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© Catherine Haslag

A Simple Moment

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My grandpa and I (age 2) eating lunch in the kitchen.

My grandfather died 2 months before my 13th birthday. Other family members died previously, but my grandpa’s death was the first big death I was old enough to remember in any kind of significant way. I had the wind knocked out of me in a way I hadn’t experienced before.

It started Labor Day weekend.  My mom was in D.C. on a business trip, so I stayed at my grandparent’s house that week while she was away. Grandpa started to feel ill over the weekend. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. My uncles finally convinced him to see a doctor on Tuesday if he wasn’t feeling better. He was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday and died Thursday morning before I got on the bus to school. I found out about 10a when my Uncle Willie called the school. He picked me up 20 minutes later. I can still remember the silence of the truck ride back to what just that morning had been grandma AND grandpa’s house.

That night, my grandma stayed in bed. She had just lost her husband of 47 years. My uncles were gone, probably making funeral arrangements. My job for the evening: answer the door when people came to pay their condolences, receive any food they brought, and Tetris it into one of the refrigerators in the house. (I grew up in a very small town and EVERYONE feeds you when there is a death.)

My grandpa loved to pull us behind his mower – be it on a toboggan or in a wagon.

My grandparent’s neighbor, Barb, brought over a breakfast casserole. We went into the kitchen to add the casserole to the already bulging contents of the green fridge. After closing the fridge door, I looked at her. We probably stood there for only 10 or 15 seconds, but it felt like so much longer. Neither of us spoke yet we shared volumes. We stood there in our silence, looking at each other. I felt like she knew everything I was feeling. That she got me in that moment, understood the weight of my grief, and made a space for it. It was a gift. We shared a teary hug and then she went home.

I don’t remember anything else regarding what people brought or even who visited my grandparent’s house that night, but I remember every second of that brief exchange with Barb 27 years later. I doubt Barb remembers it or has given it a second thought, but this moment touched me deeply. I felt like someone really saw me in my grief in that moment and it was everything to me. We offer these moments to people without even realizing the gift we have given them.

The gift of a simple moment too deep for time.

Floor Furnace

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In the fall of 2009, I was in the middle of a divorce.  My 4.5-year marriage had been failing for longer than it had worked. It became apparent to me that this relationship wasn’t what I needed. A friend of mine owned a small rental house that was empty. She lent me the key so I could have a place to go to get away from my soon-to-be-ex-husband and the house we owned while the legal system caught up with what my heart already knew – that the relationship was over.

This is very much like the floor furnace I describe in my blog. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of that actual floor furnace to share. (image obtained from Pinterest)

This rental house, a small 2-bedroom, 1-bath bungalow, had a floor furnace in the dining room that heated the house. That floor furnace would become my touchstone over the next year.

It is where I sat when I called my mom and told her I was divorcing my husband.

It is where, wrapped in a blanket, I sat and cried about the loss of the life I had known and tried to figure out what I wanted to do next.

It is where I stood each winter morning in my robe to warm myself after I moved into the bungalow and finalized my divorce.

It is where I conducted many hours of conversations with my very patient girlfriends as they helped me navigate the emotional labor of ending a marriage and moving forward with my life.

Its creaks and clicks became the soundtrack of my life while I surveyed the world and planned my next steps as a single woman.

Like a light bulb to a new-born chick, it provided me with physical warmth during an emotionally trying and cold period in my life.

In January 2011, I left the floor furnace and moved out of that bungalow, headed on a northern migration. I had that furnace for just one year, but that was all I needed. I had developed a plan forward and it was time to move on, much like the chick that outgrows its need for warmth from the light bulb.

There are times when we will realize the smallest thing did so much for us – a moment of understanding silence, a book that touched us deeply, a hot cup of tea at just the right time. These are the simple things that make the hard times in life bearable. While things and moments are fleeting, their impact on us lasts a lifetime.

© Catherine Haslag

Aunt Jo’s German Chocolate Cake

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My Aunt Jo holding baby me circa 1980.

My Aunt Jo made a three-layer German Chocolate Cake from scratch. About 9 years ago, I obtained her recipe from my mom because I wanted a way to connect with Aunt Jo. I wanted to create something she once did. I didn’t like her cake when she was alive to make it because I was too young to appreciate coconut and chocolate cake. Thankfully, my dessert appreciation has matured since I was 7. I loved my Aunt Jo. She always had those yellow Brach butterscotch candies in a dish and she let me play on her organ and piano when I came over. All the stops on the organ fascinated me and I loved to flip them in different combinations and see what sounds I could make. I must have made all kinds of horrible noises during my musical experiments, but I don’t ever remember her telling me to stop.

Mostly, I remember how much I loved her. The kind of pure, endless love only a little kid shows. The kind of love that hasn’t been damaged by hurt, disappointment, and time. When I bake her cake, I am reminded of that love, of her, of her carpet on my feet, and the noises I made on her organ. It’s a way to connect with someone I love and barely know. A way to keep her alive. When I share that cake with others, I share her and the love I have for my Aunt Jo.

Below is the recipe my Aunt Jo used. It was straight off the box of Baker’s German chocolate (which I didn’t know until I wrote this post). It is best made as a 3-layer cake but can be made in a 9×13 pan, which is much easier to transport. May you bake this treat and share it with those you love.

GERMAN’S SWEET CHOCOLATE CAKE

Used by Aunt Josephine Samson

Aunt Jo’s three-layer German Chocolate cake.

Ingredients:

1 pkg.  (4 oz.) BAKER’S GERMAN Sweet Chocolate

½ cup  water

4 eggs, separated

2 cups  flour

1 tsp.  baking soda

¼ tsp.  salt

1 cup  butter, softened

2 cups  sugar

1 tsp.  vanilla

1 cup  buttermilk

Procedure:

HEAT oven to 350°F.

COVER bottoms of 3 (9-inch) round pans with waxed paper; spray sides with cooking spray. Microwave chocolate and water in a large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 1 ½ to 2 min. or until chocolate is almost melted, stirring after 1 min. Stir until chocolate is completely melted.

BEAT egg whites in a small bowl with mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form; set aside. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each. Blend in melted chocolate and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating until well blended after each addition.

ADD egg whites; stir gently until well blended. Pour into prepared pans.

BAKE 30 min. or until a toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Immediately run small spatula around cakes in pans. Cool cakes in pans 15 min.; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Spread Coconut-Pecan Filling and Frosting between cake layers and onto the top of the cake.

COCONUT-PECAN FILLING AND FROSTING

Time prep:  20 min

Total Servings:  About 4-1/2 cups or 36 servings, 2 Tbsp. each

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks

1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk

1 ½ tsp.  vanilla

1 ½ cups  sugar

¾ cup  butter or margarine

1 pkg.  (7 oz.) Baker’s Flake Coconut (2 2/3 cups)

1 ½ cups chopped Fischer’s Pecans

Procedure:

BEAT egg yolks, milk, and vanilla in a large saucepan with whisk until well blended. Add sugar and butter; cook on medium heat for 12 min. or until thickened and golden brown, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

ADD coconut and nuts; mix well. Cool to desired spreading consistency.  This is mix is also used between the layers of the cake.

© Catherine Haslag

A Traveling Legacy

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What the Wind Told

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Cover of What the Wind Told by Betty Boegehold.

One of my favorite books of all time came into my life on a Halloween night. A neighbor lady worked at Scholastics and gave out candy and books to trick-or-treaters. I was the last kid to come to her house one year so I was the lucky recipient of half a crystal punch bowl of candy and a stack of books. A jackpot of massive proportions to someone who could still count their age and not use all their fingers to do so. One of the books in my acquisition was titled What the Wind Told.

The story of the Old Woman’s Window.

Published in 1974 and written by Betty Boegehold, this book tells the story of Tossy, a little girl who is homesick and bored out of her mind. She eventually asks the Wind to tell her stories about the windows across the way to help her pass the time. The Wind tells Tossy stories of a woman whose kitchen floor turns into a pond during the day, a family of plants who keep their children on the window sill, and a dog who sits typing names for things all day long.

The story of the Old Dog’s Window.

What the Wind Told opened my child-mind to the idea that each window contains a story. I wanted to learn those stories. To this day, I enjoy touring other’s homes and looking at their houses as I walk down the street. Each window tells a story about the people who live there. The widower who hasn’t changed anything in the living room since his wife died. The family of 6 who lives in a 2-bedroom house. Bunk beds stacked in one bedroom with sheets in the windows for curtains. The retired neighbor who loves to sit on his 3-season porch and wave at passers-by. The immigrant family who purchased their first home and is chasing their American Dream.

Drool and Gool hiding in the middle of their apartment, terrified.

More than 30 years later this book still inspires my imagination. A home a few doors down from where I live has captivated me for years. It reminds me of the Scary window described by the Wind. The windows are dark and the curtains are always drawn. I never see anyone come and go from the house. There is no car in the driveway or garage. There are never any tire tracks in the snow come winter and the sidewalk is never shoveled. Sometimes I see a cat in the window, staring back in boredom. There are decorations by the door and someone does live there, but there is no evidence of this other than the bored window cat and dumpster and recycling found weekly at the curb. Every time I walk by this house, I imagine that Drool and Gool are hunkered down in a pile of furniture in the living room, hoping no one calls or knocks.

Unfortunately, What the Wind Told is out of print and copies of it are very expensive. I am so thankful for the neighbor who gave me this book when I was a child. It sparked my imagination and taught me that windows are glimpses into others’ lives. The stories our windows tell about us are beautiful and incomplete. A glance at the private lives contained in our homes and hearts.

 

PLEASE NOTE:  All photos used in this blog were taken from my copy of What the Wind Told and are not my personal work or of my creative labor. They were used in this blog to help communicate the essence of the book and provide an illustration of the stories the author was telling.

A VERY SPECIAL THANK YOU to Alvina Jaegers for the Halloween candy and books. Your house was my favorite to visit on Halloween night.

© Catherine Haslag

Memorex

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When I was 12, I was given a boom box for Christmas. I had always loved music and this was a tool to access the musical world. The boombox had an AM/FM radio, cassette tape deck, and a CD player component on it. My favorite feature of this gift was the ability to record songs from the radio onto a blank cassette tape. At that time, the only way to listen to music on demand was to own a recording of it on cassette or CD. The cheapest, but by far not the easiest, way to possess a recording of your favorite song was to record it off the radio. I had many mixtapes of my favorite songs for my efforts.

One of the blank cassette tapes I used to collect my favorite songs from the radio.

The quest to capture my favorite music from the radio took time and planning. I ALWAYS had a blank tape cued up in my cassette deck when I listened to the radio so I was prepared to press record when the latest Counting Crows or Bush song came on. I might spend weeks trying to get a song. Sometimes I couldn’t get to the record button fast enough to catch the start of the music. Other times I turned on my boom box only to find that a song I had been trying to record for weeks was in progress and I was just moments too late to capture it. I hunted for songs like a lepidopterist chases butterflies. DJs would sometimes talk through the intro or end of a song, so many of my radio recordings have the sound of DJ sprinkled in. I think DJs did this just to torture those of us trying to record from the radio.

When a cassette was full, I would listen to the songs over and over. I could rewind, pause, stop, and start at any point in the music I wanted. It was an amazing feeling to have built my own mixtape of sounds I loved. It was equally incredible that those cassettes survived the constant use of a teenage girl.

Now, we have almost any song we desire at our fingertips in an instant. When I was a teenager, I listened to the radio for hours a day. Now, I rarely listen to the radio. Spotify, Amazon, and my collection of MP3 music files are my go-to when I need to hear a beat. My boom box no longer has a blank cassette ready to record. Mixtapes have been replaced by playlists.

I still vividly remember most of the songs I captured from the radio on my mixtapes. I have created a 90’s Mix Tape Spotify Playlist so that I can reminisce about those times whenever I want.

When you listen to it, I hope you also hear a teenage girl lunge across her bedroom to hit record.

© Catherine Haslag

Warmth and Laughter

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A beautiful Christmas tree in St. Paul, MN 2020

Christmas 2020 was different for most everyone.

I typically travel home to Missouri to visit my family. We used to gather at my uncle’s for dinner before or after Christmas Eve mass. He loved to make New England Clam Chowder and play Christmas music on his stereo during the holiday celebrations. We would enjoy a meal and laughs together. When both my grandparents were still alive, sometimes my cousin and I could talk them into letting us open one gift on Christmas Eve. One year we both chose to open the heaviest package. It turned out to be a pound of nails from my grandpa. That year, we were consumed with building forts outside. There wasn’t a board on the property we hadn’t punched full of nails to build our forts. We even confiscated the dog bed for one of our structures before we were told to put it back. I don’t know if grandpa was trying to encourage our interest or simply keeping us from consuming more of his nails. So much Christmas tradition has changed over the years; however, the warmth and laughter of those times with family and friends have always been a part of Christmas for me. It is the one tradition that hadn’t failed me.

This Christmas has been very different for me and not just because of social distancing. My uncle died in 2019 and the family home we celebrated so many Christmas days in sold last month. This year was going to be different for my family even before COVID-19 jumped the pond. I chose not to travel home to see my family because of coronavirus. My significant other and I had a quiet Christmas at my house instead. We made Indian Butter Chicken (I chose a non-traditional Christmas dinner on purpose) and celebrated Zoom style with various family and friends. We spent the day in our jammies, exchanged gifts, watched Soul on Disney+ (totally worth the watch), drove around and looked at Christmas lights (it was a banner year for Christmas lights), and ate enough sweets to make us diabetic. It was cold outside in Minnesota and there was snow on the ground, but there were warmth and laughter inside.

Of all the things that have changed about Christmas for me, warmth and laughter is one tradition that remains constant. May it remain constant for you as well.

© Catherine Haslag

More Than a Band-Aid Box

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The band-aid was invented by Earle Dickson in 1920 to provide ready-made bandages for his wife, Josephine, to use when she injured herself in the kitchen. He told his boss at Johnson & Johnson about what he created and the company soon began producing their BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages. Because BAND-AID® Brand was the first band-aid available, eventually all-ready-made bandages were referred to as band-aids, though not all bandages are BAND-AID® Brand bandages.

One of my grandma’s band-aid boxes, found in her sewing supplies after she died.

According to the Johnson & Johnson website, they began packaging BAND-AID® Brand bandages in decorative tins in 1926. The website indicates that people reused the empty tins to store many things, including “small nails, holding extra buttons and safety pins, even storing marbles and baseball cards.” My grandmother was no exception to this.

My grandmother kept cash around her house in band-aid boxes. White metal BAND-AID® Brand tins and green and white plastic Curad® boxes. They were under where she sat in the living room, in the cabinet in the kitchen, and in the top drawer in the utility room. They were sprinkled around the house. One time, the family was sitting around the living room, talking about who wanted what when grandma died. Grandma was in the room, participating in this conversation. In a moment of silence during this macabre conversation, my Uncle Jerry said he wanted the band-aid boxes. Everyone laughed, including grandma.

My grandparents came of age during the depression. My grandpa was born in 1916 and my grandma in 1918. They both knew how to make do with very little. Grandma didn’t just repurpose band-aid boxes. She could reuse just about any container. When she died, my Uncle Willie cleared stacks and stacks of Cool Whip, Country Crock, and other plastic tubs of similar size/shapes from her kitchen and basement. To this day, I don’t assume that there is actually Country Crock in a Country Crock container any more than I assume there are band-aids in a band-aid box.

In reality, she used band-aid boxes for more than storing money. The one pictured here was in her sewing cabinet holding notions. I found it after she died and kept it. A remembrance of my grandma and the story I shared above.

Last November, my aunt, and uncle sent me $40 for my 40th birthday. Each $20 bill was carefully folded into a heart. I couldn’t bring myself to unfold them, so I placed them in my grandma’s band-aid box. It seemed like a fitting home for them. The perfect place for an emergency stash of money and love.