Childhood Illnesses

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Susacadia
FBS - sisters

Me on the far right – FBS 1965

I am old enough to have been born before most modern vaccines were available. The only usual ones I got were for polio, a drink as I remember it, and small pox. I got a bunch of others, too, that were perhaps less usual, at least for kids growing up in southern Massachusetts during the fifties. I got vaccinated against cholera, yellow fever, and typhus.

I did not get a penicillin shot the time that Missy Blake’s sister came down with scarlet fever right after Missy’s birthday party. Mom felt there would be plenty of warning if that were really necessary, but, she said, she wanted the penicillin to work if it were every really necessary, that to get one just in case was frivolous. Apparently it was necessary when I had my tonsils out in second grade. I remember quite clearly fighting the nurses and screaming bloody murder as they tried to give me a shot in the butt.

A penicillin shot (three actually) was again necessary when I got measles. I’d caught those, in the usual way, from my younger sister. I was nearly twelve and she was five. We were living in Jordan (now the West Bank of Palestine) in a city called Al Bireh, right next to Ramallah where I went to school. After Christmas, we had packed up the Chevy station wagon we drove, a three-seater with the third seat facing backwards, along with Ken Shirk and his family, and headed out, across the desert, to Bagdad. We stayed in a hotel, hired a driver, and rode out to see different sights.

Gretchen started getting fractious (which I felt was a clear bid for attention) and by Sunday morning had started running a temperature. Mom and Dad headed out for the Embassy to see a doctor. The trip coincided with a military parade through the center of town, challenging the driver to find alternate routes there and back, and alarming my Mom with the potential for a coup. They made it there and back, with the tentative diagnosis of measles. The doctor couldn’t be sure, and wouldn’t confirm, or write a script. The word “quarantine” was whispered as we started to pack.

Back across the desert, we drove all night, with Mom wedged into the back seat with Gretchen moaning and occasionally puking. The moon was full, and I admired the stark scenery and wondered about life on other planets. I don’t suppose I was nearly as entertaining as I hoped. I certainly didn’t appreciate the problems associated with bringing a potentially diseased person across borders, but the party line was that she really just had a bad cold and we were returning home for her comfort.

But it was measles and Stephanie caught them, too, since she and Gretchen shared a room. They got gifts galore (at least that is how I remember it) from the faculty and the students. They ran fevers, they puked, and got better. Then I got sick, just as they were getting well enough to return to school.

It was my first experience with fever dreams when I actually knew what was happening. Images expanded and shrank alarmingly. Colors changed. Positives became negatives. Had I only known, it was trippy. As I got sicker, blankets went up over the French doors onto the balcony. My lamp was switched to a 15 watt bulb. I remember Dad sitting on my bed, hunched over the lamp, blocking the light as I turned toward the wall, and reading from Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and then Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. I know I was in no shape to pick out books, and I certainly couldn’t read myself, so they must have been his choices. I slept a lot and did not even struggle when I got the first penicillin shot. With two more in the next ten days, I was on the mend and eventually back at school.

Then came the chicken pox. This time I recognized the fever dreams as soon as they occurred. And just like with the measles, my sisters came down with them first, and reaped the present glory. This time, however, it was more a matter of keeping calamine lotion and goopy daubs of baking soda and oatmeal on the blisters. Constant reminders not to scratch nearly worked, and I was left with a small scar at the top of my nose which disappeared ages ago. I was in charge of my own reading and had free range of our library as long as no one might see me. I did read an abridged version of Lorna Doone, but also read O Ye Jigs and Juleps, Seventeenth Summer, Cheaper By the Dozen, and a whacky mystery whose title I can’t remember about a guy who witnessed a murder during a train wreck and encountered the murderer in the jungles of Brazil years later.

It was spring and Easter was nearly upon us. Dad was playing Joseph of Arimethea in the Easter Pageant held in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I was well enough, though somewhat scabby, to attend the play. I wore a sweater with long sleeves and a scarf pulled down over my forehead. I wonder if I might not have been mistaken for an acne spotted teen.

We returned to the States in August, and by early November I had come down with the mumps. Those, for me, were just like an extra sore throat. The tonsils had long since been removed, as had my adenoids, so there wasn’t much left to swell in my neck. The most memorable thing of this childhood illness, besides it being really at the end of my childhood, was a card from my grandfather who commented on my “fat little face being even fatter.” The irony was, that my face wasn’t really fat, and although my neck swelled a bit, I looked more like a weight lifter than a balloon.

Some might say I was lucky it wasn’t worse. Some might say I was unlucky to get the dreaded three so nearly into adolescence. I had been raised on stories of people who had gone through terrible illnesses as children to become hearty, nearly indestructible ancients and people who had lived charmed lives until one small illness as an adult and they were felled like a white pine by lightening. My grandmother talked about my grandfather who had been brought down in the prime of his youth. He was, it turned out, days before his seventieth birthday. To come from people who considered seventy youthful in the ‘40s,  puts a perspective on disease. This same grandmother had buried a first husband and son in an epidemic over a century ago. She had fought off influenza, shingles, and blindness caused by poisoned dogwood. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” she used to say. “The first hundred years are the hardest.”

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Rafe–Return Day

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Susacadia

3306123512_f32f4f2dda_bIt was Return Day, forty-seven days past Solstice, and the town of Riverside had been living in Winter Home for close to seventy. The worst of the winter storms has passed and herdsmen reported that the ewes were near lambing. The sun had returned to the sky with authority, neither hiding below the horizon nor veiling itself in clouds.

The people of Riverside were putting the finishing touches on the brooms they would use to sweep out the old dirt and dust from their houses and shops, as if scouring floors and counters had not been the last thing they had done before descending the ladders into Winter Home. They would walk softly into their homes so as not to disturb the dust that had settled over the winter, dampening it to keep it from floating back into the air, and carefully sweep and clean.

Rafe saw a vision of her parents sweeping out house and forge while she and Jenna toiled in the barn, hauling three months of manure to the garden pile. That last year, Ducky had been part of the crowd of kids too old for the corn husk dollies and too young to be forced into labor. They had run into the woods and fields looking for snow drops and bare patches of ground that had started to green with the coming spring. She supposed he had taken her place the following year. Without either home or place of business she would be back shoveling the shit. It had been one constant in her life whether living in Riverside or in the North with her troops.

Rafe found herself enjoying her role as an Auntie, helping the little kids with their dollies, some looking human, others, with four legs pointing down and long necks, seemed more like sheep, or horses, or dogs. She still knew how to tie a good broom and how to plane the blade of a shovel, freeing others to make the holiday treats they would eat under the noon time sun.

It was the first day someone could spend the night above ground without one of the gossips muttering “She’s no better than she should be.” Rafe knew she would be nestled down in the hay above the forge. Others would take advantage of well aired feather mattresses on newly tightened bed ropes. Breathing fresh air, no one’s snores but her own, freedom to wander the dark – Rafe saw heaven approaching and knew she was on her way to the promised land.

“Sleeping up top tonight?”

Rafe tugged on the twine binding the broom and looked up at Bors Pubmaster leaning on a barrel, waggling his great eyebrows. “I am.”

“Scared of the dark, up there alone? A tender wench like yourself?”

“Not so as you would notice. No, I am not.”

“Scared? Or a wench?”

“Both. Another time, Bors. Another time. My back is itching and I could scratch my hair out with just my fingers, I need to be alone so bad.”

“I would have thought soldiering as you have been, you would have gotten used to living cheek by jowl with the masses.”

“And that’s where you would be wrong. Soldiers know how to respect a person’s privacy. They stay out of your business and you stay out of theirs. Not at all like you lot, needing to know every little thing, story telling all night long. A soldier wants to sleep off alone or turns his back … You can’t see his eyes, he’s not there. Here, I turn my face to a corner, or pull a hat down over my eyes, then it’s ‘Everything all right, Rafe?’ and ‘Can I get you something?’ or ‘You want to hear what I just heard?’ or even ‘I got a nice soft bed I can share with you and a door that locks if you’d like.’ And if I did go to my quarters and lock the door, then there would be discrete knocking and inquiring all afternoon just because I may have locked it by mistake.” Rafe rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Another time, then. I’ll get good mileage out of this little rant at the bar tonight, anyway.” He looked at the eavesdroppers who busied themselves as his eyes fell on them.

“And you won’t even have to say a word.” Rafe smiled and picked up another broom.

Taking over the job of tending her sister’s livestock had helped, giving her time to think and to hide a ditch bag, complete with bedroll and provisions.

The weather signs were good. While most of the people who tended the livestock kept well away from the dark and stormy windows, never opening shutters for a peep outside, there were a few in addition to Rafe who kept an eye on what was happening outside. Last night the evening sky had been red, and there had been no ring around the moon.

Early this morning, when she had gone up to feed the sheep and let the chickens out after having been cooped up for so many weeks, a warm breeze from the north had started to blow through Riverside. During the day there were traps where buildings abutted each other, that batted the warmth of the sun back and forth.

One of these heat traps, near the grain silos, was the traditional place for the picnic. Rafe, with some of the grumble of geezers from the warming bench, set up the tables and cleared out the fire pits. Some of them harvested greens that had been planted in cold frames along north walls, while others dug up the last of the root vegetables that had been planted near Marlon’s heat vents. This, Rafe thought, was a wonderful change from her youth, when the Return Day feast consisted mostly of grain and mealy potatoes. Only the meat was fresh thanks to the young rams sacrificed after doing their paternal duty. Now the current crop of rams was lined up near the freshly cleaned abattoir, ready to meet the next stage in their journey.

“How are you doing, Auntie?” Wilf waved his chanter as he approached.

“Fine, Wilf. Fine.”

“I bet you’ve seen finer things than this during your Sojourn.”

“I was just thinking how much this all irked me when I was young, and now I’m feeling as if I’ve come home at last.” Rafe adjusted a bench.

“Is this so grand then?”

“No, it’s more that I don’t have to think about it. I know in my bones what to do even though it’s been over forty years.”

“What would you be doing, then, if you were back with your Company?”

Rafe sat on the end of a bench, leaning back elbows on the table. Wilf straddled the opposite end. “We’d be preparing our battle gear. We’d have been cleaning and repairing all winter. Now is when we’d lay it all out and have one last look-see. Toward the end I’d be doing that and looking over the job petitions, seeing who was making offers, how much trouble they would be, would it be worth the money to take them on. That’s why I came back here, you know. None of them seemed worth the money for the effort of heading to battle against old friends – or their babies, really. The kids they’d had, gone into the family business, calling me Auntie, like you do, during the off season. It didn’t seem worth it.”

Wilf was fingering his chanter the whole while she was talking. “How about you, boy. How are you doing? Regretting spending the winter here and not going out on the road yourself?”

“That time will come. Fear not. I’ll be better prepared when I do go on my Sojourn. Something to bring to the table of them that may be willing to teach me. Stories, tales of the greatest commander the Guard have ever known.”

“You mean lies you can tell.”

“Lies, were they Auntie? Well then you told them first. What does it matter if I am just repeating what a venerable elder chose to use as an object lesson?”

“Who knows?” Rafe stood, leaning strategically forward as Wilf dropped to the ground, ducking as the bench flew over his head. She walked toward the abattoir.

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An Ode to Julia Child

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Susacadia

1280px-Julia_Child,_1989 I’ve been listening to Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child as my audio car reading. In my Audible search Dearie came in a tasty 25 hours and 29 minutes, long enough to dig in for the trips to Bar Harbor and Bangor, too long for the drive-by reading I can manage before falling asleep. I learned things about Julia, and found connections, I had never imagined.

I had known Julia spent summers at Laupus Point, where I took my kids swimming, with her husband and his family. Thinking about her walking the beach, considering seafood options, looking across the harbor at the sardine canning plants, I tried to see through her eyes. Much had changed since Julia arrived in the fifties. Bass Harbor grew and then shrank back in on itself, and Julia, a terrible cook at the outset, morphed into a beacon of culinary technique.

Listening to Dearie, however, got me thinking about my own experiences growing up with food, things my family did in terms of eating. There was, I suspect, quite a bit of Julia’s influence. She burst onto the scene from WGBH out of Boston. That would have been the channel my family watched in the early sixties. I remember my mother bringing home egg plant and zucchini. Well, not so much her bringing it home, but the reaction when she served it up for supper. None of us, herself included, had ever eaten such a thing. It did not go over terribly well. My father at that time was still a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Fish could be broiled or fried, clams fried or steamed, eel well corn-mealed and fried. Beef was roasted or grilled and chicken like-wise. We ate hash on Wednesday made of the Sunday roast, boiled-dinner was not just for St. Patrick’s Day. We ate carrots, green and waxed beans, and peas. Canned spinach and beets were cause for rebellion. My mother must have been sorely frustrated. I remember my sister gloating, once when I got home from first grade, that she and Mom had eaten asparagus on toast and it was delicious. Since I never even tasted asparagus until I was well into my twenties, I can only imagine that the reaction to the egg plant kept most of the food experiments between the two of them.

By the time we returned to the States in 1966 our palates had broadened and we had all grown beyond rebelling outright at new food. We knew that egg plant could be cooked without being bitter. Lamb could be brochetted and not just served as an Easter roast, or in shepherd’s pie, but still I cannot remember anyone cooking with wine. Once, when being left to cook a roast beef on my own, I dredged it in flour and “seared it on all sides.” I still remember the mocking for having done it using a non-family-approved technique. My dad, at this time, was starting to work on a PhD. This meant he was home during the day, sometimes. He could watch daytime TV, and he was brushing up against folks at Cornell who experienced fine dining and cooked as a recreation.

Dad came home, one day, with an omelet pan. He lectured us on the importance of using real butter (we were a margarine family) and plenty of it. He diced enough onions and tomatoes to make four omelets, and grated cheese on the finest side of our grating tower. He talked about being able to slide the eggy pad around in the bottom of the pan, and how the sides were specifically sloped to help this and the subsequent flipping process. He extolled the virtues of keeping the eggs moist, when to sprinkle on the other ingredients, and how to fold and flip the omelet to seal everything in place. Cutting into the perfect omelet would reveal a nearly liquid creamy filling, enhanced by cheese and vegetables. We weren’t, he assured us, limited to onions, tomatoes, and cheddar. Bacon, mushrooms, parmesan, or simply plain were excellent options.

Listening to Dearie I knew the source of Dad’s enthusiasm. What he ignored in his conversion attempts was that we were not, by and large, an egg eating family. We used them in cooking, and ate them scrambled or boiled or in an eggnog . Mom only ever ate eggs in a dry oven-baked omelet made by folding whipped whites into yolks; we joined her under duress. At that point in our family life, no one except Dad ever willingly chose to eat eggs if something else was available. Mom would scramble them for us all if she was cooking breakfast, or fry them for Dad. He begged us to try them, and we did. Our uneducated palates were no more welcoming of the exquisite omelet that they had been of egg plant.

Mom’s oven omelets morphed into frothy cheesy soufflés which, like Dad’s omelets, were accompanied by a patter I now recognize as coming straight from Julia. They were a somewhat easier sell. We were older, and, by then sharing the cooking responsibilities. We understood the tit-for-tat by which our own attempts would be given a fair shot, and so less likely to argue when new food was dished up.

Mom was all about the end product, real food, and whether it could be accomplished economically; Dad’s passion was technique and tools. Julia addressed both their needs. I never caught them watching any of her shows, but they must have. Dad would recount Julia’s devil-may-care attitude in the kitchen. Mom produced meals that could only have come from one of Julia’s shows or cookbooks. I counted myself lucky when I scored a hard bound, coffee-table sized copy of The Way To Cook in a used book store for $5.

Julia was more of a technical than intuitive cook; she was an enthusiastic teacher who wanted to bring others on board. What she had was a sense of humor, especially when it came to herself, and an ability to turn a phrase in such a way that the uninitiated could follow instructions and learn technique. From Dearie I learned that what seemed spontaneous was the result of hours of refinement and pounds of food, of learning how to recover from mistakes. My first, and perhaps greatest, lesson from her was on how to make biscuits. If you did not eat them directly out of the oven, if you let them cool down at all, my biscuits could be used as weapons to knock tourists off bicycles. They would not crumble, even in soup. “For a hockey puck,” one friend said, “these are great biscuits.” Julia’s advice to stop cutting in the shortening when you get to the point where you think “just three more cuts will make it perfect,” was what I needed. I understood it in a way that “don’t over-mix” had never helped. I am the sort of cook who needs to understand why something works, before I can freely apply the lesson to other, perhaps new, situations. From Julia I have learned to cook with wine, the value of mirepoix, and mixing restraint. I am not sure I agree with her tenet to “Never apologize!” but in matters of technique I will follow her anywhere.

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Giving and Memory

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Susacadia

FBS - sisters

FBS - Schools

LAB - Principal

Memories rise up from odd places. The donation request was for supporting an 11 year old student, with the goal to provide future leaders in Palestine with an education that includes the Quaker focus on reconciliation and achieving peace. It has sent me shooting down memory lane; I have returned a letter of my own to the requester. (Contact information at the end if any of you are interested. But really, this is just a blog, so no pressure.)

The green-bordered picture was my dad in 1965, when he was Head Master of the Friends Boys School of Ramallah, Jordan (actually in El-Bireh, the well where Jesus’s parents stopped when they discovered he hadn’t joined the group on their way home from the holidays in Jerusalem). Dad was 40 years old, 20 years younger than I am now. I was 11, then. You can seem me in the black and white snapshot, in front of the Head Master’s house. The plants to the right were calla lilies. Off camera were poinsettias. That is me, the tall girl on the right, next to my dad. My sisters are age 9 and 5.

I still grinned broadly at the world. I had read in a psychology magazine, that 10 was the perfect age – and it had been. Age 11 was shaping up to be the same kind of bonza year.

We had lived for three years in Kenya, on the Friends Mission of Kaimosi. We traveled through The Sudan and Egypt on our way to Jerusalem Airport. Haile Selassie’s lion cubs, the Pyramids and Sphinx, The Dome of the Rock, and the Mandelbaum Gate (which was pointed out to us from a rooftop shortly after we had entered the city) were part of the background against which I came of age.

While that sounds dramatic, I don’t believe it is. A keystone moment is when events, even small ones, conspire with understanding to push a person onto a path from which there is no exit. Moving to Jordan – the West Bank in 1965 – was such a moment for me. I learned to see a world that was constantly divided, constantly striving for unity, understanding, and calm, constantly striving for Grace.

I attended the English Speaking section of the Girls School with Palestinians (sent “home” from the States to learn about their birth culture), an international mélange of students (children of the UN Peace Keeping forces), and a smattering of children from foreign workers in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. I was in class with other kids in my own grade, again, rather than being in a class of three grades and four children. I no longer had even the illusion of steering my own course. We learned literature and writing with a journal we had to keep daily. I had to constantly figure out what was meant with very little hard information to go on. What the heck was ETHICS? How could I write about them if I didn’t understand them? Where were the Pilgrims in history? Gone! That’s where. Math was a comfort, as was knitting that was required for the crafts class, although the black garter-stitch headband seemed to take forever.

It was a year of firsts. I was introduced to a brand new alphabet, learning Arabic for 40 minutes each day. It was my first experience living in a culture where most people did not speak English as their first language. I recall one New Zealander, but all other classmates, even those born in the States or England, spoke some other language at home with their families. In Kenya we had lived on a mission, and, while there were certainly Kenyans who were our neighbors, the school I attended was for the children of British and American Friends and AID-type workers.

I made friends who mattered to me, girls who would walk around the basketball court holding my hand and buy me falafel for lunch when stewed okra over rice was on the menu. I learned the joy of having someone’s secret to keep, and telling one of my own, the misery of betrayal, and the agony of betraying someone for a moment of popularity. I learned not to make the secrets too big or too real. I learned the value of taking a hit, and the popularity that comes from standing up, though bloodied, to a bully. I had my first babysitting job that gave me the cash to buy the falafel, as well as the “sno-b’r” (crunchy green almonds sprinkled with salt). I learned the joy of food.

I experienced the thrill of walking across town on a Saturday, by myself, to visit the library in the Girls School, and cruising the streets with my best friend Mona (whom I never betrayed). Sometimes it was just the two of us, sometimes it was showing the sights to one of my parents’ visitors from the States. I have no real idea how many of these jaunts was sanctioned. I remember the constant fear that I was stepping outside some prescribed boundary, but seemed unable to stop myself.

There was constant tension at home, as well. Some of it came from my dad’s role as liaison between the Society of Friends, who ran the schools, and the Jordanian government, who had jurisdiction. Some came from the nature of living among countries constantly sniping against each other. There were occasional explosions in the basement chemistry lab, and, once, students I knew, home studying for mid-terms, did not return because they had been shot, pacing too near the border.

There were parties, and there were times my dad escaped from the house, taking me to see movies like The Ipcress File and Von Ryan’s Express. There was pressure (I now know) for my dad to stay on as Head Master and those discussions could not have been comfortable for either him or my mom. For me it was like living in a mine field.

It was attending the Friends Girls School, more than any other event, that set me on my course to join the Peace Corps, and maintain a passionate interest in the way people work within their own cultures, and what happens when cultures collide with each other. I got good at reading situations, figuring out cultural cues and learning to navigate the formal, public, ways. I developed a facility for learning languages. I learned to love the solitary path in the midst of a crowd.

So, when I got the letter from VQM asking for a donation to support a girl, I knew what I would say when Andrew got ready for the Charitable Donation part of our year.

Check to: Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting – Ramallah Friends School

c/o Joann Austin Treasurer

Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting

PO Box 150

South China, Maine 04358

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Lace and Me

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Susacadia

When I first lived in the New City of Fés (Fés Djadeed as we called it),  I was not the rabid lace knitter that I am now. I had done color work during the Lopi Icelandic Sweater rage, and I knew my way around a raglan sweater pattern. But the color work was not even done holding a different yarn in each hand. I knew one type of increase, one decrease, and one bind off. I was 26 years old, I had been knitting for 15 years, and I was still a beginner. I was still a serial knitter. I would not have dreamed of starting a project, or even stocking the supplies for the next one, before the current job was done. I was on the cusp of change.

This would have been the spring of 1980, and I would have had money burning a hole in my pocket. It had taken nine months for my work visa to be processed, and to get my first pay check – a whopper with all the back pay. I had gone from scrimping, as the last of my $2,000 ran out, to feeling quite flush. I was experiencing that special sort of ennui that comes from at last having the where-with-all to entertain yourself, but having lost the habit of embarking on a spontaneous frolic.  This particular afternoon, I was flailing about for something to do, tired of sitting in the coffee shop; two hours was long enough to nurse a café cassé. It was Sunday, so The Oasis, the only place to buy books in English, was closed.

As I wandered the streets, looking in windows, I saw a display of attractive magazines and colorful balls of yarn. I had recently finished a sweater for myself, and thought that, since I could afford the yarn, I’d start a new project. I looked through the magazines available, all in French, Italian, and German. One, Anna, a German publication by Burda, had some good graphics of how to make stitches. I figured it would be easy enough to match up the words, symbols, and pictures. It would be a pleasant break from speaking Arabic and drinking mint tea and espressos in the cafés.

There was a pattern for an alligator in this particular issue of Anna and I figured it would be a fine present for a friend who was pregnant. I picked out the yarn and straight needles. The only circular needles were some unpleasant nylon ones in pastel colors. I went home, cast on, and started to knit.

I don’t remember much else that was in the magazine except for two things. One was a kangaroo and baby set that I later knit for another friend. The other was a lace table cloth by Herbert Niebling.

As a child I had fallen in love with tiny crochet hooks and #30 thread. My grandmothers both did handwork. I am sure they were pattern followers, and steeped in tradition. Today we would call them craftswomen, but then it was just what they did. Both crocheted, both tatted, and one knit. Both coached me with stories of how they had learned their handwork. One grandmother had a subscription to Work Basket Magazine from which she made doilies and edgings. She often had what she called a “plaster” on her finger from where she had jabbed herself with her crochet hook. I took this to mean she had some alternative to a Band-Aid. The other grandmother worked more with yarn, and was less wounded by her tools.

The lace table cloth was made of the thread I adored, but it was knit! I had never imagined lace knit. As I worked on the alligator, the lace whispered to me. Before long the magazine naturally fell open to the pictures of the lacey white cloth draped over a colored background.

For those of you who have never experienced a Burda pattern book, it comes in two parts. There is the glossy tantalizing display of finished projects, with minimal information about the required materials. Stapled in the center of the magazine are a couple of newsprint sheets. There are outlines of patterns you can trace onto tissue paper, each outline being in either a different color or embellished with different symbols, matching a different project. For a pair of rompers, you might follow the blue lines marked with triangles, while for a blouse black lines marked with squares. The patterns for each would overlay each other on the same sheet of paper. There were other sections where outlines for embroidery, knitting, or maybe cut work or bobbin lace would be laid out. This one had probably four different charts that made up the instructions for the knitted lace tablecloth.

It took me three days to go back to the shop. I bought a set of thin steel needles, 20cm long, and a couple of balls for #30 thread. Circulars, even nylon ones, were not an option for needles that small. I went home and abandoned the alligator.

The next several weeks were spotted with frustration and satisfaction. I learned to tension my knitting. The cotton thread was quite unforgiving and frequently broke. It took a while for me to work my way past round 20. I got very good at casting on in the round. I learned that when I got stressed about a particular symbol, my knitting got too tight and the thread would break. I discovered strategies for keeping my stitches loose enough to knit, but not so loose that the needles I didn’t have immediately in my grasp would come shooting out of their stitches. I memorized symbols, learned some German knitting words, and gradually made progress. I was working with two sets of stich repeats per needle.

Then the day came when my needles were too full for me to easily see what I had accomplished when I laid my work out on the table. I was in constant danger of dropping stitches, and I had no skills in repairing my work. I headed back to the store and got a new set of needles. I moved half the stitches from each needle to my extra set. Moving to a single set of stitches on each needle made it easier to keep track of the pattern and helped catch errors early on. I think I ended up buying four sets of needles in all. I resorted to rubber bands wound around the ends to keep my stitches from spilling off.

I never did finish that table cloth. Whether it was lost in a move, or there was a serious loss of stitches, I don’t remember. What was important about this was that I knew lace knitting existed. I did not return to it for nearly a decade when I came upon a book on Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman (the actual version I got, complete with errors). Then I discovered Gloria Penning and her Lace Knitting books. I made shawls, window hangings, inserted lace into sweaters. I learned the beauty of algebra present in all lace knitting – that if you add a stich in one place, with a yarn over, you need to take it away in another, knitting two stitches together. I learned that you could do the same with a different sort of increase and create beautiful flowing designs that mimicked the foam on an agitated sea.

By the mid-90s I had amassed quite a collection of lace patterns from German and American sources. My mother-in-law graciously got me an ongoing subscription to Anna magazine each Christmas. In an Ebay purchase I found that original magazine that contained my first lace tablecloth. Confronted by a gnarly series of projects at work, that had me learning to program and build applications for a variety of Unix platforms, it was to lace knitting that I turned to calm my mind and soothe my soul.

When I participated in the Maine Writing Project in 2005, I established myself as a public knitter; the it is way I am still remembered by alums of the class who invariably ask if I’m still knitting. We were required to give a 10 minute presentation about writing, learning, and self-definition. I chose to speak about the rhythms I see in lace and knitting, and how those are reflected in how I write, discovering images connected by a single thread.

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The Gathering

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Susacadia

G-Bear and ScarfA week ago today (7:30am, Friday, November 7), I was leaving Ellsworth on my way to my very first Gathering. I was squired by Maudie, an experienced Gatherer. The bear, sporting a scarf make by The Gathering committee, greeted us when we finally arrived at Sunday River in Bethel, Maine.

I say “finally” because we had been sucked into the Lewiston Vortex, and, listening to the “how’d you get here” chatter, we weren’t the only ones. According to the Google Maps directions, there appeared to be a leap of faith on leaving Augusta. They seemed to read that there were 52 miles we would be traveling until we reached Bethel. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, unnervingly (yes – all those adverbs) we were “Entering Lewiston,” and had tacked  on about two hours as we wended our way back north. Coming home we stuck to Route 2, which is more winding and goes through more small towns which cut the speed limit down. On the other hand, we did not tempt the Vortex for a second time.G-The Story of the Sample

In the days leading up to The Event (I’ll let you know right now that I really do think of a lot of these things in capital letters), I had been increasingly excited about meeting people whose work I had long admired. I was taking a class with Myrna Stahman, author of the Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves in which she explores top down Faroese shawls and seaman’s scarves in a variety of pattern motifs. I hoped to meet Abby Franquemont, author of Respect the Spindle. These were both women I had followed in discussion groups on Yahoo, and whose patterns and skills I had incorporated in my own repertoire.

Then on the first afternoon at The Gathering, I was walking through one of the classrooms, and I saw a book cover. Dancing in a field of blue was a white coat, with streamers flowing off the sleeves and hems. I had long been a fan of Katharine Cobey’s knitted art, but had never known her name. Her style and subject matter, “Portrait of Alzheimers” and “Ritual Against Homelessness” among them, could have been created by no other artist. “Oh, my God!” I said to her as she was preparing for class. “You’re that woman!”

“Yes, I am,” she said, without the narrow look I had expected.

“I’ve always loved your work, but I didn’t know your name.” I immediately bought the book.

“This is not the sort of book you can just browse through and knit patterns. You have to start at the beginning and read it through.”

I am still not convinced that this is true, since I have yet to meet the book, fiction or not, that I can’t browse to some extent. Diagonal Knitting is, however, is the sort of book I most admire. Like the other two books mentioned, it discusses why and how a Knitter makes Structural Choices to accomplish goals. There is plenty of reading to do along with excellent illustrations to peruse.

The matter of Choices was the Thesis of Myrna Stahman’s class. During our introductions she opened a discussion of the difference between knitting dogmatically, adhering to a pattern as written, versus understanding the underlying principals about how the stitches are formed and having a toolbox of strategies. Reading your knitting is a vital skill in becoming a Knitter. Myrna brought bundles of samples for us to examine and narrated the stories each sample illustrated as she taught how to read stitches in situ.

G-Expanding F&FG-Larger needles

We saw the difference between increasing the number of holes versus increasing needle size (purple).G-Variations on a theme

We focused on the styles of increases and decreases (white). And all the while we heard stories: how Myrna learned to knit; when she was introduced to the Feather and Fan as a knitting element; knitting camps she has both sponsored and attended. We saw examples of how varied knitters’ gauges can be, and the effects of different yarn elements.

G-Happy participantsG-Personal attention

 

 

G-Notes and materials

The class was small, discussion was free flowing, and help was plentiful. Although we were knitters of different abilities and interests, there was clearly room for us all at the table. I learned about the physics of how a stitch wraps on a needle and the torque added or subtracted by the way a yarn is spun, instructions that allow for left or right handedness, language that makes the process clearer, abandoning arcane vocabulary while still honoring traditional terms. I had a blast!

I was amazed that, of the six of us, four had been in the Peace Corps, all in the North West corner of Africa. Two had served in Liberia, one in Ghana, and I in Morocco. The woman from Ghana had served when the PC was still young, from 1963-65. It was fascinating to hear how the service had changed. We had all been teachers, all been young, and all been coddled by our host country neighbors. Myrna said that when she was there she had thought it was out of respect for being a teacher and from the US. Now, however, she realizes how young they were, so soon out of college. She thinks the welcome was more about the adults realizing just how far from home we kids were, and how much help we needed. From my own experience being taken into the tea drinking, joking, crafting fold, this rings true.

The other class I took was with John Mullarkey. It was a pin loom weaving class. I figured I should step out of my comfort zone of knitting and lace, and try something new. He had a great visual of a giant portion of a Zoom Loom (the re-vamped “weave-let” from the 30s) that made his instructions quite clear. As we were working on our first 4” square, I was struck by how much like a caned chair bottom this looked. I asked if there were patterns that made a more lacey fabric. John said that someone had sent him a sample they had done, using a caning strategy.G-Setting up

Both evenings we all gathered, many with spinning wheels, others with spindles, knitting, or crocheting. What impressed me most is that we were all story tellers. From instructors, to other participants, to evening speakers – all couched their message in story, setting the scene, describing action, illustrating conflict. I can see this developing from the need to entertain and be entertained while working to produce the fabric needs of the family, sharing the news of the region at the “bees” that decorated the social landscape of the pre-industrial revolution. Were handcrafters the family bards?

I certainly felt some of that when I was waiting to attend my first board meeting of the Northeast Handspinners Association, the group putting on The Gathering. I was sitting in a lounge area, spinning. First one, then a pair, then seven cleaning ladies were surrounding me fire questions about what was the group about, how do you spin, what is the fiber like, how do you get the colors. Some of them clearly had an idea, already, about the answers. Some knit or crocheted. Each had a story of her own to tell.

G-Batt challengeG-No photo here

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Rafe–Dealing With Spies

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Susacadia

[This follows “The Feral Sheep”]

Rafe pulled into the third lay-by she encountered. It was backed up against a stream overhung with willows. She unharnessed Snarge and pushed the dog-cart under one of the trees. Across the stream was a path that led to another road that ran parallel to this one. “Happy hunting,” she said as the dog headed into the underbrush. Rafe stowed the goat hair wig under the seat of the cart, pulled a scarf down over her forehead, and, still in her feral sheep garb, headed down the path.

The men were waiting, as she had expected, at the back of the camping area, facing the road. She saw Snarge as a shadow floating to the north of them. She headed a bit south and then turned to come at the men through the underbrush. Rafe kept her old lady voice as she said, “Hello, boys.” When they turned, Snarge stuck his nose up through the tall one’s legs, knocking him to his knees. “I seem to have you surrounded.” In a smooth motion, Snarge twisted, checking the other man who collapsed on the ground beside his cohort. Snarge took a seat on the man’s back and pointed his teeth at the tall man, still kneeling in the dirt.

“This isn’t how grandmas are supposed to be,” said the first man. “What do you mean by this? What have we ever done to you?”

“Are you stupid son?” Rafe made gave her voice a bit of puzzlement. “Not all grandmas are cookies and hot soup and ‘Let me take care of that for you.’” She had been hobbling across the dusty area as she spoke. “Some of us get cranky just want to make ends meet.”

The man started to reach into his pocket. “If all you’re looking for is a bit of money, then …” Snarge snapped at the hand.

“That’s right, dearie. Just you keep your hands out and about. No need to hide them in your pocket. I’ll be cleaning that out soon enough.”

“If you just let me open my pack then I’ll be able to …”

“Oh, my. Did you eat a big bowl of stupid for breakfast, poor thing. You don’t understand your situation at all. Let me explain. No, no. Just be quiet, like your friend there, under the dog. I’ll tie you up nice and tidy, then your pal. Then I’ll ask some questions, get some answers, and take anything that seems useful.”

“But you have no right!”

“Odd attitude for someone like you to have.” Rafe took a pair of thin leather straps out of her pocket and gave one of them to Snarge who chewed on it for a minute. “I’ve got to wonder how much of that stuff in your pack or pockets really belongs to you in the first place.”

“It’s all mine by rights.”

“Rights, is it. Fair and square? Or by fair means and foul?” She started to wrap a leather tie around the man’s right wrist while Snarge chewed on the other piece of leather. “Don’t you just love a good old slobbery dog?”

“Bill,” said the man under Snarge.

“Don’t use my name, nummy.”

Rafe made the man squat and tied his wrist to the left ankle. “There that ought to be plenty awkward for you. Now for your pal.”

Snarge released the other man and dropped the soaked leather into Rafe’s hand. She tied the second man left wrist to right ankle and plunged her own hand into his pocket. She brought out a flint and a knife. The flint showed signs of use and the knife was frequently sharpened. They were tools, not props. She quickly cleaned out both men’s pockets and removed weapons from boots and holders hidden under clothing. “I’ll go fetch some fire wood, so we’ll be comfy this evening, and anybody passing by will just see a couple of young men letting their poor old grandmother rest after a hard day at the market.” Rafe moved the packs into the edge of the woods and stuck them high in a tree. “Guard, Snarge,” she said and headed back into the woods.

As she searched for dry wood she paused now and then to listen for her captives talking. They were a chatty pair, hissing back and forth. She could hear their guard growl, in reply to sounds of scuffling around the lay-by. Once she hummed deep in her throat, finding the right vibration for a tree at the edge of the cleared space. It held a widow-maker ready to drop anyway and she helped it along. The crash almost on top of their heads quieted them down long enough for her to finish gather wood and return to build a fire. With the dropped branch she would have plenty to last the night, if she needed that long.

Rafe laid the fire, checked the bindings on the captives, retrieved the packs, and nodded to Snarge who bounded into the woods. “Let’s see what the two of you brought along for supper. With all the traffic along this road, I doubt there will be anything like squirrels hanging around, waiting to be picked off.” She started to pull out packets and open them. “Someone’s got a sweet tooth. I do love taffy.” She sniffed a piece, took a lick, then popped it in her mouth. She put the rest in a pocket in her skirts.

“That’s ours!” said the tall man. “You’ve got no right!”

“Still with the rights, is it?”

“What did we ever do to you?”

“Well, you seemed to be trailing around after me at the market, for one thing. Why would you be interested in a poor old woman?”

“Looks like we were right. You don’t seem to be really all that poor, or pitiful, or,” peering at her from his squat in the dust, “all that old.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, sometimes. You appear to be someone looking for a quick deal, for a bit of a trade, perhaps, or to pick up a pretty girl. But which of those is a lie?”

Snarge came back to the circle, at this point in the conversation, carrying a fairly large hare. Rafe skinned it quickly, gave the innards and head to Snarge who would already have eaten his own dinner at the kill site. Some of the fat she saved in a dish and put it near the fire to melt. She scooped a handful of salt from a sack in the short man’s pack. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked as she rubbed the salt into the hide. “Never waste; never want as we old folks say.” She cut a long green stick from a nearby tree and skewered the meat. When the fat started to sizzle and drip into the fire, she caught some in the dish and added flour and water. She made up biscuits in the dish and set them to cook just inside the stone circle. Delicately she waved some of the smoke in the direction of the prisoners. “Have some of this. It will keep the bugs down.”

“You going to share that?”

“Of course. You don’t think I’d let Snarge, here, go hungry. What do you take me for?”

“With us.” His teeth seemed clenched.

“Why? You didn’t get enough to eat, wandering around the market, showing yourselves off?”

“Come on. Prove you really are a nice old lady.”

Rafe did laugh at that. “Okay. Fair is fair. Tit for tat. You answer my questions, I’ll give you something to eat.” She tossed Snarge a biscuit, turned the hare over the fire, and removed one of the legs and started to chew. “Needs salt. It’s lucky I found some.”

The two men stared into the trees and toward the road, but not at the cooking meat. Rafe continued to waft smoke in their direction and noticed that were swallowing regularly. She smiled, finished the hare and tossed the bones, by no means sucked clean, and a couple of biscuits to Snarge. She sorted through the two bags.

“Aren’t you going to ask us anything else?”

“Would you answer? I believe I’ve given you a chance, and I’ve got nothing else to bribe you with.”

“No. But you really suck at interrogation.”

“I am, as I said, a poor old woman. What would I know about interrogation? Food always worked for my kids, but it hasn’t worked for you. What else should I try?”

“Torture. Threats.”

“I did that. And you wouldn’t talk. At least I got a full meal. What did you get? Hmmm?”

Rafe put anything she considered useful in one bag and the rest of the stuff in the other and hung them back on the tree near her.“Time for bed then. I’ll be up early.” She rolled into a ball. Snarge nestled down with her, positioning himself between her and the two men. She listened a while to their muttering.

In the small hours of the morning, when the men had tipped over onto their sides and had fallen asleep, Rafe got up, left the bag with remnants on the tree, and headed back down the road. She made it to the next lay-by and ducked through the far side into the woods. She found her cart, fastened Snarge between the traces and headed back to the barracks.

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Pigs Passing

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Susacadia


Bye - A Pigman's last goodbye (2)The pigs have passed through our lives and on toward their eventual purpose as dinner. I’ve tried to be sad about this, and, while I’m not gleeful, I’m not particularly morose either. Andrew, who did much of their caretaking, is much more moved. I catch him gazing out the window at their pen. He spread their last comments, left in the trailer, on the garden where it will be turned into yet more food. He has spread the straw from their house over the muddy mess they made of their dooryard, but the buildings they used still remain and the fence is still up. They made for some good stories with their escapes. They served as a reminder of things past, with our kids, and kids at school.

Watching them work at trying to shimmy the gate reminded me of Zach as an almost two year-old learning to take apart his crib during naptime and escape. The day care folk assumed it was a fluke, reassembled his bed, popped the mattress back in place and lay him down again. Ten minutes later, he and his two compadres appeared in the doorway, ready to rock and roll. They were quickly promoted to Toddlers before anyone else learned the fine art of crib dismantlement.

Likewise the pigs seemed content to stay in their pen until we needed to move and expand their pasture area. Like tigers caged too long, they didn’t want to leave their original pasture perimeter, even after the electric fence was down and the pig panels had been moved. They were still pretty small at that point, and we chivvied them through the gate and into their new area. We had guests from away who thoroughly enjoyed the circus, and contributed a great deal of watermelon rind for the effort. That was the beginning of the escapes. They learned that their confines were not really limited by their fencing, but rather by their ability to breach barriers. They made their first escape the next day, lifting the gate off its hinges and passing into the world.IMG_2424

One went to the garden, the other to the ravine where we have the heather planted. This separation proved true every time they got out. Although they eventually ended up together, following their pigman back to the pen, each went its own way at the start. Once it was hooves on our little bridge that alerted me that pigs were on the loose. Another time I saw one nosing around a hive near the house. In their last days, when they were contained by an electric fence only, it became clear that they could leap at least six inches to avoid the shock.

Just as grown siblings can co-exist in the same house from time to time, it is only a strict set of self-imposed rules that allows them to live together. I saw this played out at feeding time in the pen. Pig Light would have first go at the feeding dish, muscling Pig Red out of the way. There was, in fact, plenty of room for them to eat, either side by side, or facing in opposite directions. There was plenty of food in the dish, whether pig feed or kitchen scraps, but the need to stake territory remained.

The cats did not like the pigs, even one little bit. Whenever the pigs were out, the cats flattened themselves to the ground, hissed, dove on top of vehicles or under the bridge, absconded through their cat door onto the porch. They never actually turned tail and ran, always keeping the enemy in sight, but they had a sense of where pigs could not go. Early on, our tiger had gone down to investigate the newly arrived pigs. There was still a fence, outside the panels, to keep predators away. The cat sniffed the electrified tape, got a hefty jolt, and never again  got closer than about a hundred yards. The orange cat was not so skittish, and took full advantage of the mice the pigs had displaced.

Pig Light in the pig poolJust as with raising a family, working in a school, and all things country-living, there is a romantic side to raising pigs. They are surprisingly adorable, what with swimming in the whey that was meant to be drunk, frolicking in the straw meant to keep them cozy, and digging in the dirt. Hannah gave them a big blue ball to play with. They galloped back and forth in their pen, chasing the ball, until it had been zapped by the electric fence too many times and deflated. Then they tried to eat it. The same happened with the over-large zucchinis we gave them. Those, it turned out, were more acceptable as toys than food, even cut up. (It seems that “too many zucchinis” is a universal norm.)

The inside of raising pigs is different. They are not just cunnin’ little critters. They are cunning, too. On an early morning chase through the field, it became apparent that there was a real lure to a flapping night gown. Pig snouts and muddy sides pushing to get at whatever is in your hands. Andrew got knocked down and learned to take a wider stance when moving in the pen. They dug pits in the dirt, undermined their house until it fell into a pig-made sink hole. They used their black feed pans as heat sinks, turning them upside down and sleeping  under them.Bye - State of the yard They grew. IMG_2402They tore up two pig yards and started on a third. Breakfast and dinner were always too late, no matter what time they were fed.

Just as we were worrying about how snow would affect electric fencing, and whether the coyotes in December would be willing to confront nearly grown pigs, whether they would need yet another shelter, whether it would be too cold for them, we got the call that they could get a lift to the butcher. The truck would be there the next day. There was little time to prepare. In the end it was raining and Andrew waited with them near the trailer. Eventually they were loaded onto a stock trailer with a half dozen goats, another pair of pigs, and some cattle.

In two weeks they will return, transformed.

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What’s Your Daddy Do?

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Susacadia

Before I started school at age six and a half, I had little knowledge of what people did for jobs. I knew about the elevator operator in Cherry and Webb’s. He had a big brass lever that turned around an arc with numbers on it. He would push it all the way forward if we were going up, or pull it all the way toward himself if we were going down, before settling on the number that matched our destination, an in charge kind of man. What a cool job, operating equipment all day!

I somehow never got the idea that the clerks at Cherry and Webb’s were working, probably because they looked like my mom with dresses or suits, earrings, high heels, and hose with lines down the back. I’d had no experience with teachers, the doctor made house calls. I don’t even recall having been to the dentist. I knew my other grandmother worked as a nurse in people’s homes, and that she used to be a school teacher, but I never saw her at any job except cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or any of the other meals we ate at her house.

I’d seen my grandfather at work, as well. He and my grandmother tended the desk at the public library. I knew he was called a janitor, but I’d only ever seen him operate a date stamp, which he would use first in the books we were checking out, then on the back of my hand. My mom would purse her lips, and I knew she didn’t like it. This was power – to thwart Mom and live! I knew that my grandfather also talked on the phone, wrote with stubby little, exceedingly cute, pencils in a flip-over notebook. When he talked on the phone, he read from the book, which otherwise was kept in a desk, along with a collection of pencils of various sizes, which he used a knife to sharpen. If this was being a janitor, wow! It was fully as good as being an elevator operator. I was ignorant of the brooms, mops (dry and wet), buckets, and rags that he used when he was performing custodial duties at the town hall where the library was housed. Although my appreciation would not have changed if I had known. I would have totally loved the wide mop gliding along perfectly waxed, empty floors, or the waxer, like a mini-Zamboni, making everything glossy and new.

The whole story of my future – You will go to school for six years , go to high school for six years, get a diploma, go to college for four years, and then get a job – was a litany I learned by rote. None of the words, which I understood individually, meant anything when they were put together. School I understood from Romper Room, or from Sunrise Semester on TV. Teachers had interesting stuff to say, but beyond those dealing with chemistry who created explosions, or those instructing us in the nature of physics where I could see spectacular crashes and more explosions, their jobs did not seem to be very interesting. I could have cheerfully become Mr. Wizard, whose experiments I replicated in the bath, but I saw him as a scientist, not a teacher.

There were other jobs I knew about from TV and books, but nobody seemed to be doing them in my neighborhood. I kind of liked the idea of chariot driver. Swamp Fox was another job, and the Macomber boys and I played at being him whenever we could. A circus performer like Toby Tyler, or wild man like Tarzan were out, since I could not think how to acquire a chimpanzee as a side-kick. I dreamed of being a flying detective like Sky King, or owning a jalopy or roadster like the Hardy Boys and their pals. I’d been down to the wharf to get quahogs and lobsters from some guys my dad knew, but I’d been told “Absolutely no women on boats. It’s bad luck. Bad for the catch and bad for the women.” (From what I now know of that period of our society, I suspect the ban of “women on boats” had more to do with what would have happened if Dad had brought me home slimey and wet that the genuine legal ban it was made out to be.) I had heard that, when he was young, he had worked with his father. (It turned out that while in high school they had mowed the lawns of the Friends Meeting House cemetery, done some painting, and practiced what would now be called subsistence fishing.) So, when the bus driver asked, on that fine, spring, step-up-day, my first day entering the Westport Point School, just to try it out, “What’s your dad do?” I proudly said, “He’s a janitor!”

I have no recollection of how long it took for the word to get back to my folks. That he was a Guidance Counselor meant nothing. Those words joined other that I had heard, could read, but meant nothing, words like “chaperone,” “weapons,” “delphiniums,” and “cafeteria.” I was packed off to school with my dad, where I met cafeteria ladies, which meant cookies (like Mom), and I got to see his boss, the principal, who, it turned out, was the father of my friend Bradford (not Elmer Fudd’s kid Brad as I had first imagined). I got to see Dad’s office, too, where he had a stamp, thought not as cool as the one my grandfather had; there were no numbers on it, just letters. I got to look at the gym and was introduced to some boys, but was not allowed to walk on the floor, not even if I took my shoes off, even though the boys were playing with their shoes on.

I think of how my own kids came up through those early years of their lives. They took field trips to see various workplaces in town: banks, fire and police stations, a pizza parlor, the medical center. They spent time in my office, when they had modest ailments like pink-eye, and saw me doing my job. Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers filled in gaps about the mechanics of how the world worked. Bill Nye was their Mr. Wizard addressing ecology in addition to physics and chemistry. I don’t think they had any better idea what it was like to actually be one of those people, but they certainly had a better idea about the tasks involved in the jobs.

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Rafe–Family Dinner

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Susacadia

This follows ‘Rafe-Welcomed Home’.

Rafe turned toward the house. “You’ve put in a new window. Bigger.”

“Yes. Well. Supper is waiting.” Jenna held the door open. “Welcome. Although I suppose welcoming you to your own house is a bit funny.”

Boyl linked arms with Rafe and ascended the front steps. “What your sister means is, that after your last trip home, and with your mother dead and all, there didn’t seem to be much reason to maintain the memorial to your destructive powers. Hence the new window. One we can see through, instead of the boarded up frame your mother insisted on.” He moved to lay his arm across Jenna’s broad shoulders. “She also means, ‘Welcome. It’s been a long time.’ You may notice a few other small changes.”

Rafe stepped across the threshold, brushing the latch and tracing the scroll-work handle. She had been six when Da had replaced the leather pull and hinges with iron. Now those were gone. The leather dust flap at the bottom of the door was still there, and no one had yet installed a sill.

“Boyl’s work.” Jenna’s voice was soft and filled with pride.

Rafe looked at her sister, trying to remember if she had ever heard this tone. Certainly not when they were growing up, even playing with her doll, or speaking to Ducky. And certainly not the last time she had been home when Jenna had been pregnant and plagued with the twins and a granddaughter. Not to mention the unwanted appearance of a damaged sister.

The hall was much as she remembered it. The bench sat just back from the door where it wouldn’t block traffic. The rack was double tiered, bottom for boots and top for house shoes. A grated wooden tray caught the dried dirt and chaff. Where a mirror might have hung, there was a frame for keys, horse picks, and other tools that might have hidden themselves in pockets or small hands.

Rafe unclasped the front of her harness. “Where would you like this?”

“Da put these up for you, just after Wilf told us you were on your way.” Maud pointed at a pair of hooks next to the hinge side of the door frame. “Easy to grab on your way out, but hard to get at if a marauder were trying to break in and wreak mayhem.” She tapped her head and winked at Rafe.

“I’m sure I don’t know when we last saw marauders in Riverside,” said Jenna.

“Well, now that Auntie Rafe is here, perhaps we’ll be a more attractive target.”

“I daresay, tucked in an obscure branch of the River, and days from the nearest town. Marauders don’t know what they’ve been missing.”

Penelope stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “But you all are missing supper.”

The table was loaded with roasted potatoes and carrots, ginger relish, pickles, bread, and cheese. A chicken sat at each end. Jenna and Boyl separated and moved to their ends of the table. “Take my seat.” Boyl pulled out a chair. “Don’t worry, I’ll still carve up the chicken, but we all want to get a look at you, and an end seat is the best for that.

Rafe stood in front of the chair and looked down the table where her sister was sharpening a carving knife on a steel and looking back at Rafe. The door opened behind Jenna. A tall man, with grey side-wings in his hair, ushered in a stout woman and a lad. “Gods, you look like Da!” Rafe shoved the chair out of the way and met her brother in a back thumping hug. “And Joanie!”

Jenna tapped the table corner with her knife. “You sit here, Ducky, with Joan. Jole, you can take the seat next to your aunt and get to know her.”

Ducky bowed toward Jenna. “Why thank you, Sister. Order in your iron fist, as ever. Jole, you all right down there with your Auntie Rafe?” He smiled and clapped Rafe on the shoulder. “He may have heard a story or two about you, over the years.”

Maud took her place at the bench.“We thought he was better off practicing with family stories. You know that Wilf is planning to become a bard, don’t you Auntie? He told us how he met you at the Memory Oak and that you knew.”

“I wouldn’t have thought many stories about me would have found their way back to Riverside.”

Jenna continued sharpening her knife, eyes on her sister. “Oh, you would be surprised at what turns up in Riverside. Just not marauders.”

“A family dinner. Who would have thought? Chicken?” Boyl passed the cut up chicken to Rafe and looked toward Jenna. “You might be seeing to your own bird, dear. I’m sure your end of the table is hungry as well.”

Dinner was a chatty affair, nothing like what Rafe had grown up with. Jenna’s bossing reminded her more of a commander on the lines than the judgment cast down by their mother.

Eventually Ducky leaned over his plate and locked eyes with Rafe. “You are not keeping up your end of the conversation, old girl. Nor answering what everyone is dying to know. What brings you back to Riverside?”

Silence was instant. Wood cracked in the stove. Eyes snapped to Rafe.

“Ah. That.” Rafe had been waiting for the question, but had expected it to come from Jenna.

“Yes. That,” said Ducky. He patted Joan’s hand on his arm rather than shaking it off.

“I woke up one morning, feeling my mortality. I thought to see if there might be a place for me here. And if not, I could consider my options just as easily here as anywhere else. Maybe better.”

Ducky turned sharply to Jenna, and Rafe noticed that their sister’s hand was under the table. “Jenna,” Ducky said, “I’ve asked your question for you. I did not promise to grill our sister after. I’m willing to let it go at mortality. We are all of an age to know what that feels like.”

Boyl nodded at Wilf, sitting on the other side of his cousin. “Unless we want to be immortalized in song. I suggest we leave this off for after dinner and privacy. “Remember, lad, family business stays in the family.”

Rafe held her cup out toward Penelope who filled it from a pitcher of ale. “Don’t worry, Jenna. There was no one incident. Nothing in particular happened. But the recruits were seeming younger, and I was creaking more when I got up and went to bed. Training became just another chore in my day. I woke up one morning and decided it was time to explore a place that seemed new and foreign. You know I’ve never thought of this as ‘Home’ but more as the place I was born. I wonder if I have a home, or if that even matters.”

Her gaze was fixed on Jenna, but she watched Boyl from the corner of her eye. He did not look like he was going to interfere. “I’m here to find a place, not to take one. If you have something for me to do, I will happily do it. But as far as I’m concerned, you and Wilf are still the head of the family. This house is your house. I’m sure it is what Ma would have wished and I’m fine with that.” Rafe knew this wasn’t enough to convince Jenna, but it was a good place to start. “The only request I have is that I do something useful. I’d rather not be relegated to the Old Timers Bench quite yet.”

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