From Us to You
This holiday season has been a tough one for me, but I've been working hard to find joy alongside my sadness. Happy holidays to everyone, may your days be filled with as much joy, peace and love as can be packed into them!
Giving Thanks
It's been a hard year, but I'm thankful for:
There's a million more things to be thankful for, and I assure you that I'm likely thankful for them all. Even with the sorrow, it's a good life that I have.
And now a little Thanksgiving story. The last time my immediate family was all together on Thanksgiving was in 1998, when my sisters and I were 15, 17 and 19 (before I went to college too far away to come home for a long weekend). After my parents divorced, we would have an early dinner with my mom, drive over to my dad's house and have a second full dinner around 6 or 7. This Thanksgiving, we were all sitting around the table and out of nowhere, my younger sister bursts out with "And that's why I wear sweatpants!!" Or at least that's what the rest of us heard. To this day, she swears that what she really said was "Guess why I wear sweatpants?" The four of us ended up laughing until our bellies hurt.
I hope everyone who reads this has a fabulous Thanksgiving, if you celebrate, and a wonderful Thursday if you don't!
I Like Big Bundts
Today is National Bundt Day. Stacie pinned The Food Librarian's celebration of the bundt cake recently and since I love a bundt cake (delicious cake, little to no frosting, perfect for unfancy days without a lot of fuss), I decided I need to join in.
I baked the blueberry lemon bundt from martha stewart and it's delicious, although the lemon flavor is perhaps a little more subtle than I'd like. I suppose I could solve that with a lemon glaze or by adding more zest or some lemon extract though.
A Birthday and a Eulogy
Today would have been my father's 58th birthday. Instead, he is gone and I am still desperately trying to piece back together my absolutely shattered heart. It seems fitting that I share my inadequate eulogy for my father here today. I'm going to be spending the day with my husband, celebrating my father with a cake I baked for him on birthdays past--a chocolate cake with cherry pie filling and whipped cream. I can't say for sure that it was his favorite, but it was the cake he asked me for when he asked me to make him a cake. I'd also like to ask you to take a moment to remember to tell people that you love them because life is frequently unfairly short and you just cannot can't on getting another chance.
Larry Donaghy b. August 13, 1953 d. January 28, 2011
It's virtually impossible to sum up in a few short paragraphs all that my father was. He was 5'10", bald and bearded and heavily muscled in a way that only comes from manual labor. He had an insatiable desire for knowledge, a ridiculous love of practical jokes and an amazingly tender heart towards children and animals. He loved beer, Hawaiian shirts, jigsaw puzzles and mystery novels. He lived very simply and was generous almost to a fault. He hated to throw anything away if there was any chance that it might be used again in any way. He was also one of the most important people in my life; one of the guideposts by which I defined myself. Without him, I am missing a rudder.
My father had large, square hands. They were always calloused from working in the fields because he frequently eschewed the many pairs of gloves he owned. A normal day in my childhood could find him operating a sawmill, chopping wood, making hay, milking goats or doing any one of a million other farm chores. Most people would have called him a man's man, tough on the outside. What most people didn't know was the inside his heart melted for his three little girls and it was not uncommon to see him with his beard or what little hair he had held back by plastic barrettes, braided into many tiny braids or otherwise decked out sparkly little girl accessories. He loved to tease and torment us; he would shake his wet beard over us after a shower or throw his stinky socks at us at the end of the day. One day when a friend was over, he was expounding on the joys of being an adult as he passed around that evening's dessert--swiss cake rolls or some other Little Debbie snack cakes--and without warning he reached out and BANG! slammed his hand down on the friend's cake, telling her he could do that because he was an adult, and that was what made being an adult great. He did also swap her mangled cake for his.
My father sang to us a great deal. While he did not sing outside the house and I can't recall the way it sounded when he sang now, I know he sang a lot. The song I most remember him singing to me was You Are My Sunshine, which has always made me cry. He would wake us up on summer mornings by bellowing "Rise and shine and give God your glory glory", his rich, round voice refusing to allow us to remain sleeping. He sang songs while we worked, teaching us to use them to work on the same rhythm. Frequently sung songs also included Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side and Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle With You. He was a terrible dancer, but he did a great deal of that around the house too, doing what we all affectionately called "the white man shuffle." He loved the song The Safety Dance, and when we played it at my wedding, he made a point of telling me--as he grinned--that he was so glad I'd played "his song." He loved The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Lou Reed, The Byrds, Flat and Scruggs, Arlo Guthrie and loved rock, old country, bluegrass and jazz in general.
My father was not always the most patient of men. Sometimes we argued and sometimes we yelled. I did inherit my stubborn nature from him, so it's only natural that we butted heads every now and then. The greatest gift he ever gave me was that I have always known that my father was behind me, proud of me and ready to catch me if I fell. Even as he kept his worries and sadnesses from us, he was free with his love, hugging and telling us he loved us as frequently as he could. A phone call to him could stretch for hours. The last thing he said to me was "I love you" and as I struggle through my life without him, I can think of no better gift he could have given me.
Happy birthday Daddy. I love you more than words can say, and for you, one last time, The Safety Dance.
excerpted and adapted from a post at Letters to my Father
Happy Day!
Mom with Derek and I in our backyard in June, 2011.
Today is my mothers's birthday. I'm sure if you asked how old she is, she'd tell you she's "old enough to know better." I cannot tell you all how wonderful my mother is. She's my support, my good friend, one of my biggest cheerleaders and she gives great advice when I ask for it (and sometimes when I don't.)
When I was growing up, waking up on Saturdays in our house meant heading downstairs to see Mom in the kitchen, her hair pinned up with a large barrette, singing along to the sounds of oldies playing on the radio while she baked bread or did dishes. She worked full time and still managed to bake most of our bread and can and preserve a vast amount of fruit and vegetables from the garden. She also managed to sew most of the clothing my sisters and I wore until we grew old enough to prefer jeans and tshirts to handsewn clothing.
Mom has been responsible for my education in many things. She taught me how to cook, bake, can and preserve, knit, crochet and sew--all tools that have served me quite well since then. She taught me how to appreciate sarcasm and how to laugh at myself. She inspires me in so many ways, the least of which is her tenacity and her zeal for life; she took up tap dancing at an age when many adults are starting to think about slowing down and recently she's started spending a great deal of her free time hiking through the hills and mountains near her home on the coast of Maine. In short, if you asked me to pick the perfect mother for me, there would be no contest, I'd choose the one I got every single time.
Happy birthday Mom, I love you more than I can possibly ever put into words. I feel so lucky to have you.