Passing It On

The instructor in a class I attended this evening mentioned the loss of the "corporate memory" in the unexpected loss of a mentor and business associate.  I've heard the term before, related to the loss of corporate memory associated with the high turn-over in highly skilled jobs due to corporate mergers and acquisitions.    I actually feel quite strongly about the loss of that long-term-experience and how it negatively affects the growth of companies and businesses since people tend to no longer be in one position long enough to gather corporate memory to pass along to younger colleagues, subsequently resulting in an increase of duplicate effort, repeats of past mistakes.... you get the picture.

But what about "life-lesson memory" that used to be shared among generations, passed down from grandad to son to grandson.... from grandma to daughter to granddaughter?  Those might be practical (woodworking, sewing, cooking, gardening), or more esoteric (love of adventure, appreciation for nature, joy of creation).  Retirement communities often "contain" the grandparents today, the parents are locked into highly scheduled days of work and activities, and the children are firmly segregated in their classrooms to only have contact with others of exactly their same age.  These factors play a critical role in the loss of "life-lesson memory" that used to be shared so routinely.   Multi-generational households may not be practical today, and I'm not advocating a return to the one-room schoolhouse, but my own life experiences argue in favor of a closer, more intimate sharing of time and experience between ages and generations to the benefit of all.

Due to the vagaries of war, I grew up never knowing the presence of a grandparent in my life, other than for a brief time via letters (y'remember?....ink on white paper, placed in an envelope with a stamp that you lick to activate the glue (yuck!), and then wait for days or weeks for it to be delivered and to receive a response in the same format).  My life felt complete, because I didn't know any different.

When I had children, my parents and those of my husband were there and available to fill the role of grandparents that I couldn't even picture.  What a revelation!  My teen years and early adulthood were filled with love for my parents but also typical (I think) anger and frustration and pulling away from them to become ME, rather than a clone or the "perfect" child.  Then, all of a sudden (well...almost...after hours of labor...), my parents became supporters, babysitters, spoilers of grandchildren, passers-on of family lore and long-forgotten games and treats of childhood.  They became our friends! The ones who helped us nurture, love, protect, and TEACH our children.  And the kids - how they adored the visits from grandparents, or visiting grandparents at their homes.  The cookies, the treats, the spoiling!  We saw our parents in a different light, and I suspect they saw us in a very different light as well.  We valued stale family stories in a different way, reveled in the times we could share, in seeing our children playing on the beaches and fields of our own childhoods.  We gained a sense of the importance and value of continuity...continuity of memories, of skills and hobbies as we watched our parents sharing those things with our children.

Today I am at that potentially-grandparent age, with adult children but no grandchildren.  In a sense, I have been fortunate to be "adopted" by a family living a few houses down.  Their oldest son has become my "slave labor" - helping me in in my greenhouse and garden; his sisters have begun to visit me for quilting lessons, a delight that I cannot begin to explain, since I love sewing (quilting in particular) and have never had daughters with whom to share that love (my sons are remarkable, wonderful, kind, talented men, but sewing has never been high on their list of interests, perhaps not surprisingly); the younger siblings of my "adopted" family like to tag along and explore my garden and my house, a never-ending flitting from one exciting find to another, as young children are wont to do, forgetting to call me Mrs. Greenfield, and instead blurting out "Grandma" periodically, since I fit the mold, I assume.

And I? I delight in the opportunity to pass on gardening information and experience to my young gardening-slave-apprentice.  I revel in the excitement of his sisters as they learn a new sewing skill and discover the joys of designing and creating warm and snuggly quilts for their family to use.  And I am renewed by the unbridled joy and curiousity of the youngest siblings, reminding me whenever they are around, that even the things I take for granted are new in their eyes, and perhaps should be in mine as well.

I am blessed to be in a position to pass along some "life-lesson memory" to an appreciative audience.  

Who is benefiting from your life-lessons?  If not immediate family or neighbors, are there community groups, school groups to share with?  I guarantee, your time and effort will be well-spent, well-appreciated, and most rewarding!

Happy!

My friend Wendy said in a recent blog post: “What makes you feel better about yourself regardless of what the scale says? How do you see what's within?”  I’ll take the liberty of changing that to “What makes you feel better about yourself regardless of what the MIRROR says? How do you see what's within?” 

Possibly like Wendy, I’ll likely never again weigh the 110 I did when I got married; more than that, my hair has gone from dark brown to gray, my formerly smooth and soft skin has developed wrinkles and spots, and my waist and a couple of other body parts have...let’s say…shifted.  Some mornings I look in the mirror and think to myself: “who IS that old person?” because I don't like what I see; other times I look in the mirror and think “not too shabby for an old broad”.   What makes the difference? 

For me the obvious answer is that I perceive that I look good when I am happy.  I can be grimy from working in the garden, but when I look in the mirror I see happy eyes and a smile on my face, and sun-touched skin that makes the gray of my hair appear to sparkle – I like what I see. When I’m dressed to the nines, but feeling sad, I look in the mirror and see a furrowed brow, pasty skin, and dull eyes – I look and feel OLD.   Even if you are young and beautiful, think about how often someone says to you “Are you feeling alright? You look [sad, ill, worried].”  How we feel SHOWS, and that - more than the color of your hair, or your current weight, or the shoes you wear, determines whether people think we look good or not.

The advantage of being in this stage of my life is that I’ve finally stopped caring what everyone else thinks of me or expects of me, and am happy just BEING. I am delighted to have been blessed with the continuing good health to do the things that I love to do, the time in which to do them, and a life-partner/best-friend/husband who encourages me to do the things that make me happy and likes me just as I am.  Does life get better than this?   I am one very lucky lady! J

Silly Bird! Silly Everyone?

Since arriving at Guadalupe River State Park,  a male cardinal has been pecking on the windows and sides of our Airstream trailer every morning for hours.  At first it was fun to see him fly right up and cling to the window sashing as we were sitting there eating breakfast, but soon it became annoying as he constantly flew at and pecked at the camper as hard as he could.  

This is apparently mating season and our little cardinal has decided to chase away all the rivals that he sees reflected in the glass and the aluminum skin of our trailer.  I suspect his girlfriend is about to trade him in for a REAL rival while this poor fellow knocks himself silly fighting imaginary competition.  Is this where the term “bird-brain” originated, I wonder?

The more I reflect on his actions though, the more similarities I see between his futile pecking and some of the equally futile behaviors we all occasionally demonstrate.  Who hasn’t felt they were just banging their head against a wall on the job, in school, or in our personal life?  Sometimes there is a very fine line between futile effort and heroic effort, between determination and stupidity, between knowing when to persevere and when to quit. 

Artisan Bread...easy as falling off a log...?

I love good bread.  You know the stuff I mean: NOT the soft, lives-on-a-shelf-for-30-days-without-mould-forming bread, but the "staff of life", fills-your-house-with-heavenly-fragrance, crunches-when-you-bite-into-the-golden-crust, best-alone-or-with-plain-butter bread. One of the goals I've set for myself on and off over the years has been to learn to bake such bread. To that end I've purchased books on baking bread, purchased a bread machine, purchased a baking stone, practiced and practiced, and generally have decided that I'm a dud at this.  I'm really not bad in the kitchen, but great bread seems to be out of my reach.

A couple of years ago a received the gift of Jim Lahey's book, "My Bread; The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method".  AHA! No work, no knead sounds just right!  I threw out my bread machine (hated those square loaves of bread anyway) and trusted that 1/4 tsp yeast, salt, flour, and water was really all it would take to make a loaf of bread like the photos in this book.  I was disillusioned fairly quickly about it really being all that simple.  You still have to know/develop a "feel" for the dough, have to learn to quickly form and transfer a very wet dough into an extremely hot dutch oven in an extremely hot stove, and be willing to always have some dough sitting around on a counter top for several days, aging to perfection before being baked.  I tried, it was ok, but I didn't stick with it.

Last year my husband got me a really good stand mixer, so that I could mix and knead bread dough more easily than the painful, tedious hand-mixing I was trying to do.  This was a step in the right direction, and some of my experiments turned out quite well.  The problem was that most of my bread recipe books were from my days with a bread machine, so had to be adapted to being mixed and kneaded by the stand mixer, risen and punched down by hand, formed, given a second rise, and baked, all with guessing at ideal times and temperatures since the recipes assumed my now non-existant machine was doing all this for me.  As you might imagine, this too was a rather short-lived experiment.

We still yearned for really outstanding fresh bread.  This dream was made more intense through having friends who bake really great bread, and who recently built an outdoor bread oven to be able to make an even more perfect loaf.  Between that and losing my argument of "lack of time"  due to my recent retirement, I once again renewed my vow to learn to make GREAT bread.

Santa brought me encouragement by way of the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day; The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking".  There we go! The answer to my prayers! Even I can do 5 minutes a day for the reward of great bread!   I read the book cover to cover, pulled together the ingredients, made my first batch of dough (enough for 4 loaves), refrigerated it and started pulling out enough for one small boule a day (great way to have fresh bread daily).  OK, but not good.  Crumb (interior of the loaf) was too dense and wet, and there was minimal rise, though crust was pretty and taste was acceptable.

Being a researcher by former career and natural inclination, I found that the authors also have a web site with lots of useful FAQs and the ability to contact them with questions  (Yay! - REALLY good move!).  So....I learned that: 1) while I was using all-purpose flour, mine was bleached, they base their core recipe on UNbleached all-purpose flour, which affects the rise and the crumb and 2) my oven is off-kilter, so while I set it to the required temperature it was actually almost 50 degrees cooler. OK, now we're cooking! My kind husband offered to go to the store to get me unbleached all-purpose flour and I made another batch of basic dough.  The difference in the rise of the dough was like night and day!  Remarkable!  I could hardly contain it in the large storage container that before was only 3/4 full of risen dough.  Terrific! Off to the races!   Formed and baked the first loaf from this batch of dough using a separate oven thermometer to ensure the oven reached the correct baking temperature.  What!?!?  The dough rise was still not good; while the first rise was outstanding, the second rise - the one that gives the bread its finished shape - was a dud, so the loaf was rather flat, if a pretty golden color with better crumb texture.   Back to the FAQs, back to the book, back to various other baking web sites that talk about the factors that affect dough rise.  Discovery: I'm using quick-rise dry yeast (what I always used for the bread machine) but the recommendation for THIS recipe is for active rise yeast.  Apparently, the former does all it's rising in the first rise leaving little energy for the second rise, while the latter has enough energy for two rises.  Poor hubby volunteers to return to the store for more yeast and more flour - I take him up on it.  It's a good thing that this experiment is one that is light on the pocket-book although somewhat time-greedy.

I think I've learned that bread baking is more of an art than a science, but that you have to make sure you've learned the science behind it before expecting to experience really excellent results. It also takes more than 5 minutes a day, no matter HOW you calculate the time!  I leave you with a photo of today's experiments, in the hopes that in a few days I'll be able to post:"Eureka! - I've got it! I can produce a GREAT loaf of home-baked bread!"  And THEN begin the experiments with whole-grain breads....

Rituals

When I was growing up, my mother prepared herself and the family for the new year by thoroughly cleaning the house, having us all take evening baths and dress in our best clothes to welcome in the new year.  There were other traditions for New Years Eve as well, but this part sticks with me after all these years - the idea was to start the new year clean, with a fresh slate.

My husband and I have welcomed the new year with a different tradition for the past 22 years; sharing the same seafood meal for our New Year's Eve dinner, and going to our cottage for lunch and a walk on the Lake Michigan beach on New Year's Day, remembering not only the past year, but the preceding years and experiences as well.

As much as my mother reveled in the idea of a clean start, we revel in the repetition, the remembrance of past years as we welcome the coming year.   Her rituals were based on cultural traditions; ours are based on the second chance at life and family we experienced 22 years ago, an affirmation of life and the strength of our relationship. We look forward to the new, the unexpected, the unknown, and face it with the strength gained from past shared experiences.  

Rituals can be affirming, comforting, challenging; what rituals do you observe, and how do they reflect your personality, your life, your hopes and dreams?

Of letting go...

I plan my gardens: I plant the seeds in trays in the greenhouse, I water, I provide light and warmth and watch them sprout; I watch some grow big, some grow more slowly at first then catch up to their larger "siblings" in time.  I transplant them into the garden or flower bed, I fertilize, I mulch, I pamper...and watch some take off immediately, some just sit there at first and reach their peak when their "sibs" are fading. I learn that I can provide good soil, fertilizer, and to a certain extent correct moisture, but I cannot control the sunlight they receive or fail to receive despite my best plans, I cannot control the over-abundance or total lack of moisture mother nature provides that season, nor can I control late frosts, or early frosts and the damage they may do.  Sometimes, despite the best-laid plans, gardens go to waste for reasons beyond our control; and sometimes, despite all the adversity mother nature can throw at them, plants surpass all predictions to grow lush, fruitful, beautiful beyond our expectations.

So it is with family relationships, with raising children, with nurturing friendships: sometimes, despite our best efforts, things just don't work...and sometimes, despite our mistakes, our omissions, our failures, the children grow into magnificent human beings that do us proud, relationships thrive, and friendships flourish.    I have no doubt that it is important to strive to provide optimum environments for the growth of relationships, but sometimes, I think, it is wise to just let go of the expectation, let go of the stress of not having done what we hoped to do,  and instead to appreciate the unexpected joys, the unplanned rewards of relationships that flourish due to the efforts of others, or to the unexpected.

I have such examples in my life....do you have them in yours?

Today's Work

When I started this blog at the beginning of this month in response to the 30-day blog challenge, I said it would be a reflection of what I do with my days and how I live this part of my life called retirement.  So far, I've not really done much of that at all; instead I've shared my views and perspectives on a variety of topics, sometimes playing off fellow bloggers in this challenges, sometime based on events, songs, photos, or other things that sent my mind in a direction that seemed worth commenting on.

Today though, I'm sharing my retirement "work"; three quilts that I'm working on concurrently, each in a different phase of completion.  I mostly design my own quilts now, rather than relying on copying the patterns of others, not because those patterns aren't lovely, but because I've always liked creating things from scratch.  The challenge I've currently given myself is to see how many very different quilts I can design based on simple squares and rectangles, obviously one of the easier forms for any quilter to work with, but this gives me an opportunity to really concentrate on and play with color and pattern.  Here they are:

1)  Nearly finished - only needs about 2 more feet of it hand quilted, then will be set to go, in time for the holidays!

2) Gift for a friend.  Will be starting the hand-quilting by end of this week and taking it on a 3-day train trip with me - should have lots of time to work on it.

3) Gift-in-progress.   This one will still take a considerable amount of hand-work before it's completed, but then, the winter lies ahead, and the garden won't be calling me....