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Camping with Kids

5/20/2016

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Summer is almost here, and the kids have begun their annual chorus:  When are we going camping?!


Never, I say.  


Never again.  


But the children lean towards me, widen their eyes, and give it their best sales pitch.  They imitate the loon’s cry, paint me memories of powerful, cascading rivers and majestic woods. They  long for the mysterious wild, the crystal starlight, and the campfires with marshmallows.  


Mostly the marshmallows.


How can I resist?  I am drawn in to their imaginations, captivated by the idea that they actually still want to sing songs around the fireside and huddle with Mom in a tent in the woods.  If I had no actual camping experience, I would say “Yes, Yes, Yes!  Let’s go sleep in the woods and listen to the owls together!”  


But I have been around the camping block.  I have experiences that make me the no-fun, realistic mom who says “Set up a tent in the living room.  We’ll roast marshmallows over a candle at the kitchen table.  It’ll be great!”


Who needs ghost stories around the campfire when you have real-life horror stories? 


Back when I was a young mom, an eager and inexperienced mom, I was foolish enough to take  small kids camping.  We bought a small pop-up tent, packed up the Disney sleeping bags, the portable crib, a suitcase and a cooler, and embarked on an adventure with extended family at a state park.  


The birds were singing as we pitched our tent.  Baby and toddler jumped together in the pack-n-play, fascinated by the tent in the wilderness.  We had chosen a secluded spot, deep under the trees.  I felt so happy to be alone in this spot of heaven with my family.  That is, until my brother, the former Boy Scout, walked over and showed me that I had pitched my tent in a large patch of poison ivy.  


Time to move.


By then it was afternoon, and the only spot available was next to a group of biker people, all seemingly tattooed and pierced, sporting jet black hair from a box and leather jackets.  We set up camp hastily, listening to their dark, heavy music instead of the loons, and I briefly wondered why on earth I thought it was a good idea to sleep outside with babies. 


By this time, the kids were hungry for supper, which required cooking.  Doug started a fire while I took the kids to our third trip to the latrines.  There were mosquitoes in the latrine, of course.  They swarmed around, biting viciously as I changed baby’s diaper and helped the toddler, who was thrilled to add his bit to the large mountain of filth down the hole.  One daughter couldn’t do it.  She didn’t like latrines, she said, and she would wait until we returned home to use our own toilet. I didn’t want to return in the dark of night, so I told her she had a choice; she could pee in the outhouse or use her baby sister’s diaper.  What a choice.  


By this time, the fire was raging, and all the little cousins were roasting hot dogs.  I was terrified.  Like a desperate sheepdog on adrenaline overload, I hovered around the kids, pulling them back from the fire, yelling at them to stay back, no jumping, no skipping, no dancing, no singing.  Babies were crying, food was dropping into the dirt, diapers needed changing again, and all the food tasted like Deep Woods Off.  “Sit down on that bench and don’t get up!  I don’t care if your cousin is chopping with an axe!  You are staying right there!”  Sweat dripped from my brow, and I longed to zip the kids all up in their sleeping bags.  Camping was more stressful than anything I had previously attempted as a parent.  What the heck was I thinking?  This little campground was The Wild.


When darkness began to fall, the brightness of the circle bonfires lit up the campground.  That was when tragedy struck.  


My kids were so restricted they were practically on lockdown. Two were confined to the pack-n-play, tightly lidded with mosquito netting, and the rest of the cousins had been banished from the fire.  I guarded like a wolf, snarling at any child who dared try to roast a marshmallow near my fire.   Away across the campsite, we heard screams in the night.  A child’s scream, a woman’s scream, echoing in the darkness.  Within minutes, we knew that someone’s child had been burned.  The campsites fell silent, children pulled closer, and bonfires died down.   When the sirens wailed and the emergency crews arrived, most of the campers stood at the edge of the dirt road, silently praying and still.  Even our neighbors, the tattooed biker crowd, stood at the end of their campsite, hats in hand, heads down.  


The sirens apparently spooked some other campers.  In their haste to evade police authority, someone apparently threw a large quantity of marijuana onto a bonfire.  As the ambulance roared away, squad cars circled the campground in a blue haze of drug smoke, the stench pervading every campsite.  I wondered, with mounting distress, if that blue smoke would dissipate before my little children got stoned. 


Just at that moment, thunder rumbled on the horizon.  Lightening cracked across the sky, and campers skittered away like ants to their holes.  Thank God I could finally zip up the kiddos.  We cuddled close in the storm, as the wind beat upon our tent and the rain began drumming down hard.  


“I’m scared.”  “I hafta go to the baffroom.”  “I’m getting wet!”


I dismissed them all.  “This is fun!  We are all together, you are safe.  This is an exciting adventure, now go to sleep!”  In the middle of a prayer, in which I was thanking God that we were no longer underneath any large tree branches, I felt a cold stream beginning to seep enderneath my sleeping bag.   The chorus began.  “I’m wet!”  “I’m wetter!”  “I’m cold!”


I scooped up Baby and planted her into a nest of clothes in the open suitcase.  The rest of us crowded onto one, full-sized air mattress, covering up with the remaining two dry sleeping bags.  The baby slept.  The other five of us shivered the night away, huddled on the plastic air mat.  I covered kids up with every beach towel and sweatshirt.  It wasn’t enough.  


The storm tapered off just about the time the birds started chirping in the morning. 


Even if we could have started a fire with all that wet wood, there was no point.  I had forgotten the coffee.


We packed up silently, my caffeine-withdrawal headache mounting steadily in severity.  We were  damp, stinky, grubby, and hungry as we loaded the car.   My brother, the Boy Scout, just laughed about our wet gear.  “Didn’t you fold down the ends of your tarp?”  


Tarp?  


What tarp?  


I had packed diapers and wipes and matches and food and jackets and beachtowels and marshmallows and band-aids and flashlights and sleeping bags and a coffee pot and a water bucket and a rustic cast-iron skillet and even hot dogs and brown beans, which all my kids hated…but we had no tarp.  Apparently, the tarp was important.  


My muddy kids stood in the dirt path of the campground that morning, jumping and singing songs and playing the Limbo with their cousins and a birch stick, laughing with joy.  Let me repeat;  they were playing with a stick, oblivious to any hardship. Instead of baths, they were going to swim in the lake before breakfast.  They were having the time of their lives.  


“Can we do this again next weekend, Mom!?”  “Camping is great!”






I am tugged out of my memorable nightmare by the chirps of my current kids.   This is the year 2016, those other kids are grown, and these younger kids are sick of marshmallows with candles at the kitchen table.  They want their own adventure.

“So, can we go, Mom?”  “Can we go camping?”  “I’ve always wanted to go on an adventure!!  Please?”  “How about the Yukon?  Can we camp in the Yukon?”


The Yukon?  


No.  


“Maybe a nice, safe State Park, Mom?”    That one knows me well. 


I am weakening…


Maybe it’s time to pack those Disney sleeping bags in the car after all, and try this camping thing again.   


With just a small bonfire.  


And a large plastic tarp.  This time, I won’t forget the coffee. 

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Happy New Year

1/3/2016

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“What are we doing for New Year’s Eve, Mom?”


It was the 30th of December.  Plans had been made.  The Vietnamese egg rolls had been ordered and picked up.  Shopping almost done.  Phô ingredients in the fridge.  Well, almost.  I forgot the bean sprouts.  And the shrimp.  


Also meat.  


There was no meat in the house at all, except one leftover piece of salami.  Maybe I should call it Ramen instead of Phô.  Then they wouldn’t expect anything exotic like limes or vegetables or meat.  Also, the noodles are mung bean, not rice stick.  Technically, mung bean noodles in broth are neither phô nor ramen.  Who was I trying to kid?  But the broth was really good, I reasoned.  I bought fresh basil!  Maybe they wouldn't notice.


Did I mention the kids had been sick?   Of course they were.  After every major holiday for the last 21 years, someone in my family has gotten sick.  So like clockwork, right after Christmas, the stomach aches had begun.  


“What are we doing for New Year’s Eve, Mom?”  The question repeated, jolting me out of my reverie.  


“Well, dear.  Three people still have stomach aches.  And since someone puked on the dog in the middle of the night,  I think we better keep it a little low key…Let’s enjoy our egg rolls and Phô and have some fun!”  


“So, Mom.  Let me get this straight."  True teenage tact.  "What you’re really saying is that for New Year’s Eve, we are staying home and eating soup?”


“Yeah, something like that.  Want to eat egg rolls today instead?  It’s almost New Year’s Eve, and there really isn’t any other food in the house.” 


Yeah!


They were delicious.  


We all said “Happy New Year” and smiled.  


The next day, the Real New Year’s Eve, my kid said  “Mom, did you know that some people watch T.V. on New Year’s Eve, and there is this giant silver ball thing that drops in New York City?  Someday can we see that?”


“Sure, kid.  Someday...  Hey,  there is just one egg roll left in the fridge.  I hid it under the lettuce so no one else could find it.  Do you want it?”
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"Aww, Happy New Year, Mom." 

Happy New Year indeed.

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Thankful

11/28/2015

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7:00 a.m. Happy Thanksgiving text from the family.  
9:00 a.m. Early Mass.  
By 11:00 a.m., I had peeled 22.5 pounds of potatoes.  I am not kidding.  I am the Undisputed Mashed Potato Queen.  I have prepared mashed potatoes for family holidays for many years, because they are impossible to mess up.  It’s all about butter, whipping cream and vast quantities of potatoes.  But about the time I put the third stock pot of water on to boil the last of the spuds, I knew something was not right. 


At 1:00 p.m. We were supposed to be at Thanksgiving Dinner, for 31 people.  
But Small One had a headache, a raging sore throat, and a fever of 101.5.


Time for a plan B.  


1:20, late as usual, the rest of the family packed into the trucks with the potatoes and drove away for dinner.  Small One and I cuddled up on the couch together.  


“Happy Thanksgiving, Kiddo.”  I said.  “Just you and me.  What do you want to do?”


“I like corn.”   She whimpered, huddling under her blanket.   “Can we eat corn out of a can together?”


Yes, we can.


And so we did.  


After all the cooking of the morning, the only clean pot in the kitchen was an egg poacher.  I was far too tired to wash dishes.  So I dumped the egg poaching cups out of the pan, and dumped a can of corn into the poacher.  In a few short minutes, we were cuddled up together in the big arm chair.  The poacher piled on top of every other pot and pan and potato bowl in the house, and I left it balancing there.  


And Small One and I ate canned corn with mashed potatoes.  She wore a damp washcloth on her head.  


Our Thanksgiving feast was unusually quiet. 


There was no hand holding, no long traditional prayer.  No cousins jumped about, shrieking and laughing, snitching treats.  No games of tag were dashed under the table or up the stairs.  No aunts discussed politics or sales, no uncles hammered out the details and how-to’s of organic gardening or ant farms.   No sisters talked about low-glycemic desserts, and no sisters dished up huge portions of homemade gluten free pie, crowned with whipped cream. No college kids regaled us with horror stories of final exams or roommates.  No one asked me to cut up their food.  


Just Small One and I, together, ate canned corn with mashed potatoes.  We did smile at each other.    


And we were thankful.  


She was thankful that she had her mom.  She had her blanket.  And she had her favorite food, canned corn.  


I was thankful for peace.  For hugs from my child.  For the antibiotics that would surely cure yet another case of strep throat.  I was thankful for the dirty dishes piled high, which meant that there was plenty of food for the family celebration.  I was thankful for the family.  Even if I wasn’t with them.  I was thankful for my mom, who hosted the party in her always-clean house, for a sister who made three turkeys, for a sister in law who baked all the pies.  I was thankful for the sister in law who made a special plate up for me, when all was said and done, with the best slices of turkey on it.   And mashed potatoes.  Lots of mashed potatoes.  


I fell asleep, holding Small One while she watched Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving special.  


I slept in the peace and quiet of alone-ness, hugging my feverish child, and dreaming of My Big Fat Family Parties.   It was almost like I was there, in the fray.  


Sometimes being absent makes me appreciate life even more.  


And I’m thankful for that.  


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Sick

11/10/2015

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“This is highly unusual,”  the nurse practitioner said.  


Of course it was.  


“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen before,” he continued.  “Five family members test positive for Strep throat at the same time…”


I tried to give him the lame excuse that our dishwasher was broken.  Why?  Why would a broken dishwasher lead to five cases of strep?  Well, gee whiz.  The repair company schedules a week out, and we were sick of washing so many dishes.  So in the interest of saving time at the sink, we shared a water cup or two.  That’s all.  This is excluding all of my teenagers, of course.  Let it be known that they shared no cups.   Yes, the small ones and I were the only ones to share cups and therefore, get strep.  


Welcome to my life.  If there was a prize for being unusual, we would win.  Not if there was a prize for something unusual like, say, winning the lottery.  Not that kind of unusual.  No, we tend to win the “5 Cases of Strep Throat at Once” sort of prize.  



Last week was kind of a record, though, even for us.  Five people with fevers, sore throats, and short fuses, all at the same time…it didn’t really count as “Fun and Memorable Days Off School.”  We drank a lot of broth.  Broth was such a hit, that we had it four days in a row.  That means I didn’t have to cook, which was kind of a bonus.  I just kept the stock pot warming on the stove, and voilá:  Breakfast, lunch, and supper!   Too bad I was too sick to enjoy the vacation from cooking.  


But on the up side, nothing happened to the laundry.  Nope.  It’s still there, waiting for me, right where I left it before we got sick.  And it has multiplied.  What joy!  Our Laundry Mountain is a young mountain range, and somehow continues to grow over time.  I think that defies geological norms, but then again, it’s not truly petrified yet.   


We got into the doctor’s office really early.  To do that, everyone skipped breakfast.  “There is still Halloween candy in the car,” I said.  “You can have suckers for breakfast.  And it doesn’t matter if you’re still in your pajamas.  Let’s go!”


Thank God for penicillin.  I really am grateful.  You may not have been able to tell when I picked up the prescriptions, though.  I had a fever and a carload of sad, crabby sick kids, all with sore throats and fevers.  So of course, the pharmacy had problems filling our prescriptions.  Because I didn’t want to share germs around the world, we went to a new, drive-through pharmacy.   


Our prescriptions ended up at a different drive-through pharmacy with a similar address, other side of town.   I rested my head on the steering wheel, looked at the poor guy at the window (who did not want my germs) and said “I am not driving across town to that other pharmacy.  How long will it take to fill it here?”  


Thirty minutes.  We could do that.  “Look, let’s all get ice cream for our sore throats,” I said, hoping that would kill a half hour.  I couldn’t take everyone home and back again.  We were going to stick it out and wait.  But it was still morning.  No ice cream shop.  Fevering child number one began to sniffle.  “No crying!” I yelled, my head beginning to pound.  “I’ll fix it.  Look, there is a McDonalds with a drive through across the street.”  But that wasn’t any good, either.  Morning McDonalds for the gluten free crowd is limited to an egg McMuffin with no muffin.  Also no cheese, because my kids are the only kids in America who won’t eat melted cheese.  


“I’m sorry, kids.  But I am not paying $2.79 for each of you to have bread-free, cheese free Egg McMuffin.  That’s just a boiled egg and a piece of ham.  Not even if you’re sick.  You probably couldn’t swallow it, anyway.  Then it would end up on the car floor with all the Halloween candy wrappers.”  


We went back to the pharmacy.  They needed another half hour to solve insurance problems. 


By then, even my best-natured kids wanted to go home. 


“No, we can do this!”  I entered cheerleader mode.  “Look, there’s a lake here.  Let’s drive around the lake and see what we can see.”  Silence fell in the car, as I drove them into sleepy boredom.  Ten minutes.  Twenty minutes.  At thirty, we were back at the drive through pharmacy.  


“Still having trouble with one of the insurance cards,” our faithful pharm tech said.  “I mean, it’s obvious that all the cards are the same family, the same numbers…there must be a glitch in their system.  I’ll need another half an hour to solve this.”


I looked at him.  I had glassy eyes, disheveled hair, and white knuckles on the steering wheel.  He smiled sheepishly and said he hoped we all felt better soon.  I handed him the cash to skip insurance, and finally drove away.  


Five bottles of penicillin, one big couch, and Netflix were all we needed.  
And some broth.  Out of five clean mugs. 


Next time my family does something unusual and noteworthy, I’m going to ask for a Different Prize.  


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Paintbrushes and People

9/24/2015

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“What do you DO all day, Mom?”  my son asked me, a small tone of jealousy in his voice.  “I mean, we’re at school for seven hours.  What do you do?”  

Wow.  What can I say? That I sit at the kitchen table all day, eating ice cream?  Does he really think that I find all the hidden Snicker bars and scarf them down with no one to stop me?  They do go really well with ice cream…  Okay, I’ll be honest.  That could have happened.

But really, that is his fondest dream;  to be left alone with the refrigerator for seven hours, with no one to stop him.  

That’s not quite how it is.  Since you asked, Son, I will show you what happened at the kitchen table while you were gone.

These are a couple of statues that a very patient person has been waiting to be painted for a long time.  Today is the day...
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The kitchen table turned into this:    It was gloriously quiet and deliciously fun.
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The statues now look like this:
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While I was painting the seeds in St. Francis's bowl, I thought about how much I love my brushes.  I have a lot of them...Some are fancy and luxurious and delicate, some are rotten-looking things that don't appear to be worth keeping.  They might look like garbage to someone who looked in my paintbrush box.  But all my brushes are needed, they all have a special purpose.  Here are two of my favorites:
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The one on the right is a luxurious, expensive oil painting brush.  It is sleek and soft, the finest Red Sable Filbert. It is 100% reliable, and far more sophisticated than I am.  It blends colors beautifully.   It softens the lines that other brushes leave behind, smoothing all the imperfections.  

The one on the left is a 99 cent cheap thing from the hardware store.  It is ancient, hardened, crusted over and pretty much destroyed.  But that's why I like it so much.  That old brush can do things that no other brush can.  Like paint abstract, splotchy spots to make seeds in St. Francis' bowl, for example.   None of my other brushes can  do that.  It is precisely because that old brush is ruined that I like it so much, and use it so often.  I need it.  At times, I have taken a scissors and snipped some of the inside bristles, thinning it out even more.  There's not much left of it, really.  
That's why it's so valuable.  

As I painted today, I did a lot of pondering about brushes and people.  

People are just like my brushes... They are all unique, for their own special purpose.  
And we need them all.

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So Son, that's what I did today.  But don't worry.  The kitchen table is now cleaned off, and ready for you to eat again.  

And I made cookies.
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Summer in the Sticks

6/24/2015

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I miss you, Blog Friends!  I hope you are having a wonderful summer vacation!  Life is good out here in the sticks.   

The Mud Pies are made fresh, daily.   In their little bakery that is the front yard, they line up their baked goods on rocks and steps, drying in the summer sun, topping them off with the best blooms from the garden.  This week, however, I turned my back for 15 minutes, and the entire bakery staff and their customers decided to use the pies to make Celtic war paint.  In fifteen minutes, a mighty battle ensued, wherein many kids were plastered in mud.  One child enjoyed this so completely that he covered himself in it.  Head to toe.  Mud.  He was so pleased.  By the time I returned, it was clear that my bathroom was going to be the complete and total loser.  Sadly, the outside water was too cold for me to turn the hose on them, and when they had all cleaned up enough to go home for supper, the bathroom was a wreck.  “Please don’t make me wash!”  the dirtiest child had said, with a smile.  “I want to show my Mom!”  Oh, no, you don’t.  

Watch out for mud pies.  
They make excellent weapons.

Career opportunities abound here.  The laundry pile is climbing half way up to the ceiling, with no signs of stopping.  If the average American washes two loads of laundry per week, (a conservative estimate)  then it is reasonable to assume that I should do sixteen.  Not counting sheets and towels.  Those add up, too.  The dishwasher runs, merrily, three times a day.  It actually doesn’t load itself, though, so good workers are always needed.  And for those career-minded individuals with a “Big Picture” mentality, the heavy traffic around here means the floor is always dirty.  All of it.  From front door to back.  Please send help.  And some Clorox Wipes.

“Success is when your knees are stained green and brown at the end of the day,”  says a local twelve year old.  With that ideology in mind, you might be surprised that so far, only one arm has been broken this summer. But it required surgery, with pins, so that child’s status as a Tag-Playing Superstar is quite secure.  

Did I mention I am working this summer?  Yes, the fridge is empty, unless you want a sandwich.    I have given up grocery shopping entirely to illustrate another (beautiful and amazing) children’s book for Behold Publications.   It is like entering another dimension for me, drawing the Little Flowers saints and virtues.  Very peaceful and gratifying.  And no mud pies anywhere in sight.  

Well, that is the news from the sticks.  

I wish you many days of restful Summer-Vacation sunshine…

Life is good.
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Breakfast, Anyone?

4/29/2015

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“Open up the tunnel!  Here comes the Choo Choo train!”  I wheedled as I wielded the loaded baby spoon.  “Here comes the Choo Choo train!”   

Second Son wasn’t buying it.  Nope.  He closed his lips tightly in determined defiance. He would not give in.  He hated food.  All food.  No matter how we begged and pleaded, prodded and cajoled, he seldom ate anything besides plain toast with milk.  Getting him to eat was a job of epic proportions.  We once (and only once) forced him to try the fish everyone else was enjoying.  He puked on the table.  On his sister’s plate.  We once made him taste black bean tacos, with the same result.  After that, we stopped trying.  The kid ate a lot of plain toast. 

He is now in elementary school, and at breakfast this week, true to form, he declined poached eggs.  “Mom,” he confided, seriously.  “I have never really eaten an egg, except for scrambled.”  

“What?  No fried eggs?  No poached?  No Easter eggs?”  How did this information get by me?  I understand we have a lot of gross gluten free food around here, but really… “No eggs?”  

“Nope.  But look what I can do.”

He smiled, and turned to his little sister, who was balking at her breakfast.

“Credit card time!” He hollered.  “Open up the card reader!  Here comes the credit card!”  He pushed the loaded fork towards her mouth, and like an obedient bank machine, she dropped her jaw and ate the food.  

His eyes gleamed with satisfaction, and they finished their food. 

Good grief.  I’m feeling old.
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Minnesota Garden

4/20/2015

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It’s April.  Spring has arrived, at last!  I picture a scene of pastoral promise:  The ground is being tilled…furrows dug, seeds sown.  Gentle rains fall, quenching the thirst of bright green sprouts… I may as well imagine a rainbow up there somewhere.  

Reality check…  

This is Minnesota.   It’s 35 degrees and windy.  

Our gardens are inside where it’s warm.

My friends and neighbors plant their seeds inside, in trays of tidy, parallel lines in April.  They light them up with hanging fluorescent “grow” lights.  They water them each morning, so by May, the little sprouts will poke their noses out of the soil.  In June they will be transplanted into real, outside gardens, to grow during our two good months of summer.  By August, everything is so hot and dry that the plants get baked into the parched and crusted earth, just before the Autumn freeze.  That’s right about when Winter shows up for another 9 month stay.  

If you blink, you’ll miss the whole growing season.

This year, I outsmarted the whole system.  The kids and I planted our garden in January.

Okay, maybe it had nothing to do with smart.  We just were bored with a bad case of cabin fever, so we got out the seeds and dirt and had ourselves some fun.  Watching seeds sprout up and grow was much more exciting than watching snowflakes fall and accumulate into mountains.  And we didn’t have to shovel it.  So anyway, now it is April, and our garden has grown.  

And guess what? 
 Just like nearly everything else in Minnesota, it grew up to be Norwegian.  

Tall, thin and pale.  


If the little kids’ feather pollination works, we should have spaghetti squash and tomatoes and corn on the cob by Mother’s Day.  Maybe we’ll get to carve pumpkins on the Fourth of July, before snow comes again.  

In the meantime, Happy Spring!

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Complain, Complain, Yawn.

1/5/2015

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I have been very crummy with resolutions this year.  It is January 5th, and my New Year's Resolution to write every day, no matter what, has ended.  I wrote just once this year.  
I FAILED!  
I could be upset, but I'm not.  
I could be angry, but I'm not.  
I could be surprised or dismayed.  I am definitely not.  
I am quite accustomed to my habits and the way I work.  It's always dysfunctional.  
My work suffers because I am busy living life.  
And life is large. 
I can make all the New Year's Resolutions I want, but that won't change a thing.
There are still hungry mouths to feed, homework to help with, and laundry piling up like a Parisian Barricade in the hall.   
Resolutions, Revolutions...
They come and they go, don't they?  
But the sun still rises in the morning, and I'll be at the stove from 6 am to 6 pm.  
I'll probably be burning the chow, because I'll be thinking about writing.
But we're all used to that.
Maybe I should have resolved to be a better cook.
I could write about that.


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Gingerbread, Anyone?

12/23/2014

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Gingerbread, Anyone?

I thought gingerbread was simply an offshoot of the story of Hansel and Gretel via the Brothers Grimm.  

I was wrong.

A Wilton baking website, boasting that they made 2,000,000 gingerbread houses in one year alone, credits an Armenian monk with bringing Gingerbread to Europe in the 10th century.  Gingerbread became a staple of Swedish nuns, and then of European monasteries in general.  Later, gingerbread came to be sold in markets and pharmacies.  

Only then did it make its way to Jolly Old England, to be displayed in shop windows as gingerbread houses.  So the origin of the gingerbread house is actually England, via the Brothers Grimm, European monasteries, Swedish nuns, and one Armenian monk.  Whew!

Thank you, One and All.  We have had much fun with gingerbread!

Many people create amazing gingerbread houses.  People set up a dreamscape of sugary goodness, organized like a painter’s palette, ready to be assembled into beautiful structures.  I have seen pictures of tidy red cinnamon dots in orderly rows on rooftops…pretzel and licorice fences, flat suckers designed into stained glass windows.  In my imagination, they look just like scenes from the Nutcracker, dripping with sweetness and happiness.

This is not what my children imagine.  Not quite.  

We used to bake our own gingerbread, and cut it into our desired architectural shapes before baking.  This is a day-long process.  We even do it gluten free.  But now, there are just too many of us.  It would take all my free time for a week to bake enough gingerbread.  So this year, we bought many boxes of gluten free crackers in different shapes, and those were our foundation.  It didn’t sound enticing at all to some of the kids, 

“After all, Mom, a gluten free cracker is still a gluten free cracker even if you cover it in chocolate!  Ew!”

But the rest of us were thrilled.  Here are a few gems from our annual Gingerbread House Decorating Day.  Not for the faint of heart…

Though the hobbit house was made of brownies and buttercream, the sweetness ended there.

Check out the lovely, Lord of the Rings chocolate-coated Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron.  Just what you’d like decorating your Christmas table, right?  Anything can happen when you pull out the gluten free crackers, chocolate chips and gummy bears!  The gummy bear army is assembled, ready for an Orc battle.  

The funny part is that the Eye of Sauron disappeared before it could be attached.  We blamed the dog.  But how could anyone resist the gummy bear covered, frosted cookie the kids had made?  So a second Eye was prepared.  We made it from the only transparent goo left in the house:  Fiber Gummies.  Five of ‘em, melted into a round bottle cap, peeled out after it was chilled.  

Everyone was warned not to eat it.  Really.  Who would want to eat something as evil as they Eye of Sauron anyway?  If they did, they were warned of the consequences.  What does five times the normal dose of fiber do to someone?  How much of a laxative could it be? 

Anyway, it’s gone.  Someone ate the evil Eye of Sauron. 

Merry Christmas, One and All!

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Painting with Small One

12/15/2014

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I recently had a most enlightening conversation with Small One.  I was painting, she was painting.  She likes to do what I do.  

We were enjoying working side by side, watercoloring the cloudy sky and some cartoons.  

“Small One, please pass the Kosher salt.  Want to watch as I sprinkle it on my wet paint?”

“I know, Mom.  I do that too.  It makes snowflakes in the paint.  See?”  She proceeds to take a pinch of salt with her dainty little fingers, and gently drop the grains into her wet paint.  

That’s my girl.  Her ‘snowflakes’ are exquisite.

We continue painting.  I paint a cartoon character pregnant, looking like a globe.  She paints her character round like a piece of candy.

“Hey Mom, do you want a tootsie roll?”

“We don’t have any, Dear.”

She smiles a knowing, secret smile of delight, and puts down her paintbrush.  “Yes, we do!  Hiding way up in the cupboard.”

I stop working.  “Oh really?  How do you know that?”

“Oh, me and Sis found it.  Don’t tell!  It’s Halloween candy.  No one  else knows, so they can’t eat any.”

Ah.  A secret stash of candy, hidden away from many siblings... Do tell.  If you want to eat something in a house with many siblings, you have to learn to either A., eat really fast, or B., hide stuff.  

At this point, she climbs up a chair, onto the cupboard, and reaches up above the toaster.  She returns victorious, with a half-empty bag of Tootsie Rolls, leftover and forgotten from Halloween.  She is so happy to share this secret with me.    

“But please don’t write about it on your blog, Mom, because then everyone will find out and it will be gone tomorrow!” 

Good thinking, Small One.
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I Am Thankful.

11/30/2014

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I am thankful.  
We ate.  We drank.  We laughed and talked and played games and solved world problems with our ideas.  We all scrunched up on the old couch and chatted and watched old movies, we ate each other's leftover sandwiches without caring about cooties.  Just for one weekend, no one cried, no one was sick or hungry or too tired to be kind.  We spent the holiday with each other, in peace, love and joy.  
I am thankful. 
Today, my house is a bona fide wreck, I have two sick kids, another going back off to college, no food in the house except one dried out, thrice-cooked turkey leg, a veritable mountain of laundry, and no coffee.  Though I vowed I would not shop this weekend, I will shop for coffee.  Today, the world is back to normal.  Someone even yelled "cooties" when I drank tea from the wrong cup.  So, the holiday is over.
I am thankful.
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Happy Thanksgiving!

11/28/2014

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Happy Thanksgiving, Part 3

11/26/2014

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If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this story, then you’ll know what happens next. 

Happy Gluten Free Thanksgiving!

“NO!”  My brain wanted to shout.

It was, indeed.  A Thanksgiving Traditionalist nightmare. 

“Well, people all over the globe eat this way.”  I told myself.

“No!”

“Actually, yes.  Africa, Asia, South America, Antarctica…”

Look, if you have to hold Antarctica up as an example to defend your menu and food choices, then something is seriously wrong with your life.  And besides, those continents don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

But truth is truth, and facts are facts.  We couldn’t go anywhere to eat anymore.  Not with Stella and her Celiac Disease.  Even if we packed her a dinner from home and went to Grandma’s, we would have to follow her like hawks to make sure she didn’t toddle over to the buffet or the cookie trays and eat something that would cause her hours of screaming and pain.

We would have to stay home and make our little family a Gluten Free Thanksgiving.  

“Well,” said my mom.  “If you’re not coming to our Thanksgiving dinner, then we are coming to yours.”  

“Really?”  I was surprised.  “You guys would do that for us?”  

Everyone?

I have a big family.  Some of them are normal.  They’re the in-laws.  

The rest of us are like the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota… our lives are messy, tangled up together, bumbling around, having fun and in each other’s business all the time.  Oh, the year this story takes place, we have, collectively, seventeen kids under the age of twelve.  

One of those kids was my newly-born son, so I was busy with diapers and nursing and ‘new mom narcolepsy’.  All that meant is that I was so fatigued every minute that I could, and often did, fall asleep mid conversation.  Pardon my drooling.  I have six kids, my thyroid just quit and my dog chewed another hole through the drywall.  Would you like to come to my house for your Thanksgiving celebration?  This would have been a great sacrifice for anyone, even without the gluten free part.  

My poor sisters in law.  They are both from families with much more decorum and manners.  The rest of the bumblers I didn’t worry about. They were used to adapting.  And besides, most of them are kids.  They won’t even care if there is no stuffing or bread or pumpkin pie.  

They have each other. 

And that, after all,  is the whole point of it.  Thanksgiving or any holiday…  the idea is to be thankful for each other.  It’s not about the turkey, or the particular recipes you cherish, or the traditions and china plates passed down through the generations.  It’s about being thankful for each other.  And that’s what my extended family did that year.  We let go of our expectations and our traditions, and we were glad that we had each other.  

Doug made a feast of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, corn bread stuffing, all gluten free and delicious.  One brother and his wife brought cinnamon ice cream.  Another brother and his wife brought paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware, which meant no one had to do the dishes.  My sister made a mountain of veggies, freshly steamed and drizzled in butter and almonds.  Sixteen little kids had the time of their life, playing hide and seek in every nook and cranny of my house.  The dog ate scraps, cleaning the floor with great joy.  I sat on the couch with the baby, a fatigued but grateful beached whale, sleeping. 

Happy Thanksgiving!  

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Thanksgiving, Part 2

11/24/2014

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Thanksgiving, Part 2
Fast forward to 2004….

Months after Stella was born, things got pretty chaotic.  My once-private little life was invaded by a veritable army of home health nurses, doctors, cardiologists, birth-to-3 teachers (who knew that was even a job?)  a speech therapist, occupational therapist, et cetera.  

But all that is just background, another story for another day.  

Right now I am remembering a newspaper article my mom brought over to me, shortly after Stella was born.  She, like her mother before her, is a Clipper.  She sees articles in papers and magazines, and clips them out to share.  Real newspaper.  Real scissors.  The pre-internet sharing of stories. 

Anyway, she clipped an article about a family whose child was diagnosed with severe food allergies. 

“This might make you feel better.”  She said.  “Other people have troubles, too.  I’m so glad you don’t have to deal with this!”  

I read the article with sadness and a bit of trepidation.  The poor family had to separate the kitchen into two parts:  allergens and non-allergens.  Separate toasters, separate knives, separate jars of jam.  How could a parent keep all that going perfectly?   I knew that there was no way in the world I could handle that kind of intensity in the kitchen!  

In September, Stella turned nine months old.  My smiley little elf was growing.  

“She needs Cheerios,” the occupational therapist said.  “Great finger practice.  Picking up those little bits of cereal will really help her eye-hand coordination.”  So we started the baby food routine.  A little bit of this, then add a little bit of another, then soon we had worked her way up the food chain to Cheerios. We celebrated when she sat at her high chair, gingerly picking at the little pieces.  We cheered when they made it into her mouth.  Even the dog rejoiced, because now magical delicious bits of kibble rained down from Heaven every time Stella was put into her high chair. 

By October, she was getting much better with her fingers.  But somehow, in those months, she had developed colic.  Every evening, the sweet little cherub would tighten up, screaming like a fire engine.  There was no consoling her.  Tears rolled down her cheeks and mine, too.  I held her and rocked her, singing every song I knew.  Around 2:00 a.m. she would fall asleep from exhaustion.  Night after night, the same crying.  A nurse taught me how to hold her cradled on my forearm, which applied pressure to her belly and seemed to help her calm down.  None of the doctors in our life had any answers.  Some of my relatives’ kids had spent their infancy crying, too.  Colic consumed my every evening, and I began feeling stretched and helpless.  How could she be so happy in the day and so in agony every night?  Though she couldn’t speak to me in words, it was obvious she was in pain.  How long could this last?  November was horrible.  Thanksgiving was just juggling kids, trying to cook and keep Stella from her now inevitable nightly screaming.  

In December, we scheduled a visit to a Special Needs clinician in the city.  There had to be something someone could do about this.  At his initial exam in January, the doctor asked many questions.  “I am going to test her for Celiac Sprue,” he said.  

I had never heard of it. 

By February, Stella and I were following up in the office of a pediatric gastroenterologist.  “She does have Celiac,” he explained.  “As far as diseases go, this is the best one to have.  There are no medications.  That means no side effects.  All you have to do is feed her a gluten free diet.  I’m sorry that I can’t tell you what kind of food you can buy.  (This was 2005;  food ingredients labeling laws had not yet been passed. There was no other way to learn what was in the food you purchased.)  You’ll have to call the food companies to find out if there is any wheat, barley, rye or oats in each product.  And you’ll have to make most things homemade.  You’re about to become a great cook of plain meat, rice, and vegetables, because your daughter needs you to do this.”

Good grief.  I’d spent the previous ten years learning how to cook and bake.  I could even make French eclairs with Bavarian creme from scratch.  I could easily whip out a batch of my grandma’s cinnamon rolls and homemade bread without using a recipe, I’d made them so many times.  What was this Celiac?

“Oh, and don’t worry,” the gastroenterologist added.  “No one else in your family will have this.  Stella probably just has it because she has Down Syndrome.”  

Famous last words.  

That was the day I began reading labels and separating foods.  By that evening, my kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off in it.  But I had one tidy little cabinet dedicated only to Stella’s food.  Our first Gluten Free Cupboard.  I taped a sign on the front of the doors that said “Stella’s Food.” 

Our Separated Kitchen Nightmare had begun.

Did I mention that at that time, I had five children, age 10 and under?  

Feeding time at the Mahnke Farm became unbearably difficult.  Two peanut butter jars. Two butter dishes.  Two kinds of bread: one homemade and deliciously whole wheat, the other was some crusty, cardboard like expensive brick of Gluten Free mystery bread.  I was frantic to keep things separate so that Stella wouldn’t get bread crumbs or gluten in her diet. If she did get wheat or gluten, it always gave her about three hours of agonizing tears.  I felt so guilty, like a complete failure of a mother every time she got cross-contamination.  I tried many different methods.  But Stella’s cupboard and our cupboards didn’t stay separate for long.  The two little ones loved to crawl inside and throw things out.  Then the next kid would come along and dutifully put it all away, but in the wrong cupboards.  I bought colorful stickers and stuck them all over Stella’s food so the kids would know.  But they liked the stickers, and the toddlers put them all over every food item.  I bought Mr. Yuk stickers next.  Remember those?  Big, green circle stickers of a yucky face?  Try making a kid eat a can of wheat noodle soup that has a Mr. Yuck sticker on it.  Uh uh.  The next effort was Sharpie markers.  Anything that came into the house that was wheat got a large, black “X” drawn on it.  Cereal?  X.  Macaroni and cheese? X.  Everything prepackaged and convenient?  You got it, an X.  Soon Stella’s little cabinet was full of little else but raw potatoes.  She thought it was great fun to open the door, grab a potato, and crawl away as fast as she could.  She learned how to throw from tossing hundreds of potatoes around the kitchen.  They were her favorite food and probably one of her favorite playthings.  

She started to heal.  Slowly, over the next two months, Stella stopped the nighttime screaming and calmed down once again.  She had peaceful evenings, hugging and smiling again. She was better!  The gluten free diet was working!  We were so pleased.  

But it seemed at least once or twice a week, she was getting cross-contamination from somewhere.  Play-doh:  made of wheat.  Finger paints:  wheat based.  Even foods like yogurt and soy sauce and canned peaches often contain trace amounts of gluten that would cause Stella pain.  Worse yet, she was crawling all over the house now, and if one of the other kids dropped crumbs anywhere, Stella would find them first.  If we went on an outing, people like to give little kids a sucker or a cookie.  I couldn’t take it anymore, I felt as sorry for myself as I had for the family in the newspaper clipping my mom had given me.  I was super pregnant again, maniacally scrubbing the kitchen floor with Clorox wipes every time someone pulled food out to eat.  I could barely fit under the kitchen table. And guilt consumed me every time Stella got sick.  Something had to change.

So we did what we had to do:  No gluten in our kitchen.  Period.  It was tough, but it worked!  Stella no longer got sick from random crumbs.  And my stress level and guilt went way down, because Stella was a peaceful, happy baby again.  

We did find a compromise for the other kids, who still liked a doughnut or a sandwich now and then.  

The bathtub. 

Our tub had a spray hose on the shower head, which made it very easy to spray the tub clean.  So every time the older kids wanted to eat wheat, they got to eat, sitting perched on the side of the tub.  In five minutes, I could spray it all clean, with no crumbs to make Stella sick.  And with the bathroom door shut, Stella didn’t see them and know she was missing out on a treat.  Many a caramel pecan roll was eaten in that bathtub!

Beautiful.

The solution to all our problems was so simple.  The “best disease to have,” the pediatric gastroenterologist had said. He was right.  Give up everything you like to bake and eat, and your daughter will be happy and healthy.  Simple.  After half a year of Gluten Free life, we had GF cooking down to a science and an art. Stella was growing and happy.  The other kids were happy with their contraband snack location.  And I was happy to not be scrubbing the floor every half an hour.   We were gluten free pros. 

And we were just about ready for our turn to host the big Thanksgiving feast for all our extended family…

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Thanksgiving, Part 1

11/23/2014

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Well, here it is, Thanksgiving week, and instead of shopping and cleaning and baking and cooking, I keep on thinking about messed up expectations.  

About times that I have been derailed from well-laid plans.  

And about one particular really crazy Thanksgiving that no one would choose to have, and yet it all worked out okay in the end.  This may take a few days to tell… 

Here is Part 1:


Often my holiday plans have been messed up.  

Not small glitches, here and there, soon fixed with scotch tape.  I mean big, unfixable mess ups.

Bigger than the first time I ever hosted Thanksgiving dinner. 

I was a pretty new at the domestic stuff, and still learning how be a mother.  This was the first Thanksgiving my little family would have in our house, and I wanted everything to go perfectly.  In the frantic flurry of all the shopping, planning, baking, and especially cleaning, I had forgotten to check on the thawing turkey.  The night before Thanksgiving, all the crystal was freshly washed and gleaming, the china dishes in their places, but I had been so distracted that I completely neglected the bird.  Now where was that thing?  It wasn’t in the fridge.  Not in the freezer.  I began to panic when our guest of honor, my mother in law, entered the kitchen.  She was a great cook.  I was not.   Especially when I couldn’t remember where the turkey was.

“With what will you season the poultry?” She asked.  

I smoothed out the tablecloth, adjusting the edge.  I was about to tell her all about the exciting salt and pepper seasonings with which I was familiar, when suddenly it hit me.  I remembered where my turkey was.

In the car. 

It was in the car, in the garage.  Of course.  

We had just a smallish refrigerator, and it was stuffed completely with side dishes and trimmings.  So, for the last few days, the turkey had been kept cold in the garage.  This was Minnesota, after all.  The garage is just a big walk-in cooler.  

Or not.  

It was actually much colder in the garage. Like probably 300 degrees below zero.  Yes, the turkey was found.  But it was frozen solid as a rock.  So, the night before that Thanksgiving, in the dark of frosty cold Minnesota, I trekked to the only open store to find a thawed turkey.  

Then my mother in law stepped in to cook the meal.  She rustled up more than just the salt and pepper I had planned, and even glazed the carrots in a caramel blend of butter and brown sugar.  Delicious things came out of my oven that day, and as my mother in law stirred the gravy and garnished the potatoes, I saw her happiness emerge.  Even though she was visiting from far away, she got to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her son.  And it was just like he’d remembered from his childhood.  His grandmother’s china plates were on his table, his mother was at the stove, doing her best.   Everyone was happy.

It was a beautiful Thanksgiving day.  
It wasn’t the one I planned.  
But it was a beautiful day.














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Secrets and Applesauce

11/18/2014

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Yesterday, I attended a funeral for a woman who died, unexpectedly, in her sleep.  Just like that.    She didn’t know that it was her last day here.  She did the things she always did.  When the coroner came to the house, I was told, she said that in all her years as a coroner, she had never seen a home so orderly, clean, and tended to.  The woman had her clothes for the next day lying out, pressed and ready.  Holiday cards were written, addressed, and stacked up for the mail.  The woman loved her family, and was on good terms with all of them.  She was prepared.  

She was ready.

This got me to thinking:  What will they find when I’m gone? 

When I was a child, my grandmother stayed with us frequently.  I can still hear her precautionary warnings as we left for school.  

“Did you remember to change your socks and underwear, Schnookie?  If you get in an accident, you don’t want someone to find you in dirty underwear.”  


I stressed about that as a kid.  I worried about the what-ifs of someone finding me, unconscious, in mismatched socks or less-than-clean knickers.  My gosh.  What would happen?  What if I hadn’t scrubbed behind my ears, either?    Would they also see what I wrote in my diary when I was mad at my sister?  There was a lock on my diary, at least.

I didn’t realize until much later the lesson she was trying to teach.  She wanted us to stay clean, whether people could see it or not.  She was warning us that all of our secrets would come to light, one day.  


I have a good example of that.  Can I tell you a story about my grandfather?

Gramps picked apples and made homemade applesauce every autumn.  Usually he picked “seconds” off the grass at the apple orchard, checking carefully for the freshest fruit that had fallen from the trees.  Bushel baskets full of crisp red apples lined the kitchen countertops and table, as he began full-scale applesauce cooking production.  Wash apples, peel apples, slice and chop apples, pinch of this, pinch of that…cook it all down, sweet and simmering, so that even the neighbors all the way down at the end of the block wondered where that delicious apple pie smell came from.  

All of his visitors received gifts of his homemade sweet applesauce.  He packed it in recycled butter tubs and plastic boxes and re-used cottage cheese cartons, filling three large freezers in his basement.   Walking carefully down the steep steps of the home he’d built for his family after the war, we grandkids had to walk past an ancient gas oven, complete with mint green steel trim.  It looked as if a gingerbread boy might come popping out of it at any moment.  Then pass by Grandma’s washing machine.  I can still see her there, standing in the cellar in her floral housedress, feeding fresh-washed laundry through the wringer.  We waited by with the laundry basket and wooden clothespins.  It was our job to hang the laundry out on the line in the back yard.

“Watch out for your fingers, Dear!  I don’t want you to get hurt!”  She’d say loudly, as the black rollers pulled each article of clothing through, squeezing the water out in rivulets that flowed back into the tub.

Gramps had a much more gruff tone of voice.  

“Keep your diamonds.  Gimme a heart.  Every pig’s got a heart!” he’d say, as he trumped all the tricks and won all the card games.  Monkey Bridge, Bridge, Sheep’s Head, it didn’t matter.  He said it would make us good at math, but that didn’t work out so well for me.

After the games, we’d follow him downstairs, and he would open the antique green paneled door to his “cold room”.  I think “cold room” was the original root cellar of the house, cool and dry.  But now it was packed full, floor to ceiling, with coupon items that Gramps had purchased for almost nothing.  “Take some cereal,” he’d say.  Or “load your car up with toilet paper before you leave.  The store paid me to buy that.”  In his retirement years, he commandeered the kitchen and collected coupons, dispersing the goods throughout the families of his children and grandchildren.  The “take home pile” of toilet paper and cereal was usually topped off by plastic tubs filled with applesauce, fruits, home grown vegetables, coolers and insulated boxes and newspaper-wrapped bins… He loved to give us the food that he made.

We all loved it.  

Then came the day that he died.  He was working in his organic garden, when suddenly, that was it.  Card game over.

When he was buried, all my family gathered together.  We tried to comfort Grandma, but after 50+ years of marriage, there was no comfort for her without him.  We prayed, and ate together, we even played his card game of Sheep’s Head around the dining room table. We neatly folded back the tablecloth, and I lost, as usual.  Evening fell, the relatives began to disperse, and the funeral mood began to lift.  

“We need to clean out the freezers,”  my aunties said.  “Since you have a truck here, you take a freezer home.  We’ll even let you have all Gramps’ applesauce.”  they promised.  

So, with mixed emotions, we trudged downstairs.  “Think of it as your inheritance!” chuckled one of my aunts.  “You can take home all the applesauce that Gramps made for himself.”  What a sweet gift.

We opened up the freezer and began to unpack it.  We chuckled about how many applesauce cartons I would be taking home.  But upon opening the freezer, it became clear that something was wrong.  Gramps had spent months making applesauce and handing it out as free gifts to those he loved.  

But his freezer at home was filled only with apple peelings.  That’s what he had saved for himself.  All the good and sweet fruit, he had packed and given away to others.  

He kept just the peelings for himself.  

All these years later, I still don’t quite have the words to say just how that made me feel…

I always recognized that he worked hard for us.  Despite any faults he had, and his gruff voice and his card-playing compulsion, I knew he loved us. 

But I didn’t know about his secret sacrifices.

It made me feel small and humble…

And loved.

That was a good secret to discover.  

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Free Lunch:  An Unfortunate Jack O'Lantern

10/31/2014

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This little guy was bold enough to climb right on the front porch for his lunch.  
He got it!
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Breakfast, Anyone?

10/27/2014

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Stella loves a good party.  One recent morning, I woke up, stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee, and found this.  

She had the table all set for seventeen (count ‘em), and the pancake mix was out on the countertop with a bowl.  

“Pancake party, Mom? Chocolate chip pancakes?”

It was six a.m. on a Saturday.

I hoped no one was really coming.  

“Are you hungry, Stella?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to make chocolate chip pancakes just for you?  There’s no party.  Only eight of us today.” I said. "And everyone's still sleeping."

“No.  It’s a party!” she insisted.

She’s always loved parties.  If she gained a year for every time we’ve sung “Happy Birthday, dear Stella” then she’d be in her eighties.  When she was little, we used to pull out little birthday candles and put them in anything, anytime, just because her happiness and delight was so sincere and contagious.  When she asked, we adorned muffins, pancakes, even mashed potatoes.  Once we were at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, and Stell told the owner it was her birthday.  So with much pomp and circumstance, they served up a plate of sticky rice, formed into a cake, glowing with a candle atop.  She was ecstatic.  The entire restaurant joined in the singing.  Her little brother did get a bit jealous with all Stella’s birthdays, but he’s come around.  She’s initiated many impromptu parties for him, too.  Her surprise and joy cast a tone of happiness into each day.   Why shouldn’t we celebrate a person we love, whenever we want to?

“Today is your birthday, Mom.”  She smiles, caressing my cheek.  “Happy Birthday to you!” 

Thank God for paper plates.

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No Internet

10/11/2014

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“Mom, do we need the internet to make waffles?”

Real question.  

Our internet has been a bit snarky lately, and the small ones were surprised by all the things we could not do.  No weather report.  No maps.  No Netflix.  No news, no blog.  No architecture game that he loves so well.  No Minecraft.

The eight year old ran through a list of all the things he could not do, and then decided that above all, breakfast was the most important.  

And we could, in fact, still make waffles without the internet.  

So he lived happily ever after. 













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toys and food

10/10/2014

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Toys are fun.  Food is fun.  So they go together!

When Stella was about four, she decided that since toys and food both made her happy, they belonged together.  Many days, when we opened our fridge, we were greeted by small plastic figures sticking out of the food.  

The David and Goliath characters liked cupcakes.  They were often found, buried head first in the muffins.  Pongo, the daddy dalmation, lived in the milk cartons.  When someone tried to pour milk on their cereal, an inevitable “PLOP” was heard, and there was Pongo, swimming in the bowl.  He was just the right size for her to fit into the cartons.  We’d wash him off, put him back in the toy box, and find him in the milk again the next day.  For months on end.

Want some yogurt?  Surprise!  It’s full of Little People, looking up at you.  

The trend caught on.  Then-tween Genius Child made lunch for the little ones when I was gone to one of our bajillion doctors’ appointments.  

She made refried beans.

But you know what she did?  She emptied two cans of beans and sculpted them into a volcano shape.  Melted cheddar oozed down the sides of the mountain, and a pool of molten salsa filled the cavity inside.  An army of plastic dinosaurs marched up and down, oblivious to their dangerous proximity to the lava.

The entire mountainside (sans dinos) was devoured by the toddlers.  A mountain of beans.  

So there you have it;  lesson learned.  Even beans can be exciting!  

Now go play with your food. 




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chocolate cake

10/9/2014

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Someone made me cake yesterday.  
She said it contained butter, flour, and two scoops of coconut.  But it looked very much like dirt.

“And that sugar stuff that’s not sugar, Mom. That’s what I used, just how you like it!”

She smiled, leading me out to the yard, where her cakes sat baking in the warmth of the autumn sun.  “See? I made you chocolate!”

Indeed, she had.  Dirt, mud, and a few sprinkles of hydrangea blossoms.  Shaped into cakes, filled with love. 

They were the best cakes I’ve ever had.

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Flipping  Burgers

10/1/2014

4 Comments

 
My son likes to eat.  That is an understatement.  He likes food so much that he is a joy to cook for.  He stands at my elbow, mouth watering, just waiting, smiling, admiring.  He loves me because I cook for him.   I would flip a million burgers (with slightly caramelized onions, tomato and romaine) just to see that smile.

But I didn't always enjoy cooking.  In fact, I spent my childhood dodging the kitchen chores, running off to help Dad when it was time to cook and prep for supper.   I couldn't stand the fact that all that work would be gone in an hour, with nothing to show for it but a kitchen full of dirty dishes.  To me, cooking ranked  on the job list somewhere far below shoveling the driveway of snow and weeding the onion patch .
 
When I grew old enough to go on a first date, the young man, Mike, introduced me to his mother, and then told me it was his dream to work in a restaurant some day.  They smiled at each other, Mike and his mom, in mutual support of what I could only imagine would be a career at the one and only restaurant in town, a fast food joint.
"What?" I thought to myself in horror.  "What am I doing with this guy?  His ambition is to flip burgers the rest of his life?  Horrible!"  I must have physically taken a step backward, because the next thing I knew, I was tripping.. bumping... falling... 

I fell all the way downstairs into the basement.

He and his mom stared, slack-jawed, at my crumpled and humiliated form, thirteen wooden steps below.  Right about where I ranked cooking.

True story.

Well you may laugh, because  the irony is that I have spent the last twenty years standing at my stove, flipping burgers for a seemingly endless line of children and their miscellaneous friends.  
For free. 
And I have actually learned to like it.

Mike, on the other hand, learned to cook in Italy.   He often remembered us as he opened chic and expensive restaurants, for which he trained the staff.    We have wonderful memories of eating fantastic food with friends and family because of this man's labors and talents.  

One year, a couple of weeks after my own labor and delivery of baby number three, Mike invited us to the opening of an excruciatingly trendy, upscale nightclub restaurant in Minneapolis.  Could we go?  The baby didn't take a bottle,  she would have to go with us.   I decided to take the rocking Winnie the Pooh carseat, and try to blend in with the svelte young crowd in their glitzy black dresses.  I made our grand entrance, lugging the newborn, but the place was so loud, dark and sparkly that no one seemed to notice.  Hurrah!
Till I faced the coat check guy at the end of the evening.  He asked which coat was mine, and I fumbled, saying it was black.  He smiled.  
"They are all black, Madame, this is Uptown".    

I blushed.  The only thing I knew about that huge, postpartum coat was that there were diaper coupons in the front left pocket. 

He retrieved my coat in record time. 

That was long ago.  Last week, Doug and I ate at one of Mike's very own restaurants.  The hamburger was so big, I brought half of it home to my own hungry boy, to show him how good food really can be.  
You never know, my boy might grow up and want to become a chef someday.

4 Comments

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