Om, Om Good

Something hit me last fall.

Maybe it was my 47th birthday. Maybe it was just that "tired of being tired" feeling.

Whatever inspired it, in October I took my exercising to a new level.

Now, for some people that means running their first marathon or increasing their workouts to an hour each, 7 days a week.

But for me, that meant getting serious about exercising at least 5 times a week on my elliptical. I started out at level 1, barely able to walk 15 minutes. But over the course of the fall, I've built up to 5 days a week, 30 minutes at a time, on level 3. I usually burn 200 calories (dessert!) and walk 1.5 miles.

I cannot tell you how much better I feel.

Also in October, we added twice a week yoga to our routine. The girls and I faithfully attend a gentle yoga class at a local studio, with Michael joining us as he's able.

Honestly, after the first class I was hooked.

I cannot believe how much better I feel after a yoga class - stronger, healthier, more energetic. How could I not have known this? Really, if I hadn't thought it would help my daughter's headaches, I never would have had the nerve to try a class alone.

Never.

Thank goodness I did, because I can't imagine my life now without yoga.

Yesterday I even did a yoga DVD at home.

I will never move on to an advanced class or become a yoga expert, my body just isn't built for it.

But gentle yoga has done incredible things for my mind and body already in just four months - I'm excited to see what happens in the next four!

Of pies and personality

I made an apple pie today.

As part of my New Year’s purge and perennial organization plan, I started sifting through the contents of one of my freezers. Yes, I have two freezers, a chest and an upright. After a summer of putting nothing new into the chest freezer, I think I can finally move what’s left into the upright and defrost.

As I started sorting through the remaining sauces, veggies, various meat items, and the occasional “mystery” package, I came across a bag of sliced apples I froze in September of 2009. If I remember correctly, they’re not the best apples in the world, being a result of "The Great Coupon Mania Of ’09".

Back then, one could print off innumerable Target coupons, all for the same item.

And print I did.

Then girls and I would head out to the nearest Super Target, armed with multiple coupons for bananas, breads, and apples... you name it, we couponed it. In September, I found coupons for 1 pound of free apples. So, off we trotted to Target, coupons in hand. We each gathered 1 pound of apples at a time, going through the checkout in a row, paying a couple cents each for our bounty. A quick trip to the car to deposit the goods, and we’d be back in produce before you knew it.

Target no longer has such a lenient coupon policy.

I might be the reason why.

Anyway, the apples turned out not to be such a great deal, being of the tasteless, shipped-in-from-a-million-miles-away, variety. My solution? Slice, sugar, and freeze for pies.

Of course, an apple pie is truly only as good as its apples, so the pies turned out to be somewhat disappointing, but nothing a heft scoop of vanilla ice cream couldn't remedy.

Mmm, there's nothing like a piece of Mom's disappointing apple pie with a scoop of vanilla!.

Let’s just say I learned my lesson and leave it at that.

But this morning, I found myself holding that last bag of disappointing apples. Not being able to throw it out, disappointing apple pie has been added to tonight’s menu.

As I dumped the apples into the crust, I started thinking about the women in my life and their apple pies. I never had one of my mother-in-law’s pies. After 12 children and the life of a farm wife in the '50s and '60s, I think her pie-maker was worn out.

My mom makes a mean apple pie, though it is quite different from mine. Hers has no top crust, while mine has the crumble topping of French apple. Mom’s apple pie is quite sweet; just thinking about it I can taste the syrupy deliciousness of the cooked juices. I don’t think she’s ever used a recipe to make her crust, but it turns out flaky and delicate every time. These days, she thinks nothing of making a pie or two and taking them to the neighbors.

I tend not to be quite so generous.

I remember when my Grandma was going to show me how to make an apple pie. My uncle and cousin were heading out on vacation in their camper and I wanted to make them some treats to take along. Grandma suggested an apple pie and tapioca pudding, two of my uncle’s favorites.

Grandma and I didn’t get along all that well. I spent the summers at her farm house for years, but we never quite clicked. If I remember correctly, Grandma wanted to get it done and I was procrastinating. I think when you were born in the late 1800s and were a farm wife, you learned to get things done - if you put them off, you might not have enough to eat that winter. The consequences for procrastinating were never quite dire-enough for me to change my "I'll do it later" attitude.

Grandma’s idea of teaching me how to make a pie upset me, too. I wanted to make the pie, she wanted me to watch her do it and learn. So I fumed as I watched her make the pie.

Without a recipe, of course.

I was 13 at the time, which might have had a little something to do with our conflict.

Anyway, I remember watching Grandma lay her precisely sliced apples - really, they were all exactly the same width - in a perfect spiral in the crust. She actually laid the apples in the crust one at a time. Slightly different from my slice, stir, and dump method of crust-filling.

Sadly, I don’t remember what Grandma’s apple pies tasted like, though in the image that comes to mind when I think of her, she’s always sitting at the table peeling apples over a tub.

My pies tend to be messy, rather unattractive things. They’re always running over, getting a little too brown in spots, or ending up slightly undercooked. But they always taste good.

I guess you could say I see a little bit of myself in my pies. A little messy on the outside, but worth a second look.

My girls aren’t interested in pie-making. Maybe someday when they have families of their own they’ll ask for a lesson. Or a recipe.

No one ever actually taught me how to make a pie (Grandma's lesson sort of went in one ear and out the other). I kind of ended up figuring it out for myself.

So I guess you can tell a lot about a person and how she makes a pie.

Just please remember one thing.

Don’t use disappointing apples no matter how cheap they are.

Every pie deserves better than that.

Love Poems

We had a wonderful Christmas this year - calm, relatively stress-free, and full of togetherness.

One thing I have always tried to instill in my children is the importance of family - being there to support each other no matter what.

This year, my youngest showered all of us with her love and demonstrated her belief in the connectedness of family.

I knew she'd been working on Christmas gifts for all of us - she always hand-makes everything, usually starting in August! This year, she asked me for some of my old canning jars - I have a huge box of them in the garage - but she kept mum about why she needed them.

The closer it got to Christmas, the more often she mentioned needing to work on "PAPOP," her name for the gift she was making for all of us.

I could tell she was getting concerned about finishing in time, so I casually mentioned that she could wait and give whatever it was to each of us for our birthdays - but she insisted this wasn't possible.

I thought she was being too hard on herself - and being a little stubborn.

On Christmas morning, her reason for needing to finish, all the hours she spent sequestered in her room, and that last-minute dash to Office Depot for more ink, all became apparent.

The whole family gathered to open her gift to us: Pick A Peck of Poems.

We each had an antique canning jar filled with 52 poems - one for each week of the year - all written by Melissa for us.

Here is what the gift tag said:

These jars are full of poems written solely by myself. The poems are the same for each person and are labeled 1-52. Starting on the first Sunday of January everyone will read the first poem. There is a poem for every Sunday of the year. The jars are easily transported so that no matter where each of us is, every Sunday we open our jar and read the appropriate poem.

Love,

Melissa

I am so taken by her thoughtfulness and the love she poured into this gift. What a wonderful young woman my daughter is!

I can't wait to read the first poem!

From the berry patch

Strawberry season has come and gone in our little patch. We picked for 3 solid weeks, averaging 2-4 quarts every other day.

There is nothing like a fresh grown strawberry, still warm from the sun, plucked carefully from its vine, and popped directly into one's mouth.

Our across-the-alley neighbors are from Mexico. One afternoon, the husband saw my boys picking and came over to visit. It turns out, his wife is from the prime strawberry growing region in Mexico and he had questions about growing strawberries in Iowa. We plan to give him some of our plants this fall when we do some dividing.

He has 3 or 4 little boys who had never before tasted a real strawberry.

We figured, in honor of their mother, we should remedy that situation.

They had never tasted anything quite as luscious, and the looks on their faces were pure delight. One little boy exclaimed, "I never knew they tasted this good!"

Makes me think of all the other children - and adults - who have no idea what real food tastes like. If they only knew, maybe more local farmers could make a living growing seasonal crops.

I buy grocery store fruit, but I know it is but a pale substitute for the real thing.

If only everyone could experience the explosion of flavor straight from the berry patch, they'd be like those little boys, who always seemed to show up right at picking time.

Snappy

A few weeks ago the girls and I ventured to a local park. They hung out on the beach and the playground while I walked the park's 3-mile trail. It was a beautiful, sunny day spent out and about together. After a quick lunch of pop, chips, and granola bars (I know, I know), we headed out to do some house-gazing; a favorite pastime of mine which I was pleased to discover the girls enjoyed. For me, drive-by house surfing satisfies my high level of domicile envy. The girls simply enjoy watching my level of panic increase as I find myself lost (temporarily, mind you) or too near the river, or railroad tracks. Or worst yet, lost on a dirt road next to railroad tracks close to the river.

Ah, phobias, I embrace thee, if only because you so verily entertain my children!

Anyway, on our way home after this foray, we drove back past the entrance to this park, which is known for its proximity to the Raccoon River, its large lake, playgrounds, etc. A lot of construction was taking place along the road at its entrance.

As I was zooming along, content in my recently demonstrated ability to simultaneously freak out, entertain my children, and subsequently find my way home, I saw a big muddy bump in the middle of this very busy road. As we got closer, it sure looked like a turtle, but I dismissed the thought since it wasn't moving.

As we passed the bump, Sarah exclaimed, "Mom, that was a turtle in the road!"

After the obligatory argument of the "no it wasn't"/"yes it was" variety, I turned the car around and went back to the park, pulling the car off the road near the entrance.

Sarah jumped out to investigate, declaring the rectitude of her perception, "I told you it was a turtle!"

Ah, then the dilemma. How to rescue a large snapping turtle (I was sure that's what it was - we couldn't possibly have been called upon to rescue a plain, old, mild-mannered turtle) in the middle of a busy road.

Just then, I spotted a couple jogging by and told Sarah to run up and ask for their help. Mind you, my part in this rescue so far entailed sending my 17-year-old daughter out into the middle of a busy four-lane road to ask strangers to help rescue a turtle.

That, and I did turn the car around.

Not one of my proudest moments.

The couple stopped and the guy pulled up a couple of construction stakes and he and Sarah started scooting the turtle off the road. Said turtle obviously had a death wish, since he didn't offer one whit of assistance in his rescue.

I could tell, from the safety of the front seat, that he was hefty, too, by watching how they struggled to move him to safety.

How much does a snapping turtle the size of an 11 x 14 sheet paper weigh? Google wasn't particularly helpful with this.

Finally, he was safely on the side of the road, but was still way too far from the lake for comfort. What to do?

We decided to empty our cooler, scoot the turtle into it, then drive him back to the lake. By this time, Melissa and I decided to join more directly in the rescue effort. While we all stood lined up by the busy road, cars and trucks began to slow, watching what was going on.

We'd become a bona fide rubber-necking event!

One woman pulled her car over, crossed the lanes of traffic, and told us, "With the way my life's been going lately, I just had to watch this! This is great!"

Finally, turtle-in-cooler, the joggers took off, the traffic began to move again, and the girls and I lugged our unwilling rescue-ee toward the back of the Prius.

Once he was heaved in, we drove toward the boat ramp, getting as close to the edge of the river as possible. A quick dump and a little prompting with a stick, and Snappy took off into the water, ready to wreak havoc again someday, no doubt.

We left, buoyed by our altruism and ingenuity, ready for the next perilous rescue to come our way.

Thankfully, my darling husband washed out the cooler.

Fishy memories

Last month the girls and I went to our little local zoo. I think it had been a couple of years since we last were there and it was fun to go back.

As always, one of their favorite places was the koi feeding area. I came prepared with change to buy the fish food and we enjoyed the ensuing feeding frenzy almost as much as the koi.

Two things came to mind while there.

First, I wish I had been more willing to say "yes" back when the kids were all little - they got to feed the fish, but each child only got one handful of food. I've learned a lot about parenting over the course of the past 15 years or so. Thankfully, my oldest two tend to be forgiving!

Secondly, watching the fish go berserk, roiling and tumbling over each other in a veritable orgy of greed, I was transported back to my uncle's ponds nearly 30 or more years ago.

I spent only 6 summers of my youth on my grandmother's farm, but the bulk of my happy memories were formed during those few months each year.

My grandma and I didn't really get along very well and she focused on and openly favored my older sister. Searching for escape, I went outside and discovered the man who probably had the greatest influence on my character and reasoning, along with my dad of course; my Uncle Clarence.

Uncle Clarence was, I think, 14 years older than my dad, making him well into his 60s in the early 1970s. In many ways he was like a grandfather to me. I remember following him around the farm, from tool shed to tractor and pick-up truck to cattle lot. I was so quiet and followed so closely that he often would turn and run into me.

Uncle Clarence was the first adult to treat me as an equal. Although he didn't hesitate to pronounce his own opinions, he opened my mind to question religion, politics, and human behavior. No matter what, Uncle Clarence was on my side.

I remember one year, as my parents prepared to take me back home to New York, I started sobbing and couldn't stop, throwing myself in Uncle Clarence's arms. It was always so very hard to leave!

Uncle Clarence had several man-made ponds that he stocked with fish. I vaguely remember that he ran a fishing business on the side. In the smaller ponds were the starter fish. I presume they stayed there until they were big enough to release into some of the bigger ponds.

Funny, I never asked about that.

And as I write this, I realize how tenuous many of the "facts" of my childhood are in my mind.

The starter fish were given feed on a regular basis and grew to know the sound of my Uncle's footsteps on land as he approached. I'm not sure whether they were crappies, bullheads, walleyes, or what; maybe a mixture of them all.

As he approached, the fish would begin to swim toward the side of the pond until the whole surface was wall-to-wall fish. And mouths.

As cool as this was, it was also kind of creepy to look out on a sea of slimy, writhing fish mouths.

My uncle and my cousin were consummate fishermen, but thankfully they tolerated my squeamishness about the whole business. I did learn to cast (though there was one unfortunate instance when I let go at the wrong moment, sending my cousin's prized new rod straight into the pond) but have never baited a hook or cleaned my catch. Heck, I never even actually touched any of the fish I caught.

Yes, they were mighty tolerant.

I got to participate in farm life as a visitor, savoring the good parts and never quite having to participate in the gross or uncomfortable. But I think the exposure I had to some of the necessities of growing and harvesting food enriched my life. Like watching Uncle Clarence shock a fish, then hang it from it's lower lip (okay, I mean the skin underneath the lower jaw), and skin it. I get the shivers just thinking about it. But I sure did enjoy my Aunt Ruthie's fried catfish.

Boy, it's been years since I've had that catfish.
Years since Uncle Clarence died.

Decades since my childhood summers on the farm.

But the memories of watching my uncle feeding those fish will be with me forever.

Sweetie

My mommy doesn't say much...

but I know she loves me.