Did My Kid Just SAY That? by Gail Roughton

     

     

You never know what’s coming out of a child’s mouth next. That’s one of the perks of having kids. They can embarrass you one minute, have you in stitches laughing the next, and occasionally, leave you open-mouthed and slack-jawed in sheer amazement.

All my kids have done it to me at one time or another and my grandchildren do it to me now. But the family did she just say what I think she said prize goes to my daughter, Rebecca. She was eight at the time, leaning back against the bathtub and savoring the feel of the hot water. Bath time was one-on-one time, hard to come by in a family of three children and two working parents, and I’d learned to grab it with each child whenever the opportunity arose. Sometimes we’d just talk, sometimes I’d read to them. I don’t know who looked forward to bath time more, me or them.

On this particular evening, I remember I had a book in my hand. It was a rather special one, at least to me. An edition of Tales of Uncle Remus I’d had since I was twelve or so myself, purchased at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, Georgia, home-stomping ground of the author, Joel Chandler Harris, and the oral folklore that gave birth to the Uncle Remus stories. Okay, I was a nerd even at twelve when computers weren’t even thought of, I’ve never denied it. We’d been reading a story or two every night for a week or so. But Brer Rabbit wasn’t on my child’s agenda that night.

She sat straight up, fixed me with the amber eyes so large and gorgeous they’ve made strangers stop and stare since birth and asked me, “Mama, are we ever born again?”

Not a question Mama was expecting, I’ll tell you that. I wracked my brain for its possible source. Maybe she’d caught a telecast of a Church service on television? A talk show, maybe? Or heard a radio show I wasn’t aware of?

“You mean like — are we born again when we die and go to Heaven?”

“No, no, no!!!” Her hand slapped the water. “I mean when we die, are we ever born again, here, on earth? In another body?”

 Eight, I thought to myself. She’s EIGHT! Where the heck is this coming from?! I wasn’t so startled I didn’t recognize this as the most basic description of reincarnation I’d ever heard, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she’d have thought of it. I fell back on the best child-rearing advice I’d ever gotten. No, not from my mother, or aunt, or mother-in-law, or best friend. From Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird. That fictional single parent and his major guideline of child-rearing got me through a lot while raising my kids, especially Rebecca, to-wit: When a child asks you a question, you tell them the truth. They don’t necessarily have to understand exactly what you’re saying, they just have to know you’re telling them the truth. Because they’ll know if you’re lying to them. 

So I gathered my wits about me and took a deep breath. “Well, that is, in fact, what many of the world’s religions believe, yes. That when you die you’re born again in another body.”

“But what do you believe?”

Great. Couldn’t avoid that, could I? “I believe it’s a probability it’s a possibility, yes.” I haven’t spent my entire adult professional life in a law office for nothing. “Becca, what on earth made you think of this in the first place?”

“I don’t know, I was on the playground the other day and it just seemed like I’d been there before, done the same things before, just in another body.”

Ah! De’ja vu, I thought. I was, in fact, rather relieved. A strange phenomenon, to be sure, but one pretty much everybody’d experienced at some time or another. I should have left well enough alone. But of course I didn’t. I just had to ask. “Well, then—who were you?” I mean, she was eight, of course she’d say, “A rock star.” “An Indian maiden.” “Cinderella”. Maybe even “An Alien Princess”. Something exotic, something dear to the imagination of childhood. Nope. Something utterly, completely, down-to-earth. Something realistic, and assuming that any universal recycling program called reincarnation does exist, completely possible.  “I don’t know," she said slowly.  "But I was black and had a lot of pigtails.”

From nowhere, I remembered my mother laughing about the stories one of my older brother told when he was small. Stories about “a long time ago when I was an old man.” So let the academics and professors and religious leaders debate all they want. I’ve never looked at reincarnation the same way since. I never will. Nor will I ever forget that night when out of the mouth of a babe came that beautifully basic and elemental description of such an extremely complicated and controversial belief, stripped right down to its barest element.  You know what they say about the sensitivity of children and animals. They know things.  Things we don't.  Or possibly...things we used to know but have forgotten?

Besides, I’m a writer. I’ve told you before—we never waste anything. We just recycle it into these things we call novels. Like my War-N-Wit, Inc. novellas. Wherein my heroine Ariel Anson Garrett wasn’t so sure about that thing known as reincarnation either. And boy, was she in for a surprise!

CLICK TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON

Four in One Boxed Set

Find all Gail Roughton titles at

Books We Love

And at Amazon

You can also visit at her Blog

and on Facebook

What movie would you watch again and again? By Jamie Hill

 

CLICK TO BUY

Anyone on Facebook has seen the status game: "Name a movie you've watched over and over again". I can think of several, mostly they're ones that are being shown on TV. When I channel surf I'll stop to watch parts, if not all. Sister Act I and II were playing a couple weeks ago on Saturday and Sunday, and I watched parts of both of them again. We never miss a showing of Jaws, Pretty Woman, parts of Titanic and probably the favorite in our house, Jurassic Park. Our consensus is that the first movie was best, the second was so-so, and the third was pretty good, better than the second. I liked Sam Neill's character better than Jeff Goldblum's, and was tickled that they included him and Laura Dern in the third.

A while back word came out of a fourth Jurassic Park movie called Jurassic World. Chris Pratt is an up and coming Hollywood actor and seems to fit the leading character role just fine. From the little I've seen from the previews, it looks like there's a mother who allows her two sons to go alone to the Jurassic World theme park which is finally open. (Excuse me, didn't she watch any of the movies?)

Anyway, June 12 is just around the corner and although we don't go to the theater to see many movies, my family will be making a trip to watch this one on the big screen. Absolutely can't wait!

I got to wondering if this theory also applies to books. Is there a book you'd read again and again? I have a few that I've saved and reread over time. Go Ask Alice is one that I can start reading and will sit there until I've finished the whole darn thing. I'll reread parts of The Horse Whisperer. But generally, my reading time is short enough as it is, and my 'to be read' pile is too large to reread books when there are so many new and interesting ones out there. 

I must admit, when I open my own books to grab an excerpt or something like that, often I'll get caught up reading and will follow thorough to the end. When I finish I get that happy feeling that readers get when they close a book, only it's multiplied when you're also the author of said book. That's one of the most amazing feelings there is.

If you're in the mood to reread, or perhaps read for the first time, some hot cop romantic suspense, why not start with book one of my series, A Cop in the Family? Jack and Crystal remain close to my heart to this day. Enough so that I wrote two more books which included them, so readers could see where they ended up. 

I just love happy endings! (And watching dinosaur movies from the comfort of my chair.)

Find Family Secrets and my other titles at Amazon and other book sellers, also available in paperback by request at a bookstore near you.

Family Secrets: http://amzn.com/B004478IN6

Jamie Hill's website: http://www.jamiehill.biz/

Jamie's Publisher, Books We Love: http://bookswelove.net/authors/hill-jamie/

17th Century Recipes by Katherine Pym

http://amzn.com/B00I6KOKL6

From the book: Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments, Being a Collection of Chapbooks, full of Histories, Jests, Magic, Amorous Tales of Courtship, Marriage and Infidelity, Accounts of Rogues and Fools, together with Comments on the Times. Selected and Edited by Roger Thompson of the University of East Anglia at Norwich, 1977. 

Merchantman being attacked by Pirates

Whew, what a mouthful. Our titles these days are much shorter, with less syllables, easier to remember. To remember this, I simply refer to it as: Penny Merriments, a tome I found in a used bookstore and considered it a great find. It has all sorts of wonderful information, like recipes to make one beautiful, or a recipe for the newest way to roast a hare. It sends me right back into the era of my choice...

17th century England started out with traders going to far distant shores, but the cost was extensive. Spices were gathered through the Levant Company (owned by noblemen and gentlemen of quality) and the fledgling East India Company. As the century moved forward, their ships went to places already taken by the Spanish and Portuguese. 

First Anglo/Dutch War

 
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) began at about the same time as England's, but they weren't hampered by the religious upheaval and civil wars England endured during the first half of the century. The Dutch VOC had a leg up on English merchant shipping until Cromwell decided enough was enough and went to war with The Netherlands. This is known as the First Anglo/Dutch war (1652-54), and fought entirely at sea. This war were over trade, who could monopolize which ports in the East and West Indies.

With that said, the recipes below show an inordinate amount of spices, which were very costly. During the reign of King James I, a fight to near death took place between VOC and English Merchantman in the South Seas that decimated the nutmeg crops on Pulo Run Island, in the Banda archipelago. A once rich source of nutmeg, it never fully recovered. 

Citrus fruits, dates, pepper, cotton cloth, and other fruits and spices were trekked across the desert sands to ports the Levant held in the Mediterranean, then imported via ship to London. Once these commodities hit the London markets, they proved costly for the middling English household.

Fleet of East Indiamen at Sea

The below recipes can only come from later in the 17^th century, and were directed to the more well-to-do. Middling folk who could read, enjoyed the thoughts of these, though...

"To Roast a shoulder of mutton with Oysters the best way. Take one not too fat nor too lean, open it in divers places, stuff your oysters in with a little chopt pennyroyal (mint or basil), baste it with butter and claret wine, then serve it up with grated nutmeg, yolks of eggs, ginger, cinnamon, butter and red wine vinegar."

"To Stew a Leg of Lamb the best way.

Slice it and lay it in order in your stewing-pan, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, adding a pound of butter, and half a pint of claret, with a handful of sliced dates, and the like quantity of currants, and make the sauce with the yolk of two eggs, a quarter pint of verjoice (acid juice from sour or unripe fruit), and two ounces of sugar. Boil them up, and put them over the meat, serving up hot together."

"The Art of Beautifying the Hands, Neck, Breast and Face: Harmless and Approved, with other Rare Curiosities.

To make the hands arms white, clear and smooth. Take a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, blanch and bruise them, with a quarter of a pint of oil of roses, and the like quantity of betony-water (plant of the mint family): heat them over a gentle fire; and then press out the liquid part, and it will serve for either hands or face anointed therewith."

"To take away Freckles, Morphew (scurfy skin) or sunburn.

Steep a piece of copper in the juice of lemon till it be dissolved (the juice), and anoint the place with a feather morning and evening, washing it off with white wine." (Not sure how that one worked.)

"To take off any scurf from the hands and face.

Take water of tartar, that is, such wherein calcined (burnt to a powder) tartar has been infused, anoint the place, and wash it as the former (with white wine)."

"To sweeten the Breath, and preserve the Teeth and Gums.

Boil a handful of juniper berries, a handful of sage, and an ounce of carraway seeds in a quart of white wine, til a third part be consumed: strain it and wash your mouth with it morning and evening, suffering a small quantity to pass down: you may whiten the teeth by rubbing them with pumice stone."

So... who wants to try one of these recipes and let me know how it works? I'd especially like to know the results of whitening your teeth with pumice stone. Or should I do a disclaimer? Don’t do this at home!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many thanks to wikicommons for the pictures:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, &

Roger Thompson, Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments, Being a Collection of Chapbooks, full of Histories, Jests, Magic, Amorous Tales of Courtship, Marriage and Infidelity, Accounts of Rogues and Fools, together with Comments on the Times. Selected and Edited by of the University of East Anglia at Norwich, 1977.