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an everyday life

Tag Archives: Birthdays

Fat Tuesday Snowflakes

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by Janell in Life at Home

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Birthdays, Lent, Love, Mardi Gras, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Gardening, Oscar nominated films, Relationships, Snow, weather

photoToday, a wintry mix of rain and snow falls outside my window.  But we might as well ignore that old news … because in the time it has taken my eyes to move from computer to window screen, the light gray sky has become full of fat, fluffy snowflakes.

So it goes with Oklahoma weather… and life and… well, I’ve been thinking of late… those relationships with whom we love more than words can convey.  All of them suffer droughts and seasons of moisture and gladness and sorrow and times when things just seem to sync and other times when we just feel walloped by our powerlessness to fix or make things better.

City officials — was it last week or the week before last?– began brainstorming on further water conservation strategies should our unwelcomed drought linger on and on into infinity and beyond.  Lawn and garden irrigation may be outright prohibited — and/or those of us who use more that what the city deems “their fair share” may incur a surcharge.  For now, we are under a winter rationing plan, following rules once reserved only for the depths of summer hell … which means, that all my big ‘ole spring gardening dreams have blown away in a cloud of dust.

There would have been a time, not that long ago, when I would have plunged ahead with plans of all sorts, come the proverbial hell or high water.  Why, by now, I would have already planned which new shrubs would be going where..and lined up contractors to break up old backyard concrete so that new paths could be drawn to enlarge and soften and fill in new garden lines.  So, I wonder: Is it age that causes me to listen to the weather forecasts and adjust plans, to listen more closely to what people say (or don’t), or to listen to the rhythm of my days in order to move more in keeping with their changing beat?

The local AMC movie theater is offering a 2-1 special for anyone who wishes to view the Academy award nominated film, Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Half of me wants to go, because I know this film would stir my soul and sprinkle in new seeds of thought, that only this particular piece of art has in its treasure box.  But instead, I’m sitting here in from of my hearth, in my Hemingwayesque, Havana inspired living room —  a decor, if you can believe it, that sprung out of last year’s visit to Key West, where we vacationed exactly a year ago today, while meanwhile, back at our OKC ranch-house, it was snowing and my youngest son was turning twenty-four and some of his siblings were picking him up for a birthday dinner of sushi.

388-0

So… though half of me wants to go to the movies the other half — perhaps the better half of me  — prefers to watch the real-time show of falling snow outside my picture window.  Already, the trees are sugar-coated with snow.

I tend not to sugar-coat life — just ask my children — and too often, what I say is just more than they can take.  It makes me sad that I can’t do better… that I can’t share my thoughts in a way that is healing rather than hurting, where words spoken would fall gently, oh so soft and quiet and beautiful like this snow falling outside my window.  When I serve up too much truth… I tell myself I’ll do better.  And maybe, sometimes, I do.  But for better and worse, I am who I am, and I slip into old molds of living, often hurting those I love most without trying, and, often, without even knowing it.  Until days or weeks or months down the road, when I begin to wonder why I haven’t heard from this loved on or that one….

It makes me crazy.  So much so that I try to rationalize away the pain by telling myself that my children (and others whom I love) have many, many friends willing to put the best gloss on life… and that, well, they have only one me… who is willing to level with them… who is willing to share the unvarnished truth with them… well, at least, the truth according to Moi… but it’s poor comfort with no staying power, that melts as fast as an Oklahoma snow.

Today is President Lincoln’s birthday… and if you haven’t seen it… Lincoln would be another wonderful Oscar nominated film to catch today… if you are not catching, like me, a better reality show of snowflakes falling on a drought-thirsty land.

Today is also my youngest son’s twenty-fifth birthday… and I wish… oh, I wish for all those sorts of things that mothers everywhere probably wish for their children, you know, that all his dreams might come true and that life itself, everyday, will be better and more magical than the best dreams can conjure.

Today is also Fat Tuesday, which means tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and then Lent and a forty-day season of time for thoughts such as these.  What else can I say… but God, have mercy?

Pie & Shrimp Tales

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by Janell in Far Away Places, In the Kitchen, Life at Home

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Birthdays, Cooking, Florida Keys, In the Kitchen, Key West Pink Shrimp, Lemon Cream Pie, Sister Rivalry, Southern Living, Travel

“… I also remember Grandma baking lots of sugar cookies, lemon pie and candied sweet potatoes, but I’ve no recipes for these.  Grandma just threw these things together from memory.”

— Cousin Nellie Yadon’s recollection of Great-Grandma Taylor’s cooking, published in the Centennial Cookbook of Rock Creek Baptist Church, 1997.

Five days gone from the Florida Keys and I’m not ready to write of my visit in any serious fashion.  Instead, I’ve been catching up on the life I missed and catching up on birthdays I missed, while key memories wash in and away from the shores of my mind.

Celebrating birthdays once had me making home-cooked meals for each of my children and their families — I’d prepare whatever the honoree selected from my standard “menu” of meals.  That stopped in the year of Daddy.   And carried on through the Summer of Sis.  And the very long difficult year of moving uptown twenty blocks and the grief that followed in the wake of dying relationships.  Was that just last year?

The straight-up story is that the part of me that used to relish making birthday dinners for everyone just quietly died.  And that these days, I celebrate family birthdays more quietly.  Smaller gatherings.  Smaller meals.  Sometimes a special restaurant.  Or maybe I’ll make some sweet dessert.  And when desired, I’ll help my children pull together birthday dinners for their families.  But usually, I limit home-cooked birthday meals for the two I share home with — unless away from the home-front, like last week.

My youngest, who still calls my home his, turned 24 on the 12th, when we were  walking up and down the party street of Duval in Key West. So last Friday I arrived home with need of cooking Kyle a birthday meal.  By then, already two birthday meals in the black, he was still happy to redeem my guilt, once I offered up two of three favorites — home-made calzones followed by twenty-four chocolate chip cookies — fresh from the oven.

Only later did I wonder whether Kyle might have preferred his favorite fried shrimp. For some fishy reason, I never thought “shrimp.”  Maybe it had to do with all that seafood my husband and I enjoyed last week? — but the idea never floated across my mind.  Until later.  Until I stumbled across frozen bags of Wild Key West Pink Shrimp while shopping at Whole Foods.

We’d hope to stumble across these ‘not-to-be-missed’, “sweet pink shrimp harvested from the crystal clear waters of the Florida Keys” while IN the Florida Keys last week.  But no.  Instead, all up and down the Keys, not once did we find these sweet pinks offered on the menu.  But being good sports and all, we kept ourselves busy trying conch and stone crab, then dining on shrimp and Yellow-tail Snapper and Mahi-mahi and Grouper, every seafood meal long hoping to catch sight of the words — Key West Pink Shrimp — printed on the menu.

It took dining at Southern Living magazine’s “pick” for Key West Pink Shrimp for me to raise the white flag.   Not finding them again, I asked our server, half expecting they might be an ‘off-menu’ item.  Instead, she gave us a shocking pink shrimp tale —  how they’d been taken off menus due to unsteady supplies.

At the time, the story seemed plausible.  Even though it didn’t mesh with Southern Living magazine’s recent write-up on the Keys, reporting “these succulent crustaceans are available year-round.”  But now I’m not so sure.  Seeing all those frozen tails while fishing the aisles of my local grocers, I’m thinking pink shrimp could be a sister to that other Key delicacy made with limes and a graham cracker pie shell; because both appear to lack straight-up stories.

Who invented Key Lime Pie? Nobody knows.

Who makes the best Key Lime Pie?   “We do.”

Where can I find Key West Pink Shrimp in the Keys?  Here’s a home-made shrimp tale I’ve spliced together:  Nobody knows like we do — at Whole Foods.

~~~~~~~

When it comes to being best in pie-making, the stories coming out of the Keys have nothing on my family’s.  A somewhat friendly sister rivalry had Aunt Jo tops in the categories of Pumpkin and Pecan and Mom with Coconut Cream Pie.  And though both made their best version of lemon pie, no one, but no one, made lemon pie like Great-Grandma Taylor’s.  Why more than fifty years after her death, we’re still talking about that pie, though most of us never tasted it.

But Mother had.  And so had Jo. And I suppose both sisters loved that lemon pie enough to emulate.  Perhaps this explains why Mother especially favored a particular tale about a lemon pie even more, since it raised questions about the fineness of her sister Jo’s pie-making abilities.  Mother told the story often — whenever Sister Jo wasn’t around — and last Monday, while four of us shared a lemon cream pie I made for Jane’s birthday, we relished the tale again.

Jane remembers the story taking place at a long-ago Mother-Daughter banquet held at Rock Creek Baptist Church.  Her mother — the woman we grandkids called Granny — sat with her three daughters — Jo, Mother and herself — with Great-Grandma sitting next to Jo.  It was likely not a catered affair since Aunt Jo contributed a lemon pie for dessert.  And because she knew Great-Grandma’s particular fondness for lemon pie, Jo offered to get her grandmother’s dessert; and, without mentioning she had been the pie-maker, Jo presented Great-Grandma a slice of lemon pie.

To this day, nobody knows why Jo kept her lemon pie-making a secret from Great-Grandma Taylor.   Perhaps she’d hoped Great-Grandma would rave over it, or maybe she wanted her pie to stand the test of an impartial judge.  But never hearing Jo’s side of the story, I can only report that a few bites into Jo’s lemon pie, Great-Grandma leaned into Jo and whispered in her ear, “I don’t know WHO made this lemon pie, but they sure were stingy with the sugar.”

Being on the end of a straight-up answer — Jo might say —  is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be.  Especially when it’s stingy with the sugar and just a bit tart.  Like Great-Grandma’s famed lemon pie.  Or like Great-Grandma herself.  And maybe like my version of that famous family pie without an official recipe — that for the record, one might call, an ‘off-menu’ item of mine.

Lemon Cream Pie

Meringue

3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
6 Tbsp sugar

Separate egg white from yolk — set aside yolk for pie filling.  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer on high until foamy — add sugar gradually, beating until stiff and glossy.  Set aside.

One 9″ Baked Pie Shell

Pie Filling

3 egg yolks
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp water
~~~
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups milk, heated in microwave (do not boil)
~~~
2 tsp grated lemon rind
6 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 Tbsp butter
1/4 tsp vanilla
 

In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with salt and water and set aside.

In a large saucepan, mix cornstarch and 1 cup of sugar.   Add hot milk and mix with whisk — cook over medium-low heat until thickened.  Add enough cooked filling to bowl of egg yolks — when well-mixed, return egg mixture to the remaining pie filling and simmer until egg sets, stirring constantly.  Add butter, lemon juice, rind and vanilla and stir until mixture begins to bubble.  Remove about a half cup of meringue and stir into pie filling.  Blend until lumps disappear — over beating will cause the mixture to lose its fluffiness.  Pour filling into baked pie shell and top with remaining meringue.  Bake in a 425 oven for 5-7 minutes, watching closely, until lightly browned.

To One Turning One

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Janell in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Aging, Birthdays, Childhood Memories, Everyday Life, Raising Children, Remembering, Soul Care

Dear Reese,

There’s much I wish to tell you today, though you’re not old enough to hear it, or better to say, not old enough to remember it.  I wish you could remember the big party your parents are throwing that celebrates your great love of dogs — what you call DA — I wish you could remember the hot dogs and corn dogs and the ‘PUP-peroni’ pizza and what I know will be the sweetest little doggie cupcakes anyone could bake.  I wish you could remember the forty or so people who have paused their own lives to show up today in yours.  And not to forget the gifts they’ll tote with them – the toys and the books and the clothes — most of which you’ll outgrow, too quick to remember.

But as much as I wish you could remember every delicious detail about today, there are other things I wish you to remember more — things about your first year of life that no one knows because they concern just you and me.  They grew out of that special six weeks we spent together last April and May when your mother returned to work after her maternity leave was over.  Knowing that I won’t always be here to help you remember these — I’m taking time today, to write them down just for you.  Because I wish you to know, in grown-up words, how special you are to me — and most of all — how special you’ve made me feel this year.

Let me begin by backing up, to the summer before you were born, when your mother asked if I’d be willing to babysit so she could return to her kindergarten class to finish the school year.  While I was quick to say ‘yes,’ you should know that the thought of caring for you really scared me.  Not because I thought I’d drop you or anything.  It was more complicated than that, though less substantial too, since my fear rested on a false self-image of myself.  You see, I’ve never regarded myself as particularly maternal — I’ve never considered myself a good mother or, for that matter, a good grandmother either — I use to often joke how no one would ever think of nominating me for a ‘mother of the year’ award.  Maybe it was those standard sixty-hour weeks I worked for years that had me writing this bit of fiction.  But writing this now makes me wonder whether they even have these kinds of awards anymore — and for that matter, what a ‘good’ mother looks like?  Today I’d say that I couldn’t have been too bad to have ended up with four great children — one of which is your lovely mother.

But how it happened, that all those long-held fears and insecurities evaporated in days, I can’t really say.  As I look back on that time, it’s funny that I began our six weeks together believing I was doing your mother a big favor but ended the six weeks realizing how it was you and she that had favored me.  And it wasn’t long after I began watching you before I forgot all my shortcomings and even forgot myself.  As proof, I share with you a note I wrote to a friend last April 19th:

My saving grace these days is time spent with new granddaughter Reese. Already two weeks into my six-week stint, time is chipping away at my front-row seat which allows me to observe Reese awaken to the marvelous world around her; Reaching clumsy hands towards rattles, cooing along with Baby Einstein’s version of Mozart, and studying her own wiggling fingers with intensity and wonder, I am reminded all over again how I too often sleep-walk through life.

I won’t ever forget those days when I cradled you in my lap as we’d sit in your mother’s rocker — how the rest of the busy world would retreat as I read stories to you or sang songs to you and feed you your bottle.  Even now, I can recall how you’d always look up to my face and study it intently — enough so that I sensed that unwavering gaze deep within my soul.  And somehow, you doing this simple thing — this natural thing, really — made me feel both worthy and loved.  By May 9th, I wrote these words to the same friend:

I find myself letting a few fat tear drops fall down my face fairly often these days as my daily time with Reese is drawing to a close. We’ve only eight school days left, and then my daughter Kara will be officially on leave. I tell myself it will the good to resume my own life again, to have more time to paint, to maybe get a head start to garden puttering — but somehow, my heart’s not buying what my mind is rationalizing away.

Of course, even after our six weeks was over, your Mom invited me to babysit or drop in for a visit.  You were sick when I watched you one afternoon, the week before Christmas — it may have been a combination of teething and allergies and maybe even a virus — but that didn’t stop you from playing with your many toys.  I watched you crawl from one to other — and whenever you encountered something soft — what your Mom calls one of your ‘loveys’ — you would pick it up with one hand to cuddle it close to your face while sticking the thumb of your other hand in your mouth for a little suck.   I watched you do this over and over that day, with first your stuffed animals and then your soft animal-shaped reading chairs and even most of your mother’s A-Z teaching puppets.  More than once you cuddled into me and began sucking your thumb — though it took me a few times to notice that your other hand held tight to part of my shirt — your way of letting me know that I was one of your inner circle of “loveys” too.  That you did this to me almost undid me — but then, true love always does undo us — and redeem us — and remake us — when we give it a free hand in our lives.

On this day for making wishes, I wish you to know you’re my lovey too. But without need of these grown-up words, I know you know.  Because you’ve read it in my eyes.

Your NaNaNa

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