Winter Rant ('Tis the season . . .)

Okay.

So I’m not an innocent party.

Six days a week

I go out to the mailbox

pick up the contents

carry the stuff in –

catalogues.

Scads of catalogues.

I dump them on the table,

and then the trouble begins.

I admit it.

I search through them

an awful waste of time

if you think about it

but I do it

because I never know if maybe

something good

something great

something special

or something expensive

I can’t forget expensive

because it’s bound to be expensive

but whatever it is

it might be available

only by catalogue –

that all-important catalogue.

Mind you

I’m not saying

I never get anything good from catalogues.

There was that cute butler cast in resin holding a corkscrew,

the bright red miniature British phone booth for storing CDs

the Rocky and Bullwinkle sweatshirt I gave my husband one Christmas

but please!

These catalogues end up

sprawling all over

the kitchen table

the counter

the dining room chairs

the piano bench

the end tables

the couch

my desk

the computer keyboard

until I can’t find anything

and I realize

I’m drowning in multiple copies

of the same stupid catalogues –

all advertising the same kinds of

pointless idiotic junk

that nobody really needs

especially me

because if I’m crazy enough

to buy more of this stuff

cute

decorative

special

or worst of all

unique

though it may be

I still won’t have

even two square inches of space

where I could fit it

because everything

yes, everything in

my whole house is already covered with

catalogues.

     ~Kate Lydon Varley

Why days or weeks with no new post?

What's up with that?

If you're ever wondering, why the periods of silence, keep reading. 

Dry Spell

I don't believe my muse has deserted me 

quite the contrary

I suspect she is busy organizing a closet

stumbling on a  wrinkled, twisted 

brown leather pump

smoothing a red print blouse with a white bib front

adjusting the angle of a long forgotten

black felt cloche

wiggling into a shocking pink bathing suit 

I imagine she's melding 

discarded identities

creating from old styles 

compelling new ones

sifting through what once was 

until she finds 

a kernel of what always is 

I expect she'll be back anytime now

                  ~ Kate Lydon Varley

I wrote this poem after our last snow storm, which I hoped would be our last snow storm this winter. But the forecast for March 20 is that we're in for more snow, so revisiting the experience of snow: 

Meditation: Eight inches, and the plow man didn’t show

so it is up to us

we work in shifts –

work and rest

work and refuel

work

and work again

shovel and lift

shovel and chip

throw the ice

throw the snow

tap to clear the shovel

repeat

repeat

repeat

snow that was heavy and wet last night

dry and light this morning

underneath the sloping white

hard frozen slicks hide from

bright March sunlight

every bit of ice like the piece before

every bit of ice possessed

of its own texture, shape, size

shovel, chip, throw, tap

again and again and again

in the end

down to the driveway’s blacktop

dark with the melt of snow and ice

mists lifting from pavement swirling

disappear into thin, crisp air

leaving behind on the asphalt

a smattering

of dry

                                                Kate Lydon Varley

Can Split Pea Soup Be a Game-Changer?

When I was in college, after a history class one day, a guy friend invited me to his apartment for lunch. Oh, my – he wanted to make lunch for me? Was this a step to some change in the nature of our friendship?

I cheerily accompanied him back to his place, chatting amiably. When we got to his kitchen, he grabbed a can opener and pulled a can from a shelf.

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Split pea soup,” he read from the can.

“You invited me over for canned split pea soup?” I said. “What kind of thing is that to give someone you invite over for lunch?” (You could have called me many things, but easy wasn’t one of them.)

He grabbed another can from the shelf, and said, “Well, we could have turkey noodle instead.”

I grumbled, but agreed, still a bit reluctantly, to the turkey noodle. The menu change was only mildly more satisfying.

That lunch did not turn out to represent a change in the nature of our friendship, other than my deciding that this fellow didn’t have great culinary possibilities.

Why, you might ask, was I so opposed to split pea soup? Well, it was because I’d never enjoyed the pleasure of it home-made, and so had developed a very negative view of split peas. And, as far as my taste buds were concerned, I’d much sooner do without the little bits of almost tasteless ham in that canned stuff.

Later, I would come to love Magic Pan’s Potage St. Germain, made with split peas, and served with sherry, or with sour cream. But I didn't start on the road to split pea nirvana until I encountered curried split pea soup.

Over the years, I’ve developed my own way of making split pea soup, subject to an addition here or there with my latest whim, but my core recipe is pretty solid now. 

At the moment, in my neck of the woods, there’s a white sky outside, with a threat of more snow later today and through the night. So, it is a perfect day to make some curried split pea soup for lunch. 

Kate’s Curried Split Pea Soup                                                Serves 8-10

2 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil, or one of each

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

½ red bell pepper, chopped

1 tbsp minced fresh ginger root

1 good-sized clove of garlic, minced

2 tsp curry powder

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp allspice

¼ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 ½ tsp sea salt

13.5 oz can of coconut milk

5 cups of water, vegetable broth or chicken broth

1. Sort and wash the peas, and then set aside until needed. Combine the salt and dried spices (not the garlic or ginger) in a small bowl, and set aside until needed.

2. Heat the oil over medium-low heat in a large pot, and then add the chopped vegetables. Cook, stirring from time to time, until the vegetables are becoming soft.

3. Add ginger and garlic to the pot, and stir and cook for 1 minute. Then add the combined dried spices to the pot, stirring to mix with the veggies, garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring for another minute, and then add the coconut milk. Stir to combine.

4. Add the split peas, and then the water or broth to the pot. Stir, and then bring heat up to medium, or medium-high, and bring to a boil. Then turn the heat back to medium-low, cover the pot, and let the soup simmer for an hour and a half, or longer. Stir from time to time, to make sure that the soup is not sticking to the bottom of the pan. If it starts to stick, turn the heat down further.

Variations: 

Add diced carrots, diced apples, or diced dried apricots along with the vegetables. 

Throw in a handful of raisins with the liquid when preparing the soup. 

Serve with chutney, or a spoon of whole-berry cranberry sauce, or with a spoon of apricot preserves stirred into a bowl of soup. 

Sprinkle with toasted coconut, and toasted slivered almonds over a bowl of soup. 

For a jot of sourness in the flavors, add a squirt of lemon or lime juice.

Notes: 

I make a thick soup, which, upon cooling, becomes a semi-solid. If you like a more liquid soup, add more broth or water when cooking – one to two more cups, depending on your preferences.

Also, I don’t heavily salt this soup. Some may prefer it with two teaspoons of salt.

Have fun with it.

And, by the way, this is definitely the type of split pea soup one could serve to a persnickety friend invited for lunch.

     ~Kate Lydon Varley

 TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE

My husband Tom and I have always had our differences. 

Take, for instance, sleep.

When we got married, I moved into Tom’s townhouse, an hour’s drive from where I worked, and joined his crazy morning routine. “You’ll shower while I shave,” he told me, and then I’ll shower while you dry your hair.” Sounds reasonable, but – and this is a big but – we were getting up at five in the morning. Not just once in a while. Not just for a few weeks for some special project. No, this was going to be every single weekday, up at five a.m. to the dulcet tones of a classical music station.

“I can’t wake up if it’s just music. I need an alarm,” I said.

“The music is enough,” he insisted. “I always wake up to music.”

At five in the morning.

But I don’t think it was the music that woke me. No, it was the sudden flood of blinding light when Tom jumped out of bed and flipped the light switch at the first note of Bach or Haydn or Saint Saens.

Those first months of our marriage, I was horribly sleep-deprived. Not only did my wonderful new husband get up before the roosters, he also stayed up with the owls. I may be the only newlywed wife who had to beg her husband to come to bed, and he’s probably the only newlywed husband who habitually wasn’t ready to turn in yet.

What did he want to do instead of going to bed? Oh, watch something interesting on television, if there was anything interesting, or read a book, or listen to music; great ideas, but not if you’re falling-asleep-on-your-feet tired.

 I actually managed to stay awake through most episodes of “Paradise Postponed,” the Masterpiece Theater offering that fall. The program was over by ten o’clock, so we could hurry brushing teeth, and get into bed by, what, 10:15, maybe?

No way.

My husband has the largest classical music collection known to humankind, which is a wonderful thing, mostly. But after ten p.m., when I was desperate for a good night’s sleep, it was hard to appreciate that he wanted to listen to music before turning in. He’d select an album, place it on the turntable, set it spinning, squirt a drop of liquid onto his special little cleaning tool, run it across the record’s surface, carefully set the stylus to come down precisely where he wanted, and settle down on the couch, a beagle at his side.

That delayed bedtime at least a half hour.

Then it was time to take the dog out. Tom would put on his jacket, zip it up, get Cleo’s leash, fasten it to her collar, tell her that he was taking her out so that she could be a good, clean, honest, puppy dog beagle girl. (Why honest, I don’t know, but that’s what he said.) When they went out the door, and I would dash upstairs to get ready for bed. Twenty minutes later, I was ready, but, more often than not, he was still downstairs with the dog. If we were lucky, we’d get to bed by quarter past eleven.

Quarter past eleven! And I had to get up in less than six hours!

I worked as a therapist. I needed to be alert and attentive, sensitive and perceptive. I had always made sure that I got a good night’s sleep, so that I would be at my best during therapy sessions. After a month or two of married life, I wasn’t sure I had a “best” to be at anymore.

As we moved into the fifth month of our marriage, I got pregnant, and things became markedly worse. I was already tired, and suddenly the fatigue was ever so magnified. Most nights after we’d eaten and done the dishes, I’d fall asleep on the couch. I’d be out cold, and suddenly I’d be awakened by Cleo’s excited barking when she and Tom went out for their usual evening excursion. I’d drag myself upstairs, get ready for bed, and curse the clock.

With children, some things changed. I was awake in an instant at the sound of a baby crying, and could get up multiple times without cursing. Although I stopped working, I continued rising early to have breakfast with Tom before he left for work. But if I was exhausted, I could catch a little more sleep after he left, if the baby wasn’t up yet.

Sleep deprived still? Well, yes, but going without sleep for a baby seemed different. And anyway, I could nap when the baby napped. Tom never naps.

One of my early illusions about my husband was that, given a shorter commute, he would get up at a more reasonable hour. No. Even the rare times when he’s been working close to home, he’s up in the wee hours. But no matter how early an employer wants him to get up, he’s willing. For a while, although we lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, he worked for a company headquartered in New York, and sometimes needed to attend meetings in Manhattan at eight in the morning. He did what any crazy person would do. He’d go to bed at about eleven fifteen, then get up at three in the morning, go through his usual routine at his usual leisurely pace, and catch a train at something like five in the morning  to get him to New York in time for his meeting. No, he couldn’t just do things faster so he’d be able to sleep a little later. And yes, the dog did seem surprised about her middle-of-the night walk, and was seldom, as he’d tell me, “productive” at 3:30 a.m.

I love him, but this man drives me crazy. What’s more, these days, going to bed at 11:15 at night isn’t good enough for him. He still gets up at five, but we often don’t even go upstairs to get ready for bed until eleven thirty or later.

I can’t stand the lack of sleep. So, although we go to bed at the same time, Tom and I don’t get up at the same time. We have only one alarm clock in our room, and resetting the alarm for me, although doable, does disrupt his routine, so I don’t like to ask him to do it.

Because he likes his routine: alarm at five, shower, dress for dog walking, enjoy that morning walk with said dog, make breakfast, listen to music, do his weight lifting exercises, and then back upstairs to brush teeth, change into his suit, and so on. I, meanwhile, am sleeping. All I ask him is, could you please wake me up in the morning when you come back upstairs.

For years, his way of doing that was to tell me about his morning walk with the dog. So, I, sound asleep, would gradually become aware of someone talking quietly in the room, telling me such things as, “Daisy had a double header this morning. It’s a good thing I had an extra bag with me.” Or, “The neighbors’ dogs barked at Gracie so much,  she wouldn’t go. Keep an eye on her, because she may need to go out suddenly.”

I told Tom that my morning shouldn’t start with stories of dog poop before I even get out of bed.

So he began waking me, or so he said, by telling me something else. What, I can’t tell you, because I usually slept through it. Once in a while, I’d become vaguely aware of someone quietly mumbling nearby. If I opened my eyes, I’d find it was Tom, telling me something like what temperature it was outside, or whether rain was expected.

Not once did he ever do anything helpful, such as saying my name, and telling me in a gentle but firm voice that it was time to get up.

So, I explained to him this wasn’t working. People pay more attention when you call them by name, I told him. He’d need to call me by name.  For some reason, this was a strange idea.

Didn’t your mother do that when she woke you when you were a little boy? I asked.

I don’t remember her waking me, he said. I remember an alarm clock.

Hmmm.

I gave instructions. I gave directions. I even suggested a script.

Nope. He can’t do it. He tries, but he can’t do it. Okay, he has managed to stop waking me with stories about dog poop, but that’s about as far as it’s gone.

His best effort now, when he comes back upstairs, and after he brushes his teeth, is this: he’ll stand next to the bed, buttoning his dress shirt, and say quietly, are you getting up, Kate?

According to him, I sometimes murmur unintelligibly, sometimes say no, but usually agree to get up. I may tell him to have a good day, or drive carefully on his way to work, or to Princeton or the airport, or to wherever the heck he’s going that day. I don’t remember anything about it, though, because I’m still asleep. 

Sometime after he’s left, I wake in a frenzy: late getting up again!

He doesn’t understand what my problem is, so here it is: I like to sleep, and he doesn’t.

That, and he hasn’t the faintest idea how to wake someone.

     ~ Kate Lydon Varley

The Do-It-Yourself Are You Ready to Be a Parent Quiz

SECTION A: Circle all that apply:

1. My belongings include:

            a. glass fronts or tops on furniture   

        

            b. gleaming wooden items with finely buffed finishes   

   

            c. family heirlooms 

             

            d. furniture I can't crawl under if necessary

2. It is important to me: 

            a. to keep windows and glass doors absolutely clean at all times    

    

            b. to keep a neat, tidy home  

    

            c. to have privacy in the bathroom

            d. not to smell of spit-up milk

3. The following is true of me:

            a. I love to cook when people appreciate the time, effort and thought I put into it.

            b. I wouldn't let my children eat junk food!

            c. Keeping to a regular schedule is important to me.

            d. Some of my favorite outfits have tags that say dry clean only.

            e. I have a hobby (of any sort) and need to keep some time free for its pursuit.

            f. It would irritate me no end to be asked a question 30 times in a row.

            g. It would irritate me no end to have to ask a question 30 times in a row.

SECTION B: Please rate your embarrassment level for the following situations on a scale from 0 to 5, with 0 representing no embarrassment whatsoever, and 5 representing extreme embarrassment.

4. You’re dying to read a hot new book a friend told you about, so you dare a trip to the library with your 6-month-old, who has just learned to blow raspberries. She displays her new talent from the moment you enter until the moment you leave. The other patrons make angry faces and glare at you.

0          1          2          3          4          5

5. You and your family are out for a walk. As you pass the house of some (let's be kind) eccentric neighbors who are out gardening, they see you, get up and come over to chat. Your child points at their home and shouts, "Isn't that the nut house?"

0          1          2          3          4          5

6. Your child asks a man in line behind you at the supermarket if he has a baby in his tummy or if he’s just fat.

0          1          2          3          4          5

7. You are in a back corner of a restaurant with your two-year-old and your infant, hoping to nurse the baby discretely as women in your nursing guides do. Your two-year-old shouts, "Isn't he drinking from your breast? I want to see your breast too!" The other patrons turn and stare.

0          1          2          3          4          5

8. You and your family are dinner guests of a friend who has prepared a meal with your child's preferences in mind, after you assure her that your little darling loves spaghetti and meatballs. Despite your best polite redirections, threatening instructions and furious glares, your child won’t eat, and instead chants through the entire meal, "I don't like this spaghetti!  I’m not gonna eat this spaghetti! Baby won’t eat this spaghetti! No, not this spaghetti!"

0          1          2          3          4          5

7. In a doctor's crowded  waiting room, your two-year old child begins to take a poll on how many people there have a a vulva and how many have a penis.

0          1          2          3          4          5

SECTION C: Multiple choice

9. You are about to enjoy a cup of freshly brewed coffee and a small dish of your favorite ice  cream after dinner one night, when your toddler, who has climbed into her toy box with her Big Bad Wolf doll, gets stuck standing on her head and bumps her cheek on a pop-up toy as she struggles to free herself. As she wails, you rush to pull her out. Then you comfort her and Wolfie, give the right number of kisses to each injured area on both the child and Wolfie, and talk about the hazards of headstands in toy boxes. By the time you return to your coffee and ice cream, they have reached the same temperature and consistency. You:

            a. throw them out and get fresh servings.

            b. throw them out and start the dishes.

            c. consume them anyway, because who knows what will happen next, and you may need fortification.                  

10. Your husband offers to watch the kids so you can have a cup of coffee and read the Sunday paper undisturbed. As you settle in with the book review section, Daddy is playing with the kids. Suddenly, your husband asks you in an urgent tone, "Is cabbage all right?" You:

            a. put down the paper and ask what he means.

            b. put down the paper, grab the baby, and search his mouth for cabbage.

            c. say, "Yes, cabbage is fine," and continue reading, because you no longer have to understand a conversation in order to have it.

11. You decide to create a Do It Yourself Are You Ready to Be a Parent Quiz. You toil persistently at the kitchen table, but six days pass between creation of each new item you write (when you are lucky). Numerous sippy cups of milk are dribbled all over your working copy. Your child says, "These things happen." You:

            a. give it up altogether.

            b. give it up for now, figuring you’ll try again when the kids are in their twenties.

            c. blot the milk off the paper (it was white anyway) and keep writing.

SCORING KEY:

Really?

You think there is a way to ace this test?

And you think that I figured out the right answers?

Really?

Good luck! (You’ll need it.)

         ~ Kate Lydon Varley

I study structure

all winter

The Bradford pear

tall, thin, almost perfect symmetry except

one branch bent forever downward out of pattern from

astounding snow that Halloween

The scarlet maple once spreading in a glorious globe

marred by limbs broken by that same startling storm

The cherry’s thickened trunk, short stature,

leaning full eastward, sparser to the west

The high aspirations of the sycamore

stretching in almost tortured

elegance to the sky

The oaks, stolid, no nonsense and no frills,

extending limbs and filling space

dependable, not predictable

The tulip poplars, dwarfing all the others,

arms angling upward, drooping downward,

stately

until the next break

In spring

buds and then

those pale green flitting gauzy curtains

giving way to lush, flowing drapery

hiding 

all the secrets of my trees.

Time, Coffee and Auntie Jo 

In warm weather, when my brothers and I played in the street in front of our house, I would sometimes see Auntie Jo sitting out on the second floor porch, her hair freshly washed, as she parted it in the middle and combed out the long strands before she pinned it up into the bun she always wore.  Her hair was so very long, mostly gray, but some of it very white.

We lived in the downstairs apartment, and Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo moved into the upstairs apartment when I was about eight or nine, I think. Before that, they had lived two doors down. They were brother and sister, not husband and wife, and they were our landlords; or, at least Tony was.

Uncle Tony was loud and balding, pushy, demanding, sometimes generous, but with something about him that sometimes made me nervous. But Auntie Jo was like coming home to someone quiet, loving, toe the mark or she’d have a word with you, but, in the end, she could make everything all right. Her voice was soothing, her manner gentle, and, when we were sick, she made a delicious mint tea for us children that could cure any tummy ache.

We weren’t related to Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo.

My parents met Tony because he’d been a regular customer at the donut shop where they both worked before they got married. It was 1950, and they were looking to rent an apartment for after the wedding, but apartments were hard to come by in the tight housing market after the end of the Second World War. They had to live with Dad’s parents for a while, but Uncle Tony at last came through with an apartment for them.

Today, maybe we’d call the street a cul de sac, trying to make it sound fancy, but this was the 1950s. A few months before I was born, my parents moved into a lovely two bedroom apartment in a house with a front porch, a back porch, a front garden, and a big back yard with a towering oak; on a dead end street with a gas station on one corner, a car dealer on the other, a warehouse across from us, and a gun club down the street.

That house was where I lived for my first eleven years, through some very good times, and some very bad times. Auntie Jo was a part of the good times.

Some of my happiest memories with her involve coffee.

Auntie Jo would often invite us, the whole family, to come for coffee. There was a ritual to her preparations that I absolutely loved. She had her own coffee grinder which consisted of a wooden box with a metal grinding mechanism in the upper area, a handle for turning the grinder on top, and a draw in the lower section which caught the ground coffee. Auntie Joe would pour in dark, shiny coffee beans, turn the handle again and again, and open the drawer to spoon the ground coffee into the basket of her percolator. The smell was heavenly.

There was something of egg shell and a dash of salt thrown into the water, and the coffee was set on the stove to perk. I’d sit at the kitchen table, waiting, waiting, waiting for that coffee to perk, and at last, it would begin – a loud, insistent rhythm as the coffee splashed up into the clear glass top of the lid – even better than the Maxwell House commercials. Then, when it perked enough, Auntie Jo would take the pot off the heat and set it to rest for a few minutes before pouring.

We kids all had cookies with the grown-ups, and the Italian cookies we were offered were quite nice. I liked the ones that had cherries and the S-shaped ones the best. My brothers would have glasses of milk too. Because I was the oldest child, I was allowed to have coffee. Auntie Jo would fill my cup half way with coffee, the rest of the way with milk. I would put my two teaspoons of sugar into my cup myself. Then I’d stir carefully, licking my spoon before resting it on my saucer. The grown-ups would talk, and I would sit and listen, sipping my coffee, never interrupting, but certainly offering my opinion if asked.

When at last I had finished my cup of coffee, there would often be a tiny bit of coffee ground in the bottom of my cup. And for some reason, that made the whole experience more special.

Sweet Auntie Jo.

We moved away shortly after my eleventh birthday, and I remember my family visiting her one time; but only once.

Times changed.

I've tried various ways of making coffee – good coffee, bad coffee, delicious coffee, but there is no way so satisfying to my soul as with a percolator.

I can’t imagine Auntie Jo using a K-cup.

I can’t imagine her coffee without a trifling bit of grounds.

My hair’s gray now, though not long like Auntie Jo's.

I'm not sure the coffee smell can ever again be so heavenly as it was then, but maybe it’s time to get myself an old-fashioned wooden box coffee grinder.

It's worth a try.