The Surprise

Nora and I started a routine 6 months ago, on November 26, 2016. That is the morning she woke up to find her parents missing and Papa Joe and I told her that her baby brother Oliver was arriving!  Knowing that we would be taking care of Nora, I had some surprises planned.  The first one was a Strawberry Shortcake nightgown and Shopkins slippers. I had a bottom drawer in my bathroom that was empty, so I put the gown and slippers in it for Nora to find when she needed a surprise. She loved that and was more than ready to look in the drawer again the next morning which found a book about a new baby hiding in the drawer. Her parents came home by that afternoon and I thought she might forget the surprise drawer in all the excitement plus another set of grandparents arriving, but she remembered!   I had a few more small things to put in the surprise drawer so the routine became a habit.

Six months later, you might call this a tradition!  Nora keeps checking and the drawer keeps getting a refill. Not all the surprises are big, and not all of them come from a store. There have been ribbons and buttons, a silk daisy for her dress up box, watercolors to paint with, paintbrushes, yarn pieces to make yarn pictures, craft rhinestone "jewels", and a recycled mint tin for her treasure box. I bought a puppet theater from a friend whose little girls outgrew it with a whole sack of puppets who became surprises one at a time. Once, a bunny who lost his ear appeared in the drawer with his ear sewed back on.

One or two days she forgot to check and I thought the idea was getting old, but she always remembers the next day.  It is a simple thing, and gives me a chance to connect with her and talk about it.    I have fun thinking of little things to refill the drawer and more fun watching her find them.  She comes to tell me thank you and hug my neck.  But the thing that makes me smile most is that she has started bringing ME surprises.  A tiny rosebud from the garden, something she has found, or one of her drawings.  Surprises are good things!

Heirlooms

This is the first chocolate tomato harvested this year.  If the birds do not get to them before we do, there should be many more, along with other types of heirloom tomato goodies. I fell in love once with a tomato called Cherokee Purple,  An old Cherokee Indian heirloom, pre-1890 variety; it has a beautiful deep dusky purple-rosy red color and sweet flavor.  And so I began to learn more about heirloom plants in general, and especially tomatoes. I love them for their stories, for their names, and for the adventure of growing them. They are not as hardy as the recently hybridized tomatoes. In addition to these 2, this year we have Brandywine, Louisiana Pink, Eva Purple Ball, and Kosovo plus a yellow heirloom I failed to tag. No, we don't have a large garden, only 1 or 2 plants of each. Joe, Ben, and my daughter in law Kristen do most of the work, and I get to pick a tomato or two and enjoy the benefits. Nora, at 3, already loves harvesting cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers with her mom. 

I find heirloom plants intriguing, and am thankful for the pleasure gardening brings to all of us.  I believe the love of gardening is another heirloom, one passed down to me and mine from my parents and grandparents, who first showed me how to garden, but also introduced me to delicious fresh food on our table.  Long before the current farm to table trends, I knew that eating local (as in very local, our own garden) tasted better and helped to keep us healthy.  

Celebrating Heirlooms!

Table Time

Ben offered to make our Friday night family dinner last week and tried his hand at brining and roasting a bird. The result was a family dinner everyone is talking about!  He even made cornbread dressing and cooked up a tarragon sauce that was passed around until the bowl was empty!  Jeremy and Michala sent chocolate covered strawberries (they now live in Nevada), and Sean is cooking our dinner at the next gathering.  This was Mother's day weekend and these gifts for me greatly pleased me for several reasons.

First, I love seeing our sons continue the practice of gathering of their family around the dining table. In our fast paced society today, it gets harder and harder to gather immediate family - husband, wife and children for even 1 meal a week. Extended family gatherings have become likely to be limited to holidays, if then. It has been important to me to encourage all of us to eat together, at the table, but also intentional times of drawing extended family to share a meal. Of course, it is more challenging when we live in spread apart areas, but even those who are able to gather physically can be present with Facetime, Skype, and Messaging or a phone call.

But I also love this  because it reminds me that all those years of letting little (then bigger and bigger) boys help me in the kitchen and get creative with making good food have produced men who are fine cooks among their other attributes. They don't just follow recipes or get ideas from YouTube.  They are chefs. They recognize the value of feeding their families delicious, nutritious, healthy food, expose their own children to this early, and create works of art in their kitchens.  I am thankful they are married to women who encourage them to do this and help.

Another reason for my gratefulness -  as I see each of my sons happily cooking good food, I also see something that is a companion to that:  growing good food. They all have gardens and use the herbs they grow in their cooking. Growing and preparing your own food is not only a pleasure but an art.

This is quoted form the About introduction for my Kitchen Keepers blog.

   Gathering around our table has been so much more than providing physical nourishment for me.  For as we gather, whatever the table shape may be, we form a circle, a place of conversation and knowing and caring.  Expressing our gratitude for the provision of food and family, giving thanks for bread and baker, we enter a sacred space

www.kitchenkeepers.wordpress.com

Changing Times

A  post with this title could refer to Daylight Savings Time, or Spring Forward, which happened a week or so ago. We changed clocks on everything that is not computerized so that the clock changes automatically and prepared ourselves for darker mornings and light lasting longer in the evenings, with everything seeming off balance for a few days.  Or it could refer to the fast changing cultural time we are experiencing. Or just the changes involved in the arrival of Spring.  But I am telling the story of a family dinner that has changed.

Once I wrote how I loved our Sunday dinners after church, with most of our family gathered around our dining table which once belonged to my Grandma Terrell.  She loved Sunday dinners after church too,. I remember thinking and saying then that I was grateful for those times together because I knew it would not always be like that. Our family grew and schedules changed and people changed and the picture tilted. For a time it seemed like family dinners were no longer going to be a regular thing.

Then something familiar began to happen. After Joe and I began to share this home with Ben and his family, we decided to have 2 shared meals a week -  on Fridays, I would prepare dinner and Ben would be chef for another weekend night. About 2 months ago when I was making Beef Bourguignon,  I considered how big my pot was and wondered if our busy oldest son and daughter in law would like to come after work and bring their daughter who is in high school.  Teion, our daughter in law, responded quickly that she and Skye would love to come but Sean would be working late. They came early and Skye played with Nora, who adores her.  Baby Oliver is always in demand for cuddling.  I finished making my beef and wine and toasted sourdough bread to serve it on and we feasted. Sean got some leftovers brought to him.  Teion and Skye said they would love to come next Friday night, Our oldest granddaughter texted that she wanted to come to Friday nights and bring her friend Kasey.  Sean began to leave work in time to come for part of the meal. And suddenly, our Sunday dinner after the church began to happen on Friday nights!  Of course, Jeremy and Michala live in Nevada now and that is not an option for them to join us, but when they were here in January with Jordann and Maddie, our whole family gathered for the feast. Ben and Kristen are gracious co-hosts.

We are too many to go around Grandma's smaller oak table, but we can all fit around Ben and Kristen's dining table which we use in our dining room now.  I served the Chicken Nogales ( * KitchenKeeper blog link posted below)  pictured above. The only difference was I doubled the recipe! We are many more around the table as the years pass.  We are a noisy, happy bunch that enjoys each other and good food. Times do change, but some things about us never do.

*www.kitchenkeepers.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/chicken-nogales/

Starting a Garden. Again.

We have lived in many places, moved many times.  Each time, we made the new place home and part of that was the garden we began and grew there. There were a few apartments, lived in for short periods.  In those, plants were grown in containers and inside. But every house we have called home brought new gardening projects for us. In the early years of moving often and raising little boys, that may have been limited to planting a few flowers and digging to plant the cuttings that family and friends so generously shared with us. By the time we moved to our home on Deep Valley in Plano, TX in 1976, a vegetable garden had joined our early home building projects. In that home, I remember Joe outlining our garden bed with railroad ties.  There I grew enough Zucchini squash to feed the neighborhood and try every Zucchini recipe in my cookbook collection.  We had an apricot tree there that had a bountiful harvest every year, and made wonderful pies.I was by then an avid organic gardener and our sons who were 3, almost 6 and 8, loved helping plant and harvest.

Some of our homes came with the bonus of some planting already established.  In our old Victorian home in Jacksonville in the 90's we tended a giant magnolia, mimosas, camellias, and wisteria along with the delight of finding a long row of purple iris that came up the next Spring. In California, previous owners had planted avocado, lemon, and plum trees as well as some beautiful roses in the courtyard. In Indonesia, we grew orchids in our flower beds along with a mango tree that hung heavy with fruit.  When we came back to the U.S. and began to live longer in one place, we added 2 serious garden passions:  herbs and antique roses.  When he was in college, Ben dug and edged a long rectangle for a gift for me...my first large herb garden.  We had a pool there and little room for a bigger garden in the back, but we had a giant old pecan tree in our front yard and shade beds. I planted old roses across the back of the house:  Sombreuil, Maggie and a fragrant French 18th century rose that looked like watered apricot silk which I cannot find anymore. 13 years later when we moved from that home to a smaller one, we filled our back yard with stone paths and garden, including another herb garden with a sitting wall. We moved from that home last year and left another garden for someone else to enjoy.  Our new home, which we share with Ben, Kristen, Nora, and Oliver, has the largest yard we have ever had but the fewest plants! Amaryllis that were my Mother's and white iris that were my grandmothers went into a front bed. We put in vegetable and herb beds to keep us cooking, and thought about it.

Over the past few months, as we discussed how a new garden might take shape, we asked advice of a landscape planning friend, and the project which began last week became work of our hands as well as our hearts.  Our favorite gardening center came out to make some planting areas, we put in a few plants we already had, and more are one the way.  Morning Glory and Moonflower seeds are already in the ground thanks to Joe and Kristen, Ben has been hard at work digging and planting, and we are all excited to work on this together.  Kristen found some seeds to plant which she gathered from our old house.  The Touch- Me- Not flowers in the photo above are not only old-fashioned and pretty, their seed pods are fun and bring out the child in anyone!  When the pods are full and beginning to dry, just a touch will send the seeds flying! Garden on the way!

Easter 2017

When Nora and her Mom let me help to die these eggs in the days before Easter, and every time the eggs got hidden and hunted, I was reminded of all the years of Easter excitement and egg hunts with Nora's Daddy, Ben, and his brothers followed by our grandchildren as they arrived one by one to fill all our lives with the joy of doing things together.  I remembered our first son's first Easter.  He was only 3 months old on April 14, 1968,  so Joe and I were proud to share our new son with his grandparents and aunts and uncles. I remember sewing Easter outfits for him that got handed down to his brothers and handing down the things we did together to celebrate Easter and other holidays as well. With each new son, it seemed the traditions expanded and became richer.

At the time those traditions begin, we did not plan ahead for doing it over and over again, but I am glad we did. I am thankful that we included the larger elements of gathering with family and worshipping as part of these celebrations. I find deep satisfaction in "doing it again" with my grandchildren. I am thankful that our sons and their wives have loved these traditions and continue them while adding their own!

Funny how colored eggs tell such a story!

Spring!

Every year I watch for my first sight of redbud trees beginning to bloom.  Along with fruit trees like peach and pear that blossom early,  and narcissus spears pushing up to sport their fragrant white blooms plus bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers, these heralds of the coming of Spring precede the calendar date in our area and bring a smile to my face and gladden my heart. In the woods of Northeast Texas where Joe and I grew up, dogwood spreads its blooms in dark piney woods also.  I do not see dogwoods here in South Texas, but I always include them when I think about this season,. Long before Easter eggs and pastel Spring clothing, these flag my attention and lift my spirits, particularly this year when Easter comes in mid-April.

Spring Break Fun

On the first day of Spring Break, we did not head to the beach.   Kristen, Nora, Skye, and I did something much more fun!  We went to my friend Stacey Roussel's farm and played with the baby goats!  Stacey showed us her mama goats, her dairy, and told us about making her specialty:  goat milk popsicles!  She even treated us to a freshly frozen strawberry pop!  Skye declared this the best day of her life and now wants to raise a baby goat for her Ag class in high school.  Nora giggled, and loved running ahead while she called "come on kids!"  The laughter of my granddaughters was the sweetest music in the world.  Kristen and I laughed and had fun too. Many thanks to Stacey for the pleasure of this unique experience.

A Visitor

We had an uninvited guest this week. I found this turtle in our garage!  Everyone came out to see, and Nora was the most interested since this was her first turtle encounter.  By this time Joe had helped the turtle along to the grass.

Since the turtle was not interested in playing peek a boo, Nora decided to go inside.  This is a large Red-eared Slider, named for the red stripe behind the eyes and its habit of sliding off logs and rocks when startled.  They are the most common turtle around here, so can often be seen sunning themselves when we drive along Texas roadways. I am not sure, but I think this is a female turtle because they have more pronounced coloration than males, and because it is the season when they begin to go on land  and dig nests in which to lay their eggs. Then the mother leaves. It takes 2 months or more for them to hatch, but young turtles are born having to take care of themselves.  This means we may see more unusual visitors since predators like raccoons, herons, and snakes try to find them.

When I was a little girl, it was possible to buy tiny baby turtles as pets.  We had one that we kept in a bowl.  Fortunately, it was discovered that these babies carry salmonella, so it became illegal to sell them.

Red-eared sliders can live 30 years or longer, so maybe this one will come back to see us!

Focus

Joe and Mary Ann Parker, May 1963


This photograph was made 54 years ago, in the Spring before our wedding in December of 1963.  I love the picture.  Not just because we were so young and unwrinkled and happy, but because we are focused on each other. At this time we were in the very early months of learning and loving. The decision to have a wedding by the end of the year had not been made. But as we focused,  we were open to all the possibilities of the future. I believe that, along with a focus of faith in God and all that he would bring us, is the strong golden thread that holds these now many years of meeting every day's victories and vicissitudes.  We have 3 wonderful sons, their wives who are like our daughters, and 6 amazing grandchldren. Our clan now numbers fourteen, and pictures are hard to get because that means everybody gathered and still at the same time!  I love the ways they build their own families with focus and faith.

Oliver Byron Parker

Guest Post by Joe Parker

This is my father, Oliver Parker. Daddy and his twin sister, Dora, were born 112 years ago today on February 17, 1905. All of my family loved and are so proud of this great man in our lives and we miss him very, very much. This is a picture of Daddy at about age 12 with a friend.



Note:  My father-in-law, Oliver Parker, passed away before Joe and I were married, so I never met him. But he left a legacy of hard work, perserverance, faith, and love as communicated through the years to me by my husband and his brothers and sister. Now there is another Oliver Parker, his great grandson who bears his name - our baby grandson, Oliver Hilton Parker! 

Opal's Button Box

Nora's middle name is Opal.  Named for her great grandmother, my mother, Opal Terrell Teal, she does not yet realize all the ways she connects with her great-grandmother every day.  Since we share a home, she is with me often and does not yet know when she calls me - "Granmary" or climbs in my lap, she is connecting not only by relationship but in ways that I grandparent.  My own grandmother modeled grandparenting for me, but Opal did so by being a wonderful Nana to our boys. Then there are countless ways that come into everyday life - the results of my upbringing in a home with parents who valued faith and family.  Last week, Nora discovered the magic and mystery of Opal's Button Box.  The buttons in a discarded kitchen cannister are leftovers from not only her many years of sewing but also her mother's, my grandmother. They never threw buttons away but saved them carefully for reuse and repurposing. If a shirt could no longer be mended, they cut off the buttons and saved them,  using the fabric scraps in another way. There are baby buttons, the one or two buttons from a card of buttons purchased to march down the front of dresses and blouses and coats, shirt buttons, glass buttons, plastic buttons, wooden buttons, and metal buttons. Nora is only beginning to discover the thrill of handling them, and ways she can use them. So in this photo, she finds the fun in making print and pattern in play dough - all with Opal's buttons. Since then, she has carried them around in one of her own boxes and speaks with pride of her own buttons.  She says buT Tons, and I love it.  Today, she told me she needs more buttons.  She is acting true to her heritage.  Mother would be proud.

Shell Seeker

One of my favorite authors is Rosamunde Pilcher.  Her novel, Shell Seekers is my favorite of her writings.  Made into a movie and enjoyed by many others, this book is one of the few I saved when I packed so many of our books away to be given to to others and donated to the library last year when we moved to share a home with our youngest son Ben and his family. I kept books I knew I would like to read again.

I thought of the book's title when Nora remembered my shell basket yesterday and ran to pull it from under my bed.  She loves to sort the shells and is most fond of the tiniest shells.  We spent a long time handling the shells and talking about how beautiful each one is.  She knows the names of a few.  Later, she will learn more.  For now, it is enough to delight in them, to touch them, and pretend. She is a little shell seeker.

Our sons loved shells and liked to keep them.  Jeremy had quite a collection so many of these are his. Many of them came from the beaches on Sanibel Island, Florida, where our family spent time in 1980. The tulip shells came from a flat boat journey out to the mud flats.All of our sons talk about that trip and the fun they had being shell seekers. There are many years between their shell hunting and Nora's discovery of the same shells. The family story is still being written.  I am grateful for the seeking and the finding and the keeping, of shells, and of story.

Promise of Spring

Last week I found Forsythia branches at my grocery store!  I like to stroll through the flower offerings although I seldom buy flowers for myself.  But I love bringing forsythia and plum and pussy willow to bloom inside when the outside is still bleak and cold.  These branches responded promptly, beginning to flower the very next day, and continuing to delight us every day since.  Spring started on my kitchen counter!  So I am browsing the seed catalogs and beginning garden plans while smiling everytime I see these yellow blossoms.

The Baby Doll

Nora has played with wooden toys once loved by her Daddy but even though she had seen this doll, only a few days ago did she begin to play with it and "mother" it. She has rocked the baby to sleep in her wicker rocking chair, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her around.  This doll was mine when I was a little girl, and although her face and hands and feet are well preserved, her cloth body is worn and stuffing is showing. This baby is like the skin horse in the Velveteen Rabbit book, she is "real"- she has been well loved, a good thing when you are 70 years old!

I was older than Nora when I got this doll, 7 yearrs old. My best friend and I were in second grade.  We played after school, had sleepovers, dressed her kitten, and talked our mothers into getting us matching dolls. Mignon got hers first and named hers Wendolyn, called Wendy. I named this one Gwendolyn, called Gwen. We played with the dolls and treasured them.  We also loved being friends, and still are to this day!  I do not know if Mignon still has her doll, but this one continues to delight a little girl.  

I will do my best to repair the cloth tears and keep her stuffing in because Nora asked me to fix her!

Heart Full of Gratitude

Today, January 20, 2017 is a day with a heart full of gratitude for me.

Forty-nine years ago, I almost died due to a massive postpartum hemorrhage. My newborn son was 1 week old. I was at home with him and my mother, who had come to help after his birth. My husband, Joe, was at work in San Antonio.  As a registered nurse, I recognized the severity immediately. I called the weekend answering service for my doctor, and I called my husband to come home as soon as he could. I should have called an ambulance. There was a lack of accurate information understood by the on-call physician, who probably thought I was overreacting, and Joe had to drive through flooded streets to get home.  By the time he got there and scooped me up into the back seat of our car, I was not able to talk anymore  I remember praying - for me, for Joe, for our baby son.  I was not aware of the fact that since the Nix Memorial Hospital building on the river in downtown San Antonio, had no wheel chair or stretcher where he was able to park, he carried me to the elevator and up to the floor where I was admitted. By the time I was evaluated, I could hear the nurses saying things like "blood pressure dropping" and "can't find a pulse" and could not speak to tell them not to give up.  It is absolutely true that a person who cannot respond hears.

By that time my own doctor had received the emergency message and arrived.  He personally helped to get blood started and pumped it in manually.  I remember the cold rushing up my arm. As soon as I was stabilized, I was taken to the O.R. to do what was necessary to stop the hemorrhage.  I  was hospitalized for a week.  I missed my baby. I worried about him and my sweet mom, suddenly thrust from the role of proud Nana holding her her first grandson to fill in full time for me. Joe tried to work and take care of all of us. 

I do not tell the story often, but today, one week after Sean's 49th birthday, I am flooded with thanksgiving for those 49 years of his life, and for those 49 years God-given to me. Joe is by my side.  We have two more sons. We have six precious grandchildren. I have been blessed with a full life, friends, and family. I look at the photo above, taken on the first evening of 2017, and can only say thank you.

The Gift of Each Other

One of my greatest joys as a grandmother is witnessing the joy that my granddaughters have in being together, and now, the joy with which they have welcomed their new baby boy cousin.  I remember playing with my cousins when I was small, and am so glad they treasure their times together, the gift of each other.

Charmed!

We are so happy to have Jeremy and his family with us this week.  Maddie and Jordann went with me to pick out a charm for their bracelets since that was part of their Christmas present.   We had fun looking and they chose very carefully. Jordann wanted a snowflake, but not just any snowflake, she found one that was just right for her.  Maddie chose tiny angel wings because they reminded her of the angel at the top of a Christmas tree. We talked about charms they might add in the future, how long they might have their bracelets and who they might pass them to in years to come.  I was the one who was charmed.  Conversations with my granddaughters are one of my favorite things in all the world.