Good-bye Mom

As my plane taxied toward takeoff in Denver last Sunday, I stared out the window through silent tears at the gleaming mountains my mother loved. I was returning home after her funeral. I recalled the many times I sat on that tarmac eager to get home, but grateful for the time I had spent with her and knowing I would be back soon.

Joanna Altenkamp Kush was the last of our family pioneers who came to America from Germany and founded dozens of families now prospering from shore to shore. She landed at Ellis Island on Aug. 1, 1926, barely 3 years old. A photograph of the Altenkamps some 77 Christmases ago hangs on my door. Joanna is a little girl with a new doll, snuggled against her proud father, a blacksmith enjoying the leisure of Christmas Day. The family is gathered around the tree, under which is a photograph of Joanna’s grandparents in Germany. I imagine my grandmother placing the picture there and decorating it with evergreen boughs. Leaving them behind was the greatest pain of her life, and she must have felt the loss deeply at Christmas.

My mother loved Christmas and created magic each year with a big, beautiful tree dwarfed by heaps of presents for nine children. One year, it nearly didn’t happen. She waited until the last moment, probably until payday, to order toys and clothes from the Sears catalog. They promised delivery by Christmas Eve, but as the day grew late and she placed desperate calls to Sears, she faced a nightmare of no Santa Claus. Hours after the children left cookies for Santa and went to bed, the truck finally arrived. I heard the commotion downstairs, my parents laughing and the driver booming “ho, ho, ho” as he hauled endless packages into the house.

Most of Joanna’s many hard times did not have such happy endings, but she remained optimistic. Struggling through a marriage with too little money and too much drinking, she took comfort in family celebrations, summer evenings, murder mysteries and watching her children craft fulfilling lives.

She crafted one of her own after she was widowed at 56 and we children were grown. She became international customer service representative for a computer company in Omaha and received her bachelor’s degree from Bellevue College at age 59. Soon thereafter, she moved back to Chicago to care for her declining mother and her housebound brother. But characteristically, she made the most of an emotionally and physically draining situation. She renewed a warm friendship with her Aunt Bridget, who was losing her memory but not her high spirits and taste for fun. And she forged a tight family circle with her daughter Judy, son-in-law and three of her 25 grandchildren.

Bridget and Judy’s family accompanied her to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and Alaska. She returned to her birthplace in Germany with daughters Gerry and Jackie. But she went alone on her dream road trip when well into her 70s, driving 10,000 miles to visit all her children scattered from Washington to Massachusetts.

When Judy’s family moved to Colorado, Joanna joined them and renewed her childhood love for tap dancing. Her life was a whirl of family outings, dancing, and aerobics, but she relished quiet mornings and evenings with crossword puzzles, coffee, and books.

Those tranquil pursuits shaped her final two years, and she faced advancing cancer calmly and bravely. She died at home on December 18, 2007, with three of her children at her side. She was 84.

At her funeral, we placed her tap shoes on a brocade-covered pedestal beside a photo quilt Judy made for her 80th birthday. A recording of the Vienna Boys Choir singing her beloved “Stille Nacht” played softly.

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Mom. Sleep in heavenly peace.

Read more about Joanna's passing on my niece Missy Keenan's blog, http://huggingthemidline.typepad.com/my_weblog/

Snow falls on Allston

Hollywood snow floats down on Allston, fluffy flakes sparkling beneath the streetlights and muffling the traffic sounds. For two desperate hours, cars inch down Brighton Avenue toward the turnpike for a longer crawl to suburban homes. But by evening, the street belongs to intrepid, grinning pedestrians who mince along slippery sidewalks to procure the elements of survival on a snowy night: frozen dinners, beer, DVDs. A shopkeeper sweeps the white fluff away to invite customers inside. Most folks dress as for a polar expedition, but a few women show off their urban winter chic in fur-topped, high-heel boots and pricey felt hats.

A television newscast predictably gives New England winter the “breaking news” treatment, complete with a reporter in a parka standing beside a clogged highway in swirling snow.

A few hours later, the snow has stopped and the spell is broken. Wet pavement whooshes under tires, muddy black strips form along the edges of the pristine white blanket and the neighborhood resumes an ordinary Thursday night.

It’s beginning to look a lot like …

The first glimpse of Christmas in Allston came out a few days ago. Two-foot-wide, shimmering white snowflakes of modish design appeared in the window of Punjab Palace, an Indian restaurant.

The place opened a year ago this week. As if totally unaware of Thanksgiving and the associated emptying of this college neighborhood, baffled waiters in their white-starched best stood at attention amid empty polished tables set with new glistening glassware.

But the students came back hungry for anything but leftovers, and gradually the tables began to fill. Now enjoying steady business, management has seized the holiday season.

The only other Allston storefront with decorations so far is a high-fashion Brazilian clothing store. Tinsel garland snakes through its window display of sexy summer dresses, perfect for Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere.

Linda

Afro pick

A young black man on the 66 bus in Allston wore a modest Afro. Though it could not compare the bushy wonders of the 1960s, he had more hair than the average hip man today. A Black Power Afro pick with a handle ending in a raised fist ornamented the back of his ’fro.

Forty years ago his uncles, maybe even his grandfather, nestled picks like that into magnificent globes of hair to remind the world that black is beautiful and they weren’t taking any crap from anybody, no matter how much the honkies ridiculed or even denounced their symbols.

In 2007, the Afro pick bore no revolutionary connotation. The man on the 66 bus sporting the black plastic pick and fiddling with his iPod looked positively retro, even quaint. And he looked like he knew his heritage.


Read about Afro picks at http://www.metalafropicks.com/history_of_afro_pick.htm