Zucchini Bread (Honoring my Grandmother's Passing)

That night I baked Zucchini bread from her recipe, four small loaves, and lit a green candle in the top of one.

“Are we having a party because she died?” my six year old son asks.

“We’re lighting a candle to honor her life,” I said.

“Oh,” he adds, “that’s what I meant.”

Isaiah, at three, wants to know if I am still friends with her even though she’s dead. 

“Yes,” I tell him, “she’s still my friend.”

Levi, also three, is confused about exactly who has died and where she is now and how she’ll get back to us.  He asked me the day before as we lay in the grass under the canopy of blue, “How does things die, Mommy?” 

I told him about hearts and lungs and strokes.

He understands that dead things stop moving and that’s enough to know for now. 

My daughter suggests that the person most closely related to my grandma should get the first slice of bread.

“That’s me,” I said.

She smiles, “I thought so.”

My grandmother never put chocolate chips in her zucchini bread like I do, but she often added nuts.  At the bottom of the shakily written recipe she wrote, “may add nuts or raisins.” 

I smiled when I read this, she knew how I hate nuts and raisins in baked goods.  I wished I could pick up the phone and call her, tease her a little about how No One In Their Right Mind puts nuts or raisins in their bread or cookies.  It’s hard for me still to believe she’s not there to answer, that the envelope with three recipes that came in the mail weeks ago is the last I’ll ever receive from her.

Someday, soon maybe, I’ll write about how I lived next door to her when I was little.  I was her strawberry girl and she blew cool breezes down the back of my dress during long, hot, Sunday morning services and lifted the sweaty hair off of my neck with her always cool hands. 

For now, though, we made the bread, we lit a candle and prayed.

The next morning I wrapped two loaves in saran wrap and tin foil, labeled them with a permanent marker, and put them in the freezer, just like she always did.

“Us saving them for winter time?” Levi asks. 

“Yes,” I say, “for winter.”    

This post is linked with the #TellHisStory community.

Did you know we're starting a book club?  Click over to read more about it and enter for a chance to win a FREE COPY of our first book.

Let Your Life Speak (1st Edition of the Wild Flowers Book Club)

Last week I added a new tab on the blog announcing the plan to start a private online book club for anyone interested in joining.  You can read all about that HERE.  This week I want to announce our first book and offer you a chance to win a free copy!  

Sharing stories of frailty and strength, of darkness and light, Palmer shows that vocation is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received. (from the book jacket)

If I could, I would give this book to every twenty-something graduating from college, especially those graduating from a Christian college.  

It's also the book I would recommend to my mid-life friends struggling with meaning, purpose and disillusionment in their current careers.  I would suggest it to the many women I know stepping out of years of intense care-giving with young children and wondering what comes next.   

For those whose lives have turned out drastically different than they expected or hoped, I would also recommend this book as well as to those sensing something like the Spirit within them awakening something new, the heart of which they they cannot yet discern.

I've used stories and quotes from Let Your Life Speak in teaching and preaching, have dog-eared, underlined and post-it noted its pages.  The spine on my copy is broken.  Are you getting the picture?  I really love this book :)

I love it because Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher, author and activist, leads by example, telling the story of his own difficult journey toward vocation with deep honesty and self-deprecating humor.  Palmer resists the temptation to write a prescription for vocation, instead opting to offer an example of his own listening and the bits of wisdom and insight gained along the way.  

Interested?  These are the details:

The book has six chapters so our book club will run for six to seven weeks (depending how things unfold).  It will be hosted in a private Facebook group so our conversation will not be public.  You will need to "friend" me on Facebook so I can add you to the group if you want to participate.  

Monday, September 22 will be our official start date, which should give plenty of time to order, win or borrow a copy of the book.  We'll plan to discuss one chapter a week and be done by the end of October/beginning of November. 

Every Monday I'll post a quote from the chapter under discussion as a starting point for conversation.  On Wednesdays I'll invite those interested to post a quote they especially liked or that raised questions for them, that way YOU can help lead the discussion.  The best part about online book discussion is that you can check in and comment or reply at a time that works for YOU. 

You're free to comment as much as you like or be a "stalker" if you're more shy.  Some weeks you may not get to the reading, but you're still welcome to participate as much as you can.  The main rules will be that we will all show grace and compassion in regard to each other's experiences and opinions.  

You can link to the book for sale on Amazon here for around $11 or find it somewhere else.  One follower on A Field of Wildflowers' Facebook page had the following to say,  

I couldn't possibly wait until closer to book club so I ordered the book. And it came today. And some biscuits may or may not have almost burned because I didn't want to put it down. - Joan Norton Stoneking

Now, (drum roll, please!) I do have one extra (lightly used) copy to give away for FREE.  To be entered into the drawing for the free book, just comment below by 12 midnight on Wednesday September 10th indicating your interest.  To have your name enetered a second time in the drawing, you can also comment on or like this post on the Wildflowers Facebook page (this will ensure that more followers see the post).  All names will be put into a bowl and the winner will be picked and announced by Friday the 12th. 

Guess what?  If you're feeling overwhelmed, chapter one is only 8 pages long.  I think we can do that, right? 

I would love your help in spreading the word!  Please share :) and let me know if you have any questions!

Whisper (Five Minute Friday)

I taught the twins to give “Eskimo kisses.”  Levi leans in, all serious, and clasps my head in his hands, one on either side.  Then he swipes his tiny nose side to side against my own.  It is unbearably cute.

Isaiah has become a prolific kisser, especially when it comes to prolonging the bedtime routine.  He also grabs hold, wrapping his arms around my neck and planting three, four, loud smacking kisses on my cheek.  When he wants a hug he says, “Me take hug,” like he’s taking a dose of children’s ibuprofen, a little something sweet to get him through the night.

“Me lovin’ you,” I whisper to Isaiah as he rides on my hip, high and happy.

“Me lovin’ you,” I say my words brushing past Levi’s ear as he hangs from my neck like a monkey. 

//

Last night as my husband and I sat watching TV, the loveliest breeze kept creeping unexpectedly through the window.  Cool and fresh, it caressed us and I couldn’t refrain from commenting on it every time. 

Sitting by the front window in the morning, thrown open to the morning’s coolness, another breeze pulls me away again and again from the laptop’s screen.  The gentle air turns my head toward the mountains and in it somehow I sense the presence of God. 

That breeze grabs hold of me, all serious and light at the same time, like the voice of God whispering, “Me lovin’ you,” and I drink it in with body and soul, a dose of something sweet, like Love, to get me through another day, another night.    

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday on the prompt "Whisper." 

Brown Paper Bag (Unpacking My Recent Hospital Stay)

I recently, unexpectedly, spent six days in a local Behavioral Health Unit due to the sudden onset of severe and debilitating panic attacks.  I'm so grateful to be home now and feeling better.  My time in the hospital now feels almost like it never happened, but I feel a need to integrate that experience as part of the truth of my life.  This poem is part of that attempt.  I hope if maybe you've had similar struggles it will somehow speak to your experience.

Brown Paper Bag

It’s not the barcoded wrist band that gets to you 
nor the constant roll-call and waiting in line for meds. 
No, it’s the brown paper bag that holds your belongings, 
the t-shirts and clean underwear your husband gathered from dresser 
drawers not his and packed into a small suitcase to be dropped off 
on his way to work early the next morning.

Without that suitcase you have only the pajamas you arrived in – 
Yoga pants and a three-dollar t-shirt from the clearance rack at Target.  
Even these, though, are better than the scrubs some patients wear, 
their clothes along with their freedom and, for a time at least, their sanity, 
inexplicably misplaced.  

The suitcase is vetted at the nurses’ station, 
belongings checked for that which is not allowed – 
sharps, strings, medications.  
Now you wonder, though you didn’t then, 
what they thought of the board books 
your husband packed.  You asked him for “something 
to help you remember” although now you cannot remember 
what.  The books, among them The Carrot Seed, were his first picks.  

Your journal and bible, your bra, socks and shirts, 
are piled together in two hefty brown grocery bags and brought to you 
in your room.  These you place on the floor in a large door-less wardrobe. 
You arrange your toiletries with care, the small toothpaste and white plastic toothbrush,
the hospital-issue baby shampoo and lotion, taking organizational cues 
from your roommate’s side of the room.  

When you leave, six days later, half of your things 
will go back into the black suitcase, returned to you 
from the safe place where it was kept. The other 
half you will carry out through the locked doors 
in a brown paper bag.  You will stop at the nurses’ station 
to have the wristbands cut off and their phantom presence 
will cause you to touch your arm again and again 
well into the following day, but it will be a week or more 
before you begin at last, to unpack that brown paper bag.  

Photo source HERE.