“Well, you figure it out together. It’s funny because you get a marriage license, a driver’s license, a fishing license, business license, or whatever, but there is no parent license. You just have a baby and you’re a parent! No paperwork and no classes required. Bill and I were a team and we trusted each other. You and Travis are a great team! I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“I feel like there are lots of things to worry about!” Lauren says, chuckling. “There’s a lot to know.”
“Yeah, but you learn it,” Andrea says, brushing mulch and dirt off of Molly’s legs after she falls in front of them.
“The world seems kind of crazy now.”
Andrea nods. “We thought the same thing when we started having kids. Bill and I learned that’s there’s only so much we could do as parents. We did everything we could to teach and guide our kids, but we learned that there are things that only God can do. We learned to pray when we became parents,” she says, laughing. “One thing we did was we asked other parents who had older kids what they did, and we used the advice that worked best for us. Some of the most common advice was to get our baby on a schedule and to keep that schedule. As each child grew, we put them on a schedule that was appropriate for their age.”
Lauren thinks for a moment. “I don’t think my mom ever had me … or herself … on a schedule. When I went into my first foster home, I couldn’t believe they said my bedtime was nine o’clock! I always stayed up until eleven or midnight.” Her face clouds over as she looks across the playground. “What if I’m like my mom?”
“You’re not,” Andrea says.
Lauren turns her head to look at her. “How do you know?”
“Because you just asked that question.”
Lauren pulls out the recipe for creamy spinach soup from among the cards in the table drawer and begins to read through it again.
Someone once told me by the time a child is five their eating habits are already established. I started you kids on vegetables and healthy food when you were just toddling around here and you’re still healthy eaters today! The green of this soup was never an issue because you loved the taste. Remember when Dad got so sick that one winter? I was practically spoon-feeding this along with tomato soup and chicken soup to him, and he got better quicker than the doctor expected! I always got our milk and cream from Bud’s. Remember going with me to the farm? I’m convinced the cows on his farm produced the best milk around, and it was worth the drive there every week. Use good half-and-half, fresh spinach, and farm-fresh chicken for this, and your kids will love it as much as you did.
Lauren pounds out a couple of boneless chicken breasts and puts them into a skillet to cook and glances again at the recipe. Dice half a cup of onion and half a cup of red pepper. Make sure you make the dices small. They should blend into the soup, not stick out. Lauren is careful as she dices, paying attention that the onion and red pepper are as small as she can make them, before placing them in a pot with a tablespoon of melted butter. She sautés them for a few minutes before adding one pound of thawed, chopped spinach, two cups of chicken stock, and two crushed garlic cloves. She looks at the recipe card again and moans: Salt and pepper to taste, and a touch of cayenne pepper. Just figure out what your family likes and season the soup according to that. “What does that even mean?” Lauren says aloud, sprinkling a bit of salt into the soup.
As it cooks for ten minutes, she melts a quarter cup of butter in a saucepan, adds a quarter cup of flour to it, and begins whisking it over low heat. Don’t let it scorch! Whisk for two minutes, the recipe says. After measuring out three cups of half-and-half, she pours it into the flour mixture and whisks until it is blended. Then she pours it into the pot with the spinach, letting it simmer for ten minutes. She wonders how much of a difference this half-and-half and chicken is that she purchased at Clauson’s, compared to what she could buy on a farm somewhere. She’s not familiar with any local farms, let alone one called Bud’s, and assumes the table she purchased and these recipes came from another town, or even another state. She hasn’t lifted the lid of the skillet since she began cooking the chicken, and when the ten minutes are up, she checks on it, and it is perfect. She cuts the breasts into small pieces and adds it to the soup, turns the stove burner off and covers the soup. To let the flavors blend, as the recipe card says.
One day, she hopes to venture out and make the crusty bread that went along with this recipe, but for tonight she’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches. She lifts the lid of the soup, spoons out a yummy-looking bite, and lets it cool before tasting it. Just as the recipe card instructed, she seasons it with a bit more salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper, and tastes it again. “So good,” she says to herself, looking into the pot. Andrea was right: she’s nothing like her mom.
TWELVE
September 1972
John makes his way to the workshop after Joan and the children are in bed. He hasn’t had the chance to be out here in over two weeks and picks up the table leg he started working on over a month ago. Standing it on top of the worktable, he tries to size it up, thinking about his next step, but he can’t think and
