Tag Archives: Truth

One Good Egg

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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Reese Caroline — Saturday’s Egg Hunt

All my “good eggs” have scattered this year.

My husband’s in Saudi Arabia.  My daughters are in route to Chandler to visit their father.  My sons have holed up at their respective residences.  My oldest, I hope, will spend the day resting from a busy tax season… while my youngest, if I had to guess, is working on book number seven of his science fiction series.

Which means, in part, that the approach of Easter has never felt less Easter-ish.  I had no big meal planned.  No special dessert.  No company invited.  So it comes as no surprise, I think, that I should wake up today… waffling on whether or not to attend church.  In the end, I went.  Not out of guilt, though.  I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I attend only when I want to.

Today ended up being more than a “wanting to” sort of day.  Today, I needed to go.  Maybe because the day began too much like any ordinary week day.  Meaning, I woke up early, as I usually do.  I did a little housekeeping.  I fed my dogs and then myself…. and worked through some assigned reading until it was time to get ready for church.

And here, even needing to go, I fumbled at the commitment line.   I don’t know why except that it’s likely tied up with my introverted nature, but I find it difficult to go anywhere by myself.  Today, to avoid going solo, I sent out a “Hail Mary” toss of a last-minute text to my youngest son… inviting him to come with me.  Only when he didn’t respond, did I give in and go by myself.

I arrived to a full parking lot, snagged one of the last two programs for the service, and squeezed into an empty space big enough for one.  In other words, I was far from being alone.  And by the time I walked out the old cathedral where I worship — more weekends than not — Easter had found me.

When Kyle and I connected three hours later, he caught me preparing a traditional Easter ham luncheon for one.  He quickly apologized for not getting my invitation in time…while I was just as quick to assure him that all was well.  We didn’t visit but a minute — just enough time for him to turn down my offer of lunch.  “I don’t know why,” he said.  “But it just doesn’t sound good to me.”  And enough time for me to turn down his invitation to go to an unnamed movie.  “No need,” I said.  “Thanks though.”

It strikes me that it takes a lot of love within a relationship for the parties to feel free enough — free of guilt or whatever, I can’t say —  to speak a simple “no, thanks” to one another.   Lord knows I am not hurt by Kyle not wanting to come over for lunch (or be available to go to church with me, for that matter);  Why I’d rather him come only when he wants to come… and the same goes for all my other good eggs, as well.  I pray Kyle feels the same about me declining his invitation to the movies.  By the same token, I believe God feels the same way about me and my fair-weather attendance at weekend worship services.  Surely, God wants me there… only when I want to be there.

IMG_1787Funny thing about today, though.  I ended up making a nice traditional Easter lunch for myself, even without a big meal plan.  I ended up inviting Kyle to join me, even though it didn’t work out.  And while I had no plans for dessert, somehow, I found myself making one.

I’m not sure when the latter decision happened.  Maybe it was on my drive home from church.  I only know that whenever the idea found me, it came softly and fully formed, as if there all the while, a colorful Easter egg lying in soft, green grass, just waiting for my notice. Because as soon as I walked in the door, I was ready to bake a coconut cream pie.

It didn’t matter that I had no homemade pie crust ready for use.  Nor did it matter when I discovered only one egg remaining in the refrigerator.  No, I wasn’t about to give up my favorite dessert, the one that most reminds me of Mother and all the many wonderful Easter lunches that I’ve been privileged to experience.   In the spirit of serving a Easter luncheon for one, I simply decided to cut the recipe in half. I mixed up half the cream filling, made do with the graham cracker crust that Mother actually preferred, and served it up in ramekins.  They turned out so pretty I think I’ll do it again sometime.

It seems that all I needed for Easter to be Easter… was one good egg.

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Coconut Cream Pie

Meringue
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
6 Tbsp sugar
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1/4 cup sweetened coconut flakes

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

Graham Cracker Crust – Mix 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs, 1 Tbsp sugar, 3 Tbsps melted butter.  Form into crust and bake at 375 degress for 7 to 8 minutes.

Pie Filling

3 egg yolks
3 cups milk (I use 5 oz of Carnation Evaporated Milk mixed with milk from my refrigerator, usually 2 percent)
1/3 cup cornstarch – scant (minus 1 tsp)
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1/8 tsp vanilla
2 tsp coconut flavoring
2 Tbsp unsalted butter

In a bowl, hand mix eggs yolks with milk, then set aside.  In a large sauce pan, mix all dry ingredients with a whisk.   Stir in milk-egg mixture. Mix well and heat on medium high heat, stirring constantly.   Mixture will thicken in 5 to 7 minutes.  When thickened, add flavorings, butter and coconut, mixing well. Remove from heat.
Pour filling into baked pie shell, top with meringue, then lightly sprinkle with coconut flakes. Bake in a 375 oven for 5-7 minutes, watching closely, until golden browned.

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Winter Mulling

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home, Soul Care

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IMG_0481“”It’s not good to complain about your flock,” she advised.  “A flock is nothing but the put-together of all your past choices.””

— Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

 

It happens rarely, but sometimes, words I’ve read from a novel will linger within me.  To be sure, it is never the exact line of prose that I remember, the one rendered so beautifully by the author.  Instead, it’s something all together better since the author’s lines point to a living truth.

It happens something like this:  I’m going along reading, reading, reading, really involved in the story, words flying and zooming past my eyes before I realize, a few sentences too late, that I’ve passed an important turn or perhaps a yellow blinking light that was cautioning me to slow down and take note.  I have no choice but to pull over and take myself out of the story.  I know from experience that I cannot proceed without circling back up the page to reread the unmarked but blinking passage.  I return long enough to pause over it.  Not too.   But long enough that some bit of truth flies off the page to live within me.

Usually, the words, like those above written by Barbara Kingsolver, seem too small to fuss over.  I don’t know what deeper meaning, if any, they are suppose to possess.  Or what I am to make or do with them.  But two days ago, more than a week after finishing Flight Behavior, I saw that if I substituted the word ‘flock’ for ‘life,’ how the meaning of Kingsolver’s two lines came close to thoughts I’ve been mulling over since …. well, whenever I last wrote a post in this blog.

IMG_0485I’ve been reading more than mulling here of late.  Lots and lots of good books —  not good enough to keep but good enough to donate to the local library for the good of a larger reading circle.  Or so I thought, until today’s lunch, when I decided I’d been too hasty or perhaps moving on autopilot, when it came to my most recently stacked book, Amor Towles novel, Rules of Civility.

Six chapters into my latest read — E.L Doctorow’s award-winning Ragtime — I kept on thinking about Towels novel.  Not the story, as good as it was, but two blinking passages I decided important enough to turn around for, to pick up, like hitchhikers off the side of the road.

The first passage reminds me never to give up on my dreams… and really, some things in life are too good not to share…

“You look back with the benefit of age upon the dreams of most children and what makes them seem so endearing is their unattainability–this one wanted to be a pirate, this one a princess, this one president.  But from the way Tinker talked you got the sense that his starry-eyed dreams were still within his reach; maybe closer than ever.” (p. 300)

The second speaks around the same truth I tripped over in Kingsolver’s two simple lines.  But since the passage is followed by a one sentence paragraph that reads — “Maybe that sounds bleaker than I intended — I’ll stop here.  The second slice is good  enough to keep for another day.  My memory, unfortunately, is not.  So note to self:  the second can be found hiding on page 323.

 
 

Midnight’s Children: The Final Jar of Time

30 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Good Reads

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Funny, isn’t it?  That twenty days after first tasting the final words of Midnight’s Children, I’m still pondering those pickle jars.

So why pickle jars?  And not the exotic people, places and things introduced into my mind, by the magical writing of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t author, Salman Rushdie? (Can anyone use that “writery” trick of foreshadowing as effective as he?)

How can it be that it’s the image of thirty-one pickle jars trumping all else, in the end?  Especially that one.  You know.  On the end.  Empty and waiting.

“Twenty-six pickle-jars stand gravely on a shelf; twenty-six special blends, each with its identifying label, neatly inscribed with familiar phrases:  “Movements Performed by Pepperpots,” for instance, or “Alpha and Omega,” or “Commander Sabarmati’s Baton.”  Twenty-six rattle eloquently when local trains go yellow and browning past; on my desk, five empty jars tinkle urgently, reminding me of my uncompleted task. But now I cannot linger over empty pickle-jars; the night is for words, and green chutney must wait its turn.”  —  p. 443

Pickle jars represent chapters; thirty full jars equate to thirty full chapters of the novel.  Thirty full chapters of the narrator’s Saleem Sinai’s life.  So full —  not of preserved cucumbers — but of a cucumber-nosed narrator’s stories, dreams and memories truth.  Artfully told.  Artfully preserved.  Artfully titled, with chapter headings that hide as much as they reveal; “Movements Performed by Pepperpots,” for example.  Hmmm.  What might that concoction smell and taste like?

I wouldn’t have written these words twenty days ago. Because the words and ending felt flat first-time around.  The final bite of words left a bad taste in my mouth.  Like onions that linger to overstay their welcome.

I expected something spicy.  Something like all that had come before.  After all, I had followed the narrator through India, Pakistan and Bangladesh —  through the ups and downs of his dramatic “India-talkie” life.  And like a child-soldier, I longed for a little more “Ka-pow’ for the finale.  Know what I mean?

I should have known better.  By now, I should have known Rushdie better.  Because, as with Books One and Two, it’s the second reading where appreciation for Rushdie’s novel grows, where chapter contents begin to meld into flavors both fabulous and subtle on the tongue and mind.  Cucumbers, after all, are not pickles overnight.  And neither are Rushdie’s pickle jars of stories.  They require time and space to appreciate fully.

“One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history.  They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes;  I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth… that they are, despite everything, acts of love.” p. 531

Truth.  Again it’s truth.  Truth floating up and swirling all around.  No longer truth in general, but truth in particular.  Truth as it’s embodied in a particular person.  Truth as it’s embodied in the narrator, Saleem.   And truth as it’s lived out (or not) by a country’s leaders. Military might as well as political power.  India.  Pakistan.  Eeny.  Meeny.  Miny.  Moe.    But rather than summarize, I prefer to get out-of-the-way, and let the Master Magician pull those ‘true-self’ “Rusdie-isms” out of his own top hat.

“Don’t you remember really?  Nothing? Allah, you don’t feel bad.  Somewhere you’ve maybe got mother father sister,” but the buddha interrupted him gently:  “Don’t try and fill my head with all that history.  I am who I am, that’s all there is.” [emphasis added] p. 403

“In the aftermath of the Sundarbans, my old self was waiting to reclaim me.  I should have known:  no escape from past acquaintance.  What you were is forever who you are.”  [emphasis added]  p. 423

“I no longer want to be anything except what who I am.  Who what am I?  My answer:  I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me.  I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine.  I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come.  Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each “I,” everyone of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude.  I repeat for the last time”  to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.” [emphasis added] p. 440-41

Simply beautiful.  Don’t you think? But as I said at the beginning, it’s the ending jar that gets me.  The jar that remains empty, since it represents the narrator’s future. And not just Saleem’s future, but my future, too.  And your future. And all of our futures.  Eeny.  Meeny.  Miny.  Moe.

Last days.  Last words.  Last breaths.  And then, eternity.  Yes, in the end, knowing ourselves — our true selves — requires accepting our own mortality.  Our own emptiness.  Our now-you-see-us-and-now-you-don’t selves. Which reminds me of Rushdie’s fabulous take on the after-life where we get a taste of invisibility through Parvarti’s magic tricks…. p. 438-39

And so much else, that I’ve no time to go there….

But later.  Maybe, then.  Maybe, then, we’ll have more time.  For as the great Rushdie, himself, once wrote,

“To pickle is to give immortality, after all…”  p. 531

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Note 1:  For other book reviews, pop over to Arti’s place and follow the links.

Note 2: All page references are based on the 2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition.