Sloppy Joe, Sloppy Sloppy Joe

Lots and lots of years ago, way back when I was a lass, our family on my Mom's side would gather in summer for barbeque's at Grandma and Grandpa's house. A family gathering for a family with 9 children, their spouses and the grand kids, plus a few friends that were regulars, made for a well populated party!
Their house was a grand Victorian over 100 years old that sat on a large parcel of land, the backyard was a perfect setting for such a gathering.
Mismatched metal chairs filled with aunts and uncles dotted the lawn, and the sound of clanging horseshoes mingled with the smell of smoke rising from the grilling bar-b-q ribs, were the trademark. Grandma was a kitchen genius and always had a variety of summer salads to choose from, Waldorf (still a personal favorite!), 3 bean, old fashioned potato salad, cole slaw, there was certainly no reason to leave hungry!
Ribs were not the delicacy then that they have become now. They were relatively inexpensive which is partly why (the other part, they're delicious) they were the grilling food of choice for such a large number of people.
For some occasions it really is just necessary to serve ribs, it is the only acceptable option, like on the 4Th of July, but now-a-days ribs break the bank and are a treat reserved for rare celebrations.
Sloppy Joe's are for my kids, what ribs were for me as a kid. It became the food of choice when appetites grew with the size of us and the expanding guest lists. It really began out of necessity, as the most cost efficient way for me to have plenty to feed everyone and like my Grandma, send no-one away hungry. Interestingly it has become the food of choice especially for birthdays, we have all come to associate a family gathering with sloppy Joe's, like it or not, that's what's on the menu!
We fancy it up a bit with deviled eggs or as G-ma and G-pa like to call them "angel eggs", black olives always a staple for finger adornment and for the across the room to a mouth open wide toss, veggies, cheeses, Wickles Pickles hors d'oeuvres (a recent addition), chocolate cake or rice krispy treats on lucky days, chips and pop.
We decided to mix things up recently and changed the menu to another childhood family favorite, homemade sliders, shakes and fries. That day the power failed, the fries had to finish cooking on the grill, the rolls flopped because the oven was goofed up in the power blip which resulted in a dash to the store for ready mades, lunch that was planned for 2:00 happened at 5:00 and we sweltered in the unusually high temps of 90 something! I'm not suggesting these odd phenoms occurred because we dared change the traditional family gathering sloppy Joe menu, just that it is indeed odd. All of the mishaps that resulted from that particular days power malfunction actually made the whole get together even better than we'd planned since we had to improvise and the improvision was memorable!
In the grand scheme of things the menu is the least of it. Time spent in good company growing relationships and making moments that will last in our memories is the far better purpose.
I suspect in the days ahead as the grand kids grow and the family morphs into one that looks different than it does right now, when we think about how birthdays and family gatherings used to be, there will be the fond recollection of the slider mishap and large pots of sloppy Joe. I'm not sure we'll try the sliders again, that's a lot of burger assembly, fry frying and shake shaking, but the sloppy's are probably here for a good long run yet.
If we bump into you as we ready for a gathering you'll get an invite, we love extras, you can probably expect sloppy's on the menu because there's always room and food enough for friends, nothing fancy just a family tradition. Who knows, maybe like ribs sloppy joe's will one day be a delicacy reserved for only the most special occasions, but then we already knew that!
Here's to gathering at the crockpot!

My Space

The small house that I and my family have called "home" for a quarter of a century, has grown. It's dimensions are the same size they have always been but the occupiers of the space have taken leave for spaces of their own, leaving me with this space, for my own.
This newly available space has been the subject of many recent considerations as I thought about paint color and room use and objects for decoration. It's a mental activity that I have always enjoyed as I poured over decorating magazines and brought home stacks of design books from the library to inspire creativity dreaming of room re-do's.
This room that I've been working on has been available since November when it's dweller signed up with his best girl for matrimony. It has taken this long to come up with a plan and the time to implement that plan.
I finally woke up one morning that I didn't have to go to my job and thought, I'm going to paint that room! The room painted still left me with decisions about furniture placement but it's always easiest for me to put it in there, move it around and actually see it to make a final determination. I also enlisted the opinion of my son who had an idea that I had not even considered and as it turns out, his idea was the best one, and I love the space!
I now have a "library" / guest room / craft room. The library part is really the only part finished but I am so excited about it! I had 2 sets of shelves that happened to fit side by side on a small wall and they don't swallow up the space in the room. My beautiful books are for the first time all together and easily accessible like a real library! I am not a big fan of novel type books, I gravitate toward design and decor books filled with pictures that inspire me to make something fabulous. I have some very old books, a couple that were my Dad's as a child, I have devotionals, short story books, books of poetry, and love letters, sweet sentiment that reminds me of the beauty that is this life. I have a collection of childrens books from when my kids were little that are as entertaining and amusing now as they were then. It's good to revisit a childlike perspective of innocence from time to time, these books assist!
I can't leave well enough alone. Book shelves cannot possibly be for only books, so little treasures were added to the nooks and cranny's filling vacant spaces with framed photos of family my hearts joy, a heart shaped rock found on a trip, a small wire bicycle handmade by the Zambian people my parents were missionaries to, a hand painted tie that was my grandpa's, some skeleton keys, a horse shoe, a couple of unusual pop bottles saved from travels, a bird shaped tag from a special birthday gift, and there are more.
It's so much more than a library. It's a museum! the artifacts of my life are contained in that small piece of square footage. It is my history in bits and pieces. I was so thrilled to be placing each of the items as I recalled the reason for which the item was acquired, and so thankful.
All at once I thought, this is a grandma's room! Grandma's all have these spaces, I have become them! It even smelled funny! Then to my relief, I remembered I had a bag of scented candles in there!
Maybe it just is a right of passage to have a space like this, one that until you have lived the right number of days, until you have raised your children, until you have an empty or emptying nest, you just don't have a right to.
There's a price to pay for this right. While I finally have the space that I desired for so many years, and can fill it with all my simple treasured objects of wonderful days past and fondly remembered, it comes at a cost.
Within these same walls over this quarter century, entire childhoods have come and gone. The room has had a patriotic theme, a black and white theme, it's been blue and it's been gray. It has been carpeted, tarrazzo, rugged and tiled, It has contained 2 beds, 4 beds and 1 bed, and the belongings of the sleepers in those beds.
I picked many a crayon and Lego out of the cracks between the carpet and baseboards. This is the room of toy car driving, band instrument practicing, trophy displays and a hang out enjoyed with many friends. From this room sleepy little wild haired boys emerged each morning wearing only t-shirts and underwear. From this room bare footed boys bounded out with energy and excitement to get to the plans of the day. After stepping from this room, one day at a time, my little boys stepped across that threshold so many times that the journey they began then, took them into their manhood now.
It has been a journey on a path paved with so many precious fleeting moments, and it is now my right to have this space of my own and to fill it with the objects that bring back the memories. One could never replace the other, not even a remote possibility, it was all so good then and it is all so good now.
If you get to Florida and need a place to stay I have space. I will welcome you into my space and joyfully tell you about the quirky display of "things" on my library shelves, in my museum.

Marred Visage

It seems increasingly so, that we as the human race are becoming more shallow, less independent, more fickle, less loyal. The more we have, comforts we are able to enjoy, emphasis we put on youth with it's strength and beauty, and wealth, and knowledge we acquire, the more insecure, weak and dissatisfied we become as individuals and as a whole.
We don't measure up.
To what?
The things that have stolen our focus are false, fleeting and fail. None of it is dependable and all of it uses up the very limited number of days that total up to be life, wasted. Life's visage marred.
Easter approaches and my thoughts are on chocolate bunnies and colored eggs, after all as we "hop into spring" these are the pictures painted by the advertisers, retailers and various media for our minds and thoughts to absorb. Unless there is some background with someone to tell you that there is another explanation for the holiday know as Easter, someone to tell that it is not about bunnies but a lamb, a sacrificial lamb, and a cross and a miracle and a victory, then all there will be is chocolate bunnies and colored eggs, and woven baskets of sugared marshmallow chicks and jelly beans. Easter's visage is marred.
For me, Easter was always about something special, someone very special. Easter meant a service at church on Good Friday evening to ponder the moments in history that changed the future of the world of anyone who chose to let the story turn their world right side up. While there were chocolates and egg hunts, there were also new Easter dresses and new white Easter shoes to attend Easter Sunday church service for a celebration of the life, death and resurrection of the Man Jesus, Son of God, who's whole life purpose was a plan to redeem back to God those who were hopelessly unpresentable in and of themselves. Ordinary people who's visage was marred.
Just in the last week or two I have read the words of the prophet Isaiah about that Man Jesus, written some 700 years before Jesus was even born. The 53rd chapter lists details about the Man who was yet to be born, who would fulfill the words written about Him 700 years earlier and who would "sprinkle (startle) many nations" and who's truth would cause even the most powerful people on the planet, kings, to "shut their mouths at Him" and "consider" Him. This is Easter.
The Man, God with flesh and in Spirit. The description of what He chose, did not have to, voluntarily did as a human which culminated in why he became a Man in the first place; His sacrifice, His offering to God the Father, for the blotting out of the sins of every body who would accept His offer, This is Easter.
Life is in the blood, no blood no life. His blood covers sins, washing them away exposing only life, clean and unspoiled as God created it and intended it be for us all.
The horror of the barbaric physical treatment that caused unimaginable suffering and spiritual anguish, the marred visage, the unthinkable facts of those last hours of His life are brought to attention at Easter.
We have communion with juice and crackers meant to symbolize our remembrance of what He did, and why and for whom, to reason in our own hearts and souls and minds the cost. Though the offer to us is free and available to everyone just the same, it surely was not cheap, it surely was of great cost, impossible to ever be able to pay ourselves. But there was 33 years of life lived here among "us" as a human being, what of the rest of His time living and understanding life as we do?
Isaiah says he was quite ordinary looking, not the King Messiah that the Jewish people were expecting to come and turn their world right side up, just a man so ordinary that He wouldn't even be noticed, wouldn't stand out in a crowd, wouldn't be paid any attention to. He Knows how it is not to be cover of a magazine beautiful, to be last picked for the team. He was hated and avoided for doing the right thing as everyone He encountered in life was so full of themselves, He knows what it's like to be alone, unaccepted, unwelcome and unloved. He was teased, taunted, mocked, dismissed as crazy, and rubbed people the wrong way for doing the right thing so badly that they sought to and finally did, kill Him. They foolishly thought His death would end His influence, they were obviously mistaken. They refused His message of freedom, hope and life, but could not stop it from reaching the ears and hearts of us, 2000 years into the future.
I love Him.
His life is one that was lived in such a way that I trust He fully knows and understands mine. His death was so only my body would die while my soul, the real me, lives. His resurrection is the first of the many He made intercession for and who will join Him forever.
I love Him.
His marred visage, as well as the picture in my mind, though I know what I picture falls far short of the awesome reality of the description in Revelation 19, of Him on a white horse, beautiful not plain; powerful and authoritative, not subjected; clothed in a robe fit for only The King of Kings, not naked and humiliated.
I love Him, because He demonstrated His love for me, first.
This is Easter.

Isaiah 53

Who, if any could live their life rejected
by the very ones for whom life was invested?

Who could withstand such objection and disdain
that passersby would choose to go the other way?

Who could endure the hurt of constant ridicule,
taunting and contempt for good and truth?

Who's heart could be broken, yet selflessly live
still concerned for others and choose to forgive?

What man could bear humiliation before his mother,
the person he'd prefer to honor over any other?

Despised, rejected, Man of sorrows acquainted with grief,
He was not desired for any appearance of beauty

stricken, smitten, afflicted, oppressed, chastised,
wounded and bruised, undeserving of the stripes.

He exchanged everything He had, His good and innocence,
for what was yours and mine, condemnation and violence.

Interceding for our transgressions, purchasing our peace,
taking what was ours upon Himself, so we'd be healed.

In this labor of His soul He's pleased and satisfied
knowing the exchange He made would make us justified.

Who is He that overcomes man's evil with God's good?
Jesus, Servant of God, saves the many no other could.

P.J.