From an Upper Floor

So now I write about the  entries and how they are verified.  When we moved from Michigan,  we were aged with health problems.  I tired quickly  accounting for sometimes sparse writings.   I now spend more time reading the journals and making notes  amazed at what was accomplished. The puzzling habit still baffles. . .why was I so disciplined in journal keeping with memos and hard copies?  David’s ongoing question till the day he left us. . . how did you know to do it?

Like the mid 1980’s when we were in Munich and a  VIP said I did not tell him when we talked in Paris last week  that I would be in Germany for the conference.  I told him he must confuse me with someone else and he became angry.  His position in the travel arm of government was important because he remembered  people and faces and where they talked.   I was to learn how important in Tourism this ability was in hiring those who are talented  in this respect.  We had a wonderful conversation in Paris he said and he did not make mistakes of that nature. 

I had never met him before and I have never been in Paris at least as this Veronica.  But I read this note in an April 11, ’19 journal entry I had as a grandmother in Paris  been invited to a granddaughter’s birthday party.  That was in reference to a dream in my Veronica head I had had in Michigan.  Is it a parallel life for me and was  I also the younger woman the VIP talked to in Paris who was part of the travel affair years before?

There is also a dream of me as a monk in the year of 1790 I wrote about carrying my cross up a hill during the French Revolution.  I wrote describing the boarded up houses and the dusty miller plantings along the dirt roads.   I understand I fought for civil rights and took issue with the church.  That dream in detail was the entry  of August 21, ’83.   There is the entry of August 25, ’85 where I awakened and sat up in bed speaking French.  My husband pulled me back down and said go back to sleep.  I  was fluent in the language.

I  limit my post words and yet hope to alert interest in the reader.  This being one incident I am detailing  research limited only because readers skim quickly. There are other incidents noted that corroborate each other.   The term alternate realities is not new but I first came upon them in the late 60’s with the Seth books of Jane Roberts.  Much was written about unknown worlds.  It was like gulping water  because I was dying of thirst.  With no one to talk to and shunned because of the Salem, Massachusetts’ fears connected with whirling dervishes and dancing with devils,  the Jane Roberts printed word saved me.

 A psychic at a friend’s party in July of  1985  read cards  and asked me whether I worked in civil rights.   I did not but he  detailed the monk incident and my arguments with the church.  I rushed home to scour the journals and found the August of 1983 entry.  Working, being a community worker’s  wife, parent on premises of 3 sons and home and yard maintenance  took all my time.  Only when the house  slept,  had there been time for research and study.

I try to show where my studies have taken me with my ‘need to know’ as an ordinary person wanting not to be an inadequate parent to our children. When you feel that special  commitment of conscience your whole world changes. Yours will too.

I guess one could call me legitimately broken as a human being this morning.  I sit here with my headband made of 1 inch elastic stretched to the measurement of my head covered with a casing of fabric to look a bit fashionable. It helps a head that hurts with no side effects like pharmaceuticals.

With a neck support with Velcro closures to keep a head upright and not collapsing.  And I just found a box the right height to elevate my leg.  In their right mind the patient should head for bed?  Certainly.

But in me is a story about recycling.  And how when television came into our homes with a promise of showing us how to do creative things, what it did too many times was to give leverage to the envious to murder the creative impulse in the young at heart. 

The first attempts were not professional as the viewed painters and sewers and builders.  But the dreamers had the burgeoning desires to do and all that was needed was a ‘good try!’  or keep doing!

Too often the words heard were leave the work to the professionals who are paid to do it.  And the desire dies with the young and they are relegated to the growing list of spectators who are entertained. 

Or the desire dies with the adults who never attempt and never know the deep satisfaction of creating something out of a raw idea.

I do not know how to inject the desire, or how to infect one with a virus for learning.  I sit on the edge of the bed and urge my body to begin the day for there are things to be done.  I want to try them before my name is called with an offer I cannot refuse. 

I recently learned how to make useful yardage with bits of fabric fused onto web and cut into shapes such as the flowers in the vase.  Exciting!  Nothing wasted!  Useful as  it for me to do that.  Just for you.well as beautiful!  And fun.  I can make fun quilts and pretty wall hangings to catch the sun and bring smiles to the children as they race to catch up to the mornings. 

And they in turn will see possibilities that will take courage and perseverance to try and in the face of the Do Nothings who discourage them go ahead and make a difference and the classroom goes forward another day.  And maybe that is all that is required.

Holding it all together just for another day.  You would be worth it for me to do that.  Just for you.

The Perfect Kitchen. . . cook’s heaven. . .

(where the bread knows the feel of my hands. .)  I have been in  cook’s heaven and I need to get my fill of it.   Son John and in law daughter Lori have given me a taste of that paradisal place every cook knows exists but never to have; a kitchen with enough space to make Thanksgiving dinner all the time and a place to put every washed plate and pan afterwards. 

It has been my contention that people shy from preparing food simply because of the cleanup.  Enthusiasm will have us begin and put together exciting dishes but to think of clean up is dismaying.  It will undo every good intention when picturing  putting everything back.   

When I was pulled into kitchen duty on the Farm because of my inability to withstand the sun and heat,  it put my mother in the field to help and me in her kitchen to feed the farm workers.  My quiet brother gave me an encyclopedic cookbook and at 12 years my passion for cooking erupted.  My heavy as lead cakes were loved by my brothers and my quick breakfast scones were indeed my sister’s favorites. 

And as I grew in experience with every aspect, even the cleaning up, I still loved the art  requiring passion.  Experimenting was crucial to learning and fortunately there were appetites without worries about weight that only came with city life, not farmers.

I learned to love the kneading of breads and eventually the no knead bread of my dotage.  And the English muffin bread  and the baking of dog biscuits that dogs crave by their waving  tails. 

I found a  love of Lorna Doone cookies  followed by my own version of pretend Doones that truthfully I love more.  Because I can make them myself when I crave them and it takes little time and 4 ingredients. 

Right now the bread making, the spice cookies I call windmills without the molds, and my pretend Doones have me happy with my specialties.  But satisfied  because the kitchen is a dream for me with a place for everything. 

Lori’s vision planned the kitchen and John’s love of craftmanship with his hands, made it.  I never thought talent for feeding who I loved to be taken to such a height by a well planned kitchen.  I wonder how many meals are thrown together by our lack of prioritizing what should be prime for all families, a solidifying and celebration of times together every day. 

The last time I saw my mother she apologized for not knowing how to show love.  Being an orphan, she said no one ever taught her how.   Thoughtfully she did every day with putting  love into every meal she cooked.  Her kitchens were not state of the art, but the results in the kitchen were.    I remember.

My kitchen times are love conscious and I wish those remembered.