Chez Rozarie

This isn't always an easy time of year.  Actually, it can be the most stressful time of the year, can't it?  Expectations are high, so fulfilling those is stressful.  Memories of those gone or not present can be sad, and so much more. We begin to reminisce in the weirdest places at the most strange of times.  Have you ever seen a person standing in a store with a blank look?  Shopping in the grocery store (I have the strangest desire to call it a market instead these days...wonder why?), the smells and sights of various aisles...the bakery aisle always reminds me of the first time we went to the new Shop Rite on Barnum Avenue next to the new McDonald's... Just kids, we had the wildest times shopping.  We hung out in the magazine and toy aisles - newly added to stores in the late 60's.  Shop Rite was brand new, and the bakery was bangin'.  Cookies that you could smell being baked, bread that was warm.  Mom would rarely buy from there, not ...

There is sadness, fear, disappointment, and a sense that our country is still full of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism.  My Dad, a Trump voter (come on - you cannot be surprised at that - he has only voted Dem in Presidential elections once that I know of), was at first proud his "guy" won.  Then, after realizing his beloved grandson was so very worried, concerned, upset and angry, started to think.  He thought and thought, about the worries his grandson and I voiced about our President - Elect, about the lack of progress this vote pointed to, about the fear that we have regarding the legitimization of difference and prejudice, about who will be blamed and treated as less then in the coming years. My Dad is an old guy.  He's come a long way over the years for an old white guy, who worked at 1 job for over 35 years.  Dad put up with a lot from his wife and daughters, heck even the pets were female at some points in our family life.  There is really o...

So the temperatures here in the Northeast have been the same or higher than those in Louisiana, where one of our kids is living.  It does bring me back to summer lazy days, and when no one had air conditioning, so everyone's windows were open, and you could hear all of the folks in the neighborhood.  You knew what was on television (and we only had TVs in our living rooms or dens in those days), smelled what was for dinner, and knew when it was bedtime.  You knew who drank coffee, and who drank tea, and who drank!  We lived our lives in semi-privacy. Stoop sitting was the norm.  No one had a deck, and if you were lucky enough to have a pool (my parents' first one went in when I was already married...), you had a single ladder in.  We went down the beach for evening swims at high tide.  If you had a small sailboat, you pulled it down the street to put it in the water and catch the Sound breezes. Mom, when we were little, brought us the 4 or so block...

So I guess I've been busy as I see I haven't posted in 2 months!  Let's fix that right now. Summer time always reminds me of road trip vacations.  You know what I'm talking about...remember those trips, where we sat in the back seat of cars, with no air conditioning, and rode along the highway to some destination for a few days or, if we were lucky, for a week to somewhere different and interesting?  Think about your trips when you were kids...if you are an only child, you were likely given a bag of "stuff" to keep you busy, and probably not expected to talk, whine, cry while driving was going on.  Those of us with siblings had a different experience. It began with seat jockeying for the window, if there were more than 2 of you.  Calling it was typical, and it had to be done right before the car got loaded - no doing it the night before as that wasn't "fair".  And if you had an enforcer listening (read "parent"), you would be forced...

As I looked for a picture to post on my facebook page for Mother's Day, I felt very verklempt (look it up...it's a great word that sounds so much better in Yiddish than in English).  Every picture I looked at was better than the last one.  This one had twinkling eyes, that one had that elfen mouth, that one had her arms in perfect "I gotcha" position. It got me to thinking when I took those pictures.  So many the last few years.  Every time she put on a "face", wore one of her many pairs of glasses, when we went on "field trips" to craft stores.  Mom was a character for sure, wasn't she?  If you didn't know her personally, I hope you know about her from seeing these pictures over the years, and reading about her. Then I started thinking about a regular topic that hits my brain often these days.  My kids are "cooked" mostly...occasionally they are medium rare, but never rare anymore.  Once in a while they ask questions that I w...

So Facebook made up this holiday - or took advantage of some crazy list of "holidays" and wanted to see who would "obey" the mandate to post pictures of siblings.  Has Facebook taken the place of Hallmark?  You know, with Grandparents' Day and then making cards to sell for that holiday? How many of you went through your pictures to find pictures of your siblings, or your kids all in one picture?  Of course I did!  I only have about 25 albums and several boxes of pictures so it was no big deal to go through all of those.  Really, it wasn't! After 2 hours of flicking through pictures and seeing every shot but the ones I wanted, I just went with the first one I found of my kids...from the nineties, Christmas time.  It was cute, and had all of them in the same frame.  But you know how you look at old pictures, and you can see that day or that hour or that minute in your mind's eye? I couldn't see it at all.  I remember the clothing the kids wore...

Spent the afternoon today with my sister's good buddies.  We shared photos (the actual purpose of getting together), but best of all we shared stories.  Everyone there had experienced serious loss of someone well loved and important.  We all had memories, good and bad, of my sister and the shenanigans of youth. You name it, it was on the discussion board.  The girls had gone away yearly for years, to New Hampshire, Vermont and other places.  Long weekends as well were part of the plan.  Their memories are sweet, haunting, and funny.  I didn't hear a sad memory from those times - not one.  What I heard were the tales of friendship and memories of love.  Don't mean to get maudlin here, but it had an element of that, this afternoon did.  But just a little bit. Maudlin has its place in our world, although sometimes I think we try to do away with it.  We should keep it as an emotion, a feeling, a reaction.  It reminds us of wher...

Dad will be 81 next week.  He is, as he should, crowing about his birthday (like any of us could forget!).  As some of you have seen, his skin continues to be his biggest challenge.  Years of no sunscreen, playing softball 4 times a week, then golfing daily have taken that soft Irish skin and done a number on it.  Wait, you say?  His last name is Palazzo?  Well, he got all the Irish/English skin, for sure.  Us kids were a bit luckier.  We picked up some Italian genes, and my Mom gave us her complexion (she had one zap - that's it). The rest of him is in pretty damn good shape, however you wouldn't know it if you listened to him.  We managed to amuse the orthopedist today.  I have to go with him for these types of appointments (well, you may remember the hospital visit in October, too) because he isn't always clear when he has the doctor's ears and eyes.  It started with the initial paperwork. "Why are you here?" was the question...