Category Archives: comfort memories

comfort memories, peanut butter

Memories and Oddities

6 Comments

Tonight as I was eating supper, I was reminded of the Sunday suppers when I stayed at my grandparents farm. Why? Peanut butter. (I had some peanut butter on celery to go with my salad supper.)

I learned early in life that if you were at Grandpa P’s on Sunday evening and there wasn’t a big group on hand, supper was going to be a bowl of cornflakes or other cereal with milk, buttered toast, and – if you were grandpa – a spoon of peanut butter. One of my enduring memories of my Grandpa P at ease is him sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, leaning back with a smile in his eyes and a spoon hanging out of his mouth as he slowly enjoyed his peanut butter on a Sunday evening.

Of course, all us grand-kids wanted to do what grandpa was doing and have a spoon of peanut butter as well. Grandma had a stricter (and saner) view and prohibited us from imbibing until we attained a more advanced age. When I finally reached an age that grandma deemed responsible enough to partake of the straight peanut butter, I was allowed to try my spoon of peanut butter just like grandpa. What a disappointment!

The actual experience left a lot to be desired versus the wonderful thing it had become in my mind from watching grandpa. If you have ever taken a spoon of peanut butter, you have discovered how sticky and gummy it really is – especially if you are young enough to be a bit impatient. Especially if you don’t have a cup of hot coffee to help melt it on down the throat.

If I had been a brighter pupil, I would have learned my lesson then. But I didn’t, and so a number of years later I can remember being given a bit chew by grandpa while we were out working in the shop. Although he took great pains to warn me not to swallow, I’m sure you know what happened. Yep, I have never had a worse self-induced bellyache in my life. That was the experience that finally taught me that it probably was not wise to want to emulate all of grandpa’s habits, no matter how much I idolized him.

P.S. It amazes me that I can see the Sunday evening table setting with absolute clarity even now many years later. The white bowls and matching juice glasses that I think grandma got as part of a box top or Tang promo stand out and evoke all kinds of pleasant memories any time I think of them. They star in so many of my memories of Sunday and breakfasts and grandpa and grandma’s farm …

comfort memories

Comfort Memories

8 Comments

From time to time we all need a dose of “comfort memories” to get us through the day and replenish our mental facilities. “Comfort memories” are memories that are deeply etched in our minds and give us a sense of joy and emotional fullness and calmness when we recall them. They replenish our emotional state and leave us happier for having remembered them. One of my favorite comfort memories comes from the summers I spent on the farm with grandpa and grandma P.

The day is hot and stifling. It has been getting hotter minute by minute all afternoon. There is hardly a bit of breeze and I can see the heat devils rising from the fallow strips in the dryland field down the road. The yard around the house is grassy and shaded by trees and sits on a bit of a rise, giving me a view into the distance where I can see grandpa and my uncle on their tractors working in the fields. More accurately, I can see the rooster tails of dust rising up from behind the tractors as they move round the fields.  I am still young enough that I don’t work the fields, but old enough to be left alone at the house as grandma has gone elsewhere. I can see to the horizon more than 20 miles away. I can close my eyes and dream my big dreams and plan my future and wonder what we will have for supper and …

I see the clouds billowing up in the distance, being fed from the heat rising off the ground, growing higher and higher and turning darker and darker. As they slowly approach, they are changing from the cotton puffs of earlier in the day to the menacing thunderheads that blanket the the entire horizon. The breeze starts to pick up and the heat devils are joined by dust devils as they merrily play a game of tag and spin round crazily. The arrival of the breeze is the signal for me to go inside. The storm is getting close.

Once inside the house, the storm continues to journey closer. The day that was so bright only moments ago is now darkening as the sun falls behind the towering thunderheads. The wind begins to gust with that here and there, uncertain motion that presages the possible coming of rain. The wind in its vigor and uncertainty makes the screens on the open windows whistle and zing bewitchingly. Grandma’s sheer curtains fly up to the ceiling and down again and again, like ghosts hoping to play. It’s almost as if the storm is trying to sing to me through the screens and the curtains are dancing to the melody. The temperature begins to drop, falling from the upper nineties to the seventies in moments. It feels good to have the cooling breeze running through the house and over my skin after the lazy heat of the day. The thunder and lightning continues in the distance, coming ever closer, getting ever louder.

Suddenly the crescendo of thunder and lightning and wind peaks and then just as suddenly begins to begins to fade. The sun once more emerges from behind the clouds as they continue their march into the distance, carrying the thunder and lightning and wind with them. Shortly the only way to know that it really happened is the cooler temperature and the fact that the yard outside is covered in newly fallen leaves and twigs. I can go back outside and continue my contemplations as I watch the dark clouds recede into the distance. The world is once more a place a dreams.

To this day, all I have to do is hear that characteristic zing of the screens in the breeze and I am transported back to those times, times of feeling all is right with the world and that all is working as it should. Times of infinite possibility when the future was mine to craft. When I want to think deeply or just calm myself, I imagine the zing of the wind in the screens and then I am back there, in my wonderful memory.

What are some of your “comfort memories?”

Time to go for a walk and get ready for the council meeting tonight. It could be a long one, so I figured I’d get this out early.

Completely off topic, but I can’t help myself.  I was reading National Geographic the other day and came upon the factoid that that at birth a blue whale is about 25 feet long and weighs 3 tons. I then compare that to the blogs where mothers to be are hoping that the forthcoming little one is not going to be a ten pounder. What does a momma blue whale wish for? Not only that, but the baby blue whale, eating nothing but mother’s milk, gains 9 pounds an hour. So how does a momma blue whale feel at the end of a long day of nursing? Just asking.