The Reindeer Keeper

Way back when I was a little girl I remember a few summers when my older brother and I would be called back inside the house by our mother in the afternoons. She would make us rest on the back porch for a few hours. She'd pull the blinds to stop the sunlight from coming in. We each had a daybed to rest on. We couldn't talk to each other. We were allowed to look at books which was fine with me. I can't remember much about what we were told other than something called polio was going around and if we didn't rest we could get it. I still didn't understand what "it" was but from the tone in her voice I understood polio to be quite scary. Our mother was a nurse. A very dedicated nurse. We loved it when we were put in the backseat of the car and we'd go along with our parents as our father drove our mother to the hospital to work the night shift. I loved seeing her dressed in her white uniform with her starched nurses' cap, highlighted by a black ribbon ...

It's no secret that I have a sweet tooth. There's a drawer in the kitchen where I can go for a touch of sweetness during the day. But with summer in full gear, I now have another source of delight-a candy shop in the garden loaded with small, round, sweet, delicious cherry tomatoes. It's impossible to eat just one-or two so I don't bother trying. Sometimes when I'm hanging clothes on the line I'll bring a small bowl out with me. Before I hang the clothes I'll pick some of those delightful little tomatoes and put them in the bowl. Then as I hang the clothes I'll devour the tomatoes. I usually run out. So I'll go back and pick some more. It makes hanging the clothes a delightful reason to be outside near that little garden. Other times if I'm inside on the computer I'll have that bowl with me full of garden candy. As I go along I'll eat a tomato. Suddenly the bowl is empty once again. But not for long. I know I could throw those cherry toma...

Green beans fresh from the garden were favorites growing up. Whether my grandmother was feeding a hungry crew in from the fields during haying season or whether she'd prepared some green beans for a family summer get together in her backyard, her green beans were always so delicious. When we'd gather for picnics those green beans quickly disappeared. They were consistent in their taste. All she did after cooking them was add some milk, a bit of butter, salt and pepper. I can still see her sitting outside on the back stoop of her farmhouse in her house dress and apron, cutting the ends off the beans, then slicing those beans fresh from the garden. My mother sometimes sat outside to cut the ends off her green beans, then slice them into pieces but more often than not, she'd have me do it. Maybe that's because I'd snip those ends off in record time. Slice them just as fast and enjoy a few along the way. After they were cooked, she prepared them as my grandmother did. T...

My mother loved snapdragons.  When we lived out in the country she grew snapdragons along a rock wall beside our house that was painted yellow. Once the snapdragons were fully grown the colors were breathtakingly vibrant-everything from marvelous magenta to orangey orange to sunshine yellow, purple haze, and snowy white.  It was like growing rainbows. When my mother didn't have time to weed her snapdragons, she'd ask me to go out and do the pulling of weeds between each plant. I loved pulling the weeds especially when the sun was shining and a breeze was coming over the fields, across the creek and up the hill. I'd bring some cookies along. Most always I'd have to go back inside sooner than later and get some more. But while I enjoyed the cookies, I enjoyed sitting there surrounded by snapdragons even more. Especially when they started to sing. Oh I had to help them a little. And only snapdragons that had fallen to the ground joined in the chorus. The others would stand...

I've only ridden on a few trains yet I can honestly say I love trains. Where I live I can hear trains passing by across the river in Canada. Listening to the chugging of the train down the tracks, hearing the whistle blowing, me wondering who is on board and where they are going all takes place as soon as I hear the movement of a train. It's especially mesmerizing at night as I'm wrapped in blankets. I listen to those sounds until they fade into the darkness. My most memorable train ride was back when I was in junior high school. My grandmother asked me to go with her on a train from Syracuse to Indianapolis to visit relatives. I was so excited, first to be asked and second to be riding on a train that would include riding the train all night long. I would be one of the passengers and maybe somewhere in the darkness someone would hear the whistle of my train and the chugging of my train down the tracks and wonder where I was going. Of course no one would know me but that di...

I looked for an old photo of the sidewalk I used to play on before we moved to the country but I couldn't find one. The above photo is a stock photo from the internet. That is not me. But it could have been me many years ago when playing on the crooked, bumpy sidewalk running by our home situated alongside a lane. Being able to play on the sidewalk once spring came was as exciting as seeing robins or seeing grass or seeing daffodils and tulips or hearing the geese flying over.  Sidewalks were a playground all to themselves. Part of the sidewalk I played on was going up a slight incline. There were cracks in it. There was even a bump that you had to plan for when going down the incline full speed on your bike. It was best to ride over on an edge of the bump than take your chances riding over the middle of it. The bump would send you flying. If that happened it might have been fun soaring through the air or disastrous. I had both experiences.  Part of the sidewalk was older than...

 Welcome to Page 133 of Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cook Book printed in the 1960s. Way back when I was in Junior High/High School this page would be spread out on the kitchen counter in our house in the country right about now. After making the Funny Bunny Biscuits and Peter Rabbit Cake a few years in a row I really didn't need to refer to page 133 in that cookbook. By then I knew it all by heart. But going into the kitchen drawer and pulling the cookbook out had become just as much a tradition as making the biscuits and cake. So that's what I would do. The fun part of doing that was one thing lead to another. I'd sometimes make up my own recipes. I'd sometimes give the bunnies a body by using another biscuit and then add a small biscuit tail. I'd use the suggested raisins for the eyes and candied cherry for the nose and slivered almonds for the whiskers if my father had picked up some almonds when at the grocery store. Or instead of making a Peter Rabbi...