May Day Romance

She was moth to his flame...

An excerpt for May Day from the historical romance, My Mozart

http://amzn.to/1TDh07s

...The forest was a living cathedral, the great columns bearing a roof of green. All the time we gradually ascended, following a path. In one place we forded a lively stream, balancing on mossy rocks that barely kept us above the chattering water.

Topping a final rise, we came at last upon the Waldhut. It sat in a small clearing, dwarfed by the biggest pine trees I had ever seen. Smoke trailed from the chimney and a fire also crackled out front, snapping sparks. From the greasy cloud rising from a blackened, steaming rock pile, I knew that a pig had already gone into the pit. There was another smell, too, the welcome fragrance of coffee.

Among the musicians and dancers were handymen and servants, all sharing in the cheerful equality of the day. As Barbara and I laid blankets at the edge of the clearing atop a thick blanket of pine needles, I spied, further back in the woods, a green tent. Stage shrieks emanated from it.

"Gott! The usual bawdy house atmosphere." Barbara took me by the arm and pulled me toward the fire. "You, Blumechen, are to stay far, far away from that tent."

The clearing had the look of an impromptu marketplace, with stacks of rugs and laden baskets. Three children suddenly bounded out the door of the summerhouse, pushing past like unruly dogs. Two boys and a girl, they wore bright lumpy peasant’s clothing.

Who did they remind me of, with their broad laughing faces and thick wild hair?

"Schikaneder's." Barbara answered my unspoken question. "Three different mothers, but look at them, alike as peas in a pod. He keeps a regular herd at some farm near Josephplatz."

Turks, I thought, weren't the only men to keep harems.

Going into the Waldhut with Barbara, we found a trestle table set with breads, butter, cheese and those expensive luxuries, coffee and sugar. With cups in hand we stood around the table with the Schacks, who were already inside eating. At last, in spite of the strong, sugary coffee and so many gay companions, I was sleepier than ever. Barbara and I, after looking at each other and yawning, agreed we couldn't keep our eyes open much longer.

Going into the yard, we collected our things and carried them to an area screened from the clearing by flowering trees. Here, close to the prone form of an ancient pine, we spread our blankets. Ferns and clusters of tiny white and lavender flowers dotted the ground. Barbara fussed at me to hurry and settle, but I spent time carefully finding a spot where the blanket wouldn't crush them.

"Shall I sing my little girl a lullaby?" Barbara leaned back against the fallen tree and kicked off her shoes.

"Yes if you please, Frau Gerl."

Behind us, the clearing grew quiet. There seemed to be a unanimous decision that it was time for a nap. While Barbara softly serenaded me with an old nursery song, I bunched up my shawl for a pillow. A root that felt like a big toe stuck into my side, so I moved my hips. The last conscious thought I had was that I'd never be able to fall asleep here...
 ~~~

I stood with a group of women among the pines. I could hear a bright tune, perfect for a romp, but my companions were still as statues. In their midst was a man, an angel of a man, a man I almost recognized.
Golden curls haloed his face and he wore a crown of laurel leaves, like Apollo. When he beckoned, one of my companions would rise and walk like a sleepwalker into his arms, where she would be embraced and kissed. Melting, the woman would crumple to the ground at his feet and remain there, eyes raised toward his shining face, apparently quite stricken with love..."

~~Juliet Waldron

MY MOZART:

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Husband in Kitchen...

                                     The hot dog, spicy chickpea, fresh cut pineapple lunch...an early effort.   ;)
                                                    

Every wife/working woman knows that after years of having her husband at his office all day, when he retires, things change around the house.  Mine retired and flopped around for several years before hitting on something to do with all this new time on his hands. I suggested that there were things he could do around here which would be helpful—instead of just micro-managing me, reading The Economist, and playing solitaire. Eventually, he took something up.

Typically—at least, I think it’s typical—the tasks he decided he’d like to take over were also the ones I most enjoyed most about housework—shopping and cooking. Somehow, women are always left with the scrubbing, mopping, vacuuming, and cleaning of bathrooms, the least favorite parts of the routine. We must have it written on our foreheads, or on some stone tablet with a curse on it somewhere:  “Woman, Thou Shalt Clean ***Toilets and Vacuum Cat Hair off the furniture to the End of thy Days.”

Anyhow, at last he took up doing something, so the food stuff is now mostly off my to-do list. I need to mention that he’s not much of a yard work or DIY guy either. Not going to launch into painting, or even mowing when it’s the season for that. I do half the mowing and at least half of the snow shoveling, so I’m standing by my man on those fronts, but I sometimes wish he had more of a bent for DIY. We’ve got a carpet in the unfinished basement that could probably qualify as a super fund site, but I digress.

First of all, he “learned shopping.” This, before he started cooking, entailed  annoyed calls from the supermarket to ask me what the hell my handwriting says, or what the hell is that ingredient and where the hell can that "weird-ass" ingredient be found? There’s a small locally owned supermarket that we’ve patronized for the last 30 years, so I pretty much have the place memorized.

There are pitfalls, however. The other day he returned with two sacks of yellow onions because they were a two-fer. I didn’t see how we were ever going to use two sacks. After all, there are only two of us! So they sat on the counter, withering, until this weekend I thought of a frugal solution: onion soup. Hating to throw anything away like a good Yankee, I suggested he chop them up. He, chef-like, has been working on his knife handling skills.

He chopped meticulously and produced an entire mixing bowl filled to the top with onions. Then with butter, salt, and low heat, I slowly stirred them over medium/high for a very long time, while they cooked down and down and down and finally changed color. Next came the chicken stock, added a little at a time, all the while cooking and cooking, reducing and reducing, and at the end, a LOT of Parmesan, quickly whisked in.  It took us about three hours, but eventually we’d produced about six bowls of very tasty onion soup. (Not yet ready for Chopped, I fear.) And yet, 3+ hours for onion soup...not the 30 minute meals that I spent my entire life putting together after I fell in the door after a full day at the office.

Now, however, he's begun a new obsession which is -- drum roll, please -- cooking Indian food.  The approach is singularly male. At least, I think it's gender oriented because it involves, first of all, the acquisition of lots of specialized tools and ingredients. First, he had to buy cookbooks. Second, he proceeded to map out all the Indian groceries in the area and scout them, recipes in hand. here, He stressed out all the barely English-speaking staff with questions about where to find the Kari Leaves...

We've acquired two large plastic tubs under the worktable (my stuff has, of course, been moved) filled with lots of little glass jars + lids  and an aluminum pot called a masala wala which contains six smaller pots. These are filled with genuine, direct from the Indian grocery spices--he now scorns Mr. McCormicks' offerings--as well as several 1/2 tsp. spoons with which to measure. The coffee grinder has been commandeered to process whole coriander, black pepper, whole cinnamon sticks and cumin seeds. Serrano peppers are a regular on the shopping list. The mini-blender is permanently stained red pepper and tumeric orange.

When I do get into the kitchen to make something like an old-fashioned split pea soup in the slow cooker, or a pork and kraut supper, he simply doesn't eat it. So, I've resigned. At least he doesn't expect me to do the dishes for him--he tried to turn me into his dishwasher, but as he uses every single pot, pan, spoon, ladle, spatula we own for each meal he makes, I wasn't going to fall for that.  

In all fairness, he's making us quite delicious meals, spicy vindaloo, saag, and briyani. Today it was chicken tandoori, which was absolutely wonderful. This dish requires marinating in five spices and lemon juice, then basting with yogurt sauce and then baking.

Heaven help me, though, if he starts to order (online) Ganges clay in order to construct an authentic wood-fired tandoori oven in the backyard...

~~Juliet Waldron

18th Century and 15th Century novels, as well as 19th Century fantasy and rural romance

A Master Passion, Mozart's Wife, Roan Rose, Genesee & Hand-me-Down Bride aButterfly Bride
and many others.

See them all at:

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also available  on Kobo, Smashwords, and itunes

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https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/mozarts-wife/id442899071?mt=11

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Not For Sissies

Years ago I first saw “Getting Old Is Not For Sissies” posted on the wall at my mother’s nursing home. It’s proved truer--and truer sooner--than I could have ever imagined. Here I am, suddenly (who knows how?!) into my seventies, telling a disease of the week kind of surgery story, just like my grandmother's friends used to. 

A decade back, I had life-changing surgery which ended five years of suffering from Ulcerative Colitis. That’s one of those “down there” diseases, like colon cancer, recently out of the closet of unmentionable ailments.  One of the worst things about UC—besides the relentless belly-aching (!) was being virtually housebound whenever the disease was active, which became progressively more and more of the time. I spent most of one year in and out of bed, fatigued, sick, and in all over pain. (At least, if you are having a tough pregnancy, you may, at the end of the trail, have something nice to show for it.) 

Finally, when I'd gone in for yet another scope, I came to in a hospital bed, with a kind Asian Gastroenterologist explaining that the look-see had been impossible because my gut was about to rupture. It was decision time. Either take a chemo-type infusion treatment that would reoccur every six weeks for the rest of my life, or big, cut-and-paste surgery. 

Being an old fashioned girl, I took "the knife." It's an awful phrase that smacks of melodrama, but there is a certain truth to it as well, because there are some glaring body-concept changes to face.  

"Why?" I'd wondered to the surgeon. My husband was only three years past a colon cancer operation. The female surgeon just shrugged her white-coated shoulders and said we'd been hit by diseases common to people with our history. We'd lived for a decade in farmland Connecticut, drinking from a well. The old run-down house in which we lived sat amid fields of corn, tobacco, and potatoes, all of which require a lot of Ag-Chem. Cancer and immune diseases go with the territory.


Surgery left me with an ostomy, but freed me from the burden of all those ruined body parts. Once again, with a bit of strategy, I could travel, go out to eat, go to the movies, or even just out to the mall. I could ride my bike to the farmer’s market and load the bags with vegetables, or hop up onto the back of my husband’s motorcycle and go out to admire the rural Pennsylvania countryside for hours, a pastime we both enjoy.

For three years I felt better. I could lug sacks of mulch around the yard, yank weeds that were hoping to settle in my garden. I was attending Silver classes at the gym and generally enjoying life again.

Unfortunately, post-surgical patients of my kind are digestive Rube Goldberg machines.

Lots of things can (and do) go wrong. I'd considered myself well-educated about possible problems this drastic re-engineering might create, but it turned out that post-op adhesions are a common occurrence. I'd probably read that somewhere before I made my choice, but now it was in my face--or remains of my gut, I guess is better--another blockage. 

So, once more, there was hospitalization followed by a dreary, kick-the-drugs convalescence. I was crestfallen, scarred, and physically weak.  It was far harder after that to imagine a nice seamless future.

So once again, I sucked it up, and bravely head “Onward, into the fog.”* which, I think is a pretty good description of the future.  Once again, I'm alive and well some years past surgery.

The beauty of the right-now-moment--hearing the voice of a grandchild or an old friend, seeing the blood red just-bloomed Christmas amaryllis, or enjoying the pleasant sensation of a lean-against-my-leg-please-pat-me from a fluffy cat—must take precedence over all those middle of the night "what if's?"  

Whatever it took to get to today, I’m thankful to have been given a little more time in which to celebrate the small shiny bits of life, those marvelous happenings of every day.


*R. Crumb's Mr. Natural



~~Juliet Waldron
http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    Historical Novels by JW at Amazon

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion   ISBN: 1771456744

(Alexander Hamilton and his Eliza, their story)

http://amzn.to/1sUSjOH Angel’s Flight  ISBN: B0098CSH5Q

Adventure and romance during the American Revolution

The Indispensable Man

Angel’s Flight  

A Revolutionary War Adventure  http://amzn.to/1sUSjOH

 I happened into the world on George Washington’s birthday. For many years I took real pride from sharing the day with the great man. After all, back in the ‘50’s Washington's birthday was still celebrated on the day on which it fell, which meant that I always had my birthday off from school. 

Pretty sweet—even if February in upstate NY meant we were buried in snow. It was fun to have a party on a school holiday. Friends came to sledding parties and for snow-fort-buildings, but, by the time I was eight or nine, costume parties were my favorite.   To have a costume party in the dead of winter was a little outre—remember, this is the ‘50’s in upstate farm country—but everyone got into the spirit, even if it just meant digging out last autumn’s Halloween costume again.

George Washington and Blue Skin, his favorite horse

But to return to Washington --Father of Our Country. Think about what it means. It’s pretty heavy stuff to lay on anybody who put his pants on one leg at a time. Still, when you take a look at his track record here’s a thumbnail of what you'll find:

“Washington was Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army upon whose victory the thirteen colonies depended to secure their separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the summer of 1787, he presided over America's Constitutional Convention. His presence lent decisive significance to the document drafted there, which continues in force in the twenty-first century as the oldest written constitution in the world. From 1789-1796, he held the highest office in the land as the first president of the United States of America under this constitution.”  

 * The Claremont Institute via PBS website

Washington was “the man who would not be King.” Unlike almost every other popular Revolution since, our military hero did not become a tyrant imperfectly hidden beneath a variety of pious designations as did so many others:  Augustus Caesar, Hitler, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Stalin, Oliver Cromwell and Mao Zedong. 

After the Revolutionary War was over, he said farewell to his officers and went back to Mt. Vernon. Later, when his two terms as president were done, he quietly returned home again. George Washington was truly the “Cincinnatus” his contemporaries called him. Like that legendary Roman farmer, he left plowing his fields to assume a generalship in time of war; after his country's need was over, he went back to his cabbages, corn, and tobacco.

Historian James Flexner’s biography of Washington is called The Indispensable Man, for the excellent reason that the general did not use his overwhelming personal popularity to set himself up as a despot. 

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism..."

He wasn't a demagogue, stirring up division in a nation which, after a long, brutal war, badly needed healing. He did not make promises he didn't intend to keep. He did not set himself up as King or attempt to found a dynasty. He didn't use the power of his office to enrich himself or his friends; and he certainly operated within the rules laid down by the US Constitution--after all, he'd presided over the room, during that hot Philadelphia summer, where this pattern for modern democracy was conceived. 

~~Juliet Waldron

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    historical novels at Amazon

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion, the story of Alexander Hamilton and Betsy Schuyler, from childhood, to the duel, and beyond.  ISBN: 1771456744

Hoag Family reunion, 1971

My mother-in-law, Carol, was a strong New England woman, one who was born and died in her home state of Massachusetts. She was taller and broader than me, had a powerful presence, softened by short brown curls and a ready smile. Back in the early 1970's, in between a full time job, a couple of teen girls and a rough divorce, she bought a fine Woolrich coat, teal colored twill with a tan-and-white wool lining.

A few years passed. Carol grew wider as folks tend to do in these United States, and the coat was handed to her youngest daughter, Abby. It probably never really fit Abby, except perhaps the winter she spent pregnant. Still, it was serviceable for bitter New Hampshire. The good twill broke the wind and the liner created an Indian blanket warmth. Like all coats of it's time, it was unwieldy. After putting it on, you became lumbering and bear-like. 

There was a hood, too, but by the time I inherited the coat, the string was gone. In deep cold or high wind, the big hood could still be pulled over a scarf for a second line of defense. You might look like the Abominable Snowman, but this senior's world, so what?

The coat is a keeper, worn weekly. Like any article of clothing that has been in use for so long, it shows it's age. For one thing, there's a dab of yellow house paint on one pocket, now hopelessly melded with the twill. That, and a fray on that same pocket, might suggest a thrift store source when viewed in cold, unforgiving daylight.

At the jolly-holly-day season, an old coat probably seems like a weird topic, but there's a part of me that a pure Yankee at heart, despite all those upstate farm New York ancestors. Still, in the midst of so much consumption--and so much compulsion do so, just pounding on the psyche from every side--there's a part of me that resists. I remember my much loved and frugal Grandfather, and that long ago rhyme.

"Use it up,

Wear it out,

Make Do

Or do without."

In later years, I'd hear it all over again, now from my husband's Yankee relatives. Even if I had the money to change it all out every year, I don't think I would. And beyond even that Yankee reason, there's memory of the two other bodies who have sheltered inside this same coat. One is a sister-in-law who has become a more of a sister, and the other was my formidable mother-in-law. When I pull it on, memories are with me just as surely as the wool and twill--which makes it so much more than just "an old coat."

Carol,  Valedictorian, Springfield HS, 1943

~~Juliet Waldron

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9FRHJD  Sisters, a Two Book Series

MOZART AND THE WRITERS

Written a very long time ago, but something to say on the occasion of another  notable January Birthday, that of Wolfgang A. Mozart, a fellow I liked so well he appears in three of my books.

Mozart sends telepathic messages!

 

I saw this headline in the '90's, in one of those papers where Bill Clinton could be seen  shaking hands with a friendly alien.

 

As a Mozart fan, however, I understood it to be true. After Amadeus, there were legions of us, out of the classical closet. We saw the play, then the movie. We began to collect Mozart music. CD and videotape were still new, and so we had to buy those and the new, and, in those early days, expensive, equipment. My poor vinyl collection took a back seat to digital perfection. I searched in for small businesses that would carry opera tapes. I volunteered constantly at my public radio station because they were kind enough to feed my Mozart frenzy on a daily basis.

 

I was not alone, however, in this mad Mozart revival. Every opera singer with a recording contract put out a Mozart album. Neighbors in posh NYC apartments sued neighbors after hours and hours and days and weeks and months of The Requiem played continuously and at full volume. Like so many phenoms, Mozart had surged over the top, infecting the planetary consciousness.

 

Love me! Love me! Listen to me! Do what those 18^th Century fools did not!

 

  

The single party I gave every year was to honor his birthday. My writer and poet friends, all of us struggling with manuscripts, attempting to find agents and publishers, to hold onto  day jobs, were loyal attendees. We could share our woes with that mostly impractical, humiliating, and perilous passion for writing.

 

I will always be grateful to those brave souls who drove through snowstorms from other states because they wanted to be in my kitchen, share their woes and then find a way to laugh about them.  It was a fun fellowship in the gray cold January world.

 

There was champagne and 18^th Century food of all kinds, steak and kidney pies, syllabub, etc., prepared, over the course of days and after trips to the butcher and the import shop, by the hands of Juliet the Certifiable. The Cake came from a now OOB bakery called Dingledein's, who certainly knew how to make a Mozart's Birthday Party Cake.

 

A warm winter pick-me-up among friends!

 

So, Happy Birthday, creator of musical joy, Wolfgang A!  

~~Juliet Waldron

See All my historical novels at:
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