Post Christmas

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When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

 Howard Thurman

Making Pie Crust

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Crumbling butter into flour, sugar salt, I think of  Mrs Gregory, my fist landlady. I was twenty, she was eighty-five or at least that is how old I felt like she was. She may have been younger.  Her apartment was next door to mine, above a sheet metal shop her husband owned.

Hoosier Mama Pie Shop, love pie. 

She was tall, elegant, and perfectly coiffed, and a bit sketchy on grammar. I was young, homesick, and very tight on funds. 

In the evenings, when I could bear the silence no longer, I would sometimes knock on her door. Helen, which was her first name and what I called her privately in my mind, though she never offered such intimacy to me, answered my knocks swiftly. Which always made me wonder, if she heard me coming, and was as eager to see me as I was to see another person.  Mrs. Gregory had never ventured to my door, and often seemed surprised that this new renter would end up at her's. 

On one particular evening, when Helen came to the door, her hands were covered in flour. She invited me in to her carpeted kitchen, "keeps the sound down" she said, when I queried "why carpet?" Carpeting in kitchens seemed counter intuitive to me. 

Waving her hands towards the table, "sit down", she said, "you can talk to me while I make pies." Obediently, I sat, happy to have an excuse to stay. All the while she talked to me, as she was a talker, she gently worked the butter into the flour,  Helen mostly talked about her sister, Lucille, as she occasionally threw in a little more butter, then a little more flour. 

I asked her what her recipe was. Mrs. Gregory looked up at me incredulously. 

"Recipe? you can't have a recipe for pie crust! You feel the ingredients, some-days you has to add more butter, some-days you has to add more flour. Your hands tells you the recipe, you have to listen to your hands!" 

The next evening, a knock startled me out of my loneliness, opening my door, I found, Mrs. Gregory, and a piece of pie waiting for me. 

Longed-for beauty

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It is autumn,
with its longed-for beauty
of:

Burning bush outside my office window. 

red,
yellow,
gold.

all of which fuels an even
deeper longing
for:

drawing closer
to each other.

Remembrance of Uncle Walter

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Uncle Walter in Yugoslavia 

Today's post was written and spoken at Uncle Walter's funeral by my daughter, and is used here with her permission. 

"Thank you all for coming today.

Uncle Walter was a lot of things, but boring wasn't one of them. In photographs, he is nearly always pleased: and no wonder. When Uncle Walter was photographed, he was usually in another country.

The travel industry has changed a great deal since he worked on Michigan Avenue, but the general idea--go and make sure to have a wonderful time while you're at it--comes through loud and clear.

A few months ago, my mother and I sorted through his enormous collection of expired passports. Uncle Walter was a man of the world, or at the very least a man who saw quite a lot of it, and so the visa stamps were like something out of a spy novel.

Japan. India. France. South Africa. Cuba ("Fidel Castro was always very nice to me," Uncle Walter said. Apparently the Cold War really did a number on the honeymoon tourism industry). 

Uncle Walter wasn't exactly James Bond, but he had an air of mystery about him, one that was at times overshadowed by his very dry wit, or his impeccable nature. It was easy, as a child--and it remains easy now that I am an adult--to think of Uncle Walter as a man at the end of a long journey. 

To be sure, his life in Chicago had a lot of routines embedded in it: Aldi for groceries, Selmarie or Brauhaus for lunch, freezing a coffee cake in individual slices so it wouldn't have time to go stale. But his apartment--which he moved into in 1956, the day my father was born, and which he moved out of in 2008--was filled to the brim with souvenirs from the life he led when he was away from home. It seemed very small, or at least it seemed that way until we had to move everything out; then it was just a constant unfolding of stories no one had ever asked about. 

Part of that was money, of course, because Uncle Walter knew the value of a dollar and didn't work with anyone who was sentimental about the fact--but part of it was that, Uncle Walter was the kind of man who planned for every contingency and who knew how to read his audience. Uncle Walter also knew how to be a tourist; he excelled at parties because of this. The trick is: stand in a corner with a glass of scotch, and wait to see what happens next. It's a very good trick. I have written it down.

When pressed for talking points, the war comes up in one way or another. I think it was the first time he had gone to another country. Uncle Walter served as a staff sergeant based in the Philippines and did quite a lot of administrative work; he used to say that a typing course saved his life. He never really said much aside from that, which was generally considered a good reason to change the subject. Still: when we were sorting through Uncle Walter's papers, we came across a letter from Bob Stillwell, who was a close friend to Walter and served with him during the war. Bob wrote, "you have always been the perfect gentleman.... And you taught me that life was supposed to be fun. Never forget those cocktail parties [during the war] with the bombs falling all around us."

Uncle Walter had style, and he wasn't shy about offering his opinion. But that remains a very small part of who he was. 

Uncle Walter was an astonishing person and he lived a very long and full and fascinating life. I have a feeling that we will never know the half of it. I hope he had a marvelous time."

----Katie Rose McEneely

Safe Passage

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Yesterday, Uncle Walter went on a another trip.

This one will be the adventure of a lifetime, and while he would have preferred to have this voyage on the QE 2,  instead, it is a voyage of another realm.

Uncle Walter has never visited this location previously, and it is the ultimate stamp in his passport.

I miss him.

Walter Laurence Butt Jr.
September 12, 1920 - September 22, 2014

Tomatoes

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Tomatoes from our garden! YUM!

Slicing
chopping
each;
green pepper
red pepper
onion
tomato &
ginger root.




I am
bombarded
by;
smells
texture &
tastes.






I am
thinking of:
tomatoes &
the poison they
were supose
to have provided.

I am delighted
one bite
proved worth
the risk.

Sands of Time

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Lost in thought as well as my garden...

Each morning,
stumbling to remember;

appointments,
shopping lists,
and what
to do next.

Nothing seems;
Earth shattering,
time sensitive,
or life changing.

Oddly though:
each moment adds up to;
hours, days, months, and years.


Which in turn add up to:
wonderment at the time
that has pasted by.

Acts that have become;
walls, windows,
worries and wasted.

Or

Cemented families,
friends, fears and faith.

As the good book says--
We have entertained angels unawares.
So easy to miss, so easy to misinterpret.

The Imprecise Mixology

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These have nothing to do with anything other then this very kind and thoughtful daughter (who, writes the blog I am enticing you to read) gave them to me for my birthday. Now we can eat salads without our hands. How nice.

One of my daughters has started a new blog. Of course, I think it is wonderful.
I hope you will too.

This daughter of mine (or should I say ours? with a nod to my spouse) writes with both wit and charm. Please take a look, in her words, think of it as "going off-road, not off the rails"

SO, I am sharing it with you today:
The Imprecise Mixologist

Italian Ladies

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While I live in a solidly Midwestern town, just about a mile from my house, is an small international village, so to speak. It was a town settled by Italians around the turn of the 1900's, versus my town which was settled by Presbyterians, in the early 1800's. (A much more staid bunch.)

The houses are built out of stucco, stone and sweat. The yards are small, but every inch counts. It has a Southern Italy sense about it. While there is no ocean edge, we do have Lake Michigan, which I would think, might feel like the sea.

These fine Italians, came and showed us how to garden, make pasta, and enjoy wine. They have done a stellar job, and we are better for their efforts.

The evidence of these facts are clearly shown by the names of the restaurants; Scornavacos, Maria's Bakery, Papagallos, and Two Guys from Italy. Or landscaping companies: Mariani, Fiore, Puccio, to name a few.

The streets are lines with flower beds which also house; zucchini, tomato, pole beans,and cucumber plants. It charms me when I see then sprawling over the fences and climbing up trellises.

Not so much these days, but when I was much younger, I would see small women, hair covered by black
scarves, sweeping the sidewalks in front of their houses.  There were holly hocks dwarfing the front porches, sunflowers dwarfing the hollyhocks, and all of the flowers dwarfing these industrious women. A colorful view.

Now, this town is home to a new wave of immigrants, Hispanic. These two cultures have melded well. Now one finds next door to Italian establishments: taquerias, Super Mercados, and, Panaderias.

It is the age old American story, we almost all came from some where else, hoping to find a safe place to raise our children, a community to call out own, and a hope for a more prosperous future.

Travels with Uncle Walter

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One of the many passports he has...

Uncle Walter is;

ninety-four,

a bachelor,

fastidious,

a paradox,

and alone.

Except..

not entirely. 

He has traveled lightly

through life. 

Never keeping

what did not matter,

nor packing what

he did not need. 

When he speaks of

his time in the army,

World War Two,

he says;

Typing, saved his life.

Some of his many passports...

(His mother made him take it in summer school, while at the Christian Brothers Academy.)

When he speaks of his travels, 

which was his career, 

he says;

Plan, plan, plan.

Should they inquire the price, 

I did not work with them, 

they were not my kind of clients. 

When the Telex came, I was thrilled, 

when the fax machine came, I was enchanted, 

when email came...

I went home.

I know he carries many wounds, inside and out. 

I know this because, for thirty-eight years, as the niece that married in, I have pursued his company, much to his surprise.

Much to my surprise, 

while we have never left the area,

we have traveled many miles together. 

Sitting in the Sun

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Sewing through this summer has it's perks. One of which is getting to sit outside in the soft breeze that flows over me while I stitch.  The other is the "excuse" to sit and enjoy the garden, I steal glances at while I examine the next step to be completed. Feeling no guilt for the weeds, just enjoying the flowers, anticipating the vegetables. Clementine sits next to me in contentment. No barking. Peace reigns.

Wisteria

It is as if, I am transported back to my childhood. We would sit under the weeping willow trees that lined the gavel drive, so as to stay in the cool shade, not to mention the leaves of the tree grazing over our skin in the breeze. I loved those dry summer winds.


I would embroider, sew doll cloths, manufacturer small useless items with my needle, and thread. Sometimes, I would sit with my sister, she would read to me, which was one of my greatest delights. Being read to to is something I still enjoy. Oh the decadence, being able to work on something while having my mind engaged elsewhere.  Or sometimes we would sing songs from the red Scribner music books, that sat on top of our piano in the living room..

On Sunday afternoons, our family would sometimes gather around the piano. We would sing songs that were encased in those covers; Casey would Dance with the Strawberry Blonde, Daisy, Daisy or countless others. I personally loved the Casey song the best. "His brain was so loaded it nearly exploded..." fascinated me as I  tried to imagine what that looked like.

My four, in all of their glory! 

As these days cascade past me, I am reminded of  my children playing in the yard.  Their days were filled with taking things outside, then dragging the same items back in at the end of the day.  Little House on the Prairie* imagined through their eyes,  space odysseys, as the swing-set transported them. Super hero stories played out, fights worked out, all as if those days would go on forever.

Holy Cats! the day has begun, sewing, to be finished, yells to me, so this writing
must stop, be stored until the next minute I can find to write them. To be honest, these thoughts circle me, and are stitched into cloth as well as my heart.

*That summer, my eldest convinced my car pool partner we were selling our house, purchasing a Winnebago, and going west, like the Ingalls. Sigh. 

Sorting Laundry (metaphor for life)

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It is Monday. Which means three things.

One of the items I give preferential treatment to. 

1. Wash Day. (It is the only thing I have been consistent with my entire life) 
2. Trash Day (this has not been consistent, as the city has complete control on when this day occurs)
3. Dinner is an after thought (with all of that laundry going on, eating is not that critical to me)

The day starts early, as I am in a race with myself to get all of the laundry washed and dried before I hit the hay tonight. I like to pretend, once all of the hampers and laundry shoot is emptied, for the rest of the week, the laundry does not exist. I may or may not be successful with this pretense.

In general, my sorting goes like this:

1. Dark clothing
2. Light clothing, but not white or towels
3. Towels, but not rugs
4. Delicate, but not underwear
5. Shirts, but not sheets

And so on until all of the dirty clothes have found their people, so to speak. As I write this, I realize that I personify the laundry.* I have since I was a small child, helping my mother hang clothing out on the line. We did not have a dryer.

When I was a child, we had a washing machine we dragged out of the basement and out into the yard. We hooked up the hose to it, cranked away until the clothes were clean. Then we hung them up on the line. If it was winter, we took the frozen clothes in like sheets of plywood, let them warm up, and drip dry in the kitchen. All of this makes me appreciate my automatic machines, very much.

Kind of like this one

I have my favorite clothes, which I am ashamed to say, I give preferential treatment to. I would like to think I am without without respect of clothing, so to speak. But, alas, I am not. The table cloth from France, much higher on the totem pole then the napkins from Target.

I realize, as I sort the laundry, I am also sorting my brain. I am preparing for another week of life, and this sorting process helps me to make some of the small, large and in-between decisions about what I will do, will-not do, and what will be put off until another time. Most often though, I find myself in a race to finish all of the work before me, as fast as I can, in unrealistic time slots. This is so I may move onto the carrots I crave to work on:

1. Watercolor Painting
2. Quilting
3. READING, my favorite!
4. Sewing for fun
5. Writing

SO, as it is Monday, and the washer is beeping, I had best go, change the loads over, and move on to the next impossible task of the day.

*This sounds weird, even to me.