There
is something special about climbing trees. When I was little, I liked climbing
trees and even built a tree house as a teen. Our son was also a tree climber.
He scared his mom with his tall tree adventures. And our granddaughter Violet
liked to climb trees and was especially fond of climbing our leaning crabapple
tree even before she was tall enough to do it safely. I added a rope to the
tree so that she could pull herself up on her own.
Tree
climbing seems normal for children, but when adults do it (if they aren’t tree
surgeons or tree trimmers) it can be peculiar or even questionable behavior.
But sometimes you must climb to accomplish a task. If you are lost or in
danger, climbing a tree might give you a vantage point to see something you might not otherwise see on the ground or allow…
A few summers ago – 2015, I think – I was sitting on the ground pulling weeds from my front flowerbed when a sweet kitty crawled into my lap. Kitty had me from its first contented purr as I pet his head in response to his gentle head-butting insistence.
The next day, kitty showed up again while I was sitting on the porch glider taking a rest from puttering around in the garden. He hopped up on the glider and then crawled into my lap, kneaded by gardening apron, then did that circular little dance kitties do when they’re about to claim their favorite sleep spot.
I remember thinking, “I think this kitty just chose me as his person.”
One morning I woke up and saw kitty sleeping on the glider. That didn’t look very cozy to me, so I put a folded blanket on the glider for him. Later, I opened the front door to go sit with kitty and noticed that kitty had left a little present on our welcome mat. It was small, furry, and had a tail…but didn’t have a head anymore. It was obvious kitty had chosen us as his family, and had given us the gift of his leftover prey as a token of his devotion. He would continue to give us similar presents several times a week.
Wayne fell for the benevolent kitty too and began leaving food for it on our porch. People food and kitty food weren’t his favorites; Kitty much preferred his food…ummm, fresh.
Now Wayne had a very devoted fur-buddy, who literally followed him everywhere in the yard. Unfortunately, Wayne is very allergic to cats, so we couldn’t bring this stray kitty into our home. Kitty didn’t care – in fact, he seemed to prefer romping around in the great outdoors. He just kept showing up on our front porch, peeking in the front window meowing at us to come out and pet him.
The neighborhood scuttlebutt was that this stray cat had once belonged to a nearby neighbor on the street behind us. Word had it that they moved back to India to be closer to family and left kitty behind.
We named our new porch kitty Smokey because his pretty gray fur had little white stripes that resembled little whisps of smoke. We sometimes called him a “her” because we didn’t REALLY know. If you read my Facebook posts about the cat over the past four years, you’ll see I bounced back and forth calling it a he or she, him or her, and spelling its name “Smokie” or “Smoky,” or “Smokey.” The cat never seemed to mind my indecisiveness, but our veterinarian friend later confirmed it was a neutered male, based on what he didn’t see…and because he had a broader face and deeper ‘meow’ more typical of male cats.
Our family got in on the kitty lovin’ too. Our daughter gave us a rabbit hutch she was no longer using. Wayne painted it the same color as our front door. It fit perfectly in a sheltered corner of the front porch right by the front door. I filled it with old towels and blankets and our Smokey moved right in.
I stopped at Goodwill and bought the kitty a little divided food dish. But, the next thing we knew, we were buying things on Amazon for the cat. Food, of course, as he had now been won over to having most of his meals coming out of a bag. Since he would be an outdoor kitty, a heated pad to keep him warm in his little house during Wisconsin’s nippy winter weather was next. Of course, he also needed a heated water bowl too. And a brush.
Some people have a dog to greet guests at the front door. Not us. Our kitty startled many a guest by popping out of his house as they rang our doorbell. Our mailman LOVED our porch kitty and lavished lots of attention on him whenever he’d deliver a package. The grandkids loved to sit on the glider and brush or pet him. He even kept my sweet momma company when she’d occasionally sit with him on the glider and brush him, or talk with him through her bedroom window.
This past week, we noticed that Smokey didn’t eat his breakfast. No worries. His appetite has grown smaller as he has grown older – and he still sometimes prefers to catch a fresh meal once in awhile. Wayne went out to fill his dish at suppertime and found that his breakfast still hadn’t been touched. Now, that was a bit odd. Come to think of it, Smokey hadn’t been hanging out in his little home all day. I took some clean blankets and towels (fresh from the dryer) out to his house. Smokey usually comes running when I change his bedding and will hardly let me get the new bedding situated in his cozy house before he crawls in and makes himself at home.
He didn’t come. In fact, he didn’t come home all weekend. He’s still not home. Sadly, we know in our hearts he isn’t coming home again.
So, goodbye sweet Smokey kitty. We hope you found a nice cozy spot to lay down for your final sleep. We miss you already. We loved being your family. Thank you for choosing us.
Did you ever lose a favorite recipe? You know the kind I mean: the recipe card that has been in your recipe box for years and is now a bit tattered and stained from years of use. Well, I recently wanted to bake a batch of cookies I’ve been making since my kids were little, but couldn’t find that handwritten recipe card anywhere. It was one of those recipes copied from someone else with my own “tweaks” scribbled in the margins.
Bummer!
I searched a few of my recipe books and found a similar recipe. It had all the right ingredients, so I mixed up a batch and baked them for my mom’s friends who live with her in assisted living memory care. The cookies baked up a bit thin and crumbly. The ingredients were right, but were obviously not in the right proportions. My friend Lola’s husband is one of the residents who REALLY liked the not-quite-perfect cookies. She heard my lament about losing my recipe card and went home and searched through her cookbooks in an effort to find the recipe for me. Imagine my delight when she surprised me yesterday by bringing in a church cookbook with a recipe that looked to be closer to the ingredient proportions of my tweaked recipe. Unlike my lost recipe, this version had nuts and didn’t have chocolate chips in it (but that problem is easily remedied).
YAAY! I couldn’t wait to give the recipe a try.
Now, imagine my excitement this morning when I stumbled upon a forgotten blog draft I had created back on July 9th when I had last baked the cookies for my friends at BeeHive. Someone had asked for the recipe, so I had actually typed out my tweaked recipe with the intent of posting it on my blog.
Well, here it is!
Best-Ever Cookies
Ingredients –
½ c. butter (1 stick, softened)
½ c. shortening (or another stick of butter, which I prefer)
½ c. corn oil (or canola oil)
½ c. coconut oil (I use solid, but oil would work too)
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. granulated sugar
3 c. flour
1 t. salt
1 t. cream of tartar
1 egg
1 T. vanilla extract
1 ½ c. regular oats
1 c. flaked coconut
2 c. Rice Krispies
2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips (variation: use a combination of semi-sweet, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, butterscotch chips)
Directions –
In a large mixing bowl, combine butter, shortening, corn and coconut oils, brown sugar and granulated sugar. Beat with electric mixer until creamy. Beat in flour, salt and cream of tartar, adding egg and vanilla extract until well combined.
Stir in oats, coconut, cereal, and your choice of chips. Stir until blended. Chill dough for a couple of hours. Scoop chilled dough (~ 1 T of dough) onto ungreased or parchment-lined baking sheets, leaving room between cookies for dough to spread a bit.
Bake at 350 ℉ for 12-14 minutes – until lightly browned on edges. Let set on baking sheet to cool for 10 minutes – cookie will continue to bake and set-up a bit. Remove from cookie sheet to cool completely, then store in air-tight storage container.
Note: the dough freezes well. I place the rounded scoops on a cookie sheet, then place in freezer until hardened. I then put the frozen dough balls in a ZipLoc bag and freeze until ready to bake.
There is a lesson for my life in here somewhere. Sometimes my life contains all the right ingredients: church, family, personal Bible study, friends, prayer, ministry, housekeeping, gardening … and the like. But oftentimes the proportions are just not quite right. When I start feeling a little spread too thin and “not quite right,” nine times out of ten, I find the time spent in personal Bible study and prayer have diminished over time. Putting those ‘ingredients’ in the proper proportions in my life allows all the other priorities to meld together into a life that is truly satisfying and sweet – God’s ‘Best Ever’ for me.
At my sort-of-annual physical, my doctor asked me questions related to my caregiving responsibilities, which led to questions related to my mom’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. One of those questions was, “Does your mom still know who you are?” It’s a good question – one that is a little hard to answer. I usually start with, “Yes. And no.”
Most days I think she knows that I am family. Her face still lights up when she sees me. She knows that I love her. I don’t believe she usually thinks of me as her daughter though, as she usually refers to me as her mom, and every now and again her sister. Other times (this is my favorite), her best friend. Last week, though, she came up with an entirely new one that tickled my funny-bone a bit.
Mom’s hospice nurse was giving me an update when my sweet mom wheeled herself up to where we were seated and apparently decided she had better make some polite introductions. Speaking to her nurse she said, “This is Cindie. She’s my longtime neighbor.” Of course, her nurse knew the truth of the matter, so we both just smiled and agreed with my mom. Mom reached for my hand and brought it closer to her, then placed her hand over mine and said, “Right? We’ve known each other forever. We go waa-aay back, don’t we?”
So stinkin’ sweet.
“Yes, Charlotte. We go WAA-AAY back.” With a twinkle in my eye I added, “In fact, I think I’ve known you my WHOLE life!”
Some of the signs of advancing memory loss can be seen most easily when viewed in retrospect.
Several years ago, when mom was still living in her own home in Milwaukee, I noticed that she wasn’t making it to her weekly “lunch bunch” restaurant gathering with a few friends. If I’d ask her about it, she would have a plausible reason. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon an envelope where she had written down the names of her friends in this group that I began to understand. Mom was in an earlier stage of memory loss – a very difficult stage where she knew her memory was failing. In this stage, mom had many strategies in place to help her remember things, including creating little “cheat sheets” for herself. One can only imagine her angst in forgetting the names of her good friends. As I looked at the envelope, I could see that, as the names came to mind, she would write them down – over and over again, as if willing herself not to forget.
Looking back now, I think it was just easier on her ego and heart to just stop going. My heart was sad when she stopped having lunch with her sweet friends…and even sadder when she stopped going to church altogether.
Looking back in the rear-view mirror of life, I can now clearly see that pulling away from the friends she loved was one of the huge signs of her advancing Alzheimer’s. As much as she loved these ladies, she can no longer remember their names – even with prompting. But I remember and am thanking God for these ladies. May I be the kind of friend to someone else that you were to my sweet mother.
I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping lately. I fall asleep just fine, then awaken about an hour later and have trouble getting back to sleep. Last night was one of those nights. Stumbling upon this blog post from a year ago served as a reminder that I am blessed to not have to juggle my occasional sleepless nights with Momma’s frequent all-nighters without sleep. I am so blessed that she is safely in the care of the wonderful staff at BeeHive. What a blessing.
I know now that I should have responded to the video monitor’s prompting much sooner. Perhaps I would have been able to get more sleep if I had gone to Mom’s mental rescue sooner. It was after midnight, and Momma was having yet another bad night struggling with sundowning. I watched and listened in on the monitor as she yanked the chain on her bedside lamp and sat up in bed talking to herself. Nothing new; the same questions she always asks – those questions that never go away, even with an answer. I heard the familiar “zip” of her purse as she went through the contents of her purse over and over again. Between each examination of the contents, she would carefully hide the purse beneath her bed sheets. Then, in delighted surprise moments later, “find” the purse and go through the…
What a blessing to receive a little ‘hello’ in the mail. I know I’ve told you about my friend Suzy who sends a beautiful handmade card each week. At first her cards were addressed to my mom (but always meant a lot to me too). About the time Momma moved to BeeHive, Alzheimer’s began to chip away at her ability to read and appreciate her mail. Suzy asked if she should discontinue sending the cards. I hesitated in answering because I loved them so much. The very next week, Suzy began addressing those encouraging notes to me. Each note always brightens my day, but this particular note was extra-special. Suzy chose to inscribe an encouraging quote from one of my favorite authors:
Life is hard.
God is good.
Glory is coming.
Therefore, stand firm in His grace.
John Piper
It is amazing to observe how many times my friend’s weekly ministry of written encouragement and exhortation “just happens to be” exactly what I need on the day I receive the mail and zip open the envelope.
The day I received this ‘hello’ included several personal challenges for me and even harder physical challenges for Momma. God, in his goodness, allowed me to better understand just how hard life is for my sweet mother, and how incredibly blessed she is to be in a place where she is so loved and so cared for. I could definitely see His goodness in the midst of this hard day.
