For My Ballet Teacher

Winging its way across the state in today's mail are a letter and photos for my former ballet teacher.  One contact led to another a few months ago, and I finally learned the last name of the beautiful lady who taught ballet in my elementary school cafeteria thirty-four years ago.  Now that the kind and lovely Karen of my kindergarten memories had a last name and then an address, I was able to put words to paper finally and thank her for this sweet part of my childhood.  After school however-many days a week in 1982, my classmates and I would meet in the school cafeteria in our most basic workout clothes and ballet shoes and dance in a circle around ever-smiling Karen.  She is one of a number of people who graced my life as a child who was just undeniably Meant to Work with Children.  She was just so good with us--and you can see it in her face in these pictures. 

I still remember the basic ballet positions, although the classes now seem to have been at least as much a time for us all to run around the circle giggling and performing Disney soundtrack-accompanied "Mousercize" as they were an opportunity to learn to dance.  We thought we were all prima ballerinas, though, I'm sure, especially after all the lessons in long-sleeve t-shirts and sweatpants culminated that winter in our donning pink and silver satin sequinned leotards and tutus for our holiday performance at the high school.  My ballet shoes got lost in the shuffle at some point, but I still have my leotard and tutu--and they smell and feel exactly as they did when I first received them, I noticed while sorting some things at my parents' house this past fall.  There is nothing about me that will have made me memorable to Karen--she owned a dance studio in addition to offering these introductory classes in the schools, so I am just one of the hundreds of people who have enjoyed her teaching and sweetness over the years--but she and the joy of her after-school lessons have been fondly remembered by me --and by my mom, who also thought my instructor was fantastic ("Just to be able to coral all you girls, let alone teach you to dance. . . !")--all this time, so Karen will soon be receiving a thank you card and these pictures.  And I hope they find her well. 

♥

Mom Memory

Seeing the Queen Anne's Lace in bloom each summer reminds me of how my mom showed me, when I was probably four or five years old, how to tint its petals by letting it sit in a glass of food color-ed water awhile.  In its normal cream-colored form, it is one of my favorite flowers, but revisiting childhood for a bit as I watched the tiny flower clusters take on color has been sweet too.  A blue bloom for me today, then, and I'll pass it on to Mom when we see each other tomorrow.  ♥

 

♥

Home Again

Monday morning, Mom and I drove out to see the house we lived in in the 1980s and the one I always dream of and tend to remember as Home.  What to say except that upon returning here Tuesday, the hometown city council received a note from me with mentions of "houses that look like they should be condemned," "trash and BLIGHT," and "the worst-looking street in town."  Oh, my heart!  

There are only seven homes on the tiny sloped street I grew up on, and mine was the house at the very top.  This Monday, by the time Mom and I reached the house Mom's great-aunt Clarice once called "a doll house--just a doll house, Christine!"--I was so shocked by the appearance of the state of the first six houses, the current condition of my own former home barely made an impression.  Mom didn't even feel safe the few minutes we spent on the street before walking back to where we'd parked the car.

I have already dreamed of it twice since then:  In one dream, there was a sense of danger in the air and I knew something bad was about to happen somewhere on the street, and in the other, Mom and I were sitting where we'd parked the car Monday and seeing our former street as it had looked when the town was first founded.  In that gift of a dream, what is now the literal junkyard at the foot of the street was still all meadow, and part of the creek that winds through town opened onto a pond. 

Seeing it again has made my beautiful childhood there seem even more incredible.  "When my family lived there in the 80s," I recounted to the city council, "It was such a pretty and well-kept little street.  Good people, nice neighbors, pretty houses and yards, roses and Lilac bushes, clean porches. . . .Seeing it this past weekend was truly saddening.  If I had the money to throw at it, I'd love to buy it all up and completely restore it to its 1980s sweetness.  It really used to be a charming little family street."  Oh, truly!  What fun--what glorious FUN--it would be to play Daddy Warbucks and bring the street back to life. . .repair and repaint the houses, remove all the trash and junk cars, redo the landscaping, fix all the broken fencing,  replant the roses that used to separate a couple of the yards. . . .Ah!  I had expected it to look different, of course--twenty-seven years have passed since we lived there--but not dilapidated and depressed.  Maybe someday, it will take a turn for the better.  I have been telling my parents since I was a kid that if our former house ever came up for sale and I had the money to buy it, I would really be tempted, and oh my, yes:  That one and all the rest, by God, so that someday another almost-five-year-old girl could move into a blue "doll house" and sit inside one of her neighbor's heavenly-smelling Lilac bushes with her new friends and use another neighbor's fallen rose petals as faux makeup and pretend her parents' blue and pink gingham front porch is the judges' station she needs to acknowledge before beginning her Olympic gymnastics floor routine.    Oh, beautiful days!  And poor little street.  ♥

I continue to write about it all, still sharing the table with Stuffed.  While home, I told my parents about the memoir project, and they answered a bunch of questions I had about those years.  We laughed Monday night as I read aloud a few of the entries from diaries I'd kept as a nine, ten, and eleven-year-old in that dear little house.  Dad especially enjoyed 1988's mention that "I gave Dad some 'Almond Joys' for Father's Day!"--since I had just, twenty-seven Father's Days later, given him the same thing for the same occasion.  Ha!  Sweet family, year after year.  

♥

Mail for Mr. V

I am not quite on the ball with Halloween card-mailing this year, but I have a few things ready to send out.  I'll be getting just a few cards mailed today, I have a tiny box of cards and candy ready for my older niece and my nephew, and I had the book Where Is Baby's Pumpkin?  shipped to little niece Bianca a couple days ago to mark her first Halloween.  (The online book preview showed the baby peeking around an orange gingham curtain--

--and how could I have resisted?!)  Today's outgoing mail also includes a combination Halloween-thank you card for Mr. V, one of my fifth and sixth grade teachers.  He was one of my favorites and one of the best.  I've found what I'm hoping is really his address and have now offered my long-overdue thanks, which makes me happy.  

Mr. V was a sharp dresser and loved dogs and baseball--this was the era of the mid-late 1980s New York Mets and Darryl Strawberry, of whom there was a poster on one of Mr. V's classroom walls--and if I'm remembering correctly, the snazzy red car in the teachers' parking lot was his--but we students loved him because he cared about us, enjoyed us, and was simply one of the good ones.  He was the first teacher who really encouraged my art skills.  I painted or drew a picture of my Beagle in his class one day, and he not only praised it, but also took it over to a teacher who was visiting his room at the time--the equally wonderful Mr. M--and showed it off to him too.  Tradition at our elementary school was that each year, a couple of the sixth grade students were selected to illustrate the cover of the yearbook.  Instead of simply telling me in class the next day that I had been one of the two chosen student-artists, he knocked on the door of the other teacher's classroom I was in at the time--this time, dear Mr. G's--and asked if he could speak to me for a moment--He wants to talk to me?!  In the hall?!?  What did I do?!  I didn't do anything!  When I stepped into the hall, I found my best friend standing beside him, adding to the pure thrill seconds later when Mr. V announced that she and I would be the ones designing the yearbook cover.  He could have just waited to tell us in class, of course, just as he could have notified us separately, but no:  Instead he created a moment, and it was, clearly, a memorable one.  It is that kind of "small" kindness that stays with a person.  

Fifth grade was the year of our using microscopes for the first time too, and he shared our excitement as we saw insects and who-knows-what-else up-close for the very first time.  When I asked him after class one day where he bought the tiny lights for the microscopes we used in class, he answered at-length, but all I remember now is that he said that even the little Christmas tree string lights' bulbs would work.  That was the first year science ever interested me:  I asked my parents for both a cookbook and a microscope that Christmas.  There remains the feeling, almost thirty years later, that we all went through the fifth grade together:  He experienced it right along with us, as it should be.  And my gratitude is much bigger than I could ever express in a greeting card, but he'll be getting one in the mail this week anyway, and I hope it brightens his day as he brightened so many of mine.  

♥

The Crayon Can

It is funny the material things we consider our treasures.  I imagine it is true for everyone from the poorest to the wealthiest amongst us that when asked which belongings we would save from a fire, we would answer with descriptions of our family photos, our love letters, our journals, and as many of those important-to-us-and-unrecognizable-as-riches-to-anyone-else items as we could gather:  Well-worn stuffed animals.  Stones.  Driftwood.  Handmade afghans.  A chipped tea cup.  Her berry-picking hat.  His soft blue  shirt.  When my grandparents were moved into a personal care home a few months before their deaths in 2001, this metal can that Grandma had always kept crayons in was one of the things I wanted from their house and was immediately relieved to know that I had saved. 

There is nothing obviously exceptional about either its exterior or contents.  It is a Folgers-brand coffee can with a handful of crayons, crayon-pieces, and crayon-niblets inside.  I don't remember ever seeing the can with the Folgers label still on it.  Like meals and decor and most everything else at my grandparents' house, the crayons were not fancy.  No glitter-filled crayons here, no crayons that change colors, and no leftover crayons from a highly-coveted 120-pack.  "Burnt sienna," "copper," and "Carnation pink" are as newfangled as these crayons' names get.  I learned this week that the stub of "green-blue" is a collector's item of sorts since the color was retired in 1990.  And because these things were also in the bottom of the can when I salvaged it from Papa and Grandma's house, I consider them equal parts of its sentimental wonder:  A rusted pair of scissors, a couple scraps of Crayola wrappers and once-clear tape--and a folded paper piece, which I would bet good money was from a cut-out heart.  

But the smell!  The crayon smell inside this can!  I take off the plastic lid, and the decades-old crayon scent works like the magic of an uncorked genie:  It is again a Sunday afternoon at Papa and Grandma's gray-shingled house outside of Punxsutawney, and while they, still safe and vibrant with good health, visit with my parents and aunts after dinner, I sprawl out on their moss-green living room carpet and color pictures.  Sometimes the scent takes me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s and I am doodling on the scrap paper Aunt Vee brings from her secretarial job to their house for just this purpose.  Other times, I open the can and find myself a little older, but with the crayons and scissors still around me, designing cards out of the pages of the Sharp's Penn wallpaper catalogs that Grandma saves.  Sometimes, of course, the scent just takes me back to childhood-in-general, and I can't tell what grade I'm in or whether I'm coloring a Christmas decoration or the blues and greens of water and land on a state map for a homework assignment.  Then there are the times the crayon can's scent sends me straight to Papa and Grandma's foyer to look for a not-yet-colored-in page of one of the few coloring books they keep under the crayon can on the tiered brass shelf beside their front door.  Or the times it takes me back to a summer week I am spending at Papa and Grandma's house, and my childhood Beagle is panting beside me while I draw his portrait on the couch.  There is so much going on inside this metal can, you see.  

I keep the crayon can on a hall shelf with other treasures, and it surely mystifies most who see it, dinged and unlabeled as it is.  As is true for us all, its magic lies inside.  Lately I find myself opening it more than usual as I pass by, breathing in deeply and eventually replacing the lid quite reluctantly, wishing its scent could keep me in its hold a little longer.  May I be granted one more day, please, when sticks of wax are all it takes to make my life colorful and pressing down too hard is my biggest concern?  Life has a way of demanding a wee bit more of us than that, though, and perhaps especially for those of us who began it in awe of these boxed rainbows, it is only natural that we sometimes grow frustrated as we figure out, over and over, how to grow up without losing that sense of enchantment.  No worries, Papa and Grandma, your girl is determined to get it right.  The crayon can holds not only the blue-green and green-blue of the wild seas I intend to learn to surf someday, but also the pinks and reds and yellow-oranges of the roses I want to grow around my home.  I will find the balance, I remind myself.  I will try not to worry as the years unfold.  And I will hope that my grandparents say an extra prayer every time they see me reaching for the lid.   

My New Favorite Val-Mom Photo

While I was home last month, my aunt Heidi passed around a folder full of old family photos, and one of them was this treasure from 1980.  I had never seen it before, and I'm still transfixed by it two weeks later.  This is one of the only candid shots of me and my mom that I've ever seen, and it's also one of only a few pictures of my mom from this time period, since she was almost always the one behind the camera.  Look at her looking at me:  Sweet Mama!  ♥  (She was probably just wondering what she was going to do with her crazy-haired three-year-old, but we'll imagine that she had more poignant and profound thoughts at this moment.)  And we are sitting in a gingham kitchen, of course.  So dear! 

Christmas is a time of Do You Remember? Of family jokes. Of family rituals. Sometimes a little sadness--but always love. ~ Pam Brown

A couple of the funniest Christmastime moments this week were jokes between me and my younger brother.  He was born when I was five, so you can imagine how goofy and fun Christmas was for us as kids.  One of the things we laughed at most this time of year when we were younger was the scene from the "Ralphie and the BB gun" (A Christmas Story) movie in which Ralphie finally has his big moment with Santa Claus and Santa turns out to be the wild-eyed super-scary man pictured above.  :)  That screenshot, and the movie dialogue below, depict this scene that made us howl with laughter growing up.  When I woke up Christmas morning, TBS's all-day movie marathon of the movie was the first holiday-related program I found on TV, and guess which scene was up?  I took a picture and sent it to Brian, who later responded. . . .

A couple days before, he reminded me of "our line" below.  We thought we were so clever when we thought of this as kids, and I'm sure we drove our parents and older brother crazy with it.  On December 23rd:  "Tomorrow we can say 'Tomorrow is Christmas!'"  Yessssssss--except we would start this the week before as kids.  "Tomorrow we can say, 'Tomorrow we can say, tomorrow we can say, tomorrow we can say, TOMORROW is Christmas!"  Ay!  :)

The shared silliness is year-round, of course, but these were two of my favorite moments this week.   ♥

Grandma's Fudge

If my brothers are reading, they should act surprised Tuesday night when they receive these little boxes.  ♥  Grandma's fudge was one of our favorite things she made.  She would mix up a pan of it for Christmas and other special occasions and "just because," as well, and keep it in a box on top of her dining room buffet.  One summer week as a kid while I was staying with her and Papa, I told her I wanted to learn how to make it, and she went along with it, showing me how quickly I needed to stir in the chocolate chips and marshmallow cream and reminding me to make sure my pan was at-the-ready when the time came, even though it was really too humid out that week to be cooking fudge at all.  That first batch, despite Grandma's patience and tips and tricks, didn't turn out, and I didn't try it again until after she died in 2001.  Someone needed to keep the fudge tradition alive, and at least a few pounds of the weight I gained during grad school in the next few years can be attributed to my determination to figure out the recipe.  (And the bread recipe.  And the meatball recipe. . . .)  

It isn't difficult--no candy thermometer involved--but took me a few tries to get just right.  The original recipe is here, but I go by the rewritten version in my little cookbook.  I need to update my little cookbook a little bit, though, because I've learned more since adding Grandma's recipe to it.

I knew I really had it down when I arrived home for my younger brother's wedding in July of 2011 and was greeted by my mom with a bemused "Brian's asked you to make some of Grandma's fudge for the reception."  That turned into another humid summer day of fudge-making, but by then, I knew enough fudge secrets to be successful.  I use butter not margarine.  Butter.  As soon as the 1.5-sticks-of-butter/3-cups-of-sugar/exactly-2/3-cups-evaporated milk mixture begins to boil, set your timer for five minutes and stir it all five minutes while it bubbles and makes your kitchen smell like Grandma's.  Five minutes.  All five minutes.  Have your ingredients open and your 13" x 9" pan greased/prepared ahead of time.  And begin washing your Fudge-Cooking Pot immediately after you're done with it.  

One of the things I wish I'd thought to save from Papa and Grandma's house was the deep saucepan Grandma used for this recipe.  This pot's another one of theirs, but I wish I'd had the foresight to take the other one too.  Dad made me the sturdy wooden spoon below.  It's extra-tall and perfect for stirring thick fudge with its big billy club handle. 

Not realizing when to begin the five-minute countdown for the boiling stage was my mistake with my first however-many batches of this fudge.  Set your timer when you first see bubbles at least as big as the ones below.  Stir constantly, and I mean it.  The sugar can get scorched if you don't, and the more you stir, the smoother the fudge will be.  Gritty fudge still tastes good but doesn't do Grandma proud.  Off-subject, Aunt Laurie sent me that sweet pot holder last Christmas, and I treasure it.  Grandma's recipe and pot, Dad's handmade spoon, and Aunt Laurie's pot holder.  This fudge recipe was brought to you by love, thank you.  ♥

And you will need to feel the love after you add the bag of chocolate chips, and then, most especially, after you add the marsmallow cream, because the fudge will already have the consistency of fudge at this point and will be hard to stir. I use the smaller (7 oz.) jar of marshmallow cream, but the fudge turns out with the large jar too.  It's just a bit softer in both color and consistency when the extra's added.

That my grandmother, even in her early nineties, made this fudge for us as often as she did--and voluntarily, and without complaint--is a testament to her love for us, truly, because the incorporating-chocolate-and-marshmallow stage makes the arms ache.  I marvel at her strength every time I cook this.  ♥ 

Quickly pour it into the pan, begin washing the pot, and let the fudge cool.  I've just opened the kitchen window and let the pan chill on the stove-top under it the past few times I've made it.  By the time I've finished all the boiling and stirring and am starting dishes and kitchen clean-up, a wide-open window feels like heaven anyway. 

Target had the little treat boxes in the top picture in their dollar section, so I picked up two and packaged some fudge in them to add to my brothers' Christmas presents.  Walnuts omitted for Brian.  Christmas sprinkles added to the top of the entire batch, although I'm sure Grandma would shake her head at this newfangled addition to her recipe and murmur, "Well, I suppose that's okay. . . ."  :)  Best Fudge Ever.  ♥  Love to you all this Christmas.  December's been a blur this year.  I see my family--and meet Bianca--Tuesday!  Life is sweet.  

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children. ~ Alex Haley

♥  Click to enlarge.  ♥

Grandma proudly labeled this photo "Our Gum tree, fall of 1990," I saw when I inherited her photos in 2001.  Papa and Grandma's trees and gardens were brilliant, and I always loved how their house was nestled behind the trees and Rhododendrons, but to me, the true caption for this picture is Home.  Or Love.  Childhood.  Safety.  Ever since I was a kid, whenever I've had those crazy panicked someone-is-chasing-me sort of nightmares, I've always thought "I have to get to Papa and Grandma's.  I just need to make it to Papa and Grandma's."  And in every dream, every time, their beautiful yard suddenly appears in the distance as I run and I know I just need to reach it in order to be safe.  The Bad Guys disappear at my grandparents' house, Papa and Grandma's bee boxes and raspberry bushes and tree swing serving as my dream world's line of demarcation.  People who have had near-death experiences often report that they passed through a peaceful tunnel and were greeted by a glowing light; When my time comes, I want to find myself in Papa and Grandma's yard--just long enough to get my bearings straight, you understand.  Oddly, it is almost exactly three years to the day since I last wrote here about missing my grandparents' yard.  Maybe autumn just makes me especially nostalgic.  Or maybe there really is some magic in this simple gray-shingled house and the trees that surround it, just as there is something special about every place we love that we feel loves us back.  

 

 

 

 

♥

One Christmas Eve

Now that I'm decades older than I was in this photo, I better understand how much effort it took my parents to make the kind of Christmas for me and my brothers that's pictured here.  In the mid-1980s, my parents were in their thirties, my brothers and I were all under the age of twelve, and only my dad worked outside the home. Although Christmas Eve dinners at my parents' house for a number of years now has meant a shrimp tray, oyster stew (or clam chowder?  I skip it and don't remember), a pot roast, and various sides and desserts, Christmas Eve's supper was not that elaborate when my brothers and I were kids.  I don't remember what we ate in those days, and whatever it was, I'm sure my mom made it special for us, but she and Dad are certainly living more comfortably now than they were in the mid-1980s.  

Awhile after we'd finished eating supper one Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the front door.  Our nearest family was my grandparents half an hour away, and we knew it wouldn't be them, so none of us could think of anyone who would be visiting us at such an hour the night before Christmas.  Dad roused himself from his blue slipcovered chair and stepped out onto the front porch, while Mom and my brothers and I waited and wondered.  After a few moments, Dad called out  a Goodnight and Merry Christmas to whoever he'd been listening to and walked back into the living room carrying with a large pizza box.  "From Marv and Debbie!" he declared, explaining that the delivery person had said that our neighbors across the street had ordered it for us and wished our family a happy holiday.  Our neighbors!  A pizza!  A second supper of anything--and on Christmas Eve!  Mom quickly cleared a space for the box on the coffee table that always served as our snack table back then, and soon we were laughing at the surprise and novelty of it as we ate our slices.  I remember that we all agreed how nice it was of our neighbors, and I remember too that that pizza was loaded:  I'd never seen so many toppings before and probably wasn't even aware that pizzas could be topped with all the ingredients our neighbors has ordered for ours.  Green peppers?!  Black olives?!  Sausage?!  Wow!  Ours was an especially happy--and especially full--family when we went to bed that night. 

I only remember a few moments from a few other childhood Christmas Eves, and that is the only Christmas Eve meal I remember at all.  I'm sure Mom and Dad thanked the neighbors, and if we hadn't done so already, I'm sure we kids decorated sugar cookies for Marv and Debbie later or colored a winter coloring book page for their refrigerator.  Marv was a walrus-mustached older man with glasses who I remember as always wearing a white t-shirt that showed off his arm tattoos.  Debbie was also older than my parents, and her bleached-blonde hair contrasted memorably with her year-round tan.  If Marv is remembered as sporting Fonzie-esque t-shirts, Debbie always comes to mind wearing a tank top.  Surely, this isn't what they wore in cold weather, but this is the only picture that ever comes to mind of them.  Their home reeked of cigarettes.  Their motor-home remained parked outside their garage the three or so years they lived across from us.  They gave me and my younger brother a giant stuffed dog that had belonged to Marv's now-grown son.  When Marv's high school-age daughter visited him one summer week, she and I were allowed to camp out overnight in their trailer and then go back-to-school clothes-shopping together at the mall the next afternoon.  "Don't show me what you bought.  Try it on for me so I can see you wearing it," Debbie chided us as she mashed her cigarettes into one of the many ash trays around the house when we returned.  "If I wanted to see clothes on hangers, I'd just go to the store myself."  I still hear her saying that every time I show Mike or my mom any item of clothing I've bought.  The Christmas Eve Pizza remains their most memorable kindness to our young family, though.  It speaks to the sweetness of surprise and the comfort in discovering that someone has been paying attention and is looking out for you.  Angels tend to be depicted in flowing gowns and gossamer wings, but in the mid-1980s, two chain-smoking ultra-tanned and multi-tattooed ones visited our home in the guise of a pizza delivery driver, and their act of kindness gave us not just unexpectedly full bellies but also delightfully full hearts.  

Father's Day from Richard Scarry

These beleaguered-looking pigs played a big part in my childhood, as this story was one of my favorites. I was thrilled a couple weeks ago to track down the book that contained this illustration. The story it accompanies is "The Three Wishes," and this telling of it is found, it turns out, in Richard Scarry's Nursery Tales. I remember my dad reading this to me when I was a little kid, and I had wanted to find it for him for a long time. Something jarred the memory loose and made me think that it was, indeed, a Richard Scarry-illustrated book that I had been remembering, and just like that, the search was over. 

This story of the bickering husband-and-wife pigs and their three wasted wishes always made me hysterical, and these illustrations still got a laugh out of me when I reread the book this month. Look at the angry eyes of the shouting husband-pig above and the way Scarry's drawn him with the accusatory pointed hoof. :) 

And the crazed look in the pigs' eyes here as they try to wrestle the sausage off the wife-pig's real nose? That was the height of comedy to this five-year-old. I tried to get Mike to see the humor in these pages, but I seem to have been thirty-some years too late. Dad, however, should be delighted. I didn't mention in his Father's Day card that I had found it, but this book is one of the little presents I'm mailing him in his belated package tomorrow.   ♥