Coffey Times: December 2010

‘Twas the night after Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings lay flung on the floor over there

By the giant-sized Sears-sale XL underwear.

~

The children were missing, and had been since noon,

And the cats were all flattened, but snoring in tune;

While ma in her apron and I at the sink

Were eagerly pondering a late-evening drink.

~

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter

I threw on my housecoat to see what was the matter.

Away to the back door I flew in a flash,

Tore open the curtains and flicked up the latch.

~

The moon on the chest of an angular man

Inspired me to step back and reach for a pan.

Standing beside him a posse obscene:

Eight filthy locals – all hungry and mean.

~

With the angular man there, so devilish and quick,

I knew in an instant this must be a trick.

More rapid than gunfire his accomplices came,

As he whistled and shouted, and called them by name:

~

“Now Joey! Now Rocko! Now Dexter and Sammy!

On Peetzy! On Jimbo! On Walter and Tammy!

To the top of the skylight, then slide down the wall --

Now dash in! Now dash in! Now dash in, you all!”

~

As tree limbs that in a wild hurricane fly

When they meet with an obstacle, higher than high,

And into the house these rapscallions flew

With their eyes on the presents (the ringleader, too).

~

And then in a twinkling, they shifted their weight

The shingles slip-sliding at a furious rate,

As I pulled back my frying pan and turned right around,

Through the skylight these skinny men came in a bound.

~

They were decked out in black from their heads to their feet,

Clothes baggy and dirty, not one of them neat.

A bundle of kitbags were hitched to their backs

(They looked like coal miners hauling lanterns and snacks.)

~

Their eyes, how they glimmered, their teeth – oh, so yellow!

Cheeks ashen and sunken; arms flaccid like Jello.

Their droll little mouths were drawn up in a bow,

And the hats on their heads were all covered in snow.

~

The stump of the pipe one man clenched in his jaw

(Which wasn’t the worst thing that night that I saw);

He had a thin face and a flat little belly

That shook when he laughed like a thimble of jelly.

~

He was grubby and short, a right gruesome old thief,

And I grinned when I saw him, in spite of my grief.

A blink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had plenty to dread.

~

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

Filled up his sack and then turned (what a jerk)

And then sliding his finger inside of his nose,

And grunting farewell, up the skylight he rose;

~

He sprang from his feet, to his team gave a whistle,

Fast away they all flew like the down of a thistle,

And I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,

“Happy New Year to all! Someone give me a light!”

~

(Also known as A Child’s Christmas on Walpole by Jennifer Coffey)

Saturday, December 25

Thursday, December 23

People keep sending me Christmas forwards (and backwards, given the degree of my sentimentality), and I realized today when I was in the shower that I am not showing a healthy or happy display of appropriately abundant Christmas cheer.

I wondered if sharing happy Christmas memories would help, but really, who wants to hear about a bunch of adult men throwing sock puppet shadows onto the kitchen cupboard walls?

Mind you, there was the time I was asked to play the innkeeper’s wife in our grade four Christmas pageant and I was so good I made the teacher cry. I don’t recall much of my acting approach, but I do remember being angry. Really really angry. What kind of world were we living in when people had to leave Bethlehem and walk for miles (I’d walk a mile for a camel…or in this case, with one) to find one lousy (and I bet it was, if you consider the etymology – and entomology, come to think of it) stable?

I also recall with vivid luminosity the year I played an angel in our Christmas pageant. I was back home living with my mother, and she was so pleased. Her taller than anyone in the classroom daughter with the long black hair and bangs was going to play an angel. In front of the entire Presbyterian congregation. Which is what I did, among the growing snickers bubbling up from the congregation.

Why, I asked myself, why were they laughing?

In the end, their giggling had nothing to do with my acting in/ability or with the large tinsel halo I had fashioned from a coat hanger. Their laughter had everything to do instead with my size 8 desert boots – poking, for miles it seemed, outside of my heavenly gown. (The tallest girl in the class is also going to have the biggest feet.) I laughed too, but secretly I was embarrassed and richly disappointed. So much for angels, I said to myself, although I held a special covert affection for those desert boots for years to come.

Then there was that winter I went sledding with the Van Camp family (doesn’t that make you want to burst into a chorus of Edelweiss?), and more particularly, with their daughter and my friend, Susan. Susan’s father, which has nothing to do with anything, was a much older man, even for that generation, and her mother collected antiques. Oh. That just made me laugh out loud. I didn’t realize the significance of much older coupled with a mother who collects antiques. Get it? GET it???

Anyway, I thought of the Van Camps only last night as I buffed my nails, because Susan Van Camp had a nail buffer on her dresser throughout her entire childhood.

Anyway anyway, they had invited me to Caledon for a day of tobogganing, and because I was the tallest girl in the class I was also one of the heaviest. Which doesn’t mean you need to know anything about physics, but it helps.

The toboggan took on a life of its own, the three of us sliding interminably down the crisp, wintry hill, on and on and on (Ethan Frome springs to mind) past the far-distant cows grazing in the snowy fields and way past all of the dark green triangulated trees – on and on and on, I tell you, and smack into the wooden fence hidden deep within the woods.

No one believed me when I said I had broken my ankle. Not Susan or her friend, as I attempted to climb the hill again, toboggan in tow. (It was my turn.) Not Susan’s parents, turns and hours later, as they stopped at a crispy-chicken-in-a-bucket place for dinner. Not our neighbour, as I hobbled past him up the steps to our apartment.

Only my mother believed me. But that was mostly because she had to cut off my size 8 for the tallest girl in the class boot that she had bought me for Christmas and had permitted me to wear, just this once, before New Years, on this special holiday occasion.

Anyway to the power of 3, I could sit here all day and regale you with Christmastime memories. But as it stands, I have to get dressed and go out and get my hair cut. I need to look nice for more happy Christmas memories that are sure to be coming up the pike this holiday season.

After all, when you’re the tallest girl in the class with what used to be dark hair and bangs and the biggest (now six 10…they really never do stop growing) feet, you need to look smashing for the holidays. Especially in case you plan on running into a great big wooden fence in the middle of the woods in your brand new holiday boots.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Whose woods these are I think I know…

Tuesday, December 21

Boots

The hardest part of all isn’t the absence of his nuzzling; his annoyed little triangulated face; his lustrously soft fur; his ambling walk; his majestic vaulting; his perception; his setting himself on fire with the dinner candles, twice; his jumping from the kitchen stools onto the dog’s back; his persistent diet of Peace Lilies; his patience with twice-a-day insulin injections; his repetitive leaping, floor banging and hopping back up to make Noam get out of bed; his fights with Galoshes; his manly meow on the way to the vet’s; his lying beside me at night; his soft paws covering his green eyes, protecting himself from the light, or his uncomplaining nature in the face of painful cancer.

The hardest part of all – and this is selfish – is that I was his favourite.

In a world where I have almost always come second, or third or fifth or last (this is not a complaint; merely a fact), no one loved me more than Boots. His entire world could have been blowing up in his face, and I blowing up in his, and still he would seek me out.

Whether it was from a far-off Ottawa neighbourhood where he had strayed, or from the recesses of the warm winter basement, I was the person to whom he was most devoted. I was the woman he sought. Boots…forever loyal, forever graceful, forever consoling.

A person has to be a great risk-taker to make a companion of a creature such as he. Because when they are gone, the hole they leave is wider than any chasm you can imagine, their loss permanent, their love irreplaceable.

There was no one and nothing like him. There was no one who loved, or forgave, me more. There is no constant companion who will be more missed and lamented.

Good-bye my darling Boots.

Monday, December 20

In Memoriam

Boots
Loving and Beloved
January 1997-December 2010

Friday, December 17

Christmas Cake Recipe

I've been getting a lot of recipe exchange emails lately, and am only sorry I did not think to forward this wonderful Christmas cake recipe, an old favourite of my mother's and of all her Cape Breton family. If you have time, you might want to see if you can make this delicious, one of a kind cake.

Enjoy!
________________________________________

CHRISTMAS CAKE RECIPE.

Ingredients:

* 2 cups flour

* 1 stick butter

* 1 cup of water

* 1 tsp baking soda

* 1 cup of sugar

* 1 tsp salt

* 1 cup of brown sugar

* lemon juice

* 4 large eggs

* nuts

* 2 bottles wine

* 2 cups of dried fruit

Sample the wine to check quality.
Take a large bowl, check the wine again.
To be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.
Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer.

Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the wine is still OK.
Try another cup... just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.
Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit up off floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried
druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the wine to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt.
Or something.
Check the wine. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or some fink. Whatever you can find.

Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.

Don't forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window.

Finish the wine and wipe counter with the cat.

Go to Loblaws and buy cake.

Bingle Jells!

**Okay, so this isn’t a family recipe. But it could have been. You have no idea how big (popular, I mean) fruit cake was in my family. Especially the kind with wine in it. Or was that brandy? (And isn’t that sort of the same thing?) Anyway, my mother used to make me bow to the east everytime she baked one. (A cake, I mean.)

Furthermore, I would credit my sources if I had half an inkling where this forward originated. But mostly I wish I knew whose recipe this is because perhaps they have others just like it.

Happy holiday baking, everyone!

hiccup

Wednesday, December 15

Winter Solace

While I was making oatmeal this morning, Lainey looked up at me and said, “Grammie, why is your back always sore?” Perceptive, I thought to myself.

So I told her, flat out. “When I was a child,” I said, “I lived with a mean woman who used to beat me with hard sticks. She hurt my back permanently.”

Lainey asked, “Do you mean forever, Grammie?” and I told her that, yes, that’s what I meant.

I then told her that many people have to live with all kinds of challenges, forever. Some people have wheelchairs, and some are blind, and some have chronic illness and some can’t hear, like the boy in her class. I reminded her that many of these same people live healthy, productive lives and in fact do more with their lives because their challenges remind them of all the good they have.

Later today after school was over, as we walked along the country road to the mailbox, the wind snapping at our ears, Lainey asked me again how long it would be before her mother would be well.

“If it’s going to be a short time, Grammie, I am going to be really happy. But if it’s going to be a long time, I am going to be just a little bit happy.”

I said that I thought that by the time winter was over – when the trees were turning green again – mommy might be well by then. I said that I knew that this might feel like a long time, but that sometimes we had to try as best we could to be patient and wait.

“But not forever, right Grammie?”

“That’s right, Lainey. Not forever.”

Sunday, December 12

Ode to Rob Ford

[To be sung to the tune of My Favourite Things]

Commies and pinkos and wackos and wingnuts,
Kooks who ride streetcars and bike in the street ruts,
Homos and trannies and folks from Beijing,
These are a few of his least favourite things.

Macrobiotics and deep meditation,
Polysyllabics in administration,
Ethical guidelines and self-steering strings,
These are a few of his least favourite things.

Exercise, patience and easy reflection,
Calm-hearted reason, incisive detection,
Inclusive action that makes the heart sing
These are a few of his least favourite things...

When his team's weak
When the wife speaks
When he's feeling sad
He simply [and I mean simply] remembers his least favourite things
And then he gets boiling mad...

[Just sayin']

Jennifer Coffey 2010

Friday, December 10

The Download

I am trying to find out which movie and TV Internet sites are downloadable and safe (and, if I am in luck, free).

I know about net flicks, which is not free although it seems comprehensive, and while I have tried CTV online, everything freezes. Barbara Walters is hard to take on a good day (shameless, shameless self-promoters on that show), but when she freezes? Not happy-making.

Several following sites have been recommended, but I am not sure what to do when I get there.

And are they legal? Who owns copyright? Is the site safe? Will I grow warts and sprout long hairs from my chin? Oh, wait. I already have those. That’s called menopause. (I know this is stale, but really, doesn’t it seem as if we should be calling it women-o-pause?)

It seems that whenever I make an attempt to cull, I receive some dire message: Norton doesn’t like it, or I haven’t got the right program, or my mother told someone thirty years ago that I wasn’t to watch anything that had swearing in it. And so on.

Let’s face it, I can barely call up email on my laptop, let alone pretend that I am all savvy and know how to link into anything like television or movies. But I have to confess, if I don’t have my In Treatment fix soon, or a half hour of The Big Bang Theory, or reruns of New Christine, or find out what happened over Thanksgiving on Parenthood, I’m liable to resort to bad things, like Pepsi, potato chips and candy. Oh wait...

Anyway, if anyone knows an easy way to do any of the things I’m after, I would be grateful for your input. Otherwise, I’m going to be stuck playing Hearts again all night, and I have to tell you – the computer gives me the Queen of spades way more times than the law of averages would.

Oh wait.

Wednesday, December 8

It's A Small World, After All

I remember my father once saying that if he were to live anywhere he would like to try the compactness of a small boat. This might have had something to do with his best friend having lived, and died, on a diminutive Newfoundland sailing vessel, but actually I think my father was more interested in the pragmatic side of things, preferring pecuniary prowess over romanticism.

I am loathe to examine too closely that genetic tree, rotten apples and trees being such as they are, but I am amazed by how compactly and conveniently a person can live.

Since I have moved temporarily into my daughter's home, I spend my evenings up in my room after Lainey has gone to bed, leaving Sarah and Chris to hockey, football, Survivor and anything that seems to distract them from their busy days (he) and thoughts (she).

But lo and behold, a lot can be had in an 8 by 10 bedroom, including a comfortable bed; an end table on which sit a telephone, an alarm clock, two pair of eyeglasses, a lamp...and a cubbyhole containing another twenty CDs; a work-in-progress, and a (decadent, yes I know) fountain pen; a toy box that holds several books (in this case...no pun...six novels), 21 CDs, a CD player and a candle, and next to all of this a small computer table ($35.00 at Staples), a clip-on lamp and a $22.00 chair from...I apologize...Wal-mart.

Along the far side of the wall is my laundry basket, and in the closet (in and on top of a wardrobe), I have tucked away my clothes and sundries (camera; purse; memory stick; vitamins; toiletries; jewelry; thermos; yet to be sent Christmas cards; notepaper...), alongside a shelf laden with food: crackers; yolkless noodles; dried fruit; bancha twig tea; cans of tuna; apples; oatmeal; bran flakes, and I can't remember all what else.

No two ways about it: I am in for the duration. And frankly, I think I prefer this little room to all of the rest of the house put together. It isn't that the rest of the house isn't lovely -- it is -- but there is something to be said for self-containment -- a cheerful hide-a-way against cold winter nights and the snowy days ahead.

While a boat might be an adequate and even exciting habitat, here in my room I can scoff at the -40 Ottawa temperatures; play Hearts to my heart's content; read novels by candlelight and toss back a glass of blueberry juice. And when the stresses of life get me down, I can listen to the soothing tones of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Toots Thielemans, and whistle my troubles away.

Céu, tao grande é o céu E bandos de nuvens que passam ligeiras...

Thursday, December 2

Simon Says

Remember when you were a kid and you used to play Simon Says?

Lainey and I are reviving this old standard every morning in the long driveway while we wait for the school bus.

"Simon says walk to the blue car."

"Simon says turn around."

"Simon says walk to the newspaper box."

"Turn around." [pause] "Grammie -- turn around!"

"Simon says walk to the blue car and don't look at those people coming. No! Don't shut your eyes, grammie -- just don't look!"

"Now look up at that tree over there and count the leaves. Do it, grammie. Now."

"But Simon didn't say."

"This is not how you play the game grammie. Count the leaves."

"Are you done? Okay. Simon says spin in a circle."

"Whoa. That makes me dizzy."

"That doesn't matter grammie. You have to do what Simon says."

"Okay, I will. But it still makes me dizzy."

"Now, let's play Toy Story before the bus driver gets here. Which doll do you want to be?"

"I think I'll be Jessie."

"Okay, grammie. I'll be Jessie, too." [pause] "How about you be Mrs. Potato Head?"

"Mrs. Potato Head it is."

"Good. Now grammie, you can't be moving like that. Remember that the bus driver thinks we're toys, not real people."

"Yes, but how am I going to know when to take you across the street if I can't look at him?"

"Grammie -- this is not how to play the game." [pause] "You have to do what Simon says."

"Haven't we moved on from there?"

"Oh grammie. You're making a lot of trouble." [pause] "Do you think after school I could have a snack?"

"I think so, Lainey. But only if Simon says."

Coffey Times

Monday, December 27

My Best of Youtube

Sunday, December 26

‘Twas The Night After Christmas