Gift giver

I think of Gayle, my mother-in-law, whenever I bake biscuits. She gifted me the double-layered baking sheet that gets used whenever it’s time for biscuits. Gayle made great biscuits.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve made countless biscuits on this baking sheet. It bears the scars, dark around the edges where things weren’t scraped off, lighter in the middle from use. I’ve thought about hanging it on the wall as a work of art, testament to the gift that continues to give.

It’s been a few years since Gayle passed away, which is why it’s important to make biscuits, simply because the biscuits baked on this sheet, this piece of metal, remind me of her, and I enjoy remembering Gayle.

Time to break out the butter and honey.

Rumours of Glory

When I was in my early twenties, my favorite musician was Bruce Cockburn, a Canadian singer and song writer. One of my favorite songs of his is Rumors of Glory, from the album Humans. It opens with the following lines:

Above the dark town
After the sun’s gone down
Two vapour trails cross the sky
Catching the day’s last slow goodbye

Every time I look up in the sky and see a vapor trail, this song plays in my head.

Summer in Winter

I went for a bike ride yesterday. It was about -14 degrees with the windchill, kind of cold for a 16 mile ride. Toward the end of it, I had a memory of cycling over Logan Pass in Montana, part of an adventure I did two summers ago that started in Seattle and ended in Milwaukee. I think I had the memory because I was riding the Salsa, the same bike I toured on. It was a vivid memory, the type of  memory that enables the past to blend into the present. Which was nice, given that the recollection of that July morning was one of  warm summer expanse.

Summiting Logan Pass back in 2015.