Steaks and Games

This morning my throat hurt and I popped two ibuprofen with my chocolate milk.  There was coffeecake:  it makes the alarm more bearable on Saturday when you remember there's coffeecake. The first gulp of coffee burned all the way down; in this house, we call it "cutting the crap", and though a temporary fix for congestion, it's a homeopathic remedy that's always on hand. 

Cake, coffee and I'm out the door and on en route for some a.m. basketball.  Abbie and Lizzie and Gabe have an early start in Mound City.  I'm behind a semi when Grandma Millie and Grandpa Charlie blow by me running 80 mph.  They are hosting bridge club tonight and won't be able to stay, so I imagine a conversation about being late.  Or, then again, maybe they are paying no attention to the speedometer...they certainly don't see me as they fly by...

Sitting in a small town gymnasium is not a half bad way to spend a winter Saturday.  Kids in bright colored jerseys pound up and down the floor, or the bleacher stairs, or flop down on coats and duffles to stare at each other's phones.  Moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas are, for the most part, pretty relaxed; their kids may be emotional after a game because they won, or lost, or didn't get to play enough, but by Sunday, they're on to the next thing.  A few folks get revved up at the refs, but these games are for exercise and maybe a medal, so how upset can you be?  Our kids win some and lose some and we are home for lunch, a better outcome than the day long wrestling tournaments Ben competed in.  Win or lose, he still had to make weight next time so even the joy of big meal was tempered.

I had a plan this Saturday, and it involved steak.  The wind was strong from the south; the thermometer crept up past 40.  Four thick steaks and the makings for salad came home from the HyVee. More years than not, there's a Saturday evening or two in the dead of winter with a magic moment for standing outdoors with a glass of wine in one hand and grilling tools in the other.  With Blake sharing the gathering twilight, this Saturday is a foreshadowing of all those summer evenings we spend out on the porch while the sun sinks and the smoke rises lazily from the Weber.  A steak dinner is most likely to happen on a Saturday.

Cleaning house on Saturday may not be my favorite thing to do, but it feels like I'm getting away with something when I do.  All of a sudden, Sunday afternoon is relaxing even if I've been at work. Instead of coming home to sheets in the dryer and dust bunnies in the hallway, it's like a good fairy has waved a magic wand; instead of entropy, and chaos, there's the couch with no guilt.

Last Saturday night the kids were here. We ate take and bake pizza and played ping pong which gradually morphed into a rough and ready form of handball...with slippers of various conformations..and finally into a pillow fight..with ping pong balls.

Sometimes it's wonderful to dress up on Saturday night and spend the evening transported by wonderful music and song; but other times staying home and sharing a chair with your grandkid, or practicing Spanish, or putting together a puzzle, or making cookies, or playing games by lantern light, or just watching the Cardinals is like a group hug. I love those Saturday nights...with kids quiet in their beds but for an occasional snore echoing that of the Grandpa in our room.

I even like Saturdays in the spring.  Gabe and Abbie come out to work.  Annie brings the makings for lunch as well as the Schlueter helping hands.  Family at work somehow becomes family at play, even at the end of some very long weeks.

To work, to play, to garden, to cheer, to travel, to listen, to cook and laugh for those I love most....whether its Saturday or not....

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Toyland

I can only guess what my mom or dad thought when they ventured out of the hallway past the threshold of our room, but I can tell you what the kid's eye view was from flat on the blue hooked rug.  On one wall were our bunk beds and the toy box and opposite were our two dressers and a bookcase. Our desks stood against the far wall while the wall nearest the doorway consisted primarily of murderous bifold metal closet doors..  The general effect, from ground level, was that of a box canyon, cliffs overhanging the chasm and detritus piled high against the canyon walls.

Hole in the Wall, Wyoming

It made for a narrow twisty path from door to the plateau of my top bunk. Once up the ladder I was like a character in a Western, safe behind my ramparts of stuffed animal friends, with a birds’ eye view of the goings on down below.  Winnie the Pooh, sewn by my mom in honey hued velveteen, Raggedy Ann with her black button eyes and replacement knees of hand-colored felt, Silver the tall gray poodle dog, and Charlie Brown, the understuffed floppy eared puppy, were just a few of the critters that I lined up every night so they could all watch me sleep.  

The narrow confines of our room became a fantasy land for the Breyer model horses we collected, or the menagerie of pipe cleaner and yarn animals Laura and I made.  We created camels and lions, deer and even a Pushmi-Pullyu...the herd we constructed included the equine protagonist of every horse story by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as Smoky the cow horse and Black Beauty. The artificial flowers my mom had yet to “antique” and her out-of-fashion head scarves were fair game for making our room the garden of Eden in our eyes.

Laura and I benefited from the talents and hobbies of our family: our Barbie doll dresses were trimmed in rick rack with darts, collars, even tulle and pleats.  My grandmother’s imagination led her to sew lovely glass buttons on tops as brooches or to hem a matching satiny scrap of fabric into a scarf for the swing back coat and dress ensemble.  I would say our Barbies were better dressed than any other little girls’....if not for the fact we instantly lost the shoes and earrings so our dolls were always barefooted.

The wagon load of homemade blocks my grandfather made more than sixty years ago show but little wear from the three generations of children who have built roads and castles and walls and fences from them. We drove our Matchbox cars over them and even made sixties style furniture...Scandinavian, I guess, for the Barbies to lounge on.

I remember our dollhouse.  It was a two story Colonial...metal….with plastic furniture that was all the same color.  We played with it lots….until the day my mom decided we were old enough...and careful enough...to be trusted with her dollhouse furniture. What an upgrade! Instead of molded monochromatic plastic, her childhood couch and chairs were padded and upholstered; the dressing table had a mirror and a skirted stool.  The radio had cathedral windows.  The single door refrigerator looked just like the one in our kitchen, but there was also an icebox.  The china family with their rosebud lips and their “nurse” were quaintly old fashioned, but also fragile, so we rarely used them in our play, spending most of our time rearranging the furniture as was our prerogative as females.

When we traveled, our ditty bags of prized possessions came along.  “Super balls and “creepy crawlers” , baseball cards and Matchbox cars: looking back, I now realize how much of what we prized cost less than a dollar bill.

The Matchbox display was right on front of the cashier at the local dime store, but we bought our baseball cards at the Walgreens next door. A quarter bought a toy, but a big gumball from the machine was still just a dime. As kids whose earning power was measured in pennies(for dandelions) or dimes per hour, our desires were constrained by our pocket change.

But not all our toys were “Made in Japan”. (In case you don’t remember, in the ‘60s that was code for “cheap”!)  Every Christmas our stockings would yield treasures like the wooden apple with a tiny tea set inside, or a bag of polished stones, a two toned ball with faceted sides that bounced in crazy directions or a sliding puzzle with a smiling frog and tiles numbered 1 through 31.  Looking back, I’m betting my mom found prizes like these in the Miles Kimball catalog, which ranked with the Christmas catalogs distributed by Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck as the subject matter for wishful thinking.

This New Year’s Day, the parades are over and football rules the big screen.  It’s way too cold to play outside.  How many kids are spending this afternoon playing with Barbies...or blocks...or puzzles?

The Rally Cat and Other Four Legged Friends

A few nights ago, the small grey cat streaked across center field of Busch Stadium like the proverbial “bat out of h***” into...at the very least….its fifteen minutes of fame.  The crowd was riveted to to the big screen struggle between the young groundskeeper and terrified animal, but after those two actors leaped into the stands and vanished into the maw of the stadium, Yadier Molina created an even bigger sensation when he launched a grand slam homer, putting the Cards ahead in a moment that was Roy Hobbs worthy...in the view of ecstatic Cardinal fans, like us!

Wednesday night, #RallyCat shared the spotlight.  Wednesday night, we were all cat people.

But...in general, that has not been the case.  Dogs have been the critters in our family pictures…Nip and Tuck and Skaggs on one side...Frisky and Silver on the other.  Of course, Millie has always had chickens and my dad had cattle as soon as he had pastures for them.  Laura and I were proud owners of Brownie, but even though she was named, it was strictly a business relationship. Nip and Tuck were the Labs that flung themselves, slobbering and barking, upon our Dodge Dart when we pulled into the driveway at Granny’s house. They greeted us in the same way, tackling us with their giant paws and giant jaws as soon as we stepped out the back door of the car. It was always a terrifying experience.

Compared to Nip and Tuck of memory, Juno, our first dog, was as gentle as she was large and calm despite her Doberman/German Shepherd heritage.  She loved Blake and became the consummate farm dog companion when she was transplanted from the duplex we lived in the last year of college to a life of pickup seats, wide open windows, and standing on the tool box in the back with her ears streaming behind her.  As far as I know, she only fell off once and climbed out of the ditch and jumped back into the truck with more damage to her dignity than injury from the tumble.  

Juno’s great doggy friend was Barney, Nancy’s beagle.  He was a wanderer, traveling from farm to farm to visit and staying until Nancy physically hauled him back to their house.  Even after they were both old and gray, Barney would find his way the six or seven miles through the country to our farm to visit his friend. He would stay for weeks while we enjoyed the sight of the two old dogs napping companionably under the shade of the elms.  

When the girls were old enough to be enamored with pets, we tended to acquire puppies in pairs.  Tommy and Holly, two black and white mutts with mirror image personalities: Tommy never knew a stranger and would roll over for a scratching before he was introduced, but Holly, who had been hit by a pickup early in life, was cautious, aloof, with sad black eyes. Tommy and Holly and I had a love hate relationship during their puppyhood.  Every time I planted something in the yard...a tree, a shrub, a rose, a perennial of any kind, they found it and dug it up.  We made our peace, but I spent an intense and angry spring chasing them through the yard, screaming imprecations that they couldn’t understand, and attempting to flail them around the ears with whatever desiccated plant carcass they had literally unearthed.

During these full house years, word evidently went out on the doggie grapevine that we were soft touches when it came to canines.  Every dog dumped heartlessly along our gravel road made its way to our dog dish. And some lovable scamps they were:  Frisky, a beautiful black puppy with a penchant for pulling clothes off the line; Mister, a raggedy long haired black and white critter with a desire to dance; and Bob, an enormous well mannered giant with a passion for fetching fireworks.  All three passed through giving us at one time or another, a population of five dogs on the farmstead along with the unnumbered unnamed cats; no wonder any stranger to our farm tended to wait in the car.

The very last stray appeared, like Mary mother of Jesus, pregnant in the deep of winter.  She was a cautious quiet nervous black dog, that we found hiding in the straw in our old shed very near Christmas time.  And, sure enough, she delivered her puppies in the barn….eight of them...and thus she became Mama Dog for all the rest of her life.  The puppies ranged from cocoa to chocolate to black and were cute as could be.  Ann and Matt fell in love with a chocolate male, and Ike was their faithful, loving, though finicky, family member before Aaron, before Lizzie and before Josh.  Peanut wound up staying at the farm, spooky, gargantuan presence under the front porch; like her siblings, she had personality quirks and a thyroid problem to boot.   Mama Dog was a good friend, following us out to the greenhouses to work, though she was far too nervous to nap inside.  During the summer hours though, she would come down to the mum patches and and rest in the clover nearby, keeping watch over her people as long as we were out of doors.

Like the lyrics from a Lyle Lovett song, these are but a few of the furry friends that spent time with us.  Chickens from Grandma Millie.  Fish that lasted longer than anyone had a right to expect after their people decided cleaning the tank was too gross. Bubbles, the head butting bottle calf. Cats like Magnum, PI, the only pet Blake ever brought home, and Pumpkin, an enormous...yes, you guessed it...orange tabby.  Finally, Baby, the last named and most loving cat ever, who would climb upon my shoulder and curl herself around my neck, giving me both a purring massage and a fur stole.

“And there are more I remember

And more I could mention

Than words I could write in a song..”

Lyle Lovett, Family Reserve

To Dust

By the time you read this, the voting will be over, the answering machine messages for and against will have ceased, and the finger pointers will find new targets.  

The dust will settle.  

Dust.  The common denominator of humanity.  From such we were formed and to it we will return. What a tidy play on words it is to sum up the total of a campaign season's worth of fuss and feathers! The entire enterprise is like the progress of a semi of grain down a gravel road: a plume in the distance; a rumble of wheels. grind of brakes, and choking cloud; and then the air clears.  

 "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." (Psalm 103:14)

That is dust as metaphor, metaphysical dust, Keynesian dust.

On this beautiful November afternoon, I prefer to ponder the many manifestations of dust in the short term.    I consider the subject as I sweep the wood floors of my house, building midden piles every 10 feet or so to be gathered by the dust pan and flung out of doors to be recycled...or tossed right back indoors by a gust of wind.  The measure of this "dust" reflects the harvest season and there are blessings to be counted in its contents.

Item: a couple of ladybugs/Asian beetle carcasses and some actively creepy Democrat bugs.  
Blessing: it's November and still warm enough that these creatures aren't hibernating. 

Item: bits of corn stubble. 
Mixed blessing: whether the corn in overall cuffs is the result of bountiful yield, or is debris due to breakdowns and repairs, a longer harvest is the result.

(Observation: Concentration of both harvest and garden detritus increases in the bathroom.)

Item: long blondish hair.
Blessing: Sure evidence that lovely imaginative artistic bookworms have been hanging out and shedding.  There are other bookworms, but their hair is much shorter.

Item: insulation off electrical wire, bits of copper Romex, dried globs from a hot glue gun, shards of a dismembered Bic pen.  Not the leavings of ordinary existence, but evidence that Aaron has been in the house, working on a some YouTube project.  He didn't meet with complete success, but the desire to build, the MacGyver-like impulse to make work and make do, and the DejaVu moment when I'm not sure whether the boy looking for #22 wire and a six volt battery at 8 pm on a Saturday night is 13 year old Aaron...or 13 year old Ben...is reason enough to smile.

Item(s): shredded cheddar, onion peel, Cheerios, Snickers wrappers. Flour. What happens when one batch of scalloped potatoes and ham (recipe says serves 12!) is deemed insufficient for this Sunday's meal in the field and a second pan is necessary.  Lizzie and Josh request a breakfast of  bread and honey; that means flour on the floor and a delicious homey fragrance of baking bread when bedtime arrives before the clocks fall back.

Dust. The big stuff takes a broom, but the grey fluff with no name is gathered with the Swiffer.   Running the Swiffer up and down the hallway and under the beds lets me sleep well at night.  

Dust.  It's what makes fall skies so brilliant, combines so flammable, and handkerchiefs a necessity.  It clings tenaciously to mirrors and windshields making Windex and paper towels tools as indispensable to harvest as socket drivers and vise grips.

  The people of Israel were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night: the bellwethers for bean harvest are combine lights by night and plumes of dust by day....

 Dust. Omnipresent and unavoidable. Like death and taxes.

  Show me your dust, and I will tell you what you are.

 I dust; therefore I am. 

 In the smallest of ways, it's a defiance of the demons of disorder, an attempt to establish an oasis against chaos.

Until it's time to garden, that is.

And Visions of...Snickers Bars...Danced in Their Heads

Halloween

(Cora May Preble)

I'm not afraid on Halloween

Because my Mother said

I should not fear those funny things

But laugh at them instead.

For orange faces in the night

That stare with eyes so wide,

Are only pumpkins on a porch

With candlelight inside.

And there are no such things as ghosts . . .

Those figures shining white,

Are only children just like me

Wrapped up in sheets so tight.

I do not fear a single thing

On Halloween you see,

Because I know they really are

Not what they seem to be.

For ghosts and goblins, witches, spooks,

And other scary folks

We hear about on Halloween

Are really only jokes.

Halloween

We mask our faces

and wear strange hats,

and moan like witches

and screech like cats,

and jump like goblins

and thump like elves,

and almost manage

to scare ourselves!

Who Will Trick-or-Treat With Me?

The first year she was a pumpkin

and she donned a bright orange smock.

Her daddy took her trick-or-treating,

though she had not learned to walk.

The next year she was a bunny

and on one leg, she would hop

while her left ear stood up straight

and the right would swing and flop.

Then a bride costume from Grandpa;

a long skirt and lacy blouse,

but she tripped over the train . . .

so daddy carried her to each house.

The fourth year brought us Lion King

and she roared both day and night.

She was either "Simba" or was "Nala."

(I never could get that right!)

The next Halloween as she got dressed,

she just kept on asking why--

if she was indeed "Supergirl,"

why then could she not fly?

Her sixth year, she was all in pink

protecting us all from danger,

as she kicked and "karate-chopped" the air

as "Kimberly, the Power Ranger."

When she was seven, she wore a yellow gown.

She was "Beauty," to say the least,

insisting that her little sister,

by default, was the "Beast."

In my heart I knew the time would come;

and this year our walk together ends.

She said, "it's not cool for mom to go;

I want to walk with all my friends."

So, I'm figuring out what I will say;

rehearsing one excuse after another,

in case she notices the "ghost" behind her

walks a little bit like her mother!

And I still have Halloweens to come;

my other daughter is only three.

What worries me is . . . when she grows up,

who will trick or treat with me?

Aaron the froggie

Josh the froggie

Levi the froggie

Grandma Millie and a host of spooky characters!

Backward, turn backward,
O Time, in your flight
make me a child again
just for to-night!~Elizabeth Akers Allen