Author: Sheila Quirke

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Hosting the Holidays

I have been lucky enough to spend the vast majority of my holidays with the very same group of family for all of my forty-four years.  For my entire childhood, my Mom hosted Christmas and my Aunt hosted Thanksgiving.  It was set in stone and, as far as I know, not really a discussion.  We all just knew where we would be on those most symbolic of holidays.

These were lovely traditional gatherings.  Both dinner tables featured turkeys, and I’m not just referring to the errant odd relative, cranberry sauce, and margarine, not butter.  They were predictable and warm and so very anticipated.  When I was a kid, I loved, loved, loved those gatherings — even more so than the presents under the tree.

I never thought too much about the work attached to hosting a family event, but I do remember how stressful it was for my Mom.  My folks’ marriage, I think — cause honestly, who really knows — was quite a bit different than my own marriage.  My husband, unlike my Dad, does the holiday cooking.  Trust me when I say that if I were ever to host a Thanksgiving dinner independently, it would be turkey tacos on the menu.  I stick to what I do best — cleaning our home, setting a beautiful table, making certain people not only eat good food, but eat it in a warm and special setting.

I could never cook a turkey people would want to eat, but then again, Mary Tyler Dad would never think to spray the table with mini gourds or arrange a vase of flowers. Yin and yang, style and substance. It works for us.
I could never cook a turkey people would want to eat, but then again, Mary Tyler Dad would never think to spray the table with mini gourds or arrange a vase of flowers. Yin and yang, style and substance. It works for us.

After my Mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died less than a year later, well, the holidays were in a bit of a flux on our end.  My folks never again lived in the home they shared after my Mom got sick.  That home was their retirement home and located three hours outside Chicago.  They rented an apartment in the city to be closer to better medical care and family.  Small apartments with old widowers are not really accommodating to large family gatherings.

Just a couple of years after my Mom died, my daughter was diagnosed with her own brain tumor.

Ho ho ho.

For my husband and I, the holidays will never be the same.

But for most folks sitting around our holiday table, things are as they were before my Mom or daughter died.  Busy, hectic, loving, joyful, blessed.  That is what I want for my sons.  I want them to grow up with what I had and still value — a warm extended family that actually enjoys one another’s company.  We don’t all share the same politics or enjoy the same movies or books or music, but there is honest to goodness love and history there.  Shared love and shared history.

So that is why, just a year after our daughter died, Mary Tyler Dad and I made the choice to move into hosting the holidays.  We knew our limitations, so we opted for Thanksgiving over Christmas.  Taking the tree and presents out of the equation put the focus on food and family.  We could handle that.  With pleasure.

The devil is in the details. Turkey shaped butter. Butter tastes better when it's shaped like a turkey!
The devil is in the details. Turkey shaped butter. Butter tastes better when it’s shaped like a turkey!

This was our third Thanksgiving that we’ve hosted since making that choice. There are a new generation of cousins running around and causing mischief. They are all five and under.  Donna, who would have been the elder statesman of this generation of cousins, is only with us in her framed image that looks down over the table.  But Donna always loved a party, so that is what we try to create.

As an adult now, and a grieving adult at that, I so feel the stress that my Mom must have felt each and every Christmas in her own hosting duties.  My Dad was always there on the holidays, but he is from a different generation.  He carved the turkey, sure, but he didn’t cook it or stuff it or purchase it.  Just like he paid for the Christmas gifts, but didn’t choose or wrap them.  Different division of labor.  I get it.

I laugh now (it’s easy a week after my hosting responsibilities have ended) as the holiday season approaches and I can feel my stress level rise.  I always feel closer to my Mom during these days and say a silent “thank you” for everything she did to give us so many beautiful and warm holidays.  A few weeks ago I read a blog post chastising people from stressing over making a holiday dinner.  Pffft.  Honestly?  If I am hosting 25 people for a sit down dinner, I am allowed to stress.  You know why?  Because it’s stressful.  End of story.

Even with my husband “man”ning the kitchen, there are still a hell of a lot of things to accomplish to make a warm and comfortable gathering for two dozen folks.  There is cleaning and linens and table setting and flowers and shopping and stowing of random bric a brac that always manages to be most present this time of year.  There are closets to clear for extra coats and a kids table to figure out.  There are outfits to coordinate for two brothers.   There is furniture to move to accommodate all these folks in a dining room made for half their numbers.

The kid table. I actually wanted to eat here myself.
The kid table. I actually wanted to eat here myself.

It’s work, yo.

But, hallelajuh, what joyful work it is, even if I do curse in the moment.  And, damn it if I am not lucky to have this kind of work.

One of the things I put in place when we started hosting was a gratitude toast.  Ha!  All my relatives make fun of me and a few even roll their eyes.  I don’t care.  Those eye rolls are all in fun and what’s the sense of gathering on Thanksgiving if we can’t, for a few short moments, tell one another, the people we love most in this world, about our blessings?  One of my finest moments this Thanksgiving was my cousin who revealed in his toast that he thought about it ahead of time.  Three cheers for gratitude!

In my own toast, I always like to say the names of the people we are missing.  I don’t know why, but like most families, my own doesn’t talk enough about those we love who have died.  I don’t understand it myself, cause if we don’t talk about them who will?  Say the names, people.  Say the names.  Jack and Carolyn and Donna and Donna.  See?  It’s not so hard.  Say the names of those you love who have passed before.

But this year, generating snickers and hoots all around, I also expressed gratitude for having people to cook and clean for.  This was not a martyr’s wail — woe is me who had to brush ground in graham cracker crumbs out of the living room rug before guests arrived.  NO.  This was a grateful woman’s words of wonder that I am that lucky human being who has a room full of people in my home whom I get to cook and clean for, who willingly come to our home to celebrate a sacred day of gratitude.

Everything is better with chocolate -- even the holidays.
Everything is better with chocolate — even the holidays.

How amazing is that?  How lucky am I?

My Mom taught me well, she did.  And, like my Mom, I, too, will always and forever stress over hosting the holidays.  But never for a moment misinterpret that stress as a lack of gratitude or a complaint.  No way.  Despite my hardships, I am one hell of a lucky lady.  I get to spend my holidays with people I love, and whom, I think, love me.

Happy hosting holidays, folks.  If you are hosting, remember these words as you plan that menu and iron those linens and wonder where that 12th spoon has gone off to.  What a lucky freaking person you are.

Happy holidays, from me to you.

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JFK’s Death Through the Eyes of an Irish Catholic Born After He Died

When President John F. Kennedy was killed, 50 years ago today, I was not even a glint in my parents’ eyes.  They were sleep deprived after having delivered their second child, my sister, just two weeks earlier.  I was still six years away.  So why on earth is this day so significant to me?

I can sum it up pretty easily for you — my family is Irish Catholic and we come from the South Side of Chicago.  The Kennedys are our royals, the First Family of Irish and Catholics and corruption.  Our local version of the Kennedys are the Daleys, and well, suffice it to say that my first son’s middle name is Daley.  These Irish Catholic political dynasties, now a dying breed, were something I grew up with and was always profoundly proud to be a part of, even on the periphery.

So, yes, today I have Kennedy on my mind.  I have spent hours Googling images of that fateful day fifty years ago and listening to the most amazing memories on NPR.  Leave it to the BBC to have the best coverage this afternoon.  It included first person interviews with Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who is the man who climbed on the trunk of the Presidential motorcade as Jackie was climbing out of the back seat.  It included 93 year old retired Dallas police officer Jim Leavelle who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald and was handcuffed to him when he died.  It included a young wife and mother who watched from the curb as her President’s brains splashed across the street.  It included one of the ER docs at Parkland Hospital who worked tirelessly to bring President Kennedy back, despite every medical indication being that he was gone.

That day fifty years ago changed the course of American history and global politics.  And for whatever reason, Irish Catholicism aside, I have always been attracted to the fairy tale of Camelot.  Hell, I have a Pinterest board dedicated to this era.  Something about the fashion, the optimism after World War II, the glamour and tragedy of the Kennedys.  It’s just rich — all of it so very rich and potent and interesting and magnetic and hopeful for me.  It’s probably no coincidence that my folks got married in 1958 and my Mom always and forever reminded me of Jackie Kennedy herself.  My folks bought into the whole Kennedy mystique, too.

Ich bin ein Kennedy, know what I mean?

The Kennedy Monument in Ft. Worth, Texas -- significantly more moving than any public monument in Dallas.
The Kennedy Monument in Ft. Worth, Texas — significantly more moving than any public monument in Dallas.

So imagine my surprise and excitement when we went to adopt our new baby boy in Dallas/Ft. Worth.  Touching down at the DFW Airport, I couldn’t help but notice all the banners calling out jfk.org — the cyber home of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy met his fate those fifty years ago.  I hadn’t made the Dallas/Ft. Worth – Kennedy connection until I saw those banners.  And this from someone who has made a pilgrimage to Chappaquiddick of all places.  I was excited and disappointed in myself all at the same time.

As we sped away to meet the mother of our soon to be son, I made a silent vow to go to the museum before I left Texas, come hell or high water.  And, being a gal of my word, I did.

Let me tell you, that is one hell of a museum.  I am the type of person who prefers a museum to a mall (I mean the best museums have the best gift shops anyway, amirite?), and a city to a beach.  I stole away for a few hours one day, leaving my family in Ft. Worth, as I made the trek to the Sixth Floor Museum, Dealey Plaza, and the infamous Book Depository building.

The Book Depository Building, now knows as the Sixth Floor Museum
The Book Depository Building, now known as the Sixth Floor Museum

I was in the Irish-Catholic-political-dynasty-Kennedy-ZONE.  I was grateful to be alone, as I don’t think I know another person who would match my enthusiasm for this jaunt.  After getting over my disappointment that cameras were not allowed in the museum itself, I simply gave in to the experience.  It is a world class museum, curated with great care.  The Kennedy presidency is covered as is the zeitgeist of the era.

And then, as you move through the exhibit, you come to the day itself, November 22, 1963.  President Kennedy’s last night was spent in a hotel in Ft. Worth.  It was rainy during his outdoor early morning speech in Ft. Worth that Jackie opted out of. Did you know that the couple was mourning the death of their two day old infant just three months earlier?  But the campaign never stops, does it?  Not when you’re President.

Within a couple of hours the clouds and rain had lifted and the sun shone brightly.  The couple flew into Dallas and requested the open top car to diminish any obstacle between them and the people along the parade route as they snaked through the city streets.  Always campaigning.

The museum exhibit deftly tells the story of that bright Friday day in Dallas.  How there were full page ads in the local newspaper taunting President Kennedy.  How the police commissioner went on local radio programs requesting the citizens of Dallas be polite and welcoming of him.  How a man named Zapruder filmed the motorcade, inserting himself in one of America’s saddest days on record.  How bullets were fired and a President died.

Standing where Zapruder stood and feeling sad and moved.
Standing where Zapruder stood and feeling sad and moved.

I cried.  It was really well done.  I will never forget it.

So much was lost fifty years ago today, forever changing the trajectory of America.  As I’ve said before about grief, it both hardens and softens you.  The same can be said of collective grief — that day in America, we both hardened and softened. America felt deeply, moaned in unison, wept openly, feared for itself.

So, yes, I was not born during Kennedy’s lifetime, but I grieve as if I were.  I wonder about an America where three assassinations in five years wholly altered the course of history.  I cry for kids who lost their father, a culture who lost their icon, a religion that lost its pioneer, a mom who lost her son, a First Lady who lost her husband, a country who lost its shining hopeful light.

The grassy knoll.
The grassy knoll.

Rest in peace, President Kennedy.  Thank you for what you have taught me. I am grateful to you.

If you liked my post and would like to read other ChicagoNow bloggers reflections on Kennedy’s death, check out these blogs:

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Figuring It Out

This post is part of the ChicagoNow monthly collective “blogapalooza” wherein one topic is presented at 9 p.m. and bloggers are afforded one hour to write their little blogger hearts out, publishing whatever they have by 10 p.m. Today’s topic:

Write about a great challenge faced by you, by someone else, by an entity, at any point in the past or in the future.

Eleven weeks ago today I stood in a labor and delivery room and watched another woman birth her child, who is now my child.  What kind of riddle is this?, you ask.  This is no riddle, my friend, this is adoption.

Rewind to four months earlier.  A bright young woman connected with my husband and I through our aptly named Facebook page, “Sheila and Jeremy Want to Adopt.”  She was pregnant, already mothering, and in no position (her words, not ours) to raise another child.  We talked.  We communicated.  We connected.  A few days later we learned that we were the ones — the family she wanted to raise her child.

I still, when I stop to think about it, have trouble wrapping my brain around this.

Caring for a baby comes easily to me.  The fact that this child and I do not share DNA or deep genetic codes appears to have had no ill effect whatsoever on my maternal bonding.  There is something about this stage in life that is supremely primitive.  A baby’s needs are simple and consuming:  food, warmth, shelter, protection, love.  I stare into my baby’s deep blue eyes and the uterus he grew in, the sperm that fertilized the egg, seem not so important.

Except they are.  They are very important and always will be.

Our son will always have two mothers and two fathers.  We can slice and dice it ten ways to Sunday, but this basic truth will never change.  Somehow, someway, circumstances led to one man and one woman conceiving and birthing this baby and one man and one woman parenting and providing for this baby, our baby.

I remember so clearly standing in front of a crowd of hundreds at our daughter’s memorial service eulogizing the life of my oldest child.  My parting words to these hundreds of folks was the assurance that we, my husband and I, would “figure it out,” somehow and someway.  We were charged, for better or worse, with the task of figuring out how to live a life moving forward that would no longer involve the day-to-day care of our child.

The parallels between our loss and the loss of our son’s Birth Mother do not escape me.  She, too, is charged with the call to “figure it out,” and move forward in her life that will not include the day-to-day care of her child.  There is tremendous loss attached to adoption, as well as tremendous joy and hope.

Our grief and comfort with our grief was something that our son’s Birth Mother was attracted to as she carefully vetted couples to raise the child growing inside her.  She clearly told us that she believed our own experience with great loss would help us understand and empathize with her own impending loss.  We agreed.  It’s true, you see.  Experiencing deep loss, like that of a child, is a life altering experience.  It hardens you, it softens you.  You evolve by accommodating the loss, or you don’t.  If you don’t evolve, if you don’t accept the loss, you stagnate.  That is no kind of life to have, most especially if you are parenting.

So here we are, eleven weeks in to our child’s life.  He smiles at us, he eats like a farmer after harvest, he relies on us for everything.  We change him, soothe him, bathe him, love him.  We are blessed.  To know this particular joy again, of infancy and firsts, well, I have no words.  I am a lucky freaking lady.

But our son’s story started before those first bottles and first diapers and first smiles.  His story started in a state we had never even visited.  He’s been places, our boy, literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.  When we adopted him, we entered a sacred pact with his Birth Mom — one, I believe, that is even more sacred than marriage.  There is no divorce with adoption, no do overs, no “starter” childhoods.

We have committed our lives to this child, just as we have to our two others before.  And the trust that our son’s Birth Mom has placed in us?  Well, I have no words.  That level of trust is beyond words for me.  At least right now.  Maybe someday they will come to me.  In the meantime, I will change a diaper and wipe a nose and fold a onesie and warm a bottle and tickle a foot and buckle a car seat and love and love and love and love.

adoption