Tag: connection

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

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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.

***

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.

***

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

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

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The One

Mary Elyn Bahlert 
She chose me before I knew Her,
or maybe - forgetting - I chose Her.
Silent, She's kept her peace:
Though I have risen and fallen,
though I have walked through the dark holding hands with demons,
forgetting who I am.
She observes, Her eyes deeper than mine:
She sees it all - sees clearly, with a wise heart.

She took my hand  
before I reached out.
She spoke:  sometimes with words, sometimes in silence:
She spoke.

One day - alone and afraid -
I said:  “Yes."
Then, we walked hand in hand.
We did not part ways again -
although sometimes I forgot Her for long stretches.

She is placid, clear, deep, full.
When I am angry, shaking a hot fist at the world,
She is placid, clear, deep, full.
She holds me then with great gentleness.
My breath returns, gentle, too.
                 - Mary Elyn Bahlert, 8/2020

Sometimes with words, sometimes silence, she speaks… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Vilnius, Latvia,

7/2024

memories, nostalgia, reflecting, Uncategorized

Jeff’s face

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Sometimes in the morning or evening, when Jeff and I sit across the room from each other – he in his beloved leather chair, and me on our sofa, I look up to look at him. He is reading, or watching another series on the web. He doesn’t know I’m looking. I look up and take a few moments to look at his face, to study him, to enjoy him.

Jeff’s face has been in my life for a long time, although sometimes it seems as if all the time has gone by so quickly; it has gone by so quickly. We’ve had good times, sweet times, hard times, laughing times, gentle times, shouting times, quiet times. I am grateful to the Powers for having gifted me with Jeff as my partner in this life.

I love that Jeff is a man who makes sure to make time for relationship, time to nourish and be with one another, offering gratitude, remembering together, enjoying one another.

And so, today, this is an ode to Jeff’s face. “From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face…” – Rumi

I think his kindness shows in his face, and I’m grateful for his kindness, through all of life’s journey.

Jeff, Lake Tahoe, 8/2020