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My husband and I went to our son's reading tournament last week. The kids competing in the event sat in two groups on the floor in the center of the room, leaving parents, siblings and grandparents to find seats in the student desks shoved in a tight and hazardous bunch at the room's perimeter. To my immediate left, a woman played a gambling game on her iPhone, sharp red fingernails stabbing at the screen to stop the wheels from spinning, hopefully revealing a lucky combination of cherries or apples or the number seven.

To my right and a bit forward, something much more interesting was going on: There was a man with a bushy grey beard and long silver hair spilling down his back and onto the black windbreaker he wore. The windbreaker was adorned with the name of a local boxing group and a pair of red laced-up gloves. The man wore a baseball cap and reading glasses. He held a yellow mechanical pencil in his right hand. In his left, he held a letter, tri-folded and opened and closed many times. It was written on both sides of two sheets of unlined paper in neat rows straight as the rows of peas and carrots and green beans my father marks in his garden every spring.

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Along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway

In the city, you learn when to breathe. You learn when to hold your breath.

You learn not to breathe when you pass that homeless man sleeping on a bench beneath the flag of New Zealand on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, that mile-long boulevard connecting Love Park with the Philadelphia Art Museum, yes, that same museum where Rocky Balboa charged up all those stairs. Today you will find people of all ages and races running up those steps before turning back to pump their arms in triumph while smiling friends snap pictures to keep the memory alive. You can even buy a tee shirt from the man who hangs out at the Rocky statue.

But we're done at the Art Museum. We're heading back. We're approaching that man sleeping upon the park bench beneath the flag of New Zealand.

Know that you will taste him, if you don't hold your breath. You will feel him settle upon your tongue like the stale communion host you had this morning in church. You will taste urine and body odor and hopelessness.

Even in your innocence, you will taste guilt.

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Whisked Away

We had our first pickup at our local CSA the other day: Dandelion greens, lettuce, collards, arugula, bok choy.   And we got to pick a pint of strawberries which we ate—still warm—right in the field.

In my own garden, my peas are up; several varieties of beans and cucumbers, too.  The carrots are just starting to put in an appearance and yesterday, I planted an Egyptian Walking onion my friend brought me from her garden. 

My strawberries are ripening, but, despite the fence I’ve got around the garden, the rabbits have found a way to reach them, to steal the succulent red berries and leave the empty stem dangling from the vine.

It looks as though strawberries won’t be available—to my family at least—from our backyard garden this year.  

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Journey

At four o’clock in the morning, we rouse ourselves and pack the car with last-minute things—computers, lunches, cell phones, toiletries—before heading south.  Thinking about the eleven or so hours this trip will take is daunting.  At sixty-five miles per hour, we watch the moon set and the sun rise as one by one the kids drop off to sleep in the back seat.  Nine hours in, we grow tired of the radio—the stations are either too loud or too classical; serious voices of preachers occasionally cutting through static.  Everyone is irritated.  The landscape has become routine.  I find myself thinking can’t we just be there already?

And then I’m reminded of the time over twenty years ago, when I packed up my car and headed to school in Arizona, my twelve-year-old brother my companion.  I was thrilled to get away from home, to begin a life for myself.  Occasionally, my brother would ask to stop.  He wanted to see the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.  But I pressed on, eager to get on with my new life, as if by stopping, my future would escape me somehow.

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Stuffed

I headed out to the fabric store the other day to pick up some candy boxes my sister had recommended.  The curb in front of every house was filled with piles of post-Thanksgiving and Black Friday stuff; stuff no longer needed; stuff to be discarded in the landfill: flat screen TVs; a sofa; a stuffed Shrek sitting in the lap of a giant stuffed bear. 

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Keeping the Bees

In the space between alfalfa fields, my dad kept a couple of bee hives.  I remember putting on a beekeeper’s mask and standing well back, watching him smoke the hive to lull the bees into a quiet.  I remember cautiously lifting the lid of the hive, my father close at hand, and peering at the world inside.  I remember my dad pulling out frames and cutting away the honey comb.  He’d slice the comb into small squares and put the honey—still on the comb—into Mason jars.  “You have to leave some for the bees, to get them through the winter,” my dad would say, refitting the lid back onto the hive. 

My dad, too, had on his shelf a book called The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A.I. Root.  I remember running my hand across its dark nubby cover.  I remember reading that book and promising myself that one day, I, too, would keep bees.

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Expectations

In the middle of Mass, Squints leaned towards me and whispered.  “Mom, what’s Black Friday?”

I leaned back.  Whispered bullet points.  “Day after Thanksgiving.  Everything goes on sale.”

He chewed on this for awhile before asking,“Is that a Holy Day?”

 I turned towards him.  “Where would you get that idea?”

“Well, at the stores, there are signs on the windows for Christmas and Black Friday so I…”

“It’s not a Holy Day.”

The day after Thanksgiving, we will not hold a vigil outside the store, waiting for gleaming doors to glide open and admit us.   No, we will spend the day after Thanksgiving in our usual manner.  The day after Thanksgiving, we will dip caramels.

My sister has already prepared several batches of caramel: melting copious amounts of sugar and stirring in ingredients I’m not allowed to reveal here.  As I write this, the caramel waits in rectangular baking dishes for warm hands to soften it and remove it from the pan.  The caramel waits for warm hands to shape it into bite-sized pieces.  The caramel waits for its thick shell of chocolate.

We’ve fallen into a pattern: Three or four of us will shape the caramels; Two or three will dip.  A runner will take cookie sheets full of glistening caramels to the dining room to cool and harden.

Cousins, together again at last, will talk and laugh and catch up.  Occasionally, a younger cousin will be recruited to grab a handful of caramels from the dining room and pass them around.  Orthodontist recommendations will be ignored. 

We will work for several hours in this way, dipping and talking and sampling a caramel or two.  When the caramel is gone, we will move on to peanut clusters.  And sometime after noon, my sister will begin cooking the several hundred pierogi (another secret family recipe) she also made in the weeks before Caramel Day.  For the second day in a row, we will overeat, stuffing ourselves with brats and pierogi and caramel, of course.

No, Squints, Black Friday is not a Holy Day.  But Caramel Day is sacred.  We shape our lives around around this day. 

After lunch, we will clean up and pack up the candy and head home to hide the candy from our children.  Because that candy will become Christmas gifts.  Teachers receive candy.  Neighbors receive candy.  Relatives and friends receive that candy.  In late October, past recipients of this treasure begin making their inquiries: “Are you making candy this year?”  People have come to expect it.  And if their box is a bit smaller than last year’s, they will not hesitate to let you know.  That candy has become legendary. 

I do not give it away lightly.

* * *

After Mass, we ate breakfast, and, on this day of rest, Squints and my husband set out to rake leaves.  

An hour later, Squints came in.  “Whew, I’m beat.”  He took out a saucepan and measured out milk.  “Seven bags, Mom.  Well, really only six because we had to fill one twice.  The wind blew it over and everything spilled out.”  He turned on the gas and added cocoa power and too much sugar to the milk.  He stirred.

The woman who lives behind us emerged, rake in hand.  She raked for a few minutes then lifted a small handful of leaves into the bag. 

Squints added his secret ingredient—peppermint sprinkles—to his cocoa.

The woman’s bag blew over.

“Squints,” I said, watching him take a taste of his cocoa and smacking his lips.  “Look there.”  I pointed.   “Wouldn’t it be nice to go help her rake leaves?”

He looked at me.  Frowned.  “I just…”

“Who knows?  Maybe you’ll land a lawn service job.”

He set the spoon down.  “You think she’d pay me?”

“I’ll keep an eye on your cocoa.”

“OK.” 

“Don’t expect any money.”

"I won't.  He shrugged his coat back on and headed outside.  I watched him approach, rake in hand.  I watched her pause, rake poised above the leaves.  I could hear Squint’s voice in my head.  Want some help?

I watched a smile blossom across her face.  I watched my son raking leaves for a woman he’d never met.  I watched two people, separated by half a century come together in a trivial task.  I wondered why it had taken me seven years to figure this out.

Forty-five minutes later, Squints came home, grinning from ear to ear.  “She was so happy, Mom!  You should’ve seen her.”  He raised his voice a notch.  “I never thought I’d get three bags filled today!  I’m so pleased!  And look…”  Squints fished around in his pocket and withdrew a folded bill.  “She paid me!”  He poured out his cocoa and sat down to drink it.

“I told her about Destructo.”  He paused, looking out the window.  “She’s a cat person.  She’s been feeding those wild cats.  They live beneath her porch.”

I nodded.

“She told me she’d ring my doorbell the next time she needed help.”  He dipped his spoon into his cocoa.  “She’s really nice, Mom.  And she seems lonely.  I think we should have her over for dinner.”

I paused.  I wanted to help a neighbor, but dinner?  “Well, at least we can make her a box of caramels.”

“Oh, yeah.  I told her all about that.  She’s expecting some this year.”  He patted his pocket to make sure his money was still there and finished his cocoa in silence.

For more about Caramel Day...

This post has been linked to Love Links
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The Company of Strangers

Summer is still such a recent memory, I’d forgotten what it feels like to be cold.  But we’ve had no heat for over a week and I suddenly remember.  I wear double pairs of socks and shirts.  I wear a scarf and a hat and gloves in the house.  I’ve become like our fat orange cat who moves from window to window searching for a patch of sunlight slanting in through the window.  The tea grows cold in my mug before I’ve finished it and at night, the dogs pull the blankets from our beds and lie beneath, curled up into tight little balls of fur. 

* * *

Squints was in a cooking contest the other day.  Four groups of people received an identical basket of food and cooked it according to their time period:  The 1940s group used camp stoves.  The Revolutionary group cooked over an open fire. 

Visitors had to pay an entrance fee and, for an additional sum of money, could purchase one of a very limited supply of orange wrist bands that entitled the wearer to taste small samples of the food.  There were tiny Dixie cups, dessert-sized paper plates and a handful of plastic forks and spoons set out for that purpose.

The weather was cold and raw.  Besides my family—we were more or less obliged to be there—only one man showed up.  He wore a green down vest and a checked shirt and baggy blue jeans and boots.  His orange wristband was displayed prominently.  But nobody checked for it anyway.

Our money refused, we were invited to eat.  The small, limited samples of food became enormous.  Instead of a teaspoonful of chicken soup and half of a Brussels sprout, we ate the equivalent of two meals there, moving from century to century with abandon, tasting a bit of chicken cooked in a reflecting oven and moving on to chicken and dumplings.  We tasted squash and scalloped potatoes and Johnny cakes and biscuits.  We ate cabbage with sausage and apples; we ate eggs and sausage; we ate an apple and onion tart.

Besides their obvious love of cooking, historical cooks love to talk: They want to educate the public; they want to talk about the methods historical cooks used.  Food historians like to connect the past to the present.  Most of all they like to connect to people.  Having no one else with whom to talk, they talked to us: Staffers talked to us about the weather and the history of the place; a husband of a staffer, dragged along to help, talked to us about sports; a tag-along husband of a woman from the 1600s plopped down in the folding chair next to my husband and talked about trying to sell his house and moving to Kentucky, absently scratching his knee beneath his woolen pants.

In that room heated only by cooking fires, we ate the food of strangers and listened to the cooks exchanging ideas.  We learned how a turkey feather makes a superior baster; We learned how to make a whisk from twigs; We learned how to tell the temperature of roasted chicken by touch; We learned how to cook rice inside a pumpkin. 

The caretaker came from his apartment with his own plate—a large wooden plate—upon which he heaped chicken and sausage and potatoes.  A cat jumped into my lap and started knitting.  “That there’s Albert,” the caretaker said.  “Just showed up one day.  He’s real friendly.  Not like Yellow Cat.”  He put a piece of chicken in his mouth.  “Yellow Cat’s been here two years and still won’t let me get near him.”

Someone set a plate of chicken on the floor.  Albert jumped from my lap and began eating. 

“We got a cat needs adopted out—a drop off,” the caretaker said.

 “We have a cat,” I said.

“Tried to take him to the shelter, but he’s just a little bit of a thing.  They told me that at his size, they take ‘em in the front door and haul ‘em out the back.”  He shook his head.  “I’d hate to see that happen.  He walked to the door and paused there.  “Wanna’ see him?” 

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see him.”

“Cat likes to sleep on yer head,” the caretaker said.  “Keeps me warm all night.”

Perhaps it was the thought of warmth that made us do it: We took him home. 

* * *

We’re having tile installed in the basement this week.  We had to remove everything and bring it upstairs.  It’s disheartening to see how much stuff we’ve accumulated.  It’s embarrassing, seeing it stacked up around the perimeter of each room.  We’ve reacquainted ourselves with things we’d forgotten.  We’ve made plans to get rid of things we don’t need. 

The tile guys showed up and I led them the basement.  I split up the animals: One dog is relegated to the garage; another to a cage.  There’s a cat locked in one bedroom; the second in another.  The hamster, displaced from the basement, is now in the dining room, running a hundred miles to nowhere on his wheel. 

I apologize to the tile guys for the lack of heat.  I show them the bathroom and offer coffee, which they refuse.   

They prop open the screen door and leave the front door open, which I keep shutting when I know they’re done cutting tile for a while, not to be rude but because there’s a chill in the air and a wild cat with her four kittens roaming the neighborhood.

I do not speak the language of these men.  I wonder, listening to their easy laughter, their chatter, their occasional singing along to the radio they blast in the basement, what they’re talking about.  Yet, I cannot bridge the gap that divides us.

I feel I’m in their way.  I hide off in a corner, try to be unobtrusive.  For the moment, this house is theirs.    I take my lunch in the dining room so they do not see me eat.  They eat their lunch in the van, the ignition turned on for the radio and the heat.

I look forward to having my house quiet and in order again.  But even more so, I look forward to the heat.  Because a little patch of sunlight in the window is only so warm, and eventually, it disappears. 

Besides, the cats have already taken the best spots.

Liebster Blog

Spent the afternoon freezing several quarts of local vegetables for the winter: broccoli, cauliflower, the last of this year's corn.  Made a couple of loaves of banana bread and several quarts of my sister's potato-leek soup, using local potatoes and the chicken stock I made last weekend.

There's something about tucking things away for the winter, knowing that, as the snow begins to blanket the ground and the roads get icy, delicious food is just a few steps away.  So far, I've frozen over twenty quarts each of strawberries, peaches and blueberries; several quarts of raspberries; too many peach pies; chicken stock; soup; and vegetables of all sorts--greens, onions, celery for soup, carrots, soybeans, corn.  My only disappointment this year was the failure of the blackberry crop, which prevented me from getting the thumb-sized berries that grow at an orchard just down the street.  In a week or so, I'll make my applesauce and apple pies; and if I get my courage up, I may just try my hand at grape jelly as well--That same orchard sells concord grapes.

It's been a good season.

And it's a good time to thank Elizabeth at The Garden Gate for awarding me a Liebster.  Originating in Germany, a Liebster (meaning beloved) attempts to attract new readers to blogs with fewer than 200 followers.

To some, less than two hundred followers may seem an embarrassment.  But I consider myself lucky, even blessed, to have each of you.  Because, eight months ago, before I mustered the courage to share my writing here, I had no one following; I had no one reading. 

One of my characters, Lilly Jean Jacobs, recently said, "half a man is better than no man at all."  And while I'm not so sure I agree with that sentiment, I do firmly believe that 60-some readers is better than no readers at all.

Writing is a lonely occupation--in my case it could hardly be called an occupation--and I often wonder if anyone cares what I have to say.  Seeing my list of followers tells me that you do.  And so I thank Elizabeth for this lovely award.  And I thank you, beloved readers, for choosing to spend some of your precious time here.  I appreciate your readership. 

And I pass on this award to the following blogs:

1. Two Kinds of People - From Susan's blog: "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who garage sale and those who don't. And, of course, the subset of those who do—buyers and sellers."
2. What I Saw - I'm actually not clear how many followers Melissa has, but she deserves every one of them.  Inspiration for writing.  Gorgeous photography and nature.
3. Coming East - Another Susan! Lovely essays and memories here.
4. Lit Endeavors - All things reading and writing.
5. Meandering Homeschool - Hampchick writes of her adventures in homeschooling.

Detachment

I see that the temperature is supposed to go down into the forties tonight.  This morning, I threw open the windows to chase away the heat and the humidity that has hovered in the air since May.  The flies appear to have been listening to the weather forecast: A group of them has taken up residence in the kitchen and I find it fair sport to chase them with a dishtowel.  It’s a battle I often lose.

A couple of days after I lost the War of Tug with Destructo, my eye started flashing—a quick burst of lightning that disappeared immediately.  The flashing began on an inconvenient day: the day of Filibuster’s photo preview: The studio owner greeted us warmly at the door and seated us upon a plush velvet couch before a gigantic movie screen.   She dimmed the lights.

My eye flashed.

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Two Miles and Twenty Cents a Gallon

I saw him behind plate glass as I exited the bank: one-third of the way up the window, a four-inch long praying mantis.  Perhaps he was checking on interest rates.  Or maybe he was just grasping on for dear life, still in shock from the earthquake or in preparation for the upcoming hurricane. 

He must’ve been reading the papers or listening to the radio: Everywhere, people are being cautioned to ready themselves; to have food and water and travel plans worked out.  I have made no such preparations, although I did fill up the gas tank at the local—expensive—BP yesterday.   My usual trick is to just put a couple of dollars into the tank at the pricier place then limp as quickly as I can into the station two miles and twenty cents a gallon away.  I told myself, watching the dials spin wildly behind the glass, that I ought to fill the tank now, just in case.  But the truth of the matter is I’m too lazy to stop for gas again so soon.

* * *

Thanks to the library book sale, Squints is the proud owner of thirteen cookbooks.  He’s got one on desserts featuring Cool Whip in every recipe; a casserole book that employs Campbell’s Soup on each page.  And, although we have no pot, he picked up a book on fondue.  But there are a couple of promising books: Street Foods shows how to make food popularized on the city’s streets: Philadelphia cheese steaks, corn dogs, pad Thai.  And the sandwich book looks interesting: For lunch yesterday, Squints made me a double-layer banana peanut butter sandwich with cream cheese and an interesting concoction of brown sugar and cinnamon topping.   While I proclaimed it delicious, I decided to split it with V.  Filibuster eschewed it entirely, claiming to be full, despite the fact that she hadn’t yet eaten.

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Book Sale

At nine o’clock this morning, the library book sale began.  This was the big sale; the hardback sale; the sale around which we had planned our vacation to Maine.  My husband even came along even though he was certain that he wouldn’t find a thing.

Last year, the kids and I just happened upon the sale, in one of its final days.  There were a few people here and there in the community room; balancing a stack in one arm while considering another book.  A man glanced at my arms. 

“That’s why I bring this.”  He pointed to his backpack, bursting with books.  “Holds more and keeps my arms free.” 

I smiled and picked up Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  I studied the back.  Would I really read it?

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Fragile

“Do you want some chicken feet for the dog?”  The owner of the farm where we’d rented our cabin nodded at Destructo.  “We’re slaughtering Thursday.” 

“Do you do the butchering yourself?”

He gave a satisfied nod.  “We used to pluck by hand until we were able to make a plucker.” 

Although the farm was hundreds of miles from home, we found we shared a connection: The owner sold wool to a highbrow place near our home; a sterile place whose shoppers, I was sure, wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to the farm and the people and the animals that had produced that wool.  Thus connected, we were invited to gather the eggs from the chickens just outside our cabin; to visit the turkeys and the pigs and the sheep.  We could pet the goats and the horses used to plow the fields.  We were free to milk the cow, provided we got up early enough.  And, of course, the hundred acres were ours to explore.

And we explored with abandon: We passed a hundred-year-old farmhouse and went on to the pigpen where baby durocs no bigger than our—admittedly fat—cat ran round the pen en masse while their mother looked on wearily.  A pasture down, there was another pig, sequestered from a lamb and a couple of horses by a wire fence.  Drying on a wooden fencepost was the horned scalp of a goat.  Here and there, where the rocks would allow, were patches of garden: Scallions and tomatoes and lettuces to the right; Further down the path a bed of peas and green beans, still in season in August.

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The Beginning...

At eleven o’clock at night, Filibuster discovered we were out of cat litter.  My husband sighed and changed out of his pajamas and he and Filibuster headed to the grocery store, which was open until midnight.  At four-thirty in the morning, my husband discovered the dog cage was too large to fit in the trunk and that the garbage can had leaked all over the garage floor.  Worse, his car emitted a strong odor that filled up the garage with the smell of gasoline.   

Vacations always seem to start this way.

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Darla's Back

I see that Darla is back at the Clip Joint.  And that’s good.

That’s real good.

Now, I have no idea who Darla is or where she’s been, but I can imagine that little thrill she gets when she sees her name on the marquee outside the Joint: Darla’s Back!  For a few weeks, I’d wager, people will talk:  “Oh! She’s back! Darla is back!”

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Things You Need

To get to the creek at my parents’ farm, leave the house by the back door.  Stop to admire my mother’s giant pots of herbs and other plants on the wooden deck before heading down the stairs and onto the brick walk.  To your left, you’ll see a perennial bed of, if I remember correctly, white and purple flowers.  And to your right, another smaller bed with shrubs and hosta and a gas lamp permanently lit to welcome visitors.

The gravel driveway will crunch beneath your shoes—and cut bare feet if you’re not careful.  Walk past the garage towards the barn.  To the right, another long and narrow perennial bed.  To the left, the remains of the pasture fence: a small length of wooden sections of posts and rails representing years of farm labor and lessons.  Tall pines on either side of the drive will escort you past the barn to your left.  And to your right, you’ll see the syrup shed, where my father spends late winters turning gallons of sap into the maple syrup that I use to sweeten peaches and strawberries and be reminded of home.  Know that into the concrete floor of that very shed, my children carved their initials with a thick nail. 

But we must go on.

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Crooked River

We put in at Route 422 near the old Riverside Restaurant.  Squints, my husband and I were in one canoe.  V and Filibuster rode in another.  My sister, my niece and nephew were in a third.  Another nephew rode solo in a kayak.

Our journey was a seven mile ride down the Cuyahoga River—the Crooked River—south towards Akron.  But our boat was put into the water backwards and as we shoved off, we accidentally headed north. 

We couldn’t turn the boat around.  We paddled on one side.  We paddled on the other side.  We paddled on both sides, one left, one right, Squints eagerly and haphazardly slapping the water with his paddle from the center of the boat.  “Hey, I’m good, Mom.  Haven’t I gotten better?” 

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The Permanence of Elephants--The End

The bathroom was at the top of the stairs and, of course, each week, I would have to use it—if only to break up the monotony of waiting for my piano lesson.  I would climb the wooden staircase, stepping lightly, hoping to have a peek into the room to the right.

This room belonged to the piano teacher’s mother, Mrs. T and, invariably, the door would be open.  The room was dominated by a massive bed—a bed so high, a stepping stool stood sentry at its side.  The bedspread was white as snow.  The bed itself was of a dark ancient wood. It looked so inviting in its size and softness, it was all I could do to keep myself from entering the room; from climbing that stool and sitting upon the bed.

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The Permanence of Elephants--III

Our first piano was a basement piano: an ugly old upright painted thick with orange.  Many of its teeth were chipped; some were missing their enamel altogether, and on these keys, someone had penciled in their names: C..D…E

Once a day, I’d go down the basement steps, gray with black stick-on treads and cross the orange tiled floor and seat myself at that old piano, fully intending to practice.  But instead, I’d find myself pretending I was the piano player at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Bonanza—banging the keys on that upright mercilessly without regard for sound or rhythm.  I’d end my performance in a magnificent glissando covering the entire span of white keys before spinning around on my bench to face my invisible audience—the ping pong table, too—for the thunderous applause that only I could hear. 

And then my mother’s voice would float down the stairs.  “Is that your lesson?”

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The Permanence of Elephants--II

Winters, we took refuge on the red velvet loveseat that was pressed against the windows of the front room of the piano teacher’s house.   I would run my thumbnail against the grain of the fabric, drawing pictures in velvet, listening to the warm-up scales of my sister.  On the table to the right there was a wooden box, which I felt entitled to open.  Inside there were dried rose petals—yellow—that must have held some great significance for the piano teacher.  But I considered them only for their entertainment value as I opened the box, inhaled the memory of scent and thoughtlessly poked a tiny index finger into fragile recollections.

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