Dandelion Wine Review by Rachel Atterholt
Was she conscious of her talent? Hardly. If asked about her cooking Grandma would look down at her hands which some glorious instinct sent on journeys to be gloved in flour, to plumb disencumbered turkeys, wrist-deep in search of their animal souls. Her gray eyes blinked from spectacles warped by forty years of oven blasts and blinded with strewings of pepper and sage, so she sometimes flung cornstarch over steaks, amazingly tender, succulent steaks! And sometimes dropped apricots into meat-loaves, cross-pollinated meats, herbs, fruits, vegetables with no prejudice, no tolerance for recipe or formula, save that at the final moment of delivery, mouths watered, blood thundered in response. Her hands then, like the hands of Great-grandma before her, were Grandma's mystery, delight, and life. She looked at them in astonishment, but let them live their life the way they must absolutely lead it.
Dandelion Wine is about time. It’s about memory and nostalgia and wonderfully, as well, homemaking. Time and memory weave together to create a bittersweet story of how generations cook and clean and serve, and the impact that has on their world.
Not a bit of it isn’t beautiful in some way, calling to mind some inner truth, but it’s also been more than cathartic and helpful to my growth.
Currently, I’m trying to be a homemaker. I've been holding on to the title of Hearthkeeper for about a year now. It wasn’t something I readily accepted or thought about, but it took me until last year to realize I was serving the Lord by serving my family, my church and myself. I’m also single, and as a single woman, I didn’t put much stock into building a home. I don’t live alone and I don’t have a husband to serve. But like in Dandelion Wine, you can build a home for others, and you can create a place for yourself. You can serve your church and others, and through them, yourself.
I am also going through another period of health issues. I have lots of chronic health problems and conditions that have remained most of my life, so I can’t be up from dawn to dusk baking bread and deep cleaning a house. Sometimes tasks take several days to finish. Sometimes they never get done. It’s hard sometimes to deal with the stress of that, the guilt and frustration, the constant false guilt of comparing yourself to others.
And then I read Dandelion Wine and everything I ever wanted to say was here. It’s like someone took the thoughts from my mind and wrote it in pretty words. I often like to find things and share them with others and say, “Here, this explains this about me.” This book explains my heart.
"If you died from overwork, what should I do today, climb in that big box down there and be happy? Also tell me, Lee, how is our life? You know how our house is. Seven in the morning, breakfast, the kids; all of you gone by eight thirty and it's just me and washing and me and cooking and socks to be darned, weeds to be dug, or I run to the store or polish silver. Who's complaining? I'm just reminding you how the house is put together, Lee, what's in it! So now answer: How do you get all those things I said in one machine?"
There are parts about discontent, where the happiness machine takes you places you may never be able to go to. It shows that sometimes happiness is just looking through the window of your own home and not at others. There’s a part about how being alone in a famous city is the same as being alone anywhere, and how minds can connect in love. There’s nostalgia and there’s fear, of building things up in your mind too much, of how sadness can be in the young and old, and how no one really knows anything.
But really it’s about homemaking. It’s about the wonderful magic of caring for your home. It’s about generations of baking, sewing, and cleaning. It’s about loving and serving others so much that you connect through time and memory.
It’s about houses being perfect chaos. And how it all affects the world around you.
He took the baking powder out of its fine new tin and put it in an old flour sack the way it had always been. He dusted the white flour into an old cookie crock. He removed the sugar from the metal bin marked sugar and sifted it into a familiar series of smaller bins marked spices, cutlery, string. He put the cloves where they had lain for years, littering the bottom of half a dozen drawers. He brought the dishes and knives and forks and spoons back out on top of the tables.
He found Grandma's new eyeglasses on the parlor mantel and hid them in the cellar.
He kindled a great fire in the old wood-burning stove, using pages from the new cookbook. By one o'clock in the still morning a huge husking roar shot up in the black stovepipe, such a wild roar that the house, if it had ever slept at all, awoke. He heard the rustle of Grandma's slippers down the hall stairs. She stood in the kitchen, blinking at the chaos.
It’s also about planting your flowers. Abby wrote a wonderful article with a mantra I like to quote.
Plant your flowers.
We can build for this world and the next. We can make beautiful things in this life and serve others down the street, in our church, or even strangers through our acts of love. We don’t need the grass that doesn’t grow too much so we don’t have to mow every week. The simple act, the serving of others, the way the children down the street like the smell, or just the very routine is better. Sometimes it would be easier to have better shoes, or easier tasks, or have everything figured out. But in the end, planting and growing, the work of it all can be beautiful and whole.
“Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade.
That's my answer to anyone who asks big questions! Quick now, send in the rest!"
This book is about staying in the present, keeping your flowers weeded and watered, and not letting them go to rot. In your memory there is good and bad, as in Dandelion Wine. There are monsters around, and fear and loneliness and pain. There’s wonderful nostalgia and heartbreaking trauma. But it’s easy to get sidetracked by all that, to blame things on that or wish for something else. It’s easy to get lost. It’s all too easy to get lost in the false guilt, the house unfinished, the clothes left unwashed. It’s easy to think that having a happiness box or fewer tasks or a better body to manage things is the way.
But it’s important to stay present, to serve others, even if it’s hard, to reach out, to let go of things that don’t matter, to plant your flowers and mow your lawn and look outward. To serve and connect and create. To cultivate and grow and keep from stagnation. To serve the Lord as we are called to do.
“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 4:10-11
Even in today's age, with little to no community or neighborhood connections, we can find it at church. We can still drink tea on the porch, maybe with a Pastor’s wife or someone unmarried. We can bring food to the sick or tired mothers, we can visit with those who can’t go to church. We can share our homes and our hearts.
We can still find ways to serve. It takes time, it takes work, and it’s a struggle to also take care of ourselves, to keep our own gardens overflowing while also trying to water others. It’s difficult for me sometimes to serve every aspect of my church while trying to heal and take care of myself. I can’t do everything all the time. I can’t bake the bread, and clean the house and make things for the church. Sometimes I can only serve the church or make bread for my family. Sometimes I can only help one person. But being unable to do everything does by no means mean we should do nothing.
It’s a balance that takes forever to find, but the journey can be good and kind and wonderfully rewarding if we let it.
Routine is magic if we let it be. The simple and the hard can be wonderfully profound if we let it be. So let it be.
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I fell in love with Dandelion Wine when we read it for book club. The whole book is a book of Tenders. I had intended to write about it for HearthKeepers. When Rachel told me she had thoughts and an article brewing, I decided to let her share instead of me. I hope y’all enjoyed her article and will go find a copy of Dandelion Wine. It’s a beautiful book. - Abby
