A Malling

Tomorrow's the day. Tomorrow we'll throw some ratchet straps in the pickup, gather up our loaves of apple bread and make the pilgrimage west to Lincoln. Its the day we visit two of our best customers, express our appreciation, exchange Christmas wishes and maybe some shop talk. Pick up our Christmas tree. Eat a bite of lunch.

And then....then we go Christmas shopping. Correction. I hope to finish up my shopping for this year after taxing the likes of FedEx and UPS for many of the gifts for our extensive family and frequenting Target, Penney, and the bookstore for others. But tomorrow is the day Blake does his Christmas shopping.

This has been standard operating procedure for more than a few years. We used to shop after poinsettia deliveries. More than once we did our shopping on the 22nd or the 23rd, Blake waiting with a book and a coffee while I shuttled shopping bags back and forth like a squirrel piling his hoard. One night we delivered plants to Beatrice, then drove north to Lincoln to catch the stores that closed late. The radio was playing a cowboy poet/singer and the night was as calm and bright as the Christmas carol.

When the OakView Mall in Omaha first opened, we'd top off our shopping with a trip to the book store and a toasty warm mocha for the ride home. We STILL top off shopping with the mocha and a sigh.

I am sorry my loving husband finds me so difficult to shop for. I know he agonizes over this, but through the years, he has done quite well in the gifting category. Some have been necessary, like the washing machine that hid under the straw in the shed for a month. Some have made life and work more pleasant, like the xm radio that migrates from town to greenhouse and back each year during planting season. Some luxurious like the black leather coat from last year. Some have been lovingly personal, like the 1860s map of Nebraska territory I enjoy every day.

But I know every one has been like pulling teeth.

So, tomorrow there will be a guy in a chore coat at the South Pointe Mall in Lincoln. Maybe he'll call in his daughter for reinforcements; maybe he'll go it alone. He's a brave lonely guy and I can see him in my mind's eye tromping through the doors of places like Bath and Body Works and Pier 1, companies he might buy stock in, but not products of. In return, I'll drive home so he can read and recover.

And shopping will be over for another year. Once again, my husband will have given me a gift that makes me smile; the fact he was willing to take a "malling" for me.

The Lake winter 2008

Seasonal feelings

Being cold.......

Memorable cold feelings over the years: Ice skating one wintry evening visiting my folks' friends in northern Illinois. As usual, the "pond" is just a flat lot flooded a few inches deep to accommodate kids playing hockey. We've brought our skates and would rather skate than play games indoors. The temperature....10 below zero, but our folks figure we'll come in when we get cold. And we do.

"The Big Snow" in Chicago: I was in third grade when we had that two to three feet of snow in the Chicago area. We were out of school for a week and reduced to eating reconstituted dried milk on our cereal in the morning. As Lucy would say: "BLECHHH!" When we finally returned to school, a friend and I got completely engrossed in building tunnels through the prairie drifts during recess. Eventually we noticed that we were the only kids outside. I don't know how long they would have left us out before someone came to look. I do know everyone stared when we blundered back into our classroom, chilled, wet, and embarrassed.

Building bays one through four of the big greenhouse. Blake and I put those up by ourselves one fall, which drifted into wintertime before the structures were ready to cover. We were desperate to have something plastic ready by Christmastime when our "help" would be home on vacation. We put up polygal on days hovering near zero, fumbling for the drill, dropping self tapping screws, warming ourselves for ten minutes at a time in the pickup. Finger aching, protesting, screaming, extremities. Beyond numb.

The winter Lee was born. We lived in the little house with no furnace. We froze the pipes to the washer; we hung blankets on the doorways. We sat in the kitchen when we were awake and slept under the electric blanket. The snow that winter was the deepest I've seen in Atchison county since I've lived there. It didn't melt until February 28th, the day after Lee was born.

In the cold farm house department, the New Year's night we spent in the rock farmhouse in Callaway county. No heat up there either. My sister had the electric blanket and I had lots of conventional blankets. That night I learned that one could have blankets enough to physically smother, yet not keep out the cold. An educational and frigid experience.

Funny how its much easier to remember being cold than being warm. Memorable warmth would be Christmas Eves in Grandma Nelson's front room; lots of people and a red hot oven. The roaring fires in Millie and Charlie's old house. The kitchen at Spruce after baking coffeecakes, or apple breads, or even just running the dishwasher. Getting off the airplane in Hawaii! One of the most appealing visual manifestations of warmth happened the summer we traveled to Ireland. That day we'd visited the grand park dedicated to the horse; it had poured all afternoon, completely overwhelming all attempts to deflect the water with umbrellas or coats. But that evening, we stopped by an elegant, low slung hotel. It reeked of class with beds of red tuberous begonias, framed horse prints, quiet carpets. The bar area was more akin to a drawing room, with fine legged divans and chairs in civilized groupings. But there was a cheery fire banishing the memory of the rainy afternoon, and mugs of the best Irish coffee I've ever tasted. I felt transported to another ecosystem, shedding my corn fed Midwest skin, donning, at least in my imagination, a cape, black riding boots, and leather gloves. It is still a magnificently evocative memory of the kind of warmth that has little to do with absolute temperatures themselves.

caramel frosting for Blake

Domestic goddesses

My Grandma Froerer was a tiny little lady as was, for that matter my Granny Renken. At least that's how I remember it; I think I passed both ladies in height when I was about ten. But whenever I make frosting, I think of her with admiration. In deference to her memory, and because it tastes really good, I make a mean caramel frosting, using brown sugar and oleo, cooking and boiling by the clock, then beating in the powdered sugar. Its really a wonderful thing over applesauce cake, or oatmeal cake, or spice cake.

 My grandma frosted yellow cakes and oatmeal cookies. And, she made that caramel frosting by hand with no aid or abetting by mechanical means. Grandma cooked her frosting in a quart or a half or two quart pan, then wrapped a dish towel around the pan and beat and counted and beat and counted til the frosting was golden and smooth. I can only swear that we were duly appreciative...we would carefully peel the frosting layer off our cake and lay it on the side of our plate, eat our cake, then eke out the luscious treat in little tiny forkfuls as slowly as we could. We never left our cake unattended, knowing that one slip would mean someone else at the table scraping our frosting onto their plate.

Grandma was a domestic goddess in other respects. Each year she sewed us flannel nighties for Christmas with ruffles, buttons, and little bows. Each year we looked forward to our new Easter dresses, made for little girls who lived 400 miles away. For the school year, there were jumpers, for play, corduroy pants and cotton shorts, all sent in boxes wrapped in brown paper.

My mother also sewed for her daughters; after Grandma's eyes and hands failed her, my mother carried on, sewing my prom dresses and finally, as her mother had done for her, a wedding dress. The ritual of going to a fabric store and fingering the cotton blends and florals, rifling through the pattern files, or pawing through the remnant counter still feels like home.

 I don't sew, I'm afraid, but my daughter does, so I occasionally come along to ooh and aah over the potentially lovely outfits and fabrics. My sole efforts with needles are pedestrian attempts at mending. While pregnant with Lee, I did embroider a number of felt Christmas ornaments and even made Lee's first Christmas stocking. That was later recycled into Ben's stocking; two years ago, Lee, Ann, and I went into embroidery warp speed and made stockings for Gabe, Abbie, Lizzie, and Kenzie at my house, and then Kenzie and Ben again as wedding gifts. I understood the camaraderie of sewing that our ancestors enjoyed at quilting bees as we shared progress and strove toward our deadline. How pleasant it is to pull the socks from the cedar chest and know they are home grown.

 I look forward to seeing Lizzie and Abbie is some of the pretty Easter dresses their mamas wore and their great grandma sewed for them. Each spring we'd take a picture of the new dresses and send down record of her handiwork. This Christmas, Lizzie and Abbie will be resplendent in dresses and pinafores made by their great Grandma Millie for two other little girls, their cousins Alissa and Bella. Lizzie and Abbie were so excited, preening and posing when presented with their new dresses.

Grandma Millie carries on the home made tradition in her kitchen too. Her mother's angel food cake recipe, complete with notations, is hand written in her copy of the of the "old" St. John's cookbook. With Grandma gone, Millie now bakes angel food cakes from scratch for everyone's birthday. Whatever time of year, no matter how busy she is, a lovely glazed tender angel food cake will appear in the birthday person's home, presented on the pink flowered cake plate. Almost compensates for having a birthday.

Grandma crocheted afghans; I loved the progression of the rainbow colored yarn. She tried to teach me, but I proved proficient at nothing more than making long chains. Granny crocheted rag rugs which captivated me. I collected lots of rags and even completed a rug. But it was as wavy as the Pacific ocean and would have tripped all comers if I had put it on the floor. When I was in college, Granny took my sad project and unraveled it, recrocheting it for me, adding the stitches in their proper places so it laid flat.

We modern ladies have no problem keeping busy; we have lots of calls on our time, both in and out of the home. My children would have suffered if I'd been in charge of all their apparel. Home cooking was sometimes sporadic. But I am happy to have tangible evidence of the talents and skills of the ladies who preceded me as wives and moms. Whenever I stir up a cream cheese coffeecake, or a Mrs. Peter's coffeecake, or work up some gooey rolls by hand, I pay homage to that tradition.

The stockings were hung on the chimney

In Hopes that Saint Nicholas

Because the gas log is often blazing this time of year, the stockings are not hung by the chimney, but rather on the piano. They barely fit; Blake's spartan red stocking of fake fur, sparse in decoration but deep and wide in volume, hangs around the corner on one end. Lizzie's stocking, a snowman waving from his mitten, anchors the other end. In between there is a rainbow of felt, sequins and applique', evidence of a large and blessed attendance in the front room on Christmas morn.

My old stocking was handmade by a friend of my grandmother's. The felt and sequins are not so bountiful or bright as the newer stockings of the kids'. But my favorite part are the little bells, three of them, that tinkle sweetly from its sole. Our stockings hung from two knobs on a little clock shelf above the rocking loveseat. Standing on it was verboten, but the rules were relaxed during the holiday season; or maybe no one noticed the times I stood up on the couch and felt the toe of my stocking or even took it down to see if Santa had left a downpayment on Christmas. He never did, but the sock was always full of delightful tidbits on Christmas morning. Maybe there were matchbox cars, or handblown glass animals, or little carved animals, or a teaset inside a wooden apple. I don't know where "Santa" found the fascinating trinkets, but they were always creative and some of my favorite gifts. Later, when we girls were in high school and college, we could always count on Santa for pretty earrings and new undies;for propriety's sake, I can only assume that Mrs. Santa took care of those purchases.

Its fun to be Santa. The items in the stockings may be necessary to happiness, but they shouldn't be necessary to survival. The small pleasures abound; new socks, lotions from Bath and Body Works, new favorite pens, esoteric kitchen tools, paperback books, music in all its evolving forms. Rolls of film have mutated into memory cards. For years, Santa has brought my husband replacements for whatever pliers and wrenches he sacrificed to the corn field and combine gods. New gloves have been de rigeur.

And now Santa has a whole new crop of little people to bring presents for. Little folks to help pick out the iced cookies to leave on the plate. An audience to gasp and point when Santa comes by on Christmas Eve and tromps across the icy yard and down the icy street. New listeners to the beloved phrases of the poem, 'twas the night before Christmas'. New imaginations to ponder how Santa gets in the house (no mystery here; he comes in the front door!)

For many years, we spent our Christmas eves the same way. First, a soup supper at Millie's to celebrate Grandpa Hurst's Christmas Eve birthday. Then, family Communion at church. Then the family would fragment to different destinations, finally reconvening at Grandma Nelson's house after the St. John's Sunday school program. Late in the evening, we'd stop by and pin our wishes on the Yule log at Janice and Bruce's. Finally, in the quiet and chill of night, we'd come home and get ready to head for bed. Maybe I'd still have a coffeecake to cook; maybe I'd still have one to frost. But even if I didn't, I'd linger in the kitchen until all the bedroom lights went out and the house was quiet.

Then, Santa would head down to the basement and bring up the bags of toys. The socks, toys, books, and little gewgaws would be arranged with all the love and care a mom/wife could muster and with the smiling knowledge of the pleasure the pj-ed recipients would get from them in the morning, whether the sun was up or not. Santa would get her cup of coffee and her camera and begin her very Merry Christmas to all....