Yum

A few delicious things my lunch bag has held recently:

1. Vanilla yogurt topped with frozen raspberries. I put this together in the morning and as the raspberries thaw, they create a bright pink juice that mixes with the yogurt. The result is a scrumptious raspberry yogurt with whole berries in it. Mmm.

2. Mini cucumbers. I discovered these at ALDI this week, bought a bag of five for $1.99, and LOVE them. Chop off the ends, pack a tiny container of ranch dip... it's a perfect, healthy side.

3. Sharp Cheddar with Wheat Thins. Party food? Maybe. Perfect lunch? Yes. I love this combination and it's so much easier than making a sandwich. Just a baggie of crackers, and a baggie of cheese pieces... the ideal finger food lunch.

4. Chicken Salad Sandwich. I love making chicken salad. Love it. Take a few breasts, slice them into large-ish "fingers," spread them in a baking dish and glaze with ranch dressing. Bake at 350 for maybe a half hour or so until they're no longer pink inside when sliced. Meanwhile, chop up a cup or so of red grapes. Make sure they're crisp. Chop up a few stalks of celery, maybe four or five. Limpish celery is alright, actually. Toast some chopped pecans in a little skillet on the stove. Just stir them constantly until you start to smell their hot nuttiness. That's when they're done. Put the grapes, celery, and pecans into a big mixing bowl. When the chicken is done, let it cool, then shred it with your fingers into the bowl. Add about a half-cup of mayonnaise, stir, then add ranch dressing until it's as wet as you want it. Some Original Perfect Pinch is a good addition too, or just some black pepper and basil. It's best on homemade toasted white bread, but summer isn't really bread-making season. Some multi-grain bread will work well too.

Nothing saves a wretched day like a delightful lunch in the middle of it.

A Few Favorite Things

1. I've rediscovered rice cakes. How did I forget these existed? They are the snacks of childhood. Of Pioneer Clubs and kindergarten. Yet they are suprisingly delicious, healthy, and filling to have on hand in a desk drawer at work. I love ALDI's brand, the lightly salted variety.

2. Neutrogena Naturals, Purifying Pore Scrub. I bought this for the packaging. White. Green. The word "Natural." I love it. It's a much finer scrub than I've ever used before, more like a wet fine white sand rather than a gel with beads in it. It's delightful.

3. Twila Paris's A Heart that Knows You. I think this was my first CD. I pulled it out again this week to listen to in the car on the way to work. Starting my day with songs that uplift and encourage, pointing me to God is undeniably effective. Now, more than 10 years after its release, this CD is moving my life again. The title song seems especially applicable as I fight the temptation to be dissatisfied with my life. Lyrics run, "A heart that knows You is a heart that can wait, die to the dearest desire. A heart that knows You is a heart that can still celebrate, following love through the fire. It may be for my sake, or just to help me grow. Maybe for your kingdom, Lord. I don't need to know." I am encouraged, as this song has begun to take hold in my mind and run through my brain throughout the day, that I don't need to know the reasons that things happen in my life. It's enough to know God and to trust that He will never lead where He has not been. And if my heart is fixed on Him, I can walk through anything without fear, anxiety, or need. I can set my desires aside, waiting on Him to answer every prayer in His own time and way. Ultimately, it is for my good and for His glory. What a treasured thought!

Little Things

Funny how life's small joys can make a big difference. Normally, when I arrive at work each morning, I spend a little time looking online for a new job. It's not that I hate my job - although I often say I do. It's more the dark shadow it casts over my life, a blurry grey haze. My job search is an attempt to set up shop under a new sky, in hopes that it might be less gloomy. Sometimes, though, a spear of sunshine will pierce through the gloom and brighten the undersides of even the darkest clouds, reflecting a warm glow on life for a while.

Last night I experienced such a sun spear when I went to a local coffee shop for Open Mic Night with two delightful friends. We'd never been before, and when we walked in, a tubby sort of young man in a blue t-shirt was singing an a capella version of Over My Head by The Fray. He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, and his notes were splashing rather messily all over the shop. We paid the $3 cover charge and sat down warily, hoping the next act would be better. Aside from a few girls reading poetry much too fast, every act of the night was wonderful. I ordered a toasted marshmallow hot chocolate, and we sat in a little corner table, people-watching and enjoying the music, floating on a constant stream of girl talk.

This morning, although my arrival at the office was entirely ordinary, and my usual annoyances and boredoms instantly applied as they always do, I felt a warm glow brightening my cloudy skies. I do not feel the urge to search career websites for a new position. I don't feel my usual irritation at the failures of my coworkers, the ugly paint in my office, or the myriad "other duties as assigned" that are constantly added to my job description. Instead, I feel content about whatever this day will bring. I feel cheered by a hot chocolate and a few pretty songs. A little indulgence on a Thursday night can make all the difference on a Friday morning.

Seasons

I love spring. The sun, its vitamin D, the flowers... when spring starts to flirt with summer, though, my affection wanes. This past week, spring has been flirting hard and it's been frighteningly hot, especially in my little upstairs apartment. On my menu this week, I did a dumb thing: I listed Vegetable Chowder. I did this because last time I made it, it was fabulous. Also, it uses vegetables, which I like more than meat. And it's girly. Also, I was able to get some leeks at The Farmer's Daughter, which made me feel earthy and local, and I had a potato left over from some other meal that was just begging to be chopped up and put in a chowder. Tonight was Chowder night. The heat index today was 106.

Nevertheless, I am a stickler for following The Menu, so I turned the fan on high, chopped those leeks and the potato (also carrots, celery, & onion), and spent 45 minutes or so in my toasty kitchen whipping up a Vegetable Chowder. I threw some just-add-water biscuits in the oven. Then, I sat at my table and ate it. Cooking hot food is nothing compared to eating hot food. I sweated more just consuming that steaming soup than I did standing over the open flame on my gas stove stirring flour and broth into the onions.

All of this is to say that I might benefit from treating seasons with the respect they deserve. Spring is a time for grilled chicken. Or corn on the cob. Or pasta salad (Ooo, that sounds fabulous). Or spinach and strawberry salad. As summer swoops in to steal spring's thunder, I intend to give it what it deserves. And to give my stove a break.

Festival Weekend

I was raised on grassy hillsides, a funnel cake on my lap, a thin sheen of powdered sugar on my fingertips, a jangly anklet making music as I shift my muddied feet on the old worn blanket. I wasn’t raised a hippie child, not all the time, but one weekend each summer, we packed up for the Folk Festival. I have friends who remember their “first concert.” I probably saw my first concert before I was old enough to talk. A whole weekend of folk and indie artists - known and unknown to the general world - made for more than a “concert.” It wove a backdrop of sound that has become one of the most peaceful sounds I know. A few fiddles, an upright bass, harmonica, and a vocal sound somewhere between blues and country... that is the soundtrack of a folk festival. Layered on top of the music itself was the chatter of other folk fest-ers on their own blankets near ours, the smell of wet mud and campfires, the sensation of sun crisping my pale skin, the taste of a funnel cake or a cold lemonade, and, often, the roll of distant thunder and the crinkle of tarps being spread over food, knapsacks, books, and small children to protect from the coming shower.

One of the best things about Folk Festival weekend, though, was that my best friend, MJ, would come along and camp with our family. She and I would take morning walks around the campground before the concerts started, we’d walk the craft aisles together and buy sterling silver rings or beaded necklaces, we’d buy smoothies to share and bundle up later for the evening concert, shivering under the stars until we were too tired to keep our eyes open, then curling up in our sleeping bags back in the tent at Campsite 30. 

It’s been about six years since we shared this tradition. Four years of college and then weddings for both of us crowded into all corners of life and made such indulgences impossible. This year, though, Folk Festival weekend approached and we were both free. We didn’t stay the weekend, but on Saturday afternoon, we bought tickets and spread a blanket in the grass, ready for a day of fest-ing. The campground looked the same: the grassy expanse in front of the stage, the carnival food vendors in their trucks parked along the driveway, the camp store, the two ponds, the gravel road weaving through the campsites... It was all just as we’d left it. 

We started the day with snacks. A strawberry lemonade for MJ, cheese fries for me. Cheese fries were not on the menu, but when I asked for them, the vendor said, “Cheese fries... hmm, yeah, we can do that. Hey Adam, just put some of that cheese on top and nuke ‘em.” I have confidence in fest food, and was happy to wait for my makeshift cheese fries, but when I was finally handed my $4 treat, I found it to be a pile of fries sprinkled with shredded mozzarella and, well, “nuked.” It hadn’t melted too well and was not sticking to the fries but had become its own entity in the paper fry dish. I had a good laugh over the mess, ate around the gobs of white cheesiness, and enjoyed every fry. MJ bought a flowy pink skirt for three dollars to replace her jeans, too hot in the surprisingly summery weather. 

We walked to the pond where we sat and talked about our grown-up lives - jobs, husbands, homes - while children played blissfully in the shallow water and teens walked by, reeking of coolness. Phases of our life in living color right in front of our eyes. The sun had its reddening way with our winter-fair skin and we finally succumbed to the need for ice cream, just $2.44 in the camp store, and made our way back to our blanket where we listened to some music until night began to settle and we collected our sweatshirts from the car for the evening concert. 

It was late when we finally left. Dew had settled on our blanket and the grass surrounding it, and our feet were damp as we made our way back to the car. The day had bubbled up with memories, the present and the past colliding at a place unchanged by time. And when it was over, I felt more sure of the things that time cannot change - not just a pond or a hillside, although those also remain firm, but also a friendship and the bedrock it becomes, undergirding a life through the cycling seasons of many years. I think now that it wasn’t the pond and the funnel cakes and the marshmallows over an early morning fire that made my childhood festing such a part of my soul. It was the companionship of my family, of MJ, of the musicians on stage who never saw or knew me but were experiencing the same life I was for that one weekend. That is what I recaptured this weekend and that is why the Folk Festival will always be part of my bedrock: It’s a sense of home wrought of exclusivity. It’s a set of memories and feelings that can’t be transferred, must be lived. And it’s the fertile ground in which memories can take root and a lifetime of love can grow.

Ancestry

My great grandmother had three daughters. The oldest is my grandmother, Ginny, who had two daughters and one son. The second one is my great aunt, Mary Lou, who has no children. These two sisters live near one another about an hour from me in Pennsylvania. The third is my great aunt, Tobi, who also has no children, and lives in Florida. My great grandmother's brother had one daughter, Jean, cousin to my Gram and her two sisters. She lives in Philadelphia.

Yesterday, all of these people gathered: Ginny, Mary Lou, Tobi, Jean, my mom, her sister, me and my sister. All the known living female relatives in a line begun by my great great grandmother, Pearl. I have rarely felt the sense of kinship I felt with all these women, my blood relations who all hail from a strong, independent Southern woman who steered her own family through trying times and bequeathed that fortitude to all of us. While we were together, we had the chance to watch some old home movies that my grandmother had saved on film reels and had made into a VHS tape. The videos were the kind I didn't think actually existed. Grainy black and white shots skipping from a quick scene of my great grandmother walking out the front door in her fur-collared coat to a shot of her two daughters walking toward the camera in Easter dresses and hats and then to a sky-skimming shot of my grandmother sporting a 40's bob and flashing a grin at the camera. The films are silent, making the emotion all the more raw and freeing the imagination to fill in the gaps and create whole stories out of single images. A doll house, a long brick wall, a trio of children kneeling in the grass... These videos are my family. They are my history.

As I reflected on the people whose genes I have inherited, the people of my mother's mother's mother's family, I realized how many other lives have shaped mine. There is my mother's mother's father's side. Then there's my grandfather's family - the Scottish Boyds. And that's only the ancestry on my mom's side. My father's family is another whole world of names, stories, histories, and homes.

All of these people have made me possible. I am a little link in a big web of people spanning the decades, the ocean, and the continent. This could make me feel less important - merely a product of years of genetic mixing, the result of a bunch of fruitful families, and just another name on the family tree that my great-grandchildren will someday pencil in. But I don't feel unimportant. I feel, instead, the significance of my life. Not that I'm so great, but that I AM at all. The cocktail that makes me me could only have been arranged by the centuries of ancestors who came before, the choices they made of a spouse, of when to have children, of where to live, and of the values to pass along. I am not me by chance; I am me because of the great Orchestrator who guided lives for years in order to assure my existence. I am me because He designed the life circumstances of my ancestors to be just right for His plans. And He is designing my life not only for my own good, but also for the benefit of my descendants.

I am thankful to my ancestors for their lives and for the hand they had in bringing me about. But more than that, I am amazed at the way God has woven together a tight web of people for His purposes and I am aware of my own role in that weaving. May I live in such a way as to be a good ancestor, a woman my descendants will be proud to have come from, a person who lives by the orchestration of God's hand.

Firsts

Today was a regular Tuesday, but it held some exciting firsts in my fledgling little life. I thought I'd document them.
1. I stopped at the grocery store after work today and walked out with a bag containing ONLY the items on my list. This was about five items. I was exceedingly proud.
2. One of the items was a whole rotisserie chicken. Mom used to get these sometimes on a rush-rush night, and tonight was one of those for us. We ate less than half of it, so after dinner, I picked clean my first chicken carcass. Not a particularly pleasant task. Something I'm glad I don't have to do often. But bearable. And it made for a (hopefully) tasty chicken salad for the next few days.
3. I joined my first book club tonight! A friend of mine had a few ladies over for a book night - a chance to share what we've been reading recently and what we might recommend. At the end of the evening, one of the ladies suggested that we make this into an official book club since we all seemed to like each other's suggestions and had similar preferences. I look forward to sharing this special group with some wonderful ladies.

Perhaps our lives need more firsts. In my quest for order, I often lack the fresh feeling of new things. May this Tuesday be a lesson to me: firsts are good. New is good. Change is good.