MMM…OUR FAVORITE MEAL…

…GARBAGE SOUP AND BURNED BISCUITS

When I was finally packed and ready to leave for college, one of my biggest celebrations was the thought that I would never have to eat Garbage Soup again for the rest of my life!  My mother served Garbage Soup several times a month.  It always started with the clean-picked bones of a rib roast.  Then she would pull out twenty or more cottage cheese containers hiding small leftover portions of peas, potatoes, carrots, chicken juice, onions…any old garbage still left in the refrigerator that hadn’t sprouted mold.

No matter what the garbage consisted of, Mother held the soup together with one can each of creamed corn, chopped tomatoes, and tomato sauce.  She learned this “recipe” from her Mother, who had finally let us all in on her own secret ingredient years after we had eaten gallons of garbage soup without the secret ingredient…1 tsp of sugar for a large pot of soup.

The best part of the dinner was always the buttermilk biscuits.  We would pull fluffy, steaming biscuits apart and load them with butter and honey or jam, all the while complaining and asking, “Why do we always have to have Garbage Soup?”  Mother would just smile her knowing smile and pass the biscuits.

Some mistakes in life are corrected almost before they begin, but other mistakes live on and on.  No matter how good our intentions, these mistakes seem to have a life of their own, regenerating time and again in front of our very eyes, growing in proportion each time and taunting us with promises to return.  My personal recurring mistake is the granddaddy of them all, the major sin of world religions, the mistake that will be my downfall forever on.  I burned the biscuits.

Actually, the burned biscuits are only the tip of the iceberg.  On Garbage Soup nights Mother would ask my sister or me to make the biscuits.  Biscuits were the only food I knew how to cook when I left for college.  I had the recipe down pat: measure, mix, cut, nibble, and bake.

On that one particular night, I made the biscuits with carefree confidence.  At 400 degrees, they had risen and baked to a golden brown.  I peeked into the oven.  They were ready.  Butter and honey, ready, set, go.  But Mother still had her soup to tend and the table to set.  Just a few minutes before we sat down.  No problem.  I just turned the oven off and left the biscuits inside to stay warm.

My dad came into the kitchen, smelling dinner.  He walked to the oven and peeked in expectantly.  Sure enough, golden biscuits.  He glanced over my way, and in the way of all irritating parents, he suggested that I take the biscuits out.  “They’re done.”

“I know,” I told him in my best expert biscuit baker voice.

“Well, they’re going to burn,” he observed.

Just because he was an engineer didn’t mean he knew anything about baking biscuits!  “No they’re not!  I turned the oven off!!”  I made sure to set him straight.  I was no dummy.  With supreme parental wisdom, he walked over to smell the soup and talk with Mother, leaving me in charge.

We ate Garbage Soup and Burned Biscuits that night.  Daddy never said a word.  He just put on the butter and honey, as usual, and “enjoyed” every bite.  I didn’t have much room for biscuits that night, having eaten more than my share of humble pie.

Humility continues to knock on my door, with regularity.  For instance, would you be surprised to learn what I wanted most for Mother to cook when I came home from college?  Yep, Garbage Soup.  I bet she smiled a few secret smiles over that one.  Then there’s our fix-up house that my husband and I bought ten years later.

We mounted a long, dedicated search throughout all of Phoenix to find a special house, one that would set us apart (and above?) all the normal people.  We didn’t want a ticky, tacky house just like the neighbors down the street.  We were special.  We were meant to have a Tudor house, an antique house, different and unique, showing our own uniquely special personalities.  Luckily, we did find the house of our dreams, a Tudor with hippie-blue painted windows falling off their hinges, a dead yard, and 1000 square feet of wooden floors that needed sanding.  I wasn’t going to be a “suburban princess” picking out carpet and wall paper samples.  Not me.  I was going to be different, unique.

Ten years later, after we had resurrected our “Lazarus Home,” (my father’s name for it) I was shocked to learn that we were part of a national movement of the 1970’s that had spurred the growth of the home remodeling industry.  Thousands of people just like us had bought homes that needed fixing up with glass doorknobs, wooden floors and new plaster.   We were little people, little statistical pieces of data that had been lumped together with the general “huddled masses” to form a mega-trend.  Nothing different, or unique.  Just regular guys.  Much like my Birkenstock sandals.

In the 80’s I began teaching math workshops and had a roommate from Arizona.  She wore these ‘funky’ sandals that looked so comfortable:  Birkenstocks.  She let me try them on, and they felt great.  They were also just a bit offbeat.  Practical.  Down-to-earth leather.  I wanted a pair.

In Tempe, I searched out the only store in the valley to carry a full supply of Birkenstocks, and I chose the ever-adventurous, go-with-everything-including-winter-socks Desert Brown.  My family called them Jesus shoes.  I had ignored Birkenstocks in the 1970’s because I thought you had to have hairy legs and a rose tattoo to wear them.  However, now I knew they went with regular clothes and regular work.  They were different, practical, and unique.  They were conversation pieces.  I was special.

In the 90’s, Birkenstock lookalikes hit all of the stores and became fashion statements for my fifth grade students.  The special, one-of-a-kind $80 uniquely distinct shoes I had loved for ten years were now $15 plum, taupe, and teal teen treasures.  I was one of the crowd, a statistically counted shopper.  Melody, in the classroom next to me, asked, “How are you going to be a non-conformist now, Jane?”  The question haunted me.  Then I caved in to the inevitable.

We bought a bigger house.  We were able to let the kids have different beds, even different rooms.  Our house looked JUST like the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, desert brown stucco with a red tile roof.  We gathered paint chips, wallpaper samples, and carpet and tile–just another suburban princess, driving to work in my mini-van.  What could I do?  I was just like everyone else.

Of course, if I weren’t so filled with pride, I would have known this all along.  I am just like everyone else, I always have been.  These are silly examples of what pride will do to a person.  There are more serious situations, however.

Years ago, when I was under ten years of age, a mother made the news for killing her children.  I remember being in my bedroom working on something with my own mother, and I commented, “I just don’t know how someone could kill their own children.”  Mother knocked my socks off!  “Oh, I do.  It can happen to any of us.  There ARE days…”  I was speechless.  My own mother.  During my entire lifetime, she gave me only one spanking and no more than ten dirty looks.  She was my image of charity and kindness.  How could she understand a mother who had killed her children?  Humility, that’s how.

Years later, her favorite writer Erma Bombeck, wrote a book centered on women who had “failed” under socially and legally dictated guidelines.  But Erma understood them.  She knew…there WERE days…

Strangely, humility comes in odd doses and flees just when we need it most.  I can truly understand Timothy McVeigh, the bomber of the Oklahoma federal building.  That is not a popular thing to write or think.  This is not to say that I think he was right or sane.  But I do understand him.  How could anyone ever be so messed up in their mind?

Well, there ARE days.  I know I have had my mind twisted around its fair share of times.  I was just fortunate not to have it twist so far.  And just as I shock someone with an understanding of a murderer of 168 people, I must admit that I don’t have a full understanding of my sister.  How could she “throw her Mother away” over such “pettiness?”  Once again pride raises its ugly head to claim me as its victim.

BEAUTY…

…THROUGH THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER

There I sat in the airplane on the Nashville runway, sifting through workshop evaluations as the plane awaited takeoff for my return to Phoenix.  In my lap I held 40 evaluations of Jane and what a “week with Jane” had meant to them…40 teachers who had watched me, listened to me, and followed my instructions for one full week.

As an elementary English teacher, I had never dreamed I would become a teacher of math for school teachers.  It was one of life’s unexpected adventures.

Ten summers earlier, looking for a fun way to get professional credits, I had enrolled in a workshop to explore the world of math through the eyes of kindergarten and first grade children.  In every activity,  sitting at a low table, knees scrinched up under my chin, playing with red and blue lima beans, amazing new insights about numbers flashed before me.

Years after receiving an A in college algebra, I could now finally see clearly, in the beans and cups I moved around on the table, the decimal values of ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. Before the end of the day, I was adding and subtracting in base five.  I called the Center that offered workshops, asking how I could get into the workshop a second time…as a “repeating” student.

In a brief chat, the man on the other end of the phone asked me a few simple questions such as ‘why’ and ‘who,’ and I was enrolled in the next math workshop “for free.”  It wasn’t until I showed up for the first class that I learned I had graduated from student to trainee. I was walking down the road to become a teacher of teachers.

Once again, the mathematical challenges were intoxicating.  Even more wonderful than the fun math was the opportunity to explore it in partnership with other eager adult learners.  Each mathematical answer led to new questions that could be explored in new and compelling ways, with blocks, beads, charts, cards, puzzles, experiments, data collection, graphs, conversation, theorizing, testing, and thinking. My own father had been an engineer, and this was the first time that I, at 35 years of age, began to understand his world.

Eventually, as I mastered the week of math concepts, I was invited to join the Center as an instructor.  Traveling around the country during summer vacations, towing bags of math materials was a serious struggle for me in the era before computers and cell phones.  But at the same time, it allowed me full and free immersion in the math world with the wonderful companionship of like-minded educators.  It was all wonderful, except for one thing.  Evaluations.

IF THE SPEED LIMIT IS 65…

…WHY DO THEY MAKE CARS THAT GO 120?

I almost want to leave this chapter out of the book or make my kids promise not to read it until they are 65.  In most of the other chapters, the mistakes I tell of are mistakes of judgment that lead to hurt feelings or bad examples.  The mistake in this chapter is one that could lead to death, and I write it down for you to read only because I believe you are wiser than I ever was at 18.

My first car was a light, powder blue Volkswagen bug that wrapped around my small, 102 pound body like a boxer’s glove.  It was a basic washing machine motor with four wheels attached, and it putt-putted me everywhere.  Its only sign of luxury was a roll-back sun-roof, which quickly proved to be a rain roof with an unstoppable leak always aimed at my left eyebrow, or a windy glare-roof for the hot 110-degree Arizona sun.

None of that mattered, however, because it was mine.  It could get me everywhere, rain or shine, and the only thing that stopped me from driving off to Maine was how much gas I could buy.  Everything about my little blue bug was wonderful, even changing the oil and fixing flat tires.  I enrolled in a class to learn how to do my own tune-up and felt such control when I learned what a distributor was, how to adjust the timing, and how to replace a stolen rotor.  Zoommmm, and I was off.

In my little blue bug, I drove to Nogales on the Mexico border with my freshmen buddies, drove home from college for the holidays, ferreted through Mesa to find an apartment, checked out the malls when shopping,stopped by to see my boyfriend, and headed to the Prescott cool pine forest for my first summer job.

I was excited to be a summer camp counselor in the mountains at Camp Wamatochick where I had spent many years as a Campfire camper.  Now, as a big-person, I would be wearing the counselor necktie and sitting on Counselor Rock when the busses of children rolled in…and getting paid good money for the fun of it.

At the camp, my little blue bug stayed parked under the pine trees down the road from the horse corral, waiting for me to climb in and take off during the little bits of ‘time-off’ we were given.

I loved working at camp…the kids and the forest.  The only downer was that my boyfriend was miles down the highway in Phoenix, 80 miles away for eight weeks.  We had just met in April, sung and played guitars together, and exchanged hugs and a sweetheart ring.  Now we were apart for most of the summer.

This was exactly what my days off were meant to deal with.  Each week we counselors had one full day off, 24 hours away from camp.  For most of the eight weeks, boyfriend Vic would drive up in his ’66 Chevy pickup to share my day off.  We went camping, toured the “big” town of Prescott, and just relaxed.  Some weekends, however, I headed down to Phoenix in my little blue bug.

In order to gauge the magnitude of my mistake, you must understand a little about the road connecting Prescott to Phoenix.  Freeways were just beginning to cross the country.  Map books had little broken green lines showing the pieces of finished freeways, and these were starting to connect together huge cities :  New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Phoenix.

In the 60’s, major roads had four lanes, two lanes going each direction, separated only by a double yellow stripe.  For the most part, however, the rest of the roads in the country were two-lane strips of pavement with a yellow stripe down the middle.

Then, just as today, construction was commonplace, but there were no extra lanes to shift the traffic off the highway.  Highway workers set out detour signs right on the highway pavement, directing traffic onto dirt paths and soft lumpy asphalt, using their orange cones and caution signs telling you to slow down.

That summer, the two-lane road from Prescott to Phoenix was under construction.  A string of orange cones led cars in both directions down a temporary, makeshift strip of bumpy blacktop, 20-feet wide, extending for miles.  The normal speed limit was 50 mph, but I’m sure that construction signs optimistically suggested many miles mph slower than that.

Times don’t change.  Just as today, back then, construction signs were meant to be ignored.  “Everyone was doing it.”  So was I.  Cars were going 50, 55, 60…fast!  My day off from camp that week was on a weekday.  With light traffic on the highway, I could pedal fast and get that blue bug reeeeeally moving.  Every few miles I pulled up behind a slow car going only 60, hang behind it for a few minutes, and pass the ‘turtle’ quickly, continuing with clear sailing for another five miles, the next turtle, and my next great sprint past…on down the highway…vroom.

I remember my Volkswagen speedometer had numbers as high as 90, and I’ll never know for sure if that engine could make 90.  But I do know that a 1970 powder blue Volkswagen on a bumpy two-lane highway under construction can go 80 miles an hour, separated from oncoming cars by tiny orange cones, and passing caution signs in a blur.  I was in a hurry.

Today I shake my head.  If I close my eyes and make vroom noises, I can still feel the shaking and wobbling of my little blue bug as it literally flew down the road.  I had only 24 hours before I had to be back at camp, and there was no time to lose.  I can only thank my Maker in heaven for protecting me on that day of lunacy.

At the time, I knew I was going too fast.  But I didn’t slow down.  Why not?  I don’t really have an answer.  I guess it’s another example of Mt. Everest…because it’s there.  There was the exhilaration of speed and excitement, the thrill of being ahead of all the ‘turtles.’  And…I was saving time.

I was in a hurry to save time.  For what?

How much of my life have I lost because I was going fast in order to save time?  That summer in Prescott, I could have literally lost my life.  I never thought it possible.  But the following year I learned that two of my high school friends had died on car rides home to Phoenix from their college at BYU in Utah.  Two 19-year-old girls and their friends.  I was stunned.  I had expected to loose touch with Carol and Denise after high school, but death was such finality.  Death belonged to bad people and old people…not to my friends.

In my senior year at high school, I had taken high school driver’s ed. and had received an A.  I had the good driver’s discount and good student discount with Allstate.  Today, my family nickname is Nervous Nelly, and it was just as true back then.  But for one day in July of 1970 in my little powder blue Volkswagen, I suspended common sense for the thrill of it and for saving time.

Life is tricky.  It can warn you about the dangers of breaking the rules…and then let you survive dangerous acts of stupidity.  Some of us get more chances than others.  I am lucky that life didn’t strike me down in my moment of dare devil speed…I deserved no better than Carol on her way back from BYU.  But life was with me.  That day.

It was also with me the night I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on my way with Victor to San Francisco.  God spared me again with the little highway bu.m.p..s that California had begun to install on the highways.  I was just going to rest my eyes for a minute, that’s all, then I’ll open them and keep going…..bump…bububububump… wow, I almost fell asleep.  Vic, can you drive? I’m tired.

Life kept Vic and me safe again in a drowning summer midnight rain, as I drove the curling narrow mountain roads through the Smoky Mountains.  Again, he was sleeping, and I was struggling to stay awake as I hurled through the wet blackness at speeds just beyond control, tires sliding into the shoulder mud and gravel at each turn.

Life is tricky.  It can teach you all the rules of safety, and then kill you just when you have the hang of it and are doing everything right.  I almost got killed three years ago, in full daylight at 4:00 p.m., driving home from work at 55 mph on the freeway, fully awake and in control.  With no warning, with no chance to think my way out of danger, the car on my right turned into my front bumper, pushing me into the car on my left, and sending me in my van wib-wob-wobbling, fish tailing down the freeway at 55 mph.  God grabbed the steering wheel with me and let me have another day to live.

I imagine that we adults are tiresome as it seems we spend half of our life telling our children to be careful.  I imagine that it seems we want them to miss the fun of life.  I imagine we seem to be afraid to even wake in the morning.  Here are the kids at 16, just looking out at all the wonderful things waiting to be experienced, places to go, people to meet, foods to eat, jobs to get, try, and quit…and then BOOM… some timid adult says CAREFUL…and there goes the fun, just like a puff of smoke.

Here it is now, truthfully on record…we were just as excited as they about life way back then…in the old days.  We weren’t so smart back then, either.  We did stupid things, and we have lived to tell our kids about them.  Over and over and over…it must seem.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t help when the kids challenge us, “Don’t worry.  Nothing’s going to happen.  You’re such a Nervous Nelly!”  Yes, life tempts us all along the way with cars that go 120 mph, even though 120 mph is the speed of death.

If any part of a book about the mistakes of life is worth anything, it’s the part that reminds me of the joys of life, the newness of it all, that even at the age of 40 there are many unexpected thrills still left for an “old person” to encounter.  Thanks, kids!  You are right to caution us adults about staying in bed, covering our heads with the blankets, and hiding from life because of fear.  You are my renewal charge of excitement for life, savoring each precious moment that I might squeeze from every day, living it with exuberance and joy.

As a small payment to you, my children, for restoring my joy in living, I give to you my tiny caution, still there, but in a very small voice of uncertainty.  Life gives no guarantee.  The only view of the future we humans have is our hope in possibilities and our limited power to explore them.  I pray that my own children will have enough joy and pleasure in exploring life that they will treasure it beyond measure, guarding it as often as possible against any of the ‘stupid’ decisions we humans are so prone to make.  No fear,  but life.  Life with caution, but most of all, life with JOY!

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