Kaymusings

In the book, Victories in the Valleys of Life, by Charles Allen, he shares this poem by an unknown author.

I’ve dreamed many dreams that never came true.
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn.
But I’ve realized enough of my dreams, thank God,
To make me want to dream on.

I’ve prayed many prayers when no answer came
When my hopes and my faith were almost gone,
But answers have come to enough of my prayers
To make me keep praying on.

I’ve trusted many a friend that failed
And left me to weep alone,
But I’ve found enough of my friends true blue
To make me keep trusting on.

I’ve sown many seeds that fell by the way
For the birds to feed upon
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hand,
To make me keep sowing on,

I’ve drained the cup of disappointment and pain,
IU’ve gone many days without a song.
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of life
To make me want to live on.

“This was a woman’s pride, to have a recipe worth stealing. To this end my mother hid her scrapbook,” Gail Anderson Dargatz wrote in The Cure for Death by Lightning.

This statement intrigued me because I was not used to the idea of having a secret recipe that someone else would envy and try to duplicate. I think it’s flattering to be asked for one of my recipes and I share them freely.

I started to talk to people about the idea of secret recipes and asked questions such as, “Do you have a secret recipe? Did your mom have one? Can you tell me a story about a secret recipe?”

One woman, Jackie, told me that her sister-in-law’s family made special nut rolls and were very willing to give out the recipe but the nut rolls never tasted quite the same as those the family made. Finally she found out that there was a secret ingredient, a liquor, and the family didn’t want others to know that they had used it in their baking, so they never included it in the recipe.

Jack told me that his mom made nice big molasses cookies. He would ask her for the recipe and she would always say, “I don’t know. I just make them.” He tried many ways to make those cookies but he was never able to get the cookies to be like the ones his mom made.

Mildred had a similar memory. “Mom made the best meatloaf and meat patties,” she told me. “But she would never tell us how she did it. ‘I just use a pinch of this and a pinch of that,’ she’d say.

No secret recipes for her, Amelia says. She has shared her special recipes with her family and one of her grandchildren put them into a family booklet so that her whole family could enjoy them.

Virginia has a friend who won’t share recipes. She always says, “I don’t give out my recipes!” Her friend likes the idea of having something that she can do that someone else can’t do. “It gives me a ‘let down’ feeling when my friend refuses to share her good recipes,” Virginia says.

It can be vexing to ask for a recipe only to be told that it’s a secret. Or it can bring back fond memories of favorite family foods that can no longer be shared because the recipe was stored only in the maker’s memory.

Do you have a secret recipe?

As a Hospice volunteer I am sometimes asked to visit patients who welcome visits. For the most part, I volunteer time in working at the Garden of Life, but I enjoy visiting people, too.

When I was asked to visit this older man, something prompted me to ask if Rusty could go with me. Rusty loves people and is a great ice breaker when I meet new people. It turned out that he was very willing for Rusty to come. He had dogs all through the years but is without a pet right now.

Rusty took to him right away and he really enjoys Rusty’s visit. I’m glad that I thought about taking Rusty with me. It’s not only good for my new friend, it’s been very good for Rusty, too.

Just a few days ago I moved my old rocking chair from a place where it’s inconvenient for me to sit when I have a few minutes to a light, airy place in my new sun room. Now it really is a good place to relax and perhaps read the newspaper or a book.

Moving the old rocking chair sparked memories. It was 1959 and my husband and I had just become parents of our first baby. She was a beautiful baby and we were both thrilled to have her. We wanted to be the best parents ever. When she got her days and nights mixed up and slept all day and stayed awake all night and wanted to be held, it became apparent that we really needed a rocking chair for my comfort and hers. He went to a second hand store and bought this rocking chair.

These are things I thought I would remember forever but now I discover that the specifics are fuzzy. How much did it cost? I can’t remember! But, it was just a couple of dollars if it was that much. My mind says it was a quarter, but then I think, “No, it had to be a little more than that.” It was not in very good condition, and here’s something else I can’t remember. The caned reed bottom was broken, but did he buy it with a wooden board nailed over the broken bottom, or did he put the wooden panel over the broken place? I don’t know, but for years I used the rocking chair with the wooden panel tacked over the broken reed caning. I spent many hours that first year rocking my baby in that chair. I painted it a bright cheerful pink color and decorated it a bit and I rocked a lot.

We had three more babies and I rocked them all in that rocker. I got tired of that pink color and painted it more conservatively. And then I learned to do caning! I took the wooden seat off of it and put a proper caned seat into it. I really felt proud of myself when I learned to cane and repaired my rocking chair like that.

It’s been years since I rocked babies in that rocker but I still have a real fondness for it, because of the memories of rocking my little ones, and the satisfaction I felt in learning how to repair the seat.

I think I’ve found a very good place for my old rocking chair and I intend to relax and enjoy rocking in its new location.

We brought this rocking chair home in 1959.

Spartansburg Fairgrounds in early September

I am often intrigued with clouds, –not in the sense of weather watching, but from the artistic point of view. Often I see cloud formations that make me think, “If I painted that scene just as I see it, people would think it was unreal. They wouldn’t believe it was depicting something real.”

These clouds hovered over Spartansburg Fairgrounds in early September. It was a cool, rather windy day. The picture was taken in late morning but the fairgrounds seem to be in deep shadow. The clouds, I think, are gloriously beautiful.

Yesterday I went with a group to tour our rural areas to enjoy the changing colors of the leaves.  We have had heavy cloud cover for days and it’s been rainy many of the days.  We haven’t had full sunlight very often in the last couple weeks.  We did enjoy the scenery but we knew that it would be even more beautiful if the sun had been shining, lighting up the flaming yellows, oranges and reds.

We’ll have bright sunshine again some day and there are a number of really beautiful trees right here near my home.

It was good to be with people and enjoy time together.

Light coming through the windows splashes colors on the wall.

I have always enjoyed seeing stained glass windows.  So much artistry goes into them

These windows are part of the church I attend.  I especially enjoy seeing the colors from the windows being cast on the wall and nearby pews.  The picture shows the darkened church with the light coming through the windows and the shadow colors splashed on the wall.

Stained glass windows are beautiful.

This is the kitty that I wrote about earlier.  At this point, it does look like a “sweet kitty” as Sally suggested.  She wasn’t after birds, she was really very thirsty.

I tried several ways to get a picture of this puzzle without any glare on it but I just couldn’t do it.  This was one of the better ones.  I plan to try to get a picture another time, taking the puzzle into another room and during daylight and see if I can minimize the glare.  But this gives you an idea of the difficulty in getting all these eggs put together correctly.  There were three eggs of each pattern, though there may have been one which was just two.  I’m not sure now.  You could see from the puzzle piece which egg it would go to, but since there were three alike, you still didn’t really know which one.  The dark areas between eggs were hard to do because they might go in just about any of the dark areas.  But, it was fun.  I loved working with Pysanky eggs and I really did enjoy doing this puzzle.

This is Rusty in the car, ready to enjoy a ride, but this post isn’t about Rusty in the car.  I don’t have a picture of Rusty on our morning walk, but this picture shows something of how alert Rusty is and I think his intelligence shows, too.  This post is about Rusty letting me know what he wants.

For most of the time that I have been taking Rusty on a long walk, we have gone west on Pleasant Street to the high school, then we walked around the school and down to South Street and returned to our home that way.  But in the last month, I’ve been walking him to the high school and then back home the way we came, on Pleasant Street.

On Thursday, he absolutely insisted that he wanted to walk down to South Street and go home along that route.  At first I intended to stick with my plan but then I realized that he really wanted to go home the old way, and what difference did that really make to me?  So we walked home on the old route.

This morning, he did it again, –when we left the high school, he headed to South Street, without any resistance from me.  He knows and remembers well where we cross the street, the vacant lot filled with tall grass and weeds, which he loves to walk through and sniff the tantalizing odors, and where we return to the other side of the street again.

I would expect a young child to let me know that he had a preference as to where we would walk, but it really surprised me to discover that Rusty has a definite preference and he let me know about it.  I like knowing this.