The Christmas Tree

December 3, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / 3 Comments

In childhood, no fake tree for us.

Just after Thanksgiving, the family search transpired.

Mom and Dad preferred Douglas fir, six feet tall.

Dutifully, we kept the tree holder filled with water,

never used real candles. We put on lights, big ones,

blue, green, red, an inch long, then carefully hung on delicate,

colorful, round balls. The most difficult task: the icicles,

long, silver, reflective. They had to go on just so.

Years later, children gone, Mom and Dad bought an

artificial tree, fake Douglas fir, incredibly real in appearance.

When they left Missouri for Arizona every winter after harvest,

they abandoned Christmas trees, gave me the fake Douglas fir.

I still have it. How long? Decades, several at least. State of the art

when they bought it, it requires work, assembly, strings of lights.

Every year, I tell myself it is time to get one of those new trees with lights

already installed, so much easier to take up and down. I never buy one.

I cannot bear to part with Mom and Dad’s tree. One year, annoyed with

putting on lights, I decorated it lightless. I missed the lights. Now every year,

decades later, I assemble it, take the time to string the lights. Some of the lower

branches no longer stay, but I work around that, hang the colorful, delicate

Christmas ornaments I love, collected over years and years, wrap the base in

the red and white cloth given to me from Africa. On cold evenings, like this one,

I turn off the other lights, drink tea like my mother did, and remember my

childhood.

A Litany of Thanks

November 22, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

I heard this poem by Max Coots recited on Sunday and saved it to share today.

Let us give thanks:

For generous friends…with hearts…and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are a silly as Brussel spouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;

For old friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;

And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life hereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

Autumn

October 1, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

dramatic weather changes

one day cold, next one almost hot

late blooms, gayfeather, groundswell,

native grasses blowing in the wind

owls hooting, robins on the patio

praying mantis, walking sticks

working on their last hunts,

other insects singing night songs

September 1, on the Rim of Wonder

September 2, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Sunrise

Dappled clouds

Owl hooting

Wren climbing

Later, I graded papers and watched part of John McCain’s funeral, some of which almost brought me to tears. I often disagreed with him but never did I question his passionate love of country, his courage, his willingness to buck the norm, to defy convention when he thought it was the right thing to do. I think he and I shared certain values on which this country is based even if the country as a whole rarely lives up to them. These include the conviction that all people are equal, that everyone deserves justice, and each person carries the right to find his or her own share of happiness without judgment and condemnation from others who may think differently.

Later, while working on the latest book I am writing, I found handwritten recipes written by my grandmother, my mother’s mother, Nellie Narcissus Duke (Kaiser),whose father came here from Switzerland as a child. One, for dumplings, remains readable. The other written in pencil on the front and back of thin paper is fragile. It is for Strawberry Shortcake. If Grandmother Duke ever made dumplings, I do not remember it. Mother did–chicken and dumplings. I wonder if she used this recipe. I do remember conversations about the shortcake because Dad did not like strawberry shortcake even though he liked strawberries. I took photos of these two recipes written decades ago in my grandmother’s handwriting.

Black Raspberries

August 19, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Mom filled the white bowl with black raspberries.

I pour Bossie’s white milk over them,

watched it form a pattern,

flowing around the raspberries–

a design in deep purple and white.

I thought it almost too beautiful to eat.

I was seven.

Now I rarely find black raspberries. Red ones won’t do. They lack intensity, the beauty. Every year we went to Hunt’s Orchard north of Amazonia, Missouri, to buy black raspberries, took them home, sorted to discard the imperfect ones, then threw them way behind the garden next to the timber–huge trees, oak and hickory. Eventually, these imperfections transformed into thriving black raspberry bushes. We had our own patch, created from the discarded, the imperfect.

Mom fed us fresh raspberries for a few days. The rest she used to create her famous pies, froze a freezer full. Baked, they transformed a winter kitchen into the warmth and sweetness of my mother’s family devotion.

I bake pies, many kinds of pies. I have never made a black raspberry pie.

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Note: this will be published in an upcoming publication by the Story Circle Network. In July my daughter, grandson, and I went to Hunt’s Orchard–yes, it still exists. I asked about black raspberries. We were too late; the season was over. The timber behind the garden area was to the right in this photo. The person who bought the land years later bulldozed down all the big trees.

New Adventure: A New Teaching Job

August 10, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Monday I went to my new job, finished decorating my new room with a few posters, a giant puma drawing from one of my former students, and an old National Geographic photo of a giant redwood tree with several men stationed at varying heights. This year I will be teaching English Language Arts to grades 7-10, a writing class, and Spanish 1 and 2. The 7th and 8th graders will be a new experience. However, several have already come by to meet me, chat, hang out. Hard to knock that for starters. It is a nearly new building out in the country surrounded by fields and pasture with a feed lot down the road–ranching country where rodeo is a major activity.

On the east side of my classroom a giant window takes up 1/3 of the wall. A small section of the window even opens. Twice I have opened it and listened to the birds singing outside. The window sill can hold several plants because it is long and at least one foot wide. Plant shopping occurs this weekend. Students begin next week.

The Clerk

July 18, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

He’s gorgeous!

I walk into the department store,

plan to pay a bill, order a griddle for the new stove,

see a bald headed 30 something with a big, brown beard.

He is not what I get.

A younger man walks up, “Can I help you?”

Explaining what I want, I look.

Wow.

Caramel skin, five inches taller than I,

obsidian ringlets falling, not long,

cut short to a form a big ball, a glossy poof.

He’s not too thin, not too chubby.

Just right.

Straight nose, not too long, not too short.

Just right.

Arched eyebrows, oval face.

Just right.

He’s drool worthy.

It’s ridiculous. I’m old enough to be his grandmother,

maybe older.

Do we ever get too old to look, to appreciate?

Missouri Roadtrip-the Home Place

July 6, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

6CC097FA-6B1F-4C37-8170-6026A42B8C30 This is he house where I grew up north of Fillmore, Missouri. My dad lived here in this house from 10 year old to 90. He died in the month after his 90th birthday. The house stands on the land my great grandfather established after he arrived from Switzerland in the mid 1800s.

3A97C88F-30A5-4A32-99E3-5E4D8E1172F5 This is the only building left at the site of my grandparents original house and barns. It is an old carriage house. In this photo my daughter and grandson are taking a look. One of the original stained glass transome windows from the house hangs in my own house. My grandparents were Lilliebelle Werth and Pleasant Lightle.

D44A6726-4FF1-4FB0-9F89-47F7E7C98391 When I was a child, this was once a chicken house but mostly the farrowing house for our registered Hampshire hogs. Later I learned that when first built during Prohibition, Dad held dances here which the sheriff checked to make sure there was no alcohol.

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This is corn and soybean country. The view reaches across the land from the back of the home place. We met the young couple who own the house now. They keep everything spic and span just like my parents did. I am grateful.

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Antioch Christian Church where we attended church when I was a child. My mom’s fruit pies were famous here.

Argentinian Adventure–Cafayate in the Calchaqui Valley

June 30, 2018 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

One of the highest wine growing regions in the world exists in northern Argentina in the Calchaqui Valley. This lovely hotel where we spent the night reminded me of New Mexico.

The hotel garden.

The ceiling above the walkway.

The walkway from the garden to the front of the hotel. Spanish colonial architecture and design seem much the same everywhere.

Cafayate is small and lovely. Like every other city, it too has a square with a church on one side. We went there instead of Mendoza, the city most people in the US associate with Argentinian wine, because Hugo, Gaston’s dad, prefers the wine from there over that from Mendoza.