Daylilies and Brown Cake

When my son Darton turned two, his birthday party featured trucks and "brown" cake--two of his favorite things at the time.  For the centerpiece I piled bright orange daylilies into an orange dump truck that had belonged to my brothers when they were young.  And now, every single year when I see daylilies, I know Darton's birthday is just around the corner.  Since he was born in summer, he was always home on his birthday, even during his college years.  But this year, for the first time ever, he won't be here.  So all week I've been thinking of birthdays past which included lots of breakfasts in bed, chocolate cakes, treasure hunts, egg drops, sports equipment, and parties in the backyard.  This year, instead of baking a cake and hanging crepe paper streamers, I'm putting a card in the mail with a check tucked inside for some new work clothes and a steak dinner.  And I'm counting the days until his next visit home. 

Home Alone

My husband and I don't travel much, and when we do go somewhere, we usually go together.  But today he and his sister are in Virginia visiting their mom on her 90th birthday.  And my college-age daughter is also gone this week. In the past on the rare occasions when I was the only one home, I had our faithful old dog to keep me company, but he died a year  ago.  So this time I really am home alone.  All alone.  And it is such an odd feeling.  Part of me likes the freedom and the solitude.  I don't have to cook--yesterday I ate cereal for lunch and a cheese sandwich for supper.  There's no noise, unless I make it; no one to object if I spend the whole day watching the Olympic trials.  And if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can turn on the light and read awhile.  But on the other hand, there's no one to eat with.  There's no one to talk to, no one to help me close the windows when a storm blows in.  And if I wake up in the middle of the night, there's no steady breathing beside me for reassurance.  I've (reluctantly) adapted to having my kids gone a lot of the time, but I'm not used to having Steve gone.  He's the one who's been with me the longest, the one who knows me best, the one I've come to depend on in ways I don't even realize except on days like this when he's away.  I'll be fine while he's gone--I'll swim and read and do schoolwork and housework and yard work, and about the time I tire of cheese sandwiches he'll be back.  And I'll be glad.

Gone Swimming

My dad never learned to swim.  Because of that and because he was big on safety, he wanted all of us kids to learn.  My earliest swimming lessons were less than successful--I clung to the side of the pool and cried.  But my parents didn't give up, and before long I was a swimmer.  I spent a majority of my summer afternoons at the town pool.  Although in those days, "going swimming" didn't really mean doing the backstroke.  It meant seeing how many somersaults you could do in a row underwater on a single breath, lying on a thin towel in the sun while talking to friends, going out to play in the park for a while, and doing can openers and cannon balls off the diving board.  It also meant sitting impatiently on the side of the pool with all the other kids for ten minutes every hour during the adult swim.  As I dangled my feet in the water, I watched the middle-aged women in their flowered bathing caps sidestroking their way across the pool; I used to wonder why they did it and what on earth was fun about those slow, steady laps they swam.  Well, now I am one of those middle-aged women.  My swim cap is black, not flowered, and I don't do the sidestroke.  But there I am, a middle-aged woman swimming calmly back and forth across the pool.  It started after a very stressful spring semester.  I was having trouble calming myself down, and for the first time in my life I had high blood pressure.  I had read that swimming was good for lowering blood pressure, so I decided to give it a try.  I started slowly, and before long I discovered I still really liked to swim.  I'm extremely nearsighted, so when I'm in the water with no glasses or contact lenses, I can barely see anything.  And when I'm doing any stroke other than the head-above-water breaststroke, I can barely hear anything.  So I once I'm in the pool, I'm in my own watery world.  The rhythmic strokes and the cool, soothing water did a lot to calm me down that first summer.  And the smell of chlorine on my suit and in my hair took me right back to my childhood.  Most of the time I swim at the college natatorium.  It's nothing like the pool of my childhood.   I don't meet up with friends anymore.  I don't jump off the diving board.  And I can't remember the last time I did a somersault in the water.  But once again I'm spending many of my summer afternoons at the pool.  Thanks for the swimming lessons, Dad!

Are You Staying Cool Enough, Babe?

We are on day three of temperatures near ninety degrees here in western New York.  Every summer we get several stretches of weather like this, and every summer I wish for central air.  Earlier this month, we went so far as to call for an estimate. “Let’s just see what it would cost,” I told my husband.  The answer: a LOT.  As it turns out our 120-year-old house is not well-suited for central air—something about no cold air returns upstairs and other things I don’t remember because I didn’t really understand them to begin with.  The bottom line is we’re back to fans and window units in two of the upstairs bedrooms.  Seeing an air conditioner in the window always make me think of my dad.  All the years we were growing up, he had one in his bedroom.  I remember feeling that blast of cold air when I walked in to borrow his scissors or to ask him a question in when he was working at his desk.  Years later when I had grown up and moved away, the first question my dad asked when he called on hot summer days was “Are you staying cool enough, babe?”  I wrote this poem a few years ago, and on this hot summer day I am thinking of my dad and of the way parents never stop taking care of their kids.

Are you staying warm enough?

he would ask when he called

on cold winter days

ever since he heard

that our dog's water froze

in her dish

in our cold New Hampshire

kitchen.

It only happened once

a long time ago,

but he never forgot.

"I'll send you some money

to help with your heating bill.

Turn your thermostat up a few degrees

I don't want the kids to be cold."

Are you staying cool enough?

He would ask when he called

during summer heat waves.

Despite my reassurances

of fans, backyard wading pools,

and sprinkler parties,

a second call came one summer day.

"Be watching for a surprise delivery.

It should be arriving soon. . .

Oh, I'll go ahead and tell you:

I got you an air conditioner.

You need one room to cool off in."

I wish I could call him today

to tell him

that a crazy hot June

drew us to the old air conditioner

that's been resting in the corner

of the bedroom through

several temperate summers,

buried under rolls of wrapping paper,

blankets, and stuffed animals

I want to tell him

how his grandson

lugged it up the stairs alone

and helped me wrestle it into

the window.

I want him to know that one room

is now blissfully cool.

But he's out of range

of phones,

of cold snaps,

of heat waves.

And I can't tell him

that although

we're warm enough in winter

and cool enough in summer,

I miss the asking,

and I miss my dad.

Picky Eaters

I'll admit it: I was a picky eater as a kid.  So when Steve and I got married, I loved being in charge of the meal planning—finally, there was something I liked for dinner every single night!  During those first few years of marriage, I collected a lot of new recipes and soon my wooden recipe box was filled with dishes my husband and I both loved.  Then we had kids.  Even though it’s never been proven (as far as I know), I suspect there’s a picky-eating gene, and I passed it along to all three of my kids.  The tricky thing was, they were each picky in their own way.  So this made meal-planning challenging over the years.  Now some of you non-picky eaters are probably thinking if I’d just been firmer with my kids, they wouldn’t have been so picky.  Well, I am here to tell you I tried EVERYTHING over the years.  The one thing I refused to do, however, was to make mealtime a battleground.  Having a pleasant dinner together was more important to me than winning the war over food.  So maybe you’re right, perhaps I was too accommodating, and I suppose I was also more than a little bit sympathetic.  I knew how miserable meals could be when you didn’t like meatloaf or country pie or liver and onions or all the other foods I pushed around on my plate over the years.  So when our kids were growing up, we settled into a pretty predictable pattern of meals.  It wasn’t that we never had meals one or more of the kids didn’t like, but recipes everyone liked ended up in the rotation a lot more often than dishes that only two people liked.  So for a lot of years, I rarely pulled the recipes for some of those early favorites out of the recipe box.  In fact, I forgot about a lot of them.  But then it happened—one by one, bit by bit, my kids’ palates started to grow up.  And suddenly, cooking became a lot more fun again.  This summer in addition to experimenting with new recipes, I've been cooking up some of the old ones.  This week, I’m two for two.  On Father’s Day, I made Lammel Supreme, a chicken dish that dates back to our college days. And last night we had Garden-Style Pizza (zucchini, carrots, and mushrooms on an oatmeal crust), a recipe I copied down from a magazine during the first days of married life.  Both were hits with the kids who were home for dinner, and both brought back fond food memories for my husband and me. Although the kids still have their favorite (and least favorite) meals, they are willing to try just about anything now, something I never would have imagined ten years ago! (Let me know if you want a recipe . . . )

Wild Mint and Index Cards

Early in my parenting years, I read a quote that said something like "our children don't from us what we offer, they take from us what they need."  I can't remember where I read it or who said it, but I do remember that it offered me a bit of comfort because the task of preparing my little ones for life seemed daunting--how could I possibly teach them everything they needed to know?  Yet the quote reminded me that it wasn't a one-way street and that my children might get what they need in spite of me rather than because of me.   Well, as my kids grew older and got ready to strike out on their own, the fear set it again--Had I done my job? Were my kids ready to face the world?  Then I thought back to my own parents.  There were some basic things they taught me directly—like how to iron a pillowcase and how to balance a checkbook.  But most of the other stuff I picked up by watching them.  Big things like how to live out your faith and why it’s important to work hard.  And little things like how to recognize wild mint along a creek bed and why it’s a good idea to keep index cards on hand. Did I know everything I needed to know when I moved out of my parents' house?  Nope, of course not.  In fact, there are still plenty of things I don't know.  But I took what I needed from my parents and then I figured things out as I went along.  And I have to trust my kids to do the same.

Today Is the Day

 

Even though I don't like clutter, I have to admit I'm not very good at throwing things away.  I'm not sure why.  It's probably partly because I'm sentimental by nature and everything reminds me of some dear memory.  I think it's also connected to the old "as soon as I throw it out, someone's going to need it" worry.  And it's partly my kids' fault--they never forgave me for selling their Disney Sing-a-Long videos at one of our running-out-of-money-at-the-end-of-summer yard sales (even though, at the time, they said they were done with them).  The sneaky thing about clutter is if you keep it around long enough, you stop seeing it.  Take, for example, the shoe collection in this picture.  There are hiking boots from two of my kids' eighth grade backpacking expeditions (eighth grade was six years ago for my daughter and eleven years ago for my son, soccer cleats (no one has played soccer in this family for at least ten years), old sneakers (kept around for creek-walking, which hasn't happened in recent memory), a nice pair of lightweight running spikes (injuries ended my son's competitive running days several years ago).  So today is the day.  I'm ready to take my first small step in reducing some of the clutter my kids have left behind.  I should have done it long ago.  But that corner of the porch looks so bare now . . . and my daughter's hiking boots are still in pretty good shape and I think they still fit . . . and could someone else use those nice running spikes?