It’s December 4–20 days until Christmas Eve.  It isn’t quite so busy  a time as it was when we were young, but we still have a lot to prepare, as to cleaning, organizing the rooms for company, special food, and programs to attend and to perform.

We have both been sick, and are trying to recover.  For husband, it has already been a 6 day siege, while for me, it is only 3 days so far.  We cancelled our obligations for yesterday and today in favor of rest.   I hope that you, dear reader, are well and happy during this season.

Now we are in the season of Advent, a time of repentance and preparation for the Second Coming of Christ.  We are also preparing for the celebration of the first coming of Christ into our world.  Most people in America probably are not aware of Advent, since it is not emphasized as much as it once was, and since we are not a homogenous society.  But for liturgical people, it is a time of deep reflection, and sober consideration of life.  This year, with all the attention given to the Mayan calendar, maybe more people are thinking about the end of the world, and maybe some of those people will wonder about spiritual life.  It’s certainly difficult in America to think about spiritual life in the midst of our materialist culture.

It is a well attested fact that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born, lived and died in Israel.  No one can dispute this fact.  It is also well attested that Jesus rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven.  He claimed to be God.  Christians believe he is God. For us, Christmas is the celebration of God incarnate as man.  All the gifts, parties, decorations, romance, music, and family gatherings are secondary.  The primary focus is the love of God for the people he created.  Man is in a mess, but God is a clean up expert.  God himself came to earth to redeem man from all evil.

The heart banner I made for our choir program (see the post: sewing) stands for the heart of God, and for our open hearts to receive grace and love from God.  Is your heart open to truth and grace?    That is the Advent question for all of us to ponder.

In October, our church choir director talked about our special program for December 16.  She said she was envisioning how it would look in the front of the church.  She said she was thinking of a heart and she formed her hands in that shape.  After the rehearsal, I talked with her and asked her to define more fully what she wanted.  I volunteered to make this for her.  I haven’t done any sewing for four years, and I sold my machine four years ago.  I was thinking, “I still have my mother’s machine from the 1950’s, so I can do it.”  Well!  The machine had some problems, so I took it to a repair guy.  Oh, he had so many in line before mine.  So I borrowed my daughter’s machine.  I bought some fabric, and started in.  I had fun experimenting, but my first project didn’t work as I had hoped.  On to the next idea.  Then, when the newspaper ladies wanted to come to take those pictures, I had to put everything away.  And I only got it out again after all the company left.  Meanwhile my machine was finished and I brought it home.  Alas!! I still have problems with it.  But, since I had the other machine, I was able to finish the project.  It is far from perfect, and I can think of many quilters who could do finer work.  But it is my offering, and it is what I could accomplish.  I hope it meets the director’s expectation. Picture a white background with a red heart outline.  Simple in the end, but not so simple in the process.

In contrast to the Thanksgiving weekend, it is quite warm now.  On Sunday, I went outside in just a light jacket, and planted some chrysanthemums which I had bought in October.  I had thought it was too late to put them in the ground, but they were still green, and the weather was so warm, I planted them.  I also cut back the asparagus ferns, weeded the bed, and put some compost on the bed.  I had been waiting for the ferns to turn brown, and the last heavy frost did that.  Even so, there were a few green ones still present.  The plants are confused I think.  I have found tiny shoots of bulbs already coming up.  The seeds in the straw I used for mulch have come up as green grass, I think alfalfa.  I’m letting it grow, and will tun it under in the spring.  The strawberry plants are still green, as are the various ferns near the house.  I cut back the lavender plant, but it has all reappeared. I also cut a lot of mint, but that has come back too.  It’s still quite dry here, entering the second year of serious drought.  I’m mulching heavily in hopes my soil won’t dry out.

November was a flurry of activity as we finished the attic, except for staining some woodwork, entertained my sister for a few days, cleaned our house, talked with a writer from our newspaper who featured us in an article and had a visit from the photographer and writer, planned for Thanksgiving, and visited with our son who arrived for a whole week’s visit.  His arrival was somewhat of a surprise for us, as he had not told us exactly when he would be coming.  But we were delighted to have his company.  We celebrated  Thanksgiving on Friday, since our other son and his family arrived then.  All 13 of us were able to sit at one table in the dining room. We had hoped the baby would be there with us in her high chair, but she napped during dinner time.  Our feast included traditional foods such as roast turkey, cranberry relish, green beans, salad, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, rice stuffing and bread stuffing.  Traditional, in this context, means the past 200 years or so.  It also means, our family traditions.  For a long time, I could not eat wheat, and during that time, I learned to make stuffing for the turkey out of rice.  This stuffing is now a favorite of one daughter.  First, you cook the rice as usual.  Then you cut up and saute onions, celery, and mushrooms.  Mix with the rice, and put it inside the turkey for roasting.  According to your taste, you can use salt, pepper and thyme for seasonings.  The recipe was on the small box of brown rice many years ago.  I thought I had saved it somewhere, and maybe I did, but it is in my head now. These days rice comes in a big plastic bag.

Since I can eat wheat now, or at least, I do eat it, whether it is good for me or not, and since we live in the Midwest now, I make bread stuffing also.  I use the Betty Crocker recipe, with the apples and raisins, and pecans.  This year, I put the rice inside the turkey, and the bread stuffing around it in the roaster  pan.  I use an electric roaster these days—so convenient.

Our daughter acquired the turkey from a farmer.  We prefer the fresh turkey, with no additives.  This bird was delivered to me on Monday before Thanksgiving.  It had been killed only a few days before.  It is three times more expensive than the ones in the grocery store, but worth every dollar, in our family’s opinion.  It weighed more than twenty pounds, but fit in our roaster pan nicely.  On the first day, we fed 13 people.  On the second day, 12 people.  On the third day, we fed 6 people.  On the fourth day, we were back to just the two of us, and we had some sandwiches.  Then I cooked the carcass for soup, and gave half to our daughter.  Counting the meals from leftovers, we can say we served 35 people from that turkey, and the soup is still to come.  We put the broth in our freezers.

Our daughters met on Wednesday and made many many pies, about 14.  These were all eaten by the end of the third day.  They included blueberry, pecan, pumpkin, apple, peach, mincemeat.  Mincemeat is a traditional food, prepared in the fall to be ready for the festivals of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I make it from beef heart, apples, raisins, currants, oranges, lemons, sugar and spices such as cinnamon.  First I bake the meat, then chop or grind it.  Next chop the fruit, add the juices, sugar, and spices, and then pour whiskey and brandy over it.  Then it ages in a crock in a cool place, in this case the refrigerator.  To serve it, we bake it in a pie.  First you have to heat it on the stove, to get it started, then put it in the pie and bake.  You have to get it hot enough long enough to change the alcohol.  Otherwise, though it is safe to eat, you might as well just have a glass of brandy.

It was quite cold that weekend, so cold that we could store food on the porch.  But we were especially grateful for our complete family gathering, since it was the first in three years.

A recent comment says, “I want to talk with you for learning English.”  I am happy to help you learn English.  Please leave a comment telling more about your situation.  Meanwhile, I strongly recommend the site Englishclub.com which is highly developed for learners and teachers of English.  Thanks for commenting and I wish you well.  If I understood the computer more fully, I could actually provide the link for you.  Alas, you will have to type in the words yourself.

I have been absent for about two months. I’ve been adjusting to being at home. I think life is one continual adjustment.
We’ve started to work as substitute teachers. I’ve signed for only Monday, Thursday, Friday, and most of the time, I’ve worked on Friday. I’ve signed only for the school in our neighborhood. It’s about the same distance from my home, as the apartment was from the campus in China. Still, it seems like a long way to walk here. A twenty-five minute walk to get from one place to another seems too long, while an hour walk for enjoyment seems short.
We do have a bus system, but I seldom see the buses and I don’t know the schedule. I know it isn’t frequent or convenient. That’s a big adjustment for me. We share one car, which Husband uses most of the time, as he works more often, and goes farther afield than I. I feel that we have gone back in time to the early days of our marriage. But right now, we have seventeen days until THANKSGIVING! We are getting ready for the whole family to visit.
I hope that you are well, dear reader, and that your daily “adjustments” help you grow stronger and happier.

Stand on the deck of the Golden Eagle Ferry crossing the Mississippi River and receive a peach from your friend who is taking them from his orchard in Calhoun County, Illinois, to a market in St. Louis, Missouri. Let the breeze blow your hair and let the sun shine full on your face and let the juice drip on your chin as you taste the sweetest peach you’ve ever had.

Drive about 200 miles to Hood River, Oregon, on the Columbia River, go to an organic grower, and buy 100 pounds of peaches, only a tiny fraction of his harvest, just a few small boxes in that huge warehouse. Drive back home to the coast, where it is too wet and chilly to grow peaches, and put the boxes of peaches into your kitchen, where they now appear huge because they take up a lot of space in the kitchen. Spend the next day processing those peaches into canning jars. In the dark and rainy winter, open a jar, share the peaches with your family, and taste the fruit of summer sun.

Invite all your sisters to your home, and prepare together the peach cream pie from the red Betty Crocker cookbook, in honor of your mother, your childhood memories, and your sisterhood. Eat this pie together at the end of a sumptuous feast. Laugh and talk into the night, and then eat just one more small piece of that pie, while you sit together on the porch swing in the moonlight.

In China, buy a few peaches from a street vendor who holds a hand scale and adds enough peaches to make an even weight, never taking any away to make a smaller weight, haggle for a minute or two—just to engage in the game—then pay a comparatively low price, and take them to your apartment. Wash carefully with your bottled drinking water, sit down and marvel that this treat is available to you.

Go next door to your neighbor who has a peach tree in her backyard. Take a dishpan full of her peaches home. Peel them, slice them , and put them in the freezer for use later on, when you will put the frozen peaches with some other fruits and perhaps some yogurt into the blender to make a delicious energy drink before swimming, bicycling, or running.

Open your refrigerator when you arrive home from a long trip, and find a large box that says, “Life is Beautiful. Eat a peach.” Open the box and see that it is full of large ripe Colorado peaches, a gift from your daughter to welcome you home. Eat one right away, because life really is beautiful, especially when you can EAT A PEACH.

Michigan is a land of blue sky, a different shade of blue than I see elsewhere, intense, deep blue, and a land of water reflecting that blue.  Our first visit was to friends who live on a lake. (Note for non native speakers of English: “on” here means the people own a property that extends to the edge of a lake.  The house is on this property.) We arrived in the evening, and after supper in a restaurant, we went on a ride on our hosts’ pontoon boat to watch the sunset. When the breeze turned to wind, it was quite chilly, so we wrapped up in blankets kept on the boat for this purpose. On our third night, we had a “campfire” beside the lake.  We talked about the days of our youth, long gone, and our host mentioned a piece of music he had performed called “Glory Water.” We spoke of the ancient system of dividing the universe into “earth, air, fire, and water.”  These are still the elements of life itself.  Although there are many houses on this lake, and a busy road leading to it, it is still peaceful beside the lake, with the crescent moon rising over the water, the fire glowing in the dark, and good friends talking into the night.

During the days we visited our son and his family in a small town a few miles distant.  They live in a house built in 1847!  Their village is historic, but up to date and prosperous.  Our new granddaughter, nine months old, is delightful.  We went to a park where we saw farm animals, went on an old fashioned hay ride, cooked supper outdoors on a grill, and took a boat ride on the large lake.  Each of the children on board, including our baby girl, securely carried by her father, got to steer the boat under the captain’s watchful eye. This boat could seat about 35 people, but on our tour there were only about 20 people.  This park includes an exhibit about historic farming.  People can touch the animals: pigs, goats, cows, and horses.  They can see the chickens, ducks, and turkeys.  Our hay ride wagon was drawn by horses. I felt we were going back in time, a slower pace, a quieter place.

Our son lit the charcoal fire in the grill and cooked the food brought from home: beef steak, potatoes, and squash.  We also had blueberries grown in Michigan. Our daughter-in-law had everything we needed in a small basket, well organized and ready to use.  We had a  blue table cloth for the picnic table, plates, steak knives, forks and spoons.  We sat there by the lake, under the shade tree as we ate.  Food is more delicious in such a beautiful setting. After supper, we still had a little time before the boat ride, so we flew the kite given to us in China to celebrate the birth of the little one.  She sat on her blanket on the grass and clapped her hands while her older sister, brother, and Dad flew the kite.  There was just enough breeze to start it flying a short time.

The weekend with our family was all too short, but they must go to work, while we are free to travel on.  We drove through miles of corn and soybean fields, marked by lines of trees, and visited our elderly friends.  Even though 45 years have passed since this man was my teacher, we still keep in touch.  He is 90 years old now, and slowing down somewhat.  Still, he and his wife are truly living “happily ever after” in their new home.  I asked what they do all day?  They pray, read and study, walk in the mall every day, and they are involved in activities with their church.  They still have a car which the woman drives, so they can go where they want and need to go. They are people we admire and hope to emulate.

Next we drove to Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit. Detroit is more than 300 years old and is showing signs of age, losing population, and losing business.
Dearborn is the home of Henry Ford, who figured out how to make a car almost everyone could afford.  He was an inventor and a businessman.   Dearborn’s population is about 100,000 people, of whom about 50,000 are Arabs. As we drove down the street seeing signs in Arabic, we thought we might be in a foreign country.  Our friend in Dearborn is 87.  She lives in Henry Ford Village, a retirement community.  She swims three times a week, and works as a volunteer daily in an organization that provides English classes and other services for new immigrants.  She still drives her car around the local area, but has given up long trips. We met this lady through her sister, whom we met in China.

Sharing a teaching experience in China created a bond with this friend and we have visited several times since 2004.  She lives in Florida and is visiting friends and relatives with her new husband.  We are people traveling from far distant places, meeting for a few hours in a place both of us are visiting.  We shared a meal and much conversation.  I mentioned that my Seattle sister had participated in a half triathlon: half mile swim, 12 mile bike ride, 3 mile run; and that she had completed this in 2 hours and 8 minutes.  Our three friends said that they were all in training for such an event, albeit slightly shorter.  I am amazed at their stamina and hope that as I continue to age, I’ll be stronger than I am now.

We continued our journey to the area where we lived for twelve years.  We are staying with a friend who owns acres of land and has created her own peaceful paradise.  We can see wild turkeys and sometimes deer roaming outside her house. She has a hummingbird feeder on her porch, so as I am writing now, I can see the tiny birds feasting there.

Each day we visit old friends, and family.  We see the passage of time especially in the children who were babies when we knew them, and in the young adults who were children just a few years ago. We spent a day with two of Dear Husband’s brothers.  We’ll see the third one on our way home.

Since the village where we lived has only about 1000 people, it is quiet, and we can see the stars at night.  My friend and I sat outdoors after sunset in her back yard, and had a campfire.  The night was cool, the stars filled the sky, the fire warmed our hearts.  We shared our thoughts and experiences of the years we have spent apart.  We sang together.  We skipped the marshmallows, a traditional campfire treat, but it was not a great loss, since neither of us needs the extra sugar.

Today is a lull, a quiet time between the full days.  We have several more gatherings to attend before we turn toward home.  We’ll leave Michigan, the land of blue sky, blue water, green fields, and happy memories.  We’ll hold it in our hearts as a portion of HOME.

We are in Seattle, a city in the Northwest of USA. My sister’s home is on a hill overlooking Lake Washington and the mountains behind it. I see the blue sky, the blue water and the green trees.
Because of the dateline, we left on Sunday morning from Beijing, and arrived 20 hours later, on Sunday at noon. We’ve had a good night’s sleep and are ready to visit our many friends here.