by Kathy Brasby | Jan 21, 2014 | Stories
I didn’t usually slice a sample of brownies as soon as they came out of the oven but I did this time. Good thing.
The brownies were for our evening Bible study and they tasted like I had drug the eggs through the gutter. I shoved the pan aside and threw together another batch.
And, if it hadn’t been for our older son, that would have been the end of the story.
We were in a hurry that evening, with the meeting plus my husband and I with the younger kids were leaving first thing in the morning for a two-day trip.
Our older son, at 17, was staying home. I didn’t have time to even clean up the bad pan of brownies.
“Don’t worry about those brownies,” I told him. “I’ll take care of it when I get home. Just ignore them.”
“Ok.”
He was trustworthy and I knew he’d be fine home alone. Except for one little problem.
The little problem wasn’t that he got sick. Or that he’d poisoned the dog with the bad brownies.
When I got home, the brownies pan was still setting on the stove. Empty.
“What happened to the brownies?”
He shuffled a little. “I tasted one.”
“Yuck. Those were bad.”
“They were,” he said. “But after the third piece, I got used to the aftertaste.”
“You ate them all?”
He shrugged.
I guess a cast-iron stomach wasn’t too big a problem.
by Kathy Brasby | Jan 17, 2014 | Seasons
Harry dialed his son. “The neighbors came over to scoop off the front walk.”
His son, Dean, lived across town and hadn’t made it out yet. “Oh, good. Thanks, Dad.”
“Just wanted you to know.” Harry hung up. Within minutes, Dean got another call. This one was from his sister.
“Dad says you didn’t scoop off the front walk.”
“Well, the neighbors did it. When did he call you?”
“Just now.”
Dean calculated. His father must have immediately dialed his sister after calling Dean. In fact, while Dean talked to Sharon, his phone buzzed with a new call. It was Harry.
“I better see what Dad needs now,” Harry told Sharon and switched the call to his father.
“Yeah, Dean, I wanted you to know that the neighbors also scraped off our windshield. But I don’t think we’re going to church anyway. It’s cold, you know. I just wanted you to know.”
Harry could no longer scoop snow or carry out his own trash but he could dial his phone. His children had given him a cell phone and it proved to be Harry’s new hobby.
He called all his children regularly and passed on news from one to another. Harvesting news and passing it on the the rest of the family became his daily goal.
Dean learned only to tell his Dad news that the whole family should hear but that was a small sacrifice in the long run.
Harry had a new purpose and it involved his favorite people: his family.
by Kathy Brasby | Jan 14, 2014 | Hope
Our younger son looked up from his computer to land yet another fun fact in the midst of the living room.
“You know about that idea that putting a potato in an exhaust pipe of a car keeps the car from running?”
Well, it hadn’t been the first thing that popped in my mind when I got up in the morning. In fact, I hadn’t thought about that in years.
My mind flashed to the stories from junior high school about the boys who had shoved a potato in a school bus exhaust, or was it the math teacher’s car? Maybe it was the opposing team’s school bus. Maybe it was the home ec teacher’s pickup .
In any case, I was sure it was successful.
Somebody had said so.
So I told our son, “Sure. That works.”
He laughed. That’s never a good sign when you’re the mom and he’s the one with the computer in front of him. “Nope. When you put a potato in an exhaust pipe, what you get is a great potato launcher.”
Oh.
This is the son that I bought the book Backyard Ballistics for many years ago. The idea in the book was to let boys be boys as they were growing up.
This boy built catapults, tennis ball mortars, a paper match rocket, and a potato cannon that didn’t even involve an exhaust pipe.
Still, he was going in the face of junior high legend and I wasn’t sure if I could let that go down without a defense.
“Are you sure?” I asked. It was a feeble defense but I had to try.
“Oh, yeah. They’ve done studies on it.”
I decided to let it go. I really didn’t want to follow him outside to stuff a potato in our car’s exhaust.
“There’s a box of fruit by the fridge,” I told him. Changing the subject was better than admitting defeat. “Oranges, apples, grapefruit. Help yourself.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I could make a fruit cannon.”
“What?”
“The neighbors deserve fruit, too.”
It would have better to concede defeat.
by Kathy Brasby | Jan 13, 2014 | Stories
I’m doing Jeff Goins’ 500-word-per-day challenge for January and promised I’d report in.
After day 12, I have logged 7,008 words and have several blog posts ready to go.
So far, so good. Hold me to it.
by Kathy Brasby | Jan 11, 2014 | Seasons
I knew this when I started the conversation but Dad had lived on a farm his entire life. It wasn’t an easy talk.
Except for the years he’d spent overseas in World War II, Dad had been a farmer. His was a love affair with the land.
But in his later years, his weak legs and fading memory restricted him. Although he no longer was in charge of the fields, he had a few acres around his house that were being overrun with weeds. Fences needed repairs.
Dad couldn’t keep up anymore.
“Maybe we should talk about moving to a place that wouldn’t take any upkeep,” I suggested to him one day.
He bristled. “I’m not moving to town.”
“But it’s getting harder for you to keep up around here. We could find an easier place.”
He lifted his chin as a new idea pushed into his mind. “You kids can take care of this place.”
My brothers had both moved too far away to help, which meant Dad was referring to my husband and my sister’s husband.
“We don’t have time to keep up with our own places,” I said.
“Family should take care of family,” he said.
I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Both our husbands were hard-working guys submarined with their jobs. Adding the upkeep of Dad and Mom’s place wasn’t an option.
But then Dad brightened again. “I’ll just hire somebody to do it.”
This meant hiring one of the neighbors who had a big tractor-mower rig. “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t you call somebody and have them mow? Maybe once a month would keep those weeds under control.”
“I’m gonna do that.”
He never did. At his age, even making those arrangements was too difficult.
He did eventually move to town, which is another story for another time.
But I’m glad I let him take charge of the problem that day. Even when he didn’t follow through, at least he had the dignity of the choice.
