http://March 2014 I had a chance to revisit this teen-age story, The Sock Hop, for a performance with Better Said Than Done storytellers at the Auld Shebeen. www.bettersaidthandone.com
You can count on Better Said Than Done to fill the room with lively audiences who are ready to enjoy storytelling. Tellers love that – – which makes for a really good show. I look forward to being on their stage again in 2015.
Merry Christmas – December 25,2014
This orchid, left from my husband’s Memorial Mass 2 years and 10 months ago, began to bloom again three weeks before Thanksgiving. By Christmas Day all seven blooms were fully open. Watching the pregnant buds slowly open and bloom has been a beacon of hope and encouragement during this holiday season.
It is also an important connection to Jim. So I decided to use Jim’s Orchid which has been bursting with new life as a symbol of hope to go along with my Christmas Greetings.
Tonight is Christmas Night. I am away from home. The quiet of this place gives me space to think about the past year and when I do I am extremely grateful for the blessings in my life: blessings of family and friends – including the Facebook Community, storytelling work that gives me satisfaction and joy, and stories to tell. The void left by Jim’s absence is enormous and I doubt it will ever feel any less than it does now – but I am learning to adjust. Jim often said, “we will adjust”, when situations changed – – and we needed to “go with the flow.”
My new lists for 2015 include changes and challenges for me in almost every nook and cranny of my life. We will see how things work out – – – for certain it includes some travel, new stories, completing some over-due projects and a lot of organizing.
Most important – I wish everyone who comes across this post – peace and happiness, along with courage and strength to see you through the hard times – – – and red shoes to dance through the great times ahead.
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| Williamsburg Wreath, photo by e. schoettler |
Christmas 2013
Continuing the review of blogs I have written about celebrating Christmas in our family.
Jim loved Christmas. He was raised in a large family in California surrounded by extended families in the area so he loved to celebrate – even when we were living so far from either family.
I, on the other hand, never really liked Christmas. Some of my childhood holidays are spiced with love and laughter and I prize those memories but many other are best forgotten. My father was an alcoholic and the Christmas Holidays triggered unhappy memories for him and tension and unhappiness for the rest of us.
Jim’s love of the Season went a long way to teach me that Christmas is a time to be happy.
That’s one reason I like to look back on our Christmas-es together
Blog From December 2008
Christmas 1957
682 Argyle Road, Brooklyn New York.
We moved to Brooklyn in July 1957 when Jim graduated from medical school and was assigned to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn for his internship.
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| Christmas 1957 |
1957 was our first Christmas on-our-own. Jim and I were married December 30, 1955 and Jim came to Charlotte for that Christmas with my family. The next year Jimmy was one month old and we went to Charlotte for the holidays and for Jimmy’s Baptism at Assumption Catholic Church, where Jim and I were married the year before.
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| Our first Christmas ornaments purchase at Bargaintown USA, Brooklyn, NY, 1957 |
We still have and prize a few of the fragile glass ornaments that we bought at Bargaintown USA – one of the pioneer warehouse-type operations in Brooklyn. The balls are decorated with silver glitter.
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| Christmas Ornament, circa 1957, purchased from Bargain Town USA, | Brooklyn, NY |
What was bright and shiny for years is now darkly tarnished by 50 years of being wrapped and un-wrapped with newspaper scraps.
In those days an intern’s salary was laughable so we planned a very spare Christmas.
The single interns took the duty on Christmas so the married guys could spend the day with their families. It was a swap. Married guys worked New Years Eve. I was grateful and Jim would have hated missing being there for Jimmy’s first Santa.
Santa brought Jimmy the noisy push toy he is holding and a classic small wagon of colored wooden blocks. By the time he had opened all the gifts for him sent from Califoria and North Carolina he was over-whelmed. Stopping only long enough to take a bite of the candy he found in his stocking. He was a happy kid, laughing and grinning all day.
We went to mid-morning Mass at St. Rose of Lima Church about a mile away and then drove over to the hospital for a sumptious traditional dinner which we could not have afforded at home and I had no clue how to cook.
Jim says he thinks we drove to Manhattan after eating, parked the car, took out the stroller for Jimmy and walked down Fifth Avenue to see the animated windows at Saks and then take in the monumental tree at Rockefeller Center.
Back to 2013
Storytelling has taught me to watch for the ways life circles back on itself when I work on my personal stories.
Jim and I left Brooklyn in 1958 and did not live in New York again. However after we moved to Washington, DC area in 1964 we went back frequently and usually at Christmas.
In the late 1960s Jim entered training as a Psychoanalyist at the Washington Psychoanalytic School and every December Candidates attended the American Psychoanalytic Society Meeting in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. That meeting was always scheduled the weekend before Christmas – not convenient true, but that was a magic time to be in New York. And at the Waldorf – Astoria Hotel with all its lavish Christmas Decorations. On Park Avenue we were a quick walk from St Patrick’s Cathedral, Saks Fifth Avenue and Rockefeller Center.
Not to mention access to all the wonderful museums in NYC.
Several Christmases in the 1970s we took Jimmy and Karen and Robin with us so that we could all share the magic – visit the Metropolitan Museum, see a few plays and take in all the sights of Manhattan.
Then one Christmas in the 1990s all our East Coast family which now included our grand-daughters
took the train and spent a Christmas week-end at the Waldorf -Astoria Hotel where we enjoyed the magic of New York City: Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Macy’s Santa Village and Santa Claus.
I am so grateful it is all part of our family’s Christmas stories. Just writing this down prompts me to remember more and more and know that I will be looking for pictrures later today to see what stories the others remember when we sit down for supper Christmas Eve.
After Jamie, the oldest of daughter Robin’s three sons, was born, Jim and I often spent Christmas with Robin and Brad and their kids in California. First in sunny Southern California and then in Lafayette which is on the Oakland side of the San Francisco Bay.
Several times we celebrated Christmas Eve with our son Jimmy’s family here and then flew out on Christmas Day, arriving in time to have Christmas Dinner on the West Coast. It was as close to bi-locating as we are likely to get. Our daughter Karen often made the trip with us.
In 2004 Jim and I flew to Robin’s a week before Christmas and Karen arrived in Lafayette several days before Christmas.
I wrote about Christmas Past then too.
12.24.2004
Around the dinner table at Robin’s, everyone was taking a turn telling something about a Christmas Past.
Brad talked of a memorable Illinois Christmas at his grandparents house. Jamie, Robin and Brad’s oldest, begged the question, not sure that this year might not be the one he would talk about later.
When it was our daughter Karen’s turn she laughed.
“Ofcourse I remember the year I got all the stuff.”
She paused and then added,
” but there is the Christmas Eve we were out here, in Madera, at Grandma’s and we went to Yosemite.”
Jim and Robin and I nodded. “Oh, yes.” “That was Christmas 1974”, I added.
This is not our first California Christmas.
My husband is a California native. He went to medical school on the East Coast and ended up staying out there. We brought all our kids to Madera for Christmas for the first time in 1969.
Jim’s father died in March 1974.
We came back to California with our three kids for Christmas that year so that all the family would be together. It was a wonderful reunion of aunts, uncles, and cousins as those anniversaries often are.
Christmas Eve dawned. All the resident families had chores to do and fixings to complete for the holiday. We were at loose ends and in some ways in the way.
Jim suggested we take our kids for their introduction to Yosemite – only a 90 minute drive away.
As we climbed toward the mountains we met snow. There were snow capped peaks ahead as we drove through lightly dusted hills and valleys.
We stopped for breakfast at a lodge near the entrance to Yosemite Park. The dining room had a cathedral ceiling and large windows framed breathtaking views of the snow capped mountain peaks.
A floor to ceiling grey stone fireplace dominated one end of the room. Standing near-by was a 20 foot evergreen tree. The top just missed the rough hewn ceiling rafters. The room was perfumed with a mixture of spruce and wood smoke. The thick farm pancakes and maple syrup were as perfect as the setting.
We entered Yosemite Park through a tunnel. As we emerged the monumental El Capitan 
stood before us on the left.
Ahead on the right we saw a bright white streak against a sheer rock face where
Bridal Veil Falls was frozen solid.
We were all so awed that we spoke in the same hushed voices we use in church
The air was cold and crisp and pure. The skies overhead were bright blue with an occasional white cloud floating by.
Ours was the only car at the vista point. And that was how it continued all day. We saw no more than three cars all day. We owned the park.
Deer grazed in snow covered clearings. 
When we walked toward a creek we heard the rushing water before we saw
it tumbling over the rocks. At every twist in the road there was a new view of the white capped Sierra peaks that surround Yosemite Valley. 
Half-dome dominates and is my favorite sight.
That was forty years ago – but I can see it as clearly as if it were yesterday.
How could we have known that we were capturing a timeless moment that would live for each of us – –
Today I think of it as the day we spent in the Presence of God –
and I am so grateful we shared it as a family.
Earlier this morning I posted the following on Facebook:
I hopped in the car for a Sunday afternoon ride with my grand-parents. We turned a corner – from Pecan into 7th Street in Charlotte, NC . At Independence Park traffic was stopped and newspaperboys were in the streets waving pink newspapers and hollering EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA. My grandfather bought one and he read the headline out loud “WAR. Japs Bomb Peral Harbor.”
As a 5 year old, I didn’t know what Granny was crying about – but I knew it was BAD!
Do you have memories of that day?
Shortly after I posted my brother Robert responded on Facebook:
Only six years before my time and of course kids my age grew up very well informed on WWII. I remember Mama talking about the u-boats off the coast of Wrightsville Beach, among other wartime tales.
Its not often that I have a chance to talk to my brother who lives in Atlanta so I sent back:
Ellouise Schoettler Oh, yes. I was at Wrightsville Beach with her for some of that- when there was “lights out” at the coast every night, and the car headlights were painted half black. Uniformed guys everywhere. Closer to home – I used to run out to the sidewalk on 7th Street and salute as the convoys, trucks filled with guys from Fort Bragg rolled by. You could hear the roar of those trucks ten minutes before you saw them. When Daddy joined the US Army Air Corps gave me one of his “oveseas” caps. I wore than hat every day. And aways when I was saluting the troops as they rolled by on 7th Street – and they laughed and waved back.
Later I added another story of Jim’s memory of that incredible December Sunday.
Ellouise Schoettler My husband Jim remembered hearing the announcement on a console radio in the Schoettler living room in Fresno, CA – the very same radio that now sits in my daughter’s living room near SF, CA and reminds us of a bit of Schoettler family history. The radio also shows us how “things” help us hold on to the memories for family stories. Robin S. Fox
Talking about the radio always prompted Jim to tell this story – his uncle was married on Dec. 7 in Fresno – the bride’s brother was in the Navy, stationed on the US Battleship Arizona in Hawaii – he was granted permission to leave the ship to send flowers to his sister for her wedding – he ran back once the bombing started but when he reached the dock the Arizona was burning and sinking! He suffered over that for the rest of his life. Many of these war stories have several sides don’t they?
There are so many bits that make up the enormous quilt of life that day.
Many people say, “I wasn’t born then.”
You can still add to the story – if you ask someone who was there for their story.
Even as a child.
They remember.
Finding old letters can add richness to family stories.
There was so much to love about a letter I found at the DAR library 20 years ago that I prize it. There is advice and inspiration for stories. I quote it to make the point that asking questions of our elders is essential to learning the history of our families.
In 1893 when Mr. James Parks answers his grand-daughter’s questions about their family history he explains that he did not ask questions when he was young so he knows little about them.
He explains that when he was young he cared more “about fish hooks and pocket knives” than he did about family stories and “when I did want to know, my grandfather had fallen into a foolish state and could tell me nothing.” So he explains why he could tell her very little about their history.
And, he counsels her to value the people she finds.
” You will see that there were no great ones among our ancestors. They were all in the common walks of life, no blue-blooded aristocracy, but just upright, high-minded honorable men and women. If there were no”great ones” among them, there were none of who we were ashamed.
September 9, 1893 (signed) James Parks
Holding Hands
Sitting my parked car listening to Fifties on 5 on Sirius XM I watched a couple walk by. When I noticed that they were holding hands my hands felt empty. I lifted a pen and wrote this poem.
Composition with Jim, e.schoettler, 1979
I saw a couple holding hands as they walked down the street
imagining the warm feeling in their hands
made me miss the connection
I’ve lost touch with Jim
We used to hold hands
he would take hold of mine
or I would reach out and touch him
his leg or arms or hand –
I miss that connection.
When we were dating
I would wait
anticipating his touch
on my hand or my arm
or his putting his arms around me.
As the months and years went on
I reached out for him
no longer shy
just wanting to feel him near me.
The world feels empty without that
I can’t touch him
he’s not here
I reach for him but
he has gone
Death is so cruel.
it makes you understand
the importance of the things you took for granted.
It wasn’t exactly on my ‘bucket list” but having a chance to tape a TEDx Talk for the internet has been high on my list of things I wished for. Then what do you know – – Jane O. Smith organizer of TEDxBethesdaWomen invited me to be one of twelve women who were giving talks in Bethesda in December. Our videos went LIVE on You Tube this week.
You are invited to hear “Lively, spirited and sassy” women share ideas and wisdom on a wide range of topics. The day we filmed there was a full house at Imagination Stage, Bethesda, MD. The audience was bubbling with enthusiastic energy that fostered each one of us to reach for our “gold”.
Jane O. Smith and her committee invited a very diverse group of speakers: a storyteller, the president of a community college, an international newscaster, an internet business guru, several others from business, a young woman who has plans to provide basic personal supplies for women in Africa and 6 others. It was a rich day listening to “talks” filled with insights, wisdom and intrigue.
The title of my talk is “Your Story is Your Legacy” – with the underlying theme that we all have stories to tell. Since I am a storyteller I took this opportunity to talk about my ideas on the importance of family and personal stories and to encourage folks to tell their story as a way to be remembered.
This link takes you to all the videos: http://bit.ly/1cBAyqC
Hope you will listen and enjoy!
Yesterday when I was looking for something in the closet in the guest room I opened a large plastic file box and found a treasure trove of memories. There are letters between Jim and me, souvenirs from our honeymoon and this precious date-book.
January to December 1955.
I remembered picking it up from a basket of “freebies” on the counter in the Manhattan Drug Store across the street from the Emergency Room entrance at Johns Hopkins Hospital in December 1954. In those days a calendar of the coming year was a familiar give-away.
Free was important to me and as I look through these months and see how often I was babysitting I am reminded of how grateful I was for those casual jobs. And I recognize the names – families of residents and interns – the gifted guys in the white suits I was so in awe of when I was working on the wards.
There is nothing like an old calendar to bring memories flooding back. As I read through these pages I love watching the progression of the relationship between Jim and me. Even though the details are not noted I remember them. The excitement and innocence of our courtship time, the evenings of meeting Jim in the Doctors Cafeteria in the hospital after 10 PM when he would take a break from “the books” in a study room somewhere in the backrooms of the small libraries throughout the hospital for an hour with me. A few names of casual dates with Jim’s classmates appear until he gave me his fraternity pin on May 16 th –
He proposed on July 9th.
Those were sweet days. I remember pretty accurately how all this happened – but I am grateful to see it in writing. Confirming my memories.
Lovely and touching to find this on our Anniversary, Yes, it was all real. Not a dream. We were young and in love. And looking forward to spending our lives together.
And we did!
To celebrate and acknowledge today – – our 58th wedding anniversary – my family took me out for dinner.
When I told them about finding this calendar they were interested in hearing a few stories about those days – making me promise to take care of it. “We want to have it, Mom.” Well, they can have it – but not yet,
I still have work to do with all these “finds”. Re-reading all the letters – many from Jim to me and me to him. As well as quite a collection of other letters – from my parents and grand-parents writing to a young girl who has just moved 12 hours away from home for school and then marries. Puts me in several other contexts – – rich in the stuff of stories. Also some interesting family papers which document who we have been and what we have done.
Yes, stories to tell – and another goal for my 2014 list –
Organize, scan and copy – the “finds” in the box.
Make an album.
Jim had an impulse for recording family history. I feel him nudging me.
Keep the history.
Tell the story.
It is our legacy for our family!