? where? ... a wisp of a melody.  The melody of "Twas the Night Before Christmas," performed by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.

And I recited that poem--well, that record--flawlessly.  The poem had flown from my mind like a startled starling, but Fred Waring had flown in, saving my poor little self from certain humiliation.  Afterwards, no one told me that I'd recited the record lyrics instead of the original poem--and I was happy, very happy.  Especially since I didn't have to try to deliver that dry-leaves-hurricane-fly stuff.

Years passed.  I had a son of my own.  And I decided to learn the poem again.  It actually came back very quickly (the starling returned!), and I've kept it in my head ever since.  Lately, I've been reciting it at Christmas dinner with our son and his family.  Little Logan--who was six the last time I did it--likes to add the rhyming words at the ends of the lines.  So I will say, "... not a creature was stirring, not even a ---"  And Logan will cry, "Mouse!"  This year, he may want to say more of it.  I hope so.

Okay, now for the "moment" from today ...

I am visiting my mom, 93, in a nursing home in Lenox, Mass.  She had a fall recently, back in her own place, and is trying to work her way back there.  It's slow.  But she's making progress.  Today I found her sitting in a wheelchair and reading a 1000-page novel about English history.  That's Mom.

We got to talking about the "old days" back in Oklahoma.  And I got a surprise.  I asked, "Do you remember when Richard [my older brother] had to memorize the opening lines of Longfellow's Evangeline back in junior high?"  (It was Longfellow Junior High, by the way.)

Did she?  She reeled them off perfectly.  "This is the forest primeval ...."  (Here's a link to the whole thing, if you're brave: Evangeline.)

I was dazzled.  And then I asked her, "Do you remember the time I had to recite 'The Night Before Christmas' for my class back at Adams School?"

Bless her heart--she said she did.

"Would you like to hear it again?

Bless her heart--she said she did.

I recited it with lots of thespian flourishes--messing up only on "he sprang to his sleigh": from my mouth came "he schlang to his sleigh."

Mom laughed--but only after I did.

I could see her, mouthing the words as I went along--almost as if she wanted to cry out the rhyming words.

And when I finished ... do I need to say what happened to our eyes?