Feels Like Home To Me

ElinorD kneading bread dough

Image via Wikipedia

On days when crisp fall fades to a dusk that chills the toes, I always think of home. Because on days like this, my house smells like baking bread.

In the eighteen years that I lived at home, I don’t think my mother ever once bought a loaf of bread. It was one of those tasks, like laundry, that you just do yourself, no matter how tiresome. Perhaps the most familiar scene from my childhood is Mom, with the huge aluminum bowl on the table in the middle of that beat-up linoleum floor and horrible burnt-yellow wallpaper, making bread.

Ingredients:

5-lb. bag of white flour (more or less)
½ c. lard
2 T. salt
1/3 c. sugar
2 T. yeast dissolved in 5 ½ c. warm water (potato water if you have it)

Dump half the flour in a large pan. Measure in lard, salt & sugar. Cut in lard & stir. Add yeast water and stir, adding flour as it gets incorporated.

We’d prop our hands on brown-vinyl chair backs and the cabinet and swing back and forth, regaling her with stories. She never stopped folding dough onto itself, the table squeaking under the force of her arms, a sound you heard and recognized wherever you were in the house. I never understood how she did it. Even today my arms wear out long before the bread’s ready.

When dough is too stiff to stir, continue kneading with hands, at least fifteen minutes, till texture is smooth and satiny. “You can’t knead bread too much,” she says.

At last, she’d slap the dough on the table and dig floury fingers into the lard bucket, smearing it around the bowl to keep the dough from sticking. She’d put the big ball in, rub it around, flip it over, then cover the top to keep it moist for the next couple hours as the smell of yeast permeated the front rooms.

Let rise until doubled. Punch down, let rise again.

Sometimes she didn’t get started early enough in the day, and the smell was late blossoming, twining with roast beef and potatoes and apple pie. I was almost sorry on those days, because it was hard to pick out the smell.

Cut dough ball into quarters. Knead and shape each piece into loaves. Place into pans greased with lard and turn to coat the loaf. Let rise until doubled.

Those nights, we’d all go to bed and Mom would stay up, sitting at the table reading, waiting for the loaves to finish rising and then baking. I always felt sorry for her, but I wonder now if some part of her relished that quiet solitude.

Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. Turn out onto cooling racks and smear with bacon grease to lock the moisture in.

Now, as then, warm homemade bread with butter and honey is my favorite of all indulgences. Brownies and ice cream are decadent, but fresh bread is soul food. It means home.

Write on Edge: RemembeRED

Published in: on November 1, 2011 at 5:05 am  Comments (15)  
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I Miss My Childhood

Harvest Moon
Image by pixieclipx via Flickr

On nights when the incessant traffic noise mysteriously vanishes and the sound of a dog barking echoes outside my window, I miss my childhood. My heart reaches back toward sight of the full moon rising swollen and orange behind rows of corn and the smell of burning leaves at the end of the driveway, burrowing into cotton and denim and polyester, permeating thick hair for days.

I long for the feel of the concrete porch under my pink nightgown, the cats rubbing up against me as I filled three-ring binders with poems, stories, and the drama of a blissfully mundane life.

I ache for the heady freedom of sitting atop a ten-foot whitewashed fence at sunset, of lying back on a corrugated tin roof as it radiates the heat of the day into the cool night, watching the endless sky fade from sunset to first stars to bejeweled. I feel again the warmth and good smells and brightness upon opening the door afterward, the smell of bread promising love and security.

I miss games of badminton in the big yard that were about conversation, not sport. On a good night we had to move into the pool of greenish-white below the security light to keep going past dark.

I miss the simplicity of those days: mist rising from creeks to east and west, breezes through the treehouse, sunsets turning from sherbet to russet in the still surface of the pond, and the ghostly roar of the grain dryer running at night, waxing and waning with the vagaries of the night breezes. On what did I squander those precious hours? Now, everything is a responsibility, even hobbies.  And the kicking inside my pelvis reminds me that the responsibilities are only on the rise.

It’s hard to remember, on nights like this, with the windows open and the orchestra of crickets carrying me backward in time, that I wasn’t cognizant of what lay all around me.

(the silence, the space, the distant bellow of a cow and the ghostly sound of feeder lids tapping tin)

That most of the time I was so busy focusing on something else that I didn’t realize how deeply the impressions were engraving, shaping me,

(the uneven boards of a treehouse built of platforms, my own brain child, the day we were washing windows and I impulsively carried my ladder from the west side of the house to the tree at the corner of the driveway)

that in my life now there are moments of equal beauty that I overlook in the mad rush to accomplish other things,

(dark almond eyes in the orange of street light, the smile of a little girl who never fails to be delighted that Mommy responded to her midnight cries)

moments that skip right over my awareness and embed themselves within, shaping me, drawing me inexorably along the continuum from who I am today to the woman I will be a few years.

I miss childhood, but it’s a gift, moving on.

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Published in: on September 6, 2011 at 5:01 am  Comments (7)  
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Boys vs. Girls

 We (or more specifically, Nicholas) are enrolled in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends one book a month. The last two have been sibling photo books.

“Big Sister, Little Sister” came first. I rolled my eyes a bit at the sight of the tutu/princess dress-clad girls, but yanno. Okay. It’s a cute book. In its pages, the girls (perfectly coutured and exquisitely matched throughout) zip up in one coat, play violin, give each other a boost, and wear high heels together—basically the picture of What A Girl Is Supposed To Be: well-behaved, empathetic, supportive, nurturing. My kids adored it—so thoroughly that within a week it had the ripped, bent look of every other book in our library.

Then came “Big Brother, Little Brother”, which you know is going to be an animal of another kind altogether based upon this cover.

Cover Image

On the first page, they’re eating worms. (Right. Your boys do that every day, don’t they?) Then they stick fish in each other’s faces and try to kiss a tropical bird. There’s a token moment or two in which the boys comfort each other—and the two pages devoted to adoption choke me up. Even so, I look at these books and I wonder: whose boys, and whose girls, are these kids? Because they don’t look like any kid I know!

I grew up with three sisters, and let me tell you, we did not have the gorgeous Kodak moments portrayed in the “sisters” book. No, we had pinching, hitting, screaming catfights. All.The.Time. When we did play, it was outside, jumping off hay bales or climbing on trucks and tractors down in the third driveway. Our play houses were in dusty attics around the farm: the milk barn, the machine shop, the abandoned grain storage above the two-story cinderblock garage. With the wasps.

But mostly, we fought. Especially when we were the ages of these girls (2 up to about 8).

Fast forward to the present. I have two boys and a girl.

My boys:

My girl:

Okay, I know that wasn’t fair. How about this one?

She likes baby dolls, but she also likes trucks and trains and bicycles and wallowing in the mud at the edge of the creek. And my boys? So far, Nicholas is more a “boy’s boy” (except he sleeps with a baby doll). But at six, Alex is a well-balanced child who enjoys art even more than baseball, and on par with riding his bicycle. He’s brainy; he loves reading and writing, school and playing the piano.

I guess the thing that bothers me is the “never the two shall meet” way boys and girls are packaged inAmerica. Let me explain.

Have you ever tried shopping for boys’ clothes? Go to the children’s department and the girls’ clothes—most of them adorable, except for what I call “attitude” clothes (“Little Miss Perfect,” “I’m the queen,” etc.)—stretch out of sight. And hidden on about three racks are the boys clothes, in muted hunters’ colors. If you don’t want a sports or occasional hunting reference, you might as well not waste the gas to go to the store. Meanwhile, girls are presented with an array of spangles, colors, layers, butterflies and crowns, one top for one pair of pants, no mixing and matching here! And have you ever noticed that nobody makes short-sleeved shirts for girls? Only wrist-length or sleeveless. What message is that supposed to be sending? That girls don’t go outside in mid-temperature weather?

I’m not one of those people who denies the difference between genders. But I think it’s a little weird how advertising shoves boys into one box and girls into another, completely ignoring the reality that human beings are complex and beautifully messy in packaging. It’s like girls are supposed to be prissy, clean little angels who are only interested in dolls and princesses—but woe to anyone who suggests that these associations continue into adulthood! Is it just me, or is this a mixed message?

Published in: on April 26, 2011 at 7:38 am  Comments (7)  
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Thoughts of Home

Time always moved more slowly there–
Too slowly . . . we were always impatient.
Come home from school and Mother’s in the garden–
Waves as the bus pulls up in a thunderhead of dust,
And later as the little white car rolls in.
Always loud inside at six–
The TV on and dishes clattering as oil sizzles.
Up at seven all summer–
Two hours in the garden,
Poor garden, that always died. . .
Throwing dirt clods at angry sisters,
Singing when we weren’t fighting.
Shucking corn around the washtub with Grandma,
Crickets and locusts make you shout over top.
Cherry-picking in June–
Who gets to sit in the loader bucket?–
Eric whirling the pail in circles
And all the cherries stay in.
Burning leaves on cold October nights–
Jewel-like embers on the ground;
Inside, light and noise and warmth
And hair that smells like smoke.
Harvest moon rises eerily behind the mailbox–
Huge and orange, every detail magnificent,
As though by reaching you could touch it.
Catprints on the engine hood–
Muddy, but at least they’re warm!
Litters of kittens in the haybarn,
Sitting for hours cuddling as rain patters.
And Christmas–
Always one girl mad at the season–
If not them, then you yourself.
Phlox around the cistern
Daffodils and daisies in the garden,
Floods in the creeks,
Roaring in the quiet so you hear it at the house.
Fighting at supper and establishing rules:
Lunch belongs to Dad–
And ten minutes on the phone!
So much simpler there,
Broken hearts become bruised pride–
Hold your head up and smile.
We always strained to leave–
Except for me, who holds on to the last.
Four little girls, and one now has her own home,
And two descend for weeks or months,
And the baby rules the quiet roost.
And always in deepest hurt or stress
It is home we long for,
The place where the walls close out the world
And four miles insulate the haven
Time moves too fast now–
A flying visit is gone in the blink of an eye
And home isn’t quite home anymore
To we who are in transition.
Leaf-burning time slips by
And we miss most of the daffodils,
But it’s still loud inside at six
And all the old yearly landmarks are still there,
And once in a while we still glimpse them–
When God is willing and we’re lucky.
And there is always the forgiving memory,
Which glosses over all the uglies,
And smooths over rough edges.
How can I conclude, when the memories pour in?
May my home be as happy–
My children as reluctant to leave.

 –4 March 1996, revised May 12, 1999

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Published in: on March 9, 2011 at 6:26 am  Comments (7)  

Scared To Death

List of national animals

Image via Wikipedia

I really thought that November had at last settled in, and I was about to take off on novel writing. And then came this weekend. I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it involved a stomach virus and everyone in the family. And book signings. And NFP class. And let’s just say that not one word got written this weekend.

So today, I’m going to share a story I can’t believe I’ve never shared, because it’s canonical in my family’s household.

My mother was a city girl through & through, but she embraced her role as a farm wife.  When I was a kid, she raised chickens and sold the eggs. It was almost a daily occurrence that someone along the gravel road would come knocking on the door asking to buy a dozen or three. Feeding and watering chickens, chasing them inside at dusk, collecting eggs–we were never more clearly farm girls than when we were doing hen chores. (Except, perhaps, when we were playing on grain trucks and jumping off hay bales. But I digress.)

So, after a few years, Mom decided she’d get a rooster, and save the money she spent every spring on pullets for butchering. Well, it didn’t work. The rooster spent most of his time perched in the tree outside my parents’ window, crowing at progressively more annoying times. And by annoying, I don’t mean 5a.m. I mean 3 a.m., and 2a.m. Finally one night, my mom flipped out. She grabbed a broom, went outside and hurled it up into the tree. The rooster flew down squawking and took off running into the pitch blackness outside the security light. Mom chased him screaming until she couldn’t see where she was going.

We never saw the rooster again, but the next summer, Mom uncovered a pile of feathers down by a grain bin while she was mowing. And that’s when we started telling the story of how Mom scared the rooster to death. :)

Published in: on November 15, 2010 at 8:02 am  Comments (4)  
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Beadwork (or: the origin of motherhood)

Motherhood Moments

It hangs in the the closet, tucked in the back with all the other clothes I don’t wear anymore, flowing concert black and high school prom red…

Like another of my blog friends, I, too, like to pull it out and put it on once in a while, as my mother did when we were little. And Alex, who after attending a wedding recently is newly intrigued by this weird grownup ritual of wearing impossible-to-keep-clean, really big dresses, insisted upon being photographer instead of one of the subjects.

So, for a few brief, glorious minutes, I got to be my bride-self again…the juxtaposition of who I once was with who I have become: flowing satin amid piles of laundry, and jammie-clad little ones on my lap.

And when it was done, we resumed our routine as if nothing had happened. Resumed the world of books, prayers, tucking in, and procrastinating by protesting that the radio is hissing, by screeching for water…

…to the ordinary tasks of cutting hair…hair that once was all black, but now begins to turn white at the temples.

Beadwork and tuxedos. That is where motherhood begins: in a union of two who become one, whose union becomes enfleshed again and again. Praise God.

***

(Note: yes, I am very proud of the fact that eleven years and three children later, I can still wear my wedding dress.)

youcapture 4-1

Published in: on July 22, 2010 at 5:31 am  Comments (7)  

The Work of His Hands

It is fall, and in the mornings now we run in the dark. I am beginning to see pinpoints of sky among the sycamore trees, and that wonderful smell of leaves giving themselves back to the dust from which they came is just starting to make its presence known…only a subtle whiff, as yet, but the promise is there.

It is the time of year when, up at the farm, the combine sits in front of the shop for its pre-marathon physical. The time when all the richness of nature hurls forth one final, all-consuming burst of energy in a blaze of fire. Verdant bean fields morph into a rainbow of red, orange and yellow. Sweet corn spends its last morsels of gold and slumps over in a gray-brown mess, its job complete. The whisper of leaves in the breeze turns to a crackle underfoot.

For a farmer, it is the fulfillment of the year’s work. “You have crowned the year with your goodness,” as Ps. 65 says. It is my favorite time of year, and full of the most vivid memories of life on the farm. I remember taking lunch and supper to the field. Lines of trucks waiting to dump at the grain elevator. The overwhelming roar of the grain dryer, and the ghostly roar of the combine crawling back and forth in the darkness, its lights little more than pinpricks, viewed from the house. The sweetish smell of corn chaff teasing the nose, covering everything in pink…the ear-splitting treble as the grain began to fill the auger.

Although I no longer live by the rhythms of the farm year, as I did when I was a child, the awareness of what lies outside the city is a constant part of my consciousness. At this time of the year, when the gaudy beach ball colors of summer give way to the mustard-yellow of school buses, I feel the richness of life more than at any other time. The promise of childhood and the bounty of summer culminate in the harvest.

And this is the time of year when I appreciate my dad the most.

The Work of His Hands
K. Basi

He tills the land, plants the seed
And he watches the green fields
Grow tall as the seasons pass over the land
And he works, and he prays
At the end of each day
That the Lord will bless the work of his hands. 

He is strong, he is proud
But he melts at the sound
Of his two-year-old grandbaby’s beautiful laugh
And he looks at his family
Now grown, and he asks
That the Lord will bless the work of his hands. 

From the dark of the womb
To the sweet golden rain
Of the final harvest,
He knows that the Lord
Is the force that moves his life.

When his work is complete
And he offers the Keeper
Of Heaven and Earth the best that he has,
May the fruit of his labor
Then lead the Creator
To bless this man for the work of his hands.

Dad and Julianna, at Nicholas's baptism 4/26/09

Dad and Julianna, at Nicholas's baptism 4/26/09

Published in: on September 22, 2009 at 1:16 pm  Comments (5)  
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My dad, the TV star :)

Yesterday my dad was on KRCG news talking about cool weather and the corn harvest. It cracks me up to see him go into his “teacher” mode on TV, especially at the end of the clip, when he’s almost laughing as he answers a question that Mark Slavit surely expected to elicit a depressing response.

http://www.connectmidmissouri.com/news/video.aspx?id=330252

In fact, when we were children,  my sisters and I thought our dad was very crotchety. (Sorry, Dad.) But adult to adult, when you pin him down to find out just how bad the weather, the machinery problems, the overall health of the crop in any given year are hitting him, he steadfastly refuses to give you anything but a hopeful answer. It is only in adulthood that I have discovered that my dad, the farmer, is a closet optimist. And oh, how I love him for it.

Published in: on July 30, 2009 at 7:43 am  Leave a Comment  
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Blackberry Season

The summer we moved into this house (two years ago), I was working at the edge of the property, and I kept getting snagged on these huge thorn bushes. Finally I put on long sleeves and got the clippers, and I chopped them down three feet back into the rough. A few days later, my neighbor said, “Oh, I saw you chopped down those blackberry bushes…”

I was horrified. “Is THAT what they are?”

He laughed at my ignorance. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll grow back.”

Actually, it looks like I did the neighborhood a favor, because in effect, I pruned them. The last two years we’ve had an abundant crop of wild blackberries, a gorgeous array peeking from amid the wildflowers at the wood’s edge.

Wild things

Wild things

Alex and I braved the sauna on Wednesday and brought in enough to satisfy the family for two days.

100_4553

With today’s gorgeous weather, I decided it was time to stop fooling around. I haven’t been down to the creek all year, because I’ve been intimidated by the logistics of getting two non-walkers down there and back. But enough is enough. I loaded Nicholas in the stroller, put Julianna on my hip, and went for an outdoor adventure.

Finally, Nicholas is awake for one of our adventures!

Finally, Nicholas is awake for one of our adventures!

While Nicholas stared fascinated at the leaves swaying in the cool wind, I sat down with Julianna at the edge of the creek. She’s newly discovered the fun of throwing things, so we started tossing rocks. Then Alex, who was watching a neighbor boy catch crawdads, called me over. I turned my back on Julianna for ninety seconds. When I came back, this is what I found:

She gives new meaning to the words "wet diaper"

She gives new meaning to the words "wet diaper"

After the woods, it was blackberry picking time:

Blackberry picker

Blackberry picker

My childhood was beautiful. I remember jumping off hay bales, climbing trees, playing pretend in the combines, tractors and trucks, the lofts and grain bins, and of course, the woods and the creeks. I remember badminton games with my sisters in the huge yard on still summer evenings, sunsets from the tin roof, lying in the big yard watching a meteor shower. And quiet. Above all, the quiet.

When we set out to buy a house to live in for the long term, I wanted to find a place where our kids could grow up, a place with acreage and woods and countryside—a place where they could experience at least some of the things I value so much in my memory—the things I long for still. That was why we picked a house with woods and creek behind it.

We’re far too close to the interstate to get stillness (except once in a while on a freak weather pattern) and bejeweled starscapes, but on days like today, I realize that my kids will have their own experience of nature—its fun and its holiness—and the fact that their experience is different from mine doesn’t make it any less precious. God willing, they will hold these memories just as dear as I hold mine.

Published in: on July 17, 2009 at 2:26 pm  Comments (1)  
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The Player Piano

When I was a little girl, my grandparents had a player piano in the basement of their split foyer on Epperson Street. We were far too small to run the foot pump, and Grandma was very particular about putting the rolls in herself, so the whole experience took on a mystique. I don’t remember a thing about the music itself—only that I thought watching the keys move on their own was the coolest thing ever.

When Grandma and Grandpa moved away, first to Kansas City and then to Detroit, the player piano departed my consciousness for twenty-five years. They must have had it, but I don’t remember seeing it again. After Grandpa died, Grandma moved back to the St. Louis area, but the piano was beyond salvation. She found a used one and had it fixed and moved into her condo.

I wrote music at that piano during the weeks I stayed with Grandma before Alex’s birth. Christian has practiced on it during three C-section stays. And yet for some reason, the fact that it’s a player just wasn’t in our consciousness until this weekend, when Grandma opened it up to entertain her great grandchildren. She sat on the bench with Alex at her side and Julianna on her lap and stuck in “Frosty the Snowman.” And suddenly this boisterous music boomed through the house.

By the end of the weekend, Alex knew everything there was to know about that player piano. He was running the foot pedals, flipping the lever to rewind the roll, and taking the rolls out himself. All we had to do was put the roll in and adjust the tempo.

Seven years of studying music gave me a whole new appreciation for what I was hearing. The rolls were recorded by one man, but they must have been done in two parts, because it was definitely a four-hand arrangement. So instead of sounding like a piano playing a song, it has the texture of an orchestra: bass, accompaniment, melody and obbligato. It’s a lot richer. We were listening to “Chim Chiminee,” and while the song goes on in the lower two thirds of the piano, the right hand takes off on this blisteringly fast set of cascading arpeggios. In the middle of “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” you get these ascending rolls—Chopin superimposed on a distinctly un-classical song. It was delightfully sophisticated. To the untrained ear it just sounds like good music, but unlike 95% of popular music now, the music was arranged to exercise the mind, not just be “ear candy.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like popular music. But it’s very rare to find pop music—country, rock, whatever—that delights the trained ear. Enjoyment lies in the words: word plays, puns, unexpected rhymes, beautiful poetry. But it was wonderful to listen to popular music that wakes up my musical brain.

It also occurred to me that without my children, I would never have had this experience. Adults don’t play. We have abig “stupid” filter on our brains, which prevents us from doing anything that makes us feel self-conscious. That filter frequently gets turned off when we’re with our kids—so we’ll spin a polka around the beer garden at Grant’s Farm, as long as we’re dancing with Julianna. But that filter tends to act upon things that aren’t embarrassing, too—things we classify as “waste of time.” That’s the only explanation I can come up with for ignoring the player piano for twenty years.

And of course, it wasn’t a waste of time at all. We had an unforgettable family experience, something special by which the kids will remember their great-Grandma…and that’s the best part of all.

Published in: on June 16, 2009 at 5:33 am  Comments (1)  
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