Homecoming Bliss

One of the annual fall festivities is Homecoming. It's a time when alumni come back to root on their high school or college teams one more time. It's a time to welcome back old friends. And it's a time to celebrate the fact that family and friends made it safely home and are here to celebrate with us. After forty some years on the planet, I've come to realize that every homecoming should be a time of celebration.

One Halloween when I was younger, the daughter of one of my parent's friends was killed while she was trick or treating and the guilt and the anguish destroyed her parents. In another instance, one of our fellow church members was killed on an icy road on Christmas Eve. And in an incident that hit close to home, my cousin was killed in a farming accident on my mother's birthday. At the time, the life altering impact of these tragedies was lost on me, but since I've become a parent, I cannot begin to fathom the depth of pain these families felt to have lost their loved ones.

I realize that my kids have to grow up and, hopefully, I've equipped them with the skills they need to make smart decisions: to not drive drunk, to not get in the car with someone who has been drinking, to not do drugs, to stay out of bad parts of town, etc.. However, as a parent, I realize that all too often all the right choices can be undone by one wrong choice made by someone else.

Having someone to come home to is one of the most blissful feelings on earth. I remember one night when I was driving home in a torrential downpour. I couldn't even tell whether or not I had the car on the road and there was no one else on the road whose tail lights I could follow. I slowed down and prayed that I'd make it home in one piece. Walking into the door, I was greeted by a tight hug from my worried husband and the sight of white candles burning on the table as a prayer for my safe return. I never felt more loved and cared for than I did at that moment.

Next time you drop your kids off at school or your husband off at the train, take a moment to tell them you love them and when you're reunited make sure they know how much they matter to you. Remember, every night there are families out there who sent their loved ones off to ordinary activities, who don't get another chance to tell them how much they matter.

Chocolate Bliss

I discovered an awesome little spice shop in Evanston a few weeks ago called Spice House. Walking into the place is a safari for the spices. They have the most wonderful rubs for meats, herbs de Provence that smells as if the herbs were just picked from the French countryside, and a "Dutched" chocolate that can invoke Nirvana with one sniff.

They also have multiple varieties of vanilla and for a girl who grew up in the country believing that vanilla was what you had when chocolate wasn't available, discovering true vanilla was a life changing experience. Spice House sells multiple variations of vanilla including extracts from Mexico, Tahiti, and Madagascar. Opening the bottles is like a trip to a far off place that's full of all the goodness on earth. If the vanilla extract is eye opening, the vanilla sugar is pure bliss. Imagine pure cane sugar mixed with pure vanilla extract and vanilla beans. Opening the jar is an ecstatic experience and this bliss can be eaten right out of the jar. I bought a jar and poured a little into my hand to sample it and was hooked. The sugar has a course texture and rolling it around on my tongue, I knew what decadence really was as I let the sugar dissolve on my tongue and the vanilla flavor explode into my mouth. I bought one jar of this heaven and have yet to cook with it as the flavor is addictive right out of the jar.

Chocolate and vanilla is as a potent combination. The sultry silkiness of the dutched chocolate combined with the sweetness of the vanilla creates heaven on earth. After a little experimenting, I discovered the absolute perfect recipe for hot chocolate. I take about six ounces of milk, two ounces of heavy cream, 3/4 tbs of dutched chocolate, a tbs of sugar, and a drizzle of vanilla paste. I heat it all up until it is the perfect drinking temperature and pour it into a coffee mug. Before I sip it down, I take some time to savor the sweet and tantalizing fragrance and then I sip the ambrosia. This incredible hot chocolate puts me in a very mellow and relaxed mood and helps me to sleep very deeply.

This morning I made the mistake of making my special brew before work thinking it help me chill out and go into work relaxed. And it did put me in a mellow mood, so mellow that it was really difficult to concentrate on the work that needed to be done. From now on, I promise to only enjoy chocolate bliss after work.

Helping Bliss

Long, long ago, I listed one of my blissmakers as helping other people and easing their burden. It's one of hte blissmakers that's lingered the longest without being written about, mainly because I was waiting for a big, showy, look at me gesture to convince all of you how wonderful I was about easing someone else's burden. The gesture had to be perfect, it had to be about someone else, but still make me look good.

Everytime, I'd review my blissmakers with the goal being to write about one of them and close it out, that one kept jumping out at me and taunting me as if to say, that I'd never do something that would satisfy my strict criteria. I've been thinking about that one a lot lately, especially since I discovered the 29gifts.org site which challanges us to give every day for 29 days. Now typically, when Americans think of giving, they think like I do about the big showy gestures. But giving doesn't have to be big showy gestures, it should come from the heart and it can be as simple as a smile, a kind word, or a compliment. So with that in mind, I've joined the 29 day challange and to get started, I'd like to share with you some of the ways that I've helped ease people's burden over the last few months. The point of this is not to convince you all that I'm a saint, but to help you realize that every little bit counts:

• I dropped everything to go out and help my mom when she needed me. It wasn't an emergency, but she needed my brother to sign some paperwork so we both went out on a Saturday at the last minute.


• I helped a coworker track down a contact in another division. It would have been easy to just say, "Sorry, not my problem." But helping him out was the right thing to do.


• I've taken my daughter to tanning more than once on days when I'd just as soon crawl into bed and sleep the day away.


• I've donated a typewriter and clothes to our local Goodwill. This benefits both the person who buys the stuff at a discount and Goodwill as they profit from my donations.


• I've given my husband a back rub to ease his aching back.

None of these are grand and magnificant gestures, but they were all given from the heart with no expectation of repayment and they were all done because they were the right thing to do and that in itself is a pretty blissful thing.

"Luving" Bliss

My father was a better writer than I will ever be because he always wrote from the heart and every so often, I'll find a piece of prose he wrote and my eyes will tear up knowing the world will never get to read these wonderful pieces my father wrote.

My dad wrote the following and it is the least I can do to share it with the world on my blog.

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While traveling through my native hills, I stopped beside the busy highway at a small cemetary and since the day was hot I decided to walk in the shade among the stones. Some had verses proclaimin gtheir everlasting love. In the rear of the cemetary, was a small potter's field where those with no money were buried. It seemed they were forgotten in death as in life. In the corner was a large fieldstone that caught my eye, on it was the name, date of birth and death, at the bottom was a verse, crudelly spelled: "I luv yu much. John." As I stood there, I thought of this man of the hills, I am sure his hands trembled and he had tears in his eyes as he carved that stone proclaiming his love.

So if like the man of the hills, poverty is my way of life and rings of gold and silver I cannot buy to show my affection or in death stones of granite or marble to proclaim my love, I hope my friends and loved ones will understand: there is no shortage of love; just of cash, because "I luv yu much."

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Daddy, I will always "luv you much."

Bowl of Bliss

Families are made and not born.

The smell of oil and vinegar always reminds me of Grandma Elda because no matter what was for dinner we always had salad with oil and vinegar served in a wooden salad bowl. Some days the salad was leaf lettuce with tomatoes and other day's dandelion greens but the dressing was always oil and vinegar with garlic and oregano thrown in for good measure. I loved helping fix the salad. I'd pull the bowl down from the shelf and inhale deeply to catch the faint smell of salads past.

Elda was my grandmother by love and not by blood. My mother and her daughter in-law were friends and she became my babysitter when I was six months old. She diapered my bottom, dried my tears, and taught me to love homemade spaghetti sauce and tomatoes. Grandma lived about six blocks from our house and some days when I was supposed to go home, I managed to "forget" and wangled an invitation to Grandma's house for dinner. There was always room for one more around her dinner table and I ate countless meals with Grandma Elda, Grandpa Tony, their son George, his wife Joan, and their two daughters Vicki and Joyce who considered themselves my big sisters.

Summer was the best times to be at Grandma's because during the summer her beautiful gardens were in full bloom and all manners of goodies came from her garden. At Grandma's I learned to love fresh lettuce, tomatoes straight from the vine, and green beans. During the fall, marathon-canning sessions would take place when Grandma made homemade spaghetti sauce and all manners of jams and jellies.

From the time I could eat cake until my sophomore year of college when Grandma got too sick to bake, I'd always have an angel food cake for my birthday. Nothing ever tasted as good as that cake I watched her painstakingly bake and turn upside down on a soda bottle to cool. When it was ready to be frosted, she'd cut off the crusty parts of the bottom and let me have a taste and then she'd frost it with buttercream icing.

I'll never forget Grandpa Tony's funeral. I was ten and I didn't exactly understand what it was like for Grandma to lose the love of her life but I do remember that after coming home from Grandpa's burial, Grandma cooked a huge turkey dinner and made sure that everyone was served and satisfied.

Grandma died ten years ago and not a day goes by that I don't think about her. I inherited the yellow tupperware juice glasses that I drank orange juice out of as a child and serving my two children orange juice out of them makes me think of Grandma. I think of her every time I start to complain about how menial housework is because she always did the most menial of tasks cheerfully. From her example, I know that being loved and loving others is more important than how much money you make or what you do for a living.

Bliss Tomato

The handwritten sign read "Tomatoes -- 50 cents a lb." I'd stopped at the Farmer's Market in Mt. Carroll, the town where my mom lives and the four booths were a far cry from the 20 or 30 booths that fill the farmer's markets in the Chicago Suburbs, but we'd stopped because my mom wanted to show me the booth selling tumbled glass.

I was trying hard not to show my suburban arrogance as we visited each of the booths in turn and checked out their wares. The second booth we visited was selling home grown tomatoes. It was almost closing time for the market and there were only a few tomatoes sitting out on the table in the sun. The handwritten sign drew me because it was written in an old fashioned hand that reminded me of the letters from my grandmother that I occasionally find stuck in drawers or in boxes that hadn't been opened in a few years.

The older gentleman selling the tomatoes was wearing a crumpled fedora and a gray jacket. As he put the tomatoes I'd chosen on the small scale, I was struck by his work worn hands and the careful way he handled the tomatoes as if they were a precious gift to me, his customer. The tomatoes were small and misshapen, unlike the perfectly red beauties that come from hot houses and commercial farms, but this gentleman handled them as if they were gems. He weighed them up and we finished our transaction and at the time I didn't think anything more about it.

It was on the two hour drive home when I started thinking about the tomatoes I'd purchased and how this little old man had probably grown them in a small plot of land. How some of them had graced his table and how he brought the rest to market hoping to make a few extra dollars. Thinking about the dignity of this man and his grace in bringing those beautiful tomatoes to market, reminded me of my Grandmother Elda and her homemade spaghetti sauce.

Grandma Elda wasn't my "real" grandmother, she was my babysitter when I was a child, but I grew up loving her like she was my own grandma. Grandma had a wonderful garden full of all kinds of wonderful treats. Every fall, she'd spend what seemed like weeks bottling homemade tomato sauce to eat during the winter. Her small kitchen was full of laughter and love as she, her son, and granddaughters boiled and strained the tomatoes. The house would be filled with the wonderful smells of garlic, onions, and tomato sauce and at the end of the day, there would be mason jars full of crimson red tomato sauce sitting on the table waiting to be carried downstairs.

During the cold, dark, days of winter, Grandma would make spaghetti and stew with those bottled jars of sunshine. Spaghetti was my favorite and on the days she made spaghetti, I'd plead and beg to stay for supper. Grandma would brown stew meat and then dump two jars of that wonderful spaghetti sauce in and let it simmer all day. By the end of the day, the kitchen would smell divine and dinner would be a sumptuous affair with all of us slurping down Prince spaghetti covered in that divine sauce.

Arriving home and basking in the memories of those wonderful meals at Grandma's, I vow that the little old man's tomatoes, will get their moment of glory. I cut them up reverently and put them in my wooden bowl, I find some fresh mozzarella to top the tomatoes with and then drizzle some olive oil over the tomatoes and top it all with a sprinkle of Italian seasoning.

The tomatoes burst with a tang of sweet summer bliss not to be found in the cardboard monstrosities found on store shelves, the oil and tomato juice combine to add flavor to the fresh mozzarella and as I eat that sumptuously simple meal, I'm reminded that bliss should be found in the ordinary.