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All Hail and Salute

Thinking about your Thanksgiving toasts? Making a list of all the things you’re grateful for?  I’m adding new entries this year, a cadre of stalwarts who deserve way more credit than they likely ever get.

Friends, I give you the Grocery Workers on Thanksgiving Week.  Will you join me in raising a glass?

Here’s to the lovely woman in the friendly green branded shirt motoring past me on a mission.  Even at that speed, she noticed me frozen in place in front of the canned fish, searching with furrowed brow for smoked oysters.  Brakes applied, she offered assistance, unasked:  “Help you find something, ma’am?”  Of course, the oysters were right in front of me, a fact she kindly neglected to point out.

And raise your glass high to her colleague, similar shirt with hair net, who appeared magically out of nowhere, a retail EMT dashing to the scene of the emergency.  Ignoring the grocery-aisle speed limit in my typical infernal hurry, I tilted the cart just slightly, like a race car on two wheels rounding the final turn.  A six-pack of beer (bottles, naturally) on the lowest cart shelf chose this moment to leap toward freedom, crashing loudly on the floor, each occupant rolling in the direction of its own choosing.  “Are you OK, ma’am?” she inquired kindly, stooping to chase the rollers I hadn’t yet caught.  Oh, yes! I mumbled, mortified.  Just wondering if any of these are going to blast a top and spray me any second now.  She patiently checked each cap as she returned them to captivity in the carton, securely placed in the deep part of the basket.  “They look OK, but get them to check them one more time when you check out,” she advised.  If her look indicated concern about anyone who would shove a cart at that speed, she was too nice to mention it.

Hail and thank-you to the butcher, who volunteered, unsolicited, to check the stock room for the particular bone broth I sought.  If our gravy tomorrow is any good, it’s all down to him.  “How many would you like?” he asked, breaking open the carton of containers.  Are you kidding, I wonder silently, I have no idea, counting on my uber-chef sister-in-law to coach me on gravy.  Like all the greatest cooks, she rarely mentions specific quantities.  “Three!” I chirped, a wild guess, and reached for them.  Yet he wasn’t finished assisting.  “Can I get you a basket for these?”  Who ARE these people, I’m thinking at this point—escapees from a remote monastery populated by saints?

Finally, lift those glasses high for the smiling young man bagging the purchases at checkout.  Efficiently wedging the last bag into the cart, he looked me in the eye and inquired, “Is there anything else I can do for you today, ma’am?”

I stared at him for a splint second and wondered—where does all this COME from? A great retail operation that actually hires and trains for customer service—a business that manages, all news reports to the contrary, to have plenty of staff on the busiest day of the year?  The friendliness endemic in our lovely small town?  The heritage that embraces all celebrations (and the preparations they require) in our beloved American South?  Some combination of all of these things?

Nope, I got it! I assured him, adding, Happy Thanksgiving! with the biggest smile my exhausted self could muster.  And thinking all the while:  You and your friends have already done so much more than you know, restoring my faith, today of all days, that customer service is not really dead, that kindness still exists among strangers, that there’s a chance I’ll actually having decent gravy for my family.

And you don’t know it, I said silently to his back as he turned to push a cart for another customer and I waited for the glass exit door to slide open, but I’ll be toasting all of you tomorrow.

Note:  G-ma receives no benefits from any commercial enterprises associated with her stories.  She is delighted to acknowledge that the story shared here occurred at Publix in Hendersonville, Tennessee.  Cheers to that team!

 

 

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Chopping, Stirring, Remembering

It happened again the other day, at it has so many times in the last few months.  And it will happen again, I have grown to accept, until, well, until it finally doesn’t.

I reached for my phone, an instinct rooted in countless repetitions across my life, to call my mother.  She’ll know the answer, I was certain, to whatever small question I was considering about a recipe, or a plant, or the identity of some distant connection in our family.  In the age of over-abundant digital information, where some have never touched a cookbook or handwritten family recipe and turn instead to the words of distant strangers, I still trusted my mother’s knowledge, experience, and judgment on certain topics above all options.  Besides, it was a reason for a chat.  It was a chance to hear her voice, to hear “love you, too, sweetie,” one more time.

In the more than nine months since my mother died, I’ve thought about calling her dozens of times.  At first, my hand might even reach toward the phone on the kitchen counter before I caught myself.  Nine months into the grief journey, memory at last overcomes instinct before I look for the device, but the inclination still keeps coming.  I asked a beloved friend who lost someone the year before Mom died how long this pattern would go on.  “Until it doesn’t anymore,” she replied, with a sad, knowing shrug.

The phone call instinct hit me again when I contemplated a summer tradition during our first summer without Mom.  As far back as I could remember, she undertook the project every summer until she no longer had her own kitchen. A second or two later, still stinging from that urge to call, I reached instead for a small binder on my cookbook shelf, a little loose-leaf number she made for us with copies of recipes from family and friends she wanted to be sure she preserved.

I’d never checked the binder for applesauce hints.  After all, we’ve made it every summer for years, first under her direct supervision, then from memory of her guidance when working in the kitchen was no longer easy for her.  In truth, I didn’t really have any lingering questions about the relatively simple process, but I wondered if seeing her notes might help me make my way into the kitchen and get started.  How funny to realize that this perennial favorite was not included in her compilation.  Maybe she thought it was too obvious and simple to write it down; who knows?

So, with nothing to guide me but memories and a daughter’s fear that I would let Mom down if our family moved through a holiday season with no applesauce on the table, it was time to get busy.  Making applesauce is a fun and pretty labor-intensive afternoon in the kitchen with a team of like-minded helpers.  Over the decades, my mother made it with her mother, one of her aunts, her children, then her grandchildren.  But company in the kitchen this time was not for me.  Uncertain how it would feel with the grief still so fresh, I undertook it alone.  I wondered what memories it would invoke, and how it would feel to revisit them.  Deep down, I hoped it maybe it would help.  And there was also the opportunity to honor Mom’s habit of giving away her bounty to the sick or the sad, those in need of comfort food, or as a simple gesture of thanks.

Alone in the kitchen with the gorgeous green apples, knives and cutting boards, the saucepan and the mill, I got to work.  Sure enough, as the tart aroma of the cut fruit filled the house, the memories turned my kitchen into a movie theater of the heart, with images and voices moving around as though they were standing at the counter next to me.  In memory of those gone ahead who re-appeared to help out that afternoon, here is a faithful description of the process she taught us.

The Very Best Homemade Applesauce

Ingredients and equipment:

½ bushel of Lodi (pronounced Loe-die) apples

Good paring knives and cutting boards

5-quart stove pot

8-10 freezer containers, depending on size you prefer

Foley mill

Step 1:  Wash apples thoroughly.  Quarter and remove core.  Chop quarters into smaller sections about 1-1 ½ inches across; do not peel.  Using smaller pieces enables the apples to soften faster on the stove and helps prevent any burning on the bottom of the pan.

Add about an inch of water to the pot.  Don’t add too much water, or the sauce becomes too thin.  Heat water to near simmering, then begin adding apple pieces.  Increase heat to a gentle, ongoing simmer, stirring frequently, on low-medium heat until apples soften and break down. Continue adding additional apples and simmering until mixture reaches desired thickness.  Extra water can always be added if needed.

Mom always said that as long as you didn’t burn the apples in the pot, you couldn’t really mess this up.  The secret to the whole thing, she said, was choosing the right apples.  We always use Lodi, an early summer apple with a distinctive, lip-smacking tart flavor.  We don’t add sugar, believing the natural flavor is the secret ingredient.  Over years of offering our delicacy to guests, it’s become clear the tart flavoring is not everyone’s thing.  Recently I’ve made a second batch using a sweeter apple variety called Paula Red, recommended by the women at Jackson’s Orchard in Bowling Green, Ky, the only folks whose opinions on applesauce I value as much as Mom’s. (Jackson’s is a family enterprise that produces the best apples you’ve ever laid eyes on.)  I serve that second variety to friends and save the Lodi batch for family occasions.

Step 2:  Pour the simmered apple “stew” into a Foley mill positioned above a large mixing bowl.  The mill uses an angled blade and the circular motion of the crank to strain the stew into sauce consistency and retains the skins to be discarded.  Crank until all stew has been compressed into sauce; let cool before storing.  A half-bushel of apples makes about nine quarts.  Use or freeze in 2-3 weeks; freezes well for up to a year.

As I chopped, stirred and milled, I let the memories flow around the kitchen as they would.  There was Mom’s Aunt Dadie, who cooked with a sensible print cotton apron over her dress, which was always paired with nylon stockings and low-heeled pumps, even in the kitchen.  She was Mom’s favorite family cooking companion, competent, fast and focused in the kitchen.  There was Mom in my sister Kate’s kitchen the last year she was able to join in the process. She perched on a stool by the stove, also sporting an apron, stirring one pot patiently while I tended another, calmly reassuring her always over-anxious daughter that I was doing just fine, just fine.  There was my beautiful niece, sharing memories of her childhood time in her grandmother’s kitchen, mimicking the circular motion of the mill with her right arm and emphasizing, “That’s work!”  Finally, there was my own granddaughter, probably about four years old, caught at the Christmas table using both hands to up-end the delicate porcelain bowl (also Mom’s) so she could lick the final smears of applesauce off the bottom.

At the end of a long, hot afternoon in the kitchen with my memories and the visitors they brought along, I filled a freezer shelf and felt some relief that I had done Mom proud.  Thanksgiving will be here soon, and we’ll have plenty of applesauce for the family table.  Bowl-licking will be encouraged.

A couple of weeks after I finished, a kind neighbor with great handy skills loaned me a tool and expert guidance on how to fix my locked-up sink disposal.  When I knocked on the door to return his loan, I offered a container from the freezer.  “Homemade applesauce,” I explained.  “Thanks so much for helping me out.”

“Oh, great, thanks!”  he smiled.  “I love applesauce.  My mom used to make it.”

“Really?” I answered, surprised that I could keep a catch out of my voice.  “Mine, too.”

 

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Fans take to the Roadshow

Fame was so close to my grasp.  I could smell it.  I could taste it.

Nah, not that kind of fame.  You’ll never catch me dancing on TikTok or “influencing” millions with culinary wizardry or cat videos.

My shot at glory seemed much closer to my grasp, and certainly more age-appropriate.

I longed to be on Antiques Roadshow.  The PBS TV series that for 25 years has revealed the history and occasionally breathtaking value of unexpected treasures for collectors across America was coming to Nashville, and I got tickets.  From there to stardom seemed what Bertie Wooster would have called a stone-dead cert, if ever there was one.

Why so certain?   For starters, my home is stuffed to the proverbial gills with old things. Most of them flowed down from previous generations of our family like a flooded creek running downhill in early spring.  Nearly every time a cherished branch of our tree ascended unto heaven, a few meaningful treasures flowed my way.  My long-time interior designer once described my decorating style as “inherited”.  I love having and using things that belonged to people I adored.  Surely it was just a matter of looking around the house with a keen eye, selecting the right item to stun the appraisers and make me famous.

And wouldn’t Karma dictate that Super Fan status counts for something?  Across those 25 years of airtime, I doubt I’ve missed a single episode of the Roadshow, gasping in solidarity with the shocked owner of the priceless painting that had been gathering dust in his basement, and so many others.  I can re-tell in explicit detail the incident of the long-haired, headband-wearing veteran who literally dropped to the ground in shock—drawing a concerned show staffer hurriedly to his side—when told his Rolex watch, purchased on a sparse military salary four decades earlier, was worth $700,000.

Why not me?  As show taping day approached, the item selection process rose to a crazed pitch. Each ticket holder is allowed to bring only two items, and I paced the house and pondered the available choices.  My daughter kindly and patiently agreed to come along on the second ticket. We ultimately agreed that portability was key, given the location and transport options.  We settled on small, intriguing items:  a tiny rose-gold ladies watch framed by two large, brilliant amber citrines; a finely tooled, tiny leather handbag belonging to my great-grandmother, its original lining and tiny, attached mirror still intact; and two exotic, hand-painted porcelain plates of my grandmother’s.  Then there was the piece de resistance:  A stunning diamond ring belonging to yet another great-grandmother, set with two enormous, flashing center stones flanked by a dozen smaller ones.  I had recently inherited this piece and longed to know more about its age, maybe even the designer and any details on the style and era it represents.

When you can smell and taste that big moment ahead, proper preparation is key.  We chose attire carefully—colorful, but not too bright, stylish but comfortable.  As to whether I actually rehearsed my eye-popping shock at the anticipated appraiser’s news, well, I say nothing.

My great-grandmother, Lavinia Sipp Kelley.

Regular viewers know that provenance is everything. Searching stored boxes of framed family likenesses (admittedly, we are rather heavy on those, too, and a house only has so many walls), I unearthed Great Grandmother’s tiny, framed portrait.  I had relegated her to storage decades before, intimidated by the image of her rather stern countenance. Re-examining the study of her young face, now a grandmother myself, I was stunned to realize how lovely she was.  I added to my bag a printed copy of the page in the family bible bearing her name, dates of birth, marriage and death.  Now, we were ready.

The Roadshow, staged in Nashville with support of WNPT, our local PBS affiliate, is a remarkably well-oiled production.  Lines were short, but I prolonged our progress by gawking at my longtime TV heroes as we passed them.  I’ve been watching so long I’ve seen several turn from brunettes to sporting gray hair. Look!  I told my daughter.  I can’t think of his name, but there’s the poster guy with the loud plaid pants!  And I nearly bumped elbows with another favorite, the New York-talking jewelry expert Kevin Zavian, as a producer hustled him toward one of the several camera booths spread across the property.  Could the lovely old ring land me in that booth with Kevin later?  I inhaled a sharp, quick breath for a nano-second of anticipation.

Alas, it was not to be.  Kevin was nowhere around as we approached the jewelry table.  The smiling appraiser we met studied the ring through her loop, complimented it lavishly, identifying the largest stones as cut somewhere between 1890 and the 1930s, consistent with our family history.  She speculated that the mounting was newer by a couple of decades, a puzzle given the family tale.  Of the style or location of origin, she was unable to speculate.  “That’s gorgeous,” she said, handing it back while delivering an auction estimate considerably below the recent estate appraisal.  “I’d sure wear it and enjoy it.”  Oh, I will!  I answered brightly.  I may have looked out of the corner of one eye to see if any cameras were watching from a distance, or maybe I didn’t; it’s hard to say.

Could we land on TV with a low-value but interesting item?  There were three more chances.  Over at the china and porcelain table, the handsome, smiling gentleman examined my grandmother’s plate and delivered immediate specifics. “These are Italian, hand-painted,” he began.  “They are very nicely glazed.  A huge number of Italian ceramics came into this country immediately after World War II, as that industry survived the war in Italy.  I would date them between 1945 and the early 50s, and they are as common as raindrops in April.  Probably worth $25 each.”  For the plates, my interest in origin and age was greater than any expectation of value, so this information gained him a wide smile in return.  (Of course, raindrops in April also don’t earn the eye of the camera.)

Still, it was big fun to hear the appraisers react to our items.  Over at the couture table, appraiser Kathleen Guzman was intrigued by our tiny leather handbag, which my other had handed down to my daughter years ago.  “This is beautiful and in great condition,” she said.  “I had never seen one of these before, and this is the second one I’ve seen today.”  Finally, appraiser Jeff Cohen at the watch table examined the tiny rose gold specimen and delivered our surprise of the day.  “1940s,” he said.  “Swiss movement, though I’m not sure the maker.  The citrines are what make this one very desirable.  I’d put it in an auction with a pre-sale estimate of $2,000-$3,000.”  Wow!  Score one on the upside.

And that was that.  We lingered a few minutes watching the cameras record an appraiser discussing a modernist painting, then moved to the line for the bus.  Unable to avoid the potential regret of revisiting our item selections, my daughter and I felt immediate kinship with a friendly attendee in line behind us.  I asked her if she learned anything interesting about her item.  “Yep,” she grimaced. “I learned I should have brought something else.”

One final chance for TV stardom emerged as we moved forward in the bus line.  The feedback booth, open to any volunteers, languished without many participants on that hot afternoon.  Faithful viewers know it as short clips of attendees commenting about their experience at the end of the show.

Let’s do it!  I nudged my daughter.  Think how your kids would love to see us on TV! We finger-checked our hair, applied lipstick, and stepped before the spotlight. I shared my “common as raindrops in April” story, and she held up the precious little handbag for the camera.  It’s doubtful we were funny or unusual enough to make the edited show, but we’ll know when it comes out in about six months.

A disappointing day?  Most certainly not.  We saw famous people, learned interesting things, and I got a rare chance for a day with my daughter, just the two of us.  We went out afterward for Japanese food and plum wine and a great chat about the day.

After all, isn’t it the rich anticipation of the ultimate outcome that makes the experience so alluring?  That’s what draws the player back to the poker table and the punter back to the betting window.  From the dusty shelves of thrift stores or the dark recesses of grandparents’ closets to the bright light of the camera and unimagined riches is but a step.  Others grabbed the spotlight this time, but in the future, it could always be us.  I can feel it.

 

 

 

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The Old Man and a Shoe

In the heady, post-war days in the spring of 1948, he was a three-year-old hero, a superstar before the term was coined, his name in the headlines everywhere and on the lips of the lucky punters who picked him in the Kentucky Derby and cashed in.  He thundered into history that June at Belmont Park by eight lengths, achieving what only seven before him had managed in more than a century:  An American Thoroughbred racing Triple Crown, having added the Preakness Stakes win in between the Derby and Belmont victories.

Citation winning the 1948 Belmont Stakes. Photo credit: The Blood-Horse library.

His name, Citation, was carved into trophy after trophy and into the long shadows cast by the greatest of all time.  He was born in the spring of 1945, a few short weeks before the Allies declared victory in Europe.  After four seasons on the track, 32 wins and more than a million dollars earned, his place secured in racing history and the hearts of millions of fans, he retired at six and returned to his birthplace in the rolling fields of Central Kentucky’s Bluegrass country at his birthplace, Calumet Farm.

By the time I met him, when I was eight and he was 20, he was living the quiet life of a celebrated old man.  Calumet was informally open to visitors back in those days, and we lived just down the road.  When my parents entertained out-of-town guests with a visit to the renowned Thoroughbred operation, with its red-trimmed white barns and pristine, white plank fences, they let their horse-worshipping middle daughter tag along.

To a child, it was hard to equate a thundering champion with this gentle old fellow, head drooping in relaxed fashion over his stall door, long back swayed deeply with age, soft whiskers twitching with gentle snorts as he sniffed hopefully for the treats customarily proffered by the still-frequent stream of admiring fans.  He ignored the patient recitation of his stats and remarkable accomplishments by the kind farmhand, who chatted proudly about the champion as he passed the feed bucket to visitors.  Just the treats, please, said those twitchy snorts, so I flattened my palm, as I had long ago been taught, and gingerly approached.  As long as I kept my palm rigidly flat, I knew, he could nibble the soft golden oats off without using those old teeth.  And so he did.

Did he shed his shoes after every brilliant triumph, like an exhausted ballet dancer whose magical athleticism broke down her ribbon-tied toe shoes after The Nutcracker?  The long-time farmhand was vague on that point, as I recall, but the discarded racing plates attributed to the old champion were free to the faithful who handed over the oats and maybe stroked the old, still powerful neck, which I was too timid to try.  It was a souvenir like no other, said to be straight off the foot of one of the fastest creatures to every streak across the earth’s face.  This shoe, I thought as I clutched it in the car on the ride home, could have won the Kentucky Derby.  It really could have, I repeated to myself, not daring to speculate aloud for someone to pooh-pooh.

I’ve been privileged to brush close to greatness a few times in my life, and when I think of those moments, I still think of Citation.  Half a century later, I’ve lost count of the number of homes where Citation’s shoe has resided with me, one of the tiny handful of souvenirs that ever meant enough to keep.  But I kept it for luck, for inspiration, and for fond memories every year at Derby time.

 

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Grump Days

The morning sunlight of early spring beams through the window blinds and onto the table next to where I’m sitting, spraying dapples onto my coffee cup and the oddly shaped little potted plant next to it.  I’m uncertain how long I’ve been sitting there, staring at the plant, my book ignored in my lap.  One unenthusiastic sip reveals the coffee has grown cold, too long untouched.  There are a lot of things I’m not finishing these days, and just as many I’m unable to even start.

The strange little plant, about 18 inches tall and bowed over in a curve like an inverted fishhook, first came into the household in early Dec.  His narrow young evergreen limbs were pinned close to his baby trunk by a wide red ribbon wrapped candy-cane style from base to tip, and a single red ball hung from the ribbon’s highest point.   The combined weight of the ribbon and ball was enough to bend him forward like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.  In a mad pre-holiday dash through Trader Joe’s, I raced past the shelf where he stood (or rather, leaned) , laughed at the shelf tag that labeled it “The Grump Tree” and tossed one into my basket.

Anything for a laugh was the order of the day for Christmas 2021, a heartbreaker in my family.  My 90-year-old mother’s declining health took a sharp turn for the worse around Thanksgiving, and as Christmas approached, we knew her time left with us would be measured in days.  She always loved Christmas, but even a scaled-down version of the usual rituals that gave her such joy felt somehow insincere, maybe even disrespectful, as her time drew to an end. Bowed forward and down by unnatural weight, The Grump Tree was the only holiday decoration in the house that seemed appropriate for the season.  Thinking about and praying for my mother, I wondered if my anticipatory grief was obvious to the eye, pitching me in a forward droop from the weight of it.

A friend who worked in palliative care once educated me on their term “good death,” which is not the oxymoron it might seem.  Looking back at the blur of those final days, it feels okay to think that Mom’s passing fits that term. She knew us until just a few days before she died, and as she prepared to leave us, we took turns by the bedside, talking to her, singing (hymns were all I could remember, extemporaneously, and I’m sure there was a reason) and reading out loud.  We did all we could to make sure she was as physically comfortable as possible as her body began its final separation from her soul.  When she alighted with the angels two days after Christmas, we understood that it was truly her time to join them.

I believe that the chance to share in a loved one’s death, to affirm great love with presence, solidarity, and words of comfort, is one of that love’s most profound privileges.  Still, anticipating and sharing in a good and peaceful death does not abbreviate the depth and breadth of the loss.  Wandering the house aimlessly during those first few weeks after the funeral, wishing I could make myself eat and sleep and trying to remember not to call Mom and remind her that the basketball game was on, I piddled at repacking my few Christmas decorations.  It was time to unbind the Grump Tree and do with it I wasn’t sure what.  I wondered idly if he could survive his holiday obligations and maybe take up a new life in the woods just beyond my back windows.  It was dark and foreboding back there as winter waned and days melted into each other.

The instructions included in his little pot made it sound easy (don’t they always?).  With the ribbon removed, and light and a little water, the bright little tag promised that Grump would straighten up, stand tall and grow into a cypress tree 30 feet tall.  Sure—why not?  Grump came into our house at the worst possible time, and something felt distantly unjust about tossing him aside with the renewed promise of spring approaching.

By the time we were soaking in the morning sunlight together with my unread book and cold coffee, about eight weeks after Mom died, Grump wasn’t looking too great.  Still bowed over, he was shedding tiny brown needles, declining to rouse himself and follow the promise on the card still stuck in the dirt at his feet.  What to do?  I was too exhausted to think about it at that moment.  Outside the window, the bright sun teased the possibility of an early spring, but the woods beyond remained colorless, dreary, and unchanged.

Another few weeks crawled slowly by, and as my concentration began to slowly return, a few good days mixed in with the worst ones, I moved Grump to a better window with even more sunlight.  Within Grump’s view, shoots of grass began appearing on the bare ground just in front of the woods, and the smallest, newest, most carefree wild sprouts made their spring debut under the high canopy.  A lone flowering tree, small and solitary, popped out in a few pink blossoms, above the low clusters of the brave young greens and way below the highest points of the overhead canopy.  The oldest and tallest forest occupants held their ground but continued waiting, taking their time in drawing strength up from the dark surface deep below to those highest reaches, a cycle affirmed over steadfast decades of slow, faithful progress.

Now Easter is nearly here, and it is almost time to liberate all the potted plants for the season, migrating them outside to the porch, sidewalk, and various perches.  Mom loved this annual process, along with every part of tending to the well-being of green things.  If I inherited any portion of her green thumb, my garden and porch will be the envy of the neighborhood. That thought is surprisingly comforting, so I began to inspect the indoor green population, pruning here and there, checking for growth, and thinking ahead to the summer that so rapidly follows the short spring in our part of the world.

Sadly, I realized just the other day, looking more closely in the ever-brighter spring light, that Grump looks worse than ever.  One whole side of him is brown, and a touch on that side yields a sprinkling of tiny dead needles that clink down to the table surface just like the ones from Charlie Brown’s tree in the holiday classic. Did I fail him from lack of attention in the darkest, of those hazy, painful first days and weeks?  What else did I forget, or overlook, when bowed down by grief, a journey without an identifiable end point? Would it feel better, like another slow step forward, to finally pitch him and leave behind the terrible winter that he represents?

Leaning toward that last option, I stop for just a moment to look closer and prod a little deeper, and a surprise awaits.  Deeper inside Grump’s brittle and brown outer layer, tiny infantile shoots show strength and flexibility when bent.  I can see he has grown up in two main branches, and one of them remains, defiantly, a bright green. While we wait for the trees outside to draw upward all they require to return to summer glory, completing the green mosaic from ground to sky, Grump deserves more time.  And a little pruning of the brown side, and some plant food, and a bigger pot.  Maybe it’s too late to save him from all that bowed him down.  But maybe it isn’t.  Maybe he won’t ever be what he might have been, after everything, but maybe he will grow into something else.

Stay with me, Grump.  It’s getting a little warmer and brighter every day.  If you can stand up for spring, maybe I can do the same.  I’m pretty sure Mom is rooting for us.

 

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Watch This

Our fall break adventure was so lovely, but it was ending.  Time to go home.  There were so many memories packed into just a couple of sunny days—a crackling campfire with sausages roasting, boat rides in a wind so vigorous that the lake’s bristling whitecaps rocked us around, determining our course.  In a few rounds of biking, I panted to catch up with Buddy and Sis and declined to waste breath responding when they hollered Come On! from the top of the hill. They taught me new games, their favorites, and it marked a new season when I had to accept defeat at the hands of a child born when I had already lived half a century.  It was all enough to summon tears when closing time was already upon us, but there was nothing for it but to trudge to the car with the first load, dump it into the trunk, and petulantly slam the lid.

Returning to my room to fetch Load 2, I could have turned either way, one option toward the gravel driveway and main entrance of the lovely old wooden lodge, the other toward the outside steps, closer to the little lake whose grassy shore was just a few dozen steps downhill from the parking lot.  Something told me to turn toward another view of the water, utterly quiet at this early hour, its flat surface undisturbed, even by fish or those who pursue them.  It was a chance to drink in one more look, just for a moment.

So, feeling blue about leaving and heading home?  Something asked.  Wishing it wasn’t over so soon?  Thinking you needed just a few more days’ respite from these crazy, unpredictable times?  Before you go, here’s a parting gift, to help you remember an interlude when happy days broke through the clouds.  Stand right there for a second, right where you are.  Don’t move, and Watch This.

As I stood still, watching, the sun inched just high enough to launch the show.  Out on the water a spectacular display of miniature fireworks erupted, scores and scores of tiny rockets of light bouncing off the surface in silent bursts, exploding and dancing as though choreographed, heralding the climb of the sun and the coming of the day.  On and on it went, flash after burst after flash, as I watched in amazement.

Instinctively (I regret to admit), I patted my pocket for my phone, imagining the satisfaction of a little video, a few seconds of recorded evidence to watch again later and remember.  But the pocket was empty.  What’s this?  Something asked.  Left your phone in the room?  You’ll just have to take this gift with you the old-fashioned way.  Stand here long enough to burn the image in memory. Watch with every sense and savor it, let it root and grow in your mind and heart, where you can take it anywhere you go, and you don’t have to push a button or charge a battery to summon it later.  Add it to that list of Signs That Appear When You Need Them Most. You’re not keeping a list of those?  Something asked, incredulous. Well, you can start one, today.

Gradually, as the sun continued its morning ascent, the fireworks fizzled, transforming into twinkling flickers on the water, a carpet studded with alluring sequins for an early fall celebration.  Finally, the flickers also vanished, merging into a powerful pool of light crossing the surface of the lake from one woody green shore to the other.

I wish the kids had been here to see this, I said out loud, to no one, as I turned away from my solitary spot on the little green hillside.  Don’t worry about the kids, Something answered, kindly.  They’ll have their own memories of the trip–you can count on that.  This gift was for you, for this particular moment.  Feeling better?  I thought so.  Time to hit the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The New Neighborly

There were many reasons, some of them deeply understood by those who honored the restrictions of the COVID era but squirmed with restless desire for change.  Whatever those reasons were, the day arrived some months back when the face looking back at me in the mirror piped up and said:  It’s time to move on.

But move on to where?  Adding comedy to the tragedy and uncertainty of the times, the memorable line from Monty Python floated up:  And now for Something Completely Different.

So, to Something Completely Different I went.  Determined not to forfeit the opportunity to share easily in the lives of my nearby daughter and grandchildren, I defined a certain geographic radius as the map of my best options.  Ultimately, I chose to leapfrog across the metro region to a new county, with a new city address on the mail, even a new dwelling, built just for me, in a new neighborhood, in an unfinished section where the surrounding canvas is still being painted.  None of those descriptors would have drawn me in the past, so I was as surprised as anyone.

After I had spent a quarter-century with a rewarding life built in a very small geographic area, the choice of Something Complete Different inspired some kind but surprised inquiries in my cherished circle of friends.  “You’re going…where?”  one asked, incredulous.  It’s not the other side of the planet, I replied.  “I don’t think you’ll like being that far away,” said another. (I asked for her opinion, and she gave it, so that was fair enough.). A third wondered if my politics would fit comfortably in my proposed new surroundings, historically known for a majority with leanings she knew were different than my own.  “People are moving there from all over the place,” I answered, perhaps trying to convince myself.  “Surely they can’t all think the same thing.”  On the lighter side, my daughter, with a keen sensitivity to my retail habits, asked, “Mom, are you sure you want to be that far from Trader Joe’s?”  (That one caught me for a second, I admit.)

Still, onward to new environs I went.  And as I strolled with the dog in my early weeks here, up and down the rolling hills of the new neighborhood in the early mornings or late evening breezes of the hot Tennessee summer, the quiet streets and unfamiliar sights were more than a bit surreal.  Where is everyone, I wondered?  Do the neighbors know each other?  Does anyone come out of these houses?

Gradually, small connections emerged.  Leaving the pool one day, I stopped to admire a newborn, introducing myself to the young mother as new to the neighborhood.  “Welcome!”  she answered warmly.  “You should come to the Fourth of July event and meet more neighbors.  It’s a great party.”  A couple of weeks later I waved at a young woman unloading boxes at the newest completed home across the street.  She approached and told me about her mother, the property owner, who was working at the time. “They have margaritas at the pool most Tuesdays,” she said.  “If you’re looking for a group, my mom’s definitely got a group.”

As these encounters continued, I began to breathe a little more easily into Something Completely Different.  My next-door neighbor, who grew up in the county, is the ultimate referral source on essentials, from shoe repair to carpentry to fresh vegetables, cheerfully pointing me here or there.  On my own, I found my way to the post office, the Goodwill drop-off, Lowe’s, and the closest coffee shop.  Even my dog began to relax, finally realizing he didn’t have to trot after me everywhere I went around the house, unpacking.  From his post six inches above ground level, he shouts dark threats at the deer who emerge in late evening from the woods on the lovely peak of the hill up the street, but otherwise continues to charm the human neighbors he encounters on our twice-daily strolls.

Encouraged by these encounters, I was still surprised to discover an active channel of neighborly communication flowing amicably and often where I never expected to see it:  on Facebook.

The neighborhood’s group page is a remarkable broadcast of daily life and proof positive that people who live in close proximity have not lost the desire to enjoy and care for each other.  Who knew?  Many of us have recoiled from social media and its vituperative culture in the last couple of years, sickened by misinformation or mean-spirited trolls.  I watch, fascinated, a regular patter of questions and answers that recently has included things like this:

  • An industrious youngster is making a new variety of jam, having apparently done a roaring trade with his canning in the neighborhood in the past. His mother seeks customer insights on the new flavor option before he begins:  Who would order a jar?  (I said I would, natch.)
  • Another neighbor, enthusiastically decorating her new home, has purchased a piece of art too big to bring home in her own car. Can someone with a larger vehicle give her a ride to transport it? (Two offers emerged immediately.)
  • A treasure trove of unneeded items is offered free to the first takers in a rolling river of recycling: Pet food (someone’s picky cat wouldn’t eat it), children’s clothes (outgrown by the child of the offering party), an office chair, and on it goes.   One has to move quickly to score on these offerings.
  • On the more poignant side, touching my animal-loving heart deeply, one desperate neighbor urgently pleaded for help to get her 120-pound dog into the car for an emergency run to the veterinary clinic. By the time I read that one it had been resolved, helpers apparently arriving within minutes.
  • Perhaps my favorite, for its time-honored status, was the neighbor who asked for three eggs. Baking for a big event, she had already been out once for additional supplies and hoped not to go back out again.  Another neighbor responded promptly; his wife was on the way home from the grocery right then with eggs they could certainly share.  The frantic cook graciously offered to pay, which he waved (virtually) off: “For heaven’s sake.  It’s eggs.”

There is no illusion of Utopia here, and the occasional complaints flare up, with grousing about the property management company or the failing irrigation system, or one neighbor reporting another for parking on the sidewalk.  One author identified as an administrator of the page recently announced that complaint posts would heretofore be banned, an interesting position to adopt for one who appeared to be a frequent past complainer.  Ah, well. There are no requirements for logic.

And why, I wonder, take the time to thumb-type these requests on the ubiquitous phone, instead of walking across the street to knock and ask for eggs?  Wouldn’t that be quicker?  The answer comes to me faster than I can type the question; of course, the social network request reaches a much larger pool of potential egg suppliers.  We are not Mayberry, after all, and one cannot assume that Aunt Bee resides just across the street with her fully-stocked larder.

As a newcomer to the city, the neighborhood, and its pattern of daily life, I’m sure I will wonder again, perhaps several times, if it really made sense at my stage in life to uproot for Something Completely Different.  It’s always hard to be the new person, and surely in our latter years we understandably crave that which is known and reliable.  So, I watch virtually while help is given and received, and commerce flows down the street and around the corner, taking comfort in the realization that the mechanism of expression may be new, but the spirit of neighborliness remains.

And eggs may be found, next time I run out.  Because I nearly always do.

 

 

 

 

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We Are What We Are (and Ain’t What We Ain’t)

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away…

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.  from John Prine (self-titled), 1971

The first time I saw John Prine in concert, it was hard to know what to make of him.  As a college student at the University of Kentucky in the late 1970s, a music fan since childhood, I was already a veteran of many concerts, spanning rock to folk to R&B to jazz to church music. But who had ever seen anything like this guy?  In the student center auditorium on UK’s campus, I sat cross-legged on the floor with the rest of the crowd (for a $6 student ticket, they didn’t budget for chairs), watching and listening this odd fellow playing solo with a raspy, nasal vocal, a lone guitar and irresistible energy.   He boomeranged around the stage area like a kid on a pogo stick.  Can this guy even sing, I remember wondering, before realizing fairly quickly that with John, that question was wide of the point.

The draw for me that night was John’s seminal song Paradise, released five or so years earlier on his self-titled debut album but gaining increasing recognition in tandem with a pressing issue of the times.  In those early days of the environmental movement, opposition to strip-mining was gaining momentum.  The methods had been used in the region to harvest its rich coal veins beginning in the early post-war years, with catastrophic results to the terrain left behind.  Paradise became a theme song for the opposition movement, which was very active on campus in those days, and nearly everyone in that room could sing along with that chorus.  The lyrics to Paradise totaled all I knew about John when I scraped together the price of the ticket and showed up that first time, beginning a relationship that lasted until John left us last April, an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic.

John’s family left Kentucky in search of work before he was born, but Paradise remains an indelible symbol of his ties to the state that was home to his parents and the center of so many childhood memories.  Interestingly, I heard John say more than once that he never meant it as a political statement or cause anthem.  Yet the last time I saw John perform at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, in the fall of 2018, Paradise provided the groundswell conclusion that has become a closing hallmark of so many Ryman events headlined by legends.  All the artists who had joined John on stage earlier in the evening, and maybe even a few who just showed up for the end, gathered around a handful of mikes for Paradise, taking turns stepping to the primary mike for solos of the individual verses.  Of course, the audience joined in as the anthem swelled in near operatic fashion to the evening’s end.

But back to that boomerang-action thing for a second, all those years ago: Was he drunk, or high, or some combination of the two?  It sure seemed like it at the time, but nearly half a century later, I wonder. In countless venues across those decades, I watched John onstage, his energy growing as the evening progressed. More and more as the years went on, he bestowed such love on the crowd, and the crowd gave it back, a cycle that built and built until he might end the evening by literally dancing off the stage, the picture of a natural high if ever there was one.  As we followed him on his 50-year journey as the acoustic everyman, the poetic chronicler of the commonplace and the tragic, the just and unjust, the jocular storyteller at the dinner table we all joined—in our hearts, of course—I wondered if that high, those dance steps, sprang as much from love as any stimulant. If substances contributed, they couldn’t take the place of that which poured directly from the heart.

Dear Abby, dear Abby
My fountain pen leaks
My wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks
Every side I get up on is the wrong side of bed
If it weren’t so expensive I’d wish I were dead
Signed, Unhappy

Unhappy, unhappy
You have no complaint
You are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t
So listen up buster, and listen up good, stop wishing for bad luck and knockin on wood.  from Sweet Revenge, 1973

John’s humor was the B side to the dark heartbreak in his work, never much daylight between the two. But I wonder if history will view his humor with the same respect afforded to his more serious work.  I hope so.  Funny stories were everywhere: He told them on stage, in interviews, captured them in songs—many pointed squarely at himself.  It was my favorite among the long list of things I admired about him.

And there were so many others. John’s generosity and gracious determination to share his spotlight with others was a joy to watch.  He often toured with young, up-and-coming artists, singing with those lucky individuals on stage, recommending their work, supporting their progress both personally and professionally. That spirit extended to those who contributed behind the scenes, as well, as illustrated in this story from John’s obituary in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.  Producer Matt Ross-Spang, who worked on the Nashville studio team producing Tree of Forgiveness (John’s last album), described the sessions as “a surreal couple of weeks.”

Ross-Spang recalled that Prine showed up at RCA Studio A every day in a different vintage Cadillac. “Eventually, he gave one to Ross-Spang — a dark red 1993 ragtop El Dorado.”

“So, the man gave me a car, but that was really the smallest gift he gave me,” Ross-Spang said, citing the other “gifts” of “his friendship, his love.”

Over the years we watched and waited hopefully as John overcame a remarkable series of physical challenges, including heart problems and two varieties of cancer.  Surgeries permanently changed the angle of his neck and provided more self-deprecating humor in the form of his wisecracks about the changes in his voice.  On a recent road trip as I progressed through a long Prine playlist, I was struck anew by the differences in his voice from the early days and the more recent, post-surgery work.  Perhaps because I increasingly admire artists who continue creating until the end of life, as my own birthdays whir past, my heart voted overwhelmingly for the voice quality in the more recent songs. The voice had raw nuances hinting of survival, melancholy, grief, longing, and the heartbreaking speed of the passage of time.  John, too, admitted he preferred the sound of his voice after he recovered from cancer.  Here’s what he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 2018:

“I said if you leave me with something – if I can make a noise, I said, I’ll come out with a voice on the other end, you know? And the surgeon told me my golf swing will improve after surgery. I said I hate golf. So at least they left with a voice to sing. I think it improved my voice, if anything. I always had a hard time listening to my singing before my surgery.”

Sam Stone came home
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas
And the time that he served
Had shattered all his nerves
And left a little shrapnel in his knees
But the morphine eased the pain
And the grass grew round his brain
And gave him all the confidence he lacked
With a purple heart and a monkey on his back

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes
Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.  from John Prine, 1971

In 2017, John published Beyond Words, a volume of handwritten lyric notes, photographs, and chords to his songs.  I nabbed a ticket to a promotional event at our local bookstore, Parnassus, where John agreed to be interviewed on stage and play a few songs, with the proceeds benefitting local charity.  Knowing it would be packed, I turned up early and was happy to perch with a decent view, standing, among the bookshelves on the side wall.  I had bought my ticket too late to get an assigned seat facing the small stage area.

In all my years of fandom and concert-going, I had never scored a front-row seat. That night, my luck suddenly changed.  When some ticket-buyers failed to show on time, the diligent Parnassus staff began filling the open seats with folks like me from the wings.  My heart leaped and continued racing when the manager waved me into a single open chair in the very center of the front row.  When our hero stepped to the mic with his guitar a few minutes later, he was barely four feet away.  Never a groupie type or celebrity-worshipper for celebrity’s sake, I was astonished at my reaction, working to slow my breathing and keep my face composed.

All that effort worked just fine until he started into Sam Stone, the dark tale of the traumatized Vietnam vet who dies of a drug overdose.  In this small, intimate setting, he played and sang it slowly, almost as if he was recalling the story new again, picking out the simple chords on the old guitar in the total silence of the big room.  I refused to move or grab a Kleenex when my tears came, so they streamed down unabated, a tribute to him, to the years gone by, to the song and the countless victims who suffered the pain portrayed in it.  As he moved comfortably and gently on his feet at the microphone, turning to different parts of the audience, I looked up again, and our eyes suddenly locked. I managed, just barely, to choke back a sob when I saw his eyes fill with tears, as well.

When I get to heaven
I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank Him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar
And start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel
Ain’t the afterlife grand?  from Tree of Forgiveness, 2018

I remember exactly where I was when I learned that John had died.  Watching for news and praying for days while he breathed through a ventilator in a hospital bed at Vanderbilt Medical Center, part of me thought the indomitable character would surely survive this one, too.  In those blinding early days, we were only beginning to understand the horrible impact of this deadly new virus.  A dear friend and fellow fan texted a few lines from When I Get to Heaven, and I knew he was gone.

Even after forty-plus years as a fan, the depth of my grief over John’s passing has surprised me.  Only recently have I been able to put his songs back into listening rotation.  It’s difficult, somehow, to separate it from the broad-based grief over our shared global tragedy; it is nearly impossible to disentangle all the emotions that have raged over this past year.  I am among those who believe that John did his very best work at the end of his life, so there has been some small comfort in watching the honors continue to roll in, accolades recognizing brilliant particular work along with a lifetime of achievement.

Of course, I have my extensive collection of his recordings, posters from his concerts, a signed volume of his book—all enduring testimony to the singular nature of John’s body of work and the joy he created that survives him.  Still, the loss of his presence remains wide and deep and hurtful. As the world inches back toward open life, there will be no John in Nashville showing up to help out at benefits, no John greeting friends at the local meat-and-three (where, the stories go, vegetables rarely made it into his “three”), no John celebrating New Year’s with his friends on stage and with us, no John telling jokes and encouraging young artists and giving away cars.  It feels like losing a beloved uncle whose door was always open, whose porch chairs were populated by the quirky and the downtrodden and the brilliant, in equal numbers, who knew everyone in every chair for their oddities and frailties and fears and loved each of them equally without judgment.  Anyone who has a soul like that in their life is richly blessed, indeed.  Perhaps John’s greatest legacy is making all of us feel like accepted, beloved friends—even those of us who never actually met him.

In the year since he died, much has been said and written and sung about John’s thoughts on mortality, faith, and the afterlife.  Those thoughts began appearing in his work very early in his life, long before tunes appeared like When I Get to Heaven, God Only Knows, a cover of Remember Me, and his final recording, the multiple-award-winning I Remember Everything.  All are fine selections if you want to contemplate John’s viewpoint, but my own favorite on this topic is a selection from 1973’s Sweet Revenge.   Nearly fifty years before he died, John was already singing about the unpredictable arrival of death and how—with the least amount of reverence imaginable—in death he might still live on through others.  Here are the first three verses of Please Don’t Bury Me:

Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen and died
And oh what a feeling!
When my soul went through the ceiling
And on up into heaven I did ride
When I got there they did say
John, it happened this way
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head
And all the angels say
Just before you passed away
These were the very last words
That you said

Please don’t bury me
Down in the cold cold ground
No, I’d druther have ’em cut me up
And pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don’t mind the size

Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get ’em out of here
Venus de Milo can have my arms
Look out! I’ve got your nose
Sell my heart to the Junkman
And give my love to Rose.  from Sweet Revenge, 1973

 

 

 

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Losing it, at last?

It’s been such a long road.  Right?  For a year we’ve struggled to hold it together in a world we hardly recognize, some days.  Then, Mother Nature cackles hysterically as she adds on her own cosmic cataclysm:  The Polar Vortex.  Who ever heard of such?

Enough, already.  If you are like me, you may think there are finally some cracks in the edifice.  Maybe, after turning the collective brave face and trudging forward determinedly alongside everyone else these many months, we are losing it, at last.  There are clues.

With a fond nod to David Letterman, G-ma presents:

Top 10 signs you are finally losing it in the COVID/Insurrection/Winter-we-can’t-believe-is-happening.

10. You persist in calling the cat by the name of her predecessor, who has been gone a full decade as of next month. Worse, you are seriously annoyed when she blithely ignores you.

9. You are practicing your limbo along with the animated characters in the Kroger “low, low, low” TV commercial. You haven’t fallen over backward yet, but close calls have occurred.  It may be the most vigorous element of your daily exercise regimen.

8. You cry at the most unpredictable times. Like when the UPS driver who stops in the truck in middle of the street to allow you to cross safely in front of him.  Or at the sound of your yoga teacher’s voice on Zoom, when you can hear that Zen really exists—somewhere else.

7. You make a trip to the grocery store ostensibly to dump off recyclable plastic bags, but really to see live people walking around in the parking lot.

6. You arise from your work chair as a strange sound gains volume in the house. Your mind plunges through a list of potential crisis options:   An icicle broken through the roof, with snow tumbling down the hole?  A broken pipe, gushing water?  Alas, it is the water you just turned on for your hot tea, commencing to boil merrily on the stove.

5. You consume long, tortured minutes clicking on links of Facebook posts of friends honoring people who have died, under the false presumption that you knew and should remember them. You didn’t, and therefore you don’t.

4. You gaze out the window and reminisce about the early glory days of pro football when Joe Namath is on TV trying to get you to call the Medicare Help Line. It’s free!

3. It dawns on you there are two items on this list referring to TV commercials.

2. You don’t panic about your stock of provisions until you are out of two of the three Housebound Food Groups: chocolate, potato chips, and alcohol.  (See No. 7; why didn’t I go inside the store instead of just walking around the parking lot, people-watching?)

AND the No. 1 indicator you might finally be losing it:

  1. The most exciting three words you hear all day are:  THIS IS JEOPARDY!

 

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Old Spice (Not That Kind)

If you ever feel compelled to examine your lifestyle in one rapid, unmerciful snapshot—a picture that unveils your purchasing habits, your eating patterns, your organizational skills, your housecleaning talents, your virtues or vices as a pet parent and neighbor—consider moving to a new home.  By the time you get out (or should we say get away?), there is nothing about your personal life that will escape full display for those involved in moving logistics.  One has to stiffen the backbone, and get ready, or face imminent collapse from embarrassment.

One small scene in the tragic comedy of my recent move was staged in the kitchen, a week or so before the trucks were coming.  I sought my wise daughter’s advice on what to pack and what to toss, and the kitchen loomed large in the pack/purge opportunity equation.  As the scene opens, she is diving into the spice cabinet.

In a kindly tone, she tries to divert my view from the initial evidence, as though gently turning the face of a small child from a doctor holding sterilized, steel implements used to stitch up that gashed lip.  “Don’t look, Mom, just toss it,” she instructs, passing me a bottle of slightly greenish/beige-ish oregano leaves, nudging me slightly and pointing to the trash can.

Right.  I reside among those tortured souls who are constitutionally incapable of accepting such instructions.  When told not to look, I immediately do. What do you mean, don’t look?  I ask, more curious than ever. Why wouldn’t I look?

She responds calmly, without judgment, to my query.  “That one expired a while back,” she says, keeping her eyes on task at hand, her back to me.  I laser in: How long is awhile?  “2010,” comes the steady answer, the speaker still avoiding my eyes, possibly laughing silently where I can’t see it.

Let’s pause here and nibble on this in for a moment.  That’s an entire, complete, recorded-in-the-books decade past expiration date.  Ten years since the tiny, (originally) green, fragrant leaves were deemed too old to do their job in soups, lasagna, or whatever culinary effort they might have adorned, when at their peak and ready to do their flavorful best.

Rocking at this revelation, I froze for a strange moment as those 10 years streaked precariously past the window of the mind’s eye.  For a decade, the oregano sat patiently in position on the spice rack, half-empty and technically retired, but still available to deliver its life’s mission should a middlin’ cook like me fail to notice the difference.  You’d win a bet if you wagered that I had used the contents much more recently. How long since I thought to check the spice cabinet?  Candidly, did I know spices actually expired?*  What transpired in that kitchen, in that house, in the lives that intersected there, in those vanished years?

I squinted, looking away and remembering.  A decade of blessing and tragedy, the bizarre and the humdrum.  Two deaths in my family, my beloved younger sister and my cherished father.  Joining memories of shattering heartbreak with those of indescribable joy, the two youngest lights of my life, a splendid grandson and his fabulous younger sister, arrived in that decade.  New career opportunities transpired, after other ones proved painful disappointments.  Dear friends gathered around my table, as often as I could manage it.  Surely, on balance, they were 10 years that shared the same human peaks and valleys lived by so many.

Still, it was a life that did not require enough oregano to finish one lonely little bottle.

Seeking a better understanding of this Aging Herb Question, I made my way to the website of the venerable McCormick & Company, the world’s largest purveyor of spices, the ones with the red labels we all know.  Behold, a section on How to Revive Old Spices!  Alas, never mind:  Its solutions revive those products that are “fading but not ancient.”

There was nothing for it but the trash can, and the thud of the containers hitting the side of the metal rings out with increasing speed as we pull out the remaining contents of the cabinet.  A contest develops as we check the dates on each. I am proud (or despairing, depending on your perspective) to prevail, if you can call it that, with a box of cinnamon sticks that expired in 2005.  Might have used those for holiday potpourri, I speculate as I fling the tiny red metal box toward its grave.  Must not have been worth the effort to make again the next holiday season; who knows, 15 years later?

The renowned McCormick experts are not above injecting a little relationship coaching into their spice advice.  Cleary, the challenge of “using up the spices” is global in scope, with many members in the family of us failures.

Honor the spices in your life, they advise, as if describing an unexpected inheritance or your grandmother’s precious china, by using them.  “Enjoy some spice love!  Don’t be shy when reaching for the curry powder or the allspice.”

Spice Love?  (And personally, I wouldn’t sprinkle allspice on the soup bowl of my worse enemy.) I will settle for avoiding further Spice Shame, while thanking my lucky stars that only my discreet daughter was there to witness it.  Many souls observed my other Moving Humiliations, like the charming young crew chief who encouraged me discreetly to vacuum the rug before he rolled it up, and the supportive friend who said nothing while wiping the detritus of a rotted green pepper out of the bottom of the vegetable drawer. But the Spice Shame is a secret my daughter and I can safeguard forever, a family secret to savor, you might say.

*Vanilla extract and salt, according to McCormick, are the only spices with indefinite life span.  If you knew that already, your culinary knowledge far exceeds many of us.  Would love an invitation to dinner at your convenience.

 

 

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