Category: Holidays

A Tuscan April Fools: What Lies Beneath

Posted on by Caitlin Randall in Family, Holidays, Memory
The house in Tuscany.

My husband hung up the phone without a word. I listened to the stillness, glancing across the room at my father-in-law. His wide grin had faded and he looked suddenly nervous. We’d gone too far this year.

My in-laws had retired to a small town in Tuscany, just over an hour from Florence. Surrounded by olive groves, their house stood on a hill with show-stopping views over the undulating countryside. There were lemon trees in terracotta pots, a magical garden and a swimming pool with a view of a 15th century church. Postcard perfect.

Long before they sold the house, when our two sons were still in grade school, we would visit for a few weeks every spring. At the time, we lived in London and it was relatively easy trip for me to make alone with the boys, my husband meeting us later in the vacation. For my father-in-law it was a prized chance to reconnect with his grandsons. Not long after we’d arrive he’d pull out a list of plans and projects: tractor rides and trips to a favorite pizza place were always slated. Our April Fools’ pranks were initially low-key — my father in-law would tell the boys that the Easter rabbit was lost in the olive grove — a joke that sent them scurrying outside where he’d surprise them with a quirky present hidden in one of the ancient gnarled trees.   

I don’t remember when the two of us ratcheted up the practical joke, turning it into a full-fledged caper, but I do know the target shifted from the boys to my husband. I never imagined my father-in-law to be a good liar. A straightlaced Midwesterner who’d travelled the world as an oil executive, he hardly fit the con artist mold. But that year the spirit of Hilaria must have enveloped him, enough to concoct an April Fools’ fable worthy of P.T. Barnum.

When my husband called that night to catch-up on the day and talk of plans for his arrival the next week, my father-in-law answered. In a deadly serious voice he told my husband that something upsetting had happened. “Three guys from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage had come to the house unannounced this afternoon.”

Pitch perfect, the prank continued: he described the visit, their note taking, the walk around the 18th-century villa, banging the walls in the basement. By the time he was finished, I was almost convinced there had been a visit. 

And then the climax: Direzione generale Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio would be digging up the garden, the basement and possibly even the pool grounds in search of suspected Etruscan ruins. For decades to come they’d be unearthing whatever lay beneath. My husband fell for it fast and hard. I took the phone, embellishing my father-in-law’s whopper. By then we simply couldn’t resist carrying on, until … until he told us he’d leave London for Rome the next day, that he’d call an Italian lawyer to try and protect the property from years of archeological digging … until, it wasn’t funny anymore. To his everlasting credit, my husband laughed when we called back — two remorseful April fools stammering “gotcha” and “we’re sorry” all at once.

Twenty years on, it’s still a tale told when our sons visit near Easter time. The story stirs memories and talk of my in-laws’ house and the precious holidays the four of us spent there, exploring the Italian countryside and relishing the beauty of that fairytale place.

Of the memories we cherish most, the best are often made in the places closest to our hearts that seem to harbor spirits of their own. The spirit of my father-in-law’s villa, part of my children’s childhoods and a vanished time in our lives, still lingers. One of my sons has an oil painting of the house hanging in his student digs. It’s a part of our family narrative, like an old friend that touched our lives and shaped our views, letting us see the world in a more beautiful light.  

And no, we never did unearth a single Etruscan artifact.

The view from the pool.

Stories Told In The Darkest Days of Winter

Posted on by Megan Johnson in Family, Holidays, Memory, Reading
A clipper ship, not unlike my grandfather’s, navigates a storm at sea. (Currier & Ives, courtesy Library of Congress)

It’s New Year’s Day and I’m shucking half a dozen of my Christmas oysters, sent this Covid-time by my son and his wife in Portland, Maine. They were too far away to make it here safely for Christmas, so the oysters were meant to fill in. Feeling very lucky, I suck down one silky oyster after another, sweet, cold and briny, and follow each with a slug of iced vodka.

Jonathan Swift remarked, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” I’ll bet it was a woman; oysters just lie there waiting to be gathered. Their defense is holding tight, but they’re not hard to pry open with the right knife. The way our minds turn often in the same groove, as I pry, I think of my father, whose earliest memory was of sitting beside his father on the cellar stairs, his father shucking and eating oysters and occasionally giving one to the boy. They were kept cool down cellar in a small barrel. Dad must have been too young, or too overawed by his father, for the ick factor to spoil their companionable sharing. By the time Dad was 4 ½, polio had struck and they say my grandfather could no longer touch his eldest son, his namesake. Grandfather believed the Bible: the sins of the father had been visited upon the son.

Suddenly I remember that on Christmas Day my brother, Paul, sent an email about Grandpa Randall. We were taught to call the absent man Grandpa, but we never knew him. He was an old man in his seventies when he sat on those stairs with his son. Our grandmother was his 4th wife, the others having died in childbirth or of the kinds of diseases that killed people before penicillin. Known in his world as Captain Randall, he died in his eighties when Dad was eight years old.

In the email, ignored in the rush of Christmas morning, Paul tells how he’s been reading one of Grandpa’s ship’s logs that had been saved and passed down. In the log, Paul deciphers his worry about finding a good crew. While at sea, he misses his wife Florence, but once at home, longs for the sea. Paul and I laugh about that seesawing of desire, how we miss the hullabaloo of family right now, but are like cats with their fur rubbed the wrong way after prolonged holiday exposure, too many sweets, and booze. Captain Randall had little hullabaloo then; he wasn’t blessed with four children until his seventies.

But Paul is interested in that concern about crew for a reason. He thinks it might shed a light on a terrible tragedy. Earlier in his life, Captain Randall hired his younger brother Austin, promising his mother to look out for the boy. Rounding Cape Horn on a run to  the west coast, a huge storm sprang up. Austin had scrambled up the mast to help down another sailor who was frozen in place during a desperate effort to reef sail. The ship lurched, there was a cry, a hurtling shape “flew from the yardarm and quickly passed astern,” Paul wrote me. The last Grandpa saw of his brother was his arm waving goodbye amidst those roiling seas. “Not waving, but drowning,” I think, now that I am old myself.

Prying at the story now, Paul wonders if the other sailor had been a greenhorn who froze in panic? One of those not very good crew members Grandpa worried about in his log? Or, as often happened, were his hands literally frozen to the shrouds by icy spray? And Austin–how long was his fall, how wild his cry in the fierce wind?

When we were children, we wanted a lifeboat. We didn’t understand that more men would have been risked, and in vain in those mountainous, freezing waves. We didn’t understand that a large sailing ship cannot simply stop and turn around on Cape Horn.

These strange, wild stories that are told and retold and parsed again in families—prying open half a dozen oysters can bring them back as we seek the meat of the story, what really happened, how a man whose ship’s logs were mostly a dull running tally of expenditures and weather, how did he feel that terrible cold day? How did it change him, and my father, and all of us? We keep our stories close, and they are never far from us, especially in the darkest days of the year—of a pandemic year—when our thoughts as naturally turn to death as to the well-loved living.

Captain Randall’s ship log from 1877. (Courtesy Paul Randall)

OFF MY BOOKSHELF: THE ART OF GIFTING BOOKS

Posted on by Caitlin Randall in Books, Family, Holidays, Memory, Reading, Writing
Caitlin Randall

Some people have a knack for match making. In my grandmother’s case, it was a talent for matching books to people. Every Christmas for as far back as I can remember, she’d give a book to each of her 22 grandchildren. She’d zero in on our passions, think hard about our reading habits and often choose volumes we’d never have imagined reading ourselves. Her rule was to pick books she thought might intrigue us, rather than books she thought we should read. She introduced me to The Borrowers, A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, Sherlock Holmes and the first narrative I’d ever read about life as an enslaved African-American. Rarely did she miss the mark, making her present one of my favorites to open on Christmas morning.

I’ve carried on my grandmother’s tradition, giving books to my husband and two sons every Christmas, although maybe not with her exceptional eye and insight. For me, picking out the gift — sifting through a stack of possibilities in a quiet corner of a bookstore  — is half the fun. But like just about everything else in 2020, shopping isn’t normal this year. The rush to buy presents is shaping up to be a mostly online experience, taking the pleasure and a good deal of the creativity out of the custom.  That’s mostly true for book buying as well, leaving us with the prospect of scrolling through online book blurbs — mind-numbingly boring and enough to derail the even most beloved holiday tradition.

“When I was a child, books were both an escape and a sanctuary. The characters in some novels felt so real to me … that I worried they might leap out of the pages at night.”

Michiko Kakutani

So this year, I’ve suspended any thoughts of happily wandering through my local bookshop and committed to buying online. To get me through it, I’ve opted for some elaborate present prepping.  It starts with a cup of tea, or better yet, hot chocolate. Curled up in my favorite corner of the couch, a cozy throw tucked in at my feet, I formulate my buying plan. 

I begin with a few lists I trust:

The Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/2020-best-books/

The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/books/times-critics-top-books-of-2020.html

These offer critics’ choice for the best fiction and nonfiction of the past year. It’s a good beginning, but I often find myself wanting something deeper, a viewpoint that considers the history of great books not just those trending over the past 12 months. With that in mind, a recent addition to my bookshelf is proving a wonderful resource: Ex Libris, 100 Books to Read and ReRead by Michiko Kakutani.  

The Pulitzer-Prize winning literary critic shares 100 personal, thought-provoking essays about books that helped shape her life. The introduction is an eloquent ode to books and reading. “Why do we love books so much?” she asks. They are, she says, like time-machines that can transport us back to the past, bring us into the future and carry us to  far parts of the globe and even more distant places in the universe.

“When I was a child, books were both an escape and a sanctuary,” Kakutani writes. “ The characters in some novels felt so real to me … that I worried they might leap out of the pages at night …”

I felt that too as a child, but longed for them to take the leap. When I first read Harriet the Spy, I wanted to be Harriet — daring, adventurous, a detective and a journalist in the making. I carried a notebook for months, keeping detailed accounts of  “strange events” occurring in the neighborhood. If only Harriet had stepped from the pages of her book and asked me to join her gang!

Kakutani’s recommendations are wide-ranging and often surprising — a collection that runs the gamut from Muhammad Ali to T.S. Eliot to Vladimir Nabokov to Dr Seuss. There are favorite classics and timely new novels, memoirs and essential works in American history. It’s a fascinating compilation; a book to guide even the most prolific reader and help source the perfect present for the book lover on anyone’s list. Indeed, Ex Libris, richly illustrated by Dana Tanamachi, itself makes a wonderful gift to the bibliophile in your life.

Once inspired, it’s easy to get down to the business of buying a book quickly and efficiently, selecting and ordering within minutes of landing on an online bookseller’s website.  And let me say here that at The Story Project we highly recommend buying through www.bookshop.org where 75% of the profits support local, independent book sellers. We’re fans of The Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT, where you can shop in person (masked) or online, and The Bennington Bookshop, the oldest independent bookstore in Vermont, open for in-person shopping  (masked).

Happy reading and a very Merry Holiday Season to all!

The Haunted Attic

Posted on by Caitlin Randall in Family, Holidays, Memory
Father and daughter ghouls march in the annual North Bennington, Vt., Halloween Parade.

For a brief time my sister Honor was famous.  It wasn’t her wit, her sense of adventure or even her heavy blonde hair that drew the crowds. She had the good fortune to be born the day before Halloween and to live in an old Victorian house with a raftered attic, creaking floorboards and a reputation for strange occurrences — all of which collided to spark the ghoulish imaginations of three of her siblings.

For as far back as I could remember an invitation to her birthday party was the hottest ticket in town. Kids scrambled for them, knowing what their parents didn’t: that this wasn’t a child’s Halloween party with Casper-like ghosts and hovering adults trying to pass off a bowl of peeled grapes as eyeballs. This was a test of nerves and a chance to be scared. Really scared.

I can’t claim to know how my two brothers and oldest sister took control of the attic tours — an event that quickly eclipsed all other games, even a prize-laden scavenger hunt — but every year they got progressively more creative. It began with a story, inspired by my grandfather the sea captain. But it was my oldest brother Marty’s artistry that fictionalized and embellished an already dramatic life.

Born in 1844, my grandfather went to sea at 17, a Yankee cabin boy in the Civil War. By the time he was 25 he was captain of his own three-master schooner, building and sailing six more in quick succession. He built the house where my siblings and I grew up for my grandmother, his fourth wife. Thirty years younger than her husband, she gave him four children, the last born when my grandfather was 80.

Marty and my sister Megan knew a great story when they heard one and used the bare bones of this one to craft their own grisly yarn. The sea-captain angle was irresistible and they concocted a tale involving a lost leg, a tragic death rounding Cape Horn and a ghostly return to the only home Captain Randall ever knew. Marty got to play the Captain, hidden in one of the attics shadowed alcoves with a wooden peg leg and a mariner’s costume that got more sophisticated with each passing Halloween.

Guests were led one by one up the vertical staircase, some retreating before they reached the top. I can still remember standing on the last step, the late afternoon sunlight gleaming through the oval attic window, it’s colored panes turning the dust motes a sinister shade of red. It was Megan’s idea to add sound to the scene by playing an old recording of King Lear on slow speed. The voices, more like moans, were as good an imitation of a ghost as anyone could imagine. Kids were led from station to station, where they pulled on a “corpse’s” leg and heard the gory tale of how they died. When they reached my oldest brother, they would duly pull his peg leg, only to have it come off in their hands to ghastly howls from the ghost.

Once they’d been at it for a few years, a new recruit was brought in. Jim was our nextdoor neighbor, one of four boys, an extraordinary athlete and a reckless daredevil. It was his inspired idea to drop down from the rafters with a noose around his neck, scaring one girl so badly she famously leapt down the attic stairs all in one go. That was the year, and presumably the antic, that brought the haunted attic to an end.   

Stories of Honor’s Halloween parties have been fodder for our family narratives for decades, following a script we’ve all practiced since childhood. As the youngest of the six kids, my recollections tend to be heavily discounted. I look back on those events through the eyes of a six-year-old, in awe of what my siblings were capable of creating. Was that attic as terrifying as my memory still insists? Probably not. But even if the physical details are blurred, the emotional power of that haunted space stays with me, a story that never dies.

Happy Halloween!

Taking the Leap to Propose: What Are Women Waiting For?

Posted on by The Story Project Team in Holidays, Love, Uncategorized
Amy Adams and Matthew Goode duke it out in Leap Year (2010). 

Leap Year, that weird calendar oddity that only comes every four years, has inspired a slew of stories and superstitions. The most famous — February 29th is the day women can ask men to marry them — was conjured up in Ireland sometime back in the 5th century.

Legend has it that an Irish nun known as Saint Brigid of Kildare bitterly complained to Saint Patrick that too many women were waiting too long for men to propose marriage. The country’s patron saint agreed to give women one day in the calendar — conveniently one that falls only every four years — when they could ask their longtime suitors to wed. If the man said ‘no’ tradition demanded that he buy his spurned girlfriend a silk gown. I wonder how many rejected women felt they’d won the better end of that deal.

For a woman to propose on any other day among the 365/366 in the Gregorian calendar was and, to a certain extent, still is considered a major no-no. Astoundingly, society clings to the notion that a marriage proposal is a male responsibility. The idea is so culturally pervasive that a woman dropping down on one knee to propose is still a rarity. The image of a ‘desperate woman’ prevails.

So what do you think? Does it really matter who proposes to whom — or why, or how? And a shoutout to all the modern women out there: Would you or have you popped the question? We’d love to hear your stories!

Here are a few famous women who have done the proposing:

  • Actress Kristen Bell to Dax Shepard
  • Pop star Britney Spears to Kevin Federline on a flight back from Ireland (where else?)
  • Singer/songwriter Pink to Carey Hart
  • Fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg to Barry Diller
  • TV’s Judge Judy to Jerry Sheindlin
  • Elizabeth Taylor, married seven times, but only asked one man, Michael Wilding, to marry her

Top Tips For Love, Or At Least How To Write About It

Posted on by Caitlin Randall in Holidays, Writing
Groom tenderly touching his bride's bare back.

At first blush, writing about romance may seem as easy as, well … falling in love. It isn’t, even for the hopeless romantics among us. At The Story Project we have the lucky advantage of penning the stories our clients tell us. It’s not up to us to devise romantic plot twists, adorable “meet cutes,” or emotional grand declarations. That’s best left to the Hollywood RomCom writers.

Our job is the not-so-small matter of coaxing couples to talk (yes, it’s mostly the men that duck for cover). And then there’s the challenge of writing a story  — from first glance to “I do” — that captures the essence of their romance.

As a Valentine’s Day gift to the wanna-be romance novelists among you, or just those of you inspired enough to compose a truly personal card this year, here are some of our best tips for writing about love:

Soldier embracing his girlfriend upon his return from combat.
(Photos Peter Crabtree)

— Steer clear of clichés. “It was Kismet” or “we fit together like pieces of a puzzle” are as old as the hills (excuse the cliché) and read that way.

— Write in your own voice. Any attempt to parrot Jane Austen’s genius, or for that matter, Danielle Steele’s sauciness, reads like what it is: a stale imitation.

— The “meet cute,” Hollywood’s name for a charming, sometimes ironic way for a couple to meet, is one of the most used tropes in film. It’s also one of the most difficult to write. Skip it. A first encounter doesn’t have to be adorable or embarrassing to grab your readers’ attention. Sometimes reality works fine. I once asked a colleague how she met her husband. “We met in the office,” she said shrugging at the dullness of it. “We hated each other. It took two postings and three countries before we fell in love.” You gotta ask: how did that happen? There’s usually a good story behind every match, even if it’s not the made-in-Hollywood variety. Ask around if you need some inspiration.

— Search for words that really express the sentiment you’re trying to convey. Her “twinkling” blue eyes and his “amazing” physique are not exactly descriptive. Then again there’s this: “The elevator whisks me with terminal velocity to the twentieth floor.” Terminal velocity? Ugh, but the author made a gazillion bucks from it. See 50 Shades of Grey.

— Trust yourself. Consider what you really want to say and be brave. Putting it out there takes courage, but then again, so does falling in love.

If you need more inspiration, keep an eye out for The Story Project’s upcoming Short-Take telling a clients’ love story, True North: A Love Story in Five Maps, posting on our website (with permission) this coming week.             

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

We’re Offering a List, and Checking it Twice….

Posted on by The Story Project Team in Family, Holidays, Uncategorized
Fairdale Farms in the Snow, Bennington, Vt.

A moment of silence please for those among us who will sit down this holiday season to awkward conversations, prickly interrogations and unwelcome political jousting. Do we really need another round of Uncle Harry’s latest conspiracy theory gleaned from Facebook? And how many times in one year can Aunt Tilly ask when she’ll dance at your daughter’s wedding?

Despite the plethora of suggestions out there to guide us through the political and social minefield that is 2019, The Story Project is offering it’s own List. We begin by suggesting that everyone at the table or around the fireplace turn inward. Make the season a true family event. Here are five questions to help get you started:

• To Your Grandparents: How did you meet each other? Was it a long courtship? Did your parents pray for a wedding or beg you to break up?

• To Your Parents: What was the best-ever family vacation? What was the worst? How did you celebrate the holidays when you were young?

• To Your Siblings: What’s your favorite Christmas/Hanukkah/ holiday memory? And your funniest?

• To Your Kids: What traditions, favorite dishes included, do you most want our family to continue and to pass down to your children?

A few things to remember:

• Avoid yes or no answers by asking open-ended questions. For example, you met Grandpa in New York? How did that come about?

• A good interviewer gives the subject space and time to answer. Sit back, relax and let the stories wash over you.

• It’s about fun and tapping into family memories. If you ask heartfelt questions and listen deeply, you never know where the conversation will lead.

The Story Project team wishes you a holiday season full of memories and wonderful stories to tell.

Charles Graham, Christmas Eve. Image courtesy Clark Art Institute. clarkart.edu

Life’s Little Arc: A Thanksgiving Story

Posted on by Megan Johnson in Cooking, Holidays
Megan Johnson

At this time of year, the question of stuffing can get territorial. There are those who want to try something new every year—cranberries, giblets, walnuts, wild rice, apricots! — and those who, having found their perfection, never want to mess with it from year to year. I fall into the latter camp—with tweaking.

I don’t remember if our mother always made her Italian style stuffing for Thanksgiving; I think there were more conventional early years of plain sage and onions. But for me, her chestnut and sausage version was the apotheosis of flavor and texture, and so it has remained. We forget how a little thing like stuffing can represent a radical departure in a family. Our traditions are wrapped up in family lore and the stories we tell around the dining room table and changing that by even a teaspoon can stir the pot.

As eldest sister, I have a long history of watching Mom. Looking back, I’m amazed at all we took for granted: her talent, her wit, her Italian persona. Mom was not Italian, but had lived with a family in Perugia for two years. This came about because Mom, a bit passive and accommodating as I saw her in the context of her marriage, always wanted to be an artist. But her parents insisted she go to a liberal arts college where she would become “well-rounded.” She would have more to say as an artist, they insisted. She paid them back by majoring in history of art, learning Italian, and going to Italy right after WWII. The experience shaped more than just her stuffing making. Peeling chestnuts late at night, she might tell you about the count who asked her to marry him in the most backward, passionless way, or her artist lover, as if you were her girlfriend as much as her daughter.

Nowadays you can find plain cooked chestnuts already peeled in jars or sealed packets, but in the 50s and 60s and 70s, adding chestnuts to stuffing was a labor of love involving raw nuts. First you had to slice an X on the bottom of each nut with a sharp paring knife so that steam could escape. We were the kind of family that never had a sharp knife. It was a chore that seemed interminable.

Next, you roasted them in the oven. Here, Mom had an advantage: a Garland restaurant stove, bought at auction by our architect father to accommodate six kids. Once they were done to perfection (always dicey to get that part just right), came the hardest part of this long job—peeling.  I don’t know if you’ve ever bought a bag of hot chestnuts from a street vendor in a New York City park (I hear those days are long gone), but they don’t peel easily. They’re like little brains, with lots of convolutions and a thin inner skin. I remember late nights of peeling and talking, and the distinctive velvety texture of the inner shells. My mother must have been exhausted by Thanksgiving morning.

She would have ordered a 24-lb turkey, and we ate earlier in those days, so she would get up at 4AM to stuff it, sew it shut, and slide it into the oven in time for midday dinner. We’d wake to the smell of roasting turkey and aromatic stuffing as it slowly filled the house, building anticipation—of cousins and aunts and uncles and lovely Grandma coming, of delicious food. It was a mouth-watering smell full of the promise of warmth, laughter and feasting.

While you’re prepping Thanksgiving dinner, during the meal, and in the drowsy groaning aftermath, ask your older relatives for stories. Get details; get recipes.

Life is such a little arc, as my mother would say. Too soon, the stories will be gone forever.

Mom’s Stuffing

The proportions are flexible; how big is your bird?

1 pound or so of Italian sausage (must contain fennel seed), removed from casings if necessary

2 large onions, chopped

Sage and rosemary and thyme as you like, but I find any stuffing is best with a little more seasoning than you’d think, since the flavors meld together in cooking, and could become indistinct. I use fresh garden herbs, usually still in the garden at Thanksgiving.

2 cups peeled, cooked chestnuts (Yipes! Don’t use marron glacés, they’re sweetened for desserts!)

Dried, stale bread cubes

Mom baked bread throughout our childhood, having been introduced to good bread in Italy. We never had Wonder Bread and found it horrifying — no bite. These days, one sister bakes beautiful artisan loaves, but I, having discovered I have celiac, use homemade gluten free cornbread. No one complains.

Fry the sausage in a large pan, breaking it up with a spatula. Do not drain. Add chopped onions, and when the onion is soft, the bread and herbs. You might add up to a stick of butter to moisten, but remember, the best stuffing is that cooked inside the turkey cavity, where the juices moisten it. If you have leftovers that don’t fit, add a little giblet stock to moisten, and cook covered.

Photos by Peter Crabtree

Contributing writer Megan Johnson is a retired English teacher who holds a master’s degree in creative writing.