The Busyness of Being Busy
     Winter is wrapping up, so we’re unwrapping ourselves from thick winter coats, gloves and knitted caps.  We’re sweeping out fireplaces, throwing open windows to refreshing spring breezes, and hanging faux flower wreaths on front doors.  And we do all of this in great expectation of what the warm weather months ahead will bring in their usual busyness.  We plan vacations, pull out the grills in readiness for BBQs with the neighbors, and start ordering seed packets for spring planting.  It’s a renewing time of year, a time of rebirth, and a time to let out that pent up breath we seem to hold all winter; Ahhhhhh… To me, however, the busy months ahead can be a bit daunting, too.  I think about all that I need to get done, and my calendar is getting covered up like a plate of food left unattended by an ant mound at a picnic.  (See, spring really is on my mind!)
     Why is it that we are always so ready to look ahead?  Is it because we’re afraid we won’t be ready?  Or are we afraid we’ll miss out on something if we don’t plan for tomorrow today?  I looked through my calendar and every month has dates already written in through the end of the year.  Crazy.  I always hear people talking about how fast time flies, but maybe we help it pick up momentum by looking so far ahead.  Just maybe we’re propelling ourselves forward much faster than we otherwise would if we just enjoyed the day at hand; not the days to come, but the day at hand.    But, no; we have to plan today what we’ll do ten weeks from tomorrow, and on that date, we’ll be planning what we’ll be doing ten weeks from then.
     My niece is coming in for a few days’ visit next week, and I already have the dinners planned and activities scheduled.  How do I know that the night I’m planning on having blackened chicken salad we might prefer to have pizza?  Or the day we’re scheduled to take a hike, we might not feel like being couch potatoes and watching some old black and white movie classic?  Now I know where the expression, “the best-laid plans go awry” comes from.  It’d be an interesting thing to see how much plans change from those we scheduled in advance.  I think we should put a bright blue dot on every day on our calendar where we had something planned but ended up doing something else entirely different.  My guess is that a great percentage of those long ago scheduled plans end up being changed after all.
     Now, don’t get me wrong; in this fast-paced world, I know it’s necessary to schedule things so that we’re all in sync, all on the same page with plans, all end up at the designated place at the designated time so as not to waste each other’s time.  But, I think we waste a lot of time trying to ensure that we won’t waste any of it.  All things considered, I think we might just be missing some pretty cool things in the here and now when we’re so busy looking ahead.     

Strange Days

     It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I’ve enjoyed watching how different people celebrate the occasion. Chicago dyed its river green; bars are serving green beer; and shamrocks decorate storefront windows, while the smell of corn beef and cabbage permeates the air in many restaurants and pubs.  Another tradition that marks this day of Irish celebration is the practice of wearing green.  But, if you’re not, then you’re subject to a sharp pinch without any apology attached.
     Of course, there are many more largely recognized and celebrated holidays, but there are also lots of obscure ones that we hardly ever hear about.  For example: I heard on the radio that this past Tuesday was National Potato Chip Day.  Hearing that compelled me to go buy onion dip and then to do a search for other strange days where we loosely pay tribute to something or someone that doesn’t really deserve a day, but gets it anyway.  And I also wanted to look for days that do deserve to be observed or made a point of, like perhaps a National Kindness Day, or a National Forgiveness Day.  What I found amazed me, and, at times, made me shake my head in absolute perplexity that each of these should be given even a moment’s pause, much less a whole day of recognition.  Here are some of my favorites:January 3rd – Festival of Sleep Day.  So, what, we sleep through the celebration?!
January 7th – Old Rock Day.  Whoever thought this one up was as dumb as a…Surely, you can fill in that blank.January 16th – National Nothing Day.  No comment.February 1st – Hula in the Coola Day.  Really, folks, I couldn’t make this stuff up.
February 9th – Toothache Day.  Shouldn’t it be Non-Toothache Day we celebrate?
March 19th – Corn Dog Day.  Okay, I’m in.
March 20th – National Aliens Abductions Day.  What on Earth!?
April 30th – National Honesty Day.  So is it all right to lie the other 364 days of the year?
May 3th – Lumpy Rug Day.  I’m…well… just speechless.
May 16th – National Sea Monkey Day.  I thought those were little plastic figures in a Milton Bradley game.
July 3rd – Compliment Your Mirror Day.  Translation: Compliment Yourself Day.
July 22nd – Rat-Catcher’s Day.  This date happens to be my friend’s birthday.  I’d rather drive lit bamboo sticks under my nails than to tell her what she shares her special day with.
July 27th – Take Your Plants for a Walk Day.  And then walk yourself to the nearest mental health facility.
Sept. 5th – Be Late for Something Day.  What’s special about that?  Most of us celebrate this on a daily basis.
Oct. 7th – International – yes, INTERNATIONAL – Moment of Frustration Day.  Don’t know about y’all, but my day usually consists of about 20, 000 moments of frustration.
Oct. 23rd – National Mole Day.  The kind on your skin or the kind in the ground?
Nov. 8th – Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day.  That oughta keep those pesky neighbors away!

     But, finally, after scrolling through all of these other days that we need not mark on our calendars, I saw it.  Hallelujah!  November 13th - World – yes, WORLD -Kindness Day.  Thank God!  However, I did notice that it took us almost the whole year to get around to it, but, at least we finally did!  All things considered, I’m delighted to report that my faith in mankind has been restored.  I’ll just pretend that Have a Bad Day Day isn’t observed six days later.  

Home Sweet Home

      I was asked about my hobbies and interests recently, and I have quite a few, but they all revolve around the same thing: anything old.  And I mean OLD.  I love to do stained glass work, having been inspired by old church windows, and I enjoy needlework; the same kind the ladies learned to do by working on samplers hundreds of years ago.  I also love hunting for antiques.  My house is full of them.  The older something is - and the more nicks it has it in - the better.  I also have a passion for old homes; I’m intrigued by creepy cemeteries; I love Art Deco jewelry, and black and white movies.  Heck, when I was a little kid, I really liked old people!  Weird, I know.

There’s just something about the uniqueness of old things, and the fact that they survived long enough to have gone from being a “new” something to being an “old” something.  I wonder about the stories attached to them, and the amount of probable “near misses” they had that nearly prevented them from achieving the venerable rank of old age.    

As far as I’m concerned, one of the best places to see many wonderful antiquities is in the South.  Now, that’s not to say that the North doesn’t have their fair share.  I know they do.  But since I live in that part of the country where collard greens, chow-chow and peanut butter pie are staples in any respectable household, I guess I’m just a bit partial to that place south of the Mason Dixon Line, with all of its glorious and not-so-glorious history.  I love it enough to write stories about it, and many of my characters were inspired by true life characters – both the young and the old.

The South is certainly home to me, and has been for many generations of my family. Some have been gone for so long now that they can only be identified by their faded names written in script on the backside of a black and white scallop-edged photo or old tintype. But, even without having known so many of them, I believe they’ve manage to leave their unique marks on my soul somehow.  

Home, with all of its many old attachments, can be anywhere on God’s green Earth, and, all things considered, I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.  Give me my couch and favorite blanket at the end of a long day and, for me, that’s Heaven on Earth – especially if you throw in a good ghost show.  Ahhhh….

Our longtime friend from Charleston, Roberta Hoeffecker, made one of the best peanut butter pies I’ve ever eaten.  It’s easy to make and even easier to eat, and a big slice of it goes great with a good book.  I know a couple that’d go nicely with that pie. ;)  

Peanut Butter Pie
8 oz. of cream cheese
½ cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter – your choice
1 cup powdered sugar
8 oz. of cool whip
chocolate syrup
Beat first three ingredients and fold in cool whip.
Pour into graham cracker crust, then sprinkle with chopped nuts.
Swirl chocolate syrup on top.
Chill overnight, or freeze for later.

The Big Little Things

      I lost a friend last Thursday, though I only found out about it today, which gives you some kind of idea about how close we were. No, I didn’t know Keith very well, and, no, we had not shared an endless list of important times, holidays or similarities, but he was a friend, just the same.

I met Keith Woody at his family’s world-renowned chair shop. The Woodys have been incredible chair makers for over a hundred years, and their chairs grace places like the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington, D.C., and the Kennedy Library, in Boston. Keith’s uncle, Arval, who I was fortunate enough to meet, was given the prestigious title of Living National Treasure years ago because of his superb craftsmanship.

I met Keith and Arval when I dared venture into their shop to see if they’d be willing to talk to me about furniture making as I was researching my book, BENEATH A THOUSAND APPLE TREES. I almost didn’t stop and nearly drove past their driveway because I’d not called first and was sure they’d have no time for an interview. However, a little voice in my head said “just do it”, and I took a right hand turn off the highway and into a parking spot in front of their shop. As I mentally went over an apology for dropping by unannounced, I pulled open the screened door - with attached bell that charmingly tinkled with each new arrival – and walked into an old-timey shop complete with wood burning stove, aglow with bright red embers. In typical Norman Rockwell style, sitting in one of their beautiful handmade rockers near the stove was a big man with an even bigger smile, who I was sure would lose it once he realized that I wasn’t there to exchange money for a chair, but rather information in exchange for an acknowledgment in my book. The man was Keith Woody, and he couldn’t have been more gracious, warm and welcoming had I told him I’d come in to order a thousand rockers.

Keith gave me a tour of the back of the shop where all of the magic happens, then we sat back down as he went through an old picture album full of his great-this, and great-that, parents, aunts, uncles and relatives of all sorts. I learned how the business got started by one of Keith’s ancestors, Charlie Woody, and how Arval, Keith’s elderly uncle, was a dye-in-the-wool Democrat who had graced John Kennedy Jr., and Caroline with the two rockers that now sit in royal splendor in their father’s library. And then, as if on practiced cue, Arval walked through the door. It was his 92 birthday, and he had just come back from lunch with his niece, Jo, who was Keith’s cousin. I was immediately introduced and Arval was delighted I was there. He, too, sat down by the stove and regaled me with stories about his great-greats, and the good ol’ days of furniture making but which he’d given up some years before and let the younger ones take over. Then Mr. Arval Woody invited me up to his lovely home behind the shop where he showed off pictures of his beautiful, long dead and very missed wife, and pictures of our town, Spruce Pine, from way back when, though it really hasn’t changed that much over the years. I was more than touched that this man and his family would open their world to me, but if that wasn’t enough, as I got ready to leave, Arval graced me with a handmade wooden business card holder, superbly crafted, just like his chairs, as well as a wooden bookmark - treasures bestowed upon me by a Living National Treasure.

When Arval passed away about a year later, Keith invited my husband and me to join the family for a dinner their church was providing for them before the service. And Keith asked us to sit with the family during the service. We were beyond moved. We were humbled.

Keith and I have exchanged Christmas gifts before, though we didn’t last year. I didn’t get to see him – or maybe I just didn’t take the time to see him – and if I’m honest with myself, I’d guess it was the latter. You see, I was “busy”.

I never did stop to give Keith a copy of BENEATH A THOUSAND APPLE TREES, even though I acknowledged him and his family in the front of the book. I drove by his shop a hundred times, but was always on my way to some other place, and in too much of a hurry to stop. I told myself I would another day. Now, there won’t be “another day.”

During this holiday season, I think it’s important to remember that it’s the big little things that make a difference in people’s lives. All things considered, some of those big little things can be enough to write a blog about, and even a book. It’s a wonderful little irony of life that my home, where I do all of my writing, is on a mountain named Woody’s Knob, and I look down from my deck onto a beautiful winding road named Charlie Woody Mountain Road. It’s one of those big little things, and I’m most grateful for it.

Wishing each of you much happiness, and many big little things this holiday season.


Janie

Arval Woody, Chair Maker

The Bomb Shelter

Today, as I was sitting in the middle of my family room, surrounded by Christmas wrapping materials, and the many gifts that needed to be wrapped in them, I thought back to the bomb shelter my dad had built in the fall of 1962, as a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As crazy as that sounds, every year when I wrap presents, I think back to that time for the bomb shelter had an indirect link to Christmas.

Because Miami is at sea level, my father had to build the bomb shelter inside of our garage, as opposed to below ground.  Both our home and separate garage were built in the Spanish style in 1925, and both had withstood tremendous hurricanes, but this type of storm looming on the horizon required an even greater defense than just our strong home could provide.

When Daddy and Mama decided that the shelter must be built, Daddy went down to Highway US-1, where, waiting patiently under the shade of an overpass, day laborers sat from early morning until early afternoon hoping that someone would come along and give them employment for the day, week, or longer.  Daddy hired three of the biggest men he could find and they worked on our fortress for several days.  

The shelter had shelves made of simple plank boards and there was a wind-up fan which would be cranked by a handle to bring air into the room.  That was the only source of air.  I always wondered why the air we’d crank into the room from outside would be any safer than the air that was already outside, but I never asked.  Childhood ignorant bliss and acceptance is a wonderful thing, indeed.

Mama lined the shelves with cans of Campbell soup, blankets, batteries, flashlights, and other paraphernalia which wasn’t important to a child, however vital it might be in enabling that child to have the opportunity to reach adulthood.

My sister, the kids in the neighborhood, and I thought it was the neatest “fort” to hang out in, although Mama would chase us out of there, so as not to disturb our emergency supplies.  Think about it:  We’ve just been slammed by missiles, and while hunkering down in the shelter, Mama asks where the hand-held can opener is, to which Kathy or I would have to answer that we used it while playing one day and forgot to return it.  The newspaper caption would read:  “Family Survives Nuclear Blast but Dies without Can Opener.”  

Another reason that we didn’t spend much time in the bomb shelter – through our own choice, as well as Mama’s refusal to let us do so – was that it was hotter than Hades in there.  Imagine August in Miami, inside of a barely ventilated, solid block and steel, 12 X12 foot room, within a room.  The front yard with the big Banyan tree, which offered shade and made for great climbing, was more appealing.  But, as kids, we still liked to venture in there, to show it off, for we were the only family on the block that had one.  I recall wondering what would happen to our friends and neighbors if the bombs fell, and wondered if we’d let them inside.  I think I was too afraid of the answer to ask, so I didn’t.  However, I do remember imagining what the aftermath of the “big one” striking us might bring.  “The Night of the Living Dead” movie immediately came to mind, and I envisioned our neighbors speaking in death-like monotone voices through our ventilation fan, asking us to let them in.  Of course, it was always the adult neighbors who would be disfigured and shuffle along, not my little friends.  Somehow, my imagination couldn’t quite get wrapped around that image.  I never did think too long or hard about what would happen to them.  It was just unthinkable.  Perhaps it was because that thought could actually conjure up thoughts of something that awful, devastating and corruptive happening to my sister and me, too.  

At the eleventh hour, backroom talks between Russia, Cuba and the United States put an end to the immediate nuclear threat.  Everyone at the wrong end of the Soviets’ nuclear warheads, as well as at the wrong end of the United States’ arsenal, breathed a collective sigh of relief, and no more so than those of us who were living just 90 miles from the shores of Cuba.  Ill winds were once again replaced with gentle breezes off of Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and things returned to normal.   However, there was still the one gigantic reminder of how very close we’d come to being no more; our bomb shelter.  Although the immediate threat was over, my parents were in no great hurry to tear it down.  Why not just stay prepared - just in case, they sensibly thought.  And, in the meantime, why not use it for other things?  How sensible!

With the nuke trouble blessedly behind us in late October of that year, the holidays could now be focused on with great anticipation and a newfound appreciation.  I do believe that children’s wish lists grew ever longer with the advent of The Advent.  And, to be honest about things, kids always know when to use a situation to their greatest advantage.  Knowing that mothers and fathers were overjoyed that their little Billy or Marcy, or themselves, for that matter, as well as their not-yet-paid-for home, and station wagon, local golf course, beauty salon and burger joint weren’t going to be vaporized in a flash, kids feverishly added on to their holiday lists.  In an ironic twist, we kids owed a world of thanks to Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev.  Thanks for not blowing us all to kingdom come.  And thanks for the unprecedented, unequaled, momentous amount of presents we got during the holidays of ‘62.  

The bomb shelter took on a whole new purpose and persona.  It became the private present-wrapping place.  Campbell soup cans were replaced with rolls of ribbon.  The folded blankets were replaced with sheets of wrapping paper.  The niche for batteries became the nook for Scotch tape.  And the ever-important, lifesaving, hand held can opener was happily replaced with a pair of scissors.  Deck the halls with boughs of holly.  Fa la la la la, the nukes are gone!  The Christmas spirit was alive and well because there wasn’t any question that we would be alive and well to celebrate it.

The passage of time fades things, even the bad things, so we returned to our everyday lives and gave the fall of ’62 an extra page or two in our scrapbooks.  As the years passed, the immediate need of more space in our garage led Daddy back to US-1, to the overpass there, where the day laborers still arrived each morning in the hopes of earning a day’s pay.  Once again, Daddy hired three of the biggest guys, (even bigger than the ones he’d hired years before) and the four of them tore into the old bomb shelter with sledge hammers.  After a couple of days, they brought the “old fort” down.

When Mama and Daddy finally sold the house in 1993, after 33 years of living there, they sold it to a nice young Cuban couple.  There they hoped to build a happy life for themselves, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”  It struck me as rather ironic that the land and the home that they fell in love with, and counted on to provide peace, safety and shelter for them, was, at one time, the place that was most vulnerable and in the direct line of fire from the country who’s Communistic regime had caused the new owners and their families to start a new life elsewhere.  Life is stranger than fiction.

Ten years ago, we made the physical move to our present home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  For a short while, I dabbled in real estate, and as I did, I realized that the influx of other city people meant bringing some of the fears of today’s America in today’s world with them, no matter how much they might try living a more serene, briefcase-less life.  Because of those fears, I was asked by several potential clients for properties that would allow them to build an underground bunker – “just in case.”  I knew well what that “just in case” meant, though this was a lesser degree of it, and not the near zero-hour panic kind my family and I had lived.   

Just recently, at the very top of the mountain we live on, Homeland Security installed a large tower.  It was all very mysterious to me as to the reason they chose this out of the way, unassuming little town that wouldn’t seem to hold too much importance to the folks over at Homeland Security.  That was until I was told that these mountains contain the mines which provide the most mica and feldspar in the world – materials used to make computer chips and other vital communication components.  I figured that just might have something to do with it.  Talk about feel like a sitting duck!  Again!!

Even with that revelation, though, my husband and I have decided to just not worry about it.  And we’ve opted to not build a bomb shelter.  Instead, we’ll worry about garden beetles; whether the church has enough money to get the new roof; and whether my elderly aunt’s chest congestion will turn into anything more serious than a cold, just to name a few things.  And, I’ll continue to write, about the past and my hopes for the future.  I bet there’ll be one, too - and a good one.

Once again, as Christmas season descends upon us, I’m back out in the family room wrapping presents.  You’ll never find me in a bomb shelter doing that, or anything else for that matter.  Because if this world does blow, or anyway this part of it, I plan on going out with it.   All things considered, I don’t want to live in a Mad Max-style world, fighting over a can of Spam.  I never did like the stuff, and it’d just be my luck that I wouldn’t be able to find a hand-held can opener anyway.

On The Front Porch

           Looking through Norman Rockwell paintings, one can expect to find one of an ancient country couple, sitting in rockers on the front porch of an old log cabin. I always looked at it as such a mountain cliché, until I moved out to the country and into my own log cabin, and suddenly realized what this picture of such solitude and serenity was inspired by. 

This morning, I sat bundled up, rocking on my own front porch and had to smile thinking about old Rockwell. Maybe he had done this a time or two, himself. Or, perhaps he’d been invited to “set a spell” by a weathered mountain couple somewhere along the line. How Americana it felt to me. How Americana I felt I must look.

As a native South Floridian, living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, these mountains and their beauty never cease to amaze me. Starting in mid-summer, I strain my hurricane-blurry eyes to see the first hint of the leaves changing, and now that it’s the first of December, my head swivels around like some out-of-control bobble-head looking for each and every peak that the falling leaves have left exposed. I wait all year for the cool/cold months, though I try to remind myself to live for the moment and enjoy the warm/hot months, too. But, for someone like me, who’s lived in a year ‘round green landscape, this is nothing short of thrilling; it’s a miracle, actually.

It’s the little things that are so important to me anymore, and I often find an unexpected muse in them. I suspect that most artists do. Like this fall, I happened to glance out the window and spot a mother deer with her fawn. They leaped and bounded through my yard, until they came to the salt licks I had set out for them. (Most people can’t understand why they like those licks, but being an anchovy fan, I do.) I stood there mesmerized, and couldn’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kennan Rawlings was doing when she was inspired to write The Yearling.

I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and an older woman let out a loud “Hey darlin’!!” when she spotted me. I didn’t know her from Adam (who’s Adam anyway – and maybe that’s the point), but I reached deep inside of me and brought forth that decent little actress. I didn’t disappoint. I gave her a huge “Hey honey! It’s so good to see you!!” in return. We stood there for several minutes and talked. I let her do most of it, since I didn’t know who the heck she was, but I nodded in just the right places, and even threw in a “bless her heart” where it seemed appropriate. Then I promised to see her soon upon our parting. I smiled the rest of the way through the store, and I didn’t forget her. She became the inspiration for a character in the first book that I’m working on in my new series - A Corner in Glory Land - which will make its debut in December of ‘17.

I’m meeting a friend for dinner tonight. She’s a hurricane Katrina survivor from Louisiana. We realize how fortunate we are, having ended up here. For one thing, we know we’ve struck inspirational gold. Our muses are as plentiful as BBQ joints, Baptist churches and breathtaking vistas. And even though I know many of the locals are not thrilled that we’ve increased their traffic, taxes, and new developments, the truth of the matter is us transplants love it here – with a passion. Heck, everyday we’re rocking on our own front porches, appreciating the little things and keeping that old American image alive. Norman Rockwell would be proud. And I hope Marjorie would be, too.

At the Table

     It was the week before Thanksgiving, and I was rifling through a slew of recipes that were ungraciously jammed inside my Betty Crocker cookbook.   

That cookbook had been my very first, obtained in my sophomore year of college, when four of us had abandoned the dorm for more sophisticated living in a two bedroom townhouse.  The cookbook was a necessary item if we intended on not visiting fast food restaurants for every meal.    

The four of us sat on Merilee’s bed, reading the choices offered to us through a book club, with the incentive to join being given two books for the purchase of one.  Now, “free” is the most sacred word in a college student’s vocabulary.  Thus, we poured over the selections and opted for the two we figured we could use the most as life quickly propelled us out into adulthood.  We selected Betty Crocker’s Best Recipes and, naturally, The Joy of Sex.   

I must admit, we did “Joy” proud.  We maneuvered our young, lithe bodies into those contortion-like positions - positions which we memorized as thoroughly as we should have our homework.  Our boyfriends were wonderfully accommodating and ready and able to help us achieve those “Joy” goals we set out to meet.  Many a class went unattended as we home schooled ourselves on another form of art that went beyond any known syllabus offered on campus.  Life was good, life was sweet, life was Joy-FULL!  

Those four years went by quickly, and somewhere between graduation, relationship separations, and moving on to higher expectations, “Joy” was lost in the shuffle.  Oddly enough, “Betty” remained in my safekeeping.  Maybe it’s a testament of life; that no matter how old we get, we still have to eat.  However, with sex...well, you get the point. 

Now, at the age of 57, with the life and times of FSU just a long ago chapter, I riffled through Betty Crocker’s Best Recipes for the winning combination of dishes to be served at this year’s Thanksgiving.  Though the book itself is well worn, it was the loosely stuffed recipes in the back of the book – those uncategorized, un-alphabetized recipes, torn and faded from years of use and handling abuse that were really the golden ones I was after; because those were the ones given to me from various family members over decades.  They were handwritten by my loved ones who are no longer with me, except through a multitude of memories, photographs...and recipes.  

I pulled several of them out; smiling over them as if they were winning lottery tickets.  Without so much as lighting a burner on the stove, I could smell my grandmother’s corn pudding, Mama’s squash casserole, and Auntie’s sweet potatoes.  My grandmother’s writing for the corn pudding had quite a few abbreviations, which reminded me that she’d been a secretary eighty years ago, and had known short hand.   I thought of the rarity of that skill in this day of tablets and smart phones.  She had been my grandfather’s secretary before becoming his wife, which told me her shorthand must have been beyond belief!  Auntie’s instructions for the sweet potato casserole were written in long, slanted cursive writing, like she’d had the time to take her time writing it.  She had; she was childless and lived on my great-uncle’s income.  Then I came upon Mama’s recipe for the squash casserole.  I heard myself let out a little sigh. 

Mama passed ten years ago, and the sting of it remains.  I guess it always does when you lose a parent, and, in my case, parents, who were as wonderful as mine were.  Though the forcefulness of the pain eases over time, it never stops entirely. There are certain moments when it can knock the wind out of you again, especially when a memory of them catches you off guard, such as the case with the squash casserole.   

Seeing her writing – quick, succinct, to the point – EXACTLY like she was, brought that tiny stinging in the heart.  So, I poured a lukewarm cup of coffee, sat down at my dining room table, and looked out at my relatively new view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.   

My husband and I moved here shortly after Mama’s death, leaving old friends behind, and, as we have for the last decade, we’ll share this Thanksgiving with relatively new ones.  Unlike our old friends, these new ones don’t yet know our quirks but love us anyway.  And they haven’t gathered much dirt on us, like those longtime friends who have so much of it, they could bury us alive with it, but who guard our secrets as if they were their own.  This year’s Thanksgiving friends are the getting-to-know-you kind.  The remind-me-how-many-siblings-you-have, and where-you-were-born kind.  Though old friends and family are incomparably cherished, new friends who wander into your mid and later life years are deeply appreciated little treasures.  They come along when the opportunities for making close friends isn’t as easy as it was in school or when working in a corporate world filled with friendship possibilities in every cubicle.  So, these new friends, helping us to make new memories, are a welcomed blessing.

When we sit at the candle-lit Thanksgiving table and begin passing around the different side dishes, I will once again think of Grandma, Auntie, and Mama.  My new and old worlds will join forces at the table.  I will almost hear Auntie’s long and piously delivered blessing, followed by a bawdy joke being whispered from my beautiful grandmother’s mouth.  And I will almost be able to hear, feel and see Mama; taking charge, being in charge, and lovingly so, by making sure that everyone has what and all they need at the table.  They will all be there; in the memories, in the stories told about them, and in the food that they made dozens of times for dozens of holidays.  And I will send gratitude and love to them all.   All things considered, I am a very abundantly blessed and thankful legacy.