Contrasting Lives in the Books I've Been Reading

Over the past few days, I have finished two very different books. A Small Bit of Bread and Butter is a collection of letters written by a missionary wife living in southern MN (and WI after the "Dakota uprising") in the mid 19th century. My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy was published in 1969, written Mary Gallagher, Mrs. Kennedy's  personal secretary from the late 50s until 1964.

What a contrast!

At some point during the special news coverage of the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination in November, a commentator referenced Gallagher's book as one of the best inside portrayals of life in the White House during those "Camelot" years. The racial attitudes ("kitchen boys," acceptance that the black woman who worked excessively long hours as Mrs. Kennedy's personal maid should of course not be paid even half the salary that the author was expecting, etc.) would be scandalous today and a first lady would be hugely criticized if she saw her role only to be buying clothes and re-redecorating both the White House and the many homes she seemed to need to collect. Her attitude toward the "little people" in her life--including the author and other close staff of both the president and first lady--is stunningly callous. From this time in history, it is hard to believe the admiration that Gallagher maintained for Jacquelyn's superficial lifestyle, but it is perhaps the kind of loyalty that is seen in the servants in the series, Downton Abbey.

Gallagher recounts that hundreds of thousands of dollars--1960s dollars at that--were spent on clothing every year. Even JFK, a man accustomed to wealth, questioned the spending and reportedly asked his wife repeatedly to try to cut back at least a little. In response, Mrs. Kennedy tried to cut the food budget for the staff and accused the secret service agents of charging their hotel costs to her budget. No remorse ever shows up for any of the imperious acts or spending, but Gallagher still calls her boss a wonderful, giving woman.

What a contrast all of that story was to the letters written by Mary Riggs from the Minnesota frontier. The tribulations their family endured as they sought to bring the Gospel to the Dakota people are almost beyond belief. Here too are comments about the native peoples who would be too racist to be acceptable in today's world, but through all her letters, this missionary clearly showed her caring desire for the Dakotas to know the joy of grace. And though she often mentioned the difficulties they faced (including a house fire that left them with no changes of clothes and little more than a single pan salvaged from the ashes), she then apologizes to those she writes to for complaining and speaks of her pity for the Dakotas who often had even less.

When I finished Gallagher's book, I was ready to swear off all materialistic pursuits. When I contrasted Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Riggs, I knew which of the two I would really want to talk to and get to know better...and which one I was sure that I most closely resembled.

Right.

As I write this, I look around and see wonderful gifts from people who have visited my home. I have a beautiful Thai scarf draped on my piano and on this sits a little antique Moroccan bronze and glass box. Small wood carvings on the antique desk include a little row of elephants, a gift from international students from India, and a hand carved "jitney" (it has another name that I don't recall) from a Mayo fellow from Thailand. Czech chocolates remain in the candy dish even as the Christmas decorations have been packed away--including some graceful bamboo (or palm frond) and shell ornaments from Micronesia. My home is a wonderful blessing, warm in these freezing cold weeks in Minnesota and full of wonderful appliances and technology. Would I really be prepared to give this all up as the Riggs did, to share God's wonderful love to people who need not just physical but also spiritual help? And do I not often shop for things that I could do without? Though I try to maintain a frugal household, there are still areas where I spend that could be cut back.

I am glad I had the opportunity to read both of these books in close succession, for the opportunity to use the contrasts in two different lifestyles to do a little more self-analysis as a new year begins. I have an assignment to read I Am Malala this week, so there will be yet another woman, with yet another very different life situation, that I hope I can use as I make decisions in my day to day life.

The Nostalgia of Fragrance

Another subzero morning, but the sun was shining brightly through my kitchen windows.  I picked up a grapefruit from the fruit basket and cut it in half. Immediately the citrus-y fragrance billowed upward, and I was transported to another time decades ago.

Growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, our diet was pretty locally based, not by choice so much as availability, or lack thereof, of anything else. That meant our fresh fruit choices were mostly apples in the unfinished, unheated basements, maybe even pears for a few months, but melons and fresh berries were clearly late spring and summer treats. What we did have from outside the area, year round, was bananas. The small town IGA sometimes put "slightly used" (ie, overripe) bananas on sale for perhaps a nickel a pound, and that would be when my mother would stock up. The full price fruit (as I recall, usually only a dime or so a pound) was something we did get too, but these might be cut in half, placed next to each cereal bowl as a reminder that we were to share wisely.

In the winter we also had citrus fruit as often as the budget allowed, and this also was somewhat seasonal. sometime around Christmas, tangerines would appear in the stores, and we eagerly awaited these zipper-skinned favorites to appear in our lunch pails--and often, in the toes of the Christmas stockings we hung each year. Oranges had a little longer season, and grapefruit seemed most often to come onto the menu in January and February. Occasionally, grapes might be had for a price that fit our family's very, very tight budget, and they were parceled out and savored when we did have the opportunity.

But it was the memory of grapefruit for breakfast that filled my mind this morning. How often we would come down to the kitchen where my mom would have already cut grapefruits in half, using her knife to carefully loosen the sections and then sprinkling each with a lavish amount of sugar. Each place had its own half (and if we were an odd number at the table that day, the half left over would have been covered and put in the refrigerator for tomorrow), and we all ate the sections and then squeezed as much juice as possible into the bowls from which we inelegantly drank the juice. Sometimes this juice was more than a little bitter, so my sister and I were glad to share our leftovers with whoever wanted more.

At school, our teacher sometimes extravagantly brought a whole grapefruit for her lunch, peeling and eating it section by section like we ate our oranges. We often watched this in awe, both because she had a whole grapefruit to herself but, even more, because she could eat it, including the bitter membrane, without any added sugar at all!

All of these memories flooding back, just by cutting a grapefruit in half. And then, a couple more. Instead of eating the grapefruit section by section from a carefully prepared half, I used my old-fashioned manual juicer to squeeze the juice and pulp out, poured all of it into a glass, and drank it with my breakfast. And I used the whole grapefruit, not just half! I learned this habit when living in Arizona with a wonderful grapefruit tree loaded in season with bushels of sweet fruit. Nothing like going out to the backyard, picking a heavy with juice fruit and bringing it in to savor. We had so many that I had quickly learned juicing was a great way to get these on the menu more quickly and more often. I even learned how to concentrate the juice for freezing without so much space taken. Now that I am again buying the fruit, I no longer do that, but it was fun to have our own concentrated juice in the freezer when the AZ grapefruit were not in season.

There are other aromas that can sometimes surprise me with pictures of the past, and I savor every one. When Grandpa Laack had his aneurysm the loss of his sense of smell was what he mentioned as perhaps the most depressing aftermath. At times like this, when I can relish the past with my nose, I think I can understand just a little more what he mourned.