Author Archives: John Cutrone

May 18 2021
17 Comments
Birthdays & Anniversaries, Transitions

Pocketful o’ Chores

It’s my dad’s birthday on Tuesday; our fourth one without him being here. It seems like an incredibly long time and it seems like it’s not been long at all, which, I’ve come to realize, is the way we come to experience grieving. Or certainly the way I have. Dad is still very much a part of my life and (again, I’ve come to realize) I don’t think that will change, either. I talk to him, especially while I’m at the family homestead, mowing the lawn. I say goodnight to his photo each night as I shut the lights, but I say goodnight to all the people in the photos, and each night I feel the same hint of surprise that he is not in my daily life quite the same way as he was before. It’s all very strange and all very reassuring, too, and if it sounds a bit muddled, well, welcome to my world. It seems to work for me.

If you are a loyal Convivio Book of Days reader, I worry sometimes that you must get tired of hearing me ramble on about my father and all those who have come and gone before me. But I know in my core that this line of people I come from and this Book of Days are of the same fabric. They are part of my round of the year and part of my spiraling thread of time and so the things all those people taught me––even ancestors I never knew––those things are all part of this book. It’s a collaboration, co-authored by you and me and all my family, no matter where they are or when they walked this old earth.

So let’s get back to the lawn. First of all, let me state that I am not a fan of the concept. I think lawns are a waste of time and resources and I have to agree a bit with those who say that suburban America has been brainwashed into the green lawn concept. And when I hear, as I did this past weekend, about communities that don’t even allow homeowners to plant fruits or vegetables––on their own land!––I know the lawn thing has gone too far. Allow me to say exactly what you’re thinking: Rules like that are just plain stupid. If you are on a neighborhood board making such rules, it’s clear we will not get along.

Seth and I, we have more sense than to have a lawn at our house. Instead, we live on a plot of land that more closely resembles a dense forest. There are fruit trees and there’s a vegetable garden (fallow right now, but still), and I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but we think it’s just right.

But when I think of my dad, even though he was an auto mechanic by trade (a “Doctor of Motors,” he’d say), Dad has a broom in hand, sweeping up after mowing the lawn. The lawn is green and lush, like a carpet, as Mom says. We Cutrones are not a traveling people, by and large, and so Dad’s pride was his home. He polished the stainless steel gutters, he kept everything running, and mostly, Dad loved his lawn. At the family homestead, we’d work on it together most Saturdays. Dad mowed on his tractor while I did the rest. Back then, I did it because I felt obligated to help. I’d peel my eyes open on a Saturday morning, waking to the sound of Dad riding the mower tractor outside my bedroom window after a Friday night of dancing to the Smiths and New Order at Respectable Street Cafe, and I’d drag myself out there, roll up my sleeves, and get to work. My favorite times were summer days, when we’d finish just before the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in: Dad and I would take shelter in the open garage and watch the wind and the rain and delight in the rain cooled air.

But these four years now the lawn is my job. It has come to be my Dad Time. I watch the skies and the trees and the pond for wood storks and other tall wading birds. Sometimes I sing songs to myself. Mostly I am lost in my thoughts, thoughts that I share with my father as I go about the work that needs doing, the work we’d do together.

Recently, Dad’s old tractor, which, for a long time now, required a growing list of preliminary tasks before it would start properly, finally gave up the ghost. It felt a bit clunky that last time as I rode it and mowed. All was fine in the front yard, but the back yard? Not so much. At one point, I looked behind me and gasped: I was creating deep gouges in the lawn, but it was too late; I was halfway to the finish line, so I kept on mowing. When I was done, the lawn looked more like a field freshly plowed for planting with row after row of furrows. I looked at the undercarriage of the mower and realized the blade assembly had rusted through and one side had given way so that the mower was cutting at an angle of about 45 degrees. My sister came out, gave me a look, and said exactly what I was thinking: “Oh, Dad would not be happy.” She put an awful lot of emphasis on the word not.

I spent a couple of weeks feeling badly and paralyzed by indecision over what to do: fix the tractor? It seemed beyond repair. Buy a new one? That’s a lot of money. Buy an electric tractor? More my speed, but that’s even more money. Finally, I took a leap of faith and bought an electric push mower, a Ryobi that’s powered by rechargeable batteries. It’s a lot of walking, but it turned out to be, I think, one of my better decisions in life. I can mow that lawn using two fully charged batteries. I get exercise and lawn day now counts as a work-out day. It’s quiet. It reminds me a bit of Dad’s old Sunbeam mower, the push mower he used when we lived in New York. And you know what? I think Dad would approve. The lawn looks better than ever, and in spite of how I feel about lawns in suburbia in general, I want that lawn looking verdant and rich. Like a carpet.

Images: “No one ever got bored with a pocketful of chores.” I never heard Dad complain of boredom, and I don’t remember what that particular phenomenon feels like, either. Top: Dad with his broom, sweeping up after a fresh cut with his Sunbeam push mower, Valley Stream, New York, circa 1972. Bottom: Me with what my sister Marietta calls “Johnny’s new toy.” It’s the electric battery powered Ryobi push mower at the family homestead. If you need a new mower yourself, I highly recommend it. Dad’s birthday is on Tuesday and I know exactly what I’ll be doing: I’m mowing the lawn, and maybe singing him a song or two.

 

 

May 14 2021
4 Comments
Cold Sophie, The Ice Saints

Where Summer Spends Winter

German weather lore suggests that the middle of May will bring each year a blast of cold weather, which very often is winter’s last hurrah until its return on the other side of the year. We’ve come to believe in Cold Sophie (or some more subtle version of her) even here in Lake Worth, which early settlers dubbed “The Town Where Summer Spends Winter.” We typically don’t get many cold days each winter––mostly they are mild and pleasant––but by the start of May we know for sure that summer is a’knocking, and yet it’s surprising how often mid May can bring just one more dose of mild temperatures. Once that fleeting day or two is gone, though, that’s it: summer is here to stay. Very often, those blissful days come right about now.

The Germans call this time Kalte Sophie: Cold Sophie. She is St. Sophia, whose feast day is celebrated on the 15th of May each year. But Sophie comes with an entourage, who, collectively, are known as the Ice Saints, or die Eisheiligen. They are St. Mamertus, whose feast day was on the 11th, St. Pancras on the 12th, St. Servatius on the 13th, and on the 14th, we remember St. Boniface, before we finally welcome in Kalte Sophie. They are known as the Ice Saints for their feast days often are accompanied by the final frost of the season, or at least a sharp drop in temperature… and if you were in a rush to get your garden planted before the Ice Saints have made their appearance, you may need to start over again once they’ve passed.

In Central Europe, particularly Slovenia, you might hear St. Sophie called Poscana Zofka… Pissing Sophie, for there, she is associated with rain. Which is probably more accurate for us here in Lake Worth, too. It is the time of year when we typically look to the skies and wonder if it will ever rain again, as we wait for our summer rainy season to kick in and quench the parched earth… making our strange land green again.

Image: Cold Sophie herself? A fresco from St. Sophia Church in Ohrid, Macedonia. Circa 11th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

May 09 2021
6 Comments
Mother's Day

Mother’s Day

I’m not very good at remembering important things, but I’m really good at remembering odd things, and often with astonishing clarity. Here’s a good example: it’s me, walking into the basement kitchen one afternoon when I was a kid and finding Mom there at the kitchen counter, making supper. I was watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV, and by power of suggestion, I wanted a carrot. Mom stopped what she was doing, pulled a carrot from the crisper drawer for me, washed and peeled it, handed it to me, then went back to preparing dinner. I stood there, munching on that carrot, watching Mom at work, when a very important question suddenly popped into my head. So, I asked it: “What are ice cream cones made from?” My mother did not even pause in her work; she just kept going, and she gave me her answer: “Ice cream cones? They’re made from crackers, Johnny.”

Her answer was delivered with so much certainty, I figured Millie Cutrone certainly knew what she was talking about. And so I did not question it and accepted that ice cream cones were made in some process whereby saltines are crushed and pressed into cones, cones that expectantly await my chocolate ice cream. It was years before I re-examined that answer and whether I believed it or not.

I don’t know that it’s my mom’s fault that she raised a gullible kid, and if that’s one of my worser faults, then so be it. She also raised me to write thank you notes for kindnesses bestowed and to wait until everyone was seated at the table for supper and to love holidays and the traditions that come with each, so if you like this Book of Days, you should probably write my mom a thank you note yourself. It was my mom and my grandma and my sister that really instilled in me a fascination with the kitchen and that, in its way, brings me to writing about these things now. I love sharing these things with you, because of all these people who loved sharing them with me.

And here we come to the late spring day each year when we remember and honor our mothers––those we were given, and those we have chosen. And, I’d argue, all the rest of them that helped raise us: the grandmothers and great-grandmothers, sisters and aunts. To all the moms in our lives, no matter where they are: We love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

Photo: That’s me and my mom. It’s a summer evening and I’m going to guess that I’m about 3 years old, so it might just be 1967. I’d like to tell you that it was around that time that I asked about how ice cream cones are made, but I suspect I was considerably older, perhaps 6 or 7 years old, when I fell for the crackers answer.

CURRENT SALE
At the catalog, two sales are in the works: First, it’s the HIGH FIVE SALE: Use discount code HIGH5 at checkout for $5 off your purchase of $35 or more… a sale we’ll run through Father’s Day in June. That’s on everything in the catalog: our own letterpress printed books and broadsides, genuine Shaker herbs and teas, all of our handmade artisan goods for all the seasons. CLICK HERE to shop.

Along with that, there’s the ongoing MASK UP SALE: We are both fully vaccinated now and so grateful for that, but we are following CDC guidelines and remaining masked in any public indoor settings where we don’t know the vaccination status of others. The masks we’re wearing are the embroidered face masks we’ve been selling that are made by an extended family in Chiapas, Mexico. They are beautiful and they are colorful and they are triple layer and buying them helps a REAL family to make ends meet. Plus they’re fun: people are always stopping me to ask me where I got my mask. Originally $16.50, our new price on them is an even $15, and for now we are offering a special: SAVE $10 when you buy any four, plus get FREE domestic shipping. Your total savings when you buy four turns out to be $24.50, our very best deal ever on protective face masks. Can you use the HIGH5 discount code with this? I honestly do not know, and if you do, it may affect your free shipping. Experiment. CLICK HERE to shop face masks, and anything else in our catalog.

Thank you for your support!

 

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