Words from The Crone

My bag is packed sitting by the door.  My carry-on bag & purse are sitting nearby.  In about an hour they will be hoisted in the car and I will be on my way to the airport to fly to Tampa, FL for a bridal shower – alone!  For some unknown reason I have this tiny lump of fear stuck in my throat as if I had swallowed a grape and it got stuck halfway down to digestion.

How silly, I say to myself.  For almost fifteen years I was flying about 50 percent of the time and not just local or even coast to coast, but worldwide.  I would park myself in the limo and off we would go.  I would check my bags, or sometimes not, and blithely pass through security and take off at a nice pace down the long halls to my gate.  If I was late for a flight I was even known to sprint.  Sometimes I’d stop for a bite to eat or buy a magazine or two.  Sometimes I’d just sit quietly and wait for boarding.  Once aboard, I’d toss my coat or bag in the overhead, settle in with my book, pray for a safe flight and be perfectly happy.

Only once was I fearful in an airplane when one of the engines caught fire just as we were about to take off.  I remember thinking that I hoped the pilot knew about the fire.  He did, we taxied back, changed planes, and all was well.  Otherwise, I was a fearless flyer.  So why this fear today?

Well, I guess for starters it is because I am older – not old, just older.  The hinges don’t work so smoothly anymore, I don’t bounce the way I used to, and my hoisting capacity is rather limited to picking up the morning paper.  Even my ability to walk long distances is severely limited and I need motorized or wheeled assistance for long walks these days. I haven’t traveled alone without R for over seven years and I have become dependent on him to make sure I was safe and secure. 

Now, I am flying alone and no one will be sure I have a wheelchair at each airport to ferry me from gate to gate.  No one will be sure that my coat is stowed.  No one will be there to lift my bag off the baggage carousel.  They don’t even have porters anymore.  And, so I am alone and that grape is stuck in my throat. 

Buck up, Rita!  You have a voice and can use it to ask for help.  People love to help.  With proper planning at the check-in you’ll have your assistance at each gate.  Your flights are spaced so that you even have time to wait for a lift if necessary.  You have everything you need in your carry-on bag, including your meds if your bag gets sent to Portugal so no sweat there.  You are smart enough to wear loafers that come off easily so you can go through security quickly.  You are even leaving your laptop home so you don’t have to deal with that hassle. 

You can do this, Rita.  Yes, I can and I will.  I think sometimes we let our fears overtake our sensibilities and rational thinking.  Someone once said that fear is the opposite of faith.  Well, then there you are…with faith I will fly alone with confidence and hope that the grape gets down to my belly before I land in Tampa!

This is not advice that I would normally be giving you, kind readers.  I love email and I remember how awed I was when I discovered that you could email someone in Russia from Connecticut and they would receive it in nano seconds.  How awesome.  I have embraced email from the late 1980’s when we had interoffice email and my love for it has only grown stronger.  So, why would I be telling anyone not to read your email?  Because, it has consequences.

Yesterday was a normal Friday and being retired, I had all day to catch up on paperwork, the bills, some writing, and even a bit of reading which I love.  Early in the afternoon as I was checking my email I opened one that I receive regularly from Cook’s Illustrated.  For those of you who have never heard of Cook’s Illustrated, it is a gourmet’s gourmet cookbook and cooking wealth of information on equipment, cooking methods, and recipes to die for but take hours and hours to prepare.  The time invested however, is usually well worth it.

As I opened the e-newsletter I glanced over the topics noting a video for making the perfect French Onion Soup.  I love that soup and so I watched the video and learned that a perfect onion soup takes two and half hours of onions baking in a Dutch oven for starters.  I stopped the video to look over the other items listed.  Not going onion soupy today.

Chicken Pot Pie was one entry.  Wow, I thought, what a coincidence, R and I were just talking about chicken pot pies and I mentioned that I really hated those yukky little Swanson’s pies my mother used to serve.  They were mushy and filled with some glue substitute.  R said that he only buys Marie Callender pot pies.  The are the only brand he will eat because they are superior to Swanson’s pies, and are made with all white meat.  He only buys them when I am out of town because I won’t eat them.

 Well, I opened that little recipe item on Chicken Pot pies and read the long list of ingredients.  I had all but two of them in stock and so I proclaimed – “Hey, I can make this R if you will run down to the grocery store for me.”  A no brainer, right?  Wrong.

 The recipe called for Dutch oven and I didn’t have one in which to make said pot pie and it just so happened that also in this article was a review of all available Dutch Ovens.  I couldn’t afford a Le Creuset at over $200, but I could afford a Tramontina.  So, I called every kitchen store in town and found that none had that brand, but had the Lodge brand which was equally as good and also recommended by Cook’s.  Off we went to buy the Dutch oven.  Bought the large size oven in blue, stopped at the grocery store to get the two missing items and arrived home at 5:00 p.m.

Even with both of us working it took almost three hours to prepare and cook this pot pie.  I mean there was poaching the chicken, straining the stock, mincing onions, celery, and carrots, sautéing said vegetables, mixing flour, seasoning, and heavy cream, making dough crumbles for the top.  There was sautéing mushrooms and adding tomato paste and soy sauce and salt and pepper and lemon juice.  There was making a roux to mix with the reserved broth.  There was shredding a pound and a half of poached chicken and on and on went the recipe.  We did take some extra time picking out peas mixed with chicken when R thought I told him to put them in and they shouldn’t have been added yet.  Sometimes cooking together has its ups and downs! 

I can tell you we were exhausted when we finally put it all together in the oven!  We ate dinner at almost 8:00 p.m.  But my, oh my, was it ever yummy delicious.  I will probably only make this pot pie once or twice a year, but that is more often than I would eat a commercial pot pie.

Before going to bed I looked up that recipe again in the Cook’s e-letter and read the following notation that had somehow slipped by me earlier in the day:

Chicken pot pie is a production, and recipes that try to shortcut the process only serve up uninspiring results. We had a tall order: Streamline the dish and get it on the table in 90 minutes—complete with a homemade crust; tender, juicy chicken; and bright vegetables.

I don’t know what 90 minutes they were working with, but I do agree, it was a “production” and cost me a fortune besides – Dutch ovens, I’ve found are not cheap! 

Do not read your email unless you are prepared to take the path less taken and venture into adventures you hadn’t planned in the morning!

I dream a lot.  Like every night and some of my dreams are pretty weird.  Not really dark weird, but ridiculous weird.  For example, I fly in my dreams or sometimes they are littered with dead people who are alive again as well as living people.  Sometimes I know the people, sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes objects do things ordinary objects can’t do like buildings will turn into swimming pools or trains will run over a desert without a track.  In one early childhood dream my mother and I were taking a train across country (which we actually did) and we had a baby carriage with us.  At each stop we would get off the train with the carriage and either my mother or I would get in with the other pushing the carriage and we would go shopping.  Weird.  If I can remember my dreams when I wake up I usually relate them to R who just shakes his head and agrees they are weird.

 This morning I was telling him about my latest weird dream as we gazed out our bedroom window at the lovely large pond in our back yard.  We were silent for a moment, our arms wrapped around each other when R asked, “What age are you in your dreams?”  Now I had never thought of that before and I had to think for a moment.  I said, “I guess I’m just whatever age I am, although I do know that I am never old.”  “What about you?” I asked.  He told me that he was always in his mid-forties in his dreams.  R also asked me how old he was in my dreams – when he’s in them.  In the one I had last night he was his current age which is getting up there in years.  However, at other times he is a young man.

 Dreams have always fascinated me and I have a few books on dreams, but they really don’t tell me very much.  There is a book that lists every imaginable object or person or thing in dreams and what the author thinks they represent, but it was also $150 back in the early 1990’s and so it is not part of my collection.  I used to have a lot of dreams about houses and wild parties in them or tornadoes destroying the house.  Houses, this book said represent your life.  Well, my life has been somewhat of a train wreck, or house wreck, from time to time, but not now.  Guess that’s why I don’t dream about houses much anymore.

 So, I wonder how our sub-conscious conjures up these images for us depending I guess on the other articles that comprise the dream itself.  And, where in God’s holy realm do these weird dreams come from in the canyons of my brain?  I often ponder on the dreams in the Bible and how they were interpreted by the prophets.  I wish I could interpret mine.  Then I think about the book of Revelation which is purportedly a vision (dream) of the Apostle John.  Now that is one weird dream.  I guess by comparison my dreams aren’t so weird after all!  And so to bed, perchance to dream.  Many happy dreams to you, too!

A lot has been written about body language, but in reality the words coming out of our mouth somehow marks us more than anything else.  Actions they say speak louder than words and so we are often judged not only by what we say, but how we act.  Often however, what we say or what we hear others say causes us to act in a particular way and more importantly, impresses certain ideas and ideals in our brains which in turn causes us to behave one way or the other.  There is great power in words.

 Many are blaming a lack of civility on the shootings in Tuscon just a week ago.  Others are blaming a mentally unbalanced individual.  Both are probably right.  For what he heard most likely influenced how he felt about Gabby.  People don’t act in a vacuum, something motivates them.  And so, we are now calling for more civility, at least in our language, if not in our hearts and minds.

I remember when I experienced my first presidential election – it was Truman vs. Dewey in 1948 and although I was only nine, I recall my parents talking about it.  We even visited the Presidential train when it pulled into town..  There was the usual political rhetoric and name calling in this campaign as in any campaign, but when it was all over and Truman was elected President, everyone got behind him and worked for the benefit of our great country.  We don’t seem to do that anymore and the political atmosphere and attitude seems to be “Let’s get them out!”  It should be “Let’s work together.” 

And so, I am saddened by the state of our political landscape and the vitriol and venom that is spewed out on our great landscape.  As Americans we should be better than that.  We should be more civilized than that.  The words coming out of our mouths should not incite folks to anything but honest assessment and debate. Our words should never incite to riot, or ruin, or a rampage killing spree in Arizona or any other place. 

I hope the dead and the wounded in Arizona will not have died or been shot in vain.  I hope we all learn a lesson that what we say means something and that our words need to be considered and considerate words.  Not war like words or aggressive words or words to stir us to vengeful or violent acts.  We need to be very careful what we say for whatever comes out of our mouths can never be taken back.  Our words, as well as our actions, are a measure of our civility.  Let them all be godly.

I believe in divine moments (DM).  Some folks would call them “Lucky moments,” but that just doesn’t do it for me.  I’m not sure what “Luck” is quite frankly, but I do know what “Divine Moments” are all about.  You’ve probably had them too and they are just so amazing and unbelievably timely.  I think it is the timeliness of these moments that shrouds them such mystery.  I’ve also heard them called “God Moments.” 

Just today for example, we had a DM at our house.  We had just arrived home with a new, larger television set for our great room.  Watching our fixed-income budget we had prudently (we thought) turned down spending almost $200 to have the store techies come and install it for us.  I mean, how hard could it be to take down one TV and replace it with another.  There are only so many wires to connect and screws to use to put up the wall mount.  Right?  And thus, R was going to install it himself.  I knew this would take a long time.

I was the first to go into the house toting the wall mount.  R was out by the car making ready to tote in the new TV with the help of DD2.  I opened the wall mount box and took out a two-foot long series of bags all attached to each other containing several thousand screws, washers, ties, plastic thingies, hex somethings, allen head wrenches (invented I guess by a guy named allen), and only God knows what else.  I blanched at all this hardware and immediately rushed outside to find R.  I knew we needed help.

Well, as a DM goes there was R talking to the contractor who had installed our first TV and had just finished repairing some flooring issues for us.  And, as a divine moment goes, as I walked up to the pair of them I heard R say, “I might need a little help installing our new TV!”  Yes, yes I yelled in my head.  I then said, “If we ask you to install it would you charge us less than $500?”  “Of course,” he laughed.  “Come on in,” I said with joy and extreme relief.

Once inside and at the great TV site, D looked over the situation and said it wouldn’t be a problem.  R asked, “Are you free this afternoon?”  “Yes,” he said.  “Thank you Jesus,” I said.  And so it went as D dug in and in just over one hour took down our old TV, mounted the new TV, and re-installed the old TV in our bedroom.  Total cost?  $40!  Unbelievable.  A four-hour plus job for R done in just over an hour!

The precise divine moment was that the contractor, D, just happened to be finishing up a job across the street at the exact moment that R went out to unload the new TV.  D sauntered over to say hello and be friendly when he noticed the new TV in the van…and you know the rest of the story.  This kind of timing is not luck my friends, it is divine intervention in my book, or as I like to call them “Divine Moments.”  And, if you look for them you’ll be surprised at how many of them you have too!

In about a half hour we are off to one of the most fun parties ever.  I belong to a local clergy group and almost a decade ago one of them decided it would be a good thing to throw an Epiphany party.  A time for light laugher.  A time for light fare.  A time for light conversation (none of that heavy theological stuff we usually discuss).  What better time than Epiphany.  But, there is a twist, and a very clever fun one at that.

 All of us, you included I’m sure, receive some gift or another that is, well, let’s just say not to our taste.  It is one of those gifts that you give thanks for because someone thought of you and was gracious enough to give you a gift.  But, it really doesn’t go with your décor, lifestyle, color scheme, or be put to any practical use that you can discern.  In fact, you really don’t want to keep it, but being as how it was a gift you are hesitant to throw it away.  And, so off to an obscure shelf it goes and maybe some many years down the path of life you’ll donate it to the thrift shop so someone else can enjoy it.

 At our Epiphany party we have another solution to those gifts.  We re-gift them to each other – anonymously of course.  And, here’s where the fun begins.  Each person brings a gift wrapped as a Christmas present and they are all stacked in the corner, wretchedly waiting to be re-adopted.  After our potluck supper and a few sips of the grape, we all draw numbers.  The number one person picks a gift and opens it.  This is usually followed by howls of laughter particularly at the more obviously unattractive ones.  The number two person then can either take the gift the number one person opened, or select another gift.  The number three person can choose from either number one or number two’s gifts or open another gift.  And so it goes for the evening and by the time we are finished our sides ache from all the belly laughing.

 One year a really lovely (read rococo, ugly) Mary on the half-shell was opened.  She was complete with painted ribbons and angels including one little cherub looking up her skirt.  Only one person wanted Mary from the opener and everyone wondered why.  As it turned out this gift was later put in a female clergy person’s church men’s room and it was not discovered for months.  When it was discovered it reappeared in the back pew of another clergy person’s church.  From there Mary circulated back and forth between various churches until it was finally presented to a clergy person leaving the mid-Atlantic for regions south.  At last, the clergy sighed, that would be the last we would all see of Mary.  Not, so.  She recently reappeared in the church refrigerator of another clergy person, who, I am told has wrapped and shipped Mary, ribbons, angels and all somewhere into the netherworld!

 Another year a box of elegant chocolates circulated among almost everyone because it was highly desirable.  One year a really, really grotesque statue of some tribal chieftain was opened by the person holding number one.  Guess what, nobody took it from him!  I still have the micro-fiber throw I selected last year.  I’d re-gift it but the rules say you can’t do that!  But, I’m ready this year with two really bad pieces I have been given and, I have two more for next year!  Let the fun begin.

We all have one!  It may be the basement.  It may be the attic.  It may be the garage. It may be boxes under the bed.  It could be a drawer. It could be anywhere.  But, we all have one.  Right?  Right!  Mine, however is a 10 x 20-foot storage unit some four miles from my house.  I first learned about storage units when I lived on our 43- foot trawler during seminary.  We rented our first storage pit, I mean unit, to store some seasonal clothes and a few Christmas decorations.  This 5 x 7-foot pit, I mean unit, oh what the heck, pit, finally housed my almost complete collection of almost 600 books.  It is amazing what one can cram into any size pit no matter where it is!

Our move into a small condo from our larger townhouse was the causative factor in developing our current relationship with this very large pit.  It was the biggest one we could find and even with that; about three years ago we had two of them.  Sad, I know.  I feel the same way.  The good news is that we are currently down to one pit.  And let me tell you, it is a very fat, full, bulging, pit.  I can only imagine what forgotten things lurk in the pit.

So, yesterday on the way home from the chiropractor, I said to R, “Come April we are cleaning out the storage unit, I mean pit!  He rolled his eyes and kept driving.  I say this every year, and some years we actually make a stab at cleaning out the pit.  This year, I mean it.  Really.  As we rolled on toward home a litany of reasons why we should, or should not, keep items rambled around in my brain.  R, I knew, was silently worried that I might throw anything out.  He’s a pack-rat who keeps everything even if it has no obvious use and/or is completely dead.  Who knows when you might need a dead something or other!

My guidelines go something like this:  If it has been packed in the same unopened box since we moved to Florida in 1991 we can probably throw it out without worrying that we might need its contents.  I am good without even opening the box.  I know R will have to open the box, but oh, well, if it makes him happy.  Next, if we haven’t used something in the past five years we can probably safely donate it the local thrift store so someone else might buy it for his or her pit.  Also, if we’ve never used it and are just keeping it because it was a gift, it goes.  No one ever asks to see a gift they have given you because it would not be polite.  And, no one really wants to know if you didn’t like the gift anyway. 

There are some things I won’t mind keeping like my Christmas decorations and my roasting pan.  Those I do use even if it is only once a year.  That made R feel better.  He did ask me though if I was ready to dispose of the baby clothes I have saved since my first child was born in 1961.  To his shock I said, “Yes!”  Gone.  I have no grandchildren (except my adopted “Granny” kids in Florida)  and I don’t like to dress up my dog.  And, I said I will even donate the embroidered towels my Down’s syndrome sister made in 1948.  R gasped in horror as I was willing to part with those items I had dragged from one place to another for forever.  He knew that THIS time I was serious about cleaning out the pit!

I’m starting now making a list of all the things that I need to keep in the pit.  So far, it’s a short list.  OMG, maybe we can get a smaller pit!  I haven’t told my daughter about this yet and about a quarter of the pit is her stuff.  I might have to do some negotiating.  So, where was I?  Oh, yes what must I keep?  R just looked over my shoulder as I was writing and saw the title of this blog.  He said, “Oh. I don’t want to read this until it’s done, if then!”  This pit cleaning might be more of a challenge than I thought! Maybe this year we’ll only use the “since 1991” rule.  We’ll see!

Today is my second full day of retirement, but I’m not counting yesterday because it was a holiday!  So today is my first full day according to me.  I am not sure what I expected, but I am sure what happened.  Nothing!  I woke up this morning, went to church, helped the church folks un-decorate, went to lunch, came home and made a not –so-perfect quiche.  We watched some of the Eagles/Dallas game, ate the not-so-perfect quiche, called a friend who broke her wrist, and here I am.  Writing, waiting.  Waiting for Desperate Housewives to start so I can find out who shot Paul what’s his name.  Nothing to write home about.  Just an ordinary day.

 But, no, it wasn’t really ordinary, ordinary.  There was something very different about it and after dinner while catching a bit of 60 Minutes, I knew what was different.  I didn’t have to do any of the things I was doing.  At the beginning of the day there was no service I had to be attending, no particular meal I had to prepare, no television show I had to watch, no email reminders to get out to people.  I didn’t have to worry about a meeting in the next few days nor did I have to send out any reminders to participants or produce an agenda or pick up a projector.  I didn’t have to worry about anything.  That was what was different.

 The most amazing part of this revelation was that I felt it, sensed it, as if some elephant has been hauled off my back and put back in the jungle.  My whole body somehow felt lighter although my scale told me I hadn’t lost weight.  Drat!  Wouldn’t it be nice if retirement came with an immediate loss of say twenty pounds?  OK, Rita, dream on. 

 Another realization that came to me was that I could wake up for the rest of my life (which I hope will be at least to 100 years-old) and not have to do anything I didn’t want to do.  Woo Hoo!  Now that’s freedom and for me, that’s retirement.  I wonder how many days it will last.

 Having retired four times (at least) I know that this carefree, having no schedule, no pressure, no anything will not last.  If I could slip from a Type-A to a Type-X or Z it might be a different story.  But I know that it is not in my nature to just wake up everyday with nothing to do or nothing to look forward to or nothing nothing.  And, it has already begun because just yesterday on that holiday, I promised myself that I would write at least an hour a day Monday through Friday, and maybe Saturday, but never on Sunday- that’s my Sabbath and one day a week you should have a Sabbath day too!

 See, I’m already beginning to fill up my schedule and I know there will be other things along the way.  I will find a ministry to engage in and there are my genealogy society meetings, and my clergy women’s lunch bunch gathering, and my weekly clergy colleague group, and my Integrity meetings, and my writing group, and my Spiritual Direction duties…oh my, did I say I was retired?  Really?  Maybe not.  Maybe I’m just indulging in other things and have, perhaps, simply changed lifestyles!  Oh well, it was worth a shot!