As the (my)Beloved fries me some hamburger, onions, and potatoes this afternoon I'm reminded that the memory can be a good servant or pleasant entertainer, but is a cruel master.
So as I remember the old funeral home in Tioga I determine to think of that time and place as happy, bright, clean, and full of opportunity and fun.
Because, you see, I have developed a default setting over the tumbling years for my memory -- which is not happy or carefree, but rather brooding and blame-seeking. When I allow my mind to wander where it will it automatically goes to unhappy places. And since my remarriage to the (my) Beloved I have found that such memory mucking is counter-productive and not in the spirit of harmony that we need in order to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous marriage snafus. Of which there are plenty. And which are all my fault. All the time, Without exception. One-hundred percent. No excuses offered.
[I'm hoping the Beloved will interject something ameliorating here . . but you never know . . . ]
(He is hoping for an interjection and I have a few things. I see this “memory time” a little differently. I understand the blaming mentality to which he falls prey. Taking blame when it is squarely on one's shoulders is an important thing for responsibility sake. It takes a person of good character to own mistakes and do something about them. It’s a small person indeed, who takes the blame for things and does nothing but wallow in self-pity. Or worse, seeks to blame someone else for things.
My husband and I still create things together. We created children and meals and mistakes in our relationship the first time around. Now we create meals and written word combinations and we foster good in our relationship, in spite of mistakes. Our marriage this time is different because I am different and He is different. My actions gave me cause to make decisions, both those in my memory and those yet to be. Indeed, he has cause for the same types of decisions. It would be wonderful to teach something about those decisions so people can benefit from this writing. Benefit is a wish and a prayer I have for all readers. Though you, dear readers, are the ones to choose your benefit.
Somehow launching into my “soap box” seems pretentious. I will wait.)
Homes have their own personalities. Just ask James Whitcomb Riley. My parent's home was a brooding iceberg with four walls, right out of an Ingmar Bergman movie. The(My) Beloved's home, on the other hand, the old funeral home, impressed me from the get go as a happy busy hive of confused activity and unpretentious but filling meals at all hours of the day. You were as likely to find a pair of muddy gumboots on the sofa as a warm basket of home-made scones -- made from winter red wheat ground by the (my) Beloved's own mother -- in the sewing room. With chokecherry syrup or wild plums on the side, bottled by the mother. Who we have decided to call Alberta. The mother, not the scones. (Chokecherry picking is about the best way to get chokecherries with flavor. You can buy chokecherry jelly or chokecherry syrup but unless you experience the hunt for the berries it’s just not the same. Chokecherry trees don’t lend themselves to transplanting. They grow wild in North Dakota and parts of the rest of the plains states. I have heard of people trying to grow the bush/tree in the city, but unless it is there in the first place it won’t grow. I was lucky and found a house in town with one chokecherry bush that had grown to a considerable size so it was nearly as tall as the trees in the yard. The yield from the bush was enough for about a pint of syrup. That’s pure gold to my family! The coulies on Grandpa’s farm had some chokecherry ‘trees’. Also on Grandma Pete’s, my dad's mom's farm. I could tell a little about Dad’s dad here. Grandpa Manley died when my dad was 4 years old. Dad is the middle child of 5 boys. So Grandma Pete raised their boys with the help of the farming community at Beaver Creek. She was a strong woman! I didn’t find out about Grandpa Manley’s business skills until very late in my life but I have several brothers who are showing the inherited skill. Grandpa Manley had lots of land by the time he died and Grandma Pete was able to survive with the money from the land for about 5 years. By that time the three oldest boys were able to be hired hands for farmers in the area and help with their own meager existence. One of the things they did was pick chokecherries every fall. We got to carry on the tradition because the trees are still there. I remember many hot August days filling several ice cream pails full. You think of berries and automatically you think there is some pilfering, right? Well, unless you get a bunch of chokecherries and coat your mouth with the natural pectin from them you don’t do much pilfering. I watched my little brother do it every year though.
Then you wash them and clear out the leaves and sticks and spiders and ticks. Once there is enough in the biggest pot you have then you cover them in water and boil them. You pour the water in another pot through a colander. The experts have a berry sieve. It’s a cone shape with a fitted mashing stick. That you can use to mash the berries till all that’s left are the seeds. We used a cotton flour-sack cloth. Mashing the berries gets the natural pectin into the juice and makes the best syrup and jelly without using the added pectin you can get in the store. And THAT’S good jelly!)
And to top the chokecherries or the wild plums, (wild plums are similar in finding them but they are a very different flavor. And you can actually preserve the plums) there was always thick unpasteurized and unhomogenized cream from the Hartsock farm (10 miles) down the road from the old funeral home. Collected each week in plastic one gallon mayonnaise jars by Alberta. (You have to skim the cream off the top of the milk if you want to have the thick stuff. Otherwise it gets stirred in with the drinking milk and you have to wait for the next batch of milk or go to the store.)That cream was as thick as library paste. The fact is, I have been daydreaming about those luscious preserves covered in cream so much that I let my lunch scorch on the Stove while the(my) Beloved was working on something in the bedroom. So it'll be Cajun food, that's all. Blackened for flavor.
There's much more to write, but I'm going to stop and eat my lunch while it's still hot [before it carbonizes completely.]
I believe that my Beloved will be interjecting quite a few things here abouts, to pad out this first part of Chapter Three.
But then again, you never know . . .
(Everyone comes to this earth with a story. The one they get from the family that made them. Several facets make up that story. Then the story is added upon by yourself. Some people call the story baggage. It can be baggage unless you learn what to do with it. Some people are able to teach their children what they have inherited and what to do with it. Others, most of us, just muddle through. We get by. Still others observe what the taught people have learned and they pick up some skills of what to do and life is better. I love the people who have learned to share their learning. My life is better because I decided to listen to some of them.
If a person has learned to like the feeling of self-pity there is room for thought, reflection and action. Pity parties are nasty things to attend. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…” is a cliche we all know. The counsel is to learn to mourn the loss of the thing and decide to do something better. This is a trait of the people who observe. I wish to speak freely of the important things. I will mention here that the most important thing is Jesus Christ. He taught us what to do with our bag and baggage. He gave us the chance to make mistakes and learn from them.)
