Books Read, Books Shared

Last week I said that I had donated a number of the books I have read in the past few years to our public library. Of course, I kept a few of my favorites. Below is a list of a few of the books our reading circle chose to read and discuss in the past year. I read others, because I enjoy mystery, poetry, and spiritual formation books,  but these are among my collection of memoir. I am thankful for books to read, and thankful that I am able to share them with others.

Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith  by Kathleen Norris

Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Founding Mothers, by Cokie Roberts

A Bushel's Worth, by Kayann Short

Not the Mother I Remember,  by Amber Starfire

My Life in France, by Julia Child

Dakota, A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris

In Order to Live, by Yeonmi Park

Reading Circle

For several years I have participated in an online reading circle through my membership in Story Circle, and international group for women writers. In this reading circle, we choose 12 books for the year ahead, and members volunteer for a book for which they would like to lead discussions. In this post and next week, I will focus on some of the books, all of which are women's memoir.  Last year, September's book led to meaningful thoughts and conversation. Written by Nessa Rapaport, House on the River: A Summer Journey, is a book I probably would not have picked to read from a library shelf.  But I liked the author's style of writing and found her poetic in many of her descriptions, poignant in her awareness of herself as a woman and a mother. I recently passed the book on to a young woman who expressed interest in reading about ways we model value, faith, and traditions to our children. I sent the following email during our discussions of the book, changed only for confidentiality of members to whom I refer.

Thanks to all who have commented on the reading this month. D, I particularly like your use of lines from the book which you intend to use for writing prompts.  That is often an enjoyable and productive way for me to continue my appreciation of a book I have finished. I read the book and have been too busy to comment further until now. I found it meaningful that I was finishing the book at Rosh Hoshanah, (Sept. 14-15) which gave extra meaning to her words for me. This past week on the 23rd Yom Kippur was celebrated.  I was once told by a Jewish friend that is the holiest of their celebration days, the day of atonement.   

Responding to the thoughtful questions:

1.  Did you identify with the author in any way?  Did she seem real?  Did you like her? 

As J said, "I identified with that desire to gather loved ones around and take a journey that was meaningful to all of them, celebrating their relationship knowing that it is ending sometime in the near future. "  

I have loved having my sons and their wives and our granddaughters gather around our dining table after fun together in the kitchen making the food we share. 2 of my adult sons and their families live within 15 minutes of us and go to church with us, so we used to have Sunday dinners together here almost every Sunday. Our middle son has lived 4 hours away in the same state for 9 years and although they are here less frequently, make it for family occasions and holidays. They are relocating soon to Reno, Nevada, and our gatherings with everyone here will be fewer. In addition, as families grow and change, and their schedules change, in addition to hospitalizations and health challenges for both my husband and me, our Sunday dinners have "gone away."  There was a time I would look around the table and say a prayer of thanks along with a realization that these changes would inevitably come.  

2.  Can you relate to the importance she places on her faith, or the not quite traditional and accepted ways she and her family practice it?

I liked the author's family ways of making the celebrations their own, and the ways in which the significance of their faith was being passed to generations.  I believe that one of my greatest commitments as well as a joy is the "telling" of our faith story as Christians to my children and grandchildren.

3.  So many of this year’s books referenced place in one way or another.  Do you have a magical childhood place that’s important in your memory?

I think of a number of special places that bring back sweet memories.  Tea cakes at my grandmother's table, the one that is now in my own dining room. Picking blackberries with my grandmother. Playing under our raised back porch with my little sister, using huge hydrangea leaves and blossoms from the bushes by the porch for tea parties and dressup.  Riding with my Daddy in his pickup or on his tractor.  Helping Mother in the kitchen to make a chocolate cake and licking the bowl.  I see that these are all as much people centric as place centric. I still find the relationships and people more important than the "where" in my life. Maybe that is because between 17 and my early 50's I moved so often?

4.  How important is your experience with extended family in your life?  Lots of fun get-togethers? Rarely see them?  Wish you had more family ties or less? 

My family of origin was small, only my sister and me. But we lived only a few miles from both of sets of grandparents and a number of aunts and uncles. I believe extended family has always been important, and that hospitality for helping this to happen is a gift.

5. Please share any special take-aways from this book, and if you liked it or not.

I loved the book, and admired the range of vocabulary!  Words like hegemony, architectonic, inchoate, palimpsest are not ones I regularly use! 

My own list of lines to remember and write from are:

"I am trying to accept that henceforth all joy will be dappled...yet I am pristinely happy."

"fascinated by the way life can circle upon itself...reacquainting (among others) with the place that symbolizes the possibility that we imperfect creatures can find true repose."

among the duties of parenthood she relishes " the cultivation of memory."

"This journey - an experiment in ignoring the taunt of the workday's receding finish line."

her mother's  "no vacation from nutrition"

On page 51 there is a descriptive narrative (more significant in the light of the fact that the Jewish calendar is lunar, so it begins at dusk) that reads like poetry. Much of her writing felt like that for me.

"The trees on the shoreline facing me are black, with only a tincture of green remaining. The sky is bleached of color, pale blue above my head but fading imperceptibly to white over woods. The lake is not transparent but a moire of black, in which the trees are reflected, long and dusky in the rippled water."

"I do not taste my disappointment or anticipate sorrow. Instead, I taste these words: peace, wonder, light, calm, peace."

"the trip is a meditation, not a narrative."

"not matter how much you do, you never think it is enough."

I am grateful for the nudge to read this book. I am grateful for the ways in which reading a book can be a meaningful experience for me.  And I am grateful for my reading circle sisters, who have become friends although I have only met a few of them.  Because of this circle, I acquired several shelves of women's memoir volumes.  Due to our recent move and the necessity to reduce the size of our library by more than half, I recently donated a large box of these books to our public library system in Fort Bend County, hoping to share this experience with many more.

In the Kitchen with Nora

One of the things I have enjoyed most about being a grandmother is being in the kitchen (my happy place) and welcoming my granddaughters to help. Of course, baking cookies is easy to get help with. Nora is 2 years old, but she is a good helper. This is not limited to tasting the batter, licking the spoon or testing the finished product!  Even she knows that the first step to cooking is to wash your hands. Then we fill the mixing bowl with ingredients from the recipe and 1 step at a time, get the cookie dough ready to spoon onto baking sheets. I learned a long time ago that the secret to enjoying this whole process is having most things out, measured, and ready to add. As she gets older, she can read from the recipe herself and work out the math for measuring ingredients. Working in the kitchen together is one of the best ways I know for beginners to practice not only cooking, but also reading, math, and cleanup skills!

Last week we made chocolate chip cookies from the recipe on the chocolate chip bag, and she mastered mixing butter and sugar, adding egg and vanilla, then the dry ingredients and finally, the chocolate chips (minus a few that went into her mouth!)

She wore herself out, because after 2 hot cookies and a little glass of milk, she crawled on the couch and fell asleep. The main problem with baking cookies is that they disappear so fast!

Joe's Birthday Celebration #79

This year we celebrated Joe's birthday for more than a week!  Our trip to San Francisco, the stay at Cavallo Point (his army base in the early 60's, then called Fort Baker), our visit with Jeremy and his family in Reno, and a family dinner back at home in Texas. I think he felt well celebrated!

While we were in Reno, Jeremy, Michala, Maddie, and Jordann arranged for us to have a dinner cruise on Lake Tahoe. The scenery was breathtaking, the food was excellent, and we enjoyed most of all sharing the special time with our Nevada family who now live so far away that we do not get to see them as much. They liked showing us their new home and surroundings, and we loved being with them and knowing what home looks like to them.  I even learned to say Nevada correctly. Our granddaughters there are growing into beautiful young women.

Joe's birthday cruise dinner.

                                                      Making mousse for Papa's birthday

Maddie

Jordann

Fort Baker 2016

We are back at home following two weeks of travel. The main reason for our trip was a visit with our son Jeremy and his family in Reno, NV. But we began and ended this trip with travel to and from the San Francisco, CA area, driving to Reno and back. This gave us non-stop air travel, but also a chance to do something Joe has wanted to do for some time:  revisit Fort Baker, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito,  the Army base where he was stationed in 1960 through 1962. 

 Originally inhabited by the coastal Miwok tribes, Horseshoe Cove became home to Fort Baker long before there was a Golden Gate Bridge. In 1866, the U.S. Army acquired the site for a military base to fortify the north side of the Golden Gate. The 24 buildings around the 10-acre parade ground at Fort Baker took shape between 1901 and 1915. The Army post remained active through World War II.

 In 1973 Fort Baker was listed as a Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places. When the Golden Gate National Parks were established in 1972, Fort Baker was designated for transfer to the National Park Service when no longer needed by the military. In 2002 Fort Baker transferred officially from post to park, when the base was closed to military use except for a small Coast Guard presence. In July 2008, this significant historic area opened as a unique resort, named Cavallo Point Lodge. 

Cavallo Point is the first bay area national park lodge.There are over 20 renovated army buildings nestled around a large grass parade ground. None of the restored buildings give any indication they are now part of an extraordinary ecologically sensitive enclave that includes remarkable lodging, a Michelin-star restaurant, and a cooking school.

The ‘post-to-park’ transformation displays adaptive, creative reuse of this 40-acre National Landmark District and has a state-of-the-art conference center.  The project also included restoration of endangered habitat and the regeneration of 27 acres of public open space

 Linked pathways, dining terraces, fire pits and moveable chairs create spaces for both gathering and quiet times.The removal of invasive trees has opened views to the Bridge and Bay which have not been available for 100 years.  A tennis court was re-purposed as event space; a rectangular lawn panel framed by a broad, gravel ‘fault’ zone reveals its former use.  The most dramatic transformation was the restoration of the coastal scrub habitat with genetic natives—58,000 plants propagated from seed harvested on the Cavallo Point site.  Guest quarters are now comfortable as well as educational set in a rich tapestry of landscape.

Since our daughter in law and granddaughters joined us there for our one night stay, Joe had the blessing of telling them stories about Fort Baker, Cronkhite beach, and other places that were so familiar to him, along with history.  That is the best way to learn!

  

When Joe stayed in the barracks as an enlisted man at Fort Baker, he did not dream that one day he would bring family back there and stay in the historic quarters which were once officers' housing!  The old houses were wonderful, our rooms lovely, and Cavallo Point celebrated his earlier time there as well as his 79th birthday.  I am grateful for him and for our experiences at this place.

                                Golden Gate Bridge with its typical shroud of fog.  July 20, 2016

Goodbye, Fort Baker!  

Love's Lookout

Love's Lookout, Jacksonville, TexasJoe and I grew up in the same small East Texas town.  Jacksonville is located in Cherokee County surrounded by rolling hills and pine trees. The scenic overlook in the photograph (not mine, one I found online) is called Love's Lookout. The scenic bluff was used for the location of a large ampitheatre formed from  red rock, a WPA project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era Works Progress Administration came to the hill in the 1930s and, using red rock mined from Cherokee County, built a park, picnic grounds and an amphitheater.

The ampitheatre was named to honor Wesley Love who in 1904 bought much of the surrounding area and planted a 600-acre peach farm. After Love's death in 1925, his wife donated 22 acres to the state for a state park. The state, however, failed to create the park and in 1934 the City of Jacksonville purchased an additional 20 acres and developed the two tracts as a city park. That's when the Works Progress Administration began its project.

In the Spring, dogwoods and other spring flowers are in bloom, making the setting even more beautiful. When I was a child, we often drove on the highway between Jacksonville and Tyler because both sets of my grandparents lived in Bullard, about halfway between those towns. Typically, scenes that are so familiar and frequently seen tend to be taken for granted.  Not until you are far away do you remember those sights and realize just how lovely they were.

There is yet another fond connection for our family with this place and its name. In 1982, we bought the home built by John Wesley Love and lived there long enough to research and write its history, receiving a designation for the significance of the home with a State Historical marker. By that time all acreage but the 3 acres where the house was located had been sold (or donated, as the land for Love's lookout is located), but the oaks and magnolias and pines that were there were  lovely reminders. When I did the research for the historical commission I learned that there were earlier connections between our family and the Loves.  My father and uncle once worked in John Wesley Love's peach orchards picking peaches.  Joe's father had done work inside the home as a painter.

When we do go back to Jacksonville, our itinerary usually includes a trip to the Bullard cemetery where so many of my ancestors were laid to rest. The highway is bigger and better, but the sides of the road are still lined with red dirt and pine trees.  There are still remnants of the watermelon colored crepe myrtles which were always full of summertime blooms.  And Love's Lookout still beckons us to stop and look across  a green valley.

Porch Time

When we have moved into various houses over the years, I always like finding spots that become favorites, places in or near our home that I return to frequently for quiet times or just because it is a joy to be there. In our new house, one of those places is our back porch, a wide tiled area with a cedar roof and ceiling fans that extends almost the width of the house. After we spent our first night here, I went out to this porch early the next morning in time to watch the sunrise, which has become a habit.
There are rocking chairs and places to perch my coffee cup. The view is an entirely different one from our previous back porch, which led onto a wooded back garden with our herb beds, rose arbor, and fish pond.  This house sits near the edge of a small lake, fenced only by open wrought iron, and the few trees only break the skyline slightly. Since the back of the house faces north, I have an expansive view of sunrises and sunsets, both reflected over the water, changing daily and by the hour. I never tire of being there, but our Texas heat does drive me inside. All our gardening is done right now in our front flower beds, or in containers, but soon we will add some raised beds for a kitchen and herb garden and a few other green growing things like roses to clamber on the fence. I look forward to welcoming new garden friends. But even more, I look forward to sharing our porch with others.  Already, family gathers and we hope that soon friends and new neighbors will join us as well. Porches have a history of being good gathering places, and this one is just waiting for others to discover it as a favorite spot!