Leaves of Three, Let Them Be

My mom's passion for wildflowers often led her into poison ivy.  I remember seeing dots of creamy pink Calamine lotion all over her blistered skin in the summer.  As a kid, I never had more than a spot of two of poison ivy rash, so while I was aware of the dangers of poison ivy, I wasn't really afraid of it.  That all changed soon after we bought our first little house. Lining the brick driveway was a bed of English ivy.  It was overgrown and filled with dead leaves and weeds, so one summer day I decided to tidy it up, without noticing there was poison ivy hiding in amongst the common ivy.  I ended up with a rash I'll never forget.  My forearms felt like they were on fire. After many miserable days and sleepless nights, I finally saw a doctor who prescribed prednisone to clear it up.  After that painful experience, my casual respect for poison ivy turned to poison ivy phobia. The problem was, even though my mom had pointed it out to me several times, I never felt a hundred percent sure of how to identify it--I knew it had three leaves, of course, which I thought were kind of teardrop-shaped with smooth edges, and Mom had told me the leaves are often kind of shiny from the oil.  But just to be on the safe side, I avoided  just about every plant with three leaves.  This worked pretty well until two years ago when the plant in the picture was just a little, barely noticeable vine in amongst the bushes at a house near ours.  I don't know if I ever would have known it was there or what it was if our dog hadn't sniffed his way into it then brought the oil home to me on his fur.  A couple of days later, I was covered in a poison ivy rash--from my face to my legs.  I tried oatmeal baths, Caladryl, Benadryl, Ivarest, and Zanfel, but eventually had to call the doctor's office for another corticosteroid prescription.  So here are some things I've learned about poison ivy: 1) It's tricky--it hides in other plants; it looks different in each season; sometimes its leaves are notched, other times they are not; new leaves are shiny, old leaves are dull; 2) Even if you stay away from poison ivy, the urushiol oil can come to you--on your pet's fur or your kids' shoes; 3) The rash starts small; at first you have one little itchy spot you hope is just a mosquito bite, but before you know it, you're covered in blisters; 4) Not everyone is allergic to poison ivy, but you don't know until you've touched it; 5) The plant itself is harder to get rid of than the rash.  Experience has taught me I'm vulnerable to poison ivy, so I'm always on the lookout for it.  But it makes me wonder, despite the warnings we get from our parents and pass on to our children, what other dangers do we blunder into because we don't recognize them at first?  What other destructive things start out small but become hard, if not impossible, to get rid of once they've taken root?  What other things in life are better left untouched?
 

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace has a fragrance as delicate as its wispy flowers.  Yet it grows just as well in rocky, roadside ditches as it does in peaceful, sunny meadows.  When we were kids, my mom used to put freshly-cut Queen Anne's Lace in tall Tupperware cups, each with a different shade of food coloring mixed with a bit of water.  Before long, we had lacy flowers in pastel shades of blue, green, yellow, and pink.  When my kids were little, I did the same thing, wanting to pass along to them something I'd learned from my mom.  Every year when I see Queen Anne's Lace blooming, I think of Mom and how she has thrived and survived in all the places she's been planted--that's another thing I hope I've learned from her that I can pass along to my kids.

Smoothie Days

A good friend of Steve's gave us an Oster blender as a wedding gift.  We used it for many things over the years, including to puree hot broccoli soup, the steam from which blew the top off the blender, and we ended up with hot broccoli soup all over the kitchen, and I learned a messy but unforgettable lesson about blending hot foods.  Somewhere along the way, the first blender gave out and we replaced it with a second Oster blender.  The new blender got a lot of use at first, but then I got a food processor and started using it for most of my blending needs.  The good old blender spent most of its time in the cupboard, only making an appearance for the occasional milkshake.  But then my middle child fell in love with fruit smoothies.  They were expensive to buy, so I bought him the Klutz Smoothies book as a birthday gift one year, and all of a sudden, the blender was back in demand.  The secret of the smoothie, according to the Klutz book, was frozen bananas.  So for years, we had little containers of frozen banana slices in our freezer (until we discovered fresh bananas work just fine as long as the other fruit you use is frozen) and the blender was whirling up a lot of smoothies.  We tried several of the Klutz recipes over the years but eventually adapted and perfected our own version, which we like better than the ones we buy at restaurants.  My smoothie-loving son is off on his own now, still blending fruit and juice with his Magic Bullet, but my daughter has become a smoothie lover, too.  So during the summer months, the humble old Oster blender shares counter space with the snazzy new food processor and gets an almost daily workout turning frozen strawberries, frozen peaches, frozen blueberries, bananas, and orange juice into thick fruit smoothies.   I know that a couple of years from now when my daughter is off on her own, every time I see that good old Oster blender sitting patiently in the cupboard, it'll make me miss my kids and the smoothie days.  I might even get a little teary-eyed, or maybe I'll just pull it out and blend up my own smoothie!

Home for the Weekend

Even though I will always miss the days our little family all lived under the same roof, I have begun to notice a few little silver linings to the empty nest cloud, and one of  them is that whenever one of the kids comes home for a visit, it feels like a holiday, even if it's just a plain old weekend in July.  You scurry around and get your work done, so you can relax and enjoy the visit.  You plan meals the visiting child especially likes.  You enjoy grocery shopping because it's fun to buy his favorite snacks again.  With a light heart, you change sheets, put out towels, and bake cookies.  When it gets close to his arrival time, you can't stop peeking out the window to see if he's pulling in the driveway.  The weekend passes in a blur of meals, games, laundry, and laughter.  In true holiday fashion, you eat too much and sleep too little. But then, all of a sudden, it's Sunday night.  He gathers up his stuff while you pack up leftovers to send back with him.  You walk him out to his car, slip him some money for gas and tolls, and remind him to drive carefully.  Then you wave until he's out of sight.  You go back in the house, missing him already and knowing you're going to have to get used to having him gone all over again.  You curl up with a good book and wait for the text telling you he made it home safe and sound.  When it comes, you count your many blessings and head for bed.  You fall asleep replaying the weekend in your head.  When you wake up Monday morning, the house is quiet, the holiday over.  You step back into everyday life, feeling both happy and sad, full and empty.  There's much work to be done, so you plunge in, but all day long in the back of your busy mind, you're daydreaming about the next visit.

Game, Set, Match

When I was growing up, we had one of the best youth group leaders of all time. Summer months with Alice were filled with bike hikes, camp-outs, swimming, and tennis.  Alice could really play, and thanks to her, I learned to play, too, which turned out to be a very good thing because my husband Steve comes from a tennis-playing family.  Steve's dad was an avid tennis player.  They had a tennis court in their backyard, and all the Wendell boys were on the high school tennis team (which their dad helped start).  I visited their house once during Wimbledon, and they actually had Breakfast at Wimbledon--bacon, eggs, melon, strawberries--the whole deal!  When we were first married, Steve and I played tennis together, but it ended up being kind of frustrating--I wasn't much competition for him, and no matter how well I played, he could always turn his game up another notch.  When we moved to New Hampshire, we met another young married couple who quickly became good friends and tennis opponents.  Playing doubles with Steve instead of singles against him was much better!  Then we had kids, and we didn't play much tennis for a long time except when Steve's family got together.  Our kids grew up riding scooters, shooting baskets, and playing tennis on Grandpa and Grandma's tennis court.  The boys took tennis lessons a couple of summers, and  Steve and I occasionally played doubles with the boys, while Em (the youngest) agreed to be the ball girl on her scooter.  Then the family home was sold, and the kids were busy with high school sports and activities, and it was several years before we all started playing together again.  Now we mix and match teams depending on who is home.  The team Steve is on usually wins, but the kids have gotten better and better, so the games are usually pretty competitive.  Although we play hard, it's not really about winning and losing for Steve and me--it's about spending with our kids and making memories.  The inside jokes and famous shots (both good and bad) have become part of our family story, and I feel sure that game Steve's dad handed down to his kids and grandkids will be passed along to another generation of Wendells.  In tennis a score of zero is called "love," and I've always wondered why.  Well, this week, in honor of Wimbledon and this blog entry, I looked it up.  There are several explanations, but the one I like best says it comes from a 17th century expression meaning "playing for love." Yep, that sounds about right.

Happy 4th!

The thing I remember most about the 4th of July from when I was a kid is driving somewhere to see fireworks, parking along the side of the road, watching from the hood of the car, and then leaving before the finale so we wouldn't get stuck in traffic.  This was not a holiday tradition I wanted to pass along to my own kids.  So early on we established a 4th of July tradition we rarely break if we're in town.  First, we picnic with friends--the same good friends every year.  Then along toward dusk, we caravan down to Memorial Park on the Lake Erie shore in Dunkirk, New York.  It's the kind of thing my dad would have hated--you have to park several blocks away and walk the rest of the way; it's crowded, it's loud, the air is sticky with the smell of cotton candy, funnel cakes, and kettle corn; when you finally find a place to spread out your blanket, you're inevitably behind a tree; and when it's over, there's all kinds of traffic and it takes forever to get home.  But we return year after year--it's tradition!  When the kids were young, we brought a stroller or the wagon, a cooler with juice boxes and snacks (to avoid the high prices and long lines at the street vendors), and a damp washcloth in a plastic bag to wipe faces and hands sticky with the cotton candy they cajoled us into buying anyway.  We travel more lightly these days--just a blanket to sit on.  We've learned to go later--often arriving just before the first few booms.  We've accepted the fact that we'll always be crammed into a crowded spot behind a tree.  And sometimes we're missing one or more of the kids.  But as long as some of our kids are home on the 4th of July, we'll keep going.  And we'll never leave before the finale!

Rock Collecting

I started collecting rocks when I was about six years old.  I collected sandstone rocks you could write with, pinkish feldspar rocks, salt-and-pepper pieces of granite, and smooth white lucky stones, but my favorites were the sparkly ones I sometimes found on the path to school.  I don't know what kind of rocks they were--to me they seemed like diamonds.  They were the stars of my rock collection.  I kept all my rocks in an old metal Crisco can.  I used to spend hours looking at them and arranging them.  Then somewhere along the way, they disappeared.  I don't know if happened on our move from Indiana to Pennsylvania, or if they survived the move but fell victim to one of my mom's garage-cleaning frenzies.  All I know is they are gone.  But my fondness for rocks remains.  I like the craggy layers of slate and any good skipping stone, but these days my favorites are the smooth, round stones that fit perfectly in my hand. I like the cool solid feeling of them and the way time and life have smoothed away their sharp edges--something I hope is happening to me, too.