Month: December 2024

memories, remembering

Sheepshead

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I loved – still love – the season of holidays. As a child, holiday time meant a time for the cousins and aunts and uncles to gather at our house for the holiday meal – which was followed by the dining room table being cleared as quickly as possible, the tablecloth removed, and the cards ready to be shuffled and played. Of course, the women had already finished the clean up time in the kitchen, the men had had another beer – or two, sitting together in the living room – and it was time to play Sheepshead.

When I explain this ritual now, folks are usually stymied by the name of the game – Sheepshead. It’s a trump game, I tell them, and almost everyone in Wisconsin plays Sheepshead. The original name, schafskopf, is a German name and Sheepshead is a German card game. The full deck is not in use when playing Sheepshead. And the highest card in the deck is the Queen of Clubs. Besides the basics, it’s hard to understand Sheepshead, to get its allure, and to understand why it was a part of every holiday – unless you play.

When I was little, I convinced myself that I’d never play that noisy, rowdy game. The hands were dealt and played quickly, and there were loud voices and complaints that accompanied every hand dealt. Daddy and the uncles pounded on the table, even though money was not involved. When they played Sheepshead, and as the day – and the playing – went on, the loud voices and the pounding on the table seemed to get more fierce. “What could be fun about that”? – I must have thought.

Until I learned to play. Mom taught me, when I was eleven. First, I had to learn what was trump, she said, as she lay all the cards on the table, right side up. Then, I had to learn the rest of the suits, in order. Then, I had to learn how to arrange the cards I was dealt in my hand. Then, I had to learn to count trump as it was played – a necessity for proper strategy. Mom was a good teacher. Soon, I was playing Sheepshead, too.

And soon, I was hooked. Ever after, I could join the shouts and complaints at the table. The shouts and complaints didn’t seem as big as before, and maybe the shouts and complaints seemed necessary, once I’d started to play.

“Sheepshead! I can play!” Here in Oakland, Jeff and I have taught a few people to play Sheepshead. This past year, we taught our friend Jim, who is sure to impress his German relatives when he makes a trip to see them. The rules may be different, we tell him, but you’ve got the basics down.

Our house is a lot quieter on holidays than our house growing up was, and that suits me. Our holiday meals – after we’ve finished and have moved to the living room to sit next to the Christmas tree – are followed by long conversations with good friends, and Sheepshead seems to be something in the past now. We have taught our nephew Rainier and his wife, Lia, to play. I hope they like it, too.

” …after we’ve finished dinner and have moved to the living room to sit next to the Christmas tree…” – photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2024

memories, nostalgia, remembering, Uncategorized

Facing the dark – entering the deep of the year…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I grew up in the Midwest. There, the darkest times of the year also heralded the beginning of the coldest times of the year.  Now, since I have had the pleasure of living in a Mediterranean climate for many years, I hope for rain to quench the dry land as winter approaches, I watch with interest the days grow shorter, and I watch the final red of sunset linger over the Bay, sink down beyond San Francisco into the Pacific.

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Here in Germany to visit friends and to visit Christmas Markets – the Germans know very well how to do Christmas! – I am reminded of how the darkness shapes this season, and I remember the Festival of Lights that is Christmas, and the lighting of candles that honor Hanukkah, fall always during these darkest days. Here in Germany, darkness comes on early as the temperature hovers just above freezing.

As I walk through the Christmas Markets of Regensberg this year, I see the same trinkets again and again, and sometimes, a treasure shines out from the rest, and I stop at a tent covered booth to look closely. Will this be a good gift for Joanne, I think? Can I carry this lovely toy in my suitcase without breaking it?

Christmas music playing from speakers hidden somewhere in the eaves of the buildings that circle the Market adds to the festive flavour of the season. Sometimes, the cold air sweeps me away again to those dark December evenings in the Midwest, marching over snow covered ground to select the perfect tree from a well-lit city lot, the perfect tree that Dad carries back to the car and fastens securely with a rope for that purpose, into the trunk. Then, I’m back in Regensberg, as quickly as I left, turning round and round to see where Jeff has wandered, knowing he enjoys the music and cold and darkness and even the crowds, as much as I do.

Yesterday, I learned that Bill, the widower of my good friend Sue who died so young, Bill, who made her so happy, has passed. Melancholy and memory seem to go well with the cold and the Christmas music.

Still, the holidays are here with their mixture of merry and melancholy. When I return home, after Jeff and I select our own tree from a lot in the city, I’ll sit across from the sparkling lights with a cup of egg nog, I’ll remember all those I love who are gone now, who I hold in my heart in the reflection of the lights.

Christmas-time in Wien, Austria. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2024

 

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“There are places…”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

“There are places I’ll remember, all my life, though some have changed…” – Lennon & McCartney

Today as I walked in Oakland between rain storms – we’ve been promised a winter with lots of rain! – I was remembering places in my life.

I remember the walk from 11 and Ring to 9 and Ring Street as I made my way to kindergarten at LaFollette Primary School – I didn’t know then that I was beginning the walk to a life different from the one I had been born into. I didn’t know then that the teachers who taught me would not only open the doors for me to another world, but that I saw in them – and remember – women unlike my mother. And I saw myself in them.

I remember the evening I sat as the dark came on at the Mathilda Brown Home on 42 Street – behind Oakland Tech – in Oakland, as I sat in the dark beside my mother’s bed, and where she would die the next day. As I sat there, a song filled my mind: “how can I help to make you understand, why I do, what I do? Going away to a distant land, far from the home I love…” (Bock/Harnick, from Fiddler on the Roof).

I remember walking along Piedmont Avenue in Oakland on Halloween Night over a year ago as little Celeste held onto my hand, dressed in her princess costume, and as we passed the other children out to reap the Halloween bounty from the store fronts. She was quiet, careful to stay connected to me in this place, so far from her home.

I remember that I’m an old person now as I passed a man with wrinkles who walked slowly, and as he met my eyes with his own and greeted me, another neighbor from the neighborhood. I’ve changed. He’s changed. But inside of us, we are the same as we’ve always been.

I remember that soon Christmas will be here, and I’ll try to make the house in Oakland cozy, something that’s hard to come by in this temperate climate. And as I sit in the darkened room in front of the Christmas tree with lights shining out from its branches, I’ll remember Christmases past, a long time ago now, a lifetime ago.

I remember as I walk close to home, that I am grateful for this beautiful place, this temperate climate, this lull in the morning’s showers, this air so fresh in my lungs, this place that is home to me, and has been for a long time.

Some of these memories I’ve held onto for many years, as if I can see in my mind’s eye every passing moment. Some of these memories will be gone soon, maybe never to come again. I’m sad. I miss them already.

I remember that this beautiful tree has been a faithful, beautiful companion to me for a long time. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/2024

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Travels

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I love the tech-y stuff that allows me to write my words to you and then to pack my suitcase and take off for a few weeks. At the end of this month and the beginning of next, we’ll be traveling to Europe to visit Christmas markets in various cities. A couple of years before COVID, I was privileged to travel to Vienna in the weeks before Christmas, where I took part in a winter retreat led by Christine Valters-Paintner (abbeyofthearts.com), a retreat leader, Benedictine Oblate, and prolific poet and writer. There, I met other travelers from all over the United States who gathered to retreat together and to enjoy Vienna by day and night.

One of the best Christmas Markets in all of Europe – the taxi driver who had delivered me to the retreat house from the airport told me so – materialized in the square right outside the window of my room in an old monastery, whose monks now have day jobs and who returned to the retreat center every evening. Several new friends and I walked all over Vienna to see the other markets in our free time, and daily we walked a few blocks away to a cafe that had been frequented by Sigmund Freud before he and his family fled to London during World War II – we were told.

After dinner, I would walk from a restaurant where all retreat members had had dinner, back to the retreat center, and I’d go to my own room where I prepared for the night. As the darkness fell, the shutters of the portable stalls in the square below my windows opened to reveal hidden treasures – clothes, food, and drink – winter drinks. I’d hear the voices of the shop keepers and the folks who shopped for Christmas delights, and the sound of folks in revelry, enjoying the dark evening with the lights and music filling the night. The smell of alcohol rose from the street below and filled my room.

At ten o-clock PM, something happened. All at once, the street was silent. When I looked out the window, I saw the booths that had been alive with people and activity were shuttered, the street dark and quiet. “I’m definitely not in the U.S.,” I thought.

After I returned home from the retreat in Vienna, I told Jeff often about the beauty of the place. That telling ignited a longing in him, too, to see the Christmas markets in Europe. I expect that as you read this, he and I will be enjoying new friends, fellow travelers, as we visit several cities of Europe, as we see the Christmas Markets. This year, we’ll leave on the trip after Thanksgiving, so we’ve been preparing by making sure we have enough warm clothes for the chilly days and longer nights there. We’ve even packed wool hats and long underwear – a memorial to our days growing up in Wisconsin.

For us, the Christmas Markets, full of laughter and wonder and crowds enjoying the colder nights, will mark the holiday time this year.

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When I travel, as I prepare to travel, and when I return home and mention without thinking much about it where I’ve been, I remember. I remember the way I grew up, the life in my family. I remember that my mother and father wanted something more for me: “you will be a teacher,” my father said, more than once. I’m surprised by the life of privilege I have had, a life so distant from my people that they could not have envisioned it. “I have not forgotten you,” – I say to the ancestors. I remember where I come from. As I navigate the world – the world of privilege – I am always grateful, and I am astounded when I reflect on my life. The dreams of the ancestors come with me to these places, they walk with me, they see and they listen, they smell the fragrance of hot mulled cider drifting to my window.

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As I travel, I’ll be thinking of home, where the trees are preparing for winter, too. – Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/2024