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Anne of Green Gables

Jul29

Blindingly bright afternoon sunshine streamed through the large western window into my living room. I pulled the drapes shut. The afternoon was warm, and my old brick farmhouse could retain coolness for most of the day if Istopped the sunshine from coming in and toasting the living room carpet. The sweet aroma of baked chocolate chip bars filled the air.

While transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer, I heard the back door of the house slam. My daughters were home. My husband, Arnie, would soon be home, too. I congratulated myself on good timing. The dessert bars were cooling on the counter, and the family supper would be ready in about an hour.

I walked into the living room with a basket of laundry that needed to be folded and found my twelve-year-old and sixteen-year-old daughters lying on the living room floor watching ‘Anne of Green Gables’ on television. Sitting down on the sofa, I pulled the laundry basket closer to me. Tammie popped up at my knee and asked, “When will we be having supper? We want a chocolate chip bar!”

Shaking the wrinkles out of a pair of jeans, I admitted, “I couldn’t resist eating a small wedge of it when it was fresh from the oven. We won’t eat for another hour. Cut a small serving for yourselves. I doubt it’ll ruin your appetites.”  Pausing the VHS tape, Niki and Tammie jumped to their feet and ran into the kitchen.

Buying the ‘Anne of Green Gables’ VHS set with Meghan Follows as Anne, had been a wise decision. My daughters watched the series repeatedly. I loved watching it with them. Both daughters swooned over good-looking Gilbert Blythe. They became frustrated with how Anne Shirley treated him. We all laughed when red-haired Anne smashed her school slate over Gilbert’s head when he called her ‘Carrots’. Anne did many foolish things like confusing a jar of raspberry juice with raspberry cordial. As a result, her greedy ‘bosom friend’, Diana Barry, got very drunk. We cried over sweet, gentle, Matthew’s death and Marilla regretting her decision as a young woman that ended her relationship with John Blythe.

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Mid-West Gourmet

Jul22
Escargot, a.k.a. snails

The hostess led me, my daughters, and granddaughter though the busy dining room to an empty table. Outside the many dining room windows that lined the huge room, we could see choppy, blue-gray water rushing past our ship, the MS Zuiderdam. We had left port hours ago, and were now traveling through the open, northern Atlantic Ocean.

Once seated, and with cloth napkins spread open on our laps, our waiter handed us menus. The starters listed that evening were jumbo shrimp cocktail, tomato and red bell pepper bisque, escargot Bourguignon and lentil Tabbouleh salad with feta. I ordered, “The escargot, please.”

I knew what I was ordering. My appetizer that evening would be snails floating in garlic butter, accompanied by a four-inch-long bun that looked like a small loaf of French bread. Many people refuse to eat escargot because they think they would be slimy and disgusting. I discovered that the little snails are delicious, and not slimy at all! I ordered escargot twice on my most recent cruise.

Having grown up on a dairy farm, I know where milk, cheese, butter and ice cream comes from and how it is made, but when I got home from my trip, I started to wonder if there was such a thing as a snail farm. I knew I had to do some research after a person asked me, “Was the escargot slimy? Because, after all, a snail is just a garden slug that wears a shell.”

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Know Your Neighbor

Jul15

Rain splattered against the kitchen window. I peered through rivulets streaming down the screen. Water-logged trees and bushes in my backyard were whipping back and forth in strong gusts of wind. Feeling chilled despite the warmth of a summer afternoon, I picked up my sweater from the kitchen chair and pulled it on. I felt bored and restless. There were plenty of household chores that I could do, but I didn’t feel like doing them. 

My daughter, Tammie, was sitting on the sofa in the living room busily doing a Japanese thread craft called kumihimo. I glanced around at the dim lighting and turned on a lamp. Chuckling, I said, “I’m turning into Grammie Altmann. Do you remember how she’d always tell us to turn on the lamps because doing close-up work in poor lighting would ruin our eyes?” 

Holding up the braid she was working on for me to admire, she admitted, “Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but I’m starting to understand where she was coming from. My eyes feel a little less strained when the light is on.” 

Pulling the drapes shut and turning on another lamp, I complained, “I feel bored. There are plenty of things I could do, even fun things like working on my latest jigsaw puzzle, but I don’t feel like doing any of it.” Sinking down onto my favorite chair, I pointed the remote at the television and turned it on. Flipping from one channel to the next, I quickly concluded that there wasn’t much that was interesting to watch.  

One channel featured a reporter standing on a busy, big city, street corner, asking people passing him to answer some basic questions. Curious, I paused my channel flipping. The reporter asked a young woman which country was north of the United States.  She frowned, scratched her head and after a long pause uncertainly questioned, “Ummm. Alaska?” My daughter and I exclaimed in disbelief. 

Other questions the reporter asked were just as simple. He asked, “How many eggs are there in a dozen?” “How many quarters would you need to have two dollars?” “How many ounces are there in one cup, one pint, one quart?” “What country borders the USA to the south?” No one gave the correct answer to any of the questions.  

I exclaimed, “Don’t people learn any of these things in school anymore? This show makes me wonder. At the hospital, to determine if a patient is confused, nurses often ask patients questions like, ‘who’s the president of the United States?’ If someone just doesn’t know, does that mean they are confused?” 

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Vacation food

Jul8

Our daughters had wandered away to play in the living room when they finished eating. My husband and I continued to sit at the table discussing our plans for the rest of the day. Arnie told me where he was going and what time he’d get back home. My response was, “What would you like for supper tonight, hamburgers in mushroom gravy or chicken?”

Arnie turned to look at me with a startled expression on his face. He exclaimed, “My gosh, woman! Don’t you ever stop thinking about food? We just finished eating a meal and now you’re already thinking about eating again!”

I responded indignantly, “Do you somehow think that the meals I make are whipped up in half and hour with no planning? The meat is frozen. It needs to be thawed out. Then it must be prepped and roasted or fried long enough for it to get done!”

To be fair, the only ‘meals’ that my husband ever made were fried eggs, fried freshly caught fish or cheese and sausage sandwiches that he hastily slapped together during a commercial. The ingredients Arnie needed to make these meals were always magically found in the kitchen when he wanted them. He didn’t seem to recognize that it took planning ahead on my part when buying groceries.

Shortly after our daughter, Niki, was married, she commented one day to me about how hard it was to constantly make meals. I knew what she meant. Making one meal is easy, but looking ahead to making a lifetime of meals is intimidating.

Through the years, Niki became a pro at planning and making meals for a large family. Every summer, she takes a vacation with her children. Since eating every meal at restaurants would be very expensive, my daughter makes meals ahead, freezes them, and packs them in ice-filled coolers. Motel room kitchenettes are small and inconvenient, but she manages to provide her children with good, home-made vacation food.

My other daughter, Tammie, and I took a cruise last year. When we got home, we talked non-stop about the wonderful meals that we were served aboard the ship. This year when the opportunity for us to take another cruise came up, I invited Niki to join us. She accepted the invitation and commented she couldn’t remember when she last took a vacation that didn’t require her to make meals ahead that had to be frozen and packed in an icebox.

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Countdown

Jun17

My daughter Tammie cheerfully announced, “Our cruise ship will be leaving the dock in seven days, eight hours and thirteen minutes.” Looking down at the cruise ship’s navigator app in her phone, she questioned, “Have you looked at the dining room menu? What would you order if you were on the ship today?”

I complained, “The closer we get to leaving for the cruise, the more anxious I feel. I feel like a child waiting for Christmas Eve and Santa’s visit.”

“That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” exclaimed my daughter, like a true high school cheerleader.

Frowning, I slowly shook my head no and explained, “When you and your sister were little, the last few days before Christmas was painful. Your anticipation and hopes made you emotional, anxious little people, which made me feel sad. The holiday was supposed to be fun. Instead, you wished away all the days and the fun things we could do leading up to Christmas. You just wanted that one day to arrive.”

Holding up her phone for me see the screen, Tammie asked, “Doesn’t looking at the navigator app make you think about the fun things we will get to do, to see, to experience?”

I insisted, “The app does make me think about all those things, but since I can’t do them until we get to the ship, I feel like I am spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I feel like I am wishing my life away.”

The phrase, ‘wishing my life away’ made me think of my mother. When I was in third grade one evening before Christmas, I lamented to my mother how I didn’t like waiting for Christmas Eve and wished it would hurry up and come. My fifty-five-year-old mother’s sage advice was, “Don’t wish your life away.”

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Another Dam Ship

May13

I frowned and requested, “Say that again. What is our cruise ship’s name?”

My daughter Tammie, who plans, organizes, schedules and purchases tickets for all our vacations, repeated and explained, “It’s called the Eurodam. The ship belongs to the Holland America Cruise Line.”

We had never taken a cruise for a vacation before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I doubted the experience would be like the 1980’s television show “Love Boat,” and I hoped it wouldn’t be like some of the cruise stories I’d had people tell me about: the ship being one huge, non-stop floating buffet.

Tammie and I started to explore the possibility of taking a cruise vacation because I like traveling and visiting different places, but dislike packing and unpacking as we move from one hotel to the next. I wanted a vacation where I could visit several cities while staying in one place. Our cruise to Alaska and back through the inside passage checked all the boxes on my ‘want list.’

Our cabin in the Eurodam matched a typical hotel room: well-appointed and stocked with everything we would need. Unlike a hotel room, our cabin also came with a cabin steward. The steward seemed to materialize out of thin air shortly after we stepped into our cabin. He introduced himself and asked if we needed anything.

 Cabin stewards clean and service the cabins assigned to them. It was like having a guardian angel watching over us. We never had to ask for extra towels, and on more than one occasion we found them on the bed, folded to resemble an animal such as a dog or elephant. While smoothing the wrinkles out of the bed sheets, he occasionally left chocolate candies on the pillows. Each morning, he left that day’s activity itinerary and dining room menu in the mailbox next to our door.

Instead of packing and unpacking while the ship carried us from one city to the next, we attended presentations, activities, and recitals. When we wanted to relax, we took advantage of a small library and lounge chairs in the ship’s Crow’s Nest Lounge.

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Fighting For Control

Feb11
The vase on the left is the new one. The one on the right was made in Door County.

Tammie parked her car and turned to me and asked, “Are you excited about our class?” A hot, midsummer sun baked the Door County parking lot.

Not sure how to answer, I wrinkled my nose and shrugged before finally admitting, “I wouldn’t describe how I feel as excited. I feel more nervous than anything, because I want to do well, but I don’t know if I have what it takes.”

 Inside the pottery shop next to the parking lot, we found our instructor preparing a pottery wheel and gathering supplies for our appointment. My daughter had arranged this class for us because I wanted to experience using a pottery wheel. Making one clay bowl wouldn’t make me an experienced potter, any more than watching brain surgery on television would qualify me as a brain surgeon, but I wanted to feel damp clay and make something beautiful.

Our teacher was in his fifties, had a bushy, salt and pepper beard and a durag tied around his head. His clothing was spotted with dried clay and paint. Shelves on both sides of the narrow room were full of different types of clay, paints, and other supplies. Next to the pottery wheel was a water faucet and below it, a drain in the floor.

After greeting us, our instructor handed us plastic aprons to wear, then went back to work. He explained, “Properly centering clay on the wheel takes a lot of practice. Since this is a onetime class, I’m doing it for you.” After demonstrating how to sit at the wheel, he explained that it was very important to keep our hands wet as we worked with the clay.

Tammie and I took turns at the wheel. Frequently dipping our hands into a bowl of water and a lot of assistance from the instructor we each managed to make an unremarkable small bowl. Before taking my last turn at the wheel, I commented, “I’d really like to make a small vase.”

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Granted Wishes

Dec3

 During noon recess, the first snowflakes of the season began to flutter from heaven. It seemed to be the answer to every student’s prayers. Everyone in the classroom acted wildly excited and had a hard time concentrating on classroom work. I knew I wasn’t the only one who wanted to watch the fuzzy, fluttery snowflakes grow into icy, school-canceling snowdrifts.

Although the snowfall became increasingly heavier that afternoon, school wasn’t cancelled early. By the time Daddy came into town to pick me and my sisters up from school, the countryside was covered with a white blanket.

When I walked into the farmhouse, Mom was in the kitchen making supper. Glancing over her shoulder at me, she teased, “Guess what came in the mail today. It’s something you will like.”

It couldn’t have been a letter. Being a kid, I didn’t get many of those other than when it was my birthday. Suddenly, I understood. the Sears and Roebuck catalog, a much loved wish book, had finally arrived! Not even taking off my coat, I flopped down on the living room floor to pore over the thick catalog’s toy pages. I immediately started picking out things I wanted and hoped Santa would grant all my wishes.

Back when I was in grade school, and truthfully, even for many years after that, I wanted many things for Christmas. I’m not sure when my focus changed from wanting things to wanting experiences. Don’t misunderstand, I will always enjoy receiving gifts, but now highly value looking forward to planning and having happy experiences.


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Alaskan Bytes

Nov26

Fighting sleep despite a full tummy and a fresh diaper, my one-month-old infant squirmed restlessly. I placed her against my shoulder and gently patted her back. I stood holding her this way, swaying, looking out at the night sky through the window in the back door of the mobile home we lived in. Above the northern horizon, I saw a ripple of pale green, blue, and white lights slowly dancing in the sky, reminding me of seaweed moved by an invisible ocean current. The little one burped and fell asleep. Her breaths were warm against my neck.

Some memories are like snapshots. Vivid, clear, but limited to just one frame. Like a memory I have of a very young me sitting on the steps at grandpa’s apartment, waiting for the grown-ups to finish rounding up cows that got loose. Other memories are like short, four or five frame videos, like the one I recounted of one night shortly after my daughter, Niki, was born.

Why do we carry around so many short memories that seem to have no point or connection to the main theme of our lives? I don’t know, but I do know that I love these short ‘clips’ and wouldn’t want to be without them!

I have several short memories from the Alaskan cruise my daughter and I took in September. I’m calling them Alaskan Bytes, because there are eight of them, just like the eight bits contained in a computer byte. Also, because Alaskan bytes rhymes with northern lights!

1) Tammie and I were in the World Stage auditorium. A handsome young man on the stage told us he belonged to the Tlingit Indian tribe, explaining, “When you say, ‘Tlingit’, if you don’t feel your breath under the tongue, you didn’t pronounce it correctly.” For many years Western laws made it unlawful for tribe members to hunt and gather as they did in the past.  While in high school, he was encouraged by a teacher to investigate the law forbidding his people to harvest sea gull eggs. His assignment led to a special permission for him to gather eggs. When he gave his mother a couple, he claimed she said, “This will be the first time in my life that I will eat sea gull eggs that weren’t poached twice!”

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Remembering Him

Nov19
I’m ready to do metal work!

One weekend, months before my daughter and I went on our Alaskan cruise, Tammie insisted we sit down and schedule our onshore activities. She urgently informed me, “We can’t put this off! Some of the activities have limited enrollment. I’ve checked and found some shore excursions with only a few openings left!”

Frowning, I exclaimed, “But the cruise is months away yet!”

Nodding, Tammie pointed out, “Some people plan their trips a year or more ahead,”

Ruefully, I admitted, “Your daddy’s habit of making last minute plans must have rubbed off on me! I thought we had plenty of time yet.” For the following hour my daughter and I went over all the shore excursions offered at each port and discussed the pros and cons of each one. One of the more unusual options described was in Sitka where each person could make a metal wall decoration under the supervision of a metal shop teacher.

Without hesitation, Tammie announced, “I want to do this! The decoration we could make would be a great souvenir! Also, going to a metal workshop makes me think of how I used to visit Daddy in his workshop.”

I approved, “Arnie would have loved visiting Alaska. Taking this workshop is a nice way for us to remember him in a special way.”

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