Nostalgia

Old Kitchen Nostalgia

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imagesGTMBP5VTI enjoy home improvement shows. I particularly like those where renovations happen to bring a “bargain” purchase up to modern speed…but my “weirdness” comes in during the first look at the “before” aspects of the homes.

renovation101216dIt almost always makes me feel a little twinge of poignancy. A pang. A bittersweet sense, of nostalgia for those times and places gone by.52ebec5f697ab040980006d1__w_540_s_fit_

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Beautiful 1950s kitchen

I can’t help envisioning, sometimes – especially with the kitchens – the happy times, the meals cooked and eaten by countless people, the gatherings enjoyed, and holidays and birthday celebrated. It can be places from times long before I was born; it doesn’t matter.

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Kitchen from around the time I was born in the 1960s

The room(s) that hosted those events is being cleared out, emptied, stripped down. That wallpaper or those cabinets and countertops so lovingly selected in 1957 or 1963, or 1990 are nothing more, now, then a mark of a bygone era, and the people who chose them and lived there have moved on, literally or figuratively, to greener pastures.

It makes me kind of…sad.

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peeking into a lit window at a cozy scene

Perhaps my feeling is connected to the game my mother and I would play (and that I still do sometimes even now, I confess) when we’d be driving somewhere, especially at night, and I could glimpse through some open shades or curtains a lit room or two in a home as we passed by. I was always fascinated by that, imagining the people who lived there by having that quick look. What were they like? What were their hopes, dreams? Were they happy or in the grip of a tragic or challenging circumstance? That “What if?” game led to me writing novels, I’m sure – but it’s also part and parcel of what niggles at me during those home improvement shows.

I’m pretty sure that makes me weird (so if you’re akin to this, or even understand what I’m talking about here, please chime in through the comments, so I know I’m not alone, LOL)!

Do YOU ever get a bittersweet sense of poignancy about something that doesn’t have personal meaning to you?

The Pang – and Danger – of Nostalgia

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nostalgia-wallpapers_37124_2560x1920Although I have rarely been dissatisfied by the world at any age, I get this kind of pang a lot and perhaps more intensely because of it. In fact I tend to glorify the world of times gone by. Different things can trigger it: sometimes it’s an item I haven’t seen in a long time, or an old photo. It can be from my own childhood, or even from when my kids were little.

It can be triggered by something as simple and silly as seeing Christmas decorations or pictures well after the holiday is done and all the accoutrements are packed away (confession: this just happened to me again today – for like the 10th time since Christmas – when I saw a friend’s old posting on FB from Christmas-time).

For me, who has a tendency to relish the past, I have to exercise balance when and how I can.

For many years, I could indulge my love of the past in a purely historical sense, writing my heavily-researched but still highly-fictionalized medieval romances.

Then, when I started writing Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, I got to spend some significant time in MY past – a practice that was actually both painful but ultimately cathartic after my father died (I’d only written about 70 pages of the 420 page manuscript when he died).

Here’s a snippet from an actual letter Pa wrote to me years ago, that I ended up using in the later part of Moose Tracks. I like his philosophy and try to remember it as often as I can:

“What was it that Scarlett O’Hara said? Tomorrow is another day!? Here are some thoughts about that: You can re-live the past but you cannot re-live the future. We dumb humans (there is no other kind) get ourselves all screwed up with more than one time base. We are forced to live in the present with minutes and hours and days and years. Everything is pretty linear, and if we stayed in the present our lives would pass linearly.

When you are young, you have a little past, the present, and a lot of future. When you are middle-aged, you have a lot of past, the present, and a lot of future. When you get old, you have a real lot of past, the present, and a little future. Notice that the only thing that doesn’t change is the present.

When you are young, you waste time looking forward to the future. When you are middle-aged, you waste time looking both to the past and to the future. When you get old, you waste time looking to the past. The problem is you can look back more than once. There are some moments in my life from many years ago that I probably have spent hours re-living. But those hours were lost to my present, never to be given back to me. It’s up to me that any re-living of my past is worth the price of time in the present..

I’ve come to realize that you can only live now. Don’t get hung up on the past or wait for the future.

Living is only for now!

The more that can be true, then the longer you live. Think about it awhile.”

So when that pang of nostalgia hits, I try to follow this idea: to allow the pang its moment, and then remember that this moment, too, will someday be part of the past. I try to live it now and to its fullest and  not be too sad in missing what’s gone before.

How about you – do you struggle with nostalgia, or are you someone who loves to throw out the old to make way for the new?

About Fishing With Pa…and Surprises

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I’ve come to understand a few things in the almost half century I’ve lived, and one of those is the realization that sometimes, people can surprise you.

Sometimes those surprises can be unpleasant, but since I try to focus on the positive, I’d like to share a moment from nearly 20 years ago that surprised me in the best of ways. I remember it so clearly, and it has stuck with me so well, that I even wrote one of the “past” scenes in Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven around it.

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Adirondacks Rainbow Trout Fisherman Wall Art by Paul A Lanquist

It involves a fishing trip I took with my father on a beautiful, sunny summer day when I was in my early 30’s, and Pa was nearing 70.

Now you have to understand that my father was a dedicated, lifelong trout fisherman. Some of my fondest memories involve Pa helping me learn how to bait my line with an earthworm, cast, “feel” the fish mouthing the bait, and setting the hook to reel in a beauty. We often released the fish we caught back into the river, lake, or stream, but never before admiring their beautiful markings and color.

On this particular day, we hadn’t gone fishing together in more than a year. Real life had intervened for me…I was married, living more than an hour from the Homestead, teaching full time, and had a young child, so opportunities to get away and spend an afternoon together fishing or even just visiting by ourselves didn’t happen too often. My husband had offered to watch our young daughter on this Saturday, and my father and I agreed to meet up at a fishing spot about halfway between each of us. It was a kind of dam with a running stream below it – perfect for active and hungry fish.

Pa and fishing favorite memory 2The bank of the stream was formed by a combination of large rocks and tall flowering weeds. The sun beat down hot and bright on us as we fished, and the sky was a perfect blue with puffy white clouds. Here’s a picture I took of Pa during some of the quiet time…we stood farther apart as we fished, so as not to tangle our lines in the gently moving water.

The surprise came at lunch time. We’d reeled in our lines and were sitting up on the bank; I thought we were going to decide where to head for a quick lunch, but Pa walked up to his vehicle, pulled out a small cooler, and proceeded to take out cups, napkins, two cold orange sodas (one of his favorite flavors of soda back then), some chips…and two submarine sandwiches of mixed cold cuts – salami, turkey, ham – dressed with mayonnaise, cheese, lettuce, tomato – the works.

When I realized that Pa had made the entire lunch himself, I was shocked to the core. My father had always been very self-sufficient (he was a US Marine after all), but my mother was such a good cook that, except for the occasional turn at the grill or undertaking a project like making homemade sauerkraut, my father had never “cooked” or prepared anything to my knowledge.  And this was the best sandwich I’d ever eaten, without a doubt in my mind.

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Another picture I took of Pa, smiling on the banks of the stream, just after our wonderful lunch

Pa got a good chuckle out of my astonishment, and we enjoyed the nicest lunch I’d ever had, not because of fancy food or ambience (though the setting WAS right up my alley and the food, as I mentioned, was delicious), but because of the moment. Because of the beauty of sharing that peaceful time and place together, sprinkled with the magic of learning something new about a man I’d thought (in my youthful arrogance and ignorance) I knew pretty much everything there was to know.

I learned much more about my father in the years to come, all interesting and some amazing, including talents I didn’t discover he’d had until finding some papers after his death.

However that day of fishing on the sunny banks of that little stream provided me with one of the first of those kinds of happy surprises. I guess I needed to be an adult to experience it – to start becoming aware that people often posses depth and complexity far beyond the surface we tend to assume. It’s an experience I’ve never forgotten…another important lesson learned, thanks to Pa, and one that has never left my heart. ❤

Some Bone Deep Memories that led to Writing “Moose Tracks”

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Now that Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven is published, I’ve been thinking about some of the “behind the scenes” and inspirational  kinds of things I enjoy reading about/seeing when it comes to novels I’ve read by other authors – and so I decided to do a post of this sort today, for anyone who might be interested.

Mary on threadbare chairWe were pretty materially poor when I was little. So much so that when my father married my mother (it was a second marriage for them both, and she already had my five older sisters) there was a carpet pad instead of a carpet for quite a few years, and some furniture that was extremely threadbare (like in this picture, taken from inside our living room, in our little house near the lake).

Pa took this picture, I’m certain, as he was the camera-expert in the house, and I only found it recently, on a slide he’d given me years ago. I love it, actually, because of the ragged carpet pad and chair. I felt so much love and nurturing in my young life that I have no memory or distress at having so little in a material sense. My parents ensured that we had plentiful, wholesome, homemade food (with one of Ma’s delicious desserts every night!) and plenty of sturdy, warm clothing and shoes; we were living on my father’s salary alone with many mouths to feed, and we didn’t have a lot of frills, but we always had more than enough in that regard. I felt then and still feel I wanted for nothing.

Mary cyI’m sitting in the pic above with my hands uncharacteristically folded and a solemn expression on my face. Here’s another one on the left of my more usual, energetic demeanor, and on the right, from a professional photographer about six months earlier. Mary at 22 monthsI was two years old in the picture on the right and about three in both of the pictures taken at home – a happy, exuberant kid. However, my parents often told me that I was also a child who would sometimes retreat into a profound stillness and deep thoughts. When I had the kind of expression I’m wearing in the pic above – the one with my hands folded – my mother said she always wondered what I was thinking, and people often said I spoke and seemed far older than my years. I wasn’t so still and quiet very often, but I had the makings of a bookworm/thinker even then.

I’ll finish this post with some final, visual examples of the kind of happiness and love I experienced as a young child – the foundation of the life and family atmosphere that would inspire my writings so many years later. These pics are from my first birthday and were taken in the Homestead’s kitchen, next to my father’s chair (empty in these shots, as he was taking the photos), back in the winter of 1967. I am the sixth of seven daughters, but my parents ensured that each daughter was recognized in her own right, with attention, conversations, and of course recognition of us as individuals on our birthdays. Pa was at the ready with his camera, and we always had a cake baked for us lovingly by my mother (who is a wonderful cook, even today, though she is in her 80’s now).

Birthday 17 Birthday 16 Birthday 14 Birthday 13 Birthday 10

Life was good in the purest and best sense…filled with ups and downs, conflict and struggle, but also filled with the kind of warmth and nurturing that helped a little girl understand what’s really important, far above and beyond material goods.

 

Release Day!

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Actual Final copy with endorsementIt’s finally here…and after five + years in the writing, another six months in editing and production, and two months in pre-sale mode, it feel very good to say that Moose Tracks on the Road To Heaven is now available for purchase in eBook or print TODAY! 🙂

You can purchase the eBook in these places:

Amazon B&N iBooks Kobo AllRomance GooglePlay

PLEASE NOTE: If you’d prefer a PRINT copy of the book, at this point it can be purchased here, from: Amazon

It will be available in print from Barnes and Noble and other sellers within a few days (there is a lag in terms of publisher availability).

It will also be available from some independent book stores, either in stock or upon request, including Mysteries on Main Street, in Johnstown, NY.

Only 30 Days Left!

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Actual Final copy with endorsementIt’s been a great couple of weeks of Holiday celebration, but it’s winding down now and the grind of regular work/teaching is going to pick up again tomorrow.

Writing and all things book-related will have to take a back seat…so it’s a good thing I’ve got just about everything in place for the February 3rd release date of MOOSE TRACKS ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN! Just 30 short days left, so place your pre-order now and secure the eBook version at it’s introductory price. Go here for amazon/kindle preorder or here for preordering from Kobo!

B&N doesn’t allow preorders of all books, unfortunately, and we’re working on getting it up at Google and iTunes – though preordering isn’t a guarantee there either. It will be up on all platforms by February 3rd, though.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a few little sneak peeks, reviews, and other little tidbits from the novel, the inspiration behind it, and the process of writing, but until then, you can read an excerpt from the first three chapters here if you’d like.

It’s a different kind of book – set up in the style of Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café –  but I hope anyone who ventures to read will enjoy it. 🙂

Christmas at the Homestead…and A Stollen Recipe

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ChristmasWell, I suppose the stollen could  be served anytime. But we always had it on Christmas.

It’s a little fussy to make and takes a few hours, between rising, baking and frosting, but the results are worth it and SO good with coffee. The pic above is of a later years Christmas morning at the Homestead…the entire living room used to be filled like this when all of us kids lived at home. My poor mother would be wrapping until 2:00am most Christmases. 🙂

Here’s the stollen recipe; it’s from a 1965 edition of Family Circle Magazine, and my mother has been making this every year for my entire life. Once I got married and started my own family, I began making it as well – though mine never turn out as nice as Ma’s do!

STOLLEN
BREADS — Yeast

Bake at 350° for 35 minutes…makes 2 large loaves

1 cup seedless raisins
1 cup (8-ounce jar) mixed chopped candied fruits
1/4 cup orange juice
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 envelopes active dry yeast
OR: 2 cakes compressed yeast
1/4 cup very warm water
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
5 cups sifted regular flour
1 cup chopped blanched almonds (I use finely chopped walnuts instead)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons cinnamon-sugar (I use a lot more)

imageCombine raisins, candied fruits, and orange juice in a small bowl.

imageScald milk with sugar, salt, and 1/2 cup (1 stick) of the butter or margarine; cool to lukewarm.

Sprinkle or crumble yeast into very warm water in a large bowl. (“Very warm” water should feel comfortably warm when dropped on wrist.) Stir until yeast dissolves, then stir in cooled milk mixture, eggs, and lemon rind.

imageBeat in 2 cups of the flour until smooth; stir in fruit mixture, almonds, and nutmeg, then beat in just enough of remaining 3 cups flour to make a stiff dough.

Knead until smooth and elastic on a lightly floured pastry cloth or board, adding only enough flour to keep dough from sticking (this is the part that’s always tough for me…figuring out how much to knead it, because there are ingredients in the dough that prevent it from being “smooth” and so difficult to tell if it’s “elastic” yet. If the dough springs back a little when you poke it, then it’s good). 🙂

imagePlace in a greased large bowl; cover with a clean towel.

imageLet rise in a warm place, away from draft, 2 hours, or until double in bulk. I use my oven’s “proofing” setting, because it keeps it draft-free and just warm enough.

imageIt should look like this on the left when ready for the next step.

Punch dough down; knead a few times; divide in half. imageRoll each into an oval, 15×9; place on a greased large cookie sheet. Melt remaining 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine in a small saucepan; brush part over each oval; sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar; imagefold in half lengthwise.

Cover; let rise again 1 hour, or until double in bulk. Brush again with part of the remaining melted butter or margarine.

imageBake in moderate oven (350°) 35 minutes, or until golden and loaves give a hollow sound when tapped. While hot, brush with remaining melted butter or margarine; cool on wire racks.

When cool, frost and decorate. imageI use a basic white icing (butter, confectioner’s sugar, a little vanilla and a couple tablespoons of milk), decorated with cut red and green cherries.

It’s really great with coffee…and with just the white frosting, you could serve it anytime!

Winter Morning Memories

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shed in snowThis is a picture of a sight I saw most late winter mornings at the Homestead when I was growing up: the sun rising through the woods out back behind the red shed, casting a pink glow over everything.

We lived on what was called a “rural route” and so the school bus had to come and get us an hour before school actually started, in order to get all the kids necessary and get us all to school in time. So I was usually sitting at the kitchen table at around 6:30am, looking out the windows – which overlooked this back yard – and eating the breakfast Ma insisted I have to “get a good start on the day” before the bus came just before 7:00am.

My mother used to even sing the song of the old-time commercial posted below, to get us to eat our Cream of Wheat with a side of buttered toast and some milk or orange juice. It was from an old radio commercial she heard as a girl in the 1930’s, and it stuck with her; she could always make us smile and eat up when she danced around the kitchen singing it. When the mood strikes, she’ll still sing it for me now, with a twinkle in her eyes, and usually with both of us dissolving into giggles before she’s done. My kids think it’s hysterical. 🙂

It was a peaceful and happy time. I learned some of my love of colors, textures, and the gorgeous trappings of nature as well by watching the changes in the vista I saw each morning in the back yard. Everything was snug, safe, and warm inside the house, the beautiful world outside was just waking up, and it was time to start a new day.

I still enjoy sunrises, though the view around me is sadly far more suburban than country anymore. The sky looks the same, though, wherever I am. ❤

How about you – are you a sunrise kind of person?

Seasonal Images From My Home To Yours

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The tree and decorated mantel in my living room. My chair is the one closest to the shelves; my husband’s is nearest to the camera

Now that my grades are in for the five weeks (even though I just got in another eight inch stack to grade over the holidays) I have a little time to breathe and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. I thought I’d share a few images from around my house, since I’m a home body and I love to decorate for whatever occasion I can. 🙂

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A little glass of eggnog with nutmeg gets things going.

imageThis “mistletoe crystal” was a gift from a friend last year. I think it looks really pretty hanging from the chandelier in our dining room.

imageFor me, Christmas-time wouldn’t be complete without some old-fashioned, “clove” oranges. The tradition of using cloves stems back further than medieval times, but the use of clove-studded oranges for scent and sight became very popular in the Victorian era. I made these last weekend (it doesn’t take long) and used the old iridescent fruit bowl my parents bought for me at an old antique/second-hand shop a couple of decades ago, perched on the silver case my sister-in-law bought for my husband and me when we got married 24+ years ago.

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A close-up of the some of the lights and decorations on the mantel. I think this looks a little like a Christmas card design, don’t you?

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And a shot of our sweet English shepherd, Cassie, snoozing under the Christmas tree. So cozy!

I hope you’re getting some opportunities, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, or nothing at all, to enjoy the different pace of the season.

Vintage Christmas

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Vintage-Christmas-card-christmas-33061199-500-363It’s true that I enjoy vintage Halloween and Thanksgiving  pictures…but I adore vintage Christmas images. Here are a couple for you to enjoy  as a start (you know there will be more in coming days, LOL!)…

Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32887773-1200-881This one is a favorite for the atmosphere it evokes. It’s peaceful and warm, all at the same time. It reminds me of the Night Before Christmas book my father used to read to us…and it also kind of reminds me of this scene from Anne of Avonlea (another favorite film made from a book, this version featuring the irrepressible Megan Follows as Anne Shirley. You can see her performing now on the CW’s series REIGN, where she plays Queen Catherine de’ Medici, pictured here on the left, just behind Adelaide Kane, who plays Mary Queen of Scots, and Toby Regbo, who plays King Francis). 1212-final-580x385

I always loved this second entry into the “Anne” trilogy, because she became a teacher in this film and experienced the freedoms of life on her own for the first time. I had my own VHS copy of the trilogy, and when I was a first year teacher (newly-armed with my undergraduate degrees in English and Russian, and a mere 22 years old), living away from home and not in college for the first time in my life, I would watch this video again and again, snuggled into my little studio apartment above the diner in Hancock, NY, where I had my first teaching position. Cozy and wonderful – the perfect situation at a perfect time in my life.

There are many more reasons why Christmas-time – the whole month of December, really – holds such a special place in my heart, as it does for so many others. But those will be subjects of other posts. Here is another lovely image for now, and I’ll save some of the other stories and pictures (and another sneak peek from Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven) for later!Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32837432-1024-768