Tag Archives: Raising Children

The Good Old Days

09 Monday Nov 2009

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My husband and I paused everyday life last night to mark the birthday of my first-born.  I’ve been a mother thirty-one years now; if you’re wondering, it seems every bit of thirty-one years, as I think on all the intervening events that have marked the passage of time.

We enjoyed a fine dinner in a nostalgic red leather booth at Cattleman’s Steakhouse, Oklahoma’s only claim to fame in the travel book, 1000 Places to See Before you Die. 1000 things Life does have a way of coming fast and furious, especially in your thirty-something years.  By day Kate is a full-time nurse.  By night and day, Kate juggles the competing demands of wants and needs that come with a family of six.

As I listened to her talk, I was struck by how similar Kate’s life was to mine at her age.  Newly married for the second time, her challenging career, her challenging home life with all the children’s activities — well, it’s enough to lose sleep over.  And Kate does.  She mentioned at dinner that she was unable to sleep the night before;  ironically, Kate was watching a television show on travel destinations in the middle of the night.

Though I suffer my fair share of sleepless nights, it’s worse to imagine your children fighting the same battle.   Usually, after an hour of tossing and turning, I get up to read a little.  Or like tonight, when my head is so full of thoughts of Mom’s storage shed and Kate’s birth night, I find it best just to release the spinning thoughts and anchor them to a line of words.  It’s an act of discipline, as if to write is to mutter sleepily….”Now stop your whining.”

I always lost sleep towards the end of a pregnancy.  My mother was living six hours south when I went into labor on a Wednesday night thirty-one years ago.  Kate was born early Thursday morning  — 1:28 am to be precise — and I recall being so tired and sore after it was all over, all I wanted to do was sleep.  Had it not been for the nurses who came in to check on this or that, I would have. 

My parents and sister arrived soon after Kate’s birth.  And Mom stayed behind a week to help me ease into my motherhood groove.  I’ll never forget those first days with Mom and Kate; even now, I can see Mom busy working in the kitchen, helping me with all the laundry  — how can one little baby cause so much dirty laundry?  —  and when all the work was done, Mom kept her hands busy by making a few crafts, including a nice big Christmas stocking for Kate.

I take out the memory of those days again and hold it up to the light.  How young my mother was then — both of us really, though it didn’t seem so with Mom now a grandmother and me now a mother.  Why is it that we never quite see life as it really is, while we are in the midst of living it?  Why does the passage of time and hindsight make the past more clear and even more precious? 

These thoughts remind me of a few words from a Carly Simon tune where she continues to refrain that these are the good old days.  These are words I need to hear and bear in mind as I continue to live my everyday life.  These are the good old days.

Yet, as good as the message is, it’s not a ‘just right’ fit for Kate’s 31st birthday and where she is in life.  Instead, I offer a variation on the same theme, from another Carly tune that I think she’ll recognize.  The words of this song, published in my 31st year, remind that if we’re willing to play the game of LIFE, that second and third chances happen; that the best kind of travel is our own time travel though life; and that seasons and reason to celebrate are always coming around again.  Just like a string of birthdays.

But in the meantime, I hope Kate relishes this one.  Because from where I sat, this birthday is already a good old day.

Savory Baked Chicken

02 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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To my eternal good, my husband’s first wife discarded her marriage vows for greener pastures.  But liking my husband’s last name so much, Cathy wore her first married name through two subsequent marriages and divorces.  While I don’t know what subsequent husbands thought about her last name souvenir, I can report that husband number one simply shrugs his shoulders and laughs;  Mr. West is glad she found something about him worth keeping.

Thankfully, when wife number one vacated my husband’s life, she left behind a few recipes worth keeping.  This baked chicken recipe is one.  It takes less than an hour to prepare from start to finish, which makes it a perfect meal to whip up after a day at work or school.  We keep it just as simple with the sides — a package of Lipton’s Butter Noodles and maybe some green beans or English peas.

All our kids enjoyed this meal. My husband began preparing it in our early days of marriage, before the boys came along.  Since hubby beat me home from work by an hour, he’d have supper on the table when I walked in the door.  Ohhhh, the memories.  It was a fine arrangement but for the girls; they were use to my cooking, such at it then was.  And being kids stuck in their comfortable groove, there was much gnashing of teeth about their new step-dad’s exotic style of cooking.  To their way of thinking, it was a scary world of Crab Quiche and dishes with ucky mushrooms compared to Mom’s kid friendly fried bologna sandwiches and fried potatoes.  So it’s saying a lot that my girls love this baked chicken recipe from their first bite — well, once my man got smart and ditched the mushrooms.

The meal grew to become our oldest son Bryan’s favorite meal — and when O.U. housing asked all the parents of  incoming freshman for their child’s favorite taste from home, this is the recipe they got from us.  With a grin, I think I called it “Bryan’s Savory Chicken.”  I figured the first Mrs. West wouldn’t mind since she’d taken the same liberties herself, when she wrote the recipe out for her own use way back when.  Our copy of the recipe still lives in a little home-made green binder that my husband received as his parting gift; in Cathy’s long hand written on notebook paper, there at the top of the page, bigger than Dallas, it says:  Cathy’s Savory Baked Chicken.  In parenthesis underneath Chicken, is the name (Brenda C——-.).  In Cathy’s life, it looks like some names were ditched while others are forever hitched.

And who knows but maybe you’ll want to hitch your own name to this recipe.  From my life — in a leftover sort of way — to yours.

Savory Baked Chicken

Serves 3 to 4      Preheat Oven to 400 degrees
 
1 pkg of chicken breasts ( three halves), sliced in half, leaving six thin cutlets
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp basil
6 Tbsp butter
 

Melt butter and add to 9×13 pan.  Combine dry ingredients in a bag or sack, and one cutlet at a time, coat chicken by shaking it until well coated.  Lay chicken in pan, than turn butter-side up for baking.  Bake for 30 mins at 400 degrees.

 
Meanwhile, make a sauce to cover chicken, for final 20 minutes of baking time:
 
4 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp flour
2 cups hot water with 4 tsp. chicken bullion (can use chicken broth and add salt to taste)
Optional:  Cooked sliced mushrooms, fresh chopped tomatoes and green onions)

In a skillet, melt butter over medium heat.  Stir in flour until bubbly.  Add hot chicken broth and cook until thickened.  After 30 minutes of baking, remove chicken from oven to cover with sauce.  Add vegetables if desired and return to oven for final 2o minutes of baking.   Can serve over rice.

For Sale

30 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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I’ve just finished watching two episodes of season one of Mad Men, the popular AMC television series about people connected with a Madison Avenue based advertising business in 1960.  It’s a show about salesmanship; the mad men sell their ideas to the clients so that they can create ads to sell the product of their client.  Four episodes in, the characters I thought I liked and didn’t have become jumbled; as characters become less cardboard, my likes turn to dislikes and vice versa.  To the creators of Mad Men, I say bravo.  I  was hooked with just one episode.

In addition to being well done, part of the appeal of Mad Men is that it reminds me so much of growing up in the sixties.  I recognize the decor in the homes as well as the cars people drive.  And all the cigarette smoke.  I’d forgotten how popular smoking was then.  But some things I was too young to know.  For instance, Mad Men depicts 1960 Corporate America as a caste system:  Jews and gentiles did not mix, women were secretaries and switchboard operators rather than professionals, and of course the racial line between black and white was huge and bold and not crossed.  If this characterization is correct, I’m glad I entered the workforce in the late seventies rather than seventeen years before.

By 1977, women professionals were no longer a novelty, though we were still trying to figure out the ground rules.  For instance, I tried hard just to be seen as one of the guys.  I worked just as hard, traveled without complaint if needed, and wore my version of a business suit.  Of course, when I became pregnant, the guys thought I wouldn’t return to work.  But I did.  And believe me, I kept under wraps that I cried all the way to work that first day back, after leaving my eight week baby girl with another woman to watch.     

I entered the accounting profession, by the grace of God, as an employee of a small regional accounting firm.  The ‘Big 8″ firms didn’t want me, in spite of my stellar grades.  And the lack of job offers had nothing to do with my sex.   Plain and simple, I just didn’t know the rules of interviewing, and because I was painfully shy and insecure, I could not sell myself.  I hate that phrase — selling myself –it sounds like prostitution.  But that’s the interview game is a nutshell:  the interviewer tries to sell the candidate on his employer and candidates try to sell themselves to company representatives.  An after all the selling comes the waiting to see whether anyone was sold.    

My college interview experiences have been on my mind the last few days because my oldest son is going through the interview sweepstakes right now.  And since Bryan has more than a few on campus interviews lined up with public accounting firms, I’ve tried to sell him a few tips.  But my best advice to Bry was to have fun on his interviews.  Because people having fun are more relaxed.  And if relaxed, Bry will  focus more on others rather than trying too hard to sell himself.  

Best to leave the business of selling to those Mad Men on Madison Avenue.  But let’s see if we can make use of a famous ad slogan to wrap us this sale post:  “Don’t get Mad.  Get Glad.”