Category Archives: 6 Looking Back // Memories!

I’m at that age where you have lots and lots of memories. When I am waxing melancholy…

Do not try this at home

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I found a memory I had recorded a few years ago for posterity in a folder of recipes.  Thought I’d share it here.  And though when I originally wrote it I entitled it “Tupperware and the New Bride,” I think now I will call it

Who on earth would even want to try a recipe called “Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole?”  That would have been me, I guess.

My co-workers at Bible College and a few friends threw a “Tupperware” shower for me before dad and I married [note: I was writing this for the kids].  That meant that the Tupperware lady would come and display her wares and everyone would order something for me from her.

I don’t really remember anyone asking me what I wanted.  And I don’t really remember wanting anything in particular. My mom had been the queen of re-using bread bags and cottage cheese containers before there was ever even a green-movement.  So I had not grown up dreaming of the Tupperware that would grace my kitchen cabinets one day.  Not at all.

Luckily, my friends and co-workers knew just what I “had to have,” and excitedly began scouring the catalogs and items on display at the shower.  I witnessed great exuberance over matching sets of plastic storage containers, and crispers and pie-rolling mats and lids that “burped” the air out before sealing.  Much enthusiasm to be sure.

Everything I got was the late seventies brown or avocado green or harvest gold.  But it was nice.  The lettuce crisper wasn’t the savior I thought it would be (you do eventually have to make sure you don’t leave it in there for weeks on end) and the huge yellow mixing bowl with lid was soon pitted with hot popcorn kernels.

As a “hostess” gift from the Tupperware lady, I received a Tupperware cookbook.

30th Anniversary Edition, published in 1981 Tupperware’s Homemade is Better cookbook

As a new bride, I decided to try one of the recipes they had.

Now, growing up in the Moslander household, you really pretty much doubled, tripled, or quadrupled every recipe when you made it.

I was already struggling to rein it in for dad, Tara and me, because I couldn’t quit doubling recipes.  There was always tons of everything I made (150 homemade meatballs, pounds and pounds of noodles for, in theory,  just one spaghetti dinner, etc).

The Moslander auto-double+ Tupperware’s HomeMade is Better cookbook

Now – take my doubling obsession and mix it with a Tupperware cookbook and you’ve got trouble.  For what I failed to understand was that the Tupperware people were trying to get you to believe you needed more Tupperware so the recipes in the books were already made to fix and then divide and then store in your handy dandy Tupperware for 3-5 future meals.  That would have been a good thing to understand.  I did not.

So one day, I wanted to find a new and really special recipe for our little family.  In the cookbook, I found something, a casserole utilizing ingredients I loved: macaroni, Corn Chex and cooked shrimp.  I could imagine a wondrous and delightful meal.  I decided to double it, naturally, because if it were really good, we’d want leftovers, and I could just tell we would.

Well – may I just say I could have catered a party for 50 with that much of the cereal, macaroni and shrimp conglomeration?  I don’t know if we had a loaves and fishes miracle happening or what? But the more we ate that stuff, the more there was left in our small fridge.  Dad ate it, graciously.  He, who prefers Rice Chex, can take or leave anything with “macaroni” in the title and doesn’t like shrimp unless it is generously breaded and deep fried beyond the recognition that is was once a living sea-creature – he ate it.  And he ate it the next day.  Maybe the next even…?

I discerned immediately – that if I was going to be cooking like that – I did not have enough Tupperware.  I think we may have actually used every storage bowl and a few old bread bags to boot.  Of course, I actually loved it and ate it for breakfast and lunch, too.  After a couple of days, dad asked me, “Do you think it’s still safe to eat this?  I mean it is seafood and I don’t know how long it will be good.”  He was gentle and very honoring.  Sadly, I watched him scrape it into the trash.

“Next time,” I thought, “I’ll only make one recipe.”  There has never been a next time.

written 9.22.07

PS – Just in case you’re curious, I decided to look up the old recipe.  And OOPS.  It was supposed to be Rice Chex.  I guess I used Corn Chex because I love them and was trying to sway Dave.  That may have made all the difference.  Haha. Or not.

Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole

2 7 1/4 oz. packages of macaroni and cheese dinner mixes
1 1/2 c milk
3 10 3/4 oz. cans of condensed cream of chicken soup
1 16 oz. package frozen cooked shelled shrimp
1 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups Rice Chex, crushed

Prepare macaroni and cheese according to package directions, except substitute the 1 1/2 cups of milk for the total amounts called for.  Stir in the shrimp and soup, Worcestershire sauce and pepper.

To bake immediately, turn one-third of the mixture into a one-quart casserole.  Bake uncovered, in 350-degree oven for 30 minutes.  Stir.  Sprinkle with 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex.  Bake 10 minutes more.

To freeze and bake later, divide remaining two-thirds of the mixture between the Seal-n-Serve Set.  Apply seals, label and freeze.  Immerse sealed container in warm water for about 3-5 minutes, just till mixture is thawed enough to remove from container.  Invert into a one-quart casserole.  Cover and bake in a 400-degree oven for 40 minutes; stir to spread mixture evenly in casserole.  Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.  Uncover and stir.  Sprinkle 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex atop casserole.  Bake 10 minutes more.

Makes 3 casseroles, 4 servings each.

This recipe exhausts me just reading it.  Thank goodness the common folk could start to afford microwaves in the 80s.

So, um…I actually might try this again, for fun, and I think now, after all these years, I would definitely double it again, but probably quadruple the shrimp.  And the Corn Chex?  Stays!  Dave won’t eat it anyway.

The Grand-mamas

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

Grandmothers.  I had 4.

Come Mother’s Day, you realize how may women you actually came from, what they brought to your life, how they are all part of the river that flows through your heart.

Ressie Belle Anderson Moslander Baker

 

This is the grandma whose personality I may most likely have.  Choleric and able, a little bossy and pretty strong.  She is the one I lived near and saw most often in my early years.  She is my dad’s mom, a hard-working farm girl from the mid-west whose first husband was killed in a car crash leaving her with 2 baby girls and 6 months pregnant with her son, my dad.  

She was not a “gooey-warm” grandmother, necessarily, but maybe a little ornery.  She was sensible and busy, opinionated and strong and protective when Grandpa’s teasing  went a little far.  She lived down the street and I could go see her anytime.  And she was always working hard, the house getting an entire “spring cleaning,” every single week of the year (that part of her, no, I did not get). 

She gave me gifts, which I thoroughly now suspect were her love language.  Not often, not even regularly on gift-type occasions, but when she gifted, they impacted me.  A large clear jar with yellow flowers on it, filled with Minuet in E toilette water.  A red plaid-skirted outfit, double-knit with matching red tights.  A set of used Cherry Ames Nurse books and Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a book I love to this day. 

She also bequeathed to me, because I loved music and sang along to anything I could get my hands on for my little blue record player, a large selection of 78s and 45s from Disney and old radio shows. “Here is something I thought you might like,” she’d say, handing me a brown paper bag.  And she was always right. 

She gardened for food and potted plants for joy. She had a cactus collection I could never resist touching, yet always regretted, and several cages with brightly colored parakeets as pets, but also as business.  She raised and sold hundreds from her basement, as it happens.

She was strong-willed and smart, very entrepreneurial (if they needed money, she would figure out how to make it happen and it was done) and the glue that kept the family together.  Her house was the center of my extended family universe.  And when she died at at the age of 57, when I was just 11, I was at her house, on her giant round ottoman, in her tangerine-colored living room (she loved bold color, too) and time stood a little still and things were never the same.  Carefree childhood, life as we’d always known it, a little less so.

Berniece Quick Hallet

 

She is my mom’s mom.  She was gentle and tender and misunderstood and lived quietly with a broken heart.  From the stories I have heard, most from her, even in childhood she was a misfit of sorts.  Very young, she married my mom’s dad and they had 2 daughters together before the marriage broke up.  And she never quite rebounded.  Court proceedings and custody battles led her in to a second marriage merely to provide a stable home environment for her daughters.  Her second husband loved her fiercely and treated her daughters well and fathered her next child, another daughter, but she never really gave her heart again, it seems.

“Nervous breakdowns” and “mental illness” were used to describe her at times.  She attempted suicide on more than one occasion, my poor mama finding her once on the kitchen floor as she came in from high school.  My earliest memories of my Grandma Hallet were when my mom dressed me up and we drove to see her at a state mental hospital, a green and rolling-hilled compound that seemed lovely to me.  My mom wore a leopard print dress.  I was three and very excited to be visiting her, no comprehension at all of why she was there, so far away from home.

But with me, towards me, she was a kind, loving woman, cheering me on and encouraging my efforts.  On our birthdays, or anytime she could muster up money, she would give us $1.11.  Yes.  Exactly $1.11.  Why?  Because the dollar was our spending money, but to teach us tithing, she’d throw in the dime so we could have the whole dollar.  But then you havd to pay tithes on the dime, right?  Thus the extra penny.  One-dollar and eleven-cents.

By the time I was 7 or 8, she didn’t live alone again, but stayed with my Aunt Helen’s family and would visit us for extended times.  She lived from a brown paper bag between houses.  And she slept in a bed with my sister and me and always prayed with us for the whole family.  She smiled really big and crinkled her eyes.  Sometimes when I see pictures of myself laughing unabashedly, I think I see her there.  She loved to clean the house and put away dinner and claimed to adore doing dishes (I did not get this from her at all).  Or at least she said she did.  Sometimes now I think she was just trying to pay her way, trying to prove she had value.  This, I probably did get from her – the need to prove my value, earn my way all of the time.

And I hate that she didn’t know she did have such value in our lives.  And that she saw herself as an embarrassment and  as weak, and so did others because of her tender heart.  She never wanted to be a bother. I have always been opposed to the thought of being less-able-to-handle-thingslike her, or forgetful like she was, and sometimes I have looked at broken heartedness in others as a fault, as if you can avoid it in a life where you love deeply.  And I think of 1 Corinthians 12 and now understand how she should have been handled:

And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. 25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. 

Grandma died that week between Christmas and New Years when so many lonely people do.  She was alone, at her state care facility.  Only 68.  Now I know she wasn’t weak, not unable, but just unjaded, un-harshened as a true-heart response.  Her heart was still flesh.  And it was still pure white as her hair had become.  And I think that if my grandkids at all remember me with any gentle kindness, praying for them, cheering them on and gently, but always, in their corner, than I shall be glad to have been compared to her.

Opal Wright Allison

I wrote a little about her recently HERE.

This is my Grandma Allison.  While my Grandpa was exuberant and boisterous in his love and affection, while he would loudly proclaim his enthusiasm and love for us and make such a big deal of our presence, Grandma was this classic beauty.  She was serene and graceful, even-tempered and kind.  I always found her fascinatingly beautiful.  I can remember so far back as to include gloves and hats and leopard-print high heels, a size 5 for her tiny feet. 

She spoke to me.  I wasn’t just a kid in the room to her.  I was a person to talk to with graciousness and kindness.

The last time I got to spend time with her, I sat at a piano and played and songs as she picked them.  I was surprised to learn how much she loved music and how she played and sang herself, though not for us.  She picked her favorite just before we had to leave.  And she held the music open while I did her favorite, Amy Grant’s, “El Shaddai.”

To the outcast on her knees,

You were the God who really sees,

And by Your might,

You set Your children free.

She loved that, for reasons I don’t really know, as far as my Grandma was concerned.  But I love it because knowing He sees me is setting me free.  I love that we shared that worship that day.

We will praise and lift You high, El Shaddai

Looking forward to singing and worshipping with her again soon.

Laveta Davis

I guess she wasn’t my “real” grandma as grandmas go, but she was to me and her impact on my family and me is undeniable.

She was my mom’s pastor’s wife, the one who nurtured my mom in her baby-Christian days.  My mom, raised in an unchurched home, had made a decision to follow Jesus as a young teen and this godly woman saw something in her and poured in to my mom, and discipled her and walked the Christian walk with her. 

When my mom was carrying me, LaVeta Davis asked, “Can your baby call me Grandma?”  And I always did.  All the kids did.  And she brought me “grown-up” books about sewing and flower arranging.  And she brought us paper for creating and card-making supplies and all things creative.  We always knew after she visited, that there would be fun things to make. 

She gave us, when I was very young, a set of old 1940s Pictorial Encyclopedias.  I doubt she knew how much I would love those things.  For when I was 5, my dad ridded our home of the television set in favor of more time for prayer and study.  And as a little girl, for entertainment, I read the encyclopedia.  For hours I would sit at the base of the shelves in the formal dining room reading and learning and discovering, all in black and white.  I couldn’t wish better times on my grandbebes if I tried.   

These are some of my most unforgettable, most influential women.

Yes.  I come from strong, loving, godly women.  They taught me to be resourceful, tender, strong, sassy, opinionated, gentle, creative, gracious, intelligent, passionate, long suffering, loving, discerning, well-doing, forgiving, hard-working, giving and so much more.  If I haven’t turned out right, it is not the fault of these women.  They were amazing all.

EPIC LOVE: Opal & Everett

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

{ O P A L   &   E V E R E T T }

My Grandma and Grandpa Allison

By the end, frail and broken-down, they were shriveled old people, quietly enduring the ravages of the so-undeserved Alzheimer’s Disease and doing their best not to be a bother for their family or health care workers.  The strangers who witnessed their final months and days could not have comprehended, I am sure, the life of love and joy they had lived. They didn’t know about the ever-enlarging family, the children and grandchildren,  the greats and great-greats, or of the fruitfulness these two people had unleashed.   They couldn’t have looked down the heart’s hallways of the past to a man and a woman wholly devoted to one another, fully giving and loving each other across decades, clinging to one another and living their lives for an epic love, the passion of which never waned.

The beginning.

Their start wasn’t picture perfect.  For in those days many years ago, theirs was an “broken” beginning.  My Grandpa Allison had married and had 2 daughters with my mom’s mother, but it was doomed from the start, it seemed.  He married Opal shortly after his divorce.  My Grandma Allison had been married before as well and came into their union with one daughter.  And so they were now the 2 + 3.  It equaled truelove (yes, I meant that as one word). My Grandma and Grandpa never really talked about their start or their love story to my mom.  It seemed some things were best left unsaid out of respect and a show of honor of their former spouses, with whom they shared children.  So they kept their romantic connection to themselves.  There were innuendos and whisperings, as blended families might have, but as for Opal and Everett,  they maintained the dignity of silence and, focused on their love for one another, building a beautiful life together.

Early memories.

I don’t really come from a family that is all that outwardly affectionate.  Love runs deep among us and we are now much more giving in public displays of heartfelt warmth, but words of affirmation, outward demonstration and affectionate touch were not hallmarks of the family I grew up in, except perhaps from my mom, who taught me to do Eskimo kisses and butterfly kiss-flutterings and is my biggest cheerleader and hugger even now.

But my very earliest memories of my Grandma and Grandpa Allison are all about the affection, the visible sign of the intensity of an inward passion.  They touched constantly.  He attended to her every whim, he doted, he adored.  He held the door and he held her hand.  He always checked her needs, reactions, and responses first in any situation.  There was never a doubt in my mind that my handsome, raven-haired, energetic and athletic Grandpa, whose hair only fully grayed during his final few years, adored my Grandma. And she in turn looked at him lovingly, from the dark brunette and sometimes frosted days until her coiff was pure as snow.  She was his gentle home, his soft place to land, his True North.  Her approval, as a strong and beautiful woman, full of wisdom and grace, was poured on him freely and he thrived successfully in any endevour he attempted because of it.

My grandparents at my own parents’ wedding, August 1957.  Are those the most beautiful four people you have ever seen?  Ok, maybe I am prejudiced about that, but my mama sure had a handsome and stylin’ dad and chose a cutie-patootie for a husband!

There was such deep love.  He served in WWII in the Phillipines in the Navy, leaving his wife and now 5 children-between-them at home.  My daughters and I love the pictures she had taken in a beautful gown to send to my Grandpa there because he desired, as he told her when he requested the photographs, his own “pin-up girl” in his foot locker.

Every memory I have of  them, through my Kodachrome-colored memories of the early 1960s (I wish there were more actual photographs, but the times…), and throughout my life includes the touching, the hugging, the kisses, the hand-holding, the warm affection and assurance of a lasting love.  And they shared that, too.

My Grandpa was the man who’d hold me on his lap like a little princess and call me “Debbie Jean” to make my momma happy (she’d lost the name game to my dad’s choice).   This beautiful man I admired with all my heart and soul as a little girl became even more deeply imbedded in my heart when, after I was grown and married, he made a decision to follow Christ, quickly becoming a man of the Word and leading the adult Sunday School class at his Baptist church. He’d spent years investigating religions, a good man who didn’t fall lightly in to things.  When he decided to follow Jesus, he sent me a letter and said, “Oh, how many years I wasted looking for truth.  I wish I could get them all back to serve Jesus.”  I got my business sense from him, he was a mover and a shaker and quite entreprenurial.  Brave and creative, his influence on me, especially in retail aptitude, is undeniable.

  

I admired them, perhaps even revered them.  Attending a family funeral when my children were little and watching them walk in, he, my ruggedly handsome and distinguished grandpapa in his suit, she, my darling grandmama, elegant and serene ~  I was mesmerized at the regal sight of them, so proud to call them my grandparents.  They sat down the row from me, in their early 70s.  They were holding hands like young lovers, yet seasoned and wise sweethearts; the embers, once shooting flames in a youthful, passionate romance, now white-hot and glowing, a stronger, deeper love for the years.

The end.

My Grandpa passed away a few years ago.  He’d been fighting to retain the identity Alzheimer’s so ruthlessly rips from a soul.  His final days in a nursing home left Grandma rattling around their large retirement home on the Lake of the Ozarks mostly alone.  When my parents visited and they planned a trip to see Grandpa, my mom says Grandma Allison (my mom’s beloved step-mother, a woman whose love and acceptance meant everything to my mom), would become as giddy as a school girl, curling her hair and doing her make-up, excited to go see her love.  She even complained that several of the nurses flirted with him and she was not happy about it.

And even as he was failing and struggled to recognize his own children, when his love arrived, he knew her.  And the affection between them melted away the wrinkles and the years.  Those times, they were just Opal and Everett, lifetime lovers.  And she would sit in his lap and put her arms around him.  They were head-over-heels in love until the end, “two hearts that beat as one,*” that ridiculous almost never-seen kind of love that everyone thinks they have on their wedding day – but few seem able to maintain to the end. Before Grandpa even died, my sweet, tiny Grandma, the most loving and thoughtful, and gracious woman in the world, was also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  When he passed on, my gentle grandma deteriorated quickly – just started slipping away.  She was moved to a care center and went very silent.  My mom was able to bring some glistening light to her eyes by singing a song she loved, one my Grandpa had sung to her “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”  Grandma would somehow muster strength to hum along, a pleasant memory dancing behind her eyes.

I made a short video tribute with the few photos I have

A Nicholas Sparks movie has nothing on my grands.  She died 2 years to the day after the love of her life had gone.  Somehow it didn’t seem an ending so much ~ just that she’d finally been released to go where her heart had already gone.  And wherever Opal and Everett are, I know they are holding hands or he’s got his arms wrapped around her or they’re embraced under a tree near a lake, a slight breeze touching their contented faces.  And their true love remains. Endless.  Endlessly. *Lyrics from the 1981 hit by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, “Endless Love.”

 

Past is Prologue

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

“The Past is Prologue”  Memory vs. Nostalgia

Some days I get really nostalgic with an actual sort of hunger and bittersweet longing for a person or thing from the past; usually feeling homesick for a place or a time in a sort of regretful kind of way.

Some days I am full of memories and just so grateful for the rich, full remembrances of life. 

Nostalgia makes me yearn, melancholy raring its powerful head, makes me wish for do-overs from earlier times, or for the gift of just going back and seeing things again, the way they once were, but with the wisdom of the years, with understanding so I’d not have missed anything important.

But memories“light the corners of my mind” like Barbra so beautifully sang way back when and are the things on which everything now is built.  They are the building blocks of my present and have added the depth and dimension that cause intricate color patterns that weave in and out of all I have seen and am and will be.  They are epic backstory, the altar of remembrance and the reminder that the story isn’t over.  It is just in the middle somewhere…

“Where are you from or where did you spend most of your growing up years?” was the question. 

Darla and Rachel, Joan and Sherri and I were getting better acquainted.   Such a simple question causes a waterfall of thoughts on the topic.  I have so many short, pat answers I have given over the years. 

I sometimes say, “I am an Iowa girl,”because I was born there and we lived in three different cities where my dad pastored churches in Iowa and then after marrying, Dave and I led a church in a fourth city in the Corn state. 

The house on 1723 York Street, Des Moines

Other times I claim the “near Chicago” as my “home,” because we lived in that little piece of northwest Indiana that ispart of the greater-Chicago-metro area and is actually in Chicago’s time-zone (as opposed to the rest of Indiana) and it is where the Moslanders (Ross-the-Boss, Mrs Moss and all the little Landers) ended up together before we all started leaving home. 

There were the short years in Louisiana… 

But my parents moved…have moved several times since, to different ministries in various cities and states and wherever they go becomes “home.”  I always feel a bit unsettled when they move until I see pictures of the house and google the street and get to go visit.  I need to know where they are.  I need to know where the boxes (the very few that are left) which are holding the photographic proof of our journeys and my life, are being stored. 

So a simple question like,  “Where are you from?” throws me into a few-seconds of a spin, trying to decide how to answer accurately, but without boring them with the tedious details of a dozen different houses and 11 schools during my lifetime, of 12 different communities, some more than once, of living as far north as Minot, North Dakota and as far south as Robert, Louisiana – two locations which were, indeed, worlds apart. 

Where am I from?

And in a nostalgic mood, I get all tender, feeling I am from nowhere.  But in days of remembrance, in times I am grasping what Shakespeare meant when he said, “The past is prologue,” meaning it has all just been preparation for where I am now, all setting up the real story of today, I am grateful for adventures and places, for the people and times I wouldn’t trade.

I look at Darla and Rachael, Joan and Sherri, kind faces waiting to hear a geographical clue to my existence.

“I am not really from any place,” I tell them. I am from a story and I am in the middle of it now.”  Home is where my heart is – and there is a little of my heart in lots of places, or maybe the places are here with my in my heart.  And I am full of wonderful memories of how I arrived here, interesting people who were kind enough along the way to notice my existence and deposit something rich, funny, happy, sad, meaningful or silly treasure into my life.

The older I get, the more I realize the things of value that have been given to me and I get a strong desire to walk where I once walked and look people in the face and say, “I didn’t know it at the time – when we were just ‘passing through’ so I maybe kept a wall between us, but you were part of God’s plan, a gift {even maybe a disruption} for me straight  from Him.” And I’d like to tell people thank-you and kiss them on the cheek and apologize that I just didn’t know.  I didn’t know they were so integral to my story.  I thought I was sometimes too focused on trying to get somewhere, trying to find home/destiny/purpose.  But I see it now.  They were that for me right in that moment.  They were my home.

 

Dear little Jeanie: why so serious?  God has good stuff planned for you ahead.  So enjoy today.

This kind of treasure is unavailable to the 20-year old. It is gained only by getting older and by understanding the past as prologue to whatever richness I now live in – past is part of it all.  And really just the beginning…

Room 222

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

Before I’d even turned 5, my dad had gotten rid of our family TV in favor of more prayer and  Bible study time.  He was devoted in his faith and we are none the poorer for it, after all, but it did take away Popeye and The Jimmy Dean Show for me.  I loved Jimmy Dean when he’d sit on that porch swing with his guitar and sing…he died last year, I think,  and I felt sad.  And it ripped The Rifleman and The Fugitive from my mom’s favorite-viewing list. 

Now and again, though, we’d be visiting my grandparents in Ames, Iowa or my neightbor Nancy Lydon across the alley in Des Moines and get to catch up on the television shows of the times: Mayberry RFD, Julia, Love-American Style, That Girl, Batman (pow–zowie–bop!), or Hawaii 5-O.  I loved it!

One show I always really liked from those years was Room 222.  When my dad decided to re-immerse himself and our family into television 5 or 6 years later in time for the World Series that fall,  Room 222 was still playing and I got to watch it now and again on Friday nights.

I always just really liked Mr. Dixon (played by Lloyd Haynes).  He was the handsome (quite dashing man with a beautiful smile), idealistic teacher who gently taught the high schoolers to be tolerant and have understanding on the social issues of the day, even if they were watered down for prime time TV.  I thought Mr. Dixon looked like a black version of my dad  (whom I also thought to be very handsome).  Even in retrospect, I think I was on to something because I was looking at photos of my nephew Ross Moslander (my dad’s namesake) and still saw a family resemblance.

Whaddya think?

  

 

 

I am telling you: we could be related!

Ahhh…..memories!

 

The Best of Badfinger

5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

I know you will find this hard to believe, but I didn’t really know what this band’s name meant when I was a kid.  I thought some one had a “bad finger,” as in a bum digit.  Hahaha.  Yes.  I have to laugh at myself.  Innocent little preacher’s daughter.

They had some great early 70s stuff.  As Guini would say, “That’s just some rock. and. roll!”

These are the ones I really liked waaaaaaaaaaaay back when.

Baby Blue 1972

They have actually disabled the embeddable version of this, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go listen to it via this link, because it is my FAVORITE one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C53QAuOoSgc

Day after Day 1971

This song was produced by George Harrison (apparently the Beatles were the first to sign and mentor Badfinger) and Todd Rundgren, who, by the way, sings one of my for-all-times favorites, “Hello, It’s Me.”  AND he was in the American Idol audience this past week, yes, he was!

No Matter What

Without You

Harry Nillson covered this and it went to #1.  Then everybody else in the world, including Mariah Carey and Celine Dion did, too.  It is a great song and Badfinger wrote and performed it first.  Then they were tragic.  Their main talent killed himself in the 70s and a few years later, in the early 80s, the band member who had founf him did the same.  Tragic.  Talented.  Sad.

Then there is just the love of the music they made that a dumb little girl, 12 or 14 – and now old enough to really understand, loves still, for the innocence it reflects in her heart.

BONUS, baby!  Here is some Todd.  Hello, It’s Me!

{things that happened during the “break”}

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

I  A M   B A C K, baby !

I kinda took a blogging fast after epiphany (January 6), which I was afraid to say “out loud” until later in January {wrote about it HERE}.  And I didn’t know how long I’d stay gone and there were birthdays I had to mention and a few times I couldn’t resist posting something like a link or video or quick thought.  But true writing/blogging, I have not done.  And how I have missed it.  And how, especially right now, in the midst of the greatest joys anyone could experience and in the midst of the deepest of sorrowful things for people I love deeply, right in the middle of the messiness of life and celebration-worthy rites of passage and as the tulips are becoming glorious and the daffodils stand tall and proud –  I just need to be and  able to break-the-blog-fast to say, and {to declare loudly}:

God is good.  He is faithful.  He is SO faithful.

 

So, I am back to write that ~~~ plus lots of silly things and a little opining, too.  I will write about sunny days and my quest for joy and let you in on where I find it.  I will sing songs and share the lyrics and write about life as I see it.  And I am back to write because my mom thinks I am good at it (everyone should have such a cheerleader!) and because I want a written record for my familia. 

 One day the grandbebes will grow up and be so happy to read this thing and see their faces and know o-how-much-I-do-love them & their amazing parents (the people I adore most in the world)! 

  

And I am back to blogging because, to shamelessly rip off 1 John 1, I am writing about the Word of Life!  I have not only heard of Him, I have heard fromHim myself, and have seen Him with my own eyes and touched Him and been touched by Him.  So I want to share and tell the things I have seen and heard with my own familia and the ones God has made mine by His Spirit. My “motive for writing is simply this: [I] want you to enjoy this, too.  Your joy will double [my] joy!”  (1 John 1.1-4, The Message) 

May this blog be a record for the generations to come of the faithfulness of God in our less-then-perfect, ordinary-yet-unique lives. And of the great, great joy He gives.

Plus a peek into the swirling thought collage of my very heart & soul.

And now,

here are some things that happened

while I was “blog fasting”…

 

Dave and Tara got settled into their new home

She is an amazing homemaker and it was cozy within days.  She is also very creative and organized and it is a lovely, peaceful place.  There is a giant, jetted tub in the guest quarters where the grandbebes could swim laps!  Their yard connects to open space (which in Colorado is guarded  like gold!) and their big window views are of the crystal-clear Colorado Rockies.  They are home!

 

I visited my mom and dad in St. Joe, MO…where is snowed and snowed and snowed…bleak!

 

Parsonage on the left.  Church on the right.  Too close for comfort.

 

Rocky and Jovan bought a new house, too!

 

There’s a lot  a-lotta pink in the girlie room!

It is cute as a dollhouse and colorful and sweet.  It fairly screams Rocky + Jovan + 2 of the cutest little girls = Blue and green & lots o’ pink and JOYfully Ever After!

Averi turned THREE and had a CandyLand Party complete with an Ice-Cream-Cone-Castle cake

 

Aren’t the presents kids get at three just the most fun?  Her Grammy and Papa hosted in Frederick and it was a sunny day full of cute kids and smiles!

Love was, naturally, in the air

    

 

My sister Tami worked on the Moslander Family Reunion in earnest.

We shall gather near Chicago late June.  Frontier Airlines to Midway, car-to-go, please.

I discovered Rice & Bean Chipotle Cheese Artisan Snack Chips

All Natural, Gluten Free, Zero Trans Fat, Zero Cholesterol

“Aged cheddar cheese and just the right amount of spicy seasonings create a flavor that is highlighted by the adzuki beans’ subtle sweetness. Together with its light and crispy texture, this artisan snack is the perfect better-for-you snack chip because of the adzuki bean’s natural healing and health properties.”

Thank-you Candi, for this most wondrous introduction.  I shall ever be grateful…and smiling as I crunch on them.

We unveiled the Heaven Fest 2011 Vision at 4 small, joyful gatherings with our volunteers and team

 

The volunteers for Heaven Fest, the leadership and everyone who is part are THE. MOST. AMAZING. PEOPLE. IN. THE. WORLD.  I love them.  {Stonebrook Manor in Thornton, Jim Elliot School in Englewood, Northern Hills Church in Brighton and Rez in Loveland}  Thank-you, people! www.stonebrookmanor.com

Dave was in Prairie Playhouse’s “Willie Wonka”

 

He played Grandpa Joe to the great delight of crowds of people.  Stephanie had to assure her friends he did not really walk or act that old in real life, because he was so good and a local news article said the “ubitiquous Dave Rhoades” threatened to steal the show.  And?  Even though it was sprayed gray, he got to keep his hair (in “Annie” a year ago, CLICK HERE  he was shaved bald)!

We had the coldest days of the year and also reached the 70s in mid-winter – all within a 2 week period!

  

That is Colorado for you.  And though March is our snowiest month, we didn’t get any.  Uh-oh.  Watch out, May!

Joe & Robin came to visit!

 

Joe made red beans and rice (to-die-for, mmmmmm) and I made an ok batch of gumbo.  That got better each day until it was gone.

Tredessa got a boyfriend.

Is it ok to say that here?  Well she did and he is cute (Army) and she kind of adores his muscles (Norwegian from Florida).  And how sweet he treats her (prophetic intercessor).  We all like him.  That works out well.  And since I don’t think he even knows I have a blog, I can pass all the news about them on to you.  Haha.

I lost an hour, but the days got longer.

I am not against Daylight Savings at all.  It tells me gardening is around the corner.  Every night, as the blue hours (l’heure bleu) get bluer and last measurable minutes longer, I sigh happily.

We announced our super-cool NEW Heaven Fest 2011 location!

 

The Ranchin Loveland!  Oh, yeah, baby!  www.heavenfest.com

My niece, Christiana, starred in a commercial for shopping in Aberdeen, SD.  


She is “Dorothy,” which seems so perfectly appropriate, somehow!  VERY proud of our little working actress!

There was a “super-moon”! 

It’s a wonderful night for a moondance…

Tredessa introduced me to a positively lovely way of looking at sarcasm, a mode of communication I tend towards:

 …the last refuge of modest people, when their soul is invaded.

Spring snuck up on me

One day I woke up – and there it was, spring!   And I looked out the window to a sure confirmation: the garlic chives were taking over the back yard already!

              

Stormie bought a house.  Yes, she did.

 

Look at all the colorful dishes waiting for Dessa to finish painting the cupboards.

A 1919 bungalow.  Cute and in pristine condition.  Great price.  The last owner {Ruby} had lived there since 1944.

Tredessa moved out of her apartment in Arvada.

She will live with her baby sister.

My lover turned 52

Sorely missed at the celebration were the Powers fam.  Another celebration will have to ensue.

You have to see this {all the way through} to believe it!

Yep.  That is Wrex.  The Birthday Singer.

“Baby Belle” (better known as Amelie Belle), turned ONE!

  

And?  God is still faithful!  And we have lots to talk about. :)

The York Street House & a Song for a Sunday

5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

If you have been on this blog over time, you know that 1723 York Street, my childhood home, still holds pieces of my heart.

The windows are all smaller now. Modern. The neighbors got closer. Some trees are gone…(googlemaps image)

The  Academy of Country Music just named this the song of the year.

 

The House that Built Me by Miranda Lambert


 

It’s like she was reading my mail.

The Nest

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

This is in no way related to my recent “flying away” post.  But there does seem to be a bird theme happening.

{Isn’t this beauful?  It is by www.cutarts.com}

We have always been an us.

On July 23, 1981, we became a family.  Me + Dave + Tara.  And we started adding to our collection.  We were avid collectors, apparently, for we added 4 more in less than 4 years.  By the time of our 5th anniversay we were 7.  Me + Dave + Tara + Stephanie + Tredessa + Rocky + Stormie.  A full, loud, happy nest, a family!

The numbers have changed over the years,  especially as kids turned into high schoolers and then college students and started getting married, and they have gone up and down, then slightly up again and even had a few cousins sprinkled in here or there and children of the faith added to the mix.  But the house, the us, has always had other people besides me and Dave breathing in some adjoining room, or another.

Stormie bought her own, first house yesterday, signed the final papers. 

And just like that, pouf!  Our nest is empty.

This was the goal, right?  This is why we taught them to tie their own shoes, be good citizens and get out there to fulfill their destiny for God in their generation.  We were populating the earth with godly seed, right?  Making sure to produce history-making, Holy-Spirit-filled sons and daughters, prophesying, praying, singing and worshipping, spiritual activists and icnonclasts for Jesus?  Wasn’t this the very goal of it all?

Stormie at her new house, images from www.maydae.com

She will sleep in her new house tomorrow night for the first time (today painting and polishing and preparing for the moving van tomorrow, all exciting rites of passage).  It is a sunny spring day and I am here, at home, on the couch and I can hear the distinct tick-tocking of various clocks throughout our home (I also, apparently, collect clocks) and they seem louder now.  They seem to fill a bigger quiet than before, understanding the expanded space they will now inhabit.  Children on the next block, rambunctiously enjoying spring break echo exactly the sounds of my own little ones – wasn’t it just yesterday?

We’ve spent 30 years building this nest for these people.  And now they are building their own.

And it is good.  And it is God.

And we have always been will always be an us.

Dave + me.  And all the storage and space I always thought I needed….and the mutt.

google image

NOTE TO KIDS:  Dad says to call if you’re coming over in case one or more of us is naked.  Yes.  He really did say that.