Tis the Season . . . .
l was born in December. I came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve. I was the best gift to the family that year! Strangely enough, I never liked winter. It was cold and bleak. The sun goes down early in the day when you live in a place that has daylight savings time. I really disliked winter when I was working, and had to go home in the dark every day. I love sunshine. I tell everyone that I am solar. I have more energy on a sunny day.
As autumn is upon us and I see the leaves changing on the trees, the flowers slowing down and about ready to wilt from the first frost, I am thinking about winter. Living in the city, winter meant icy streets. After a nice clean snow, it all becomes dingy and dirty snow as our cars drive through the slush and kick it up on the roadside. It used to make me sad to see autumn. It was a precursor to the end of warm and sunny. It was like the signal of things dying. Although I am not a fan of these colder seasons, I know it is necessary for new life to regenerate. The old must die, and new life returns. It is a life cycle that will always be there.
Four years ago I moved to the country after getting married to my sweet husband. He retired to the country after working his whole career in busy cities running a railroad. Our home sits on a little lake or a large pond, however one wants to describe it. It is serene. I have found the winters serene. We have three fireplaces in our home, but I love the one in the living room the best—it is a wood burning fireplace. The living room has 16 windows and a double sliding glass door, so the sunlight shines in, and nature is right outside the window. In the winter, when it is really cold, we will build a fire and sit in the living room and watch the beauty out of doors. Dennis put a bird feeder on this property right past the deck. I can sit in the living room on a cold, snowy day and watch the abundance of birds come to feast on the suet and seeds. Of course, a few rude squirrels will try to chase the birds off so they can feast 
also. We have enough to share.
Summer is my favorite season, and that has not changed from when I lived in the city and moved to the country. I love the fact there is a pool out back and the lake behind it. I can swim, lay out, or paddle in the boat across the lovely little lake. In the summer, the abundance of trees make it is hard to see the neighbors’ homes that are around this small body of water. In the winter, I can see two of the homes.
As spring arrives, there are signs of trees budding, the spring flowers such as tulips, daffodils, and irises are popping out of the ground. Those flowers don’t last long like summer flowers, but they are some of my favorites. The April showers come, and bring moisture to the ground to allow the flowers to sprout to their beauty once again. It is a sign of new life. It is energizing. It fills my soul with hope for a new day.
When summer arrives, it is life at its fullest. Trees are rustling in the warm breezes, flowers are blooming, geese are swimming across the pond with their new babies. People are outside mowing their lawns, weeding their gardens, swimming, riding bikes, playing ball, and enjoying the warm of the season. Everyone is active. The bees are landing on the flowers sipping the nectar to produce the rich honey. You can hear children in the distance playing outside, laughing and just being kids.
It is the cycle of life. We are born like a new spring. Sprouting into this world, receiving love and nourishment to become young, active people with hopes and dreams. We run around in life as if the summer of our lives would last forever. We feel the sun shining on us all the way to our souls and we feel refreshed. As the years go by, our autumn comes upon us. It is still beautiful, but different. Like the leaves changing, our hair color may turn to white, a few wrinkles come along, and we may have a little more trouble moving along. It is just the slowing down of nature. But . . . it is beautiful in its own way. We delight in the beautiful changing of the leaves. Why don’t we delight in the beautiful changing of ourselves? It is a wonderful time of life. Slowing down, retiring from our busy work schedules to enjoy life as we wish it to be. As the winter of our life approaches, we will lose many of our friends before it’s our time. We will see the pain of our icy roads and lost leaves in our bodies not working as well as they did in the past. There is still a quiet beauty in these days. Those peaceful, snowy days are like the peaceful later days as we prepare to meet the one who created these life cycles.
I look at my life in the different seasons, and I see how it all fits together. My first years as a child and becoming an adult are like the spring of my life. I was young and full of energy. I was nourished with love, food, education, faith, and friends that helped me grow and become strong. Everything I encountered was new and fresh and I was excited to move on to the next steps in my life. As I moved into the summer of my life, I became a mom. Four little boys ran around the house and I relished in the aliveness that was around me. I also had a heavy drought in the summer of my life. It was my hardest years, and I thought I wasn’t going 
to survive, but everything came back to being, and life continued to go and grow. I moved into my loved career and continued thriving as I have moved into the autumn of my life. There is a slowing down. I am now retired. My hair has changed colors (but not fallen out, as have happened to some of the men!). I enjoy the coolness of season. I can reflect back on the earlier years of my life (childhood, young adulthood, parenthood, and my career) with 
fondness. These years have taught me many lessons and have made me the person I am today. I don’t know how long my autumn season will last. For some of my friends, the autumn and winter has taken them, for some autumn has been hard on them. But we will all be there. As I relish this time in my life, I know there will be a day, the winter of my life, when things will seem harsh and cold. I will not move around as easily as I do today. I will know that this is part of life as surely as the spring of my life was. As the winter of my life approaches, I will be looking forward to the spring of a new life for eternity, one that will be all the seasons and the best of all the seasons. I will have no regrets.
These seasons of life are all beautiful in their own way. Each cycle of life we encounter has its blessings and its problems, but it is what makes that season in life so special. I realize that I need to slow down and appreciate season I am in, and every season in my life as it comes and goes. Each season is so different. Just slow down and see the beauty in our lives as we go. Appreciate every encounter one has with others, what special times we have to connect and communicate. Appreciate the nature around us — the trees, every blade of grass, the animals, birds, flowers, even those pesky little bugs that run around on six legs. Embrace the creation we have been given. Understand that none of it is forever–it is ever changing in order to continually bring new life.
How are you enjoying and embracing each season of your life? What do you want to hold onto? What do you want to change? What beauty do you see as you think of the seasons in your life?
When I got divorced, my children were pretty young. They were entering a whole new world with me—the world of a single mom, and kids with only one parent with them at a time. No longer were there two of us in a united front, ushering our children along.
I do know that I had expectations. I had four little boys who were in my charge approximately 26 out of 30 days. We muddled our way through those days. I will not even try to convince you that I had my act together. To tell the truth, I was overwhelmed. I went to see a counselor, and I distinctly remember being in tears saying, “Whenever I eat a meal, I have five dishes to wash, whenever I wear a pair of socks, I have five pair of socks to wash, and on and on and on. I was overwhelmed that all this was on me only. I couldn’t turn to someone when I was tired, and ask that they take over if even for five minutes. My counselor said to me, “It would be overwhelming being a single parent with two children, I cannot imagine how overwhelming it must be having four.” Really? That is supposed to make me feel better? That’s supposed to give me hope to move forward? I changed counselors!
As I started my single motherhood journey, the holidays came, birthdays came. I took my boys shopping and had them pick something out for their dad (small, of course, because I wasn’t going to spend a lot), but because I wanted them to know they needed to continue to celebrate his birthday, Father’s Day, and Christmas. I assumed (expected) he would reciprocate so that the boys would know that is the right thing to do. You know what they say about “assume”! I never received a card or gift. When he remarried, I stopped, and decided if she wanted them to celebrate their dad, it was now the step-mom’s job. I think the real truth of this was that I was hurt, and was tired of doing something that didn’t get rewarded.
What about when we are dating and selecting the person we want to do life with. When I was young, I totally ignored red flags. I was never taught to look for them, so if something didn’t seem quite right, I was sure I wasn’t understanding enough. Yes, codependents have low self esteem. It must be my fault, even though I know it’s not. Or, if I knew it wasn’t me, I was really good at making excuses in my mind for that other person. It’s a dangerous road to go down.
actions, and not the actions of anyone else. It is such a shame that most people don’t know the full prayer. The prayer continues to say, ” Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as a pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever and ever in the next. Amen.”
Saturday my husband broke his toe—not just any break—he slammed his foot into the coffee table, and his little toe was no longer facing north, but facing east! Ouch! Yeah, he had to see an orthopedic doctor to get a special insert in his shoe to keep his foot flat when walking, and at least 6-8 weeks of not taking our 3 mile daily walk. A friend of mine died rather unexpectedly Monday, and Tuesday out-of-town visitors came to visit. It’s Wednesday, and I publish on Thursday. What am I going to write? I googled, “I need a topic to write about.” I clicked on a link that said, “Writing Topics | Thoughtful Learning K-12.” Yes, that’s what I need. What would kids write about? I’m picking my “kids” topic, and writing an “adult” answer! This link is loaded with topics that I could write about. Who thought it may move me off dead center? I have picked the topic, “What Makes Me Laugh.” By the way, this website stated this topic is for Grades 1-3. That even made me laugh—I am such a child when it comes to humor!
I told Dennis that I am not eating at that diner. We can buy a prepackaged snack in their convenience store to hold us over until we get to Sheridan where we can have a good dinner and a place to sleep. I wandered throughout the store, and finally selected a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Coke. When we got back in the car, my cell phone rang, and I proceeded to answer the phone. I was chatting with one of my sons as Dennis is back driving down the highway. After a lengthy call, I hung up and commented that we should be getting closer to Sheridan, and Dennis commented that he hasn’t seen any signs lately stating the distance to Sheridan. I pulled out my iPad, and went to the Maps app. The blue dot that shows my location on the map is moving to the left. It should be moving to right if I am going west to east. So what did I do? I turned my iPad upside down! Of course, the map turns itself around, and once again my blue dot is going from right to left. I declared that we are driving west instead of east. Everything looks pretty much the same on that highway—of course it does—we saw it all from the other window before we made the rest stop!
I would get instructions on what to start for dinner. I became quite adept at cooking meals through my teen years, that served me well later in life. Cooking meals didn’t excite me. I am still good at it, but it doesn’t excite me. What excites me is baking.
Now baking — that’s a different story. There is magic in baking. I take a group of very different and strange ingredients, and the final results are something that looks nothing like the original ingredients. Most of those ingredients do not taste good alone. Don’t try to eat flour or shortening alone. Depending on the quantity and what ingredients are added, magic happens. Actually, this is probably chemistry that happens, but since I am not very scholarly when it comes to the sciences, I prefer to call it magic. The truth is, it is probably all chemistry or physics (too bad I never took those courses in school)! When I take these baking ingredients in different quantities, depending on the recipe, the final results look nothing like the ingredients from the start. Amazing cookies, cakes, pies, muffins, and desserts magically appear from these ingredients.
Flour – Oh, that white stuff. I use King Arthur’s general purpose flour. I just feel better that it is not bleached with chemicals, like regular white flour. I won’t go into all of that except that Canada and Europe have banned the use of the chemicals that bleach flour, so it just seems safer to use unbleached flour. It looks the same and works the same as bleached flour. There are plenty of different types of flour, but for my purposes, my recipes I am discussing are using general purpose flour.
Leavening – There are three commonly used leavening agents: baking soda, baking powder, and yeast. Both baking soda and baking powder are considered dried leavening. Baking soda is a sodium bicarbonate and it reacts quickly when it encounters an acid, whereas, baking powder is sodium bicarbonate along with two acids, thus “double acting” that you see on the label of baking powder. This causes the leavening action to be slower over a period of time allowing rising, in such things as cakes and muffins. It will give a lighter texture than rising with just baking soda. Yeast is a single-cell organism, which needs food, warmth, and moisture to thrive. It converts its food (sugar and starch), through fermentation, into carbon dioxide and alcohol. It’s the carbon dioxide that makes baked goods rise.
Fats – Which is more evil, fats or sugars? It depends on who you read or whose documentary you are watching. I think both can be dangerous. We just have to keep all things in moderation. Fat in baking contributes tenderness, moistness, and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished products, and can serve as a flavor enhancer of blended ingredients while contributing its own distinct flavor. Fats include anything from butter, oils, shortening, or lard. (I have never baked with lard).
I learned how to bake in home economic classes in high school. Before that, I did what I would call minor baking at home. We used a box cake mix, a box muffin mix, and pie crust sticks (I have never touched one of those things since I have learned how to make a crust). I think I found the magic back in those days. I learned how to bake quantities, doubling cookie recipes for Christmas, making several pies at one time for Thanksgiving. I have become more adept at my baking skills and organization. If I have a lot of baking to do at one time, such as for 
Thanksgiving, I measure all my ingredients, put it in small zip-lock bags, and label the bags. The day I am doing all my baking, because pies must be fresh in my opinion, I have all these bags lined up with the ingredients and it becomes an assembly line of quickly putting together each pie. Rather than being overwhelmed baking all my Christmas cookies in a day, I make one kind of cookie a day. I hold out a few for tasting, and the rest get put in freezer bags and frozen immediately. I don’t see them for weeks, and they don’t call my name, tempting me to eat them before its time.
There is something therapeutic about mixing the ingredients. I put a musical playlist on the speakers in the house—Christmas music, or something that just makes me feel good. A year ago, we did a minor remodel of the kitchen. I had the cooktop removed from the island and moved to a counter on the perimeter. Then a new top was put on the island which gives me an 8 foot prep area. I have worked in kitchens with next to no counter space, so this is a joy to be able to have room for all the ingredients and work area, and it helps me stay organized and focused during preparation. I have found that if I am rushing, I will miss an ingredient or not make the recipe properly. That’s why the music plays, ingredients are in order, and I have the kitchen to myself to concentrate.
Flour, sugar, fat, and salt, seem to be the basis of baking recipes. Then take those added flavorful ingredients, be it fruit or chocolate, vanilla, other flavored extracts, add it, and bake. Magic happens! Nothing looks like the basic ingredients that I began with. I am always in awe seeing the recipe rise in the oven, brown, and its look is totally different that what it looked like when I slipped it into the oven. Magic!
Oh, this is magic! I love to see the smiles, the ooh’s and ahh’s, from those to whom I serve these recipes. It is in the creation.
continue to do baking at home.
