More Delights and Disdains . . .

of a diminutive nature of late . . . Number 6

Disdains:

Shedding a few tears with my son as I made ready to leave him at university for the summer term.

Delights:

Helping my son move into his first college dorm room. The dormitory resembled a Soviet-era housing project that was actually livable. The elevator worked, the air conditioned room was cold, and the paint was a fresh medium shade of bureaucratic brown. So, no complaints needed.

Watching with amusement the dad of some unseen student stand guard over a big screen television on the sidewalk and wondering how they were going to cram it into the elevator, much less into the kid’s dorm room.

Shedding a few tears with my son as I made ready to leave him at university. Yes, this duplicates the above disdain but reminds me of life’s bittersweetness, the beginning of new adventures, reaching another milestone and all of that . . .

Listening to the first volume of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative. Published in three volumes from 1958 - 1974 its pages were meticulously written by Foote with an antiquated dip pen. He said that the delay caused by re-inking his pen every three or four words greatly influenced his narrative style for the good. This method forced him to know what he wanted to say before he wrote it on paper (a benefit also claimed by authors who use typewriters). Unlike me who doesn’t know what I think until I have written it. Lucky for me that I prefer to write using a computer since Parkinson’s has taken my handwriting ability. In any event, his pen method along with his sense of history and depth of research makes for an excellent read . . . or listen in my case.

Listening (again) to the third season of my nephew’s crime mystery series Exeter available only on Audible and starring Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ray McKinnon.

Making my mother’s vanilla cake recipe. Commonly referred to as a country sheet cake, she made it on a regular basis throughout my childhood for Sunday dinner or various birthdays. She topped it off with a chocolate fudge icing - all made from scratch and without a written recipe. I suspect she learned how to make it from her sister, who served it at family reunions. I have spent the last 25 years since her passing trying to perfect the hard fudge quality of her icing. I may be finally getting close.