Family Roundabout

Autumn.  Around it comes, round again.
I took a long walk this morning -- because the sun was shining, because the children were otherwise occupied -- and I remember thinking this is the tipping point.
This is the day when everything is at its burnished, glowing peak.
In a week, maybe two if we don't get too much tearing wind, it will all fall down.
The darkness will close in on both sides:  another Bonfire Night, another Thanksgiving, another Christmas, another New Year's.  Feasts and festivities for compensation.

I've been reading a novel called Family Roundabout -- and I keep thinking about the aptness of the title.
Not just because I am the family chauffeur; and round and round I go.  Although there is that aspect of it, especially during half-term week -- when I have driven to Malvern, London, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading in so many days.
But also because I am the fulcrum of family life, and I feel like everyone else is a lever.  I am the circular and circumscribed, and everyone else is an exit -- leading to a separate road.
For this week, at least, I have embraced the busy roundabout of family life.  When it is going full-tilt, I feel necessary . . . (although there are a thousand conflicted thoughts behind that admission).

Will tomorrow (already today) be the last Halloween party of my daughter's childhood?
Will we still be in this house next year, when autumn rolls round again?
I am craving change -- and lots of it is coming (jobs, schools, home) whether I want it or not.

And yet; there is something so comforting about the roundaboutness of things.   

Wales

Curves ahead

For years now, my husband has been saying "We need to take Mum back to Wales."

My mother-in-law's family came from a small village in western Wales and during the war years she and her sister lived there.

I've always imagined a dramatic evacuation from London:  waving good-bye to her parents at the train station, along with the other millions of city children who were sent to the countryside in 1939.

As it turned out, the "real" story was a bit different.  Apparently, the family was already in Wales when war broke out.  My mother-in-law was thrilled at the turn of events, as it meant she would be able to go to the fair.

"Yes, we had a marvellous war," giggled my mother-in-law's childhood friend as we discussed those years.

My children and I had never been to Wales.  I don't know what we had expected, really -- something gray and wet, I suppose.  Something old-fashioned and fusty and dull.

The dramatic cliffs, the huge expanse of Irish Sea, the blue sky:  it was all such a surprise.

Setting out

The week in Wales was on the calendar for the middle of August.
As far as my oldest daughter was concerned, it was a black hole in her hectic social life.  She dreaded it and complained about it with the full force of adolescent hyperbole.
The thought of sentimental journeys, of a visit to the past, is anathema to her.  She wants only to live in the present.  The future is a bit frightening, and the past just seems irrelevant.

Over the stile

 My children's great-grandfather and great-great grandparents are buried in the village of Cilgerran.  We visited their graves.  My mother-in-law doesn't know how deeply rooted her family in Wales; like her granddaughter, she has never been that interested in the past.  It gave me a chill, though, to think that my children are part of this place.  It is there, somewhere, in their DNA.

To my fanciful eyes, Cilgerran was a bit of a Brigadoon.  For a hundred years, and maybe more, it's hardly changed.  There is Aunt Mary's house, but someone replaced the old door.  There's the Teifi River, where we used to fish.  There's the ruins of the old Norman castle, where we used to play. 

We climbed the steep path from the river to the castle, and I worried that it was a bit much for my mother-in-law.  I scolded my husband about it, but he defended himself by saying that she knew the climb was challenging.  I wonder, though, if it is difficult to remember that you are 80 when you visit one of your childhood places.  In any case, she declined to join us for our walks on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.

There is no escape route

My girls are good walkers.  Even when they were really young, I forced them to trek across Boston, Amsterdam and Den Haag -- because I like to see things by foot.  These experiences have become part of our family lore. 

We walked every day we were in Wales, but one day we hiked the 10 miles from our cottage in Moylegrove to the Newport Sands Beach.  It was a sunny day, but you could feel -- in the wind -- that a storm was approaching.  On the top of the cliffs, the wind was fierce.

The sign, above, reads:  This is a remote, rugged and challenging stretch of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.  Please keep to the path.  Avoid the cliff edge.

Stay on the path

Rather worryingly, it warns: On this stretch there are no escape routes or exit points.


Once you start down the path, you have no choice but to keep going. I couldn't help but think that, like much of life, it's better that you don't know how hard it's going to be.

Avoid the cliff edge

It's a trick of perspective, but in this picture the girls seem so far away.  I let them get a bit ahead of me -- and there they are, tiny figures on the edge of the cliff.

After what seems like a summer of too much togetherness, they will be off -- on their own -- in only two weeks.  The oldest daughter is off to boarding school, and the youngest daughter is going to Dartmoor for a geography field trip.

Rise and Fall

There's almost no cell phone coverage, or Internet access, in this part of Wales.  My husband complained that he got better coverage in Angola.  He and my oldest daughter walked around, cell phones held aloft, trying to find a signal.

Before cars, before trains, there were ships -- and then, this rugged coast was well-connected.  I read that Newport, where our walk ended, supplied the herring for Queen Elizabeth I's Navy.

These cliffs are actually part of the Preseli Mountains -- the source of the blue slate, or "bluestones" that make up Stonehenge.

This bit of coastline, near Cardigan Bay, is one of the only places in the UK where you can find dolphins and seals.  Sadly, we didn't spot any . . . although we kept looking for them.  Even without dolphins, there was more than enough to marvel over.  She might not admit to it, not now, but even my teenage daughter wasn't immune to the magic of this place.

Resting (and reflecting)

For my brother

November 8 is my brother’s birthday, and this year, it falls on Remembrance Sunday. Because my brother is currently deployed to Afghanistan, it is particularly poignant that those dates should coincide.

All week long, it seems like Afghanistan has been in the news for tragic reasons – and there have been particularly personal betrayals. I don’t know how distant the war seems to others, but it is never far from my thoughts – although I have never before written about it here. Even the recent horrific events in Fort Hood, Texas are uncomfortably close to home for me; my parents live very near there, and my brother has been stationed there several times.

My brother is a Lt. Colonel, in charge of a large battalion of soldiers. I know his responsibility weighs heavily on him, but he refers, only obliquely, to the terrible mental and emotional stresses of his daily life. I don’t know if his reticence is due to necessities of confidentiality, or the desire to protect his family, or just weariness; perhaps it is a bit of all those things.

Our lives have so little in common now, but we share the same liking for books and games that goes back to earliest childhood. I cannot think of my brother without remembering the marathon games of Monopoly that we played as a child. We would get up early on Sunday mornings to play – always hoping that my parents would oversleep and that we wouldn’t have to go to church. (It rarely happened, but we lived in optimistic expectation.) These days, we play Facebook Scrabble – in the odd moments, once or twice a week, when he can visit an Internet café. He always wins; he always did win.

He likes to read; everyone in our family does. When he was a little boy, he loved the Curious George books by H.A. Rey, and he had a good bit of that curious monkey in him. Like so many young boys, he would pore over the Guinness Book of World Records. I also particularly remember a series of nonfiction books called Tell Me Why that he would read and reread. As he got older, he started to prefer histories – particularly military history. These days, he tells me that he reads lots of thrillers and other “escapist trash.”

As children, we used to construct “ships” by enclosing the sides of the bunk beds with blankets. It was so wonderfully cozy to feel concealed in that space – to lie back on pillows, and read by the light of a lamp. It felt so safe. I doubt that any adult ever feels that safe again, but books can still provide those feelings of an enclosed, complete world far from present realities. As Emily Dickinson wrote: There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away . . .

After much pondering, I decided to send my brother a birthday package of books. What better escape than humor, I thought? When I googled “funniest ever books” the same titles kept recurring, and these are the three I ended up sending to Afghanistan: Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome; Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis, and a P.G. Wodehouse Omnibus. They are all English classics, and although I’ve read them, I don’t think that my brother has done. Although women may read and even like these books, they describe a completely male world. They have some odd similarities, actually: particularly that of the hapless male protagonist who keeps stumbling into scrapes of his own making. There are lots of cups of tea, although it is true that some of them are spilled. Nothing really bad happens, though; foolishness reigns here, never violence or evil.

They make me think of the letter* that Winston Churchill wrote during World War II, when he was confined to bed with illness. He asked for Pride and Prejudice to be read to him, and later commented: What calm lives they had . . . No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic wars. Only manners controlling natural passions as far as they could . . .

I would remind Churchill of this: perhaps Jane Austen knew more about gardens than battlefields, but she also had two brothers in the Navy, and I doubt that the pitched battles between England and France were ever as far out of her mind as her novels might imply.

Happy Birthday, dearest little brother!



* A copy of this letter is in Jane Austen's bedroom at the Jane Austen House in Chawton, Hampshire.

Fresh Eggs

So . . . once again, optimism triumphs over experience.

Longtime readers of the Bee Drunken adventures-in-farming will know about Ralph and Lauren -- who used to be our chickens.  Perhaps they are someone else's chickens now; maybe they didn't like the fact that my oldest daughter kept changing their names?  Possibly, they wandered off to seek greener pastures.  Quite probably, the wily fox got them -- although he didn't leave any feathery evidence.  All we know for sure is that when we got home from our Spanish cycling trip, those chickies were gone.  They had flown the coop.

I will admit that I dealt well with my grave loss.  After all, who was the one who waded through the mud all through the winter to feed them?  Who scraped all of the chicken poo and hay off the eggs?  Whose flower borders were wrecked, more than once?

As time went by, though, my hard feelings softened.  As I gazed out of our kitchen window, my eyes would inevitably fall on the empty hen hut.  And I would feel just a teensy bit sad.

There were practical reasons, too, to miss our poultry.  For one thing, the stale bread kept piling up.  Also, as I bake a lot, we never seemed to have eggs anymore.  I was always forgetting to buy them after three years of a steady supply.

Unsurprisingly, when my youngest daughter started making noise about getting more chickens it really wasn't that difficult to wear me down.  Yes, I am a sucker.  Not only that, instead of holding the line at two chickens (one for each child), we left the farm with FOUR chickens -- two of which (whom?) won't even be earning their keep for another 9 months.  "But Mommy, they are so fluffy and cute!"  Yea, yea.

Do you dear bloggy readers realize just how many breeds of chickens there are?

We bought our chickens from a 13 year old astoundingly knowledgeable farmer's son.  He had a dozen breeds at least, and he tried his best to educate us on their finer points:  how to tell males from females when they are young, what color of eggs they each have, etc.   I was somewhat overwhelmed, though, by the profusion of farm animals.  The main thing that I learned, and can pass on to you, is that an unruly chicken may be "tamed" by grasping it by the legs and flipping it upside-down.  Apparently, the blood rushes to its meager brain and it immediately goes docile for you.  Well, it worked for the farmer's son; I didn't test the technique, actually.

My youngest daughter immediately determined that we must have the "white silkie" breed.  They lay very small eggs, but compensate for this shortcoming by being soft and cuddly.  Frankly, I think they are the "dumb blondes" of the chicken world.  It has already become obvious that they don't eat a lot of carbs, either.  Ralph and Lauren were plain, but they were sturdy and reliable egg layers.  They could dispatch half a loaf of bread, no problem.  These dainty dimbos haven't laid an egg yet and they keep trying to eat the baby chick food.

One of my daughter's friends raises chickens, and her only comment on the white silkies was: They are really stupid chickens.  Since all poultry is fairly dumb, this is hardly a recommendation.

Still, my daughters spent all weekend gazing adoringly at them.  They promised me that, unlike last time, they are going to take care of these chickens.

I give it a week.  Maybe two.

Family Life

"Felicity in family matters is as rare as hen's teeth,"

I once read.

I tend to think of myself as the keeper

 of the family happiness,

but is that a thankless task,

or even possible?

I am like the self-appointed shepherd

of a small, ornery flock

who only want

 to be left alone

to go their own way.

My idea of a blissful family day is a pub lunch,

all of us together, 

followed by a long walk afterwards.

Only rarely is this wish indulged,

because one person doesn't like to eat out

and the other doesn't like to walk

and the third wants to listen to a radio programme

instead.

Let's go to Combe Gibbet, I said.

High upon Combe Down

is a long chalk pathway

with incredible views

of Berkshire and Hampshire,

and maybe even Oxfordshire.

I remember reading about Combe

in  A Genius in the Family.

In her memoir about

the intense love and rivalry between sisters

Hilary du Pré says

that her famous sister, Jacqueline

described Combe as "the top of the world."

Jacqueline du Pré took her husband

Daniel Barenboim

up to the Combe Gibbet.

She loved it; he loathed it.

It is a wild, beautiful place

but a little haunted.

This is a two-person gibbet, apparently.

George Broomham and Dorothy Newman

were hung in this place in 1676.

For crimes against family: adultery, which led to murder.

I wonder if the sky looked as ominous

on that day.

The day was full of clouds and intense, muted sunlight.

Against this backdrop,

even the haystacks look a bit menacing,

and lonely, too.

And yet, unexpectedly,

the sun will sweep across

the landscape.

Family life is like that, too.

 Here we go

over the stiles,

one after another.

Sometimes with a helping hand,

sometimes entirely alone.

These oak trees have endured

who knows what.

They seem to have grown together.

I think that can happen in marriage, too

if you are fortunate.

If there is anything that makes me happier

than seeing my children happy, together

I can't think what it might be.

Moving On

Selling up and moving on

After her husband's death, my great-great-great grandmother

left Indiana for Texas

There's nothing like history for a bit of context.

Over the past year, as banks have been bailed out and the economy has shrunk and anxiety has settled over all of us like a fine choking dust, my youngest daughter and I have been reading through the entire "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I had read the books as a child, but it is quite a different thing to approach them from an adult's perspective. Underneath those happy family tales of fiddle-playing and prairie adventures, there is an obvious subtext of privation, danger and lots of darn hard work. Compared to the pioneers of the 19th century, we are all such dabblers. We are so used to our glut of luxuries and comforts and social service safety nets that the use of the word "depression" has suffered from galloping inflation.

Just this morning, on the BBC, I heard some politician pontificating about how we are moving into "uncharted territory" in terms of the economy. Well, in a way, I suppose that is always true. The future is always a new twist on the past, and perhaps we really can't make projections anymore . . . but could we ever? I can't help but think of poor, uncomplaining Ma Ingalls -- who keeps on having to pack up her little china shepherdess and other small keepsakes and move, once again, into completely uncharted territory. A literal frontier; and there's no grocery store on the corner, if you run out of milk.

Last night I was reading a journal that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. It is a diary of the trip that the family took, by covered wagon, from DeSmet, South Dakota to Missouri in 1894. Lane begins the account by describing seven years of drought, of failing crops, of losing the farm, of failing banks, of 25% unemployment, of the rampaging "Coxey's Army" of the unemployed. On the Way Home is not a "story" in the way that the other books have been crafted to be; instead, it is a journal of observations, with most of the feelings left out, although a reader can certainly infer them. Wilder describes the crops in the fields, the brutal summer temperatures, and most poignantly, the other covered wagons -- about half going towards the Dakota Territory, and the other half going to Missouri. With farms failing everywhere, there is the sense that families don't know what else to do . . . other than to "move on" and hope for the best.

The Ingalls Wilder collection are probably the best-known "pioneer" tales, but I wonder how many American families have similar stories to tell? In the past couple of weeks, I have discovered some information on some of my ancestors (with thanks to B.S. Duvall), and these tantalizing fragments from the past have my imagination completely engaged. If given a few details, is it not inevitable that we attempt to fill in the blanks?

One of the most compelling fragments is the Public Sale notice, pictured above. I really cannot articulate the choked feelings I have when I read this record of a family's belongings. Elizabeth Shaw's husband, Andrew Jackson Shaw, had died of Bright's Disease in 1886 -- about three years before this notice. Did she try to carry on running their small farm, with the help of her seven children? What set of circumstances made her decide to sell everything: animals, land, house and furniture?

The Homestead, Daviess County, Indiana
1880s

How did a family of nine live in that small wooden house? I know that photographs lie, and this one is sadly tattered, but doesn't it look desolate? There is something so pathetically small and played-out about it. . . as if the wind and bad luck had blown nearly everything away.

After selling the Indiana farm, Elizabeth Shaw and her children boarded a train heading for Ft. Worth, Texas. They arrived on February 4, 1889 -- just a few weeks after the public sale. I have a picture of the faded post card of the train station, and the date, but these small notations can't answer any of my questions: Why did they decide to come to Texas? Did they have a contact there, or had they just heard rumors of a new place with opportunities? How did they begin the story of their new life there?

The Shaw Brothers Dairy

Ft. Worth, Texas

1900

Between the third and fourth "Little House" books, there is a gap of time that Ingalls Wilder chose not to describe. My daughter was indignant about how the story suddenly "skips." For whatever reason, the author barely alludes to the scarlet fever which struck the entire family, and blinded her older sister Mary. She hardly touches upon large debts caused by failing crops and illness. She doesn't mention a younger brother and sister being born; she never mentions that the younger brother died. I wonder so much about the stories that she chose not to tell. Were they just too painful to remember?

In a similar way, I wonder how the Shaws went from selling all of their belongings in 1889 to building up this family Dairy in 1900. Where did they get the capital to build this business? How did they go from that small primitive house to the considerably grander one pictured below? If "moving on" is the quintessential American story it is only because there is always that hope of moving on to something bigger and better.

The farm house by the Dairy

The entire Shaw family lived here in 1900



Elizabeth (seated in middle) and her children
at her 70th birthday party
My great-great grandfather George

is second on the right-hand side

Family legend has it that the Shaws were always strongly matriarchal, in that generation and the one that followed. Elizabeth Shaw outlived her husband, Andrew Jackson by thirty-four years. Her 75th birthday, in 1919, was celebrated at Trinity Park in Ft. Worth -- a place I used to visit with my own Shaw grandmother -- and she was surrounded by a huge crowd of descendents.

The very image of a prosperous family.

But it makes me sad to think of Andrew Jackson Shaw, left behind in a grave in Indiana. His grandchildren remembered a few things about him, as told to them by their parents. He was born in Pennsylvania to Irish parents, who died when he was a young child. An aunt and uncle spirited him away from an orphanage. He played the fiddle -- not just for his family, but at entertainments all over Daviess County.

He was named for the President always associated with the frontier.

Andrew Jackson Shaw
1840-1886

Just like you pictured it

Longhorn cattle: an enduring symbol of Texas

TEXAS. I can't help but be aware of the myths, sometimes the stereotypes, that most people of this world conjure up when they hear the word Texas. That is because People are always asking me where I am from, and then sharing what they imagine that place to be: a desert, with cowboys, and the Alamo, flat, and BIG.

I tend to dispel those myths, although I'm not sure why, as it always leads to disappointment. For many years, "my Texas" has been Houston -- and like big cities everywhere, it is cosmopolitan and full of immigrants who bring their food, language and culture; inevitably, the "native" culture gets watered down quite a bit. Also, Houston is semi-tropical and less than an hour from the coast. It is green all year round, and heavily forested in places. The density of population and all that green make it look and feel really different from "mythic" Texas. (Although its massively sprawling size and wide highways might make a non-Texan dispute that claim.)

Here's the truth, though. As soon as you drive out of the cities, Texas looks a lot like the myths. Although the land varies -- and can range from mountains to true desert to prairie -- it is mostly big, flat, empty and dominated by the vast sky. There are lots of small towns, most of them none too prosperous, lots of cows, and fields -- some of them green, but a lot more brown and dusty.

It is not a landscape that comforts me, and I don't find much beauty in it, either. And yet, and yet -- when I am in other places, I long for that wide-open feeling. I will never forget visiting Spain, after a long wet year in England, when I was in my early 20s. When I got off the train, and saw that huge blue sky, I remember thinking: This feels like home.

My feelings about Texas can be characterized by the word "ambivalence."

My accent is a strange one, difficult to pinpoint or typecast. I still carry traces of my Texas roots -- in the way that a "t" sound becomes something softer, more like a "d;" "a" is more like "ah;" and I still sometimes say "ya'll," although less and less as my years in England mount up. I could never pass as English, but Texans don't recognize me either. (They ask me where I'm from, too, at least if I'm in a small town.)

In the past year, it has struck me that my exile from Texas might be a permanent one. For years, we moved back and forth between Texas and England; but my husband has tired of that rolling stone kind of life. America, the land of opportunity that once beckoned to him, no longer appeals. He prefers English humour, English radio, English beer, English countryside. We are in the process of selling our house in Houston right now, and so we continue to cut our ties there. Although my recent visit to Texas was mostly pleasure, there was also that particular business to attend to.

Perhaps this explains why I became obsessed with the family history during my annual trip to my parent's home in central Texas. I spent hours going through old family albums, taking notes from my father's study on our genealogy, inspecting old census records on Ancestory.com, and cajoling my parents into taking me on sentimental journey fact-finding road trips.

Our family is pretty typical of a certain kind of American migration. In a twenty year span before and after the Civil War, (which ended in 1865), all of the various branches of my family tree migrated from various Southern states (Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina) to Texas. All of my great-grandparents were born in Texas, bar one, and most of my great-great grandparents. too. This might not sound like much to brag about, but you have to put it into a certain historical perspective and remember that Texas wasn't even a state until 1845. Even more importantly, there was no air conditioning. I'm not being funny; forget the oil boom of the 20s and 30s, the population of Texas didn't really begin to expand until air conditioning came to our punishingly hot state. Summer temperatures go from May to October, but the temperature can shoot up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit in any month of the year. Before the 1960s, you had to be tough as a boot to live in Texas.

All of my family settled in a swathe of central Texas that spans the north-south artery of Interstate 35. From the tiny town of The Grove (officially a "ghost town" now) to the big city of Ft. Worth, you can cover the entire territory in two hours of driving. Believe me, that's nothing on the Texas map. For a hundred years, everyone mostly stayed up -- barring the inevitable dislocations of World War II, when my farm-boy grandfathers went to war. And yet none of my parents' four grandchildren were born in Texas. Neither of their children live there now.

Texas garden: limestone, cedar, cactus, rusted wheel and skull

Is this meant to be humorous?

Or is it a matter of doing the best with what you have?

Starting with the old Cox cemetary, which is only 30 miles from my parents' home, my father and I spent a long day driving from one family graveyard to the next. I was on a fact-finding mission, but I also had some emotional need to match the photographs with a place that I could see and make sense of.

I wanted to see the farm that my grandfather grew up on in the small town of Cranfills Gap. I had seen it once, when I was a small child, but it wasn't a place that my grandfather ever wanted to revisit. My grandfather was born in 1920, and his parents divorced when he was five years old. His sisters went with their mother to the more properous side of the family; my grandfather was handed over to his widowed grandmother on his father's side. He had to help work the farm, and it was a hard, lonely life. My father took down an oral account of my grandfather's life before he died, and among many other poignant facts, he shared that he was the only non-Norwegian boy in the local Mustang school. A neighbor, Mr. Knutson, loaned him a horse to ride to school. He ran away to join the Army when he was 16.

Cranfills Gap: Population 358

Cranfills Gap is still a small farming community; I don't think it has changed much since the 1930s when my grandfather lived there. I suppose that the price of agricultural commodities is affected by all sorts of larger world factors that touch upon that tiny town, but it seemed like a timeless landscape when we drove through it. The land is pocked by cedar, and it looks hard and scrubby. There was something heavy and suffocating about the atmosphere there, but perhaps it was just the sky -- choked with dust that day. There was a crazy-making wind, too.

I had been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, late into the night before, and a description of the gray sky as the "onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world" kept running through my mind.

Cranfills Gap feels terribly remote. It is at least 20 miles away from the county seat of Meridian, and that town only has a population of 1500. There is a large county courthouse that dominates the town, and not much else. These are the features of a small Texas town: the church, the filling station, the saloon, the Dairy Queen.

A Lutheran church

on the Texas prairie

The Lutheran church is one of the few establishments to be found in Cranfills Gap. I think that people need God, or even more so the sense of community, when they are in the middle of nowhere. Every small town has a church -- or even several churches. The church which is pictured above has always fascinated me because it just stands alone in the empty landscape. It is about 20 minutes from where my parents live, and when I see it, I know that we are getting close to "home."

Hill County Courthouse

This courthouse is a typically ornate example. It dominates the square of a town whose fortunes have declined, along with the cotton industry, for decades now. One of my great-grandfathers used to have a cafe in the square, but we couldn't pinpoint the exact spot. My father and I spent hours poring over records -- looking for information on the Grizzle and Page families who were his mother's relations. We found the Death Certificate for my great-great grandfather, Jasper Simeon Grizzle, but it was mostly uninformative. "Not known" was the disappointing response to most of the questions that we wanted answered. Texas did not start recording deaths until 1903 -- which gives you a sense of how recently it was a wild, lawless sort of place.

The Horny Toad is a recent addition to Cranfills Gap
It was too early for dinner,

so we passed it by

The Koffee Kup in Hico, Texas
This is where we did eat dinner that day



When in Texas . . .
You need to eat chicken fried steak with cream gravy
onion rings are a nice embellishment,
but mashed potatoes are more typical

The Koffee Kup is one of those restaurants where the waitress calls you "Hon" and keeps the coffee pot constantly circulating. After this highly caloric meal, which I almost never ate when I actually lived in Texas, my father and I sampled the pie: coconut cream and chocolate, both with meringue about six inches high. When I took out my camera, to take a picture of my dinner, it made the other patrons indulgently amused. I could tell that they thought I was a visitor to that place, which I suppose that I was, and you could see the pleased "Only in Texas" expression on their faces.

The Dairy Queen in Gatesville

When I was a child, you could find a Dairy Queen in every small town -- and in many cases, it was the only game in town. My mother grew up in a small town in central Texas called Gatesville. It is one of the few small towns that has grown in size, mostly because it has a growth industry in the form of prisons. It has the largest women's prison in Texas -- a fact that I find extremely symbolic because small towns do feel like prisons to me.

Although it has been renovated, my mother spent a large portion of her teenage leisure hours at this Dairy Queen. Despite my crack about the prison thing, it is a friendly place -- and a group of elderly women were playing bridge in a private room when we arrived there. As my mother and I ate lunch -- and I had the steak finger basket, by the way -- she reminisced about how she and her friends used to pile in a car and go to the DQ for Cokes. Apparently, you could get a driver's license at age 14 back then. (Having a 14 year old myself, this bit of trivia horrified me.) However, out in the country, it is still not uncommon for little kids to learn how to drive the family pick-up truck and every 16 year old thinks a car is their natural birthright.

There is a song by Nanci Griffith, the chorus of which is: Texas back in '69 was drive-in movies and dashboard lights. Apparently, that was true of '55 as well. Larry McMurtry's Archer City was not the only small Texas town to have a drive-in "picture show."

You can still see a drive-in movie in Gatesville

It is in my teenage daughter's nature to criticize everything I do at the moment, but she was particularly exasperated by my interest in delving into my Texas past. "You are obsessed," she kept saying to me. At 14, she cannot imagine why I would be interested in anything "old" -- and she really cannot grasp why I think that understanding where I came from provides some key to understanding who I am now.

Even if I never live in Texas again, I am keenly aware that the prairie, the sky, the small town is a part of me -- ambivalence or not. And of course, as long as my parents are still there, it is still, and will always be, home.

And really, this is a love letter to both of my parents . . . but especially to my mother, for Mother's Day.

Stopping for a moment

at Wisley

Yesterday, Sigmund and I sat by this pond for all of twenty minutes, maybe. Who knows, because neither of us thought to consult a watch. We talked, in a fairly loose way, about vague plans for the future. Moving to Oxford or London. Retiring to somewhere warm -- Madeira, perhaps.

Mostly, we just watched the ducks. What a mind-lulling thing it is to sit on a bench and gaze out on the water and admire the glint of sun on the silky emerald-jet of a duck's sleek head.

Today, we sifted through papers and pensions and met with a financial counselor. Tomorrow, we will work through our wills. Both projects have been on the long-term TO DO list for ages now, years even.

Perhaps we can make time for the future because our life is relatively stable -- for once. Although I shouldn't tempt fate by suggesting such a thing!

On mothering

Little daughter

A couple of weeks ago, on one of the first warm days of the year, little daughter and I were hitting tennis balls back and forth in the back garden. Suddenly, she cried: Mommy, I figured out how to climb the willow tree! Watch me!!

When she had settled into her perch, she said (with real satisfaction): In the summer, I will come up here to read. This will be my secret place and no one will be able to see me.

Although she meant it innocently enough, I couldn't help but wonder: At what age will she want to start hiding from me?

The next day, my youngest daughter left for a week's school trip to France. Although we could see pictures of our children on the website, we didn't get to speak to them. It was a strange feeling: for the first time, she was experiencing a new world that I couldn't access or be privy to. When she returned, I was afraid that she would be changed in some way . . . although she wasn't; not in any apparent way at least. She was still excited to see me; still wanted to share every detail of her week. Change is always a more gradual thing, isn't it? It has an imperceptible, but inexorable, creep.

Oldest daughter

Yesterday we were having a picnic outside -- our first of the year. Minstel was stretched out so fully and lazily in the sun . . . his abandoned pose made us all laugh. I quickly snapped this picture of my oldest daughter stroking our funny cat -- and later, while studying it, it struck me that she is completely obscured to my eye. It often feels that way. She is still here, still in our house -- but we don't know what she is thinking or feeling most of the time. Politely, but firmly, she has erected an emotional wall. If we are lucky, and catch her in a light mood, we get to see through one of the chinks.

Sigmund sent me a funny card which makes fun of the difference between mothering and fathering children.

A mother knows all about her children.

She knows about romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A father is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

This is true enough to elicit a laugh; but his message inside added so much more to where we are now in the parenting cycle. We no longer "know" our oldest daughter -- not as much as we'd like to anyway. I still know what she reads, and likes to eat, and who she talks to on the phone (or rather, texts), but I don't get a look in to the really important stuff. I think that's what defines getting older. A shame, fear and reluctance to share the hopes and dreams.

Today is Mothering Sunday in England, and I'm struck by the different emphasis of the words. In America, it is Mother's Day -- the biggest restaurant day of the year, and it's all about the mother. But here, but today, I feel that I have been doing the mothering and the emphasis has been entirely on the children. But isn't it always that way? It's the emotional responsibility that never stops. I sometimes tease my mother-in-law that when you have five children, at least one is bound to be in a crisis. If I really need to talk to someone, if I need unconditional love, my own mother is still my first port-of-call.

When my youngest daughter was a much smaller girl, she somehow picked up on the jargon of "quality time." Today, as we took a long walk/bike ride together at her request, she said: This counts as five chapters of quality time. (I owe her several days' backlog of bedtime reading because her father has been demanding his own quality time.)

Begging for attention

This puppy isn't part of my family, but I saw him on Friday afternoon and his expression has stayed with me. He was in the trunk (or boot) of a car, gazing wistfully out of a dirty glass.

Even in the most loving families, someone is looking for attention and someone isn't giving it. Someone doesn't want to be looked at, and someone else is doing their best to see through barriers seen and unseen.

Happy Birthday, Gerald Monroe!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

My father's birthday cake of choice

My father was born on December 8, 1941 -- the day after Pearl Harbor.

Ten things which remind me of my father:

1. Steak and onion pie and pineapple upside-down cake (because that is always his birthday dinner)
2. Diana Krall (because he loves a good crooner)
3. Aggie Football (because he is an alumnus and loyal fan)
4. Popcorn (his favorite snack, and mine, too! the smell of popcorn is my childhood)
5. Games - especially three-handed bridge and chickenfoot dominoes (because he is a fierce, fun and fair competitor)
6. Handel's Messiah (because he sings in the Church Choir)
7. A well-grilled steak (because nobody does it better)
8. Fishing (because he takes all four of his grandchildren, and patiently deals with the fallout)
9. Dancing (because he is a real smoothie on the dance floor)
10. Atticus Finch (because he is a lawyer, and now judge, of honorable character. He is scrupulously honest and I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone.)

I love you, Daddy! xx

Sugar Cookies for a Rainy Day

When I am tired, when it has been raining all day, when it feels more like October than June, I find solace in baking cookies.


Rain. Depression. Happiness. Low blood sugar. A diversion for the children. Birthday parties. Picnics. Holidays. Boredom. These are all good reasons to make cookies.

Yesterday, as I was tutoring, the small boy in my care piped up: "You ALWAYS have cookies at your house." It was clear, from the expression on his face, not to mention the crumbs on it, that he thoroughly approved of this consistency. I'm not ashamed to admit that I know the "bribing" (shall we just say encouraging) power of a warm, homemade cookie.

A cookie is intrinsically cheerful; and the good vibes are at least doubled if it is a homemade cookie. (But that is just my bias, and I don't actually have any scientific data to prove it.)


A crazy cookie maker like myself will even manufacture events -- in order to justify making LOTS of cookies. This Friday, I am hosting an all-day "tea" (for want of a better word) to raise funds for the "Walk the Walk" charity. This event has provided me with the perfect excuse to bake lots of cookies . . . not that I needed one! Next month, I will make hundreds of roll-out sugar cookies for the 4G booth for the Summer Fete. (A cookie decorating booth: My idea, of course.) In the last two days I've made sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies and cashew cookies. The latter are only for my family, as Walking Partner thinks that I should pay homage to the ubiquitous nut allergy that plagues us. Therefore, I need at least one more kind of cookie! Hmmmm . . . what could be more delicious than thinking about what kind of cookie to bake next?


I realize that there are people who don't bake/can't bake/won't bake . . . but I "comprehend" this imperviousness to the charms of baking without actually understanding it. Just like I know that there are people who don't like dessert . . . or people who don't comfort eat . . . and I don't really get that, either. I can admire these people for their abstinence; I can respect them; but in my secret, innermost self I tend to think that they are either (1) LYING, (2) strange, or (3) sad people who are missing out on one of life's best and most consistent pleasures.


For me, cookies are the most perfect baked good because they are (generally) really easy and (usually) provide instant gratification. Some people don't even wait to cook them before sampling their charms. (I'm not naming names, but let's just say I regularly stare the threat of salmonella in the face -- and so do my children.) In fact, cookie dough is to sushi as cookies are to baked fish: for those who love it, better "raw." I have been know to make chocolate chip cookie dough just to mix it into vanilla ice cream. I'm not alone in this strange behavior, either: I once knew a woman who claimed that the "secret ingredient" in her chocolate chip cookies was her own spit! (I know, you might be saying "eeww" or "ick," but I thought that it was pretty funny!)


(There are exceptions to the instant gratification angle: gingerbread cookie dough, for one example, needs to be chilled overnight. This can be either a positive or a negative -- depending on one's organizational skills.)


Unlike baked goods that require yeast (bread) or whipped egg whites (meringue) or kneading (bread) or gentle handling and cold butter (pastry) or precise cooking temperatures (cake), cookies are really forgiving. In fact, I believe that if you have good equipment -- meaning a decent mixer, proper baking sheets, and silicone mats -- you can hardly go wrong with cookies. You just have to figure out if you are a "chewy" cookie person or a "crisp" one, and judge your cooking time accordingly. Some people like a brown cookie; others prefer a paler, underdone version. It is also helpful to have someone around who likes the opposite of what you like -- because even with a good timer, cookies aren't always perfectly predictable. They are, however, almost always edible.

Recently, a dear friend asked me to contribute to a cookbook that she is putting together for her daughter's 21st birthday. After wracking my brains over the PERFECT recipe, I realized that I should just go with something that my family has made over and over again . . . something that is easy, always delicious, and part of the history of our family life. It is just a very simple sugar cookie -- cheap to make, and containing "standard" ingredients. (Okay, "standard" if you bake maybe . . . but still, certainly nothing fancy!) When I got married, my mother put a cookbook together for me -- and of course this recipe was in it. We can't have Christmas without these cookies -- and I make them even more than my mother did. Anyone who has ever attended one of my children's birthday parties has probably eaten these cookies. In fact, when I moved back to England I had a Christmas lunch for some old friends, and one of them said, "I remember these cookies!"

Sugar Cookies

Cream together:
4 oz butter
4 oz Crisco (or similar veg shortening; this is necessary!)
1 cup sugar

When creamy and fluffy add:
1 large egg

Sift together (or just add if you’re feeling lazy or time-pressed)
2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt

And then mix with butter mixture.

Finally, add:
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp milk

Drop by spoonfuls (about walnut size) onto greased cookie sheet. (Silpat nonstick mats are very helpful, if you have them.)
Flatten (gently) the cookies with a glass dipped in sugar. (Dip the glass into the cookie mix first, to make it sticky enough for the sugar to cling.) Then decorate the cookies with sprinkles of your choice – OR, a whole pecan (my favorite).

Bake at 400 f./200 c. for 8 – 10 minutes. They should be barely brown at the edges, but I also like them slightly underdone.

My family almost always doubles this recipe – as they freeze beautifully, and also keep nicely in a tin for at least a week or two. (They are actually delicious straight out of the freezer!)

They are perfect with a cup of tea, coffee, or milk! They are sweet, but slightly salty; not too plain, but not too rich. For me, they are "just right" . . . especially if there is just too much rain, and some small comfort is needed.

Perfect Day in Texas

Recipe for a Perfect Day:
four cousins, ages 10 -13
a true blue, cloudless sky
eggs, bacon and biscuits for breakfast
long walks in the sparkling fresh air
bluebonnets
fishing down by the creek
badminton family tournament
making cookies -- sugar and snickerdoodle
lots of horsing around, tomfoolery, and juvenile jokes
a weenie roast
toasting marshmallows under the stars

I hadn't really planned on posting from Texas, but I felt moved to honor this perfectly splendid day . . . and since my family is pitiful when it comes to taking photographs, words will have to make do.

I do not worship any god, and every now and then I feel that lack -- especially when I feel overwhelmed with gratefulness and I want to give thanks.

After days of oppressive humidity, a cracking storm washed a swathe of Texas clean last night. When the day dawns so fresh and bright, a person just can't help but feel reborn.

Eating breakfast with my family -- parents, two daughters, and niece and nephew -- I had a moment of intense, palpable happiness. As I looked around the table, sunshine streaming through the windows, Nanci Griffith singing in the background, perfect tender biscuits being drizzled with honey and butter, I felt profoundly glad to be there.

Like winter moles emerging from hibernation, we've frolicked in the sun as if energy and youth were limitless.

My oldest daughter summed it up: "This has been one of my perfect days."