We are visiting my childhood home today – St. Simons Island, Georgia, on the 8-year anniversary of my mother’s death from Parkinson’s Disease. Although the family house where we grew up has long since been leveled and rebuilt, so much of the 1970s decade is still ever present here on the island.
When I was young here, the Tastee-Freez was the place we’d go on our bicycles to get ice cream and hot dogs. It has since been a Dairy Queen and now a Frosty’s, but the original poster is still hanging by the door.
I also love my brother’s dishes, which were our family dishes in the 1970s. This morning, I used a smaller coffee cup and a saucer than I would normally use, just to eat from these dishes. The retro vibe is strong on the olive green pattern.
It’s a welcome feeling to walk back through the decades. As we go through years of memorabilia with our dad, my brother and I are reliving memories and sharing the stories. Even though the annual “family meeting” is sometimes uncomfortable with the details of how families move forward after losing a loved one, it’s also filled with plenty of time around the table, enjoying great food and laughing.
As we move into a new year, laughter is a word that I’ve considered as my One Little Word for 2024. It’s surely something that improves my whole outlook!
We’re missing Mom today, but we know she is close. As my brother and I were driving this morning, a hawk flew directly over us – – a sure signal that all is well in Heaven.
At 8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, my daughter and I began our first-ever Yule Log baking adventure in our pajamas in a rural countryside VRBO kitchen that was unfamiliar to us. When our Kentucky family got together to plan the Christmas dinner, everyone decided to divide the menu and each prepare a dish. Ever so daringly and boldly, she volunteered us to bring a Yule Log. She’d found an ambitious recipe online and had shopped for all the ingredients. She measured them into bags and brought them to the rental house.
By the time we arrived back from the only open store, a Dollar General on the backside of nowhere, we were well into the Christmas Eve hours when children are tucked into bed and elves begin working their magic. And we needed more than magic. We needed divine intervention. Lots and lots of prayer – my One Little Word for 2023.
The recipe looked intimidating. We watched the video of the woman making it to try to ease my apprehension. So much had to go right, and I was fearful of a flop.
The old whipped-cream-on-the-nose baking pose
To ante up the challenge, we were using dishes that weren’t ours, cooking in a gas oven we didn’t know. The cardinal rule in baking is to “know thine oven,” and this beast was a complete and total stranger from another realm.
Somehow, though, after all the beating of the egg whites with sugar to form stiff peaks and folding in that mixture with the flour and egg yolk and cocoa, she pulled a perfectly baked chocolate sponge cake from the oven, ready to be inverted onto parchment paper and rolled in a thin white towel and placed in the coolest part of the room to set before spreading the heavy whipped cream on it and re-rolling it. My daughter was unflappable throughout the whole process, but my nerves were on edge the entire time. I was trying not to show it.
The cake is ready when it springs back into form when pressed
We watched the recipe video again when it came time to unroll the cake and spread the layer of whipped cream on the inside.
The entire process involved phases of blending, folding, baking, setting, cooling, spreading, rolling, unrolling, and waiting. It also involved a lot of laughing to keep the nerves under control. It felt a lot like walking across a landmine with someone who didn’t know we were on a battlefield with so many potential pitfalls.
As every step turned out, my daughter smiled through the entire process. She was baking a miracle as I stood amazed. Turns out, she hadn’t read the entire recipe before she started. Each small step was not overwhelming to her. I, on the other hand, saw every mile of the long journey and knew how risky it could be.
It came time for the rolled log to be iced, and her artistic flair came out in full force.
She evened out the chocolate buttercream frosting into consistent thickness and began her artistic presentation using a fork to make bark lines, even making an elliptical shape to make it look more knotty and authentic, like an owl might pop its head out at any moment and ask us whoooo we were. She softened a Hershey bar and began the tedious process of shaving thin chocolate curls with a sharpened knife. And she placed peppermints in a Ziploc bag and crushed them to look like shimmering snow to top the Yule Log.
And when her masterpiece was finished, she stood back and admired it with pride.
“Look what we did, Ma! Thanks for making it with me. Without you, I probably would have given up.”
I hugged her close, thinking, No, dear daughter. This is all your creation, not mine. I never would have even attempted it. You are far more courageous than I will ever be.
She inverted a mixing bowl to cover it like a cake lid and placed it in the refrigerator to chill overnight. I admired her accomplishment and thought of that Yule Log as a metaphor for all the ways we need each other.
And we hugged goodnight, looking forward to sharing it with family on Christmas Day.
One of my daughters volunteered us to make a Yule log for Christmas dinner. We were in Kentucky, checking in to a VRBO after our 6-hour drive and a Christmas Eve Service of Lights when I found out. Without a mixer anywhere in the cabinets, the bold yellow glow of a Dollar General open until 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve on the backside of nowhere offered a glimmer of hope for the first miracle we’d need to create this masterpiece of skilled baking and artistry I seriously doubted either one of us had – – except for her creativity. That was the only strong possibility we had going between the two of us.
The recipe said it would take 3 hours. It was 7:30. The second miracle we’d need would be wakefulness. A working oven (in this one, we’d be cooking with gas) and all the right pans and an assortment of mixing bowls would need a divine nod, too.
The irony is that just a day before, I’d seen a perfect Yule Log as I’d scrolled on Facebook. I admired the swirl, the spongy-looking cake, and the icing that looked like tree bark. Oh, to be able to make a thing like that, I thought to myself.
“Someday, when I’m retired and have more time and patience, I’d like to try making a Yule Log,” I shared with my husband, showing him the picture. He studied it for a moment, noticing its intricate design, and then studied me, handing the phone back. I think he halfway expected me to laugh, as if this were a joke. I didn’t.
“But what about all these different ingredients?” I asked my baking partner daughter. ”We may have a Dollar General, but we’ll never find a grocery store open after 6 on Christmas Eve.”
“No worries,” she assured me, holding up a bag filled with an assortment of Ziploc bags. ”I already have all that, already measured out. It’s in this bag, and everything is labeled, right down to the eggs.”
Sure enough, she came ready with the ingredient part. We added a jelly roll sheet pan and a roll of parchment paper to our buggy, along with the mixer. Then we thought of a can of Pam, a Hershey Bar to make chocolate curls, and some peppermints to smash for a top-garnish. We were ready to check out and go get busy on our baking adventure of a lifetime. On Christmas Eve.
At 8:00 p.m., we began the 3-hour baking quest.
“I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d find yourself making a Yule Log on Christmas Eve, did you?” she asked.
“This is not the first time I’ve found myself doing something I didn’t expect to be doing,” I reassured her with a smile of readiness for anything.
I heard my husband chuckling from the den, where he sat reading. ”Nope, it sure isn’t, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, either,” he added.
Kitty and Randolph always stopped by my grandparents’ house in Blackshear, Georgia on Christmas Day with a big, round, heavy tin of fresh-baked fruitcake cookies. The grownups would sit in the parlor on the antique furniture by the silver tinsel tree and talk and talk and talk, while my brother and I would figure out ways to steal cookies. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to like fruitcake cookies, so we liked them – and still do. We are among the small percentage of the population who can actually savor a slice of fruitcake with a cup of coffee.
My grandparents were natural social distancers back in the 1970s, but Kitty and Randolph were part of their small circle of friends- close enough to make it past the front door. Kitty was always smiling and laughing, but Randolph was quiet and reserved.
My maternal grandparents lived life unto themselves. They both worked – she in the Sears Catalog department in downtown Waycross, Georgia, and he for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in Waycross. Both worked hard and came home at the end of the day to each other, their impeccably clean house, and their manicured lawn that they took great weekend pride in landscaping during the warm months.
Those Christmases, so full of vivid paperdoll and red wagon and Daisy gun and army men and fruitcake memories, come rushing to mind as I sit here in my living room thinking of my early childhood years when we traveled to visit our grandparents in our metallic blue and woodgrain-sided Buick station wagon through the back roads of rural Georgia, my brother and I lying flat on our backs on a quilt in “the way back” (third seat flattened to a bed area, with no seatbelts, of course) looking up at the stars in the clear night as pine tree tops whizzed past.
My eyes gaze upward to the window over our front door, out to the stars past the pine tree tops, realizing that the years, too, have whizzed past faster than I could have imagined. I’m older now than my grandparents were then, and understand in these years more than ever before how fleeting time truly is.
And I wonder whether fruitcake-filled Currier and Ives Christmas tins with lids of horses pulling sleighs over snowdrifts out by the old two-story farmhouse are still a thing anywhere. I’d like to steal some cookies and tuck myself away in all the wonder of a silvery tinsel tree, reliving just a few moments of those good old days, hearing Kitty tell stories and coffee cups clink and antique chairs creak as folks laughed, before screens came along and disrupted real human conversation.
I didn’t want them to leave, even though we go back to work tomorrow and most of our grandkids have another week of homeschool before they take their Christmas break. Sawyer is in 3rd grade, Saylor in 1st, and River in PreK. Beckham and Magnolia aren’t in their school years yet.
Aidan, the oldest and a teenager, lives in a neighboring county and attends a private school there. He has finally caught – and exceeded – my height. We’ve been back to back and heel to heel for a year now to see when the day would come, and it has happened!
Even though it’s far from our normal routine where we live with three Schnoodles, having part of our family come for a visit is a joy! They are a lively bunch, and they make us so proud!
We love taking pictures each time we all get together. Our daughter in law sets the timer and makes the run to take her place before the click, while we all watch the flashing light and say “cheese” on repeat until it stops. She’s an iPhone wizard!
This year, no one felt like getting dressed for a picture, so we didn’t. It was a rainy, cold weekend and we were busy staying warm and playing dominoes and watching movies and eating nonstop. So we opted for the reality photo, the one where you have to keep calling everyone to get outside and no one can pry themselves off the couch or chair they’re occupying. No one wore anything except pajamas with a coat or robe (and not the family matching kind with the coordinated Tartan plaid that looks planned and professional). A couple of us had shoes on, no girls had makeup on, and one or two of us might have brushed our hair or teeth. We simply ran out in the misty drizzle for a photo to mark the occasion.
L-R: Saylor, Kim holding Beckham, Briar in back, River, Aidan, Sawyer, Marshall holding Magnolia, and Selena
This may be my favorite picture of us ever taken. When our grandchildren are grown and look back on these days spent with their grandparents, this is what I want them to remember – that we were happy just the way we were, and that we chose to savor every moment relaxing together at home. And that we didn’t need a crippling blizzard to know how to stay in our pajamas and drink coffee and chocolate milk all day and stay cozy.
Seven years before she died, my mother joined one of my daughters and me on a girls’ trip to Dahlonega, Georgia. My college roommate makes it an annual tradition to take her own mother and daughters to start the season of Christmas shopping the weekend before Thanksgiving each year, so we met them there that year, staying with them in their favorite Smith House suite overlooking the Dahlonega square. It was a magical time of welcoming the Christmas spirit, eating great food, playing dominoes and cards, reading, sleeping past 6 a.m., lingering over coffee, and shopping for those on our lists.
I’m so grateful for that time we had together. Mom knew something was different, and she suspected Parkinson’s Disease long before her official diagnosis came. Her right thumb trembled endlessly, and she found she grew weaker and felt increasingly exhausted in her daily routine, even with her normal daily tasks. I was glad our room was close to the town square so that she could go back and rest when she felt too tired to walk.
We were downstairs in one of the gift shops when Mom’s eyes lit up. She’d spotted the sale sign on Willow Tree items. I was curious about what she’d wanted from the selection, so I followed her over to the table, where she stood admiring the Nativity set.
She bought that basic Nativity set as my Christmas gift that year and added to it for the next several years, giving me a new part of the collection each year. At the time, I was thankful, but not nearly as grateful for that gift then as I am today. The memory of our time together lives on, and this is one gift that I truly cherish because it marks our trip and takes me right back to the place where she found the joy of giving this to me and building it over time. When I admire these pieces, she is right here with me. In this Nativity, I see the past, present, and future.
Earlier this week, I watched a Tik Tok video showing a prank a teenage girl played on her father by telling him she was having car trouble and didn’t know why. She said she’d put gas in the car and loved the festive red and green gas pumps the stations were putting out for Christmas like she’d seen on Tik Tok, and that she’d chosen the green one. She knew she wasn’t out of gas.
“You didn’t!” her dad muttered in disbelief, before using a few choice words about staying off of Tik Tok.
When I pulled into the gas station on my way home from a conference yesterday, I chuckled when I saw the pumps. Sure enough – red and green.
I’ve had a few surgeries in my lifetime, starting with a tonsillectomy when I was in kindergarten. We lived in our house on Timmons Street on St. Simons Island, Georgia during this time, and I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. The house was white with a royal blue exterior wall in the carport and a 1970s modern-at-the-time artistic architectural barrier wall of cut-out circles that gave a false notion of privacy between the car and the road.
Since we had just moved to the island back in those days, Dad serving as a new pastor with long hair and sideburns looking a little bit like every picture of Jesus I’d ever seen, the members of the church showered us with things for me to do as I recovered. They stopped by and held my baby brother, and they brought ice cream, popsicles, soups, coloring books and new crayons, and books to read. I got spoiled early on to the ideas of what recovery from surgery meant: all the ice cream I wanted, and fun new stuff.
That’s why I began thinking about the silver linings of surgery before I came to be with my adult daughter as she recovers from a tonsillectomy. This isn’t easy surgery – – the older you get, the rougher the recovery. I was even more certain of this when the surgeon appeared from behind the curtain as we awaited the magical hour.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked her.
She had a far more enthusiastic response than either of us was expecting.
“Well, it’s going to suck,” he warned her. “There. I’ve said it. I had this same surgery at your age, and it’s not easy. But it’s worth it. There are healthier days ahead.”
I am a fan of new, young doctors with all the new technologies like the one I had when I broke my foot in 2022, but I took great comfort that this ENT looked older than I am, and I began saying silent prayers of thanks for his level of experience. The good Lord sent comfort on many levels for this mother’s heart as I watched my child being wheeled out to the operating room.
The silver linings and up-sides of surgery include time together, even though we aren’t running around having all kinds of adventures and fun. We’re sharing the sweetness of flattened Coca-Cola so the carbonation doesn’t sting, and we’re having conversations about hopes and dreams.
We’re also knitting hats. I was thinking back on the days when I was young and someone gave me a weaving loom. I must have made a hundred potholders and loved every single project I finished, carefully sorting the colors into piles and counting the numbers I’d need to be coordinated and not all willy-nilly random about weaving just any old colored loop in there.
Years ago, we made a bunch of hats using round looms. I’d passed the looms on to someone else to enjoy once we’d squeezed all our own joy from them, so I stopped in and got some new ones, along with some yarn for the journey. Together, we watched a refresher YouTube video to re-learn how to cast on and cast off, and we started our handiwork.
Oh, the fun of simple time, talking through the hours, sipping apple juice, and creating something that will bring warmth and all the pride of wearing a handmade item. I knitted a baby cap for a new grandchild, and she worked on a hat for herself for the coming colder days.
Somehow, working with her hands has taken her mind off of her throat and given her a different focus. And watching her work has given me a deep peace that everything will, indeed, be better.
Healing is a process that takes time, but togetherness and family time makes it all more bearable.
At the end of each month, (or beginning), I review my yearly goals and spend some time reflecting on how I’m doing in living the life I want to live ~ a way of becoming my own accountability partner and having frequent check-ins to evaluate my progress. I’m still in the process of revising some of my goals as I encounter successes…..and setbacks. New goals have asterisks for the month of December, when I will report on them in a few weeks. For the month of November, here’s my goal reflection:
Category
Goals
My Progress
Literature
Read for Sarah Donovan’s Book Group
Blog Daily
Write a proposal for my writing group’s book and a proposal for an NCTE presentation for November 2024
I participated in the November book discussion with Sarah’s reading group and look forward to reading January’s book (we skip the month of December)– I Hope This Finds You Well, by Kate Baer. I’ll participate in this book discussion in January 2024.
I continue to blog daily, and the daily writing and reflecting is a wonderful habit for me. I don’t feel complete without some form of daily writing, and the blog is a way of continuing the habit.
My writing group is writing a series of new books, and I will spend time editing the chapters we have written. I will continue to add chapters as we receive feedback from our proposals. We are each sending our proposal out to some publishing companies. I’m also meeting to help write a proposal for the NCTE 2024 Convention in Boston in 2024.
Creativity
*Decorate the house for Christmas
My main December creativity goal is decorating the house for Christmas, since we didn’t decorate at all last year. The grandchildren will be coming to see us, so there must be trees! For the month of November, I spent some time knitting hats and doing some therapy coloring with a daughter recovering from surgery.
Spirituality
Tune in to church
Pray!
Keep OLW priority
We have tuned in to church every Sunday in November and will continue doing the same for December. We plan to attend a Christmas Eve service this year as well, with one of our children.
My car is still my prayer chamber for daily prayer, and there’s so much to give thanks for. I continue my conversations with the good Lord each morning and afternoon.
I’m still keeping my OLW my priority: pray!
Reflection
Write family stories
Spend time tracking goals each month
I have shared family stories through my blog this month and will continue this month to do the same. I’ll participate in an Open Write storytelling event and share a family story out loud!
I’m tracking goals, revising, and considering some new categories as I look at my goal table. I’m already looking at my goals for next year.
Self-Improvement
*Reach top of weight range
This is a setback for me since April. I’ve hit major stress and gained weight, despite joining WW. I need to set a firm date and get the mental mindset that it takes to stay on track. I have work to do. Update: every day, the diet is starting “tomorrow.” I seriously need a good mindset to start back.
Gratitude
Devote blog days to counting blessings
I begin the days this way and end them giving thanks as well. November was full of gratitude and thanksgiving by its sheer celebrations, and I celebrated the birthdays of a grandson and a brother. Taking time to pause and give thanks for people and blessings brings joy and reminders that family is a gift.
Experience
Embrace Slow Travel
Focus on the Outdoors
I’ve taken a trip to be with a daughter having surgery in November, and while this was not adventure travel or vacation, we found ways to maximize our togetherness and make the best of a time of recovery. Next month, we will be welcoming visits from family members and visiting some out of state as well.
I’ve joined Project Feeder Watch, since birdwatching is far more comfortable and warm from inside the house. I plan to add two entries per week throughout December, totaling at least one hour per week.
Throughout her life, my mother loved birds. Songbirds, water birds, and birds of prey. She could spot a hawk from a mile off, as if she’d had some inner sensor alerting her to their presence.
My brother Ken and I often share pictures of hawks when they manifest themselves to us, especially on significant dates – birthdays, holidays, or times of concern. We often mention that we saw Mom sitting on a wire by the highway making sure our seatbelts were fastened and our doors were locked.
My children often share how much she meant to them – taking them to Dairy Queen for Cotton Candy Blizzards, making strawberry figs in the kitchen, taking walks along the beach. They called her Mimi.
Imagine the deep feeling of comfort when my daughter and I were leaving for the hospital from our hotel this morning and noticed, resting on the wire directly above the car, a hawk – seeing us off, assuring us that her spirit was right here with us in these tense moments of anticipating surgery. A tonsillectomy is rough surgery for an adult, but Mom’s spirit affirmed for us that we are on the way to better days ahead.
I’d parked the car with her guidance the night before. That inner voice told me, arriving after dark, to park near a light – not on the back side of the building, as had been suggested by hotel staff at check-in. I followed that voice. She is always steering me in all the right ways, right down to parking the car for safety and so she’d have a wire for a better morning greeting.
Even brief appearances and signs bring deep comfort to us! Mom knew how much this hello from Heaven would mean to us.
Common Threads 