spring punch

My friend Barbara was having a party at her house last Sunday.  A Spring Shower.  Women from our church would gather at 4, bring appetizers and desserts, share recipes, talk, laugh and celebrate the end of winter.  It sounded like just what we needed!

 I found a recipe in Better Homes and Gardens for Spring Frocktails - a pretty pink and orange punch with juice and soda and sherbet.  Barbara had a punch bowl so I just needed to bring the ingredients.  I began brainstorming for the most delectable appetizer I could bring.  Stuffed mushrooms?  BBQ meat balls? Mini quiches? A savory cheesecake with crackers?

Sunday morning flew by and I still hadn't decided.  I waded through all the black and gray sweaters in my closet to find a floral blouse and a green sweater.  I was going to look like the first day of spring after a long winter.

I was on call for hospice all weekend.  There was a family meeting at 1:00 pm.  Then I would stop at the grocery store on the way home, make my food, change my clothes and get to the party early.  Plenty of time!

The meeting was right on schedule.  Thirty minutes and done.  Whew!  As I was driving out of the parking lot I got another call.  A family needed a chaplain 20 minutes south.  And then another call. Another patient.

At 3:15 I sat in my car in the hospice parking lot.  The party was in 45 minutes and 35 minutes away. I had no food.  I had no punch recipe.  I was wearing black. I contemplated driving off the nearest cliff.

And then an Elizabeth Edwards quote came to mind.  I think she was addressing people who had recently lost a spouse, or were being fitted for a prosthetic, or had just been driven from their homes.  But my situation felt comparable at that moment.  So I rehearsed it.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” ― Elizabeth Edwards

I decided to stop the rapid breathing.  I reminded myself that no one at the party was watching the windows in hopes that "Erin would wear something besides black."  I chose to believe that really anything can be an appetizer.  And I drove to the nearest grocery store to put together something that was hopefully good.

I grabbed Dole Orange Peach Mango juice, cherry 7-UP and rainbow sherbet.  I found a frozen loaf of my favorite brand of Gfree Rye and a block of dill havarti.  A tomato, a cucumber and a tempting selection of olives from the deli.  I threw the bags in the back of my car and sped across town.

Let's skip to the end.  The party was a blast.  Better than good.  Delicious food.  Easy conversations.  My little grocery store offerings looked pretty on Barbara's glass plates.  The punch was fruity and refreshing.  

And brown.  Oh yes, orange mango mixed with green and pink sherbet turns a very unspringy shade of brown.  We talked about ways to serve it in the future so we could enjoy the taste and not have to see it!

I drove home smiling.  Girl friends make everything seem better.  So does a dose of resilience, creativity and humor.  And getting over yourself.  That's a big one.  It's only punch...


The correct recipe for non-brown Spring Frocktails.
3 cups ginger ale
4 Tbsp grenadine
4 Tbsp orange juice
3 scoops orange sherbet

grit and glory

I was about five years old.  A little girl with a blond bob.  Sitting on the floor in a yellow gingham room, sun streaming in. I was playing "grown up", my very favorite game.  My mom had given me a stack of unused check deposit slips and I was signing my name with a flourish and making check marks in various boxes.  I couldn't wait for the day when I would have a real job and do this all the time.

Today, forty-one years later, I'm sitting in my blue office, sun streaming in.  I have a stack of forms in front of me and I'm signing and checking boxes.  And that's when I had my little yellow flashback.  I'm still playing grown up, and I love this job more then that five year old could have imagined.  I like writing articles for the newsletter, filling in to teach classes, creating board agendas and art curriculums. But it's also harder than I would have dreamed.  Disciplining, hard conversations, budget struggles,  refereeing.  Somedays I don't feel like signing the slips.  There is so much more grit and glory than any five year old can imagine.

I was in 6th grade.  Several of my girlfriends and I made up a game where we wrote letters to each other from our future selves.  We imagined our lives as very mature twenty-three year olds.   Most of the scenarios involved our handsome, made-up husbands taking us to TCBY every evening.  What else would there be to do as grown ups?

Today, thirty-four years later, I can't remember the last time my husband and I went to TCBY.  My 6th grade self would be devastated.  She would also be horrified to know that handsome husbands often come with contrary opinions, and that so much of our evenings involve grocery shopping, playing with our boys and homework.  We have to make a real effort to get out on a date occasionally.  But it's all so much better than those letters ever hinted at.  I didn't know how nice it is to walk hand in hand through the neighborhood with an unmade up man.  Or how safe you feel, curled up watching TV with someone who loves you forever.  There is so much more grit and glory than any 6th grader can imagine.

I was living in the dorm in college when I visited a newly married friend.  She and her young husband had just moved into a brand new apartment that was very 1990's modern.  All grays and purples, sleek lines and minimalistic furnishings.  It was the most sophisticated place I had ever been.  And was immediately the epitome of all my "when I get my own house" fantasies.

Today, twenty-six years later, I see a lot of gray throughout my house.  Mostly in things that once were white and have been used and aged til they are dingy. My style is teenage-aged-boy-lived-in.  Not very popular in the house magazines I pour over.  The washing machine and dishwasher hum constantly.  From where I am sitting I can see a clump of cat hair and a streak of mud.  But it is my favorite place in the world.  The couch where the four of us flop on together at the end of the day.  The table we gather around for Steve's famous Saturday breakfasts.  The porch where we watch lightening storms.  It's where we pack friends from top to bottom for sleepovers, cook Thanksgiving dinner and toast our Christmas tree with egg nog.  There is so much more grit and glory than any college student can imagine.

I still like playing grown up.  Someday I may redo this post by adding to the paltry imaginations of my forties.  Until then I am grateful that life is so good.  And I will soak up all I can of this gritty and glorious life!

aesthete

It was in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva where I realized it was hopeless. 

My family was spending the morning at this art museum and today I was determined to be my best art appreciating/cultured self. We all started together and I slowly wound my way through the museum.  I read all the captions.  I looked for little details in the pictures. I walked with agonizing slowness from corridor to corridor. By the time I circled back to the first room, I couldn't take any more art.  That is where I found my father.  Still in the first room.  Gazing up at a painting with tears running down his cheeks.  "Have you seen this one yet?" he asked with a combination of reverence and passion.  Oh dear.  My art immune, barbarian status was confirmed.  

Growing up in an art-loving family has exposed me to some wonderful art in my life.  I've been to the British Museum twice, all the Smithsonians in D.C.,  the Wyeth's Brandywine Museum in PA, Norman Rockwell's museum in MA, the High Museum in Atlanta and during a study tour in college I got to see art museums in Israel, Greece and Rome.  But I never was captivated by it.  Art Shmart.   I may have speed-viewed many priceless works.  I may have rolled my eyes more than a few times.  

A couple years ago, a road trip with my parents included the de Young Museum in San Francisco to see Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl earring. We had a wonderful day, and I almost felt arty.  But I realized it was mostly because my parents are great company and I got to be sophisticated and urban for a change.

Then, as irony would have it, I became an art teacher this school year.  Yep me.  The can't-draw, can't-craft, can't appreciate girl inherited four sections of elementary art, grades K-8, once every single week.  In a panic I downloaded a timeline called Art History for Dummies.   Appropriate. I made a schedule and plugged in some true artist friends.  And then the routine started.  On Friday I would text my dad with the time period for the next week.  Cave art.  Egyptian art.  Roman art.  Byzantine art.   By Monday there would a set of pictures in my inbox.  I'd sneak to the library and call my dad for an art history lesson.  

Week after week, in the quiet dark library, on the phone to California,  I discovered that art is made up of stories and themes, of artists and countries, of inventions and influences, of talent and luck and survival.  I would take dad's enthralling stories and ideas and find ways to engage my students in the excitement of it.  My interest in art became sharply focused and incredibly enjoyable.  

Recently our library art class time centered on early Renaissance art.  I got engrossed in Giotto, an Italian painter and architect who was first in line of the renaissance artists.  Dad told me about this reportedly unattractive shepherd boy who painted pictures of his sheep on the rocks in his pasture.  He was discovered by a local artist passing through the field who couldn't believe how life-like the chalk drawings were.

Giotto later auditioned to work for the Pope by submitting a single, perfect circle painted in red as his best work.  The Pope was impressed and hired him, wisely, as Giotto's depiction of human emotion in his paintings set him far above his contemporaries.   Dad especially mentioned the emotion depicted in a painting with little angels.  I thought about Giotto all through the day.

The next day I got down to business.  With my scribbled notes I began to look up pictures for class.  I couldn't read my handwriting.  Gotto?  Getto?  I googled Renaissance artists and found Gatti. Italy.  Renaissance.  Must be it.  There was nothing about him being ugly or the painted red circle or the chalk sheep.  But I wasn't surprised that my dad would know way more than Wikipedia.  I found some of Gatti's art.  Ornate, overdone.  Yes there were a few little angels - fat, gilded cherubs. Nothing there to inspire in me the wonder I'd heard in my dad's voice.

It was shades of Geneva all over again.

And then I realized that Gatti was from the 1600's.  I was pretty sure the artist I was looking for was at the beginning of the Renaissance.  So back to Google.  1300's.  And there was Giotto.  There were the sheep and the pope. Ah ha!  I scrolled through some work he had done on chapels.  One caught my eye.  The Lamentation of Christ. It is of Jesus being taken down from the cross, mourned over and held by his mother and friends.  The painting is in beautiful blues, golds and rose.  But what caught my attention was the sadness on the faces of Jesus' friends.  Emotion.  I enlarged the picture.

And that is when I saw the baby angels. Ten of them flying to earth, filling the sky.  They are horrified, heartbroken and in pain at the loss of Jesus. One is plugging his ears.  One is hiding his eyes.  And one little angel in the middle is skidding to a stop mid-air because he can't take in the loss of his God.

I saw all this in the second the painting filled my computer screen.  I heard myself gasp and at the same time realized I was crying.  I resonated with their feelings of confusion and grief.   In a new way I glimpsed what a staggering loss that moment in history represented.  I was touched by their heart broken hearts.  I was moved.

I was moved!  Those little, emotion-filled Giotto angels were the last straw that broke my art resistant back.    I'd finally crossed over from philistine to aesthete -a person who is sensitive to, recognizes and values beauty in art.   It only took 46 years, 65 students, 25 art classes, miles of museums, hours of patient conversations and 10 baby angels.

Gear up Dad!  Impressionism is coming up, and your art-appreciating daughter can't wait to find out what I'm going to love next....

darkness

It is cold and dark.  All the time, this time of year.  I get up in the dark and rush to get the heaters and fireplace turned on.  It is gray on the way to work.  The sun is setting by the time we head home.  The house has been empty all day and is cold.  I pile on the sweatshirts trying to get warm while I do homework.

I have my winter standbys.  Hot baths that leave the bathroom mirror covered in steam.  Burying under fleece blankets with Steve, watching Hawaii 5.0.  My yearly read through of A Trip to the Beach by the Blanchards.  Dreaming of our upcoming Outer Banks Vacation.  These help a little bit. I still feel whiney about the cold and dark.

This winter I read Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor.  She has a different perspective on physical and spiritual darkness.  She draws attention to the non-sunny Bible stories.  Where Abraham, Jacob, Moses, several Josephs and others connected with God after dark.  These night time Bible stories are filled with stars, ladders, pillars of fire, and dreams.  She writes that good things happen spiritually if you aren't always demanding a light.

And then she urges us to enjoy the darkness.
"Here at the liquid edge between day and night, the difference is so unclear that there are many words for it: sundown, twilight, nightfall, dusk...According to the rabbis, the Sabbath begins when three stars are visible in the sky, in which case I am not there yet.  As it turns out, there is a lot of ground to cover between one sunset and three stars."

Steve has always loved the evening.  In the summer he will often call us all out to lay on the driveway as the day is ending.  Or sit on our porch rocking chair.    I'm a morning person.  When the sun goes down so do my spirits.  But since Christmas my new fit bit has driven me out of the house in the evening.  When Steve gets home from work we all bundle up and head out to finish my steps.  The boys will toss a neon football.  Aggie will bounce up and down with joy to be doing something exciting.  We will talk about our days and loop back and forth on our neighborhood road together.

And I have started to enjoy cold evenings in a new way.  At Barbarba Brown Taylor's urging I now look for the subtle differences in darkness.  There is not really light, kinda dark, and can't-see-the-road-ahead night.  I tell the boys "If we were inside we would call this dark, but look how much you can still see!  Look how pretty the trees are!"

Last night we finished the walk before the football game was done.  While the boys played, I laid on the driveway and stared up at the first stars. I looked for ladders and pillars.  There were none.  But I heard my boys laughing, felt Steve's warm arm around me and saw the sliver of the moon.  There on the driveway I realized that coldness and darkness are like any other problems you face.  Bundle up and meet them head on and you find they aren't as scary or awful as you were afraid they were.  You might even find them enriching your life.

Bring it on Winter. :)

promptings

During my last year in high school, our class put on a production of Pride and Prejudice.  We all auditioned for a chance at a big part.  What could be better than playing Miss Elizabeth Bennet to some handsome senior boy's Mr. Darcy?

No shocker but I did not score a major role.  Even tiny parts like Kitty or Charlotte went to others.  As consolation I was given the "very important" job of Prompter Number Two.  I spent every practice and the entire performance perched high in the eaves over the stage whispering down lines to forgetful actors.

Try saying this in a loud but quiet whisper.  "If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” 

Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds....

I've been thinking about my perch and those whispers recently as New Year's Day approaches.

My resolutions never change.  Over and over.  Bigger heart, Smaller body, Less stress, More gratitude.  It's some form of that every year.  But I wanted specifics this year.  I wanted clear prompts! And I realized that some of the whispers I was hearing might hold the answers.

I got this text from my Maryland friend Lisa a few days before my birthday.  "You have to get a fit bit.  I just got one.  We can encourage each other to move! Get it for Christmas!"  How's that for a prompt?  I pled my case.  I got one.  Not only do I get to communicate with Lisa more, but I have the motivation to get moving despite cold and busyness.

I read this whisper in Bill Hybel's book Simplify, 10 Practices to Unclutter your Soul.  "Find a chair.  Find a spot that works for you and make space to feel the deepest sense of God's pleasure with your life." Not a new idea.  But just the perspective I needed to take it up a notch.  I found a cozy spot, claimed it as my soul chair and am spending regular time there.  I already feel some new life sprouting.

On my bathroom sink is the most precious picture of my two boys when they were 4 and 5.  They are tanned and smiling, standing next to our car.  It's been a favorite for years.  But lately I hear it whispering loudly "treasure each moment."  My boys are growing up so fast. Tonight I drove Jake to driver's ed.  I fixed Josh his 5th meal of the day.  Before I know it they will be away at college, planning their next date or traveling the world.  I'm so glad for this prompt, reminding me that I have them today. Slow down. Soak it up. Enjoy.

Part Holy Spirit, part human, that is how my New Year's resolutions came to be.  Or as Mr. Darcy put it -  "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.''

So welcome 2015!  I look forward to many more whispers from any eaves...

napkins

I always forget napkins.  The table will be set, food is hot, family gathered, and someone will say "do we have any napkins?"  I will jump back up and grab a handful of paper towels.  Because "no we do not EVER have napkins."  The paper towel thing is fine when it is just the four of us on a week night.  We aren't fancy.  But for Thanksgiving or Easter or weekends with company? When a lot of work has gone into making the table look nice....the wad of paper towels just doesn't cut it.  Must remember to get napkins!

Which is why I was so tickled when my in-laws showed up around noon on Christmas with a package of beautiful Christmassy paper napkins.  "We thought you might need these," my mother-in-law said as she handed them to me.  I did!  They brought many other things, boxes of presents, food and drink, but those napkins are still making me smile.  I think it's the great combination of being truly known, and truly taken care of.

I felt that combination with the cozy pink coat from my parents.  It's a continuing gift of fresh color and warmth as I stand outside and greet students every morning.  And the afternoon trip to Sensibilities Spa with my sister-in-law from my brother's family. It was the perfect mix of quiet relaxation and fun chattering.   And my fitbit from Steve and the boys - just the right incentive and social competition that I needed.   I could go on...

Christmas can be a great physical reminder of God's abundant love.  My God will richly supply all your needs through Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:19 .  It was for me this year, and I am so grateful.

And there were more napkins.  Later in the day I unwrapped a package of cream-colored cloth napkins with words of gratitude printed in black script.  I had seen them at Pier One, thought they would be great for Thanksgiving and hinted that I wanted them.  (Can it still be called hinting if you call your mother-in-law and say "I really want these specific napkins from this specific store"?)  

One of my resolutions for 2015 is to Use It Up.  Don't save things for later.  I tend to tuck things away for a special occasions -soft scarves, gift boxes of unique tea flavors, pretty candles, the good plates or better silverware. But NOW is a special occasion.  Dinners on Wednesday evenings and baths on Tuesday nights, and getting dressed for cold Monday mornings.  Use It Up is a regular reminder to live in the moment, that my family is worth it, that I am worth it.   I have been inspired by Gretchen Rubin's call to spend it out and Shauna Niequist's burn the candles post, and want to live into this paradigm. 

So Friday night I pulled out the beautiful Thanksgiving napkins and set the table with candles.  I controlled my wincing as spaghetti mouths were wiped on the new napkins.  They can be washed.  And if they don't make it til next Thanksgiving think of all the gratitude-infused meals we will enjoy in the mean time.

The paper towels can wait.

tantrums

At school today a little girl was marched into my office.  Her eyes were red and her shoulders were shaking.  She listened defiantly as I talked about how kindergarten students can not throw screaming fits over the shape of crackers served during snack time.  She was not convinced.  Or very sorry.

Actually I felt for her.  I know that helpless, angry frustration that sometimes wells up inside me looking for a way to escape.

I felt it this month.  After years of praying a very specific prayer and years of silence from Heaven in response. After laying out over and over and over what seemed to me a God-honoring, mostly unselfish plea.  After trying to be positive and grateful and teachable in spite of not seeing a light at the end of my tunnel.

Recently in my car I listened to an inspiring sermon on Daniel's three friends facing the wrath of the king.  How these men of faith faced the angry king and told him to his face "Our God is able to deliver us from this furnace.  But even if He does not we will still serve Him to our death."  The point of the sermon was sometimes God delivers us FROM the fiery furnace.  And sometimes God delivers us IN the fiery furnace.  We don't always get the rescue, the answers, the solutions we want or need, but this doesn't have to shake our faith.

As if.  

I love my faith.  It's the air I breathe and the road I walk on.  It is guiding, helpful, comforting, delightful, interesting, challenging, grounded.  What it is not is Unshakable.

I falter in front of a furnace.  Or in pitch blackness.  Or dead quiet.  I need more burning bushes and wall writing and nets overflowing with fish.  I'd like a city falling down and seas parting please.

But no.  What started with a hope-crushing text last week, ended with me in the bath tub having a spiritual hissy fit.   I didn't renounce my religion or curse at God.  Just kicked and cried and pouted.  "God, what in the world is wrong with you?  How clear do I have to be?"

When I was still doing hospice full time I ordered Barbara Brown Taylor's new book Learning to Walk in the Dark.  I thought I would be good for my patients.  I pulled it out recently and found that what it is really good for is people in mid-tantrum.   This paragraph spoke to me.

This darkness and cloud is always between you and God, no matter what you do," wrote the anonymous fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, "and it prevents you from seeing Him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing Him in sweetness of love in your affection.  So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out after Him whom you love.  For if you are to experience Him or to see Him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness."

I climbed out of the tub, spent and resigned.  Red eyes and shaky shoulders.  So be it cloud and darkness.

And then the next day.  The next day! Things dramatically changed.  Better than I could have scripted or hoped for. Steve was offered a new job.  With people that valued his years of commitment and consistency.  People who said things like "Wow, we are so excited to get to work with you." With plenty of stable work, affirming staff and new challenges.   The desires of my heart.  What feels like the warm smiles of God.

And with my joy and gratitude comes sheepishness.  Why couldn't I have held that tantrum off twenty four hours? Why couldn't I have embraced one more night of the darkness and announced "Even if He does not!" Why such a vivid reminder that my faith is sometimes still in kindergarten?

There will be other cloudy nights and long tunnels.  I know that. What I hope is that I can carry this experience and so many others through the darkness.  That I will remember there is a fourth being holding my hand in the furnace.  That instead of yelling at I can cry out after Him whom I love.

And maybe a little less pouting and kicking.....