My Grandmother

Mocha was my mother’s mother. She is really the only grandparent that I remember. Granddaddy, Mother’s father, and Grandma, Daddy’s mother, died was I was very young and I only remember them really from pictures. Grandpa, Daddy’s father, died before my parents ever met, so I obviously never knew him. We were lucky to have Mocha for a grandmother. She was an amazing woman and always fun to be around. Mocha was born Marion Carney Malone on June 8, 1898. It’s sort of weird to think about, now that we’re in the 21st century, someone actually being born in the 19th century, even if it was just barely that. She gave birth to my mother when she was almost 28, which was probably a little old in those days. This is the earliest picture that I have of her, when my mother was a baby.

 

I think for a long time that Mocha and Granddaddy and their daughters lived a pretty cushy life. I’ve heard that they had a cook and a maid and they lived in a pretty nice neighborhood in Charlotte. I’m guessing that when the Depression came around that they had to tighten their bootstraps some too, just like everyone else, and that’s when Mocha learned to cook. Mocha really was a pretty good cook. Her specialty was baked goods though. I’ve mentioned before how she made cakes for the grandchildren’s birthdays and would make anything that we asked. Her angel food cake was always a hit as was her pound cake, and those got requested often. She also made chess pies, which were basically a super-sweet custard-like concoction in individual tart shells. Somewhat like a baked crème brulee, although not as creamy. Put a little whipped cream on that baby and you were bouncing off walls for days!

 

 

She also was a great casserole maker. She made a wonderful chicken and wild rice casserole that was a favorite in our family. It was always my brother Paul’s birthday dinner and, since my mother served this often when we had guests, it’s been passed on to others. Here it is for your eating pleasure:

1 box Uncle Ben’s wild and long grain rice

2 – 2 ½ lb. fryers, cooked and boned

10 ¾ oz. can condensed cream of celery soup

1 onion (minced)

2oz. jar pimientos

2 cups mayonnaise

8 oz. can water chestnuts, sliced thin

2 cans French style green beans (drained)

Paprika and parmesan cheese

Cook rice as directed on box. Add all ingredients except paprika and parmesan cheese and mix well. Pour into shallow 3 quart baking dish. Sprinkle with paprika and cheese. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Easy and delicious!

She also made something called Crittenden Casserole, which she got at a luncheon at the Florence Crittenden Home. This was a place where girls went, back in the olden days, when they were pregnant and unmarried. Mocha was President of the ladies group that supported the Crittenden Home, which kind of surprised me when I found out what the place was about. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like something she would have supported, but I was always glad that she had had a heart for that. The casserole, by the way, was never one of my favorites.

Mocha was always a fun grandmother, although she could also be strict. She was never the grandmother that let the rules go out the window. If my parents left us with her, she always followed their rules, sometimes with a little twist. But she also, sometimes inadvertently, helped us out. I remember the Christmas she came to visit us with pierced ears. I had been begging my mother for years to let me get my ears pierced, to no avail. But when Mocha showed up with her cute little earrings, there was nothing Mother could say but “yes”. So I was forever grateful to Mocha for helping me out. Mocha loved going to the beach. The Hunters had always gone to Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina and that was a tradition that lived on for decades. I don’t ever remember seeing Mocha out on the beach, but here’s a picture that proves that at one time she did.

 

Mocha was always dressed to a T. I never saw her in anything but a dress. Quite the proper lady.

 

I knew Mocha wouldn’t live forever, but she lived a very long time. She was 96 years old when she died. As she got older, she got more confused about things. Not big things, just little things, but they were often funny. I went to visit her at her retirement apartment one evening when I was in town on business. She had asked me how my mother was doing and then she asked me about “Joe”. I was stumped. So I asked “who?” and she frowned at me and said “Joe, that boy that lives with your mother”. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. She meant George, my brother, who was living with my mother at the time. (My mother pronounced George “Joe widge” and that’s where I think Mocha got the “Joe” from.) It’s one of the favorite family stories.

So here’s to Mocha – a great woman and a terrific grandmother! I miss her a lot.

My Love Affair with Purses

I think most people who know me know I love purses. Even people who think they know me know I love purses. But I haven’t always had this love affair with purses. As I’ve mentioned before, my mother was certainly no fashion maven and she definitely did not encourage this trait in me. From her perspective, you didn’t need to wear the latest trends or look like everyone else. She had probably 5 dresses in her wardrobe, all made from the same pattern, in different colors or prints. She had a couple pairs of shoes and she had a coat. And she had one serviceable purse. Anything more than this was just unnecessary, as far as she was concerned.

When I was in college, I remember buying some clothes, usually things that were – surprise, surprise – more trendy and modern. I had a roommate my freshman year who was very fashion savvy and I aspired to look more like her, although I failed miserably. I remember buying my “interview suit” for on campus interviews my senior year. And that suit was the first professional item in my wardrobe. I added to my closet over the intervening years, but I don’t recall having more than maybe two purses, one for fall/winter and one for spring/summer. And if I spent $30 on a purse, that was a BIG deal.

The first time I really remember thinking about purses was not long after college when my best friend Debbie bought her first “expensive” purse. She spent $60 on an Aigner purse, which seemed like an incredible indulgence to me at the time. She doesn’t remember saying this, but I recall her telling me that now that she was in the working world she was going to buy whatever she wanted and not worry about the price. I thought that was so amazing, but I had been raised to be cheap and I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. I spent many years searching for that perfect color that could take me throughout the year in the perfect style that was classic and timeless. And that cost $30 or less.

Debbie was probably the person that put the purse bug in my head, although it lay dormant for awhile. I was with her when she bought a Gucci purse and I bowed down to her ability to spend the money without having heart palpitations. I genuflected to her awesomeness when she spent $80 – EIGHTY DOLLARS – on a shoulder strap (just the STRAP!) for her Louis Vuitton purse. I never thought in my lifetime that I would spend $80 on a purse, much less a strap.

But then one day a Dooney & Bourke caught my eye. It was a shoulder bag in a nice season stretching color. I salivated over it. But it was $225! A fortune! But I thought back to that Carrie Bradshaw-like confidence Debbie had when she’d bought her first “expensive” purse after college and I started saving my money. When I finally had the $225, I went to visit her in Houston for the weekend and we went to our favorite shopping haunt, The Galleria, and I bought that beautiful purse. It was apropos that she was with me when I bought that first special purse.

I probably should mention that by this time I was already a Talbots-aholic and was spending crazy amounts of money on clothes. Spending that kind of money on a purse though somehow seemed silly. But I loved that purse and I carried it for many years. And even after I had that breakthrough, I still looked for purses that would be suitable year-round. Or at least for half a season.

The first Coach purse I ever bought was actually a swing bag. I bought it before I went to the SHRM conference in New Orleans back in the early 2000’s. It was perfect for carrying the essentials and leaving my hands free for my tote bag and other necessities. The first full size Coach purse I ever bought was a Willis bag, a Coach classic. An HR friend of mine named Kerry was a huge Coach fanatic and she recommended the Willis. I carried that bag for a long time, even though it wasn’t as practical as later purses. The Willis didn’t have things like the cell phone pocket or another interior pocket and it wasn’t as large, so it didn’t hold as much “stuff”.

Then I discovered the Coach outlet in Grove City, Pennsylvania. For a couple of years after that I started adding to my Coach collection, all from the outlet. I had Hampton bags, which were my favorite style, and tote bags, which were great for travel. I even bought a laptop bag. I would look at the full price catalogs and then buy the outlet version.

I don’t remember the next time I bought a Coach bag from the full price store, but once I started I couldn’t stop. And suddenly I had more than just a purse for fall/winter and a purse for spring/summer. I started buying purses just because I liked them. And eventually I quit buying from the outlet. I had so many purses that I had to start switching them out each month. But I loved my purse collection. I loved the pretty colors and the comments I would get.

Eventually I traded out my swing bags for better small purses that are my go to for travel.

 

I bought an oversize tote that has traveled to Europe and many places in the US.

 

Debbie and I bought the same purse once. On purpose. We both loved it and loved the color and we both still have it.

 

I bought a Burberry purse at the Burberry outlet. I had been on a Burberry kick and bought it along with a scarf and an umbrella.

Then the day came when I went in the Louis Vuitton store with Debbie during one of my visits to Houston. I was breathless over the prices. Sure, they were beautiful purses, but at those prices I just couldn’t imagine myself ever buying one. And then I saw this:

 

The sales clerk took it down for me and placed it on the counter. I gasped as I touched it and picked it up and admired it. I nearly passed out when I looked at the price. I remember thinking “I wonder what would happen if I just picked it up and ran out of the store?” I was in love with that purse. Debbie egged me on. But I couldn’t do it. I left the store without it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I agonized over it. I went home and still couldn’t stop thinking about it and talking about it. I finally looked it up online and not only did they not have it in the beautiful red color, but the price had gone up. So I took it as a sign that I wasn’t supposed to have that purse.

But one day I looked again and there it was. The red purse. At the price I’d seen at the store. And before I could change my mind, I ordered it. I thought I would regret it, but once it arrived and I had it out of the box, I knew I would never second guess my decision to buy it. And I will have it forever.

I have bought other purses. I have re-homed purses to friends as I’ve bought new ones. I have bought Kate Spade purses and a real Burberry and even another Louis Vuitton. But that red purse is the centerpiece of my purse obsession and it is the epitome of my love affair with purses. I don’t buy Coach purses much anymore. The styles don’t speak to me as much as they used to. But I still love beautiful purses and I still love it when someone comments on the one I’m carrying.

Thank you, Debbie, for introducing me to the world of purses. And for reminding me that it’s ok to be good to myself with something that I love.

Wanderlust

I have a bit of wanderlust in me. Actually more than a bit. And it’s more than just a travel wanderlust, although that’s what caused me to contemplate it this weekend. I read an article on cnn.com about the 10 “hot” spots to visit in Europe this year. I’ve only been to 2 of them, although to be fair, my “visit” to Amsterdam was totally within the walls of the Schipol Airport as I changed planes, and sat on my outgoing flight for four hours, going from Basel, Switzerland to Atlanta. Number one on the list was one of my favorite destinations, Corsica. I never hear Corsica mentioned with respect to places you should visit in Europe. I don’t think Rick Steves has ever done a show in Corsica. Which is too bad.

Corsica is a fabulous place. For a small island, it seems incredibly large. It has lovely beaches and tall, carsickness-inducing mountains. It has cities that hang off cliffs.

I visited Corsica on a two week trip to Europe with my brother Paul, my sister-in-law Beth and my two nephews Allen and Boyce. We stayed in a lovely villa overlooking the Bay of Palombaggio. We spent most of our time there hanging out on the veranda or lounging in our own personal infinity pool.

 

It was spectacular. I read that they are holding part of this year’s Tour de France in Corsica. Which makes me wonder how they will get to the mainland of France – are they going to bike over the Mediterranean? Probably not, but I’m sure it will be spectacular.  LOL

There are some other locations on the list that I would love to visit. Berlin, Crete, Istanbul, Innsbruck (although I did go to Garmisch, which isn’t far away), and a real trip to Amsterdam. Liverpool is on the list, which surprised me. I know my brother George, a devoted Beatle-phile, would go in a heartbeat for International Beatle Week, but other than that, I found it hard to believe this would be one of the hot spots for 2013.

I’ve been fortunate to visit a lot of places, both here and abroad. I thought I might start blogging about some of them in upcoming posts. There are lots of places I’d like to go, some as mundane as Wrightsville Beach, NC and Charleston, SC and a long weekend in Southern California. But, as much as I wish I was, I am not a good solo traveler. I’d much rather go with someone than go alone. And so I don’t end up going to these places I’d love to see. Perhaps I can muster up some courage and just do it.

The wanderlust hits me in other areas as well. I am currently early in my 8th year with my current company. That’s 2 years longer than I’ve ever worked anywhere. My inner job changer has screamed loudly at me over the last 3 or 4 years and yet the time has never been right. But my desire for a change of scenery, new experiences and challenges, new opportunities still is there, still creating that itch I need to scratch, that vague unsettledness. While on the one hand, feeling comfortable with the familiar can be good, I never like getting too comfortable. I feel like there’s new mountains to climb, new experiences to have, new crazy employee issues to solve.

And relationships. If you were to ask me, I would probably tell you that I’d love to have that long-term companion, be it husband or not, someone to feel comfortable with and have experiences with. Maybe that person to go on all those trips with. But after a couple years in a relationship, I always have that desire for something else. Relationships start hot, but cool off fast for me. It doesn’t take long for me to get bored with the sameness, to stew over the faults, to want something new and different.

So maybe 2013 will be the year for me to satisfy some of the pent-up wanderlust I’m feeling. Stay tuned!

Christmastime is here

I was just at Christmas Eve services at my church.  I go to a fairly large church and we have 7 services!  There are 3 family related services, 3 candlelighting services and a communion service, which is the one I attend.  It’s become a tradition for me every year to go.  It’s held in the larger of the two chapels at the church and it’s both relaxed and a little austere.  And it’s the one service on Christmas Eve that has communion.  It’s a noon service, so timing wise it works well.  I think I also like the fact that it's simple and not flashy.

While I was there today, one of the hymns we sang was “The First Noel” and it immediately took me back to my childhood and a memory so clear it actually brought tears to my eyes.

My childhood church was Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC.  Rather unassuming on the outside, the sanctuary to me was magical and awesome and awe-inspiring.  To me it always seemed huge and magnificent and I felt wrapped up in a happy blanket.  We were told that the church was fashioned after an upside down ark, so it had a pointed ceiling that was all dark wood and beams.  The pews were also dark wood with deep purple velvet cushions.  The stained glass windows were “real” stained glass, all jewel tones, and told Bible stories.  While it seemed cavernous and huge, it also seemed enveloping and warm.  There was a great pipe organ, played by a magnificent organist.  My favorite time of year was at Christmas, because we had this wonderful Christmas service and all the choirs sang.  When I was very small, we weren’t allowed to participate in the processional or carry real candles, so it was a huge treat to be old enough to walk down the central aisle with the lights dimmed and carrying real candles.  I remember wearing a choir robe that was black on the bottom and white on top with huge billowy sleeves.  We had to learn the first two verses of “The First Noel” because, with candles in our hands, we couldn’t carry a hymnal.  I was so proud to be floating down the aisle singing one of my favorite Christmas hymns!

I went to one candlelighting service at my current church, but the times always conflict with dinners and no one really seems to want to go with me, so I've only been the one time.  I remember the time I went it brought back some of those same memories.  I remembered having to breathe deeply to keep the tears from flowing.

But Christmas doesn’t mean the same thing anymore to me.  The first Christmas I was married turned out to be my father’s last Christmas.  I didn’t know that at the time, but he’d had cancer and it had come back and maybe I should have been more in tune with that.  But my new in-laws were in town from Jacksonville and I got talked into spending most of the holidays with them.  We ended up spending about an hour and a half with my family on Christmas Day.  There was no Christmas Eve dinner with them and we came well after the gift opening and breakfast traditions on Christmas morning.  My father died a little more than a month later and Christmas was never the same again.  I promised myself I wouldn’t miss those traditions anymore, and I didn’t, but the magic was gone.

And then 9 years ago, we buried my mother on Christmas Eve.  It seemed cruel that there was so much happiness and festivity going on around us during those few days when I felt none of it.  I know what Mother would say to me now – “just tell yourself you’re not going to let it get to you”.  But it does.

I don’t know that I could say today what would bring me joy at Christmas.  I spent Christmas one year in France and that was certainly magical, but I still went to bed Christmas Eve and cried for what was missing.  As I was driving home from church today, I thought how nice it would be to be surrounded by a family with a fire going and laughter all around.  Or rushing around with someone I loved grabbing last minute gifts and then having lunch and a few drinks at a local pub.  But I’m not really sure if having those things would make it feel ok.

I am happy to be able to spend time with my brothers and their families.  If someone is missing, as George will be this year because he’s sick, it feels incomplete.  But it feels incomplete anyway because the two people that made Christmas joyful and magical aren’t here.  There will always be something missing for me and always be a hole I can’t fill.

But, as I do every year, I try.  I do the modern equivalent of “just tell yourself it’ll be ok” – “fake it till you make it”.  And I will be happy to spend time with the people that I love most in the world, even though there’s still an ache in my heart.

Traditions!

Traditions!  Every time I think about this word, I’m hearing the song from “Fiddler on the Roof”.  I actually saw that on Broadway.  When I lived in New Jersey during junior high school, I had the opportunity to see 3 Broadway plays – “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Mame”, and “Man of La Mancha”.  How exciting was that?

Anyway, this is the time of year for traditions.  My family has always been about traditions, not just at the holidays, but all year long.  But I see a lot of those traditions going by the wayside, which makes me a little sad.  I wrote about the naming traditions in my family.  But how we celebrated – whether it was Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays – was just as important.

Birthdays were always your “special” day.  You always got to pick out your special dinner, as well as what cake and ice cream you wanted.  I always picked shrimp as my dinner.  Since my birthday is in August, there were a number of times when I was fortunate enough to be vacationing at the beach on my birthday and we would pick up shrimp fresh from the shrimp boats for my birthday dinner.  My choice of cake was always chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  I didn’t need or want anything fancy, just plain chocolate.  Oh, and chocolate ice cream too.  Plain.  For my 16^th birthday I did get a bakery cake, but I’m pretty sure I had chocolate ice cream to go with it.  I don’t remember all of my brothers’ birthday meals, but I do remember that my brother John’s was fried chicken.  At some point, Mother decided that she didn’t want to fry chicken anymore and she told John that if he wanted that, she could pick some up from Kentucky Fried Chicken.  He was horrified.  He tried to shame her into making an exception for him, but she was not going to be budged.  I don’t think he ever had fried chicken again on his birthday!  When we were young, my grandmother often made our cakes.  Anything we wanted she would try to create.  A favorite was her angel food cake.  My mother tried making it one year when we lived in New Jersey and Mocha wasn’t there to make the cake.  Her first attempt completely vanished in the pan!  So she tried again.  Looked good, but when we went to eat it, it was the chewiest thing ever – turns out she had mistakenly doubled the number of egg whites!  That was another thing she never made again.

As the years went by and we got older, we stopped having the special birthday meal.  Even the cakes stopped being our “special” cakes.  These days, if there is a birthday celebration at all (and there isn’t always), the cake is likely to be an ice cream cake or something from Publix.  And the ice cream is whatever someone picks up.  We no longer seem to celebrate everyone’s birthday together either.

Every time there was a “holiday” – like Memorial Day or 4^th of July or Labor Day – we would go over to the house and cook out.  Even after my father died, Mother liked to have everyone over and we would cook out hamburgers.  I think she just liked to see us and it gave her an excuse to do that.  We don’t do that anymore either.

New Year’s Day also had a tradition to it.  We always got together and had the traditional ham, black eyed peas, and greens.  Mother would nearly lose her mind if we didn’t do that.  She was convinced that we would jinx ourselves if we did not follow that tradition.  But I can’t tell you the last time I had that meal on New Year’s Day.  Not that I would eat greens these days – yuck! – but I don’t eat anything even close to that.

But the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were the big deal.  We always had pretty much the exact same meal for both holidays – turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, squash casserole, peas, rice, rolls, a relish tray, and pumpkin and mincemeat pies for dessert.  Growing up, we used to have these big meals at my Great Aunt Helen’s house.  She always had a huge tray of shrimp and cocktail sauce, which I remember fondly.  All of the children would gather around the coffee table and nosh on the shrimp, while our dismayed parents stood behind us cursing themselves for teaching us to like shrimp.  We had other dishes on the menu that I remember,  like sweet potato casserole and pickled peaches.  In the years before my mother died, she actually was ok with having HoneyBaked ham and HoneyBaked sides for Thanksgiving.  I do remember one year my brother Paul made a pumpkin pie for dessert using a graham cracker crust.  Which he baked first.  That was interesting.

The first year after my father died, I had Thanksgiving at my house.  I thought that my mother would appreciate it, since especially that first year all the traditions made her sad.  I did my best to recreate the traditional meal and even found a sweet potato casserole recipe, which I had to make for several years in a row after that. 

After my mother died, Thanksgiving became kind of a lost holiday.  My brothers John and Paul went off elsewhere with their families and my brother George and I were left to our own devices.  For several years we went to one of the Brazilian churrascarias for Thanksgiving.  Other years we got ham slices and sides.  It meant few or no leftovers, but it actually wasn’t so bad.

Christmas is where we’ve held on to most of the traditions, although not all.  Our tradition was always to have Christmas Eve dinner with all the trimmings and then eat leftovers on Christmas Day.  We still do that, although not all of us together anymore.  My sister-in-law Beth usually prepares the Christmas Eve dinner and she has done traditional as well as non-traditional (a shrimp boil).  The years that they lived in France meant that George and I again had to be creative.  Christmas Eve dinner at a restaurant is ok, but actually was more sad to me than Thanksgiving.

When we were growing up, Santa always left our presents in the living room, with each of us having our own “station” of gifts.  Once we had had our fill of investigating them, we would open presents under the tree, and then we would have breakfast.  Our traditional breakfast was scrambled eggs, sausage links, and Moravian sugar cake from Dewey’s Bakery in Winston-Salem.  My mother always drove to Charlotte before Christmas to deliver gifts to her side of the family and always returned home with the Christmas sugar cakes.  As we got older and were finally able to convince my mother that we no longer believed in Santa Claus, her plan was that all the Santa gifts – yes, we still got them, even into our 20’s and 30’s – would be wrapped and go under the tree.  Daddy would wrap the gifts and number them; on Christmas morning, he would have his number key so that each of us got the right gifts.  Then the opening ceremonies would begin – we went around the room, each opening a gift, until they were all opened – and then we had breakfast.  After Daddy died, Mother still wrapped the presents, but she put names on them instead of numbers.

We still have that same breakfast, with some additions.  But one thing has never changed – the sugar cake!  We still order that from Dewey’s every year.

Another tradition during the Christmas season was driving around looking at the Christmas lights.  I still like doing that.  Not that it’s exclusive to New Jersey, but we seemed to see more than the usual number of houses with an overabundance of Christmas lights in New Jersey.  You know the houses, the ones that had the entire house outlined in lights, along with the yard and the walkways and the shrubs and the trees.  And there were often Santa’s and manger scenes and snowmen and stars on the roofs and chimneys and in the yards.  And more often than not the lights were blinking.  After we moved back from New Jersey, we still drove around looking for the “New Jersey houses”.

So often when I think back on these traditions, I realize that they came from my mother.  I don’t know if they were all the traditions that she grew up with – I’m guessing many of them were, because she was very traditional like that – but I think these were the things she wanted to do to put a stamp on the Moore family experiences.  This is the time of year when I remember my parents and miss them the most.  This is the time of year when the traditions were strongest and the things I remember about those days always revolves around them.  So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons’ Greetings and thanks, Mother and Daddy, for making the holidays – all of them – special times. 

Cuba!

So this year I went to Cuba.  An unusual place to go, because not many people from the US go there.  In fact, the most common comment I got when I said I was going to Cuba was “I didn’t think you could go to Cuba”.  But you can and I did.

I wondered what my parents would have said about my going to Cuba.  Remember that both of them were in Germany less than 10 years after WWII ended.  A divided Germany ravaged by war.  My dad was in the Army and was stationed there, so maybe his parents wouldn’t have been so concerned about him being over in Europe, and specifically in West Germany, then.  They may have just been happy he had a stable job.  My mother, on the other hand, chose to go there.

I asked my aunts what Mocha and Granddaddy had said about her going over there like that.  They said they don’t know what might have been said behind closed doors, but that in public they were supportive.  This, of course, was back before the days of women’s lib and women being major players in the workforce, so for my mother to have made the decision to go teach school for a year in Germany had to have been a BIG deal.  Both my parents grew up with Germany being this major world power, ruled by Hitler.  I know that, at least for my mother, the concept of a reunited Germany in the late 80’s/early 90’s was cause for apprehension.  The Germany they knew was a “bad” country, filled with hate and evil.  After the war, I think for them it was a matter of the “good” Germans being in West Germany and the ones who couldn’t move past the past being in East Germany.

I didn’t remember a Cuba that wasn’t ruled by Fidel Castro.  That wasn’t Communist, although Cubans today will describe what they live in as closer to socialism than communism.  I vaguely remember the anxiety around the Cuban Missile Crisis, although I was too young to know what it meant or what it was about.  I wrote a paper about it in college and learned more about how close we may have come to disaster back then.  I remember the Mariel boat lift, mostly from watching the movie Scarface, and the problems around that.  I knew that Cuba was a communist country, but that was about it.  Of course, I knew about the embargo, but it didn’t really touch me, so I didn’t dwell on it.  I certainly didn’t know much about what life was like in Cuba when I decided to go.

I think my parents, and especially my mother, would have been worried about my going over there.  They would have worried about my safety and they would have assumed that the living conditions would have been meager and difficult.  I think they would have supported me because, after all, I’m a grown woman and can make my own choices, but I think they would have been worried.  Especially since I would have been on total communication lockdown while I was away.

As I think back on my decision to go, it was a totally spur of the moment decision.  My church sent out a pamphlet on all the missions that we do and at the end had a list of upcoming mission trips.  The Cuba trip was on the calendar but just listed as “fall 2012”.  As I looked over the list, it was as if a voice said to me “Go to Cuba”.  I knew right then that I needed to do this.  For many reasons.  I was sure that it would be a popular trip, so I emailed the Missions Director right away.  Turns out I was the first person to ask about it!  I met the Associate Missions Director, who would be leading the trip, and was reassured that this was not a “building” trip or a “planting crops” trip, just a support trip.  I knew I could do that!  When the application came, I filled it out and sent it in immediately.  And then started to wonder if I was making a good choice.

Several years ago a friend and I had gone to hear Bruce Wilkinson speak at a local church.  He’s the guy who wrote, among other things, “The Prayer of Jabez”.  He talked about a mission trip he was sponsoring to a remote, undeveloped area of South Africa and was asking for 100 people to come forward and go with him.  My friend really wanted to go and I could hear her making all kinds of noises as she was struggling with the decision.  She knew her husband would not want her going alone and he wouldn’t go with her, so she was hoping I was “hearing the call”.  At one point she asked me “do you feel led to go?”  But I didn’t.  Not even a little bit.  But this time I certainly heard that call.  And made the decision to answer before I could talk myself out of it.

This was when I heard the “I didn’t think you could go to Cuba” stuff and people wondered what it was like there, would we be roughing it or having to go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground.  My best friend was apprehensive because not only was it a Communist country, but she didn’t think she could do it because she’s not a “camping girl”.  We did learn that, while Cuba is not as modernized as the US, they do have electricity and air conditioning and TV and phones and indoor plumbing.  Not so bad.  And no camping!  LOL

I did worry, in the weeks leading up to the trip, whether I could do this or not.  Because, after all, this was a mission trip.  Not a guided tour trip focused on sightseeing, although we would have a translator who was like a guide and we did do sightseeing.  I consider myself to be religious and spiritual, I believe in God and Jesus, I pray.  But I wasn’t sure I was “good enough” to go on a religious mission.  I couldn’t quote Scripture and I was uncomfortable praying out loud.  I wasn’t good about talking about my faith, even with others of faith.  I was sure I would fail.  It didn’t help that, when I went to the pre-trip meetings, the other folks who were going seemed to be so much more Godly than me.  I worried that I would be unmasked as not enough – not spiritual enough, not knowledgeable enough, not able to carry my weight enough.  But I also believed that God had led me to make this decision and that it would help me find a closer walk with Him.  So, in spite of the fact that I felt like I was completely out of my depth, I pushed forward.

The trip itself was amazing.  It was a little like peeking behind the curtain and seeing the Wizard of Oz unmasked.  The people were wonderful, happy to have us there and warm and welcoming.  I never felt unsafe.  There were no overt political overtones, in spite of the many graffiti messages of “Viva la revolucion!” and pictures of Fidel and Che.  The few times it ever came up, the message was really one of hopefulness – hope that the embargo would soon go away, hope that soon it would be time for the Americans to come.  It gave me hope, even while I felt immense sadness that it was this way.  I had never given much thought to the embargo and what it meant, both to these people in Cuba as well as those who had left after the revolution.  But I was left with the feeling that we were beyond it, that it had gone on too long and that whatever was important about this at one time was long in the past.  I couldn’t, and can’t, figure out who or what it benefits anymore.  This is a beautiful country with beautiful people and I’d love for more Americans to see this amazing place.  Even though I fear that if that does happen, Cuba will lose a lot of what makes it so special, because the Americans they want will change this place to be more acceptable to Americans. 

The only part of the trip that wasn’t so amazing had to do with clothes.  And as much as I tried to tell myself to get over it, I couldn’t.  One of the team members had been on several mission trips to Cuba and gave us her thoughts on what we would see and experience.  One of the things she told us was to “dress like a bag lady”.  No fancy jewelry or designer clothes or shoes.  No high dollar purses or other things that would show us to be Americans.  We wanted to blend in.  She even said that we could probably get away with wearing the same clothes the entire trip and that midway through we’d have the opportunity to have some laundry done.  While that last part about the laundry was true, the rest of it was mostly not.  And, as it happened, I was the only one who actually took it to heart and didn’t bring a lot of clothes.  Certainly not enough to wear something different every day.  Even the team member who gave us this advice didn’t take it herself.  She had a different outfit for every day and sometimes even more than one!  It was hot and humid while we were there and it didn’t take long to feel hot and sticky in your clothes.  So wearing a top two days in a row or a pair of pants four days in a row got old.  And every time I had to do that, every time I didn’t have what I thought were more appropriate clothes for the occasion, every time I saw her and the others wearing something nice, I couldn’t get past my anger and irritation.  I couldn’t not mention it either, even though I didn’t want to.  The other women even took makeup, which I did not, so when we went out to dinner or went to something a little more special occasion, they could look nicely made up (and wearing clean fancier clothes!) and I felt like an idiot.

We did get to do things that tourists would do.  The seminary, which was our host, had someone who planned the trip for us and she made sure that we had cultural experiences as well as the more religious ones.  We went to the ballet, we heard a chamber choir sing.  We visited a pharmacy museum and a slavery museum (which focused more on Santeria than slavery!), we visited the Hemingway Museum.  We got to go to the beach and had a mojito at the former DuPont mansion (now a hotel).  We had dinner at two nice restaurants in Havana and stayed at a nicely appointed hotel in Havana.  We went to craft markets in both Varadero and Havana and got to buy souvenirs and mementos.  And we had a walking tour of Old Havana.

But what impressed me the most was the faith of the people in Cuba.  The enduring faith that made it through a difficult time when Cuba was an atheist state and discriminated against people of faith and caused them to have to go underground for fear of reprisal.  Because of this, it’s not uncommon to see mostly old people and children in church.  Few young and middle-aged adults are in church because they weren’t allowed to go as they grew up and they don’t have that history.  Many of those who go to the seminary and spend many years learning about the Scripture and about Scriptural teachings will leave Cuba once they have completed their studies.  So while Cuba is now a secular state and does not prohibit its people from going to church, it’s still hard to grow the church because of the many years of neglect.  So it was encouraging to see young adults starting to come back and teenagers standing up for their faith when many of their friends are not.

I didn’t get the major spiritual moment that I thought God led me to Cuba for.  But as I saw how God worked through the people of Cuba and that He hadn’t given up on them, it started to awaken in me the knowledge that He hadn’t given up on me either.  I often wonder how God could love me, an imperfect and flawed person.  I’ve worked so hard in my life to be the Anti-Mother that I think I lost a lot of the wonderful qualities that really made her who she was and would have made me more pleasing to God.  And so I felt that God surely couldn’t love that hard-hearted and selfish person that I have become.  I needed to understand that God would stand by me and I started to learn that through seeing how He has stood with the Cubans all these years.  When everything was against them and it didn’t seem as though there were any hope, He was still there.  Waiting.  And so I think He’s been waiting for me and that was what He wanted me to see in Cuba.

Here are some pictures that say “Cuba” to me and that are representative of my trip and what I want to remember.  And I think that, in the end, if my parents had heard what I learned about myself and about the country of Cuba while I was there, they would have been glad I had gotten that opportunity.

Small town Cuba - Jaguey Grande

Sunday afternoon in Jaguey Grande

Small churches like this one in Guisima are common and staffed by seminary students

Cubans, like Israel, are kind and gentle people

The tourist beach - the new face of Cuba

At the seminary in Matanzas

Cuban women who make and sell needlework and other crafts to show their faith

Jose Marti - the father of Cuban independence and a symbol of hope, even today

Even in hard times, Cubans are a happy people

The beauty of Cuba

 

So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!

July 23, 1954

Monday and Tuesday nights I went to the movie with Willie.  Then Wednesday night went to Rita and Bernie’s to dinner.

Yesterday about noon Willie found out that his orders had been changed.  He left this morning instead of Sunday.  Last night we went to Juanita and Lilburn Irwin’s to dinner.  This morning I got up and ate with Willie.  Then I went to the train with him.  I surely did hate to see him go, and I surely did feel down in the dumps.  He called this afternoon from Nuremberg and I missed the call – darn it!  [It makes me a little teary to read this.  I can only imagine how hard it was for her - she was leaving - and not for somewhere close by but halfway around the world! - and then he gets called away sooner than expected.  I can remember when I had a long distance relationship and every time I left, I felt bereft.  I imagine that's how she felt.]

Tonight Dan Clark had a promotion party.  Afterwards Detachment had a going away party for the Freeman’s and they let me in on it too.  They gave me some grand perfume.  It was a grand party.

Mother at the Officers Club going in for one of those infamous parties

Party time!

The Martin’s leave tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I am to go to the Ireland’s for dinner, Sunday the Verboshes, and Monday the Allen’s.  Tuesday I leave.

Got to get my stuff together now – packers come tomorrow at 0800!

July 27, 1954

Saturday they packed my things.  That morning the Martins left.  Then that afternoon a bunch of us sat around and chatted.  Saturday night the Tuites, the Tuggles, and I went over to the Ireland’s for dinner.  Afterwards I spent the night with the Tuggles.  Sunday afternoon I went into Peg and Bob Kelly’s for lunch.  Then we went to the baseball game and back to their house for supper.  Afterwards we went over to the Verboshes for drinks – Kellys, Tuggles, Lilly’s, Amy Randall, and Janie Flynn.  [What a whirlwind of activity in just a few short days!  All the parties!  Parties do make the world go round, don't they?]

Monday June and I went to Nuremberg for my final doings.  That night went over to Pat and Don’s for dinner – Kelly’s and Tuggle’s.

This morning I left for Frankfurt.  We got in about 1700.  We sat in the billeting office until after 8 waiting for rooms.

One other teacher and I are staying at the Park Sanitorium Hotel in Bad Homberg.  It looks like Am. Express reservations!!!

Mike Molloy greeted me at the billeting office – they are still here!

Surely do miss Willie!!!  [I wonder if they had already talked about getting married.  I wonder if she cried.]

 

July 28, 1954

This morning I went into Frankfurt to see Nora and Mike.  After going several places and waiting around for Carlton most of the day, I found out they got out sometime late last night.  People are coming and going continually here all day and night.  Wonder when our time will be!

August 2, 1954

Last Wednesday night (28^th), they came knocking about 20 ‘til 11 and said be down in the lobby by 2300.

They took us into Frankfurt for our baggage check.  Then we went to Rhine Main where we converted our money for dollar instruments and went through customs, etc.  We took off at 0330 the 29^th.  We flew on Trans Ocean in a cargo plane which wasn’t very comfortable.  We landed at Iceland where it was certainly windy.  Had lunch there.  Then we went to Gander for supper.  We took off in a storm.  We landed at Idlewild at 0330 EST.  It took us 30 hours.  [These days you could fly from Frankfurt to NYC in about 8 hours and non-stop!  Heck, you could probably fly non-stop to Charlotte in about 10.  I can't imagine all those stops and it all taking more than a full day!  At least she got to fly and didn't have to take a ship back.] You might know I would get on the slowest thing going.  We had to process at Idlewild and then go to Ft. Hamilton.  We got there around 0600 and couldn’t finish our processing until 0900, so we just sat around.  Finally we finished, and I got transportation into Penn Station.  Saw Mike Molloy again as I was going out through the gate.  After I had gotten my ticket, I went out to Dink Ware’s for lunch.  Then I got the Zagat at 1400 and got into Charlotte at 0200 Saturday morning the 31^st.  I sho’ do miss Straubing but it certainly is nice to be home and see everybody.

Plane Mother flew in from Frankfurt to NY

 

And of course she must take a picture of leaving Iceland!

End of my European tour!  It was grand!!!

And so it's all over.  But there's still more to discuss so stay tuned!