Author Archives: Janell

Color My World

06 Saturday Feb 2010

Posted by in Life at Home

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The church hall was full of well-wishers.

How many of them, I wondered, would have ever thought my uncle would be celebrating his eightieth birthday today.  Not many, I’m guessing.  Yet, here he stands defying the odds  —  how many years later?… and how many times?… from what many believed would be his deathbed.

Yet, even today, in the midst of this birthday party, I understand my uncle isn’t feeling well.  But to look at him smiling and his eyes twinkling and his arms reaching out for one long hug after another, no one would ever guess what was going on underneath.

I think this is how it is with folks of my uncle’s generation; — it was the same with my parents — they keep their troubles to themselves.  They realize that there is a time and place for everything and today was not a time for sharing pain.  Instead, today was all about joy  — a time to remember and honor a life still being lived.

Propped against the tables were old photos — I’d forgotten than my aunt and uncle were once in a bowling league in the sixties.  How young they looked then, Bob barely thirty and JoAnn not yet thirty.  These two have been part of my life from the beginning, of course — and though I remember them in the 1960’s, I don’t remember them looking like this.

What I do remember is that I always thought my aunt and uncle were rich; and in a way, they were rich, when compared to my family.  They always seem to drive a new car every couple of years, they went on long vacations to neat places like Yellowstone, and they lived in a house that had central air conditioning — all things that were not part of my family’s everyday life.

They were the first in our family to get color television —  at a time when not all shows were broadcast in color — and often, they would invite us to come out to their house to watch television.  Shows like A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Wizard of Oz — which I didn’t know was bursting with color until I experienced it at Aunt Jo and Uncle Bob’s house.

And while I now know that my aunt and uncle weren’t rich, at least in the way that I once imagined, I see that they were rich, and still are rich, in ways that matter more than money.  Just like the color television set they shared with their poorer relations, my aunt and uncle colored my world with all sorts of nice memories, some centered around the holidays while others just made the everyday more special.

To recount these memories shrinks their importance, makes them seem so little when they were not.  How can I convey my excitement when my aunt stopped by our house to chat with my mother on her way home from work?  Or  when my aunt and uncle picked up my brother and I to take us to the movies with my cousins — where we saw movies like Bye, Bye, Birdie and Summer Magic?

They just showed up in my life.  And today, I just showed up in theirs.

Soft Ginger Cookies

05 Friday Feb 2010

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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I once thought of these as my cookies.

Not as in … all mine… but more as what comes out of youthful innocence…to keep one unaware of the likes and dislikes of others.  I don’t recall Mom making these as she did her Peanut Butter cookies.  So who knows but that perhaps it was my passion that fed my sibling’s desire for these cookies.

I became aware of our common feeling about this cookie only last summer, when my sister baked a batch for my brother’s birthday, then ended up keeping half the batch for herself.   Recalling the memory of her half and half methodology, I baked a batch of these cookies on her birthday a few days ago, with a plan to keep half —  and with a slight refinement of my sister’s formula — give the remaining half to my sister to share with my brother.

Sharing these cookies is something I’ve done for years.  In part because they are my favorite — but also because they sit pretty on a serving dish, they transport easily and stay fresh for days.  I’ve shared these cookies at church gatherings, work parties and even given them away as Christmas gifts.  I don’t know how many times I’ve given away the recipe.

It was one of the first I gathered from my mother, back when I began my collection in the early seventies.  The recipe was one Mom clipped from a local newspaper — now mustard brown with age, the clipping is pasted into Mom’s favorite cookbook, one of the few things of Mom’s that Christi has chosen to keep.

Like any good recipe, this one is splattered with forty years of  use.  But unlike most, this recipe has also survived a hit and run casualty from a collision with two canines, that began with Max’s foray on the kitchen counter top.

Pilfering food from the counter is one of Max’s favorite past-times that has netted him many tasty morsels.  Unfortunately for Max, the counter was bare that day but for the recipe card.  So when Max swept the counter clean with his huge paws, the card took flight and landed at Cosmo’s feet, who quickly nabbed the prize and ran like mad  for her hidey hole.  By sheer luck, I saw her running away from the scene of the crime and got to the card in time to save it from certain death.  Carefully, I pulled the card from Cosmo’s clenched jaws, extricating all but one small bite that she refused to part with.

Keeping a share of the recipe is obviously something Cosmo subscribes to also.  Or is it just something that comes natural to all dogs?

Try it and see.  From my life to yours.

Soft Ginger Cookies

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup shortening
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. salt

Cream sugar & shortening; mix in egg and molasses. Beat well. Gradually add sifted dry ingredient to form a stiff dough. Refrigerate for two hours or over night. Form into small balls, roll in sugar and bake on a greased cookie sheet — 10 to 12 mins at 375 degrees. Makes four dozen.

Wholly Listening

04 Thursday Feb 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care, Writing

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Regret closes in.

What door did I just close?  What would have happened had I not been so quick on the tongue-trigger?  What might have been said had I waited in silence?

Of course, conversations happen fast.  The words of another don’t quite sink in before the moment is gone.  It’s only later that the loss is felt, only later that regret fills in the hole of what might have been.  And as much as we’d like to retrace our words back to the time of impending revelation, the opening we glimpsed too late  is gone.

It’s funny — in an ironic, sad sort of way —  that it was just last night when I was talking to my husband about when, in my writing, I most sense the presence of the Holy.  Inevitably, it comes through telling stories of  times when life catches us by surprise, when we forget ourselves enough that we simply react, without fully processing what it is we should do.  Or what it is we should say.

For a moment, we are immersed by whole truth.   Unbridled hurt or anger flares up and life shakes lose a tear.  We feel naked and exposed.  Or sometimes we’re just so darn giddy that if we don’t embarrass ourselves by our victory jigs (after we’ve come to our good senses), then we have surely embarrassed friends or family or complete strangers with our demonstrations of foolish and unabridged joy.

Sacred moments catch us by surprise, and often, I realize only later that I may have closed a door on something important.  It happens more often than I would like and perhaps, more often than I know.  Last night it happened with my brother’s unexpected call.

Jon never calls on Wednesday and never so close to bedtime.  Looking back on it, I guess he was in the midst of  a whole-truth moment, where he simply had to tell me something, in spite of the fact that he was calling at the wrong hour or on the wrong evening.

I can’t recall Jon’s exact words but he called to thank me for bringing a holy listener into his life.  Jon wanted to tell me about  their first meeting and how much he had enjoyed being with Jim.  On some level, I sensed the weight of  unprocessed longing in the words expressed and the words that may have come next.  But I’ll never know since I jumped into the silence with words that should have waited on the weightier words of my brother.

Silence is indeed golden.  It helps us be better listeners.  It gives us time to absorb.  It gives the one speaking time to clarify and expand.  If truth is resting on the tip of a tongue, silences invites the truth to slip out in the open.

With silence, our listening can become whole.  And in the  listening, when the speaker loses all track of  time and forgets about the listener and for a moment, even forget about himself, the listening become something else.  Holy.