QuidNunc/QuidTunc?

I was never a big mac and cheese fan. (I hope I didn’t recently write about sweet potatoes). But recently I was at a friend’s house for dinner and there was mac and cheese. Well, It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just like, “what’s there to like?”  It was deeee-lishous! After we ate it, she says, “Do you want to know what kinds of cheeses are in it? ” After listing about 5 she said she only put about half what it called for. “It’s a recipe for a heart attack waiting to happen.”  My sister makes pretty good mac and cheese and I even ‘allow’ it at the Thanksgiving table. I don’t remember having seconds, but maybe that’s because there are way too many other things to eat at Thanksgiving.

I used to make it at Cono, and I would doctor it up with herbs and stuff to give it a little flavor. One day a boy said to me, “Mrs. DiBernardo, some of us like mac and cheese just the way it is.” I realized I was ‘doing it up’ because I didn’t like it. sort of like a non-coffee drinker making the coffee. I think it’s time for another cup of coffee. Seeyooz

When we were in 7th grade, Mrs. Belz would send us outside to wrote ’something pretty’ papers. I always liked this assignment, but I can remember doing it only once. I feel like we did it more often. i wonder what other people wrote about. I wrote about trees. I guess I like trees too. Lately I have been collecting and waxing leaves for decoration. I am sure that I am the only one walking the Lancaster Streets and bendiing over and picking up leaves. somehow a little project like this gives a person pleasure. I stuck some to my windows and I made a little wreath which needs a slight repair because I was low on glue in the glue gun.

So here is the proJecto:

modus operandi

the melted parafin, the fresh ones and done ones in a stack.

Name that leaf

And here is the pretty girl who went on a walk with me today

Whenever Joel goes to Longwood, there are certain trees he expects to see, and they are usually waiting for him (and everyone else!). When we were very young, and we would have some spare time after setting up for a concert, we would roam the streets and he would stop and gaze at trees. I would worry someone would come out and chase us off for loitering! When our children were very young, we spent a lot of time at Longwood Gardens and Joel would make (want) us to stay next to him while he tree gazed. It was a little hard reining in all that animation, so that when he said “Who wants to go to Longwood?” , Mary., whose middle name is “Go!”, would be the only volunteer. She would walk alongside him, leaning on his leg and sucking her thumb, stopping when he stopped and going when he went. They were pals. The other day we made a late afternoon trip to Longwood and , sure enough, the ‘old friends’ are still there. I have a camera I can liberally click away with and ‘trash ‘ what I don’t want and I don’t get bored while he ‘gazes’.

The Buckeye Grove

The oxydendron tree

The Happy Trampers

My reading is beginning to pick up speed and lately I have read two books I’ve been meaning to blog about. The first one was Camille by Alexander Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers. Never see him given credit for much else. Camille is told as a narrative as someone relates his relationship to a woman in Paris described as a ‘kept woman’. It is an upper class prostitute. She’s not working the streets, but the men know who she is and pay her for her favors when she grants them. When the teller of the story sees her for the first time, he falls in love with her. She grants him an audience, but he doesn’t go for her favors, he goes for her. When she feels sick and leaves the room, he goes to see if she is all right, and she is astounded by the act, because no one had ever shown her that kind of attention. He keeps up his relationship with her until she sees no other. Then she wants to leave Paris, so they find a cottage in the country. She lets all of her old life go in the face of this man’s love for her. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it made me think. People often see becoming a Christian as a cutoff from doing or being something they desire, or people they desire to be with. They see it as some sort of bereavement. I would say they do not understand what happened at the cross. Sometimes I have not understood what happened at the cross. For a long time I heard . “In view of God’s mercies, OFFER YOUR BODIES AS LIVING SACRIFICES.’  Especially loud ’sacrifice’. Always got to be thinking about what I am giving up. One day in church it hit me as “IN VIEW OF GOD’S MERCIES, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. ‘ Really no big deal when you think of God’s great mercy. So this woman was getting rid  of the things that had entangled her in that other life.

The other book was A Thing of Beauty by A.J. Cronin. I think ‘The Citadel’ is his claim to fame, but he has wonderful character development and this book was not a disappointment. I got it on vacation at my sister’s library in the ‘for Sale’ room. This was about a young man whose father expected him to ‘go into the church’ as a fourth generation and inheriting all he had and the son wants to paint. The father can’t see any future in painting and his world generally looks the same. The painter’s world is always changing. It is sort of like reading the book of Proverbs as different characters go in an out of his life. The father is always waiting for a return and he does return for a painting job that goes awry. I think this is the 4th  A. J. Cronin book I read. All good.

I was just thinking about a period of time in our early 40’s we felt exhausted all the time. One morning when we woke up Joel said, ‘If we feel like this when we’re in our 40’s, what do people in their 60’s do???”  I replied,’ Well, I guess if you’re not dead, you get put of bed!’ One of my most profound moments. I’m not in my 60’s yet and I think it has been a long time since we felt so draggd out like that all the time. Maybe it was all the responsibilities of raising kids as they got older and all the crises of the time or we just got used to the way it felt, I don’t know. I do know that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning and the sun just peeped out! And two funny girls named Mary and Annika will be here soon with bagels. I think I’ll go boil some eggs!

There is always a little something stashed away in a corner around here. Lotsa corneres, lotsa stashes! So in a ‘closet’ there was this bag of letters  I wrote to Joel’s mother and so here is a glimpse of our life on February 12, 1990. I knew it was imporatnt to date letters!

” This is as close to Valentine card as I can muster (stationery with a pair of wood ducks). Mary colored you one that’s in another envelope. Makes her feel like she has done something official. She really enjoys school and is reading quite well. She’s a hands-on type… she has fidgety fingers! She scratches my back when she sits next to me.

I’m working on a quilt, the hand stitching part and I’v e gotten so sleepy. I’m making great progress, too. (???)

Samuel is really enjoying listening to records. He’s so much like Dad (mine). I went to a funeral with Dad and Mom on Saturday. Dad walks past the baptistry and pokes his head in! Samuel gets so involved with the music he listens to! This morning he was dancing around on the rocking chair.

Joel is making some sales again this week. Once we get a customer they’re very pleased. Getting them is not easy but he’s very encouraged. Last year at this time he didn’t really know if he could do it and now he knows he can— the growing part. The making money part has its queations, too, but that always will, I’ve been out dibbling a few times. I’ve just hired one of the students to help me after school. We ought to make some real progress.

I cleaned Nicky’s closet ;last week and concluded that everything that disappears is wedged behind something in Nicky’s closet. He sleepwalks.

Jeannette is sick today. I think she’s exhausted . Growing bodies can’t always take what you dish out to it. She got to go to a chamber concert performong Mozart’s Requiem with her English teacher. Saturday before last Andrew B. took a bunch of little boys to see ‘White Fang’.”

That’s it folks. In Feb. 0f 1990 I was 31, had 5 kids aged 2-12! I think I did the math right on that one! Everybody is pretty much in character. Where is Luisa??? She played and sang and sang and played back then!

If I have time to find a pictue I ight update this post, but now I am going to scramble!

The reason there isn’t a pictue of Joel pointing is that I can’t find it!!

I wonder who made those words up. I am sure if I look it up in my lovely online dictionary, it’ll tell me, but I am not going to take the time. We were looking over our bookshelves, I think Joel had a sacrificial eye and he said, “It’s not like we use them.” I followed his gaze to the World Book Encyclopedias and said “No sir. I am always paranoid of a Tower of Babel experience and said “I’m keeping all my hard copies!” At least they are good through 1989. I keep all my dictionaries, too. I have 6 English ones. One is about eight inches thick. I kept a couple in the car for a while when I was teaching homeschoolers so I was sure to have something with an etymology.

Joel just finished repointing all the points in our brick that needed it. It has been about a 3 week project. He is really glad to have it done. He figured by the time he finished he would have the hang of it.

We celebrated Two Years of New City Fellowship of Lancaster today. I made Mississippi Mud in honor of it. One day as i was with Mary when she picked up K from Nursery school and K called out to her teacher , “Good Bye Mississippi!”  Instead of ‘Mississ Hilton’.

This is me saying good bye to the Midwest on ourway home. Three weeks ago. I couldn’t find my camera cord. it showed up on Friday.

Technically I am not a prairie native, having been born in Michigan. But being the impressionable age of 6.75 when my family moved to Iowa, I think I am a prairie native. When I ride for miles and enjoy the rolling hills and the staritness of the roads, the immense sky like a dome over my head, I think I am a prairie child. The breeze freely moves past us without much blockage, although as you look acrss the horizon you see the uprisings aropund a farmstead in their attempts to create windbreaks. And they do that to some extent. Twenty years ago we Dibers moved to Iowa and as my friend Mrs. B. said every time she answered the phone, “The DiBernardos are here and it’s a storybook day.” The other day I went to see her in her bed, weak and frail, just home from a short hospital stay. It was another storybook day. When I was young she taught us to keep track of our authors and Bess Streeter Aldrich, a prairie woman herself put it this way, and I think it describes the prairie and its ’storybook days’ perfectly. It’s from A Lantern in Her Hand:

“There are weeks where drifting snow and sullen sleet hold the Cedartown community within their bitter grasp. There are times when hot winds come out of the southwest and parch it with their feverish breath. There are periods of montonous drought and periods of dreary rain; but between these onslaughts there are days so perfect, so filled with the clover odors and the rich, pungent  smell of newly turned loam, so sumac-laden and apple-burdened, that to the prairie born there are no others as lovely by mountain or lake or sea.”

I read an entire book pf BSA’s trying to find this quote. I came to my sister’s and saw A Lantern in her Hand and there it was on the first page of the Introduction. It pays to read introductions.

This is one of my very favorites of all time. I sang it with Cedar Rapids Concert Chorale and have been ‘in love’ ever since. This piece stats out with Psalm 23 (in Hebrew) and don’t let a few shaky notes at the beginning turn you off. The boy a ALL heart and is a delight to watch sing. When the sopranos and altos sing antiphonally I think it is ‘Thou preparest a table before me……..” Then the men come is with a juxtaposition of Psalm 2 (Why do the heathen rage…) and then it resolves back to The Lord is my Sheperd again at the end. Leonard Bernsein is the composer and conductor. If you don’t like it the first time, try listening to it a few times.