Memory and Hope have one daughter,
and her name is Art.
and her name is Art.
w.b. yeats.
No, not this Hope-
not this Memory-
THIS Memory-
And if Memory and Hope had gone on to give Art a sibling, her name would've been Christmas.
There's no other season, is there, that can match its blend of longing and light.
There's no other season, is there, that can match its blend of longing and light.
Longing and light, memory and hope. All present at a funeral I attended this week- the sort of funeral that memorializes a life so beautiful that the loss of it dims the entire community in which it was lived. A life that packed into it's 4 score and 7 years so much hope and so many memories that the whole packed room was filled with love, and chuckles, and enough tissues to have felled a grove of trees.
This little card was the tangible memory of that occasion, given to everyone who was there:
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| the front the back |
Remarkable, isn't it? I've been wondering ever since- what are the things that we give to this world or the things that we are known to love doing, that could be captured with a pocket sized memento? A piece of music maybe? A pen? A golf tee? A flash drive?
And yes, I've tried them. The peanut butter balls. Err..am trying them. There's a batch of naked peanut butter balls in the freezer now and tomorrow I'll put their little chocolate robes on and tell you all about them. I can let you know though that one taste of the unchocolated peanut butter centers caused me to say to the dog,
"Josie, it is my fond hope that my memory will be associated with something this yummy"
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| Josie thinks that if I don't act quickly, I may be remembered as that woman who thought it a good idea to humiliate her dog with a Christmas Sweater. |
The department of interesting facts of no particular profundity brings you a few memories of the food week past:
The Roast Chicken recipe just keeps proving itself a winner, I used a whole chicken this time and butterflied it. (butterflyed?butterflew? how does one verbify this word?) It roasted on top of some sweet potatoes, carrots and cauliflower and did just fine.
I'd been afraid that roasting the chicken on something not potatoes would create alot of smoke, but it didn't. The Lasagna, however, dripped some errant cheese on the oven floor and smoked up the Living room, and the TV room, the breakfast table thingy.........
Ah well. Where there's smoke....there's often dinner.
I tried recreating the Broccoli cheese soup that we had at Sweet Marley's and was a little concerned at one point that it was turning into the sort of gluey gray mess that reminds me of Calvin Trillan's opinion of English food....
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"even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests shows up without his teeth." |
A little cheese, a spin in the blender and some bacon to the rescue:
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| Pretty good, but I think a little half & half or milk would make it better. |
And before I hang the stockings by the chimney with care, I want you to know that I hope...
I hope your memories of the year past are happy ones that fill you with gratitude and wonder.
And if they don't, if memories of the year past are filled with darkness, I hope that you will find somewhere in that darkness a memory of love, of beauty,of life lived artfully.
And that you'll gather those memories together, watch them spark into hope and pass that hope to those around you.
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| like this. |
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