Leaving Home

     It was not my kids' first school. Although it was right down the road, the little elementary school that sat across the road from a cow pasture was passed over in favor of Miss Mary's. Nana had taught at Kings Chapel years before, but she was now at a school "in town," and we wanted Jeffrey to start Pre-K with family. 

    If you've followed this blog's meandering path for any length of time, you know that he didn't stay in the town school, nor at the school across the county that offered a collaborative kindergarten class. He actually did first grade at the Chapel with a one-on-one parapro and, boy, was that not a rousing success. Back to the school across the county for an inclusion autism classroom (yay!) and then to the elementary school that primary fed (boo!) That's five(ish) different schools in five years and we were exhausted. Frustrated. Ready to just shrug and say, "Might as well go to the Chapel." 

    So we did.

    And it was great. Whatever changes had been made meant that Jeffrey was successful, and we sent River off as a pre-k baby knowing that we were sending her to an excellent school. 

    With our kids' successes, Kings Chapel felt like magic. 

    It felt like home and a safe place. It felt happy and like good things were happening there. I don't know if it was the pine trees that the car rider line weaved through or the coyotes you could hear howling after sock hops or the cows staring at you as you made your way into conferences, but KCES was different. My kids thrived there. 

    Then in one of the weirder turns of events in my life, my high school assistant principal husband became principal of Kings Chapel. How awesome was that? Jeffrey had moved on to middle school, but River could go to school every day with Mr. Daddy. And I could watch my guy become an educational rock star. 

    It's hard to oversell what an amazing leader Will is. He loves his job. He loves the kids. He knows most of their names, and if he doesn't know a kid's name, he knows what they like to eat for lunch, or their favorite game on the playground, or what college football team they root for on Saturdays. He is actively engaged with improving the educational experience of the Chapel families. He knows how to read data and plan strategies to make improvements based on it. He cares about his teachers, his secretaries, his custodians. He tries to find ways to connect with all of his staff. He can handle the hard decisions, have difficult conversations, and push his teachers to make the most of their careers. He is verifiably one of the best principals in our system, and I know just how blessed I was to have a child who experienced her education through the lens of his leadership. 

    Oh, I've loved being the "first lady" of Kings Chapel. I loved working in the Santa Shop and making the curtains for the office windows. I loved the book fairs, especially Grandparents' Day, and the talent shows, and the music club performances. I loved rubbing shoulders with the PTO as we stuffed hamburger and hot dog buns for the back to school picnics and I loved watching Will cheer kids on at Field Day. 

    The eclipse, with scared kindergarteners piled on my lap, and my big kids leaning on my shoulder. 

    Watching River and her friends dancing on stage after the Green and Gold ceremonies (and poring over her certificates to find where Will had added his special messages to her.) 

    Singing show tunes with the kids on the morning drives between the soybean and cornfields.

    Watching new teachers blossom, seeing my nieces and nephew grow up in the familiar halls, all of the families and friends who have called the Chapel home. There are so many memories, so many important days and years and people encapsulated in that little brick school house across from the cow pasture. 

    And now...our family is moving on. A few days ago, Will was honored to be named the Director of Human Resources for our school system. I'm so proud of him. I'm proud of the dedicated, hard-working educator he is, and I'm tickled by all of the folks reaching out to tell me how proud they are, too. 

    You know who else would be proud? His mama. 

    But I know she'd be a little sad, too. Sad that her boy was leaving our family's special place, sad that our family is moving on. 

    It's always a little sad to be leaving home. 

    Thanks, KCES, for being our home, growing our kids, and teaching Will how to be an amazing leader. We love you. 

What I'm Working On--From Chapter One of Ridiculously Untitled Unfinished Novel

 ...she was thinking of jelly. 

Forty half-pints of it, lined up on her white counter, gleaming in the sun coming through the kitchen window.  It should, technically, have been forty-two jars, but one didn’t seal and one jar cracked and so she had poured the stuff into a convenience store plastic cup and stuck it in her fridge.  (This was after she had heated up a leftover breakfast biscuit and slathered it with butter and still-warm jelly, eating it out on the back stoop so Cole wouldn’t know and demand a bite. The taste of it, rich and tart and sweet, was summer on her tongue.) 

At some point in time, I'm going to shove my muse, Blanche, through Chapter Six so I can get to the rest of the dang book, but for now, I'm stuck wallowing through a decidedly unmagical bit of writing in what is an otherwise magic-adjacent story. 

Also, Blanche is demanding that I tell you that the jelly in the novel is actually blackberry jelly, not strawberry jam, and that the biscuits upon which the blackberry jelly is slathered (I LOVE that word) are not lemon-thyme biscuits. Blanche might be stubborn and pokey, but she's meticulously honest. 

(Maybe if I thus appease her, she'll let me get through Chapter Six.)

Poems on Sunday--Last August Hours Before the Year 2000 by Naomi Shihab Nye

I've spent the entire day reading over old blog entries and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to discard. I've got a lot of feelings about the words I wrote, and who I was when I wrote them, and I don't quite have it in me to wrestle with that particular emotional demon this evening. It's been a blue day, a contemplative day, one more suited to mid-autumn than late summer, but I am, as always, the Gemini-est Gemini to ever Gemini, so it makes sense in some weird way.

As I lay out my plans for blogging, writing, working, and living in the coming months, it's both heartening and concerning to realize that, in many ways, I haven't changed a bit. It gives me both hope that I have a base for a good second half of my life and worry that I'm stuck in a lifelong cycle that doesn't satisfy me. 

Maybe that's why this poem by Nye spoke so much to me, and why I wandered around my yard braving snakes and mosquitos to capture the end of a late summer day. 

Last August Hours Before the Year 2000

by

Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Spun silk of mercy,

long-limbed afternoon,

sun urging purple blossoms from baked stems.  

What better blessing than to move without hurry  

under trees?

Lugging a bucket to the rose that became a twining  

house by now, roof and walls of vine—

you could live inside this rose.

Pouring a slow stream around the

ancient pineapple crowned with spiky fruit,  

I thought we would feel old

by the year 2000.

Walt Disney thought cars would fly.

 

What a drama to keep thinking the last summer  

the last birthday

before the calendar turns to zeroes.

My neighbor says anything we plant

in September takes hold.

She’s lining pots of little grasses by her walk.

 

I want to know the root goes deep  

on all that came before,

you could lay a soaker hose across  

your whole life and know

there was something

under layers of packed summer earth  

and dry blown grass

to moisten.

Boone North Carolina Survival Sandwiches

Once upon a time, four friends decided to go to Boone, North Carolina to go skiing. Actually, probably twelve or so friends decided to go skiing, but the other eight don't come into this that much, as they didn't partake in the first batch of Boone, North Carolina Survival Sandwiches. Many of them have partaken in the glory of these sandwiches since that fateful weekend, but in the beginning, it was just V and P and Will and I. 

 P and I were talking about that trip yesterday and the first thing that struck us was that we had no frickin' idea how we thought any of us were going to pay for a ski weekend. Will had a job and P did (we think...things are a bit, um, HAZY about that period in time), but V and I sure didn't. I struggled to pay rent and ate a whoolllle lot of mac and cheese, but things like ski trips were totally out of the question. I can't imagine asking my parents to pay for it. It's possible that the new semester was about to start and we were all using our financial aid checks. So...to all the Americans out there: thank you for maybe possibly paying for our doomed ski trip to Boone, North Carolina. The sandwiches were GREAT. 

 The trip to Boone from Athens takes about four and a half hours. Some of our group rented equipment (Will and I didn't. I wasn't going to ski because the idea of my uncoordinated self sliding full speed down a mountain made me want to urp. I was going to skate and/or sip cocoa somewhere while looking out a window.) and we all packed warm clothes and P made the sandwiches. At the time, we didn't call them Boone, North Carolina Survival Sandwiches. She got the recipe from an aunt, I think, and we figured that we could munch on them on the way in case we got hungry to save on money. Because as a bunch of unemployed college kids spending a weekend at a ski resort, we were FRUGAL. We set off into the gray morning. The weather report (as I hazily remember it) was a little sketchy. Possible snow in Boone on top of a packed something or other. Eh. It was raining in Athens when we left, but winters in Athens, Georgia are typically the stuff of Emily Bronte novels, so we didn't blink. 

As the only person with a car that was mostly assured of making it into the mountains, P was driving. Bless her heart, she took this role a lot; taking care of us was kind of her deal. Not in a motherly way, but in a "holy crap, if I don't take charge of this situation, the rest of you fools are going to die" way. It is a miracle she stuck with us. The "us" in question being V and Will and I, who giggled a lot and pointed out the rain and who, within fifteen minutes of leaving Athens, were absolutely frickin' starving. We broke out the the sandwiches and I'm pretty sure that while it wasn't exactly manna, angels started singing over our car as we ate. 

The angels were probably hoarse by the end of the day, because what was supposed to be a four and a half hour trip took roughly nineteen years. It rained the whole time. The whole time. Rain. I remember (hazily) a couple of near-wrecks due to people more foolish than P not being able to handle the slickness of the road. 

 Now, this was in the dark days before iPhones and instant weather reports, so we just trusted that, you know, the mountains were, like, HIGHER than where we were driving so, surely it would be snowing in Boone. Surely. This belief lasted until the very last stage of our trip, when on a pitch black road that headed up the mountain, we encountered a washed out bridge. Because it was flooding. Because it had been pouring rain for about eight hours and all of the snow had washed off the mountain. Sigh. 

 Back we went in the downpour to Athens, where we ate the rest of the sandwiches in a haze of disappointment and boredom. BUT!! All of the boredom and disappointment aside, we were left with the Boone, North Carolina Survival Sandwiches. Which are the best thing in the entire world for tailgating, reunions, picnics, sports-related parties, and rainy road trips. They're great hot out of the oven and delicious cold for...hang on...mmm...mid-morning snacks. Blessed sandwich o' mine. P and I continued our chat yesterday with the realization that the recipe that we've been using for years really makes too much spread. We're always left with a tub of it after we've made the sandwiches, which is a terrible waste of precious golden yumminess. So I'm tweaking the recipe a bit, which means the measurements on the spread will look weird. Feel free to double the amounts in the spread, although you'll also have to double the amounts of bread, ham, and cheese that you buy, which will leave you with enough sandwiches to feed the Russian army. Just saying.

Boone North Carolina Survival Sandwiches 

Ingredients 4 oz. cream cheese, softened (half a block)

4 oz. yellow mustard

 4 oz. mayonnaise 

1 small yellow onion, diced finely 

4 packages brown and serve rolls (the kind in the metal tins) 

1 pound sliced deli ham 

2 packages sliced mozarella cheese 

Directions

1. Don't you hate it when recipes say "one small whatever?" What does that MEAN? In this case, it means an onion that's baseball-sized. And actually, because I'm halfing the spread part, it might mean an onion that's, say, golfball-sized. You're aiming for 1/2 cup diced onion. I use yellow onions because they have a mellow taste that's not overpowering, which means that most people who don't even like onions can forge ahead with this sandwich and enjoy it despite the onions. If you want to get crazy, go with a white or red one. I don't recommend it, but whatevs. We used to just chop the onion, but diced goes better with the squishiness of the bread. Dice that sucker up and throw it in a bowl.
2. Pile the cream cheese, mustard, and mayonnaise on top and mix everything up. I used to use a fork to do this, then I graduated to a hand mixer. Now I put it all in the KitchenAid, because I feel like the KitchenAid can do anything. In fact, I often dream of sticking my kids in there at bathtime with a squirt of soap. Mix it up until it's all smooth and there are no bits of cream cheese popping up.
3. Here's the hardest part of the whole recipe, with the exception of not eating an entire pan by yourself during naptime. It's really not that hard and after you've made a few batches, you'll do it like a pro. I'm gonna post pictures of this part, even though the light was bad and it embarrasses me to show these photos. Forgive me. Place the bag end to end with the metal pan. Remove the rolls from the pan in one piece. Lay the rolls on a cutting board and carefully cut them in half, longwise. You want a definite top and bottom. The rolls are soft and occasionally separate, but this really isn't that big of a deal, as you can see in the picture. Flip the top carefully so that the two halves are like an open book and then lay the top on the plastic bag. Put the bottom back in the pan.
4. Using a spatula or butter knife, swoosh the spread over the bottom portion of the rolls. Use as much as you would on a regular sandwich. Too much and you'll get mushy sandwiches AND lose the yumminess of the cheese and ham.
5. Lay slices of ham on the bottom portion of the rolls, on top of the spread. I don't use more than a triple layer of ham. I've used deli ham from the...um...deli before, but Hickory Farms now sells ham by the pound, so I use that. I prefer the delicate sweetness of brown-sugar or honey-baked ham in this.
6. Lay slices of cheese on top of the ham. One layer of this, and it requires some finagling. Back in the day, I used long slices of mozarella, which meant that I had to cut some of the slices in thirds, which was complicated. I can't find long slices now, so I use three slices per pan, a few of them cut into strips. You'll figure it out.
7. Swoosh spread onto the top half of the rolls. Carefully place the top portion on the cheese layer. I usually wipe off any spread that I've gotten on the rolls now. Because I'm a nerd.
8. Now you can do one of several things. You can put these back in their plastic bags and stick them in a cooler or your fridge until you're ready to eat them. You can eat them cold, which is fine. But for the best Boone North Carolina Survival Sandwich experience, you need to stick them in a 250 degree oven for ten or so minutes, until the cheese is melty and the tops are a bit toasted. Whichever way you go, before you serve them, cut around each roll with a sharp knife to separate them.

That's it. Except for the accolades you'll get when you serve these bits of mustardy love to your friemily. I'm assuming you could substitute turkey or chicken if you have a ham problem. Or go crazy and use swiss or provolone cheese instead. Last year, I did a variation with turkey, provolone, and apple butter that was a partial success. The bread is very soft and sucks up anything spread on it, so if I was going to do the turkey, prov, apple butter thing again, I'd probably add some cream cheese to it to thicken it up. Let me know if you use this and try something all nutty. Clearly, I'm going through a big cooking phase, coinciding with a sewing phase. It's all very Martha-goes-nuts-in-the-heat-of-summer. With a less fluffy dog. And a lot less style. I'm sure I'll blog about it at some point in time; my insane inner Martha. After I eat a sandwich.

Tom Haverford the Squash

I went into Ace Hardware looking for one thing: okra. That's it. I never plant okra in my garden because all of my family gags violently when I even say "okra," which can put you off when trying to enjoy supper. BUT I decided that I am forty-dang-five years old, and the ONLY one actively trying to garden to feed the family, and if the pandemic interrupts the food chain as my Laura Ingalls Wilder-loving heart fears it might, I reckon those gaggers are going to be chomping down on some of my delectable pods of joy. 

But I digress. 

Ace was out of okra and pretty much every other plant and seed in the world, because other people have read The Long Winter, too, but I did snag a pineapple sage and some Dixie butter peas and purple-hulled pink-eyed peas, because nobody gags when I cook peas, so it felt right. I also bought some hand sanitizer which was made from grain alcohol and let me tell you, after we sanitized in the car, it smelled like the backend of an Ole Miss game at Sanford Stadium. Go Dawgs and speaking of that gag reflex...

We moved on to Walmart in our search for okra, and holy mackerel, was THAT a pandemic experience. I parked near the garden section, because okra, and the nice lady there told me I had to go to the front of the store to enter, which COOL, Walmart. And I mean that with no sarcasm, which I know is hard to believe, given my relationship with Walmart, but I'm down with any store that's actively trying to keep me healthy. We beelined it through the store, but we did pick up some gold nail polish for vacation (by GAWD, I AM going to get to my ISLAND) before finally arriving in front of the remaining vegetables in the garden section. 

Y'all. It's hard to be a vegetable for sale in early June in middle Georgia. It is not even technically summer yet, but the pep has gone out of every gardener's step because even if it isn't blazingly hot, the humidity will literally suck all of the energy out of you as soon as you walk out the door. The excitement we all felt in March when we realized that we could start planting stuff even if we couldn't get haircuts or hug our mamas has faded, and the tomatoes feel it. They are leggy and sad, like teenagers who are sick of being cooped-up with their parents who refuse to let them hang out with their friends like EVERYBODY ELSE, MOM, GAH. The eggplants are leathery and the squash...oh, the squash. 

The poor squash Walmart was offering was pale and limp and pretty much ready to scootch itself over the edge of the shelf and end it all. I was about to pass it by, when...I saw him. 

The plants had bloomed weeks ago, obviously, and were still trying, bless their hearts, but there's only so much you can do in a 2 inch over-watered six pack in the desiccating sunshine of the Walmart garden section. But as my eyes moved over to the next row, I spotted a tiny, itsy, green squash growing valiantly amongst the tired blossoms and miniature leaves.  

Y'all. Listen. It's hot out, and my children have been talking about Minecraft or The Legend of Zelda nonstop when they aren't complaining about my parenting style, and I'm tired and a bit anemic, but I SWEAR that tiny little squash spoke to me. 

And when he did...he spoke to me in the voice of Tom Haverford from Parks and Rec. 

"Why so glum, sugar plum?" The little squash said to me. "You know you want me. You know you want to take me home and take care of me." 

"Take a chance on me," he said. "Please? Pleaaaaaase?" he said in that somehow endearing Tom Haverford whine. 

If you're a fan of the show, you know what my squash friend said next. 

He said, "Heather, treat yoself." 

AND I STRAIGHT DID.

I scooped up Tom and his brothers and sisters and a trio of fairly sad cucumbers and I treated myself to some vegetables that needed some serious rehabilitation. (No, really. At one point, I promise I'm not lying, I got out the medical tape and taped up some squash vines. I am sad to report that one of the squashes didn't make it.) 

I don't know if any of the others will make it, in fact. It's really late in the season AND against the signs to be planting squash right now, and these guys have been through it, but I put them in the best dirt I have to offer squash plants and said a little prayer for their health and well-being, that I might eat them in a few weeks. 

I said an extra special prayer for this one. Say hello to my friend Tom Haverford the Squash, y'all. I'm sure he'll be especially delicious.