All the Easter Dresses

One of the many things I love about this time leading up to Easter is the re-emergence of color as seeds sprout and flowers return to bloom.  When I was growing up in East Texas, the dark wintertime evergreen woods began to dot with dogwood and redbud trees. Daffodils and narcissus and azaleas drifted across front yards. And little girls and their mothers planned Easter dresses!  I am not sure the above photo was the Easter dress the year I was three, but it might have been.  And it would most certainly have been made by my mother on her Singer sewing machine although I suspect the crocheted lace on that collar would have been crocheted by my grandmother.

Stitches in Time

at Christmastime I hang a wreath, braided circle of  cloth

 made almost half a century ago from scraps found in my fabric stash

one strand of the braid is green velvet

bits left from creating a dress

with beaded cummerbund that circled my then tiny waist

a second strand cut from scraps of snow white brocaded cotton

my high school graduation dress

woven  with the green and white is red corduroy,

my first maternity dress

there would have been nothing left to make the wreath if not for first

 you,

the sewing

and the clothes.

I remember sundresses, circle skirts with petticoats, pleated skirts,

tucked blouses, mandarin jackets, peter pan collars,

puffed sleeves, vests, and weskits

a squaw dress and a poodle skirt

all made after I helped pick a pattern

Simplicity, McCall's, Vogue

you even collected last year's pattern books

from fabric shops where we bought

yards of gingham, calico, organdy, dotted swiss,

eyelet, dimity, poplin, corduroy, worsted and flannel

I remember plaids, checks, polka dots and stripes

pin-wale, herringbone, and tweed

one of a kind made just for me

a red checked dress for a play

always a new dress for first day of school

pink eyelet with ruffles for my piano recital

black suit with red velvet bow for my ride

 in the parade as a duchess

school dresses and play clothes

Sunday clothes, Easter outfits, nightgowns

I remember prom dresses -

clouds of billowing scarlet chiffon,

net the color of hyacinths, shiny satin

pale pink organza, and creamy peau de soie

bolts of rustling taffeta and black velvet

sacks of heavy ribbon and lace

measured with a yardstick on a cutting table

in a shop that was more fun than a candy store

by then I could sketch my dress and it happened!

I remember hours you spent preparing cloth, spreading it

with tissue patterns, cutting with pinking shears

the love that bent you over the humming Singer

with its one tiny bright light

when you said “let's try this on” and tucked

at my waist or lengthened a hem

I don't remember smiling and saying “thank you”

I hope that I did

 I did learn to sew

 I remember when I designed and made my wedding dress

you were proud to help me sew on pearls

I remember writing letters to tell you how my 3 little boys

played when I tried to sew

one standing behind me with his arms

around my neck

And when my granddaughter wanted a princess gown

we picked out a pattern and she helped me cut and sew

I remembered how you made me feel like a princess.

Sad only because you could no longer remember any of it.

Mary Ann Teal Parker  March 23, 2013

Written for my mother, Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal

who suffered from Alzheimer's the last years of her life,

 and died in 2006, one month short of her 93^rd birthday

Tea, Tree, and a Tooth

Maddie celebrated her seventh birthday at our house last Saturday with a tea party, complete with butter cookies and lemon tea served in tiny china tea cups that were mine when I was seven!  She knows how to dress up in a pink swirly dress and drink from dainty cups but she spent more time climbing trees and helping in the garden than sipping tea while she was here.

 Look at her smile in the top two photos.  Then notice what is missing in the next picture...
She pulled her own front tooth to finish a big day of celebrating!

The evening she and her mom and sister left to go home, Maddie released some ladybugs in the garden. The ladybugs are still hanging around on the roses and mint.  Maybe they miss her.  I do!

Good Times

We spent the night at Maddie and Jordann's house last week, and they modeled their new tops for me.  Maddie will celebrate her 7th birthday next week while they are here for Spring Break.  We have a list of things we want to do that includes planning a birthday Tea Party, having fashion shows from the dressup box, pressing flowers, doing leaf rubbings, making cookie press cookies, having a picnic in our Secret Place,  going ice skating, picking strawberries, planting new herbs in the garden, going to the American Girl Doll Store, and having lots of play time with cousin Skye. I can't wait!

I'm Here!!

Each year, one of my favorite harbingers of Spring is the sudden appearance of Redbud blooms on the gray scraggly branches of what has been an almost unnoticed small tree in someone's backyard or the woods along the road.  In the Piney Woods of East Texas where my husband and I spent our growing up years, the first blooms seemed to signal to dozens of other early blooming trees that it was Spring again. The woods lining the highway between Jacksonville, Texas and my grandparent's smaller town of Bullard seemed to come alive in a patchwork of wild plum, dogwood, and various shades of purple from the Redbud trees. We see fewer here south of Houston, but the fact that they bloom even earlier in the slightly balmier climate makes them stand out even more.  The first blooms bring my biggest smile.  I like being reminded of the joy they brought me as a child.  And they bring fond memories of my mother and daddy and grandparents who first taught me to watch for them.

The Redbuds are blooming.  Easter is on the way.

Trio

This trio of scissors is not a matched set. They are all pinking shears, those zig zag edging tools which at one time were in the sewing basket of every serious seamstress because using them helped keep the edges of seams from raveling and fraying.  The pair on the left belonged to my Mother, those on the right were my grandmother's.  My own pinking shears are the ones in the middle.  Now they all belong to me, and I haven't used any of them in years.  But recently, I took them to be sharpened.  I was not surprised when the scissor man told me Grandma Terrell's pinking shears could no longer be sharpened enough to make a difference in the way they cut.  He was able to sharpen the other scissors, however, so they will be ready if and when I decide to choose fabric and pattern, lay out the tissue pieces, and cut the garment sections before stitching seams.

It is strange to think that an art I once practiced regularly has become only occasional for me.  In fact, the only times I plug in my electric sewing machine are when I want to mend or alter something, or stitch up a doll's dress for my granddaughters.  I only know of  one or two women who still make their own clothes.
Because fabric and sewing accessories are expensive, off the rack clothing is often less expensive and less time consuming.  But I miss honing that skill.  My 10 year old granddaughter has asked me to teach her to sew. I think I had better practice before I do.  The pinking shears are sharpened and ready!

Marriage in a Model T, a Love Story

   

My parents were  married on December 27, 1931, sitting in the front seat of Daddy's

 Model  T! My mother said their first kiss involved the car, too. She described Daddy standing there in his overalls, getting ready to light a cigarette.  When he started to strike a match on the car's windshield, Mother told him he could not strike a match on glass. He bet her a kiss that he could, and he won!.He wanted to wait until she was 18 to ask for her hand in marriage. Three days after Christmas in 1931, they decided while eating Sunday dinner after church to ring up their best friends (Gertrude and Herod Bickerstaff) who were at Gertrude's family's  home feeding the preacher his Sunday dinner.  They told them they were  coming over and would like Brother Shuttlesworth to marry them.   

Gertrude and Herod had tied the knot a couple of weeks before, with  Mother and Daddy (Opal and Howard) standing up with them. So when they  heard the Model T coming on the red dirt road, the preacher and the  friends headed out to the car and started the ceremony before Opal and  Howard could even get outof the front seat!  Maybe Preacher Shuttlesworth couldn't wait  to get back to his fried chicken!

In 1927, after selling over 15 million Ford Model T's, the Henry Ford Motor Company replaced the Model T with the Model A. In 1928, the song, "Henry's Made a Lady Out of Lizzie" was about the new Model A. Its lyrics make the Model A into a female, and make much of the car's attractiveness: "Have you seen her, ain't she great? she's something you'll appreciate."  The song made fun of the rough ride of the Model T, and the bruises you'd get from driving one, then went on to favorably compare the Model A's features to the old Ford standard. The photograph below is of the piece of sheet music owned by Mother that became mine, so in 1931, others were already singing the praise of a newer kind of Ford.   But Opal and Howard never talked about the old car or the rough ride.  After all, that car was their wedding chapel.

                                                           

The Journal Keeper

When I read a book which I know from the beginning I will read again, I like to encourage others to read it, too. I have chosen not to advertize or monetize my blogs, so this is not a pitch to go out and buy The Journal Keeper, but it is so worth reading.  I think your public library will have a copy.  I know that I identify strongly with Theroux because I value journaling, and have done so for many years.  I admire her journey of faith and smile knowingly at her adventures with her aging mother, remembering my own and our long farewell with Alzheimer's. Of course, there are many elements in her life far different from mine, but I really do think Phyllis Theroux and I could sit down with a cup of tea and pick right back up even though we have never had the beginning of the conversation.

New Orleans

Street cars. St. Louis Cathedral. Jackson Square.Canal Street. Lacy wrought iron gates. Beignets.  Coffee with Chicory. Boiled Shrimp.

Before you decide this will be another blast of Superbowl hype, let me correct your impression by adding another item to the list - Lizardi Street, where my parents and I lived after moving from Texas around 1942 for Daddy to work in the shipyards during World War II.  Located just north of the Mississippi in what is now the Lower Ninth Ward, the tiny house was owned by Mrs. Castaine, who rented part of it as an apartment for us. Two years old at the time, I have memory only of what I was told about the way we lived there.

Daddy worked the night shift at the shipyards.  Mother took care of me and cooked the shirmp he bought from shrimp wagons bringing in fresh harvest on his way home - his supper, my breakfast!  Then she dressed me in a pretty dress or striped overalls and took me out to play or walk, anything to keep the little rooms quiet enough for Daddy to sleep before heading off for another night shift.

 My Texas grandparents missed me and wrote long letters telling my mother so.  Phone calls were a luxury and limited to brief exchanges only when necessary.  Once for  a birthday present they sent me new house slippers, filled with orange slices. Rarely, we made the return trip to East Texas, always a glad reunion.

Years later, I would visit New Orleans on business trips and enjoy wonderful meals at Antoines, Glatoire's, and Commanders' Palace. I would walk down Bourbon Street and explore antique shops in the French Quarter.  I would photograph wrought iron  balconies and gates, and once again ride the St. Charles street car.  We would stop for beignets, coffee, and shrimp po-boys.  I would fall in love with he foods and learn to cook them.  My mother never wanted to return to New Orleans after they left.

Katrina changed the city forever.  I am glad to see the rebuilding and restoration of neighborhoods and many of the city's treasures although I am unable to discover whether Lizardi street has recovered much.  I am glad for the attention New Orleans is receiving from being chosen for the location for Super Bowl 2013.  I won't be watching the game, but I have enjoyed my view of the city.

And I still love shrimp, any time of the day.

                    Dressed in a grass skirt to model the shell jewelry and rattan bag brought back as a gift for me                                          from my Uncle Travis, who served in the Navy in the Pacific Theatre during WWII.

Playing Dolls

I went with my daughter in law and granddaughter this week to a newly opened store in Houston, the American Girls doll store. Skye's doll, Molly,  went along because she was going to get her hair done - the doll, not the girl!  The store was packed with little girls carrying a variety of American Girl dolls.  It was a beehive of  girls, complete with shrieks and giggles.  We watched as the doll was strapped into a miniature salon chair and covered with a shampoo cape.  A stylist (one of several)  spritzed and brushed out all the tangles that several years of play had created, then braided Molly's hair and tied on new ribbons.  I was proud of Skye.  The huge store is filled with tantalizing dolls and all their pretty outfits and accessories, everything from teepees to canopy beds and garden tea sets.  So many things to ooh and ah over.  Skye's mom and I did our share of admiring.  But Skye stuck with the budget and left with only the new hairdo for Molly. It was tempting, and maybe someday we will go back.  But there is a lesson here for many of us much older than 10 years:  delayed gratificaton, sticking to a plan, and enjoying what we can afford without complaining.  Good for you, Skye!  

Celebrating Beginnings

                                                             Happy Birthday, Sean!

Two weeks ago, those in our family who live in this part of Texas gathered to enjoy the hospitality of our  son, Sean, his wife, Teion, and their daughters Lauren and Skye.  We enjoyed the traditional New Year's Black Eye Peas and Cabbage (with a twist of Indian seasoning) as we welcomed the beginning of another year and thanked God for the blessings we share as a family.  Forty-five years ago, Joe and I celebrated the beginning of 1968 in San Antonio as we waited for Sean's birth.  The morning of January 13, 1968 was blustery and cold as I struggled into a coat I had made for myself that no longer would meet in the front to button!  Our lives changed forever with his birth, and we celebrated it with joy.  There is even deeper joy as we celebrate his life after these years shared.  Each year, New Year's thoughts and plans will always include our pride and gratitude for him.  

In recent years, I have seldom put away our Christmas decorations before Epiphany, which has now come and gone.  I even leave a couple of little trees up and add red tissue paper hearts so they become Valentine trees.  This year, I was late getting to the rest of "all things Christmasy".  As I stripped the big tree in our family room, I held each dear old ornament for a second and savored the stories they tell. My camera helped.  We don't limit the tree adorning to things we have bought for that purpose; these items hanging near each other here are a good example.  The glass ball in the center hung on our family tree when I was growing up, so it has graced decades of trees.  Many of those trees stood at the window of the small living room at 1128 Sunset Ave. in Jacksonville, Texas where my parents moved in 1944, and was still in use for many years after I grew up and left home to start my own family.  Daddy died in 1982, shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary.  Mother eventually stopped putting up a big tree and passed some of the tree decorations on to me, so they have traveled far and outlasted any number of trees! This ball and its peers hold dear memories of my childhood and my parents, but it also speaks endurance to me!

On the left is a small torn piece of paper with a tiny handmade Christmas tree.  It arrived one year as a card from dear friends.  I love it perched on a branch as it reminds me of friendship and how much it means to make something for a friend.

On the right, the small cross-stitched banner is my own handwork.  I love the little carolers.  I love more their song.  So, as I go back and forth to the garage with my boxes packed with Christmas heirlooms, they leave behind their message.  Joy to the World, the Lord has come!

Imagine

Celebrating our anniversary last week and heading into both our 50th year of marriage as well as the year 2013 has meant spending time in reflection and gratitude, savoring memories and looking forward to making more. Joe is the love of my life, my partner, and my forever friend.  Our sons are my pride and joy; my granddaughters fill my life with delight and laughter, more than I could have ever imagined.  That is why I love this image of our oldest son, Sean, and his daughter, Skye.  They are standing in our kitchen, surrounded by my pot rack,  the little altar at my kitchen window where I worship even while washing dishes, and that word, "Imagine" on the cabinet top. Just to the left is a smaller phrase, harder to see, but very big in importance.  On it are the words "Celebrate Family,  Friends, Tradition.  Here in one small photo - what a wonderful life!
 

Happy Anniversary

                                                                   December 28, 1963

At 7:00 this evening, Joe and I will be enjoying an anniversary dinner at Mia Bella, an Italian trattoria, Texas style. Forty-nine years ago at 7:00 in the evening, the organ chimed seven times, I put one hand in my muff, with the other took my father's trembling arm, and walked toward Joe at the altar of the church in Jacksonville, Texas where both our families worshiped while we were growing up. Our meal that evening was a plate of waffles where we stopped the little blue Karman Ghia on our drive back toward Oklahoma City.  When I bent my head to look at the menu, rice fell all over the table.

We decided in October to get married in December during my Christmas break from my senior year in Oklahoma Baptist University. I was in the clinical portion of my studies (which took place at that time at John Wesley Methodist Hospital in Oklahoma City).  In the weeks between our decision to move our wedding date and that week after Christmas, we made a couple of trips to East Texas, picked out china and silver and linens, ordered our wedding rings,  I made my wedding gown, took finals, and planned the wedding long distance and low budget.  With less than thirty dollars for fabric and supplies, I made the dress from creamy peau de soie, appliqued lace and pearls, and sewed on all those tiny covered buttons.  My veil hung from small pillbox hat (did you know an oatmeal box is just the right size to cut down and cover for a tiny hat like that?)  and my only flowers were pinned to the muff I made from the leftover fabric.

  Joe was handsome and happy in his dark grey suit and butonierre.  My sister and best friends wore cranberry faille coat dresses with white organza collars and carried candles.  Joe's brothers and best man dressed up in their suits, too.  Our only decoration was a bank of magnolia leaves, leftover from a wedding the night before!  A friend of Mother's made our wedding cake which I decorated by sugaring little Christmas bells the night before. The wedding rings didn't arrive, so we borrowed rings from Arnold (Joe's brother,  and his wife Judy.  I honestly do not remember feeling anxious or stressed.

And it was beautiful.  Beginnings are like that.  The start of our fiftieth year is another new beginning. Beautiful.

Carol of the Birds

I am strangely attracted to a Christmas carol rarely sung -

 treasure of music, words with sweet mystery,

 quiet, wondering melody

Questioning feathered twitters.

“Whence comes this rush of wings afar,

Following straight the Noel star?

Birds from the woods in wondrous flight,

Bethlehem seek this Holy Night.

Tell us, ye birds, why come ye here,

Into this stable, poor and drear?

Hastening we seek the newborn King

And all our sweetest music bring.”

Stirring some ancient warmth within me

I play the notes and sing each verse,

 decorate a small Christmas tree

with vines, berries, woodland birds.

Greenfinch, Philomel sing

Re, mi, fa, sol in accents sweet

from woodland edges, farmland hedges

Noel, Christ on earth with man to dwell

Someone singing this tune for 400 years,

before that, once an older one now lost?

Could it be I am pulled by what I cannot remember?

Song and my great grandmother both born in southern France

She died when I was a baby.

Did she sing it, rocking me

in the old wooden rocker in which I rock my own grandchild?

Noel.

Trees and Trims

Our Christmas house has more than one tree to trim.  We have artificial trees these days, but the decorations that dress them have been on many trees in many different places.  After the spare snowflake and string ball trimmed tree of our 1964 Christmas, Joe and I added an ornament or two or three every year.  So that our sons would have their own Christmas ornaments when they left to begin their own traditions and families, we let them choose an ornament for their own each year which was stored in a box.  I love visiting their homes and seeing a few of those childhood choices on their trees this time of year.  This tree is in my kitchen.  It celebrates family and the cooking we enjoy together, and is trimmed with cookie cutters I used when I was a little girl, cookie recipes handwritten  by grandmothers and friends, and little gingerbread boys and girls. The gingerbread family is over 35 years old, so of course is not real gingerbread.  When my sons were all in the same elementary school, one year we made baker's clay ornaments colored with instant coffee for all their teachers plus some for our own tree.  They come back out to dance on our tree and remind us of many happy Christmas times together in our kitchen.

My granddaughters are a delight all year 'round, but Christmas brings more fun than ever.  We enjoy making this tea tray with a tiny tree, teacups and teapots. We add a mix of pretty tea bags and Joe's mother's small spoon collection plus the book A Cup of Christmas Tea.

Snowflakes

Cutting paper snowflakes can make young children into magicians and grandmas into little girls again.  There is mystery involved in the folding, choosing just the right place to cut, and carefully trimming little triangles and curves and slashes.  But there is wonder in the unfolding!  Much like the real ones, no two snowflakes turn out exactly the same.  I have never lost that sense of expectation and trying to imagine how this one is going to turn out.

Forty-nine years ago Joe and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple.  That December found us far from our Texas family and friends, in Corvallis, Oregon.  The original plan for Joe to enter graduate school there had been delayed.  In the meantime, he did any odd job available, including painting houses.  I worked as a nurse in a busy pediatric practice within walking distance of our apartment.  One of our doctors had a farm outside of town where we were invited to come cut a Christmas tree. We tramped around the hillside brushing away blackberry vines to find a perfect small Grant pine.  Its symmetrical, graceful branches had wide spaces that were perfect for decorating.  But we were beginning our home and our traditions.  We had no old familiar ornaments to unbox and remember.  We also had no extra money in the budget for buying same.  So we hung a few candy canes, made some string balls from twine and starch and balloons, and carefully cut lacy snowflakes.  That year I knitted my new husband a green sweater with sleeves twice as long as his arms.  He painted a tiny recipe box for me and pasted "Good Things You Can Fix" on top.

The photograph is the few snowflakes that remain after all these years.  I framed them last year for a gift for Joe.  This year we will remember our 1964 snowflakes when we make paper snowflakes with our grandchildren.  If you have never cut a snowflake, try this project.  You will agree with Charles Dickens - "It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself."

For some wonderfully fancy paper snowflakes, visit  www.bontempsbeignet.blogspot.ca/2011/11/faux-sneaux-flakes.html

Again!

                                   
                       Howard Teal and his first grandson, Sean Parker, Christmas 1968


This picture speaks to me of Christmas past and Christmas present, even Christmas yet to come.  My Daddy is holding our first son. How proud he was!  Sean loved his Papa, and already loved books. They are delighting each other with the reading of The Night Before Christmas.  Can't you hear "...up the chimney he rose?"  With this book, as in most, arriving at the last page meant "again, read it again!"

So, as I bring in the boxes of decorations and begin pulling out all the old familiar ornaments and set up the manger scenes, I am brimming with both tears and smiles, thinking how good it is to do it again.  I set up our advent wreath and candles and fill the big basket with all the children's Christmas books read and reread so many times.  I stack my Christmas piano music and practice the arrangements of White Christmas and Silent Night that I have played for so many years now.  I  am thankful that I did most purchases for gifts before Thanksgiving, so that shopping is not on my to do list, and I can spend  more time re-calibrating during Advent.  I listen to my favorite Christmas CD, James Galway's Christmas Carol.  On the way to Bethlehem, again.

Innkeepers

At this time of year for a number of years, Joe and I became innkeepers.  No, we didn't open a  Bed and Breakfast, but we did set up a cozy inn with a fireplace and welcome guests so that we could share our stories.  Our church, First Baptist Church in Richmond, Texas, has a custom of offering a gift to our community each year at Christmastime, called Experiencing Christmas.  This is not the expected scenes from a live nativity, as special as those can be - but a group of people who put on the characters from the Christmas story like they put on the robes and headwraps.  We became Jacob and Rachel, innkeepers who find a place for the holy family that is clean and quiet and away from the public, their stable.  As small groups of guests came in to sit by our fire and talk to us, we talked about our fears, our amazement, our wonder, our belief.

Every year, the drama changes to tell different parts of the story, and this year, the inn changes too.  It will come after groups have finished their walk through the story scenes.  But Jacob and Rachel will still offer their hospitality in a reception area.  No cookies and punch though - there will be flatbreads and cheese, olives, and dates, and pomegranates.  Looks like I just can't get out of the kitchen.  But then I don't really want to.  Welcome to our inn!

Gratitude for Hand Me Downs

                                     
        Thanksgiving memories: Quilt from Mary Clyde Curley Terrell and Opal Terrell Teal

I grew up in the 40's and 50's in a small town in East Texas. I remember ration stamps during the war, “butter” that we made out of white stuff that we mixed with coloring to make it yellow, tea towels made from flour sacks, and patchwork quilts made from the scraps of fabric leftover from clothes sewed by my grandmother and mother. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” was really practiced. Men's shirt collars were turned when they became worn, and socks were darned. Mending was an important word in our vocabulary.

I learned to do handwork like embroidery and crochet from Mother and Grandma, but I took a sewing course from the local Singer Sewing machine store when Mother got a new electric sewing machine to replace her treadle Singer. The course came free with the purchase and she already knew how to sew, so I took the lessons, made a dress and jacket, and modeled them in a fashion show for the last lesson. I remember working over the scalloped neckline and sleeves of a teal blue outfit and wearing it proudly. I was 8 years old. After that, Mother and I worked together on making my clothes. I learned from her to shop for fabric bargains, the reason I still have yards of fabric stored for the time when the right need appears. We always planned something pretty for the first day of school. When I was in high school, I would sketch a design for a prom or banquet gown and was never disappointed at the results. My outfits were always one of a kind!

Even so, I did a happy dance when the occasional box of hand me downs arrived in the mail from my cousin in South Texas. Marcia Lee was 6 years older than me, and all her clothes were store bought! She had a younger brother and no one to pass down to, so I was the glad recipient. I never grumbled about wearing second hand. I was aware, however, that not everyone felt special wearing not-new things. My younger sister had a lot of hand-me-downs!

Today, there is a revival of appreciation for used clothing and other worn items. We call it repurposing or recycling. I am reminded of the wisdom of my parents and grandparents. The root of the concept of passing something on is the word “give.” Making something we no longer can use or need available to someone else is a gift, both to ourselves and that one who receives it. As we donate, pass down, relinquish, and turn over things, or receive those which have been made available to us, we are acting out a physical image of a much larger passing down, the transmitting and endowment of a priceless legacy. 

My cousin passed down clothes.  Mother and Grandma handed me down so much more.  The quilt in the photo is a passed down treasure with its patches from dresses worn 70 years ago by all three of us.  Every patch and stitch reminds me of the gifts of themselves handed on to me that live beyond me in the lives of my sons and granddaughters. 

"And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously,handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read."  ~ Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Garden
 
"My work in the world is to catch fire, to bloom, and to unleash my own secret words."  ~ Christine Valters Paintner

Richmond, Texas

For the first twenty-eight years of my marriage, we moved alot.  Twenty one times, in fact.  There were assorted apartments, duplexes, old houses, new houses, even a 3 month sojourn in a hotel in Indonesia.  Every time we moved, we said our goodbyes to one place and our hellos to another with the glad anticipation that in yet another place, we would make a home.  And we did.  But when we returned to the United States after living in Jakarta for nearly five years, we settled in a place that has been home for twenty years now. We have lived in two different houses, but within the same neighborhood.  We have a Sugar Land, Texas postal address, but live just beyond the edge of the Richmond, Texas city limits.  Although our work and shopping may take us frequently into Sugar Land and beyond into Houston, our feeling of community is in our neighborhood and in the small town of  Richmond.  There is our church, and a sense of returning to the kind of small town which nurtured me in my growing up years.

Freeways and cell phones and internet connections may link our lives in ways I could never have imagined as a young girl but I am rooted in this place and with these people.  Appreciation of history is strong here, as evidenced in a recent anniversary celebration for the town.  I love to be at home here.

Marlin

What do these things have in common other than the fact they are all colored glass?  I could say that all three pieces belonged to my mother, as did the aluminum tray. They were all originally purchased in what was once termed a "five and dime" store.  True, too that each piece of glass reflects a part of childhood images: the little cruet filled with vinegar for my mother's favorite wilted lettuce salad, the ashtray once holding Daddy's Lucky Strike cigarette ashes, the candy bowl that held lemon drops.

My story is not about where the items came from, or what they were used for.  It is the story of how they changed from plain clear glass to the colors of honey and amber. Each one of these pieces was carried on one of our family's rare summer trips for an unusual purpose.  Hardly a vacation, still somewhere to go and much anticipated, Mother, Daddy, my sister Janice, and I for several years traveled from our home in Jacksonville, Texas down to central Texas to a similar sized town where we stayed in a tiny motel room cooking our own meals.  There were no theme or waterparks, little scenic attraction, and no relatives to visit.

 Why would we use Daddy's precious one week of time off from work to do this?  One reason:  Marlin, Texas had a mineral hot springs. Located about four miles east of the Brazos River,   Marlin had a clinic and bath house where people with various ailments (Daddy had rheumatism) could go for a round of hot mineral baths as healing therapy.  Daddy signed up for a week's worth of the baths at the bathhouse. He encouraged us to drink the mineral water for its health benefits, but I hated the taste. Mother, my sister, and I amused ourselves in various ways, the most exciting thing being taking dime store glass to the mineral water fountain in the center of town and leaving it for the hot mineral salts to splash over  We checked it every day. Yes, it was still there, along with assorted other glass objects that people had left - to my knowledge, no one ever took anyone else's glass.  By the end of the week, the glass had turned varying degrees of golden colors, an enchanting kind of magic to me. 

It was a long time before I learned more of Marlin's history. While digging to find a water supply for Marlin’s 2,500 residents in 1891,  engineers struck sulfur-laden water that gushed out of the ground at 147 degrees F. Several physicians interested in the curative properties established clinics, bathhouses and sanitariums. More wells were drilled, hotels and boarding houses opened their doors, and by 1900, Marlin was a popular spa emphasizing medical water treatments. The New York Giants baseball team trained there from 1908 to 1919.  Some think it was not  mere coincidence that the Giants won the National League pennant in 1911, 1912 and 1913.

In the 1920s, the Marlin Hot Wells Foundation for Crippled Children established a hospital to treat young polio victims  In 1929, Conrad Hilton built his eighth Hilton Hotel in his chain in Marlin, a nine-floor, 110 room Falls Hotel, which could be seen for miles from the city limits of Marlin. Across the street was the Marlin Sanitarium Bathhouse. An underground tunnel connected the two buildings. A fire destroyed the underground tunnel, the Sanitarium Bath House was torn down, and the Falls Hotel was closed. Despite sporadic attempts to revive them, Marlin’s mineral-water establishments were pretty much gone by the 1960's.

 The hotel remains the tallest building in Falls County. The location of the bath house is now the city post office and a gazebo park. Another former hotel, the Arlington Hotel on Coleman Street, is now the location of a Mexican restaurant, Lupita's, and the Marlin Inn.

Today, you can drink mineral water  from a fountain from that era, right next to the Chamber of Commerce Office. You can soak your feet too, (they've thoughtfully provided a separate facility for that )  Water has laxative properties, which locals have timed at 43 minutes!.  I think it is fun to visit the fountain, but I don't seen any glassware transformation going on there these days.  I still don't drink the water, but Lupita's is a great place for lunch.

Honoring People and Places

"We clasp the hands of those who go before us.” – Wendell Berry

Home has for many years meant the place I lived with my husband and our sons (and now gather them with their wives and children).  We have made a home in many places and learned to move on and call another place home.  But, as Eudora Welty says so beautifully,

There may come to be new places in our lives that are second spiritual homes closer to us in some ways, perhaps, than our original homes. But the home tie is the blood tie. And had it meant nothing to us, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and we would carry no compass inside ourselves to find home ever, anywhere at all. We would not even guess what we had missed.

I am grateful for the piney woods of East Texas around Tyler, my birthplace, and Jacksonville, where I grew up. I also warm with a smile when I think of Bullard, the tiny town in between those two.

Both my parents grew up in Bullard.    Because both sets of my grandparents lived there, it is part of the place of my childhood and fondly remembered.  The Bullard cemetery is where a great many of my ancestors are buried: parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great grandparents!  But this is no longer just a little country community, a "wide place in the road," my Daddy called it.

I read with interest how Bullard has changed and grown.  One of the old buildings I remember as Ferrell's Drug Store used to be the location of the medical practice of the Ferrell's daughter, Dr. Marjorie Roper.   We called her Dr. Marjie. She is a legendary physician and has always been one of my heros.  She practiced family medicine in Bullard for 60 years, retiring, she says, because she was not computer literate!
http://americanprofile.com/articles/doctoring-for-decades/

 I was recently sent the link below telling of her plans to convert the old pharmacy.  I think I need to go to Bullard for a museum trip.  But I will also take some herb bouquets to place on cemetery markers, honoring those who have gone before me.

Longtime doctor transforms historic pharmacy into museum#.UIVCe2TOPOI.gmail

Mother's Purse

Today, in tribute to the day in 1913 on which Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal was born, I am being grateful for the birthday which made my own birthday possible, and for the strong woman who gave birth and life to me.
She never went anywhere without her purse.  I have the ones shown here, and most of the contents!
Happy Birthday, Mother.

Mother’s  Purse

1.

pastel patterns sparkle on

beaded pouch dangling 

from tarnished chain

room only for a hankie

hung from your thin

flapper girl shoulder

2.

fun dressup became working casual

brown beige black grey

bag with zippers

pockets and handles

capacious, strong, heavy holding

keys and address book

wallet and check books and coupons

driver's license, children's photograph

a pleated plastic headwrap

S&H green stamps

Kleenex and comb and metal folding cup

red lipstick worn to slant

nail file and Ritz crackers

always anchored on your arm

2.

Red pocketbook with gold snaps

monogrammed “T”

inside pockets sparsely filled

½ roll Tums

1 cough drop

nail scissors

allergy card no

penicillin or codeine

Dr. business card

sticky note with

my children:

names and phone numbers

$6.00

Thompson Funeral Home card

kept until we needed it

held now in a hand missing

holding yours

                                                

After Dinner Gardening

Many things we enjoyed doing with our sons when they were growing up are being revisited as we have fun with granddaughters.  One project with almost endless possibilities is "after dinner gardening."  Yes, we can grow pineapples in our own back yard here on the Gulf Coast of South Texas.  Once the pineapple top has been sliced off before paring and slicing the fruit for eating, it can be placed into soil mixed with a few coffee grounds.  Kept moist, it will root and make a new pineapple plant.  We have sprouted avocado seeds, apple, peach, and grapefruit seeds, also lemon and orange.  Celery root ends kept in a shallow dish with water will grow new celery leaves, and carrot tops done the same way are wonderful little ferns to use in a fairy garden.  We have successfully grown ginger from ginger root and garlic from garlic pods.  Of course, potato eyes can be fun to plant and grow, too.  Another part of this project is becoming seed savers which leads to sharing seeds, just like my grandmother did.

I think we are also growing gardeners!

The Buttermilk Glass

I am a keeper, but not a collector.  A collector might find this lovely glass and purchase it to add to a shelf with other depression glass treasures. That person would probably know whether this is called pink or peach, the name of the pattern, and just how much it is worth.  I know none of those things.  I only know I love to hold the glass, and use it for a "feel better" boost by filling it with iced tea or lemonade when I need to feel a little pampered.  I have only one other piece of a similar color and vintage, a cracked candy bowl, which was once owned by the person who gave the footed tumbler.   I don't even think depression glass when I take it out of the china cabinet.  This was my grandmother's favorite buttermilk glass!  So that is what I call it - the buttermilk glass.  She liked to fill it with cold buttermilk and sometimes crumbled cornbread in to eat with a spoon.  It has been mine for many years now.  I wonder if one of my granddaughters will one day call it "the lemonade glass?"   For more story about Grandma Terrell -

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1961267651365563869#editor/target=post;postID=111748802559416224

Most of my garden photographs get posted in my blog www.stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com . Most of my kitchen stories and recipes get told at www.kitchenkeepers.wordpress.com .   But this blue pea vine that blooms so profusely at my kitchen window reminds me why I love vines so much: they are quite alot like families.  There is something magical about a climbing vine in a garden. Vines seem to have a mind of their own and grow here and there in many directions - but they need something to cling to or climb on, a support.  Like morning glories and moonflowers, they reach for the strength of a trellis or rail and hang on, blooming and blooming some more.

Families can be like that too. Especially in our marriages,  I think sometimes we are branches of  the vine and at other times we need to be the trellis, offering support for each other's growth and change. As I age, my children help me do things I once could do for myself or for them. So last night, as the blue pea vine peeked in my kitchen window, I cooked a pot of seafood gumbo with my granddaughter's good help while my son hung curtain rods for me and my daughter in law stood on a ladder to change light bulbs. I am thankful for my trellis and glad I can still bloom.  They loved the gumbo.

Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall!

One of the great advantages of living on the South Texas Gulf Coast is that we have two growing seasons!  It is true that Spring gardens often get burned with summer heat that comes on fast, but Fall gardens can be so rewarding.  I planted new tomato plants about a month ago in containers that were shaded part of the day.  Now that cooler temperatures have arrived, they are setting fruit.  Squash and cucumbers went in a few weeks ago as well.  This weekend, I will plant some Kale, collards, bok choy, and lettuces.  If we have a typical mild winter, they will still be thriving until next Spring.  One year we had an unusual snow day early in December and I have photos of the greens frosted with snow which only seemed to give them second wind!  I love planting seeds.  When my granddaughters are here, they like to plant their own rows.  Our garden may be small, but it adds so much pleasure and of course, good nutritious food for our table.  I will add a plug for Baker Creek Heirloom seeeds, my favorite seed catalog.  www.rareseeds.com

Remembering a Step and a Leap

It is mid morning on September 13, 2012 and I am in my Sugar Land, Texas kitchen -  but I am brimming with tears as I hear bagpipes and later,  a husky voice singing “Fly Me to the Moon.”  I vividly recall the late night of July 20, 1969 in our friends' living room in San Antonio, Texas.  What these times have in common is a television screen and a man named Neal Armstrong.  Today's newsworthy event on the screen is at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. - a memorial service for the man who filled the screen on that hot night in 1969 as he stepped from the lunar module of Apollo 11 onto the moon saying “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

 

In 1969, Joe and I had a tiny unreliable television set, so we were invited to the home of friends from church where we set the stroller and propped our first son, Sean, so that he could watch, too.  He was barely 18 months old.  Today he is 44 years old, and if he sees any of this final tribute to Neal Armstrong, it will be on his lunch hour with his iPhone, watching streaming video from the internet!  There have been many small steps for men as well as giant leaps for mankind since those words.were spoken, but one thing remains the same.  America still needs more men like Neal Armstrong.

 

Post Script:  I thought I would spend some time stargazing and moon watching for remembrance tonight but clouds shroud the moon light, which I receive as another farewell.  

 

To Market, To Market

We grow a few vegetables and have pomengranate, Meyer Lemon, Fig, and Satsuma trees, with starter Avocado and Olive trees. The past two years, we have purchased a CSA share which means we have local organic produce and eggs during their delivery seasons.  But today, I am thankful for the abundance of Farmers Markets that are new to our area.  At the site of the old Imperial Sugar plant in Sugar Land, every Saturday local gardeners, bakers, chefs, and craftsmen are there with fresh vegetables like sweet Japanese eggplant, colorful peppers, squash, okra, tomatoes, peaches, fresh bread and pastries, Texas Wagyu beef, freshly made pastas, olive oils, and a variety of condiments.  It is satisfying to support local efforts, and the results are tasty when I bring our bounty home to cook.  I have another reason to be happy - tomorrow morning is supposed to be in the 60's, so I don't even have to brave the blistering Texas heat to shop. 

Tribute to Friends and Family

"From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord's name is to be praised."    ~ Psalm 113: 3

This week started with end of summer and start of school stuff.  It is hurricane season here and there was a storm brewing, Monday was the beginning of school for our 4th grade granddaughter, and Tuesday the first day for our first grader. Both my recently planted tomatoes and I were wilting in the heat and grateful for long cold drinks of water.  Joe was busy with work and medical appointments. By the end of the day on Monday, my cool pillow was the only place I thought I was headed.  Suddenly, everything changed.  We were on the way to the hospital instead of to bed.  Joe, who has had so many surgeries on his left knee, was literally brought to his knees by that joint collapsing and dislocating.  We found ourselves in a swirl of pain and prayers. Calls to our doctor and our son, who came to help resulted in emergency hospital admission and on to the operating room where the out of place pieces were put in place and snugly encased in a thigh to toe cast.  It is going to be a painful, challenging recovery but he is addressing it with his typical courage and good spirits
.
All this to say, I am so grateful for God's provision for our peace in the middle of this storm, which felt like the pounding confusion of hurricane winds to us. 

Isn't it good that we know we are not alone in dealing with this?  We are grateful for access to medical care, and most of all so thankful for our family and the friends who help us and love us in so many ways.  Our sons gave us their time and strong arms to lean on.  Ben made our dinner when we came home from the hospital.  He even remembered his Dad had said mac and cheese sounded good. Our son who does not live here was connected and encouraging by phone.  All 3 daughters in law responded with loving attention.  And I am overwhelmed with appreciation by the emails and Facebook messaging as well as phone calls from our friends.  So it was natural that when I thought about a blog post for today that I wanted to give the spotlight to all of you who love us so well and help us so much.  As the photo of a note I received many years ago declares "Hope your day starts and ends on a beautiful note!."  I might add ...you certainly make the notes in my day a symphony!


Postscript:     The note I mention was the last letter I received from Doris Nutt,  a longtime friend and mentor on October 22, 2001 although I got a birthday card a few weeks later which she mailed before she died.  She taught me at church when I was growing into and out of my teens, and was so important to me as a friend and mentor that I (along with other women who had the same blessing of knowing her) called her Mamma Nutt.  Her faithfulness, loyalty, and unselfish giving of herself remain an example to me when I think of friends.  When she passed away, friends found her with her Bible open in her lap.  All those years ago, her encouragement and teaching helped to equip me for the storms of today.  I am thankful for family and friends, then and now.

Biscuits, Butter, and Beyond

No, I didn't confuse which blog I was writing for!  I guess I could have titled this Kitchen Tools or Grandma Terrell's Keepsakes.  It was just that I started thinking about the top one when I used it the other day.  Its companion is missing a handle and wears the stains of its years, but it has a place of honor on the granite strip at my kitchen window behind the sink that holds reminders of my faith and family. 

One of the popular apps on FaceBook these days is the posting of an antique object or vintage find and asking you to check like if you remember something or if you ever used it.  So think about it!  Did (or do) you ever use either one of these objects?  Do you remember what they are?  Both were handed down to me by my mother who received them from her mother.  The rectangular wooden box is a butter mold.  Of course, the cow had to be milked and the milk had to be churned to make the butter before it was placed in the mold to harden in a cool place. 

The top round is not so different from today's cookie cutters except I don't have any with wooden handles.  This one doubled as a donut cutter due to its center, which can be twisted to remove.  I remember Grandma making biscuits - folding the soft dough and rolling it out to a sheet on which this biscuit cutter was used to deftly punch out dozens of creamy soft rounds which rose to golden,  flaky rounds in her wood stove.  Mother used it as well, eventually beginning to use the "new" biscuit mix, Bisquick,  to make her dough.  I now use it not only for biscuits (my favorite, angel biscuits have yeast as an igredient) and cookies, but tea sandwiches  and other goodies.  Recently, 6 year old Maddie and her Daddy helped me use it to cut circles from corn tortillas, which we placed in the iron skillet with an egg in the middle - a variation of the "toad in a hole" that my boys liked when they were little.  We saved the tortilla rounds to make mini tacos!

I don't churn and have never really used the butter mold.  But it reminds me daily of family heritage, hard work, and how my life is shaped and molded with love and intention.

Hit like if you know what this is.