Spoons and Pins

It is only the modern

that ever becomes old-fashioned.

-Oscar Wilde

Due to a generous bonus from an oil company client, I treated myself to a KitchenAid stand mixer this Christmas. It's enormous and has all the attachments and hooks and motors. It's also still in its box. Until I have need of making meringue or homemade whipped cream, it's staying there.

Kid you not. I am not crazy about noisy kitchen gadgets. I am over-the-moon crazy for quiet old spoons. This weekend I bought another ancient wooden spoon to add to my growing collection of ancient wooden spoons. I have several that are hand-carved. I have others that are worn smooth and thin with time. All of them wordlessly brag of generations of care and use. I wrap my fingers around their handles and wonder where they came from. What they've made. I wonder whose birthday cake they mixed. Whose soup they stirred. Whose bottom they paddled. (wink)

And please don't get me started on rolling pins. I collect wooden ones, of course. Just the wooden ones. They're so romantic; one glance tells you someone... somewhere... used these beauties to fill a pie safe and feed their sweetheart. I imagine cherry pies with lattice tops and golden buttermilk biscuits and thick, crumbly sugar cookies and bubbly chicken pot pies and hot, fried peach pockets. I can just picture the pin in a drain board, all clean and dripping, as its family scoots up to the old farmhouse table to eat their dinner and grin their grins.

Tell me that's not more romantic than a noisy KitchenAid mixer. Yes, I'm looking forward to adding to the legacy of my spoons and pins. It's only the modern that ever becomes old fashioned, after all....

(Side Note: Please be sure to get in on the chance to win a FREEMAN HOUSE CARE PACKAGE by helping our friends at A Place to Bark. You just may find yourself the winner of an antique rolling pin to go with that book and apron! See sidebar for details.)

Monday Moment: The Deception

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

-Proverbs 31:30

Oh, but we're all about the charm and the beauty. To us... even as Christians... the measure of a woman is her beauty and charm.

I've been giving this some thought lately. With my marriage over and buried a year ago this past weekend, folks around me are strongly encouraging me to get back into the dating scene. Over Christmas, even family and friends bombarded me with: Are you seeing anyone? and, I've found the perfect guy for you! Yeah. Sure you have. I've laughed.

Yesterday a friend asked me, What ARE you looking for in a guy, Brin? I paused and then gave my standard Patty Griffin answer: "strong and kind and clever". And what should he be looking for in you? my wise friend asked. This time I paused but said nothing.

It's a shame, I think. As we raise our children, we teach them to look for someone smart. Mannerly. Beautiful. We coach them to find someone with good teeth or hair... a good work ethic... good automobiles... good families. We encourage our sons to find a pretty girl... especially one who can cook or isn't afraid to work. We tell our daughters to go after the quarterback... or at least not to settle for an unattractive man who treats her poorly or won't spend money on her.

And those things are important. To all of us. But they're not the point. We're missing the point entirely. We're tossing dozens of arrows at the target and missing the bulls eye. We're buying the deception and gift wrapping it for those around us. We're entrusting our family tree to diploma-carrying, pressed-khaki-wearing, Comedy Central-watching, income-potential-offering young people who have no willingness or desire to exemplify the single characteristic we should be crying out for: a person who fears the Lord.

Where am I going with this? I'm going here: we have it all wrong. As we look at ourselves in the mirror, our potential or current partners out of the corner of our eye, and our family trees down the line, we're still scribbling "charm" and "beauty" at the top of our must-have lists. We're placing far too much emphasis on the external at the expense of the eternal. We're becoming shallow, in this world and of it people who dishonor our God by the priorities we choose and the people we chase.

Strong, kind, and clever. Hmm. I do want a man like that. And charming and beautiful? I want to be that girl, too. But above all, my heart and my family tree cries out for someone who fears the Lord. Where are these people?

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a significant other... a child... a friend... an in-law... an ordinary man or ordinary woman... who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Monday Moment is a little devotional to help kick-start your week. See you again next time!

UPDATE: Please read the comments to this post for clarification(s)!

Strawberry Sugar Bread

There are some days, you understand - days when Old Man Winter shakes an icy, gnarled finger at you - that you simply must shake a finger back. Today is such a day.

Start by digging deep, deep down in the freezer for the strawberries you lovingly grew, picked, and hulled back in June. Plop them into the prettiest old bowl you have and let them thaw. Gently crush with a fork until you have one cup of mushed strawberries. Tip into a saucepan and cook, over medium heat, until just boiling. Cook one minute more, then remove from heat and cool.

Now assemble the following: 1 3/4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, one teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. (Not bacon powder.) Dump the lot of it into a sifter, if you wish, and sift. Close your eyes and rest against your warm counter top and listen to the old sifter scrape powdery heaps into your pretty old bowl. Decide you're happy.

Take your happiness and find 1/3 cup butter (softened) and 3/4 cup sugar and beat until fluffy. To that, add 2 eggs (room temperature) and 1/3 cup (minus 1 teaspoon) of water. Fill the teaspoon - the one you just dumped the water out of - with vanilla extract. Mix it all in with the butter and sugar.

Lovely. Now add your butter mixture to the pile of dry ingredients and mix. Over it, pour the cooled, crushed summer strawberries and a 1/3 cup pecans or walnuts. (Toast them if you wish, or leave them out altogether - your preference.) Now combine it all thoroughly, spoon into a greased baking dish, and bake at 350 F for one hour.

Poor Old Man Winter. He stands no chance against fresh, buttered Strawberry Sugar Bread. Especially when it's accompanied by a steaming cup of tea in a warm kitchen....

Hoping happiness and warmth find and hold you this weekend. -Brin

So Much To Miss

Seems as though your house... and your things... always look different when you return home. I'm such a stuff person, although I want desperately not to be. When I'm far away, I catch myself missing things. Things like my pretty, white dishes. My flowers. My clothes and clothespins and clothesline. My clawfoot tub. My comforter and pillow. My desk with all its papers and books and calendars and files and clutter.


I miss the food, too. My own cooking. I miss my oven and its warm, homemade cookies. I miss fresh, speckled eggs. I miss my aprons and cookbooks and worn wooden spoons. I miss sitting at the piano and hearing this music leave my fingers and float throughout the house, filling every nook and corner and gap in the floor boards...

It's funny to me how ... when I was fourteen?... how badly I hated learning this Sonatina (Clementi, Opus 36, Number 1 - performed here by Szokolay). Now it's one of my favorites, and one of the first to be played when I don't have sheet music to read from. It's locked in my brain somehow, this piece of melodic chaos. It's just as much a part of my life as my brothers... my elbows... and my college diploma are.

Anyway. It's good to be home. There's so much to miss when one's away, isn't there? So, so much...

Where I'm Headed...

It's not where you are today that counts.

It's where you are headed.

-Arthur Lenehan

...and I'm headed home to Freeman House. You know, until Monday anyway. I plan to make a bundt cake and that jam I was talking about. I plan to see friends and take long soaks in the old clawfoot tub and plant garlic and these heirloom roses I ordered over the holiday.

After I'm done with all that, I'm going to knit this gauzy wrap and wander around the house, all clean and ethereal and at peace. (Because that's how days are at Freeman House, and I miss that.) And if you come knocking and I don't answer, it's likely because I'm piled high in my fluffy, iron bed with a book and the remote.

Oh no. It's not where we are right now that counts. It's where we're headed. See you in a few days! -Brin

A Break of the Highest Order...

Off on break, folks. The trouble with a messy, thrilling life is that it is messy and it is thrilling. And it never stops... only pauses as people get on and off the ride. (Laughing)

Will explain later and be back as I can.

(And for those who are wondering, yes. This is their new china.)

Freeman House Journal: January 10, 2005

It's cold in this old house. The window's broken in the study... the top, middle pane. Looks as if a bird or a rock or a fist flew through it, leaving jagged shards as a reminder of the assault. I wonder how long it's been that way. Twenty years? Fifty? Ninety? I'll try to tape it up tomorrow.

I suppose it would help if this place had electricity. Insulation. Old newspapers stuffed in the wooden walls. Something. I moved my iron bed into the former dining room/sitting room/bedroom, the warmest room in the house, and am under all the covers I have. Mae is under here with me. I wonder who's trying to get warmth from whom.

We painted the old woodwork between the entry hall and the "great room" today, Mae and I did. (I'm still calling it the "great room" because I have no idea what purpose the room will serve.) Lori told me it's the room Miss Freeman lived in before she left and died. I guess as she got older and more brittle, Miss Freeman shut up one room, then another, then another, until her life was confined to the great room, nearest the front door, and the bath. I wonder if she knew how badly the roof leaked in the back hall, or what a mess her roses in the yard had become. It must have been a very small world she lived in, here inside this house.

But I know Lori's right about this being Miss Freeman's last room. There are rocking chair impressions rutted into the linoleum. An old phone list thumb-tacked to the wall, right between two white frame shadows on the peach sheetrock. It's odd to stare at those marks where the pictures used to hang. I get a strange feeling, like I'm seeing something I shouldn't. I wonder what - or who - looked out from those frames. There are no other nail holes in the walls, just those inside the frame stains.

Of course, Miss Freeman wasn't the only one whose life played out in this house. Tonight, right after it got dark, I made my way to the front door and its cold, slick windows. I wondered, as I leaned against them, who else had stood in my same position, a hundred years before, and pressed their forehead and palms to the glass, watching. Waiting. I wondered whose feet had worn footprints into the floor boards. Whose fingers had turned the old brass knobs and lost the skeleton keys that locked them tight. I wondered what I would think of these people and what they would think of me. This may be my house now, but I still share it. I share it with rooms full of memories and lives that have gone before.

I'm tired. Tired of working and tired of thinking. And my fingers are too cold to write anymore. Hopefully tomorrow will be warmer and I can make some headway on clearing out that back cabinet. I hope, anyway.

Adelante,
B

(The entry in my Freeman House Renovation Journal, three years ago today.)

Cookery Abandon and Anticipation

Cooking is like love.

It should be entered into with abandon.

-Harriet Van Horne

My, but we cooked and ate well at Freeman House in 2007! Going through some pictures over the holidays, I couldn't believe how many I had of food. And the garden. It was a great year for several things: potatoes, squash, strawberries and tomatoes. The herbs were wonderful, too, and the freezer is full to its frosty top with homemade pesto and stewed berries and tomato sauce. At least I hope it still is. It was when I was there last. (Wink)

I'm eager to be home and cooking again. And taking pictures again. I've been extremely unhappy with the pictures I've taken over the past year. They've gotten better, but they're not good. I went to the trouble of writing one of my favorite bloggers over Christmas and got some photography advice. What camera to buy, what lens to train on, what manual to use. I always said I liked taking pictures because it was impulsive: see something quaint or quirky or quiet and snapsnapsnap. No thought to it... just see and snap. I'm afraid that now that I'm actually having to try to do it right I'll stop enjoying it. Yick. If that happens we're going back to poorly composed, blurry shots. That's all there is to it.

It'll be fun to see. It'll be amusing to watch this year as recipes are tried and perfected and sampled and shared. I'm already excited just thinking of it.

Until then, I wanted to thank you all properly for the food love in 2007. For those who tried things along with me... thanks. You tickled me strawberry-smoothie pink. And for those who have yet to join in, I promise we'll find a stirring of something that will be worth jumping into the kitchen for. I just know there will be.

[More information for April, and those who've asked: the camera I've used for all my pictures is this one. Great for landscape shots; crap for anything else. Especially close ups. The camera I have my eye on (and the one Lisa uses) is this. (Gulp.) I'll probably end up with this, or something like it. We'll see.]

Book Love, Love, Love

A good book is the best of friends,

the same today and forever.

-Martin Farquhar Tupper

My job is nonstop. I'm sure many of you know how that is, whether you mind house or mind a boss. In the oil and gas industry, companies pay handsomely but for that they require your soul. Or so it seems lately.

But tonight there's a thunderstorm and I'm finished before 7 PM and I have a stack of books waiting, thanks to a midnight madness order off Amazon. So before I'm off to read, let's talk books, shall we?

The book above, The Thirteenth Tale, is astounding. I'm only on chapter three, because I picked it up last night after completing a 63-page report, but so far it may be my favorite book. And I mean ever. I adore it. Whatever may come next, I want it carefully noted that the first few chapters of this took me to a world I don't want to leave. The narrative is seamlessly sloppy, which I love, and strong. It sings. I can't wait to get under the covers and drink more in.

Then there's this gem: Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant. Even the title makes me giggle. And everyone's raving over it. I've read bits and pieces of it... here and there. Have any of you read it through? It's hard to put down, but I managed somehow and now I wish I hadn't. But it's to be continued very, very soon.

A journal I've been working through for almost a year now... Finding God in the Broken Places. Don't pretend you don't have them, broken places. We all do. When I've been open, and ready to heal, I've found it's really spoken to and encouraged me. Maybe it will you, too.

And oh. The Crafter's Companion. Beg, borrow, or buy this... or steal a friend's copy. You won't be sorry. She will, but you won't. This baby will have any crafter slobbering and gasping and clapping and ... craving a new project. I love books like this one.

And this. Knitting Nell. Talk about mattering. Any girl, young or old, who does or wants to knit should have this book. I read it several times a week and the end almost makes me cry everytime. Even on the twelveteenth time. Besides Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, it's my favorite children's book.

Oh gosh. I'd hang around and talk book love but I'm zonked and my current paper fling is calling. Let me know about your loves and current crushes, too. We'll dish. -Brin

Monday Moment: You Should Know...

I know some days it feels like you're just one of the crowd.

As the days come and days go, you're busy blowing this way and bending that.

Just trying to make it through the week.

Trying to stifle the hurt or outlast this illness or pay that bill...

...or not go crazy.

And sometimes you wish... you just wish...

that someone would look you in the eye and see you.

See your life for what you're really going through.

Feel your days like you're feeling them now.

Brave it all with you.

It would be a relief to be noticed.
Focused on.
Heard.
Not that you feel you deserve it, but because you need it.

But perhaps you know. Surely you do:
You are not just one of the crowd.
Not to the One who made you.
As you're blowing and bending, He's supporting and holding.
As you're longing to be seen, He's already watching.
As you're feeling the weight of your days, He's feeling it, too.
(Just think of how heavy they'd be if He weren't there.)
And when you're all out of brave... when you're on your last laugh...
He has one. You can borrow His.

Beautiful you.
You who are special, seen, and appreciated.
Today. Right now.
Not for what you do but for who (Whose) you are.

You’re not alone. You and your cares aren’t forgotten.
And they won’t be.
Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

Just thought you should know.

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. -Isaiah 49:15-16

(Pictures taken at and around Freeman House, 2007.)
Monday Moment is a little devotional to help kick start your week. See you again next Monday!

Simply Dreaming... Or Is It Dreaming Simply?

Our life is frittered away by detail...

simplify, simplify.

-Henry David Thoreau

Can you believe this 'wall tent' Bed & Breakfast that MaryJane has dreamed up? I was looking at these pictures from her site today, and with each and every click I would squeal louder and louder. I suppose for some of you, accommodations like this would be torture. For me, I'm thinking heaven.

Just beautiful.

I was talking to my Dad today... telling him I was thinking of buying a little land and moving Freeman House to the middle of a meadow or something. Maybe it's being out here in all this open air, but it makes me yearn for ... space. For somewhere to plant acres of flowers and ramble about and splash through a brook and soak up sunshine... real, middle-of-nowhere sunshine.

My Dad was quick to point out that moving a house like Freeman House would cost a fortune. "Well, I'm not about to part with the old thing," I said defiantly. He shrugged.

Hmmm, I thought. Maybe I could just build a little tent like MaryJane's with an outdoor kitchen and such....

Don't put it past me. There's something powerfully attractive to the idea of waking up amongst this:

Bet I couldn't take my piano, though. Ah well. It's just dreams. Just an overwhelming desire to simplify and beautify and savor my life... not just fritter it away into a thousand inconsequential details....

More on Mattering

I just loved the comments from yesterday's post. If you haven't read them, you're missing the best part of this blog. As they came in, I felt like a kid at a candy shop... like I was in a room full of sweet, sweet things. Thank you for them all.

Thinking more about the mattering thing today, and how easy it is to get totally absorbed in ourselves and our lives. It's like water spiraling down the bathtub drain - the days just have this way of sucking me into their minutes and minutia. Before I know it, hours... days... months... are gone and there's nothing to show for them. I don't know about you, but I believe we were all created by a loving God who has a specific purpose in mind for each of us. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord... reads Jeremiah 29:11. I hate the idea of not fulfilling His plan... not being all He meant for me to be... because I'm so taken with myself, my hobbies, and my things. Guess it's really weighing heavy on my heart this year.


Maybe that's why I love to read stories of people who find a way - in their daily lives - to matter. People like Bernie Berlin (that's her, with the kitten). She founded and runs A Place to Bark, a "no kill foster and adoption rescue dedicated to the welfare of animals". I love her and her place. Like so many of you said in your comments, it's not about changing the world, it's about changing lives - one life, even. And Bernie saves sweet animal lives. She can't do it alone, though. She needs old towels, blankets, food, treats... anything. For her mailing address, or other ways you can help Bernie matter, visit her help center here.

There are as many ways to spread hope as there are people to spread it. Whether you have more time, money, or love, there are a zillion ways a day to matter. That's so encouraging, I think. Sometimes a hug is all it takes. Sometimes a phone call. Sometimes a few boxes of Mac 'n' Cheese to a food bank. Other times it's a homemade meal or a ride or a shoulder to bawl on. Sometimes it's as simple as telling someone they're appreciated... not for what they do, but for who they are.

Which brings me back to y'all and all the comments. I wanted to say again, before I got off on Bernie and soldiers and shoulders, that I truly appreciate you all. You're such an encouragement and for that and a thousand other reasons, you matter to me. -Brin

Resolution: To Matter

I'm from Texas and I make my living in the oil and gas business. Needless to say, I work for and with people who have a lot of money. I was reminded of this today. Angela got a diamond-studded Rolex for Christmas. Randy flew his private plane to Houston for New Year's. "What did you do Christmas?" asked Diana, my co-worker, at lunch today.

I told her, ending with: "... and we drove around Christmas night looking at lights."

"Oh!" she breathed. "We did too! We got one of those Hummer limousines with a fireplace and water walls and went to that display in Grand Prairie." And that was after they spent $600 on lunch, apparently, at the Gaylord Texan.

"Six hundred dollars!" I gasped, immediately thinking two things: What in the world did you eat that they could charge $600 for? And: Crap. Six hundred bucks would feed me for a year!

All week I've been listening to what my multi-millionaire buddies are going to buy this year. Where they're going to vacation. What yacht or ATV or car or TV they're going to get. And it's cool, I guess. Gosh knows I have my eye on appliances for my kitchen and a trip to England. But after a while... after all the stuff is unloaded and all the new becomes old... isn't it bound to feel... well, a little empty?

"I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful," Marilyn Monroe said. I thought of that quote when I was making my new year's resolutions for this year. Do you make resolutions? I do. Sometimes I keep them and sometimes I don't. Last year I did, so I'm hoping to make it a two-in-a-row type of deal in 2008. Yep, I sat down Tuesday with a pencil and thought and thought. I'd write something down, then I'd erase it. I'd write something else down, then I'd mark it out. I'd scribble other words, then I'd crumple up the paper and start again. What is it you want to achieve? I kept asking myself. Who is it you want to be? And finally I wrote one down. Just one. The paper read:

New Year's Resolutions:

1. To matter.

It suprised me, I think. It wasn't a resolution I'd been planning. What an enormous thing to resolve yourself to. It almost made me cry. I mean, what in this world could be more significant than to matter?

So here's Matter Project #1: handmade pillow cases and toiletry items for a women's shelter in Texas and a children's church camp in Mexico. It's not much, but it's what I can handle on the road. I'm collecting small items... hotel sizes are great... in shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hairbrushes, etc., and packaging them in pretty pillowcases and shipping them out April 1st. In plenty of time for summer mayhem. My first bit of fabric (it takes a yard for a pillowcase) is from Purlsoho. And I'm already hitting up my traveling co-workers for supplies from their hotel rooms.

Crazy? Yeah. Guess I am. But I'd probably do something stupid with a Rolex anyway... like drop it in the toilet. And private little planes make me nervous... JFK Jr. and all. And my favorite place to eat will always be Chili's. Six hundred dollars can buy a lot of Chicken Tacos. So I suppose I'll be here, sewing pillowcases and tying tiny shampoo bottles with ribbon and trying... in some small way... to matter.

New Year's Ramble...

I hope you love birds too. It is economical.

It saves going to heaven.

- Emily Dickinson

Although Emily Dickinson's my favorite poet, and I've spent hour upon mellifluous hour reading her verses, I've never understood this poem. I like it, but never quite understood it. What did she mean when she said loving birds is economical? And why would a love of birds ever save going to heaven? It all sounds a bit reckless and irreverent. Ah well. I appreciate Emily's terse, morose mind... and I do like birds. So there. Guess we've covered that.

I only thought of Emily and the bird poem today because it seems this same little creature has perched around since New Year's Eve. First he was in the melting snow outside the front door. Then I spotted him with several buddies in the backyard tree. Now he's on the hose hanger just outside my bedroom balcony. Curious fellow. I'm wondering if all the dancing and laughing and praying in the midnight snow turned me into some sort of Mary Lennox. Or perhaps just gave me a touch of the flu. Which would explain why I've spent an entire blog post rambling on about literature and birds.

Anyway, hope your January first was lovely. I'm looking forward to this new year we have together. I hope you love it too. It will be economical. It will not, however we may try, save going to heaven. Just thought you should know.