Stop! He Said To the Pea Juice As It Flowed Into the Mashed Potatoes

You probably didn't know this, but I grew up in a family where we all mixed our cereals, and so I thought cereal mixing was a universal practice. Not until Wayne and I were married did I learn the truth: it is not universal. Apparently it was a Brimley thing. It was not a Wayne Gordon Schiess thing. He did not mix cereals. Surprised I was, but I knew I could adjust. After all, such practices are a matter of choice. I did think he was missing out on something pretty okay. He did not think so, and the vehemence with which he declined to mix is what really stunned me. He was adamant, would not even entertain the thought of it.

He was equally adamant against sharing food, as in trading bites. That seemed to be more fundamental to me. I mean, if you love a person you might like to share. Not so with him. I tried to take his attitude not personally, and eventually I did. It was, for me, a matter of understanding and acceptance of him. My sister Lucile recalls that Wayne didn't like his foods to touch on his dinner plate. I'm not sure what prompted his attitude or his strictness in it. That's just the way he was, a phrase I became well acquainted with in the many years I knew him.

It's true. We are not all alike, and they say that's a good thing. Families have their customs and quirks, and those get passed along. In the Brimley family we liked to invite people over to share a meal. I wanted to invite people over for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas. He did not want to, so we didn't. About the cereal, some of my kids mix, some don't. I think they're food/bite sharers. Not actually positive there.

This post is prompted by Ann's Cereal regulations. Carol's Corner will have more to say on the subject of cereal.

Thanksgiving Report

The day has passed. Thanksgiving. It saw us actually giving thanks some. Ann's doing. Wow.

And it brought my granddaughter Cory for a Saturday stay, and, because she was here, all who live here and are affiliated with this family came to see her. All except Michelle, who was sick, and Jeremy who was working on his school project due today.

We did draw names and have the customary debate associated with that activity. The subject is not always the same, but there is just about always a debate. We did laugh a lot and tell stories, do a dance step or two, chase after the little kids, eat sandwiches and yum-yums, and mostly just sit around. I guess that's our main way of having a good time.

Twenty-four sleeps until Christmas, Clayton.

Thanksgiving Approaches

Four more sleeps from now, to be exact.

Be it known I have much that I am thankful for, of which I will cite only two things: 1. That about 12 people from the Park Center Ward came yesterday and raked up all my leaves; 2. Mostly and always, my family. It's a right bunch of people. Strange, as we know, but funny and bright and good.

I believe some of my family will come to my house for turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day. They'll bring side dishes and such. We'll visit and eat and draw names for the Christmas gift exchange. We've done it all before. Pretty traditional. Nothing terribly exciting and nothing disconcerting, I hope.

We'll mention Wayne, no doubt, probably comment on the Pumpkin Pie, which I will likely buy at Costco. It will be good, I'm sure, but it won't be his, and that is certainly worth a mention. But I expect we'll have a fine time together, probably eat too much, maybe even talk about what we're all thankful for. Just kidding.

Keeping Up

Standing in the check-out line at Winco yesterday, I heard someone call my name. It was George Huff, recent widower of Gretta. She was 96 when she died two months ago; George is 13 years younger, as he used to like to mention--before she died--and for the last three or more years has done everything, which he also liked to mention. "And I mean everything," he would say, "inside the house and outside. It's wearing me out."

Toward the last, he couldn't keep up with all that needed to be done, so they had someone come in for a while in the mornings. Hospice, I suppose.

Since her death George has cried a lot. I have seen it, how it comes over him unexpected, and have been sad for him but glad he misses her. I mean, doing everything did not wear out his love--that it would not may seem obvious, but I mention it anyway.

Yesterday he was chipper, chatty, his usual self, and he offered to take me for my basal cell surgery Wednesday--with his daughter Carolyn, of course, because it wouldn't be proper for just the two of us to ride alone in a car. He told me again about his recent skin adventures. This was the second time he had told me, and I won't be surprised if he tells me again when he sees me after my surgery. A red head, George has had many skin adventures, I'm sure, in his 83 years. I thanked him for his offer and declined.

We talked more as I placed my food items on the moving belt. Then I noticed the Star Trek-like gizmo attached to his left ear. "George," I said. "You're wired."

"Oh, yes," he said. "I'm a real tech-y."

I told him he is very cool.

I knew he had a cell phone now. It's Carolyn's way of keeping track of him, making sure he's okay. But the ear piece is new. Very direct, her calls going immediately into his ear. Carolyn, a nurse, is working nights, he told me, and calls him in the morning when she gets off work before she goes home. Just to know that he's okay.

It's a good idea, I say, as long as he remembers to put the thing on.

Poem

Etude
Carol Schiess
for Wayne, for Carol

I
Sleep is a deep spinning dive
through dark water to a cavern
bright with the light of you,
where the sudden saving breath
inhales the scent of you
lingering on the skin,
where the quickening touch
is your fingers
wiping water from my face.

II
In sleep the muscles relent,
tissues, cells give over
to all they resist waking.
The body can move
through fire,
absorbing heat,
until it throws back the covers,
spreads the arms wide
in welcome.

III
At the piano a small girl sits,
playing again again and now again
a certain passage, the notes
before her. Someone weeps.
Perhaps she
weeps. Tears run
down the page, notes
blur, fingers turn
wooden,
hearing fails, her mother--
not there before--
walks from the room
shaking her head. Sleep
is a reaching, an invasion
of fears, of loss, of something
never found.

Jeff's Mom

Jeff is my son-in-law. His mom died last Friday. Shirley. And it makes me sad. She's 67, still young. Lola says Shirley was always so happy, so easy to be around. People were drawn to her. It's sad to lose someone like that. I hope Jeff can talk about it with his Nevada relatives, that is if he wants to.

No, I'm not going to carry on or wallow in the sadness I feel about it, because that would just take me right back to losing Wayne. But I will say--not for the first time--that for me death is the hardest part of life. It is the trial of my faith.

My friend Mike, in his early 50s, is ready to go, he says. Anytime. Not that he's looking for ways to die. No. But that he does not fear it. "Whenever He wants to take me," he told me the other day, "I'll be ready and more than glad to go." That has never been my view of things.

Do you think there is a way to change one's point of view on this issue? I mean, what good does it do to be afraid?

Shirley had projects, things she wanted to do, stuff she was working on. I say good for her. And I think I can hear her say, "Life is short. Live. Do things now."

Milque

I just now poured myself a glass of milk, took a drink, and was suddenly back at 722 drinking goat's milk. Yes, that's what today's glass of Kirkland milk tasted like, and I wondered if the dairy people ever slip goat's milk in with the cow's milk before sending it to the place where they pasteurize and homogenize it. Probably not.

Not that the milk tasted bad, just that it tasted like our goat's milk.

We had two goats: Cookie, a big, cantankerous alpine, and Carni, a chocolate brown Toggenberg with a gentler temperament. She was small and clearly not the alpha female. Cookie was, and a good milk producer, too, but she may have thought she was a billy, the way she acted like the boss of everything and liked to play ram tough with Paul.

We also had the Davises' two goats at our house, well, in the pen. Cookie ran their lives, too. And, incidentally, four goats make a lot of goat poop, if you'll pardon me. But that is a story in itself and will have to wait to be told.

Our milk was good or not so good, depending on what we fed our goats. We sought and bought the freshest, sweetest hay we could find. Sometimes hay was hard to get, and always it cost more than we thought it should. We could have thrown grass clippings over the fence; no doubt the goats would have eaten it. But we didn't do that, at least not very often. We were selling the milk and drinking it ourselves, so we were careful.

We had a nectarine tree and would give the goats a nectarine now and then, which they seemed to like a lot. We'd watch Cookie chomp the fruit and spit the seed out the side of her mouth. (How else, Carol?) She would bump Carni out of the way when we came with the nectarines, so we had to be quick and sneaky to get a treat to Carni. We didn't give nectarines to the Davises' goats. Why should we? By the way, we bought the goats from Phyllis Friend. She named them. We didn't.

Wayne built a couple of milking stands--he and Terry Davis did--which stayed on our patio. Every day, twice a day, we'd go down and drag those goats up to the patio for milking and try to get them there before they ate the peach tree we were trying to grow at the top of the slope near the patio. Terry didn't seem too concerned about that tree, seemed to think it was okay for his goats to eat it. Before long, we had to take it out, what was left of it.

We'd feed the goats oats with honey, which they loved, while we milked. We couldn't dilly-dally at it. Get the milking done before the oats were gone and hope the goat didn't step in the milk bucket. Then we'd weigh the milk, keep a record of how much our goats gave. I don't know why.

It started out that Wayne and I did most of the milking. I believe our children do not remember it that way. Soon enough they were all involved, and the only one who really wanted to milk was the one who couldn't. Ann. Too little. I think even Alyce milked sometimes. Not sure. But I'm sure of this. They all have their own stories about the goats, milking, drinking the milk, and so on.

We had to buy a new fridge, one without a freezer, so we could keep our gallon jars of milk in it. Goats were expensive, we found.

Sometimes the people who bought our milk just didn't show up, and we would have an awful lot of milk on hand, so to speak. I made cheese and more cheese. I made ice cream a'plenty, and goat's milk, with its richness and high fat content, made wonderful ice cream. But you can't make it every hour, you know.

About the fat. Fat particles in cow's milk are big, and they adhere to the body's mucus membranes and so cause allergies, ear infections, etc. Fat particles in goat's milk are very small and are easily digested. That is why doctors recommend it for babies and children who cannot tolerate cow's milk or who are having chronic ear infections. Which is why people bought our milk.

We took our goats out to Phyllis Friend's and had them bred. I say baby goats are the cutest animals ever. But we had no room for more goats, so we sold the babies, even though we knew the buyers were going to eat them. Don't think about it. Davises kept one of Carni's babies, Martha. Eventually, they built a new house with a goat pen and moved their goats down there.

But the day came when we had to give up the goats. We were not selling enough milk, and, as I said, people sometimes didn't show up, even after they had called to be sure we had their milk. I never understood that. What it meant was we had too much milk and could not afford to keep the goats if we were going to pour the milk down the drain, which we had to do now and then.

I don't remember who bought them. It was the end of what I always considered a good time for our family, one of those times when we all worked together on something. I don't know if they all see it that way. I'm pretty sure Wayne did.