Category: Grandmothers

Growing up, my sister and I had two amazing grandmothers, often differentiated in the family as the farm gramma and the city granny.

Tonight, the farm gramma is much in my memories. You see, there is a huge vat of turkey bone broth simmering on my stove.

I really don’t know if Gramma made soup. She did the hard part!

Elsie raised poultry on the farm in Indiana. Turkeys, geese, chickens. Probably ducks but I don’t remember any colorful stories about them.

(Ask me one day about my dad and a toy bow and arrow and a certain cranky turkey!)

In addition to feeding her family, Elsie was selling eggs to help send her sons to college. (Which is, indeed, an historical issue for another day!)

Just between us, I’m pretty glad I’m not the one raising the birds that wind up in my stock pot.

And I also spend a bit of spare time now and then imagining how shocked Elsie would be about contemporary, sustainable family farming.

Elsie, who lived to be 97, didn’t trust computers.

“They’ll tell you things,” she’d whisper, “that you don’t want to know!”

I think she may have been on to something!

Then again, I’m grateful for the fact that I can sit with my laptop, watching Top Chef re-runs, and magic up a delivery of birds and bones and other yummy things.

I can even get eggs. Real, farm eggs, laid by hens who ran around like Elsie’s no doubt did, being happy, healthy chickens.

I’ve thought about backyard chickens, but there are three Newfoundlands who hold previous title around here and I just don’t see that turning out well.

Frankly, turkeys might stand a chance. They’re big and scaly and kind of pre-historic looking.

And they are, oddly, among my farm heroes.

I can make, conservatively, 50 or 60 meals from the bones of half a turkey, with a couple of miscellaneous additions. Even 100, depending what I do with the broth!

Not to mention some really excellent gravy.

And that’s after we eat the turkey!

I know.

Some of you are all, “Blech!”

I hear you.

I also know that I feel a lot better since I started eating a bowl or two of bone broth, chock full of veg, almost every day.

And I can use less food for my family so there’s more food for others.

I have a magic wand.

I even have a crystal ball.

They’re useful therapy metaphors.

My stockpot is more useful for real world healing.

I’m working on revisions for my book, Let’s Boil Bones! which should be out in paperback this Spring.

Comfort food and research all at once!

It’s a stormy night in Atlanta.

My house smells heavenly.

I don’t hurt.

I think I inherited Elsie’s bird wisdom.

Maybe that’s why the cardinals were all over the garden this morning!

When Dave, who turned 38 this week, was a little guy he spent his days hanging out at a fabulous child  learning center while I went to nursing school. Blessedly, he loved it.

I did, too.

Most of the time.

They did have one tradition that drove me nuts.

Every day at nap time each child had to lie quietly on a cot.

Wisely, sleeping was not required.

Somewhat un-wisely, to my mind, was the sleep alternative popular among little boys Dave’s age which, at the time, was probably about three.

Apparently they all laid on their cots and pulled the little elastic strings out of their socks. Quietly.

One thing led to another and I wound up buying socks. A lot of socks.

And, frankly, we didn’t have the money to spare.

I explained. And explained. And explained.

Then, one day, inspiration struck.

Dave loved french fries. The kind from the place with the golden arches. He didn’t just like french fries. He begged for french fries.

(Please don’t judge. We don’t know until we know and I didn’t know then.)

In any event, after a nifty bit of math on my part, I told Dave that he had to have socks that didn’t slide down in his shoes and put blisters on his feet.

Every time, I explained, we had to buy more socks because he’d pulled the little elastic strings out, that was whatever number of bags of fries we couldn’t buy.

I could actually see the light bulb come on!

Suddenly, Dave was a believer.

For a couple of years, his most frequent question was, “How many fries could we get for this?”

I got adept at the math and the French Fry Economy was born.

(Laugh if you want. It made way more sense than anything the Econ guy in the gorilla suit said while I was at Florida!)

Feel free to find whatever exchange rate works for you.

When my girls were small and we played a lot of This Little Piggy, our little piggies ate frozen yogurt. The girls didn’t know what roast beef was!

Oddly, I discovered this week that I’ve just developed a new personal economy.

I was flipping through the daily haul of catalogs and, attentive to my internal dialogue, laughed myself silly when I noticed I was calculating the number of bottles of paint I could buy for the price of a necklace featured at a phenomenal sale price.

The necklace is probably still available and The Paint Economy is born!

Just between us, I think it has some advantages over fries, though it’s complicated by the fact that all the bottles of paint have different prices to learn.

My girls mostly don’t wear socks. They don’t much eat fries, either. I’m not sure how they’re going to learn about money…

Dave and Kelly will figure out something.

It’s all just making choices.

The resident herd of big dogs, believing they were doing their job, launched into the whole danger-barking thing when the mail carrier dropped a couple of packages in the carport.

No amount of rationalizing can convince them to hush.

And yet, finally, they do.

Hopeful, but ever-learning, I waited until we were back to the big dog snoring routine before venturing out to investigate.

I was not disappointed.

Paint.

And a very sexy veg cookbook.

Gifts. For me. From me.

You see, today is a big day in my world. Or, more accurately, the anniversary of a big day.

Thirty-eight years ago, I was having seizures in labor, waiting for Dave to be born, to the extent that I was conscious.

It wasn’t the journey my birth doula friends work so hard to empower.

It was, I suspect, the biggest of all the stories that have shaped my life which seems more important these days than all the scary details.

Especially since I am much engaged in integrating some of those stories just now.

So, today is Dave-day in my part of the world even though he’s in another part of the world just now.

The part of me that still owns a rolling-pin wishes I could bake him his traditional birthday treat. Apple pie.

Fortunately, the girls are turning into quite the bakers and I know he’ll have all the carbs he needs.

In the meantime, I have painting to do and big dogs to feed and trees to watch out the window. (It’s homework!)

And I imagine Dave will be busy with his world.

I won’t presume to tell his story.

Only to say that he has been the greatest teacher in my life.

And, I suspect he isn’t done!

One of the things I learned from Dave was to listen for the wisdom where it finds me.

Some found me yesterday.

I was engaged in more homework sorts of things. Baskets to wash. Notes to scribble. Symbols to ponder.

In the midst of putting this here so that could go there, I picked up a fiber art doll. She’s a little darker and not as sparkly as her sisters.

Though she does have cool hair!

She’s never hung on the Christmas tree.

I don’t always know where she is.

Yesterday, though, she was where I thought I wanted to put something else.

And, for the first time in a long time, I really heard her message.

The secret of having it all… is believing that you do!

I do.

Which is not to say that paint and sexy cookbooks can’t be helpful.

Or that another 500 square feet of house wouldn’t be handy.

Just a vivid reminder that I do have a whole lot of what really matters.

Happy birthday, Dave!

Our tiny Atlanta neighborhood is still reeling from a fire in an apartment complex about a week and a half ago.

It started with folks wondering about sirens and helicopters at 6:00 am and went on to news reports of babies being dropped from balconies into the waiting arms of fire fighters.

That was a lot of drama for Avondale Estates!

Sadly, the story is only beginning.

Together, we helped some elementary school kids get uniforms and winter clothes.

And then, today, an email about three sisters whose apartment was totally gutted. According to the message, they’re moving back in tomorrow with nothing.

Nothing.

A couple of phone calls and I had some more information.

One of the sisters was referred to as “challenged.”

All of them from “very humble beginnings.”

They had, literally, nothing. Except a kitchen table.

Which is an important place to start, but not nearly enough.

After a couple hours of a few folks raiding their basements, the sisters now have, in addition to that table, three chairs. Totally unmatched, but chairs.

Four place settings of dishes. Some miscellaneous flat ware. Three cooking pots and a few spoons. A mixing bowl and a pie plate. A handful of drinking glasses and a mug.

A collection of hotel toiletries. Three toothbrushes. A variety of paper products and a bottle of dish washing liquid.

A couple of pounds of rice. Some cans of tuna. A dried lentil chili mix and the tomato sauce that goes with it.

Not to mention, a quilt and a vintage chenille bedspread. A pillow and a handful of miscellaneous kitchen linens.

I expect there will be more by tomorrow.

Including, I hope, a few coats.

Will it be enough?

Of course not.

But when you look at what a handful of neighbors can do, in the middle of what is turning out to be a southern snow storm, there is hope.

Someone asked, while Bill was toting things up from the basement and I was washing linens, why it mattered to me.

The immediate answer is that, once upon a time, I needed people to give me stuff.

The bigger answer is that, as the old saying goes, “there are no others.”

And there’s an answer that’s even bigger than that.

We need to reclaim our concern for those around us.

Once upon a time, I needed people to give me stuff.

Today, I can give stuff to people who need it.

Almost all of us can, if we think about it.

And I can vote. And protest. And write poetry and make art.

And soup.

I can share my blessings.

Someday, people will need what I’ve learned to give.

What we’ve learned to give.

We need each other.

We need hope.

Also, snow plows.