Pie Day

January 23 is National Pie Day, thanks to the National Pie Council.

A box of culled apples we bought for $5

National Pie Day is not to be confused with Pi Day, which is, of course, March 14 (3.14). Pi Day is a day on which many folks, especially science/math nerds (per my friend Pat), celebrate by eating pie. And we all know the equation for determining the area of a circle, such as the surface of a pie, is πr squared. And for the circumference of the circle, as in the pie pan itself? 2πr.

Pies are squared? Not for Pie Day here in Delaware. The pies were most definitely round. And while two pies are definitely better than one, there was no shortage of pies here on Pie Day because there were lots of pies.

In fact, there were 19 of them.

Piling up in the freezer

All day on National Pie Day, the Symphony handed out slices of fresh baked apple pie to anyone who walked through the door. Despite the bitter cold temperatures, lot of people came through that door. Attorneys, a magistrate, my mother, an organist, the mayor, someone in town just to pay his property taxes, a banker, the city manager, downtown shop owners, and the city attorney all stopped in. The youngest pie eater was just short of 3 years old, the oldest were well up in years. About half of the nineteen pies were consumed one slice at a time. The eight remaining at the end of the day went out into the world in various ways. Two went to high school wrestlers (courtesy of my friend Judy), three went to juvenile court, one went home with Buffy, who works at the Symphony, and one came home to our house (half of which I then gave to my friend Anne as a thank you for a wonderful favor).

The eighth pie went home with an elderly gentleman and his wife for a donation. He had a slice, she had a slice, they shared a third slice, and then he asked if he could buy one. No, said Warren, but he would let him take the pie for a donation.

I hope that man and his wife enjoyed every bite of the pie they carefully shepherded home.

19 pies. Yes, I made them singlehandedly in batches of four, doing everything from peeling and slicing the apples to rolling and filling the dough. As I finished each batch, I wrapped and froze the pies unbaked. The night before Pie Day, I baked pies all evening, filling the house with the scents of cinnamon and apples.

19 pies ready to go

What was I thinking?

Not entirely of the Symphony, although I made sure it was the beneficiary of my Pie Day observances. Warren helped immeasurably in making Pie Day happen, including calling a grocery for a box of culls and supporting my quest. I'm glad the pies pulled people into the office. But I didn't do it solely for the orchestra.

Not of my health, that's for sure. I'm in the middle of a relapse. I have not yet started treatment, and my energy and strength levels are at all time lows. That's why I made the pies in batches of four instead of eight or more: I couldn't make more than four at a time.

So what was I thinking?

Here's what, plain and simple: I wanted the community to eat my apple pies on National Pie Day. And I wanted to do it so that in the event that there are no more Pie Days for me, I will look back with great satisfaction on this one.

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote a haunting villanelle, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. The final two lines are often quoted:

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As I wander through the outlying lands of Cancerland, I give more and more thought to the ultimate end of my wanderings. I do not plan to rage, in the sense of being wildly angry, against the dying of the light when it comes to the cancer and medical intervention. I do not plan to battle and fight this terrible disease to its bitter end. I live with it, I am about to start a treatment that we all hope will make it quiet down again, but I'm not in a battle with cancer. There will come a day when I say to my oncologist "that's enough" and savor the days left to me. That's my plan, when that times comes.

The word "rage" can also mean a burning desire or passion. When it comes to my non-oncology/non-medical side of life, the day to day events that make up 24 hours, I am raging.  I have returned to volunteering at our monthly Legal Clinic, despite how awful I feel afterwards. And my quiet raging is what fueled my hands and spirit through the apple pie binge. Yes, it was exhausting, and yes, I collapsed on the couch when the last three pies exited the oven.

And yes, my heart was filled with joyous rage.

At the Symphony office

Handing Down Treasures Through the Generations

My good friend Anne called to me as I walked by her office today. "Hey, I have to tell you something real quick about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

I gave Anne a copy of Betty Smith's novel for Christmas when she mentioned earlier in the year that she had never read it. I am of the firm conviction that all readers (and by "readers," I mean avid, crazed without books, individuals who will read cereal boxes if nothing is at hand) should read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at least once in their life. (Confession: I've read it some two dozen plus times.)

Anne is a reader. I love Anne because she is bright and witty and attractive and reminds me so much of my daughter-in-law Alise at times that I get homesick for Alise (who is also a reader). Anne had to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

So this morning Anne told me her mother was pleased that Anne was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because she had read it and it was a good book. Then Anne's mother said she had read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because her mother, Anne's grandmother, had read it and then given it to her daughter to read.

Anne's grandmother had only an 8th grade education but clearly did not let her lack of formal education keep her from expanding her horizons through reading. When Anne told me that about her grandmother, I immediately thought of Francie Nolan, the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and of how Francie's struggles for an education despite not being able to attend high school must have resonated with Anne's grandmother.

I love the thought of Anne's family reading this book through three generations. It personifies Will Schwalbe's lyrical reflections in The End of Your Life Book Club: "I will never be able to read my mother's favorite books without thinking of her—and when I pass them on and recommend them, I'll know that some of what made her goes with them."

To Oz and Back

Oz has held me in its thrall since I was a child. The MGM movie (the Oz movie) lured me in, but by the time I was 10, I had discovered the books and read as many as I could find in our library.

L. Frank Baum

This fall, I read a 2009 biography of L. Frank Baum, the man who brought us Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and all of the other inhabitants of Oz. The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum was well researched and well written by Rebecca Loncraine, a Welsh writer. Perhaps it takes an outsider (outside of America, that is) to analyze, deconstruct, and interpret the life of the man who dreamed up Oz.

Baum was a complex man, and Loncraine deftly illuminates his strengths and shortcomings. As was the case with most people during that era, Baum lived closely with death, having seen several siblings and cousins die during their and his childhood. Perhaps because of these losses, he appeared to be deeply influenced by the Spiritualist movement in the late nineteenth century. Baum was violently racist and Loncraine does not overlook or excuse this. He was a dreamer, a mediocre storekeeper, a newspaper editor who called for the eradication of all Native American tribes as a final solution to the tensions between tribes and white expansion. He was a theatrical producer and actor, a bankrupt movie producer, a passionate husband, an adoring father.

And, if this biographer is correct, Baum initially resisted being saddled with the burden of being the author of the Oz books. While both delighted and overwhelmed by the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum thought he was done with the whole story. To his dismay, he found himself hounded by children begging for more Oz stories.

Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, having grown tired of his fictional creation having taken over Doyle's life. Baum did not kill off Dorothy, but he tried to end the Oz series after six books. The powerful witch Glinda renders Oz invisible to save it from discovery by dirigibles and airplanes at the end of The Emerald City of Oz (1910). The final chapter of that book is "How the Story of Oz Came to an End," and contains a note from Dorothy that begins "you will never hear anything more about Oz." Baum tells his readers that while that is sad, it is not all bad, "for we have had enough of the history of the Land of Oz."

Like Doyle, who was forced to bring Sherlock Holmes back to life, Baum was forced to return to Oz by the incessant demand of his readers and the need for income. Three years later, The Patchwork Girl of Oz appeared, with Baum indicating that he was once again in contact with Oz via radio signals. After that, Baum produced an Oz book every year of his life, with the last two coming out posthumously.

In time, Baum took to describing himself as the Royal Historian of Oz rather than as the author of the Oz books. In his notes and papers, he expressed his strong conviction that he channeled the stories directly from Oz, not unlike the spiritualists who channeled the dead. Ironically, his publishers printed the first posthumous book with Baum's now traditional note to his readers, making no mention of his death. It is only in the final Baum Oz book, Glinda of Oz (1920), that the publishers reveal to the reader that Baum "went away to take his stories to the little child-souls who had lived here too long ago to read the Oz stories for themselves."

On the strength on Loncraine's biography, I spent a portion of the fall reading the 15 Oz books written by L. Frank Baum. (There are two other Oz works by Baum, one of which I read during this time, which are not included as part of the children's Oz books. There is good reason for that.) While I did not read them in chronological order, it is fitting that I read his final book last.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz is my favorite and, in my opinion, Baum's cleverest work. That was his return novel when he finally accepted that he could not escape Oz, and to his credit, Baum put his heart into the book.

In the end, Oz is one of those worlds, like Wonderland, like Middle Earth, like the Kingdom of Wisdom, that has always existed even before being reduced to writing. The magic of Frank Baum was that he captured it on paper.

After Baum's death, his publishers continued the tradition of an annual Oz book (always brought out at Christmas) using other authors, until the series wore itself out in 1939. I've never read any of those Oz books, but I have read two other Oz books written for children. One was Visitors From Oz, by polymath Martin Gardner, the other was Dorothy of Oz by Roger Baum, the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum. The Gardner book is rather pedestrian, but his keen knowledge of topology shines through when he (as the narrator) helps Dorothy and friends return to Oz through the use of a Klein bottle.

Roger Baum's book, the first of several Oz books he has penned, reaches back to Oz, the real Oz. He weaves elements of the MGM movie into the story, yet he stays true to the original story. In a mix of both, Roger Baum transports Dorothy from Kansas back to Oz:

Dorothy took Toto up carefully in her arms. She clicked the heels of the silver shoes three times as she had been taught and said, "Take me to Oz!" 

The rainbow became a blur. The prairie disappeared and they flew over the rainbow to Oz.

Roger Baum hints in his prologue that he was channeling his great-grandfather in writing this work. It shows.

Christmas By the Book

For all my love of reading, I did not receive a book as a Christmas present until 1965 (4th grade) and then only as a reward for refraining from biting my fingernails. That a child would crave books over toys was unfathomable to my young parents and I think they were taken aback when I would ask for them. Betting against my daily nibbling of my nails, my parents indeed rewarded me that year. While I no longer own the books, I still remember them well: Marguerite Henry's An Album of Horses and The Golden Stallion by Rutherford  Montgomery.

That is the only thing I remember about that Christmas: I finally received books that belonged to me and me alone. By sheer fate, that Christmas turned into a hat trick of sorts when it came to books as I also received a children's abridged and illustrated Little Women. (I still own that book.)

With Christmas just hours away, I have been recently revisiting my memories of Christmas stories and tales. My earliest are oral: singing "Away in the Manger" in church toddler class or listening to Grandma Skatzes recite the nursery rhyme beginning "Christmas is coming."

Once I learned to read, I discovered Christmas in books and learned I could experience the holiday anytime I felt like it. I heard and read the lilt of Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas" and set about memorizing it, starting with the names of the reindeers.

There was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Dr. Seuss) and the wonders of Whoville and Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree (Robert Barry) and my satisfaction over the mouse family getting the last tip of the too big tree. There was Laura cuddling Charlotte in Little House in the Big Woods, the first book of the series I had yet to discover. When I did discover and devour the series, I found that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a Christmas scene into every single book in the series. My favorite was and remains the time that Mr. Edwards swam the Verdigris River to bring Christmas to Laura and Mary way out on the big prairie.

Wilder had a knack for Christmas scenes: the rag doll, Mr. Edwards, the church gift trees in Plum Creek (the muff) and De Smet (the secret gift from Almanzo), the store bought cap Almanzo received as a boy, the hard winter where the Ingalls family read stories until the kerosene lamp went out.

As my world of books expanded, so did the Christmases I experienced. I joined Sam Gribley and Bando for Christmas day in My Side of the Mountain. I followed the fate of the Christmas tree in Hans Christian Andersen's story"The Fir Tree."

I can never think of Little Women without hearing Jo grumble "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents." And even having read that book hundreds of times, I still thrill when during a later Christmas when Laurie  "popped his head in very quietly. He might just as well have turned a somersault and uttered an Indian war whoop, for his face was so full of suppressed excitement and his voice so treacherously joyful that everyone jumped up, though he only said, in a queer, breathless voice, Here's another Christmas present for the March family."

By the time I was in junior high, I'd added the Christmas chapter from Sally Benson's Junior Miss, Abby Deal's Christmas efforts in A Lantern in Her Hand (which introduced me to the writings of Bess Streeter Aldrich, who was no slouch herself when it came to Christmas stories), and the Christmas celebrations woven though the Betsy-Tacy novels of Maude Hart Lovelace. At about the same time, I first read Dylan Thomas's "Conversation About Christmas"and Truman Capote's evocative story, "A Christmas Memory."

Interestingly enough, there are no celebrations of Christmas in any of the Oz books. Santa Claus makes a cameo appearance at Ozma's birthday party in The Road to Oz.

In my children's young years, I added a few more Christmas tales to the list: Jingle Bugs, a marvelous pop-up book by David Carter, Carl's Christmas by Alexandra Day, and, a little later, Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Her Father, in which she plays a sheep in the church pageant.

There are two other books I would be remiss to skip. The first is Gregory Maguire's Matchless, a retelling and reworking of Andersen's story "The Little Match Girl." Told simply and starkly, it contains a favorite line of mine: "The family was still hard-pressed for money, and dreamed of savory treats to eat, but they had the warmth of one another, and enough on which to live, and in most parts of the world that is called plenty."

The second is, of course, my beloved A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I confess: I do not remember reading it as a child, learning my Dickens from the early broadcasts of "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol" instead. I have long since made up for my lapse by reading the book some fifty or more times as an adult.

It is the afternoon of Christmas Eve as I finish this. Somewhere Jo is grumbling about the lack of presents, somewhere a lonely boy is searching the sky for a "lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven." Somewhere Ramona is wiggling her bottom to make her tail wag, and somewhere Sam and Bando are trying out Christmas tunes on the willow reed whistles.

Somewhere it is always Christmas.

Muddling Through

Some of you may remember that back at the start of this year, I became a monthly columnist for The Myeloma Beacon, an online myeloma site. I love writing for the Beacon; I have found a community of friends and supporters there.

I am reprinting my December column, which just ran on Monday the 16th. I have another December blog post in the works on an entirely different topic, but after you read this, you will understand when I say I don't yet have the energy to finish it off.

I had to do a lot of driving earlier this month. I had four days of mediation training packaged in two-day blocks with a weekend in between. That took me up to northwest Ohio and back twice in a short period of time. To keep myself company, I turned on the car radio and let it serenade me down the road.

It’s the holiday season and the airwaves are saturated with Christmas music. The sacred songs, the secular songs, and the gimmicky songs play in an ever flowing, unstoppable stream.

One often played holiday song is rarely played in its original form. That’s too bad, because the original version is my Myeloma Holiday Song 2013.

In 1944, Judy Garland sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to a distraught Margaret O’Brien in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis.” One particularly poignant verse goes like this:

Someday soon we all will be together,
If the Fates allow;
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t recognize those lyrics, there’s a reason for that. In 1957, Frank Sinatra asked lyricist Hugh Martin to “jolly up” the line about muddling through. Martin obliged and substituted “hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” Never mind that the line is a non sequitur to the preceding line. It stuck.

Almost every artist recording “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” since Sinatra sings the revised lyrics. A welcome exception is James Taylor, who resurrected the original lyrics in his version.

I’m glad James Taylor bucked the trend. When he came on the car radio, I turned it up extra loud. James recognizes that sometimes we get to this time of year and the best we can do is muddle through somehow.

I’m muddling through right now, with some extra help from my myeloma.

I saw my oncologist just before Thanksgiving. My lab numbers continue their slow, steady drift in the wrong directions. I’m tired all the time, way beyond “57+ years old tired” or “busy day tired.” And my wedding ring is now several sizes too big, causing my oncologist to speculate there is catabolic muscle loss going on.

What a muddle.

I have a lot of labs scheduled for late December, along with a skeletal survey. I meet my oncologist in mid-January, and we will map out where I go from here. According to my doctor, it is highly likely I will go back into treatment.

I’m definitely muddling right now. Even before my oncologist put his stamp on the situation, I knew my energy levels did not begin to meet my holiday plans. And as we draw deeper into December and I assess the upcoming holidays, I am acutely aware that my energy levels continue to drop like our current temperatures.

That’s a whole other muddle to deal with this month.

So back to my song. I love the original lyrics. I don’t find them bleak. They actually buoy me with the message that I can and will muddle through somehow. Despite the uncertainty of this disease, despite my children and grandchild being impossibly far away, despite my husband’s hectic December performance schedule, despite my huddling on the sofa every night reading because I have no energy to do anything else, I am muddling through.

I plan on having a merry little Christmas, myeloma and all.

Grandma's Tree

Grandma's tree without the lights turned on

I have written before about my Grandma Skatzes and her love of Christmas. This year I heard a story about Grandma that gave me a little more insight into Grandma and Christmas.

One of my vivid Christmas memories is that no matter what the size, the Christmas tree in Grandma's house was always heavily hung with lights, ornaments, and tinsel. For several years in the 60s, her house tree was a small aluminum pom pom tree, so the shininess factor was even greater.

I always thought the brightness factor was because of my grandmother's very dim eyesight. I just assumed Grandma made her tree extra bright so she could see it better.

Maybe so. Maybe not.

My grandmother was born in 1893, long before electric Christmas light were readily available for home use. In those days, the Christmas trees were lit by candles in most homes. Candlelit trees must have been beautiful, but must have posed huge safety hazards as well.

When Grandma was a little girl, probably before the century turned, her family lit their annual tree with candles, just like everyone else. Grandma's mother, my great grandmother Strickler, was deathly afraid of fire. One Christmas, despite her diligence, the tree caught fire.

Great grandmother Strickler was not a very tall woman and she was terrified of fire. All the same, she picked up the burning tree, hurried to the door, and threw it out into the yard.

Great grandmother Strickler saved the house and her family from a fire that day. But she never allowed another Christmas tree, candles or no, in the house.

When my Aunt Ginger told me that story earlier this year, I stopped her. "Grandma never had another Christmas tree all the years she was growing up?"

We looked at each other and both reacted that same way. "So that was why Grandma always had a Christmas tree with every ornament and light she could fit on it."

We probably won't bring a tree into this house until just before Christmas, given Warren's performance schedule this month. We may get it on December 21, which would be fitting as that is Grandma's 120th birthday.

Whenever we get it, I will make sure it is ablaze with lights and shiny ornaments. Grandma would have wanted it that way.

Belly Flop

When I was a kid taking swimming lessons, it took me a long time to learn how to dive. I would stand at the side of the pools, toes curled down on the edge, my arms over my heart with my hands in a prayerful position. I would start to lean over, willing my hands and arms towards the water. But invariably, when I got to the critical "about to go in" phase, I would lift my head up and smack belly first into the pool.

Belly flops, we called them. Young boys thoughts they were great fun and would spend long summer afternoons trying to outdo one another in making the loudest, most painful smacking sound.

I belly flopped recently. No, not in water, but in real life.

I have been intrigued by the rise of massive online open courses (MOOCs). The more I read about them, the more I wanted to sign up for a MOOC. This fall I finally jumped in (so to speak) and signed up for a MOOC on early New England poets, taught by Harvard professor Elisa New.

Four weeks of classes, with new video lectures, readings, and online discussions coming out every Thursday.

Easy peasy, no?

It would have been, in a perfect world. It would have been, if I had been more driven and more focused. It would have been if I could have shut out everyone and everything once a week for, oh, 4-5 hours.

I made it through week 1 and 2, then fled.

When I signed up for the course, I wrote enthusiastically to friends about how much I was looking forward to being in a poetry class again. Now I am scuffing my toe in the dust and mumbling how it didn't go as I had hoped.

When my boys were little, they watched a children's puppet show, Eureeka's Castle. One character was a bat named Batley, who always smacked face first into a wall or door in every episode. Batley would fall to the ground, then rise up, spread his wings, and declare "I meant to do that!"

Well, I didn't. I meant to do all the readings, listen to all the lectures, and engage in discussion with my fellow online students. I meant to gain more insight and understanding into the world of the early immigrants to this country. I meant to dive right into the waters of poetry and come up refreshed and revitalized.

Instead, start to go in, lift up the head, and splat!

Belly flop.