Nostalgia

I was an adorable two year old when I was uprooted from my Brooklyn digs and transported to the hills of the Bronx.  My parents were convinced that the altitude in the Bronx was far superior to anywhere else in New York.  My Dad could never really explain this theory but he stuck by it for more than forty years.  …

Some of us are collectors.  I have a friend who collects cookie jars.  She has perhaps 400 lined up on top of her kitchen cabinets, on specially designed shelves and spread throughout her home.  She didn’t begin by thinking, “I’m going to collect cookie jars.” It just happened.  Friends, knowing her passion, give her cookie jars.  She hunts antique stores …

Does anyone have honeybaked ham for a regular, ordinary, no-big-deal, middle of the week dinner?  Seriously, nobody’s coming over, but you go to the honey-baked ham store and take one home?  I don’t think so.  There are certain things that only seem to work for holidays.  For instance, turkey.  Have you ever bought a turkey in the middle of April, …

It was 1951 and it was my job to bring my mother Rose a rose, always red.  This time I got fancy and bought a yellow rose, actually two of them.  My gift was met with disdain, actually a sound that sounded something like “Blech.” My Father’s yearly Valentine ritual consisted of an expensive gift and an equally expensive dinner …

It was like another world – away from everything we did or knew in our everyday lives.  This holiday was special.  All my relatives had their own take on what this holiday meant as well as what was allowed or forbidden on the Sabbath. My Mother, Rose, had her own religion that suited her lifestyle, and no one could tell …

Lupe, my friend in Mexico for twenty years helped me with Marimba, my first horse.  Decades have passed since I bought Marimba, a thirty-eight year old gelding, whose ribs showed through his brown coat because his teeth had grown too long for him to chew alfalfa.  I crossed the border to buy alfalfa pellets and he regained his weight. Our …