Happy Birthday Joe!

Planning birthday celebrations has always been fun at our house. From the first year of our marriage, Joe has loved to have me bake an unusual cake called "Cheap Cream Cake" for his birthday cake. When our sons were little, we had such good times thinking how each one would be a special occasion for the birthday boy!  Jeremy had a frog birthday when he was four complete with a frog cake baked in a bowl and turned upside down with green frosting and a homemade pin the fly on the frog's tongue instead of a tail on the donkey.  Sean had a birthday scavenger hunt one year, Ben's 6th birthday was a bicycle parade around the block.  We have had parties where everyone came dressed in stripes, bake your own cake parties with paper chef hats, and those where we made our own banana splits or ice cream sundaes or pizzas.  The year Joe turned 40, the boys and I made him a huge poster with 40 things we wished for him for his birthday and gave him a Baskin Robbins cake shaped like a train with frosting that said "Keep on Chugging, Honey, You're Not over the Hill yet!"
I have enjoyed asking family members each year "What would you like for your birthday dinner?"  That has produced Italian meals more than once, Indonesian and Mexican food often.  We have had a murder mystery game dinner, a luau, and cookouts. 

So I was not surprised recently when Joe said "I have decided what I want to do for my birthday!"  "A dinner," he said -with our family.  Here.  (at home) And I want violin music!"  So of course, that is exactly what we had this past weekend. For Joe's 75th birthday he finally did not have "Cheap Cream Cake."  He had lasagne and all the trimmings, tiny cupcakes, family, and unspeakably beautiful violin music.  Aija Isaacs, who teaches music to several family members, brought her family and violin and gave us an enchanted evening. 

My birthday present to Joe is in the photo below, a collage of a great many of the tickets to events, musicals, and theatre  we have enjoyed through our nearly 50 years together.  I can say without hesitation that his birthday evening of violin music was the best of all by the expression on his face.  Many thanks to Aija, to our children for all their help with the evening, and to our friend Tommy Gay Dawson for her lasagne!

Summering

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russel Baker

We had two weeks of very unusual weather for July - two weeks of rain every day, heavy rain on a number of days and darkly overcast skies with thunderheads even on the dry days!  This was not associated with a tropical storm or hurricane and was so very much in contrast with last summer, one all remember as a brutal drought.  Many areas north and east of the Houston area received more than 14 inches of rain and experienced flooding.  We were thankful for our 6 to 7 inches and most of all, for the drop in temperatures.  This morning, although there is still a chance of some showers this afternoon, the sun is up early and burning brightly. Hot!  As I was clipping blooms from our leggy basil plants and cutting some of its bounty to hang up and dry,  I was thinking how herbs hate to have wet feet and could almost see soggy soil baking.  It is going to be a true to Texas summer day!

There are many reasons on the Texas Gulf Coast to experience the power of summer.  Flooding rains, blistering heat, the challenges of helping animals and plants survive, getting into an oven everytime I need to drive the truck, fire ants, mosquitoes, electric and water bills, sunglasses sliding down my nose along with perspiration - these are among the ways we spend our summertime.

At the same time, we experience the refreshment of cooling showers, sunshine on our shoulders, singing cicadadas, ripening figs and berries , the flourishing of fragrant herbs, air conditioning, iced tea, cold watermelon,  and a healthy dose of Vitamin D!   "summertime, and the living is easy....fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high!"  Papa doesn't have to be rich, and Mama may not be good lookin', but "hush, little baby, don't you cry!"

Touch- Me- Not

We planted Impatiens Balsaminas this week!  One of our favorite local garden centers grew a few to see what interest their customers might have and were almost sold out when we went to get ours.  For years now, this little known member of the same family as the lavender and coral shade loving impatiens has gone unnoticed. It was popular in Victorian times and a favorite of Thomas Jefferson. I think it is one of those lovely, old fashioned flowers that just fell out of favor.  Mother always grew them in our front flower beds by the screened front porch.  Grandma grew them by the back door.  One of my earliest gardening delights was touching the touch- me- nots!  You see, when their seed pods are "ready", the seeds jump right out - surely producing little girl giggles!  They are heat resistant, don't require nearly as much water as other impatiens, and grow vigorously up to 3 feet high. Best of all, because of their robust reseeding, you usually only have to plant them once, they will come back and come back and come back!

Called by other names, such as Jumping Betty, Lady Slipper, and Rose Balsam, these plants also have a history of medicinal use,  having the reputation of a remedy for snake bite poison ivy rash among others.

I have had fun this week remembering long ago flower beds and being glad for ancestors who loved tending flowers.
I can't wait to touch the first seed pod by my back porch and wait for the resulsts next Spring!

A Fairy Garden

My granddaughters and I have been creating small fairy gardens in several places in our garden. Every garden needs a little whimsy!  Here, a kitty sits ready to serve a tiny tea in a pot of English Thyme!

Letters

When was the last time you got a letter? To be honest, I can't remember - and that makes me sad.  I sort the mailbox harvest, in order of preference:  hand addressed envelopes, bills and other items with first class postage, then the junk mail which goes promptly into the recycle container in my kitchen.  I love getting holiday cards, announcements and invitations, and thoughtfully penned notes saying thank you or be well.  But it has been a very long time since a long newsy letter arrived except those of annual Christmas Letter variety.  I miss getting letters. I miss writing them.

I exchange email correspondence and Facebook messages.  I always have my cell phone with me.  I stay connected with my family in those ways although I have stopped short of texting and tweeting.  I savor engagement in these ways but I can't help but remember the difference in sitting down to write a letter and getting to settled to enjoy reading one.  Our electronic communications are immediate, instant gratification but briefer, to the point, with less feeling apparent.  Somehow posting a smiley face says so much less than a few sentences about feeling happy.

I have used the same expression most do in referring to mailbox content as "snail mail" - of course it is slower!  Just like many others, I now do my banking and much of my shopping online.  I love the internet tools available for researching, writing, and communication.  I am not suggesting we go back, only that we consider what may be lost in the progress and that we become more intentional in retrieving engagement and intimacy in our communications.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I choose to post weekly on my three blogs.

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.   ~ Phyllis Theroux

P. S.  The photograph above is a letter I wrote to my parents in 1963 while I was planning my wedding (December 28, 1963).  I found it recently when I was going through one of the many boxes belonging to her I have sorted and filed since her death in 2006.  I wonder if there will be any letters for my granddaughters to read in 50 years.  Somehow, printed emails don't seem to be keepers. Who knows?  They may keep digital scrapbooks which have a file for their children's letters.  I just hope the messages of the heart will be in them.

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Being Thankful for Chores

A maid service which advertises with bulk mail in our town reprimands "Life is too short to clean your own house."  The number of meals which families eat out, prepared and cleaned up by someone else,  is an astronomical part of family budgets.  I even saw a newsclip last week touting the introduction of a Swedish invention which is a bed that makes itself!  It seems that we spend an inordinate amount of energy and resources to get someone else to do our homework!Now approaching 72, and learning to accept more help these days, I appreciate occasional assistance with cleaning and gardening. But I prefer doing most of it myself.

I grew up having chores - housekeeping and kitchen chores I was allowed to be responsible for. At times I helped when Daddy fed the cows or drug a trailer behind a tractor to pick watermelons.  I don’t remember this as a negative, just something that was done because I was told to, most of the time feeling good about it. I may have not always begged to dust or take care of my little sister, but I loved helping in the kitchen. Cleaning up afterward was just part of the process. The summer  I was twelve, I helped behind the counter of the small cafe my parents owned. I had part time jobs as a teenager. That was work, not a chore, right?  When I graduated high school at seventeen, entered college, and became solely responsible for getting myself up and off to 7 a.m. classes and to my on campus job, I was given a book with a quotation by Charles Kingsley which still comes to mind when I hear anyone bemoaning “having” to do something.

 “Thank God–every morning when you get up–that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you a hundred virtues which the idle never know.”

I wouldn’t have labeled it so at the time, but I was learning the value of discipline. I also learned that something I accomplish has a great deal of meaning that involves something I am. Beginning all those years ago, I began to understand how I could find deeper meaning in my daily tasks required to care for my home and family.   I found great creative energy in gardening, planning and cooking meals, finding ways to make our home beautiful with art and music, encouraging our boys with good books, and offering hospitality to our friends and family. But the weeding, cleaning, mopping, potscrubbing, endless laundry (3 boys certainly makes for lots of washing and ironing) and keeping up with all the practices and games they were involved in could have easily overwhelmed me except for my belief that what I was doing was more than a job that would likely be necessary to repeat soon.

 I could pray for the man who would wear the shirt I was ironing. I could be intent on loving the little boy from whose jean pocket I had just fished out a frog. I could focus on blessing the messes as well as taking pride in the delicious meals. For many years, I have kept a small framed poem. It has peeped from beneath the stacks of paperwork on my desk, perched by the detergent in the utility room, and for a long time now has rested on the side of my kitchen sink.

Teach me, my God and King

In all things Thee to see

And what I do in anything,

To  do it as for Thee.

   ~ George Herbert

 Kathleen Norris, in her little book, The Quotidian Mysteries, discusses this process of the deeper meaning in our chores.

“…all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import, and their significance for Christian theology, the way they come together in the fabric of faith, is not often appreciated.”

We may do well to consider any differences with which we approach work (in the sense of a job for which we are paid) and chores, the necessary tasks which order our daily lives and the life of our family. 

Sign of Home

For many years we traveled a great deal, particularly during the years we lived in Indonesia.  The past 7 years we have traveled very little due to Joe's many hospitalizations and surgeries.  Occasionally I am asked if I miss traveling.  My answer can be surprising.  Other than wanting to spend more time with family members who don't live near us, I honestly do not miss "being away."   I love being at home.  I may go to Tuscany and back in an afternoon by reading Frances Mayes' lovely books.  I feel like I have been to the south of France or back to the island of Bali by preparing an Indonesian or French meal, but I am in my own garden by the time we have eaten! 

In various places in our home, there are little reminders of this feeling for me, as well as the hospitality I want to extend to our guests.  One of my favorites is this little placard which I have hanging under a large picture which is a print of work done by artist  David Arms.  This photo doesn't allow a good look, but above the birds and nest there is a line (dictionary style) defining home as a place of refuge and rest, highlighted with a couple of feathers.

         
                     Yes, home is a place of comfort, refuge, and rest for me.  Come for a visit.  Welcome home!