Chasing the Storm

On the night of December 2nd, 2007 the coast of Washington and Oregon was slammed by hurricane force winds that left a wake of destruction reminiscent of the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s or the atmospheric explosion of a meteorite. The infrastructures of the communities that dot the coastal region were devastated. Roads were rendered impassible, power lines were down everywhere as were telephone lines. Flooding was rampant in communities built near the sea. My mother lives in Ilwaco, Washington at the mouth of the Columbia River and for three days we were out of contact with her. Although phone lines were down we knew that she was sitting in a cold dark apartment. As soon as the roads onto the Long Beach Peninsula were opened we drove down to see what we could do to help her. By the time we arrived her ordeal of no power had just ended so we got her some fresh groceries and promised that should any other such storm that promised so much devastation be headed toward her we would come and fetch her away.

Last week the coast was pummeled by storm after storm. Mother came through the first four with her lights only being out for 2 and a half hours. I became complacent. Friday night I checked the NOAA website and it looked like the storm predicted for Saturday night wasn’t going to be as bad as that which they’d had on Monday. Sunday morning we woke to the news that the coast of Washington had been slammed by a storm that had been much more severe. From a Facebook friend who lives in Ilwaco we learned that not only was the power out (her parents have a generator), but that it was a major BPA line that might take as long as 3-5 days to repair. Although the phone lines were not down this time, we were out of contact with my mother because her corded phone was malfunctioning and her cordless phone had no power. The question became what should we do?

After making phone calls to PUD, the Pacific County Sheriff’s Department, and my cousin who lives down there I came to the conclusion that I had no choice but to drive down and rescue my mother from her cold dark apartment. How I was going to get her down the stairs from the second floor I would deal with when I got there. A check of the DOT website indicated that the roads were open so my husband and I hopped in the car and were off. Clearly this storm had not been anywhere as devastating as the 2007 storm. The more inland communities appeared to have power although during the day it is difficult to tell which houses had lights on. When we got to Montesano we stopped for a bathroom and snack break and that is where we were when my aunt called to say that the power had just come back on. She’d spoken to my mother who was fine. At that point we could have turned around and gone back to Gig Harbor, but we decided to complete the trip and take her the telephone. Although we will be going to Ilwaco for Thanksgiving the fact that the coast has had storm after storm the past week my knowing that my mother now has a phone that should work even if the power goes out again.

Life on the Washington/Oregon coast makes being prepared a necessity. It is difficult to care for an aging mother from 150 miles away and the time will come when we will have to move our mode of operations to Ilwaco. We are wrestling with out desire to live their fulltime vs our desire to help our children who live with us. Can’t put a cute grandson to the curb, but don’t like leaving a great-grandmother sitting in the cold for days at a time.

Aunt Bee's Sweet 'Tators

Today I continued my Thanksgiving preparations by baking yams. When we were living in California my mother cut out an ad (or maybe she saw it on TV) and ordered a copy of Aunt Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook. My mother loves to cook and loves cookbooks. Not only does this particular cookbook contain literally heart-stopping recipes, it also has pictures from Andy Griffith’s Mayberry show. Because the recipes are very down home, but very unhealthy, I don’t use the cookbook much, but at holidays I figure calories and fat don’t count. Several years ago I was fishing around for a sweet potato recipe that did not involve marshmallows because my husband thinks that they are disgusting prepared that way.

To me Thanksgiving is a time when it is okay to eat those old fashioned high calories dishes so I pulled out Aunt Bee’s and discovered “Raleigh’s Budding Executive Sweet ‘Tater Casserole.” This recipe is not exactly sugar free; on the contrary, but there are no marshmallows so I made it. My husband says that it’s still pretty sweet for a side dish, but the children fell in love with it. I use yams only because they are prettier. I also double the recipe because it will generously fill a 9X13 inch pan and maybe leave you some to have with leftover turkey. I’m freezing my yams for transport to Ilwaco next week where I will put the whole thing together, but I have also baked the whole thing ahead and frozen it.

Raleigh’s Budding Executive Sweet ‘Tater Casserole

3 C. cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (my daughter-in-law has taken canned yams in her suitcase to make this recipe in Brazil and it worked fine.)
1 C. white sugar
2 eggs
1tsp. vanilla extract (if you use imitation, which you shouldn’t, use twice as much)
1/3 C. milk
½ C. butter
1 C. brown sugar
1/3 C. all-purpose flour
1/3 C. butter
1 C. pecans—chopped

In a mixing bowl combine the sweet potatoes, sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk, and ½ C. butter. Beat until smooth. Turn the mixture into a casserole dish. In a bowl combine brown sugar, flour, and 1/3 C. butter. Crumble the mixture over the potato mixture and sprinkle with pecans. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. You can do this while the turkey is standing.

Thanksgiving Memories

Next to Halloween, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. What I like about it is that Madison Avenue hasn’t figured out a way to commercialize it. Oh sure, Safeway and Fred Meyer will try to get you to spend a lot of money—$150 this year—to get a free turkey, but for the most part they have had to resort to whipping up the buying frenzy for the day after Thanksgiving in what has become known as Black Friday. We are untraditional in that we don’t participate in Black Friday because that is the day we celebrate Thanksgiving.

We started doing that a number of years ago when the children lived in Tacoma and there was only one bridge across the Narrows. Apparently every grandma with family in Tacoma must live in Gig Harbor or the Olympic Peninsula because it took the children two hours to make a twenty minute trip. Finally, my middle son asked if we couldn’t just have dinner the next day. It seemed highly unorthodox, but we quickly discovered that the turkey and stuff and all of the trimmings tasted the same on Friday as on Thursday and a new tradition was born. Now we have moved our celebration 150 miles to the Long Beach Peninsula where my mother, her sister, and my cousin live. It’s a logistical battle plan to get everything to our old Victorian in Ilwaco, but otherwise my little extended family is alone and resort to Thanksgiving at Denny’s or something equally as sad.

I asked some friends what their favorite Thanksgiving memories are. One said that her brother made a “pie” of marshmallows, peanut butter, candy bars and every other sweet he could get his hands on when he was a child. Another said that her mother let her and her siblings chose their favorite food and prepared everything from tacos to spaghetti for Thanksgiving.

One of my favorite memories is of one of our first years during our stint in California. The holidays made me more homesick than I was on a daily basis, missing the green of Washington and my extended family of uncles, aunts, grandparents and my dad. We had only my husband’s cousin, who being from Iran was a little fuzzy on what Thanksgiving was supposed to be, so we did what we could to make the day seem special. At the time I was working shelving books in a library and had brought home a book of children’s poetry just before this one particular Thanksgiving. My middle son decided to read a poem to entertain us after dinner and I still remember him getting dressed up in his best clothes and putting on a red bow tie. Suddenly the thousand miles between California and home shrank and Thanksgiving came to where we were. It was priceless.

Our first Thanksgiving back in Washington was pretty special. After some help from my cousin we were able to secure a house to rent in Chinook. My uncle in Beaverton, Oregon had sent us a turkey and the Elks in Long Beach gave us one, too along with boxes and boxes of food. Our table groaned that year and my mother’s sister and my cousins and their children all gathered at our house and it was reminiscent of years long ago at my grandparents in Vancouver.

When we began taking Thanksgiving from Gig Harbor to Ilwaco we began another tradition that just happened as a result of the long, usually dark, drive from Gig Harbor to there. Wednesday afternoon after school I would take my daughter and my youngest son, the dog and the turkey and whatever else we needed and we’d head out. After stopping to eat along the way I’d turn on KGO talk radio. That’s a San Francisco station that I got into the habit of listening to during our six years in the Bay Area. Bernie Ward was the late night host and the night before Thanksgiving was always a discussion of cooking turkeys. While Amy slept in the backseat, Nadir and I listened to all the calls and all the ways people were cooking their turkeys. Because KGO has such a big broadcast tower they would get calls from all over the Western and Southwestern United States so there were lots of opinions. We made our trek this way several years in a row until one year Nadir cooked the turkey himself after having soaked it in brine.

Buying our 15.5 pound organic turkey yesterday was bittersweet because now Nadir lives in the Bay Area and won’t be with us this year, but I can already feel the merriment next week will bring as most of the rest of us gather in our old house. We have friends whose only child lives elsewhere and have been adopted by us. They are in charge of the turkey and have been ever since they persuaded us to let them barbeque one. It was and always is the best turkey I’ve ever put in my mouth. They have trucked their Weber all the way from Gig Harbor to give this gift of a succulent bird to us.

As with most other Americans, my weekend will be filled with preparing for next week. One of the beauties of Thanksgiving is that it is something that every American participates in. Since it is not a religious holiday, no one need feel left out. I know as I bake my cornbread for stuffing and make my sweet potato casserole to be frozen and then driven, that there are others baking pies and polishing silver. We are a part of a huge celebration of remembering our blessing.

Getting Twice the Husband at Half the Income.

For about a year we have been living with the knowledge that my husband’s job was going to end. The only question was when. Dave works at Seattle Flight Service briefing pilots on the weather and filing flight plans. This is a job he’s done since he was in the Army in the 1970s. During the 1980s he went to work for the FAA when Regan fired all the air traffic controllers. He’s been at the Seattle facility since 1989. Three years ago Lockheed Martin won the bid to take over the flight service section of the FAA. The result of this effort to save money has been reduced staff, inferior equipment, and unhappy employees. Fortunately, Dave had enough time in with the FAA to retire from the government before he went to work for Lockheed Martin. We’ve not touched his retirement which has gone into an ING account. We all know how well the economy’s been doing so we are not going to be living in the lap of luxury.

Over the past year the skeleton staff at Seattle Flight Service has been rife with rumors and interpretations of everything Lockheed did, trying to discern which facilities were going to be closed and when. We’ve joked that they’ve done everything to read the minds of the Lockheed executives, but hire a gypsy to read tea leaves. Yesterday, as Dave says, the hammer fell. February 1st has been set for the closure of the Seattle facility. Scheduling the closure just before the Olympic in British Columbia is as mysterious as everything else Lockheed has done since they took over.

Twenty-ten promises to be a very different year for us as I gain twice the husband at half the income. I intend to share our journey with you and the decisions we make. Our first is to not panic. Last year we made a commitment to my son, daughter-in-law and grandson, who live with us, to stay in Gig Harbor for three more years. That is to give them time to develop a little nest egg toward a place of their own when we sell the family home and move to the coast. We’ve two more years on our commitment and intend to make good on it. We just have to pull together. And there's always the Top Ramen. Hee, hee. Just kidding.

A Quilting Blog to Comfy Up With

Blogonia buddy Lorraine Hart sent me the link to a new blog, An Appalachian Quilter’s Blog. It is managed by a semi-retired councilor and quilter who also has a book blog. According to her profile she lives in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, fifty years in the past, in “Mayberry” and not far from the real Mayberry the show was based on. I am adding her to my list so when you visit here you can see if she’s got something new and click right over to the blog.

Swimming in the Stream of Consciousness

Yesterday when I went out to walk Loki in the morning darkness, the wind was singing in the Doug Firs. I love the sound of the wind in Doug Firs and I felt that I could stand outside much longer than I had. It made me think of another storm long ago when I stood outside listening to the wind in other Doug Firs. My reminiscing about that night drew me into the stream of consciousness and I floated back to a very different part of my life.

The Fall of 1987 the children, my mother and I were living on Top Ramen in a drafty old house in Chinook, WA after having run away from my Iranian in-laws in CA. Despite being frightened, desperately poor, and much of the time without a car, there are things from that period that I find myself getting nostalgic over. When you’re living on the edge, small things can take on a heightened sense of importance.

After six years in CA I was very glad to be back in WA. It is not that I hadn’t attempted to love CA. I had, but no matter how hard I told myself that it would be my home for the rest of my life, on some cellular level I don’t think I had ever believed it. I was homesick in every fiber of my being for six years, so even being cold and poor I was happier in a house with no phone or cable two blocks from the Columbia River where the East wind could bring the bitter wind out of the Gorge, racing for the ocean.

So, frequently when Autumn arrives, I think back to that one we spent in Chinook and how different our lives are now. I would not return to those days for the world, but I do long for the simplicity of that time, minus the Top Ramen. This morning the wind in the trees took me back.

Come out into the storm,
You said to me,
And listen to the wind
Singing in the fir trees.

You stretched your arms
Toward the blackened sky
While Doug Firs swayed
In the Autumn storm.

A warrior you were,
Come back with
Wounded spirit
That fed on the energy
Of the tempest.

For a moment then,
Outside in the dark,
The drafty old house on the river
And meals of Top Ramen fell away,
As we danced with the trees.

Virtual Farming

I play Farmville on Facebook. My husband thinks it’s kind of cool. My son Frank and his wife think I’m nuts, but my youngest plays, too and gives me tips as to how to make the most of my virtual farm.

Saturday morning on NPR Scott Simon interviewed Dean Takahashi, a blogger who writes in the Bay Area about gaming and technology, about the Farmville phenomenon. It turns out that I’m one of nearly 64 million people who have a little virtual patch of earth. Three of my coworkers play, too. They, along with my son, are my virtual neighbors on Farmville. One stopped me in the hall last week and we chatted about the blessing and curse of technology. “We just end up fertilizing each other’s fields,” Pat said. “I know,” I told her, but I really enjoy it!” “I do, too,” Pat laughed. We concluded that we’d each like simpler lives, but would never give up our technology.

I’ve spent the weekend thinking about why I like Farmville. In his interview with Takahashi, Simon theorized that while farms are declining in the United States, people yearn for what appears to be a simpler life. A fanciful simpler life. That’s part of it. Personally, in my early 20s having a farm was my fantasy. It never happened, but I can have a virtual farm on Facebook. Are you ever too old to pretend?

Hard core gamers are not attracted to Farmville. It’s not action packed. It’s like…watching vegetables grow. It’s only as competitive as you want it to be. Mostly you’re competing with yourself to get the most out of your plot to be able to expand and to “buy” things for your farm. The game is free although you can spend real money to get some of those things. I never would do that. I’m shooting to get to level 26 so I can buy the farm house I want. When I have enough “money” I will also expand my farm so there’s more room for crops and animals.

And you get to help your neighbors. You fertilize their gardens so they get more “experience” which translates into virtual money and you also get to send them gifts of animals, trees, and farm equipment. In most games the idea is to obliterate your neighbor. I like the gentleness of Farmville and it helps me to unwind after work. It’s a place where I have some control (the animals will walk around if you don’t make them stay or contain them) and it’s replaced solitaire on the computer for me.

For a long time I resisted signing up for Facebook, but it’s been a wonderful way for me to connect with old friends and new, and play games.

Excuse me. I have to go harvest my blueberries and decide what to plant next. Gotta get that farm house!