When the light turned red, the bird flew away.
I guess the bird was going in the opposite direction.
Fly away, beautiful bird.
H A N D S
These are the hands that held us as babies
These hands braided our hair
These are the hands that buttoned our shirts
These hands bathed us with care.
Her arms hugged us tightly
And her hands held us close
When we were worried or scared
She'd be on her toes.
These hands planted flowers
These hands sowed some seeds
These hands wrote books and manuals
And filled diaries with her deeds.
These hands are quite tired now
Her body needs rest
Each movement takes effort
Everything is a test.
Prayerful hands
Caring hands
Loving hands
My mother's hands.
I love you, Mom!
When people go out for coffee, the fancy cafes sometimes place a small cookie on the saucer for the coffee drinker. I am not an avid coffee drinker, but I am a self-confessed cookie monster.
This is my latest go-to sugar cookie recipe. I typically roll, cut, shape and freeze. That way, when I feel like baking cookies, I can pull something out of the freezer.
COFFEE SUGAR COOKIES
3 c flour
2 t baking powder
1 c cubed salted butter
(or 1 c unsalted butter + ¼ t salt)
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 T vanilla extract
2 T espresso powder
Preheat oven 350 degrees.
Combine flour and baking powder in medium bowl.
In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar.
Add egg and vanilla until combined.
Add in flour mixture slowly.
Add espresso powder and mix until dough forms a ball.
Roll out to 3/8” onto floured surface.
Cut and shape.
Bake 7 – 10 minutes. (Do not overbake.)
You have to believe me, I only bought a few bananas. The bananas were on sale, so of course I had to get some. How was I to know that they were going to go from green to yellow to brown in such a short time? OK, I admit it, I knew that would happen if we ate the apples ahead of the bananas. I tried to delay the inevitable by moving the bananas to the fridge when they had turned yellow but I now realise that it only worsened the situation. You know, out of sight, out of mind. Yes, those bananas got left in the fridge a little longer than they should have been. After several days in the fridge, the bananas had gone from overripe to very overripe.
The bananas had to go but I wanted to try a new recipe. I knew my sister Mindy has a tried and tested banana bread recipe so I sent out an SOS. She promptly sent me a picture of John Harper's Banana Nut Bread recipe. Looking at the picture of the cookbook page she sent, and all the smudges that came with it, one could tell that the cookbook was opened on that page a lot. I took that as a sign to give the recipe a go.
Mindy said that she lessens the sugar, uses coconut oil instead of shortening, and added that her kids don't like walnuts. The original recipe called for 3/4 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of vegetable shortening. I followed Mindy's reduced sugar path and used butter, instead of either coconut oil or shortening. I used a bundt pan, instead of a loaf pan. It turned out well.
BANANA NUT BREAD1/2 c softened butter1/2 c sugar1 large egg4 teaspoon lemon juice2 cups flour1 teaspoon baking soda1/2 teaspoon salt1 cup mashed (2-3) ripe bananas1 c walnuts, coarsely chopped1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Cream butter and sugar.
3. Beat in egg and lemon juice.
4. In separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.
5. Fold the mixture into the batter and blend well.
6. Stir in mashed bananas and walnuts.
7. Pour mixture into greased and floured bundt pan (or 9x4x3-inch loaf pan) and bake 60 to 70 minutes or until the toothpick inserted in the centre of the pan comes out clean.
8. Turn out on a rack to cool.
(I've indicated 1 cup of walnuts in the recipe because I used the original 1/2 cup from the original recipe and felt that the banana cake could definitely use more walnuts.)
Saying good-bye is not always fun.
Right before Christmas last year, I got a post card from Sunshine. It was an unexpected surprise.
It made my day.
A few days after that, I was in a call with Mother and Z. As we were saying good bye, Z said, "See you later, alligator!"
I replied with the most logical reply I could think of, "In a while, crocodile!"
The repartee was brief but it made me smile. I wanted to have other witty replies for future good byes so I went to google and found this in youtube.
I gathered up a few more lines and with MyGirl's help (and Apple's emojis), we came up with this collection in time for Christmas. I had them printed out in Kmart as pictures and fridge magnets.
MyGirl came up to me earlier and said that something in the Snoopy blogpost struck her. She looked back at the post and told me which part got her thinking. The blogpost read:
It was only after I had completed the puzzle and disassembled it, that I discovered instructions inside the box that would have enabled me to finish the puzzle in less than than five minutes.
(Personally, I enjoyed the challenge and would not use the cheat sheet if I had to do the puzzle over again.)
She said, "Mom, of course there would be instructions."
"But it is a puzzle!" I argued and pulled out the box to show her CRYSTAL PUZZLE in big bold letters.
"Mom," she calmly continued, "why would you think there wouldn't be instructions?"
I was still thinking jigsaw puzzles. They don't come with instructions. They come with a picture of the completed puzzle in the cover of the box. And that is what the crystal puzzle had -- a picture of Snoopy and Woodstock standing on a green platform. In my mind, here is what the completed puzzle is meant to look like. Go forth and solve the puzzle.
In a matter-of-factly, yet loving tone, she drove the nail home by saying, "Would they sell Lego without instructions?"
I started to laugh. (Lightbulb moment!)
Of course she was right! It would be like selling IKEA furniture without assembly instructions.
It made perfect sense now. Clearly, instructions would come with this puzzle.
Can I just use the "Instructions were in Japanese" card?
Coming from a family with ten children, I'd like to think I get a free pass in the crazy department. In other words, it is inevitable to end up a tad crazy if one is growing up with nine other siblings. I always like to say that there is method in our madness but that is just my way of saying that there is a whole lot of madness in each of us and we'd like to pretend that we know what we are doing.
When we were kids, we always looked forward to Christmas. When Christmas break started, we would plan out our Christmas program for our parents, schedule it with them, turn on the aircon in the study room if that was the program venue, set the stage and present our creative genius to the two people who would best appreciate our talent.
One of our notable Christmas programs included a nativity play complete with Joseph and Mary (with a pillow under her shirt) knocking from door to door because there was no room at the inn, until the baby Jesus (a baby doll) arrived. This was followed by our version of the "Eight is Enough" pyramid. If memory serves me right, we settled for a base with three kids and carried the lightest child safe enough to put on top of the pyramid. We were ambitious but we knew our limits. One year, someone came up with a script and we did a Peanuts segment with Charlie Brown (Eldest Sis, I think), Snoopy (Sister Deer in a big white t-shirt), Lucy (London Eye waving to her queendom), Linus (was it me that draped a security blanket over my shoulder). You get the picture although I should go through old albums to find some proof of who played who in that Peanuts production number.
If we were lucky, we would be able to organise some sort of Anniversary or Christmas project that we could give to them. It could be as simple as folding several sheets of bond paper into a booklet or as thematic as something shaped into a heart. Some of these have survived having been kept by Mother, including a lion-shaped book, where each kid was given a lion-shaped piece of paper to fill up with whatever they wanted, tied together by a piece of yarn that served as the lion's tail. Someone recently discovered Slash-M's version of O' Henry's The Gift of the Magi. (His version is an absolute classic but that is for another post.)
Anyway, as we have gotten older and gone our separate ways, we still try to gather forces with projects we could give as a gift for a special occasion. I can't remember all of our projects but I remember that for Sister Deer's 40th birthday, we collated Walk Down Memory Lane for her, we did Countdown to Fifty for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, we had the Slash-M Fifty Project. We routed a birthday card around the world for Mindy's 50th birthday. That was planned way in advance. I got the card which J started with Lego-like strips forming the number "27" (official age) from Sunshine in December 2021. By that time, it had gone through the siblings in Asia and Europe. It was more than half a year away from her actual birthday and my job was to mail it to the US. This particular card arrived on time. It was hand-delivered by Jersey Girl when they visited Mindy in July.) We did a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY collage which was our parents' screensaver for many years before it got updated in 2008. This 2008 version got included in the Christmas letter that year. We managed another family collage for Sister Deer's 50th. J's brilliance really made this collage special because he managed to convince Sister Deer to join him in a photo holding up her name. In 2017, a collage of the grandchildren signing the letters HAPPY BIRTHDAY for Mother's birthday got upgraded to include the children becoming a double birthday surprise. We updated that collage in April 2023 to include the in-laws. Another project involved collating our Christmas letters into a book which we gave to Mother for her birthday in 2018.
So each of these projects would start off as a germ of an idea, someone's articulated thought bubble, often driven by the notion that 'we should do something special for (fill in the blank with the name) because it is (fill in the blank with the occasion).' You only need to convince one person to start off the project. Once you are able to get a sibling to agree that it is a good idea and a worthy endeavour, you can call in the reinforcements. This will lead to more coordinated (covert) discussions, numerous requests and incessant follow-ups if we want to see the project to completion.
Our latest project was for Sister Deer's 60th birthday. The Search for 60 Starts Now took off in October for her December birthday.
Sister Deer is turning 60 in December. She will join the ranks of dual citizenship and will be getting discounts she can claim.
We all know we tend to be forgetful now that we’re all over 30. What more when you are twice that?So to help remind Sister Deer of her new age and to celebrate her new privileges, please take a selfie against all the 60’s you find between now and November.We don’t know yet what the final gift will look like. I might leave that with the creative ones. But at least we’ll have some material to work with.
The final gift to Sister Deer came in the form of a blog with over 60 pictures of family members from several continents, countries, and states, posing against the number 60. We presented this to her in a zoom call before her birthday.
RD and I were talking about these projects today and he said, "Your family has a certain kind of crazy," to which I replied, "But Auntie Sister Deer liked her blog."
"Sure Mom, if one crazy person in your family has an idea, of course, another crazy person in the family will appreciate it. You know, if you all get raised in the same asylum, it's no wonder you all think you are sane."
(Got to love this son of mine. Although he would rather not think about it or have to admit it, he knows for a fact that he is walking around carrying half of my genes.)
