Family Stitches

Since hearing of my dad's cancer diagnosis I've been thinking a lot about family dynamics. Particularly my own responses to family situations.

I confessed to a friend one night last week that I'm not particularly good at predicting my own reactions to emotional pain. I tend to be a bit too optimistic about how I'm going to react when something bad happens. I know that I'm going to hurt, I know that I'm going to feel the restless, stinging ache of loss but somehow I convince myself that it's not going to be so horribly bad. I tell myself that if I'm just stoic and patient it will all be alright.

I'm at least right about one thing. Loss does eventually ease into something manageable. It just always takes so much longer than I think it should.

All in all I think I've dealt with the loss of my family pretty well. The ache is mostly gone. It's only when quirky little things happen that I feel the sting – when I run through the McDonald's drive-thru for lunch and sneak french fries out of the bag like Dad and I used to do when we took lunch home for everybody else. He used to say that if we took some from all four crinkly paper envelopes of french fries that nobody would notice.

I feel a little piercing when I see a playhouse in the neighbor's back yard as I drive by. I remember the overseas shipping box that Dad brought home for us to play in. He put a real, miniature screen door in so that we had a proper "house." We salvaged items from the garage to serve as furniture and this space became our neighborhood clubhouse.

Yesterday I saw Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench on TV and felt a twinge of loss. Dad and I used to watch Cincinnati Reds games together. I don't know how much I loved the game of baseball. I just know I loved hanging out with my dad.

Families are sewn together with threads all around the edges. I used to believe that it would be possible for me to unpick these tiny stitches whenever I needed or wanted to. But lately I've begun to realize that no matter what our circumstances are, no matter how badly we might desire to unravel ourselves out of that cloth that we were woven into, we can't.

The stitches are too small.

They are pulled too tight.

Words and Pictures :: Remembering

I haven't participated in awhile but this is the prompt this week from Meet Me At Mike's.

Gram taught me to knit when I was about eight. She patiently taught me the long-tail cast on and then showed me the knit stitch. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing as they say, and this little bit of skill was just enough produce ugly, trapezoidal shaped garter stitch clumps. But I was knitting! For some reason our lessons never included casting off, so when I got tired I just unraveled it and started again.

While I practiced, Gram knit a feather and fan afghan that she gave to me. Inspiration I suppose.

As I grew up knitting fell by the wayside for me. It did for Gram too. I didn't pick up knitting needles for another 35 years.

As Gram got older, dementia set in. The last time I saw her still active and vital, she didn't remember me. The house was full of family and she was standing in the dining room. I hugged aunts and uncles and she came towards me with a smile. Her arms were outstretched and she took my face into her hands. Her eyes searched mine - back and forth, back and forth. A long pause hung between us before she finally said, "Do I know you? You sure are beautiful."

It was tough. She was left without memories of the past but all of the things that used to trouble her were also gone. She was happy and appreciative of every little thing. I just smiled and hugged her.

At a big family dinner that evening she sipped wine from a tiny aperitif glass. "Oh," she would say, "That tastes so good! I think I'd like a little more!" and magically her glass would be refilled. She had on large jewelry that didn't match her outfit but was so excited to be "going to a party with such nice people!"

While waiting for dinner I took my knitting out of my bag. Gram watched the needles moving for a little bit before she said, "You know, I think I once knew how to do that didn't I?"

"Yes," I said. "You're the one who taught me."

She thought about this for awhile and I could see that it was painful for her. Her eyes searched my face again – back and forth, back and forth.

"I wonder if I could still do it. . ." Her voice trailed off. For the first time since I had been there, she looked sad. I thought about handing her the needles and wool.

"Would you like to try?" I asked.

She searched my face again – back and forth, back and forth. "No," she quietly said. "I just can't quite remember."

"It's OK Gram."

Then she laughed and all the traces of sadness were wiped away.

"I sure would like a little bit more of whatever that was in my glass though!"

Mother's Day

I belong to an online knitting community called Ravelry. We share patterns, stories and laughs on a variety of forum pages. In December, 2007 I knitted a shawl with the intention of sending it to my mother. As I knit it, I prayed for her since we had not been in communication for several years. After I finished it I wrote about it on a Ravelry board and asked the question, "How much power does knitting or prayer have?"

That shawl has been on my mind today because it's Mother's Day. Here's my original post and some of the very wise answers I received.

tmpike:

I recently finished knitting the Forest Canopy Shawl and am mailing it to my mother for Christmas. She has health problems and I treated the knitting of this as an exercise of prayer for her.

As I'm preparing to mail this it makes me wonder what kind of power knitting - or prayer for that matter! - really might have. My mother has not spoken to me, nor I to her, since September of 2002. As a lesbian, I'm a disappointment to her as a daughter and to her understanding of what a "christian" must be.

So, I knit. And I pray. And I guess we shall see.

I'm posting this here so that all of you who love knitting might send thougths of peace toward my mother as well. After all, isn't that what this season is supposed to be about?

billyqc:
I'm deeply impressed and moved by your kindness and generosity. This time of year usually leaves me feeling alienated and very, very sad since, like you, I'm queer and my family won't have anything to do with me; all the talk of holiday knitting and such leaves me cold and estranged. I'm going to try to remember your amazing gesture every time I start getting down, and pour the rest of my heart into finishing the small projects I'm doing for my constructed family.
Thank you, and peace.

jacttd:
It is a shame she cannot see what a strong daughter she raised. I'm sorry you feel like a disapointment to her. As a mother myself, the only time I am disappointed with my girls is when they do not follow their hearts. A mother's job is to equip their children for life, learn to let them live on their terms and remember their choices are not always a reflection of ourself.
You both have my prayers.

dharmarn:
I hope it occured to you, that by sharing this with us, you have done more than just that. Reading this touched my heart. I’m not gay, but I grew up with some really strange family dynamics that I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to make sense of. I, too, have felt that alienation from my ‘family’ and had to contruct a real family of my own.
I think it is beautiful that you shared this with us, because in some way, you just taught us all how much we truly have in common -not as knitters, or gays, or daughters with screwed up parents- but as humans who need to feel love.

I never heard from my mother. I kind of still wait. I don't really know what I feel any more about this whole thing. You can only be hurt so many times. Now I just kind of feel numb. 

I spent the afternoon with Ali's mom today. It was really hard for her to come to terms with Ali's sexual orientation. She's from the same fundamentalist Christianity as my parents. But, today she and I watched Ali play softball together. We laughed and talked and I didn't have to hide anything.

To all those who mother us, in the very best sense of the word – Happy Mother's Day.

Possibilities

When we went to the flea market on Saturday, Ali's nephew B came with us. He loves to look at stuff, and unlike most 8 year olds I know, doesn't mind a two hour car ride. He had $23 in his wallet and spent a lot of time looking for the perfect paperweight that was within his price range. He was patient and finally found one that he loved and could also afford. Persistence paid off.

However, when we got to the junk store where we found and liberated the windows in yesterday's post, he got a little confused. He just couldn't understand why we were so excited about rusty metal floor grates, doorknobs, cracked windows, old sinks and peeling fence posts. 

"This stuff is just junk. Why are we looking at it?" he asked.

"You have to learn to see things differently," I explained. "You can't think about what this thing used to be. You have to imagine what it might become."

He's a smart kid. He got thoughtful while we wandered around. A few minutes later I saw him digging in his wallet. He called me over and pointed to an old glass jar with a lid. It was dirty but still in good shape with a $2 price tag.

"If I buy this, will you help me turn it into a terrarium?"

You betcha kiddo.

Just a gentle reminder of the possibilities for the future without the burdens of the past.

Words and Pictures :: Little Things

This is the new writing prompt from Meet Me At Mike's. I'm a bit apprehensive about posting it as most of the other essays and pictures on this theme are light and bubbly. If what I've written makes you uncomfortable, please accept my apologies.

It was an airless September afternoon at my parent's house when artificial silence slammed headlong into inconvenient truth. "If you don't stop being gay you're not welcome in our home any longer. Don't you see what this means? What will people think of me. . .of your mother. . .of the way we raised you. . .God will punish you for the wickedness you're bring on us. . .You're only doing this to hurt us. God despises you and you will pay the ultimate price."

My mother cried. My father turned to icy-stoned fury and with one deep breath he excised this disruption he couldn't control and quickly became the father of one daughter - not two.

He couldn't change biology so he tried to change history.

That was almost seven years ago. I'm just fine. I have a wonderful extended family and a family of quirky souls who I have chosen and who have chosen me back. My life is fulfilled, joyful and fun. A and I have the same normalcy as any other married couple – we fuss about who's turn it is to take the dogs out, who should mow the yard this week and why I always have to cook. Our life isn't exotic. It's rather mundane. But we are happy.

I like to think that I've moved on from that pain but there are little things that I miss. My mother never got to teach me to how to can fresh green beans from my garden. I had to learn it from a book. When I finish a new craft project I sometimes still wish I could share it with her. She loves to craft too. I miss eating chili on Christmas Eve with everyone. When I can't find a pen in the mess of our kitchen junk drawer I remember my father's pen, nestled in it's special drawer in the top of his immaculate desk and it brings a hollowness to my chest.

Maybe that's the thing about the little things – they're more painful to remember when they're gone.

Words and Pictures :: Cozy

Another writing prompt from Meet Me at Mikes!

My great-frandmother Lilly was poor. Being born, living and dying in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia, she never had much in the way of creature comforts. She spent her life in Possum Hollow, widowed early, raising five kids alone. She was born in May of 1888 and died in May of 1982. A good long life.

Mamaw never made a lot of the kinds of concessions that we tend to make as times and trends change. She never wore pants. Not once. She wore long skirts that almost reached the floor. Mamaw never cut her hair. She wore it in a bun on the back of her head, covered in the kind of bonnet Ma Ingalls wore on Little House on the Prairie. My mamaw lived in a tiny five room house that most people would call probably call a shack. For most of her life she had no electricity or running water.

But none of those things ever mattered to me.

Mamaw's house was home.

The most prominent memories I have are smells - Mamaw making magic in the kitchen on her wood fired stove. I remember breakfasts of country ham, red-eye gravy, homemade buttermilk biscuits and eggs. The biscuits were topped with freshly churned butter and crowned with homemade jellies, jams and preserves that she had put up herself the previous fall.

I remember that Mamaw loved coffee. It amazed me that she would bring a strong, hot cup to the table and then proceed to pour it from her cup into her saucer before noisily drinking. She said it was too hot from the cup.

While sitting with her at the breakfast table I would hide an extra biscuit away, stashing it under my shirt to save for later. I'm sure she would have given me one. It was just fun to try and pull something over on her.

The days were lazy at Mamaw's house. Catching butterflies, reading books on the creaky old porch swing and taking walks by the river were our activities. Once in a while we would have the gift of an afternoon rain. On these special days I would take my stolen biscuit and curl up on the lumpy mattress that was filled with feathers. It took a little doing, but with some determination you could hollow out the perfect size nest for an 8 year old body on a rainy summer afternoon. A feather mattress, a secretly hidden biscuit, a good book and the sound of rain on a tin roof will always mean cozy to me.

Mamaw Lilly on her 82nd birthday, May 4, 1976 in Possum Hollow, Virginia

Mamaw's Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk

Pour flour into a mound on the kitchen counter. Using your fingers, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and quickly blend in, making sure to not overwork the dough.  Scoop up the dough and lightly flour the counter again. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of  1/2-inch. Use a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, press out as many biscuits as possible. Gather up scraps and quickly knead back together, then cut out as many additional biscuits as possible. Place biscuits in a cast iron skillet and bake until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Red-Eye Gravy
country ham steaks
bacon grease
1 C. strong, hot coffee
3 T. flour
2 T. butter

Heat up a cast iron skillet until hot. Melt some bacon grease in the pan and fry the ham steaks for about 3 minutes per side, until browned. Remove ham and stir flour into the grease. Cook a minute or two. Slowly stir in the coffee. If it's too thick, add some water. When thickened stir in butter.

Serve over the ham steaks or over the biscuits.

I Found It!

Last year on this day I wrote about my grandfather, Pop. Today is his birthday. He would have been 100.

Here's the picture I couldn't find. It's now framed in the office where I can see it every day.

Happy Birthday to us!

Groovy dress, huh?

Beware. . .Whining Ahead

There are lots of things that I would like to write about today. I just don't have it in me. On Saturday I felt it coming. It's now Wednesday and I'm dragging my sorry ass around like it's the end of the world – hacking and coughing and drowning in my own snot. I don't get sick days at work so I'm just trying to survive.

Yeah. . .I'm whiney. . . this too shall pass. Or I will. Either way is fine with me today.

We are adding a new member to our little family tonight. Oliver. He's a pointer mix that we fell in love with when we went to the Humane Society on Saturday. He liked Sammy. And Sammy liked him. Pictures tomorrow. Assuming I'm still alive.

All isn't lost however. We've been crafting! Ali has gotten into working with polymer clay. It's pretty cool stuff. You sculpt and then bake it. This is what she made last night. I think they are awesome! One of the pendants is for me. The other is a gift for someone who doesn't read this blog.

Here's my latest effort. Soon my red button stash is going to be depleted. I didn't know how much fun these little guys were going to be! Perhaps a reindeer is next!

Stay tuned for Oliver and Samson pictures tomorrow! 

Now. . .where did I put that Vicks???

This Family Rocks

Sometimes I struggle with the nature and purpose of this blog. Why do I do this? Is it a forum just for me or do I have an audience mentality as I write? Is the purpose of 45 Pines to be about hobbies and the mundane details of my life or is it more about the bigger picture of my existence? What if its only purpose is self-expression? Is that a valid enough reason to share it or should it be confined to a locked book under my mattress? If it's only self-expression that I'm affirming, then why post it for everyone to read?

I've been thinking more about these kinds of things since getting home from vacation. In some ways, the week that we just spent in Wisconsin has changed much about me. I think it changed Ali as well.

To be completely honest, we went up there not knowing what to expect.

It's no secret that I've been estranged from my family - particularly my parents - for quite some time. But the feelings of estrangement go farther back than that. My dad moved us from Kentucky (where I had grown up and where all my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were) to northwest Ohio 27 years ago. We had little money or time to make the trip down to see everyone very often after that. I went to college up here and eventually got a job and the years just slipped by.

It's not that I ever lost touch with my family. It's just that when you don't see people often you lose track of all the things you once shared in common.

After coming out to my parents and having that go so completely wrong I hesitated to put myself out there with other people for awhile. I had an inkling that things would be OK with the rest of the family but I just didn't want to risk that kind of pain again. So, years passed.

Then Gramma got sick.

She was like the sun to our planets. Her gravitational pull kept us aligned and spinning together as a family system in an intricate dance.

It was her funeral that took us to Wisconsin. And it was there that I felt "family" again.

To be honest, at some moments it was overwhelming. Everywhere you looked, everywhere you went there were Pikes and Curtis' – Pedersons were all over the place too. Our cabin was "party central" so nights dragged on til midnight - full of cribbage, beer, Trivial Pursuit and stories. Ali and I awoke each morning with stomachs sore from so much laughter the night before and whispers (lest we woke our rooomies!) about the wonderfully crazy people who were sharing our week.

We felt unconditionally loved. And, the crazy part for me is that we felt it from biological family.

And that brings me back to why I write this blog. I want to say thank you. And say it out loud.

This family, however extended it may be, rocks.

A Weekend in Photos

Different year. . .same weekend!


Bret and Grampa Steve

Happy Fourth of July!

We are getting ready to head out for the long weekend to Johnson Island on Lake Erie. I'm looking forward to getting out of town and just relaxing with family. We have all the essentials – the cornhole game we just built (yes. . .using power tools!), bikes, puzzles, knitting and the dog!

Here are a few pictures from last year. Hope this year is just as much fun!





I hope you have a restful and joy filled holiday weekend!

Country Karaoke

You know how they say that if you play country music backwards you get your dog back, your wife back and your truck starts?

Friday night we went to a party. There were a lot of fun people there. Some people played cards, but clearly the draw of the evening was karaoke. It was a nice set-up. A sound system that sported two "real" microphones so that you (and everyone else!) could hear you sing!

Singing is like breathing for some people. They just have to do it. For some folks it should be more like coughing – they should try to control it in public. But, I digress. . .Even the worst singers were funny. And after awhile, you catch yourself singing along.

It was all going along fine. There were literally thousands of songs to choose from and most of the songs being played were 80's and 90's hits that everyone knew. People were tolerant. Ali and Curt worked their way through the entire "Grease" soundtrack while John waited patiently.

Then he got his revenge. He wanted to sing classic country. They started with Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." It was funny. Then they sang some Merle Haggard. Buck Owens. Glen Cambell and George Jones. I started to get misty eyed.

Looking back, I would call myself a Daddy's girl. I worshipped him. When he would come home after work and join us in the kitchen as my mom made dinner he always made me laugh. He sang all those old country songs, sometimes dancing with my mom while she laughed and protested. Sometimes he would dance with me and we would sing.

"Say hey, good lookin’. What ya got cookin’?
How’s about cooking somethin’ up with me?
Hey, sweet baby. Don’t you think maybe,
We can find us a brand new recipe? "

Before very long on Friday night I found myself standing in the yard crying.

It doesn't happen like that very often anymore. I'm used to it. Maybe it's that hearing one or two of those old songs is nostalgic. Hearing a dozen was just too much.

As Ali stood there with her arms around me the only thing thought sprinting through my head was that it's just not fair.

So, here's the real question: If you play country karaoke backwards, do you ever get your family back?

Rest In Peace

I just found out that my grampa died. Ever since Gram died, Grampa has lived at a nursing home in Louisville. When my aunt Sharon called to tell me that Grampa was gone, the only thing I felt was confusion – mostly because I didn't have many other emotions surrounding his passing.

There are so many phrases that people fill the air with when someone dies. We want to be able to assign meaning to something that is beyond our control and usually, beyond our capability to understand so we say things like, "He's in a better place." "Her suffering is over." "God has another new angel today." What do those things really mean?

The only phrase that I can come up with that resonates at all with my Grampa's life, at least as I knew it, is "rest in peace."

My Grampa was a complicated man. When I was younger I heard stories from my father about how his father was gone for weeks at a time, driving truck all over the United States. My dad and his brothers were mostly raised by their mother. By the time I remember my grandfather, he and my father owned a moving company together in Lexington, KY. Grampa was gruff. Opinionated. Loud. Stubborn. Often angry.

When I was young I remember that on many rides home in the car, after spending an evening at Gram and Gramp's house, my mother would be unhappy. She disliked hearing my Grampa arguing politics with anyone who would listen. He was relentless in trying to pull you into "discussions" and giving you his perspective on whatever the topic was that evening.

I never felt particularly close to Gramp. His roughness scared me. There was an annual butchering day on the farm and every year Grampa would bring the cow tongue into the kitchen in a bucket full of blood. I was already unsettled from hearing the gunshots that put the cow down and then Grampa would insist that I touch the cow's tongue and feel the sandpapery taste buds.

As I got older, I got used to Grampa's abrasiveness. When Gramma would write me letters in college there would always be a paragraph or two in Grampa's thin, nearly unreadable writing. When I went to visit I would often hear the same stories that I had heard many times before. As he aged, this became more and more pronounced. He talked endlessly about routes he had taken across the US in his truck. About cafes, waitresses and weather patterns in any city you could name. What seemed superficial to us was simply his way of connecting.

Over the last few years I've learned things about my Grampa that explain a lot. Like most of us, events shaped and molded him in both positive and negative ways. As a young teen his father shot and killed himself. My Grampa was the one to find his body. Naturally, he grew up in many, many ways in that moment. Who helped him figure all those feelings out? Who mentored him and taught him how to handle anger and resentment and guilt and all the other feelings that come with suicide? I have no idea. Maybe no one.

I have no doubt that he loved my Gramma and their family, even if he didn't know how to to show it very well. For all the nagging, bellowing and bickering there were equal amounts of laughter and good natured ribbing. Even though it was never outwardly apparent, I'm also quite sure that he loved his grandkids and was quite proud of all of our accomplishments. The first thing he did when you went home to visit in the last few years was to show you pictures of the grand- and great-grandkids and tell you what they had been up to lately.

Perhaps the reason that the phrase "rest in peace" resonates for me is that the one word I would use to describe my grandfather was "restless." I have a particular aural memory of Gramp. Just as I regularly hear my Gramma's laughter, I can still hear the whispering sound my Grampa made with his hands. Even as he fell asleep in his big red leather chair in front of the television at night, he was restless. His index fingers circled is thumbs endlessly making the dry, hardworking skin of those two fingers create a whispering sound that only stopped when he was truly asleep. It's a sound I occasionally catch myself making when I am especially agitated.

From the time that my Grampa entered the nursing home after my Gramma's death in September, until just about a week ago, he never mentioned his wife to the staff at the home. They had been married 68 years. It was only in the last week, as he stopped eating and slipped closer and closer to death that he began to see her in his dreams.

He talked and perhaps she answered.

Rest in peace Grampa. I loved you.

This is the best picture of my grandparents that I have. It cracks me up to look at their color choices for a joint portrait. . .but it's a perfect reflection of their personalities! It's fitting that their funerals will be together. We're all going to Rice Lake, Wisconsin the last week of July to celebrate their lives and have something of a family reunion on the lake.

Where I'm From

I am from a cast iron skillet; from Clabber Girl baking powder and red-eye gravy.

I am from a kitchen with a fieldstone fireplace; a rocking chair with a wide, black bottom; an uncomfortable wooden church pew and singing in the kitchen – banging on the pots and pans.

I am from the Magnolia grandiflora and Cornus florida – the Southern Magnolia and the Flowering Dogwood.

I am from chili on Christmas Eve and doll cakes on birthdays. I’m from Lily and Marian – Cooks, Pikes, Buchanans and Curtis’.

I am from hotly held and defended opinions and from uncomfortable silences, especially when we hurt.

I am from dog graves for pitcher’s mounds and spaceship trees to climb.

I am from fire and brimstone Southern Baptists, the sweet by and by, and the church in the valley by the wildwood.

I am from bluegrass, burgoo and Derby Pie.

I am from the captain of the football team and the homecoming queen. The silence is puzzling.

I am from those who know how to work hard, how to laugh loudly, how to drink Red Pop over ice cream. I am from the well read and the even more curious.

I am from all of these things and they are from me.



Written from this template.

Like Cats

Napping in the sun.

Some Thoughts on Food

My first word as a baby was “bite.” Adults would lovingly ask me if I wanted a taste of whatever they were eating, and I quickly learned that “bite” would get me another morsel of the good stuff. . .not the baby stuff!

Food marks all kind of milestones in my life. My great-grandmother lived in a tiny cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. She created the most incredible country cooked meals I’ve ever eaten. Fried chicken with cream gravy, biscuits that would melt in your mouth, fried corn and potatoes that she grew herself, raspberry pie made from the fruit she picked on her little patch of mountain land – all washed down with sweet tea drunk from mason jars. This kind of feast was regularly consumed around her battered Formica kitchen table with the six chairs that didn’t match.

As I got a little older my vocabulary evolved from just “bite” when I wanted some good food. When we visited Mamaw when I was a toddler I would run to her, grab her long skirts* and say “Kitch Mamaw! Kitch!” Loosely translated this meant, “Mamaw honey, would you go to the kitchen and make me something good to eat? Please??”

My mother began teaching me to cook as soon as I was big enough to stand on a chair at the counter and hold a spoon. My mother was a mean cook in her own right. I never remember eating any food other than Jello that came in a box and that included every cake I ever consumed up until she got a job when I was in high school. Every morning before school we had a hot breakfast with homemade biscuits.

As I began to get older and more responsible in the kitchen, Sunday afternoons after church became my baking time. When I was about eight years old I made my first unsupervised baked good. The recipe is called “Tea Time Tassies.”

CRUST:
1 (3 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 c. butter, room temperature
1 c. flour
FILLING:
1 egg
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
Dash of salt
2/3 c. nuts
Grease small cupcake pans. To make crust, blend cream cheese, butter and flour. Chill for a few minutes. Shape into balls. Press dough on bottom and sides of each cup. Blend all ingredients of filling until smooth. Fill each dough-lined cup 2/3 full of filling. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes or until filling is set. Makes 2 dozen.

Although I’m a good cook now, baking is still my forte.

Food is still influential in my life. I’m the only person I know who reads cookbooks for pleasure. I have more than 150 cookbooks. I particularly like older books that describe cooking in the American South.

The only real collection of things, besides cookbooks, that I have is metal lunch boxes. They have been stored in the attic for the last 4 or 5 years because there hasn’t been space to have them out. Until now.



Sunday morning I unpacked my lunchboxes. As I held each one in my hands in the stillness of the morning and washed and dried it before putting it on top of the kitchen cabinets, I thought about how cooking has been a connection with my family. It has taught me that people show love by creating meals – from the simple to the elaborate. As I learned to cook in the kitchen alone, it taught me self confidence and how to learn from my mistakes.** Cooking has taught me to think on my feet as not everything goes as expected.





But, more than anything else, cooking has taught me that food has been such a nourishment in my life. And not just in the physical sense.

My lunchboxes are just another reminder.


* When Mamaw Lily died at 98 she had two distinctions I’m sure I will never encounter again – she never had a pair of pants on in her life and never cut her hair. Most of the time she wore her long hair in a bun, underneath her bonnet. Yes, the kind of bonnet they wore on “Little House on the Prairie.” I wish I had one of hers now.

** I once made a grilled cheese sandwiches for my Dad and his friend Jeff Hensley. They were outside playing basketball when I decided to surprise them with lunch. I cut Velveeta cheese into about 4” thick slices and grilled them in the skillet. When the bread was done I took them outside. . .Jeff was a good sport and ate the whole thing without complaint. My dad on the other hand. . .let’s just say I never lived it down and rarely make grilled cheese anymore. . .

To Know or Not to Know?

Ali has a new hobby. She's really getting into geneology. In the evenings she's hunched over the computer with her books and notebooks spread all over the couch. For the most part it's a pretty quiet new pastime. Occasionally she'll scare the crap out of me by yelling something like, "According to his World War 1 draft registration card, my great-great grampa was stout! But he had all his fingers!"

There is just no end to what you can find out about folks these days. . .

It got me thinkin. There were always some secrets in my house when I was a kid. Like, why my parents didn't EVER celebrate their anniversary. When asked, they would be very vague and then change the subject. Once, when I was in high school I looked my father in the eye and flat out asked if my mother was pregnant with me when they got married. He looked straight at me and said no.

I didn't believe him.

So I asked his brother. My uncle Greg said that they eloped and got married in Tennessee. And yes, I was there.

My aunt Sharon is also very much into geneology. She said that she had asked my parents the same question and had gotten two different answers – that they were either married in September of 1963 or 64. I was born in March of 1965.

So, my question is this – If Ali can find out which relatives had all their digits, should I try and find my parents official marriage license? Or should I leave well enough alone? Leave me a a comment with your thoughts!

Project 365 - Day 61

Happy Halloween!

"Hold on, man. We don't go anywhere with "scary," "spooky," "haunted," or "forbidden" in the title." ~From Scooby-Doo

Project 365 - Day 15

As I sat next to Gramma's bed on Saturday afternoon she was not responsive. To manage her pain, she was given morphine every four hours to keep her comfortable. I knew that it would likely be the last time I would see her alive and one image kept weaving its way through my thoughts.

It was an image of a sunset.

That warm, early fall afternoon Gramma was physically in her bed. She was breathing regularly. Yet, she wasn't really there. There was no laughter. No quiet singing of "Beautiful Dreamer." The essence of Gram had already disappeared below the horizon line. What was left that afternoon were just reflections of Gram left in the clouds.

By late Saturday night even the reflections had faded and she quietly slipped completely out of our sight.

But there's an amazing thing about a sunset – just because we can't see the sun anymore doesn't mean that it isn't there. When the sun goes down on our side of life it bursts above the horizon somewhere else. On Saturday night I can imagine Gramma literally flying over the horizon, laughing and singing at the top of her lungs.

The sunrise is a really beautiful thing.

Project 365 - Day 14

Images of Gram - photographed at her memorial service

"We do not remember days; we remember moments." ~ Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand