Baby-in-Snowsuit Cookies, 11 Years Ago Today

Eleven years ago today, I made these nephew-in-his-snowsuit sugar cookies for my family.  Little Dylan was then the bundled-up dumpling below, so you can see why I just had to.  ♥

At that time, I was in my last push toward finishing graduate school and the baking and cake/cookie-decorating were huge parts of my stress-relief that winter, as gardening was in the warmer months.  My family and I ate more than our fair share of buttercream back in those days, let's just say. 

And now this pudgy baby who inspired his own sugar cookie is heading to middle school next year.  But still:  So sweet.  ♥

At Mom and Dad's

My work schedule and my mom's work schedule magically coincided last week and we ended up having all the same days off, so I took a bus home and got to spend a rare four February days with her and Dad.  While my motion sickness wore off last Monday night, I sat in the window booth Dad built a few years ago and unpacked a bag of Honeycrisp apples for him and a foil pan of gluten-free cinnamon rolls for Mom. 

Usually my visits home are much shorter, so Mom and I find ourselves staying up much later than we usually would in order to have more time together.  This visit, that wasn't the case, so we were in bed by ten every night, better for me since I've been making quite an effort to take better care of myself lately, and better for her Mom since her Lyme disease tremors were troubling her the entire time I was home and they ease up a bit when she's resting.  Likewise, a visit the next night with my younger brother and his wife and baby was a bit short since the baby was suffering from her first cold, and what was to have been a Wednesday dinner with my older brother and his family was cancelled when he called to say he and his wife were sick.  It was an even more leisurely four days at home for me, Mom, and Dad, then, which meant more rest for everyone, all-around. 

Mom's been redoing the kitchen, which has alternated between blue gingham and red gingham my entire life.  This winter, it is red gingham with creamy butter-yellow walls.  The booth above is the one Dad made for her and is one of my bird-watching spots when I'm home.  I haven't yet learned to use the zoom feature on my new camera, but even without it, I could sit at this window and get good shots of Chickadees, my favorite birds, in the Rhododendron bush, and I spent a good bit of time doing just that last week from the warmth of this gingham-windowed booth.

My parents moved into this house in the summer of 2003, so it's not the home where I grew up.  I gave up my apartment in 2003 and moved in with them here, though, while I finished graduate school and worked and re-built my savings after a few rough starts in my early twenties, so being in this little blue and red house always reminds me of that time in my life.  That's sometimes nice and sometimes not.  I was twenty-six when I had to move back in with them in 2003 and thirty when I moved out in 2007. . .a frustrating four years of having my own furniture and most of my own things stored in their basement and garage, of coming to understand that my ex was my ex and not yet knowing that my just-a-friend Mr. Mike would hold such a place in my future, and of struggling with school and depression while working toward getting back out on my own.  For a long time in those years, I thought that my parents' perennial gray-blue and red gingham would forever remind me of those sad times, but I wasn't gone long at all before I wished I could see Mom and Dad and their cute little house more frequently again, of course.  Such is life. 

I have told Mom many times that I can't look at her kitchen now without marveling at the fact that she and Aunt Laurie transformed it into such an airy pastel pink and green wonderland for Mike's and my anniversary party a few years ago.  She laughs every time I bring it up and just says it was fun for them.  It's been a joke between us since I was a kid that someday she would want to "be like me" and have pink everywhere--Picture me coming home from elementary school to find her wallpapering the kitchen in yet another Colonial blue print and yelling at her, "Aw, come on, Mom! Give up the blue and red, and try PINK!  Just think:  Pink roses and pink gingham and bright WHITE everywhere!  And we could work in some GREEN!  You should at least tryyyyyyyyyyyyy it!  You don't know--You might really LIKE it!"--so walking into our surprise anniversary party a few years ago and seeing Mom's kitchen and dining room finally in pink, white, and green was such a treat.  We laugh together every time the subject comes up.  ♥  

So many of these items in her collections were in the kitchens of my childhood too--The hen-on-nest-beside-red-milk-jug-against-fence wall hanging that's behind the hen shakers above was a piece we found together at a Ben Franklin store in the mid-1980s--but she is always finding and painting something new for her home too.  The nut didn't fall far from the tree, etcetera.   When Mom's in "Blue Mode," she repaints the milk jug in blue and brings out her blue Spatterware and copper mold collection.  When she's in "Red Mode," it is gingham and hens.  The adjoining dining room is almost always blue and filled with her Americana and tavern signs, though.  Every now and then, she'll move the pewter and Colonial things into the living room, but they always seem to find their way back out here.  

Dad built the corner cupboard below for her to store her cherished old Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne dishes in, and the collection is yet another thing that automatically, and forever and always, equals "Mom" to me. 

The red gingham wing chair in the photo at the top of this post was one I saw on eBay years ago.  Mom had been wanting one just like it for decades--she has magazine clippings from decorating magazines from the 1970s that show similar chairs--so even though the eBay seller mentioned in her listing that the chair was "local (Texas) pick-up only," I emailed her to beg her to be willing to ship the chair.  She kindly agreed--and that still delights me ♥--and I won the auction (as if I wouldn't, in this case, right!), my brothers and I divided the cost, my older brother drove to the local bus station to pick up the chair in his truck, and we somehow managed to surprise Mom with it on her birthday in 2006.  :)  

Giving Mom with this chair for her birthday that night is one of my favorite memories of all our times in this house and certainly of my four years living in it.  She moved it into this spot right away and sat down with my nephew, and these are the first two pictures I took that night.  ♥  And Mom and I both mailed thank you notes to the eBay seller for her kindness. 

Sweet, happy memories--and now this chubby little toddler is almost ten years old.  ♥  And the chair now has a skirt.  "Never too much gingham" is one decorating creed on which Mom and I agree.  :)

When I'm home next, for my birthday in May, the views from Mom and Dad's windows will be green, and the Cardinals, Woodpeckers, and Chickadees will be more than outnumbered by the buds on the Rhododendrons. 

 The snow on the hill outside their house will have melted to reveal the spring's first wildflowers.

And since Aunt Laurie and her family will also be in town next visit, coffee cake and homemade bread will likely be on the counter beside the cinnamon rolls covered in gingham dish cloths, Mom and Dad's TV will seem permanently set to a baseball game, and their blue and red house will smell of brewing coffee in between everyone's walks and fishing trips and flea market jaunts. 

In the meantime, February has turned to March, and we had our rare four winter days together.  And that, as Mom is known for saying about something she loves, is "not!  too!  shabby!"  ♥  

One loses many laughs by not laughing at oneself. ~ Sara Jeannette Duncan

Today is my dear friend Marylou's birthday.  Ahh, Marylou!  She makes me laugh.  ♥  A classic Marylou story circa 1998:  She received one of those silly quiz-type emails from a friend, and one of the questions asked her to share her Most Embarrassing Moment.  She took her time with the goofy survey questions, described some humiliating episode, and emailed it to her friend.  Soon after, a response appeared in her inbox--from a complete stranger.  "I think you meant to send this to someone else," it read.  "I guess you have a new Most Embarrassing Moment."  That made me cackle when she first told me about it, and it still makes me laugh.  Almost every conversation with (and email and letter from) Marylou contains a gem like that.  

In her honor, and as a virtual birthday present, I will remind her of--and share with you--another story from around the same time.  After making my way from my college's library to the science center halfway across campus one afternoon, I arrived at the building's door in the usual crush of students all trying to get to class on time, and as I waited to enter it, I saw the reflection of one of the students beside me in the mob:  She was dressed up in this sweet outfit--a long-sleeved white blouse under a sleeveless gray jumper-dress with white tights--and I simultaneously admired her outfit and noticed  that (poor girl!) her dress was tucked into the front of her tights.  Those realizations and my sudden horror for her--a young woman exposed from the hip down in this horde of students!--and my wondering how to tell her--seemingly all swept through my mind in a single instant, and when we got closer to the door and its reflection, I looked up and saw that--The girl was ME.  (I die again as I write this.)  I had walked halfway across campus during the busy class-change time with my oh-so-cute dress hitched up into my tights--IN THE FRONT!--and no one (no one! not even another woman?!) TOLD me.  I had passed people I KNEW on the way to class.  I had  said hello to students and PROFESSORS.  (I die again and again.)  It has been about fifteen years and I am still both laughing and blushing even as I type this.  I don't remember how or where I adjusted my dress and tights--I assume right in front of everyone and right then, since I obviously couldn't go to class like that--and I remember nothing else from that afternoon except that later on, I told my coworkers at the writing center, and they all died along with me--both from the utter horror of it and from laughter.  

A year or so later, when I was settling into grad school, a card arrived from Marylou wishing me luck on my new campus.  Tucked inside the envelope was a handful of coupons for L'eggswear-brand tights.  Ha ha.  :)  

When the Dress-In-the-Tights saga somehow came up in conversation awhile back, Marylou's only comment was a dry "At least you were wearing underwear."  Indeed!  And never let it be said that I don't thank God for small favors.  :)  But still, truly:  GAH! 

 What can you do but laugh.  :)

Sigh.  :)  

'Happiest of birthdays, Marylou.  :)  ♥

Home Sweet Apartment ~ in Pink

Since bringing back from my parents' house the mantel my dad built for me and Mike last April, I've been painting it and fixing up the things that will surround it.  My treasured old "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint is the first piece I've revamped for the mantel-wall.  It was one of my very first eBay finds back in 2001, that most-miserable of years, and even though--or maybe especially because--I was unexpectedly living with my parents again at the time, I was thrilled when mine was the winning bid:  This vintage sampler, like a Field of Dreams-type "If-you-find-the-decorations-for-it-the-new-home-will-come" talisman,  gave me something concrete to work toward as a frustrated twenty-four-year-old.  

In the summer of 2002 when I finally had my first all-to-myself-with-no-roommates apartment, I delighted in unpacking the needlepoint and dolling it up, and what a year before had arrived pine green and maroon with an unfinished wooden frame became pink and aqua to match the little dining nook in my new place.  

"Home Sweet Apartment" behind me as I would sit in the corner seat under it there and work on school work for my second Masters program.  "Home Sweet Apartment" beside my newly-ex-boyfriend and I as we sat across from each other at this vintage tablecloth-clad table eating bowls of my homemade soup and awkwardly figuring out our post-breakup friendship.  "Home Sweet Apartment" above me as I bawled my heart out in this pink-dotted chair the following New Year's night after realizing we weren't ready to be "just friends" just yet and that we might never be able to in this lifetime.  The sampler over me and my mom when she showed up on a whim with two chocolate muffins from the bakery and listened as I made us tea and told her all about it.  The sampler over a whole bunch of us when I hosted both my first family dinner and first birthday party and relearned that as long as I had love to give--and gave it--I wasn't down for the count.  Before I moved out of this first "all mine" apartment, a former professor joined me for cookies and lemonade under the needlepoint and commented that I was good at making people feel welcome.  "Hospitality is your thing, isn't it," he thoughtfully noted.  And that's when "Home Sweet Apartment" really clicked for me:  I really had created a home here, not just filled and decorated a rented space. 

The pink and aqua needlepoint became a more subdued and not-very-Val-like red and yellow in 2007, so as not to overwhelm Mike with my pink-and-rainbow-loving tendencies.  Our studio apartment was so tiny, it was hard to do any real decorating in it at all, so the yellow and red actually didn't bother me too much.  When you can roll out of bed in your home-sweet-apartment and land on the kitchen floor, or open the bathroom door while sitting at the dinner table, the color combination of a sampler's matte and frame isn't your biggest homemaking concern.  Besides, the sweet sampler watched over me and Mike, this time hanging from the apartment's built-in mantel, during all our goings-on for four years the same as it had when it had been pink and aqua for me before.  Home was still love-filled and our favorite place.  Be it ever so humble, you know.   

Today it became pink again, though, and I don't see it changing after this.  It finally looks just right to me.  I covered the yellow matte with the dotted pink upholstery fabric that I had used to cover the captain chairs in my little circa-2002 pink and aqua corner.  I repainted the red frame black.  And I removed the glass-front since I don't trust this apartment's wall to hold its weight.  While I continue painting the mantel and fixing up the wall around it, at least this much is done.  That I figured out a way to incorporate the old chair fabric makes me especially happy.  

"Lighten up, Val--It's a sampler," I know, but when I look at it, I remember the journey it's accompanied me on and think of it as a witness to the past twelve years.  When Mike and I eventually move on from renting, I will pass it on to its next owners with a prayer for their own resilience and contented refuge in home.  

Sweet, indeed.  ♥

Dawn

A dear friend died last night after a couple years of battling serious illnesses. Dawn, who I had yet to meet in-person, was working on her doctorate degree at the same time I was working toward my Masters, and we met through a grad student support group however-many years ago. We would make each other laugh throughout long nights--and years--of reading, researching, and paper-writing by describing our "work clothes" to each other. "I think I have you beat tonight," I would tell her. "Charlie Brown 'zig-zag' t-shirt, candy cane-striped pajama pants I got for Christmas, and my hair's pulled back into one of my dad's Pirates baseball caps. It will be a sad day when I have my degree and am not this fashionable anymore!" She would share her own crazy outfit--and no small amount of love and wisdom, as well--and another night spent trudging along on the long road toward our goals would pass with much laughter to combat the exhaustion and stress. I finally earned my degree in 2006, and she finally became "Dr. Dawn" in 2009. In a recent email, she wrote, "You are so dear, and I miss our chats about the most outrageous outfits. I'm currently wearing a worn-out Henley 4 sizes too big, and boat shorts. . . . will shortly add an ancient 2 sizes too big maroon sweat outfit and white fuzzy slippers."

"I don't know how you do it," I told her as she plodded along on her new and more difficult journey of cancer treatments a year ago. "But you do it. I admire your persistence." Big-hearted and brave, Dawn responded, "I do it because I'm one stubborn old broad, and because I have a lot of help from my friends and my dear sister and from God." To all her friends and family, 62-year-old Dawn has been the epitome of love and friendship, so often the one we would all look to her inspiration and advice even while trying to support her in her own battles. The student group through which I first met her is heartbroken today. To find anyone in this life who loves you and makes you laugh is a gift, and to find someone who loves you, makes you laugh, and makes you try to be a better person is a whole other level of a blessing. Dawn was a treasure.

"OK, I am tired, gotta go," she signed off in one of her last emails to me. "God bless wonderful, faithful Val." Bless you too, my dear. But friendships do not die. If you're sporting sparkling wings today, Dawn, then you finally have me beat. But you would want me to try, at least, and as a respecter of tradition, I don't mind telling you that I am wearing an oh-so-80s neon green nightshirt with screen-printed stars on its front, rainbow-striped underwear that is probably showing through in the back, and pink rabbit slippers. And I miss you so much already. And even when I'm 102 years old and find myself wearing some nutty mismatched outfit, I will think of you and laugh. And always, always, I will be grateful for your goodness to me and to so many others. Your heart was as big as your sweatshirt. 

His Eye Is on the Sparrow

I was living in New York City as a first-time grad student in the fall of 2000. It was a discouraging semester, and times only got tougher as the weeks went on. On the way back to my apartment one afternoon, I decided to pop into a sandwich shop for a takeout lunch. I can’t remember now why I (ever) chose that place. It consisted of the counter and a narrow galley space with an exit at either end, it was always raucous and jam-packed with people pushing their way toward the counter and then to the exit, and I always emerged from it feeling annoyed and disheveled, like I’d just survived a skirmish. It was close to my apartment, though, and on some days, maybe that was enough.

That afternoon, after minutes of being pushed and shoved to the middle of the shop where the counter was, I was suddenly stopped by a huge black man in a business suit. He was built like a linebacker and was easily 6’8”. How I hadn’t noticed him in this crush of people was beyond me. I’m 5’2," and to be approached by anyone in this city of strangers was so unexpected, I could only stare.

Not put off by my mute staring, The Linebacker in a Business Suit bent his head down toward me and smiled. ”I just want to tell you it’ll be okay.”

“What?”

He kept smiling and nodded as if to acknowledge that he understood my startled and rude response to him. “I know things are hard right now,” he told me, “but it’s going to be okay.”

Before I could reply, I got jostled by the hordes of students packed around me. When I looked up—maybe two seconds later--he was gone. The man who had been standing at least a foot above the head of even the next-tallest person in this tiny space was nowhere to be seen. That familiar tingly feeling that always marks these kinds of moments for me was already setting in, but I maneuvered myself enough to turn around and look for him anyway. When the place was that crowded, even a paper-thin man would have had to push his way through the mobs of students and book bags-thrown-over-shoulders for a full minute before finally reaching one of the two doors at either end of the shop. The man was just gone.

When I got back to my apartment and shared the story with my roommate, she shivered and crowed, “You have the weirdest experiences!” And I do, I suppose, but I had walked away from The Lunch-Hour Skirmish Sandwich Shop that afternoon believing all the more something I’ve really needed to hold on to ever since: The Universe is aware of Little Old Me and is sending me a sign here. I believe in holding on to hope, I don’t think we’re ever alone or unloved, no matter how lonely or unlovable we may feel, and I trust that the Universe is always somehow aware of us as we plod our way through it. It's going to be okay.