Coming East

Why Do I Love Thee?

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Coming East

Have you ever tried to write a love letter, only to give up because words seemed so inadequate to describe how you’re feeling? I wish I could have penned Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s words to her husband when she wrote, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…” Alas, she beat me to it, and I am left here fretting about how to get started.

You see, this weekend my beloved and I will have been married for forty years. We have this little joke between us that when I tell him I love him, he responds, “Why is that?” I always say it would take too long to list the reasons, but the real reason is because I can’t put the reasons into words.

Big Al says, ” The real reward in blogging is not whether you are widely read but how it acts as a journal for your feelings, opinions and interests.” I wholeheartedly agree with him, so I’m writing this post to capture, in whatever imperfect way possible, how I feel about my husband.

Dearest Husband,

Why do I love thee? Let me count the reasons.

1. You buy my popcorn at the movies.
2. You are a quick learner. You learned early on that the two most important words a husband needs to know are, “Yes, Dear.”
3. Sometimes I can feel you staring at me, and sure enough, when I look up, I catch you smiling at me.
4. You call me Mrs. Beautiful, even after all these years.
5. Your favorite song is Jimmy Durante‘s “Make Someone Happy,” and that someone is me.
6. You laugh at my jokes, finish my sentences, and always know what I’m thinking, because it’s what you’re thinking, too.
7. You pay attention to me. In a world where people are constantly in motion, their minds rushing from one obligation or task to another, you slow it all down and take the time to notice me.
8. You pump my gas, check my tires, and wash my car.
9. When there are only two pieces left, you give me the biggest one. (This is not true if Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream is involved, and that’s why I had to finish the rest of the carton while you were at work the other day. Sorry.)
10. You buy my popcorn at the movies, or did I already say that?

Drat! As I said at the beginning, it’s impossible to put my feelings into words. Maybe I could sum it up in the words of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, “Of all life has given me, you’re the best surprise.”

Now here are a few pictures to chronicle our forty years together, nearly forty-two, if you count when we met in college.

The cocky young man as I met him in college at the University of Connecticut. Man, I thought he was a hot ticket! I still do!

Do you think my grin could be any bigger? He still makes me smile. All the time.

First there was one...

Then there were two...

And then there were three. They outnumbered us...scary.

About twelve or thirteen years of marriage. Blue eye shadow was in then...trust me, it really was.

Our 30th anniversary

Forty years and still going strong

Posted in Favorite posts | Tagged aging, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, family, home, life, Love, marriage, personal, Relationship, Romance, Sonnets from the Portuguese, University of Connecticut, women | 36 Comments

I Figured Out Romney’s Brilliant Strategy

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Coming East

People are being too hard on Mitt Romney. He meant well when he said he wasn’t concerned about the poor. After all, they do have safety nets like Medicaid and food stamps. It’s the millions of middle class families who are struggling right now who need help. I think Romney means that we shouldn’t help raise the poor out of poverty because then they would become members of the middle class who are struggling without safety nets. By that reasoning, I’m surprised he didn’t say we should do nothing to help the middle class because then they would become members of the poor, and the poor have safety nets. So does that mean we should do nothing for anyone? I’m so confused. I don’t think I get the hang of this politics thing.

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged humor, middle class, News, opinion, personal, politics, Poverty, Romney | 22 Comments

Time Traveler

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Coming East

A few years ago I read The Time Traveler’s Wife. Though I didn’t see the movie, the book was terrific and intriguing. I’ve been going through family photo albums this past week for a project I’m working on, and the question arose, “If I could return to any age, what age would I pick?” That’s a tough one, plus there is a huge difference between picking an age and then moving forward from there, or choosing an age to revisit. Though I would love to return to a time when gravity didn’t make my skin sag, wrinkles hadn’t been permanently etched into my face, and my knees and hips didn’t ache every time I get up from a chair. But I definitely don’t want to go through toilet training, giving my keys to my just-licensed teenagers, hubby’s illness, and many other things, big and little that were unpleasant and stressful. I’m happy being right where I am and moving forward from here. But still…

It’s fun to imagine being a time traveler and enjoying different periods in your life. I certainly would not choose high school, a time when I felt awkward and unsure of myself. I did well grade-wise, had enough friends to look respectable, but I wasn’t on the “A-list.” I remember one of the most popular girls in school, a gorgeous blond cheerleader, who always had her nose in the air, when and if she ever spoke to me. It was quite satisfying to see her again thirty years later at our high school reunion, fat and single. Of course, I still found her stuck-up, but she no longer intimidated me.

When we first moved to San Antonio. The children were 2, 5, and 7---great ages! Notice the cowboy boots on the kids. We were going to be raising real Texans!

One thing I do know, and my husband would agree, if we could return to a former time in our lives for just a little while, it would be a time when we were a young family. Our love is deep and sweet, but we miss that time when the kids were still with us, young enough to enjoy them without all the teenage angst and drama. Of course, time marches on, and it’s a good thing for it gives others the opportunity to enjoy what we have enjoyed. Otherwise, my daughter would not have the joy of raising her own family, and we would not have the terrific son-in-law and daughter-in-law we have. But wouldn’t it be magical if we could be a time traveler once and just revisit a day or a month or a year in our former lives once in awhile? Which times would you pick?

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged aging, children, family, family photo albums, home, life, marriage, memories, motherhood, parenting, personal, relationships, San Antonio, Time, Time Traveler's Wife, women | 30 Comments

Stop! I Can’t Take Any More!

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Coming East

Image via Wikipedia

Last week I read a post on Saturday Evening Porch‘s blog about something called Pinterest. That was the first time I had ever heard of it, and I wasn’t really clear about what it is. No matter, I thought. It’s probably just some passing fad, like Angry Birds, something else I’ve never seen and don’t understand the workings of. Then lo and behold, this morning’s paper had a full-page article on Pinterest, beginning with “Chances are you’ve heard of Pinterest…” Actually, if I hadn’t just read SEP’s great blog post last week, I would still be in the dark, which I guess I still am since I don’t understand how Pinterest works.

However, I just read a post today that says if you’re a blogger, you definitely need to be on Pinterest to promote your blog, so now I’m worried I’m shooting myself in the foot if I don’t look into this. But I don’t even know how to Twitter ( or is that tweet?), even though I have an account and apparently have followers. My daughter was the one that set up both my Twitter account and my Facebook account and linked my blog to them. Speaking of Facebook, I keep getting these emails that tell me I’ve got notifications pending. Am I supposed to do something about that? Does that require me to actually go on Facebook?

I can barely come up with four or five posts a week and read other people’s blogs, and how on earth am I expected to Twitter (or tweet) and keep up with Facebook, and now add this Pinterest to my routine and still be able to see the light of day? Yet I know there are a bunch of people doing just that. Oh, is that why so few people seem to be outside taking a walk in the fresh air?

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged Angry Birds, Blog, blogging, Facebook, life, Online Communities, personal, Pinterest, Social media, Social network, Twitter | 46 Comments

“The Most Immediate Breath of Life”

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Coming East

“We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Little did Goethe know, when he wrote those words at the end of the Eighteenth Century, that letters would be destroyed, not by throwing them away, but by technology. Letters have been replaced by phone calls, emails, and text messages. As Liz Carpenter said, “What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can’t reread a phone call.”

Every once in awhile, I read some of the family letters which have been passed down to me from my parents. They are an intimate look into the lives of people who no longer walk this earth. Yet those people come alive for me in their words. Take this letter my father’s father wrote to my mother’s parents during World War II. My parents had eloped in Ohio, and shortly after, my father left for the South Pacific. My mother’s parents lived in Kentucky; my father’s in Manhattan. They had not met yet, and my father’s parents had not even met my mother, Dorothy, and were eagerly looking forward to a visit from her. What a lot is revealed in these words:

I have many other letters, including the love letters my father and mother sent back and forth to each other during the war, and letters from as far back as 1926 when my great-grandfather wrote letters to his little girl, my grandmother, when she was a young bride with two small babies, one of whom was my mother. What treasures!

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to start writing letters, something that I’ve yet to get to, but I’m rethinking that goal. What is the point of writing a letter, paying for postage, sticking it in the mail, and then waiting for several days or nearly a week for it to arrive at its destination when you can send an email instantly? Would anyone really appreciate the effort and keep the letters as I’ve kept those old ones? Probably not. Life is not the same. People don’t have as much patience. The immediacy of an email or a phone call or a text and a quick response is what people are looking for. But reading those old letters over and over again make me believe, like Liz Carpenter, that we’ve lost a lot.

Posted in Favorite posts | Tagged family, family letters, home, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters, life, Liz Carpenter, personal, relationships, World War II, Writing | 31 Comments

Are You Sure I Don’t Need My Appendix Removed?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Coming East

I keep this empty canister to remind me what to keep asking for. They are sick of me asking.

My husband thinks I’m the worrier in the family, but I know the truth. Yes, I worry about the little things, like what if Trader Joe’s never starts carrying their Conacado Organic Fair Trade Cocoa anymore and we’re forced to drink Swiss Miss the rest of our lives? That’s a real possibility, as they haven’t carried it in over a year. But my husband worries about things that will never happen. Like what if we don’t spend all the money in our flexible spending account and we lose what we don’t use?

For those of you who don’t know what a flexible spending account (FSA) is, it allows an employee to set aside a certain portion of his or her salary to be used for medical expenses during the year. The benefit is that this amount is not subject to payroll taxes, so it reduces the amount you’re taxed. The downside is that if you don’t use all that you set aside, at the end of the fiscal year (in our case, July 1), you lose any money that’s left in the account. The trick is to estimate how much you’re going to need during the year.

Every year my husband worries that he has estimated too much and that we won’t spend it all in time. He figures out how much our normal prescriptions will cost, adds in a pair of glasses for each of us, getting our teeth cleaned every four months, and then he throws in some more for unforeseen expenses. It’s those unforeseen expenses he sweats about. He started fretting back in November about maybe estimating too much. “Seriously?” I said. “We’ve got a long way to go until July.” “But we’re so healthy,” he moaned.

Yes, we are relatively healthy. But we’re also old. And something always comes up for old people. He just called me from the dentist office where he’d gone to have a sensitive tooth checked. “He’s going to do have to do a crown today,” he said, sounding unusually chipper. A crown? That will cost at least a thousand dollars. Praise the Lord!

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged aging, Flexible spending account, FSA, Health, Healthcare, home, humor, life, marriage, Medicine, personal | 26 Comments

Making Bread on a Dreary January Day

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Coming East

There’s something about making bread in winter that takes the dreariness out of the day. Yesterday I made four loaves of my favorite whole wheat bread and thought I’d share the recipe with you. If you’ve never made bread before, this would be a good recipe to start with. If you are a regular bread baker, then you will appreciate how versatile this recipe is.

This recipe makes four small loaves (8×4-inch pans) or three large loaves (9×5-inch pans). It’s a lot of dough to handle, but it’s easy for me because of the Mirro Gold-fashioned Bread Mixer my mother bought me in 1976. I looked for it online to see if I could find a website for you, but it has been relegated to the “vintage” kitchen appliance sites. You can still find them, if you look at sites like e-Bay, and it would be well worth it to find one if you like making bread in large quantities. You put all the ingredients in, assemble the dough hook and handle, and crank it around and around. My children loved to take turns “kneading” the dough.

Here is the recipe:

5 cups water or milk
1 cup honey
3 1/2 Tablespoons or packages yeast (not the quick rise)
1/2 cup oil
2 Tablespoons salt
10 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour

Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup of very warm water (110-115 degrees) with a little bit of the honey. Let it sit for 10 minutes to see if the yeast is active and spongy. It it’s not, throw it out and start again with fresh yeast. Don’t skip this step!

Dump the yeast mixture in a very large bowl. Add the rest of the warm water (you can use warm milk, if you wish, or a combination of the two), the honey, oil, salt, and the two cups of white flour. Stir the flour in and keep adding more flour until you can’t stir it anymore. Put some flour on your work table, turn the dough out onto it, and work the remaining flour in. You may not need all the flour. Knead the dough for about eight minutes until it is smooth and elastic.

Grease a very large bowl and put the dough in it, turning it over until it is greased on all sides. Cover the dough with a damp dishtowel and then another dry towel and let it rise until double in bulk, about an hour or a little more. Punch it down, divide it into 3 or 4 loaves, shape it by pressing each portion flat and then rolling it up and tucking the ends under, and place in greased bread pans. Cover the pans with dishtowels and let rise again for another 1/2 hour until dough is just beginning to rise above the top edge of the pan (do not over rise). Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes for small loaves and 40-45 minutes for large loaves. Watch them and cover them loosely with aluminum foil if they are getting too brown. As soon as you take them out of the oven, turn them out of their pans and cool on racks.

The great thing about this recipe is that it is so adaptable. You may use all whole wheat flour or all white flour. You can add leftover cereals or grains to the recipe and cut back on the flour. I put about a cup of dry oatmeal and a little flaxseed in my bread yesterday. You can add herbs or onion or raisins and cinnamon. This dough can also be used for pizza. Use your imagination. Just remember that homemade yeast bread spoils quickly, so freeze the loaves you aren’t eating right away or giving away. I would love to hear from you if you make this. And I hope you find that vintage Mirro bread maker!

Here are more pictures from yesterday.

Stirring the ingredients together

Kneading is finished. Even with the Mirro bread maker, I like to finish the last of the kneading by hand.

Dough has doubled and is ready to be punched down

Risen and ready for the oven

Finished product. While the loaves are still hot, I like to take a stick of butter and glaze the tops to keep the crust soft. If you don't have real butter, don't bother. Also, don't cut the loaves while they are hot or they could collapse.

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged baking, Bread, Cooking, Dough, Food, home, Kneading, personal, Recipe, whole wheat bread | 43 Comments

Never Leave Home Without Your Eyebrows

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Coming East

“Never leave home without your eyebrows” was one of the Mom-isms I learned at an early age from my mother. Most moms struggle with their adolescent daughters about the make-up issue when girls, starting in middle school, think they are old enough to wear make-up to school. Their mothers don’t, and the battle begins. Girls leave home with innocent faces freshly scrubbed, only to arrive at their first class with a face found on a streetwalker. They smuggle cosmetics onto school premises and share with each other, and are only caught when one day they arrive home, forgetting to scrub the evidence from their once cherubic features.

But that wasn’t the case in my house. My mother was always a fashion plate when I was growing up. I don’t know how any normal woman can look as beautiful as my mom did in the kitchen, first thing in the morning. Obviously, she was from another planet, and I was too thick to figure it out. We were both redheads with fair complexions and eyebrows so light, you could hardly tell we had any. My mother would draw mine in and brush the pencil marks with her eyebrow brush. Then she’d take me to the mirror, and with her hands on my shoulders, she would turn me to face it and say, “Now, doesn’t that look so much better? Without your eyebrows, it looks like you don’t have any expression.”

As I got a little older, she expected me to come to the breakfast table with my eyebrows already on. She also told me a little pale lipstick wouldn’t hurt either. Make-up wasn’t something I was particularly interested in, but I went along with it because it was obviously important to my mother, as if teaching her daughter how to look put-together was an important part of being a good mother.

My daughter would have loved to have grown up under the direction of my mother. The Lord doesn’t usually make mistakes, but I have to tell you, He got it all wrong this time. My mother was the mother my daughter was meant to have. My daughter was one of the most fashionable girls in school, and I can’t take any credit for it. I think she was fashionable in spite of me. But I still don’t walk out of the house without my eyebrows and a dab of lipstick. My mother did her job well.

Posted in Just Blogging | Tagged children, Fashion, life, make-up, memories, motherhood, mothers and daughters, personal, relationships, women | 30 Comments

The Five and Dime

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Coming East

For Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave me a book entitled Good Poems, which are the poems that Garrison Keillor selects and reads on his NPR program, The Writer’s Almanac. This morning I read a poem called “Woolworth’s” by Mark Irwin, and it brought back memories of our five and dime store in the middle of Fairfield Center in Connecticut. On Saturdays I would go with my parents to the center. While my mother went to the stationery or Trudy’s, the women’s dress shop, and my father went to the hardware store, I would wander into the five and dime, my allowance burning a hole in my pocket.

What a marvelous place! At the back of the store, the first place I’d run was the menagerie of parakeets, turtles, hamsters, and little white mice. (I always wanted a mouse but had to settle for a turtle.) There were beautiful bolts of fabric and tables with stacks of pattern books. I’d sit at one of the tables and search through the books, daydreaming of how a certain outfit would look if my grandmother made it for me.

Though I looked at everything in the store each time I went in, only two things were slated to take my money from me: animal crackers and “fine” jewelry. Yes, I had a penchant for flashy gold and ruby or emerald rings, the kind that had the adjustable bands that fit three times around my tiny finger and turned it green, and the sparkly glass that lost its luster after a few turns making mud pies. And the animal crackers? I wasn’t even fond of them, but I liked the circus wagon box they came in, and I loved seeing my brother’s delighted face when I gave him the cookies inside. He was rather frugal with his money and never would have bought them for himself. Why should he, when his sister was always so willing to provide?

Yes, we have dollar stores today, but they can’t hold a candle to the old five and dimes. Those old stores were neat and orderly, like the sales women in their starched white blouses and pencil-straight skirts. The glass counters were cleaned of fingerprints and the imprint of little noses pressed up against the glass as eager faces perused the merchandise behind them. They were part of the Saturday magic with Mom and Dad in the center of town.