1. TINY PANCAKES FOR TINY FINGERS

The griddle of my childhood sat dutifully atop the stove on Old Clairton Road, across from the kitchen booth just this side of the dining room doorway.  Its weight required substantial preheating before the flame was turned down, the ultimate pancake being created on residual heat.  Mom stabbed a fork into a hard cube of butter and slid the chunk across the hot iron.  It screamed across the griddle, bubbling into a golden brown pool which she spread in an even layer across the seasoned metal. When the liquid music stopped, she whipped the batter bowl with the back of a spoon, then poured exquisitely even puddles of liquid Bisquick onto the griddle.  She stood for what seemed a methodically precise period of seconds, her head cocked to the side.  Eventually she lifted the corner of one pancake with the thin edge of her spatula, peeking at the color underneath as she evaluated the bubbles on the surface.  “When the bubbles pop, and the holes don’t fill in, then it’s time to flip.”  She taught me, at a rather young age, how to judge the turnability of the perfect pancake.  The perfect pancake, to me, was golden, and not too large, and not too thick.  And it was slathered with good fresh butter, maybe some fresh raspberry freezer jam, or good runny apricot jam, some chokecherry syrup, or home made syrup made with sugar water and maple flavoring. There was a time when margarine worked, but that was during that mistaken decade of the 70’s when butter had a brief false encounter with nutritionists who thought its value was inferior. For me a plain old golden Bisquick pancake with butter and only butter was divine.

I still like Bisquick, but it is way over priced for my liking.  Instead, I whip up home made pancakes nearly every time my grand kids sleep over. I keep a Post-It note with the recipe inside my baking cupboard door. Saturday morning is for cartoons, and wearing pj’s all morning, and pancakes, or French Toast. French Toast fingers with plenty of good fresh butter, generously sifted with powdered sugar. That, or tiny pancakes, for tiny fingers.  

Pancakes 

1 ¼ flour

2 t baking powder

¼ t salt

1 T sugar

I beaten egg

1 cup milk (adjust to make batter fairly runny)

2 T vegetable oil or melted butter

Mix dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients.  Beat with whisk.  Batter should be thin. Pour onto hot griddle.  When bubbles pop but do not fully fill in, flip pancake. 

French Toast

2 eggs

¼ c milk

vanilla

We use non-nutritious delicious soft white bread 

Whip together 2 eggs. Roughly 4 T milk, and ½ t pure vanilla. Melt butter on a hot griddle.  Dip bread in egg mixture, cook on griddle, flip when golden brown.  Slather toast with butter while hot and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Or to make it extra special, add sliced strawberries and whipped cream.

LENT 2015 BEGINS

In the liturgical Christian world yesterday was known as Fat Tuesday.  Shrove Tuesday. The last Hurrah before Ash Wednesday.  It is also known as Pancake Tuesday. Pancakes were traditionally eaten on the day before Ash Wednesday because they were a way to use up eggs, milk, and sugar before the fasting season of the 40+ days of Lent. The “fasting” during Lent emphasizes eating plainer food and refraining from "pleasurable" foods such as meat, dairy and eggs. Many people "give something up" during Lent as a way to prepare for Easter, the most holy of holidays. It’s not always food.

As a Mormon, this practice is not a part of my religion or culture, but as a Christian I find the practice inspiring and compelling, so seven years ago I started a Lenten practice.  Each day of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday, I pause from the demands of the day and reflect.  The reflection is not passive, and requires some degree of energy because I command myself to write.  It really is a sacrifice for me, and often takes more time than anyone might imagine. I have seen great benefit in this exercise.  I have memories I had not realized were tucked into my brain.  And I have been able to preserve those memories by giving them voice.  I choose to share them on my blog because sharing it requires a certain accountability.

This year, for the season of Lent, I have chosen to share recipes.  Along with the recipes there may be a story or two about the yumminess in my life.  And trust me, there is considerable yumminess. Post 1 follows….

CIRCLES

Heritage Halls, 1977.  We gathered in a large circle in the lobby of our dorm, some of us sitting on the hearth near the big old tube TV, some smashed hip to hip on the sunken couches beneath the large plate-glass windows , some of us sitting cross legged, our knees jittery with anticipation.  We had been called to a Candle Passing Ceremony, a few dozen girls, with a few scattered boy-friends and friend-boys in tow. The lights were dimmed and we sat in darkness as our dorm leader lit a candle which we passed around the circle. Some girls teased, pretending to fill their cheeks and prepare to blow out the flame, but generally the candle was passed from hand to hand, still ablaze…until it came to the mystery girl…the woman of the hour… the one who had just become engaged.  This was the late 1970’s BYU method of announcing a marriage engagement.

I sat across from her and smiled as I watched her take the candle, turn to pass it on, then bring it back, purse her lips, and blow it out! Her name was Cyndy Hooley, and the fella sitting next to her was my brother, George.  We cheered, and embraced, and congratulated, a circle of friends and roommates. I did not know that this was the first of many circles I would share with Cyndy, my friend who would become my sister.

My brother George, who happened to be roommates with my fiancé’ Dave, had a habit of visiting my dorm, first because there was likely to be a pot of hot soup on the stove.  But it didn’t take long for the soup to move to the back burner because his hunger was for that cute girl with the curly hair and the irresistible smile. The girl who had just the right amount of sass to peak his interest, and the unmatched strength that would eventually put reigns on the wild horse that is my brother.

Dave and I have joined George and Cyndy in many circles.  Some where a crackling fire kept us warm and fed, our bellies full of trout, our hands filled with guitars and flutes and such.  We have stood in sacred circles, dressed in white, raising our hands before each other.  Other circles, where our babies were central. First wrapped in white blankets, then roughly eight years hence, those children were again in white, their hair wet and clean, their hearts ready and willing and trusting, and the worthy hands of their father and uncle were once again placed on their heads. We have encircled many a dinner table, have hammered pots and pans on New Years Eve, have celebrated high school honors and college degrees.  And we have huddled in grief, our shoulders slumped together, our hearts heavy, in ICU waiting rooms, in family prayer, and around caskets where the scent of pine still wafts in our memory. So many circles, with ripples still rolling out to eternity.

Today, the kind of day we fear as children and never outgrow with age, we formed our circles again.  Layer on layer.  And central to all of it was that beautiful friend who became my sister more than three dozen years ago.  Her body was spent, worn out by good works and, almost inconceivably, whipped to submissiveness by cancer.  I have never known a stronger woman.  And so I have never seen a more unyielding disease. Demon cancer!  Lauren, Bryan, Nate and George, directed by what some people call fate and I call the Holy Ghost, had made the decision to come together with impeccable timing. 

They surrounded her, their hands touching her as if they were charging their spirits with her good energy. 

And we who loved her too, encircled them.  Out into the halls of the Heber City hospital, and beyond. Out to distant places where prayers were all that could be sent, their paths interweaving like a web of faith, encircling all of us.  We sang her to the gate, our hands and voices trying to fill her with sweet memory to take with her.   

I sat behind Nate and Bryan, their arms holding each other up, their father and sister across the bridge of their mother. I imagined their brother, Clayton, whose body we had encircled on that mournful day 18 years ago…I imagined a tug of war between those crazy brothers; two of them pulling from this side to keep her here, and Clayton engaging the aid of his grandmothers, tugging from Heaven.

Cyndy walked into her Gethsemane with grace and dignity and complete trust; ever aware of the lessons she was teaching in her journey, and completely submissive to her God.

Today, in the waning hours of daylight, Heaven won.

We promise, Cyndy, to lock our arms, to lift our sorrowful eyes heavenward, and support each other in love. One tight, little circle of those who shared your body and your name, and layers of circles beyond that.  Rippling out to places our eyes cannot see, carrying your influence out across the waters of time and space and into the realm where you embrace your son and so many others who have loved you long before we did.

MY MOTHER'S HANDS

I know my mother's hands.  They are still now, down there in the ground under that sheltering sycamore tree, but the energy in them is very much alive, somewhere.  I wonder what that good energy is doing right now.  Does she realize it is the anniversary of her humanness?  Those hands, tiny and perfect, first felt the chill of the earth on this day, so many years ago.  Flailed in their new space; clutched the pinky of her mother just moments after they waved goodbye to me, probably laughing as she went, calling back to me…"See you in a few!" That was when we were just spirit friends. The chemistry of our relationship changed when she became the vehicle for my travel. That act alone lifts her to a place of eternal honor in the story of my life.  But that, as glorious a gift was it was, was only the beginning.
I have known my mother's hands from all perspectives.  I know their tenderness, her fingertips patting my back to the rhythm of her humming.  I know their industry.  They wring out the cleaning cloth, a hint of bleach or ammonia or vinegar filling the space we were cleaning.  She tucks her pointer finger into the cloth and works her way into the corners and crevices, showing me how to work with real intent.  They have been firm and quick with wooden spoons, both in a pot of stew and on my disobedient back side.  They have pulled blankets up under my chin when I was sick, the backs of her fingers testing the heat in my forehead, the palms stroking my wet hairline.  Her hands have folded in prayer, at the dinner table, at the sacrament table, at the side of her bed.  I have gripped them, trustingly, when either of us needed help rising. I have watched them press the rolling pin over pie crust, and gingerbread men. I've seen them handle slippery fish on a log in the middle of the Snake River, watched them thread worms onto snelled hooks, witnessed as she would gut, clean, scale and fry dozens in one fell swoop on a warm summer evening.
My mother's hands turned pages of books.  They held contracts and pens and keys, all at the same time, and that was just one hand…the other one was on the steering wheel.
My mother's hands never did love buttons.  Electric buttons…the ones on computers and cell phones and such, though she did learn to use a computer more than a decade before people had them in their homes. She preferred to use a pen and paper.  I still get a tingling inside when I see something written by my mothers' handwriting.

Against the deep red comforter that enfolded my mother's body, there on her bed, I held my mother's hand in one last sacred grip.  Her lovely, lovely hand, worn with good works, wrapped in mine. 

I see the age spots on my own chubby fingers.  I did not inherit her long slender fingers.  I feel time hurl like this winter wind that blasts through the crack under my door.  It swirls around me and presses me forward, to that place where I will one day join her under that sycamore tree.  Then, sad as it may be on this end, I will gratefully, joyfully, passionately reach up and, no doubt, she will take my hand.
Happy Birthday, Mom.

MICHAEL PALMER HEAVEN BOUND

There is a picture that is tucked away in my mind, and diffuses all the way down to my heart.  I write these words to keep it there. Yesterday, after we had gathered in the narrow room marked “Palmer Family” on the 4^th floor ICU at the U of U Hospital, after we had embraced and reminisced and told Michael stories, laced with laughter and tears and more laughter; after the doctor had come in to explain the unsurvivable damage to his brain; after we had two by two made our way through the large loud doors into the ICU, down to the room where Michael lay uncharacteristically still, surrounded my machinery; after his faithful dog Buddy had been smuggled in, had leapt onto Michael’s bed and laid calmly and comfortably atop the little man’s body; after innumerable hugs were given, to him, to each other…after all this Kelli and Cristy and Jamie asked if I would sing a song before I left.  My guitar was there in the corner of the family waiting room and of course I agreed.  We wept together as the music came, holding hands and clutching hearts.  Cindy, down the hall with Michael, asked if I would come down and sing for them in his room. 

I walked into that sacred space, the love so thick you could almost hold it in your hand like a soft snowball. Cindy lifted her head from Michael’s chest, and said,

‘”Do you know you are my hero?” I paused for a minute, surprised at her words.  “Well, that’s kind of ironic cuz right now I’m thinking you are my hero.” I said.

And then there was a slight pause.

“No, she said, Do you know the song you are my hero?”

We had a good laugh, and then I tried to find the place in my brain where the song Wind Beneath My Wings might have been stored a number of years ago.

I suspect some musical angel whispered the chords and words to me, because really, I don’t know how to play that song.  But I did play it.  And I was glad it came somewhat freely because this is where the indelible picture is emblazoned in my head. 

It’s a scene of a boy,  really a man in a boy’s body, and the women who adore him.  They surrounded him like ministering angels.  Cristy, and Jamie, and Kelli, his aunts…and of course his mother…his champion…his confidant and first love.  My fingers stroked the strings of my guitar as I watched. Kisses upon kisses fell all over his tiny head, down his arms, kisses and more kisses, sparkling against his soft warm skin under the sheen of their tears. I saw in that snapshot of a moment 27 years of adoration, of strength, of patience and tolerance and selflessness all gathering into that one place where true love circled and circled like electrons around an atom, and central to it all was Michael.  Dear, sweet, funny, mischievous, nose pinching Michael - encircled and enfolded by the women in his life.

It took massive amounts love to make him remain here, those twenty-seven years ago… love and determination and perseverance, intelligence and drive. He spent the first four years of his life in an ICU. When a family has used those traits for so long it is a hard thing to change course and let go.  And yet, call it the grace of God, I witnessed in reverence the tender beauty of these magnificent women whispering their love to him, sending him off with dignity and passion, so there would be no doubt of their love, their trust, and their devotion.

A similar scene had played out earlier that afternoon, with Randy and Michael’s brothers-in-love huddled around his bed.  Such devotion and unity is palpable.

We know the days ahead will have their heaviness.  There will be moments of silence where his voice would have swirled in the conversation.  There will be pangs in the heart when you drive by a Lost Dog poster nailed to some telephone pole.  But there will also be an undeniable shift in the air, now and then, as if a breeze came out of nowhere.  You will straighten up your ears and your shoulders will rise, and it might not be till later that night when you whisper your thoughts to God that you realize the slight lightness of being was not a result of nature; you’ll know it was something more familiar.  It will have been your boy, laughing in his heaven place, blowing you kisses, telling you to lift your arms so he can be the wind beneath your wings.

HURON CALLING

Although the day is overcast, and when I look to the sky I could not tell you right-off exactly where the sun is situated, I know it is there because its light is glistening on the ripples pulsing against the shores of Lake Huron outside our cottage window.  And, further evidence, I can see it shimmering through the underbellies of the leaves of these tall old maple trees that shade the cottage, emerald and chartreuse and deep forest greens clapping against each other.  There is a slight Michigan breeze whispering through the flora, discussing the matters of nature with the lapping of the waves, a language familiar to my history.  Their discussion makes me feel like an outlier, gratefully ignored by these ancient waters, these dependable winds and eternally shifting sands. 

Dave and I returned to our Michigan cottage yesterday, having driven from Utah by way of a Utah Bar convention in Snowmass CO.  We arrived just after midnight, our car slowing as we passed the cottages to the south of us, keeping watch for the streetlight hanging over the singing bridge, the marker that our cottage was eminent. The large evergreen in the front of the cottage has been cut down, giving the front a nice sense of balance, and more space for our car to park.  Our car doors opened to the sound of Huron calling, her rhythmic hum like a heartbeat, throbbing out there in the darkness.  Coming to the cottage is a sensory renewal, like we are called back to a dream where rest is rejuvenating and not just a break from being awake; the thunk of our footsteps against the boardwalk, the slapping of the screen door, the scent, undefinable but absolutely exact, of the cottage when you first enter.  A rush of memory, a tug and pang of recollection of Dave’s mother and  father who brought us here and whose spirits whisper to us to keep returning. 

My mother-in-law's décor, over twenty years old now, is timelessly fresh and cozy and oh so inviting. Red gingham love seats and soft enfolding easy chairs, rocking like mothers in church on a lazy Sunday morning.  Warm, golden hardwood floors, reflecting the patterns of light that stream through stacks of windows.  Crisp white cupboards in the kitchen, accommodating ceiling fans twirling overhead, as if they were children on the merry-go-round in the park, moving the soft July air over our skin.  

A lovely bank of glass doors and windows, six of them, line the back of the cottage, framing the lake and the trees and the sparkling spanse of beach where next week our grandchildren will disturb the sand and lift their voices against the music of the waves and the wind.  They will play until their bellies are churning with hunger, then they will follow the scent of Michigan baked beans trailing through the screen doors.  They will politely refuse the beans, begging instead for macaroni and cheese and a large weeping glass of cold milk.  Anna Bella will remind us that tonight we will have fresh corn on the cob, with Amish butter, and I will ask her how in the world she is going to eat that corn with her two front teeth missing.  She will smile her toothless smile and giggle, pulling her lip with her finger and declaring that she will use her back teeth.  Joe will scream because his Auntie Kate is bringing him up from the beach, whining and wiggling until he sees the noodles and the milk, then he will crawl into his high chair and chow down, wondering how someone knew he was hungry when even he didn’t know. Timothy will eat quietly, wishing his cousins were here, thinking about making little snips of movies with them down there in the sand, forcing himself to not think so much about it because the missing them hurts.  He will think instead about borrowing the Doyle’s kayaks and taking a row with his mom or dad or auntie Kate, or his Gumpa will remind him that they will go golfing tomorrow morning.  Then he will listen to the music that is always running through his head and he will gobble his mac and cheese contentedly.

But that is all to come.  Today I am here with the man I love, in this place I love.  He is downstairs, preparing for a conference call with a couple attorneys.  I am tucked into this easy chair my mother-in-law sat in over twenty years ago, rocking to the rhythm of the waves, my fingers clicking away at this keyboard, trying to hold on to a moment in time. There are chocolate drop cookies on the counter,  There is a bluebird on the railing of the deck in front of me, and a squirrel paused halfway up a tree just past the bird.  His tail waves, creating a repetition of question marks, as if to say…”Are you coming?  Are you coming?” 

“I’m already here.” I whisper.  I’m already here.