"Imagine if"

Imagine if every time you opened a new box of cereal you found a pretty ceramic dish, perfect and flawless. Imagine this a real thing, that you could build a whole set of decorative dinnerware, enough for your family, of quality to last a lifetime and even pass on, just by having breakfast as usual.

In this age of sticker-shock on shrinking cereal boxes (holding cereal only) it is almost more than the mind can absorb! But indeed the 1911 acquisition of "Mother's Oats" by the Quaker Oats Company spurred an effort to encourage Americans to eat more oats, with pretty dishes in the boxes being a "carrot" to the consumer.

Previously, oats in America were more prevalently consumed as animal feed. The company's promotional brainstorm caused a quick stir of the pot, of oatmeal into bowls, inside of human kitchens. Women were said to have purchased (many) boxes of oatmeal ahead, and it is not hard to think they may even have emptied many boxes into bulk containers in their pantries. After all, the traditional Sunday dinners of the era needed pretty dishes, the sooner a full set the better.

I didn't have such a set handed down to me, but I still kept somebody's grandma's dishes, and I treat them as if I inherited them.

And I do not mean like fine china, used only for special occasions and stored protectively all the rest of the time.

I started my "set" by chance of having come across one pretty plate, a story told in a previous column. The one pretty plate turned into an eventual collection, for some time treated as so precious it did in fact fall into that "sheltered" category. Saved out, in a display cupboard, in "look but do not touch" style.

But one day I noticed something upon dusting them, a chore that comes to pass when pretty plates never fulfill their intended purpose. 

"Score" lines, gentle creases over the colorful flowers of the plates caught my attention. Not noticeable at a glance, up close and personal these lines spoke to me. They evoked distinctive images to me of knife-and-fork meals, of an attentive mother setting up a feast for her beloved family and everyone at the table diving in, with gusto and appreciation.

I thought of bread and butter and roasted meats and vegetables, of salads and side dishes, of contented sighs and harmonious conversations. My plates experienced all of that and more, and now emerged to tell me the tale about it.

They said, "We are none the worse for the wear."

And so I began using them, every day even. They were made in America and are the exemplification of quality, and yes, none the worse for the wear! Many decades past their exit from an oatmeal box, they still thrill my senses.

Their delightful entry into my everyday sphere really doesn't grow old. Each time they are wiped and set into the cupboard I am reminded of a time I didn't live in, but somehow still feel nostalgia for. 

It is that way for the things we wish we might have experienced, in the gentler annals of history. 

And I must end this column comparing the easier opening of that kind of "cereal" over the challenges of opening the boxes of today's many kinds of cold cereals. Sealed in wax bags as they now are, they can present quite the frustration to opening, at least to one impatient, "manly" man of this writer's household. 

He might be able to chop, drag, split and stack cords upon cords of firewood better than any man I have ever known, but open a box of cereal without it exploding onto every surface of his wife's carefully tended kitchen? Pour himself a bowl of the contents without mutilating the box? Make an easy breakfast for his wife without declaring a cardboard box and wax bag childproof and impossible??!!

No, he can't do that. So, any time I hear murmurings that it is time to open a new box, I am off and running, full speed ahead, "Let me get that for you, Honey."

And alas, I haven't found one pretty dish yet! 

If readers are interested in the tale of my first plate find (and other stories) please "like" my Less is Plenty page on Facebook.

"Waste Not, Want Not"

November is inspiring even in its drab chill. 

It prompts us toward preparedness, almost wherever we live. We may not all have recently harvested a garden, but we are all concerned about "bounty." We're all thankful to see it in our cupboards and freezers, and when we feel its sufficiency in our bones.

Our household has dabbled in self-sufficiency for decades. We know well the plusses and minuses of trying to produce many things for ourselves. We have learned that we are mostly not die-hard; if nobody does it better than a local grower and we can skip THAT grueling work, so be it. We have other grueling work to do, and we are happy to support someone who will "grow our garden" in greater joy than we can muster. 

There are a couple of apple trees out front, that do their due diligence at guilting me into work, though, as well a patch of rhubarb. Being perpetually fruitful, they (in their season) dare my conscience to let them go to waste.

I can't do that. So I bake pies and cobblers and cakes, and freeze slices and chunks until the freezer is taken up with them. I lament I need room for other things, but am I going to weep at bounty?

No, I'm going to store fresh what I can, preserve some in jars, and give pails away. Years past I also added into this solution other things we planted annually, popular things that most gardeners are inclined to grow and so must we, too. 

The trouble with keeping up with the Jones's garden is that except for a few universal classics, it is not in keeping with what a "Ramos" garden would most naturally look like. ln some ways we are as American as the apple pies I bake, but we are also creatures of the cultural foods we were both raised with, and so....

Beans and rice it is! They make the best sense for us for storing "bounty" and are SO easy to transfer from the bags on the grocery store shelves into the pretty jars in the pantry I love. 

Even after giving food away, wasting some we still don't eat is a very first-world condition.

Which brings me to a "slew of blue" (vintage canning jars) I once chanced upon.

It was at a landfill, when such a place still resembled more of its old-school namesake, the "dump." 

This one was near Wheeler, in the 90's. In those days I drove our blue Jeep pick-up into the place, backed up and unloaded our household trash. There were no bins to separate items, just one big pile to add this, that and everything to, the sort of pile soon-to-be nevermore.

One afternoon as I was doing this, another woman in another pickup truck backed up next me, dropped the gate and hopped into its bed to start shoving her "trash" onto the rubbish heap. 

My jaw dropped. She was ridding herself of dozens of vintage blue canning jars, quarts and pints and even half-gallons galore. Some still held sealed foods; she was casting away her Mama's hard work in preserving bounty!

Waste of food aside, I coveted those pretty blue jars. For a brief moment my innate shyness held and I almost drove off. But desire overtook. I soon piped up: "As long as you are throwing those away, would you mind if I took a few?"

"Have at it," she said, and paused to let me help myself. I took about a dozen and a half, feeling strangely greedy at that. Later I wished (many times) I had been greedier! I've used those jars unceasingly and knowing that so many more were literally relegated to a rubbish pile still boggles my mind.

For several seasons I did what those native to Wisconsin did. I preserved a garden in those jars and others. I tried my hand at the pickles they pickled and also made jams from the wild fruits on our place. I filled shelves and cupboards with the pleasing sight of bounty, and almost wept to begin using their beauty, and to usher in the dwindling of "plenty."

But something strange happened on the way to extracting the literal fulfillment of the jars. As we gradually emptied them, I realized I was preparing meals around them, when we so often more craved the foods of our upbringing.

These had never come in sealed blue jars, or cans of any sort, really. They mostly came to our mother's kitchen in bags, and in fresh forms from the neighborhood supermarkets. They were always nourishing and delicious, signifiers of home and comfort.

It was really up to me how I wanted to proceed. I had loved learning to preserve bounty, and this was inspired by what the locals did. So much of what inspired THEM was a desire to hold faithful to the comforting food traditions they were raised with. Their descriptions of foods unfamiliar to me were intriguing, so that sometimes I tried versions of their favorites. 

Like my own mother, I did like to change it up in the kitchen, but also felt more a creature of my upbringing, and culture. Aren't we all?

So it ended up that less was plenty in things I didn't want to plan meals around. Instead I took beans and rice and flours and filled the blue jars with them, and a simple few other things we consume consistently.

They don't grow old stored that way, and they don't grow old in inspiration for a good home-cooked meal. Throw in the fresh stuff and there we have it: our own traditions carried on.

I love how in America we can all do this! We can keep and share and try so many traditions, and in the course of this "taste" for ourselves at least a portion of almost anyone's experience. 

One of my big blue jars is now reserved as a vessel to affirm "blessings." Onto a small piece of paper I jot down good things that have come to us, over the course of a year. I have read that to do this is especially important in trying times, because when a person feels distressed by continual challenge, it is encouraging to realize every day offers good things, too. At the end of a year, one can empty the jar to be reminded how true this is.

This November has driven home to me the beauty of the artistic image of "Grace," by Eric Enstrom. You may be familiar with this picture, of an old man bowing over his simple meal in thankfulness. His expression of gratitude is vivid with earnestness, and it is over bread and soup, that's it. No buffet of endless "sides" and "mains," bread and soup it is, and such a feast at that.

The image also reminds me of how ages ago in the family restaurant in California, my uncle Dick would stand in the kitchen and put what he liked on a flour tortilla, roll it up and eat it. Once he did this with a chile relleno, a cheese-stuffed Anaheim pepper, battered and quick-fried. (A "peppered" cheese curd, if you will). My mom had never done that, so I thought it a bit strange and when my "look" kind of said so, he said (with gusto) "It's GOOD!!"

It IS good! I take it up a notch with adding beans and smothering it all in a green sauce and more melty  cheese, and I think of him every time I do this. He would have approved and I like to think he might have even put it on the menu. 

But the best thing I took away from that little exchange is how "leveling" it was, how people and families in their homes everywhere just want something filling and tasty good and that (in the best of circumstances) this is really how so much of the world lives.  Satisfied and grateful at nourishment, in good shelter, peace and love--a summation of BLISS to fulfill our deepest senses. 

So, even if our pantry is stocked with much more than the makings of bread and soup, I am enamored with the driven point that "more" of "less" can be plenty.

Because "bounty" is in the eye of the beholder, and its arrival is perceived, one heart and one mindset at a time.

"Rockin' With You"

Are the second and third grandchildren doted less upon, much as the second and third child seem to be?

In our own grandparenting, we think so. Now make no mistake, each one is generously loved! Each one we would lay down our lives for.

But spend as much money on as the first? 

We had to apply the brakes a little. The second "shift" came in almost as twins, very close in age. The very first grandchild had us to herself, when the sky seemed more the limit. 

We so enjoyed giving her experiences. Ramon (otherwise known as Grandpa) noted during his work in the Twin Cities different places to bring her back to on the weekends. Each excursion involved considerable thought and expense, but nothing made him happier than outings we could go on together that we were each enthusiastic about. We went to museums, shopping malls, zoos, carnivals, ethnic markets and celebrations, all kinds on mini road trips.

Once Grandpa went all out to buy new camping gear to try "roughing it," something we hadn't done with our own children. That appealed to me less than ever so I encouraged they two should go and I would happily stay home.

He loves to tell the story of that camping trip, what a beautiful place it was and all they did. He decided to top off their final day by visiting a store he knew she would love. The caveat to her was that she should know he was done spending money for now, the camping trip having been squeezed in between all kinds of other recent outings and purchases for her. 

This was Grandpa's weak attempt to teach her limitations, that the sky was NOT the limit, that she could sometimes have desirable things in front of her that she could not have, that the world would keep spinning if she had to do without one more figurine of a barnyard (or wildlife) creature.

The thing was Grandpa KNEW ahead he would buy her another one, to add to the hundred or so he had bought for her before. Each one was only about five-dollars, and he isn't really the type to torture the child OR himself, over her unrequited longing for a five-dollar thing in a store she probably wouldn't have the chance of seeing again anytime soon.

But he just had to lay out ahead, an expansive explanation that a lot of money had been spent recently, and he now only had "a few dollars left for the gas home" in his pocket. 

She wasn't buying that. In her few years of experiences with Grandpa, she knew he had more money burning a hole in his pocket, for her. And this store had something she hadn't seen before (well of course it did), a trailer to pull her little horses in. So, when the moment hit, he said, "Well, we can buy the gas to get home, or we can buy this trailer. Which should it be?"

She chose the trailer. He pulled out the funding. When they left the building, he filled up the gas tank and drove them both home.

To her credit she was five and to his discredit, he was probably fifty-five. We're very grateful she (over time) also witnessed his hard-work ethic and absorbed that influence too!

Fast-forward to our "second shift" in grandparenting, the more recent years. We both pretty much retired our jobs toward the purpose of helping out with them, so it wasn't like we didn't know what we were getting into. The first one taught us what to expect, as did our responses to her.

We told ourselves we were going to have to rein ourselves in. Now it would be two of everything to purchase, and four in admissions to everywhere. It was almost like parenting all over again, on a fixed income. We could still do the occasional bigger thing, but it was now going to be more parks and picnics, more fast-food than real restaurants, more natural world experiences than commercial amusement extravaganzas. 

We were going to be cheap, but it was still going to be good. 

One of the earlier summers I do remember finishing up a small excursion with a stop into the local big box store to let the two pick a "five-dollar" something from the toy aisle. Many years had elapsed from the first grandchild to these, but funny how that amount still seemed reasonable to Grandpa and me!

We soon saw that it wasn't. The only thing the kids could see in that range was a strange little "gimmick" object in an "eggshell" that "hatched" into a surprise animal. There were dozens of them. Seeing that the future could evolve into a "collection," I shrewdly decided to read the label for clues on how not to collect the same animal more than once.

I saw nothing helpful on this, so I called over an employee to ask what he knew about things. Mostly I wanted to know how going forward we could avoid purchasing repeat objects, again and again. I added to include how the PARENTS might avoid this, this possible beginning of a thing the grandparents got everyone into!

He too read the packaging and confirmed my greatest fear: we could well end up with multiple repeats. This I could not have! Here was a battle between the shrewdness of myself, and the shrewdness of the creator of said gimmick. I knew I would have to be strong in the sight of sweet and hopeful smiles, but I did it anyway. I said to them, "Kids, this is like the toy in your meal when we pick up hamburgers, except you don't get the hamburger."

Poor things. They (and Grandpa too) had no choice but to follow me, out the door, to the car, to the so-called "dollar store," which I hear tell is currently considering a reboot to the "dollar and a half" store.

They were little. Everything looked better than it was, and they could now pick five things instead of one! They liked the store so much it was like a new "ticket" to entertainment for many more times going forward.  

But even those days now are in the rear-view mirror. We played several years of roulette in what will it be this week, will we take them on a real trip that involves real lodging and real expenses, or will it just be hikes on our trails with lunches on the porch? Will we camp in a real camper-trailer and stay overnight places (we did, for a time), or will we just go to lunch and a children's museum for a day and call it good? 

We did plenty with them too, and the time has flown. It has whizzed by so fast Grandpa in particular has had a time of it, letting go of their "littleness." 

He has said to me time and again, "I'll be alright when the time comes, because I learned from having a daughter, and then the first granddaughter, what happens. All of sudden we're not their world anymore, and I will be okay when it happens."

This from the guy I watched once, hauling with his bicycle a buggy, the "second shift" tucked in, so big by then their rear ends almost sparked the gravel on the way out.

On the way out to wherever they were going, on the way back to NOW. Mostly just Ramon and I, keeping busy, but often taking the time to watch the world drive by from the porch. Where we're now living out (in the words of the John Conlee song): "That old rockin' chair don't scare me like it used to; it doesn't matter as long as I'm rockin' with you."

"It's all good" is like a miracle--something unexpected happening in a needed and beautiful way.

 We dreaded a window of time but found we love this one, too. 

"The Iceman Cometh"

 I long to be nostalgic about the days of "the iceman cometh" but it was before my time.

Still, I so wish it was an option for the current day, that a body would deliver ice blocks to an "icebox" at home, and that my household never HAD to rely on plugging a refrigerator in, ever again.

Now don't get me wrong. I love a running refrigerator, that never stops running. That's what I want. I think it's what we all want, long-term reliability--that a "chip" or a "module" or a "motherboard" will not die randomly on us, and usually right after we got the mother of all grocery orders all tucked in.

It's happened to me too often. Mostly at my food business, whereby a cautious operator almost by default HAS to have another refrigerator (or more) running at all times, in case one goes out. Because one WILL go out, setting off an immediate panic about food safety and food loss.

It happened enough that the phobia transferred to the home refrigerator. I have since bought refrigerators (and other appliances) before their time was up, finding homes for the still-good ones and marking my calendar for the "predicted longevity" of the next one.

The "predicted longevity" of the modern day is 5-7 years I hear, while the predicted longevity of an old-fashioned icebox is pretty much defined as infinite, and I should know it pretty much is. 

At one point I tried it. I bought an old icebox in an antique store, wiped up its shelves and polished its pretty oak exterior, made my own ice "blocks" and set the groceries in.

I tried to keep up. Into my "normal" freezer I alternated ice cream pails filled with water for the ice. A drip tray underneath the icebox had to be guarded from overflow, not as easy as you'd think, considering there was an attractive oak lift-shield I liked to keep shut, for pretty. One hour of not staying on top of things and water would stream out onto the maple kitchen floor. 

The insulation on that particular unit might have been worn down; things kept cool but not ice cold.  I would guess the old-timers who really used these iceboxes in consistency would probably say this was the way it was anyway, but it was a step up in their day from fishing the butter crock out of a creek. 

All I could do was try. It might have helped if this experiment didn't take place in the midst of whole days at the cafe, when it was not possible to lift up the pretty shield to see if too much water had collected already. But it was the unreliability of refrigerators there that inspired the icebox at home, so there was that. 

Of course, it didn't take long for me to plug the electric fridge back in. The lesson of the experiment seemed to be that we are a species of weaklings, who view the next great thing as a thing that makes the previous great thing too much of a hassle, too much of an effort.

A few months ago I decided it was time to not risk the time again, that we would have a fridge stocked with plenty and it would die. At the appliance store I only momentarily fancied a bevy of shiny beauties, having soon been told, "There are global shortages and delays right now, and most of these won't come until about June of next year."

That was before Christmas, and it's still not June. So, one-by-one (and just in case) I asked, "What about this one? What about that one?" until each was quickly eliminated, and only two realistic choices of immediacy were left to pick from. I had already initiated the futile discussion of "Is there a unit made anymore that isn't reliant on modern computer parts and would last like the ones in the good old days?" whereby she did say no, and whereby I did inquire if she had a selection of Coleman coolers.

She didn't take me seriously. We found a home for our "old" fridge and ordered the one unit that would come quickly. We are now off to the races, hoping we will make it beyond the finish line of at least seven more years.

In the meantime, I'm still serious. I have a big Coleman on the porch, and I'm not afraid to use it. I wish it looked as charming as the vintage oak boxes that rested outside windows back in the day, the ones that were stocked with renewed chill on the days "the iceman cometh." A body inside the house could just reach out for the milk and butter, no electricity needed.

I'm all for charm, and I'm all for practical. I would love "old" iceboxes to be offered "new" again, and I would love for an iceman to put me on his route. I wish they made cook stoves the way they used to, a "Monarch" that could utilize up to three fuels, warm the house if needed and operate without a plug, too.

In some ways progress has us in regress, I tell you! But if I'm going to look at the bright side, I just got a new fridge, and I'm good to go. For a for a little stretch, anyway.

Never Can Say Goodbye

Some of the hardest places to live are the hardest places to leave. The places of investment, in heart and soul and toil and belief in a best possible life. A place where it was difficult to get to, in the first place. 

In 1988, immigrant pioneers we were not, but we still came to a lifestyle and region foreign to us, because of hardship.  With a minimum of money but a wealth of dreams, like the pioneers, we could have land! Acreage, rolling fields and woods. A farmhouse, if dilapidated and barely removed from many years of abandonment. 

Build your dream and it will come, we thought. So, we listed our Colorado home, went to work in California and eventually signed on the dotted line for a different one, in the crosshairs of random hope and deeper seeds of faith. 

We did not sign on for peace of mind. When we finally arrived, we were so awash in doubt we despaired and almost didn't want to unload the rented truck. Our two young kids must have been so confused by parents who had hyped a "dream" to them for almost two years but now acted as if its arrival were a nightmare! 

We knew no one, but the locals were kind and that helped. It was April and the landscape shrugged off winter into a greening Eden, even in what later proved to be a drought year. We were making friends quickly, becoming a part of what did look like a wonderful place to live.

It appeared to be "Onward Wisconsin" for us, but the Colorado house hadn't sold, and Ramon had only found the poorest of work. It was hard to do all that was needed to prepare for an eventual winter in a house we couldn't do much to fix, one that was heated by wood alone. A proper chainsaw and truck for the woods were out of the question until the house in Colorado sold. As long as that house WAS unsold, we waffled. We could still possibly go back, and we might have to.

Each day we experienced a mix of highs and lows. The casting aside of realities to get here now reared its ugly head. We hadn't planned well! We had planned on fate intervening in the nick of time in a positive way, and only when we were in the trenches could we see it might not work out. And that maybe we didn't even want it to, after all.

Still, we began to plant a garden. With shovels, we turned soil that hadn't been worked in ages. In my own mind I was contemplating if we would even be here for its harvest. If we were, we would need it, so we might as well do the work. 

As the four of us dug, we began to turn up pieces of objects from another era, rusty fragments of farm implements and hardware, old bottles and broken glass. When our son pulled up a dish, he called me over to see it. He flipped a whole small plate, with clingy dark earth that I brushed off, to see a pretty pattern, and to GASP.

I gasped because the dish was an exact match to one single other one that I treasured, one that I'd found for a dime in Colorado and had tried for years to find more of. In fourteen years of living there, I never could scare up even one more, not in the dozens upon dozens of antique stores that we had visited.

Serendipity, some would say. I looked it at otherwise. It was messaging. We had to believe we were meant to be here, we had to stop doubting. And to double-down on this messaging, the next time we went to the mailbox, there was a package in it from my sister, holding a sweet little picture with words that said, "Go forward and never lose sight of your dreams."

How could she know?! I wondered. We'd only said, "We have our work cut out for us here." Pride had kept us quiet; we hadn't said much to the family and friends who were waiting to hear more, about how it was going for us.

She didn't know. It was messaging again, responsive to that leap of faith we had taken.

It's been over thirty years now since that fateful time. Lately I've been looking at other houses and places. But faithfulness to this one is a weird thing! Surely there's something finer out there, and it's fun to be on the prowl, if a fling with a different one sounds better for a new (or older) stage of life. But it takes time and a lot of lived experiences to make a house more than a house, a place to live more than just a place.

Once you've raised kids and helped grandkids grow up mostly in one single house and place, it's a home, and it's like second skin. If you hurt, it helps you heal, especially if you still have another beating heart in its walls with you. Maybe ONLY if you have another beating heart in it with you! So it is for some, not for others. 

For pleasure, work and exercise we've traversed hills and fields all these years. We still prefer a wood fire over the cooler breath of an alternate fuel.  Whether for joy or for winter warmth, it all adds up to work. Work that doesn't get easier with time.

But it's even harder, to consider leaving your "storied" place! At least this far.                                                                        

Lightness at the end of a Secret

 My husband playing Christmas music in February inspired me to think of secrets we feel dark about, that end up unfolding toward lightness, and good, so that you finally long to share them.

He'd been reaching for a Beatles CD and accidentally dropped Lauren Daigle's Christmas compilation, which spilled onto the floor and having to know if he scratched it, he decided to play it.

We love that CD, and hearing it brought me to think of the niece who recommended it to me a few years ago, and thus to a secret I kept long ago, in regard to her mother, my sister Cindy.

Cindy and I were three years apart. When I was little and timid, she was a powerful force of vibrant personality and strong will. Sometimes she was so hard on me I made inner promises to myself I would NEVER speak to her again, and I MEANT it! 

And then she would ask me to join her "midnight club," where just she and I would get up at midnight, meet in a (big) closet central of the house, and discuss future doings for our club. (We actually did that once, and having nothing to really plan, quickly went back to bed).

You know how it goes, with siblings. One day it might be laying down your life (she once pulled me onto her shoulders in the ocean, when we somehow lost our footing and found ourselves gasping for air, inciting an actual rescue by two swimmers nearby) and the next day it might be all-out estrangement.

When I was a freshman in high school, she was a senior. A whole lot of life had passed between us by then, for better or worse. I now considered her my very cool big sister, and I almost burst with pride and happiness, when her friends would start conversations with me, mentioning favorable things Cindy had said to them about me. 

I almost felt "cool" too. 

Apparently, I was SO cool and appeared to be so close to Cindy, that one friend in particular asked me one day, "What do you think of Cindy getting married already?"

What?? I knew nothing of this. But the friend (hardly taking pause at my evident surprise) went on to inform me that when Cindy turned 18 in 3 weeks, she and her boyfriend were eloping.

Cindy hadn't told me because Cindy feared that even if I kept the secret, my loyalties would be torn, between her and my mom, between what might be right and what might be wrong, between what might turn out good for her and what might turn out to be disaster for her.

I knew for sure telling this secret would be disastrous to hers and my relationship, our closeness. I knew my mother would be enraged and would do everything in her power to stop Cindy from doing this, and so then THEIR relationship would be destroyed. And as the stubborn, willful force from whom Cindy was born, it seemed to me my mother had the power to win.  

Don't ask me to do the math but I think I was fourteen, 15 at most. This was a burden I didn't want; it was a responsibility I didn't have the maturity to even begin to know how to "unload."  

So I did nothing. I said nothing. In 3 weeks I said nothing and Cindy married, informed my mother, and their relationship did seem destroyed. And I didn't have closeness with Cindy either because she no longer lived under our roof and was not free to visit or contact us.

She did call me secretly, anyway. For a few months she phoned me intermittently, always trying to get a "feel" if Mom had calmed down, if she was softening. When I finally (on wobbly legs) brought up to Mom that Cindy had asked if there was any possibility she could come visit, she answered, "I guess."

That was my mom's way of expressing openness, and so the healing began.

Cindy and her husband had two beautiful babies soon in a row, but the marriage didn't last. 

But the kids lasted, you know? They are beautiful people with beautiful souls, and my goodness, if you could see the beautiful children that came when THEY had children!! It goes on, the beauty. The more life, the more stories, the more love, the more fullness of family going forward.

I felt guilt about that secret; my mother never knew what I knew when I knew it. She might have laid blame on me! But the awe and admiration she often expressed toward Cindy's kids and grandkids  eventually convinced me there was no "blame" to take; it had all in time turned for good.

Sharing a secret is your confidence in someone, or a limited few. I've since shared this secret with (a couple of) my other siblings, but not with Cindy's kids and grandkids. They will now know! But I don't think they will spend precious time wondering "What if our grandma somehow stopped our family from coming to be?"

That's not how fate works. What will be, will be. 

But if we know a little bit more in our history as to how things came to pass, that too adds fullness to a life. We can take stock of what might have been, what might NOT have been.

I held a secret, and it seemed dark. I'm so glad it unfolded toward lightness and good, and although it's very personal to me, I'm happy to finally this day, long to share it.

It's done!!

I used to be afraid to use words. Of lining them up in rows, in choosing this one over that one. Maybe it was shyness, or humility, or insecurity. I longed to be expressive, but as my husband (Ramon) would often say, "Why do people pick hard words over simple words, that most people already know?" He was no help!

You know who was a help? My dad was a help. Another man you would think preferred the simpler words, but who one day unknowingly pressed a "I can do this" button in me.

It was in Colorado, where Ramon and I had rented temporarily, and were preparing to buy a house. Because we hadn't been there long, we didn't have a phone line put in. Instead, we drove weekly to a phone booth with piles of quarters in hand, to call our parents.

Winter was approaching, and my dad asked, "How are you acclimating?"

Acclimating? What's that?? I had to ask him, "What does that mean, 'acclimating'?"

He pleasurably informed me that it meant how a person was adjusting to new surroundings, and usually a change in climate that might come along with that.

Oh. Why didn't he just ask if I was getting used to the weather in this new location? 

I don't know! But I liked that he thought I might know the word. I liked that HE knew the word.

My dad was "just" a hod carrier, a union laborer. He worked hard, with his back, and with his hands. He wasn't prone to very deep or long conversations, ever that I knew of. When I heard him use this intriguing word that I did not know, I realized that I honestly didn't know the true extent of his vocabulary.

And I was suddenly interested more, in his vocabulary, and what it might mean for mine. I knew that Dad spoke about John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck. He had their books on a shelf. 

I picked them up when I lived at home, and I eventually read them when I lived elsewhere. I loved that my dad knew these authors. 

But I think too my dad was like Ramon and so many others, myself included at times, why use certain words, when you can use simpler words?

Sometimes we should keep it simple! And sometimes, why not use other words, beautiful words, expressive words, when you can, if you dare, if you think someone else might appreciate or even extract something good, from them?

My dad pushed a button in me, and my husband has come along for the ride. Ramon now says living with me is like living with a dictionary....not quite! There's always so many more words to learn.

But the less-simple ones I've learned and became willing to openly use, I've come to think I can somehow credit to my dad. All I had to hear was a glimmer of his joy at teaching me a word! All I had to absorb was that he likely knew so many more, but that shyness, humility, and insecurity kept those words locked up in a pen of inhibition. 

Here are some words (not mine, not complicated) I also think my dad would have enjoyed--the heart of their very expression. Love and concern for children in what can be a cruel, uncertain world, so many of us craving the peace of wild things, and places.

I'm not so sure we who grew up in the concrete of cities would so naturally "lie where the wood drake rests" but I know my dad did long for natural and growing things! Where he lived he created his own backyard haven, and he would have loved Ramon's and my haven here in Wisconsin, where the backdrop of this poem looks just like our home, and the peace of wild things.