While Paul and I were away this past week, we took a road trip from L.A. across the desert to Palm Springs to visit my dear friend Mary, whom I have known for almost 30 years. I met her when she hired me to be the the receptionist at my first job in the New York City garment industry. Mary was the office manager for a now defunct sportswear company called Mega Sport, who prided themselves in making affordable active wear for the not-so-active set, or what they referred to as “armchair athletes.”

When Mary saw that I was smart and ambitious, she immediately took me under her wing, mentored me, and I quickly rose through the ranks to assistant merchandiser. It was shortly thereafter,  that Mary married her second husband and moved to Palm Springs. We only worked together for 6 months, but we stayed in touch all these years, which is remarkable considering that there was no Facebook or email 27 years ago.

Mary is now 74 and I will be, dare I say it, 50 next month. In my 27-year- long distance friendship with Mary I have seen her in person only three times, but it never detracted from our closeness. She has been a surrogate mother to me.

Paul and I travel to L.A. quite frequently on business, and are often too busy or too preoccupied to make the two hour drive to Palm Springs. This time I told Paul we had too. Mary has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and although she has defied the odds and has lived almost five years since diagnosis, I dare not even think about life without her. So instead, I focus on life with her.

We reminisced about old times over lunch at a classic New York style deli. I had a Reuben, Mary had a bagel with a smear. Mary looked great. She had her hair and nails done and she was dressed to the nines. Nothing changed. She told me when she goes into the hospital for chemo, the other patients are surprised to learn she has cancer too. She cheers them up with gifts and her lively, boisterous, no nonsense New Yorker sense of humor. In that regard, she reminds me a lot of my own mother. A real independent, self starter who never let adversity get in her way. No victims here. She and my mother both were powerful role models to me and I am proud to follow in their foot steps.

Although my mother was a fabulous baker, indulging us with an abundant supply of fresh baked cookies, cakes and pastries, she absolutely hated to cook. She considered it a chore and a burden and used to lament that if she just had more time, maybe she would have not felt so pressured, especially since she was preparing meals for a family of 7. (I can relate to that.) There was also that archaic dictum that dinner had to be served at 6 o’clock and no later, which I’m sure added to my mother’s anti-cooking angst.

Feeling her pain and wanting to help out, I took over the dinner duty chores when I was about 12 or 13. My mother worked and would always call home around 3 pm to make sure I made it home from school and to assign tasks. First, set the table. Next, make the salad. Eventually I was cooking the whole meal.(I have always said that I learned to cook over the phone.)

I breaded pork chops and pounded chicken cutlets into thin slivers for Cordon Bleu. I experimented with Jello parfaits and started throwing fruit and nuts into salads long before it was chic. Why? Because I loved to eat. There isn’t a childhood photo of me where I wasn’t stuffing my face with cake. (Maybe that’s because the only time pictures were taken was at family birthday parties, but still….)

As an adult, nothing has changed. Except I too get into my cooking slumps and get bored with the same old fare. Whenever this happens, I crawl into bed with a stack of cook books (I have quite a collection) and come up with some fresh ideas to pull us all out of the doldrums. Here are some recent recipes that my family just adored. Read the rest of this entry »

I love Mother’s Day. As a stepmom, I often wish I could spend the day will all of my kids, but I also enjoy the opportunity to spend it with just Eva and Sophia. And I must say, I really delight in their enthusiasm as well. I think it is because they appreciate that I see it as a day for everyone to relax and enjoy each other’s company. For instance, last year we all got pedicures, went out to lunch and saw a movie. Sophia was grateful and actually told me, “I like the fact that you don’t make us do chores all day, like weeding the garden and cleaning out the gutters.” Gratitude. Love it.

This year’s event will be fairly low key. We are going to spend the day in Carmel with  lunch at the Hog’s Breath Inn (which I believe is still owned by Clint Eastwood)  and  the afternoon at the beach. Paul said he would cook us dinner when we got home. Lovely. My sister Jill is coming with us. She and I like to toss flowers into the ocean to honor our mother who passed away 7 years ago. (She never made us do chores either. And she always raved about the running eggs we made her for breakfast.)

I’ve always been a firm believer in letting my house to be the “kid house.” By that I mean, our home is the one where all of our kids’ friends come over after school to make messes, noise (squealing and/or heavy metal guitar music) and raid the fridge. And I’m not complaining. My mother always said when the kids and their friends are at your house at least you know where they are.  I agree.

My kids live with us all the time except every other weekend and even though Paul has a 50/50 split with his ex, his kids still come to our house every day before and after school. That means we have a full house pretty much all the time.

Yesterday Cheryl had a half day and she called me around noon to ask if she could bring five friends over for a few hours. (If you have five kids, what’s five more?) I said yes. When she got home she did the sweetest thing. She brought all five friends out to my studio so she could introduce them to me. She also introduced them to the dog, but that’s not the point. She had a big, happy smile on her face. She wanted her friends to meet her amazing and wonderful stepmom, I just know it. Seriously, I was both touched and proud that Cheryl demonstrated her good manners and made the effort to make the introductions. It left me with a big, happy smile on my face.

Last week I waxed nostalgic about packing up my daughter’s dolls and storing them in anticipation for her leaving in the fall to go away to college. When Sophia saw all of the boxes I had set out in the study filled with her naked dolls, she insisted that before we put them away, she had to dress them in their original outfits and brush all of their hair. Which she did. Meticulously. All weekend. Then she washed and folded all of their clothes and placed them neatly in the cartons. I watched her, wistfully, as she did this and believe you me, it brought back a flood of memories.

I can still envision her playing endlessly for hours on end when she was a little girl. At one time she had every American Girl doll that was made. The only reason she doesn’t have all of them now is because she simply stopped collecting them and others have since been produced. I think we must have been American Girl’s best customer. Sophia had everything. The beds, the armoires and all the outfits. Why so much indulgence you wonder? I ask myself the same thing. The answer is simple. My girls had a mother who loved dolls too. Except when I was a child, there were limits to what my parents could afford to give me. Although I did have Dancing Ballerina. Remember her? Did I overcompensate? You bet. Sophia justifies her rather large collection by rationalizing that she never played with anything else and that is true. She wasn’t a stuffed animal kid or one to play board games or computer or video games for that matter. The sheer joy of watching her play acting imagination run wild was motivation enough for me to continue to foster her passion. But I digress.

Seeing Sophia gingerly reminisce about every single doll, their names and the personalities she imbued upon them, made me realize that not only am I not ready to see them go,  she wasn’t either. I assured Sophia that we would keep the dolls safe for her daughters and that she could always come home to visit them. Sophia lamented, “What if I have some maniacal daughter who wants to scribble magic marker all over their faces?” I assured her it was genetic. If I loved dolls and she loved dolls, then her daughters would certainly love dolls too. My sisters all loved dolls. In fact, I don’t think my sister Pam has ever forgiven me for leaving her Chatty Kathy doll out it the rain. We all have memories, and hopefully they will remain in tact … and in our hearts forever.

One side note in closing. The photo to the left is of two dolls wearing outfits my mother made for them. The swimmer’s flip flops were hand crafted out of foam. Lovely. She loved dolls too.

I am one of those types of people whom my children refer to as a “clean freak.” I got my training early on because I, myself,  had one of those crazy clean freak moms who could have coined the phrase (which she often invoked) “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Every Saturday morning in our house was cleaning day. We stripped the beds, and I kid you not, moved them away from the walls so we could wash the baseboards. Stuff most people did once a year, like washing the windows, my mother did once a week. Our house always smelled like Mr. Clean and Pledge and by god, it was clean. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re in a quandary. Today, Friday, marks the start of a no kid weekend. That means the children go to their other parents’ houses for the weekend, which leaves Paul and me  alone. We cherish our time together, sans kids, because running a household with five teenagers who leave a trail of dirty dishes and dirty laundry everywhere they go can be… how shall I say this…. aggravating, annoying and exasperating. Today, as I was wiping ketchup off of the kitchen counter and sweeping crumbs off of the just swept kitchen floor, I counted the minutes until they  would GO. It’s not that I don’t love them, I just NEED A BREAK now and then, otherwise I might freak out and shreak at them and scar them for life. Read the rest of this entry »

I was working in my studio last night after dinner when  around 9 o’clock  Sophia came out to say good bye before she headed out to her weekly babysitting job. As I watched her walk down the driveway, in the dark, toward her car, back pack slung over her shoulders covered by her long, flowing blonde hair, I had a flash back of her walking into her first grade classroom with her pink Power Puff Girls back pack and I couldn’t help but wonder, “How did you get to be 17 already? Driving. At night. In the dark. With a job.”  So independent. As my mother always used to say, “Where did the time go?”

I shared my thoughts with Paul this morning as we were lying in bed before the alarm went off. I told him, “The day Sophia leaves for college is the day I fling myself across the bed and sob.” Apparently my mother had the same reaction on several occasions. First, when I left home in Pennsylvania to move to New York City, and later when I moved across the country to California.

I now know how she felt.

Yesterday afternoon Sophia got her first acceptance letter from Humboldt State in Northern California. It was the first college she applied to and the first acceptance letter she received so far. She hasn’t heard from any of the other schools she has applied to and in fact,  is still not finished applying. Still, she was delighted and so was I. I’m still in a state of euphoria that I cannot put into words. When I went to get the mail and saw that letter I knew what it was and my whole life flashed in front of me. I anxiously brought it to Sophia’s room and stood nervously by her bed while she opened it. When I saw the look of victory on her face I remembered the same day, 32 years ago when my mother paced our living room floor, letter in hand waiting for me to come home from school so we could find out together whether or not I was accepted to college.(I was). I now know how proud my mother felt. And relieved. It was like a wave of validation washed over me and I could see that all my efforts, the tutors, the soccer mom parties, the driving on field trips, the endless home cooked meals and first aid for skinned knees… was all worth it. My kid’s goin’ to college. Not to steal Sophia’s thunder and take any credit away from her because no one has worked harder to get into college than this child, but still… I just want to glow just a little more.

This past week marked two great family gathering events in the Shwanda household.  Paul’s brother and five sisters all flew or drove into Santa Cruz (from as far away as Alabama and Ohio) for a family reunion  to celebrate Pop Pop’s 90th birthday. In addition, my ex-husband, Jared, took our two daughters, Sophia and Eva, to his niece’s wedding in New Jersey. Sophia and Eva got to spend the first part of the week with their step dad’s family and the second part of the week with their dad’s family. (Jared’s family is also rather large in that he has one sister and four brothers.)

It was a fun filled, busy and joyful occasion filled with lots of activities during the day with  surfing, sailing and  kayaking, and in the evenings at each other’s homes playing charades, board games and reminiscing over old photos of Pop Pop in the army and on his wedding day. Those were the moments when I looked at my girls blending in with their “step” aunts, uncles and cousins, enjoying themselves and feeling included, even though they don’t share the same heritage, history or genealogy. After Sophia and Eva left for the wedding in New Jersey, where I heard reports that they ripped up the dance floor with their East coast cousins, we had one final big party at our house on the last day of the reunion.

I had planned a menu of grilled chicken kabobs, homemade potato salad and coleslaw. It was  a pot luck and everyone brought their contribution. Paul’s older brother decided he wanted the family to take a trip down memory lane and asked his wife to prepare “bun burgers,” a dish their mother made for them as children. It stirred some fond and not so fond memories. (Apparently not everyone liked the bun burgers.) I didn’t quite get the recipe, but I watched them being prepared. Basically, you prepare ground beef like you are making hamburgers. Throw in some spices and some chopped onions, but instead of adding bread crumbs, pick out the bread from the tops of hamburger buns, which leaves a big O, tear it into pieces and add to the mix. The top of the bun is placed on the bottom half of the bun and then on a cookie sheet. Next, scoop up a  generous dollop of hamburger meat and place inside the opening of the top bun. Bake in the oven at 400 degrees and just before they are done, top with strips, in an X shape, of Kraft processed American cheese. Place back in oven until melted.

I have to say they were pretty darn good and could easily be adapted to something healthy and rather gourmet if using, say, ground turkey, whole wheat buns and  perhaps some goat cheese, instead of the fatty beef and fake cheese. The culinary nostalgia didn’t end there. No. There were fish sticks too! You know, the frozen kind that comes in a box with lots of fillers and mystery ingredients. They were a  once-a-week staple in Paul’s family’s house. Paul’s brother felt that no family reunion was complete without fish sticks and bun burgers. As we were standing around the kitchen, noshing on the retro delicacies, he lamented, “Too bad we don’t have fake milk to go with them.” Anyone who grew up in a large, budget stretching family in the 50′s and 60′s would know what fake milk is. I do. My mom used to take powdered milk, mix it with water and add it to the real milk to make it last a little longer. It was gross, but we accepted it because that’s just the way it was.

As Paul’s family reminisced about their childhood memories, I reflected on my own (I’m one of five kids.) and realized that big families are pretty much the same.  It isn’t just the food, the family vacations, the sibling squabbles and competition for the bathroom that they have in common, but rather the inherent bonds, life lessons and experiences that go with the territory. I’ve always said being part of a big family prepares you for life’s greatest challenges: To be able to get along with anyone, to know how to wait your turn, to accept delayed gratification and to tolerate things that can at times be somewhat unpleasant.

My thoughts wandered to the future as I pictured myself at Sophia’s or Eva’s wedding and imagined all the guests who would attend.  There would be my family, Jared’s family and  Paul’s. It would be  a blended family wedding… and one hell of a party.