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Naughty Fingers

May24

New technologies challenge me. Until 2016 I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to use a smart phone. When I finally took the plunge, my daughter Niki set it up and trained me. Very carefully, she explained and demonstrated how to open the apps I wanted. She showed me how to use the calculator, flashlight, and camera. There was so much more to learn, like how to get back to the homepage, and how to recognize the sound the cell phone made when a text came in. My daughter also helped me pick out a notification sound for phone calls.

As my daughter was preparing to go home, I noticed the cell phone’s screen was black. Hoping to wake it up, I shook it. Niki took it out of my hands, again. After swiping up, a keypad appeared. She punched in the numbers we agreed would be my secret code. Suddenly, my phone was awake and interactive again. I nodded, happy that I knew what to do when I needed to use the device.

An hour later I decided to sit down and play with my new toy. I swiped up on the black screen and the keypad appeared. I typed in my secret code and waited, but nothing happened. The numbers just sat there like small numeral guards protecting Fort Knox. I fretted, “Why won’t it open for me? Did I somehow break the phone?”

Driving to my daughter’s house, I tearfully explained, “Niki, I think I broke it.” She took the cell phone from my hands and tapped in my code. It instantly opened for her. I stuttered, “But, but, if there isn’t anything wrong with the phone, why couldn’t I get it to open?”

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The Rowboat

May17

I stepped out onto the back deck and realized I didn’t need a jacket. The sunny spring afternoon was warm despite there being a few drifts of leftover winter snow dotting the yard. Folding my jacket over my arm, I commented to my daughter, Tammie, “I’m bringing the coat with me. When the sun goes down, it’ll get chilly.”

Tammie, who was a few steps ahead of me, turned and asked, “Which car should we take? Yours or mine?”

I apologized, “I’m sorry, I should have filled my car’s gas tank when I was in town the other day. As it is right now, my car doesn’t have enough gas to get to Wausau and back. Let’s use your car tonight and mine for the rest of the weekend.”

Niki, my other daughter, had invited Tammie and me to join her at a cooking class put on by Grebe’s store in Wausau. We happily looked forward to attending without a stop for gas first. Without another thought, we got into Tammie’s 2016 Mazda.

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Donkey Milk

Apr12

In the depths of the bathroom cupboard, was a familiar bottle. The lavender-scented body lotion bought while visiting France five years ago had slipped behind other toiletry supplies. The principle of ‘out of sight means out of mind’ certainly pertained here. Planning to use the lotion only on special occasions, other tall bottles had slowly obscured the container.

Lifting the bottle out of the dark recesses of the cupboard, I admired the pretty sprays of lavender that decorated its label. Why was I so stingy with the lotion? It needed to be used up before it dried up. My daughter Tammie and I are planning another international trip this year, so who knows what items I’ll be bringing home with me this time?

As I gently spread the creamy lotion on my legs, I futilely sniffed, hoping to detect its flowery scent. Unlike orange peels and crushed basil leaves, which my olfactory receptors pick up very well, lavender isn’t a scent I can enjoy. Placing the bottle on the counter, I reflected, “Not being able to smell it, surely contributed to my forgetting about the lotion!”

When I talked to Tammie later that day I asked, “Do you remember the long bus trip we took while in France?”

Shaking her head disapprovingly, Tammie answered, “I surely do! The French rail workers were on strike, so we couldn’t take the speed train from Paris to Lourdes. What could have taken only a few hours, turned into our spending an entire day on a bus.”

I agreed, “That was unpleasant but halfway through the day we stopped at a small strip mall. One of the stores sold nothing but locally supplied, farm-grown items, like wine, rapeseed oil, olives, wool, and products made with lavender. I bought wool slippers and a bottle of lavender-scented lotion. I used some of the lotion today. Did you know it was made using donkey milk?”

Chuckling, Tammie admitted, “I’d forgotten about that but it makes sense. They do things differently in France.”

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Pronouncing Judgement

Apr5

After noon recess, we found the classroom windows open. A stack of papers on the windowsill fluttered in the balmy breeze. I heard red-winged black birds calling to each other and wished I could go back outside. The custodian started to mow the lawn between the school and church rectory. I closed my eyes listening to the familiar roar of the mower. The scent of freshly cut grass made me giddy with joy. The school day was half over. School would be out for the summer in a few weeks. Beautiful summer was finally returning to Wisconsin after six months of ice and snow.

My classmates and I could tell Sister Wilhelmina was in a good mood. She had a smile on her wrinkled face. At least I thought it was a smile, because that wasn’t something she did often. Standing in front of the chalkboard, Sister shared, “I love the scent of freshly mown grass. It makes me think of my childhood.” After a pause she uncharacteristically suggested, “Someone tell me what they like and will always remember about their childhood.”

A boy waved his hand in the air and eagerly shared, “I have two things. There’s a crick behind our house that I play in, and I kin crawl out of my bedroom window onto the ruf.”

Sister sat down heavily at her desk, clearly struggling with what to address first, his dangerous pastimes, sloppy speech, or his mispronounced words. Having decided, she weakly questioned, “Do you remember the proper way to pronounce words like ‘creek’ and ‘roof’?”

Red faced, the boy nodded and said in a rush, “Saying those words the way you want me to, don’t feel right.”

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Fox R US

Mar15

What does the fox say?

A fresh blanket of snow covered the backyard. Opening the living room curtains, I admired ice crystals sparkling like diamonds in the snow. As my eyes adjusted to the bright, March morning sunlight, I noticed that the pristine covering had already been marred by animal tracks. Going from window to window in my house, I tried to make sense of what had gone on following the snowfall.

            Pulling on boots and a jacket, I went outside to take a closer look. Like an Arthur Murray student, I studied the tracks in the driveway nearest to the back door. One track belonged to a rabbit and the other to a deer. Their steps appeared quick, quick, slow, quick, quick, slow. The two were obviously dancing the tango.

Another set of footprints belonged to a large dog with warm feet. The prints were deep and defined. I could tell he stopped to sniff here and there as he passed through the yard.

The rest of the yard was covered with hundreds of rabbit tracks. In some places one hundred bunnies had followed the same trail. The snow was thoroughly trampled. The shelter of the woodshed and underside of the deck next to the house were the most popular places in the yard for the local long-earred crowd.

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Have Chainsaw, Will Travel

Mar1

Encouraged by the sunshine and blue skies, I pulled on a jacket and left the house to take an afternoon walk around the yard. Melting patches of ice in the driveway made each step a gamble. Not wanting to fall, I stepped off into the soggy snow covering the grass. Snowbanks pushed into tall mounds by a plow along my drive were surrounded by puddles of water.

            Suspiciously, I scolded Mother Nature, “It looks like spring, but I know better. You can’t fool me. I wasn’t born yesterday. We will still get a lot of cold weather and snow in Wisconsin before winter is over.”

Enjoying the fresh air, I walked from my driveway to the nearby bridge. Although the weather was warm this week, it looked as though we were still a long way from having the river ice break up. Just in the short distance that I could see downstream before the river curved out of sight, were at least a dozen large branches broken off trees along the water. Shaking my head, I wondered if all those branches would cause a log jam in the river during the spring melt.

 An ice storm during the winter had coated every highline wire, twig and branch with heavy sheaths of ice. The weight broke several branches from the pine trees in my yard. Until today I had only seen the damage from the living room windows. Since the afternoon was so pleasant, today I would take a closer look at the carnage.

Several broken branches had landed on top of one another along the tree line. The jumble of large, sturdy logs reminded me of a giant game of pick-up-sticks. I wondered if I could cut them up with my small battery-powered chainsaw. I doubtfully eyed the forked branches that would surely hook onto each other and make them doubly hard to saw. A tug on one of the branches showed that the branches were still frozen to the ground.

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Monkey Leg Stew

Feb22

Some of the cards in my recipe file have yellowed with age and are speckled with splattered batter. Pulling a very old recipe card out, I held it up for my daughter to see, explaining to Tammie, “Look at this one. I think this is my oldest recipe and probably from my grandmother Franziska. Before emigrating from Germany to the United States, Franziska had worked as a housekeeper for a rich family. Maybe the recipe was something she made in that household.”

My daughter took the card from my hand and wondered, “Why do you think that?”

I explained, “Mom told me the gravy in this recipe was called a roux. I don’t think her German family would have normally used that French word. Mom was making this recipe in 1935, early in her marriage. Surely, it must be something that Franziska taught her to make.”

Handing the card back to me, Tammie chuckled, “I love the goofy name your family gave the stew. “Tell me the story again.”

Laughing, I explained, “I’m going to tell it to you the way I see it in my imagination. Mom married Daddy in the fall of 1934. By the following summer she was pregnant with my brother Casper. They had lived in the small Altmann farmhouse with Daddy’s parents through the winter. When spring arrived, Daddy’s parents moved to Stratford. What a relief it must have been for Mom to finally be alone with her husband.

The house Agnes, my mom, shared with Jake, my daddy, wasn’t as big or grand as her childhood home. The summer day was hot, but Agnes had the front porch and the back porch doors open to allow a breeze from the cooler backyard to pass through the kitchen warmed by the hot wood stove.

Agnes glanced out into the yard from where she was standing at the kitchen sink deboning a cooked chicken. She wasn’t feeling very well. She smiled, daydreaming about the baby she would give birth to in December. If it was a boy, she wanted to name him Casper after her brother. If it was a girl, Jake wanted to name her Agnes. She wrinkled her nose. It would feel strange naming a baby after herself.

Setting the meat aside, Agnes retrieved three large kohlrabies from the back porch that she had picked from the garden earlier that morning. After peeling and slicing them, she put them in a kettle and held the kettle under the tap, grateful for the cold well water piped to the kitchen.

Once the kettle of kohlrabi was on the wood stove to heat, Agnes sat down at the table in the corner of the kitchen to rest. The sound of birds singing, chickens clucking, and cows mooing came through the open doors. Then she heard Jake’s team of horses coming closer; their harnesses jingling and their hooves pounding on the dry earth in the lane. A few minutes later Jake stepped into the kitchen. Browned by the sun, his brow glistened with sweat. Wiping his forehead, he informed Agnes, “I still have more hay to mow, but stopped to water the horses, and myself.”

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Chemist in the Kitchen

Feb15

I scanned the hundreds of spices and other baking ingredients in mom’s kitchen cupboard and wondered what a scientist would want in her laboratory. Reaching up, I took down the cinnamon box and tapped some into a shot glass. I had two more shot glasses to fill and several doll-sized teacups. I regretted not having more scientific looking equipment, but that couldn’t be helped.

Slowly and methodically, small samples of baking soda, salt, the entire contents of a cherry flavored Kool-Aid packet, sugar, tap water and vinegar filled the various small containers. Several trips to the laboratory (living room) moved the supplies where I planned to experiment.

Satisfied that I had everything I needed, I sank down onto the floor next to the child-sized kitchen cupboard that Daddy had made for my big sisters when they were little. The off-white cupboard with small clusters of flowers painted on each cabinet door and the shelves painted red, didn’t look much like a laboratory for a scientist, but it would do. Empty paint-by-number vials would serve as test tubes.

Hosting imaginary tea parties didn’t interest me when I was nine years old. I wanted to grow up to be a scientist. I wanted to be someone who did experiments and discovered amazing things. For the next hour I happily mixed various powders and liquids in the small vials.

My final experiment for the afternoon had me tapping Kool-Aid powder, salt, sugar, and flour into one of the little vials. Topping it off with several drops of vinegar, I snapped its airtight cap on and began to shake it. Suddenly the little capsule’s top blew open and red Kool-Aid splattered everywhere. Amazed, I sat with my mouth hanging open for a few moments. I had just discovered chemicals that exploded!

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Big Girls

Feb1

My two-year old daughter reached with both hands for the baby bottle. Sitting down on her bed, I opened the book to begin reading her night-time story. Instead of reading, I lowered the book and said, “Niki, you’re such a grown-up girl! You don’t need diapers anymore and now you’ve even started to sleep in a big girl bed!”

                I wanted my baby girl’s babyhood to last longer, but after a week of internal debate,  finally had to reluctantly admit that Niki was too old to be still having a bottle at bedtime. One reason I was reluctant to take her bottle away, was because she didn’t use a pacifier nor had a special blanket. Would bedtime be too hard and comfortless without the soothing bottle?

                Niki basked in my compliments. She bit the bottle’s nipple and smiled. She knew she was a big girl and was happy that I recognized that.

                Before reading the bedtime story, I leaned forward and shared in a low, confidential tone, “Did you know that big girls don’t use bottles?” My daughter nodded, but I wasn’t sure she understood.

                For the next three days, I told Niki from time to time that big girls don’t use bottles. On the morning of the fourth day, I took a large, brown paper grocery store bag and used a black magic marker to write on one side, “Hide this in the garage.”

                That afternoon as I prepared the evening meal, I opened the bag I’d prepared and told Niki that she was a big girl who didn’t need baby bottles anymore. All of her bottles were on the counter and I had Niki stand on a chair to help me throw them into the brown paper bag. Rolling the top of the bag closed and taping it shut with masking tape, I said, “Come and help me throw these bottles away.”

                I opened the back porch door and stood facing Niki. I instructed, “Help me throw the bottles away.” Together, we swung the bag back and forth and at the count of three, let it sail out the door to land on the back lawn.

                When Arnie arrived home for supper, he found the bag and hid it in the garage.

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The Name Game

Jan25

I like naming things but the ones for inanimate objects don’t always stick. When I first brought home a dark blue Equinox in 2013, I started to call the car, the Blue Ox. Other than being blue, big and sturdy, I wasn’t really feeling the name, so there was no follow through.

On the other hand, the gray Dynasty I drove for many years eventually gained the name of The Old Gray Mare. That car was dependable and loved.

Years later Arnie and I bought a Buick Rendezvous to celebrate having paid off our house mortgage. This was the most expensive car we ever bought, and it was equipped with all sorts of special amenities. I began to call it my Yuppie Yacht because I felt like a young, rich and successful person when driving it. That name stuck.

I was recently watching a HGTV show where a woman had her kitchen remodeled. The designer did something I thought was risky. Without consulting the homeowner, she ordered a bright pink gas stove. Fortunately, the homeowner was delighted and gave the appliance an elegant, Victorian name.

Naming the stove struck a chord in me since I had recently bought a new gas range. I asked my daughter, “What would be a good name for my new stove?”

Tammie quickly responded, “Name it Calcifer after the fire demon in the movie, Howl’s Moving Castle.”

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