The most anticipated evening in their year
This isn’t a Halloween post, though it falls on Halloween. I have a difficult relationship with Halloween. It seems a strange holiday, making light of death and darkness. Maybe I should just accept it as being another way we humans try to make sense of mortality.
It’s been four years since my father-in-law passed away. He died on Halloween, and Kevin’s mother telephoned late that afternoon, twice, first to tell him to hurry and come home, and then, not long after, to tell him, yes, please come home, but it’s too late to make it in time. But we felt fortunate. We’d been to visit just two days earlier, and knew that goodbye was coming. Still, we wondered what to do. The kids were dressed up and excited about trick-or-treating. How to give them this news? “Take them out,” I said, “and I’ll stay home and pack.” And so that’s how we told them, after trick-or-tricking: when they arrived home with bags full of candy, our bags were packed. There were wrenching sobs, and we changed them into pajamas, hopped into the van, and drove away, letting them eat all the candy they wanted. I don’t suppose we’ll ever forget that night, or that drive. It felt like an adventure, momentous and sad all at once.
A year ago, my grandma passed away on Remembrance Day. Last week, my grandpa, her husband, also passed away, and our family travelled across the border for another funeral, on another autumn day. As we drove to the graveyard for the burial, it was raining and the sun was shining. From our angle, the rainbow that emerged looked like a column of magic dust rising out of the earth, colour, shimmering. We all saw it.
I don’t know what everyone else thought. I don’t even know what I thought, exactly. Just that it was a rare and ephemeral sight, and I was glad for it.
Last week in suppers: enter chaos, from above
**Monday’s menu: Pasta. Red sauce. Broiled shrimp. Chard stir-fried with onions, peppers, and carrots.
**Original plan: Pasta.
**In the kitchen: Cooked as soon as the kids got home from school. Two of the kids I was feeding were leaving for theatre rehearsal just after 5, and needed to eat early. The red sauce was just waiting in the freezer to be used. I jazzed it up with lemon juice and thyme. The veggies turned out well: sauteed in butter, not over-cooked, and I seasoned simply with salt and the juice of a lemon (we have a lot of citrus in the fruit bowl right now.) Totally over-estimated how many noodles we’d need to feed eight people (two friends stayed for supper.)
**At the table: Eaten in shifts at the island in the kitchen due to major construction going on that required the dining-room table to be moved up against the breakfast bar.
**The verdict: The kids ignored the chard. You may be noticing that I’m not one to force food on a child. They ate a ton of pumpkin bread with peanut butter for dessert, so maybe that counts?
**Tuesday’s menu: Peanut noodles with fried tofu and raw veggies (pictured above.)
**Original plan: Beans and rice. But we had all these leftover noodles.
**In the kitchen: Whipped up peanut dressing on Monday night, post-dance-class/run combo, while putting supper away and doing the dishes. Used recipe on my blog, piped in via my phone. Kev, some while into the process: “Oh, that’s why you keep checking your phone.” Me: “Did you think I was becoming obsessed?” Marinated noodles in dressing overnight. Fried tofu and added veggies the next day, before swim lessons.
**At the table: Initially refused by several children, eventually eaten by all. It’s not like there were options.
**The reviews: All good! Thank heavens. I almost made something extra to go along with it, and Kevin suggested I should keep it simple.
**The verdict: Great use of leftover noodles, but, “Remember not to put that in my lunch for school tomorrow.” (Peanuts)
**Wednesday’s menu: Beans and rice. Green beans.
**Original plan: Borscht. But beans and rice was easier.
**In the kitchen: Soaked and cooked beans in the morning. Baked rice before leaving to pick up the girls for piano lessons. Chopped tomatoes and steamed beans upon arrival home.
**At the table: Everyone was very hungry and appreciative. But we have no table to sit around, at present, so the meal felt haphazard. The kids sat at the counter and I filled their plates at the stove and served them. Kevin and I sat side by side at the part of the dining-room table that is accessible.
**The verdict: I miss gathering around the table. But this is temporary.
**Thursday’s menu: Squash with orzo. Broccoli with cheese sauce.
**Original plan: Tofu and veggie stir-fry. But I wanted to try this Squash Orzo recipe that was supposed to be an easier version of risotto, and which I knew everyone would hate. Don’t ask why.
**In the kitchen: This is not an easier version of risotto. It took just as much standing around and stirring. Plus peeling and chopping a squash is hard work. Is there an easier way? But it smelled delicious: cubes of squash cooking with onions and garlic and white wine. Finished by stirring cooked orzo into the squash mixture and adding a pile of parmesan.
**At the table: As predicted, no child would touch the squash with orzo. But I made a ton of orzo, and did not mix it all with the squash, so they could have it with cheese sauce and broccoli instead. Some refused even the cheese sauce. I am getting worried about their veggie and protein intake.
**The reviews: “But you know I hate squash, Mommy!”
**The verdict: Even I didn’t love this meal. Kevin thought it was delicious, but I’m not sure it’s worth the work.
**Friday’s supper: Leftovers, plus dessert.
**Original plan: Yup.
**In the kitchen: Steamed a pot of rice to go with the leftover beans. While Kev took the kids skating, I rented carshare car for an hour and headed out to Herrles, which closes for the season on Monday, to buy veggies and pumpkins. Plus dessert. No Bailey’s pickup, so Herrles stood in for Bailey’s.
**At the table: AppleApple and I ate hastily, then dashed off to soccer (I went for a run.)
**The reviews: Everyone loved the pumpkin pie. But now that Herrles will be closed, along with Bailey’s, I’m at a loss of how to replace my super-easy Friday suppers.
**The verdict: It’s a changing season. Get ready for snow. A very old woman in front of me at the Herrles checkout turned and said, “It’s sad, isn’t it,” and I knew just what she meant.
:::
**Weekend kitchen accomplishments: Lentil soup simmering on the stove less than hour after returning home late Sunday afternoon from a cross-border trip to Ohio, where we spent time with family and said goodbye to my grandpa. This feels like a genuine accomplishment. I’m also working on turning over-ripe pears and bruised apples into sauce. Smells pretty good in here, even if the house is basically a total disaster. (If you drop in for a visit, don’t look down. Or around. Think construction materials on dining-room floor, plus drywall dust, plus bags of travel laundry, plus piles of school work, plus games and toys, plus yet-to-be-carved pumpkins, plus dishes abandoned on Saturday morning, plus this list could go on and on and on ….)
Today is a perfect fall day and I will sit at my desk and write
Today is a perfect fall day, crisp, pale blue sky threaded with grey clouds.
Today, I will sit at my desk and write.
Today, I will enjoy this cup of coffee and wish for a second one.
Today, I did not get up early for yoga. When the alarm sounded, I turned it off and crawled back into dreamland.
Today, I ate porridge for breakfast, plus an egg with toast.
Today, I kissed and hugged four children, reminded them repeatedly to get ready for school, listened to them play the piano, and bribed one of them to go to math club once a week.
Today, the builders arrived to continue their work.
Today, I will sit at my desk and make up stories about characters I’ll never get to meet in real life.
Today, I pause to remember my Gramps. Once, he took me to see wild horses. Mustangs. It was sadder than I thought it would be. I was ten or eleven. The mustangs were corralled for sale on a ranch, of sorts. I remember dust. I don’t know what my Gramps thought of it all. What the wild horses meant to him. I think he appreciated the atmosphere of wheeling and dealing. But I know he loved horses, too, like I did. When I think of him, I think of horses.
Today is a perfect fall day, yellow leaves on green grass, and the frost lifted by the sun.
Today, I will write something for Gramps.
The progress of porch, continued
Here’s where the house was on Friday. If you’re thinking, that window looks too small, well, you’re right. On Monday, I took no pictures, though a lot of progres was made throughout the day, including board on the outside and drywall on the inside. The windows also went in, and the more I looked, the more I knew in my gut that the size was wrong, and that we had to figure out how to fix it. I was pretty upset.
Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. The builders did not hesitate even a moment. They worked all the next day to fix the problem. They were cheerful and positive and stayed until after dark, until the new new windows were in. I have nothing but good things to say about the way they solved the problem.
And just look at the results of their efforts. The board and batten is on. The windows let in lots of light. When I stood in the room, quietly, by myself, on Tuesday night, I felt at peace, calm, grateful. What I appreciated most was the builders’ professionalism. They transformed what seemed overwhelming (to me, in the moment), into something relatively minor and entirely fixable.
(It would have been major had we done nothing about it, of course; but that’s a good reminder: even problems that seem overwhelming can be faced head-on and tackled with goodwill and expertise. Yes. That’s me, adding a moral to the story. Can’t help myself, folks.)