Sounds of Hope

I’m listening to Christmas music on Pandora today.  Just seems like a good thing to do on a quiet slow Christmas day.  Our festivities were last night.  We had a wonderful time.  The day ended with making potato candy with my youngest daughter.  She is off with friends today and wanted a treat to take with her.  It was fun. Christmas music really sets a mood, doesn’t it.  I love Silver Bells because it reminds me of Christmas in New York City.  I sure hope I get to see the tree at Rockerfeller Center at least one more time.  I used to love to go see it with my dad.  I’ve even been there when it was lit.  What joy, what excitement!  After that, a trip across the street to the magnificent St. Patrick’s Cathedral to see the crèche, followed by some steaming hot chocolate made the day complete.  Our first Christmas in Tennessee I was so homesick for New York and the East coast one of our daughters gave me some silver bell...

Heavy snow is coming down today.  It is reminding me of a Christmas in Brooklyn. One of my favorite people when I was a child was my “Tante Bitta.”  She was actually not my Aunt or Tante, she was my cousin.  However, like all of my first cousins on my father’s side, she was an adult when I was born and had children my age.  Out of respect, I called her Tante.  When I was little I couldn’t say her name Birgit; in my childish pronunciation she became Bitta.  We saw her and her family only occasionally until they moved within walking distance.  What a happy day that was!  Her eldest daughter and I became best friends. So many things I could write about her daughter and I.  After putting 75 cents in the cigarette machine, we’d puff away for a few hours.   Believing we’d rather “fight that switch” after a brief usage of Marlboros we became Tareyton smokers.  Doused in perfume, with gum in our mouths we'd try to cover ...

As I look back on that day, it was a real coming of age type of day.  I remember clearly standing by the front window of the subway as we rode back to our home in Brooklyn.  We lived for two years on Fort Hamilton Parkway.  I didn’t like living there.  I missed PS 94 and 53 rd Street.  It was the world I had always known.  I knew each house and at least a little something about the people who lived there.  I knew to walk fast when I passed the tenements and to walk near the curb if I walked past the bar on the odd side of the street near 5 th Avenue.  I suppose it was because we never had alcohol in the house and because of how my parents felt about it that I was always nervous walking past a bar.  I think I thought someone might reach out and grab me and I’d never be seen again.  It was a lonely trip back to Brooklyn.  I don’t remember why my father wasn’t with us.  I was at an age where I was beginning to have those inevi...

The Christmas season has begun.  I knew nothing of the first Sunday in Advent as a child.  We had no Advent wreath or theme in the Norwegian Pentecostal church I attended.  The first Sunday of Advent meant the distribution of our Christmas “pieces” in preparation for the Christmas program.  As I’ve mentioned before, I always seemed to be expect to have the longest piece, or be a narrator.  To this day, I attribute my lack of fear of public speaking to those days.  I don’t ever remember being nervous about getting up in front of people to talk.  I’ve been doing it since before I can remember. It was officially Christmas, I had seen Santa at the Parade on Thanksgiving Day.  Lights were twinkling from the houses in my neighborhood.  As you went toward 5 th Avenue, the smell of pine mixed with a small coal fire filled the air.  Miraculously Christmas trees were lining the path to the wonders of 5 th Avenue. No I am not talking about the...