Butter

I went to sleep last night thinking about how when I was a kid I would sometimes watch my grandmother make butter. Why was I thinking about this? I have no idea. It just came to mind. I'm not sure why, but I guess this is normal, but I have more and more memories of my childhood becoming clearer and clearer in my mind. I used to remember very little of my young years. Now, at odd times, I remember things. I had a very good childhood, nothing to repress, I just have always been so very "in the present" that I guess I pushed those thoughts back into the deeper parts of my brain. Well, they are starting to come forward. Am I getting old? ha ha!

My grandparents had a dairy farm/ranch out east of Colorado Springs. Grandma skimmed cream off the top of milk that they kept for themselves and didn't sell. She'd keep it in a quart jar in the fridge and when enough accumulated, she'd pour that icy cold cream into a large bowl. She'd get out her electric "egg beater" (that's what I always called it) and churn the butter that way. I see myself standing across the table from her, watching with big-eyed amazement as the beaters went round and round and round, churning the cream into a thicker and thicker substance. Soon chunks of yellow would start to form, more and more until the bowl was full of yellow chunks of butter swimming in a milky white liquid. I don't know how she knew when to quit - was it the stiffness of the butter, the amount of whey in the bowl, or what? I just know she'd turn off the beaters and, with very clean hands, begin to knead the butter into a lump. She would drain off the whey as it accumulated in the bottom of the bowl. Knead, knead, knead. Soon all of the whey was out and there sat a lump of beautiful yellow butter. She'd then add some salt, knead it in, pat the lump into whatever shape she wanted and voila! Fresh sweet cream butter.

Grandma usually made bread, too. White bread - none of that healthy whole wheat stuff can I remember. White bread was what people ate. We'd slather fresh butter on fresh homemade white bread and think we'd died and gone to heaven. Oh my - that was GOOD stuff!

It was a good memory to go to sleep on.

I need to call my mother and make sure some of the details I remember are accurate - like the bowl she used (yellow outside, white inside - my mother has a bowl like that so maybe I'm remembering my mother's bowl and not my grandmother's. Also, did she use a hand-beater sometimes, like the kind you turn the handle round and round on? It's possible that when I was very young she did - I seem to have memories of that, too. I want to know these things now, while there is still time to ask my mother!

It makes me very sad to know that I am not creating memories for my grandson like these. We live on the other side of the world. What will he remember of us when he is 55? Anything? There are so many nice things about families living close together and multi-generations being involved in each others' lives. I guess this is part of 'counting the cost' of following Christ. Sometimes 'cost' hurts. I hope that one day he may be able to read some of these memories and understand his grandmother a bit more and where he came from. (I also hope my kids will, too - Peter? Are you reading this? heh heh)