Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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5 Comments:What a wonderful account and what wonderful photos of your parents! :-) Ah, a vicarious visit with my own family...thank you! Thanks for sharing the sweet and the bittersweet. Lovely memories. I loved reading your memories of Thanksgiving. Your parents look so sweet, it's obvious where your sweetness comes from. :)
Dear Heart, what a lovely account. Your Mama reminds me of my Mom, who passed away Jan. 21/04 at age 87...esp. her smile and her hands...
By Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Saturday, November 24, 2007
align="center">What Type of Passionate Woman Are You? I liked the “How Virgo are you?” quiz just a little better than this one, but since I am wearing red, I thought I'd put this one up in today's post anyway. Yesterday's visit with my parents was extremely powerful – and love-full and nostalgia-full and oh just extremely full altogether. It was a very beautiful autumn day and it was an easy drive, sans traffic, since I wasn't going to a shopping center. Much of the story of yesterday is not really mine to tell. Suffice it to say that their respective relocations, to different places, after 60 years of living together, has been a great challenge for my parents. Each, in her or his own way, has made progress through this tremendous and difficult situation. Sister and I have had to navigate with caution and care and sometimes, with boldness, as we steered them to safety, if not to some desired outcome. Sister and I, are good, but we are not miracle workers and we can't turn back the clock. But turning back the gaze, to look over all those hours the clock has already ticked, was the order of the day for me. Alone in a car for 2 hours, driving through back country roads that I know well enough that it's safe to let my mind wander a bit, gave me an opportunity to remember, to watch the flickering scenes of past holidays shared with my parents, now showing in the theater of my mind. From my earliest days there were Thanksgiving Apple turkeys whose heads and wings and tails were cut from shirt cardboard. Mama would draw them for us and we would cut them out and color them. They were the first moment of Thanksgiving, back in the days before people started putting Christmas out just after Labor Day. Back then, nobody put up a tree more than 2 weeks before Christmas so Thanksgiving got the full benefit of your attention, your gaze and your holiday spirit. We knew Christmas was coming. We knew there were only a few more weeks of school left, but they were dangerous weeks, filled with 3 more spelling tests, 3 more chances to flunk arithmetic, and 21 more homework laden opportunities to fail. Really, childhood is so difficult – it's the hardest period of your life, no matter how rosy it looks in hindsight. So we really did soak up the joy of that Thanksgiving weekend. In addition to the apple turkeys there were paper napkins, with their embossed flowers and scrolls, just right for coloring. In fact, all my early Thanksgiving memories are scented with the smell of Crayola Crayons – one of my favorite fragrances – one I wish the Crayola company would sell to a good perfumer. I'd love to walk around smelling like a brand new box of Crayolas. Later, when there was a boyfriend, Thanksgiving was a chance to eat two gigantic meals in the same day. I actually wanted to do that back then. Laughed at carbs and calories and fat grams! Later still it was the first holiday long enough to justify the tedious bus ride home from college. And then it was a chance for cousins to gather at Grandma's and pretend to be adults. Or another sister, visiting from Delaware, and I would drive up on Friday with our children to visit the Grands and pick at their extra pumpkin pies. After a while the big spread shifted to my house and daddy had the opportunity to get lost in Hanover County trying to take the new 288 across the James. Well. We are dealing with something new and different these days, but it doesn't stand that these are not good things – good days. Getting Mama out at all is a feat worthy of bragging about and Daddy had on his charming hat and made not a single whiny complaint about anything. He was even good natured about crawling in and out of my low-rider Nissan Sentra. It really is a teensy car and asking two cripples to fold themselves into it and out of it and back into it and back out of it can only be justified by the sort of afternoon we got to spend together yesterday. We went to the Brick House Restaurant in Midlothian, which, happily, is under new Greek!!! ownership so I had a fabulously delicious Greek salad (dressing on the side, so only 4 WW points, thank heaven) and the 3 of us shared a desert of Kataife which we thought sounded like Cadaver when the waitress pronounced it, so we giggled till tears streaked our cheeks and later, after it was served, and proved to be delicious beyond belief, made horrible cannibal jokes and stuffed our mouths with napkins while we laughed some more. Just before darkness slid across the sky the full moon rose and lit my way back home. For the longest time I was still awash in the joyful feeling of having so many blessings – though somewhere past Elevon, deep in the country, where my own road begins, I grew a little weepy for things that are gone forever. But a few tears are good to water the garden of your soul – and there were dogs waiting for me at home, and BD with his warm hugging arms – and a warm fire in the stove. Today is another cold crisp blue and golden day. R and her daughter J are due here sometime this morning. Knitting will be taking place – and spinning. It is still the sweetness of a holiday weekend and my wish is that yours be as full of sweetness and of giggles as a Kataife!   |
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