Category Archives: St. Louis-abilia

Sue and Her League of Extraordinary Women

Sue Trantham Rector (back row, third from right) is a woman with an exceptional ability to attract, lift up, and inspire just about everyone she meets.

Sue and I were high school classmates, but didn’t actually become friends until we were well into middle age.

A few years ago out of the blue, I received a long, lovely email from her. She reintroduced herself, told me a good deal of her life story, and explained the reason for getting in touch.

Sue was in a transition period in her life. She had discovered Gifts from the Spirit: Reflections on the Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s classic itself: Gift from the Sea and wanted me to know how much both books had meant to her.

As she wrapped up her email, she wrote:

When I finished your book, I felt somewhat sad because I am always looking now for ‘genuine friends,’ those individuals that I can truly be myself and have a connection, an intimacy with. Wish you still lived here…I think we could be good friends.

I so appreciate you helping me go down a path to discover Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s work and for the path that your words took me, to help me become more aware of myself, who I am, and who I want to continue to be…(I) wish I could meet you and shake your hand. You touched my life and helped me a great deal. I will share your work and Anne’s with as many women who are willing to take the challenge to look inward and find a place of their own.”

The rest of the story is that we did indeed meet and have become good friends. Sue has been true to her word. She continues to tell the story of what Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea and my Gifts from the Spirit have meant to her, buys copies, and gives them out generously to her friends.

“Sue… is a woman with an exceptional ability to attract, lift up, and inspire just about everyone she meets.”

When I was in St. Louis recently she gathered about a dozen of them for dinner in a private room at a restaurant and invited me to share in a conversation about the discovery of my grandmother’s copy of Gift from the Sea that led to my own path of self-discovery as an author.

Through her conscious decision to make choices about where she puts her energy and who she allows into her life, Sue attracts like-minded friends. Her tremendous ease within herself enabled her to host the evening with poise and put all of us at our ease too.

Sue’s intention to fill her life with extraordinary women—genuine friends—has blossomed, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

A few weeks afterward, Sue’s friend Pam Lee pays it forward with her book group in Florida.

What is This Thing That is Presence and Yet Not Presence?

Not long ago when we moved my mother and had to break up the home she and my father shared for thirty years, the only St. Louis home my son ever knew, the hardest thing to let go of was my dad’s ancient workbench. This excerpt from Gifts from the Spirit: Reflections on the Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh is for all of us who have lost fathers this Father’s Day.

“My boy is so far away, even here [at her mother’s home]–until I went upstairs. As I walked into his room…everything came back. I looked at his toys, the rooster, the Swedish horse…the little blue stool, his cart of blocks…Then the bureau drawers–each one so full of him. Just the familiarity of my hand on the crib seemed to put him back there. What is this thing that is presence and yet not presence? I went down crying but more satisfied.”

HOUR OF GOLD, HOUR OF LEAD, pp. 257-258

Anne made this diary entry just eleven days after she learned that her infant son had been killed. Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was stolen from his crib at the Lindbergh’s Hopewell, New Jersey, farmhouse in March of 1932. After two months of raised and dashed hopes for his safe return, the eighteen-month-old child’s body was discovered half-buried in a wooded area less than five miles from their home. He never lived beyond the night he was taken.

Six months pregnant with her second child, Anne was visiting her mother’s home, where she and her husband and child had lived while they waited for their own home to be built. They had not been back since baby Charlie’s death. Anne tiptoed upstairs and gently opened the door to her son’s room. She was flooded with more than memories: she felt his presence. The smell of the tin of Johnson’s baby powder, the little crushed blue jacket he wore over his sleeping suit when he came downstairs to play every night, his gray pussycat with the tail nearly off. In each of these things, she found her baby. She stole back downstairs in silent tears, but was comforted. He didn’t feel so far away.

“What is this thing that is presence and yet not presence?” Visiting my mother in St. Louis a few months after my fathers’ death, this question became real for me. I was there for our annual summertime sojourn, the first time I’d been home since his funeral the winter before. I lived in California now, and the geographical distance had buffered the realization that he was gone. Intellectually, I knew he was, of course. But, emotionally, it wasn’t entirely real; when you don’t see someone regularly you don’t meet the person’s absence as sharply as you do when you live nearby.

While I knew there would be a reckoning with this trip, it didn’t come right away or in any way I expected.

I didn’t apprehend the reality of his death in the places I thought I would. Not in his empty, dark blue, leather recliner, situated in the best possible location in the family room for TV viewing. This was the “dad” chair, reserved for him with unspoken understanding all the years I was growing up and into the present—except when his grandson came to visit. (My son was granted a special dispensation to park there for his morning cartoons.)

I didn’t find it either when I sat at the desk in his study. He’d sit there to read the paper while his grandson took over his armchair in the family room. Tipping back in his swivel chair, with drugstore reading glasses perched on the edge of his handsome nose, my father would peruse the St. Louis Post- Dispatch—even if it was that liberal paper that knocked the Globe-Democrat out of business.

I didn’t realize the fact of his death, either, in what would have been his empty place at the table. Just as his chair had the best view in the room for seeing the television, my father had the best view in the breakfast nook, the place he and my mother took their meals. At his place you could look out a bay window onto a pastoral scene where horses grazed in a field thatpage45image3675840touched their property. Now my mother moved my older brother, who was also visiting, into this spot. (If it sounds like the men in my family get preferential treatment, it’s because they do.) So even his absence at the dinner table didn’t strike me deeply.

That my father was permanently gone did not become real to me until several days into the visit, when I ventured downstairs into the basement. That’s where it hit me.

I slipped quietly down the carpeted basement stairs. Yes, carpeted. My father was the kind of man who not only carpeted his basement stairs, but also regularly vacuumed the concrete basement floor. Instinctively, I made my way over to his workbench.

My dad built his workbench when he and my mother bought their first house. They had moved twice since, and never left the workbench behind.

Standing in front of it now, I pictured it in the tiny laundry room it occupied when I was four, and then later in the larger laundry room in the house where I grew up. It was a permanent fixture in the life of our family. It was the place where things that needed to be repaired were piled, where shoes that needed shining were shined, where my father could often be seen hunched over, working his magic on some electrical gizmo (his favorite word of choice) that needed overhauling.

I grew up believing that my father could fix anything.

Years later, when my parents moved to the new house, he would take my son downstairs to the basement and let him tinker with him at his workbench. I can still see my preschool- age son perched atop a sturdy plastic drum of laundry detergent before scraps of discarded wood, drilling holes with the old manual drill that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and hammering nails with his grandfather’s tack hammer—right alongside his granddad. Some summers they would make special projects together. One year it was a birdhouse; another, it was a concrete-and-tile steppingstone for the garden.

Although I stood alone at that moment with my memories rushing at me, I was surrounded by my father’s presence. He was there.

There, in the stained, scuffed surface of his workbench where he had polished shoes, built Pinewood Derby cars, repaired lamps, painted furniture, framed pictures, fixed the cord on my mother’s iron, and completed innumerable other tasks that kept the surface of our lives functioning smoothly. And each tool, hanging in its spot on the pegboard of his workbench just where he’d left it, was full of him.

I was overwhelmed by his presence. And I knew, for the first time, that he was gone. The reality that I hadn’t been able to access before came now. And along with the tears that came from deep inside my body came the knowledge of what he had meant to me.

My father was a man who wasn’t comfortable with his feelings and didn’t share them easily, and so he showed that he cared in practical ways. Building, repairing, improving, fixing–he loved to do all of these things and we received the benefits. Here was a man who showed care through his handiness. He was able to love through doing the thing he loved. My loss became real that summer day because in my father’s workbench I found his essence.

“What is this thing that is presence and yet not presence?” Anne asked. It may be this: We inhabit the things we love and, even in death, if we have loved we leave some of ourselves behind.

Hello, Friends! I’m Your Gooey Butter Cake Girl…

So you may not really be able to “chew your way to health” with Gooey Butter Cake, but you can’t tell me thousands of happy, peppy people wouldn’t clamor for just a sample.

I’m pleased to report that interest in St. Louis style Gooey Butter Cake continued to hold steady at my school’s annual fundraising benefit this spring. While the winning bid may not have hit the all-time high of $1500, the little homemade cake did sell for a respectable $1200, once again. But can you really put a price on it?

My apologies to Lucy…

 

The $1500 Gooey Butter Cake: NICE!

IMG_1423I’m still in a bit of shock about this year’s fundraiser results. It’s not like I was unaware of the power of the cake, but when it went for $1000 more than the highest bid for indoor skydiving and only $500 less than two primo tickets to the finale of “Dancing with the Stars” I realized that there was more to this story than a box of cake mix, some eggs, a stick of butter, powdered sugar, and cream cheese.

Each year during my school’s annual benefit season, teachers are asked to donate their time and talent in experiences that are put up for auction and bid on the night of the gala. Last year when my initial offering of gooey butter cake appeared, it was bought straightaway for the suggested price of $200. (The $200 Gooey Butter Cake) It went so quickly that this year I knew it would be put up for auction without a ceiling.

A week before this year’s big event, when it was time to make my sales pitch at morning chapel for my “Teacher Experience” that wasn’t an experience at all, I knew I’d have to update my approach.  That meant just one thing. I had to come clean. The previous year I’d ended my presentation dramatically, reminding students that gooey butter cake was NOWHERE to be found in southern California and that their best chance of having it again was in asking their parents to bid on the one I’d bake for them, St. Louis-style.

As it turned out, this was not completely true.

‘In the interest of our school policy of honesty in all things and truth in advertising, I come before you today to set the record straight,’ I confessed as I stepped up to make my pitch. ‘A reliable source informs me that gooey butter cake can now be found in southern California!’

Stunned silence as the following picture appeared on the overhead screen:

IMG_1350-1

When the gasps of horror and giggles died down I explained that I’d done some investigative research and this is what I’d discovered.

IMG_1346

More gasps.

I compared and contrasted the two products, pointing out that despite its claim as the ‘Gateway to Flavor’ and the friendly price point of $1.49 or 2 for $2.50, the extensive list of ingredients on the Walgreens’ brand of gooey butter was nearly unpronounceable as compared to the simplicity of ingredients in my homemade cake. I tried to be as kind as I could about the inferior imposter and closed my pitch with this call-to-action plea:

‘I’m sure the folks at the NICE! company mean well, but wouldn’t YOU rather have a gooey butter cake baked just for you by a NICE teacher like ME?’

Apparently, that clinched the deal. The rest was gooey butter history.

In hindsight I’ve realized that along with the sheer power of the cake there were some basic sales principles at work here that, despite the fact that I nearly failed Econ 101 my freshman year of college, I have finally understood:

  1. Create a buzz. Because I use gooey butter cake as an example of my favorite dessert in class when I teach expository writing, students are inundated with knowledge about it, intrigued by its foreign Midwestern origins, and curious to sample it, which leads to…
  2. Don’t underestimate the role of the stomach in decision making. After we complete the writing unit I bring in samples of GBC for the students to taste. Their heightened anticipation from hearing all about it along with its pure deliciousness creates further buzz.
  3. Limit supply, increase demand. Now that gooey butter cake is a benefit item I no longer share the recipe with students and their families. Big deal, you might be thinking. Anyone can get the recipe in a hundred places on the internet. True, but not one baked just for them by their writing teacher. Which returns us once again to #1.

There’s one more principle that renders my list pretty much irrelevant because it’s the one that really matters. And that’s the generosity of the parents who purchased this St. Louis-born treat to help our school and make their daughter and her classmates happy.

Now THAT was really nice.

 

The $200 Gooey Butter Cake

ImageWhat price gooey butter cake? I found out last month at my school’s annual benefit and fundraiser.

Every year teachers are invited to offer “experiences” to raise money for various programs at our independent school. Imaginative offerings run the gamut from after school Zumba classes to splashy high ticket items that are usually put up for bid at live auction. They have titles like “Disneyland with Your Teacher, 2 Friends, and All the Churros You Can Eat!” or “Limo Trip to the American Girl Doll Store for High Tea with Your Teacher and 3 Friends!”

What did I have to offer? I racked my brain for inspiration. I felt a bit like the little drummer boy without the frankincense, gold, or myrrh. I had no Disneyland season pass upon which to draw. And I’d raised a boy, so I didn’t know from the American Girl store.

What is it that students really want? I asked myself. And then the answer came to me. They want gooey butter cake.

Each fall when I teach my fifth grade students how to write the dreaded opinion essay, I draw them in by way of their stomachs. I model the classic five paragraph structure with my own topic, “My Favorite Dessert.” Once they write their essays, I bake a gooey butter cake and bring it to class for them to sample. They swoon. They rhapsodize. And they beg for more.

If you’re not from St. Louis, you may not be familiar with this simple, yet irresistible confection made from cake mix, eggs, butter, cream cheese, and powdered sugar. If you are from St. Louis, no explanation is required.

Two weeks before this year’s benefit, I donned my chef’s hat, took up my wooden spoon, and made my pitch during morning chapel. A dramatic PowerPoint presentation, “The Gooey Butter Cake Story,” recounted the legend of how it came to be–by accident of course, as all great discoveries seem to–during the Great Depression in St. Louis. I reminded my current and former students that this delectable treat could be found all over my hometown, but NOWHERE in southern California. That seemed to clinch it.

A parent reported to me afterward that her son predicted my gooey butter cake would “…go for thousands!” and urged her to get there early. 

The event organizers apparently weren’t clued in to the word on the street, so put it up for silent bidding with the option to purchase outright for $200. As instructed, my student’s mother got there early and snapped it up.

I wasn’t able to attend, but heard that there were quite a few disappointed people. The gooey butter cake was the talk of the evening. I was proud of my hometown. SoCal wants St. Louis gooey butter cake! Next year? Live auction!

Only connect…

imagesNot long ago, on break at a writers’ conference, I sat down with a sigh as I checked email on my phone. Discouraged that my manuscript for a children’s biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, which had won two prizes including “First Place Work-in-Progress Picture Book” at this same conference the year before, had not yet found a home (“You write beautifully, but you need to cut 1,000 words!” was a common refrain), my thoughts were beginning to spiral into the black hole of my-writing-efforts-are-for-naught.

Just one well-timed email later, the veil of self-doubt lifted, and I was reminded that this was not necessarily so. The subject header on the email was: “From Sue, Fellow Lindbergh Graduate.” Sue was a classmate I hadn’t known well growing up in St. Louis many years before, despite having shared close mutual friends in junior high. The gist of her surprisingly long email was that she wanted me to know her recent discovery of Gifts from the Spirit: Reflections on the Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh more than ten years after its publication and, subsequently, Anne’s own Gift from the Sea, had made a profound impact on her.

“Why did Anne’s book and your book resonate so much within me? Because I have struggled to ‘find myself,’ to stand up for my right to create space and time for myself without feeling guilty or selfish most of my life…(and) that this was essential, as you say, to happiness, inner peace, spirituality, to more rewarding relationships with others…” Sue had more to say. She shared quite openly with me, a virtual stranger despite our common hometown origins, about herself and how her choice to grow in self-awareness has affected every aspect of her life.

Deep calls to deep. My openness in sharing my own struggles in Gifts had elicited this beautiful and heartfelt outpouring of honest expression from her. Sue’s words were a gift to me in that moment, lifting me out of my dejection and reminding me that my writing effort does make a difference. Several emails later we met in St. Louis for lunch and nurtured the seeds of a growing friendship. In reaching out to me, Sue also became the catalyst for reconnecting me with mutual friends whom I’d lost touch with years before.

The gifts continue coming.

The chapter in Gifts titled “Reading to Know You’re Not Alone” could have a corollary: “Writing to Know You’re Not Alone.” As I look back over the years since its publication, I realize a theme is woven through my post-publication experience.

There have been other correspondents, not unlike Sue, who have touched me with their response to my book. And there have been occasions, like the afternoon I had the honor of delivering a keynote lecture at the Missouri History Museum, marking the 75th celebration of Charles Lindbergh’s epic flight, an experience that connected me with the hometown I loved and the museum that meant so much to me as a child. I have also been the guest of a dear friend on Captiva Island, where together we walked the same shell-strewn beach that inspired Anne’s Gift from the Sea.

One of my most cherished memories was the day I met Anne’s daughter Reeve Lindbergh for lunch in her hometown in Vermont. After our meal Reeve could have bade me farewell and sent me on my way, but she didn’t. Instead, she invited me to her farm to see the A-frame chalet that her husband had built on their property for Anne, where she spent her final days. Moments of connection like these are electric. I was reverberating for days after the experience of seeing Anne’s home, with the seashells she had scooped up on Captiva Island lining her mantelpiece. These are the moments that tell us we are fully alive.

A writer friend once gave me a card with an E.M. Forster quote on the cover that said, quite simply, “Only connect…” I keep these words close by, and it’s in this spirit that I am pleased to launch Gifts from the Spirit:Reflections on the Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh once again.