Memory #3: The Incident in the Secret Passageway

So, I thought it was a secret passageway. Understandable, really. It was a small door, out of the way, unnoticed by grown-ups, but saved you from having to go down the stairs, which was both cool and practical. Plus, Grant’s head would definitely fit. It led to an entirely different part of the house, and if all my living vicariously through Nancy Drew had taught me anything, it was that a small, out of the way door that leads to somewhere else can only be a secret passageway.

The most important part of having a secret passageway, however, was having a little brother to test it out. There was no way I was going to get into the secret passageway first. It was reckless, it was dangerous, and it was a good thing I didn’t, because the secret passageway was actually the laundry chute.

So I convinced Grant that he should get in there instead.

We were mid-shove, with Grant’s feet dangling down over the washing machine on the floor below, when I heard heavy steps on the stairs, and a throat clearing noise that was halfway between shock and “Oh no you don’t!”

“Young lady,” you said, looking very stern. “Why is your brother in the laundry chute?”

“Oh he’s not,” I responded cheerfully, as I prepared to give Grant a final push. “He’s in the secret passageway.”

“We don’t have a secret passageway,” you told me, which I knew, because you had told me repeatedly throughout my childhood that we didn’t have a secret passageway, but I was determined to find one anyway. What can I say – Nancy was constantly finding them! You can’t blame a girl for trying.

“This is a door for dirty laundry to go through,” you continued as you got down on your knees and pulled Grant out. “And we do not put our brothers through that door. Understood?”

“I understand,” I said, sad that you had scolded me.

I was also sad that my dreams for a secret passageway had been dashed again. You have always been my fellow adventurer, so part of me was surprised that you were averse to the idea of the secret passageway. It’s only now that I’m much older do I realize that a love of adventure – even the childhood, backyard, made-up kind –  was always trumped, quickly and immediately, by your love for us. Every ramble around the block, every afternoon spent crashing through bushes or climbing on trees, was always under your supervision. You let us play and be wild and creative, but you were also always right there, just in case.

So I grabbed a blanket, a snack, and a Nancy Drew and headed out under the trees to live vicariously through my favorite adventurer for just a few more hours. Meanwhile, my other favorite adventurer looked safely on from the back porch. Just in case.

Memory #2: The Prom King of Real Life

Everybody likes you. No really, it’s true! I have never met one single person who didn’t. We had to build an extra ten minutes into our grocery store trips just to make sure we had time to chat with the sample cheese ladies, and it seems like everywhere we went, we (you!) made new friends left and right.

This was especially evident when I went with you to Idaho Springs, for your 50 year high school reunion. We arrived at the outdoor pavilion and there were several groups of old friends sitting at tables, drinking lemonade, and catching up. I waited to see which group of friends you would join as we approached, when one of your friends spotted you. Immediately, everyone was buzzing that Dick – class president, head boy, and all around good guy – had arrived! It was the kind of welcome movie stars and royalty would dream of. You were the prom king of real life. The man of the hour.

After a few hugs and introductions, we flitted (can a 75 year-old man flit?!) from group to group, catching up with everyone. It demonstrated to me that you weren’t just my favorite person in the world, but that everyone, from cheese ladies to high school classmates, thought just as highly of you as I did.

I love you so much, Grandpa! Thanks for teaching me the importance of kindness, how to be sociable, and – most importantly – the fine art of the flit.

Memory #1: Whoppers

I have never been tall. We know this. In fact, I’m pretty sure all of my LITTLE cousins are taller than me now, except for maybe Joy…hmm… But I have always been scrappy, and a pretty good detective, which is how I found out about the Whoppers.

You thought you had hidden them, but I saw you, every once in awhile, getting something chocolately and delicious out of the top cabinet in the hallway between the kitchen and dining room. And so, after much speculation about chairs and drawers and angles, I pulled out all the drawers below, scrambled up onto the counter (who needs a step stool?!) and felt around and found a carton. I pulled it down, shook it and heard its hollow rumble, and knew I had struck gold. I popped open the top and the balls came streaming out into my hands. I crammed several into my mouth, before I could get caught, and was just about to stash the evidence and wipe the chocolate off of my face when I heard that distinctive Grandpa chuckle. I looked up to see you standing there, smiling at me, shaking your head and cracking up. You had been watching me the entire time.

Busted.

Better luck next time, Harriet the spy.

I love you so much, Grandpa! I’ll see you in eight days! It’s almost birthday cake time! I wonder if we can make a Whopper flavored cake? YUM!

For Grandpa

My sweet Grandpa passed away last week. He was 88. In addition to his many accomplishments, awards and honors, he was also just the best guy I know.  He and I had a very special relationship. I already miss him.

I will be posting some of the memories I’d been mailing to him, so everyone can share in his wonderfulness. In the meantime, if you’d like to read his official obit and leave a comment below, please do. He loved so many people, and I know his bright spirit lives on.

We love you, Grandpa!

Richard Everett “Dick” Davis, 88, was born on May 1, 1923 near Idaho Springs, Colo. at Floyd Hill to Margaret and Shelby Davis. He often liked to say that he arrived in a May Day basket with his twin brother, Bob.

He attended Idaho Springs High School, where he was a natural leader, popular student, and active Boy Scout. He was elected both Class President and Head Boy his senior year, and graduated in the spring of 1941. Dick would remain devoted to Idaho Springs for his entire life, serving as president of the Idaho Springs High School Alumni Association from 1994–2005, and continuing as an active member of the board until his passing.

Dick enlisted with the Army Air Force in January of 1942. He served as a 2^nd lieutenant bombardier with the fourth army air corps until the war ended in 1945, when he returned home to attend college at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

At CU, Dick was a dedicated student, a proud member of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, the university’s hiking club, and the civil engineering society, which he led as president his senior year. He also played co-ed intramural volleyball and was a long-time admirer of his teammate, Dee.

They married on August 27, 1950 and were married for 61 years.

Dick was hired by Rio Grand railroad in 1952 and was steadily promoted through a variety of positions. The Davis family moved between Utah and Colorado before settling permanently in Arvada in 1969. He retired in 1985 as Superintendent of Engineering, overseeing structures, buildings and bridges. Davis Road in Salt Lake City still leads to the superintendent’s office as a testament to his 34 years of service.

Dick was passionate about so many facets of his life. As a volunteer, he devoted his retirement years to many causes, including tutoring at Stott and Vanderhoof Elementary, volunteering for the PBS Channel 6 auction, chairing the CU class of 1950 reunion committee, and participating in Boy Scout activities with his sons and grandsons. Dick was a recipient of the Silver Beaver award in 1974, the Denver Area Council’s highest honor for Boy Scout volunteers. He was so proud that his four sons and one grandson obtained their Eagle Scout, scouting’s highest rank.

He also traveled widely, visiting 48 states, Europe and Asia with Dee during their life together.

He was a loving father and grandfather to his five children and 13 grandchildren, and he instilled in them a love of service, respect for nature, and a deep appreciation for family.

Dick passed away on May 4, 2011. He is survived by his beloved wife, Dee; his son Kirk and his wife, Lorna; his son Kip and his wife, Lynn; his son Kelly and his wife, Michelle; his daughter Heidi and her husband, Keith; his son Kerry and his wife, Jani; and 13 grandchildren: Eric, Hilary, Grant, Morgan, Ali, Hope, Ian, Kanessa, Kaylan, Faith, Grace, Joy, and Hannah.

Donations may be made to:

Denver Area Council

Boy Scouts of America

10455 W. 6th Avenue, Suite 100

Denver, CO 80215

Clear Creek Alumni Association

65 Brentwood Street

Lakewood, CO 80226

OASIS Institute

In memory of Richard Davis, Jefferson  County, Colorado

7710 Carondelet Avenue

St. Louis, MO 63105

Do you have?

• A giant latte to get you through the rest of this crazy Thursday?
• A birthday cake to bake for someone very, very loved?
• A lovely boyfriend to run away with this weekend?
• A royal engagement ring replica to wear during a 2am viewing party because you are OUT OF CONTROL EXCITED about the impending nuptials across the pond?

I do!

Comfort

Monday was a hectic day. After a 4:30 wake-up, a tearful goodbye, a delayed plane, a stopped BART train, a work day that lasted into the daylight savings time dusk, and a public transit trip with my suitcase the size of a hippo, I really needed a hug. Instead, I pulled out a skillet.

Same difference.

What is it about food and emotions? Why are the two so confusingly intermingled? Why is oatmeal with homemade granola almost as satisfying as holding hands during a movie, or juicy raspberries an acceptable stand-in for a minty fresh morning kiss in the bathroom?

I’m sure Oprah has something to say about eating your feelings, but Oprah can fly to her faraway someone in her private jet, while I have to make do with a quick Southwest flight every other month. C’est la vie. This month, we’re going to Seattle to explore, ride bikes, see a favorite band, try cool restaurants, and celebrate my sweet boyfriend’s birthday with a day of doing only whatever we feel like doing.

And until we do, there are chickpeas.

The humble chickpea. It’s not glamourous, or new, or even all that much to look at. It’s beige, it’s boring, and if you are particularly lazy or busy (please see first paragraph) it even comes in a can.

But if treated carefully and with a little extra love, the chickpea can surprise you. It can be warm and earthy, mealy almost, but in a great “this has recently come from dirt” sort of way, even if it’s not true. Way to go, chickpeas! If given the support of our friends in the spice rack, the chickpea can burst forth, like Superman from a telephone booth, with flavor and punch. And if given the right time and attention, the plain, boring chickpea can almost stand-in for the comfort of a hug on a bad day.

Almost.

Spicy Chickpea Curry

I found this recipe in my monthly bible almost a year ago and have made it numerous times since. It’s quick, you likely have all the ingredients already, and it’s the easiest and most satisfying thing I know of to make. Easy. Satisfying. Simultaneously. Feel free to fall in love already.

Ingredients

Olive oil

One clove garlic

One quarter yellow onion

One small ripe tomato

One can of organic chickpeas or 8 oz. dried chickpeas soaked overnight

1/2 tablespoons each yellow curry, cinnamon, red chipotle or cayenne spices

Ketchup (yes, ketchup! Just go with it!)

Whole wheat rice, flatbread, plain yogurt, and a lemon wedge to finish

1. Measure out your spices and mix them together in the dry skillet. Heat on medium-high, toasting the spices for a few minutes, mixing thoroughly. Spices will come alive if toasted a bit at the beginning, so this is a critical and delicious first step. Once the yellow curry and red cayenne turn the color of the cinnamon, scrape them from the pan and put them aside.

2. Glug some EVOO into a skillet and heat on medium low. While the oil warms, dice your garlic clove, your tomato, and french cut your onion into thick strips. Onion strips are smaller, area-wise, than onion rings and they comingle with the chickpeas in a friendly backyard BBQ kind of way, instead of the high school prom queen on top of the heap sort of way that rings sit in a pan. My apologies to the prom queens.

2. Once the oil is warm and loose and will spin nicely, coat your skillet and throw in the onions and garlic. Swirl things around until they start to spark, then add your spices back into the mix. The spices will clump, so stir and prod until they coat the vegetables evenly and become fragrant.

3. Pour in the chickpeas, stirring again to even things out, then add a few swirls of ketchup and mix yet again. Once everything is evenly coated, add a quarter cup of water and turn the burner up high to boil the liquid. Once you reach a solid bubbling, turn down to medium, stir a final time, cover and simmer for 20.

4. While the chickpeas are simmering, do a quick batch of whole wheat rice. The nuttiness of the rice is the perfect complement to the spice of the dish, and it’s the perfect bottom layer to catch the sauce and the tang of the yogurt.

4. Once the liquid has thickened into a sauce and the spices have melded together, the chickpeas should be soft and yielding and the rice should be done. Fluff up your rice, pour the chickpeas on top, and serve with a piece of warm flatbread for scooping. Garnish with a drizzle of plain yogurt (greek yogurt is a bit too thick and dessert-like for this – I go for regular plain) and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Today…

…is the day before the day I get to see the guy who makes me feel like this:

Like, all the time.

I am beyond excited for a weekend of skiing, cigar smoking, family dinners, and a whole lotta face time with my someone!

I hope you have a fantastic weekend, too.

Good point

“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”

- John Green

(italicizing mine!)

Found via Middle Child Complex and reposted here because – good point!

Letters From The Bay, Week 88: And on the third day, Granny drunk packed for the earthquake

I thought I was over it.

When I moved to California almost two years ago, the first two weeks were hell. Firstly, because I missed home and I was living with strangers and that was weird. Secondly, because I didn’t know how to go anywhere and I was constantly lost and that was frustrating. Thirdly, because THE AGENCY was very quickly revealing itself to be the worst place on Earth and I was overwhelmed and that was terrible. And finally – fourthly, if you prefer – because I was terrified to death of earthquakes and would wake up every time the garage door slammed and dash out into the hallway and half-grip the walls (because, hi, you can’t really hold onto a wall. Remember that one time you were drunk and you had the spins and you tried? Yeah.) and have a few moments of half awake panic because I was sure we were going down in the giant pile of stained carpet, green walls and overstuffed closets that was my first apartment in the city.

Luckily, after a few weeks, I forgot that I was living on the equivalent of a Jell-O jiggler atop a stack of cardboard boxes and I began to relax. And, you know, sleep at night and leave the house and stop carrying around my bike helmet, and such.

Until now, when the series of quakes in Haiti, New Zealand, and Japan have thrown the network news into overdrive. It’s the anchors, with their hyped-up hypothesizing, and the featured guest experts, bloviating about how our lack of preparedness is going to blow up in our faces when the big one hits and we all fall down, who have caused us, the residents of the Jell-O, to experience a city-wide freak out.

On Tuesday, I found this clip, which sent me into a frenzy of freaking out. According to my friend Cameron, we probably have to believe this guy because he looks like Santa and Santa wouldn’t lie to us, right? RIGHT?!?! And Santa says that an earthquake is scheduled to hit San Francisco today, Saturday, March 19th. Or, as the little network news anchors in my head are already calling it: THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY QUAKE AND DISASTER OF 2011.

On Wednesday, while my roommates were watching live Japan coverage on CNN, I was perusing the SF Quake informational site and cursing myself for never taking my Mormon friends up on their conversion offers. Mormons are crazy about emergency preparedness and even though I actually just think Mormons are a wee bit crazy, it wouldn’t hurt us to have some canned soup and a flash light in this house, you know?

And on Thursday, after lots of beer at a St. Patrick’s Day street party with a cover band of middle aged guys wearing tracksuits and ski goggles (who, I might add, were awesome), I came home and packed my emergency to-go bag.

Yes. While drunk. I packed for emergency while drunk. It made perfect sense at the time. It also made sense to call D, my general life supervisor.

“DUNCAN!!” I shouted loudly into the phone. “The EARTHquake is COming on SATurday, and YOU aren’t ready for it yet, RIGHT?!”

“Hi – what are you doing? Are you drunk right now?!”

“Yes. I am drunk. I am drunk and I am preparing for emergency!” I yelled at him as I rummaged wildly through the drawer of technology where any and all cables and things with wires sticking out of them are relegated. “I need to back up my hard drive, fill up my camelback, find that little first aid kit, and saran-wrap my love letters!”

“Your love letters?!” Dunc said, in the incredulous, one-eyebrow up way that he uses when his down home Lutheran sensibilities are confused by your lack of common sense (okay fine, it’s usually my lack of common sense) and he is .2 seconds away from talking you down, Garrison Keillor-like.

“Ooooookaaaaayyyy,” he said. Oh heeeeere we go.

“First of all – love letters should be put into a ziploc. Saran makes no sense. It’s not water tight. Second of all,” he continued, “you really need to get a dedicated bag for this sort of thing and actually put real emergency items inside it. Two cliff bars, a roll of TP and your love letters aren’t really going to help you in case of emergency.”

“Thirdly,” he said as he tried to contain his laughter and it was getting the better of him, ” I just want you to know that this day will go down in the hilarious history of our friendship, and I cannot even wait to tell your grandkids about the day their granny drunk packed for the earthquake that never came.”

How does he know?

Last I checked, it was still Saturday.

Freedom and Fear

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about writing.

I always spend lots of time thinking about writing. All day, all the time, I think about writing. And when I sleep, I dream about writing.

True story: I had a dream last night that my coworkers and I were on a road trip and I had a backpack full of random things. Everyone dove into my backpack in a shark-like feeding frenzy and took everything inside it. When they had finished their frantic rummaging – those dirty jerks – I felt about the bottom of the bag for something – anything – that might be left. My arm emerged from the bag with a pen. And I was happy.

But happiness while writing doesn’t take away the fear of writing. The thing that makes me happiest is also the thing that terrifies me the most. Figure that out.

My friend Dan has reminded me a few times that nothing is precious. You just have to write…and write and write and write and write. And then trash all of it. And then write some more.

I am bad at trashing anything. Ask the 27 Barbies living like refugees in a rubbermaid tote in my parents’ basement. I choose to think they’re having a party in there, where neon leggings and shoulder pads are still all the rage, but the truth is that I am afraid to get rid of them because I believe, deep down, that there will come a moment in my life where I will need precisely 27 Barbies and two Kens and I will somehow, magically, be in my parents’ house when that moment arrives.

True story.

And I think that’s how it is with writing. I am afraid to start – to truly start – because it will mean facing days where I will feel I am not very good at it, this thing that makes me happiest. I am afraid to begin because it not only means hard work, but because it means work done, and re-done, and re-done again. I am afraid to start because maybe, deep down, I believe there will come a moment in my life where my novel magically comes pouring out and I will simply be a vessel for words from the heavens.

True story: I used to be afraid of running. My shorts would accidentally leap from the drawers during vigorous cases of laundry folding and I would shield my eyes as I shoved them back in. My Nikes would stare at me dolefully out of all of their 16 eyelets and my heart rate would rise as I thought about myself running, slowly, without purpose, and badly.

I just ran three miles. Just now, about two hours ago. I laced my shoes, cranked up Florence + The Machine and away we went, for three glorious, sweaty, red-faced miles.

True story.

I’m not a great runner. But I run and run and run and run and run. And now it’s not so scary.

This week, I am going to start writing. And writing. And writing. Because there is freedom in doing something that is scary. Just like there is freedom in talking about things that are scary (thanks for listening.)

There is also freedom in failing at something. Because as soon as I fail – or give up, or take a night off, or stop writing, it’s all the same – then I am one step closer to trying again, and being better.

This is my arm, emerging from the bag.

It is holding a pen.