Keckling and aging

Early in my formation of a book club at the library, a woman of forty some years came one time and then confided in a friend that she couldn't join that group because the women were too old!! I was rather stunned as the majority were around my age! But the more I thought of it - and certainly it was her choice - what a potential treasure trove she was kicking to the curb! I realized further, I have always loved hanging around elderly people - at whatever age I was - because the years they represented awed me. And what a lot there was to learn from them! Even it was just not to be as cranky as they turned out to be!!

As my years increase, I would give worlds to be able to sit by my parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents' sides and ask hundreds of questions. The lost history saddens me. I suppose every generation feels this way, but now I want to know context! Why did they cook, think, dress, work, talk the way they did. This all came sharply to me when I was discussing with my husband why I always make "keckling" (cooked soy beans) for Thanksgiving. Mother did. Why? Soy beans don't seem like a Lancaster County staple! So did Grandma Weaver make them? Or was there some foreign influence that came to bear on Mother?! Such a minor detail, but I have such an ocean of longing to know more about the nitty-gritty of our bones.

And the mysterious keckling rocked the meal, as always!

It was a dark and scary night

My bosom childhood friend wrote me on my November birthday, reminiscing about fall days during school days. One Halloween my brother and I decided to have a party for our small circle of neighborhood friends. We went all out with spiderwebs gracing the cellar door entry to the basement (in those days they might have been real!), pumpkins carved and lit with sputtering candles and ghostly figures and goblins lurking in the shadows. Halloween was such a shivery departure from every other dark night - the possibility of lurking figures in costumes everywhere was so deliciously scary.

 And then there was the flinging of shelled corn on peoples' front porches. The frightening staccato noise probably scared us more than the comfortable people inside the lighted rooms! My mother drew the line at soaping windows on houses or cars, and reluctantly granted the corn as it could be swept away easily and eaten by God's creatures!

Why do we like to be scared, within certain boundaries and circumstances. I can still feel my heart pounding on those dark nights. We must have known instinctively there was a lovely circle of safety surrounding us.

Ah, how life has changed.