Category: North Carolina

Recycle the Fruitcake

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My mother loved fruitcake. I think making and eating it reminded her of her Carolina roots.

As a teenager and young adult, I remember seeing her and many of my older relatives consume fruitcake.

The thought of munching that dark, rich, moist, nutty, fruity, and rummy consistency repulsed me.

Anyway, she liked having fruitcake around during the holidays. I didn’t.

In the early 1980s, when Jean (my ex) and I lived in the Chicago suburbs, Mom hadn’t caught on to my fruitcake aversion.

Every December, she ordered a rather expensive variety of fruitcake, made by the Trappist monks of the Assumption Abbey, and had it delivered to us.

(Assumption Abbey is a monastery tucked in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks.)

Jean and I didn’t have the heart to tell Mom to stop sending us fruitcakes. So, every year, we received another tin of it, which sat unopened on the bottom shelf of our refrigerator.

We never found a way to recycle or share it with others, because no one else we knew liked fruitcake either.

Inevitably, year after year–sometime in May, June, or July long after the last presents were unwrapped–Jean or I extricated the fruitcake from the back of our fridge and dumped it in the garbage.

***

If you follow my blog, you know I sing second tenor with a gay chorus–to be precise, the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus (PHXGMC)–and have written several librettos for PHXGMC.

For the uninitiated, we are a joyous, talented, and rambunctious LGBTQ-plus organization, comprised of more than one hundred singers and musicians (who also wear multiple hats as artistic consultants, dancers, actors, writers, marketers, costume designers, stagehands, sound technicians, and lighting crew).

At times, the switching of hats from one day, week, or number to the next is a dizzying process. But when you volunteer for an arts’ organization you believe in, it comes with the territory.

As I write this, we are entering the heavy lifting phase of Lights, Camera, Elves!, our holiday show coming December 21 and 22 to the Herberger Theatre in Phoenix.

Anyway, as I swam laps on Tuesday and considered what to write this week, thoughts of my mother’s love of fruitcake and a coincidental plotline in our concert popped into my head.

You see, like my mother, Rudy–a character in our concert–adores fruitcake. He can’t get enough of it, and that obsession leads him into trouble and a terrible trap. 

In fact, Act One ends with a hysterical, rousing number–Recycle the Fruitcake.

In the mix, I should back up and tell you that Scott, our choreographer, has asked me to play a bit role in the fruitcake number.

For about 15 seconds, I’ll be crossing the stage wearing an orange hazmat suit, while carrying a toxic fruitcake in this holiday tin. Meanwhile, the chorus will be singing this lyrical line:

“A fruitcake can be wide, a fruitcake can be thin, a fruitcake can be toxic, so they keep it in a tin. So, when you get a fruitcake, never let it touch your skin, ’cause you never really know where fruitcakes might have been.”

Brandon and Mike (two other chorus members) and I had loads of fun co-creating the libretto for Lights,  Camera, Elves! … and we are coaching the cast as they prepare for our performances.

The show is a story of redemption, featuring Santa’s love for holiday movies, a misfit security guard named Rudy, and three recalled-and-mischievous elves (Spike, Ginger, and Eddie) … all told against the backdrop of gorgeous and fun holiday music.

We’re excited, because we are expecting full houses for all three of our holiday shows.

Though my mother has been gone for nearly twelve years and was never able to see me perform in any of the fifteen holiday concerts I’ve appeared in since 2010, I know she would have loved the spirit and beautiful music in this show … along with my creative impulse to recycle my fruitcake memories. 

Another Day, Another Story

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After my mother died on this day in 2013 at age eighty-nine, my grief took root.

With a little time, a lot of reflecting and journaling, and the support of a small circle of family and friends, I found and nurtured my own path from the branches of despair.

By 2015, I had carved out a storyteller’s life Helen Johnson would have loved. Late that year, I flew to North Carolina to visit Frances, her only sister.

Spending time with Frances in the state where both were born–and revisiting childhood memories of my grandparents’ farm in Huntersville, NC–propelled my creativity.

In March of 2016, I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground. It is the story of my journey and grief.

If you’ve read this story about three writers (my grandfather, mother, and me) and their love of family, you know this isn’t really the cover.

Today I’ve superimposed this photo of Helen and Frances together (in my sister’s backyard in 2003 or 2004 in northern Illinois) to remember them both.

Why? Because Frances was the last physical vestige of that rural, 1960s world for me. When she died six months ago at age ninety-one, I metaphorically waved goodbye to those years of running amok barefoot on warm summer days in the Tar Heel State.

Of course, I will always have rich memories of my wise-and-frugal mother, who wrote countless letters, and my fun-loving aunt, who traveled the world in her retirement years. In their own ways, they inspired me to tell my story.

Today–as I remember them both–I can walk into the sunroom of the Scottsdale, Arizona condo where Tom and I now live. I can pull my book off the shelf and find this passage.

“What I knew before was that the farm was a place of discovery for me and the fertile ground there was a physical and psychological refuge from the hardships of our family drama in St. Louis. What I know now is that I would need to go back to North Carolina to come to terms with my grief and integrate my southern memories with my present-day, real-life adult existence.”

I can take solace in the fact that I’ve written about Helen and Frances–who they were, who they loved.

Though they are both gone, they live on the pages.