Plowin' On Through

Sometimes I miss my children being small. When I think about the days when I could scoop them up and bury my nose in their little necks, the way their skin felt, how safe I always thought they were in my arms...it's easy to miss those days.  I comfort myself with the fact that they will give me grandchildren.  It's been a long wait already and those days are not yet in sight.

So I comfort myself instead with how much fun we can truly have now that they are grown.  Not only can we talk about the price of gas or eggs, but we are finally on the same side of everything.  There is no more hiding certain parts of reality from them.  If only there were!  More importantly, they no longer feel the need to hide certain things from me.  When you think about it, looking back, parents and children do a lot of lying (if only by omission) for the sole reason of "protecting" each other.  It's really silly but so far no one has come up with an alternate plan that ends with children being responsible adults.  Oh, there have been parents and children without these barriers, but they usually end up as a movie of the week.  Not my style.

This post is about some of the lesser secrets of life.  This post is about secrets in the kitchen.  Women are usually the sole conspirators, but the Lord knows that men are not immune, if they happen to spend much time in the kitchen.

Some of the best memories my daughter and I have (so far) is in regard to these secrets.  

When either of the older kids come home now, there is a flurry of activity with greetings and going here and there and catching up. Then we eventually drift to our natural environments, which with me is the kitchen.

The Beautiful Redhead and I had the best time making pies last Thanksgiving.  She left out ingredients and I spilled them all over the counter before we got them in the oven, but I told her not to worry.  "No one will ever know", I said.  "They have never questioned any kind of food I have given them in their entire lives, with the one exception being the time I sprinkled cinnamon over the chicken/broccoli/rice casserole instead of paprika", I said.  She remembered that and we had a good laugh.  That was the year I got bifocals, by the way.  heh heh heh.   But the pies were a roaring success that year, even if we did leave the evaporated milk out.  So if you ever "forget" the evaporated milk or anything, I advise you to plow right on ahead and dare anybody to be able to tell the difference.  My money is on you, my Wooden Spoon Brigade, and I am not even a betting woman.  I will have you know we served those pies just like we knew what we were doing.  And we had a bonding moment as I met my daughter's eyes while all her brothers were eating the pies without any comment except compliments. "Toldjah!"  my eyes said to hers.  "I can't believe we pulled it off!" her eyes answered.  We were in it together, come what may.

So with Easter coming and me being about chocolated out from all the recipes on Facebook last week, (what was the deal with that, anyway?!?!) I was dreaming of something fruity. I found this recipe jello ribbon cake.  It seemed simple enough, so we got started.

As we caught up on our personal lives the cakes were in the oven.  The orange one got done really fast. This was due, I believe, to it being in a glass pie pan, as I have only one round cake pan. I think I used to have another one but it got used in a sandbox or maybe the dogs ate it.  I forget the details. Forgetting the details is what keeps mothers sane.  I highly recommend it.  The cherry one overflowed and burnt in the bottom of the oven. "Do you smell something burning?" I asked, "It's the coffee" she answered. A few minutes later I took out the orange one and let her know the cherry one may be in trouble.  We mixed the filling layer, with me doing the steps and her reading it off, two or three times just to be sure, because this is how we left out the evaporated milk at Thanksgiving.  Learning from your mistakes is very important and a skill that I actively cultivate.  It is especially challenging when you forget details,  just one of the double edged swords of motherhood.  We got the filling done right. 

By then the cherry cake had quit smoking in the oven but it had, unfortunately fallen by the time it cooled.   "Oh well", I said, "we are going to paste this baby together with cream cheese and Cool Whip Frosting, no one will ever know the difference."  About that time the twins were cheering for some basketball team that was making them very happy indeed, and she just smiled.  March madness is a wonderful thing, especially if you don't follow basketball but need privacy in the kitchen.

The cherry cake ended up being able to be sliced in two.  The orange cake came out mostly in pieces, well, more like limestone layers, if you know what I mean. If you don't, you should be feeling superior right now because your cakes probably always turn out normal.  You are lucky if this is the case, but you also have no idea what you are missing.  Where is the challenge if your cakes turn out perfect? What fun is that?  You have no idea how much fun it can be to overcome these obstacles.

So we made a 3 layer cake, with extra filling between both layers.  We were actually starting to look forward to this cake. It did not look like much at this point, it was true, but we were sampling right along and everything tasted wonderful, so we plowed ahead.  I would have taken pictures but I haven't figured out if I can use the camera and the Chromebook together yet, plus I was too embarrassed.  It was all crooked and listing to one side pretty bad.  I could already tell we were never going to forget this cake!

The Cool Whip frosting is wonderful, as I'm sure you guessed.  You should make sure it's all the way defrosted. I don't know why they keep it frozen and it irritates me to death, but only because I have no patience.  I tell you now, IF you insist on frosting your cake too soon, it will smoosh the layers of filling out of the middle of your cake.  Oh, you can get (most) of it back in, but it takes a delicate touch and patience. This is why we have children, it turns out.  They will keep going while you lose your mind and open windows and complain about how hot it is, while drinking coffee.  I love my daughter.  I mean, I love all my kids but who keeps my secrets?  She does.  Who knows my objective when I am in such a state and works along like nothing is wrong?  She does!  Without her I would be lonely in a way that I cannot even begin to express.

By the time the twins were joyously yelling about "Kansas being out" (sorry about your bad luck, there, Kansas) we got the frosting on, threw some jelly beans on top, and it looked a little, well, amateurish.  But I never claimed to be a professional when it comes to cooking.  Never.  Not one single time.  Ever.  This is very important, in case you are making a plan for future disasters in the kitchen. You probably should be.  They come around on a regular basis.

Into the refrigerator it went, to set up (Lord hear our prayer) or possibly break down overnight.  Whatever else Easter brings, it will bring a very tasty if not beautiful cake.  "Don't worry", I said, "they'll never know", I said.  She just smiled at our beautiful creation.

I know that she will hear my voice in her head saying these words, comforting her and giving her strength to plow on through, all the days of her life.  With me or without me.  It's a family tradition.  One that I have no doubt she will pass on.  Someday.  Sigh.

Have a blessed Easter and never lose a chance to make a good memory. Some of my best ones involve what I regarded at the time as complete catastrophes.  Here's to making good memories.

The Secret Of Life.....

I suppose that there as many 'secrets of life' as there are people, but for me it is learning to live in the moment.  One thing about getting older is you feel you have seen or heard about pretty much everything before, and you also know that most of the time, people will live through it and life will go on.  

I find it quite wonderful to be the one to say "There, there, dear, these things happen", rather than to be the one bawling and squalling and at the mercy of all the hormones running mercilessly through your body, along with the tears that seem to be your constant companion throughout your 20's and 30's.  I remember it as being just exhausting, even before I had children.  I must say, I do not miss it.   I find it quite hilarious to remember what I thought I needed to shield my mother and grandmother's from when I was younger.  As if they hadn't walked down that same road at least once and probably several times before.  What a waste!  It is the blessing and the curse of youth that one can be so self absorbed and completely unaware that it has all happened a million times before.  Well, they will learn.  A lot of it will happen to them, and they will live to tell the tale.  Not to anyone who will want to hear it, alas, but then that is what blogging is for.

This is what makes me glad to just be here, now, most of the time.  It was the lesson I learned while my mother was preparing to leave this earth.  When you find out that you ( or a loved one) have terminal cancer, and it's the worst thing you could possibly imagine, and you try to wrap your mind around that, you might think you would lose your mind.  You might wish you would lost your mind!  But no, you wake up in the morning and the world goes on.  You slowly come to realize that what is needed now is not frantic activity, but simple appreciation of the fact that you are alive today and look outside!  See what God has given you this day!  Feel the soft breezes, listen to the birds, the beauty of snow in sunlight can be mesmerizing.  It should be mesmerizing.  Whatever is going on in the world is going to continue, but so will the soft breezes, the birds, the snow and the sunlight.  This was my lesson and it became my mission for the rest of what remains of my life.  The trick is to appreciate what you have right now.  Spend time with quiet, and let yourself listen to God.  You might be surprised how much He will talk if you will just be quiet and listen to Him.  Talk about having seen it all before, you may have no idea....

I am back to regular life now that Abigail is gone this week.  My house is decidedly quiet with just two teenage boys, who keep looking around and letting the dogs in, as if it just seems wrong without someone to snuggle up with you.  It is wrong.  The dogs are in heaven.

I was thinking of all this last week, since I was on vacation with a 3 year old, I even took a vacation from the news.  I turned my back on it.  Was not speaking to it.  Did not care what happened.  You want to know why?  Because several times when I lost myself in such trivial details as cutting an orange into an even and perfect 8 slices, the sweetest little girl would come up and kind of melt into me, and say "Mimi?"

"Yes, my angel baby?"

" I luff you", she would reply, and I would lean down and swoop her up into my arms and I would rock her. She loves to rock, always has, and she likes Down In The Valley best, which I love also because I actually know all the words to several verses.  It is also incredibly easy to make up words if you forget, and they never know any different.  (wink wink)

And while I rocked her, (which I did a lot) I told her that even if she got big enough someday that I could not rock her anymore, she would never be too old to lay her head on my shoulder and tell me everything she  was glad or sad or mad about.  That she would never be alone.  That God was always with her even when she seemed to be all alone, and that there were so many people who loved her, even if they couldn't be with her all the time.

When we went to the park and she wondered where "all the people" were, (she is used to city living, poor thing, and seemed to be wondering where everybody was no matter where we went) and I caught myself worrying about whether today would be the day when Iran would finally achieve nuclear missiles and attack Israel once and for all, I looked down and saw this:

And made myself be here, now.

Instead of worrying about what my children's lives would be like ( they will only rent houses, never own, may possibly be led down the path of socialism and live like slaves, never be able to feed their children) I listened to laughter as I watched this:

And this:

And this:

When I told her she could pick all the yellow flowers out of the yard (dandelions), bless her soul, she filled up a whole little bucket!  She kept saying "These flowers are for the people!"  and I told myself that this was an extension of 'the people' she kept looking for everywhere and NOT some kind of socialist indoctrination delivered via some state funded daycare.  It's ok, her mother doesn't take her to daycare anymore.  She is running a daycare out of her home so that she can stay home with her children and I am so very glad to see the younger generation re-claiming the right to raise their own children.  They might have to fight for that right before long, but they are pretty tough and I have faith that they can win.

I told her we might be eating those before long and we laughed!  They all bloomed again the next day and she thought it was a miracle.  Who am I to say it wasn't?  Every day is a new day and so far the world is still here and there are children all around who would just LOVE to tell you some things if you will only listen.

I think it's the only way to save the world, not to mention America, which is kind of tied to the train tracks right now, not that I think you should let the stress get to you.  Breathe, just keep breathing and listening.   It is not rocket science, it just takes some time, which is still free so far.  Knock on wood.  We have to keep working at it one good deed at a time.  Is there a child unattended around your area?  Get to know them, you know some stuff, they can help you weed, rake, or burn leaves.  They just love to burn stuff!  They also like knowing there are nice adults around who listen to them, even when they don't think they have anything to say.  You will see their world through their eyes.  You will probably be amazed.

As I rocked, or picked flowers, or pushed her on the swing, I thought of the movie Finding Nemo.  Remember the part where they find the turtle and find out about the Gulf Stream?  They can't see it, but once they are in it, they can get where they are going much faster and easier.  You can't see it, but it's right there, and once you get in it you know it.  That is the secret of life, letting yourself be in it, having faith that it is there, right beside you, and all you have to do is let yourself find it, and it will carry you forward, to exactly where you are supposed to be.  It might not be where you thought you were going, but it will make you the person you are supposed to be.  With any luck, you will find it rocking a baby, but picking all the yellow flowers is good too.  Never forget to count your blessings, it's a great way of keeping things in perspective.  Spend quiet time listening, even if it's only to birds or the breeze.  

Just some advise from an old lady who doesn't know anything.  Wink wink.

Throw down over Alzheimer's

All through the long process of losing my mother to cancer, I thought at first that I could not take the stress.  After a couple of years I realized that I could indeed take the stress and wondered if I would ever "go back" to the way I used to be, once it was over.

Isn't that funny?  I don't know if everybody thinks that or not, but if you do, I can tell you the answer.  The answer is no.  You won't "go back" to the way you used to be; not after you start your period, move from home, have a baby, lose a loved one, or go through hard things.  I used to be so amazed at the changes in me and try to imagine the person I was before in the new situation, whatever it was.  The answer was always obvious.  You will never "go back", because what you will be at the end of the process will be just another piece of the total package that will be "you" then.  Now.  At this moment.  There is no "going back" in the course of daily life.  Las Vegas was built to be able to fulfill that wish, within reason and for cold hard cash, for a very limited piece of time.  It's as close as you will ever get, unless you have the misfortune to suffer from Alzheimer's.  In that case, you may not know it, but you will indeed "go back" and experience things with no more wisdom or mercy than you had at the time.  Be careful what you wish for.

A very good friend of mine who I grew up with has a mother, whose home I spent a lot of time in, who is in the last stage of Alzheimer's now.  It has been a long, painful, heartbreaking process for everyone involved.  But what can you do?  You have to go through it.  There is no way around it.  There are the usual defenses, oblivion, denial, rationalization, anger, but none work very well for very long.  What starts out as Mom not remembering your name (and what mother ALWAYS calls you the right name??) gets steadily worse until medications are messed up badly enough to get some attention.  This usually leads to an inspection of the home, which very quickly reveals that things are not as they were, and they won't ever be "going back" to the way they used to be, either.  Things are MUCH worse than they have ever been before.  Whether you are a spouse, a chld, a sibling, or a parent of this person who is obviously not the way they were doesn't matter.  You feel betrayed, helpless, angry and heartbroken.  And that's just the beginning, folks. 
This is a disease that has no time frame for when it will be "over", and most likely their bodies will be in much better shape than their minds for years to come.  It drags on for years, getting slowly, slowly worse until that beloved personality is gone from the body that housed it for so long that you were fool enough to think were inseperable.  You can spend a small fortune on slippers and clothes that just get lost as fast as they are replaced.  I won't even go into what can happen to the teeth.  You learn to make peace with seeing your mother tied up because that way she can't hurt herself.  Or anyone else.  You have to cut your more tender feelings off because they will do nothing but enable your loved one's husk to hurt itself even more, and make you person non grata in the one Rest Home you could stand to put her in!  It is not for the faint hearted, and you don't get invited to join, or a chance to decline.  It comes to you unannounced, unrepentant, and unlikely to leave any time soon.  All you know is that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, (what would "better" be, by now?  Don't think too hard about that, just keep moving), and you lower your sights in order to survive it because you already know one of you isn't coming out of this horrible mess alive.  This goes on and on for what seems an endless amount of time.

My friend's mother was a very beautiful and great lady.  She was a wife and a mother to 6 cihldren, and gardened to feed them.  She made many beautiful quilts as well as lots of her families clothes, and had a welcoming home. She was famous for her potato rolls.  She was funny and wise and out spoken, especially if you came into her house in the middle of the night smelling of "beer and cigarettes!".  She scolded you heavily but never without respecting you, and would defend you like a grizzly bear if she thought you needed it.  When she really laughed, she threw her head back and really, really laughed.  I laughed with her many times until I cried.  She held my babies when they were small and adored them, remarking on every detail.  Sometimes I would catch her looking at me and have the strongest feeling that she knew everything I was thinking and feeling as a young woman and I would be so GLAD that there was nothing I could do about that.  She was a woman with whom you felt your secrets were safe. You felt understood as opposed to judged.  I miss her so very much, and she is not even actually gone, except in every way that really counts.  It is a grief that feels premature and incomplete, like a betrayal and so wrong, but when the end finally comes, what will be left to mourn?  It is as she disappears that we all mourn what is gone, and then what has been gone for 1 year......2 years........so long.  And still it does not end.

It is getting rarer that she recognizes anyone, now, but for years I would listen to my friend mourn her mother's gradual disappearing.  At first I offered ideas like crossword puzzles and that Suduko thing, Then it was those alarms you could get for your doors and windows in case someone got out of the house.  Eventually, all I could do was listen and sympathize and cry and search the Bible for comforting passages.  I began to realize how many times in our lives we change and never "go back" to the way we used to be.  I began to see myself not as the daughter in the situation, but the mother.  It was the most horrifying thing I have ever thought about.  I knew that this great lady would rather be dead than ever have anyone see her like this.  I knew that she would have NEVER wanted to put her husband or her children through this.  I knew that she was completely helpless and blameless and trapped.  I wondered if she ever knew it.  I hoped she didn't.

It was during a long phone conversation, which is the only kind my friend and I ever have, :) that I ended up going on a rant and pretty much bawling out my poor wonderful old best friend who I had only ever comforted before.  It was---galling for me.  I mean, I really didn't want to do it but I just couldn't not point out this thing from her mother's point of view.  I had to do it for mother's everywhere.  For WOMEN everywhere.  I had to do let this mother's daughter have it just like her mother would have if she had still been, well, aware. 

My friend calls me and she is mad at her mother.  MAD.  This is understandable and I am sympathetic.  The story is, Mom was MAD at Dad, REALLY mad, and cussed him out like a dog because she said Dad had bought her Brother beer.  (Now, Dad was in his 80's at the time, Brother was in his 70's, and of course could drink all the beer he wanted to, BUT in her mind, at that moment, everyone was apparently MUCH younger and Brother had had some problems with alcohol during his life).  Now, even though everybody involved except Mom knew that she was not "herself", Dad's feelings were hurt to the point that he was really really upset and now Friend is PO'd at Mom because it's not Dad's fault.  I do not expect this to make logical sense, OK?  It's all emotion, that horrible, inconvenient, illogical DOWNER that will not leave you alone.  I was quiet for awhile, listening to her story, wondering if this was an actual, factual thing that had taken place 50 years or so ago or if it just drifted through her mind and stuck.  And then I thought about all the things I could reveal about myself that I probably didn't even remember anymore, and how a person can't really be blamed for that kind of thing, at least not unless it's God blaming you at the end of this impossibly long am sometimes miserable road called life.  And that's when I said "Listen! (finger went into the air at that point.  This is a sign that I have had enough, anybody will tell you) Let me tell you something as a mother!!  (Friend does not have any children of her own)  When you become a mother, you start living your life differently, like a filter, so that your children will have a picture of what a "mother" and a "home and "decent" are supposed to be.  Do you want to do this?  NOT PARTICULARLY, but you DO it, because, you HAVE to, because it's the RIGHT thing to do, because you have to set an EXAMPLE.  But nobody is just a mother, and your mother may be different ages in her mind right now, and she might be fighting mad AT THIS MOMENT about something that actually did happen, and IS happening for her, right then.  It's nobody's fault, but Dad and you, Friend, are just going to have to suck it up!  Because she can't help it!  Do you ever think that at one time in her life she was just a girl, who had yet to meet her husband, and she may have had other boyfriends, and NOW she might just tell that in front of the one person who would be hurt by it even though he has been married to her for over 50 years?!!!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD DO TO HER IF SHE KNEW???"

By now, I was sobbing.  So was my Friend.  My poor Friend, who had done plenty of stuff when she was just a girl, I happened to know, as all girls do, myself included, and was now remembering (thanks to me) not only that she had to be strong for Dad, but that Mom was a girl and therefore on the same side as Friend, eternally, and deserved a little loyalty too.  You might think that it was a low point for us, but not really.  The thing about Alzheimer's is that it just goes on and on and you just have to cope with it and along with coping comes emotional detachment, if you want to survive it.  It's like war, that way. She knew I might hate this crappy mess we were in but I would not leave her alone in it, even if it meant letting her have it.  Just like a mother!!  She saw it my way.  She saw it Dad's way, and she saw it Mom's way. Talk about your multi-tasking.

If there is any blessing in this, for this family, it is that they are many.  Six children have grown into quite a crowd.  She is a great-grandmother several times over now, although she doesn't know it.  The last time she went to a family gathering she asked her husband "Who are all these people"?  He replied, "Well, don't ask me, you started all this", and she told him she wanted to go home.  I didn't really blame her.  You know how you secretly dread having everybody over when you are young and it's so much work and wears you out so bad,  and it has yet to occur to you that you will ever have Alzheimer's?  Well, someday you might announce that to all of your family, thinking they are strangers who would not be hurt by that information.  Don't worry, though.  Dad got her out of there before she did that, her partner in crime, her keeper of secrets, her hero to the end, whether she knows it or not.  I really love them both and the family they made.  They have much to be proud of.

She is receiving hospice care in the nursing home now.  She is a woman well loved, leaving a life well lived.