Category: remembering

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.

*

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

 

memories, reflecting, remembering, Uncategorized

Night now

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Bedtime comes earlier in our house now than it did at the beginning of the COVID sheltering that started in March of 2020. As the sheltering began and as we all adjusted ourselves – our schedules, our social activities, most of our activities – Jeff and I adjusted our daily schedule, as well. Some of the adjustments were in response to the sheltering – but most not. We simply shuffled into the time of sheltering – “for how long?” we might have wondered – and our daily routine shuffled itself into something new.

We both woke to the alarm at 5:30 AM and started the day sitting together in the living room of our beautiful Craftsman house, talking, looking at the news articles online, checking our emails. And the day started with a nice cup of coffee, made fresh, cup by cup. After a while, Jeff would leave the front room where I still sat to cross the yard behind our house to his studio, where he’d spend the early morning. Each day had its own rhythm, broken only by online classes and meals together, a ZOOM call with a friend, walks in our neighborhood, and in our case, friendship time in the backyard. A few of us would sit in a circle – sometimes wearing warm coats and with scarves tied around our necks – with a small group of friends who had ventured out for some face to face time with other human beings. “We’re still alive,” we seemed to be saying to one another by our presence. In the early evenings, often, Jeff and I would get into his car and drive somewhere, a local place. Over the months, as COVID sheltering went on – did we ever think we’d be sheltering for months and months and months??? – we drove in the early evening, as the sun set, into many neighborhoods in Oakland, finding and exploring places we’d never been before, although Oakland had already been our home for many years.

Were the days long? As I piece together my memories of that time, it’s hard to remember whether time seemed to go slowing, and it’s hard to understand how we did it, those days and weeks of early sheltering dragging on, month after month. Every day, we listened to the NPR News Hour as the losses of COVID were numbered and sometimes named. Every Friday, Judy Woodruff honored five of the week’s dead by recounting the stories of their lives in a few sentences. Things were tough in Italy, in New York City, in China, we learned. After a time – when the sheltering went on and on and on – she stopped the practice of telling life stories of victims.

All along, Jeff and I went to bed early, often chatting before we fell asleep, and as often as we could as we lay awake, saying our good night to one another: “Night now.”

Another long and strange day had ended with those simple words.

*

Over the years, those simple and gentle words have guided us to sleep. When our nephew Rainier came to live with us when he was a student at San Francisco State University, he listened and watched us carefully. His folks had divorced when he was a child, and he had grown up without some of the simple joys of witnessing a couple. And so, while he observed us, he too, took on some of our simple traditions. “Night, now,” he’d say to us.

When we visit Rainier and his family in Seattle now, he makes sure to end our days together: “Night now.”

“Night now” comes as a comfort to us, even now.

Birch at Sunset, 4454 photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/2024

community, memories, reflecting, remembering

Showing Up

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Over the years of my life, I have come to value something that is rarely mentioned. Although this quality is not often mentioned, it is of inestimable value. At least it has been in my life. Many years ago, I committed to memory the “gifts of the Spirit,” and sometimes before I go to sleep at night, I say them to myself: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” And to that holy list I would add: “showing up”.

I remember the day of my mother’s funeral in Milwaukee. Jeff and I had accompanied my mother’s body back to Wisconsin to have her honored there, a funeral, and to have her buried there, alongside my father. Like many important memories of days and times in my life, “snapshots” appear in my mind of that day, a cold, cold February day, bleak in that way mid-winter days are bleak in the Midwest. I can sense myself sitting there in the sanctuary, aware of the folks who were sitting there along with me, my mother’s casket before us. Jeff’s mother and brother Randy were there, along with many of my friends, and some of my mother’s friends – those who were still alive, my mother having passed her 80th year, her friends, also. Some of those gathered were friends of my mother and some were my friends, there to be present to me.

Clearly, I remember myself walking away from the grave as the small group of us had gathered at the graveside for a few words to be said, and as we walked away so that her burial could be completed by the waiting workers. My friend Vicki walked beside me, and she said to me: “you had neat parents.” Her comment was so simple, and yet I have not forgotten her presence beside me, and I have not forgotten the words she said. With those words, she was telling me that she, too, had loved my parents, and that they had been a part of her life.

I remember Vicki’s presence that day and I remember the presence of many others. I remember reaching out to Joanne to join me in throwing some earth onto my mother’s casket at the burial. I remember my mother-in-law, Betty, taking my left arm as I walked down the steps to the gathering in the church basement that followed the funeral. I remember Jeff, who read the words I had written in honor of my mother, and who had traveled with me to be with her friends and mine on that day.

I will always love the people who were present that day. They showed up. My cousin Rudy and his wife Mary, now in their late 80’s and early 90’s, attended the funeral. I remember them especially because Rudy and Mary carry with them the value that I have come to love: they showed up. They were there at my wedding to Jeff, the first day of spring, when the guests traveled through another snow storm to be present with us. They were there when my father died after his long struggle with colon cancer. They were there on the day that Jeff read a short story of his at the little church in Kiel that his grandfather had pastored, many years before.

Last week, when I was in Wisconsin, I made sure to drive out of my way to see Mary and Rudy in their home. I wanted to show up for them, as they had shown up for me and for so many I loved, over the years. As we talked and talked, our conversation remembering so many that have passed, and including those who are still with us, I made sure to remind Rudy and Mary, as I have before, in other visits, that I have not forgotten that they had showed up.

Rudy and Mary personify that blessed quality, “showing up.” To me, they do. When I told them – again – they told me that they had visited my mother when she was living alone in the apartment on Appleton Avenue, alone after my father had died, alone in the place she lived until Jeff and I moved her to be closer to us in the Bay Area. I had not heard that story before.

I haven’t read accolades about “showing up.” I doubt I will, in this time of Artificial Intelligence and driver-less cars. Some of the simplest, most concrete things in life will not be mentioned.

But I remember all of you. I think of you often. I see your faces, those who showed up for me at just the moment I needed you to show up. Thank you.

Cousin Rudy and Me, circa 2014, Kiel, Wisconsin

beauty, reflecting, remembering, Uncategorized

Warm fuzzies

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Sometimes, a word is needed to describe something ordinary, something that is recognizable, something wonderful. A word is needed to describe a feeling that is ordinary, recognizable – and wonderful. Or a couple of words.

Jeff and I understand completely what a “warm fuzzy” is. We have both had moments when a sensation of happiness and contentment arrives in our solar plexus – for a moment. And then, it passes. As quickly as the sensation arrives, it passes. Unless we notice it, it will pass without our knowing. That would be sad.

And so, Jeff and I honor the arrival of a warm fuzzy, usually by noticing its arrival on the face of our partner, or maybe even a stranger. Having felt that warm and comforting sensation ourselves, we can see its presence in someone else. “He has a warm fuzzy,” Jeff might say to me as we pass a gentleman on the street who is chatting with someone on his cell phone. Alone in his world, the man has received a compliment, or something else that is good, and it shows on his face. Alone in his world, he might not even notice the sensation that has arrived, and that the sensation has as quickly left him. But we noticed!

It would be good spiritual practice to take note of the warm fuzzies that come into your life – into your solar plexus. “Ah – there it is again: a warm fuzzy!” Or maybe a journal entry could be made: “10/6/2024 – on this cloudy day, a warm fuzzy.” As life with its people and events and days and weeks and months passes so quickly, we could honor that life by noting the warm fuzzies that accompany those people, events, days, weeks, and months.

When we meet with friends, so often our conversation turns to the more difficult things: the coming election, the illness of a good friend, a sudden change or loss of health. And so it’s up to us to make room for the other things: the warm fuzzies.

We hold them in our awareness for a moment, like a prayer.

Autumn branches, Niles Canyon, California, 10/6/2024; photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert