Five-o
hearts were suff’rin’
from holey elbow and torn hem.
For Valentine’s I patched my house
of cards.

I sewed pockets, hemmed pants and patched holes while Marcel was the day’s poet laureate.

(Quilted pillow top, completed.)

Chaja, first of the bunch,
can make a great lunch
or better yet,
a lemon tart.
She’s my sweet-and-sour heart.

(Pajama seam, repaired.)

Sam is neat.
Sam is sweet.
Sam is sweet
on chocolate.
I’m sweet on Sam.

(Down jacket, patched.)

Quick to smile.
Quick to laugh.
Quick to my heart.
Quicksilver,
My dear
Max!

(Spiderman suit, shortened.)

Ivan not-so-terrible,
way better than bearable,
positively huggable,
very much
cuddle-able.

At the table:

“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”
“The Story of Ferdinand”
“The Secret of the Unicorn”
“The Overlord Protocol (H.I.V.E.)”
“Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage”

Have you read Alice Munro, the short story writer from Canada? Her writing is not lyrical or dreamy, but strong, sharp and clear. Yet there is nothing straight forward about these meaty stories, that cover swaths of time and depths of emotion in just 30 to 50 pages. I’m entirely under her spell.

An excerpt from the short story “Floating Bridge” found in “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.”

“It’s too bad the moon isn’t up yet,” Ricky said. “It’s really nice here when the moon is up.”

“It’s nice now, too.”

He slipped his arms around her as if there was no question at all about what he was doing and he could take all the time he wanted to do it. He kissed her mouth. It seemed to her that this was the first time ever that she had participated in a kiss that was an event in itself. The whole story, all by itself. A tender prologue, an efficient pressure, a wholehearted probing and receiving, a linger thanks, and a drawing away satisfied.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh.”

He turned her around, and they walked back the way they had come.

“So was that the first you ever been on a floating bridge?”

She said yes it was.

“And now that’s what you’re going to get to drive over.”

He took her hand and swung it as if he would like to toss it.

“And that’s the first time ever I kissed a married women.”

“You’ll probably kiss a lot more of them,” she said. “Before you’re done.”

He sighed. “Yeah,” he said. Amazed and sobered by the thought of what lay ahead of him. “Yeah, I probably will.”

Lauren Groff reads Alice Munro’s “Axis,” and discusses it with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.

The Paris Review (The Art of Fiction, No. 137) interviews Alice Munro.

My hand that held the receiver shook.

This maple tree would grow slowly and steadily, its shadow enlarging each year until the house and I were engulfed in darkness, the lavender and tomatoes and peas and roses yellowed and stunted, and my own face a pale moon from lack of sun. I imagined fighting the decision, of uncovering city documents that supported my position, of meeting with a supervisor, of seeking help from my city councilman. I imagined backing into the sapling with its trunk no bigger than my wrist, of poisoning it, of moving it under the cover of night.

I will do none of this.

But this is what I vow: When this sugar maple towers over me, and my children’s children climb in its branches, I will tap its trunk for syrup and make it bleed.

“Oranges”
By Gary Soto

… I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

Clementines in ginger syrup
Adapted from Gourmet magazine, February 2008
Serves 4

In a sauce pan, bring 1 1/2 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup thinly sliced and peeled ginger, 4 green cardamom pods and 3 whole star anise to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep, covered for another 15 minutes. Strain syrup and chill until cold, at least 2 hours. Cut the peel from six clementines with a sharp knife, then cut into 1/4-inch thick rounds and place them in a bowl. Pour chilled syrup over the fruit and return to fridge for at least 1 hour. Just before serving, sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

Knitting is a diary written in yarn. If you knit on your commute to your job, the tightness of the stitches might indicate whether you’re going to work or returning home, and for those who knit during a movie, the stitches can chart when the film reaches its climax because our emotions are woven into every stitch.

“Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either,” wrote Elizabeth Zimmermann in “Knitting Without Tears.” “When I say properly practiced, I mean executed in a relaxed manner, without anxiety, strain, or tension, but with confidence, inventiveness, pleasure, and ultimate pride.”

So intent was on calming my taut nerves and tapping into knitting’s hidden power when I began to knit three years ago I even tried conscious breathing as I worked, inhaling on the knit stitch, exhaling on the purl. And I held my yarn loose. Very, very loose. Too loose. For now I found myself struggling to make a hat out of gorgeous green wool because I couldn’t make gauge. The pattern called for a size 8 needle and I’d dropped to a size 5 and still couldn’t achieve the 4 1/2 stitches to the inch. In desperation I went for help, and this is when I learned that if I didn’t tighten up my yarn, I’d be working in negative needle sizes and still not get gauge.

I’m breaking a bad habit and relearning how to hold yarn. On the first day my left hand ached. On the second, my right shoulder did. But on the third day my stitches starting looking more uniform, and I’d achieved gauge –  on the size 5 needle.

“I am only a moderately loose knitter, but I can quite easily achieve the same gauge with a needle three sizes smaller,” Zimmermann wrote. “I enjoy knitting loosely (and) I see no reason to make myself nervous by knitting very tightly on a size 8 just because the book says so.”

With a bit of collective nose thumbing, the hat again is a work in progress, muscles are committing a new technique to memory, and my stitches are telling a new story of how to better weave stress into my life.

“Nothing. Why?” I said.

“A bite’s been taken out of each one.”

“What?”

“A bite.”

“You’re joking.”

I walked into the bedroom where I’d stashed the dessert of cream-filled sandwich cookies because my kitchen is small. Thinking I was being clever, I’d placed 4-year-old Ivan in charge, reasoning that if he shouldered the responsibility of protecting the whoopie pies, they’d be safe not only from his older brothers and sister, but, most importantly, from him.

Whoops.

Now, I stood before a baking sheet filled with sandwich cookies boasting bite marks. Four were spared.

“Ivan!”

“You shouldn’t have put them down low where he could reach them,” Marcel said.

“Well, it’s too late now for that,” I said.

I yelled again for Ivan as he walked into the bedroom.

“Yes, Mom?”

“What happened to the whoopie pies?”

“Sorry.”

“But what happened to them? They’re for our guests and now there’s a bite taken out of each one.”

“I was starving,” Ivan said.

“But why did you have to take a bite out of every one of them? Why not just take an entire cookie and eat that one?”

“Okay.” He smiled.

“No, no, no. You can’t have any more! Tell me what happened.”

“Well, I was starving and I went in and took a bite and got a drink of water and watched the ‘puter game and then I got starving again.”

Whoopie pies are not quite a cookie and not quite a cake, but fall somewhere in between, according to ”Whoopie Pies” by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell, whose cookbook runs wild with possibilities like:

• Fat Elvis (banana cake, salty peanut butter filling),
• Lemon Triple Threat (lemon cake, lemon curd and mascarpone filling),
• Happy Pilgrim (pumpkin cake, maple filling), and
• The Stoner (chocolate cake, marshmallow cream, drizzle of chocolate syrup, with the edges rolled in crushed Fritos).

The two constants in all these happy combinations are the generous amount of creamy filling and the pies’ soft, rounded shapes. I looked at my half-eaten pies resembling half moons and sighed.

“You were hungry fourteen times?”

“Uh-huh.”

Teeth marks were cut away, the whoopie pies stacked and the four untouched ones served to our guests, who went on to request seconds, fully aware they’d been vetted by our young taste tester — who developed a stomachache later that night.

Classic chocolate whoopie
Adapted from “Whoopie Pies” by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell
Makes about 48 two-inch cakes

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

4 tablespoons vegetable shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cup milk

Position rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375-F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in one bowl and set aside. In another bowl, beat together the butter, shortening and brown sugar on low speed with an electric mixer. Increase speed to medium and beat until fluffy and smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for another 2 minutes.

Add half the flour mixture and half the milk to the batter and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the remaining flour mixture and milk and beat until smooth.

Using a spoon, drop about 1 tablespoon of batter on to the baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake one sheet at a time for 10 minutes or until the pies spring back when gently pressed. Remove from oven and let the cakes sit on the sheet for another 5 minutes before moving them to a rack to cool completely.

Classic marshmallow filling

1 1/2 cups marshmallow cream

1 1/4 cups vegetable shortening

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

With a mixer, beat together the marshmallow cream and shortening until smooth and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat about 3 minutes longer.

Assembling whoopie pies:

Spread the filling onto the flat side of one cake using a knife or spoon. Top it with another cake, flat side down. Repeat. Alternatively, you can use a pastry bag with a round top to pipe the filling onto the cakes.

+++

The weather was crummy so my family went to see the photographs of Isaac Layman, a Seattle artist who turned his lens inward, studying the small and unoriginal pieces of his home. It was the final day of the Frye Art Museum’s exhibit “Paradise” and we passed one room lined with empty frames. In another room, a large photograph filled one wall with its soft, luxurious folds of gray, but as we walked closer we discovered it was used tissues from when the photographer’s family had been sick. Here is art, then. One of life’s banal mementos transcending its base and contemptuous origin and, for a brief second, becoming beautiful, right? Maybe.

“Isaac Layman’s photographs are hyperreal visions of the mundane spaces and objects found in his Seattle home. … They are ultimately unremarkable scenes, but Layman feels an affinity to them as they are endearing representations of all he has,” according to the Lawrimore Project.

We returned to the room with its blank walls and discovered that this was intentional. The empty frames held glass removed from the windows of the photographer’s home. I stood and stared, shifted my perspective, puzzled over what I should appreciate about these squares of dirty glass and decided to be grateful that it was not lint found in Layman’s navel.

I left the museum feeling annoyed with such a wide, forgiving definition of art, and that night I woke with the limerick in my head. But today — as the sun threw into high relief my own smudged and specked glass from which I view all that I hold dear — I decided to not disparage what I failed to appreciate by throwing rocks through another’s windows. After all, I might be more like Layman than I wish to admit in searching for the significant in what is dull and commonplace, he with his camera and me with my pen.

A week of snow, of broken routines and sledding before sunrise. Of early nights, and being surprised that I’m hooked by the space western Firefly. Drinking The Duke’s Hot Chocolate with pepper and all spice, as snowmen infiltrate the backyard. Learning to identify the Bewick’s wren, black-capped chickadee, gray-headed junco, and red-shafted flicker at the bird feeders. Wishing I could do this.