"Randy"

During this (and his) birthday month I've been thinking of my brother Randy, and how next year he will (God willing) meet a milestone birthday--his fiftieth. This is something we once could hardly contemplate.......

Families were larger in the sixties, and ours fell in stride. In 1964 my parents had five daughters, with another baby on the way.

Part of it was a Catholic thing, but surely anyone could understand that a little boy's entry into our realm would "mix it up" a little, and be a very welcome newcomer to our very girly household.

I was eleven years old when my brother was born, and right off I knew how momentous his coming into our world was. He was given the majestic name of "Rudolph Anthony" (after our dad and grandfather) but "Randy" came to our lips more naturally and seemed a better fit.

I wondered about my dad's inner musings about my brother. As if to keep us all equal, Dad didn't overtly express his excitement about now having a son. He was not a man who shared feelings at all. We imagined, though, that Randy's future relationship with Dad would be exclusive. In our house, they were the lone members of their special society; by virtue of our gender we just could not take part.

I think we siblings were all fine with this. We were happy for Dad's sense of completion. Dad's Mexican heritage gifted him with the trait of machismo--some of which played out in in the natural drive to carry on the family's name, and simply for the meanwhile to enjoy the camaraderie of the father and son kinship.

Randy was an "easy " baby, quiet and not problematic. But almost before we could adjust to the idea that his presence would soon "change it all up" for us, he became seriously ill. Things worsened as a few days passed, and then panic set in. At four months of age he was transported by ambulance from our local facility
to the University of California at Los Angeles hospital. There each anxiety-ridden day surged heartbreakingly into the next.

We learned only then that aside from this sudden, blindsiding health emergency, our brother had been born with Down Syndrome. The term was new to us, but we gathered quickly that this was devastation. Randy would never be "normal," and at the time it was very often suggested to parents that institutionalization was  the best course of action. Suddenly we were not just fearing Randy's death, but if he lived, what decisions would we face about his care? Would he even be in our lives?

The day came when extended family members came to our home. They came to support us, because our parents had now been told to prepare for the worst--Randy was not expected to make it through the night.
Even my mother and father came home in the late afternoon; the emotional havoc had peaked to unbearable and they chose to take some time of respite with their girls.

With sustenance in mind, the women began the assemblage of a meal. Something was needed from the store and my mother sent me into her room for her purse.

Following her command, my parent's closed bedroom door did not register with me. Usually left open, its closure now just did not sink in, and I burst in to get the purse.

Jolted is the word I think of--the physical, mental sensation of being hit with a hard sight and a hard realization---when I recall the image of our dad, at his bedside, on his knees and in posture of prayer.
I had unwittingly crashed into this most private, solemn moment of appeal to his God, and nothing I could do would take back the moment.

As I was stunned, so was he. He vaulted to his feet, shaken by the invasion to his privacy, but not in the slightest angry. Even in solitude he wore dark sunglasses to hide the wear on him from the many days of angst, and from under their glare I saw that tears had worked their way down his face. His lips trembled, and he said simply, earnestly, "Pray for your brother, honey."

With his uttering of those few words, I knew that my dad wanted my brother to live. He hadn't been on his knees suggesting to God that he (my dad) could accept God's will, come what may. He wasn't leaning toward a "way out" of this. He wasn't secretly, ashamedly harboring thoughts that Randy's death would be "for the best," as some had insinuated might be the better answer.

No--he was praying for my brother to LIVE. Not to recover and then be turned over to an institution, but to recover and COME HOME. To get well, and be a part of this family, come what may.

Somehow I knew this. Even in the sixties, when children with Down Syndrome were still horrifically referred to by a term I can't to this day utter or write, and were most often shunted off to institutions, I knew this. My dad was a prideful man who would have loved nothing better than to mold a son in his own image--but that afternoon I knew he would take Randy as he was, come what may.

The knowledge of this about my dad was golden. Like all fathers, ours was not a perfect man. He had received little molding himself; his own dad had died when he was just five years old. No other man showed up to parent him; he was raised by his mother and sisters. We girls understood this was a big void for him, but it did not always help when we suffered his less than shining moments.

With Randy we saw our dad in a new light. I do not know what promises or conversations our parents made with God or with each other about Randy. I only know that when Randy came home, he was loved and nurtured and in turn was loving and nurturing to all of us. Never rambunctious, he was always gentle and kind, thoughtful and dear. He was funny too, his constancy in good cheer giving him his own style of charisma.

The changes Randy brought to our household were not the ones we expected. They were probably better. As the years went by my parents often heard from relatives and friends about the trials they were experiencing with their growing sons. Some of these trials had life-altering, tragic consequences--and so the strangely converse comfort of knowing Randy was home safe and sound was perhaps not so strange, after all.

There's much more to Randy's story and I hope to tell more on this blog, hopefully after his milestone birthday. And even though my dad has been gone now for many years, I know today as I knew "that day" that Randy's story is in great part a happy one, because of the molding my dad gave him, "come what may."

Grandma's Hoosier Cupboard

                                                                 

Mine, when in my shop

Looks just like mine but I don't have it anymore!

A showroom-new cupboard is flawless, but it could never make me swoon the way my Grandma's Hoosier did.

Now, lest your imagination fancies you with visions of golden-aged oak, roll-top breadbox and classic built-in flour sifter, I must enlighten you to the modesty of Grandma Rosa's Hoosier. Her cupboard, in her California home in the fifties, was made from humble pine, painted creamy white.  Its essential purpose in life was to store food and kitchen items, and this it did for many years, to my never-failing (?) enchanted memory.

It was the imprint of these recollections that induced me to eventually bring such a one home for myself, decades later to our Wisconsin farmhouse.

We came upon our find in a dank shed adjacent to a rural antique store several miles from home. The shed was used for overflow of bigger items the main building could not house, with "weathering" continually seeping in at all sides, underneath and from up above.

We didn't snatch it up right away. In fact, we passed on it several times. Despite its banishment to a near-dungeon, it was a slightly bigger-ticket item, and our pocketbook was more in line with the smaller dishware in the shop.

After about a year of frequenting this shop, we at last rescued the cupboard from icy winters and sweltering summers. A little worse the wear from the elements, we scrubbed up the warped wood and gave it a fresh coat of paint, then slid it into our farmhouse kitchen.

We backed up the Hoosier against a longish wall and set our aged oak table in front, and went industriously  to work stocking it, filling it generously with jars of flour, sugar, and other staples.

I used a fine, wide drawer for rolling pins and cookie cutters and all manner of old but perfectly useful kitchen utensils. The smaller drawers were prime for dishtowels and cloths, and a deep tin-lined bin was ideal for airy bags of potato chips. Behind its sizable bottom door my bigger stockpots and gangly bake-ware found perfect housing.

I loved the look of that Hoosier in my kitchen. It was homey and functional--and put me back in time to my grandma's kitchen.

My grandma's Hoosier was recessed under overhead built-in cupboards in her narrow but generous kitchen.

It too was painted white, with no fancy adornments. Early each morning Grandma would unwrap a fresh stick of butter from her refrigerator, and set it in a butter dish on the enamel work surface of the Hoosier. Whenever we grandchildren spent the night with her, we could count on sweet butter that cut and spread easily onto our toast, or sliced cleanly to sizzle in a frying pan for our breakfast eggs.

Grandma's cupboard too was full of purpose. It sheltered her everyday dishes up top and always had a loaf of fresh bread in its cubbyhole middle. The work surface was made for putting together sandwiches, or for slathering preserves onto warm tortillas. It was also a good place for holding dishes from the front eating room as they awaited their turn at the sink.

Whenever I used my Hoosier, it never failed to spur me into further musings tied to Grandma.

My own mother would tell you that Grandma was forever stern, fault-finding and hard to know. (Perhaps this was part and parcel of many a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship.) My own personal experience told me otherwise. At Grandma's house there was always a game of Chinese Checkers ready to go, and cousins to meander her small acreage with. For me, her steady presence was unobtrusive but yet warming all at once. 

It really was Grandma's kitchen and her humble Hoosier cupboard that bespoke best the connectedness she felt with you. Her little stocked pantry filled with nurturing foods told you this. Her invitation for you to generously help yourself made her welcoming to you ever so implicit.

In time Grandma would move into a newer house in a nearby town, replete with a good plenty of built-in cupboards. She didn't take the Hoosier with her, and not too long afterward I heard the old house was being razed, as they say, to put in a parking lot. I didn't nurture impractical thoughts of tracking down that cupboard; in fact I hardly remembered it at all then.

It was really only when I saw the neglected Hoosier in the dank shed in Wisconsin that Grandma's kitchen came so alive to me again. Seeing it stirred all the old images, such that I determined images like that should transpire in our farmhouse kitchen for our own children.

And so it did. For myself, I could never go near the thing without wanting to draw up a chair and pour out a cup of fresh coffee. Sometimes I would sit to heavily lace my cup with rich cream and sugar, and slurp just a little noisily, the way Grandmas always did. A new and perfect cupboard would never incite this urge in me!

One year, I decided to move my Hoosier to a soup and sandwich shop I had opened in the small town near our home. My "kids" then had flown the nest, and it was just the thing the place needed to beckon customers over to its side, where they naturally pulled up a chair to cozily sit for a light lunch.

Their explanation as to why this was the corner most often chosen always touched on the very simple and almost universal: it reminded them of their Grandma's kitchen.

After about thirteen years, I closed that shop and made the reluctant move to sell the Hoosier. My home kitchen had been changed up so much there didn't seem a place for it anymore.  I did not resign the piece to another stretch of loneliness, however. Another couple considered it a delightful nostalgic find and told me they would be enjoying it in a little private cabin they have created away from the main house on their rural property.  They go there for peace and seclusion they say, from all the commotion that occurs even in this "quieter" neck of the rush-rush world.

An object is just an object, but is it? If the use of it traverses the generations and its very presence is evocative of the most pleasant remembrances a person could ever hope to recreate, it IS something more, isn't it? 

"You Can't Give 'em Away"

I know very well the windfall plenty of an overflowing garden.

For a few fleet days or weeks, everything is crisp, sun-kissed and sumptuous, far surpassing any store-bought produce on the planet.

After awhile it's just THERE. Nagging you, prodding you, spurring you to your feet when all you really want to do is snooze in the hammock.

But no...........zucchini and cucumbers are greening by the minute, growing an impenetrable hide on the outside while turning mealy and seedy inside. It doesn't take long for vegetables to pass their prime, even when they've taken all summer to be ready.

The first blushing tomato is a thrill. The first few after are still wonderful, but too soon they seem to come as ill-considered brutes in their timing. Either you're dogging the vines hourly to pounce on the earliest crimson, or you're overwrought with blighting and blackening fruit teeming outward from all your kitchen surfaces onto your back porch.

Waste not, want not. It all boils down to work, work, WORK. And boiling your are, not just from the steaming kettles of preservation on near 100 degree days. You are also boiling mad at yourself for insisting upon planting a dozen plants of this and a dozen plants of that, when half a dozen of each was really more than you ever needed.

And so in due time you become the generous, thoughtful neighbor and friend. You pack bags and baskets of the surplus, and go rapping on doors here and there. There is a mix of dread and relief in doing this; you are joyous to unload the excess but equally fearful to hear, "Thanks, but I can't possibly take these--I have more of everything than I know what to do with myself!"

Thus, you never wait to be invited in for a cup of coffee. You rap and RUN, hopeful you can escape before the bounty is deemed yours again. When you get back home and discover even MORE veggies have ripened, you wearily pack them into bags and set out a "free produce" sign at the end of your driveway.

How conflicting is the feast and famine of growing things in their season. You toil and depend mightily on the good graces of the sky. You wait patiently for exceedingly long days for that first fabulous fruit. The anticipation is akin to that first phone call from the man of your dreams, long desired, tremulous with the thrill of the chase.

Once you've snared the man (or the tomato) you wish he (or it) would leave you alone for awhile. You'd rather have supper with a girlfriend or open an easy can of spaghetti sauce.

For the past few summers, I've concertedly bought a three-pack of tomato plants, set them in pots on the porch to be nurtured to their harvest. Doing it this way has usually been a bust. There's something about hoping for large returns on hardly any investment that rarely flies for me--it's simply not my lot in life.

These days I resort to more hardy gardeners than I. I look for their roadside stands, or I wait comfortably at home. It's my turn to hear that rap on the door, and be assured--I'll answer the door cheerfully, with a surprised but gracious appreciation.

I think I'll put the coffeepot on now.

"Let them eat cake"

I believe it was Marie Antoinette who said, "Let them eat cake."

I say let them BAKE cake. And roast meats, throw together sumptuous salads, pasta entrees, and create all manner of awesome food. Let THEM be trendy with classic dishes and be daringly inventive with that which is already unfamiliar.

Who is "them"? Anyone but me.

I've been there and done that. I like to think I gave as good as I got in the arena of chic little eateries, and as with any worthwhile venture its peaks and valleys ran their course. For me, there is no turning back.

But looking back is another matter, because the way all people sustain themselves intrigues me. It's not my business (literally, anymore) but it still intrigues.

Flavor, beauty, and wholesomeness should all be part and parcel of the eating experience. I understand there are people out there who eat for nourishment only, and any hoopla in partaking of anything is a mystery to them. Eating is out of necessity only for these sorts, and THAT viewpoint is mystifying to me.

Enjoyment of eating isn't the only pleasure in life, and it certainly isn't the most important "thing,"  as is love of family, general health and welfare, justice and equity for all. 


But nature runs its course when these all-important things cannot be fully enjoyed without the certainty of physical nourishment. All are intertwined; a great lack or abuse in any one of these areas compromises life and diminishes quality within, for sure.


We know that "the body is the temple" and "we are are what we eat." Food does matter, it is crucial to our overall well-being, so why wouldn't a modicum of hoopla about it be just fine?


What I love lately about good food is not wasting it. As a matter of routine in my cafe, I nurtured quality ingredients into creative fare, always in sufficient amounts to serve the number of guests I hoped to have.


This guesstimation always proved to be a crap-shoot. Some days our customers were lucky to be offered the one chicken salad "fold-over" we had left; other days we could not scare up a single taker for food I was fit to burst with pride over. (Maybe that was the problem--PRIDE.)


It may be in the cost of doing business that some product has to be thrown out, but it's a hard thing to do. You consider the beauty of it, the cost and all the other expenses you've incurred to put food out there that isn't same-old, same-old, and in the end you kind of suspect same-old is really what people want, despite choruses to the otherwise.


I always found good homes for good leftovers, and that took some of the sting out of things. It's more than fine to share surplus, but most business advisers do tell us we need to sell at least a little more than we give away.


I love that at home this angst is gone. I don't know that it was so much a "wide audience" I needed about my cooking (so much as a way to earn while enjoying a loved pastime), but I do puzzle at the lengths I went to over food.


Maybe (as a new line of groceries is named) it is because "food should taste good."  I wanted to share that belief, one I mightily hold. But the business of food opened my eyes to many struggles regarding sustenance in the world, and I come away enlightened.


Far and away from those trying to sustain themselves with the business of selling food, there are many others more concerned with simply and essentially just having enough food in the cupboards at home. Their mindset hardly dwells on costly meals out.


I have a new understanding and admiration for the timeless piece of art ("Grace" by Enstrom, I believe) where an old man prays intently over his bowl of soup and loaf of humble bread. It is evident that the fellow sincerely appreciates his daily bread, but more than that I can picture that image going into motion with relish and gusto after his prayer is done. I can see the man dipping that hearty bread into his broth to sop up every bit of flavor, until it is "all gone." I can't speak for that man and don't know if he ever yearned or enjoyed much more, but I am convinced there are many people even now very happy, fully contented with simple food.  


Can a person trying to sell food (especially away from hugely populated metropolises) really get frustrated with that? And what about people who can eat out with no big hardship but choose not to, at least very often?


That's me for some time now: meals out are too often a disappointment at any price, and no place is as comfortable (or comforting) as home. I have found that after years of trying to keep up with food inventiveness, I truly exalt in a less (choices in food) being plenty for me thinking. Diversity in food is all well and good, but I am blessed with a cultural foods background that in its own vein is extremely rich and almost completely enough for me. Add in an occasional cheeseburger or a wonderful salad, I'm good.


It's a luxury not to be excessive with food, because more, as we know, does not mean better. In a conversation recently with my 86-year-old mother, I was held a willing captive to her discussion of  chile verde, something she has prepared spectacularly for our family for many decades. Really good chile verde doesn't require very many different ingredients, but it is exciting and delicious every time you taste it.


One always makes a generous amount of it, because the base goodness of it stretches into many meals, none of which are same-old, same-old. A first night of chile verde is usually the stewed meat with traditional beans, rice and tortillas. Nights after can emerge with tostadas, tacos, burritos, tacquitos, posole, quesadillas and the list goes on. Each does not feel like a variation on the same theme because accompaniments and garnishes do a good job of changing things up.


"Use it up" is easier and much more delightful at home. In the business of food-service, I was a hostage to the pressure of performance, which always involved excess and thereby waste. From the beginning of time excess and waste have come hand-in-hand, so I don't know why it took a smart person (me?!?) so long to figure this out.


Or to realize how much it would bother me, as well it should. I see the light now: luxury is in the eye of the beholder, and where food is concerned "less is plenty" will serve as a beacon for me. 

"Like What You Like"

In relation to food, if you like what you like, what's wrong with that?

Outside of foods and practices that harm you or your family, why can't we like what we like?

If "food snobbery" has its way with all of us, we will all be consuming only that which others say is really good, or good for us, or even socially acceptable.

Were you raised with any food "oddities," foods that elicit the most winsome of memories for you, but others visibly cringe at? Often dishes like this are related to our ethnicity; they are connective to our cultures and families--they represent the best of what we knew as children.

In the midst of trying to relate the beauty of a revered food tradition, little is more dismaying than having it trounced upon and denigrated by someone who just doesn't "get it." Ten to one, this person has a precious food tradition, too. What makes his or her recipe fabulous, and yours just plain weird?

Much has to do with what we were raised with, and much has to do with how open we are to trying other people's ideas of what good eating is.

I'm willing as a baby is to taste new offerings. A bit hesitant, but mostly game to begin with. Unlike a baby, too much information might influence my taste buds. If I know that certain body parts (sometimes referred to as offal) account for a certain flavor in a meat dish, I'm affected. Why a chunk of beef roast has more "social acceptability" to me than a pile of beef brains or a pig snout seems obvious to me. But really? After all, that beef roast very well came from the cow's behind, so how classy is that?

I'd like all people to understand the appeal of "menudo," and not insult me with derision of it. In a Mexican household, this main-dish soup is practically sacred. "Menudo por los crudos" essentially translates  to "Menudo for the hungover" but you don't have to be a drinker to love it. "Crudos" is pronounced, with a rolled r,"crew-dose," not crud-os which is ironically probably more accurate; it helps rid the body of that cruddy hangover feeling.

People make big pots of menudo on Saturday evening, and dive into it after mass on Sunday morning. One (who has indulged) drags one's self out of bed to attend church for the cleansing effect of religion, then to home for the cleansing effect of this cultural mainstay. Good menudo is bold and bolstering, spicy and richly flecked with fresh garnishes like chopped crunchy onion, cilantro leaves, and a dried herb blend of oregano and crushed red pepper. It is always laced heavily with squeezed lemon for tang, and all of this put together gets the pores flowing. All is right with a bowl of menudo when it makes you sweat--and sweat as we know, does detoxify.

Menudo may be touted as a toxin releaser and a good cure for a hangover, but most everyone who enjoys it enjoys it for the flavor.

What makes for the flavor? Admittedly, it's offal--kind of awful offal: tripe, if you must know. The same word used synonymously with garbage, trash, refuse.  To thicken the plot further (oh, I mean the soup) a soup "bone" is added.

This doesn't sound as bad as a pig snout, does it? Alas, the truth is it's a pig's hoof, or foot, and that sadly DOES sound as bad.

But a pig's foot it must be. Not too long ago I trekked to an authentic Mexican market for menudo fixings, something I hadn't made in many years. In Wisconsin, I have become far removed from the idea of pig's feet in my soup, so I asked the friendly butcher if good old beef soup bones wouldn't do as well.

You'd have thought I asked him if I could made a burrito out of Wonder bread. No, Lady, he smiled. It's always been a pig's foot and always will be a pig's foot, if you want true menudo.

So menudo as I've always known it is comfortable for me, but I sense your skepticism. I get it. I decline many "foreign" dishes myself, especially when too much information is given. But I like what I like, and you should with ease like what YOU like.

"Foraged foods" are not foreign to any of us because they are a part of our collective ancestry. It's how the earliest life cycles were sustained and it's a history that belongs to all of us. Time and the ages have removed us from the constancy of need to forage, but many people are doing it now more from enjoyment than real need.

Foraging doesn't honestly appeal to me, but those who love it should love it openly. A friend of mine so successfully owns the tradition that he's become an expert at it. He has been sought out by a publishing house and of late has been making the rounds to lend publicity to his wonderful book, "Trout Caviar." He is innovative with his ways of preparing wild foods, and fearless even about his "accidents." Some of his finest moments come from things he didn't intend.

I once enjoyed a foraging jaunt with a friend who has always used the wild to complement her cooking. She explained that a creek-bank near her home harbored fresh watercress, and we were going to have a salad from that. I remember my mother adding watercress to our salads, and&n;the thought of experiencing that picquant freshness again just had me excited no end.

She plucked a bunch of the found greens, and we went home to assemble the meal. As we talked and worked, she mentioned her process of ridding the greens of "critters." The plates we were eventually presented with were beautiful, and her grilled salmon divine. Still,  with every approach of my fork to the salad, I was pretty sure what should have been cracked peppercorns was not--too much squirming going on there.

I suspect "critters" are part and parcel of foraging. Anyone who practices it  might only suffer amusement at those who would be bothered by these little natural "details."

"Live and let Live," should be practiced when we think about the foods we enjoy the most. I have a feeling my friend, Brett Laidlaw (who wrote "Trout Caviar") would not condemn my menudo, would even relish it, but the both of us (I am sure?) frown upon macaroni and cheese that requires orange powder for its finished state.

But isn't orange-powdered mac 'n cheese considered an American mainstay in many homes? Is my food snobbery about this as wrong as someone's else's ripping on my menudo or his foraged delicacies?

Live and let live....and if we want to LIVE well, enjoy it all in moderation.

Final comment on this: Just saw a Food Network episode where Guy Fieri was tasting someone's enchiladas topped with barbeque sauce. Some things are just WRONG and this would be one.

Pictured: Classic red sauce enchiladas....haven't made menudo lately.

"Haven"

A walk in the woods

Sometimes country living just means taking a walk or enjoying a little green space.

Leaving one's inside quarters to experience blue skies, fresh air and the growing things that are determined to thrive anywhere can be plenty, depending upon how one looks at it.

I feel I live in a haven (rural Wisconsin), but it's easy to see that everyone everywhere experiences haven.

I think of  my mother-in-law in her neighborhood in Santa Ana, California. Santa Ana is like any American town--divvied up into sections, some more "desirable" than others, depending on who is doing the considering. It has a richness in cultural diversity and particularly so in the Hispanic population.

One might observe that my mother-in-law's neighborhood never held a gated community status, but she was up every morning with the birds, tending her shrubs and flowers so artfully established by my father-in-law in the early years of their marriage.

How fresh and inviting her haven always felt. With benches and chairs amidst the multi-layering of vivid colors in plant life, her yard was so inviting I remember that friends often drifted in to while away a few moments of their day. Her sense of belonging to a neighborhood that thrummed with vibrancy in sight and sound held great appeal; although that district definitely had issues, I never heard her note any of it with adjectives like "noisy," "congested," or "dangerous."

For the most part, people who live in an urban environment do so by choice, and wouldn't have it any other way. For the flavor of nature, a walk to a local part or a back-yard oasis makes it all good.

For ourselves, we went the extra mile (actually two thousand miles) to create our backyard oasis. Our neighbors, most of whom were born and raised here, are of true rural stock. They raise chickens, milk cows, go hunting and fishing, and grow gardens and hundreds of acres of crops. We take walks, ride bike (my husband), go antiquing (me), watch old (and new) movies, tend the grandbabies, and sit on the porch with lemonade and magazines.

Hmmm....come to think of it, we live like more like city people than rural folk. But as any person envisions their idyllic surroundings, we dreamed this and count our blessings that it's come to pass.

It's not that we haven't tried to extract more from the land. We have lived "country" for most of our married years, here and in Colorado. We have raised chickens for eggs, tapped trees and made maple syrup, picked our wild fruits to make delicious jams, gathered morel mushrooms to enjoy with our steaks (homegrown by friends who raised the cattle) and grew gardens to can extensively.

It was all rewarding, and it was all work. Now don't get me wrong--we're not afraid of hard work. We don't lead sedentary lives and it's hard for either one of us to sit unproductively for long, at least during the daylight hours. It's not usually until night falls that watching a movie even feels right, although the hour approaching dusk often finds us with the magazines on the porch.  And well that should be.

We have learned as many do, that when enthusiasm for any project runs its course, DO THE MATH. Most self-accomplished endeavors pay both monetarily and spiritually. When they cease to do both, it's time to pick another venture.

How then DO we extract from the land that feeling that we are living a country life?

As anyone does. We look at what we have as precious, and we nurture and tend it.  In Garden Grove (also in California) my mother grew a spectacular bougainvillaea shrub along one side of her house. Out back, my dad grew tomatoes, chilies, lemons and nopales (cactus paddles).

From his own imagination, he dismantled an old wood cookstove and built a stone framework to reposition its various sections into a beautiful outdoor barbeque unit. One side boasted an uprising, stone-encased grilling rack complete with chimney stack, and the rest of it was stove--four burners with a utility/spice shelf above and a warming oven below. In readiness for this unit, Dad poured a concrete floor, set down a long picnic table and a permanent canopy overhead. He added a refrigerator nearby, stocked it well, and waited for the family gatherings.

With a garden-like backyard and all of that going on, I like to think this haven in the late 60's and early 70's was an early outdoor kitchen and that my dad was a man ahead of his time.

My grandma Rosa (Dad's mother) also created her piece of paradise in Placentia, once more in California. Her small acreage harbored many kinds of fruits and florals, but it is the likes of her geraniums that I have yet to see again in my lifetime. Grandma trained and nurtured her red geraniums so that they flourished skyward on both sides of the fence.

Both sides of the fence belonged to Grandma, because her little namesake restaurant was next-door. The eatery bragged an outdoor patio with a stone floor, my dad's work again. The fabulous geraniums and other flora lushed the setting into a tropic-kissed haven for diners. Such a haven it was that although small, I couldn't think of a prettier place to hold our wedding reception in 1973.

Grandma too was ahead of her time. She created an appealing outdoor eatery with European-like flavor (which was in actuality reflective of her own Mexican heritage) in the 1960's, and I think now that no bistro I've ever seen has held a candle to it. It was a haven for many people, including herself.

I have to say that our haven in Wisconsin bespeaks almost purely of God's handiwork. Yes, we "tweak" it all the time. This involves alot of detail and many hours of tweaking at that.

But it was presented to us as a generous piece of natural land, and as you know, nothing is prettier than what God creates as nature. Keeping with its flow can't be a bad thing. If we don't use the land by planting it, raising animals on it and so on, we can still feel we are living a country life in the simplicity of just ENJOYING IT.

With this thinking we (my husband) scoped the place to expand on its natural flow in trails. For country-living pleasure we (this means we) take walks, many of them. We breathe fresh air and see wildflowers and wildlife, we get exercise and always come away with never-failing gratitude, even awe.

Less in land would be plenty I'm sure, but more is what came with when we found this place. About this we've always felt that the place more likely found us, and maybe it is because it knew (God knew) that from it we would create HAVEN. Here on earth, that's pretty close to HEAVEN.

Lemonade!!!

"Marty"

Everybody loves a winner--but do we really?

Seems like alot of times we just want to tear a winner down. Sure, we wish our friends and families well enough to support their dreams and ventures, and help them approach the entry halls of success. Especially with our children, we hope mightily to see them ensconced in their dreams, no holds barred.

But when we see someone peak at success, making for a sphere of happiness that eludes our own selves, are we as generous-minded as we know we should be?

Most of us can acknowledge a modest level of envy toward others who seem to "have it all."
After all, we're only human and our own lives may feel plenty full of stress instead of a richness in attained goals. So this envy is purely natural. We can be reasonably happy for others and still lament for ourselves; this we know is the way of the world.

None of us wants to admit (even to ourselves) when envy has turned a corner and the realm of bitter jealousy has been entered. When we not only can't be happy for someone but are secretly peering for signs of a downfall, this is a shame on us and not a status we want to own.

Selfishness is an interesting thing. We pounce upon the trait in others and disown any fragment of the quality for ourselves. God forbid we be accused of selfishness; it is a crime worse than almost any other. Thinking of all the judgmental possibities that could arise from such a subject, I nearly halted blogging about it. Selfishness is not a topic warm and fuzzy, and any one of us can potentially find it another of us. (While not seeing it in ourselves.)

Thus, on the day I scratched the surface of the subject, I also scratched it off my list of possible blog entries. It was a cool and blustery Sunday afternoon, and I decided to watch an old movie instead.

The movie playing on the old movie channel was "Marty," a fifties-era classic wherein the title character (an Italian-American male in his thirties) so moves his audience with his life of loneliness that the actor (Ernest Borgnine) won the Academy Award that year, 1955. This was no small feat against contenders like James Dean, Frank Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and James Cagney. It is said that Borgnine's audition for the part put all present to tears, and cinched the role.

If ever there was a movie that impresses upon us the tragedy of selfishness, it is this one. And so the subject again became mine--meant to be.

Have you ever seen "Marty?"

Marty and his widowed mother live together in an urban house, where Mom's life centers on church and Marty. Their home is a nest she has feathered like a pillow, something also known to smother.

Marty is a humble meat cutter who works hard and spends his leisure time dutifully enjoying Ma's homemade meals and then regularly walking downtown to meet up with his equally single, Italian-American buddies. Marty's crowd looks to be a tad on the "loser" side, nice enough boys who stay out of trouble-- but each lacks the charisma to ever come close to the persona of a "chick magnet." Women are not an easy part of their scene, and when they are, that scene is often fraught with rejection.

One evening on the dance floor, Marty musters his wherewithal to ask a girl to dance and suffers acutely the rejection he fears. In a scene away from his scene, a young woman suffers a competing blow of rebuff when the man she has been "set up with" decides he wants to ditch her. This fellow seeks out Marty and offers him five dollars to take responsibility for his unwanted date and somehow get her back to her home.


Despite inferences from his pals  that the girl is not attractive, and quite to his surprise, Marty and the girl, Clara, (played by Betsy Blair) "click." They enjoy long, heartfelt conversation and learn of their differences but also experience undeniable camaraderie.

Clara is a teacher to Marty's butcher, but this is just a momentary deterrent to Marty's psyche. The evening ends brimming with promise and in no time at all we witness Clara's introduction to Marty's mother, and we marvel at his plans to ensure a better future by opening his own meat market.

Alas, this is where envy, jealousy and selfishness rear their ugly heads. The people in Marty's life cannot wish him well. They all point to Clara's homeliness; the fellows straight out call her "a dog." Clara is not a dog. She is average looking, just right for the average Joe, or average Marty. She is a dear girl, smitten already with Marty, able to see their differences as contrasts rather than reasons for discord.

Marty's mother, who has lamented that her son has yet to marry the perfect Italian girl to provide her with grandchildren, cannot abide Clara. She points out that Clara is not good-looking, is not Italian, and what was she doing anyway in a dance hall--one step from the streets? I don't like her, she pronounces, and suggests forcefully that Marty not bring her home again.

Marty's friends find themselves roiling in agitation that their co-hort is on the brink of a new life--one that will end their lonely boys society and one that guarantees Marty a happiness they fear they will never have themselves. In their covetousness they can do nothing but try to coax Marty away from all his promising possibilities. This they do by endlessly ripping on Clara. Poor sweet Clara is called "a dog" so often that sadly, heartbreakingly, we are horrified to hear Marty cave into the pressure of his peers and refer to her as "a dog" as well.

And thus we see both Marty and Clara lonely again. Their respective scenarios are pathetic; those of us watching want to shake some sense into Marty, for while Clara longs for the phone call he also longs to make, he instead reverts to a pointless session of "hanging out" with the guys again.

The selfish entreaties from those who most care for him convince Marty that going for happiness is not for him. Pulling their pal back into their familiar void puts them back onto equal ground, and all (except Marty) feel better this way.

Do we all feel better to keep those in our circle on equal ground, more for the worse than the better? Does
misery really love company? Can we really only be happy for others as long as their happiness and success don't exceed ours?

And what about jealousy and resentment over physical traits (beauty), personality and charisma?

On a recent "Dancing with the Stars" segment it was revealing to hear one of the male judges effusively flatter a male (heartthrob type) dancer, then declare his hatred toward him--said in friendly humor, of course. How many times have you heard (or taken part) in admiration of someone's physical persona only to realize if that person were just a little less gorgeous, you'd feel better?

Happens all the time, with most of us, I venture to say. Like the inherent good in people, we are also given tendencies toward failings, too. Our struggles with generosity of spirit are perhaps tougher than the ones we have about money. If good will doesn't usually cost a dime, why is it sometimes so hard to give?

I don't know the whys and wherefores of this, but I'm pretty sure the sentiments are universal if not shared by all. Is there a sense that there can't possibly be enough good to go around in this life?

For a great ending to a somewhat tortuous (but engrossing) story, Marty (back to Marty) gathers his wits and declares emancipation from his loneliness. He boldly stands up to his friends and literally bolts from their presence to race to a phone booth to call Clara.

We are left to consider their lives will be lived happily ever after.

I can't imagine anyone seeing this movie not feeling blissful for Marty and Clara at this conclusion. And here lies the question--if we can be happy for strangers, and fabricated strangers at that, can't we do the same for all in our own real lives?