holidays

Valentine’s Day in a Shoe Box

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It is that time of the year again when the store aisles are bleeding red with Valentine’s paraphernalia. At the local Walmart the other day I almost became a single person fatality when an avalanche of giant stuffed animals wearing Valentine themed shirts fell from the shelves. Rows of heart shaped boxes, perfume, cards, conversation hearts that, when strung together, create sentences more disjointed than a text from a 13 year old, and roses by the dozen all culminate to assault the senses and empty the wallet. The holiday seems to be designed to kill you with candy while providing flowers for the funeral.

All sarcasm aside, when I think of Valentines Day I am transported to Mrs. Grandstrand’s 1st grade classroom. My classmates and I are seated around a long scarred oak table like we are about to hold a séance. In front of each of us is a shoe box and in the middle of the table are stacks of construction paper, glue, old magazines, tissue paper, brightly colored plastic scissors, crayons, markers, and the ever adored pinking shears. With a word from Mrs. Grandstrand we are off like a flash. Art supplies go flying, scissors are snipping, and flakes of tissue paper saturated in glue are melting onto the surface of the table where they will remain forever, a testament to our efforts like the markings of ancient civilizations.

Back in the day (way, way, way before Pinterest, Etsy, and online tutorials) it was a tradition to save the very best shoe box from the whole year and spend a morning at school transforming it into a gaudily decorated receptacle for Valentine’s cards. We, as children, called upon every creative atom in our 6 year old bodies and, with brows furrowed in concentration, set about the task of wowing the teacher and our parents with our crafting prowess.

Then, the big day arrived. The shelf in the back of the classroom would be lined with our finished masterpieces ranging from the delicately decorated creation of my friend Sara who always did everything perfectly, to the giant men’s boot sized box covered in brown paper and a strategically placed ad for women’s bras that the classroom misfit found in one of the magazines. His reasoning behind the ad on his box was “They had lace on them Teacher, you said to decorate with lace!” The type of twisted logic which landed Patrick in the principal’s office in our strict private school on more than one occasion.

Once the commotion died down, Patrick’s “offensive” box was removed from the lineup and replaced with a plain Buster Brown one with Patrick’s name written across the top in the teacher’s precise hand. After a prayer to save Patrick’s soul we were finally allowed to commence with the festivities. We went down the row inserting cards into the slot on the top of each box. The cards ranged in theme from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Snow White and Donald Duck. Some were fancier than the dime store variety I could afford. Incased in ivory envelopes printed like fine lace were cards beautifully illustrated and decorated with velvet and scented with chocolate. These came from the dentist’s daughter who was not afraid to flaunt her wealth and who often times reminded me of Nellie Olson from Little House on the Prairie with her pug nose, blonde hair, intolerable disposition.

Fancy or plain, there was a certain thrill about opening each envelope and waiting to see if that boy in the second row sent a special card just for you. Ahhh, first grade romance. My dabbling in the subject amounted to a hug followed the next day by being pushed off the top of the slide by my beloved and breaking my nose. The next day I returned the favor by giving him a black eye and getting myself sent to the Principal’s office.

Then, suddenly I was not in the first grade anymore but in high school where Valentine’s Day took on a whole different meaning. Hormone driven boys appeared on the bus loaded down with flowers, candy, and wearing enough cologne so that if the gifts didn’t make their girlfriends swoon the Old Spice would!

Middle school and high school were awkward years for me. I was tall and clumsy with glasses and horribly curly hair that was the result of the perm from hell. So, I would sit on the sidelines and gag as my friends exclaimed over how sweet their boyfriends were on Valentine’s Day. I was bitter, I will not lie. Life had dealt me an unfair hand in the form a of a crooked nose caused by my one and only attempt at love, ugly glasses, and hair that made me look like a poodle had overdosed on acid on my head thanks to a beautician who was intoxicated every day by 9am. But, I digress. The fact is that I hated Valentine’s Day with a passion and let the whole world know about it.

Finally, in my 20’s, someone asked me out and saved me from becoming the first Lutheran nun in history. I got roses on Valentine’s Day that first year together and I got to see what the hype was all about. Too practical to ever be a hopeless romantic, I found it to be kind of nice getting wined and dined one day out of the year. (My expectations were pretty low back then)

Years passed and I soon discovered that I was not the only one being wined and dined. In fact, he was filling more shoe boxes than Nike in those 8 years we were together. So, my view on Valentine’s Day darkened to Ebenezer Scrooge-type proportions once again. I cursed the day and scowled at all the cutesy decorations and declarations of love. The holiday was forever ruined for me and I kept a box of goose loads by my side just in case Cupid dared to enter my “no fly” zone.

Then something happened to change my outlook on everything. I was working one particular Valentine’s Day when an elderly gentleman came into my office to pick up his wife’s death certificate. He looked tired and sad, his shirt collar had lost its starch and he had not shaved in days. I asked him how long he had been married and he replied “All my life!” I smiled and he continued “Now don’t go thinking I am some funny old man for saying that. My life began the day I married her.”

I left work that night humbled. Instead of going home to my mint chip ice cream, Hallmark movies, and my cats on the couch I went out and bought bouquets of flowers and took them to the local nursing home to hand out. I was met with love, kindness, and gratitude and I wondered to myself how I could have gotten the meaning of the holiday so wrong in the past.

One particular lady asked me to sit with her as she looked at her bouquet of flowers. She told me a story of how the day after her wedding her groom was sent over seas to fight the war. They kept in touch with letters and each kept a dog eared snapshot of the other close to their hearts. Then the letters stopped. She knew her husband was busy fighting a war but she was not expecting the knock at the door. Instead of her beloved, there stood a stranger. In a matter of seconds she went from being a wife to being a widow. She never remarried, never took off her ring, and never forgot how that once in a lifetime love felt.

That, my friends, is what it is all about. Sharing love with those around us. You do not need to have a romantic relationship to celebrate Valentine’s Day. All you need is a heart and the capacity to share love with others.

Need further motivation? Go home tonight, call upon all of you childhood crafting powers and make a shoe box Valentine container? Yes, I mean take a shoe box, cut a slit in the top and decorate it like crazy. Don’t hold back, make it yours. And then ask friends and family to fill it with paper hearts on which they have written special messages to you. Then write some of your own motivational quotes, Bible verses, prayers, sayings, sentences giving yourself encouragement and love, or plans on how to make the year ahead a good one such as going out and visiting people in nursing homes. Fill the box with enough hearts for the entire year ahead. Every morning open the box and remove one heart. Read it to yourself and let it guide your day. The theme of Valentine’s Day is love. That means to love others and to love yourself!

Hopefully my post gave you all something to think on for this Valentine’s Day. Like I said, all you need is a heart and the willingness to share it and you will never be alone on Valentine’s day or any day for that matter. Go on now! Spread the love!

Christmas Cookies

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This time of the year the one thing I miss the most is baking Christmas cookies with my Mom. Every holiday season our baking was something akin to an Olympic event involving painstaking preparation and powerful tests of endurance. We would line up our ingredients, crank the Loretta Lynn Christmas album and get to work.

The first recipe on the docket was always the one for rolled sugar cookies because the dough had to chill in our “Polish Refrigerator” aka the un-insulated back porch, for a couple of hours to firm up to make the cut outs.

Everything was done from scratch from the fragrant smooth dough to the decadent icing tinted every color of the rainbow. Mom would pull open the stubborn bottom drawer of her kitchen cabinet, the one that always smelled of the brown sugar stored in the drawer above, and retrieve an ice cream pail full of cookie cutters as old as time.

In the yellow glow of the kitchen light the aluminim cutters reflected warmly on the worn Formica countertop. I would eagerly dig through the pile to find Santa with his gift bag, the snowflake, and my favorite leaping reindeer cutters, relieved that they survived another year.

With the table liberally dusted in flour, Mom would roll out sections of dough with a 50 year old rolling pin that creaked with each push. Silken dough, perfectly chilled, was rolled to 1/4 inch thickness before cutting into the cheerful shapes of the season. Hearts, diamonds, spades, Santa’s, reindeer, snowflakes, clubs, and stars covered well seasoned cookie sheets lined in parchment.

The cozy house soon filled with the scent of warm sugar, butter, and of home at Christmas. I would eagerly watch through the amber tinted glass of the oven door for the cookies to finish baking and then hours were spent in decoration. Mom would whip up a large batch of basic powdered sugar icing with just enough Watkins vanilla to turn simple into spectacular and set me to work with bowls for mixing colors.

Red for Santa was the most important and drop by drop from a tear shaped bottle of coloring would be added to achieve the correct hue. Containers of sprinkles emerged from the battered spice drawer perfumed with the exotic scents of cinnamon, allspice, and ginger. The icing was applied and quickly after the dusting of sprinkles, silver and gold baubles, and colored sugar that dyed fingers red and green.

Sheets of waxed paper spread across the dining room table like red carpets awaiting special guests. Soon, row upon colorful row of cookies littered the table painstakingly decorated by clumsy yet determined 7 year old hands. A Christmas mosaic of sugar laden artwork.

The memories of our special baking days sits neatly in the part of my heart reserved for that which I hold most dear. I cannot stir flour, butter, and sugar together without picturing Mom in her calico apron piped in peach fabric, her work worn hands gently guiding my soft childish ones in the making of so many recipes. Yes, one could say, the golden glow of a mother’s love never fades even when she is no longer capable of expressing it.

With this post from Christmas Past I wish to share with you our favorite rolled sugar cookie recipe so that you too can create memories to cherish like mine.

Corn Syrup Cookies

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup butter at room temp

2 eggs

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Dash of salt

1 1/2 teaspoons of Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract

1/4 cup corn syrup

Beat sugar and eggs until lemon yellow. Add syrup and vanilla, stir in dry ingredients to make a smooth dough. Chill 2 hours. Roll out on floured surface and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

And at 350° on parchment lined cookie sheets until the edges are slightly golden. When cool, ice with your favorite icing.

Icing on the Cake

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With winter fast approaching I always laugh at people who bundle up like they are headed out on a trans Siberian adventure when they are merely going to the mailbox at the end of their drive.

Living in Wisconsin the number of complaints filed to the weather gods rivals that of the daily postage arriving at the North Pole this time of year. People curse the cold, stomp their feet, and proclaim loudly about how much they hate winter. What is the reason for so much animosity? The cold temps, messy roads, snow to shovel? With all the energy that goes into hating winter isn’t there at least one positive? Oh yes my friends, there are many.

Ice fishing! The best tasting fish of the entire year are the ones caught through the ice from December through March. Every winter I drag out my Fish Trap ice shack and treck across frozen backwater sloughs to my favorite spots. The crisp air stings in my nostrils and through watery eyes I survey the bays for the perfect local to drop a line. It is either feast or famine out there and while nothing beats sunfish fried in butter, just a few hours out in the peaceful quite of my shack melts away the stress of a long work week.

Hiking! I absolutely love going hiking in the winter through snow frosted forests. Like a sparkling wedding cake, the landscape is perfectly iced without a single flaw save for the tracks of woodland creatures going about their winter routines. The clear sharp air clears my lungs and the most minute of sounds is amplified and carried to my cold nipped ears. Squirrels rustling, deer foraging, and birds of prey swooping almost silently down into the snow to catch a meal while the sun reflects off of crystalline surfaces painting rainbows on pure white templates. Every sense is heightened in winter. Unable to succumb to the sluggishness that warm weather fosters, the cold has a way of heightening and sharpening awareness of ones self and ones surroundings.

I could go on and on extolling the joys of the season and I am a firm believer that people who partake of the outdoors regularly, no matter the weather, are happier and, as a result, healthier people. I am living proof of this in the fact that I can feel a change in me when I have not had enough time in the wilderness. Headaches become frequent, irritability takes over, and my mood becomes generally glum until I get outside for a few hours. Yet there are those who think I’m crazy for feeling this way. The outdoors is my therapy, my spa, my place of renewal despite the weather because there is so much to experience when you head out into the woods, fields, and valleys.

Tell me how one cannot find beauty and peace while standing amid falling snowflakes. Angel feathers dropping from the sky to gently kiss upturned faces. Or the watercolor glow of a January sunset melting across sky and frozen land like a overturned painters pot spilling warm color before darkness falls. How can one complain about the cold when bearing witness to mornings following a fresh snowfall when every twig and surface is flocked in lacy white sweaters knitted by unseen hands?

There is beauty in the death that signals winter. Life yet to be discovered and savored with each icy breath, each crunching step. The cold months are a time of inner renewal, a time to explore and push ones limits and find splendor where others see only despair. Perhaps the sole purpose of winter is to serve as a test, a test of endurance, a test of appreciation, a test of imagination. Or maybe it is what I have called it all along; a gift.

The Art of Giving Thanks

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I am well enough aware that the internet and blogging community will be full of Thanksgiving posts speaking volumes on the origins and meaning of the Holiday. I will not try to veer from that theme but merely share my thoughts and memories about a the day we all gather to give thanks.

At 5am the motor fired up on Mom’s ancient meat grinder as she fed through it’s churning blades the various and unexpected ingredients for Grandma Lenzen’s German stuffing. I would pull the covers over my head in an attempt to drown out the incessant noise to no avail. Mom and Dad made preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the 6 of us sound like they were creating a feast for the 7 kingdoms. Dad would bark orders, Mom would scurry around the tiny kitchen dicing here, peeling there, stirring this, and mashing that. I watched, learned and then crept off to find the turkey coloring page in the newspaper while watching Macy’s parade on TV.

Then came the wait, and I’m not talking about waiting on the food. The wait for my sister and her husband to make the 30 minute drive to our house which seemed to take them 40 days and 40 nights. When they finally arrived, my sister would unpack her kidney shaped Tupperware container of 7 layer salad and I would go about the business of snatching off as many hard boiled egg slices as I could while no one was looking.

When it was finally time to eat, we all gathered around that old butternut table, said Grace, and dug in. Each flavor was one to savor, so familiar yet foreign in the fact that it had not been partaken of in an entire year. We ate until our eyes bulged then Mom wold bring out dented aluminum pans filled with desserts and we would eat again.

Dishes were washed and games played while Bing Crosby crooned in the background about a white Christmas. It was a cozy time, a time to soak in all the love and comfort that a small family shares. A time to make memories and to recall old ones to laugh over again. I miss those days.

Since being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, my mom can no longer commandeer the kitchen. Part, a huge part, of the Holiday cheer has vanished. The food doesn’t taste the same because her hands and her love are not preparing it. The memories are not as funny, home doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. Yet, time goes on.

Change is something we expect in life except when it comes to the holidays. We never want to see that picture postcard Thanksgiving or Christmas of our childhood to ever end. The holidays are the one thing we can still count on as adults to give us the wonder of being a child again. We look for Santa at the mall, we gaze fondly at brightly wrapped presents, we snatch colorfully iced cookies off of sugar laden trays, and we watch Christmas programs on TV just to capture the nostalgia of a time when innocence had not yet been lost to the demands of adulthood.

Like a time machine, boxes of decorations take us back as we unwrap memories with each ornament. We prepare food that has the flavor of times long past that allow us to cling to happy memories of moments that will never be again.

For me, the holidays may have lost a bit of their cheer but I give thanks for the memories I do have of a warm home, good food, and family. Although things will never be the same perhaps it is a sign that it is time to make changes of my own. To share the blessings, invite new members to my circle, volunteer more and give others the chance to expierece the holidays through my eyes. Giving thanks is not to be isolated to one day but something practiced the year over. The gifts of the season are not to be contained in boxes and stockings but to pour forth from full hearts and believing souls. So, on this approaching Thanksgiving I wish all of you the very best and challenge you to make one change in your routine that includes touching a life that might not otherwise have reason to celebrate. God bless.