love
It’s 10 o’clock
Michael has moved into his apartment at TCU and Paige is packing. Tomorrow Paige and I hop in the pick-up and drive her back to Iowa for her sophomore year.
Summer ends again, tonight.
I tried not to cry when she started kindergarten. She’s my youngest. For years she had watched her older brothers go off to school. Even though she went to nursery school three mornings a week, she was so ready that day she went to kindergarten. She just bounded out of the car like her brothers and headed confidently to her classroom. She was big. How could I cry?
Sunday morning, we’ll move her into a new room, although in the same dormitory as last year. She’s out of her living-learning community, but the bonds between her and fellow writers from last year are strong. They are already trying to figure out how they can find a house to share by next year.
She may not even come home next summer. I’m mindful of that. I didn’t come home after my freshman year. We’re starting to collect things she will need to live in her first home away from home.
She’s big.
How can I cry?
Horse bling
Sam isn’t a belt-buckle-wearing kind of guy. When he’d come home from Chisholm Challenge with another trophy buckle, usually from being the best in English equitation, we’d look at it lovingly for a minute. The organizers of Chisholm Challenge order the trophy buckles each year from the silversmith in Placerville, Calif. That was always fun to see, too. I knew the shop since I worked for the El Dorado Arts Council for three years, back when Sam was an infant and toddler.
But then, we’d just put the buckle back in the velveteen box and shove it in the dining room cabinet. (Lots of room in there. We don’t have many fancy dishes.) After a few years, I felt bad. He worked hard for those buckles and he didn’t get one every year for every event. (Unlike Special Olympics medals and ribbons, but I digress.)
I figured it was time for a display. I asked Dad, and the next time we were talking on Skype, he showed me what he’d built. I brought it home two weeks ago and showed it to Sam.
He’s not really a belt-buckle-arranging kind of guy, either. I pulled them out of the box, marveled at the craftsmanship and then arranged them.
I hope he’s a belt-buckle-noticing kind of guy.
Love Letter to Caleb
Our family has been touched again by tragedy.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Mark and Peggy
Sometimes we did things just to see if we could.
http://chirb.it/Fwy53p
Being Who You Are
My grandmother’s 90th birthday was was her last.
We knew that. Her cancer was untreatable. She had been blinded by macular degeneration years ago. She sent word through the family that she wouldn’t be sending Christmas cards anymore.
It’s a big family, on my mom’s side. My mother is the oldest of nine. I’m the oldest granddaughter of, um, about sixteen, or so, I think. I haven’t met all my cousins. Many are still in Wisconsin, but not all. The great-grandchildren number more than 40, and yes, I believe there are great-great-grandchildren, too. My youngest uncle is only two years older than I am.
What can I say, except we’re a big, Catholic family.
Except about 10 years ago, Grandma let go that we weren’t always. Mom went back to meet the cousins in Northern Ireland. My great-grandfather came over from Ireland as a Presbyterian. He never sent for his family. He married my great-grandmother, shown in this photo with my grandmother. 
Grandma converted to Catholicism to marry Grandpa.
My grandmother liked ham sandwiches and drank black coffee no matter what. She knew everything there was to know about babies. She was loving, but not a sentimental person nor the keeper of scores of family treasures (if there even were any).
She liked tossing out the old and in with the new. Grandma was in the moment.
But she was always stitching something. She was the first relative to show me the value of handmade gifts. One year, Grandma and Grandpa made all the granddaughters doll beds of wooden spools and cut coat hangers. They were canopy beds, and mine had pink flocking. I couldn’t believe I got the pink one. In my seven-year-old opinion, it was the prettiest of all the beds.
Whenever I visited my grandparents, which got harder and harder to do as the years went by, I would get a tour of the house to see the latest creations. It was as good as touring a folk art museum.
There were other family secrets Grandma never shared. Some we knew, but couldn’t speak of, because she wouldn’t acknowledge them. Some we learned from Aunt Bea.
Aunt Bea, the originator of the family’s sweet roll recipe, and the speaker of family secrets.
Grandma probably just found out how much her sister Bea let on. Don’t worry, Grandma. It’s all good. It’s all about the love. You knew that and so do we.
Mark’s Kahlua
Just about every year this time of year we’d have to hightail it outside and stay gone for a while because Mark would be making kahlua for his friends and music colleagues. The only thing that stinks up the house more than making kahlua is making mustard. Caramelizing onions isn’t even on the same scale of stink, I’m telling you.
Ok, guys. Here’s the recipe he refined while we were living in Sacramento.
2 quarts plus one cup water
7 cups sugar
6 ounces of freeze-dried coffee
1 T. Hershey’s cocoa, optional
1 fifth of Everclear
3 T. vanilla
1. Drive to Reno to buy Everclear. (After we moved to Texas, he drove to Paradise.)
2. Boil water and add sugar. Add coffee and boil for 15 minutes. The house will be really smelly, so go outside. Add the cocoa and remove from the heat. Let cool.
3. Add Everclear and vanilla. Bottle and keep in your liquor cabinet.
Today it’s four years since he’s been gone.
I don’t like thinking that at some point in my life I will have lived more of my life without him than with him.
What Little Girls Are Made Of
As Paige was packing up for college last summer, we had a dilemma. She’d been borrowing my jewelry box for years because she had way more bangles and beads and baubles than I did.
I stopped wearing earrings when the kids were babies and pulled on them. My skin has autism. It doesn’t like bracelets or necklaces or rings. She felt a little guilty about taking my box, especially since that left me without anything for the few things I do have.
On her dresser was a box she’d made at art camp in elementary school. It was empty. I asked her about the ceramic piece affixed to the top. Did she remember making it?
No, she said, but she did remember what inspired her. “I had learned the atmosphere was made up of bits of sunlight, and water, and the grass around us. I wanted to make that. I wanted to make the atmosphere.”
That went right to my heart. “I’ll trade you boxes,” I said. She didn’t think it was a fair trade, but I convinced her.
My little girl comes home for the holidays tonight.
Sugar and spice.
Happy 24th, Sam!
The only time in his life I can buy a pack of candles and use every last one of them.
Here is the cake we nearly always bake for a Wolfe family birthday, ever since I bought Rosso and Lukins New Basics Cookbook and adapted it.
The Chocolate Birthday Cake
1 c. butter
1 1/4 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
3 eggs
3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
2 1/4 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
9 T. buttermilk
1 c. boiling water
2 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and the sugar in the mixer for five minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. Meanwhile, melt chocolate in the microwave by breaking the blocks in pieces and microwaving on high one minute. If not fully melted, microwave for 30 seconds at a time until melted. Fold into butter and egg mixture.
Sift flour, soda and salt together. Add one third of flour mixture with 3 T. of buttermilk and mix on low. Repeat two times, mixing until all buttermilk and flour is incorporated.
With mixer on low, slowly pour in boiling water and then add vanilla. Pour into two prepared cake pans (I prefer Doughmakers) and bake at 375 til it pulls away from the sides and springs back in the middle, 25 to 32 minutes.
While the cake cools, melt 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips in a small saucepan with 8 T. of butter over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, gently store in 2/3 c. half-n-half, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 c. confectioner’s sugar. This mixture will be thin. Refrigerate, stirring every 10-15 minutes until its stiff enough to frost the cake.
Start by applying a thin layer of ganache on the bottom cake round. Sprinkle with additional chocolate chips, pressing them down into the ganache. Top with other round, frost top and sides.
Serve. Store any leftovers covered in the refrigerator.
Tuba Juba Duba
Michael worked hard for a year to learn to play the violin. Mark wanted him to know that music can be fun, too. He suggested this little duet for them to play during the Argyle Talent Show in 2001. Michael captured this video this morning and edited it.
Happy listening!
Tuba Juba Duba
Michael worked hard for a year to learn to play the violin. Mark wanted him to know that music can be fun, too. He suggested this little duet for them to play during the Argyle Talent Show in 2001. Michael captured this video this morning and edited it.
Happy listening!