Category Archives: Family Matters

To Mama, with love!

I am so blessed to have had you as my mother.  You loved me unconditionally and supported me through the great times in my life and the most challenging moments I encountered.  We stood together during the illnesses of our immediate family members as a formidable team.  You were a rock and you displayed such quiet strength.  You were a quiet, pensive woman with a passion and love for your family and the students you taught.  Many people, including me, sometimes mistook your softness and quietness for weakness.  It took me growing up and maturing to realize you were a pillar of strength, courage, and love.

It took time to start feeling better about daddy dying and there have been days this last six years when I have sobbed over missing your touch, your voice, your advice, your laugh, your smile, or our conversations.  Being without those things has been hard and being without your physical presence right now is even harder. My family  has been excellent through it all.  Between my sister’s illness and daddy’s heart issues, we have always had a special caregiver relationship and you told me that one day I would be the one to care for you.  It was hard to become your caretaker and see you ill.  Sickness and death do not happen at times of convenience and my response to your needs couldn’t either.  I am so thankful for the folks who made adjustments in their schedules to help me travel, care for my kids, my dog, my husband, and you.

Mama we have been dealing with crisis situations since my childhood and you know the stuff nobody else does and we loved each other through it all.  God has shown himself faithful, reliable, and a God of amazingly awesome timing.  I am so blessed to have had you, Mama, and I know you felt blessed to have me.  I always wanted to make you proud and it was fitting that the last word I ever heard you say was “Proud.” My family remained supportive even when it wasn’t convenient because they loved you and respected the relationship and bond between us.  God provided many villagers to help me love you in the way you needed me as I moved and lived in three different states in the last five years.  The village cared and prayed for me, fed my family, checked on our precious Yorkie Swaggy, visited you, let me FaceTime with you, put the phone to your ear to let me get you caught up on our goings on, sent me pictures of you, got my kids to and from school in snow storms, purchased gifts for you when I didn’t get something in the mail on time, read to you, and did so many other things over the years to offer support and encouragement.  Mama, some friends even gave me keys to their homes so that I would always have a place to stay when I traveled to care for you.

His favor rested upon you and all who were in your presence.  I am walking in that favor.  I can say that in helping you make adjustments needed to care for others and by doing whatever we had to do whenever we had to do it I was well-prepared to juggle so many moving parts in my life to care for you.  I am now more certain than ever that God orders our steps and God does honor sacrifice. Ha! I couldn’t have and wouldn’t have written this script.

You fought the good fight! You were a good and faithful servant for all of the ninety years the Lord let you bless this earth!  Rest in peace until we see each other again. I love you, Mama!

Thanksgiving 2009

I recently wrote a post about making memories during the holiday season and I reflected on some good times from my childhood.  Well, my son reminded me of Thanksgiving 2009, the last Thanksgiving dinner we had with my mother at her house in Montgomery.  As previously stated, Thanksgiving dinner was always excellent and my mom always had some staple dishes so our expectation for this Thanksgiving was that everything would remain the same.  However, when we go to the house, we knew that this would be the last Thanksgiving dinner she would prepare for us.

Weeks before Thanksgiving Day, I spoke to my mom and I told her that the kids and I would be driving to Alabama from Indiana for Thanksgiving.  She was excited and we were excited.  My brother was a high school band director and he had a couple of tickets for the kids to go to the Turkey Day Classic to see Alabama State University play Tuskegee University.  The plan was coming together.  My mom and I agree that I would bake and bring sweet potato pies.  I was also in charge of making the sweet tea.  She said that she would make candied yams, cornbread, order a ham from a local establishment, and have Aunt Pinky make us a pound cake. She asked if we would prefer collard greens or green beans.  With haste, I vocalized the need for collards in the Thanksgiving spread.  Well, what about the turkey you ask?  Well, my husband coached a kid at a junior college some years ago and his family loved turduckins.  Neither of us had ever had a turduckin and nobody had a clue what one looked like or tasted like, but we trusted the public opinion poll that said we would like them.  So, I solicited the help of a friend and chef in Indianapolis to prepare this rare “bird” and I hauled it to Alabama for this special dinner.

For some reason that I can’t remember now (but I’m guessing it had something to do with the public school schedule), we couldn’t leave until Wednesday evening, Thanksgiving eve.  With coolers loaded with pies, sweet tea, and turduckins,  we gathered our playlist and hit the road headed south.  I made a decision to spend the night in Nashville and finish the drive the next morning.  We got up the next morning, Thanksgiving Day, and resumed travel.  In all this great planning, I forgot about businesses being closed for the holiday which made the search for breakfast challenging. We saw a sign for a popular coffee shop and we took the next exit.  We got there and the line was out the door and stretched through the parking lot.  OMG! Apparently, we had the same brilliant idea as all who ran in the early morning Thanksgiving fundraiser race.  It was one of those moments when you just take a deep breath, get in line, and make the best of the situation.

After a delay, we got back on I-65 and headed toward our destination.  On the way, a friend called to say that they had an extra ticket so now all three of us could go to the game.  Yipee! I called my mom to relay the news and to find out if she was good with the change in the plan.  She was good with it.  She asked that I call her when we were leaving the football game so that she could start warming the food.  Yes! It’s all good.  We were really hungry, but we could grab a snack at the game — just enough to keep from being hungry, but not enough to ruin our appetites for the special dinner awaiting us at Mama’s house.

The game ended and we called Mama to alert her that we would be there soon.  When she saw the car pull up into the driveway, she hurried to the door to greet us with a big smile and hugs and kisses all around.  We entered the house and we all had a very curious feeling.  Where was the robust smell of collards and yams? Where is she hiding the honey ham she ordered? And the cornbread was missing too.  Hmmm.  I was certain that the stove just wasn’t warm enough to heat the food yet and within the next few minutes we would be engulfed with the aroma of the much anticipated Thanksgiving dinner.

To my surprise, Mama asked if we were ready to eat.  I asked if the ham was warming in the over.  “Well,” she said, “I didn’t order one.  The people from the senior center stopped by with a basket and there was a canned ham in there so I just decided to use it. Oh no — I forgot to put pineapples on the ham.” I’m thinking what the what?! Canned ham for Thanksgiving?! She opened a can of sliced pineapples and then opened the oven and placed a couple of slices of pineapple on the canned ham.  umph! When she opened the oven, we saw the candied yams and our eyes began to bulge.  It turns out that she didn’t feel like peeling sweet potatoes so she used the canned sweet potatoes soaking in syrup from that gift basket for the starchy goodness that she usually made from scratch.  Oh wow! At this point, we are in disbelief and a little nervous about the other items on the menu.  This was not supposed to be one of those holidays where you get surprise gifts from family, but heck the suspense was literally killing me. I was melting on the inside from hunger and from the thought that I didn’t cook and load another cooler.  I told her that I didn’t smell greens.  She said, “Well, I didn’t feel like picking [cleaning] greens so I just got some canned beans.” Oh no! My mom always said fresh then frozen, then canned so her choosing canned first was uncharacteristic of her and gave me visions of the taste of salty canned beans sprinkled with metal.  Historically, she had been able to season some canned beans in an emergency and make you believe they were not from a can, but this was not that time.  So, to take a tally of the dinner menu: collards-no check, yams-no check, honey ham-no check. We had sweet tea, sweet potato pies, pound cake, store brand grape and strawberry sodas, and the turduckin that was stuffed with “dressing.”  With anxiousness and apprehension, we opened the packaging around the “bird” and proceeded to slice it.  “Oh wow!” said everybody in the room as we all let out chuckles.  My mom said, “Well, if I had known you were gonna bring a meatloaf, I would have gotten a turkey.”  Lol! What?! She would have gotten a turkey.

That was the only Thanksgiving that we didn’t eat turkey.  The truth is we couldn’t figure out which part of the “bird” was turkey which was the duck and which was the chicken.  We ended up loading the plates with samplings of all of the offerings, but we only ate pie, cake, and rolls. My daughter and I drank sweet tea and my son had a few grape sodas.  We did a nice job of carrying on a normal holiday dinner discussion about the trip down, school, and the game without ever making mama feel any kind of way about the shocking lack of yumminess at the dinner table.  My daughter said, “This is the first Thanksgiving we won’t have any leftovers to eat tomorrow.”

I am also thankful that my kids loved their grandmother enough to enjoy her Thanksgiving dinner without giving her any notion that we knew she probably would not ever prepare for us the kind of Thanksgiving dinner spread we remembered again.  I am so thankful that we were able to be at the table with Mama the last time she prepared Thanksgiving dinner.  Every time we talk about this Thanksgiving memory, we laugh so hard that our stomachs hurt and our eyes tear.

 

 

Please don’t do the laundry

My husband generally works long hours and most of the chores around the house belong to me most of the year. Sometimes when he gets a bye week he thinks that doing the laundry will help me out. While I appreciate the thoughtfulness, I really prefer to maintain control of laundry duty.

When the kids were younger, I reserved laundry detail for the times when he was out of town. I used the act of sorting laundry to teach the difference between light colors and dark colors and which articles of clothing could go into the “white” pile. I tend to have two piles that can be categorized as white: the one with solid white things and the other with things that are mostly white with some color to make the garment interesting. This lesson in sorting proved very helpful as the kids got older and needed to do their own laundry. It also helped me when they were able to bring their dirty laundry to the laundry room and place it in the
correct pile.

Secondly, the kids and I would sort the clean clothes. We would have a basket for each family member’s clothes or designate a spot in the room for each person. We would have clothes folding lessons while we watched Sunday football. After the sorting and the folding, we would scurry around putting away laundry during commercials. My son’s clothes were not always put away as neatly as I would have liked, but heck they were no longer smelly or cluttering up my laundry room or den. We threw the rolled socks at the tv when we didn’t like calls by refs or plays we saw on the screen. When I wasn’t throwing socks at the tv, I threw socks at the kids. It was like dodge ball with socks. It kept the task fun and meaningful.

FInally, laundry fed my compulsive disorder that requires that the towels and shirts be folded a certain way so that they fit into the closets and drawers perfectly. My husband after all these years still can’t fold the towels right (and we won’t even discuss the fitted sheets). Ha! The process of doing laundry somehow is therapeutic for me. I have time to busy myself and quiet my spirit at the same time.

I often say, “If somebody really wants to help me, sweep and mop the floors.” I would also be overjoyed if someone would give me at least a week off from kitchen detail. I wouldn’t object to the dishwashing and cooking, but I still think I need to put them away. My type A, compulsive issue would require that I reorganize everything if they didn’t put them away properly. I guess my particular ways may be the reason they let me do most of the chores. Ha!

 

 

It’s that time of year!

Halloween was last Friday and a week later we still have leftover candy from the trick or treaters. Prior to last year, I hadn’t participated in trick or treating in at least fifteen or sixteen years. I made the decision to turn off all of the lights except the one in the back bedroom and watch movies with my daughter many years ago. My daughter was three, I was pregnant with my son, and we were living in a new and unfamiliar city. My husband’s work schedule was brutal and kept him away from home until late at night. Since he would not be home Halloween night, I decided it was not safe for a woman late in her pregnancy with a three year old to open her door at night for strangers dressed in costumes. I thought I might look silly explaining how an unrecognizable person in a mask spooked me or victimized me. Over the years, we developed our own traditions for Halloween. The kids and I would go out for dinner and then to a movie. Sometimes we participated in local harvest parties where they would play games and eat treats. I also had neighbors who made special goodie bags for my kids because they knew we didn’t trick or treat. Now, the kids shake their heads at me because the dog has costumes and I buy candy to hand out to trick or treaters who stop by our house. I am thankful that my kids enjoyed the tradition we started and at least acted like they understood my thought process. Well, at least I don’t think my approach to Halloween eternally scarred our kids.

Immediately after closing the door to Halloween and the kids in costumes, we woke up planning for Thanksgiving. Oh my gosh! It seems that the pressure to plan and create special environments for our friends and family is at an all time high from the end of October through February 14th. The holiday season can be brutal emotionally, financially, and socially. When I think about the holiday season during my childhood and even my adult years, I generally remember the food and the experiences I had with my friends and family.

Recently, I was talking to a friend about growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, also known as “The Gump.” In The Gump, Thanksgiving included getting up early for the Turkey Day Parade and watching my brother marching with the Alabama State University Marching Hornets. I was about four years old and my brother was a drum major. The band was so large that the crowd had to take steps back so the band could fit through the parade route. My brother would wink at me as he passed me on the street. I would blush and smile and hold my head up higher hoping that everyone witnessed him showing the world how special I was to him. We would go home, eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, collard greens, candied yams, sweet potato pie, pound cake, and sweet tea. Thank goodness for Mama’s cooking!

It was years later that I realized the sacrifice and love that went into preparing Thanksgiving dinner. My parents came from families of good cooks where food was the common denominator at all family gatherings. As a result, holiday meals were designed to create an atmosphere that would fill our needs for warmth, fun, and physical nourishment. Now that I am many miles away from my family, my father is deceased, and my mother is in a nursing home unable to communicate with me, those well-crafted, special moments we had back in the day are etched in my memory and in my heart forever. I am thankful that the experiences that blessed me then are still blessing me today. I am thankful for the lessons my parents taught me about simplicity, hospitality, and family.

I work each holiday season to remind myself that it’s really not about the stuff, but rather the experience. Since we can’t go to the Turkey Day Classic every year, we look forward to spending the day eating our traditional dinner, watching football, and napping. I am thankful that life often affords us an opportunity to evolve and create new traditions and experiences that can be as rewarding as those no longer available to us.
Each holiday season brings on memories of my mom and dad and other family members and friends who are far away. I work hard not to allow the thought of missing them to consume my being. Whenever those thoughts linger, I start to have a thanksgiving rally in my head. I start to say how thankful I am for parents who loved me and wanted the best for me. I express my thankfulness for my brother who loves me and supports me. I celebrate my thankfulness for my husband and my kids who look forward to sharing Thanksgiving dinner with me. I am thankful that my family enjoys the food I cook. I focus on my family and friends who find humor in my sarcasm and quick wit.

I have to transform every negative thought during the holiday season into a positive reason to give thanks. This takes some practice. So, let the rehearsal begin:

When the person cuts in front of me in the line at the grocery store, I will be thankful that I have a reason to be standing in line and money to pay for my groceries.

When my kids are home for holidays and complaining about the food choices or the lack of food, I will be thankful that I know where they are and that they have the ability to talk.

When I have to pick up socks and shoes from the family room, I will be thankful that my kids came home the night before.

I must make staying in the thankful zone every day my focus. I encourage my readers to speak words of Thanksgiving and to encourage others to do the same. Hey, I hope you feel thankful and that you stay in the thankful zone throughout the holiday season. Don’t let the holiday season overwhelm you and suck you into the great abyss of chaos, negativity, and needless spending. Instead, focus on being thankful for some past experiences and memories. If you say you don’t have any, make it your business to create some this year and be thankful for the life and breath you have to accomplish that feat.

 

Swaggy The Great!

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If this little dog could talk, I can only imagine the things he would say. For fifteen years my kids begged for a dog. Daddy, “Can we have a dog?” they would ask. The answer was always a resounding, “No, I don’t think so, not right now.” Well, two and a half years ago when one kid was about to begin her sophomore year of college and the other his sophomore year of high school my daughter asked again and my husband said nothing. “Huh?!” filled the thought bubble over my head. My next thought was “You have got to be kidding me.” My girl heard what I heard: the pregnant silence in the car after the age old question about a dog. Pure shock was the only emotion I had while she was beaming with anticipation and the possibility that his failure to say no meant yes. I suggested she follow up with how much he would let them spend on the dog to test him to see if he was really going to let them move forward or if he would back peddle into that dog free zone like we had seen him do in the past. After he maintained his position, she told her brother and the excitement escalated. Within the hour they found two dogs in the area that fit the requirements established by their dad and made contact with the owners. The next day they met our favorite pup and the love affair with Swaggy was born.

The only dog I ever had as a child was given to me by my grandmother because somebody dropped her off on the dirt road near my grandmother’s house. I don’t remember dogs living in the house when I was a kid except Toby, the poodle across the street. None of my neighbors had small dogs who rode in the car. I don’t remember a dog in my neighborhood having a wardrobe either. All of the dogs in my neighborhood were large breed, guard dog types. They had fierce names and you always prayed they were safely behind a fence or on a chain before you rode your bike by the houses where they lived or else you would be frantically riding that bike as fast as you could to avoid getting caught by King or Killer or Butch. When I walk through my old neighborhood I still think about that german shepherd that lived on the corner down the street from me.

Swaggy is our first family pet. He was about thirteen weeks old and about two and a half pounds when we brought him home. He was so small that he could fit in my son’s size twelve shoe. He could sleep in the bed intended for a stuffed animal one of the kids owned. We had to put a cat collar on him because all of the dog collars were too big and we needed the bell so that we could keep up with him. He was and is the cutest yorkie on the planet and he knows it!

I never thought I could learn anything from a dog, but Swaggy has become a teacher. Swaggy has taught us the following lessons:

1. Walk with confidence and believe that you are a champion. When people see him they comment on his posture and his stride. He walks with purpose and his head held high. He’s friendly, but knows that he’s a show stopper. We have his groomer to thank for helping us keeping this champion looking the part.

2. Leave the mess outside. Well, I like to think that is self explanatory. In short, just work to make your inside space calm and mess free. The ability to do this on the regular takes practice much like training Swaggy to leave his mess outside and not in some secret corner of the house. His celebration includes some verbal praise and a treat. When you notice that you are consistently keeping your house free of the mess you should celebrate too.

3. Ignore the stupid stuff. Sometimes when we are walking we encounter other dogs who get really worked up barking and lunging in Swaggy’s direction. You would think that he would reply with similar behaviors, but he looks straight ahead or he looks at them like they are really out of their minds then turns and struts off focused on his enjoyment of the outdoors. Like Swaggy, we should just learn the value of silence in situation where someone has difficulty controlling their mouths or their actions. My mama used to say somebody has to take the high road. That advice is great advice, but not always easy to execute. I can only hope that I can be cool, calm, and collected like by boy Swaggy when the crazy rises up around me.

4. Stop and smell the flowers. My dog, Swaggy, loves flowers. I have never seen a dog stop and smell flowers. One would think he is selecting flowers for a garden or floral arrangement. He gets so distracted on our walks by the plants and flowers along the route. Good for him for being able to really inhale the fragrances of the terrain. I often comment on how my feelings about the outdoors fluctuates from thoughts of the beauty of it all to dread because is seems so brown and lifeless. Every day this little dog goes out to walk he finds something beautiful and deserving of his attention and admiration.

5. Never bite the hand that feeds you. Swaggy loves us and he has figured out who supplies his particular needs. He knows that his boy will play with him and teach him tricks. He knows that his girl will cuddle him, take him for rides in the car, and slip him a taste of her food. Swaggy looks forward to
the big guy coming home because the big guy has a soft heart and will give him more treats than he is supposed to have. And then there’s mama who does it all for him. I feed him, walk him, and boil chicken for his special treat moments. I take him for rides and have conversations with him that I am certain he can understand. Haha! Unlike Swaggy, we don’t always appreciate the roles of our loved ones. He has figured out that his life can be whole and complete if he trusts each person in the family to do just what he knows they have proven they can be trusted to do.

swaggy