Monday Morning

If you ever get a chance to build a house, try to face your kitchen windows east. Sunshine splashing around my breakfast is a better kick-start than caffeine, even on a Monday morning.

A Short Century

This is one of my two favorite grandmothers. She lived all her life in south Texas, where she taught me to play Spite 'N Malice and Canasta, and taught me to make candy: toffee, divinity, fudge, pralines. She taught me that fresh strawberries were extra good if you held them by their green tops and dipped them in a bowl of sugar before you ate them, and that I shouldn't watch soap operas, even though she did. Her Sunday-after-church dinners were a southern feast: ham and okra gumbo, black-eyed peas, mustard greens, cornbread and the best cobbler I've ever eaten, made from wild, thorny Texas dewberries.

Besides cooking, she liked to sit and visit. As a child, I would lie after supper on her thick living room carpet, eyes closed and ears open, listening to stories that bobbed and rebounded through the air above me. Avoiding bedtime banishment, I pretended to be asleep until I actually was asleep, wrapped in the comfortable conversation of aunts and great aunts and adult cousins who knew and loved each other well.

My grandmother was born in October of 1910. October the tenth --- 10-10-10. The rhythm of her birthday numbers underscored what I already knew: she was one-of-a-kind and very special. Through her, 10-10-10 leapt out of the history books and became real--playing cards and eating cobbler with me in my very present daily existence.

Decades later, I still think of my grandmother every time the month and date and year align, and even when they almost align, as they did twice last week. The time I spent with that 10-10-10 grandmother seems not so far away, and yet I can almost touch the next 10-10-10.....October 10, 2010.

How can a century be so short?

Corn, Corn, Corn

My sister-in-law is passionate about sweet corn, especially when it is fresh off the stalk. But she lives in the midst of the Dallas/Fort Worth concrete metroplex. When she sees cornrows, they look like this:

Web photo                                                                                             

Not like this:

An old retired farmer was selling sweet corn, still in the husks, out of the back of his pickup last week. His son had picked it that morning. On a whim, I scooped a dozen ears into his empty WalMart bag as he held it out. Not wanting to drive the ten miles home and back for a box, I buzzed into the post office and thumped my bag of corn up on the counter. "How much is it going to cost me for a box and priority postage to Texas?" Not as much as you would think. "Here--pack these around your corn," the postal clerk offered as she lifted a stack of free farm newspapers from behind the counter. Promising to return, I took the box and drove six blocks to the vet: "Do you have an extra ice pack?" The vet usually has leftover ice packs from pharmaceutical shipments. "How many do you want?" asked the receptionist. I told her one, to chill my sweet corn on its ride south; she gave me two. "Oh, and if you're going to the post office right away," she added, "would you mind mailing this box for me?" Another six blocks to the dollar store for a birthday card, and then I was back at the post office with my package and the vet's package. Two days later, my sister-in-law shucked and ate fresh, juicy sweet corn in her Fort Worth kitchen.

I love the way things work in small towns. Happy birthday, Miss Wusan!

Cinderella

Thank you to the princess who did my sweeping for me.

Visitors

Sophie doesn’t live here.

Rachel doesn't live here either, but when they're both here at the same time, I get to see a fresh subject through a fresh photographer's eyes. Thanks for the photos, Rachel. Nice.

Summer's Last Fling

Four families gathered last weekend for a final stab at summer.

We've gone round the seasons with these particular friends for nearly twenty years.

Fall's coming again. Don't blink.

This garden has everything:

Sunflowers drying to attract birds when the rest of it is covered in snow.

A tall spike of lettuce seeds drying behind the gate, to be harvested and planted next spring.

Blue jeans drying on the hot fence (electricity turned off, please).

And three kinds of tomatoes – not drying at all.

Inevitable

You may not get a funnel cake.

You might not ride the rides.

But if you go to the State Fair with this family, you WILL see the draft horses!