Rock My World

Stone is the face of patience.       

Mary Oliver 

Even rocks have stories to tell,

deep old stories of time passing through eons, 

slow and fast moving water 

shape the stones over millennia. 

I have such a stone, ancient, from a creek bed in the Colorado Rockies. 

It fills my whole hand with its weightiness. 

Hefty. It feels hefty.

The color of dusky charcoal with white threadlike veins running around it,

tracing the paths of its life, telling the earth's story. But my stone has another story; the story of how it came into my life in the summer of 1982 during a family vacation through the west. 

My husband, our ten-year-old son and I had climbed an easy sloping mountain where we sat, all three of us, hushed by the beauty of it all, the vastness from on high. The only sound, the flapping of a bird's wings. We sat in awed silence for a while, we three, with our own thoughts before we made our way back down the mountain. Our son, always fearless, made it down way ahead of us. It seemed like we all were craving continued silence as we went our separate ways to explore the creek bed, remaining within sight of each other, but feeling no need to talk. 

The creek was lively, yet easy to navigate. As I waded the shallow waters, the rock caught my eye. It was sitting there alone, glistening, serene, tempting. I moved to pick it up, but hesitated for a second, not wanting to disturb it in its ancient bed. In the silence it seemed to call me; a connection on a cellular level that has stayed with us for 32 years.  

She's a good traveler. (I think of her as female.) There is always room for her in my suitcase. She went to Scotland with me where I picked up a couple of traveling companions, two pieces of green marble from Iona. On a tour of the Isle of Coll, we saw formations of gneiss, some of  the oldest rock on earth. I think she felt at home there. 

I look at her every day. I hold her every day. She  has been a silent witness to my journey. She's seen every emotion it's possible for a human to have. Sometimes I look to her for answers. She never has any. What she does have when I hold her in my hand is solidity. She takes me right back to that ancient silence, which gives me the space to be calm and focused. It's her never-ending gift to me. One that I never take for granted. 

The few steady influences in my life are very precious to me. She has been a most steadfast presence. She doesn't judge. She abides. 

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Making Soup

When I decided to write about making soup, I Googled one word. SOUP. I was astounded by the amount of information available on this subject. The varieties alone were staggering and the historical references copious. I found that this humble food has warmly and steadfastly accompanied man and womankind’s march through time. Soup in all of its guises, broth, pottage, bisque, gumbo, chowder, consommé, stew, porridge and even gruel has found its place in the story of the human race and it’s survival.

Picture early woman, kneeling by her cook fire dropping heated rocks into a stone bowl to bring the water to a boil, carefully adding the ingredients for the cattail, tuber and mammoth stew. Techniques improved through the ages but the fact remains, all of our ancestors used the simple method of cooking grains, vegetables and meats in liquid to make----SOUP! By utilizing the ingredients found in their regions each culture added a unique adaptation, but soup making has been around for as long as watertight containers.

Soup has been used to heal the sick, comfort the old and nourish the young. It can be prepared hot or cold, thick or thin. Soup can be the first course or served up as the entire meal, as simple as consommé or as complex as bisque. Both kings and beggars have inspired it and it is appreciated by everyone.

I come from a long line of soup makers. I recall the rich goodness of my Grandmother’s chicken and dumplings and the hearty brightness of my Mom’s vegetable soup. I grew up eating my sister’s chili and I still judge all other chilies by its measure. I remember my Dad introducing us to the oddly named but deliciously exotic matzo ball soup. To not make and eat soup would never occur to me. Therefore, it surprises me when people tell me they never make soup. I think some people believe making soup is akin to practicing alchemy, that there is a wizard locked in a tower room somewhere, jealously guarding the “soup secrets.” If there is, I’ve never been introduced to him and there is not a secret soup maker handshake, as far as I know. Soup making is not mysterious, it’s just soup.

For me, it is truly a freeform and creative way of cooking. When I make soup, I regard recipes as suggestions. They serve to give me a basic list of ingredients. They recommend flavors and textures that will enhance one another. They instruct in techniques and procedures. All the rest is gleefully and freely open to my interpretation of what that soup will be. The myriad ways to combine the meats, beans, vegetables, grains, pastas, fruits and spices is at my disposal. Only the supplies in my pantry and my own imagination limit the choice. I anticipate the layering of flavors, each ingredient releasing its essence to merge with the whole, creating a new taste. There is satisfaction in striking the perfect savory or spicy note and when the rich soupy aroma envelops the house it is ambrosia.

Vegetable soup, one of the first I can remember making is still one of my favorites. It was nothing complicated, beef, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes, maybe some celery, the vegetables of my Mom’s soup. My first attempt at making chicken noodle soup created a pallid, bashful version. Today my soups are more daring, more intense and like me more mature. Over the years my taste and sense of adventure has expanded and I relish experimenting with new ingredients and techniques. The vegetable soup I made thirty-five years ago would not be recognized as the steamy concoction I give that name to today and that too, is the beauty of soup. The endless combinations, the forgivingness of accuracy and the adaptability of soup are the things that make it so appealing.

Don’t be afraid to dive into the soup pot. Making soup is a joyful, liberating and warm expression of your own creativity that can be enthusiastically shared with your family and friends.

Diana for the Poplar Grove Muse

What Comforts Us

Recently I’ve been thinking about comfort and what that means to me. Amy mentioned in her last blog post that Steph has moved to Portland; to say she will be missed in our writing community and in our lives is the very definition of understatement. Steph had a difficult decision to make and leaving Bloomington was hard for her so I wanted to do something to help her transition. I sent her this quote in an email to be opened when she arrived: “Whenever I go on a trip, I think about all the homes I’ve had and I remember how little has changed about what comforts me." Brian Andreas Mostly True Collected Stories & Drawings.

After sending the quote to Steph, I began thinking about what brought me comfort. This led me to question the definition of comfort, so I looked it up. Thank you Merriam-Webster Online!

Main Entry: 1 com·fort
Pronunciation: \ˈkəm(p)-fərt\
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French cunforter, comforter, from Late Latin confortare to strengthen greatly, from Latin com- + fortis strong
Date: 13th century

1 : to give strength and hope to : CHEER 2 : to ease the grief or trouble of : CONSOLE

I realized that the thing that has brought me comfort consistently throughout my life fits both definitions. That thing for me is coffee.

I grew up in a chaotic, shifting environment. The only constant in my life was my maternal grandfather an inveterate coffee drinker. One of my first solid memories is of sitting on his lap at Grandma & Grandpa’s kitchen table. He’s drinking coffee and has made me a cup of my own, mostly milk with a little coffee and a lot of sugar. I remember feeling very grown up having my own cup of coffee. Their kitchen table was small and covered in a red checkered oil cloth. Grandpa used an ivory colored mug, its surface paint crackled like the lines on the back of his neck. I used one of Grandma’s tea cups because it wasn’t too heavy for my tiny hands. Coffee is forever bound to the feelings of safety, hope, strength and ease that I associated with Grandpa. He was a man who always had time for each of his ten grandchildren; a man who somehow knew what each of us needed and made us each secretly feel that we were his favorite. For me, he had patience. He knew that I needed downtime from my household of drama. He would take me to Miller’s Dairy for ice cream and never once tell me to hurry up no matter how long it took me to choose chocolate every time.

When I was twelve, Mother taught me how to make a great pot of coffee in our Pyrex glass stove top percolator. It felt like a rite of passage. I know I was twelve because that was the year Grandpa died. I can close my eyes and still smell the difference between that brewed coffee and Grandpa’s instant Sanka.

I always feel immediately at home when I walk into someone’s house and they offer me a cup of coffee. It feels very congenial. My surrogate mother, Dorothy Young, always had her stainless steel Hamilton Beach percolator going, the coffee inside the glass knob on the lid bubbling away happily. That coffee pot produced its own unique aroma that I remember well also. Her home and her coffee always brought me comfort.
.
There is a coffee concoction that Grandpa taught me how to make: Coffee Bread. In a shallow bowl you place two slices of buttered bread (in those days it was Wonder Bread and what Grandma called oleo), sprinkle a little sugar on them, then pour about a half mug of milky coffee over it, and eat with a big
spoon. That recipe probably sounds weird to most people, but about twice a year I make Coffee Bread for myself. I sit with it and savor it and am comforted by it. Some times when I make it I wonder what inspired this concoction and I think it was probably a poor man’s dessert for someone who raised four children during the Great Depression.

Rituals are very important in my life and I love the ritual of making the coffee, preparing my own cup with just the right balance of milk and sweetener, and sitting with the cup in both hands, savoring the aroma. It feels very luxurious just to take the time to sit with my coffee. It takes me back to the days when Grandpa had all the time in the world to sit on his front porch swing with a little girl, watching the lightening bugs in the garden and listening to the katydids.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Packing Up

My house is a mess. Newspaper shreds flutter about and I can’t find anything. Three things I’ve already packed away (at the bottom of the box) are things I want today. Moving is tough stuff.

This move was not self-initiated. The mother ship decided I needed to be a West-coast girl. I decided I needed my job. And so the hubby and I uproot ourselves again. We’ll test the soil, water and light in a new habitat. It’s hard to yank myself out of ground I thought I would never leave.

Not all about the move is sad or unwelcome. We’ll be close to oceans and mountains and great mass transit. We dream new adventures. We let stuff go. We begin again.

I’d like to say that I balance this tension of excitement and loss. Some days I do. Some days I cry privately in 30-second bursts. I resist slipping away quietly and choose, instead, to say goodbye to friends. That hurts.

To get through, I do what I can. I’m more patient with the hubby (and myself). I tie up a few newspaper-wrapped teacups with ribbon. It will make me smile in a few weeks when I unpack the box and think about the people who drank tea with me.

~Stephanie W, for the Poplar Grove Muse