Midlife Siblings Misery on the Holidays-

Holidays can sometimes trigger old brother or sister hurts that never healed. Joy to the World can turn into something from Black Sabbath. Perhaps you’re an adult child avoids your midlife siblings because there’s “bad blood” from childhood . Maybe you steer clear of Mom’s holiday dinner so you can skip seeing sisters and brothers who gouged childhood wounds. The scar has built up over decades and you dive for the alcohol whenever they re around.
Perhaps there just was not enough love in your rickety family nest, making you and you sibling scramble for the few caring crumbs.As a kid your brother could have slugged you behind Mom’s back. Maybe you had sister got the new prom dress when you did Goodwill. Divorce may have shattered your family leaving you with two houses, two beds, two sets of parents,and stepsiblings who fought for your parent’s diminished love. No matter what your grievance story - holidays are when you might want to think about forgiveness.

There are many reasons why this is a great season to consider absolution for your siblings.

But first take a look at the list below from Stanford's Dr. Fred Luskin, in his book Forgive for Good, , Harper Collins , San Francisco, 2006

See if you have one of Luskin’s grievance stories. If so, buy his book before the holidays and consider why not to spend another miserable family holiday

Are You Telling a Grievance Story?

1. Have you told your story more than once to the same person?
2. 2/ Do you play the events more than two times in a day in your mind?
3. Do you find yourself speaking to the person who hurt you even when the person is not there?
4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?
5. Is the person who hurt you a central character in your story?
6. When you tell your story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?
7. Does the story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?
8. In your story is there a villain?
9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the story again and then broken your vow?
10. Do you look for other people with similar problems to tell your story to?
11. Has your story stayed the same over time?
12. Have you checked the details of your story for accuracy?

If you answer yes to five or more questions of the first 11 questions and no to 12, there is a good chance you have a grievance story. Luskin’s book is available on Amazon .
Read it before the holidays. Give it as a present to your estranged sibling. Make forgiveness as a gift to yourself.

Persimmon Pudding and St Cecelia Sauce for the Nearly Normal and Dysfunctional Family

There are two types of families who celebrate the holidays- dysfunctional and nearly normal- many of us luckily fall into the latter. But we all cook . Holiday recipes bring out the best in most clans , even the dysfunctional family. People enjoy ritual holiday meals even if the family strain and misery gives them indigestion afterward.

I would like to offer a holiday recipe that I make most years, as I live in California and there are endless orchards of persimmon trees. It beats plum pudding and is from my family cookbook of last year. This weekend, I took it to a party on a boat, at the lighted boat parade in Santa Cruz.

If you are gluten intolerant ,as I am now, just substitute 3 cups of the regular flour with an equal mixture of sweet rice flour, white rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch. No one can tell the difference

Persimmon Pudding with Saint Cecelia Sauce
This year I made Persimmon Pudding again for the Christmas Season. This comes from an old friend Lou Commons. She and husband Speedy and were from New Orleans and this recipe seems so southern but is an intersection between the south and the west.

Speedy, was a scientist way ahead of his time and got a masters in electrical engineering from Stanford in the early 60’s. Silicone Valley was being born and was full of daredevil tech people like Speedy. During his stay at Stanford, an aunt from New Orleans lived nearby and gave Lou and Speedy this recipe.
Last year I bought a pudding mold and that makes a smaller pudding and also has a lid. However I made it in bundt pans for years. My daughter Jill supplied the persimmons this December, as a friend of hers has a Dad who hunts wild pigs in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The friend told Jill the mountains are littered with fallen persimmons. I have this great picture of wild persimmon orchards, persimmons this intense orange, hanging like Christmas ornaments, studding the mountains. Anyway, here is the recipe.
Persimmon Pudding
Sift together
3 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
3T baking soda
1T baking powder

Add
½ t cinnamon
2 cups copped walnuts
2 cups chopped dates
1 cup milk
1 T vanilla
1 T butter
2 beaten eggs

Mix well in a large bowl or food processor. Butter and sugar a pudding mold or bundt an. Steam in a large pan. Put on an upside down cake pan , trivet or ring underneath the pan or mold and surround bottom of an with enough water to cover bottom of pudding mold or bundt pan by am inch. Cover pudding mold or bundt pan with a lid. Put a lid on pan . Check water every half an hour so does not cook off. Add water as needed. Take out , let cool and unmold.


Lou’s St Cecelia Sauce ( Pour over a slice of the Persimmon Pudding )
Beat 2 eggs well
Add 1 cup of sugar and beat well again
Add 1/2 pint whipping cream
4 Tablespoons of rum or Sherry

Holiday Flicks with the Dysfunctional Family

The holidays are upon us .Although joyful for most- they herald a miserable month for dysfunctional families. Any ritual gathering punches these clans in the gut
If you’re in a dysfunctional family or suspect you might be - cheer yourself up by watching other people’s pain. Go to the movies .

Literature, stage and film get their lifeblood and scripts from the dysfunctional families. One insane crisis after another keeps us reading, watching and musing, “ my families a mess but look at this one .” Holiday films with sinister sides can be number one on your December netflicks list.

If you must attend a Hanukah or Christmas event this month and dread the drama - the sibling snipes, drunken digs, mom theatrics and ultimately ruined meal- feast on films.

NPR did a great segment last year on holiday movies filled with dark dysfunctional segments. “Meet Me in St Louis” is the top pick.

My mother grew up in a family where two kids died and their house foreclosed, in the 1930’s mortgage meltdown . Her favorite holiday song was “ I’ll Be Home for Christmas “ . When I hear Judy Garland sing this, I still cry.

The film’s modern holiday carol, warbles through a Christmas scene when tragedy is about to strike. Johnny Depp is another victim of Christmas in the film Edward Scissorhands.

Check out the link below and order your favorite on net flicks These films can either prepare you for the holiday gathering or make you feel better after the annual family breakdown.

Drunken Turkey or how to Pass the Thanksgiving Baton

I ‘m not cooking on Thanksgiving. The holiday will be spent in LA with my daughter Kali and her husband Dan. I didn’t cook last year either . My daughter Jill prepared the feast . After 30 years of masterminding Thanksgiving , I am passing the baton. Our family is reshuffling the deck and my daughters are beginning to take over.

The biggest step an aging family takes is to reorganize. Adult kids have to step up the plate and take over the jobs Mom or Dad did in the past. It can be Thanksgiving or any holiday or event. If adult kids rebel and won’t cook the turkey- chaos can ensue. In aging - it's called the filial crisis. You can feel that Mom always did all the work for the holidays and why should you have to take over now. Or you can see that Mom’s no longer capable of coordinating a feast for 20 and fight among your siblings as to who gets stuck with the job. Or you can plan the transition.

The secret of holidays is they are rituals and like all ceremonial occasions they have scripts and ritual implements. It’s good idea to coach your kids to take over. I have been preparing my daughter’s Kali and Jill for years. Annually, I have bought them a setting of their wedding silver or dishes so they could set a large table. When you are young you never think of that, because someone else ( like Mom) does the meal. It does not have to be silver. It could be a set of any kind of matching dishes or a even a turkey platter.

You could also just give them a sample menu. I have also done a family cookbook. My turkey-marinating formula (listed below) and holiday dishes have been slipped in. My Mom died at 62 and left no recipes so I decided years ago to give them to my children them way ahead of time. It prepares young women to take over these ritual family occasions.

These last years I became more tech savvy and put my Thanksgiving menu and in a word doc,updating it each year. When my daughter Jill was ready, I sent it to her, as a possible map of the territory. If it were my younger daughter Kali, she would do it on an excel spreadsheet.

So this year, when again, I am a guest at the feast instead of the cook, my daughters are prepared. The deck is being reshuffled and I have a good hand.

Happy Thanksgiving and here, again ,is my drunken turkey recipe from my family cookbook.

Turkey Marinade
In 1982 I was the director of Elderday, an adult day program in Santa Cruz, California. Many of our volunteers were conscripted, having committed an offense and were working off their sentence through community service. We had two women who were convicted of drunken driving and were satisfying the county by volunteering at Elderday. They were jolly, helpful women who had a great sense of humor and mirrored the old line about drunks being the nicest people. When Thanksgiving came along they told me they always cooked their turkey by marinating it in huge amount of cheap wine for days, in effect creating drunken turkey. They offered guffaws at the irony but swore it made the best darn turkey and indeed it did. I’ve marinated all my turkeys this way ever since. As the drunken drivers instructed me, I always use the cheapest wine possible, usually gallons. I use red wine because it gives a better flavor but beware that the turkey comes out not only drunk but red.

Turkey Marinade
1 gallon cheap red or while wine
1 whole bud of garlic crushed
Juice of three lemons
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 Tablespoon of poultry seasoning or sage
1 cup of oil
1/3- 1/2 salt
3 Tablespoon pepper
Put all ingredients into a large pot and stir. You can also pour all ingredients into a Ziploc X large bag (2ft-x 1.7 ft.) Put turkey into marinade. Turn turkey twice a day. Marinate for 3 days. Can do a frozen turkey and then marinate for 5. If you marinate in a Ziploc bag it is a lot less messy. Just turn the sealed bag.

Avoid Swooping on Thanksgiving

If Thanksgiving includes a visit to your out of town aging parents, here are some really important , helpful hints.

Beware of the dangers. Your trip can turn into a family disaster.

If you are visiting from a distance avoid” swooping “

Swooping is showing up after a long absence and telling everyone who’s been caring for Mom or Dad , what to do. Don’t fly in with your two cents. If siblings or other family members are your parents primary care provider , keep the advice short.

If you arrive with a long checklist of activities filled with big ideas and dark concerns, the daily family caregiver might get really mad. Instead of making order- you might make enemy’s.

Skip the meddling. Instead , give the family care provider some much needed relief. You could handle a few problems if they ask , offer some practical help if requested , and perhaps provide a shoulder to cry on.

You can spend quality time with Mom just being with there . Simply visiting can sometimes be the best idea.

Your sister can resent it if she thinks you’re interfering . Your brother can be offended by your advice , if you are not at Mom's side day in and day out . Since absence makes the heart grow fonder, your Mom can tend to glorify your presence, making sibling tensions soar.

So one thing to avoid is being “Miss Full Charge”. Have as good a time and use the brief visit to work with your Mom or Dad’s caretaker to do what they need you to do.

Using this method, all your sisters and brothers can share your worries about Mom or Dad and agree on tasks that might be divided prior to your next visit. You can do this in conference calls using the conference calls suggestions I have you in my November 10th blog.

Have great Thanksgiving .

Technology post Turkey Day for Aging Family

Now that the holidays are almost here, many families will be visiting elderly parents. Sometime during the visit, you may come across blazing red flags, like piles of junk mail, consistently dirty clothes or the turkey gravy full of worrisome lumps.
.
Below is a list of alarm bells to take with you when you go to Mom and Dad’s house for Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, and any holiday visit. If you do find scary signs, this is a good time to call a geriatric care manager.
➢ Unpaid bills
➢ Missed appointments
➢ Clutter in the house
➢ Weight loss
➢ Poor grooming
➢ Getting lost
➢ Wandering


Long distance family members providing care can especially benefit from geriatric care managers. It saves money because all those trips to monitor Mom and Dad add up, and having someone in your parents’ town who can check on them on a regular basis, evaluate their care needs and arrange services, and most of all knows all those services backwards and forwards is manna from heaven if you live far away from your aging parent. You can locate a geriatric care manager in your parents’ area at www.caremanager.org.

There is great new technology for family at a distance. When you visit you might think of making one of these high tech items a part of an older family member’s life. They can help an older parent or relative age in place and improve communicating with loved ones.

Talking via video is a great way to keep elderly parents connected. Free programs like Skype,and the built-in webcams on many computers, make this easy on elders.

In addition to online chats, Ceiva, Flickr and Kodak allow adult children, friends and family to continually send new images, helping older or less mobile family members stay updated.

One item I love is Presto. You can load pictures of you and your family or write notes and letters and send them to your parents. They don’t have to do anything. The service just prints your message and photos out in their home. It’s a great gift for someone with memory loss, or just for Mom and Dad to have in general—with the wonders of technology they don’t have to have any computer savvy.

If your elderly Mom or Dad would like to use e-mail but need a simple technological tool, PawPawMail takes the complexity out of the process. For $5 a month, users transmit and receive mail through PawPawMail’s Web site, which features simple graphics, large type and real names rather than potentially confusing e-mail addresses. The account manager, typically a younger family member, sets up the account, creating a list of approved e-mail senders; spammers and phishers cannot get through.

Also, if you want to have a virtual meeting with your sisters and brothers about anxiety producing signs you spot while visiting your parents, there are virtual web meeting sites where family and friends can post messages to each other. In these virtual meeting places family can keep track of all interactions in one place. Examples of this technology are Caring Bridge and Care Pages. If you want to choose an affordable teleconference link for you family to discuss Mom and Dad's problems try Free Teleconference.

Another item to use as a family if you need to organize care for a loved one after a visit is Lotsa Helping Hands, a calendaring program on line where family members can share care easily.

This Thanksgiving, may be the time to pass on the ritual and plan next year to have someone besides Mom cook that turkey. Rituals give you an opportunity to reorganize your aging family, when Mom or Dad either needs care or can no longer can carry that heavy load. Again, for help in reshuffling a family when your parent can’t cook that turkey or make that pumpkin pie, call a geriatric care manager.

Happy Thanksgiving

Zenyatta and Obama- Don't Bet on the Good Old Boys

My grandfather was a bookie. He had a horse room fronted by a candy store in Atlantic City in the 1920’s. After the depression, he lost it all but still did the horses for a small elderly clientele of lady neighbors. I grew up knowing every horse track in the US through the radio blaring in my grandparents flat.

Yesterday my husband was watching this horse race. It had a mare named Zenyatta running against , European elites , triple crowns winners and a bunch of boys. Since, I like change agents, gender equality , and tough odds, I sat down and watched the race.

Zenyatta started from the gate, broke on the wrong lead, was dead last . I lost all hope. I was about to leave the room when she started moving fast, steadily and then turned on all engines and rocked from the rail to the open track leaving all the elite boys in her wake . She sped at warp speed to the outside ,exploded to the front and won the 5 million purse . She stayed undefeated in 14 races., bucked the odds and had women in the grandstand roaring , in tears, brandishing their pink signs

Why am I talking about a female horse ? Because I have spent months watching President Obama and his health care bill. I voted for him, and like Zenyatta I cheered him on , cried when he won, believed his promises. They are both powerful forces who don’t fit the “ old boy” school, which in politics and horse races is pretty much the same. .
Obama vowed to change a world of corruption , rigged bets,illegal, immoral wars and medical malfeasance ( people and horses are regularly doped )

In health care ,Obama, like Zenyatta, started dead last and stumbled at the gate. He stayed in the rear until I was ready to abandon him, thinking he’s never come though and win this damn race. Then two weeks ago he started to move. He passed the tea baggers, then the birthers, the salacious Fox News crowd, the demo Blue Dogs and last night, the House of Representatives.
My grandfather would paid good money for this race . Obama , to my utter amazement has kept his winning steak alive. Call your Congressperson. It’s not over. Believe, against all odds, that change is going to come.