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Marilyn Jefferies 1949-2010

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I took this picture on our last walk on Dartmoor with Ray and MIJ. I had already snapped a few shots of the cross when MIJ stepped into the shot. I took two or three photographs with her back to me wondering if the cross marked a grave or had been placed there as a memorial of some kind. I know now that many of the stone crosses on Dartmoor were placed there as guideposts to let travelers know they were on the right path. It seemed appropriate to use this photograph today.

Ray called this morning. John was out so I took the call knowing before I answered what he was going to say. He told me that MIJ had died about 7:00 this morning and that she seemed peaceful and appeared to be in no pain.

He said that he had just finished writing a poem for her and had turned to open the curtains as it was just beginning to get light. When he turned back, he could see that her breathing had changed so he took her in his arms and held her as she slipped away. That’s the way he said it, ” I took her in my arms and held her, and she just slipped away.”

As much as MIJ loved Ray, I cannot think of anything she would have liked more than to be held by him at the end.

Ray & MIJ on Dartmoor – November 8, 2009

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Waiting

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I took the fuzzy picture above from a fair distance through our kitchen window. It’s a view I see at various times of the day as Fudge, the cat in the picture sits waiting for his owner to come home. John says he is only waiting for his next meal, but he is out there at the end of the drive twice a day, just as he always was before his owner died a week before Christmas.

Several neighbors have taken turns feeding him, but when I try to coax him over for a little snack, he runs away. The man’s daughter lives several hours from here and does not know what to do with Fudge. He won’t go with her and he won’t stay put. As far as we can see, he likes to roam. He keeps his distance from people … sometimes even those like me with hand out for comfort and a bit of food to nourish. I keep reaching out, but Fudge cannot bring himself to be comforted or even fed by someone he doesn’t recognize.

I on the other hand, wanted to say how much I appreciate the kindness of  all of those who stopped by … even the new names that I do not recognize yet. Your messages of support and encouragement after reading this post were a great comfort to me as I am sure they will be to Ray when I am able to share them with him. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts.

As for Fudge, if you live in Cornwall or close by and would like to take in an independent outdoorsy cat, I can put you in touch with the right person.

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The Last Walk – Measured Steps

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Our friend MIJ is desperately ill. She won’t get any better and it is really bad now. That knowledge sits so uneasily with me that it stays with me in the back of everything lately. I pester John for answers he doesn’t have and ask him to call her partner Ray for updates when I know there is not going to be any good news.

Twenty years ago, MIJ had breast cancer with a reoccurrence five years later, but with good medical intervention and diligent followups it seemed unlikely that this would reenter her life, at least not in this way. In November, she turned sixty with the kind of energy you would expect to see in an athletic forty year old. As active as I am, I always felt pleasantly tired after one of our five hour walks around Dartmoor, while MIJ never showed any signs of fatigue.

She has been in so much pain that Ray said she has given up and her doctors are now focused on just keeping her as comfortable as possible. Already a tiny slip of a woman, her weight loss is shocking when friends stop by to see her and it has been difficult to find the right dosage between controlling the pain and allowing her some lucidity in the short time she has left.

From everything we hear, she is receiving wonderful care from a compassionate medical team who spent weeks searching diligently through symptoms that were so unusual that they thought she might have something they could treat … something with a different outcome than the one she has now, a terminal diagnosis.

Mid November was the last time we saw her. I wish I had known it would be our last walk, I might have talked of other things. From all appearances, everything in her life was fine. She’d just had her sixtieth birthday becoming eligible for her state pension and we discussed the ways a bit of extra cash would be useful to her travel plans. After retiring at 58, she and Ray would often go off for six weeks at a time, walking and camping in conditions that while beautiful, would have left me grumbling. When we saw them in November, they were planning a trip to Nepal with a departure date of next month, and I listened to her explanation of why they were going there and putting off the New Zealand trip I knew she had been dreaming about.

She also told me in great detail of the new kitchen installation she had decided to go ahead with. MIJ has a doll house of a cottage and had wanted to make changes for some time, but had put it off, concerned as are most people on the edge of retirement, about money. The kitchen was finished about a week after MIJ went into the hospital. She never even had a chance to use it. My mind fixates on things like that. I tend to get stuck on thoughts such how she won’t ever cook a meal or wash a dish in the new space. I think about how she will never see New Zealand or swim again with her grandchildren. I keep thinking about how sad it all is and what she will miss.

I have been getting stuck there lately thinking about the twenty years she won’t have, but John encourages me to shift my thinking by gently reminding me of the twenty years of living she has been able to have since her first cancer diagnosis. In those years, MIJ has seen her son marry and have children of his own and she has been able build memorable relationships with her grandchildren who are old enough now to remember her when she is gone. Having twenty more years meant she had time to meet and fall in love with Ray eighteen years ago and travel to places she might never have seen had she been traveling alone.

When I came back from America early in December, I anticipated we would see Ray and MIJ for New Year’s Eve like we did last year, but around the time I began to think we should call them to make a plan, Ray called us to share the bad news. They were with us on our wedding day and I thought we would have more time. That’s often the way it is. You plan for a future that may not come and put off the things you might do or say differently if you only knew that this moment might be all you would have.

It is so natural to say, ” When I retire, I shall do ____ or when I get a new ___, I’ll be peaceful and happy,”  but if anything ever illustrated the point that we should not wait to do the things that matter, the finality of death does in it in an unmistakable way. It is that period at the end of the sentence, the full on stop that says, ” Your time is up.”

As Ray watches over MIJ in the hospital, I find my focus shifting to what we can do to help him. MIJ is getting all she needs now and is barely able to communicate more than a few words a day. He is at her side, all hours of the day, staying late into the night to keep her company as she gets ready for the final part of her journey.

Looking back over my photographs from our last walk together, I saved this one although I wasn’t really sure why at the time. It is not particularly pretty like many of the others that day, but in looking at it now I can see a future that was not apparent to any of us three short months ago.

MIJ, as you can see, walks on ahead while Ray waits, looking off in another direction. She is getting closer to the end now and I feel such sorrow thinking of her dying in a hospital bed. A still and quiet MIJ is so unfamiliar that I can’t quite get my head around it and my mind looks for something more comforting. I find it by picturing her walking, looking as I remember her best and thinking of these last days as measured steps, where MIJ is only going on before us, on a last walk alone.

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Remembering The Day We Met – Valentine’s Day 2008

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I took this picture last February when John and I were in Paris on our honeymoon and I’ve been saving it for just the right time. Today is the third Valentine’s Day we will spend together and the anniversary of the first time we met face to face.

Yesterday evening, John called out to me from his study and I went in to find him rereading a series of short emails that passed back and forth between us on February 13, 2008. We were emailing each other right until they closed the airplane door, documenting our thoughts and excitement as I was getting on the plane to fly over to meet him for the first time. He’s that kind of man, tender, romantic, and permanently etched on my heart. I am grateful everyday for him and I love how he remembers the details of our romance. Well loved, every day is what I am, but on Valentine’s Day it is especially nice to remember how we began.

If you don’t know our story yet and you’d like to know more, you can read about our first meeting below. After I take him a little breakfast in bed, we’re going back to Bedruthan Steps to recreate that first walk. We didn’t manage a photo the first time, but we took one a year ago and if you come back later you will be able to see a photograph from today’s walk posted underneath the one from last year at the bottom of the page.

Will You Stay With Me, Will You Be My Love

February 14, 2009

Today is the anniversary of the day I first stepped off a plane in England and into John’s arms. We’d spent the previous six weeks first emailing and later talking on Skype so we’d seen each other online for quite some time, but had never touched. Very quickly, I developed a huge crush on the darling Englishman who is now my husband. That we met for the first time in person on Valentine’s Day was more because it suited my work and travel arrangements than by romantic design. Because I had so many frequent flyer miles and a keen interest in seeing John in his own space, I suggested the idea that I come to him. I came with an open mind and a tender heart, but no expectations beyond the idea of getting to know him as only one can when actually in the same physical space.

As I write this, I have just been reminded by John that one year ago today, exactly 30 minutes from now, my plane touched down in a tiny airport in Newquay.  It is a vivid memory for us both and it’s funny now to look back and remember the thoughts and feelings I was having as I walked down the steps of the commuter flight across the tarmac and into his warm embrace that morning.

Any of you who’ve been reading my old blog at (giftsofthejourney.com) for long are aware of how this first meeting progressed from friendship and mutual attraction to the sweet ceremony we went through not quite two weeks ago. It seems appropriate to share our buttercup story and why these tiny yellow flowers have such meaning for me now.

When I arrived on that chilly day February 14, John asked me if I felt up to a little walk along the ocean on the coast path at a place called Bedruthan Steps. It was on the way back to the tiny village where he made his home and he was exited to show me a bit of the Cornish coast that he’d been telling me about for weeks. Despite having been too excited to sleep on the plane, I was definitely interested in seeing any of the places I had heard him refer to during the hours of talks we’d had using Skype.

We gradually worked our way back to the village and after putting on wellies we took a walk though a beautiful wood that opened into what I now refer to as the buttercup field. Of course, in February there were no buttercups, but I was intrigued as John described how by May the field would be covered in gold as the buttercups competed  with the constant green of the grassy space. As he told me this I thought how lovely that would be, but it was only after having spent the better part of two weeks with him that I knew with absolute certainty that I needed to come back to this field and stand in the middle of the buttercups that he said would come with the month of May.

Jumping ahead here and skipping over the activities that happened in order to bring me back, I arrived  back in England on May 13th. As I got closer to my travel date, I kept asking John, “ Have the buttercups bloomed yet? “ I was so worried that I would miss them.

Below are some of the images from the day I arrived in May last year. Few things in life are just as we imagine they will be, but this day was special and it was better than I could have imagined.  When I first saw the field of gold, I could almost hear Eva Cassidy’s voice singing in my head providing a romantic soundtrack to accompany the images that filled my eyes.  The song I heard was Fields Of Gold and I now think of this as our song. Take a minute and listen to it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3YVil3Ajjs

I love the part of the song where she sings, ” Will you stay with me, will you be my love…”  These words were embroidered on a special linen tablecloth by my new friend Tina to use on our table for our wedding reception. The flowers you see are the two buttercups I picked that day in May. I tucked them in a pocket on the side of my pants and played in the buttercup field with them where they stayed until we returned  home. I forgot they were there and when I noticed them again, I took them out and pressed them in a book. They dried twined together having fallen into the position that you see in the picture. I took a photograph of them and Tina created a sketch from it and the tablecloth design is a now a lasting memory of the day I came back to John and saw the buttercups for the first time.

I’m off now to climb Bedruthan Steps with John as we go back to the place we walked one year ago today. Today we’ll celebrate old memories and look forward to making new ones…and soon we’ll be walking in fields of gold again.

Bedruthan Steps – February 14, 2009

Bedruthan Steps – February 14, 2010


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Sweet Domesticity – Not Exactly Yet

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The other day I was on the phone with my friend Carla in America and she commented that I was becoming such a domestic goddess after I described a day of sewing and painting and re-upholstering. Now I ask you, ” Do those waffles look like the work of a domestic goddess? “

A couple of weeks ago Karen, who I met through quiz night at our village pub and mentioned here, very kindly gave me her lovely Chisinau Belgian Waffle Iron as she was moving back to Canada and could not use it there.

(Internet Photo)

I’d like to take credit for the yummy looking waffle above, but the sad truth as you can see by my unappetizing pile of waffles is that my waffles looked nothing like the internet photo. The waffle iron itself was a mess as the Oatmeal Pecan waffle mixture squished out through edges and spilled over the side of the waffle iron sending it into a serious lockdown mode as soon as the aggressive oozing began. Mind you, it normally locks when you close it, but then it beeps and releases when the waffle has cooked the required amount of time.

This had worked with fine for the first two batches, but they were not very pretty because I had not put enough batter in to spread evenly throughout the four segments of the waffle iron. By the third pour, I decided to give it a bit more mixture so I might have four good waffles for my efforts. What I got was a waffle iron lockdown tighter than Alcatraz during a prison break and a steam bath that might have opened up even the tightest pores.

Added to the excitement, was the wheezy, moaning sound coming from it, along with the incessant beeping as it baked my locked in waffle to what I envisioned would be more like a blackened fat cracker than a sweet breakfast treat.

Lacking a directions manual, I quickly turned to my laptop to search for emergency directions before thinking Good grief, Elizabeth … just pull the plug. Just so we’re clear in case you ever use one like this, pulling the power source from the wall does not release the latch, not right away and not before you might have to later reapply your makeup and blow dry your hair.

Disclaimer here, the waffle iron is great when you don’t overfill it. Thanks again to Karen for the gift and I’ll let you know later what John thinks of the waffles. He passed on them this time, but there’s a big stack in the freezer with his name on them for later.

Just in case you are looking at my waffles and thinking,” They don’t look that bad ,” you should know that I showed you the good side. My first shot is below and one last thing that you might find funny, I worked at a Waffle House in the summer of my sixteenth year.




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We Won!

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Wednesday night you will generally find us down at the pub having a bite of dinner and enjoying a little friendly competition with the folks who turn up for Quiz Night. I have written about this before on my old blog here and mentioned it in a few other places as well.

John and I tend to be somewhere in the middle of the teams and don’t often move too far up or down in the rankings from week to week. There are some brainy groups who always seem to win or at least finish in the top three, but it’s rarely been us. Well, once we did finish first, but we were part of a team of six instead of our usual two so while it was fun, it didn’t feel as sweet as it did last night.

I have to say here that I always feel a bit of pressure when there is what people in the pub would refer to as an ” American” question. Last night, we played with Jean and Robert who were also at the pasty making competition. They always do well and frequently win or come in second so we had a much better chance right from the beginning than we normally do.

It was a killer quiz and seemed much more difficult than usual and I struggled as I often do to come up with the answers to questions I think of as ” British” questions. One example of this might be a rugby question about a famous player from 1970. Now there is no way I am going to get a question like that one right, but the pressure is always on when it’s about something related to American trivia.

Last night’s combination of Jean, Robert, and John left little for me to do much of the time as they were usually whispering the answers to each other while I was still digesting the question. In fact, there were only two questions I answered that my teammates needed help on and while I knew a few others, they were the type most of us would know.

I am often teased here in a good-naturedly way about my competitiveness which I prefer to laughingly call enthusiasm. One example of my “Enthusiastic nature ” might be the difference in how I react when the answers are read at the end of the quiz. In a room full of people who at most give off a soft murmuring sound when they’ve found they have answered a tough question correctly, my loud ” YES! ” coming out of the corner tends to draw a bit of attention.

Last night, there were two questions like this for us, questions that I answered that no one on our team could answer. I can’t remember them both, but the one that stands out was, ” What was Nancy Reagan’s maiden name ?”  It seems easy until everyone looks at you for the answer since it’s an American question and for a few minutes I was blank only remembering it when I thought of her daughter Patti Davis who used her mother’s maiden name after disagreeing with her father’s politics.

After we placed first, I was excited, but felt like it was more their victory than mine as I had only known two answers that they couldn’t get on their own. This morning though I can see it a bit differently. While writing the details of last nights win, I just realized that the points difference last night between first and second place was … two questions.

This is the regular team of folks that Jean and Robert usually play with on quiz night. Robert and Jean are in the darker purple shirts at one end of the table with Helen and Jeff at the other. Karen is sitting in between Jean and Jeff and has moved back to Canada recently freeing up a spot on their team. Jeff and Helen couldn’t be there last night so we joined Jean and Robert to create the Anglo-American Alliance.

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Obsessions In Photography

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Chris Sneddon is talking about her recent obsession over at Shutter Sisters today and she’s asking readers to share any obsessions they may have when it comes to photography. Her question made me think about why I photograph what I do. My photography tends to be closely linked to what I write about here on my blog. This would include images that provide a documentary look at topics such as the pasty competition posts from the last few days to photographs that are inspiration for personal essays and others that illustrate the mini short stories I’ve written for TMAST.

I take photographs to tell a story and there’s always a story. Whether it’s real or imagined, mine or yours, every picture has a story waiting to be told. My obsession is in the finding, first the photograph and then the words. I have included a few of the 32,000 photographs I’ve taken in the last two years.  32,000  photographs in two years … does that seem like an obsession to you?

I would love to hear what you like to photograph and if there’s any subject matter you think you get a bit obsessive with when you have a camera in hand.

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And The Winner Of The 2010 Best Pasty Is

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I wanted this so bad I could taste it, but the winner of the 2010 Pasty Contest was…

… not me! The winning pasty was made by Rebecca, the woman you see above. I have to admit her Scotch egg pasty was spicy and delicious and as you can see below, beautifully made.

Competition was fierce among 21 contestants and while I scored a respectable 120 points, the winning numbers were 139, 134, and 129. Second place was captured by Pauline who rushed in late and whipped up a Pigeon pasty that earned her a spot in the winners circle.

Robert and Ian, who made their pasties on the same table tied for third. Robert, who you see closest to you is rolling out the pastry for what will be his stuffed to the max haggis and potato pasty while Ian is almost ready to begin putting his rabbit pasty together with onions and a bit of mustard sauce. With key ingredients such as rabbit, pigeon, haggis, and scotch egg making up the winning pasties, you might wonder what of some of the others 17 varieties of pasties contained.

There were several versions of spicy indian mixtures along with lamb, beef, and chicken. A Christmas pudding pasty with cheese and chillies along with several fish pasties added options for snacking and included Helen’s smoked halibut, cod, and asparagus combination which looked really yummy. Several contained breakfast ingredients that included baked beans and black pudding. I must admit that I gave those a miss. I can’t yet get my taste buds around black pudding no matter how good people say it is.

That’s Len’s pasty ready for the fold over, but first …

…  he decided he needed a quick break below …

… for some liquid refreshment leaving his wife Mary hard at work on her own above.

We made pasties in shifts at the tables while others strolled around offering praise or advice while checking out the competition.

Robert gives his wife Jean’s ( that’s Jean, who sometimes comments on my blog) pasty technique a good look after putting his entry in the oven.

Next to Jean is Helen, who came up with the pasty-making party idea and did all the work to make it successful right down to making the great looking award you saw Rebecca holding in the photograph above.

That’s me in the apron working next to Kate. She made three pasties while I was still finishing up my first one, but she did say she used to make them in a shop so she’d had a bit of practice. My pasty took a bit longer too because I made something no longer seen in the area, a two course pasty with a sweet on one end.  It was the only two course pasty in the competition and Gary, one of the judges said later that he really liked the sweet part of mine in particular.

A two course pasty requires a little pastry to separate the sweet from the savory. Can you tell what’s inside mine yet?

After the making …

came the baking …

… and then the waiting …

… until it was time for the tasting.

The three judges went first. I need to add here that Gary, David and Griz each ate seven pasties over the course of the evening and the variety of ingredients made some less appealing to me than others so a big well done to all three judges.

As they came out of the oven, the judges took one pasty from each plate and split it three ways leaving two to be taste tested and judged by the other pasty makers who each had a chance to leave a number and a vote behind.

We’ll call it the people’s vote. It was only a small percentage of the total score, but seeing what your plate looked like after the table was rushed by the hungry hoards, did a bit to ease the disappointment of not winning later.

Number three on the end is my pasty sitting next to the scotch egg pasty that won first prize.

Here is a look at my plate ( number three ) after the other contestants had a taste. So while it’s not a trophy, I think the empty plate reflects public opinion fairly well. Some of us laughed about the competitiveness of Americans, but I think there were a few other people who coveted that trophy as well.

Now down to the nitty gritty, packed inside my Cornish pasty was a decidedly Un-Cornish set of ingredients. It contained a mix perfect for a tailgate party or a 4th of July celebration. With slow cooked pulled pork barbecue, a bit of coleslaw and smattering of cheddar cheese filling the main section, there was also a tiny bit of dessert tucked on the end made from a sweet potato pie mixture that included brown sugar and pecans. It really was pretty yummy or scrummy as one might say here.

Now I need to say that I am really just teasing about being so disappointed in not winning … I had a great time and I learned a lot about making a local dish. In addition to a fun evening there was a fund raising element involved as there so often is at these kind of events. After the small expense of the village hall rental, and a few other things, we had 45 pounds left to donate to Shelter Box, an international disaster relief charity that has it’s headquarters here in Cornwall.

Thanks again to Helen and her partner Ron who did so much work to make the event run smoothly and to the judges Gary, Griz and David.

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Cornish Pasty Competition – Bringing It To The Table

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Today is a big day for me. I am going to be participating in pasty making competition here in the village in a couple of hours and I am so excited. When I told my step-mom Cullene about the contest the other day, she said, ” I never thought I would hear that you had entered a cooking competition.”  I worked so much when I lived in America that I barely had time or energy to think about proper meal planning and saved any cooking beyond the basics for special meals. So until a few years ago, I would have laughed at the idea too. Living in Cornwall has brought out some skills I didn’t know I had and the luxury of time to explore new areas is a gift I don’t take for granted.

Although today’s pasty competition is mostly an excuse for a party with some friendly competitiveness thrown in, I have to admit that I am taking it pretty seriously. The winning part doesn’t really matter as I have had such a good time preparing a taste of the American south to go inside my Cornish pasty, but you know … it might be kind of cool to win too.

I just finished a trial run to see if I could get the twisty fold-over thing down that you do along the edge. It’s a bit tricky, but I think I managed a respectable job. We have to make three identical pasties and we will be judged on taste, presentation, and innovation in the filling. It ought to be a fun evening and I will be taking lots of photographs to share with you later.

I’ll leave you with a little quote from a famous chef that is beginning to make more sense to me now …

“I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.”

~Julia Child

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A Sweet Day Out

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Thanks so much to everyone who left us a sweet message for our anniversary. Although the rain made it day to stay in, we ventured out for lunch to a special place to celebrate the day. In Cornwall, there are some places that receive a great deal of attention for their food and the place where John and I had lunch is one of those that people talk about. In addition to serving up yummy meals to please your palate, they also serve the community of Cornwall though a special apprentice program modeled after Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation and restaurant in London.  Tucked away in a place called Watergate Bay, we enjoyed the sea views from our table even though we were not inclined to brave the beach as some of the people you’ll see below.

We had a front seat view of the ocean from our table for two by the window and while I usually stick to water with meals, I surprised John when I said,  ” I think I’ll have a cocktail.”

Mmm … a Cosmopolitan, just like I remembered from evenings out with the “Girls” back in Atlanta.

Here’s one of John at the end of our meal … well fed and relaxed.

There was a Tuscan theme to the menu this month as our food choices below reflect.

Cornish smoked mackerel with celeriac remoulade and wild rocket.

Pappa Pomodoro ( a rich tomato and bread soup finished with a good oil).

Roast fillet of pollock with Fifteen’s amazing squash caponata, spinach and aceto di balsamico.

Roast Cornish rare breed pork loin with oozy polenta, Savoy cabbage and salsa verde.

And we are back where we started …  well sort of anyway … burp … oops, pardon me.

After a quick picture and …

… a last look at the beach …

… we said goodbye to Fifteen and headed for home.

I wanted to say that John was completely surprised by my anniversary gift. He had no idea that the tiny heart was there and he suggested that I post a photo showing more of the building so you might see its size in contrast with the rest of the wall. If you are having trouble finding it, look to the far right and you will see it about half way down the wall. Adding to our lasting memory, Kristin over at Gypsylife has a sweet story of her own. It made me smile to see that my post had triggered a special memory for her … I wonder if you have one of your own you might like to share below.