Our Christmas Card: letter and pictures, including sentiment.

Posted on December 10, 2007 by K

A Merry, Merry Christmas

from our yard to yours—


This post brought to you by the Fabulous Web Tools written by Murphy Randle and given to his mother for Christmas.

WHAT A GUY!! (And how will I live without him?) I DON’T KNOW.

 

For your enjoyment—a small vacation in peace and hope:

My niece, Elise, and her BYU a cappella group.

Just click on the play arrow—

[audio:elise.mp3]

Now: the card:

 

 

On the day after our first serious snowfall—

Slept all night in socks. Purpose of socks: to reinforce effects of Vicks Vaporub applied to the feet. Purpose of Vaporub? Cough suppressant. Some people swear by this, so we tried it. Worked two hours. After that? Well, my coughs love me.

It snowed on December first. After long years of nearly frost-bitten hands, I have learned to put Christmas lights up in the weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving. This year, though, it seems like everything I’ve learned has gotten lost in the database. We have built on the studio, Char and I have written a book together,Murphy is up to his lovely lashes in university, and we have been working our heads off in the studio. A whirl. Head in a.

Somehow, we have pulled the greatest holiday into order. Admittedly, some things, long time honored, have gone by the wayside—for instance, I no longer make cookies. I am of mixed mind about this; cookies are so tied up with memories of being a kid and having kids, they are hard to let go of. My darling mom used to make four kinds of cookies: Nellie’s thin, crisp sugar cookies, light as air, cut into trees and bells and stars and sprinkled with colored sugar and tiny sugar balls. Mom had those biggish tiny silver balls, too—the ones that came in a little plastic bottle that said, “not edible” on it. Like, you sell cookie decorations that people aren’t supposed to eat? (Char brags that she’s eaten thousands of those things—but the brag seems to assume that she’s presently in perfect health. Who knows—maybe that’s what makes her hair curl when it snows?) I see in my mind all of my children crowded around the table, hands full of cookie cutters (we had more than three), rolling out lumps of dough—green, yellow, red, sometimes blue—cookie sheets to the side full of shapes, waiting to be sugared. “The Holly and the Ivy” playing in the background—always that album, Tab Choir from way back.

Mom (and by that, I mean my mother, and by extension, me) did these almond flavored candy cane cookies—two sets of dough, red and white, twisted together and shaped into the cane, sprinkled with crushed peppermint. I think about that now, how odd about the almond flavor—but they’re good. Really good. And I always looked for the ones that had gotten just a little too sprinkled, the ones with the thin shell of melted peppermint caught in the crook.

And what my dad called reindeer drops; formally known as Russian Tea Cakes. Also almond. Tiny, dry, sugarless (but oh-so-shorteninged and nutted) balls rolled in powdered sugar. And stained glass window cookies, the kind you make and shape into rolls, refrigerated till they could be cut into coins. These were a brown sugar kind of dough, as I recall, studded with gum drop slices.

I used to be religious about making these things. Dining room table, for a week dusted with flour. Kids, for a week dusted with flour. Bits of very sticky gum drops all over the place. Cookie sheets on permanent release from storage. House smelling like heaven.

But all that was in the days before we discovered that hips and diabetes were running rampant in the world.

Now, it’s can’t eat ‘em, won’t make ‘em.

The only sin I am now willing to commit in that wise has to involve chocolate. Dark chocolate. And mint. And if not those, then brittle—often cashew—always, now, made beautifully in the microwave, and only one batch. My sis-in-law tells me that the best way of melting chocolate is to leave it in the oven with the light on—no other heat. Takes an over-night commitment, but anything that promises to do the work for me is worth trying.

And I am giving up Christmas Cards. I never loved doing them—although I do love the art and/or sentiment you get with really good cards. And I dearly love the feeling of connecting with folks you don’t see often, don’t know so well anymore but still feel a connection to (up with which I will not put?) But stress? Take the picture, get the film developed, take it home and decide which one is THE one, take it back to the printer, get dozens—then write the letter (one page, one side, brilliant, witty, loving, informative—no pressure), then decorate the letter, print the letter, fold the letter, stuff the envelopes, print the labels (and already, I was moving a step away from “personal” with those dang labels –which I had to re-learn how, exactly, to print every darn year all over again), affix charming postage, mail. Then collect returned letters, edit database.

My mom had this really weird copy-making set up. The reality of it is relegated only to the fringes of memory, it was at once so strange and so mysterious. She had this little box of gel stuff, shallow and paper-sized. And she’d type up a letter, the stick it face down on that gel. Somehow, the ink would migrate into the gel, and then she could make copies by putting paper down on the gel. I don’t know. I remember mom and dad both hunched over that thing. And I also remember that when you tried to read the copies, you felt suspiciously like you must not have had enough sleep—

To think that I even consider giving all that up. Tsk. No, again, gotta admit, love this (wish there was another word) blog thing. I love the number of pictures I can stick up here – in color, any size, the equivalent of dozens of prints (many of which from past years are now artifacts, still stuffed into various boxes in various cabinets all over the house). I can write thirty pages if I want. I can offer news, or philosophy or simply say: read the year’s collected essays for the larger portrait. Or the people who I love, to whom I am heart connected— people I wish to hug long distance can simply scroll through the pictures without the pain of wading through my words.

And I still have the benefit of getting returned mail and editing databases. With the chance that maybe somebody who gets the card will say “Hi and Merry” back again, which is all the more fun.I am certain to disappoint some folks with this. And I am truly sorry about that. But as life goes on, I guess I do, too—so this is pretty much my plan now.

So much of our tradition goes untouched—the garland bows hung, the tree—now semi-perma-lit—over-burdened with memories, hand-made or other-wise. We sing. We sneak around. We open the big attic boxes to find jolts of memory in ever nook—long-time decorations, bits of past wrapping paper, forgotten delights all made new in the crisp light of winter and the renewed sharp scent of pine and peppermint.

Of course, I push to the background the fact that the most important parts are starting to go missing: Ginna in Missouri, Murphy some time very soon to some unknown quarter of the world, Charlotte soon enough to Japan or somewhere. Cam and Lorri will probably stay close, as their living and home-choice dictates. But they are their own family now, and we will do more going calling than simply calling from the bottom of the stairs.

I guess, then, that it is only in the way of things that I change these little parts of our traditions, a sort of pre-curser for years to come, when there will be new small faces to fill with wonder and chase from over-laden trees, when our rituals expand into new rooms of new houses, and Guy and I will have only each other to wake to on Christmas morning. I still find mortal life puzzling. Just when I get used to it, just when I grow up enough to really enjoy something, it somehow grows past me. But I guess that’s what makes life so terribly sweet—the fact of each moment’s rarity.

The Family Christmas Picture

Gin’s husband Kris, and Cam’s Lorri were both off on matters of business when we shot this—

 

at the last minute, of course, and just before Gin was going to leave.

They are also adored.

I always end with a wish for those I love. This year my wish is, as I think it really always is, that our every coming moment be a good investment, that time, effort, craft, artistry, ritual – all of these things be put in their proper places—that love will swell and grow to fill all spaces, usurp all tasks, burst all business and leave us with great, gashing leaps of heart joy. Something that will last. Something that can be passed down from mother to mother to mother—from sister to brother to nephew to daughter—never palling.

May you have the Merriest, and most meaningful of Christmases.

God bless us, please—

each and every one.

BONUS TRACKS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Christmas | 7 Comments

November Short

Posted on December 10, 2007 by K

A few pictures of our November adventures:  I am not including shots of the Closing Up of the New Addition.  I will take pictures of the piano, in state in the still unfinished, but now useable studio space.

 

Instead, I offer you our Pie Maker, who took advantage of the two little single pie pans and one extra tiny pie pan and carried the tiniest of all off with her, dog sitting for her aunt and uncle in their very big, very comfortable, very abundant house.

 

The thanksgiving feast:

 

Cam and Lorri, who give us great joy: 

 

 The Cleanup crew (you can’t hear us singing):

 

The Chef: (who always thinks he knows more about gravy than I do)(that’s the one with the beard btw)

 

The beautiful and ambitious Emma, who—with a friend who soon high-tailed it—came to our front door one morning, announcing she was bored and looking for something to do, and was enlisted by Guy, who’s central passion in life is Getting The Leaves UP Before It Snows, (which finds little play for that among the rest of us merry-makers).  He put her to work, thinking she’d do a little, a sort of entre-act to the huge job he and Murphy would do that afternoon.  Abandoned by her friend, Emma worked, smiling like a seraph, all morning into the afternoon, and got up most of the leaves you see in this picture.

 

She did it for nothing, but found herself paid handsomely in the end.  I love our neighborhood.  And I love her family.  And her next door neighbors.  And—well, the list does go on.

 

A Utah sunset, as seen from our front porch. Char and I finished the first draft of our book – really, just last week.  Then we had to reconstruct the house, which had pretty much fallen down around our ears as we worked.  But we have almost righted the ship, and though half the rituals of Thanks—Xmas week were pass-incomplete, we forge ahead.  It snowed two days after Emma’s mighty labor.Come Winter!  Come wind!  Come ice on the water trough, fire in the grate, chocolate hot from the stove top, books in the evening, and bright, sharp white mornings—  

Posted in Just life, Memories and Ruminations | 3 Comments

Of Cornucopias and Ports of Call

Posted on November 25, 2007 by K

Two days before the great feast, I saw a pirate.

He was in the bread and bagel aisle, and I sort of cut him off. But this was after the epiphany, and so I am telling things out of order.

First of all, I have to say that I don’t really cook anymore.I used to.I used to start the day by making a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast for everybody.And then a big dinner, and then a big supper.But I got over it just about the time I learned about the protein/carb thing and had children old enough to use their own brains and hands to feed themselves.Besides, I always hated making food.

Still, I have been known to break out into the odd meatloaf or pot of broccoli soup, especially in the autumn when something inside of me starts nest building.I don’t know why it is, but the second the nights cool off, I am frantic if I am not making a thing out of wood or clay or fabric or wire or glass or something – and if absolutely nothing else presents itself, I suppose the thing can be somewhat satisfied if I use food. It was more fun when the result could be something like cinnamon apple cake, or hot dark brownies, but I am too canny for that now, having lived the results in the past. So broccoli cheese onion soup it will be, nine times out of ten.

But here it was, two days before—as I have already said—the great feast, and I went shopping for the fixings.All of this that went before is simply to explain that I no longer haunt the aisles of grocery stores as a usual thing, and so I saw the insides of this one with fresh, un-jaded eyes.

Smith’s is a nice grocery store, well designed, well-lit, well-presented.Standing somewhere between the onions and the tomatoes, I suddenly found myself in the middle of Dickens’ Christmas Eve market—and I stood there in growing amazement. Each apple was nestled in its own little green plastic niche, round, fat and glowing—an entire counter of apples, acres of them, all kinds—and the names: Abrosia, Fuji, Braeburn, MacIntosh, Honey crisp—read the list out loud, I dare you, and see if your mouth doesn’t water—bright, gleaming red apples and green.

And then the pears—more kinds than I knew existed, D’anjou, Bartlett, Asian brown, all neatly marshaled into their niches and laced with eternal ivy. Baskets of lemons, cascades of limes, piles of garlic, tumbling from artfully spilled baskets.

A wall of greens—dark and light, frilled, red-leafed—chards and lettuces, escarole, scallions—bright bags of carrots, peppers: brilliant green and yellow and red and orange—all fat amd firm-fleshed, washed every few minutes by a small storm of rain, announced by a miniature clap of thunder.Baskets of herbs, cabbages, cauliflowers—perfect, spotless, some organic, some evidently made by machine.

Your choice. Walk along the counters, dip your hand into the baskets of squat filberts, pick a plumb, a raft of raspberries, a corpulent red onion or a pomegranate that will fill your fist to bursting. How could I not be amazed?

I’ve written the story before, told me by the manager of this abundance, how a herd of Russians had been ushered into the store, just so they could see what American life is all about, and one of the Russian men, seeing what I had suddenly seen that afternoon, came to a dead halt in the middle of it all and broke into sobs.

I took out my phone and tried to grab at wonder—but the lighting and that little camera did not work so well together, and the pictures I ended up with were a that every color, every taste, every shape of living, summer treat a mouth and brain could ever crave—spilling in billows on every side.

I already knew we live in an age of wonder. I take it all in stride most days, but happily for me, on this day, my stride faltered, and I became aware of the fact that I had feet at all.

Grateful? Shocked. Blessed. I could have fallen on the floor and wept, but that would have been awkward for everyone else. It was bad enough that I was roaming the aisles with that little camera, like a Japanese tourist at Disneyland.

It was in that spirit that I finally tore myself away to hunt out the holiday breads (dark rye, Jewish rye, California sourdough, nine grain wheat berry . . . ) and that’s when I nearly plowed into the pirate. He was stumping along, pushing his own cart, leaning on it with his elbows, a proper pirate slouch, masses of black, unruly, curly hair, red cheeks over a bush of beard and mustaches and eyebrows.

“Oh, excuse me!”I said.“Shouldn’t have cut that corner.”

He had only a few things in the basket. One of them, a pie.

He glanced at me, no look at all on his face, and then said—in the deepest, most gravely and sonorous voice—the utterly perfectly, absolutely most piratish voice you can imagine, “Oh, you’re all right.”

And I am not kidding here—it was only with the most earnest exertion of civility that I didn’t turn around and follow him and ask him please, please—to say “ARRRRRRRRR” just one time.Just once.I mean it. I had to tell myself “NO,” three times before I gave it up.

The end of this story is simple: it had been so long since I had had a moment of complete, transcendent, clear happiness. And here, I’d had a good half hour of it. I have been so dogged for so long, I didn’t even recognize delight until it had nearly bowled me over. My heart was racing. I was nearly laughing out loud at nothing.Delighted with being alive, delighting in the strange world we think is so darned normal. So grateful. So amazed.

I got over it, of course. I didn’t even get a chance after that, to write any of it down—not for five whole days. But after I took my Sunday School class to feed the horses and led the music and yelled at the Relief Society for singing the word “rejoice” like they were asleep—I came home today for turkey sandwiches and this download of memory.

I hope that your Thanksgivings were like warm, homemade bread – substantial, delicious, steaming and begging for butter and honey.Ours was.We shared it with Lorri’s family, and we ate till we were sick, and we watched Brian Regan’s new DVD and laughed ourselves sicker, then played cards and talked and better or more delightful hours were never spent.

At the end of it all, I am not suffering the same violent eruption of joy. Wish I had been built to sustain such a thing for longer than twenty minutes at a time, but I don’t think my brain would survive the chemical mix. But I am still left with the gratitude. And a lingering amazement.

We live in the midst of miracles.

And now, it’s time for us to make Christmas.

This is my hope for us all: that we all do our best, and keep our eyes open, and allow our hearts to feel,and—in touching one another—we brush glory.

(There were pictures of all this once.  I imagine they were of Smith’s produce department. But I seem to have dumped them and know not where to look to look to find the originals.  I am sad. 2012)

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | 7 Comments

Sum of the Parts –

Posted on November 18, 2007 by K

I’m not making the personal essay->bloooogg transition well.  I tried breaking this thing into three parts – but I’m afraid nobody will read them all because there are so many.  And, my gosh, who’s going to leave comments on each one?  I do have to admit that I don’t write these for my little self—well, yeah, I do, but I mean, not for me to read.   I have to say how grateful I am, though, for this whole internet thing that allows us to keep in touch in ways nobody’s ever been able to do it before in the history of the world – I love reading yours.  I love being able to send a quick embrace out to you to remind you that I know you and love you and that our friendship (because you are all heart-friends to me) is alive in me, whether or not we’ve seen each other in eons.  Forgive me for saying too much.  But saying is the most integral gift I have to give.  So here I say—for your entertainment, comfort, cheering up – (drum roll): three new blog things.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

A Bit of Ponder –

Posted on November 18, 2007 by K

On riding a horse (but not really):

People have been riding horses for ages. Horse=transportation. I was told by some of my up-start students this morning that riding a roller coaster is twenty times safer than riding a horse. Tell it to the Marines (that’s ancient slang for – tell somebody who cares). The basic idea most people have is that you get on the horse, pick up the reins and drive. Uh-huh.

I mean, that’s more or less what you do with a car; it offers no opinions—turn the wheel, and, physics willing and the tires don’t rise, the car goes where you point it. Driving is not a collaborative effort.

On the other hand, when you “ride” a horse, you are calling on a fellow creature—much bigger, stronger and faster than you are, to go partners on your journey. Some people fight this—they want the horse to become a car, or a tractor—something without opinions and a tendency to offer input. If those people win in this effort, beating the personality out of the horse, they’ve lost a good deal of the value of the association: horses, outside of our human habitat, know a whole lot more about what’s what than people do. They smell things we don’t. They hear things we don’t. And their first priority is staying alive, which is too often not a human’s first consideration.

So you can ride in a couple of ways: you can choose a horse because you want to be him for a while – you want to own legs like his, a chest and lungs that large—if you could do it, you’d put your brain in his body, leaving him behind and using his body to do your work.

Or, you can respect him, ask him to help you, and—as his partner—benefit from his native sense and ability. But doing this requires some patience, study and wisdom. In the best partnership, you learn about the nature of your horse; you come his way and learn from him. In the end, he could save your life. Or, even if his behavior puts you at risk, if you are prepared for it by understanding, you may benefit from it in the end.

I think, many times, when we approach God in prayer, we’d really love to be able to stick a bit in his mouth. Then we could gather up the reins, prompt him with a heel, scoot him in the right direction, and pull his head around so that we can use his power to get where we want to go. We can’t smell water. We can’t see 360 degrees. We don’t realize that he knows more than we do about the country we’re crossing. We don’t want his input—we just want to drive.

I’m just thinking, that might not be the way to go . . .

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

November Ghosts Two: in Lehi

Posted on November 18, 2007 by K

My parents came to visit last month. They haven’t been here in years, mostly because my mother isn’t doing so well. But in October, my brother wanted my dad to come up and ordain him a high priest, and help to ordain my nephew an elder (that’s almost all the boys left in that generation of the family—just two to go – or maybe three). And Mike really, really wanted Dad to see the house Mike and his wife had built for themselves last year.

I don’t know why it is that our family is so casual about getting together. Other families have reunions every year. My dad didn’t grow up very attached to his paternal family, and he really has hated family gatherings – too much noise, too many kids—just too costly in terms of energy. Mother loved being with us all—loved the very things my dad found so difficult.


So we hadn’t been together for a very long time. Not since the last wedding, really, some four or so years ago. And Ginna’s before that. At that time, my father told me that we kids couldn’t expect my folks to come to every grandkid’s wedding—too far, and too hard.


Now Mike and I are both up here, with most of our kids. So finally, my parents, thanks to my Texas sister’s efforts, came up for a gathering of the clan. It was strange – odd and precious at the same time. Some of my sister’s kids were there, as were some of mine and some of Mike’s. But Keven, Mike and I were all in the same house at the same time, and my parents were here, and there were even grandchildren—great grandchildren of my parents. Just like a regular LDS family. Like people who have roots.

I am so used to being with other people’s families—we’d been up here so long alone. We’ve spent plenty of time with Guy’s aunts and uncles and finally, with his brother and sister who have moved up here in the last couple of years. What I’m saying is that I’m so used to being a shirt-tail relative, it takes a long time for me to understand that this is my family I’m finally with. The family I actually came from and am linked to by time, blood and history.

So here’s a picture of us—who could have guessed there’d be so many? I do come from somewhere after-all. Kind of amazing.


I only wish my mother, who is so willing, and even now, so kind to us—had known who we were.

Posted in Family | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

November Ghosts

Posted on November 18, 2007 by K

On my blog roll, you’ll find my friend Rachel’s blog. She’s the mother of seven who almost died on the mountain with me. She’s writing about her experience with Levi, her 6th child who has a very rare and terrible disorder – and how the family deals with it. Just this morning, somebody said to me, looking at Rachel’s second son, “There are no sweeter, more beautiful kid in this ward than those kids of Rachel’s. So, if you want to dip into courage, love and faith, you might give her a look, and for heaven’s sake, leave a comment.By the way, I have been upbraided and mocked by Dick Beeson for (among other reasons) begging for comments. But the fact of the matter is that it’s a hard thing, whistling in the wind, and just knowing somebody has walked beside you for a little is actually, I’ll admit it, thrilling. So my Gin and I have decided that we’re always going to let people know we’ve been there, like a short embrace.

Now: reflections on the pooping out of the year. (Did your dad ever say he was too pooped to pop? And why is it okay to say you are pooped, anyway?)The tag end of Indian Summer—sky outside is properly gray, and it’s been sleeting a little. After all of this beautiful weather (during which I did NOT get the Christmas lights up, but did wash the outside, downstairs windows), I’m not sad about the dreary day; makes it all the better to stay inside and rest.Rachel has come to visit, and is asleep in the sienna chair in the west study, where Murphy, sacked out of the couch, has also fallen asleep. I am in my corner of the couch in the living room, attached to the wall by a cord, and Guy, with his computer open in his lap, has pretty much collapsed into oblivion. Char is upstairs listening to some British voice read to her, and is probably drawing. Not so holy a Sabbath day after our hours of church, but peaceful, and in a somnolent way, companionable.

(no pictures – I lost the links. But I put in too many pictures anyway.)

These last many days have been nice—a few holiday-feeling errands run, some ornaments made, hours and hours on the couch in ancient Japan—we are within ten pages of the end of the first writing of our fantasy—and the occasional desperate bit of house upkeep.

The leaves were brave this year, holding on to their true yellow a week past Halloween, and that’s when the magic thing happened to me. I was alone in the house—Guy in the studio, Murphy in the animation lab, Char at her dogged job—all, in other words, tucked in their beds, visions of—I don’t know—dance in their heads. And I, as I said, in medieval Japan, communing with the Spirit of the Very Earth. When comes a knock at my door.

I open it to find two fresh young things, one a stranger, the other my Raphaellian beauty, little Emma, from across the street. They have come for a piece of old rope. For climbing a tree.

Not sure what inspired me to do it, but I threw open the gates and said, “You want a rope on a tree? Just follow me,” and marched them over to the arched gate and into the back yard. Big tree. Fat rope. “My kids used to swing on this all the time,” I told them, and let them have at it. For the next hour, the yard was full of squeals and laughter and shouting.

And it had the strangest effect on me. That yard used to be full of kids. I can see Ginna in my mind’s eye, swinging on that rope—all of them out there all the time. I had never realized how silent the yard had grown to be. The dogs, with somebody to chase around, were in heaven.

Posted in Just life, Memories and Ruminations | 7 Comments

Large Syringe/Shorter Ghost

Posted on November 1, 2007 by K

Nov 1, 2007

The little absurdities of life (or—another excuse not to sit down and face writing the last chapters of the latest book).

Scene: my house with Ginna in it.
Ginna (pointing at me): Max, what’s her name?
Max (like, duuuh): Gram.
Ginna: No, what’s her real name?
Max (looking thoughtful): Mom.

Scene: the barn, a sick horse. Fall, a reasonably cool day. We have a huge syringe in which I’ve been dissolving two large tablets of chalky Phenylbutazone (better known, but not by many, as “bute”) for some four hours. These are like gigantic human aspirin tablets, used to cut inflammation—which, when it gets a free hand in a horse’s foot (the inflammation, not the bute) can eventually mean a dead horse. The stuff (the bute, not the inflammation) tastes a lot like aspirin. Or so they say. You can try it if you want—let me know.

The whole problem here is that I was afraid Sophie had laminitis – which a horse can get when there’s too much sugar in her diet – meaning, lush green grass, too much grain. I know this is too much info, but you have to know this in order to get at the irony in the story.

So what do you do to make the stuff taste better to a horse who will do ANYTHING she can to spit it out right into your hair – or down your sleeves, or anywhere she can reach? You add a little molasses to the syringe, that’s what you do. So we had this bottle of molasses that Geneva left with me: “Just like a dollop,” she said. Or maybe she didn’t actually use the word “dollop.” In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say that. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to pour molasses – but there used to be this really well-known expression (it came out of the south where they eat a lotta biscuits): “slow as molasses.”

What it means is, once you turn over your bottle, you can run home, take a shower, watch a PBS special, drive back, feed the horses and then go back to the upside down bottle and start worrying about whether the molasses can actually drip down into the syringe without getting all over everything. Only thing is, once molasses is committed to a flow, it’s real hard to stop. Real hard.

So, here we are, dancing around this syringe, trying to get the stuff to stop dolloping. Which it does not do until practically the whole rest of the syringe is full. And then, you can’t scrape out the extra, because by that time, the bute is all mixed into the molasses. So we shoved the stopper in and stuck a finger over the little bitty hole in the front, hoping the whole assembly wouldn’t simply blow up.

Next step: get the mixture into the horse – by the simple expedient of shoving the business end of the syringe into the horse’s mouth, which you are trying to hold way up in the air, so that it is tipped as far away as it can get from your hair. You have to get the syringe up on top of the tongue, which is very busy trying to expel anything that is not grass, hay or a bona fide treat—which means bute and all—and push hard on the plunger.

It all worked fine, that is, until the mass of molasses hit that little bitty hole in the front.

That’s all I will tell you, except to say that when we were finished, I had analgesic molasses running down my sleeves to my elbows, and Sophie, her lips now a nice burgundy-brown, was looking at us with an air of deep reproach.

Then it was left for me to hope she would not simply expire of a sugar spike during the night. I wouldn’t have worried about a dollop. A half cup is another thing altogether. But as it turns out, she survived to see another day. The next morning, the doctor couldn’t find a thing wrong with her. Okay. And now I am left to wonder: what brought about the miraculous change? Was it the bute? Or the molasses?

**********
I didn’t mean to write so much.

Char and I went to Michael’s Crafts the other day, looking for—well—craft stuff. And we happened to see this cool bow-making thing in the ribbon aisle. It was the As Seen On TV Bow Maker, and we fell for it. But before we could move happily on, we caught sight of yet another bow maker, down on the bottom shelf, a neat little package with a picture of a very happy woman on it, holding what was obviously a prize winning bow.

I need to say here that there are times when I have feel as though I am actually living with Brian Regan. If you don’t know who he is, you just haven’t lived. We went to one of his concerts – though why we call it a concert, I don’t know, since all he does is yell, mostly – and the rest of his fans are just as bad as my kids: they know every one of his routines BY HEART. In fact, if he gets one word wrong in performance, they ALL correct him. And when they are back in civilian life, and they happen to slip accidentally into a Brian Regan state of mind, they talk JUST LIKE HIM.

So, here I am in the craft store, and I pick up this nice lavender box and I look at Char, and I ask her, innocently, which one of these bow-making things looks the most effective. She does a slow grin. “Well,” she drawls, approaching Brian talk, “which would you rather use? The As Seen on TV? Or the BOWDABRA????” For that was the unfortunate name of the product. The Bowdabra. This is pronounced, at least by Charlotte, as Bow-Dabra. As in Abraca….

So, Okay, those of you who can, let’s all say it together, just like Brian Regan: BO-DA-bra. And for the next twenty two minutes, that’s all I could get out of her. “Don’t you just want to get home and get your hands on that BO-DA-bra?” “We did it ourselves with the BO-DA-bra.”

In the end, that pretty much made the decision for me—I have way too much reverence for Christmas to bring something like the Bo-DA-bra into it.

I’m just wondering how Regan’s family lives with him??

This was supposed to be a summation of July – but now I can’t remember anything that happened back then.

So I’ll talk about Halloween.

We used to have, like, 300 kids come to the door, back in the day. We were the only real neighborhood around for blocks, and people would come from all the rural corners of the planet to walk our street and harvest our candy. But urban sprawl has eaten almost all the land outside of my pasture, so kids don’t have to walk twelve miles in the snow to find candy anymore. Besides, they all grew up.

More or less.

Last year, it rained. We only got the eleven kids from across the street and about three others. Which was great. Cut down on all that DVR pausing. This year, the weather was great, and I decided I was going to count kids, just to see how many we had left in this good old and getting older neighborhood.

I don’t give out candy anymore. I give Oriental Trading goodies – spiders and bugs and glow-in-the-dark bracelets (which are good for the really little kids who can’t get past the candy thing), so what’s left over, I just toss in the Halloween boxes for next year. Which means that I had plenty of bugs in the bowl by the door – at least, I hoped I had plenty. The fact that Halloween was on a school night was going to cut down on the after eight o’clock crowd, anyway. And Scott Holyoak, who used to show up after nine, figuring everybody would dump their surplus on him (which we did) is now married and lives somewhere else, also factors into my planning.

We used to do a talking ghost. This is because some people who lived across the street and down the block from us did one when I was a kid in LA. Maybe they only did it one year, but it made a tremendous impression on me, so we did it for twenty seven years, and let that be a lesson to you. We used to use two sheets, with Guy’s big work boots just peeking our from under the bottom hem. And we’d run wires out to the studio so we could use the big processors on the voice (Darth Vader had nothing on us). We’d peek out the windows and call the kids by name, and they never could be sure if the thing was really alive or not. And for years, the kids loved it, and for a while, they brought their own kids back to the house just to see the ghost.

We did not, however, put the thing up this year. We’re too old now, and the charm of waiting by the window has worn off in direct proportion to the amount of time it now takes between banks of kids (15 to 20 minutes). And as our kids are all off now, wearing dreams and looking for chicks and guys, and driving to the university and the city, and not taking their turn at the window – well, the thrill is just gone.
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We got less than a eighty kids this year, and quite a few of those were the very tiny children of people who USED to be very tiny children, and I hate the thought of giving them nightmares. Nobody seemed to miss it. Our fame has run its course.

And I only allowed two of our pumpkins – medium sized ones, all this year – to be carved. I guess I am in cultural rebellion: I love whole pumpkins and I think they are highly appropriate on the Thanksgiving porch as well. I do not wear purple with a red hat; I’m not even sure when that became the symbol of being old enough to throw out the expectations of the ages and exercise the freedoms of age. But I am finding that I can, finger by finger, give up some of my grip on traditions that used to characterize this house full of children.

So, now I am going to show you pictures of my yard, and my two last children – or maybe Cammon, too. And the dogs. Piper was really genuinely sad that we made him come inside; he wanted to lie out on the deck and watch the kids. Turns out, our fierce, kid-hating puppy grew up to be an old softy. If he didn’t make Ginna sneeze, he’d spend hours following Max around like a – puppy.

That’s all I have to say. I wore my new orange Gap sweater (which is as close to a costume as I ever get, since my dreams are full of lovely, angelic images that I will never achieve in costume) and Guy and I stayed home to answer the door (some old people don’t even do that). Half of our petitioners came from two houses across the street—children we love, trooping by our house first, before it was even dark.

Here is a picture of my neighborhood: I no longer have treat-or-treating kids, no opportunity to pilfer—so I walked out onto my front porch and yelled: I WANT A BUTTERFINGER!!! ANYBODY WHO GETS ONE TONIGHT, GET ONE FOR ME, TOO. And by the end of the evening, I had ten of them.

And that’s pretty much the end. I ate two tiny Butterfingers and stored the others up unto the season thereof. And we blew out the two little lanterns. And now we get to put the decorations away. Everything goes too fast, you know?

Posted in Family, Horses, Images of our herd in specific, Just life, Memories and Ruminations, Seasons, The kids | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Editing with a Toolbelt

Posted on October 24, 2007 by K

October 23, 2007

My grandmother’s house had a basement. For me, an LA kid, brought up in a little stucco ranch on a slab, this was a place of mystery. I could spend a good while talking about that house, the only place that was always the same in my young life, as TWA transferred our family from coast to coast and points in between. It was a sort of Mecca for me, sometimes east, sometimes west—but dependable as twilight. Even the furniture never changed position—or the hidden treasures in the drawers pf the hutch.

There was a ping-pong table down there, tucked into a dark corner. On the one wall, there was a deer head (about which there was a story) and under that, a rack of pipes – wonderful, odd pipes, many of them hand carved, all smelling of sweet pipe smoke. And there was a firebrick heater in the little fireplace, guarded by a cast iron Boston terrier. And a pair of very long skis, longer unused, that had belonged to my father (skis in Kansas City?), and an ancient upright piano that I know my grandmother never played.


Of course, there’s more to this—smells, textures, old books, arrowheads and fossils—but my point in all this is that, in one very rarely seen corner, tucked in behind the wash room, was my grandfather’s workbench.

I didn’t like it in there. I can’t tell you why. Maybe because the tools seemed so alive, when he had died long before I was born. They made him seem young and present, not a ghost, but somebody I always just seemed to miss seeing when I visited. Rich, worn wooden handles. All in order, hanging as he had left them.

My father tells me that when he was first married, he didn’t really know how to build things. He was an engineer, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. But planning terminals and runways is a far cry from mounting a doorway, adding on a room, building shelves and sheds and things—and if I understood him correctly, this was stuff he did not know how to do. I am puzzled by this, considering his father’s tools—but young men, out there with their tennis rackets and frat houses are likely not to take much interest in screw drivers and hammers.

Once domesticated, it seems that he—with that rich legacy of tools in his upbringing—became very self sufficient. By the time I was old enough to recognize anything, I knew what Craftsman tools were, and had been taught how to make a tiny screw driver out of a handy nail. There wasn’t a house we lived in that my dad hadn’t tweaked—added a room on the back, or a new door or bathroom—put up shelves, screened in a porch. When I think of my dad, I think of project drawings, all labeled in that angular, clear architectural print—strong illustrations of beams and joists and studs.

I find that there are two things that make a home to me: the piano and the projects.

Guy’s father was not much of a handyman. Our good friend down the street (the Bishop) is said not to know one end of a hammer from another (I doubt this very much), so I guess there are some real men who are not tool-savvy. But Guy came with that same fools-rush-in mentality that set my father learning these things, and a father-in-law who liked to spend his visits with us building things with his s-i-l, and now, Guy is just like my dad, except not as in love with neatly hung tools (read: please do not let my father near our garage – especially this year). I am guessing that my father, indifferent as he might have been to his father’s industrious ways, was as deeply impressed with those rows of hanging tools, all neatly ordered by size and function, as I was by Dad’s peg-board ordered walls. No. Dad wins—he was the more impressed—because, where he made a workshop ordered like the insides of a Swiss watch, I have never successfully imposed that kind of shining, musical order in any area of my life.

Anyway, this is all about building onto the studio—something my husband was brave enough to do because my father taught him how to do these things, and because Guy is brave enough (or fool enough) to wade into a thing like this.

The sweetest moments this summer have been the times that Cam came over to help, and that Murphy had time, in the middle of school and work, to help. And John Kane, too. Kind of like the culmination of a lifetime’s work: children who can help, and do.

And Cam is of Dad’s and Guy’s ilk: stumbling confidently into a project, conceived by necessity crossed with imagination, and wrought by sheer plod and chutzpah.

So these are my pictures of June: the ground breaking on Murphy’s birthday – Murphy, running the little back hoe beautifully, with the exception of the fact that he mangled the water main. But that was a mere trifle. I say June – but I mean, the entire summer and autumn.


We will finish it. We have to.

They’re already charging us more property tax because it’s there.

Posted in Family, Just life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Shards and parcels –

Posted on October 21, 2007 by K

Woke up to snow. This was not a surprise—while we watched the BYU home game last night on Cam’s very large plasma TV, the field went from that lovely football green to a white wasteland. “We think it’s a first down,” the officials were saying. “If we can find the little white line on the field, we’ll know for sure.” Clash of the snowmen. Not your usually bright October day. Last time we couldn’t tell the teams from the snow was in about 1981—but that was November. I know. I took a picture of Ginna, and the UTEP game was on in the background. I am wondering now, however, if that was a black and white TV, which would cut down on color-recognition. As I look at that picture, I can actually tell the difference between the field and the players, too, which was not like the game last night.
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It’s become a ritual, watching the game at Cam and Lorri’s. We come, Lorri’s mom and sibs come—at least half the people there sit around the room staring into their laptops, while the rest of us yell and scream together and help out the commentators. Cam had these brilliant “season tickets” printed up for everybody in August with a handy-dandy listing of the games and times, which means I don’t get lost on the Cougar website anymore. Even Ginna is part of this; Cam pulls the game into his computer somehow and streams it to Kansas City over Skype. “Somebody better get that kid out of the booth,” Lorri said, half way through the game (the brutal truth is that The Mountain is not the slickest network on the block) ‘cause we were hearing a voluble small person in the background.

Turned out to be Max, in the end—we could hear Ginna and Kris on our end of the skype connection.

*******

I can’t write these things anymore. Somehow, when I was doing this in journal form, I felt more myself. Now, when I sit down to—what do I sit down to do, anyway? It’s like taking pictures—these things happen, things that hint or smack or reek of meaning—epiphanies or clever things, philosophy, observation, patterns or aberrations—and I want to record them in all their shades and flavors. It’s not unusual for life to intrude, so that all I’m left with is the impression of a dream. But beyond that, now, when I sit down to write things down, I go all self-conscious. Like, I don’t write in cute little packets. I’m scared to make things too long. I’m worried about not being funny. It’s like worrying that my kids won’t want to come and visit unless I’m entertaining enough to entice them.

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And that’s probably more than anybody wanted to know, right?

So, here are the highlights, as many as I can salvage from the last several weeks, of our lives—to be enlarged upon as life permits:

June: We are getting too old for this entrepreneurial thing. You work all your life, thinking that you’re building something, then the world changes and what have you got in the end? Then again, from what I hear, the corporate thing really isn’t any more secure – life has few safety nets. I checked on the possibility of finishing my Master’s Degree, as if that would make a difference in my fate. And, always wisely anticipating the chance of facing financial rack and ruin, we decide to spend thirty grand on an addition to the studio (horses and burning barns). We begin to break up the driveway and dig very deep holes. I buy many books and start learning how to do CSS so that I, too, can have a cool author website. Learning curve: good thing I’m used to mountains. I try to find an agent. Good thing I’m used to mountains.

July: Immediately, the phone begins to ring and Guy has no time to build anything. We have temporary fencing in the front to keep the dogs from playing chicken with the traffic. I make a friend of an agent I respect—which doesn’t mean she signs me.

August: Charlotte and I start writing a book together and I get a commitment from Raincoast Books, which means that I am NOT dead, and I get to work with Tonya again. Also, it is very hot, and chaotic, and nothing else happens.

September:
1. You’ve read about Death on the Mountain.
2. I fly to Dallas to see the folks.
3. I come home and try to remember where I left off. On the way to my yearly bout of hair-frying, I am almost killed by an out-of-control car (this may be pushing a point). We think about riding the mountain one more time, but can’t get it together.
4. A week later, Charlotte and I drive to Rexburg, Idaho, so I can be one of the Famous People at a children’s lit conference. On the way home, through the worst storm of the previous three months, we are almost killed twice (pushing a little less). All of the leaves on the mountain have fallen.
5. Two days later, we fly to Florida for a Disney World adventure. Heavy on the “adventure.”
6. Come home to do damage control after being gone half of the month of September—homebody bites the dust.
7. Half a week later, Ginna comes for a training thing. Or was it a week and a half?
8. The water breaks in the barn. Again. Deep holes must be dug.
October:
9. Charlotte and I are up to our eyebrows in the book.
10. It freezes at night, and the autumn apples turn mealy.
11. I feel guilty for the mess at the pasture—only so much time in one life-time, and I begin to resent the fact that barns and houses can’t take care of themselves, even for a MINUTE.
12. I buy clothes for the first time in fifteen years. Maybe twenty. Who knows?
13. The yard turns gorgeous colors, and it snows.
14. When I should have been writing about the yumi and the oni (a scene from our up-coming book – have I mentioned it?) I go instead to Costco, gathering food. While there, I am in one of those cheese and polish sausage cooler isles, when I look up and find that I am standing right between David McKell, my former (we’re talking 30 years or more ago) employer, son rescuer (motor cycles in the desert), daughter reconstructionist (pogo sticks in the garage) and dear friend and Dick Beeson, Scrooge (only about my Christmas party rules), curmudgeon and dear friend. It was like coming up snake-eyes.
15. Now I am finally writing—having forgotten all the scintillating details, brilliant insights and heart-rending truths.

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See what I mean?

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Just life, Seasons | Tagged | 6 Comments