Celebrating Fall and life

About age and the seasons, the seasons aging us, age seasoning us, we can be sure.  This fall, we see both in its most vivid colors.

 My Aunt Sadie, the youngest of my mother's siblings, turned 99 last week.  She's a lovely and loving, smart, bright- and sharp-eyed wonder at any age, so my sisters and I decided to join her in Hershey to hold an all-too-infrequent sisters weekend and to celebrate with her.

It's needless to add that reunions in the current pandemic give us pause, but we are careful people (even among the not-so-careful/caring folks we were disturbed to find in our travels) and  made it our objective to keep Aunt Sadie and her family safe as possible.  A 99th birthday is hard to let pass by.  And she is very dear to us.

To say that Aunt Sadie was delighted seems not to do justice to her joy.  "This is wonderful...the best birthday ever!" she kept telling us, from our first surprise knock on her door to the very last wave as we left four days later.  It's difficult for many people to handle isolation in the kind of senior community where she lives.  One Covid patient  among them shuts them in their rooms for the duration.  Fortunately, there were no cases that weekend, and she could go and come as she pleased, as could we, as long as we followed the health precautions strictly.  We were glad to oblige.

So her birthday was the best possible.  Barbara, her daughter who lives only a few minutes up the hill, and her husband Bill were generous hosts, and we spent dinners there after long day hours in Aunt Sadie's apartment, sifting through her treasure trove of old black and white family photos, mementos, memories.  Having Aunt Sadie to identify people long gone before us was invaluable...she is the last of our parents' generation to ask questions of, and fortunately for us who, as most people find themselves doing, have neglected to ask enough questions when our elders were available and willing, she has the mind to do so.   We are already planning to celebrate her 100th in style, and I, for one, am hereby warning the world to step up its game to allow that.

Barbara, ever attuned to Aunt Sadie's requests, baked a peach and whipped cream sponge cake (her first); it was the favorite of our great-aunt Ernestina, a light, fluffy, delicious concoction. 

Then, brave woman, she turned her kitchen over to us to produce Aunt Sadie's other wish...a dinner with eggballs...another family favorite one doesn't find on senior dining menus.  It never comes out quite the way our grandmother made them, but my sister Eileen's version is just fine, a memory of taste and heritage sprung into the present for us.  (This time, for a few of us, she made them gluten free.)  Here's the recipe, a good one to celebrate Fall.

We had texted each other earlier for ideas about gifts...whatever does a woman 99 need? ...and eventually we brought books to read, a bag of puzzles (she's a whiz at them as at crosswords), bright fall mums, scented lavender soaps and hand cream, and from Barbara a huge bouquet of red and white roses.  

Driving her back to her apartment, we looked at the sky and saw the fall moon rising, the brightest planet next to it.  Fitting toast indeed.

Happy Birthday, yet once more, Aunt Sadie...you are my inspiration and my vision of what, I hope happily, to come when I grow up.

September

                                        

Mr. Eliot may believe that April is the cruelest month, but for me September is its match.  On this second day of the month, Fall in the air from yesterday's rain--the hurricane Ida blowing by us at a distance-- the lightness of sky and breeze is most welcome after the last few weeks of sweat.   Still, memories sleeping uneasy under the skin of summer rise again.  

Soon it will be the New Year. COVID phase 3, as it's called here, means High Holy Days services by video and small home celebrations, and Kaddish without community.

And yet, you know, there is something very peaceful about that.  To be sure, we miss having a table full of friends and family to entertain and be entertained by...stories, old recipes, new recipes, new traditions, old traditions, the complicated issues of life, historical and present.   But the day will be quiet and memories given their full attention. 

Jude Lobe, Sun flowing through trees

 I am even now looking out to the sun shimmering here and there as the wind blows its filters; I imagine the same for Rosh Hashanah day, a pleasure of introspective  reflection usually reserved for the solitude of Yom Kippur.

The menu for dinner is the same, no matter how few we are.  There will be apples and honey, matzoh ball soup (perhaps along with Alexander's carrot soup, which he likes to make whenever we are cooking together), baked fish--trout, salmon, or grouper in a glaze--and a noodle pudding.  I will order my round challah this afternoon from the bakery that makes our favorite.  Like Thanksgiving (which Rosh Hashanah is, in its way), the celebration at home, of home, centers us as we contemplate the strangeness of this new season, the impossibility of the passing one.

Goodness knows, we could use centering.

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Noodle Pudding

8 oz. fine egg noodles

1 cup cottage cheese

1 cup sour cream

1/2 c. finely minced onion

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp nutmeg

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook noodles until soft.

Meanwhile, saute onions in a little butter.

Drain noodles and mix with cottage cheese, sour cream, onion and salt.

Pour into buttered baking dish (about 1.5 quart).

Sprinkle nutmeg over top.

Bake until brown and light crust forms on top.

Cut into squares to serve.