Rolling cookie dough before dawn

First time I ever set my alarm for 5:45 so I could bake cookies, but it worked. The kitchen was cold, except for the preheating oven. The dough rolled easily without getting sticky.

Dad has requested cut-out sugar cookies like his mother used to make. He wants them thin and brown, the way we both prefer.

I'd hoped to make cookies for Dad when I was in Lincoln over Thanksgiving. Even if I had found Mom's cookie cutters, I could hear her warning the kitchen was too warm to roll cookies.

In December Mom would also be frustrated when the kitchen was too cold to bake houska or cardamon braid, our traditional Christmas breads. The yeast needs a warm winter day to rise -- a steamed kitchen.

Found my cookie cutter collection odd. The butterfly, hearts, squirrel, and roller skate cutters went for clay art projects long ago. The bell and other Christmas forms must have gotten too rusty.

Dad will be getting a package with a few reindeer, helicopters, brontosaurus, and one ghost (of Christmas past). There will be boots and pine trees, and several states of Texas. And there will be lots and lots of owl cookies. He should just pretend they are arctic snowy owls.

My grandma would arrive for the holiday on the Greyhound bus. She would climb down carrying two cardboard shirt boxes tied with string. One would be full of sugar cookies. The other would hold prune and apricot kolaches. I hope my little mailed tub of cookies gives Dad some taste memories.

Packing tape

I'm hearing a continuous loop of my mom enumerating her instructions for trip preparation. Fritzi seems quite nearby this week. The little gray-green bird has been in the playground shade tree at recess. A pair of hawks sat on the utility pole today. A slate gray junco has been calling attention to itself at my patio feeder. The birds all want to know the next plan for my dad.

Dad is still calling most of his own shots, but he's getting frail. We have to discuss options for assisted living this holiday visit.

Fritzi would have things more planned and organized. She would have a clear solution to Dad's living arrangements. There would be no doubt as to her opinion, but the birds just suggest she's on the premises while I must try to find my own preferences and negotiate an arrangement.

Thanks to new airline restrictions on baggage, I'm breaking Fritzi's first rule of travel:

Always, ALWAYS, take a spare pair of shoes.

Some of Mom's other travel rules follow.

Rule #2:

Have "a little something" in your purse in case you get too hungry. Fritzi's "little something" was usually a butterscotch candy or lemon drop.

Rule #3:

Take salty snacks in case you get queasy. Fritzi never traveled without saltines, Fritos, or pretzels.

Rule #4:

Cover the toilet seat with bathroom tissue before you sit down!

Rule #5:

Loading the car trunk is an an art form best not left to mere mortals.

Food pyramid topples in Red Willow County

A good story by Prairie Bluestem about her Grandma Violet cooking for farmhands in Gordon, Nebraska, unleashed a vivid childhood memory. My grandmother also cooked for farmhands when my mom was a little girl down by Marion, Nebraska. As far as I know, my mom kept her clothes on, although Genevieve's mom thought clothes should be optional in the hot kitchen.

I always found it difficult to reconcile the grandmother I knew with family stories of her cooking for the farm hands. To me, she lived with my granddad in an hotter-than-hell one-bedroom apartment in McCook, and never did more in the kitchen than set out a "Dutch lunch."

One Sixties summertime visit to McCook our family of five tried to sleep on the fold-out sofa and air mattresses in my grandparents' living room. The sweltering apartment was filled with the smell of overripe cantaloupe and very little sleep.

Last night while I was tossing and turning and worrying that I might have strep throat while hoping it was just a sinus infection, I kept thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't sofa-surfing with cantaloupe in McCook. Some things are worse than strep in August, but not many.

The next day, Grandmother set out the spread of pickled herring, pickled pigs feet, pickled miniature corn, sweet pickles, bread & butter pickles, watermelon pickles, cucumbers and onions in sour cream, sardines in olive oil, sardines in mustard, Club crackers, overripe cantaloupe, salami, summer sausage, cheddar, toothpicks, Fritos, chip dip, and 7-Up. Oh, and some chocolate mints and macaroons for dessert!

Let's call the whole thing off!

You say TOO ber cles,
I say too BUR kles

We're talking about the bumps on the almost translucent, velvety skin of Mediterranean geckos, a non-native species. The preschoolers are learning about diurnal green anole lizards, and nocturnal geckos. How to pronounce the bumps? Either way, the preschool class got the giggles:

Po TAT to, PO tat oh
TOO ber cles, too BURK les

Let's call the whole thing off!

I'm real self-conscious about em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-LAH-ble (aggravated in situations compelling my mangled Nebraska pronunciation of foreign composers' names like RICH-erd WAG-ner). I'm accent-challenged, and it's definitely an inherited condition on my mother's side. Nature or nurture.

Back in 1937 when George and Ira Gershwin were struggling with vegetables for the musical, "Shall We Dance?," my mom was learning to read chapter books. A young reader who hasn't heard a word will sound it out and say it in her head. That's why Fritzi believed she was reading stories about De-BOR-ah and AG-knees. Shhh! Don't tell Deborah and Agnes! Fred and Ginger danced their way into the dictionary.

The big controversy growing up was whether those seventy-six sliding instruments were TROM-bones or trom-BONES. I leaned toward TROM-bones because of that capital T that rhymes with P.

My grandmother met Ebenezer Scrooge on a tropical vacation in the BAH-ha-mas, but never met Captain Jack Sparrow in the CAR-ib-be-ann, or the care-uh-BEE-an.

Seventy six trombones led the big parade

With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand

They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos;

the cream of every famous band.

Dreaming of his dad

Sometime after 4:30 a.m. Howie dreamt he was taking his dad to McDonald's for a filet-o-fish sandwich, a small chocolate milkshake, and maybe some fries. It had been so many years since Adolf appeared in a dream. It got Dad's full attention.

His dad, he commented, had strong opinions about teachers, especially music teachers. No common sense. Completely impractical.

His dad played marbles with him just that once. The day in memory's neon red letters--that one evening outshining everything. Adolf outside in the dust after sunset, shooting marbles with Howard this one time. The dust. Just.

1935. Adolf died when Dad was twelve. Late getting to glee club practice because his father died. The music teacher unsympathetic at this excuse.

They used to walk on down together. Downtown on Saturday night. All the farmers and the townspeople eventually gathering around Anderson's Ford Garage to exchange thoughts about the crops, the prices. Howard with Adolf. Walking the three blocks downtown. The crops and the dust.

Dust and marbles and common sense. We went on over to McDonald's for a filet-o-fish sandwich and a small shake. What did his dad order in the dream? They never got to McDonald's, Dad says.