Dear Peggy,

I saw a “facebook-friend” tonight at a party. Okay, let’s stop right here, right now, and address the term “facebook-friend.” What the hell does that mean? I can tell you what it means in this particular instance (and probably in a lot more). A facebook friend is someone you may have met casually, realized you were both on facebook, sent each other a “friend request,” accepted the “friend request,” and then began to learn things about each other from daily posts that you wouldn’t otherwise have ever dreamed. So in essence, some “facebook friends” know more about you than your “real friends.”

The “facebook friend” (scratch that), the friend I saw at a party tonight thanked me, as I was leaving the soiree, for my blog. She told me she read it and said something about how I could really open up and put things “out there.” I can’t remember her exact words because I had several glasses of wine at the party. I told her I would send her a private facebook message and explain how I began my blog, thinking she might enjoy seeing how far I have come and how I ended up in this place where I feel so free to “put it all out there.” But, in the ten minutes it took me to drive home from the party I knew what I wanted to say to her privately would become my blog for all the world to read (or at least the three people who might actually read this blog post).

I began this blog on a lark, as a way to write while simultaneously purging my home (read – clean my house) of the crap I have accumulated over an almost thirty year period. I tentatively posted my intention in 2008 and it was 2009 before I had the guts to follow up that first post. Originally I just wrote about cleaning out cabinets and drawers and closets, but then a funny thing happened – I began writing about my life beyond my clutter. I began writing about my passion, my family. My own small family of one husband, two daughters, one son-in-law, and two dogs and that grew into tales about my extended family; my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It grew into a way for me to practice writing down my family lore.

What I really want to tell my “facebook friend” – I mean my real friend, my friend Peggy, is how embarrassed I was when someone first discovered I had begun a blog. I must have let it slip to Daughter #2 and Daughter #2 let it slip to Daughter #1 and Daughter #1 called me out on it. I was humiliated. I was speechless. I turned every shade of red (thank God I was on the phone and Daughter #1 couldn’t see her Technicolor mother). I was flustered, I hemmed and hawed. Daughter #1 actually laughed at me! Finally I drew every bit of courage I could dredge up from the far recesses of my bravery locker and fessed up. “Yes,” I said, “I am a blogger.” Followed immediately by, “But I didn’t want anyone to know, that’s why I put it on the internet.”

Daughter #1 spent a few minutes trying to explain the insanity of my rationale and then gave up. So, a blogger was born. From what I read about bloggers we are an egomaniacal bunch. How dare I presume that anyone cares about the contents of my closet or how my little brother died? But that is just it – it goes back to my point about putting this on the internet as a kind of anonymous post. There is so much out there (out there being the internet) so few people read it, so few people really care, it becomes just a personal writing exercise. So when I have a friend (notice I am no longer calling her a “facebook friend”) tell me she read my blog I have to stop and realize that someone is reading this – that this is more than casting out my jewels upon the ocean to be carried away with the tide. People really read personal stuff about my family, my friends, about me!

Does this mean I will quit opening up? Does this mean I will cease blogging? Hell no, it just means I damn well better pay more attention to grammar and spelling! Thanks, Peggy for commenting on my blog and thanks for being my friend.

Happy Birthday

Today would be my brother Wade’s fiftieth birthday. So very hard to imagine my nineteen year old brother at fifty. He is frozen in time as a teenager of the 1970s; long hair, long sideburns, drinking beer, smoking pot, and riding a motorcycle. He was a drummer. He was in his element, in his own world, when perched behind his drum kit. It was everywhere else he was out of place; never truly comfortable in this world’s atmosphere. His life cut short by a dark road and a missed curve. I wonder what he might have been, might have become by his fiftieth birthday. Would he have learned to breath? Would he have learned to conform? Or would he have stayed his path? Perhaps I would have seen him on the Grammy Awards this year, gathered my friends around the television and said, “That’s my little brother.” He might have had children, more nieces and nephews to add to the family tree, to carry on his legacy. I wonder what kind of father he would have been. What would he have taken as an example from our parents? He would have been a kindred spirit. Someone I could call and tell, “I miss Mom and Dad,” or “Remember the time…,” or “I’m sorry for…” And he would know exactly what I meant, because he would feel it too. Thirty-one years is a whole lot to miss out on. We were both cheated. Happy birthday, Robert Wade Primo.

Ham Loaf

Last month at a family dinner attended by Daughter # 2 and The Boyfriend, The Boyfriend mentioned he liked Ham Loaf. He's from Kansas and this is Texas - I'd never heard of Ham Loaf. Meatloaf I know, but Ham Loaf - that was a new one for me. The next day, totally out of the blue, I received an email from a dear friend and great cook containing a recipe for Ham Loaf. How randomly coincidental is that?

Tonight I prepared the Ham Loaf and it was surprisingly delicious. I am not a food stylist, but I thought I should offer photographic proof (and the recipe). (Perhaps I should also offer an apology to Daughter #2, the vegetarian.)

Enjoy!

Glazed Ham Loaf with Mustard Hot Sauce

1 ½ lbs. ground ham
1 ¼ lbs. fresh pork
1 ½ c. soft bread crumbs
2 beaten eggs
•Combine all ingredients and press lightly into oiled ring mold.
•Invert onto shallow baking pan and remove ring.
•Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, then brush with:

Sweet Sour Glaze
½ c. brown sugar
1 T. prepared mustard
2 T. vinegar
1 T. water
•Continue baking until done – about 45 minutes longer. Baste 3 or 4 times.
Serve with:

Mustard Hot Sauce
½ c. dry mustard
½ c. vinegar
•Mix, cover and let stand overnight.
In double boiler mix:
1 egg, beaten
1/3 c. sugar
dash salt
the mustard mixture
•Cook over hot (not boiling) water, stirring constantly until mixture thickens slightly and coats spoon.
•Cool and add equal amount of mayonnaise. Stir together and refrigerate. Serve with the Ham Loaf.

The Stockings and Panties Saga

Prologue

A few months after my cousin Mandy’s husband, Mark, had lost his hard fought war with cancer, I dropped by for a visit. She was just finishing her two year old son’s bath, and after drying him off, my ill-informed cousin, not having the pleasure of growing up with brothers, sent him to his room saying, and I quote, “Kevin, go get your panties.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Boys wear underwear, not panties.” Thus saving the poor child from a lifetime of ridicule. Just ask Steve.

Chapter One
Feet

How, in a home with an equal number of boys and girls, my grandmother persisted in calling all underwear, “panties” and all socks, “stockings” is a mystery, but she did. In the 1950s my grandparents were constantly asking one of the older children to put Steve’s shoes and stockings back on. Steve (or Stevie), the youngest of ten children spanning a twenty year period, thought nothing of pulling off his sturdy, lace-up Buster Browns no sooner than they had been wrestled onto his feet. The older children quickly tired of this chore and devised a plan to ensure Steve would keep his shoes and stockings on. They convinced the gullible toddler that to show one’s bare feet was as unacceptable as parading naked through the house; like letting the whole world see you without your panties on. How many younger siblings have been scarred for life by the well-intentioned lies of their brothers and sisters? The ruse worked. Steve kept his shoes and stockings on and countless hours were saved when his siblings no longer had to re-shoe their baby brother.

The dye was cast; Steve now understood his feet to be objects of shame to be hidden from leering eyes. Occasionally he would let down his guard, as happened one afternoon as the family was gathered in the living room. The doorbell rang and Aunt Faye and Uncle Dump were in the room with Steve and his naked feet before he could flee. Quickly tucking the offending appendages under his bottom, he sat on the sofa as, one by one, his siblings deserted him, leaving him to listen to the incessant drone of the adult conversation. Finally, legs grown numb and lifeless hidden underneath his body, and unable to stand the idea of his brothers and sisters having unsupervised fun without him, he made a break for it. He threw his body from his perch on the couch and propelled himself from the room using his arms, feet still hidden from view, looking like a WWII amputee.

I can only guess at Aunt Faye’s thoughts upon seeing the child’s irregular retreat. “Poor addlepated boy; I suppose that’s what happens when one has a baby at age forty-six.”

Chapter Two
The Piano Standoff

Steve attended Kindergarten at the Catholic school where his mother, my grandmother, was the second grade teacher. One rainy day Sister Anna Benita marched the kindergarteners to the gymnasium for an indoor recess. The wooden floor of the gym was brand new so she instructed each five year old to remove his or her shoes before entering. What debauchery is this Steve must have thought? Sister may as well have announced they were spending recess at a nudist colony. Panicking as he neared the door, and his turn at removing his shoes, he vowed to remain chaste and not be forced into sin by this nun who was surely an emissary of the devil. When it was his turn to expose himself he made a break for it, seeking asylum beneath the grand piano at the far corner of the gym.

Sister deployed a khaki-clad envoy of parochial school uniformed boys to fetch Steve from his hideout. But the miniature troops were no match for him and the sturdy Buster Browns he had no intention of removing. He kicked and flailed and valiantly fought off the enemy. Sister brought in the “Big Gun,” Father Drury. Kindly Father tried negotiations to bring the skirmish to an end, but to no avail. Steve just scooted farther into the depths of his cave, out of reach of the priest’s long black-clad arm.

By this point, with recess ruined, Sister did the unthinkable and resorted to the slyest of strategies; using her secret weapon, she sent for Mrs. Owen, the second grade teacher. Mrs. Owen arrived on the scene, furious I’m sure at Sister Benita for pulling her from her classroom. (My grandmother had little patience for teachers who could not control their classroom, black-habited nuns included.) Mrs. Owen quickly surveyed the situation, seeing a posse of bare-foot youngsters circling the grand piano and her youngest child, terror-struck, but valiantly holding his position. To her credit (and Steve’s eternal foot-phobic salvation), she quickly grasped the root of the problem. Calmly extending her hand saying, “Come with me, Steven.”

Unsure if his mother is his savior or his executioner, but relieved to be finished with his standoff, he forfeits his position and crawls out from under the piano. Will she make him take off his shoes and stockings in front of his classmates, Sister Benita, and Father Drury? No, Steve didn’t have to expose his feet that day. She gently led him to her classroom to spend the remainder of his recess with second graders, and you can be sure she lit into her older children at home that evening.

Chapter Three
Ozelia Made Me Do It

In my grandmother’s 1950s, pink brick, ranch-style house there are three bedrooms. The parents’ room, the girls’ room, which at one time held an assortment of beds all covered with pink Sears and Roebuck rib cord bedspreads, and the boys’ room, also full of beds but the Sears and Roebuck rib cord bedspreads were used for covers or kicked to the floor, depending on the season. (Interestingly, neither Steve nor I can recall the color of these bedspreads, further testament to the fact that the beds were rarely made. We think they may have been blue or green or brown.)

After my grandfather’s death my grandmother still had a house full of children, Sam and Steve being the two youngest. When I consider all of the mischief they were into or could have gotten into, it surprises me that my grandmother focused on the state of their bedroom, specifically their dresser drawers. (After all – they were already famous for shooting each other with homemade match guns and burning down the backyard fence.)

My grandmother had better things to do than clean house. She raised ten children, taught school, took a ceramics class, tried to learn Spanish, and loved to read. Cleaning house was not in her repertoire. She always had help. Beginning with the young girls who “lived in” and helped with the babies to the women who came once a week to clean her house and do the ironing. (And the forced labor of her own children.) In the late 1950s through the 1960s the housekeeper’s name was Ozelia. Ozelia also cleaned for my mother and even though I was very young, I remember her well, a tall, thin, black woman who smelled of bitter sweat and Pine-Sol. At some point, Ozelia proclaimed she would no longer clean the boys’ room. The boys lived like most adolescent and teenage boys, they were pigs. Smelly socks, P.F. Flyers, and underwear were strewn ankle-deep across the floor. Beds unmade, drawers left open with clothes spilling out, closets full of athletic equipment, bongo drums, and Mad Magazines.

Ozelia refused to enter the boys’ room and my grandmother began making threats. “If you boys can’t keep these drawers closed, I’m giving the dresser to Ozelia.” Why she focused on the open drawers of the mahogany chifferobe when there was so much mess to choose from is still a mystery. There are many truths I know about my grandmother, two are: she does not make idle threats and she would not willingly give away good furniture. The latter leads me to believe she was coerced by Ozelia to follow through on her threat.

Of course, Sam and Steve continued to live like slobs, pulling their clothes from the ever gaping jaws of the bureau. One fateful day, they arrived home to find their room spotless. Beds were made, no clothes on the floor, no stench of sweaty socks, and no dresser. In place of the missing dresser there were four Libby’s green bean boxes neatly covered with yellow floral-print contact paper and written with black Magic Marker in my grandmother’s perfect penmanship, “Steve’s Stockings,” “Sam’s Stockings,” “Steve’s Panties,” and “Sam’s Panties.” Ozelia owned the dresser.

Chapter Four
Football

Over the years my uncles, Sam and Steve, spent time living with older siblings so they would have more supervision and the influence of a man during their formative years. Sam spent a year with his brother, Don and his family in Arizona, and Steve spent some time with his sister, Sandra and her family, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In eighth grade Steve moved back home and re-entered the Catholic school where his mother was still teaching second grade. As an eighth grader he made the Junior Varsity football team. This was quite an honor and Steve was well on his way to re-inventing himself after his time away in Tulsa; hanging out with the high school football players, weight-training, and showing his prowess on the field. Finding out he could be a big fish in the high school pond was heady.

In the locker room one afternoon following practice, Steve couldn’t find his socks. Suspecting a prank perpetrated by the upper classmen, and not wanting to fall for it, he calls them out. “Okay, guys, very funny. Now give me my stockings back. Who took my stockings? This isn’t funny!”

But it was funny, it was hilarious – to the other guys. “Stockings?” they asked in disbelief. What high school boy wore stockings? I wonder how long it took him to live that one down?

Epilog

Kevin, you owe me – big time!

The Last Walk

It’s not hard to imagine my Uncle Steve at age five. He is three years my senior and has been like a brother to me my whole life. Apparently I am the one who nicknamed him Bubba as soon as I could say the word. I don’t remember him at age five, I haven’t found my two year old’s memory, but I have no trouble knowing what a five year old Steve surely looked like, as all four of his children bore a striking resemblance to him when they were young.

At age five my Uncle Steve lost his father. His father, my grandfather, suffered from congestive heart failure and experienced several major heart attacks before the one which took his life on May 15, 1959. After the first attack my granddaddy, Lewis, was prescribed diet and rest, which he allegedly followed religiously. At noon each day he picked Steve up from morning kindergarten at the Catholic school where my grandmother taught second grade. Lewis and Steve spent the afternoon together; lunch, followed by a nap and then a walk to the end of the block and back before the other family members began returning from work and school. What a treat this must have been for Steve. The youngest of ten children, he had never before experienced the undivided attention of a parent.

Also, he had never experienced the freedom of those long afternoons. As Steve tells the story now, half a century later, he waited patiently for his father to fall asleep at naptime and would stealthily creep from the room, and out of the house, to roam the neighborhood, sneaking back into the house in time for the afternoon walk. What an angelic picture the little imp must have made walking down the front sidewalk, holding the hand of his six-foot tall father, shortly after he had riled every dog on the block while running and whooping through the alley.

There were two things Steve was forbidden to do (I am sure there were more, but these are the two he related.), one was walk on the roof and the other was climb the redwood fence. My grandfather was proud of his slate roof and didn’t want his children breaking the tiles, or it can be assumed, falling off and breaking their necks. I can also guess he didn’t want the fence slats broken by his young sons and daughters scrambling over the top when such a nice hinged gate was provided. During naptime Steve did exactly the things he was told not to do. One day after his afternoon romp through the neighborhood Steve climbed over the fence planning to sneak back into the house and into bed before he was missed. St Christopher, hanging from Steve’s neck by a long silver chain stopped him on his descent from the top fence rail. Little Stevie was hanging from the redwood fence certain he was being punished by death for his disobedience. A Savior appeared in the form of his father who carried him into the house, examined his neck making certain he was truly not injured, and then gave him a good spanking, admonishing him to never climb the fence again.

On the day of my grandfather’s last heart attack my grandmother received a call at school summoning her home. She retrieved Steve from his classroom, raced home, and deposited him on the living-room sofa where she ordered him to sit. Steve might have sneaked out of the house while his father was napping, walked on the roof, and climbed the fence, but no one disobeyed my grandmother. From his seat on the sofa he observed the “ambulance men” arrive with a gurney and leave with his father. He and my grandmother followed the ambulance to the hospital where he was once again ordered to sit, this time in the car, while she went into the hospital.

Steve doesn’t know how long he waited in the car. Long enough to push every button, turn every knob, go through the glove box, and play with the cigarette lighter. At some point a lady showed up at his open car window, told him her name was Mrs. Robinson, and he was to go with her – and he did. He recalls having a vague idea that her children went to his school. He spent the rest of the afternoon at her house before someone, one of his siblings perhaps (he doesn’t recall), picked him up.

As vivid as his memories of this day are, he doesn’t remember much about the next few. His father died, a funeral takes place, and relatives and friends gather at the family home after the service. Late that afternoon, amid the condolences and the company, my Uncle Ronnie, Steve’s twenty-three year old brother, thinking it a good idea to give Steve a sense of normalcy by keeping to his routine, takes him for his afternoon walk to the end of the block and back.

As they stroll along holding hands, Ron, preoccupied I’m sure by the events of the day, glances down at Steve noticing his other hand, the hand not held in his, is raised toward the sky.

“What are you doing, Bubba?” Ron asks looking at Stevie’s outreached hand.

“I’m holding my Daddy’s hand and he’s walking with us,” was Steve’s reply.

Run

I ran yesterday. I put on my running shoes, walked out the front door and took off at a jogging clip after a year and a half of a sedentary lifestyle. It felt good. My body recalled the rhythm and fell right into it. My breathing was steady and my lungs cooperated – for 2 blocks before they revolted. I forced myself to hit the half mile mark before I turned around and walked home. I knew it would be tough, but only a half mile! How did I let this happen? It’s not as if I was a jock or a marathon runner before, but I was proud of being in fairly good physical condition.

In my late (very late) forties I signed on with a personal trainer, vowing to get into shape before I turned fifty. I worked hard and soon I was running. The first time out I ran a whole mile. I was shocked – I’d never run more than a city block in my life. My trainer was smug; he knew I could do it because he had conditioned me well in the gym for months before he sent me out for my first run. From there I increased my distance to 2 miles, 3 miles, 4 miles, 7 miles. I considered a half marathon. I ran a 5K Turkey Trot one Thanksgiving.

I never considered myself a “runner.” I never hit the point of losing myself in the run or felt the exhilaration “real runners” feel. I always had to fight at it, force myself to run. My trainer said I ran like a warrior – not a compliment. Then my fifty year old knees began to rebel. I had to ice them after every run and rather than increasing my mileage, I began cutting back. Then I spent a week in the hospital with pancreatitis and had emergency gall bladder surgery with a slow recovery giving me an excuse to stop running and to quit my trainer. That was seventeen months ago.

I’m surprised to admit I’ve missed running. I’ve missed the discipline, the rhythm, the exhilaration of accomplishment, and the tautness of my calf muscles. Can I get it back? I’m not sure. Will I get back out there this morning? You bet.

Seed Catalog

Today is dreary. Not just the weather, but my mood as well. I spent the day at work worrying about the lack of funding for my pet project and looking out the window at a dust covered landscape. And then, along came a seed catalog.

My dismal day was quickly replaced by visions of my beautiful kitchen garden in the spring. I visualized my raised beds and containers brimming with onions, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers and red kale; tall stems of okra and trellised cucumbers lording over it all. On the ground I see my vining crops – spaghetti squash, pumpkins, watermelon and cantaloupe. On the fence I’ll grow gourds and purple hyacinth beans. There are no bugs, no weeds and no triple digit temperatures in my seed catalog-daydream. I don’t forget to water, I don’t get attacked by mosquitoes, and I’m not sick to death of zucchini (yet).

I can almost smell the rich earthy compost, the heady scent of garlic, and the fragrance each herb releases as I brush by.

Will I grow bush beans or pole beans or maybe even golden wax beans? Will this be the year I finally grow the moon and star watermelon, the yard-long beans, crimson okra, arugula? I see myself walking through the garden with a basket over one arm collecting my dinner ingredients. Beautiful, vine-ripened, luscious tomatoes, a little basil, an eggplant, a red and green bell pepper and I have a divine pasta sauce. Some lettuce, a cucumber, some mint and I have a cool summer salad. Green beans, an onion and a little rosemary and I have a side dish. Is that the scent of homemade bread I smell wafting from the kitchen window? (It’s a daydream, remember?) I can’t wait to get in the kitchen with my fresh produce, open a bottle of wine, and start cooking.

With all of this bounty my thoughts turn to canning, or “putting food by” as my Maw Maw used to say. Jars of tomatoes, salsa, and spaghetti sauce sharing space with pickles, chow-chow, pickled okra, and specialty chutneys float before my eyes. The hot summer kitchen and all the work this entails are not in the picture today.

Seed catalogs are made for optimists. In spite of my bad day at work I am an optimist after all. If I can believe in the Eden-like garden I have created in my mind, then surely I can believe my pet work project will find funding.