Frost Free

"They must hunger in frost who spring-time have lost."
German saying

 

Mostly Cloudy

Low: 36 °F

Thursday

Comes around every year….yes, yes, it’s mid October and several days beyond the average first frost for Tarkio, but don’t we all postpone the inevitable when it comes to cold weather?  Who turns on their furnace, or rolls up the garden hose, or winterizes the lawnmower...in September? At any rate, the night time temperatures this whole week will be settling into the mid-30s, dropping, dropping before making that final fatal plunge to 31 degrees on the 14th.

My birthday.  That comes around every year too.  

The proverbial “spring cleaning” is a no-go for folks in the flower business, leaving those long harvest evenings as the ideal opportunity for home improvement projects in this household. I’ve just wound up the living room painting project, covering coffee spills and assorted furniture divots.  I even had the pleasure of rearranging the furniture….as much as one can in a room with three doorways, a window, and a giant pocket door.

My folks clearly had different theories about birthday gifts.  Gifts my mother picked out: pretty sweaters, fuzzy jackets, dangly earrings, a whimsical watercolor print of geraniums and a baby robin that hangs in our kitchen.  

Gifts my father picked out: a step ladder, long handled pruners, waterproof shoes, a rain jacket.  My mother always told me, “Your father prefers useful gifts.” Sometimes there would be compromise, like the pair of blue lamps for our bedroom, but especially when I received pottery:  mixing bowls or serving bowls or platters that were not just serviceable but beautiful as well.

One year they broke with this pattern, unwrapping a beautifully finished 3 foot long slab of cherry with a single autumn hued handmade tile mounted on one end.  The tile they had purchased at a gallery on one of their local travels, but the slab of cherry was an heirloom of sorts, a piece of wood my father had inherited with my grandfather’s woodworking tools. My Grandpa Froerer had purchased the cherry somewhere in Illinois years and years ago.  The rest of the board was left open for me to decorate with tiles from future travels.

 This object is no lightweight.  As a matter of fact, it’s always made me a little nervous, hanging above the bathroom door as it does.  My father screwed two hooks into its back, very firmly, and, in typical frugal fashion, re-purposed what I’m certain is chain from the swing set he made for his grandchildren.  The board sits atop the crown molding on the door, so the plaster walls do not bear the full weight, but I’ve never felt the engineering was quite up to the standard of redundancy my father usually executed.

So, with all due respect and appreciation, I bought a picture hanging package designed for items weighing between 75 and 100 pounds(more weight than I could ever lift overhead!)

I unscrewed the twisted and bent hooks (yikes, they weren’t in danger of pulling out, but they weren’t straight anymore, either!) and drilled into the beautiful cherry with the proper hardware.

I replaced the swing set chain with picture hanging wire, doubled up and tightly wound.  It was a labor of love. I put my tools away after I finished.

Now, barring a direct lightning strike or a bigger earthquake than we’ve experienced thus far, the birthday gift from years ago is safe and secure...and the folks that pass through the bathroom door are too!

And what about that freeze on the 14th?  Well, the houseplants are happily situated in their winter quarters as well...all except for the big jade, a two person job.

 My mom’s house plants always summered in the screened comfort of their market barn and were moved back into the house and greenhouse well before the first freeze.

I’ve never been that organized and often have fallen upon the mercy of the weather gods in praying for a night that DOESN’T QUITE FREEZE while I promise to move the posies to safety TOMORROW.  Not this time. This year all the hand me down begonias, the antique hoyas, the hibiscus as tall as I am, and the succulents I can't quite part with will have been carried up the stairs two by two to their botanical equivalent of the ark.

Using the right tools for the job?  Moving the plants in before it freezes?  Is THIS the birthday I get not just older...but wiser?  

Thanks for the Memories...

If it were possible to poke that many candles in one cake, mine would have sixty-one.  But even though our family is plenty big enough to devour two cakes in one sitting with a couple of pieces left over for breakfast the next day (yes, that’s what we do...a la mode too), I’m not certain one can get 30+ candles lit and extinguished one, two, three, without entombing the cakes and frosting in a carapace of colored wax.  Maybe someday we will try it... in the back of a pickup, during harvest.  Without much wind.  Or flammable plates.

When you are sixty-one, your grandkids are still young enough to give giant hugs, make silly videos, and even tell you you’re the most beautiful grandma ever...hyperbole being standard operating procedure for grandchildren….Your children, on the other hand, are caught between a rock and hard place: if their mom is over sixty, it follows that, YIKES!   

It’s OK….I couldn’t get my mind around my parents turning sixty...and then seventy….either.  I still felt like the kid when I was pushing forty.

Good news, all.  You are fully certified responsible grownups and we are proud as we could be of your character, accomplishments, hopes and aspirations.  But...we do remember when you were younger...and sillier….and not as responsible, reliable, etc. etc. as you are today….

Our household was unpretentious, not bound by style, or convention...or routine...we bought shoes at Payless Shoes, jeans at John’s Bargain Barn, and a big night of entertainment was renting a VCR and movie in town and picking up a pizza...which was always cold by the time it had wended it’s way eight miles north and east on route O.  

It was years before the kids thought about consumer goods like fancy athletic shoes; growing up on a farm and going to school in Westboro probably inoculated them against that kind of materialism.  After all, the girls had a full complement of Barbies with customized eye makeup and a whole herd of My Little Ponies.  

And if books or toys or tormenting their little brother ceased to be entertaining, Lee and Ann could always go downstairs and sing along with the Judds at the top of their lungs.  Who needs karaoke?

Lee’s first word was “Be”, for baby, and it applied to Orange Baby as well as her baby sister. Annie had Blue Baby...we were literal rather than poetic with doll names.   I swear Ben’s first word was “HyVee”, but maybe that was the first word all three of the kids could read….even before .  

The girls were blessedly non-picky eaters, happy enough with eggs or hot dogs for supper, making it so much easier to pack meals during the busy seasons.  Combines were not family friendly, so it was several years before Ann could perch herself on a water jug, Lee on the fire extinguisher, and Ben on my lap or the armrest after supper.  We were young and flexible then.  

This contortionist act was rivaled only by the trips we sandwiched all five of us into the cab of the pickup.  Mind you, this was before the invention of quad-cabs, before car companies recognized that more than two people might want to ride together in a pickup, or that lots of families considered their pickup to be their second “car”. At any rate, most of our safety defying trips five across were local, undertaken on snowy days or icy days when the country roads were impassable for our Ford Econoline.  Plumped by multiple layers of coats, scarves, boots and coveralls, one of the girls would straddle the gear shift, then the other would squish in beside her (interestingly enough, the cries of ‘she’s touching me!’ ne’er were heard in the cab of the pickup….maybe because no one could breathe) and let the seat belt out enough to fit around both of them. .  Blake would elbow space to shift and shut his door, then, finally, Ben and I would launch ourselves into the remaining space, and yank the other door closed.  Only then would I pull the other seat belt around both of us…padded like climbers on Everest... and attempt to find the buckle underneath whichever sister was next door.  

This seating arrangement did not lend itself to long distance travel, but nonetheless, we drove out west of Grand Island at least twice to club calf sales, dragging our trailer behind and constantly running the defrost to offset the effects of all that respiration.  Bathroom breaks were matters of logistical significance. Strangely enough, I do not remember any of the kids complaining….perhaps they were suffocating or perhaps I couldn’t hear them over the wind and fan...but I recollect quite clearly that none of the calves we bought those two years ever won his class.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  After that we stayed closer to home...and bought black.

I know this sentiment was not shared amongst the kids at all times and at all places, but some of my best memories did involve our family road trips, whether it was an early morning trek on Thanksgiving morning to my aunt’s gracious home in Columbia, a re-enactment of the pioneers’ trail through Wyoming, or museum hopping in Washington, D.C.  I loved picnicking in parks, stopping at historical markers (all of them), wading in cold mountain rivers, and finding a movie theater that last night out.  I appreciated every time one of my patient kids would pose for yet another mountain vista.  I even liked packing…..

Good for a laugh from the safe distance of decades:  digging for Ann’s retainer in the trash of a McDonald’s at the Lake of the Ozarks; Lee’s bright red  Sally Jessy Raphael style glasses….a replacement frame the color of her mother’s face after Lee left her brand new glasses where Ann could sit on them; Ben, checking to see what I thought about shaving his head...after the fact.  Ann and Ben, wearing the signs ‘Drunk’ and ‘Deserter’ at Fort Kearney or playing ‘Jack and Diane’ on their way to school in the Neon...a big improvement from the days Lee and Ann shut him in the linen closet.  Lee and Ben, practicing parallel parking with the dualled up 1984 Ford diesel pickup, Ben directing his sister between the buckets of feed and bales of straw in the driveway.

Tense times: music contest, freshman wrestling, prom.

And, for this mom,the very best of times: a break from running the seeder while I listened to the events of that day after the bus brought the kids home. Long phone calls on the 888 phone number.  Late night talks in the kitchen when the rest of the family was sleeping.

Happy memories. Lucky mom.

  

Just One of Those Very Good Days

It’s been a fine fallish evening with folks in black and orange cheering on the junior high boys on a long grass field at a small town school.  Dust from the gravel road clouds the home team’s sidelines on a stiff northwesterly breeze.  Yesterday’s weird orange wildfire fueled light has yielded to a textbook fall blue with wind driven whitetail clouds. Despite the cool temperatures, it feels like a corn drying day, like the husks are bleaching and corn is denting as our lips cry for chapstick and we pull our Wolves sweatshirts over our Wolves t-shirts, warding off a chill that is really still a month away.  

After a win, we stop for supper like football families usually do...tonight at the Joy Wok where we know Matt and Lizzie, in the Dodge Ram and 26’ trailer, will park as easily as Ann’s minivan with two sets of grandparents and a very hungry six year old.  “Oh I love this place!”, or words similar is what Josh has to say, even though he expressed doubts about “eating Chinese” moments before.  And, sure enough, the notion of instant Chinese buffet has occurred to more than one EA sports family as the Joy Wok fills table by table and the cooks bring fresh ribs and wontons and coconut shrimp.  Josh and Lizzie go back for more; we watch Josh to see what he thinks of his Sweet Sour Sauced bananas….

They disappear without a trace.  Who says little kids are unadventurous eaters.

Matt talks about their new home in progress.  Ann worries about two different business trips to Canada or Washington, D.C.  Millie continues the ongoing saga of the lone chicken.  Blake is on his phone to Ben concerning a notorious case. As Ann left us off at home, a big white moon lit the path to the back door.  We turned on the late West Coast feed of the Cardinals-San Diego and settled into our comfy chairs. I download the pictures from another year’s first football game.

Then I heard Frank Sinatra....

See, back in 1966, he had a hit with a song titled ‘It Was a Very Good Year.’  And that is the phrase I heard, not the lyrics, (look ‘em up and you’ll see what I mean  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydcUaTpiHgQ )

but the slow almost plaintive melody, the conversational phrasing, and the contemplative resolution of each stanza with, “It Was a Very Good Year.”

Why did Sinatra’s melody come to mind? Because tomorrow is one of those very good days:  Aaron’s 14th birthday!  This evening I threw my arm around his tall (and getting taller!)  shoulders and asked him what kind of doughnuts he prefers. Preschool doughnut delivery is our tradition and if Ann can scare up a candle, we will sing and even make Aaron blow it out first thing.  It was a very good evening when Annie and Matt brought over a small package for Ben to open years ago; it contained a box of Uncle Ben’s rice, a play-on-words gift that was a little too cute and too smart for these dumbfounded grandparents-to-be.  Once we came to our senses, it was all glorious excitement not just for our sake, but for our kids and the thrilling adventure that was to be.

If I were to catalog memorable days, certainly the births of our babies and the stories we tell of those days would be on the list.  But as memorable are the days we learned they were anticipated, that they existed, and were going to be loved all those days before we met them.  I cried when they stepped out in faith and were baptized in their church...and when they said their wedding vows in front of loved ones and friends.  Those were also very good days….

On the one hand are these landmark days that fill us to overflowing, make us fall to our knees, they are so overwhelming. On the other hand are wonderful times built of seemingly mundane moments that grab us by the throat, demanding our attention with little building blocks of joy, if we but notice them and measure their small happiness-es.

How could I ever choose a single best day from all these memorable, all these wonderful, all these miraculous, days?

Sunrise, Sunset

The January sun is still on weekend time, yawning its way over the eastern horizon this Saturday morning; its wake up call is worth a picture from the pasture on 3rd street. I'm enroute to the HyVee for chicken broth, onions, and frozen green beans. It's an early tip time for the 4th grade girls in Fairfax, but the recipe for Meatball Soup tells me to "combine all ingredients in slow cooker," so there's just enough time to fill the crockpot, give it a quick stir, grab coffee and head south.  

Like the old Army saw goes, weekend basketball tournaments involve a lot of "hurry up and wait." With one kid playing in the morning and the other kid playing in the afternoon, Lee and Ryan, Gabe and Abbie are in the Fairfax gym for the long haul.  Frito pies and hot dogs, Gatorade and M&Ms take care of the physical needs, but Abbie has only brought one book.  Midway through her brother's games, she finishes it..shuts the cover.....and starts over again.  

Blake and I dine upon hot dogs and Frito pies, so the Meatball Soup is still simmering, untouched, and filling our house with a comforting and inviting aroma.  Just in time for the back door to open upon a new, yet old, crowd of visitors: some strangers, but others making a kind of homecoming, a pilgrimage of sorts, coming back to a place with memories, familiar, yet changed.  It is the kind of visit I understand in my heart and bones, a need to pass the stories on, to knit the generations together, to hold on to the past with laughter and cell phone pictures and the universal love of little kids for rocking chairs.

Sooner, not later, our family will take that same kind of walk.  Through rooms echoing with the noise of holidays, birthdays, games, and music that only we can hear, full of familiar objects rooted in time, not just space. We will commit those places to our hearts, into the realm of used to be, of photographs, of happy memory.  

Christmas is back...like Groundhog Day....at our church this Sunday.  The Bethlehem backdrop, the manger and stable, and the little kids stacked three rows deep in the front pews, costumed as stars and shepherds....all gathered this last week of January because we don't want to let a perfectly good Christmas program go to waste because it was icy one Advent Sunday. A full house at church too, with extended families present to laugh and clap for their children and grandchildren..maybe there's something to be said for midwinter Christmas programs as a change of pace and a reminder that Jesus' season is year 'round.

What better illustration, what better way to send the congregation off with celebration in their hearts, than to witness the baptism of one these kids.  What a blessing to see our Lizzie smiling at the pastor who has known her from birth, joking with him in the baptistry, professing her faith before us all.  "I baptize you, my sister", says Glenn and Lizzie smiles even bigger and the church fills with gladsome applause before we pray and disperse to eat and celebrate. 

 It is such a week: of private joy and tears, of public emotion and celebration, of the endings and beginnings that are the very kernel of the human condition.

Sunrise, Sunset

(Fiddler on the Roof)

(Tevye)

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

(Golde)

I don't remember growing older

When did they?

(Tevye)

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

(Golde)

Wasn't it yesterday

When they were small?

(Men)

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

(Women)

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset 

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Forty some years ago...really, that long.... New Years Eve was numbingly cold and crisp in northwest Missouri. I had ( choose one) 1) been invited, 2) invited myself, or 3) made it clear I had no plans.....to stay over and welcome in the New Year with Blake and his friends on Tarkio. We stayed up way too late, had a wonderful time, and struggled the next day to look wide awake and chipper when he dropped me off in Kansas City where my parents were spending New Years Day with my aunt and uncle.

It was ...to paraphrase the famous line from Casablanca..."the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Tonight, decades later, I poured batter on the griddle and listened to Aaron, Lizzie, and Josh outbrag each other about the number of pancakes they had consumed. Eight to ten each, to listen to them. Aaron nestled on the couch reading, ignoring the football game just like his grandpa. Josh had a camping lantern under the dining room table where Liz and I turned over pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle of Times Square. Lizzie has mad puzzle skills, a talent she has obviously inherited from her Grandma Millie. Spilling the puzzle out on the table is a throwback to New Years past when the women and kids tapped their fingers each time a new piece was joined and the men reared back in their recliners and snored after lunch was over.
It is a good thing to visit these ghosts of New Years past before the fireworks go off and the future is upon us. I am happy to be home, to set a table for the family we only imagined those forty years ago, to watch movies with grandchildren and to listen to the same guy sleep through football every New Year.

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