It’s been a lovely visit, filled with family, pets, a party to celebrate the solstice, Christmas Eve dinner with friends so old they are essentially family, many visits to thrift stores and lots and lots of cooking. We lit candles and made our annual Christmas wishes. On Christmas morning, my parents and I chopped veggies, stuffed a turkey and cooked breakfast together, just as we’ve been doing for years. My sister wandered downstairs a little later, bleary from having gotten up at 6 am to drive a friend to the airport.

I’ve walked nearly every day with my mom. I’ve gone through a few lingering boxes of childhood relics. I’ve been to two different New Seasons. I’ve read seven books and slept at least 10 hours a night. I made bear claws for my dad upon his request. I’ve talked to Scott everyday and have wished that he had been able to come with me.

Each time I come to Portland, I look around this jewel of a city and wonder why it is that I moved away. It is clean, friendly and incredibly livable. And yet, Philly calls. Tomorrow night, I’ll answer that call and go home.

Despite the dearth of internet, I had a wonderful time while in Portland. There was an unprecedented amount of snow on the ground, the most the city has seen since the winter of 1968 and so many of my plans for fun outings and shopping trips were curtailed (Bob’s Red Mill, I’ll just have to get out to your store next time).

My sister rolled into town on December 23rd, driving up from Shasta the day before another huge storm hit. Church was cancelled on Christmas Eve because of the snow and so we stayed at home and sang Christmas carols together instead. Here’s a little video clip of Raina and Mo singing Blue Christmas (with some back-up from my mom in the kitchen).

Scott and I got a Christmas tree about a week and a half ago. It’s the first Christmas tree I’ve had as an independent adult and it’s been a fun thing to put together. There were some initial tensions when we first were stringing lights, and Scott had accused me of being a little bossy when it comes to ornament placement (which is probably an accurate accusation), but once we got over those initial bumps, the tree has been a delightful thing. I’ve also enjoyed getting to use all the vintage glass ornaments I cherry picked from Walla Walla thrift stores during college, as well as the ones that my mom would give me each year.

For those of you starting families, giving your children an ornament a year is a wonderful tradition to start. From the time we were babies, my mom gave my sister and me an ornament each year, with the plan in mind that by the time we were adults, we’d have enough to decorate our own trees. As kids, we loved seeing our boxes of baubles each December (if you’re doing this for multiple kids and you get them matching ornaments, make sure to discreetly mark them so that there’s no fighting about which belongs to whom. Many of mine have tiny ‘M’s’ inscribed on hidden spots with black sharpie). However, I don’t think that she imagined it would take me until my 29th year for me to get my own tree.

If you’re interested, you can see more pictures of the tree here.

Scott and I already exchanged Christmas presents this year. We’re not going to be together on December 25th (I leave for Portland on December 21st and he heads to Virginia to be with his mom on the 24th) and neither of us is particularly good at waiting. He gave me a very spiffy, super wide angle lens for my camera that took the picture you see above. For so long, I’ve primarily lived with a fixed width 50 mm lens on my camera, so the amount of the world I can now see through this new lens is jarringly awesome. I got him a watch, so that when I ask him what time it is, he won’t just offer me a bare wrist (it wasn’t an entirely selfish move, as it was also what he asked for).

Speaking of Scott and me, we celebrated our one year anniversary last week. We’ve now been friends for three and a half years and together as something far more than friends for a year. It’s been a really good year. I will be forever grateful that we made the leap from friendship to partnership.

In other news, I’ve been blogging like a cooking/writing machine over at Slashfood. For December, I’m doing a feature in which I post a recipe for an edible gift every day of the month. Half way through the month, I’ve only missed one day (I have never claimed to be perfect). Yesterday, I posted a recipe for some Spicy Sweet Roasted Nuts that uses butter, maple syrup, rosemary and cayenne to create a highly addictive, giftable snack. Some of my other favorites so far this month have been my dad’s Pancake Mix, Lemon Curd (inspired by gifts my cousin Lolly used to send out) and Rosemary Scented Salt (cause it’s easy).

That’s essentially the current round up. I’m looking forward to my week in Portland, despite the fact that neither Bonnie (the dog) nor Dinky (the cat) are there to greet me anymore. My mom and I have big plans to hit The Bins (Goodwill Outlet Store) and the Bob’s Red Mill Store and I’m hoping to finish a few books.

How’s everyone else doing these days?

Being that I enjoy cooking, handling the bulk of the Thanksgiving meal was a pleasure for me. I’ve prepared this same meal in tandem with my parents many times and so it was really fun to take that knowledge and be the primary one to stuff and roast the turkey. Scott helped me with the actual stuffing of the bird, and I have to admit that I got a little frustrated with him when 1. He wasn’t able to anticipate my every move (the nerve!) and 2. When my plans for how to close the stuffing into the turkey cavity didn’t work out as I wanted at first. Thankfully, he was fully prepared for the fact that I was going to yell at him at least once during the day and so didn’t hold my momentary frustration against me. It helped that I also apologized a little later in the day (and made a special batch of stuffing that had no mushrooms in it, just for him).

Dinner was really lovely, with the perfect combination of chaos and order. Scott’s mom Joan chopped potatoes, later Jean spent a good half hour pushing them through the ricer and Dan did a skillful job of carving the turkey while I ran around and put the finishing touches on the veggies (roasted brussels sprouts and peas and carrots). It was really fun to have both the kids there, Derek was entertaining and personable, while three month old Juliet was totally mellow and good-natured.

Best of all, I now don’t have to cook for days, as I have plenty of leftovers.

Toasty, our dog at that time, loved fruit and so would zig zag between our legs with a half-chewed apple in her mouth. I took my job as apple scavenger very seriously, filling my bag until it threatened to tear under the weight of the apples. Occasionally I’d lose my footing for a moment on a rotting apple, but even that seemed unthreatening, just a small price to pay for free apples.

The orchard was always quiet, any sounds from the road muted by the fallen leaves and the curve of the hill. In my memory, it was always overcast in that way that is unique to Oregon, with mist that sometimes turned into drizzle. Occasionally a sunbeam would glow through the moisture, illuminating the entire orchard with diffuse light that made us feel like we were on stage, play about to begin.

The Bybee-Howell farm is the highest point on Sauvie Island and was the place that residents from all over the island would gather during the yearly floods, back in the days before the dike was built that controlled the river. I learned that when I was nine, when they still offered tours of the old farm house. I also remember that throughout the house, the door knobs were lower than seemed practical, because during the time that the house was built, it was the fashion that ladies be able to just skim the tips of their fingers along the knobs.

When we were done, we’d carefully scrap mud and bits of apples off our shoes and head for home with our scavenged goody bags. Later that day, my mom would get down to the business of washing, peeling and chopping the apples (carefully cutting around any yucky bits), making four or five gallons of apple sauce before she was done. All that apple sauce would get loaded into zip top bags and stacked in the freezer, so that we’d have sauce to last us until the next fall.

My sister blew through town earlier in the week, bringing with her a handful of new songs, John Elliot, Mudge the accupuncturist and lots of chaos. She rolled in a minute or two after 4:30 pm on Sunday afternoon, pulling her ‘new’ Subaru station wagon into the parking garage just as I was leaving to go to latihan. She lept out of the car and tackled me with hugs. It had been nearly ten months since we had last touched. Also standing with me was my cousin Sabrina with a sleeping Juliet (now nearly two months old). They had been walking past, heading home after some errands and so had waited with me to see Raina. It was a moment of gorgeous synchronicity, as four members of the same family unexpectedly met on a little patch of concrete for ten minutes.

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Two weeks ago, Aunt Anne died. She would have been 89 this Monday. After living for nearly nine decades, she was more than ready to go. I am sad, though, that she didn’t live to see the November election. She hated George Bush and would have loved to have seen Barack Obama win (and according to recent polls, he is winning!). She was the last member of her generation and lived in altering states of disorientation and clarity. My father often spoke with her about god, spirituality and the possibility that the soul continues to exist after the body dies. We all hope that those talks gave her some sense of comfort and aided in her ability to let go. I am relieved that she is no longer struggling with a body that can’t seem to get enough oxygen, but I do miss her loving sass.

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Last Friday, Scott and I were driving to a friend’s surprise party, trying to get there before the birthday boy got home from work. The post-work traffic was slow and I found myself getting frustrated quickly. I normally try to be a generous driver, believing that the world flows better if you let people change lanes and pay attention to your part in the body of traffic. However, in that moment, I struggled to stay in that place, just wanting to get there. At the peak of my frustration, a cab driver to the left of me rolled down his window and asked me to let him move over into the lane in front of me. In Philadelphia, cab drivers never ask and rarely attempt to obey traffic laws, moving as if rules do not apply to them. The fact that this one individual was willing to communicate and engage in the conversation of driving surprised and delighted me. I let him in with a grand wave of both arms and felt my frustration drop away.

My sister and I sat by her cage while my parents filled out paperwork and paid the adoption fees, trying out potential names, giddy with the idea that we’d soon have a baby animal in the house.

As all puppies do, she turned the house upside down. We roped off a section of the family room for her and put down some newspapers. We quickly discovered that she was a chewer, destroying anything left within her reach. She also was an eater, gulping down all things edible (and more than a few things that were questionably edible) often before we could stop her. Once, she managed to scoot her body up onto the kitchen counter and grab a two-pound bag of pitted prunes from the fruit basket. She ate the whole thing and had to be baracaded in the basement for three days as she had some of the most horrific diarrhea known to humankind.

One of my family responsibilities during high school was to take her to the park across the street. Back in the mid-ninties, Wallace Park had an unofficial dog run up behind Chapman Elementary School and people came from all over the neighborhood to bring their dogs over there. During Bonnie’s first couple of years she loved playing and running with other dogs. When we’d arrive, they’d say, “Oh good, Bonnie’s here! She’ll get them running.” And she always did, leading a pack of eight or ten dogs in a lopsided circle down the hill and back up again.

When I went away for college, I’d often tell my mom to put me on the phone with Bon when I called home. She’s line the phone up with her ear and shout, “Okay, go ahead.” I’d give her thirty seconds of my best baby/puppy talk. Bonnie never made any noises in response, but when she got back on the phone, my mom would always tell me that Bonnie had cocked her head to the side, like Nipper in those old Victrola advertisements.

She liked carrots, watermelon, peanut butter and popcorn. She’d take bits of celery if you offered them, but then go and spit them out on the living room rug. When I’d come home after a long time away, she would leap up on her hind legs (until arthritis prevented it) and cry out in a way that made me feel like I had been truly missed. Last December, when I headed back to Philadelphia after Christmas, I knew it was a possibility that it would be the last time I would see her. As I said goodbye, I gave her a little bit extra love.

Last Friday, my mom called as I was driving to a fundraiser at Penn Treaty Park. I knew immediately from her tone that something wasn’t right. I questioned her and she said, with tears in her voice, “Bonnie had a stroke this afternoon and we had to put her down.” She had been on the phone with my sister when she started twitching and acting strangely. She lost the ability to walk in that moment and totally emptied her bowels on the hallway carpet. My father lifted her up and sat with her in the back of the van as my mom drove to the vet’s office half a mile away. It took just five minutes to ease her out of her body and this world.

She left us exactly 13 years (to the very week) that we got her. She was a wonderful dog and she is missed.

I found them on the 18th Street side of the Square, watching Derek trying to throw a ball for a newly befriended dog. After he said good-bye to the dog, the four of us wandered around the Square until we worked ourselves over to the courtyard by the goat, which has always been the spot where all the parents and young children gather to play.

It’s a place where my own grandmother played, when she was 6 or 7 years old. For a brief period of time, somewhere around 1921 or 1922, my grandmother lived with her siblings, their mother and step-father Fred, in a tiny rowhouse across the street from Rittenhouse Square. It was fun to get a chance to see Derek sitting on the same statue that so many members of my family have enjoyed as children.

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Several weeks ago, I answered the Cookthink Questionnaire. It went live last week, and so if you happen to be one of those people who has an unquenchable thirst for greater knowledge about me (I believe my parents are the only ones who actually fall into this category), you can read it here.

Last Friday, my parents celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary. It’s an impressive feat, especially given the fact that they had known each other just six weeks on the day they got married. My dad was 21 and my mom had just turned 23 six days before. After the wedding, they drove from San Francisco to Virginia, getting to know the other person’s quirks and habits, held together by a marriage license and a two-door Karmann Ghia. There were times in the first year (as well as some of the years between now and then) when they weren’t sure that it would work and that the commitments that held them together wouldn’t be enough, but somehow they always managed to make it work.

Recently they were at a party, where the majority of people in attendance were closer to my age than theirs. Someone turned to my mom and asked her how they had done it for so long. She thought for a minute and said, “You have to just keep working at it. Oh, and make sure to take some separate vacations.” Sounds like good advice!