Deseret News, Wed., January 13-14, 1993

EVERYONE HAS OWN IDEA OF ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD

“The best thing about bad weather is how good it makes soup taste,” I told my boy one stormy day as he reluctantly sat down to what I considered the ultimate comfort food—a steaming bowl of vegetables with bits of beef and broth.

Apparently, the weather hadn’t gotten bad enough to convince the world’s pickiest eater, who also happens to be my 15-year-old son, to lift his spoon.

“So that’s why you start peeling carrots every time it rains!” he said in a voice as dry as the untouched crackers on his plate.  “So you can save the runoff in the barrel to make soup.”

If there hadn’t been the slightest chance he was just kidding, I would have suggested he try an alternate menu, like bread and water, for the rest of his life.

Instead, I just smiled and gave him kitchen duty for a month.  Unfortunately, he didn’t appreciate my generosity.  

“When was the last time you ate watermelon?” he had to ask. 

If I have an Achilles’ heel where food is concerned it’s watermelon.  Once during my childhood, when my school’s lunchroom monitor told me I couldn’t leave the cafeteria until I’d finished my fruit cup, I threw up.

“OK!” I surrendered.  “I’ll never make soup again.  Next time it storms, I’ll serve cold cuts with ice cream, and we’ll all sit around eating ‘til our lips turn blue.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he countered.  “Next time it storms, let’s go out for pizza.  That way you won’t have to spend the day stewing over what to cook.”

“Ha!” I croaked in honor of his pun.  And then, I smiled for real. It’s pretty hard to stay mad at a kid who’s so considerate.  “How come it’s taken me so long to figure out that, from your point of view, pizza is the ultimate comfort food?”

“Because it isn’t!” he said with a voice as smooth as olive oil.  “From my point of view, the ultimate comfort food is watermelon.  “But I’d never try to make you eat something you couldn’t stand!

To my credit, I did learn to like watermelon later in life!

POLITICAL JARGON JUST CHILD’S PLAY

“Power is not a substitute for reason,” said Rep. Newt Ginrich, R-Ga, in the opening rounds of GOP squabble over President Reagan’s lobby for a $98.9 billion tax hike to ease federal budget deficits. Bedrock conservatives don’t want it, and the word is out that a good old-fashioned donnybrook threatens to muddy up the House floor, as some of the President’s old friends, including former Reagan political adviser Lyn Nofziger and former Reagan domestic policy adviser Martin Anderson square off against those opposed to the administration’s plan.

 “Donnybrook!” Now there’s a word! The first time I ever heard it used in reference to government, I thought they were talking about a new senator. My 8-year-old daughter and I were busily engaged in the serious business of icing a chocolate mayonnaise cake at the time, and as the 6 o-clock news pumped out the latest political palpitations, and I came to realize that what I know about politics would just about fill a measuring cup. 

“The Republicans are the ones with the long noses and big ears,” I told my little girl in reply to her question about our country’s two-party system. “The Democrats,” I further explained, “are the ones with the short noses and big ears.” “With all those big ears, Mommy, how come no one ever listens?” 

My darling child had put the whole country’s problems in a nutshell. “Oh, they do,” I demurred, “about as good as you do, when I ask you to help me clean the house. “Do they help clean their house? she asked. “I suppose some of them do,” I could only hope.

 “The ones who don’t...are they the dirty politicians?"   I wondered about that one.“Some of them are pretty good about sweeping things under the rug,” I had to say. 

My protege was deep in thought. “What would happen if they crossed a Democrat with a Republican? Would they get a Democran or a Republicat?” she finally asked. I said I hoped a Republicat, since I’ve always been partial to kittens.  

“Maybe a lion kind of cat!” My daughter’s eyes lit up. 

“Hmm, the King of Beasts!” I could see this regal political hybrid, pacing back and forth across the Senate floor—a feline solution to the nation’s political polarity. Our conversation had lifted me to an intellectual high.

 In the next moment, I’d resolved the problem of the tax hike, too. “All us good Americans could use the tax cut money we received in July to pay the tax hike Reagan has proposed,” I said out loud. My daughter wiped the chocolate frosting from her chin.

 

Will That First Teacher Realize the Worth of Small Son?

 

Rain or Shine

LAKESIDE REVIEW

5 September 1984

Matthew started school yesterday. I watched him saunter—almost swagger down the hall.  One small hand swung confidently against his stiff new jeans, while the other hand’s knuckles tightened on a pencil box so new you could still see the gummy place where the price tag had been.

Matt-Matt’s freshly cut hair, the color of ripe wheat, bounced jauntily on the crown of his head, as he maintained a safe distance ahead of me, but not so far away that his clear, blue eyes couldn’t focus on my face whenever he looked back over his shoulder.

This, he did regularly, if somewhat self-consciously, before jostling against some nearby kid as though to create a diversion from those apprehensive backwards glances.

When Matthew finally reached the kindergarten room, my thoughts raced ahead to contemplate the teacher waiting outside the door to turn the page of a new chapter in my small child’s life.

A thousand questions quarreled with the peaceful state of mind I had sought to affect as an example to my son. 

Will this teacher notice how vulnerable Matt’s mouth and chin are when his eyes sparkle with pseudo macho mischief?

Could she ever guess how much the tough little kid who likes to flex his muscles in public loves his well-worn plush leopard in private?

Will she understand that the biggest tease in in her class, the one who doesn’t mind tugging on a little girl’s braids, would shrink to ever pull a puppy’s tail.

Can she sense that a small boy who seems so self-contained would love to have a hug from time to time?

Upon reaching the long-awaited destination of his first five  years, Matthew took his place behind a table low enough to stub your toe on.  Forcing an ear-to-ear  grin from across his teeth, he gazed with bravado at the brand-new woman in his life.

I hoped she saw the momentary wobble of his chin.

 

Snow Horse on the Mountain

    On a green-meadow day, when the sun is an orange marigold in a blue, silk, Utah sky, and onion tops are whiskers on Earth’s black velvet face, Grandfather pulls me up to his John Deere tractor, and we sit cozy, looking far away into the crevice of an unnamed mountain peak high in the Wasatch Mountains to the east.    

    “There she is,” Grandpa says, his voice soft and whispery like an early summer breeze.  “Can you see her up there, Pea Pod?”  Grandpa’s brown eyes twinkle as he calls me his pet name.

    “Looks like a snow goat,” I giggle.  It’s an old joke between the two of us, and I know exactly what my grandfather’s next words are going to be.

    “No, it’s a bob-tailed draft horse—a Percheron, just like the one my daddy had before we  got this tractor.”

    Grandpa’s eyes get shiny.  He pats the John Deere’s dented sides, as if the big, three-wheeled machine were a dear, old friend.   It’s no coincidence that our family’s antique tractor bears the old draft horse’s name. 

    “Good, old Nellie Belle,” my granddad says, his voice getting husky.  “I used to ride her bareback in the fields.”

    I know by heart where this conversation will go.   Grandpa likes to tell me how the ghostly, horse-shaped figure shows up every year on the mountain ridge that runs down Webb Canyon.

    We both know the Snow Horse is just a patch of un-melted, winter snow, a massive white mural painted there by strokes of sunshine and shadow.

    But I love hearing Grandpa remember how early settlers began using the Snow Horse as a planting gauge soon after Mormon pioneers began farming Davis County in the 1850’s, 

    The Snow Horse usually appears around the first of June, and the old farmers warn, “You shouldn’t plant your tender crops until you see the Snow Horse prancing on the mountainside.” 

   Tomato seedlings and corn shoots might freeze on days cold enough to keep the mountain snow from melting into the familiar draft horse shape.

    If you spot her early, say in the middle of May, that’s bad news.   People say that means the winter’s snowpack was shallow, and everybody worries about water shortages or what Grandpa calls a drought. 

    Once the Snow Horse becomes visible, farmers hope she’ll stay awhile.   When she lasts until the Fourth of July, farmers know they’ll have plenty of moisture for their crops to grow.

    “So what do you think, Pea Pod?”  Grandpa asks each year after he’s rehearsed the local Snow Horse lore, though he knows exactly what I’ll say.

    I crane my neck and look at the majestic Snow Horse standing there with her long, long legs and short, bobbed tail. 

    “Still looks like a snow goat,” I giggle. 

     Grandpa tugs my braids and laughs, “Snow Horse in June--good harvest moon.” His voice is all silver ripples—like soft, summer rain. 

    For a moment, a faraway look shadows Grandpa’s face, and I know that he’s remembering every snow horse he’s ever seen prancing on that mountainside on a sunny day in June.

    And he’s right about the harvest moon.  Come autumn, on a wheat-gold day, when the sun is a bushel basket in a blue-linen, Utah sky, and wheat stalks are stubble on Earth’s brown, leather face, Grandpa and I will once again sit cozy on old Nellie Belle, the tractor. 

    By then, the Snow Horse will be just a memory on a burnished, gold ridge.  

    But when the sweet, acrid scent of newly dug onions spills into the crisp, harvest air, and ripe tomatoes hang like red jewels on tough, green vines,  the corn cribs will be full , and we’ll remember how this year’s Snow Horse had lingered well past June’s long green-meadow days into July.

Gift Buying for Picky Wife is Tricky Business

 My husband was browsing in the appliance department of a large downtown store when he ran into his friend Walt Stokums.  Walt was gazing bleary-eyed at a row of steam irons.

"Howdy, Walt!"  Dave slapped him on the back.  "Where's Connie?"

"Oh, she stayed home with the kids, so I could shop for her birthday present," Walt confided, offering Dave a clammy handshake.  

"Gonna' surprise the little woman with a new iron?"  Dave asked.

"Well, I don't know," Walt's voice trembled.  "Connie is so fussy.  She always returns whatever I pick out.  And if I get her anything useful, she thinks I'm making a statement about her housekeeping."

"You could get her something frivolous--like a new negligee," Dave winked.

"I tried that last year, but she exchanged it for a carpet sweeper."

"What about books?"

"Afraid not.  I'd have to bribe someone from Harlequin to smuggle a new potboiler off the press before the ink was dry.  Otherwise, she'd already have it."

"Doesn't she ever read anything else?'

"Only self-help books on home and time management.  But I know better than to give her one of those.  She already has a schedule on the bathroom mirror--five minutes is all I get to shower, dry my hair, and shave.  And if I leave lather in the sink, I lose thirty-five seconds of my breakfast time."

"Why don't you just take her out to dinner?"  Dave got practical.

"No way!  Connie has been on a diet since she was born.  Two years ago, I thought I had it made when I gave her a digital bathroom scale, but that really backfired.  For the next six months, we had nothing but green salad and Diet Coke for supper every night."

Walt's eyes were beginning to look like marbles, and he began to hyperventilate."

"Maybe you'd better come over here and sit down for a minute."   With the help of an eavesdropping clerk, Dave settled the distraught man in a straight-backed chair.

"Poor devil," my husband said to the clerk,  there's got to be some way we can help."  

In reply, the clerk leaned over and whispered something.

"I've got it!" Dave shouted, amazed that what seemed to be the perfect solution could be presented in just three words.  "A gift certificate, Walt.  You can give Connie a gift certificate.  Then she can get herself something she really wants!"

Walt sadly shook his head.  "That's exactly why I'm here.  I gave her a gift certificate this morning,  and she sent me back with it.  She wants me to use it on something to surprise her."

COUNTRY SERENITY CAN DRIVE YOU NUTS

 

“LAKESIDE REVIEW”

Around 1982

 

And so we moved—picked up our pots and pans, carted off our clothes and canned goods, bundled up our bedding, and trucked away the trappings of our suburban lifestyle, to settle far out in the country.

 

My husband was exuberant over the change.  “Ah, this is the life,” he jubilated with a gesture that encompassed a meadow-like expanse of unfenced green behind our newly built home.

 

I was not totally convinced.  “We’ll certainly have to be more organized down here,” I said, wondering if the grocery checkers at the now far-away market would miss my daily patronage.

 

“But, we’ll grow a bumper garden crop,” my optimistic spouse replied.  Picking up a brown clod, he let the fine warm sand trickle between his fingers.  “And it’s so peaceful here.”

 

“Way down here, we’ll have to budget more for gasoline,” I had to interject.

 

“We’ll go for walks in country air,” came his response.  He took a luxuriant breath and continued, “Just listen to the calm…”

 

I listened.  Two begoggled flies played Kamikaze pilot with my nose.  “We’ll have to buy a dozen No-Pest Strips.”

 

“But for such peace and quiet!  It’s a trade-off for tranquility.”

 

“There’ll be no more doorstep mail delivery,” I sighed.

 

“No more door-to-door salesmen,” he countered.

 

“No next-door neighbors,” I cried.

 

“No freeway noise, no airplane flight patterns, no recess bells at noon,” he rejoined in rapid fire.

 

I had the next part memorized.  I’d heard the words so many times before:  “Serenity.  We’ll sleep like babies, awakening refreshed.”

 

That evening we tried it out.  Turning off the bedroom light, I slipped between fresh sheets crisped by country air.  Cool shadows merged to inky black, and I marveled at the soothing absence of people-perpetuated noise.  Only a courting insect whispered chirrups to his mate.

 

But before I drifted off in awe of the almost perfect stillness of night, I opened one eye.  The moon had moved to a spot directly above our partially opened window, and I could see my tired husband where he sat bolt upright on the edge of the bed.  Dark circles of fatigue made purple splotches underneath his bleary eyes.

 

“That blasted cricket,” David groaned, “is driving me berserk!”

AEROBIC DANCING: '3s' TRYING TO BE '10s'

From "The Lakeside Review," a subsidiary of the "Standard Examiner" 

Anyone remember Bo Derek?  Good! I've been trying to forget her ever since my husband promised to watch the kids while I went to my aerobic dancing class.  Handing him a can of Similac and a pack of Pampers diapers,  I grabbed my gym bag and left the house, hoping to return looking just like that iconic star of the movie 10.

My friend Susan followed me through the gym's dressing room door.  Sitting on narrow plank benches between rows of pink lockers, we stowed our Mom jeans with our loose-fitting tunics.  Then, slipping on spandex leotards and tights, we both began to laugh.  Sue laughed at me because I curve in all the wrong places, and I laughed at her, because she doesn't curve at all.

Self consciously, we put our shirts back on and slunk out onto the dance floor to meet our instructor, the drop-dead gorgeous Miss Lindsay.

"She's gotta' be allergic to eating," I said, searching for a word to describe the kind of body proportions no one ever calls thin or skinny.

Just as we "dancers" lined up and dropped to our knees for the preliminary floor exercises, I got a Charlie horse and had to sit out all during the sit-ups.  

But I was proud to be back in the line-up for "berry pickers."

"This is easy," I said, my hands flat on the floor.

"You're not supposed to bend your knees," Miss Lindsay demurred.

After that, we were instructed to check our heart rate, but since I couldn't find mine, our mentor showed me how to slide two fingers "along your jawline to the appropriate spot for pulse counting."  Only when my knuckles kept getting detoured by my double chin, did I take Susan's advice.  "Just pick a number between one and a hundred," she suggested.

Suddenly, the room began to rock with the introductory fanfare of "The Star Wars Strut."  Mesmerized, I watched a series of breathtaking moves with names like the "C3PO Side Step" and the "R2D2 Robot Roundoff."  Soon I was huffing and puffing like Darth Vader, himself.  Beads of sweat soaked my body, while cool, svelte Miss Lindsay floated along looking like an advertisement for "Ice Blue Secret Deodorant."

An hour later, I stood in front of the locker room mirror, assessing the results of my recent workout.

"Well, what do you think?  Do I look like Bo Derek?"

Sue chose her words carefully,  "I think you need some corn rows in your hair."