Rosalie's Eyes

I remember the last time I went to the Barrus Family Reunion. I was maybe 10 and I knew nobody. It was awkward.  There were kids running all over the park and my parents kept saying, "They're all your cousins, just go play with them." But I didn't.  I was relieved when it was finally time to go.

Twenty years later I am ready to try again. I want to know more of the woman whose eyes I share. 

It all starts the same, with so many smiling faces....familiar but unknown and I keep thinking, "They're all your cousins, just go talk to them." 

And I do, a little. Mostly, I read histories posted on the walls, trying to connect the lines from them to me and wonder at the lives behind the dates and places.

I giggle when my dad's cousin and partner in crime starts teasing my daughter...she has no idea who he is and when I tell her of the mischief he and my dad used to get into, her eyes grow wide with surprise. And this is why I came. I am just not a mom anymore than my dad is just a grandpa, just as she will not always be a little girl. I want her to know that. I want to know that. Connecting these lives adds perspective and inriches our heritage.

Later, there was an unexpected surprise from a man I had never met. He sat down next to me with a plate of food and continued a conversation with my dad. After a while he asked who I was and I pointed at my dad and said I was his. He didn't offer any introduction so I ventured a guess based on his wrinkles and a smile that looks like hers. "Are you Rosalie's brother?" My dad confirms that this is his uncle Ruel, the one he was named for.  I had assumed his name came more from his grandfather....I'm not sure I even knew he had an uncle by that name.

Then I get the story.

He had been over three months in a prison camp in Germany with conditions that left him as thin as a rail when the tanks rolled in to pull them out. "Anyone here from California? Anyone here from New York? Anyone here from Idaho? And just like that he was free again. That same month my dad was born.

Again, I get to know different parts of these lives I admire. What it must have been like for my grandma as a young mother, worried about her little brother in a prison so far away...what it must have been like for her little brother in a prison so far away.

Later I got to see the house where my Grandma was raised, and my dad was born,  the two huge pine trees still towering in front. My dad looks for a long time with eyes handed down from his mom and I wish I could see his thoughts.

I've seen this house before, but it seemed so much easier this time to picture my grandma there as a little girl, now that I see my own little girl playing in the ditch, making clover rings and giggling; seeing it all with eyes just like hers.

What's in a name?

"Esther? Isn't that the name of a cow?"

I overheard them talking, but I wish I hadn't. My name has it's moments. Being named after a courageous queen can be a nice boost sometimes. Unfortunately, it is also a popular name for "old ladies" and apparently even cows.

I celebrate my current last name, a gift from my husband, because it ties me and my children to another wonderful family that amazes me more every day.

Even though I've been married for 13 years, I still cling to my maiden name. It's both a tie and a reminder of a heritage that I that I work to earn. I love the old Judd's song "My Guardian Angles", especially the last verse:

Sometimes when I'm tired
I feel Elijah take my arm
He says, Keep a-goin', hard work
Never did a body harm.
And when I'm really troubled
And I don't know what to do
Fannie whispers, Just do your best, We're awful proud of you!

(Tear...sniff, sniff) It gets me every time. Names are a spoken reminder of that eternal bond that keeps us close despite years and mountains that separate.

What's in your name?

Wordfull Wednesday@Chocolateonmycranium

Put Up or Shut Up

Seriously.

Times are tough. Like everyone else we've been looking for ways to trim costs, save more and live well within our means. So when the garden produces more than expected, peaches arrive by the box load, neighbors offer trees of bounty, and friends unload ripening fruit you say thank you and get busy.

First, it was peppers. These I chop and freeze, dry or can. If canning you should use a pressure cooker since they have low acidity. I don't have one and I have just used a water bath, but it's not recommended.

Next there were peaches. What we didn't eat I simply cut up into slices, added a little sugar and froze in quart freezer bags. Growing up, Mom would always can LOADS of peaches....rows and rows of the peachy fruit lined our storage room shelves. It was pretty, but my kids don't really care for canned peaches; they do love peach smoothies, so I froze most of them with just a little sugar to keep them pretty. I also made peach jam, that turned out quite tasty, by following my apricot jam recipe.

Before I was even half way through the peaches, my neighbor offered her apple and plum trees. So we (and by we, I mean me and Laser Boy) made applesauce, plum applesauce, apple pie filling and plum jelly; still too many apples left on the tree....with such cute help, I'm sure I'll just have to make more.

In the middle of all this, another neighbor calls offering three large boxes of pears that are going rotten faster than she could get to them. Hmmm, let's see, wasn't that me just praying for solutions to lower the ol'e grocery bill.....

k, I'll take 'em.

Turns out they went rotten faster than I could get them to my house (Hubs said they smelled like hooch), not sure what my well intentioned neighbor had in mind, but they did make an excellent addition to my compost pile, and with all my extra time I was able to freeze my corn before it went too mushy.

Now, I think the rush is over and I'm just dilly dallying with more peppers, green beans, basil and tomatoes; hoping it doesn't freeze until I can stock up on canned tomatoes and tomato sauce.

To be honest, I'm surprised by it all. Not that I am well taken care of, that I have come to trust, but the fact that I can.....um, can. All those Labor Day weekends spent in hard labor, helping my mom can everything you could imagine and in amounts that are now unimaginable, must have paid off.

Food on Fridays with Ann Kroeker

Trek was fun, I knew it would be, why else would so many youth continue past the cringe of tennis shoes and a skirt just to experience this adventure? Maybe it also had something to do with the hunger. Not the life stealing, 4 ounces of flour a day kind of hunger the pioneers experienced, but just as real. Pres. Mcconkie hit it on the head when he said these youth are hungry for spiritual knowledge. Some of them have been living on so much less than 4 ounces a day that they are willing to "lick the empty flour sacks" just to get a taste. On this trip there were plenty of snacks to be had, and for those who came prepared they left with tummys full and future provisions. I just feel honored to have witnessed it.

I have to admit that I was adequately fed also, some I'm still chewing on. To be in a place that felt so alive with the faithful who died there was more powerful than I expected. While we were at Martin's Cove, the weather was beautiful. It has been a very wet spring and everything was lush and green, completely oppisite to what the pioneers must have experienced, except for the solid mass of rock that sheltered the cove on the east, and the wind....not the freezing, biting wind that brought that early winter in 1856, but the sound of it as it blew over the cove seemed to carry so much more than fresh spring air. Several times it stopped me in my tracks, listening for what I thought I had heard. Then, at the Willie Handcart Memorial site, as I pulled the cart with just my girls up the hill and passed between the men with their hats off and heads bowed, I felt physical pressure all around me, like every woman who has been left to pull on their own was there. The honor was for them, and I was just a decorative whitness standing proxy, amazed by their courage to do what had to be done. These experiences would have been enough but mixed in with all the history of faith and perserverence there was still time for my own questions to be answered as I felt His peace "distil upon (my) soul as the dews from heaven."

Of course I was snapping photos all along, these are just a few....I hope the music doesn't feel irreverent, considering the quarter mile swamp littered with cow pies we trekked through it seemed appropiriate.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Can You Feel It?

Reading the histories of my grandparents always leaves me in awe, but the stories that I love the best are the ones that go beyond the facts and share the feelings. I find strength in reading that these people whose blood runs in my veins didn't just stoically live day to day, but laughed, and cried, they felt pain in disappointments and joy in success, they had fears and searched for comfort with faith.

For example, my great grandma could make some seriously wonderful bread. This is a fact I have heard repeated several times from those who had a chance to feast on her sustenance, but it wasn't until I read this account that I really felt the sacrifice.

"We all remember her wonderful bread. It was freshly baked when we got home from school. When most of us were home she baked 15 loaves three times a week. And usually she made some scones or cinnamon rolls with some of the dough. Each batch took about thirty cups of flour and was mixed in a big hand turned bread mixer. I was like a big bucket with a crank on top and a dough kneader extending down into the bucket. The kneader and crank were attached through a cross-brace, which fit across the top of the bucket. When the family was in school Dad would turn the bread-mixer. It was a good workout for his muscles. On evening when the hungry tribe ate seven loaves of fresh bread for supper, mother quietly went to the next room and cried."

I have never taken a homemade loaf of bread for granted again....or my great grandma.


I know there are many of us who go quietly into the next room and cry; or on better days, we laugh out loud even though there is no one there to hear.

We feel and so we are....who were you this week?

Fragmented

Thoughts bumping around inside....where did they come from, and where do I put them? What am I not hearing? All of these ideas...gifts from on high....and I can't put them together. Guided by distraction; I search for focus.

Pieces of worn clothes, some worn through, some too new...to unused, to be sliced into pieces. Cutting up the physical remnants of life that is dearly missed. Piecing them together hoping to connect in some way with life passed on. Feeling His direction through her memory, and it begins to come together. More than a quilt...

My own fragmented emotions that have felt so undone...beginning to come together. Refocusing, reassuring, connecting with lives removed.