GRANDPA CARPENTER'S FRIED EGGS

Melt a small lump of butter in a small skillet.
Use low heat.
After the butter is melted, add a tablespoon of water.
Then add one egg and cover for two minutes.
Slide out and add one buttered piece of toast.

Next is GC's famous( or infamous) chili.
Love and kisses, Grandma C.
----- Original Message -----

Julie’s Journey
Just an update on what’s going on in my new "jouney"
As of Tuesday, Feb.21 , I have received three chemo therapy treatments plus much love and support at Burlington Hospital. In between, they have given me extra fluids intravenously plus a shot to increase my white count. Along with this I wear a pain patch plus I take pills for pain and nausea. My intake of enzymes is at about 9 per day.
Keeping track of all of this is a chore but................keeps my mind occupied along with the jigsaw puzzles.
Each day, Neal gets the mail and brings me my presents of greeting cards. I do a few househould chores and then about 10am, I wrap my self in my prayer shawl, read my cards and sometimes the old ones to, page through my book on hummingbirds, and think about all the good food our family has been making and bringing in freezer containers on the weekend. Didn’t know we had such good cooks in the family. Here I thought I was the only one. Hmmmmmm.
Charting the course of the medications is one of my jobs. I take my temperature and mark the pill reactions down so that my "medical team" has good information. The least I can do.
The prayers are coming from all over the place. How blessed can one person be. Now I am getting brave and bold . As I go around town doing my errands and folks ask how I am, I ask them for their prayers. More knees bending, eh.
I love all of you. Julie

this blog

i have been thinking about tradition and our pasts. as much as we'd like to deny it, they make us who we are. we come from a long line of people and lives that have eventually shaped our own. our lives will shape others for years to come. the actions i take now, the people i love now, the life i live, will someday affect others.

so where did i come from, what is the tradition left before. who are the people.

one of those people is my grandma carpenter. as anyone who is reading this well knows by now, my dear grandma has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and actually starts chemotheropy tomorrow.

though i've known for a little while now, i don't know that i truly have let it sink in. she told me this weekend to pray, and so that is how i have decided to cope.

the other thing i really want to do is gain everything i possibly can from her. she has so many things in my life that have impacted my heart... stories she's told, wisdom she's passed on, gifts she has given. two things, in recent years, that have meant the world to me have been that i really need to let go and truly enjoy the world around me... and the other was to quit my job, because there was something else out there. since then, i have fallen in love and quit my job, finding a job that will hopefully really suit my style. i couldn't have done it without her.

so i created this blog. here i will keep stories... one's from her own mouth, through her fingers (from emails or letters), and those others will tell of her.

she is an inspiration to me. she has lived her life everyday. she never quit, even through some tough ones. she paints, she writes, she calls, she helps those in need, she makes others feel welcome with her. she is proud. she is proud of her children and her art.

we'll see where this goes, for now, here are a few things she recently sent me in an email. read on... enjoy the stories and the wisdom from my grandma: juliet carpenter.

poems

“Oh, that was my Mother’s”

This woman that I kind of know
Is so very everydayish.
Not better than the most of us,
Not down there with the worst of us
Just kind of in the middle.

She has a kind of homespun cozy way about her and
Thinks that rocks plucked from the shore are good
And the best of life is found in peanut butter,
Oatmeal and homemade bread.

Her ending day’s delight is
Knitting by an open fire.
While she watches sunsets,
She reminisces about her early childhood days,
Early married years and early Grandma times.

Hear and there about her home there is a basket,
A bowl, a dish or sometimes a thing she is wearing
That begs a comment from a visitor.
Very often she answers with that old time grace,
“ Oh, that was my Mother’s .”




Ode to the Huggers


Hooray for the huggers,
Hip, hip hooray
A good hug can last you
All through the day.

Good huggers aren’t born
It takes practice you see.
There’s no school where you learn
And earn a degree.

Some families are huggers
They’ve got it down pat.
All the short, all the skinny
All the tall, all the fat.

If practice makes perfect,
and that’s what I’ve heard.
That’s probably their secret
in professional words.

Just how did they learn
each sister, each brother?
When their times were tough
They just clung to each other.



IT’S SAFE WITH Katie

Our thoughts and feelings are precious things
that are built upon the
shaky foundation of our youth
and tossed around by life events.

They are not what they used to be
They never are
Whatever they were at age 10 or 20 or 40,
they have been strained and filtered
into something very different today.

We all look for places for
these precious and private things
Wherever we keep them we want them to be safe
With my friend, they are safe.
She will love them, treasure them and
respect them because she knows their
source.

Unfinished



It’s important to try
lots of stuff this and that.
so that when you arrive
at that place where you’re at.
And you’ve dressed for the day
You choose the right hat.
Just suppose that you get a call from your friends
to meet them for tea
Or you plan to sail the seven seas
or climb some mountains

Or go to the palace
and have lunch with Alice
She lives in a palace







Her Mom’s Blue Jars

A friend and I were talking
about our childhood
about our times so long ago,
about our Mothers

Their lives were different than ours,
more cleaning, more gardening, more cooking .
We talked about their joys
We talked about their sadness.

We asked ourselves,
what little thing of theirs could we keep
to remind us of these long ago women
who taught us that life would be good if we were.

My friend wanted to keep her Mom’s blue jars.
As a child she watched as the jars were filled
with precious food to keep the large family
fed during the long hard winter months.

One by one, emptied, washed and placed back on the shelf.
The blue jars stood like sentrys waiting
to be called upon to preserve and protect.
Waiting patiently
for their call to duty.

In the bright blessed light of the summer sun.
those blue sentrys gleamed.
Small blue eyes seeing more than blue.
They stood and waited in their very silent place
showing off their beauty .





WHAT DOES A FRIEND LOOK LIKE

I always wondered if I would know a
friend by how they looked
or where they lived
or how much money they had
or if they took vacations
or who their friends were.

I also wondered if a person
had only one best friend,
but when I grew up I found
the best in many friends.

I have a friend for each of
the following, when I go through
things with my man, my Mom,
my kids, my job, my neighbors.
One that I shop with, cry with,
get confused with and one that
takes me back after I have
made a complete fool of myself.

Seldom do I find one friend with
many of these things all wrapped up
in one. But I have one that has many,
that I look to for support and love.

Come to think of it, she does have
a look. She wears a funny red hat,
has curly white hair, lives on a farm,
paints watercolors and is always there
when I need a friend. She was sent
from God. I will remember to thank
Him for the gift of her.

prayers

When I pray in the morning
and ask the Lord what chores He has for me,
I always forget that what’s in the present moment is the answer.
What He wants is right there before me.
It would help though, if He would just send me an email.
As soon as I say, thy will be done......off I go
As I tear through life and tear I do,
I hope and pray that it is what He wants.
At the end of this road
As I run toward heavens gate
With my clothes tattered and torn
My knees all skinned up
Huffing and puffing and my hair all eskew
The Lord will meet me and I will say,
Did I do ok
and He will pat me on the head and tell me
You did just fine.

my mom (from grandma)

I want to write about my Mom. I feel the need to think about her life and the positive things she created out of such a strained existence. Lately I seem to be preoccupied with her daily hardships especially things that I take for granted. One of the aspects of that life was the important role of water in the raising of so many children and maintaining a house and home far out in the country.
She had running water in the house but it was cold. The only way she could have warm water, not very hot, was to heat it on the stove. After every meal, the dishes had to be washed (no paper plates) and to do that, water had to be heated. That’s three times a day, one pot for washing and one for rinsing. Water couldn’t be wasted. Washing your hands in between was done in cold water.
Clothes were washed by hand and that water had to be heated also. The clothes were washed on a scrub board, sheets also, then rinsed in cold water and hung outside on a clothesline, winter or no winter. I remember coming home from school and seeing my Dad’s long johns as stiff as a board. She left them overnight and then brought them in the basement to finish drying on the long clotheslines my Dad put up.
Bathing was a whole other situation. Each day we washed our faces and hands and other parts of our bodies. We called it a sponge bath. Water had to be heated up in the kettle for each person. Entire body bathing was done once a week and it was a big project. The big pots were put on to heat and that water had to be carried into the bathroom. You could then run some cold to make it comfortable but the idea of a whole tub was out of the question.
Since this was such a project, baths were taken once a week. With four brothers and a sister, this took the entire evening. I think my Mom took hers during the day, maybe also during the week.
In the summer months, my sister and I used to carry water from the rain barrel outside and heat it on the stove to wash our hair. We had no water softener and our tap water was very hard. The rain barrel was kept covered and the water was so nice and soft. What a treat!
I look at my own hands and see the hands of my Mom. Her hands were in far worse shape than mine were as hers were in and out of cold water on and off all day. During the winter months, they would crack and make open sores. No big bottles of hand cream at our house, nor was there any Band-Aids. A cut or sore of any kind was treated with a paste or poultice made of wash soap and sugar, then wrapped with strips of an old white sheet. When she could afford it, she would buy a bottle of rose water and glycerin to help heal her hands.
All of our food was made daily. Nothing was purchased from the store that was prepared. We had one store in town and it was about three quarters of a mile from our home. My Mom went once every couple of days as we did not have a refrigerator only an icebox. All of the purchases were carried, as we had no car. Food was as much of a challenge as water.
I really do not recall any recipe books. Everything was prepared from my Mom’s memory. We ate very simple foods. Soups, stews, wild fowl that my Dad caught and that was roasted or fried, potatoes by the bucket full., now and then a ham, always brown gravy as my Dad was German and that was a standard. As hard as I think I cannot recall much fruit or cereal or even desserts of any kind other than pie or cake when my Mom made them.
She made a lot of meatloaf and sometimes it was the big meal on Sunday. Our Sunday meal was about 1pm or 2pm. Usually my Mom came home from church and started finishing dinner. In the evening we had a sandwich or whatever the leftover was. I do remember snacking on cold boiled potatoes, not so bad. I still like them today. On Sunday we usually had a desert, not a big one but there was something. After dinner my Dad usually took a nap and then we listened to Jack Benny on the radio Sun. evening and I did my homework.
Now and again we would make popcorn on Sunday during the Benny show. That was a special time.
During the depression, my Dad worked on the WPA as a laborer. It was local and he came home for lunch. Lunch was a lot of fried potatoes and bread and butter. That was all there was.
A man called Sam Carlin owned the store in our town. He was a butcher and his wife was the clerk. Many of the women in town had husbands that had jobs and were able to come and buy enough meat for their family. My Mom would ask for soup bones and many times she had to also ask for credit. He was always good to us and let my Mom run up a bill during the worst of times. She must have been very embarrassed to have to ask for all of that in front of the other women. She would have done it for her family and gladly. Her ability to face other women and hold her head up is something that I really did not appreciate until after my own family was raised and I began to think about her life as another woman instead of just my Mom. My Dad was a violent drunk and the depression only increased the violence probably because of the frustration of not being able to get a job and support your family. We had to take food from the county and it was delivered to our house with my Mom and Dad sitting there watching. There was nothing either of them could do but take it for the children’s sake. The violence always got worse after that. After the depression was over and more people had jobs, my Mom paid Sam back everything she owed him. He never charged her any interest for all that time. Sam was Jewish and I think the only Jewish family in town. He knew that we were Catholic but it made no difference to him and surely not to us. We were very grateful. An added thought; while he was feeding Catholics, his ancestors or maybe family, were being burned in the ovens in Germany.

Painting grapes

Grapes can be green,
Or purple or pink.
When painting grapes,
You must think, think, think.
They sit in a pile
On top of each other.
Don’t eat them all
There’ll be none for your brother.

Rocks are the same
Just square and not round
If you look with both eyes
A surprise will be found
Just think think some more
They are not what they seem
Don’t look at the rocks
But the space inbetween.

feb. 4th 2007 email

Katie , If you cannot open this stuff. let me know. I love you. GC

THE STORY OF JANE
Oh where to begin.
We don’t know her beginnings
so we must start from today
and go backwards.

Today, Jane’s 93 year old eyes
have seen and saw and selected
more than all our other friends.
Desease and cures,
War and peace,
Anger and love,
Joy and sadness
Dawns and dusks,
Todays and tomorrows.
A library almost complete
from which she carefully selects
which recorded story to tell with her colorful paintings
of life, liberty and love.
Tell us more, tell us more.
Dear Jane.


Dear Loved Ones,

I was driving to church early this morning and recalled something from my childhood. After a night of listening to the wind howl and then driving along and seeing all the trees that had fallen, I remembered the nights that I laid in bed at the home in which I grew up in and listened to the wind that made the house creak and whistled through the cracks. You may consider this as close to a family heirloom as we can get.

In the " good old days" the newspapers used to publish contests for one thing or another. You could send in your entry and win some small item. A big thing during depression days. Our paper was the good old Chicago Tribune, thanks to Col. Mc Cormick.

My Mom entered a contest one time and won an alarm clock. We were all pretty excited about that. The challange was to write a poem. Who knows what about but there is not a time goes by when the wind comes howling through the trees that I do not recall that poem.

The wind blew through the windows
and the wind blew through the doors.
It even blew beneath the rugs
that lay upon the floors.

One night when Bob was sleeping
now what do you suppose.
The wind came in and blew the buttons
off of his night clothes.

Amen

Bob was my oldest brother.