My mini essay “Sometimes You Need to Trust a Stranger” appears in the February issue of Northern Wilds Magazine as part of their “Winter Mishaps” theme pages.
To read my short essay, click here! Scroll down until you get to the fourth story. Enjoy the rest of the “Winter Mishaps” stories by Erin Altemus, Joe Shead, Naomi Yaeger, and Chris Pascone.
Some of you may remember that after I went sledding with my two youngest grandkids a few weeks ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to behave like a child more often. I’m still working on it, unlike resolutions of the past, which I’d have tossed into the trash bin by now.
On January 20, I went roller skating with all four of my grandkids. I was sixteen years old the first time I went — still a child then — so this counts as behaving like a child now. The last time I went I was in college, and probably about twenty-three.
I fell a lot the first time I went roller skating. I’m sure the seat of my blue jeans kept a good part of the roller rink floor buffed and shiny. But despite all the falling, I loved it, so I went skating once or twice a week. My skills improved, and I rarely fell.
Before my skate date with my grandkids, I made the mistake of telling someone, “Yes, I’m going to skate too,” while my husband was in earshot. Afterward, he asked, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“I used to roller skate a lot in high school and college,” I said. (A lot is a relative phrase.)
“That was decades ago,” he said. (Ouch!)
“It’ll all come back, like riding a bicycle,” I assured him. (It didn’t all come back, unless I compare it to the first time I went roller skating.)
“You’re going to fall and get hurt, maybe break something,” he said.
“I’m not going to fall. I passed that stage years ago,” I said. (I fell seven times. Five of the falls were gentle with soft landings; the other two smarted and then some, one left a respectable bruise on my forearm. Good man that he is, my husband never asked how many times I fell.)
Walking into the roller rink was kind of like a trip back in time. It’s the same rink where I skated with my college friends, but the inside has been refurbished and updated. The walls and ceiling surrounding the rink feature bold graphic art scenes painted in vibrant colors that glow under black lights. The old bumpy greenish-blue floor was recently replaced with a beautiful, smooth wooden surface. There are new booths, benches, and carpeting, but the layout is still the same. I have no idea if the roller rink I frequented in Milwaukee County when I was in high school still exists, and I don’t remember its name.
“Are you going to skate with us?” This question was repeatedly asked by my two youngest grandkids, even as I paid for five skaters, picked up my skates at the counter, then laced them up while seated on the bench with my grandkids. I don’t know if they worried about me being too old, or if they kept thinking I’d change my mind. I like to think they were amazed Nana could skate. Well, sort of — after watching me fall.
The moment I stepped on the rink, I realized my return to roller skating wasn’t going to be smooth. At first, I spent all of my time concentrating on maintaining my balance, waiting for the memory in my leg muscles to wake up and recall how to skate. When I didn’t stay upright, getting off the floor was a challenge. Trying to stand on a slick floor while wearing wheels on your feet is the stuff slapstick comedy is made of. Once I fell too far away from the wall and struggled to stand, so I began crawling toward the wall. My oldest grandchild skated up and gave me a hand.
I’d forgotten how heavy roller skates are. Lifting my leg up to do a crossover or to push off, felt like pumping iron. Resistance training. Good for the bones. My doctor wants me to do more resistance exercises because while my bone density test wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great. She’d be proud of me, I thought — skating around the rink with the equivalent of ankle weights laced to my feet. Then again, she might have something to say about me breaking a bone. She’d probably be Team Husband.
After twenty minutes, I felt more confident, and as I slowly, cautiously, precariously skated around the rink, my mind wandered back to my high school skating days and a boy named Mark, who I had a crush on through most of my junior year.
School crushes are funny things. Some of my infatuations were all consuming. I daydreamed about those boys from the moment I slid out of bed in the morning, until sleep swept away my romantic fancies at night. Like Randy in seventh grade, whom I never worked up the nerve to speak to, but whose name filled the pages of my diary, and whose image occupied my nearly every waking moment. Sometimes I had crushes on boys at the same time: one at school, one in my neighborhood, and one at work. Some crushes expired faster than an egg salad sandwich left out in the summer sun. My crush on Mark started in our American literature class during our junior year and carried over to the roller rink, but I didn’t particularly pine after him when he was out of sight. He was funny and talkative. We were school and skating friends.
I was out of Mark’s league. He was handsome, tall, and muscular. He had thick blond hair nearly touching his shoulders and cut like a rock star’s. I don’t remember the color of his eyes, but they were often filled with mirth. His sense of humor ranged from puns to bawdy, from slapstick to stand-up. He smiled constantly and laughed easily. In a category for “Student Most Likely to Become a Comedian,” Mark would’ve won.
I’m not sure how I started roller skating, but I never had a date at the roller rink. Instead, lots of kids from my high school and surrounding schools would show up on the evenings designated for teenagers. It was one big group date. Mark never came with a date either, but on almost every teenage skate night, he was there. Sometimes during the day at school, he would ask me if I was going to the rink that night.
We often skated side by side, making small talk. Rock ‘n’ roll from the 1960s and 70s pulsated through the air. The mirrored disco ball tossed flashes of color across the rink. Sometimes there was a couples’ skate, and he would take my hand. For the length of a slow song, I’d imagine we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Other times, he’d ask another girl he happened to be skating next to when the DJ called for a couples’ skate. Mark was kind to everyone. Of course, I was disappointed when he didn’t ask me every time because it meant he didn’t have a crush on me.
During the summer, after my junior year, I went to Europe for a month, and my family moved. When I returned home, I settled into a new home, a new school, and a new town. I developed two crushes, one on a boy across the street and one on a boy at school. I never saw Mark again.
In the late 1990s, I learned Mark had died of cancer in 1995 at the age of thirty-six. One of my high school classmates, who’d become a dental hygienist, told my sister, whose teeth she was cleaning, to let me know. She knew that Mark and I’d been buddies. Did she know that I’d had a crush on him? Did she think he had one on me? I’d rarely thought about Mark after I moved, but I was sad when I heard he’d died. He’d been so full of life. He’d married and had children.
Over the years, I’d occasionally think about Mark. Something would spark a memory that reminded me of my junior American lit class or the roller rink. For example, I can’t hear or read about A Raisin in the Sun without thinking about Mark and a play he wrote for a class assignment, which featured me and some of our classmates. Of course, Mark being Mark, the play was humorous, but in a kind way, a gentle satire that kept us all in stitches.
A few months ago, I was looking through my junior yearbook — nothing to do with Mark — and I came across a long entry penned by him. I was stunned by what I read both on the page and between the lines. His words were an unabashed admission of affection and love, but at the end of his heartfelt reveal, he’d sandwiched the word lies in parentheses as if shrugging off the whole letter as a joke, giving himself enough plausible deniability to save face if I didn’t return his feelings. Why had I missed his declaration of romantic affection? Probably because I was convinced that he’d never be interested in dating me. Turns out he felt I’d never be interested in dating him. Why had I thought he was joking? Probably because he never flirted with me, and he was always joking. What about his writing “I love you” and “I’ll miss you if you move”? Lots of my yearbook entries were filled with words of love and miss-you-over-the-summer sentiments, from both my male and female friends. I have several yearbooks filled with gushy prose to prove how sappy my classmates got when signing yearbooks. Some things are easier to write than say.
I kept skating, mostly upright now. “Y.M.C.A.” played, fast-paced and upbeat, the kind of music that would’ve sent me zipping around the rink when I was a teenager, but not anymore. I skated as if I were keeping time with Perry Como’s rendition of “Moon River.” When we left the rink, I told my grandkids, who had a blast, that we would come back in February and March on their school breaks. I plan to skate again, so I hope my legs won’t develop amnesia. I don’t know what my husband will say, but I know what my father would’ve said, “Old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.” Hopefully, I’ll stay off the floor.
I will think about Mark again, and his life cut short by illness. I will smile at the thought that he had an unrequited crush on me too, but Mark and I were never destined to be together. We weren’t each other’s one that got away. If we had dated during our junior year, we most likely would’ve spoiled a fun friendship. School crushes are funny things. They’re often ignited by a physical trait: a dimpled cheek, sky-blue eyes, a smattering of freckles across a nose, luxurious wavy hair, a lopsided melt-your-heart grin. They consume our lives for a moment, but like a match, once struck, they often burn out quickly.
I remember Mark fondly because we were friends who laughed, and talked, and roller skated together. He’d be pleased to know that I still think about him now and then. How I sometimes tell the story about a boy from my American lit class who climbed out of a classroom window on a warm spring day, joyfully followed by me and most of the class. (No, we didn’t get into trouble. Teachers were also charmed by Mark.)
It’s what we want when we’re gone, that people will remember us and tell our stories.
During the holidays I was sifting through old family photos when I came across a picture of a young woman in an elegant tea-length dress, the kind she might have worn to a prom. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the whisper of sheer filmy material wrapped around her shoulders and trailing down her back. From her classic pearl jewelry to her satin-sheen shoes, she’s ready for the red carpet.
She looks like Rosemary Clooney: the hair, the face, the dress. If I hadn’t watched White Christmas a few days before, I might not have noticed the resemblance. But because I had, I found the similarity uncanny. Was the young woman in the photo trying to look like Miss Clooney or some other movie star of the time? Adoring fans often copy the fashions and hairstyles of their favorite celebrities. In 1976, after figure skater Dorothy Hamill won an Olympic gold medal, many fans rushed to their hairdressers, asking for the Dorothy Hamill haircut. The graceful movement of Hamill’s hair as she skated across the ice was nearly as beautiful as her figure skating. Five years later Prince Charles would become engaged to Lady Diana, who also had gorgeous haircuts throughout the years. Once again women rushed to their hairdressers, this time with photos of Diana’s most recent hairstyle.
I hadn’t seen White Christmas in years, but when my sisters and I were kids, we loved the movie. We made sure to watch it every Christmas season, along with Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. We had one chance to see these specials during the holidays. If we missed it, we had to wait until the next year. I hate to sound like an old person whining about how tough it was when I was young, but we didn’t have anything on demand. There were no streaming services, no VCRs or DVDs, and no marathon runs of shows playing over and over. If we missed one of our favorite Christmas shows, we had to wait until the next year to see it. We had four channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. Our neighbors had the same four channels, but they had a bigger antenna than ours, so they picked up a channel out of Chicago which ran old TV shows. My sisters and I were Grinch-green envious, and we often spent time at their house watching reruns of old sitcoms and westerns.
I don’t recognize the Rosemary Clooney look-alike in this photo. I sent a copy of it to my two aunts, but neither of them remembered her. She might’ve been the child of one of my grandmother’s friends or relatives. She could’ve been one of my dad’s girlfriends, but the photo was taken at Rainbo Studios in St. Louis, Missouri, and my father grew up in northern Wisconsin. Still, there were lots of families who came from faraway places to spend all or part of the summer on the lakes in the north woods of Wisconsin. Many of the local teens had summer romances with the vacationing teens. I did some research on Rainbo Studios and learned that it operated during the 1950s.
All I’ve learned about the girl is that she put on a pretty dress and had her picture taken at a now defunct studio in St. Louis, Missouri.
“I wish someone would’ve written a name and year on the back of this photo,” I said to my husband. Then added, “I should write the names of people I recognize on the backs of the photos that aren’t labeled.”
“Who’s going to care after you?” he asked. He has a point. When I’m gone, what will become of these old photos? Pictures of grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles, cousins and shirt-tail cousins, not to mention the friends and neighbors who appear in some of the photos. I don’t know most of them, but I do know some of them.
These photos will eventually end up in the garbage. I hate writing that sentence, but unless someone in my family develops an interest in family history that will probably be the case. I’ve worked on some family history. I wrote a book with my mother-in-law about her life, and I re-typed and updated a family history that my grandpa George’s cousin wrote. I’ve written about some of the family history on my mother’s side too. But I’m a short story and essay writer, so I spend most of my spare time writing fiction and essays.
I won’t be the one to throw the old photos away. I love them, and occasionally, I look at the people in the pictures and imagine their stories. What happened in the days before and after their pictures were snapped? What were their dreams and hopes? How did their lives play out? I know the answers to some of these questions, but mostly I don’t. Sometimes one of my aunts can tell me about the people in a photo and may also remember something about the day the photo was taken. But often they can’t because they either weren’t born yet, or they were small children at the time.
I’ll never know the name of the Rosemary Clooney look-alike, but on the back of her photo I wrote, 1950s. It’s all I have to offer her. Somewhere, someone knows who she is. She could still be alive. For now, I’m keeping the photo on my writing desk. Now and then, I hold it in my hand and wonder, “Was she a Rosemary Clooney fan? Where was she going? What was the rest of her life like? How did her picture end up in my grandparents’ box of photos?” Perhaps I’ll hit upon an idea and be inspired to write a short story about her. Of course, the answers to my questions will be fiction, leaving the real young woman a mystery.
I’ve taken great care to write names and dates on the backsides of the photos I’ve snapped over the years and put into albums, but eventually, the photos of my family and friends will end up in boxes, becoming memories without stories. Ultimately, they will end up in a landfill.
And what about the photos on our phones?
On Monday and Tuesday, both warm winter days, my grandkids and I drove by Central Park numerous times while running errands. Not the famous 843-acre Central Park in New York City, but the Central Park in my hometown, around ten acres in size. Each time we drove by, we saw children sledding down the hills at the western side of the park.
“Can we go sledding there?” Evan, the nine-year-old, asked each time we passed it.
“If you bring your snow pants with you tomorrow, I’ll take you sledding,” I said. “But it’s supposed to be below zero in the morning.”
On Wednesday, the grandkids came with their snow pants, and the morning temperature was actually fourteen degrees, so after breakfast we stowed the sleds in my van and went sledding. I wore long underwear under my jeans, thick wool socks inside my boots, and a wool sweater under my down coat. To complete my winter ensemble, I donned a thick stocking cap, slipped my hands into a pair of lined mittens, and wrapped a scarf around my neck. But I knew it wouldn’t be enough, and that I would be cold while standing on the hill in the park as the wind circled around me.
“What if they have sleds there we can use?” Evan asked as we drove to the park.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t believe the city would spend money to provide sleds, only to worry about them being pilfered or broken. But when we arrived at the hill, there was a rack filled with sleds and topped with a tiny poem: “Use a Sled, Return it When You’re Done and Everyone Can Have a Little Fun!”
I’d been the one with the jaded heart, but my city’s parks & rec department had faith in its young citizens. “Look, Evan,” I said, pointing at the sign, “you were right.” My grandsons mostly used their own sleds, but occasionally borrowed one of the saucer sleds from the rack.
Peals of laughter and shouts of joy filled the air as they sped down the hill. I pulled my phone from my pocket to take some pictures and to look at the time — only five minutes had passed and I was already freezing. At that moment, as if to mock me, Old Man Winter exhaled a powerful gust of frigid air. I huddled next to a pine tree, but the narrow trunk did nothing to protect me from the wind’s icy breath. I wanted to go home, but anything less than a solid thirty minutes on the hill, and my grandkids would be disappointed. They were having a great time.
I decided I had two choices. I could stand on the hill and freeze, or I could hit the slopes. I placed a blue sled at the top of the hill and looked down at it.
“Nana, are you going to sled down the hill?” one of the grandkids asked.
“Yes,” I answered. I gazed at the sled and remembered how much I loved sledding when I was young. Plus, there were no adults around (like my husband) to ask, “Do you think that’s a good idea at your age?”
With grins on their faces and anticipation in their hearts, my grandsons waited to see Nana “bomb” down the hill. They knew I could do it.
Successfully, but not too gracefully, I lowered myself into the sled. I pushed off with my hands and raced down the hill, bobbing up and down on the slightly uneven terrain. By the time I used my feet as brakes to stop the sled before reaching a line of trees along a frozen creek, I felt much warmer.
Was it the thrill of the ride that pumped blood through my veins and warmed my body? Or was it the memory of getting a toboggan for Christmas as a girl and using it to sled at Whitnall Park throughout my childhood and teenage years? Either way I was ecstatic as I walked back up the hill with my sled in tow. I wasn’t cold anymore. The key to being outside in winter is to keep moving and have fun.
I went down the hill many times. I felt ageless, still capable of doing something I did when I was young. Dopamine filled my brain, and I was over-the-moon happy.
We stayed for forty minutes. On our way back to the car, Evan asked if we could come back in the afternoon.
“Sure,” I said, and I meant it. I wasn’t just saying it in the moment, figuring I’d find a way to back out later on. Sometimes we do that as adults. But like my grandkids, I wanted to go sledding again, even if it meant the dishes didn’t get done or supper would be late.
I fed the boys lunch then took them to the library for a kids’ craft hour. I went to the grocery store for ingredients so I could make chicken enchiladas after our second round of sledding.
We returned to Central Park just before three o’clock, and stayed for more than a half hour. This time I didn’t wait to get cold. I grabbed a sled immediately and began zooming down the hill, loving the speed and the winter’s air that filled my lungs, caressed my face, and returned me to my youth.
Sledding with my grandkids was the most fun I’d had in a very long time.
I made a New Year’s resolution to behave like a child more often.
Naomi Helen Yaeger, in a delightfully engaging biography, tells the story of her mother Janette Yaeger (née Minehart) who grew up in Avoca, Minnesota. Yaeger spent hours interviewing her mother before her mother died. In her book, Yaeger lovingly recounts the stories of Janette and her siblings, parents, and extended family. Most of the book concentrates on Janette’s life from toddlerhood through young adulthood. However, toward the end of the book, Yaeger summarizes the key highlights of Janette’s and her family’s lives as they moved through adulthood. I’m glad Yaeger did this because after reading about the early lives of Janette and her family, I wanted to know what happened to them as adults.
Yaeger’s book invites readers into a bygone era. We learn about the history, culture, and lives of ordinary people who lived through the depression, WWII, and the Korean War. We read about their daily joys, disappointments, and sorrows. Usually, the history we are taught in school focuses on major events and well-known people. But I find the daily lives of people and how they lived while major historical events happened around them fascinating. And I learned a few things that I didn’t know before reading the book.
As I read Blooming Hollyhocks, I laughed and I cried. I felt connected to my own relatives who grew up in the same era as Yaeger’s. And I remembered the stories they had told me, often similar to the stories Janette Yaeger shared with her daughter Naomi. As I finished Yaeger’s book and closed it for the last time, I was already missing the Mineharts, their relatives, and their friends.
[When I attended Naomi Yaeger’s book launch, someone mentioned that Yaeger’s book would make a great present. After finishing her book, I wholeheartedly agree. If you know someone who lived through this time or grew up listening to the stories of relatives who lived through this time, I believe they would enjoy Yaeger’s book as much as I did.]
After it was all said and done. After I’d decided on two pairs of shoes to purchase, and the mother and daughter who were shoe shopping alongside me had decided on three pairs of shoes between the two of them, the sales clerk reordered the chaos on the floor. She checked the labels and sizes to make sure two shoes (a left and a right) of the same size went into a box with the corresponding size, style, and brand. The young sales clerk, maybe twenty years old, was swift and accurate.
After the clerk walked away to meet the mother and daughter at the checkout, my husband said he was surprised that the sales clerk had let the area become so messy.
“Oh, no,” I said. “This is how women shop for shoes.”
He raised his eyebrows and gave that look people give when they want to say, “Wow! That’s just crazy” without saying, “Wow! That’s just crazy.”
He didn’t know women have rules for shoe shopping. He just picks out one pair of shoes at a time, asks for his size, and tries them on. But women circle the store and gather several different types of shoes before approaching the sales clerk.
“I’ve been shopping for shoes for years, with my mother, with friends, and this is how we’ve always done it,” I said.
I explained all this to my husband as I walked around the store in a pair of shoes I was still auditioning. I stopped in front of the shoe mirror to see how they looked from the side. I walked up to my husband and asked, “Do these shoes make my feet look big?”
He laughed. “Of course,” he said.
I laughed because he got the joke.
Women really do have their own set of rules for shoe shopping. We try one pair then another pair. Maybe try them again. We ask for different sizes. We look at more shoes, and try those. And while we do this, the unboxed shoes stay on the floor. Unless we specifically tell the clerk that a pair of shoes are definitely a no go. A good shoe sales clerk knows this. It’s not chaos. We need to be able to see the whole array of shoes in front of us.
I haven’t had so much fun buying shoes in a long time. The mother and daughter and I had a good time visiting with each other while we tried on shoes. We laughed and joked together. The mother and I bought the same shoes. “If I see those shoes out in public, I’ll recognize you,” she said.
Best of all, the sales clerk was a joy. She was knowledgeable about the shoes in the store. She kept all our requests for different styles and sizes straight while she helped all three of us at the same time. She treated us like our quest for the perfect shoe was important. She understood how women shop for shoes.
Two years ago I took my four grandkids to a rose garden. We smelled the roses, walked along Lake Superior, ate ice cream, and tossed rocks in the water. Then we did it again last year. So, of course, we had to do it again this year. It’s a tradition now. When my grandkids are grown up and old, they will say to each other, “Remember when Nana took us to the rose garden every summer, and we’d get ice cream then throw rocks in the lake?” Just like I recall my nana taking us to George Webb, Sherman Park, and Capital Drive, and letting us use her galvanized steel wash tubs as swimming pools on hot days.
We arrived at the rose garden, which also has other flowers. We spotted bees slurping nectar. My oldest grandchild took photos of the bees and roses. I took photos of the bees and roses. My other three grandkids watched the bees and smelled the roses. We all love the flowers and bees. I like to refer to bees as pollinators, like it’s a royal title and the bees belong to a noble class. Watching pollinators feed on flowers gives me hope for the world. If you want to help create hope, plant something pollinators like, and make sure it’s pesticide free.
As we smelled the roses, we took care to look for bees before sniffing. We didn’t want our noses stung, or egads, to inhale a bee. We visited the rose garden a couple of weeks later than we normally do, so we missed the peak bloom. But the roses that had waited for us didn’t disappoint.
My grandkids love the functioning water fountain, a focal point in the garden. I handed out pennies for wishes. They splashed their hands in the water. One of them found a small, round, flat stone painted with the message Make a Wish. I think more than one of them would have liked to climb into the fountain. Kids and water just go together. The summer I was twelve, my siblings and I spent three weeks with our grandma Olive. Every day we begged her to take us to Bluegill Lake so we could swim. The fountain in the rose garden was originally located in a different part of the city, where it supplied fresh water for horses in the days before automobiles. Everything changes.
After spending time with the roses, we headed down the Lakewalk, and enjoyed the views of Lake Superior. Later, on our way back, my youngest grandchild stopped at several of the park benches and assessed the views, commenting on each one. Perhaps, he is a budding travel writer.
On our walk from the gardens to the ice cream shop, we always stop at a large stone stage. Flanked with two stout turrets, it has a castle vibe. My grandkids ran across the stage and through the hidden passageways behind it, then suddenly appeared once again. Their laughter and excited shouts to one another rang through the air. I thought about Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” followed by his musings about the “seven ages” of life from infancy to old age. I stood on the stage with my grandkids, yet apart from them, separated by several “ages” of life.
The cooing sounds of pigeons who nest in the nooks of a stone wall along the railroad tracks captured the attention of my grandkids. One grandchild was impressed by the range of their colors and the variety of their markings. And the other three started a cooing conversation with the pigeons. I have to say, the cooing sounds my grandkids made were impressive, but finally I said, “What if the pigeons hear your coos as a battle cry and attack?” Yes, you got it, I was thinking about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I saw the movie once, years ago, and I’m still miffed Hitchcock killed off Suzanne Pleshette’s character in the movie! She was one of my favorite actors.
If you asked my grandkids what they liked best about our adventure, they would probably say the ice cream. It’s what I would have said when I was their age. The picnic tables at the ice cream shop were new and so was the chocolate mint ice cream used to make my malt. For thirty years I’ve been ordering chocolate mint malts, made with the same minty ice cream filled with thin, flat pieces of dark chocolate. This year the ice cream was a little too minty and the thin, flat pieces of chocolate were replaced by mini chocolate chips. It was good, but not as good as it used to be. Next year I’m going to order a different flavored malt. Maybe I will find a new favorite. The clerk at the shop said they could no longer get the same kind of chocolate mint ice cream. All things change. But don’t ask me to say change is good when it comes to my ice cream. Some wasps hung out with us while we ate our treats. None of us panicked, but neither did we share our ice cream with them.
Our next stop was the lakeshore filled with rocks waiting for my grandkids to toss them back into the water. Now that they are older, they try to skip the rocks across the water instead of just throwing them. I planned to let them stay ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but they were having so much fun with each other. I watched them toss rocks, look for agates and beach glass, and play with driftwood, and suddenly I could see my siblings and myself on the sandy shores of Bluegill Lake seining for minnows, building sand castles, and floating on inner tubes in the water. I marveled at how long ago that was and yet how quickly the years had passed — in the snap of a finger. We stayed for more than a half hour. This was the best part of my day. Because while my grandkids on the beach had no idea how quickly time would slip by, I did.
I write for Northern Wilds, a local magazine based in Grand Marais, Minnesota. A couple of months ago, the editor put out a call for the magazine’s contributing writers to submit mini essays about camping traditions. I wrote one about my backyard camping trips, the only kind I ever took as a kid.
My essay was published in the August issue of Northern Wilds. To read my essay in the web format, click here and scroll down. To read it in the magazine format, click here, and click to pages 20-21.
And whichever way you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy the camping essays written by my fellow writers.
Yesterday I made cranberry pistachio shortbread cookies. The kind of cookies my grandma Olive would’ve made to serve at a ladies’ luncheon. (Although, her cookies would’ve have contained dates because dried cranberries weren’t available until the 1980s.) Her luncheon would’ve been written up on the society page of the local paper. The kind of write-up they don’t do anymore, unless it’s about someone famous. It would’ve sounded something like this:
On Wednesday, May 6, Mrs. George Youngquist entertained the Presbyterian Women at a luncheon in her home. [Back in the day, a married woman’s first name was rarely mentioned in an article.] She served a variety of finger sandwiches, potato salad, and coleslaw, along with fruit punch. For dessert she served a variety of cookies, including her well-loved date-pistachio shortbread cookies, accompanied by coffee. In attendance were the group’s president, Mrs. Frank Smith; the secretary, Mrs. Grover Bost; and the treasurer, Mrs. Elmer Connors, along with nine other members. No church business was conducted. Mrs. Youngquist said, “The gathering was held to celebrate spring and to give the ladies a chance to visit with one another.“
As a child and for most of my adult life, had I been at that luncheon, I would’ve passed on the date cookies, no matter how well loved they were. I would’ve looked for a chocolate chip, peanut butter, or sugar cookie. But I’m of a certain age now, and I like to try new things, occasionally. (But in a crazy paradox, I’m not big on change.) So, a couple of months ago when I saw this recipe, along with a picture of the cranberry pistachio shortbread cookies, I decided I needed to bake them. After all, I do like cranberries and pistachios and shortbread.
I bought the dried cranberries and the shelled pistachios shortly after I came across the recipe, which was a couple of months ago. Yesterday I decided I needed to stop procrastinating and bake the cookies. It was a perfect day for baking. I spent most of the day writing, so baking cookies would get me off my backside. And it rained and stormed most of the day, ideal baking weather.
Why did it take me a couple of months to try the recipe? Fear of messing it up — because I’d never made this kind of cookie before. But once I started mixing, chilling, then later baking, I discovered this simple recipe produces scrumptious cookies that look sophisticated, like the kind served at a luncheon or with high tea.
The two sticks of butter used in the recipe make the cookies melt in my mouth, releasing bursts of cranberry and orange, making my mouth tingle. They pair well with coffee. However, I will have to find someone to share them with because my husband doesn’t like cranberries. He did try one, but he didn’t like it. I just couldn’t possibly eat all these cookies by myself.
What did I like about this recipe? It was easy! The cookies turned out so well that I fancied myself as a TV chef. The dough is rolled into a log before chilling, which makes it easy to slice the cookies for baking. Other recipes, like this one, call for the dough to be chilled in a ball then rolled out on a flat surface before using a round cookie cutter. But the log method is easier and less messy. Also, the log method keeps the baker from overhandling the dough. Best of all, I felt like I was in the kitchen baking with my grandma Olive.
What would I change? I’d use chopped walnuts or pecans instead of pistachios, which are harder than pecans and walnuts. Because when I had to slice the cookie dough, the chopped pistachios were difficult to cut through. I could use dried cherries because my husband likes those, but he doesn’t like walnuts or pecans. I could eliminate the nuts, but they add a savory taste.
My one goof? I only had a small orange. Having never zested an orange before, I had no idea how many it would take to make a tablespoon of zest. I ended up with 1/2 tablespoon, and while I can still taste the orange, I can’t help but wonder what the cookies would taste like if I’d used a whole tablespoon.
Here’s the recipe I used. Happy baking!
(Some of you may have read my blog about my lost mitten. About my buying another pair online. And about one of the new mittens arriving with a twisted lining. If not, you can click on A Lost Mitten to read that blog if you wish.)
On Monday, March 3, my new mittens arrived. I pulled the bag from the mailbox, and crossed my fingers as I hoped they would fit and be without defect. After I went inside, I opened the bag and tried on the mittens. They fit fine. They were a perfect match. And they looked well-made.
The journey of my mittens was well documented. After the company received the pair with the defective mitten, they sent me an email telling me that my replacement mittens were on their way. They provided me with a tracking number, so I could follow their journey as they made their way from the East Coast to my Midwest mailbox. They sent me another email after my mittens were delivered.
Remember the old days when we ordered something from a catalog, then waited? There were no emails or text alerts to tell us something was on the way. We couldn’t track it as it left a warehouse, arrived at a shipping center, then showed up at our local delivery facility where it would be loaded onto a small truck headed to its final destination. We didn’t get an email announcing our package’s arrival with a photo of it resting against our front door.
But receiving those emails from the company was reassuring. After all, the original pair of mittens had been a Christmas gift from my mother.
All that communication about my defective mitten and the replacement mittens made me think about a two-week summer romance I had with a boy when I was fifteen. We parted with promises to write to each other. I wrote to him and received a letter from him in return. So I wrote again.
Every day I ran to the mailbox, flung open the flap, and grabbed the mail. I shuffled through bills and advertisements, but he never wrote back. Perhaps waiting for my new mittens reminded me of the boy because I waited for a second letter from him with the same hope I had while waiting for my replacement mittens. I wanted both his letter and my mittens to be perfect.
I pined for that boy, every day.
After each day’s disappointing trip to the mailbox, I’d sit on my bed and hold his one-and-only letter and sing the words to “Daisy a Day.” Tears would gather in my eyes. I’d blink them back, but occasionally one would break loose and roll down my cheek. (My unrequited love for that boy hurt almost as much as when I had a supersized crush on Donny Osmond, who never answered even one of my love letters. To think of all the money I wasted on Tiger Beat Magazine.)
Next, I’d play a John Denver album and sing along with his rendition of the heart-wrenching ballad “Today,” which was about a love that wasn’t meant to last. This sent the rest of the tears that had pooled in my eyes strolling down my face.
Finally, I’d play a Beatles album and listen to “Please, Mr. Postman” over and over. I’d sing along with every pleading lyric, as the singer begged the postman to check his bag one more time. The song had a melancholy air, but at the same time, the rhythm of the music inspired me to get off my bed and dance. Even though the singer, like me, was disappointed by love, the dancing lifted my spirits and soon I’d be off to enjoy the rest of the day.
For about a month that was my routine — dash to the mailbox, suffer bitter disappointment, croon to love songs, then dance myself out of a funk.
After school started in the fall, I kicked that summer-romance boy out of my head. I was on to other crushes on other boys in my high school — just like when I outgrew Donny Osmond and went on to have a crush on David Cassidy.
Eventually, I outgrew it all — the crushes, the summer romance, and the teen idols.
But I won’t outgrow my replacement mittens. They are safely tucked in my mitten box on a shelf in my front closet. It’s still cold enough to wear them, but spring is coming. I’m saving them for next year. By then I’ll be brave enough to wear them again. I’m going to watch over them as carefully as I watched over the mailbox when I was fifteen.
The mittens, a Christmas gift from my mother, warm my soul.
Writing Near the Lake 