If you have spent much time rummaging around in "Googie's Attic," you know or at least suspect that I prefer to write poetry and creative nonfiction rather than fiction. If not for my hometown Senior Center (which, by the way, I barely qualify for on the basis of age), I probably would never have mustered the motivation to try my hand at fiction in any serious way.
However, as a result of becoming better acquainted with the Senior Center writers, who put their fingers to the keyboard under the amazing tutelage of a former creative writing student of mine, I have somehow amassed the courage needed to branch out into the unknown territory inhabited by the mysterious, elusive beast known as fiction.
Since I have spent so much time reading to the grandkids over the past five years, it stands to reason that some of my earliest efforts in this genre have been stories for children. You may remember that I published the first of these, "Jacky Joe's Halloween Party," on the blog last October, along with some great original illustrations by Sooby.
This spring the Senior Center again sponsored a contest with a category for children's fiction. This time it was to be a "fairy tale," 300 to 750 words, using the theme "The bears decided to stay awake all winter."
Knowing this, I drifted off to sleep several nights with my thoughts focused on a family of storybook bears. I pondered why they might want to stay awake. I considered what might happen if they did. I wondered if the whole family would stay awake, or just the kids.
What resulted from these musings is a story titled "A Little Winter Magic." This month, I will share the story in segments here on the blog, along with some commentary on the experience of writing it. I hope you will want to read it, share some feedback with me, and--better yet--try it out on some imaginative preschoolers you know.
So next time in "Googie's Attic," watch for the answers to these thought-provoking questions: If you were going to create a little boy bear and a little girl bear, what would you name them? What kind of antics would you expect from a character named "Squirmy Squirrel"? What does a mama bear do when her kids don't want to go to bed?
On the edge of your seat, are you? Transitioning into the nail-biting stage? Watch the blog for the first installment of "A Little Winter Magic" in a couple days.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
The Bazinga
Three months ago a nearby university--my old alma mater, in fact--released to the media an earth-shaking announcement: mathematicians there had discovered--drum roll, please--a NEW PRIME NUMBER. Holy inter-terrestrial integers, Batman! Now we can all sleep at night.
Never mind that this 17-million-digit miracle would require reams of paper just to be printed so that we could feast our eyes on it. Though the article I read failed to specify just how this numerical wonder would ease world hunger, bring the country together over gun control, or tell us what really happened in Benghazi, I have no doubt that such answers lurk there somewhere.
Indeed, such an arithmetical anomaly causes us more alphabetically-oriented types to hang our heads in shame. Why can't we find something new? After all, just how long have we been using these same old twenty-six letters?
In fact, we have so few letters that some of them, like c and g, have to do double duty by representing more than one sound. Those poor little letters must exist in a continuous schizophrenic quandary as we require them to shuttle constantly between "hard" and "soft." And just think of those poor vowels! They never know what they are supposed to sound like, so a lot of times we relegate them to an undignified "uh" and go on.
Resting my head on my hand, barely able to type on, I gaze in bitter remorse on this sadly impotent computer keyboard. I am just about to put it out of its misery with a sledge hammer when--wait!--there it is! It has nestled quietly there below my fingers all this time, just waiting to be discovered and lavished with the recognition it deserves. Sure enough, quite by accident, I have discovered the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. It looks like this: [:].
How could I have missed something so phenomenal as this? Oh, how I rue the years, fraught with nonchalance and complacency, when my fingers flew across this keyboard oblivious to such potential just waiting to be tapped. Guiltily, I take my right forefinger and scrape it repeatedly along the top of my left. Shame, shame, shame on me.
The potential uses of this newly-discovered letter are myriad. I don't think even Carl Sagan could count them all. Like the new prime, it would take reams of paper to explore them all, so I let it suffice here to mention only a few.
How many times, when deeply engrossed in your writing, have you settled for using the clumsy and verbose phrase "electrical outlet cover"? Or how about "shirt with two buttons"? Or "jar with two suspended peas"? With potential this awe-inspiring, I must give it a name that reflects its true wonder. I hereby christen it "bazinga."
"X-Y-Z-Bazinga." At this point my mind virtually explodes with possibility, so I must hurry on to seek out media coverage of this life-transforming discovery.
Welcome to our world, bazinga. The forty-eighth known prime number pales alongside the likes of you.
Never mind that this 17-million-digit miracle would require reams of paper just to be printed so that we could feast our eyes on it. Though the article I read failed to specify just how this numerical wonder would ease world hunger, bring the country together over gun control, or tell us what really happened in Benghazi, I have no doubt that such answers lurk there somewhere.
Indeed, such an arithmetical anomaly causes us more alphabetically-oriented types to hang our heads in shame. Why can't we find something new? After all, just how long have we been using these same old twenty-six letters?
In fact, we have so few letters that some of them, like c and g, have to do double duty by representing more than one sound. Those poor little letters must exist in a continuous schizophrenic quandary as we require them to shuttle constantly between "hard" and "soft." And just think of those poor vowels! They never know what they are supposed to sound like, so a lot of times we relegate them to an undignified "uh" and go on.
Resting my head on my hand, barely able to type on, I gaze in bitter remorse on this sadly impotent computer keyboard. I am just about to put it out of its misery with a sledge hammer when--wait!--there it is! It has nestled quietly there below my fingers all this time, just waiting to be discovered and lavished with the recognition it deserves. Sure enough, quite by accident, I have discovered the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. It looks like this: [:].
How could I have missed something so phenomenal as this? Oh, how I rue the years, fraught with nonchalance and complacency, when my fingers flew across this keyboard oblivious to such potential just waiting to be tapped. Guiltily, I take my right forefinger and scrape it repeatedly along the top of my left. Shame, shame, shame on me.
The potential uses of this newly-discovered letter are myriad. I don't think even Carl Sagan could count them all. Like the new prime, it would take reams of paper to explore them all, so I let it suffice here to mention only a few.
How many times, when deeply engrossed in your writing, have you settled for using the clumsy and verbose phrase "electrical outlet cover"? Or how about "shirt with two buttons"? Or "jar with two suspended peas"? With potential this awe-inspiring, I must give it a name that reflects its true wonder. I hereby christen it "bazinga."
"X-Y-Z-Bazinga." At this point my mind virtually explodes with possibility, so I must hurry on to seek out media coverage of this life-transforming discovery.
Welcome to our world, bazinga. The forty-eighth known prime number pales alongside the likes of you.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Words for the Wise
At the moment, each of my five grandkids is in a different stage of language development and expression. Zoomie still operates at the nonverbal level with the typical peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake gestures. Beenie voices only simple, repetitious words like "tick-tick" and "uh-oh," although it is clear that he understands many more when he hears them said (like "no" and "cough").
Boots, at 2 1/2, says most anything she wants to but is sometimes hard to understand. Four-year-old Pooh spews a veritable fountain of words that sometimes find it impossible to keep up with the pace of his busy little brain. But at almost six and nearing the end of her kindergarten year, Sooby is the one whose creative, multi-faceted use of language is the most fun right now.
First, it is interesting to hear how she couches certain experiences she doesn't yet have the vocabulary for. For instance, not long ago, she was explaining to me how the human brain grows. "It starts out as a little piece of stuffing," she said, "and then turns into a pink ball."
Another time she was giving me instructions for producing a glottal click (the sound you make when you tell a horse to giddy-up). "Put your tongue on the top of your mouth," she told me, "and then slap it down."
The fact that Sooby can now read just about anything has opened up a whole new world for her, but she sometimes finds that world confusing. Several incidents that occurred the last time she was here illustrate that quite well. For example, when she saw the word "Master" on the combination lock that secures our yard shed, she asked Pa-pa who the master was and why he had locked up our building.
Years ago I brought home as a door prize from somewhere a rustic wooden sign that says, "Here let the fires of friendship burn." It hangs on my indoor deck as a motto for our summer swimming soirees and barbecues.
Sooby digested the message of that sign with no small degree of concern. "Googie?" she asked in a voice tinged with alarm. "Are fires of friendship going to burn RIGHT HERE?" Sometime, when you are up for a challenge, try explaining metaphor to a five-year-old.
That same visit included a Monday that happened to be a holiday at her school but not here. Thus, First Student, Inc., the bus transportation company our district uses, was running its regular route. As a big yellow school bus with "First Student" emblazoned on the side came toward our house, Sooby's mama beckoned her to the window to watch.
"Look," she said. "There's the bus picking up a little girl to go to school." School buses are new to Sooby, as she lives just a couple blocks from her school and doesn't ride a bus.
The bus glided slowly past our window as it worked to gather speed. Sooby watched intently, read the words on the side of the bus, and then said, "Yep. There goes the first student." I guess she thought the second and succeeding students would have their own buses, all with the appropriate ordinal signage.
My favorite of Sooby's recent verbal adventures happened at her school a couple months ago. As a test, the teacher instructed the class to take a clean sheet of paper and write their numbers from 1 to 100. When it came time to grade the tests, the teacher found Sooby's paper near the bottom of the pile, one of the first to be turned in.
There were no numbers at all on Sooby's paper, but she did give her teacher an explanation of sorts. On the paper, she had written, "I am not going to do this." How great is that?
Of course, Sooby's mama was mortified, and Sooby paid dearly at home by having to write her numbers from 1 to 100 twice. I imagine she got the expected lecture about following the teacher's instructions and all that. But from a Googie's perspective, I think this is about the funniest thing I have ever heard.
First, Sooby's mama was a willful child herself, and there is delicious poetic justice here--but I won't go there now. Instead, I will just enjoy imagining the teacher, lost in a bored daze of number-checking, coming across this paper. How many written notes do you think she gets from her five-year-olds? Not many, I suspect.
I don't think for a minute that Sooby intended any disrespect. Reading between the lines of her words and knowing the child as I do, I am sure she simply meant, "I know how to do this. You know I know how to do this. I am busy with something else right now."
I have threatened to buy Sooby a cell phone for Christmas so that she can text me. Her mama does not see the humor in this, so I probably will try to resist that urge (for now). But I love seeing this kid grab this thing we call language by the tail and swing it around to her heart's content.
In a little over a month Sooby will be coming by herself to spend a whole week with me. I think it may be time to dust off the Scrabble board and acclimate myself to the idea that, at bedtime, she will be the one reading the stories.
Boots, at 2 1/2, says most anything she wants to but is sometimes hard to understand. Four-year-old Pooh spews a veritable fountain of words that sometimes find it impossible to keep up with the pace of his busy little brain. But at almost six and nearing the end of her kindergarten year, Sooby is the one whose creative, multi-faceted use of language is the most fun right now.
First, it is interesting to hear how she couches certain experiences she doesn't yet have the vocabulary for. For instance, not long ago, she was explaining to me how the human brain grows. "It starts out as a little piece of stuffing," she said, "and then turns into a pink ball."
Another time she was giving me instructions for producing a glottal click (the sound you make when you tell a horse to giddy-up). "Put your tongue on the top of your mouth," she told me, "and then slap it down."
The fact that Sooby can now read just about anything has opened up a whole new world for her, but she sometimes finds that world confusing. Several incidents that occurred the last time she was here illustrate that quite well. For example, when she saw the word "Master" on the combination lock that secures our yard shed, she asked Pa-pa who the master was and why he had locked up our building.
Years ago I brought home as a door prize from somewhere a rustic wooden sign that says, "Here let the fires of friendship burn." It hangs on my indoor deck as a motto for our summer swimming soirees and barbecues.
Sooby digested the message of that sign with no small degree of concern. "Googie?" she asked in a voice tinged with alarm. "Are fires of friendship going to burn RIGHT HERE?" Sometime, when you are up for a challenge, try explaining metaphor to a five-year-old.
That same visit included a Monday that happened to be a holiday at her school but not here. Thus, First Student, Inc., the bus transportation company our district uses, was running its regular route. As a big yellow school bus with "First Student" emblazoned on the side came toward our house, Sooby's mama beckoned her to the window to watch.
"Look," she said. "There's the bus picking up a little girl to go to school." School buses are new to Sooby, as she lives just a couple blocks from her school and doesn't ride a bus.
The bus glided slowly past our window as it worked to gather speed. Sooby watched intently, read the words on the side of the bus, and then said, "Yep. There goes the first student." I guess she thought the second and succeeding students would have their own buses, all with the appropriate ordinal signage.
My favorite of Sooby's recent verbal adventures happened at her school a couple months ago. As a test, the teacher instructed the class to take a clean sheet of paper and write their numbers from 1 to 100. When it came time to grade the tests, the teacher found Sooby's paper near the bottom of the pile, one of the first to be turned in.
There were no numbers at all on Sooby's paper, but she did give her teacher an explanation of sorts. On the paper, she had written, "I am not going to do this." How great is that?
Of course, Sooby's mama was mortified, and Sooby paid dearly at home by having to write her numbers from 1 to 100 twice. I imagine she got the expected lecture about following the teacher's instructions and all that. But from a Googie's perspective, I think this is about the funniest thing I have ever heard.
First, Sooby's mama was a willful child herself, and there is delicious poetic justice here--but I won't go there now. Instead, I will just enjoy imagining the teacher, lost in a bored daze of number-checking, coming across this paper. How many written notes do you think she gets from her five-year-olds? Not many, I suspect.
I don't think for a minute that Sooby intended any disrespect. Reading between the lines of her words and knowing the child as I do, I am sure she simply meant, "I know how to do this. You know I know how to do this. I am busy with something else right now."
I have threatened to buy Sooby a cell phone for Christmas so that she can text me. Her mama does not see the humor in this, so I probably will try to resist that urge (for now). But I love seeing this kid grab this thing we call language by the tail and swing it around to her heart's content.
In a little over a month Sooby will be coming by herself to spend a whole week with me. I think it may be time to dust off the Scrabble board and acclimate myself to the idea that, at bedtime, she will be the one reading the stories.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Beenie's Other Christmas Present
Just two nights ago I was frying up three skillets of morels, which Mom, Pa-pa, Teebo, Beenie's mama, and I inhaled in pretty short order as we enjoyed a textbook spring evening out on our screened deck. As we worked to founder ourselves on these delicate offspring of wet weather followed by hot sunshine, we gloried in a concert of birdsong and distant lawn mowers against a backdrop of lush green lawns and flowering trees ruffled by a welcome breeze.
As the evening wore on, the breeze picked up and turned cold. By last night the temperature had dropped fifty degrees and a wintery mix of precipitation began to assault the tulips. Today, we woke up to a historic cover of May snow that has continued to come down through most of the day. Never, in all of my six decades of life, do I recall seeing snow in Missouri in the month of May.
And so, on a day when I was supposed to be having a garage sale with the other families in my subdivision, my thoughts have rewound themselves to the things of winter. Chili is simmering on the stove, and I am thinking about Christmas.
Specifically, I am thinking about what I will get for Beenie, who is Grandkid #4 of the Fab Five. Since Beenie and I have spent three days a week together most of this school year, I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of things he might like to find beneath the paper and bows next Christmas, when he will be twenty-one months old.
A typical boy, he likes trains and cars and basically anything with a set of wheels that he can push along the floor while making that cute little "bmm-bmm-bmm" motor sound. He also likes phones, from the most basic rattler toy to my iPhone. Every day, at some point, he will hand me the rattler, shaped like a landline receiver, and expect me to go through my familiar one-sided dialogue: "Hello? Yes. Yes. No. OK. Bye-bye."
I also have the Fisher-Price chatter phone and numerous toy cordless and cell phones. Although he likes all of these, none holds a candle to my iPhone, whether we are looking together at the pictures and videos of Beenie and his cousins stored in my camera roll file or watching a musical You Tube video like "Five Little Monkeys" or "I'm a Gummy Bear."
Finally, I am proud to say that Beenie has taken after his Googie and seems to have an affinity for Beanie Baby stuffed animals. (With a blog name like "Beenie," I guess he didn't really have a choice.) Although most of my nine hundred (yes, you read that right) Beanies occupy a closet out of the grandkids' reach until they get a little older and more hand-tag-friendly, I do keep eight or ten of the "better-loved" ones on a shelf in the family room for them to play with.
Every day Beenie will use the loveseat to pull himself into a standing position so that he can then point a little forefinger at the furry little critters he sees up on the shelf above. This is my cue to get them down, one by one, and repeat their individual names as I put them within his reach. Thus, Casanova, Woody, Mystique, Ally, Yours Truly, Kissy, Glory, Giraffiti, and Chocolate Kiss become an integral part of our play.
So toy vehicles, phones, and stuffed animals are all good candidates for Beenie's special present, come the more welcome and opportune snowfall that heralds Christmastime. I will keep these in mind as I watch for sales and bargains that may present themselves over the summer.
However, whichever of these I buy will have to take second place to the other gift I have in mind for Beenie. This is something I have been thinking about for a couple months now. I get more excited about it every day.
It will be a tee-shirt that says "Big Brother." Consider this the official announcement of the expected arrival of Grandkid #6 on or around November 10, just a day before what would have been my sweet dad's eighty-ninth birthday.
This means I am going to have to spray-paint that sixth 8- x 10-inch wood frame for the googery, the gallery of grandkid photos I have hanging in their room here at Googie's. (See "The Googery," my March 18, 2013, blog post for further explanation and a photo.) It will be chocolate brown this time.
So, although this comes a little early, Merry Christmas, Beenie. I hope you will like your present this year, whatever it is, and I know we will like ours.
As the evening wore on, the breeze picked up and turned cold. By last night the temperature had dropped fifty degrees and a wintery mix of precipitation began to assault the tulips. Today, we woke up to a historic cover of May snow that has continued to come down through most of the day. Never, in all of my six decades of life, do I recall seeing snow in Missouri in the month of May.
And so, on a day when I was supposed to be having a garage sale with the other families in my subdivision, my thoughts have rewound themselves to the things of winter. Chili is simmering on the stove, and I am thinking about Christmas.
Specifically, I am thinking about what I will get for Beenie, who is Grandkid #4 of the Fab Five. Since Beenie and I have spent three days a week together most of this school year, I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of things he might like to find beneath the paper and bows next Christmas, when he will be twenty-one months old.
A typical boy, he likes trains and cars and basically anything with a set of wheels that he can push along the floor while making that cute little "bmm-bmm-bmm" motor sound. He also likes phones, from the most basic rattler toy to my iPhone. Every day, at some point, he will hand me the rattler, shaped like a landline receiver, and expect me to go through my familiar one-sided dialogue: "Hello? Yes. Yes. No. OK. Bye-bye."
I also have the Fisher-Price chatter phone and numerous toy cordless and cell phones. Although he likes all of these, none holds a candle to my iPhone, whether we are looking together at the pictures and videos of Beenie and his cousins stored in my camera roll file or watching a musical You Tube video like "Five Little Monkeys" or "I'm a Gummy Bear."
Finally, I am proud to say that Beenie has taken after his Googie and seems to have an affinity for Beanie Baby stuffed animals. (With a blog name like "Beenie," I guess he didn't really have a choice.) Although most of my nine hundred (yes, you read that right) Beanies occupy a closet out of the grandkids' reach until they get a little older and more hand-tag-friendly, I do keep eight or ten of the "better-loved" ones on a shelf in the family room for them to play with.
Every day Beenie will use the loveseat to pull himself into a standing position so that he can then point a little forefinger at the furry little critters he sees up on the shelf above. This is my cue to get them down, one by one, and repeat their individual names as I put them within his reach. Thus, Casanova, Woody, Mystique, Ally, Yours Truly, Kissy, Glory, Giraffiti, and Chocolate Kiss become an integral part of our play.
So toy vehicles, phones, and stuffed animals are all good candidates for Beenie's special present, come the more welcome and opportune snowfall that heralds Christmastime. I will keep these in mind as I watch for sales and bargains that may present themselves over the summer.
However, whichever of these I buy will have to take second place to the other gift I have in mind for Beenie. This is something I have been thinking about for a couple months now. I get more excited about it every day.
It will be a tee-shirt that says "Big Brother." Consider this the official announcement of the expected arrival of Grandkid #6 on or around November 10, just a day before what would have been my sweet dad's eighty-ninth birthday.
This means I am going to have to spray-paint that sixth 8- x 10-inch wood frame for the googery, the gallery of grandkid photos I have hanging in their room here at Googie's. (See "The Googery," my March 18, 2013, blog post for further explanation and a photo.) It will be chocolate brown this time.
So, although this comes a little early, Merry Christmas, Beenie. I hope you will like your present this year, whatever it is, and I know we will like ours.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Blue Cookies
Today I wiped the last fragments of dried blue icing out of the cookie jar. The egg shaped sugar cookies I made a couple weeks ago for Easter are history.
Easter egg sugar cookies have been a tradition at Googie's house for a long time. There is no prettier centerpiece for a spring table than a basket filled with these cookies (recipe compliments of Betty Crocker) iced in a rainbow of pastel colors and adorned with sprinkles. My cookies are traditionally frosted pink, green, yellow, and blue--and if I have the time and energy, you might also find some in orange and lavender.
I like to bake and frost the cookies one day, let the icing dry overnight, and package them in pretty cellophane bags as an Easter treat for my mom, kids, and grandkids. If we happen to be going somewhere for a social gathering, I like to stack some on a platter for a hostess gift or for a beautiful and tasty dessert.
I remember one particular Easter lunch we shared some twenty years ago at the home of my mother- and father-in-law. At that time, our son and daughter, Teebo and Cookie, were a tween and a teen.
Sadly, Grandpa W was in the later stages of Alzheimer's and no longer able to converse with us. Instead, he had to rely on gestures and a variety of incoherent vocalizations in order to communicate. Often, he would do neither and sit quietly and somewhat sullenly among us as we continued our family traditions as best we could.
That had pretty much been the case on this particular day. Cookie and Teebo had enjoyed a relatively quiet lunch. Although I don't actually remember, I imagine that Grandma F had fried a skillet full of crappie (If you are not from the Midwest, you need to know that crappie, pronounced KROP-ee, is a delicious, mild-flavored fish abundant in our freshwater lakes.).
Anyway, I had taken along a basket of Easter egg cookies, which Grandma F had set in the middle of the table. When dessert time came around, it was time to pass the basket and dig into those cookies. What happened then was something I will never forget.
Grandma handed Grandpa a pink cookie. Grandpa refused with a scowl and a violent shake of the head. He pointed to the basket and gestured spasmodically with a perfectly straight forefinger. This happened repeatedly as she offered him the other colors. Nothing seemed to please him; that is, until she handed him one of the blue ones. With a blue cookie in hand, he returned to a calm state and proceeded to devour it with great relish.
Strangely, Grandpa wanted another blue cookie, and another. Further, if one of the rest of us chose a blue one, he quickly made it known that he did not approve. So we would put it back.
That year, Grandpa W got all the blue cookies. This year, I could not wipe the pieces of blue icing out of the cookie jar without thinking about him. Remembering the year of Grandpa and the Blue Cookies always makes me smile, and Pa-pa and I still miss him every day.
Alzheimer's is one of the cruelest and most debilitating diseases in our present-day repertoire of end-of-life maladies. It takes vibrant, loving people and builds a wall between them and the ones they love. It erases the personality and replaces it with paranoia. It tortures the caregivers, often spouses who are themselves in their later years with their own health issues.
If my grandchildren read this post years from now, I want them to know that their Great-Grandpa W would have loved every one of them. He would have lifted them up and said, as he did so many times to my own children and their cousins, "Pam-paw loves you a whole great big lot." I can say unequivocally that he was the kindest, gentlest man I have ever had the pleasure to know. I count myself lucky beyond measure to have called him my father-in-law for seventeen years.
Kids, your great-grandpa was many things. He was a dairy farmer, a deer hunter, a fisherman, a postal worker, a Baptist deacon, and a decorated World War II veteran. Eventually, one of you may inherit his Purple Heart. All of you have inherited his heart of gold. I hope you use it, as he did, to buoy the people around him with a love for God, country, and family; a selfless spirit; and an unrelenting respect for traditional values.
In years to come, it will be up to you to carry on our Easter sugar cookie tradition. If you do that, make sure to think of this story and this great man. And when you frost your cookies, just for old time's sake, be sure to make a few of them blue.
Easter egg sugar cookies have been a tradition at Googie's house for a long time. There is no prettier centerpiece for a spring table than a basket filled with these cookies (recipe compliments of Betty Crocker) iced in a rainbow of pastel colors and adorned with sprinkles. My cookies are traditionally frosted pink, green, yellow, and blue--and if I have the time and energy, you might also find some in orange and lavender.
I like to bake and frost the cookies one day, let the icing dry overnight, and package them in pretty cellophane bags as an Easter treat for my mom, kids, and grandkids. If we happen to be going somewhere for a social gathering, I like to stack some on a platter for a hostess gift or for a beautiful and tasty dessert.
I remember one particular Easter lunch we shared some twenty years ago at the home of my mother- and father-in-law. At that time, our son and daughter, Teebo and Cookie, were a tween and a teen.
Sadly, Grandpa W was in the later stages of Alzheimer's and no longer able to converse with us. Instead, he had to rely on gestures and a variety of incoherent vocalizations in order to communicate. Often, he would do neither and sit quietly and somewhat sullenly among us as we continued our family traditions as best we could.
That had pretty much been the case on this particular day. Cookie and Teebo had enjoyed a relatively quiet lunch. Although I don't actually remember, I imagine that Grandma F had fried a skillet full of crappie (If you are not from the Midwest, you need to know that crappie, pronounced KROP-ee, is a delicious, mild-flavored fish abundant in our freshwater lakes.).
Anyway, I had taken along a basket of Easter egg cookies, which Grandma F had set in the middle of the table. When dessert time came around, it was time to pass the basket and dig into those cookies. What happened then was something I will never forget.
Grandma handed Grandpa a pink cookie. Grandpa refused with a scowl and a violent shake of the head. He pointed to the basket and gestured spasmodically with a perfectly straight forefinger. This happened repeatedly as she offered him the other colors. Nothing seemed to please him; that is, until she handed him one of the blue ones. With a blue cookie in hand, he returned to a calm state and proceeded to devour it with great relish.
Strangely, Grandpa wanted another blue cookie, and another. Further, if one of the rest of us chose a blue one, he quickly made it known that he did not approve. So we would put it back.
That year, Grandpa W got all the blue cookies. This year, I could not wipe the pieces of blue icing out of the cookie jar without thinking about him. Remembering the year of Grandpa and the Blue Cookies always makes me smile, and Pa-pa and I still miss him every day.
Alzheimer's is one of the cruelest and most debilitating diseases in our present-day repertoire of end-of-life maladies. It takes vibrant, loving people and builds a wall between them and the ones they love. It erases the personality and replaces it with paranoia. It tortures the caregivers, often spouses who are themselves in their later years with their own health issues.
If my grandchildren read this post years from now, I want them to know that their Great-Grandpa W would have loved every one of them. He would have lifted them up and said, as he did so many times to my own children and their cousins, "Pam-paw loves you a whole great big lot." I can say unequivocally that he was the kindest, gentlest man I have ever had the pleasure to know. I count myself lucky beyond measure to have called him my father-in-law for seventeen years.
Kids, your great-grandpa was many things. He was a dairy farmer, a deer hunter, a fisherman, a postal worker, a Baptist deacon, and a decorated World War II veteran. Eventually, one of you may inherit his Purple Heart. All of you have inherited his heart of gold. I hope you use it, as he did, to buoy the people around him with a love for God, country, and family; a selfless spirit; and an unrelenting respect for traditional values.
In years to come, it will be up to you to carry on our Easter sugar cookie tradition. If you do that, make sure to think of this story and this great man. And when you frost your cookies, just for old time's sake, be sure to make a few of them blue.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Gravy
Every time Beenie sneezes, I say what my dad always said to us years ago: "Scat, you old cat! Get your tail out of my gravy!" At our house, it was never "Bless you" or its German counterpart, "Gesundheit." It was always "Scat!"
The other day I found myself wondering why this was so. Was this something peculiar to Dad's family? Was this an idiom related to region? To generation? My friend Google would surely be able to shed some light on the mystery.
A quick online search revealed that "Scat, you old cat . .." and its variations are indeed "Southernisms" commonly used in response to someone's sneezing. Among other things, I learned that even country singer Toby Keith has a song titled "Scat Cat" on his Hope on the Rocks album. The reference appears in the final three lines of the song's chorus: "If a bullet doesn't find me,/They'll let me rot in jail./Scat cat, you've got gravy on your tail."
By now, my mind has branched off into other family figures of speech referencing gravy. In his characteristic style fraught with hyperbole, as an example, Pa-pa always liked to tell our kids the "gravy sandwich" story. His family was so poor when he was growing up, he told them, that they had to take gravy sandwiches to school for lunch.
When times were especially hard, he said, they couldn't even afford bread, so on their way out the door the children would have to file past the cook stove so that their mama could ladle a spoonful of gravy directly into their back pockets.
My father-in-law used to declare that all gravy fell into one of two categories. Brown and white? Nope. He categorized gravy as either "chasin'" if it was on the thin, runny side or "slicin'" if too much flour pushed it over to the thicker side.
Great-grandpa's gravy categories speak to the challenge of making gravy of a perfect consistency, with just the right ratio of grease to flour and then flour to milk. Once this is achieved, the salt and pepper part is easy.
I grew up in a 1960s blue collar family for whom fried meat, mashed potatoes and gravy were staples on the lunch menu. So without really trying, my mom passed on to me the mechanics of gravy-making, and my children, Cookie and Teebo, also grew up with a steady diet of the creamy white stuff.
When I was working, one of my colleagues would shudder at the prospect of white gravy, blaming it alone for the fall of the South. This attitude, along with the tendency of today's families to fall back on the likes of fast-food burgers and pizza, makes me worry that the fine art of gravy-making is destined for extinction.
Therefore, in the interest of preserving this fine family tradition, I will record here how to make gravy. But I warn you--I will have trouble. I will run into the same problem I encounter every time I try to explain to my daughter or my daughter-in-law how it is done.
First, I firmly believe that the best gravy grease comes from either fried chicken or browned, crumbled sausage. (The sausage will make its own; you will have to give the chicken a start using solid shortening.) If you fry your chicken in a big skillet, save about enough grease to cover the bottom.
Whatever you do, DON'T throw away the rest of the grease. Instead, save it to use later when you want to have potatoes and gravy without freshly fried meat. Baby food containers work well for freezing just the right amounts.
To make your gravy, heat the grease until it is hot but not popping. Then, stir in a rounded tablespoon of flour and a little more if needed to make the mixture resemble a thick sauce. Keep stirring as you add milk. I don't really know how much milk; it varies with the exact amounts of grease and flour that are already there. I just know that you pour and stir and pretty soon your instinct tells you when to stop. If it doesn't, well, neither chasin' nor slicin' gravy tastes all that bad.
Finish the mixture off with salt and pepper to suit your taste. (You have to actually taste the gravy to know how much it needs.) Bring the gravy to a gentle boil, keep stirring, and turn the fire off when it reaches the desired thickness. Then, pour it immediately into a bowl for serving.
When I create gravy (I use the word create here because gravy-making is an art), I have to take care not to inhale deeply as I add the pepper. Doing this invariably leads to a sneeze, whereupon someone nearby is likely to say, "Scat, you old cat," and I am lost again in my memories of this good life of mine lived in the savory, abundant presence of a wonderful thing called gravy.
The other day I found myself wondering why this was so. Was this something peculiar to Dad's family? Was this an idiom related to region? To generation? My friend Google would surely be able to shed some light on the mystery.
A quick online search revealed that "Scat, you old cat . .." and its variations are indeed "Southernisms" commonly used in response to someone's sneezing. Among other things, I learned that even country singer Toby Keith has a song titled "Scat Cat" on his Hope on the Rocks album. The reference appears in the final three lines of the song's chorus: "If a bullet doesn't find me,/They'll let me rot in jail./Scat cat, you've got gravy on your tail."
By now, my mind has branched off into other family figures of speech referencing gravy. In his characteristic style fraught with hyperbole, as an example, Pa-pa always liked to tell our kids the "gravy sandwich" story. His family was so poor when he was growing up, he told them, that they had to take gravy sandwiches to school for lunch.
When times were especially hard, he said, they couldn't even afford bread, so on their way out the door the children would have to file past the cook stove so that their mama could ladle a spoonful of gravy directly into their back pockets.
My father-in-law used to declare that all gravy fell into one of two categories. Brown and white? Nope. He categorized gravy as either "chasin'" if it was on the thin, runny side or "slicin'" if too much flour pushed it over to the thicker side.
Great-grandpa's gravy categories speak to the challenge of making gravy of a perfect consistency, with just the right ratio of grease to flour and then flour to milk. Once this is achieved, the salt and pepper part is easy.
I grew up in a 1960s blue collar family for whom fried meat, mashed potatoes and gravy were staples on the lunch menu. So without really trying, my mom passed on to me the mechanics of gravy-making, and my children, Cookie and Teebo, also grew up with a steady diet of the creamy white stuff.
When I was working, one of my colleagues would shudder at the prospect of white gravy, blaming it alone for the fall of the South. This attitude, along with the tendency of today's families to fall back on the likes of fast-food burgers and pizza, makes me worry that the fine art of gravy-making is destined for extinction.
Therefore, in the interest of preserving this fine family tradition, I will record here how to make gravy. But I warn you--I will have trouble. I will run into the same problem I encounter every time I try to explain to my daughter or my daughter-in-law how it is done.
First, I firmly believe that the best gravy grease comes from either fried chicken or browned, crumbled sausage. (The sausage will make its own; you will have to give the chicken a start using solid shortening.) If you fry your chicken in a big skillet, save about enough grease to cover the bottom.
Whatever you do, DON'T throw away the rest of the grease. Instead, save it to use later when you want to have potatoes and gravy without freshly fried meat. Baby food containers work well for freezing just the right amounts.
To make your gravy, heat the grease until it is hot but not popping. Then, stir in a rounded tablespoon of flour and a little more if needed to make the mixture resemble a thick sauce. Keep stirring as you add milk. I don't really know how much milk; it varies with the exact amounts of grease and flour that are already there. I just know that you pour and stir and pretty soon your instinct tells you when to stop. If it doesn't, well, neither chasin' nor slicin' gravy tastes all that bad.
Finish the mixture off with salt and pepper to suit your taste. (You have to actually taste the gravy to know how much it needs.) Bring the gravy to a gentle boil, keep stirring, and turn the fire off when it reaches the desired thickness. Then, pour it immediately into a bowl for serving.
When I create gravy (I use the word create here because gravy-making is an art), I have to take care not to inhale deeply as I add the pepper. Doing this invariably leads to a sneeze, whereupon someone nearby is likely to say, "Scat, you old cat," and I am lost again in my memories of this good life of mine lived in the savory, abundant presence of a wonderful thing called gravy.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Aloha Oe
It has been the kind of weekend a person only dreams about. After several weeks of kicking around possibilities and probabilities, the plans were finalized only yesterday.
I have already pinched myself in disbelief at least ten or twelve times so far today. Yes, my friends, today Googie has big news, and I mean BIG.
If you know us personally, you know that six or seven times over the past ten years Pa-pa and I have enjoyed vacations in Hawaii. Most of these have been spent immersed in the breathtakingly beautiful tropical paradise of the island of Maui.
On one of our early trips to the island, while snorkeling near Black Rock off Ka'anapali Beach, we became acquainted with Aolani and Kanunu, native Hawaiians who work at the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, where we often stay. The couple live in a beautiful home just down the beach a ways from the more commercial, touristy area.
A couple weeks ago, we learned that Aolani and Kanunu plan to spend a year on the mainland lending their expertise in native Hawaiian language and culture to a research project conducted at a university located not too far from our home here in the Midwest. What began as a phone conversation Kanunu initiated to get our advice on a temporary living arrangement has ended with an unbelievable solution: beginning in June, we are going to swap homes for a year.
Even as I stare at the words I just typed, I find myself incredulous. However, it doesn't take long to wrap my mind around what this actually means. For a year, Pa-pa and I will drift off to sleep to the sound of the ocean lapping the shore. We will begin every morning with a pot of coffee, a bottle of Bailey's, and a two-mile saunter where we squish our toes into the soft, wet sand of Ka'anapali Beach.
Two or three times a week we will venture into nearby Lahaina to take in the night life there. We will sit under its world-famous banyan tree, which has grown in 140 years to encompass two-thirds of an acre. We will breathe in the night air rolling landward off the ocean and eat dinner in all our favorite places, including the Cool Cat, where our friend Captain Eric croons and strums as long as the restaurant management keeps him adequately plied with Captain Morgan.
The longest we have ever stayed on Maui at once has been two weeks. Then, it was always a countdown as the days slipped by way too fast, shrouded in the awareness, always present in the back of our minds, that the dreaded day of departure was never far away.
The one down side, of course, is how much we will miss the kids and grandkids. But there is always Skype, and I am hoping that vacations can be arranged so that everyone can come and spend a couple weeks or more with us a time or two while we are there. I love the idea of splashing in the ocean and building sand castles with Sooby, Pooh, Bootsie, and the two baby boys.
Like I said, it has been the kind of weekend a person only dreams about. And that is just what I did. I sat at my computer and dreamed this whole thing up.
Confession time. I just couldn't resist. We really do love Hawaii, but we have no immediate plans to go back there.
You guessed it. April Fool's.
P.S. Followers and Facebook Friends: I would love for you to comment, but please do so discreetly. Help me keep the joke going, at least for the rest of the day!
I have already pinched myself in disbelief at least ten or twelve times so far today. Yes, my friends, today Googie has big news, and I mean BIG.
If you know us personally, you know that six or seven times over the past ten years Pa-pa and I have enjoyed vacations in Hawaii. Most of these have been spent immersed in the breathtakingly beautiful tropical paradise of the island of Maui.
On one of our early trips to the island, while snorkeling near Black Rock off Ka'anapali Beach, we became acquainted with Aolani and Kanunu, native Hawaiians who work at the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, where we often stay. The couple live in a beautiful home just down the beach a ways from the more commercial, touristy area.
A couple weeks ago, we learned that Aolani and Kanunu plan to spend a year on the mainland lending their expertise in native Hawaiian language and culture to a research project conducted at a university located not too far from our home here in the Midwest. What began as a phone conversation Kanunu initiated to get our advice on a temporary living arrangement has ended with an unbelievable solution: beginning in June, we are going to swap homes for a year.
Even as I stare at the words I just typed, I find myself incredulous. However, it doesn't take long to wrap my mind around what this actually means. For a year, Pa-pa and I will drift off to sleep to the sound of the ocean lapping the shore. We will begin every morning with a pot of coffee, a bottle of Bailey's, and a two-mile saunter where we squish our toes into the soft, wet sand of Ka'anapali Beach.
Two or three times a week we will venture into nearby Lahaina to take in the night life there. We will sit under its world-famous banyan tree, which has grown in 140 years to encompass two-thirds of an acre. We will breathe in the night air rolling landward off the ocean and eat dinner in all our favorite places, including the Cool Cat, where our friend Captain Eric croons and strums as long as the restaurant management keeps him adequately plied with Captain Morgan.
The longest we have ever stayed on Maui at once has been two weeks. Then, it was always a countdown as the days slipped by way too fast, shrouded in the awareness, always present in the back of our minds, that the dreaded day of departure was never far away.
The one down side, of course, is how much we will miss the kids and grandkids. But there is always Skype, and I am hoping that vacations can be arranged so that everyone can come and spend a couple weeks or more with us a time or two while we are there. I love the idea of splashing in the ocean and building sand castles with Sooby, Pooh, Bootsie, and the two baby boys.
Like I said, it has been the kind of weekend a person only dreams about. And that is just what I did. I sat at my computer and dreamed this whole thing up.
Confession time. I just couldn't resist. We really do love Hawaii, but we have no immediate plans to go back there.
You guessed it. April Fool's.
P.S. Followers and Facebook Friends: I would love for you to comment, but please do so discreetly. Help me keep the joke going, at least for the rest of the day!
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