Give It a Year

It wasn't all that long ago, while driving the kids home from school, that I said a prayer I've said often since our car wreck last year.

Thank you, Father....thank you for keeping Daniel and Gabriella safe.

It was a great blessing, the greatest blessing that Daniel and Gabriella weren't harmed in any way. Though at the time of the accident I recoiled for several moments in disbelief at the noise, the sight and the pain, God knows I'm grateful. I took the brunt of it. Let me always take the brunt of it. Sometimes my thoughts stray into the territory of what could have happened, and I pray my gratitude silently, passionately.

Then cries my soul, my Lord God unto to thee, How great Thou art. How great Thou art.

I think of all the ways in which you provided for us through our fellow human beings.

The firemen took care of our youngest children when I could barely speak or move and was in a very selfish place of pain. My husband came from work instantly and ran across a grassy field toward the intersection at a speed only panic can induce. He barely got to take my hand before I was transported, but he was there to take our littlest two into his arms; they didn't need to go with strangers on the strangest, scariest day of their lives.

Our friends from our little Mom's Group stepped in to help immediately. Kim drove all the way out to the county hospital to take Ella and Danny home with her where she fed them and distracted them with toys, games and TV and made them feel safe. Geraldine picked up Ana and Berto, our eldest, from school, and the two groups united at her house. Dana and her kids showed up, too, and can you believe the miracle of love and friendship? They had a pizza party. My kids had a pizza party with friends on what could have been a disordered, gloomy, really bad day.

My husband called his mom from the hospital when he was a "mess", barely coherent. She drove from Albuquerque early the following morning. Dana watched our kids until she arrived, so that Matthew could spend the morning with me at the hospital, bearing gifts of chocolate and magazines that Dana sent with him.

I don't think I ever thanked my mother-in-law on this blog for taking care of her son and grandkids for five days - the second time she's been there for us in a huge way - or for listening to me talk and cry the evening I came home from the hospital. I thank her now, just as I thank the cheerful firemen, our beautiful, steadfast friends, and my diligent, strong husband for all they did for our children that I could not do for them myself during those early fall days a year ago.



Time and Chance and Gratitude

Easy, Whole-Wheat Coffee Cake

This recipe came from my mother-in-law. My husband brought it into our marriage from a collection of recipes his mother gave to him when he left for college. (I brought only my chocolate-cinnamon chip cookies for our sustenance.) Those recipes, along with cherished heirlooms that I later begged from my mother, have helped us survive on more than potatoes, cereal and pizza. Strangely, my mother-in-law didn't remember the recipe when I thanked her profusely for it, so...divine providence, then? Obviously, I love it, if one looks at the evidence of exhibit A:

I did, however, modify this recipe to my liking, as I do all of them. Though I love sweets, in general I believe that many recipes call for too much sugar and salt and not enough whole grain. Any time you add spice or cocoa to a recipe, you can get away with quite a bit of whole grain, because chocolate and exotic flavoring tend to override everything with their strong personalities. Anyhow, here is the original recipe and my slightly altered rendition:

Original Coffee Cake                                            Hillary's Whole-Wheat Version

1/4 cup vegetable oil                                            1/4 cup vegetable oil     

1 beaten egg                                                         1 beaten egg

1/2 cup milk                                                         1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cup sifted flour                                           1 cup whole wheat + 1/2 cup white flour

3/4 cup sugar                                                       1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder                                 2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt                                                  1/2 teaspoon salt or slightly less  

spicy topping                                                      Hillary's spicy topping

1/4 cup brown sugar                                            1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon flour                                                1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon                               It's not spicy topping without it! (trust me)

I tablespoon melted butter                                   2 tablespoons melted butter

pecan pieces, if desired                                       not in this house!

Melt butter in a small bowl in microwave, measure in everything else and mix together with fork.

Now for cake batter...combine oil, egg and milk in mixing bowl:

or measuring cup

Mix dry ingredients in medium bowl:

Break up pieces of brown sugar and sift ingredients with (clean, obviously) hands:



I like to play with my food

Pour wet mixture into dry:

And gently mix together with a spatula:

The dough will be very sticky and hard to spread, but do your best as you pour it into a nine-inch square pan (the hardest part). Then sprinkle on your spicy topping as evenly as you like. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes (ovens vary, so check at 20-22 minutes to see how it's getting along). This coffee cake is done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with crumbs, not batter.

I serve this on weekend mornings and have served it at most of our celebratory brunches for baptisms and confirmations with family and friends. It's easy, has a nice texture and is good without being too sweet. Thank you to my mother-in-law for passing it on to me, so I could pass it on to you. Try it and enjoy!

Death in the family

My precious Ana lost her pet dwarf hamster this past week. Sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday day, the little guy climbed up the tunnel to his potty place, a detachable box lined with paper towels, and passed away.

Twice on Wednesday afternoon, post-school, she came to me, concerned that she had not heard Nike up all day. The first time I didn't think too much about it, but the second time she added that he was lying on his side and not moving.

"Uh-oh."

I hastily went to investigate. The very moment I laid eyes on his tiny stiff body I knew he was dead.

So began the tears from both my girls...and from me. My Analisa, such a quiet, easy child, cries in a way most women could never compete with when she is very upset; with mouth wide, eyes shut, face raised up and stretched thin, the wails build to ever greater pitch. When her favorite uncle, Steve, left after a visit this past spring, she wept and wailed to such a degree on the drive home from the airport that both my sons clamped hands over ears and slid down in their seats, and my husband kept turning up the radio every two seconds, giving up when even its deafening sound could not drown her out. So he told her bluntly and most unsympathetically that she could be sad but not hysterical - in other words: cry silently, for heavens sake.

Her wails over her little friend were not that bad, but close. My husband kept his patience as he hugged both the girls, and I cried silently with them as I murmured, "I know. I know," and thought of all my pet friends who had left me.

Ana had taken very good care of Nike, her gift from us on her 8th birthday - changing his food each night, checking his water, and cleaning his cage, usually with my help but the last time all by herself. She held him often over the summer and put him in his ball for exercise. When the busy days of school started, it was harder but she tried every day to spend time with him. Both of us loved when he sat on hind legs on our laps and cleaned his face with his minute paws, and Ana used to hold him up to my face and her own so he could give "kissies", sniffing our faces and tickling our cheeks with his rodent whiskers. Nike was her first animal friend.

I regret that I had not held him lately, something I often did at first and especially because Berto and Matthew would never hold "that rat". I'm disappointed that our new Yorkie friend kept trying to eat him whenever the cage came down, making it harder for us to spend time with the first pet in our family, an elderly friend. He had lived with two families before us, and hamsters don't live that long. Ana had said to me many times in recent days, "I'm worried about Nike." He had not consented to be held very often or easily in the past couple weeks, instead burrowing under his bedding. Thankfully, the day before he left us, she was able to pick him up, pet him and put him in his ball for some exercise.

I should have held him that last day - busy doing dishes - but I'm grateful Analisa did.

"You got to hold him yesterday, right?" I said gently. "And he had a last good run in his ball."

"At least his grave will be his last good burrow," she said with a sad little smile.

Ana found her Girl Scouts bandana, earned by selling cookies, and we all went into the backyard. Her papa picked up Nike's little body and wrapped him in Ana's special bandana. Only his half-shut eyes and small grey head showed as Matthew held him out for Ana and each of us to say good-bye (I had to nudge Berto who had been complaining about the smell and was still trying to plug his nose). I sobbingly read the end of Watership Down as the dirt was placed, a tradition my dad started at the passing of all my childhood rabbit friends. Then we all got big rocks to lay across the tiny tomb so Taz, our Yorkie, wouldn't dig him up. Ana wrote his name on one, Neiki to her, and God Bless You on another. We did not put an Adidas symbol on our little friend's grave, as a certain sarcastic someone had once suggested.

It was only a little while later that my girls showed me a hummingbird perched on some dead branches of our African sumac tree, under which Nike is now buried. The tiny creature didn't fly even as the sliding glass door slid shut and we approached close beneath.

"Do you think he came to comfort us?" asked Analisa.

He stayed there for some time, a beautiful presence in the early evening light, and with my arms wrapped around my girls, I replied, "Maybe he did."

My Little Card Shark

Every day, every single live-long day, I am locked in a card tournament with a tenacious opponent. He's not the best sport - yet. He throws cards around in frustration and tries to pull the wool over my eyes occasionally, but he trusts me a lot; he always has me deal. I hope every hand to lose. Not because he's so cute with his frosty blond hair and his sweet blue eyes, but because it seems unfair to win too often when the boy doesn't even have a firm grasp on colors and numbers yet.

I'm speaking of playing Uno with my preschooler. He loves the game and demands at least three to ten hands of it every day before naptime. Though his appetite for cards is voracious, we never gamble with Hot Wheels, and we don't swig inordinate amounts of cool-aide or chocolate milk while wrinkling our brow at our opponent's Draw 4 or Skip cards.

He doesn't always like the rules, and he doesn't understand how to court Lady Luck. He'll keep his residual cards from a losing hand rather than have me shuffle them, and it never turns out well, poor fellow. In such circumstances, I'm likely to win several hands in a row though I give him prodigious help. Once he finally pulls one off, I breath easier, and we drag out Candy Land as a nice way to unwind from all the tension. He always goes first at that, and he almost always wins.

He's not my first child to monopolize my late morning or afternoon hours with games. I have encouraged my kids in this, because I grew up on board games and card games myself. My brother and I invented many versions of Uno in our quest for excitement, and we named them all after cultures and countries about which we knew very little: Indian Uno, Chinese Uno, Russian Uno, African Uno, and so on. I remember playing Rummy with my siblings for possibly hours in the summertime. And I have taught my kids their numbers and colors and basic reading through card or board games - an oft-overlooked and entertaining teaching tool.

All four of my kids have had their favorite games. With my eldest, Berto, it was Sorry!, and my husband and I complained often that the Sorry! leprechauns were with him; he nearly always creamed us. Ana, my first girl, liked Barbie Memory Match with numbers when she wasn't quietly entertaining herself with drawing whimsical birds or looking over books. Ella could embarrass us all in a match of Memory when she was three; after that, she developed an all-consuming love of puzzles - the only one to do so. We did several a day sometimes, and she quickly conquered the 100 piece at age 4.

And now it's my Danny Sammy, my littlest, with interminable games of Uno - carrying on the family tradition. And, honestly, except for some anxiety over engineering him a win, I feel very lucky to have this quiet time with him on the living room rug each day, every day. If he could stop mixing up his yellow and blue, I'd be willing to bet some sweet Hot Wheels and cool Little People that he could beat any kindergartener out there.

As for me I'm going to see if there's any money in this Uno thing, some Las Vegas high-stakes tournament, perhaps. I'd be a shoe-in for the jackpot. I've had years of practice.

My thought is my gift - no rainchecks

They say it’s the thought that counts, and that’s lucky for me; my presentation is hideous – Christmas presents mangled up with string, cookies begrimed with runny frosting, and a signature so indecipherable, illegitimate even, I'd have to pay someone to autograph my work if I ever became famous.

But what if the thought is unshippable?

This morning I had an engagement present to send. I go to the United States Post Office to send such gifts of goodwill, because it's patriotic and philanthropic, considering the USPS deficit.

Today I hauled in bubble-wrapped wine, raspberry-habanero jam, and a few dozen plastic grocery bags to use as packing material and so free myself from their suffocating presence in my home while pawning them off on a relative. I stuffed them enthusiastically around wine and jam in a crisp, fresh box, hoping there were no dead insects to be discovered upon their arrival hundreds of miles away. I found a card that was perfect among the post office selection, and I had the cumbersome, official priority-tape dispenser on loan from a kind USPS employee.

"Take this - it's free," she said.

Free, yeah, but no instruction manual. I banged it against the counter top with a resounding crash while trying to wield it, caught my hand on its sharp cutter, and twisted the adhesive on itself, the dispenser and my fingers. Daniel, my preschooler, was yanking on the poor chained pens in an effort to free them and make Picassos of the Hold Mail cards as I tried to figure out which way the tape was supposed to face on its wheel. I taped myself, the plastic grocery bags, the table, and - with much difficulty and decidedly bad form - the box. I would have taped my son to the chained pens and their counter had he deigned to stay beside me.

Balls of discarded tape piled up on the counter. I thought, Free, my foot! They'll never let me have this tape again! Feeling self-conscious, I barely managed to repress a fit of laughter during my trials, pretending my broad, involuntary smile was provoked by my adorable, mischievous boy, but I grinned back at a middle-aged woman grinning at me as I slapped that tape on in folds and ripples across the seams of the box.

At last, a USPS employee called out, “Can I help someone?” And there was no one but me to help.

I trotted myself up there with my indecently-wrapped package. I’m surprised he didn’t say, “Well, it’s the thought that counts…” in the same wry way my son did when his birthday cupcakes wouldn’t dislodge from the pan, and I subsequently squished their crowns back on while trying to reshape their bruised bottoms.

"I have this package, and a card like this one that I put in it."

“Do you have anything liquid, breakable, perishable, and possibly hazardous in here?”

“Yes, I do,” I piped up. “Alcohol.”

“Can’t ship it,” he said, shaking his head and pursing lips.

“Really? You can’t?”

“No, I'm sorry. I could give you some shady advice, but..." He looked me over with sympathy or admiration. "Most people aren’t as honest as you are.”

“Well, I’ll pay for the box at least.” It was such a work of art, so much effort.

“The box is free, but you still owe me for the card.”

I laughed, and just then, Danny whispered urgently, “Mama, I need to go peepee!”

Of course. Well, it was truly time to bow out…gracefully, as I always do. I paid for the card, hurried home with my new found wine, and vowed to make the thought count another day - with better packaging.

Happy Birthday, my Berto

On my children's birthdays, I am always busy trying to bake and frost the cake, pick out birthday books, and make a birthday sign with their siblings. Inevitably the moment comes, however, when it hits me that this day means they are older, grown and changed - far from that tiny nursing baby who I struggle to remember holding - and then I am sad.

Yesterday was my handsome son Berto's birthday. As I read How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague to his little brother Danny before naptime, the moment came. Suddenly I choked up and paused. Why on earth was I sad? The emotion always ambushes me. I'm so busy I forget to anticipate it.

Yet I understood when I thought for a second. The book used to be a favorite of Berto's when he was a little tyke. He had to have it each night before bedtime. Papa read the papa parts, mama the mama ones. Then we took turns on the last few pages, giving kisses and hugs as they fell in the story, before we read together, Good night. Good night, little dinosaur.

Now he drapes his big 11-year-old body over a whole recliner and reads to himself, the Harry Potter series, books by Rick Riordin, and sports fiction by Mike Lupica.

When he was first born, I sat in that same recliner in the spacious master bedroom of our apartment, the sun streaming in through the long windows along two walls, and held the boy as he nursed and slept. As a new mother I found nothing in the world pressing enough to tempt me from that child. Cradling my tiny son on his bumblebee boppy in perfect comfort and contentment, I read Agatha Christie for hours as we rocked in quiet. I often think back to the luxury of that time I had with him. It's something I could not have with any of his siblings after; it's special.

And now I'm crying. It makes no sense, I know. Birthdays are celebrations, for crying out loud. And I celebrate all the one-on-one time I've had with Berto, like taking him to see the Hobbit just last year and trying to cover his eyes every several minutes with my hands (he just yanked them away). And I celebrate him for what he is today: a guy who loves football and wants to be an NFL quarterback, a high-achieving student who doesn't like when his friend disrespects the teacher, a big brother who is too hard on siblings but protective of them, and a mop-haired, fifth-grade boy who will do pushups and then monkey-crawl across a swing set to impress a few girls with his muscles. He is also my-not-so-little-anymore buddy who jokes around with me and makes mischief until we've both provoked Papa with our antics at the dinner table, over bedtime stories or at other inopportune times.

Our now 11-year-old son got the unabridged Dracula by Bram Stoker for his birthday book this year. Paca (my dad) and Uncle Nate, both big Stoker fans, approve, I'm sure. It's a long way from How Do Dinosaurs Go to School, and that's how it should be - even in the world of wistful mamas.

Beat the Blues, Not Yourself

I've been beating myself about the mental bush for the whole week thus far. The same old, same old feeling that I'll never be successful, that I've made so many mistakes in my journey as a writer, that perhaps I'm one of those individuals with some talent who is doomed to fail, because we don't understand a secret ingredient that others grasp so completely in the quest for creative fulfillment.

Or perhaps just most people hate us. Guess I should go eat worms.

When you are hurling negative comments at yourself, cutting down hope with a wicked little hatchet, it's hard to be positive toward others. I apologized again to my husband this morning and asked, as he smiled knowingly back at me, if he thought I would be apologizing again tomorrow.

"Yes."

He's probably right. I hope for better. See? I'm improving; I'm hoping.

Funny thing is that the deeper you sink into your hole of dissatisfaction, the harder it is to pray for deliverance. And I don't mean crying to God, Please make me a professional writer! Please help me to understand what I lack. Please make other people help me somehow.

I mean the kind of prayer that my friend Dana prays with her family, that I found so inspiring when she confided it to me:

Father, thank you for all you've given us....for our health and happiness and our home. Please just keep doing what you're doing.

So I prayed it this morning, a variation.

Please help me to appreciate all that I have - our beautiful children, our home, all our food and especially our health...even our dog, Father.

Throw in a pickup truck, and it could be a country song.

It's about the joy that you embrace when you're down, a clarity of vision and patience, too. This morning at school, my nine-year-old Ana was hugging me at school and pointed to the sky.

"Look, it's a dragon fly, Mama."

I gazed up to see it.

"No, it's a hummingbird," I said with wonder, and we watched it high in the blue, higher than I thought it would go. I felt the gift of it's beauty after these days of selfish absorption.

Then I went to take my big, almost 11-year-old boy his lunch, and he met me by the basketball court.

"Give me a hug and a kiss," I said jokingly.

He looked around sheepishly from beneath his mop of hair, and then consented to give me a hug and a big smile to go with it.

And when I came home, I found an email from a dear, longtime friend who I had not heard from in so very long, and the email read like poetry to me.

So I see again today, God has been very good to me. I just hope I can remember it tomorrow.

Raising my Children in a World without Jim Henson; A Mother’s Lament. Dedicated to all the lovers and dreamers. (Guest post by Holly)

I am so pleased to have this guest post from my friend Holly. She and I agree on a lot of things, not the least of which being that we think much of so-called "Family" or "Children's" television nowadays is obnoxious and promotes hyperactivity, superficial thinking and rude behavior. Are we teaching our children to be creative - their own master storytellers - or to be partially-functioning slaves of technology adrift in a world of pointless noise?

Well, I never thought I’d turn into my grandparents quite so soon; longing for the “good old days”. I can’t be alone. I can’t be the only one wishing that the world that I’m raising my children in had a lot less angry birds, high school corpses in stage make-up and stripper heels, or Bratz dolls (the name says it all)…. and a lot more felt. That wonderful rainbow-technic kind of felt that comprises the Muppets. I’m honestly not an advocate of entertaining children through a screen in general, but I do live in the real world and I appreciate quality entertainment for children. This leads me back to my point. The death of Jim Henson left a gaping hole in that realm.

I fondly remember gathering with my family on those Muppet show nights, we all were huddled together around our vintage eighties console television anticipating that familiar theme song: “It’s time to play the music; it’s time to light the lights…”  All of us ready for some good old fashioned laughs that everyone in the family could enjoy on some level. There is just something magical about the Muppets. Jim Henson’s brilliance was unparalleled; he just made the world a little brighter. People of all ages, from all walks of life would have trouble not cracking a smile when they witness Fozzie bear attempting some really bad jokes, following them up with his signature “Waka Waka”.

I’m not sure when “family” entertainment moved into its current tone of fast paced, in your face obnoxiousness, but I know none of it holds a candle to Henson and his fellow puppeteers’ work. Where else can my kids learn such lessons as: A weirdo can be king of his own domain, sophisticated and even fawned over by a flock of ladies, literally…hens, all it takes is confidence. Who better to teach my daughters about feminism than a karate chopping pig who owns her curves and is always rescuing her man (or frog)? In what other place can such hilarity ensue from a crazy chef uttering an unintelligible language?

Even Sesame Street just isn’t the same as it used to be. I used to love when the characters would interact with children and just let the preciousness, beauty and hilarity of childhood stand for itself. We as children could learn simple lessons from Bert and Ernie. Bert is clean and Ernie is messy, how can they “work it out”? Now Bert and Ernie are hardly on the show anymore. The show is not without merit compared to most of the drivel out there but there is just a sweetness that seems to be gone. 

I guess I’m dreaming to hope that someday a wonderful frog and his band of misfit buddies will take over the airwaves again. Until then I’ll show my girls reruns and hope that they keep coming out with new Muppet movies. The 2011 movie was a whole lot of fun and watching it was like pouring lemon juice into my wound of Muppet withdrawal. I am glad they were introduced to a new generation. I issue a call out to all you children who were influenced by Henson: keep the flame alive, show your kids (and remind yourselves) what quality family entertainment is all about and maybe one day, if we are lucky, maybe one of our own children will aspire to follow in his footsteps.
 

 

Halloween and the Ghost of Costumes Past

Ah, it's in the air - the smell of candy corn and melted chocolate and pumpkin pastries! It's 102 outside and there's not a breath of wind, but I can smell Halloween creepin' round the corner, its arms laden with spider rings, glow sticks, and toilet paper.

You know what it is? It's the fact that my kids have already been in school more than a month. It doesn't matter that it'll be hot as blazes here til late October, that autumn does not fall on this desert. From my childhood I have associated going back to school with a change in weather, a change in scenery, and the forthcoming parade of holidays.

My friend Kim throws a huge party every year. You walk into her home, and it is decked floor to ceiling with fantastic Halloween décor. I can't conceive how much effort it takes to get it to that point of spooky perfection, but just passing the threshold of her home is a treat. The kids always let out involuntary oohs and ahs.

Along with the kids, I admire my friend's flair for creating atmosphere, and I always dress up for the festivities. That's part of the fun, a whisper of a different time when adults went to masked balls and wore exotic apparel to escape the ordinary, and the children, for an evening. The mulling over ideas, presenting of options to friends, and the wondering about how much your husband will let you spend on a fling worn for one night (two if you wear it trick-or-treating) is all part and parcel of the excitement.

If I had unlimited funds, I would of course dress up as Elizabeth Bennet or Jane Eyre, elegant period clothing complete with bonnet and ribbons. But I would want to do it right, and my husband would never agree to dress in the top hat and period suit of Mr. Darcy or Mr. Rochester - though he would look so damn irresistible in them; I would have to speak softly and carry a big stick the whole night to beat back other women, especially if he wore something like Colin Firth's forest green jacket in the movie. So, fantasies aside....I must be a flamenco dancer, if not too dear, or dress as the quintessential 1940s or 1960s woman - any era, really, of the twentieth century. And I must lay a heavy guilt trip on, slyly convince, or plead with Matthew not to go as "a sensitive guy" - something he threatens to do every year by painting a big blue teardrop at the corner of his eye.

In years past I've had a fairly easy time of it. Last year, my eldest boy, Berto, went as Anakin Skywalker, so I was his daughter, Princess Leia:

Princess Leia

I decided to be the nerdy version instead of the sexy Leia. Yeah, yeah. Princess Leia didn't wear glasses, and her robe wasn't a satin lingerie robe, but details like that don't matter; I had the ear buns. It was gold, baby.

 

The year before that I went as a Wild West sheriff. I'm still a little bitter. I found a genuine reproduction badge of the AZ territory Tombstone sheriff's badge, and my husband wouldn't let me get it. It was too "expensive". Ah, well, he obliged me by dressing up as my outlaw. Too bad I cut the neck hole on his poncho too wide. He was an outlaw running from a bad tailor.

 

Sheriff and her no. 1 outlaw (photo by Kim)

My hat was from our honeymoon in Fredericksburg, Texas. The suede semi-duster I got for dirt and pennies and had for years, and the denim vest was borrowed from a friend. I go in for cheap, as you can tell, maintaining the time-honored, non-spoiled-brat tradition of digging through all the junk in your closet to compile something truly jaw-dropping.

 

Now (rubbing hands together) for this year! What shall I be? What can I convince my Man to wear? What will our friends choose as their persona for a day? The anticipation, like pumpkin-chocolate cake, is to die for.

A Day in the Life

This weekend I have been busy living my large, blessed life. On Friday it was very busy and full of love:

---Feed My Starving Children is a great organization. I don't feel my family has volunteered our time nearly enough, but, thanks to a friend, our Mom's group has volunteered for this charity a couple times now. The work is simple - for kids - but the adults have the job of supervising those kids as they deposit spoonfuls and cupfuls of vitamins, veggies, soy and rice into plastic bags to be sealed. Over and over you find yourself saying with forced cheer and goodwill, "No - a full cup, sweetie; Get it full...to the top, to the top!" Kids get distracted singing and shimmying along to the pop song over the loudspeakers, and then they dump in half cups over and over and over. The bags of dehydrated food have to weigh at least 380-400g before being sealed. We had to repeatedly bring the weight up with added rice until, at last! One bag came through that was perfect, and I exclaimed:

"The angels are intervening! Even they can't bear to watch!"

Whenever a full cup came through, we praised exuberantly, "Good Job! That was a good, full cup!"

The time flies amid all the combining and weighing of ingredients, the sealing of bags and boxes. Before you know it, it's time to clean up, and you are truly astounded, if volunteering with children, at the mess about your hands and feet from food that failed to launch where it should have.

Of course, many people volunteer with church groups or businesses or sports clubs, and they pack four times as much food as we did with only a fifth of the mess. One young lady there had brought her gymnastics team to celebrate her birthday by packing food for starving kids - a beautiful girl, a beautiful thing to do.

But I am not faint of heart. I plan to take my kids again. They have a blast every time, and I am always eager to return with them. The feeling of joy we all get afterward as we pray for the boxes' safe arrival to orphanages, schools and missions around the world is an antidote to the hairy task of packing with little ones.

I can't wait for our next adventure in loving others.

Please consider giving your time to this brilliant organization.

---My man and I had a date with two other couples from his work. I came home, showered, applied my evening face and fixed my hair. Egads! I fixed my hair! Normally I just let it hang stick straight as it is or I fold it up in an elastic, but this night I put it in a loose side ponytail and wound it up into a bun that I fixed with bobby pins. It looked elegant but carefree.

It is a very rare treat for Matthew and I to go out, and the conversation on Friday with our friends was lively. One gentleman in the hotel business told horror stories about guests and the atrocious things they do and attempt to do in "guest accommodations". I wondered how he kept his faith in humanity, but he pointed out that it's only about one percent of guests who are sadly memorable.

One of the ladies, a good friend, said to me, "I have something for you. I heard you've been hit by the house bug." So she drew out an ad that showed extravagant estates for sale, all in excess of 400,000 sq. feet.

"You'd have to invite all your relatives to live with you in a place like that," I said. Still, I confided that I do wish I had a larger, nicer home like any little person, how I felt a failure when I stepped into other people's grand manors. I confided that I felt my oldest should have his own room as a bona-fide teenager.

Then they all made me feel better, and humbled, by sharing about the homes in which they grew up. My husband didn't get his own room until he was in high school when older brothers moved out. His co-worker from out of town spoke about her sister's family of nine living in a three bedroom, two bath house. His friend told us that he didn't get his own room until college, and that the room he shared with siblings when younger was, as his wife described it, a "shoebox". He had to stand to the side when he opened his dresser, because the bunk beds were right there. And his parents took in dozens of foster kids over many years in their small home!

This gentleman even spoke about how he was the first in his family to graduate high school.

"And what's more, you went to college, too," I said with admiration.

All this wonderful conversation, and the beer sampler, had loosened my tongue and made me bold in the company of accomplished, educated friends. I spoke of my regret that I had not gone to college, how though I am technically "published" on humor sites, I don't see how I will ever earn money at writing, and how I wish for just $50 a year!

Then they began to rain encouragement on my head, lifted me up, and my cup ran over. They pointed out how, unlike many eighteen-year-olds, I know what I love and wish to pursue; how there are so many options nowadays; How I could likely pass competency testing for certain classes and forgo them; and that I don't need to sacrifice my dreams in order for my kids to follow theirs.

"I think I'll do it," I said, the rumbling of a resolution, a buoy in the not-too-distant future.

"Well, you better after this conversation," said the gentleman with the childhood room like a shoebox.

"I really think I will....I will."

And then my husband saw it was 11:45 on his watch, and we panicked about leaving the new babysitter much longer than anticipated with the kids. We all wished each other good night in the rain-drenched parking lot with hopes of getting together again soon.