LOIS 1-5-2008
Lois, my ex-mother-law taught me a lot about the kitchen and the garden. It was natural to her. Every movement instinctive and economical in that white brick Iowa farm house , salt-box shaped, a hundred years old, they said. Tall windows look out to treeless land. Miles of flat corn and beans in perfect rows to the horizon. There was always wind enough to blow the screen door open and whip dry the clothes on the line.
Lois was made to be a farm wife it seemed. She was plump with short freckled legs that showed beneath her house dress and home made bibbed apron. Sensible brown shoes, size 4 1/2 from the boys department at J.C. Penny’s in town were topped with boys brown socks turned down like anklets. It was a no nonsense uniform for the work she needed to do. About canning, gardening, cooking for the men, she was serious. It had to be done and done quickly, without waste, tasty and healthy, and in summer, always fresh.
So, on our frequent visits to the farm in the early years of my marriage to her oldest son, I followed her, partly out of boredom with farm life and partly out of awe. I ran after her to collect the eggs – out to the chicken house – no sentimentality for these fowl. Hand under the hen, grab the egg, next hen box, grab the egg, dodge the hen’s beak. Work fast ‘til the bucket was full of warm, lovely brown eggs. Quick walk back to the porch, change buckets. Run-walk to the garden, squat to pick the strawberries, mindful of where your feet are . Don’t pick pink ones or even medium red, only dark ruby red – heady, sensuous strawberry juice staining fast fingers. Did she notice? No words beyond “Be careful with the plants, careful where you step.” I hear, “These are my family jewels,” as valuable as diamonds to some, more valuable to her.
Now rush back to the kitchen. Wash the eggs and carton them. Refrigerate. What rich man could have such fresh brown, perfect eggs in his strawberry shortcake? Or such strawberries, minutes from the garden – juice dripping as she shows me to slice each berry in half with the knife she always uses for this task, catching berry juice in the same 1 quart yellow mixing bowl that she uses for this purpose every summer. Love the bowl, love the berry, love the egg – flour – love the God who provides these after your hours of labor. She said all of this without even a word.
Break the egg on the side of the bowl like this. No words. Drop the egg into the hole you made with your wooden spoon, like this. No words. Stir sparingly, leave lumps of flour, egg, butter, like this. No words. Do it all with the fewest most efficient moves possible, all while you are remembering the roast in the pressure cooker with potatoes and carrots and onions, while you make the jello with ice cubes to hurry it along. Shred carrots and celery from the garden and apples from the root cellar, add to the slurried jello. No words, spare movements.
Now set the big kitchen table with plates, glasses and stainless steel ware. Remember the giant iced tea glasses for the men who will come thirsty from the field with drops of sweat carrying black Iowa soil in rivulets down their foreheads. These men with their thirst and their hunger, are the reason for all our actions today and every day. No words.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Noodles Written 9/07
NOODLES
My mother thought noodles were junk food – no nutrition, unless of course they were egg noodles, the supreme noodle – “only one worth eating”. How is it that my German mother made such delicious chicken noodle soup with egg noodles? She didn’t learn it from Grandma Buttenhoff. Grandma only used water in her cooking because, mother said, she was too poor to use eggs. The precious eggs from their own chickens were sold to neighbors in order to buy the flour for Grandma's water noodles.
The 11 children were skin and bones, my mother said, because grandma and grandpa didn’t know better than to have so many kids. "You can’t raise healthy children on water noodles." Its true, Ardis died at 14 of pneumonia. So now there were only 10. Perhaps if the noodles had been more substantial she might have lived. Perhaps if grandpa had not forced himself on grandma so many nights with all the children listening... perhaps if the oldest, Edna, had not come home from school excited to tell her mother that there is a way to stop having so many babies... perhaps if she would not have been slapped in the face, hard... perhaps if they had listened and learned...the family noodles would have been more substantial, the daughter Edna, not quite so angry, I, her daughter, not so tired of hearing of the benefits of substantial noodles.
My mother thought noodles were junk food – no nutrition, unless of course they were egg noodles, the supreme noodle – “only one worth eating”. How is it that my German mother made such delicious chicken noodle soup with egg noodles? She didn’t learn it from Grandma Buttenhoff. Grandma only used water in her cooking because, mother said, she was too poor to use eggs. The precious eggs from their own chickens were sold to neighbors in order to buy the flour for Grandma's water noodles.
The 11 children were skin and bones, my mother said, because grandma and grandpa didn’t know better than to have so many kids. "You can’t raise healthy children on water noodles." Its true, Ardis died at 14 of pneumonia. So now there were only 10. Perhaps if the noodles had been more substantial she might have lived. Perhaps if grandpa had not forced himself on grandma so many nights with all the children listening... perhaps if the oldest, Edna, had not come home from school excited to tell her mother that there is a way to stop having so many babies... perhaps if she would not have been slapped in the face, hard... perhaps if they had listened and learned...the family noodles would have been more substantial, the daughter Edna, not quite so angry, I, her daughter, not so tired of hearing of the benefits of substantial noodles.
The Last Time written 07/07
The last time I saw my youngest son "John" he had grown very fat. He was wearing an orange jump suit stamped Hennipen County Jail in black washed-out block letters across his chest. In my nervousness, walking down the long row of orange-suited men, I walked right past the cubicle where he sat looking through the glass waiting for me to recognize him. He grinned when I turned around unable to hide my shock at the change in him, yet again.
For some reason I flashed back to the time maybe 15 years earlier when he showed up at my little cabin in Boulder, gaunt as a starved deer, barely able to stand up, weaving and talking crazy. I let him sleep on the couch. He didn’t wake up for over 24 hours. I worried that maybe this would be the time he didn’t. So I sat and watched him breath, remembering all the old times when I cuddled him, bathed him, cared for him as best I could and loved him as much as I was able. After a day of this, he woke up and grunted and barfed. He ate everything he could find in the frig and left. He was 21 then.
Actually I’ve seen very little of him since then. There was the couple of months when he lived with me out on the farm. I gardened with furvor that summer. He planted some marijuana seeds he got somewhere. I have never seen such an attentive farmer. He brought a chair out to the little patch and sat and talked to his plants, sometimes for hours. I kept thinking, if only this energy could be redirected – he’s so smart, so gentle and kind and a basically good man. It is such a waste, this drug stupor. Still then, I thought I could help him if I could just figure out the magic key to unlock him from his addictions.
No magic key appeared. My partner, not having the blindness of motherhood, finally demanded that John get out – too much smoke, too much basic disregard for others in the house. He was disrespectful and treated me badly when under the influence – hadn’t I noticed? John left after the two of them almost came to blows. He didn’t come to our wedding later that summer. He didn’t call again for a year or more. By that time he was in trouble again. He said someone was out to kill him and he was headed for California. I sent money. A couple of months later he called from Las Vegas. Still alive, headed back to Minnesota where he knows how to survive – “at least so far”, he said.
When I dare, I look at his childhood picture on my wall. A beautiful 2 year old with chubby tan legs in the summer sand. Memories of that soft perfect body, running my hand through his fine blond curls. Then comes the memory of the orange jump suit, the home-job tatoos that cover every visible inch of skin and how we talked through the glass over a phone set for only 20 minutes before they took him back to his cell (no matter that I had driven 900 miles). He tried to ease my worries, as he always does, with talk of plans to go straight when he got out. I heard from him about 6 weeks ago - excited that he was out of jail - with plans to bring his girlfriend for a visit to meet me in Arkansas. I said it would be wonderful. No word yet.
For some reason I flashed back to the time maybe 15 years earlier when he showed up at my little cabin in Boulder, gaunt as a starved deer, barely able to stand up, weaving and talking crazy. I let him sleep on the couch. He didn’t wake up for over 24 hours. I worried that maybe this would be the time he didn’t. So I sat and watched him breath, remembering all the old times when I cuddled him, bathed him, cared for him as best I could and loved him as much as I was able. After a day of this, he woke up and grunted and barfed. He ate everything he could find in the frig and left. He was 21 then.
Actually I’ve seen very little of him since then. There was the couple of months when he lived with me out on the farm. I gardened with furvor that summer. He planted some marijuana seeds he got somewhere. I have never seen such an attentive farmer. He brought a chair out to the little patch and sat and talked to his plants, sometimes for hours. I kept thinking, if only this energy could be redirected – he’s so smart, so gentle and kind and a basically good man. It is such a waste, this drug stupor. Still then, I thought I could help him if I could just figure out the magic key to unlock him from his addictions.
No magic key appeared. My partner, not having the blindness of motherhood, finally demanded that John get out – too much smoke, too much basic disregard for others in the house. He was disrespectful and treated me badly when under the influence – hadn’t I noticed? John left after the two of them almost came to blows. He didn’t come to our wedding later that summer. He didn’t call again for a year or more. By that time he was in trouble again. He said someone was out to kill him and he was headed for California. I sent money. A couple of months later he called from Las Vegas. Still alive, headed back to Minnesota where he knows how to survive – “at least so far”, he said.
When I dare, I look at his childhood picture on my wall. A beautiful 2 year old with chubby tan legs in the summer sand. Memories of that soft perfect body, running my hand through his fine blond curls. Then comes the memory of the orange jump suit, the home-job tatoos that cover every visible inch of skin and how we talked through the glass over a phone set for only 20 minutes before they took him back to his cell (no matter that I had driven 900 miles). He tried to ease my worries, as he always does, with talk of plans to go straight when he got out. I heard from him about 6 weeks ago - excited that he was out of jail - with plans to bring his girlfriend for a visit to meet me in Arkansas. I said it would be wonderful. No word yet.
I am ...
Edelle Rose is an emerging Crone (which basically means that at 62 I am getting older and trying to do it consciously), who everyday awakes to a new reality of Self. Who am I? The older I get, the harder it is to define me. Am I the nurse I have been since 1982? Am I a mother, since I have 3 amazing adult children who continue to teach me the most important lessons of life? Am I a gardener, delighting and struggling with my Ozark Mountain garden of rock and clay, producing giant Okra trees and delicious sweet potatoes? Am I a political activist who now eschews the label as too small after years of anti-nuclear, prison awareness, anti-racism work? Am I an American? I have never left this country and even now do not feel called to do so. Yet, it is the land, this amazing place on Earth that I am connected to and not a government or way of life ... or so I hope. Am I a Buddhist? Just when I thought so, my identity expanded again and its hard to use the label - its too small for the experience of Oneness that I AM as I walk daily through the scrub oak forest with Liza, my lop-eared Border Collie and Jim, my more than eccentric partner.
The one label that seems to abide with me through the years, the one I feel most comfortable with - that identifies me to myself, is "working class woman". In this I feel allied with all the women of the world who get up every morning to feed the children and deal with the realities of this world in all its harshness and bliss.
So in the end, I am a woman, walking the land in times of great change. In this I am connected to so many women across the planet - attempting to open to each new day - each new breath.
These writings are my record of the journey. The order is only that of consciousness and sometimes immediacy, like the birth of a grandchild or the death of a friend.
The one label that seems to abide with me through the years, the one I feel most comfortable with - that identifies me to myself, is "working class woman". In this I feel allied with all the women of the world who get up every morning to feed the children and deal with the realities of this world in all its harshness and bliss.
So in the end, I am a woman, walking the land in times of great change. In this I am connected to so many women across the planet - attempting to open to each new day - each new breath.
These writings are my record of the journey. The order is only that of consciousness and sometimes immediacy, like the birth of a grandchild or the death of a friend.
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