Turkey Day 2013

This will be the first real “empty nest” Thanksgiving for John and me. Sarah is in Chicago for graduate school and will come home at Christmas break. Johnny has to work, so he won’t be able to drive down from Seattle. It will be the first Thanksgiving since we’ve had kids, twenty five years ago, that we’ll go back to it being just the two of us.  

I planned to shop for our turkey on Tuesday with the slim hope that is would be defrosted by Thanksgiving day. I have a history of trying to wrestle/pry the frozen neck out of the turkey on Thanksgiving morning, so you’d think that by now I’d remember to buy the bird earlier, but oh well, why ruin a well established tradition?

The advantage of there being just us two is that I won’t have to cook as much. The experts say to allow ½ a pound to a pound of turkey per person. I jokingly told John that it was going to be very hard to find a 2-lb turkey.

While I looked over the coupons in the newspaper I asked John, “So since it’s just the two of us, what do you want for Thanksgiving dinner?”

I had my pen ready to write the shortened shopping list. He answered, “Well, turkey.”

“O.K ”

“And mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.”

“What about stuffing?”

“Oh yeah, we’ve got to have stuffing.”

I wrote it down. “Do you want succotash?” That was the only vegetable Johnny would eat.

“No, let’s have Brussels sprouts instead.”

“That’s good. You don’t want the applesauce Jello that the kids always wanted, do you?”

“Oh yeah! We’ve got to have that! Oh, and rolls.”

I added King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls to the list. “Cranberry sauce?”

“Definitely! And don’t forget, pumpkin pie. Oh, and sausage cheeseballs!”

I had to laugh, so basically I’d be preparing everything I cook no matter how many people are here for Thanksgiving. I guess he wasn’t kidding all those times he’d told me that he liked everything I made for Thanksgiving. The bright spot of preparing 10 courses this time is that the timing is flexible for when I’ve got to have everything on the table.

At the store I loaded my cart with all the ingredients I would need, including things I’d forgotten to list like olives and Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. I solved the frozen turkey dilemma by buying a fresh free range turkey (no thawing needed), and I bought enough groceries to qualify for a frozen turkey that I can cook later.  John got a new propane tank to cook the turkey on the grill. I’m looking forward to watching the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade and football while cooking at my leisure tomorrow. We will have plenty of time to count our blessings. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Laura Keolanui Stark is looking forward to leftovers. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

While You Were Gone

        My husband John is a scientist and a leader in his field of environmental toxicology. He travels a lot to do research and to present the results at scientific conferences around the world. While he’s on the road, I hold the fort down here at home.

        In the beginning, I whined about him traveling so much. There weren’t any cell phones so he’d buy calling cards and try to navigate through foreign operators to call home. I’d pull the phone into the bathroom while bathing our kids so I wouldn’t miss it if he called from exotic places on the other side of the world, like Thailand. Email made things better. For some reason I don’t worry about him as much as long as I know that he’s gotten to his destination safely.

        He’d return home with gifts and foreign money to give the kids, and entertaining stories about adventures on his travels: Germans who thought he was with their group, Asians telling him what they disliked about the other Asians, soaring in a crop duster over Rota, animals seen on African safaris, and why America is the best in the world—our bathrooms.

     He waited until the kids were older to tell the stories about almost getting shot in Paraguay, or being detained in England because they thought he was an Irish terrorist. One day he’ll have to write a book!

        Now that the kids are grown and it’s just me at home when he’s gone, I treat it like a staycation. While the cat’s away, I don’t make the bed. I stay up late and sleep in. I don’t wear makeup, other than lip gloss. I treat myself to Hawaiian Pizza from Papa Murphy’s. (John doesn’t like pineapple on pizza, so we never get it when he’s home).

I eat breakfast for dinner and snacks for meals. I control the remote and watch chick flicks on TV. I listen to hip hop and new age music. I’ve had more than a few all-night quilting sessions. It’s not like John has ever forbidden me from cleaning house, but for some reason when he’s gone, I get into deep domestic organization. I clean out kitchen cabinets and bedroom closets, reorganizing drawers and my sewing room. It’s fun/lazy time in the Stark house!

        But the undercurrent of all this carefree frivolity is that like clockwork, when he’s gone, there’s always a crisis. It’s like our house acts out as soon as he takes his suitcase through the door. Cars break down. Roofs leak. The last time, our 14-year-old dog got so sick I wondered if he was going to make it.

        This time John left at the start of a major storm. While he flew to Australia, the weekend storm got worse: lots of thunder, lightning, and record breaking rainfall topped off by a tornado (a rarity here) only seven miles away. When TV weather forecasters showed the storm on the map, it looked like a swirling, nameless hurricane to me, complete with predicted gusts of 65 mph.

        I battened down the hatches.  As the rain pounded down through the night, I was glad that we’d gotten a new roof this past winter, and also thankful that we’d had someone trim widow makers off our trees this summer. Although 7,500 lost power, ours stayed on.

        Monday, after the worst of the storm had passed, I woke up and thought the house felt colder than usual. Our programmable thermostat sat at 64, but I didn’t hear or feel the heater kicking on, even though it’s supposed to be 68 degrees when we’re awake. I checked the gas furnace and the pilot light was out. I’d light it when I got back home from Zumba.

        Lighting the pilot light, simple right? Wrong. I took the cover off the furnace and poked around, but couldn’t figure out where the flame should be.

        I got online and looked for instructions. It all sounded straight forward. Wedged in again between the hot water heater and the furnace, equipped with a flashlight, and long BIC lighter I failed again to hear the whoosh of gas igniting.

        Back at the computer, I watched YouTube videos of guys lighting pilot lights. I turned the thermostat down to 45 degrees and went back downstairs to the basement. 

       

Kneeling before the furnace again, flipping switches, turning knobs, and pushing the red button for 60 seconds, absolutely nothing happened.

        The house was getting colder. I emailed John 9 hours and a day ahead in Australia. I also emailed Johnny asking for advice. I was beginning to think that pilot lighting is hard wired in males only. If only I could channel some man magic! I didn’t remember John going through all this the few times the pilot light had gone out before.

        Johnny called. Hopefully his father had passed the pilot lighting torch onto him. He hadn’t. He said he didn’t know how John lit it. However, he did warn me to stop waving the lighter around when I was pushing that red button. He asked if I’d lost power during the storm, and told me to check the circuit breakers to see if the one for the furnace had tripped. It hadn’t. He thought I should call a furnace man.

        John’s email told me that he couldn’t remember the specifics on lighting the pilot light, but he thought the instructions were on the furnace. The only thing I saw on the inside of the furnace panel was a detailed diagram of circuitry.

        The sun was setting. I knew it would get colder, but how cold? I checked the weather forecast.  The lowest nighttime temperature until John got home would be 45 degrees. That’s well above freezing, and inside the house would be warmer. I decided that I’d just tough it out and wait six days for John to get home. We’ve got a wood stove, and I had a space heater that Sarah had brought home from college.

        One last time before bed, I tried, without any success. I ran the space heater for a half hour, added another quilt to the bed, and settled in for the night.  

        Then I laid there fretting. The later into the night it got, the worse my “what ifs” got. I was warm, but what if the animals weren’t? Suzie’s fur is very short and she’s prone to shivering when she gets cold. T-bone’s fur is thick and pretty long, but he’s old and arthritic. The cats have fur coats, but they’re not very big. Then I remembered that Pippin used to LIVE outside fulltime. The fish and the turtle would be OK as long as we didn’t lose power because they have heaters in their tanks. I knew I was being ridiculous, but what if?

        At 2 am I turned the lamp on and read a book for a half hour. At 5 am I coaxed myself to stay in bed until 6:00. At 6:00 I convinced myself to stay in bed until I could see sunlight. At 7:00 I got up. It was 61 degrees. I decided I was calling a furnace man. 

       

At 7:30 I started a fire in the wood stove. At 9:00 I called my friend Carol to ask her for her furnace man’s name and number.

        I called and he asked me if the furnace was my primary source of heat. I said yes. He told me he had a few jobs ahead of me, but he’d fit me in as soon as possible. In the meantime, “bundle up.”

        That’s when I did the totally logical thing. I went into a cleaning frenzy. The problem was that the furnace is located in and near my favorite junk hiding areas—the laundry room, which is next to the garage, which leads to the basement that used to be like a little studio for guests, or an area for teenagers to hang out in. Now it looks like a hoarder’s paradise. It is stuffed with the contents of two former college apartments, childhood mementos, my long arm quilting machine, and some exercise equipment. Lots of it has been sorted through, thrown out, or donated. Lots still remains.

        I blazed a path through the garage:  the paint cans, moldings, closet doors that will complete the remodel of Sarah’s bedroom. Tools were stored away.  Projects were rearranged. Then I started moving luggage, the rug cleaner, mops, and Christmas decorations out of the storage area where the furnace is. I was feeling good about my progress until I realized that he’d probably have to deal with the thermostat too.

        And that is how the upstairs part of our house got cleaned up too. Suddenly decisions were made about things I’d been waffling on or procrastinating about. Book shelves that I had left near the front door to donate on the next charity pickup got moved to the consolidated mess in the basement. Summer wall hanging quilts got switched out to fall quilts as did the rest of the décor around my house.

       

Things that had been piled up waiting to be put away, finally found their rightful places. Cleared table tops were dusted. I warmed up as I scurried around and couldn’t help but think, “I’m just SO sure the furnace guy cares what my house looks like!”

        As surely as a household crisis always happens when John is out of town, it’s guaranteed that I’ll go cleaning crazy when someone “new” is coming to my house, even if it’s a repairman. But, for all the absurdity, I have to say it definitely looks much better around here, and that sweet hum of warm air flowing from the heating vents sure does feel good!  The pilot light was lit when John got home, and I (along with the animals) slept warm and well!

Laura Keolanui Stark watched over the furnace man’s shoulder and learned how to light the pilot light. She never would’ve figured it out because it involved removing a shield. He fixed it so that all the burners are firing and the pilot light flame is steady. He didn’t even go upstairs, but he did see the basement mess, and observed, “Boy, you’ve got a lot of stuff in here.” Laura can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Farewell Pullman!

Now that the dust has settled and the bins holding the contents of another college apartment are stacked throughout our house on this side of the state, I’ll say my official farewell to Pullman, WA. On May 4, 2013, our daughter Sarah graduated Summa Cum Laude (GPA over 3.9) from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance.

Sarah Stark, WSU Class of 2013

Sarah followed in her brother’s footsteps and became a cougar in August 2009. Even though my husband John has been a professor at WSU since 1990, I had never visited the main campus in Pullman until we took Johnny, our oldest, to WSU while shopping for a college in the spring of 2006.

For seven years our two cougars migrated back and forth across the state, spending most of their time in the small college town named Pullman. They both put in a lot of class and practice hours in one particular campus building, Kimbrough, the music building.

Over the years I got in the WSU rhythm as well: buying books before fall semester, helping them pack up to return to college, sending them Puyallup fair scones, football season, dad’s weekend, finals, winter break, buying books for spring semester, spring break, mom’s weekend, finals and moving their stuff from dorms to apartments and back home.

Johnny and Sarah both knew that if I came to visit, it was mandatory that I get a milk shake at Ferdinand’s. If we didn’t get to Ferdinand’s while it was open, they figured out where else I could get my fix of the famous WSU creamery’s ice cream and a tin of Cougar Gold cheddar cheese. 

We had our favorite restaurants in Pullman: Tam’s or McDonald’s for breakfast, Black Cypress, South Fork, or Fireside Grill for dinner, and Rico’s for beer and popcorn.

While John met with his colleagues, I’d take the kids to Wal-Mart or Safeway and stock them up with groceries. Near Sarah’s apartment on College Hill, we knew where the best hunting was for parking spaces.We were there when the new Cub opened and missed Dupus Boomers when it closed. 

Mom's weekend 2011 at Dupus Boomers restaurant.

We had fun rolling some balls down the alley at Zeppos when Johnny was taking bowling. I slept in Stephenson dormitory at freshman orientation and one mom’s weekend, and we knew our best bet was to camp out in the kids’ apartments because hotel rooms were scarce during mom’s weekends and graduation.

Special thanks go to the WSU Health center. They took care of Johnny when he broke his wrist, and got the gravel out of Sarah’s palms when she fell one cold winter the day before her piano juries. Both of my cougars managed to dodge the swine flu outbreak of 2009, but I knew that the health center was there if they did. More thanks go out to the mechanics at Les Schwab who repaired Johnny’s Honda when his front wheel and bearing fell off in his apartment parking lot, and to the reputable shop that re-flashed the electrical system of Sarah’s Audi when her friend jumped her battery the wrong way. Thank you also to AAA for towing these cars for us—one time 72 miles from Othello to Ellensburg.

Although the scenery can be beautiful, I will not miss the five and a half hour drive across 300 miles of Washington, listening for reports on whether Snoqualmie pass was open or passing on two-lane Highway 26. We knew where the speed traps were along the way, and a short cut that bypassed Colfax. My heart always lifted when I spotted the spud shack that farmer Orman Johnson spent $5000 on to have special crimson siding cut to spell “Go Cougs” in letters so large we could see it for miles. It meant we were about an hour and a half out of Pullman.  

Moving Sarah back home was a piecemeal trek divided into three parts. On mom’s weekend in April John and I drove over in his truck. I would drive her car back home. After enjoying some mom’s weekend activities, we loaded the furniture that Sarah wasn’t passing on to friends (my childhood dresser and desk, etc.) into the back of his pickup, and crammed smaller things into the Audi.  

Just past the halfway point of Ellensburg, I noticed the road condition sign flashing. 

I was following John and saw that a semi had blocked his view of the sign. I couldn’t figure her radio out so I called Sarah and told her to get online to check the pass, then call John with the results. He called me and said that Sarah found out that the pass was closed. We pulled off at the next exit and consulted, deciding to double back to E-burg and get a hotel room.

We pulled into the Holiday Inn Express, and hustled inside to the front desk where the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The check-in clerk asked if I’d mind if she took another call. I told her only if she guaranteed us the next available room. She nodded agreement as she answered the phone.

The next call was from a sports team that needed eleven rooms because the pass was closed! We’d made it just before she switched the “No Vacancy” sign on! Sarah said that as she checked the pass conditions, they closed seven exits because of heavy snowfall and multiple accidents including a semi.

Sarah Stark and Dr. Keri McCarthy

Part two of the moving Sarah home odyssey was during graduation weekend, the first weekend in May. Friday night we were at a special dinner celebrating her graduation from the Honors College. She made a speech to honor Keri McCarthy, associate professor of music, who guided her through her Honors dissertation.

  

Saturday morning, while the “kids” slept in, John and I went to McDonald’s to pick up breakfast. As we left, the lady handed me the bagful of sausage biscuits and hash browns and said, “See you next time.” I’d held it together through the Honors college graduation, but those four words, “See you next time,” caught me off guard and made me unexpectedly tear up. There probably wasn’t going to be a next time. How had seven years gone by so fast?

Sarah with the class of 2013.

That afternoon we sat in Beasley Coliseum and watched Sarah shake President Floyd’s hand after they called her name, the culmination of four years of hard work. The Cougar Class of 2013 stood and sang their fight song while crimson and gray confetti and streamers rained down on them. Afterwards, we hiked all over campus to Sarah’s favorite spots to take pictures of her wearing the leis her Hawaii grandparents had sent.  

John, Sarah, and Laura Stark ouside Martin Stadium, WSU.

Johnny and Sarah spent their cougar cash eating lunch here.

This time Johnny had come with us. He enjoyed being in Pullman again, seeing his sister graduate, talking to music professors he’d had classes with, and visiting old haunts. He helped Sarah’s friends move furniture out of her apartment and into their vehicles.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we wouldn’t be able to fit the rest of her apartment in our vehicles. It was going to take yet another trip. We loaded as much as we could, covered the full truck bed with a tarp and headed west. John would follow the three of us home in the Camry the next day after meetings with his department.

Part three: John and I returned two weekends later. Sarah couldn’t go because she was going to a wedding. Campus was empty other than a few stragglers like us still moving, so it was easy to park the truck close to her apartment.

I was confident that we could fit the last of it in the truck. I stayed up late Friday night packing. I was also confident that we’d be able to clean the apartment and leave by noon. That night we slept on air mattresses on the floor. I hadn’t brought a sleeping bag because I was confident that it would be too hot.

Well, it got down into the forties that night and I had left the windows open, so I didn’t sleep well. We almost couldn’t fit everything in the truck and called one of Sarah’s friends who was staying in Pullman to ask if we could leave some things with her. But after throwing even more away, and donating some more  to a charity, it did all fit. I changed my “confident” estimated departure time from noon to 2:00. We left the key to Sarah’s apartment on top of the defrosted refrigerator at 5:00 and closed the door to her Pullman apartment for the last time.

Sarah's WSU home for three years.

John tightens the tarp before we leave.

On our way out of town, exhausted physically and mentally, we stopped at McDonald’s to get a dipped cone for John and a hot fudge sundae for me as a little reward for all our hard moving work and for successfully getting two kids through college. We sat down in a booth at Mickey D’s and ate our ice cream.

      We were quiet driving through town for the last time. I remembered crying tears across the Palouse when we left each of our kids for their first time at college. This was a different feeling--a wistful finality.

Rolling hills of the Palouse

About ten miles out of town, I decided to text Sarah and Johnny and tell them we were on our way. I looked for my phone which was in my purse. But where was my purse? Panic set in. John was quizzing me, was it in the back seat? No, there was no room in the back seat, and even in the front of the cab, I had shoe horned myself in straddling some of Sarah’s stuff for the next five and a half hours. The only room left in that truck for my purse was on my lap and my purse was not on it.

John hung a u-turn, carefully so the over-the-top load wouldn’t shift, and went back to McDonald’s. I ran inside and checked the hook on the back of the bathroom stall door. No purse. I fast-walked to the booth we’d sat in. No purse. I went up to the counter and explained the situation to the clean cut, young man waiting to take orders. Before I could finish describing, “It’s turquoise leather . . .” he cut me off.

“Oh yeah. We’ve got it!” He ran into the back and came out with my purse. He said that he’d spotted it when he went to wipe the table we’d sat at.  

I thanked him and told him I was just so tired from moving my daughter. He nodded sympathetically. I walked back to the truck patting my purse triumphantly. John, ever the New Yorker, urged me to check the contents, but I already knew everything would be in it. After all, we were in Pullman.

Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

Laura Keolanui Stark smiled when she got an email reminding her of freshman orientation at WSU. She is helping Sarah sort through the bins to get ready to pursue a master’s degree in Musicology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Laura can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.