Alas, Poor Yorick!

     I dreamed the other night that I was trodding the boards in a local theater production of Macbeth, and landed the leading role as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark! I stumbled over my lines at the beginning of the first act but ended eloquently enough to garner the admiration of my fellow actors. Then came Intermission. Among the admirers crowded around the conference table in the break room was Johnny Depp. He was so impressed with my performance that he asked to read lines with me.

     Fortunately for me the intermission was a long one—several hours long; I couldn't remember any of my lines for the upcoming acts, I couldn't even remember rehearsing them. I was basking in borrowed glory. Thankfully, I awoke from my dream before the intermission was over with the phrase "Alas, poor Yorick!" on my mind, and only a vague uneasiness about the forgotten lines.

     They say everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. I think that was it for me. You might say it doesn't count because I dreamed it, but isn't fame as immaterial and illusive as dreams? It seems rather fitting, then, that my 15 minutes were something conjured by my subconscious.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

                                                                   ~ The Tempest ~

Painting by Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret

Blah Blah Blogging - What I Ate for Lunch on Thursday

     

     On Thursday morning, as I was making the bed, the telephone rang. Lo and behold, it was the Townhouse Café calling to say their chef was making cream of celery and apple soup that day! Four months earlier I had put my name on a list for cream of celery and apple soup fans. At last the anticipated day had arrived. I was told that if I couldn’t make it in that day, I could still have some of the specialty soup on Friday even though it wouldn’t be on the menu. For a moment I was conflicted: Should I go eat soup with the vulgar herd on Thursday, or wait and sup with the privileged few on the following day? I decided to shove vanity aside and go for the sure thing. He who hesitates could end up soupless.

     I find it intriguing that so many folks in the blogosphere want to show me photos of what they have eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Now here I am sharing my lunch with you. Sort of. You don't get to taste it; you just get to see how pretty it was and imagine how good it might have tasted. I can't even give you the recipe because I don't have it myself. All I can tell you is that it had celery, apples, garlic, cream and white wine in it and that it was lip-smacking delicious–I would have wiped the empty cup with my fingers and licked them if there had been no one to see me do it. I paired my serving of soup with an apricot chicken salad sandwich and terra chips made from root vegetables. Perfect. I'm not a soup sommelier, but I am beginning to feel like one. And I am convinced that if you cannot sit across the table slurping a cup with me, you will still enjoy my cream of celery and apple soup vicariously by looking at my photos and reading about it.

     After all, as it says in my by-line, "a pleasure shared is a pleasure multiplied..."

     Or is it?

     You may find this all so blah blah blasé, jaded by the plethora of food posts in the blogosphere. You may be critiquing the quality of the photo my daughter took with her phone or my blog format. You may even feel slighted that I didn't invite you to lunch. On the other hand, you may feel so inspired by my zest for cream of celery and apple soup and my description of it that you run to the grocers, buy the ingredients I've mentioned and figure out how to make it yourself. If you do, could you send me a photo and the recipe?

     And I am not really sharing my lunch with you, am I? I'm sharing an experience. To those of you who are passionate about food, that could be just as interesting as the time I was kidnapped by pirates and returned home wearing an eye-patch. Arrrgh!

Queen Anne's Lace

It is that time of summer when the waysides are tangled with some of my favorite wildflowers. I am distracted by them. I slow traffic and nearly drive off the road into ditches. In my humble opinion, no formal gardens can outshine these weedy wonders.

Portrait by a Neighbor

Queen Anne's lace

Before she has her floor swept


Or her dishes done,

Any day you’ll find her


A-sunning in the sun!

It’s long after midnight


Her key’s in the lock,


And you never see her chimney smoke


Till past ten o’clock!

She digs in her garden


With a shovel and a spoon,

She weeds her lazy lettuce


By the light of the moon.

She walks up the walk


Like a woman in a dream,


She forgets she borrowed butter


And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,

And if she mows the place,

She leaves the clover standing


And the Queen Anne’s lace!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

Someone Nibbish

blue-eyed chicory and Queen Anne's lace

She sweeps in her pajamas

Writes stories while in bed

Eats apple pie for breakfast

Before the household’s fed!

The sun is shining brightly,

She lingers in the house,

But when the rain is falling

She skips out for a douse!

When you stop to borrow sugar

She invites you in for tea,

Serves tasty little nibbles

Then chatters endlessly…

Smiles mildly at the roses

You brought her for the vase

Then swoons at blue-eyed chicory

And at the Queen Anne’s lace!

~ Nib of Nib's End ~                

Stone Cottage

     

     Someday I will live in a stone cottage. It is a small house, easy to keep, leaving me time for baking cakes, writing stories and dreaming in the garden. The windows are deep enough to hold a pot of violets or set a pie to cool on the sill. I will always take time for tea. You are always invited to join me provided you leave your muddy boots on the threshold. My cottage is invariably tidy except for the books strewn about, the dozen pair of eyeglasses I keep close to hand in order to look at your photos, and the crumbs under the kitchen table from the cookies I give to the children who visit. The violets on the sill I have dug from the birchwood up the hill, and the berries for the pie were gleaned from the hedgerows. The sheets on the bed have been dried in the wind and there is lavender from the garden under the pillows. If you happen to spend the night, you will be wakened in the morning by the songs of robins or of wrens in the tree outside your window, the rich, sharp smell of coffee, and muffins baking in the oven. You may eat as many muffins as you like; there is time enough to make more. 

     I walk out every day, in the woods, down the lane, or along the bridlepath beside the brook. I go even if it rains because I like my flowered umbrella and wellies and don't mind showing them off. I splash through puddles instead of going around them, stop often to watch the day unfold, and nurse a fond regret that I am no longer spry enough to climb the trees in the wood. If you see me coming down the lane, you will abandon your good intentions for the hour and join me because we are two of a kind. Of course, it is always good to come home again to the quiet welcome of my cottage where my larder and cupboards are crammed with the simple goodness of life.   

Fairy Wing

     

    Girlybird and I were sitting in the backseat of the car talking about this and that when I plucked a piece of something white from her hair. It was a small, gauzy thing shaped like a leaf or flower petal.

     “It’s a fairy’s wing,” I said.

     My granddaughter looked at me with a skeptic’s eyes, doubt forming on her tongue. Girlie is six and doesn’t believe the Easter Bunny is real or the Gingerbread Man was seen running through her school chanting, “Run, run as fast as you can…” We talked about butterfly wings for a minute.

     “If you rub the dust from a butterfly’s wings you can hurt it,” I said, examining the scrap of white in my hand.

     “I know, Grandma, that’s why I never touch them.”

     “I wonder if it is the same with fairies…”

     “They have pixie dust on their wings,” she lisped through the double-wide gap in her front teeth.

     “Yes,” I said, smiling, “pixie dust.”

     “Didn’t you touch the Toothfairy’s wings?” She knows the story about Gossamer Toothfairy dropping by for tea when her mommy’s teeth went missing. Was she testing me?

     “I didn’t think it would be polite,” I said, holding out the fairy-wing in the palm of my hand. “This one looks so small it must belong to a child. Maybe fairy children lose their wings and grow new ones as they get older just like you lose your teeth.” Girlie’s eyes were beginning to shine. I talked about finding bits of colored shell from robin’s eggs scattered on the ground in the spring; told her that mother birds protect their babies from hungry animals and naughty children by dropping the broken pieces far from the nest. “I wonder if that is how this wing got caught in your hair; maybe a mother fairy was flying past and dropped it.” I paused, considering. Timing is delicate when dealing with a sagacious six-year-old. “Maybe it’s not a fairy wing;” I said casually, letting a shred of doubt creep into my voice, “maybe its just a piece of that flower you have clipped to your…”

     Girlie snatched the wing from my hand before the bubble of possibility popped. “No, Grandma, it’s a fairy’s wing,” she said in a determined voice that dared me to contradict her.

     Sly grin. That is as it should be. I didn’t con my granddaughter, grandma’s no grifter; I just think children should believe in the unbelievable, and anything I can do to encourage her to suspend her disbelief is part of my job.

     And who knows what things may be true that we have trouble believing in?

Illustration by Arthur Rackham 

Buckwheat Pancakes

     Some folks like buckwheat pancakes. My mother-in-law does not. She was in North Carolina visiting a nephew last week, and he made his signature buckwheat pancakes for breakfast one morning. Mom, who is nearly eighty years old and wouldn't hurt the feelings of a flea, tried to speak well of them, tried valiantly to make them sound like a culinary treat, but I’ve eaten those pancakes and I called her bluff. She admitted to me that she nibbled around the edges until her nephew turned his back, and then tossed them out the open kitchen window. She was sure the squirrels or birds would find them before he did and destroy the evidence.

     I’m still laughing.

Collecting Thoughts

  
     I don’t think of myself as a collector. So why do I have more teapots than I can use? And there is a bird ornament of one kind or another in nearly every room of my house. My decorating style is somewhat spare…until it comes to my walls; I have to discipline myself not to cover every available space with a piece of artwork or something architectural. I do own a lot of movies, just over a hundred. I used to think that was excessive until a lady I worked with told me she owned close to six hundred. I love books, but I do not collect them promiscuously—although I probably would if there were a room in my house for a library. Most women collect shoes, but nowadays it is difficult for me to find attractive footwear that will fit my hobbit feet.

     If someone were to ask me what I like to collect, I would say: Thoughts, I collect thoughts. I keep thoughts for blog posts on my computer; I keep thoughts for stories scribbled on scraps of paper and stuffed into notebooks; I keep thoughts of my reflections on the meaning of life in a journal. And I don’t just collect my own thoughts: I have notebooks for interesting quotes, notebooks for poems and passages I like, and bookmarks for the blogs I read.

     I also spend a lot of time staring out windows or off into space looking for thoughts. Some thinkings are as delicate as moth wings and need a butterfly net to catch them before they flit away and are lost forever; some I can chase down and grab by the heels like the wayward shadow in Peter Pan; others I wrestle out of thin air and pin to a page in bold, black type—I’ve knocked the wind out of some of those, and they don’t always recover. And there are those thoughts I have gone to a great deal of trouble to hook only to find there is nothing much to them, so I throw them back, give them a chance to mature.

     At my age I lose some of the thoughts I have gathered over the years—they wander off and I can’t find them—but I have learned that if I leave them alone they usually come home wagging their tails behind them.

     My collection of thoughts is not something I horde; it isn't so valuable I need to keep it locked up in a safe place, but I try to be judicious and gracious with the ones that I share. It’s one thing to show someone your stamp or button collection, another thing entirely to expose them to your thoughts. This is the spot I choose to display some of my collection, this blogspot, and I hope visitors to my store of stories, my museum of memories will find something to please them.

Watercolor by Fran Evans for Two Bad Mice