Tag Archives: Memoir

Courage at Twilight: A Snake in the Bowl

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Water covered the floor of the tiny half-bath, overflowing from the bowl.  Dad had bailed and bailed to fill a five-gallon bucket, and had plunged and plunged until he was spent.  “Don’t go in there,” he commanded Mom and me from his recliner.  “I am going to fix it.”  We acceded, but I drove to Lowe’s for a coiled plumbing snake.  He tried and tried to feed the snake into the fixture, but it kept flopping incorrigibly out.  Finally, he called to me, unable to rise from his knees, with nothing for leverage but the bowl.  I wrapped my arms around his big chest and hoisted until he was vertical.  “Dad, let me try,” I offered.  “This is my home now, too, and I am part of the family.”  He consented reluctantly from his convalescence.  I struggled and struggled with that incorrigible splashing snake.  The coil advanced no more than a few inches during 30 minutes of effort.  I did not do anything Dad had not already done, but the water abruptly drained from the bowl, and I was able to pour in the five gallons of blackwater.  How nice it was to flush and watch the water swirl down, rather than up and over the brim.  We cleaned and disinfected the toilet and the floor, and then the bucket and even the snake.  We both hope to never need that belligerent snake again, but have found a place for it in the garage, just in case.

(Reader, please do NOT bring up this episode with Dad.  My life and happiness depend upon it.)

Courage at Twilight: It’s Got To Go

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Mom’s six-year molar suddenly started to hurt. Gently tapping her teeth together sent an eye-scrunching zing through the molar.  “It started to hurt a couple of days ago,” she explained.  “I’ve been chewing only on one side.”  The next morning, I saw her moving around earlier than usual.  “The dentist office said they could see me at 9:30,” and off she drove in her treasured Subaru.   Mom texted me later in the day, “I am without a tooth!”  The early molar, with deep amalgam fillings and a crown, had cracked in half and was not reparable.  “It’s got to go,” the dentist declared.  As he pulled the tooth, it came free of its roots and shattered, so he had to find and pull the roots one at a time.  But Mom was not unhappy.  She told me how gentle and kind her dentist always is.  I do not know anyone else who would come home from a tooth extraction praising, “I love my dentist.”  I think it is Mom who is gentle and kind, grateful for her dentist even as he sent her home toothless (well, without a tooth).  In the evening, with her face fully back to life, and the gap stuffed with gauze, Mom was pleased to tell me she felt no pain.

(Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Prayers of the Innocent

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As a boy, Dad’s mother Dora prayed with him every night, saying, “Bless the cost and worn.”  He thought it a good thing to ask God to bless the cost and worn, whoever they were—their situation sounded grim.  Sometime later, Dad asked her, “Mother, who are the cost and worn?”  She looked quizzical, confessing she did not know.  They thought and thought and repeated the phrase together numerous times, eventually realizing they had meant to be asking in prayer for those who had “cause to mourn.”  Of course, God knew their hearts, and what they meant to say, and who the cost and worn were—and doubtless He accepted their petition.  Again as a little boy, Dad was asked in his church primary class to offer a prayer.  He stood dutifully in front of the class and ventured, “Heavenly Father, help us to beat the Japs.”  While one would never refer to the noble Japanese people in that fashion today, eighty years ago, in 1942, that very prayer was on the lips and minds of tens of millions of people.  Even a seven-year-old boy felt the weight of the great conflict that was World War II, and asked his God to end it.  I have heard many testimonials from young children who prayed to find something they had lost, and immediately seeing in their mind, or feeling an impression about, where the lost thing was, and finding it precisely there.  I have felt tempted to pooh-pooh this puerile witness of the Divine.  But then I remember that God loves little children (and wants us older folks to be like them)—He wants to bless them, and appreciates their simple supplications as much or more than my own more complex concerns.  Children love and have faith and hope.  And what sweeter exercise of faith could one encounter than a small child turning to God in momentary distress.  An excellent pattern we would do well to emulate our whole life long.  The next time I lose my car keys, I will pray to God to help me find them.  Tonight, I will pray for the cost and worn.

(Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Making Out the Bills

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November Newsmaker Breakfast: Salt Lake City Mayor-Elect Erin Mendenhall - Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute

Mom exclaimed to me one day, “I’m so proud of myself. I made out all the bills!  I don’t owe anybody anything!”  “That’s wonderful,” I responded.  “I’m proud of you, too.”  I could imagine how liberating it would feel for her to have no financial obligations in a particular moment in time.  She had sat down with a stack of paper bills—utilities, doctors, magazines, insurance companies, credit cards—and written out a check to each one, sealing each check in an envelope with a stamp.  Worried understandably about mail theft from her mailbox, she drove the stack of sealed envelopes to Help U Mail, a few miles away.  With her exclamation, I began thinking about the fascinating dynamics of generational change.  When I began living on my own six years ago, I decided I did not want to deal with paper bills, checks, check registers, and mail, and set up online accounts with automatic deductions for all of my bills: rent, power, gas, internet, gym, insurance.  This made life so much easier, and I never looked back.  I could conveniently check balances on my bank app and utility apps, managing my money on my computer and even on my phone.  My grandfather Wallace, on the other hand, paid his bills, after pay day, by cashing his pay check at the bank, and driving around the Salt Lake Valley to each utility company and government office to pay in person and in cash.  When Mom was a young girl, Wallace often took her with him on these rounds.  Similarly, my grandfather Owen was acknowledged by the city clerk to be the most faithful child support payer in Salt Lake City.  Unlike the other “dead beats,” he paid his obligation in cash every week at the City-County building, and was happy to do it.  Then the bank draft (aka check) became a banking tool for the common man, and my grandfathers wrote out checks and put them in the mail, no longer needing to pay the bills in cash.  And now, my children do everything on their smart phones, from ordering retail products and restaurant take-out, to paying bills, to purchasing air fare, to managing stock investments, to shopping for engagement rings.  The entire world culture changes in a single generation.

(Pictured above: Salt Lake City Hall, formerly known as the Salt Lake City-County building.  Source: gardner.utah.edu.  Used pursuant to the Fair Use doctrine.)

Courage at Twilight: Elevator Girl

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“I got bit by the booster,” I texted my boss the Mayor when I asked to be excused from her staff meeting. I had put off getting my Covid-19 booster vaccination (shot #3) because I missed two days of work each with the first two shots, with fever, aches, and chills.  (My aged parents had no adverse reaction to any of their Covid shots!)  Knowing I might get sick, I needed to plan around Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Steven’s visit in early December, Laura’s visit in mid-December for Caleb’s wedding, and Jeanette’s post-Christmas visit, not to mention weekly City Council meetings.  I thought I had escaped Continue reading →

Courage at Twilight: Mobility Strategy

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I sat down with Mom and Dad recently, and asked Dad if we could discuss a plan to preserve his mobility for as long as possible. Far from defensive, he seemed grateful for the discussion: he and Mom know that him losing his mobility will dramatically affect quality of life for them both.  After our discussion, I typed and printed our Mobility Strategy, in big blaring pitch, and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet.  A day in the hospital, the Christmas and New Year holidays, and family celebrations interrupted some elements of the new routine, like going to the gym.  Other elements we started immediately.  I do not badger Dad about drinking water, for example, but every time I pass his chair, I hand him a bottle of cold water.  My message is clear.  And, to be fair, I hold my own water bottle even as I hand him his.  (Water intake can reduce edema.)  Here is our Mobility Strategy.  I will let you know how it goes.

  1. Stationary Bike. Ride the bike 6 days a week, for 30 minutes each ride.
  2. Gym. Go to the gym 2 days a week, weather permitting.
  3. Leg Compressors. Use the pumping leg compressors when reading at night.
  4. Walker. Use the blue walker between family room, kitchen, and dining room, as needed.
  5. Cane. Keep the “walking stick” handy for short treks in the house or to the car.
  6. Compression Socks. Order.  Wear.
  7. Elevate. When sitting, keep legs elevated.
  8. WATER. Keep several water bottles cold in the fridge.  Sip all day.

(Image by Willfried Wende from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Five-Month Reading List

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During my first five months living with Mom and Dad and commuting to and from Sandy and Tooele, from August 1 to January 1, I have enjoyed listening to many amazing books, which have enriched my life tremendously, and have made the time and expense of commuting a blessing in disguise. I have enjoyed sharing these books with Mom and Dad and my children, sometimes just some stories, sometimes the books themselves.  I looking forward to “reading” many more.  How abundant good books make the world.

  • Hidden Figures (Margot Lee Shetterly, 2016)
  • How Will You Measure Your Life? (Clayton Christensen, 2012)
  • Beyond the One-Hundredth Meridian (Wallace Stegner, 1953)
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie, 1936)
  • Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow, 2004)
  • Becoming (Michelle Obama, 2018)
  • Amos Fortune: Free Man (Elizabeth Yates, 1950)
  • The Truths We Hold: An American Journey (Kamala Harris, 2019)
  • The Pioneers (David McCullough, 2019)
  • The Great Bridge (David McCullough, 1972)
  • Searching for Joy (C.S. Lewis, 1955)
  • The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (C.S. Lewis, 1941)
  • Simply Jesus (N.T. Wright, 2010)

(Image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Life Is Better

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Mom, Dad, and I were blessed to have family visiting as we turned the calendar to 2022.  My sister Jeanette and ten-year-old niece Amy.  My oldest son Brian and his wife Avery and my two-year-old granddaughter Lila.  My son John and his wife Alleigh, expecting their first baby next month.  Others stopping by and video calling.  We splurged a bit on our New Year’s Eve dinner: Jeanette and I cooked sautéed bay scallops topped with a reduction of butter, drippings, and white wine, plus linguini alfredo and garlic bread.  And we allowed ourselves bowls of ice cream with crumbled Oreo cookies and M&Ms and brownie bits and caramel syrup and whipped cream, because we could and because it was New Year’s Eve and we were celebrating.  Earlier in the day we took the girls to the park to sled in the new snow.  On our first run, Lila sat with me in the toboggan, and as we crested the little hill she stiffened and grabbed my legs and I put my arms around her to help her feel safe, though I am sure the sled felt like a roller coaster toppling over the cantilevered edge of the ride.  At the bottom of the short hill she announced, “Out!” and spent the rest of the outing tromping happily in the snow and riding the swings and sliding down the slides, wearing her great-grandmother’s stocking cap.  And at home Lila carried around my Olaf and Winnie the Pooh and Little Growler the lion, calling “Papa Roger!” in her little bird voice, the prettiest sound I have ever heard, right up there with the house finches and cardinals and black-capped chickadees singing in the snowy spruce trees.  And after dinner we played Telestrations and Apples to Apples and laughed and told stories and watched a funny movie.  Life is simply better with good food and good friends and fun games.  Life is better with family.

Courage at Twilight: Stuffed Peppers

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Dad thought stuffed bell peppers would be a nice dinner for Mom and me. And he did not want me “slaving away” in the kitchen, as he put it.  So, he began to thaw the ground beef, cook the rice, cut and seed the green bell peppers, and mix in the seasonings.  Mom had given him two recipes for stuffed peppers, but they conflicted in critical respects, and caused some confusion in the kitchen.  Short on produce, Mom and I drove to the grocery store with our yellow-legal-pad shopping list, the items organized according to their location in the store and our usual circuit.  Home two hours later, we found Dad slaving away over his peppers, understandably utterly worn out.  But when they emerged from the oven 30 minutes later, the cheese crispy on top, the stuffed green bell peppers were beautiful and wonderfully delicious.  Thanks for dinner, Dad.

Courage at Twilight: Sledding and Gingerbread Houses

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My ten-year-old hot-desert-weather Arizona niece Amy came to visit for the New Year holiday week, bringing my sister Jeanette with her. The night their airplane arrived (actually one o’clock in the morning), a dark wall of low purple clouds dumped six inches of new powder on the valley, just in time for Amy to take us sledding.  Jeanette had dug their winter clothing out of her attic and checked a suitcase-full on the flight, so the girls were prepared.  Continue reading →

Courage at Twilight: Winter Holiday Crafts

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A number of years ago, Tooele City, where I have worked for 28 years, began to host craft workshops for the locals.  A color flyer showed the projects, often holiday themed, and we could order them online.  On the appointed evening, we gathered to collect our crafts, mostly preassembled, to paint and decorate them.  Several times I took one of my children for a crafting date—Hyrum made a small sledge.  I have made snowmen, scare crows, pumpkins, pilgrims, and Easter bunnies.  Often more than 50 people would come—and I was always the only man there!  Covid-19 shut the program down temporarily, but then it resumed, with the public picking up their projects from city hall, and taking them home to finish.  This Christmas season, I ordered a winter village scene (pictured above), which my daughter Laura and I painted during her short trip from Houston.  Mom ordered a wood block nativity set (pictured below).  These crafts have been an important activity for me, for the chance to socialize with nice people, and to exercise what little artistic inclination I have—not to mention having fun holiday decorations to exhibit on the front porch or on the dining room table.  I appreciate my town for providing this enriching quality-of-life activity, and for finding a way around a pandemic to keep the program going.

Courage at Twilight: Toe Surgery

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Dad found some of his toes beginning to rise above the others, rubbing painfully against the tops of his shoes.  The podiatrist promised simply, “I can fix that.”  The next week he poked into the sides of Dad’s toes with a tiny scalpel and nicked the toe tendons, to release some of their tension so the toes would drop back into place.  Dad felt great when he came home, and wanted to go to the gym and to the grocery store.  I implored him to sit down and elevate his foot, and placed an ice pack on his foot hoping to prevent and reduce the swelling and pain I knew was coming.  “Dad,” I remonstrated, “if you don’t take it easy today, you are going to pay for it tomorrow.”  And he paid, in the coinage of pain.  And Mom and I paid, too, because it was our job to take care of him.  Our gentle Dad turned into a cantankerous papa bear.  I barked back that I would be very unhappy if he did not take care of his toes and they became infected and had to be amputated.  Perhaps I reacted too harshly, but I needed to get his attention so he would contribute to his own care and healing.  He apologized later, and began following the doctor’s orders (that is, Mom’s and my orders).  Actually, though, he healed quite well, despite diabetes, and I let go my fear of amputation and all it would mean for his mobility.  Now, weeks later, the snow is deep and we are taking granddaughter Amy sledding.

Courage at Twilight: My Enormous Salads

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While I love to cook and eat an exotic French meal, I often opt for a salad for dinner.  The raw vegetables are good for my gut.  But mine is no ordinary salad.  Dad says my salads are the most gorgeous salads ever made.  Of course, I use the standard lettuce, celery, cucumber, carrot, and tomato.  Then I add diced apples, raisins, roasted mixed nuts, avocado, slices of hard-boiled egg, and ground flax.  (I leave out bell peppers and onions.)  Toss it all with salt, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil, and I have a wonderful (and large) bowl of salad for dinner.  I always make extra, offering some to Mom and Dad.  I even prefer this tasty salad over a good burger and fries.  It is so full of wonderful complementary colors, flavors, and textures.  I can eat as much of it as I want.  And after eating, I don’t feel like I have swallowed a hamburger bowling ball.

 

(Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: December 23

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We moved our Baker extended family Christmas Eve party to December 23 this year. My (former) wife and I began the tradition in 1992 when we lived with my paternal grandmother Dora, in the basement of her little house, after our return from Portugal, where I had been a Fulbright student.  We enjoyed a simple “shepherd’s meal,” with bread and cheese and nuts and fruits and cold meat.  We recounted the birth of the baby Jesus, and we sang Christmas carols.  Dora, a cute 83 years old, dressed up as Mother Mary and held on her lap my two-year old son Brian.  This year Brian brought his two-year-old Lila as we continued the tradition with Mom and Dad and our extended family of Baker siblings and their posterities.  We moved the party from December 24 to December 23 to add Dad’s birthday to the Christ-child celebration.  We had planned the move for last year to celebrate Dad’s 85th birthday, but Covid-19 dictated otherwise.  So, we rescheduled for 86.  But Dad would not allow us to celebrate his birthday at the party.  Though December 23, this party, he insisted, was to celebrate the birth of Jesus, not the birth of Dad.  He grudgingly allowed a few gifts, but focused on his Savior, and on another notable birth, also on December 23, the 1805 birth of Joseph Smith, the founding prophet who established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to whom the Father and the Son appeared in 1820.  Those two birthdays counted, Dad said, not his.  We rebuffed him with a respectful, “Yeah, whatever” and added Dad’s birthday to the trifecta celebration.  Card tables and folding chairs accommodated the crowd, which passed by the kitchen island for plates of ham, scalloped potatoes, and my French glazed carrots and parsnips touched with ginger.  And Sarah’s perfect homemade whole-wheat bread.  We sang Christmas carols and rounds and hymns.  We played a matching game with carol names and lyrics.  We played again our indispensable traditional “Left-Right” game in which the group sits in a circle, each person with a wrapped gift, and passes the gifts to the left or to the rights as those words appear in the story Mom narrated about the “Wright” family, with laughter and chaos and flying wrapping paper—one never knew what gift one would receive.  And Brian read the Birth story in Luke 2.  And Dad blessed us again with his Christmas message of love for his Savior and love for his family and how the two inseparably embrace.  The time came for everyone to disperse from whence they came, and Mom, Dad, and I felt content and happy and relieved that the Christmas Eve Birthday party—our 29th annual—had been a success, having celebrated the births of Jesus, Joseph, and Dad: quite our favorite trio.

(Pictured above: a family service project with Mom and Dad.)

Courage at Twilight: Christmas Bittersweet

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My thoughts and feelings on Christmas are bittersweet.  Since divorcing seven Christmases ago, the season brings sadness and uncertainty and a nagging sense of failure, along with the traditional excitement and joy and love.  I ruminate on knotty questions: Do I pull my children away from their mother? Will their mother pull our children away from me? How do I plan? What activities do I undertake? How do I think about gifts and meals and parties?  My seven children are mostly grown and gone, but orbit back frequently.  They are my life’s joy.  At Hannah’s holiday choir concert with the Millennial Choirs and Orchestra, six of my seven children were present, with their spouses and granddaughter Lila, even Caleb and Edie on the night before their wedding.  I am grateful for such times—they become joyful memories.  The children’s mother and I are peaceable, both devoted to the success and happiness of our children.  We have found ways to share the Christmas celebration together, to not pull the children apart, but to give them the best broken-family experience we know how.  “Broken family” is the 20th Century’s nomenclature for our family status, but I loathe the label.  We are still a family, and there is nothing broken about us, just different, a bit challenging, like in all families.  We are doing our very best for the family, for the children.  So, I try to set sadness aside, and work to find ways to give and to enrich, to find ways to remember Jesus, our loving Savior and Redeemer, who gave us the example of giving and forgiving.  I look for ways to celebrate Christmas.  So, I watched the children open their gifts, enjoyed the traditional strawberry waffles, talked and plunked the guitar, and played card games and board games and laughed.  And Hannah affirmed in a letter, “I love you so very much Daddy!  I am so blessed to have you as my father.”  Ways to celebrate Christmas.

 

After Hannah’s Christmas concert.

 

My children, with Mom and Dad.

Courage at Twilight: Weddings and Wheelchairs

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Some days are unabashedly victorious and joyful. They need make no excuse for their happiness, and deserve their delight.  One recent glorious day was my son Caleb’s wedding day.  He and his wife Edie found each other after years of mutual adventures shared by family and friends: rock climbing, kayaking, canyoneering, hiking, mountain biking, and missionary service.  My heart believes in them individually and as a couple, that they can be happy together for the long haul through life.  Caleb’s mother and I joined peaceably in the celebration of our son’s hope and happiness.  Not long ago he was a chubby grinning toddler—now he is a giant with as big a heart.  Mom and Dad, 86 and 82, were able to attend the wedding ceremony, pushed in wheelchairs by my sister Sarah and her husband Tracy.  The marriage was solemnized in the Jordan River Temple, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we took hurried pictures in a sunny 25-degrees.  The wheelchairs were wonderful tools for access and ability, and at the same time ominous portents of things to come.  My thoughts about marriage are tender and wounded and fearful and hopeful.  I want so badly for the marriages of my children, especially, and my friends and neighbors—everyone—to succeed, to be joyful even, knowing the disruption and agony of that particular failure.  What matters today is that Caleb and Edie are happy together, and they are determined to work with each other and for each other to keep it that way.  I feel so very happy for them.  And how content I am that Caleb’s still-living grandfathers and grandmother could join in the celebration, from the wheelchairs that made that joining possible and even comfortable.  Here’s to good days.

Courage at Twilight: Morning Light

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Mom’s and Dad’s open kitchen, dining, and family area has ten windows, facing east, which let in the wonderful morning sunlight as the sun peaks over the 11,000-foot-tall mountain peaks of the Wasatch range.  Sitting at the kitchen table, we watched a doe mule deer with her three yearling fawns stepping through the back yard snow.  When dark descends, Mom shuts out prying eyes by reaching her wooden yardstick over the chairs and sofas to push shut the thick plantation blinds.  In the early morning, preparing my breakfast and lunch for the day, I open the blinds so that Mom and Dad are greeted by sunlight as they begin their day.

(Yep, it’s a birthday–Dad’s 86th!)

Courage at Twilight: Bulk Pick-Up

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Sandy, Utah, where Mom, Dad, and I live, offers fall bulk garbage pickup days in November. On these days, the city’s whole population, it seems, puts their junk on the curb for the city crews to haul away.  Looking up the street before the pickup day, I saw grills, wheelbarrows, mattresses, bed frames, bicycles, benches, logs, pipes, boxes, bins, water heaters, microwave ovens, and most anything else you can imagine.  Mom and Dad do not accumulate much junk, so the items I placed on the curb comprised only six iron T-posts.  Metal scrappers scoured the city in their beat-up pick-up trucks, picking out metal items from the piles.  I went to sleep, with huge piles on the street, and awoke to find all the metal gone—only the plastic and wood items remained for the city to haul off.  A good result, I suppose, with the metals being recycled instead of dumped in the landfill. One neighbor removed dozens of rotting railroad ties from his landscaping and mounded them on the street.  I was appalled at the enormous pile, but the city’s front-end-loader made quick work of it.  While amazed at the waste of numerous seemingly good items being thrown away, still I appreciated the city for helping people de-junk and de-clutter and otherwise clean up their properties, contributing to the community’s aesthetic and reducing public nuisances.  I admire a local government that encourages its residents to be clean and tidy, following up with heavy equipment and trucks—lots of them.

(Photo from Sandy City, Utah, website.)

Courage at Twilight: Hair Cuts By Jen

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Every six weeks, Mom gets her hair cut. Jen, a daughter of a neighbor up the street, is the beautician who cuts Mom’s hair.  During the warm months of spring, summer, and fall, Jen comes to Mom’s house to cut her hair.  Mom sits in a camp chair in the garage while Jen works her magic, and Jen sweeps up afterward.  During the colder months, Mom sits at the kitchen table while Jen carefully snips here and there.  Mom’s hair cut is not fancy, but is cute, and matches her fun personality.  Once flaxen brown, Mom’s hair is now the prettiest white.  Attending Mom’s community orchestra concerts, before Covid shut down public events, my children and I always looked for grandma’s white hair at her violin stand, proud of her for being talented and engaged and happy.  Dad has always been fond Mom’s hair beautiful.  A few years ago, he told me of coming back to bed on a winter morning and observing tenderly his wife’s white hair as she lay sleeping.  Some time after, I wrote this short poem, entitled “Morning”: Warm sun in winter / hurtles white-capped / peaks and rushes through / wide windows / to halt and hover / over a head of tousled white / hair, aged, peaceful / upon her pillow.

(Pictured above: Mom and Dad after receiving their first Covid-19 vaccinations.)

Courage at Twilight: Stacks at the Top of the Stairs

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The stairs to the basement have become more and more difficult for Mom and Dad to go up and down the stairs to the basement.  Each step is a labor, descending a focused effort not to slip or fall, and ascending a herculean effort to climb.  Their trips to the basement to retrieve canned goods or to put their DVDs back on the bookshelves have dwindled to a minimum.  Mom piles clean folded sheets and cans of fruit and NCIS DVDs and rolls of toilet paper on the top stair, allowing sufficient accumulation to warrant the long trip to the cool dark basement.  I see these stacks as my cue to take the trip myself, putting things in their places.  The routine has become a game Mom and I play, with her piling the items neatly on the stair, and me running them downstairs to their nooks and shelves and cupboards.  I don’t mind—I like putting things away neatly in their places.  And we do not even need to coordinate—the task is simple and understood by us both, with not another word said.  Speaking of which, it is time for the next season of NCIS.

Courage at Twilight: Creamy Potato-Leek Soup

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One of the first French meals I cooked for Mom and Dad was Julia Child’s potato-leek soup.  This very simple soup is so hearty and delicious, and the texture thick and creamy.  In one big pot I boiled cubed potatoes, rings of carrots, and sliced leeks, yellow onions, and green onions, with a spot of butter, a shake of pepper, a sifting of salt, and a spray of aromatic herbs: thyme, bay leaf, parsley.  With the vegetables soft, it was time to puree them in their juices with a wand blender, adding cream to the perfectly pureed consistency.  Chopped spinach and sautéed mushrooms were the last to join in, adding color, flavor, and nutrients.  The soup turned out perfectly.  Mom, Dad, and I enjoyed every delectable sip from the spoon, together with bites of crunchy buttered sourdough toast.  Thanks Julia!

Courage at Twilight: Weekend Getaway

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I knew I needed a break.  And a good place to take one was at Harvey’s house, four hours distant, in the small isolated town of Enterprise.  I consider Harvey the hero of my book Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road.  Actually, my seven children are the principal heroes and heroines.  But Harvey is the non-family member that joins them on the podium.  During his long and colorful life, Harvey was a tanner of hides, a seeker of nature’s healing ways, a modern mountain man living in remote hills and attending rendezvous, and a friend to American Indians, earning from them the name Many Feathers.  Harvey invited me one day to an Indian sweat ceremony, where I languished for three painful hours while also reveling in Indian song and story.  And at the end I smoked the peace pipe handed me by a Navajo Sun Chief, to offer my sacrificial prayer of smoke from burning sage.  Harvey is 84 now, and I wanted to see him.  So, I waved farewell to Mom and Dad and made the voyage.  Skinny and bent, Harvey puttered with me around his house and yard, feeding his prize pigeons and meat rabbits, frying up potatoes and sausages in his black iron skillet, and telling stories about the old days.  After a long day, I slept in the bunk house he built, warmed by the flame in the pot-belly stove.  Before I knew it, I was waving good-bye to Harvey and Mary and driving the long miles home to Mom and Dad, but feeling renewed from my time with my friend.

Courage at Twilight: The Friendly Beast

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Near midnight, I lay in bed watching the snow fall outside the window, lit up by the strings of white lights on the eves.  Just inside, Olaf, Winnie the Pooh, and Little Growler also watched the pretty sight.  Morning brought the realization of the night’s big snow fall.  A week before, three inches had settled.  Before Dad and I got to the task of shoveling, our neighbor Terry plowed the snow off our driveway and sidewalks with his snow blower.  But this snow fall was a full 12 inches of heavy new powder.  I had not used Dad’s new snow blower before, but the pictorial instructions on the machine showed me how to prime, choke, and start the engine.  The beast of a machine ground eagerly into the drifts, throwing a twenty-foot comet tail.  My affection for the machine grew as it helped me with the enormous job, and I began thinking of it, perhaps appropriate to the season, as my Friendly Beast.  The Beast and I sliced off a foot-width of snow at a time, passing back and forth a hundred times.  The snow near the street sat on inches of slush, which stuck in the tines and snow chute.  Twenty years ago, I met an elderly church volunteer who had severed his fingers cleaning out a clogged snow chute.  With the memory of his bandaged stubs still fresh, I used a broom handle to ream out the chute, then plowed on.  Just then Kevin’s car slid and stuck in the unplowed ruts in the road.  “I’m stuck!” he shouted to me from his open window.  I brought two shovels, and we cleared the ice from behind the tires.  I had him back up slowly, careful not to spin the wheels, and he then was able to roll forward.  He waved gratefully as he drove away, and I went back to the Beast.  After two hours, the Beast and I finally finished the job.  Dad came out, all bundled up, to wave and watch, then we went into the house for mugs of mint truffle hot cocoa mix.

   

Courage at Twilight: Housecleaning

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On Saturday evenings in my childhood New Jersey home, Dad filled a bucket with warm soapy water, sank to his hands and knees, and scrubbed the kitchen’s linoleum floor.  I never felt the compulsion or even inclination to join him (but I worked hard in the yard).  I remember thinking his knees must be awfully sore.  Later, he purchased a carpet cleaner to clean the carpeted rooms himself.  The walls showed roller marks where Dad had patched and painted holes or stains on the walls.  He rubbed Murphy’s oil into the wood furniture, and vacuumed the carpets and rugs.  These helpful habits lasted long into Dad’s retirement.  But the day finally came, brought on by a knee transplant and age, that he could no longer descend to his hands and knees to scrub the tile floors.  The day came when Mom and Dad needed help cleaning the house.  That is when Ely started coming.  She comes every Monday morning with her smile and her cleaning supplies.  Mom and Dad love her, are happy to have her in their home, and are relieved at how clean Ely makes everything for them.  In addition, Dad calls Stanley Steamer to steam clean the carpets.  But Dad still breaks out the carpet cleaner to spot clean the trouble spots and wear paths and food spills from the most recent family party.

Courage at Twilight: Hidden Figures

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Hannah came home with me for the evening, and to spend the night. After a dinner of soup and toast, I invited her to pick a movie to watch with Mom and Dad.  She went to their movie archive—three basement bookshelves lined with DVDs and even VHS tapes—and came back with Hidden Figures, the story of the critical contributions made by three Black women to NASA’s nascent space flight program and to launching the first American astronaut into earth orbit in 1962.  That astronaut, John Glen, asked human computer and mathematician Katherine Johnson to recheck the new IBM computer’s go/no-go capsule re-entry calculations.  Mary Jackson broke through glass ceilings to help engineer the orbit capsule.  Dorothy Vaughan, a FORTRAM computer language expert, became NASA’s first Black supervisor.  I have seen the movie several times, and always find it inspiring.  These women, and many others, were both heroines and pioneers.  My favorite movie moment is when NASA Director Al Harrison, in a meeting with the nation’s top brass, transfers from his white hand to Ms. Johnson’s brown hand the stick of chalk, a baton, a metaphor for so many necessary human equity advances, including civil rights and women’s rights.  The book is high on my reading list, and I look forward to reading more about NASA’s remarkable hidden figures.

Courage at Twilight: Cheesy Onion Bread

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The Olympic games played on the television all day Saturday.  I was getting ready to bake cheesy onion bread with Gabe.  He wanted to do everything: measure out the flour, dump in the salt, even pour in the Guinness.  We pressed and pounded the dough and set it to proof in the lightbulb-warm oven.  Gabe and I laid on the floor in front of the TV building castles with the wood blocks.  As castle architect, he instructed me on exactly where to place each block, and where not to.  Just then Olympic wrestling came on the TV.  We watched the twisting and grunting, looked at each other, and launched into our own wrestling and tickling free for all.  Needing a break, we wandered outside to find Grandpa (Dad) fertilizing and watering his plants and flowers.  Gabe just had to get in on that action, though he preferred watering the landscaping boulders.  When the rocks were clean, he turned the hose on us.

Courage at Twilight: Decorating the Christmas Tree

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Steven and I pulled the black garbage bags off the high closet shelf.  Each bag held a section of the Christmas tree.  Boxes of ornaments and lights followed.  My brother Steven was visiting for the week from North Carolina, visiting his beloved, elderly parents.  We spread and fluffed the wire branches, wound bright tinsel ropes, strung strings of white lights, and hung red baubles and ornaments.  Many of the ornaments were homemade, some decades ago in our New Jersey childhood home.  Ornaments made from the lids of frozen orange juice cans, punched with nails in patterns, and painted by little children.  Steven was two years old when I left home for a university 2,200 miles away.  How does an adult brother have a meaningful relationship with a distant two-year-old in the 1980s when long-distance calls cost as much as mortgage payments?  He doesn’t.  But I am in my late 50s now, and he in his early 40s, and the ages no longer matter.  We are brothers, sons of common parents, and we are friends.  Steve laughed as he hung a particular ancient ornament, a humble thing belonging only on our family tree.  We turned the lights on with pleasure, and stood back and looked at the Christmas tree with pleasure.  And Mom’s and Dad’s faces lit up with love and smiles to see their little boy all grown up into the best kind of man.

 

Courage at Twilight: Pizza for Dinner

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For dinner tonight we pulled out a frozen pizza and slid it into the roasting hot oven.  While it bubbled and crisped, I made fruit smoothies with frozen strawberries, blueberries, and a banana, plus a little cream, milk, and ice.  Wedges of lettuce and sliced tomatoes, spread with mayonnaise, rounded out a nice, simple meal.  I have a good recipe for pizza dough, and my sister Jeanette gave me a pizza stone a while back.  I need to get some toppings and try homemade pizza.  Maybe with fresh mushrooms, or ground sausage, or ham and pineapple.  And you can’t go wrong with pepperoni.

 

(Image by Bruno Marques Designer from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Pantene 2-in-1

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Dad lamented that his scalp hurt, and asked Mom and me to find a better shampoo that would be soothing to his head.  Back in the day, when I had hair, I liked Pantene 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner.  It softened and smoothed my hair and skin.  So, Mom and I brought home a bottle from the grocery store for Dad to try.  Within a few days, he beamed at how much he liked the new shampoo, remarking that his scalp no longer burned or stung.  (I suspect any shampoo-conditioner combo would have worked.)  The following week, at the grocery store, Mom told me to put five bottles in the shopping cart.  Only two sat on the shelf.  But now we know what works, and will add it routinely to the shopping list.

Courage at Twilight: Mom’s Mint Tea

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Mom enjoys her breakfast sitting in her recliner: a bowl of dry Quaker granola, a glass of cold milk, and a tall glass of hot unsweetened mint tea. She asked me once to buy more mint tea at the grocery store.  Along with her standard mint, I brought home a variety of other herbal teas, including berry blends and lemon ginger.  But she did not care for them, and opted loyally for her favorite: mint.  Both spearmint and peppermint sit on her cupboard shelf.  I took the other blends to work, where I enjoy the berry and lemon-ginger flavors, sweetened, of course, while sitting at my desk.  But Mom likes her stimulating mint tea unsweetened.  “Ah, this is so good!” she sighs in satisfaction as she sips.  I am growing mint in my Aerogarden.  After six months of growth, I cut much of the mint off, dried it in a warm oven, ground it in my parsley grinder, wrapped it in cheese cloth, stuffed the cloth into the tea infuser, and steeped it in just-boiled water.  Six months of plant growth made a single tea bag, a weak one at that, and I supplemented with a commercial tea bag from the box.  But I think Mom is right: hot mint tea is simply wonderful.

 

(Image by congerdesign from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Stories of Cockroaches and Fleas

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Dad, this morning: “I was sitting here remembering an odd experience.  When I was a missionary in Brazil in 1956, my missionary companion [missionaries work in twos] rented a room in a house, where we lived.  He got up in the night to use the bathroom, and when he turned on the bathroom light, the walls and the floor were covered with skittering cockroaches, and my companion screamed and woke everyone in the house up!”  Dad is a storyteller, and when I hear, “I remember when…” I know a story is coming, and I had better just plant my feet in the floor for a few minutes.  His stories are always touching or funny, even after a dozen tellings.  I have typed up every story I have ever heard Dad tell about his life (and Mom’s stories, too).  “I was allergic to flea bites.  The bites would swell in great red mounds.  The itching was terrible, and I scratched the bites with a wire brush—better the pain than the itch.  I got good at catching fleas.  Once I wrote a letter to my mom out of dead fleas.  I stuck them to scotch tape, forming the shapes of the letters with the fleas, then taped them to the paper.  I don’t know how I survived it—I poured a can of DDT in my bed so I could sleep without being eaten alive by fleas, with the sheet tucked up tight under my chin so I wouldn’t breathe in the power.  The DDT killed the fleas, and I’m surprised it didn’t kill me.”  Thirty years later, as a young church missionary in Portugal, I suffered from bed bug bites—the bugs crept out of their hiding places at night while I slept, and bit the backs of my hands dozens of times.  Every morning I awoke with fresh and painful red bites.  I did not know yet of Dad’s mission pesticide story.  As if reenacting it, I bought a can of Raid and sprayed all the wooden joints and slats of my bed and sprayed under the mattress and on sheets.  Fearing illness, or worse, I did all the spraying in the morning, hoping the bed bugs would be dead, and the poison dissipated, by bedtime.  It seemed to work.  And I have my own cockroach story: as a ten-year-old in Brazil, I reached up to open a high closet cupboard, and out poured dozens of two-inch cockroaches landing all over my head and face and shoulders.  Shiver.  I still cannot stand the sight of a cockroach.  I look forward to Dad’s next stories, which likely will be told today.

 

Pictured above: Dad (far left) and his mission colleagues in Brazil, circa 1958.

Courage at Twilight: Bratwurst and Beans

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“Rog?” Dad called eagerly as he stumbled through the door from mowing up the leaves.  “Have you started cooking dinner yet?”  Remembering a prior conversation about the possibility of spaghetti, I had pulled a package of meatballs from the freezer to thaw.  With two minutes left on my stationary bike ride, I panted, “I got the meatballs out, just in case, but I have not started dinner.”  He told me his idea for dinner, emphasizing it was just an idea—he wanted me to know he was not vested in the idea.  “We could grill bratwurst, and warm a can of pork and beans and a can of stewed whole tomatoes,” he offered.  This particular random combination of dishes had never occurred to me, but I consider that it had not only occurred to him, but sounded good to him.  So, I concurred, suggesting we add steamed spinach to the menu, since we had accidentally added a third bag of spinach to the two bought the week prior.  The brats browned up nicely on the indoor electric grill (with a power cord borrowed from an electric skillet, since my cord was thoroughly grilled with the previous brats).  After asking God to bless the food for our nourishment and strength, we dug into to the eclectic gathering of food.  And I enjoyed it.  Remembering childhood dinners of pork and beans mixed with sliced frankfurters, I sliced my bratwurst into the beans, and felt at home.  “Didn’t we have a great dinner, Lucille?” Dad crowed.  Yes, we did.

(Image by Karl Allen Lugmayer from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Church Christmas Party

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Our church held a neighborhood Christmas party on Friday.  The poster announced the location: Whoville.  The cultural hall (aka full-court gym) had been transformed into the snowy town from which Mr. Grinch had attempted to steal Christmas from the Whos.  The setting including an ice skating rink for kids in stockinged feet (the rink enthralled my two-year-old granddaughter Lila), a genuine snowless alpine sledding slope, the Whoville Charities booth accepting new winter coats, boots, gloves, and hats for the Boys & Girls Club, the Whoville Post Office where visitors could send cards to young people serving church missions abroad, a Who-house chimney into which little Whos tossed wrapped gifts that tumbled down into the house, the Whoville Hair Salon, a cookie decorating station, the Whoville Photo Studio taking pictures of children with the Grinch, and the Whoville Sweet Shop where children lined up for banana and orange and berry cotton candy faster than I could spin it.  Wisps of sugar gossamer tickled my face and clung to my hair and clothing.  Three-year-old Gabe exercised his insider privilege and stood on a chair spinning his own cotton candy, with a little help from me.  Lila, too, helped herself to the sugary puffs.  Mom and Dad brought a large bag with their donations, happy to have helped children who need warm winter clothing.  Mom and Dad sat smiling with mirth as Whoville teamed with happy little Whos running around in their Who pajamas.  Mom declared it to be “the best Christmas party I’ve ever attended.”  Our Mr. Grinch already possessed a big warm throbbing heart, and made friends with all the children.  In fact, the Grinch is Gabe’s new favorite superhero (so long Spiderman).  A framed 8×10 of the duo sits prominently on Gabe’s nightstand.

Pictured above: Gabe and the Grinch

The Whoville Ice Rink

Granddaughter Lila enjoying the rink with her dad

Alpine sledding slope

Where Gabe met Mr. Grinch

Sending Christmas cards to far-flung missionaries

Decorating sugar cookies

Donations to the Boys & Girls Club

Gabe and I spinning his cotton candy

Courage at Twilight: Jordan River Jaunt

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On possibly the last warm day of the quickly-coming winter, the Jordan River tugged at me to bring my kayak and glide.  My solitary jaunts on the Jordan have brought a mystical connection with nature.  On this paddle, my brother Steven joined me, in town for a visit, and we set off with our boats racked on my green Subaru.  Mom and Dad sat in camp chairs in the driveway, wrapped in winter coats, waiving as we pulled away.  Continue reading →

Courage at Twilight: Leaky Toilet

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Though the float was up in the toilet tank, the water kept jetting into the tank and spilling down the overflow tube.  The flapper was fine.  The float was fine.  So, the problem must be the fill valve.  Until we could fix it, though, we would have to turn the water off to the toilet.  But my brother was coming to visit, and the running toilet was in the guest bathroom.  The time to fix it was now.  Lowe’s had a good selection of fill valve assemblies.  I chose the Fluidmaster 400H-002-P10 Universal Fill Valve because the box boasted of a three-minute YouTube video on exactly how to replace this exact part, and I knew I would need that video.  Dad and I watched the video, twice.  I thought maybe I might possibly succeed in replacing the fill valve, guided by both the written instructions and illustrations, and the video.  Like preparing to cook a new recipe, I gathered all my ingredients, or rather parts and tools, and plunged into the project.  To my utter relief, the repair went flawlessly.  Within minutes, the new fill valve was installed and working perfectly.  Why am I always so surprised when I manage to fix something I have never fixed before?  I did fix my own washing machine switch, after all, thanks again to YouTube.  Mom and Dad were pleased that the repair had been so quick (10 minutes) and inexpensive ($14), did not involve an extended delay or a costly plumber, did not prompt any swearing, and that Steve would not have reach behind the bowl to turn the water on and off with every use.

Courage at Twilight: Spider Face-Off

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While Dad was reading late one night, a spider emerged from under the sofa, walked slowly toward him, stopped, and stood tall on its front legs, looking up at him, as if challenging, Here I am. What are you going to do about it?   Dad knew there was nothing he could do about it—he could never heave himself out of his recliner and catch the spider before it dodged away.  Victorious, the spider sauntered nonchalantly back to its hideout under the sofa.  A couple of weeks later, another spider scampered across the kitchen floor, near where Dad was standing at the sink scrubbing a pot.  This spider, too, looked up at him with a challenge, but Dad simply stomped on it.  Dad felt bad, preferring to let these fascinating creatures live—but not in the house.  When Dad was a teenager, his father Owen staked out a 40-acre mining claim in the Nevada desert, and occasionally took his two sons to camp in the desert and work the claim.  They imagined striking it rich with gold as they dug their holes in the hill.  Owen had welded steel plates to the old truck’s undercarriage, allowing him to bowl through sage brush undamaged.  After making camp one afternoon on a low flat sandy arroyo, with blue skies overhead, they began to hear a strange rumbling, and looked up to see a wall of muddy water rushing down the dry stream bed.  They lurched from their bed rolls and made it with the donkey to higher ground just in time to see their camp entirely washed away.  The torrent ended as quickly as it began, and the boys set off down the muddy channel to recover what gear they could find.  Here was the stove, and the aluminum plates.  And there was the pistol barrel sticking up from the mud and sand.  Dad came to a narrow gorge across which a stout plank had once been placed.  He was halfway across when an enormous tarantula climbed on the other end of the plank and started to walk toward him.  They both stopped and looked at each other for a moment.  “I think the tarantula was asking me, Are you going to let me cross, or what?  Dad back up and off the plank, and the tarantula recommenced its slow crossing.  He watched the tarantula amble off into the desert, and then crossed the gully in the other direction.  Since the two recent faceoffs in the house, Mom brought in pest control to spray for spiders—they simply do not belong in the house.  But that tarantula was king of the dessert.

 

(I encountered this migrating tarantula while mountain biking in Settlement Canyon, Tooele, Utah.)

Courage at Twilight: Dishes in the Dishwasher

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At my apartment, my children always asked me after dinner, “Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty?”  At Mom’s house, that is the wrong question.  Either the dishwasher is empty or dirty.  Clean dishes are never allowed to remain in the appliance.  She empties the dishwasher immediately upon the cycle ending, despite the scalding steamy dishes.  So, when my children asked Mom if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty, she replies, “If there are dishes in the dishwasher, Dear, they are dirty.”

Courage at Twilight: Change in the Air

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Some people love change.  The newness of changed circumstances stimulates and excites them.  Others loathe change, which can frighten and overwhelm.  I tend toward the latter, though I am reconciled to the truth that change is both inevitable and frequent.  One reality on which both groups agree is that change disrupts.  Our perspective tells us whether that disruption is good or bad, positive or negative, welcome or to be shunned.  I also have learned the truth that change gives us the opportunity to reexamine who we are, what we do, and why we do it.  Why do I wash the laundry on Mondays and eat an enormous salad on Thursdays and only vacuum once a month?  Why did I eat my solitary dinners in front of the television?  Changed circumstances provide an opportunity to revise routines, and to discern and maintain the essential while escaping from old ruts.  Living with Mom and Dad, after six years alone, I no longer eat my dinner in front of the television screen—instead, I sit at the kitchen table and talk with Mom and Dad about the day.  Two habits I am working to strengthen are prayer to the Divine and time reading holy Writ.  Though I recognize the supernal value of both, I have always struggled to follow spiritual habits, maintaining discipline with stubborn irregularity.  My recent move disrupted all of my routines, from the side of the bed I curl up on to my practice of prayer.  I sense how important it is for me not to lose whatever little discipline I had harnessed before.  My success has been spotty.  But I will keep working at it.  For example, I read today about the Word in John chapter 1.

(Photo: Slickrock country in Moab, Utah.)

Courage at Twilight: Giving Tuesday

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An excellent church sermon, on the subject of serving humankind in small and simple ways, prompted me to visit the service clearinghouse JustServe.org.  I browsed through hundreds of worthy service opportunities—everything from being pen pals with prison inmates to assembling hygiene kits to indexing gravestone photographs to tutoring young people in English and Math—and settled on a small and simple project I felt I could handle.  The project was to make greeting cards with the message You Are Loved decorating the inside.  I have made cards from pressed leaves and flower petals since my Grandmother Dorothy taught me decades ago.  Against her office walls leaned four-foot-tall stacks of heavy books pressing thousands of slowly drying leaves and petals.  The card-making process involves gluing pressed flowers and other decorations, like paper butterflies, to wax paper, gluing colored tissue paper to that, drying, ironing to melt the wax into the tissue, cutting, and folding.  Into the card I insert a blank paper bifold, on which I write a personal message for upcoming birthdays and anniversaries.  I love making cards because, while far from being an artist, I can make something beautiful to brighten someone’s day.  Equally important, making cards connects me to memories of my dear grandmother.  (For more photos and detailed instructions, see my essays Cards of Leaves and Petals and Grandma’s Pressed-Leaf Greeting Cards.)  My sisters have supplied me with abundant pressed leaves and flowers (from Carolyn) and paper cutouts of birds and butterflies (from Megan).  At the extended family Thanksgiving celebration, after our dinner, I enlisted family members to decorate the card inserts with colored markers, including the message You Are Loved.  I explained that the cards would be included in kits delivered to refugees around the world.  Upon opening the kits, the recipients will be greeted with the generic but safe and loving message: You Are Loved.  With those refugees in mind, my family members, from my two-year-old granddaughter Lila to my octogenarian parents, enjoyed personalizing their cards.  Only after Mom and I delivered the cards to Lifting Hands International, did I realize that today is Giving Tuesday.  That coincidence brought me happiness.  Thoughts of refugees being cheered, even if momentarily, by a loving personalized artistic message, brought me happiness.  In fact, I find that helping others always brings happiness.  Why don’t I do it more often?  To be sure, our service was among the smallest and simplest—no grant accomplishment.  But every good deed, no matter how miniscule, even when unnoticed, contributes to the world’s goodness, of which there can never be too much.  I wonder what small and simple gift of service you may enjoy offering others?  After making 60 labor-intensive cards, I need a break from card-making.  But I am sure I will make more, maybe for Giving Tuesday 2022.  Perhaps sooner.

Roger Baker is a career municipal attorney and hobby writer.  He is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road and A Time and A Season.  Rabbit Lane tells the true life story of an obscure farm road and its power to transform the human spirit.  A Time and A Season gathers Roger’s poems from 2015-2020, together with the stories of their births.  The books are available in print and for Kindle at Amazon.  See Rabbit Lane reviewed in Words and Pictures.

Courage at Twilight: In Which Roger Finds the Courage to Cook Julia Child’s Delectable Boeuf Bourguignon

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Alone with Mom and Dad on Thanksgiving, I determined to make a nice meal (that was not a turkey), and found my courage to try Julia Child’s recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon (beef stewed in red wine).  The recipe had intimidated me for a long time, because of the expensive ingredients (quality cut of beef, bottle of Bordeaux) and the many involved steps that have to come together.  Boil and brown the bacon sticks.  Brown the beef cubes.  Sauté the sliced carrots and onions.  Pour in the red wine and broth.  Simmer in the oven for three hours while sautéing small whole onions and quartered mushrooms to add later.  “Do not crowd the mushrooms,” Julia charged.  The last step was to boil the wine and broth down to a thick gravy to pour over the platter of beef, bacon, onions, carrots, and mushrooms.  To my wonder and delight, the meal was a smashing succulent success.  I felt quite proud of myself as the three of us chewed with delighted mmmms and ahhhhs.  How disappointing to get full so fast!  I will not prepare this dish often, but the four-hour cook time was worth the happy result as we quietly concluded our Thanksgiving Day with our meal of French Boeuf Bourguignon.

Courage at Twilight: A Drive Down Memory Lane

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We took two drives in two days, Mom, Dad, and me—I drove the faithful Suburban.  The first day we drove into the hills, into the gated neighborhoods with the big houses, which grew bigger and fancier with altitude.  Several houses were enormous, of the 20,000 square-foot variety, with turrets and weather vanes and wrought iron fences and security cameras.  One resembled an English country mansion estate.  We felt distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of all the money poured into these lavish houses.  We are not wealthy people, and did not know how to relate to such wealth.  The next day we drove across the valley to find Mom’s maternal grandparents’ house.  We found it in a rundown part of town, with century-old match-box houses, tiny, unkempt, honest, 20 little houses crammed into a single mansion lot.  I remember visiting great-grandpa James Evans—I was four.  He scooped Neapolitan ice cream into cones from his top-loaded deep freeze.  He walked stooped with age, humble but dignified, showing me his little cherry orchard with the concrete ditches ladling irrigation water to each dwarf tree.  More than 50 years after that visit, I snapped a photo of his little old house.  Around the corner was the Pleasant Green church where my grandfather Wallace first met my grandmother Dorothy.  He was a guest minister, and she played the organ.  After church, Wally asked Dorothy if he could drive her home, and she accepted.  After he dropped her off, she got a ride back to the church so she could take her car home.  I snapped a photo of the church, and we drove away from history and memory back into our comfortable present, far across the valley.

Above: the Church where Wally met Dorothy.

 

Monument to the Pleasant Green church.

 

Grandpa Evans’ little old house.

Courage at Twilight: Stringing Christmas Lights

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While I cooked dinner, Dad dressed in his gray winter coat and his pom-pommed snow hat and stumbled outside with a bag of rolled up strings of Christmas lights and a hot glue gun, a bag of glue sticks in his pocket.  The temperature dipped into the low 30s.  I wondered at the hot glue gun, thinking hot glue would not work well in cold temperatures.  After near an hour, I thought I had better check on him, to make sure he wasn’t collapsed and freezing.  But there he was, painstakingly gluing the light string to the brick every six inches.  He was nearly finished, gluing the last six feet to the wall.  “I didn’t think the hot glue would work on cold brick,” I commented.  “Actually, the glue works better in the cold, because it sets faster, and I can move on to the next spot.”  Just then he let out an “Argghh!!” as he pressed a fingertip into a dollop of hot glue.  “I seem to be gluing my fingers as much as the lights!” he cursed.  I reached in and held down each newly glued spot until the glue hardened, while he moved ahead to the next.  I dipped my finger into the hot glue myself, and I rubbed furiously against the cold brick to wipe the burning glue off.  “I see what you mean,” I commiserated.  With the last section in place, we extricated ourselves from the tangled bushes and stood back to observe.  “You did a great job, Dad,” I complimented.  The white LED lights climbed one end of the brick wall, ran along its adorned top, and ended at the base of the other end.  The next day we wrapped red and green and amber lights around the boxwood bushes.  “Let’s get your mom,” Dad enthused as the sun sank and the cold set in.  Mom was duly impressed, “You men did a great job with the lights!”  Every evening, Dad flips a switch by the front door, contended at the cheery beauty at the corner of the front yard.

Courage at Twilight: Grocery Shopping, A Sequel

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I feel so anxious in the grocery store with Mom and Dad.  In the produce section, I assess the fruits and vegetables with one eye even as I monitor Dad’s quickly waning strength with the other, tense and ready to catch him if he slumps.  While Dad waits exhausted and uncomfortable at a deli table, I rush from aisle to aisle scratching items off the shopping list.  I cannot suggest he stay home, and should not.  This is his life, and he enjoys grocery shopping.  If he wants to come with me, he should come.  It is healthy for him to get out of the house, to see the abundant beautiful produce, to get excited about beer-battered cod and grilled bratwurst and baking salmon on Sunday.  But he pays a steep price over and above the grocery bill.  “I’m done, Rog,” he whispered as we stood in the check-out lane.  “I hope I can make it to the car.”  Back at home, I carry eight plastic shopping bags in each hand, thanks to the handles Connor made on his 3D printer.  Mom and I put the groceries away, and stuff the plastic grocery sacks into a larger bag to be recycled.  Wiped out and grateful, they sink into their recliners with their books and newspapers—or the TV remote—and their snacks and drinks.  This is a perfect time for me again to urge Dad, captive to fatigue and comfort, to hydrate.

 

(Grocery bag carriers printed by my son-in-law, Connor.)

Courage at Twilight: Moments of Self-Doubt

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In a prolonged moment of self-doubt about my abilities and contributions, I remarked to my brother Steven about my “stupid little blog posts.” He quickly chided me, gently, and urged me to have compassion for myself.  He assured me my stories are beautiful and real, and he loves reading them.  My four sisters have given me similar encouragement.  So, I trek daily ahead.  Mom has commented to me, pleased, but humble, “Your blog posts are kind of like my biography.”  She is right.  In fact, I tag every post with “Memoir.”  I am telling a story, painting vignettes, writing a family memoir, slowly, one day at a time.  All the stories are true and real, and I hope they approach the kind praise of “beautiful.”  Many of the world’s stories are dark and painful—still, they can be instructive and even revelatory.  But, except for confessing my mistakes (like, not investigating a bang! in Mom’s bathroom when she lost consciousness in the shower on a Sunday morning before church), I choose to tell stories that are both real and redeeming.  Steven is right to encourage me to have compassion for my own story.  I wondered today, Why is the First Great Commandment to love God with all our heart?  It cannot be that God needs the fickle adulation of seven billion squabbling humans.  Rather, I believe that by loving God, we discover the capacity and desire to love others, including ourselves.  So, I will try to believe in myself.  I certainly believe in Mom and Dad: their lives and characters make telling heartening stories an easy exercise.  Mom and Dad are endearing in their quotidian lives, smiling at each other across the distance between recliners, patting the backs of each other’s hands, reminding each other to take their medicine and to put in their hearing aids.  They exemplify.  They edify.  They love and they struggle.  They serve with such generosity.  They are virtuous.  They have value, and their stories deserve to be preserved.  I am so grateful for Mom and Dad.  I am telling their stories, and learning to love them more deeply day after day.

Courage at Twilight: Overpriced Electrician

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After having a new roof put on the house, and the old attic fan removed, Mom called an electrician to pull the absent fan’s switch and wiring.  The job took three hours, for some reason, and involved no electrical parts.  But the bill seemed exorbitant, and I believed the electrician had taken advantage of my aged parents.  And so, contrary to my peacemaking avoidant nature, I called the company to complain, or rather, to “inquire.”  The intransigent manager rebuffed my suggestion we had been overbilled, offering an incoherent rambling justification—and I gave up the fight.  I reported the conversation to Dad who, to my surprise, grew cross.  Pointing to himself, he proclaimed, “I will decide which battles I want to fight and which battles I do not want to fight.”  The implication was perfectly clear: I was not to intervene uninvited in his affairs.  Fair enough, I thought.  I do not mean to fight his battles, and I do not want to fight his battles.  In fact, I abhor contention, and have a hard enough time fighting my own battles.  I appease and apologize to my adversary even as I timidly brandish the sword.  I did explain to Dad, however, and trying not to sound defensive, that I am here to help him and Mom—that is my purpose—and that I intend to say something when I see people taking advantage of them.  Loath to fight, yet I will defend my family.  Neither of us said another word about the subject.  But I sensed the boundaries had shifted and resettled, appropriately.

 

(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Aged Independence

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Burger King to sell meat-free 'Impossible Whopper' nationwide - New York Daily News

In the last several weeks, Mom and Dad have gone several places without me: to the dentist, to the audiologist, to the dermatologist to have a bothersome cyst removed, to the grocery store, to the post office.  I felt a bit glum being deprived of the opportunity to be useful and helpful, so show how needed I am, and to earn my keep.  But I arrested myself with a self-deprecating, How silly of you!  If Mom and Dad want to go places by themselves, and can do so safely, why shouldn’t they?  They do not need a third wheel on every outing.  In fact, any opportunity for them to be independent is healthy.  They do want to be unnecessarily dependent upon me, and do not want that either.  I should not try to soothe my sense of self-importance by inserting myself where I am not necessary.  Despite some lingering worries about their safety on the road, I am happy to see them go off on their own to do this or that.  I am not jealous.  If I am available, I can offer to go along, just to make the outing a bit easier.  In the meantime, it is fun to see them drive off to Burger King for Impossible Whoppers, fries, and diet Cokes.

 

(Image from NY Daily News.  Used pursuant to the Fair Use doctrine.)

Courage at Twilight: Mom’s Needlepoint

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Ready for the day, Mom sits in her bedroom rocking chair working on her latest needlepoint, waiting for Dad to get up, then listening to him talk and talk when he does get up.  His concerns about the family.  His memories of his childhood, his ministry, his career as an international corporate lawyer.  His worries about each member of the family.  She listens and works the needle and listens.  Her needle carries the yarn up through the square and diagonally down into the next square, a hundred thousand times.  Mom’s completed needlepoints hang framed on many walls in the house, and include large florals, aboriginal geometric designs, fall leaves, rustic Brazilian skylines, and, my favorite, Noah’s ark and the world’s animals gathering two by two.  Mom taught me to needlepoint when our family lived in Brazil—I was nine years old.  My first (and only) needlepoint stitched a red cat on a yellow background.  Two colors.  Nothing like the complicated color patterns of a pair of Mallard ducks on a pond, or a sunset over Salvador, or women carrying pots on their heads.  Mom needlepoints as she watches NCIS and PBS and Netflix, and as she waits for Dad to wake up from his night reading to tell her everything he has on his mind.  Three needlepoints lay finished on the dining room table, and I drove Mom to a rundown wood-paneled dry cleaners to have the needlepoints stretched straight and blocked, ready for framing.  “How do you think that young woman learned the skill of stretching and blocking needlepoint?” I asked Mom.  She had no idea, but was glad to have found her.  In two weeks, we’ll pick them up and deliver them to be framed.  I hope she never stops doing needlepoint.

Enjoy these other needlepoints by my mother.

                                                    

And three more finished, ready to be stretched, straightened, blocked, and framed.

           

Courage at Twilight: Christmas Orchestra

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To prepare for the musical program at our church’s Christmas services, Mom’s friend Tamara organized a church orchestra from neighborhood musicians.  Mom has played the violin since elementary school, and plays still.  She played in the Murray Symphony, a community orchestra, until age 80, when Covid-19 ended all rehearsals and performances for a year and a half.  The family loved supporting her at concerts, cheering and taking photographs.  At age 82, Mom has decided the rehearsal schedule, the walking, the sitting, and the ornery conductor are just too hard, and she resigned from the symphony.  But she is thrilled to be part of the church Christmas orchestra.  Tamara and her husband Mike pick her up for rehearsal every Sunday afternoon at 3:30.  “They are just so nice,” Mom reported.  Tamara delivers Mom the music she needs, and looks carefully after her.  Mike helps her walk to and from the car, and carries her violin.  I am so happy for Mom to be playing her violin again in an orchestra, and to exchange greetings and rub shoulders with people she loves.  And I am so grateful for kind people in the world who make all the difference, as Mike and Tamara are doing for my cute, sweet, 82-year-old musician mother.

(Photo features Mom in her red coat, at the last concert performance of her career, in December 2019, with Dad and admiring family and friends.)

Courage at Twilight: Saturday Morning Mystery Oatmeal

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While cold cereal is the work-week’s morning fare, I enjoy cooking breakfast on Saturday mornings. Nothing fancy or heavy—I usually turn to oatmeal. “I love it when you cook breakfast,” Mom reassured me. She normally eats dry Quaker granola with glasses of milk and mint tea on the side. But she loves my mystery oatmeal. Easily bored with the same old, I improvise, wondering what flavor combinations will set well in the oat stew. Classic apple-cinnamon oatmeal is Dad’s favorite. This morning I tried something new: lavender-banana. My goodness, it was delicious. If you want to try them, here are some simple instructions and tips.

Apple-Cinnamon Oatmeal

Ingredients (4 good servings)
4 cups water
2 cups milk (or 2 more cups water)
3 cups rolled oats (not quick oats—quick oats turn to mush while rolled oats remain soft but pleasantly and chewily textured)
salt to taste (I use ¾-1 tsp)
1-2 diced apples, any variety
1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions
Add diced apples to water-milk mixture, along with cinnamon and salt, and bring to rolling boil. Because of the milk, the liquid will quickly boil over, so watch it carefully. Allow the apples to soften in the boil for 3-5 minutes. Add oats and stir. Lower heat to low boil/simmer, and stir frequently for 5-10 or so minutes until the oats are soft and thicken to desired consistency. Sweeten to taste with sweetener of choice. Brown sugar and honey are both wonderful. Mom prefers white sugar. Dad employs Splenda. I use Stevia extract. A dollop of heavy cream adds a bit of luxury.

Lavender-Banana Oatmeal

Ingredients (4 good servings)
4 cups water
2 cups milk (or 2 more cups water)
3 cups rolled oats (not quick oats—quick oats turn to mush while rolled oats remain soft but pleasantly and chewily textured)
salt to taste (I use ¾-1 tsp)
1-2 ripe bananas
1 tsp lavender flowers, ground (I found these in our neighborhood Smith’s grocery store spice aisle)

Instructions
Add lavender and salt to the water-milk mixture, and bring to rolling boil. Remember, it boils over almost without warning, so watch carefully. Add oats and stir. Lower heat to low boil/simmer, and stir frequently for 5-10 or so minutes until the oats are soft and thicken to desired consistency. Add the sliced bananas only at the very end, when the oatmeal is done, and reduce heat. Adding the bananas late releases the wonderful flavor without turning them to mush. Sweeten to taste.

Option Tip: reduce oats by ½ cup and add ¼ cup cream of wheat for extra creamy thickness.

Courage at Twilight: Visit to the Dentist

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Mom and Dad drove themselves to the dentist office for their annual checkups and cleanings. They came home happy to report that they had no cavities or other problems.  Dad’s first visit to the dentist was at age 15, circa 1951, by which time several teeth were in bad shape.  His mother sent him to the dentist with a $5 bill, which the dentist took, along with four teeth.  “Going to the dentist was a luxury,” he explained, a luxury his single mother, emptying waste baskets at night in the Kearns Building downtown Salt Lake City, could not afford.  More than a decade later, when he had a job and dental insurance, “Doc” Nicholas made bridges to fill the gaps—implants weren’t a thing.  Mom took her first trip to the dentist at age seven, by which time she had several large cavities to be filled.  She remembers the agony of the dentist grinding for what seemed forever with a slow rotary tool, and no Novocain.  She had to just sit there, a prisoner in the chair, and suffer through it—what was the alternative?  Thereafter, Mom was taken to dear Uncle Harvey, a new dentist who always smiled and laughed and made you feel good about life.  Today, Mom and Dad came home cavity-free and in good spirits.  Mom reported how kind the hygienist staff were on this visit.  “Sometimes they just jab you, and it hurts, but my hygienist today was so nice and gentle.”  Next month it is my turn to see the dreaded dentist.  I wish “Doc” were still around.

 

(Image from Pinterest.  Used pursuant to the Fair Use doctrine.)