This year, I have been helping clean out my older sister’s home and have found a wealth of treasures interspersed with many questionable items. A lot of the pieces of paper and absurd objects are the same ones I sorted through 30 years ago when my mother died. My sis has been the collector and curator of all the things and could not bear to throw them away. Items I thought long discarded were tucked into drawers, on shelves, and in boxes under beds. This tendency to hoard was passed on to her via our mother’s genetics. Still, it has grown with time because she also inherited our father’s flawed arterial flow issues. I so want to talk to her about the abundance of pictures, recipes, and scribbled notes, but the time to do that has rapidly faded. Indeed, time itself has grown thin and fragile as she sits each day in a lovely memory care facility. She is not yet totally lost to us but wakes every morning closer to that shadowland where both sorrow and joy escape from her mind like air from a pinhole.
Our conversations these days are about the past because it is still somewhat clear to her. In the present, she is tired and confused, but when we speak about the old days, she remembers the abundance of love and joy of the Christmas season. We have no indoor pictures of our childhood, no Christmas mornings, no laden tables. The reason for that is simple. Our only camera was a little Brownie box with no flash attachment. I’m sure it was an expense my parents deemed too extravagant, but the pictures in my head more than suffice. Do I recall them accurately? I’m really not sure. Driving back by the tiny house we lived in as children, I’m certain it had to be cramped, but I never felt that way. I’m also sure my mom had to pinch pennies, but I never felt deprived, certainly not when I sat at the table on Christmas day.
Our love language was always food. Our mom was unquestionably the best baker of all the moms we knew, certainly the best in our church and school. One of the most lasting memories both my sis and I have of Christmas were her jam cakes. I have her recipe, and I can make the cake, but Mama took it to a professional level. Of course she made coconut cakes, banana cakes, chocolate cakes, and spice cakes which many felt were tastier than the rich heavy jam cake. The secret to the jam cake was its keeping power. Heavy laden with raisins, nuts, molasses, spices and coated with a caramel candy icing, it could be shipped safely anywhere in the world. That is precisely what she did every year in the months before Christmas. By the 25th, every relative and friend of the family had one of Mom’s delicious cakes to enjoy. My sis and I recall helping make them, measuring flour and spices onto dozens of squares of wax paper to make them ready to sift and incorporate into the liquid components of the batter. To understand the scope of my mom’s cake operation, I am including an early recipe from her notes that gives the prices of the components. You might need to cut it down a bit if you want to make it. It’s for sixty cakes.
Did I mention that my mom worked full-time, was an officer in the chamber of commerce, and was an active worker in our church? I am unsure how many other things she did because she never bragged about her accomplishments. Plenty of other people did, including my sister and I, who know best what an amazing person she was. Christmas was never the same after she left us. There are moments when I envy my sister, who has forgotten so much. It seems to have fallen to me to remember everything in the same way she saves the physical bits and pieces of our lives. We each have our role. May the holiday season fill you with the joy of happy memories.
The house is quiet on this cold, snowy winter morning, and it seems that no one is stirring except a possible mouse. I hear her working on something under the bookcase, making tiny, scratchy noises. I’m feeling philanthropic today and hate to begrudge her whatever minuscule crumbs she can find after yesterday’s housecleaning. We have tried to block all egress to our 1920s home for years, stuffing steel wool around all the pipes and blowing insulating foam into every tiny gap we can find. Still, about every other year, one of her kind who is clever and resourceful and shivery cold finds some way to escape the snow and enter our warm, cozy home.
She and her family seem to have a genteel nature, as I never find any evidence of their passage, no chewed wires or boxes or bags, and not a drop of excrement has been scattered in my cupboards or original hardwood floors. In past years, my beloved husband has set traps or put out poison. On one occasion, I found one of the tiny creatures guillotined under the sprung wire of the trap. Seeing the violent end of so frail a creature caused despair in my tender heart. Yes I know they can do a lot of damage, but somehow, in this year in particular, I do not have the will to mention the noises I keep hearing. I am comfortable in my cozy chair, blanket drawn up to my chin. I know she will joyfully flee back outside when spring returns, for she is a field mouse, born and bred. She will surely do no more damage than a domesticated cat or dog living inside.
When my daughter was in first grade, her class had a pet white mouse in a cage in her classroom. One morning, when the students came in, they found a nest of newborn baby mice with skin markings that made it clear the father was a wild mouse who had slipped easily into the little white one’s cage. When summer vacation neared, the teacher desperately asked if any children would like a pet mouse. Of course, my daughter volunteered. That’s the summer Shirley came to live in my bathroom, where she would be safe from the numerous cats my daughter had adopted. We all learned so much about mice that summer, including the fact that if picked up, they will not jump out of your hand but sit there with their tiny nose twitching, looking adorable and fuzzy and begging for food. We all loved Shirley, and fortunately, with a house full of cats, there were no secret trysts with a randy house mouse in the night. She lived a good, long life, wanting for nothing except perhaps a litter of her own. In a time of so much discord and hatred in the world I have decided to take a live-and-let-live policy this winter.
Knowing Shirley gave me empathy for all of her kind. Even this small insignificant creature proved herself not so terribly unlike us. Scientists tell us that we share 85% of the mouse’s genetic code and enough similarity in circulatory, reproductive, digestive, hormonal, and nervous systems that they can be used to help with the study of human physiology. Let us not forget that all humans, no matter their skin color, religion, sexual preference, politics, or country of origin, share all our DNA. You may know that the Bible, and most all of human philosophy, tells us to love our neighbor. You may not know what the lawyer testing Jesus asked after, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer to that question was the parable of the good Samaritan. If it’s not familiar to you, let me summarize. Your neighbor is anyone in need, regardless of where they live or what they think. No exceptions.
Letting the mouse live is not at all the same. I’m not patting myself on the back for my decision. The reality of our world is brutal right now, but I still believe we can all figure out how to make this work. May it be so.
This is a picture of my grandmother and my sister, Eleanor taken around 1962
When I was a child I lived on a dead end street in Beaver Dam Kentucky and there were no other children except my brother and sister who found their little sis a pest. My “Mamaw” lived next door to us and looking back I would have to say she was my best friend when I was a child. I was on her front porch as soon as I did my morning chores and ate my breakfast. She always had something for my second breakfast, often homemade biscuits that were different from my mom’s but just as delicious. She put butter and sugar on them for me and served them with her home canned peaches also sprinkled with sugar as she did not put much in when she canned.
We then went to tour her small “estate” walking from plant to plant, seeing when we thought the roses might start blooming or if there were any ripe grapes or raspberries ready to eat. We collect eggs from the chickens and petted the rabbits. She always wore a bonnet she had made from the calico fabric of the feed sacks and an apron made of the same, but rarely matching because feedsacks had little fabric. In the spring we picked poke salad and in full summer the little green tomatoes inside husks that looked like lanterns. Years later I learned these were Mexican ground cherries or tomitallias. I do not recall ever eating them and have no idea how she used them.
In the heat of the day we would go inside and sit on the pump organ bench together and she would play songs of men and women who took the wrong path in life, “The Cowboy’s Lament”. “Pearl Bryan”, “I have written him a letter”, “Come all you young Maidens”, and so many others. She had the patience to teach me how to do basic sewing, crocheting, how to make rag rugs and always let me cook with her, never minding that I made a mess. She would say, “Don’t worry, my middle name is mess.”
She was a hard working woman, fierce as they come. I have watched her spend the morning hoeing the garden, finish off the making of homemade soap, and then ring a chicken’s neck, pluck it and serve it with dumplings for supper. She buried three husbands, but always warned me not to marry, both directly and also indirectly by teaching me all those songs. I am so grateful for everything she taught me, even if I did not heed her warnings. But, now happily married to my third husband, I think I finally understand the contradiction of her feelings about men.
I know she has a story to tell of a life she lived before she was my grandmother. Nobody’s going to tell that story if I don’t. I’ve been working on it for a while and hopefully it will be out by spring. Since historic fiction is my happy place it will include a lot about the times in which she lived, 1882 to 1970. I know more facts about her than I did about Lydia, my Babies in the Bed heroine, but I will expand a lot based on what history teaches us about women’s life during those years.
In case you’re wondering, title of this post is the working title for her story, the book I’m currently writing.
I want to share this picture of Santa and Mrs. Claus (my mom and dad) because it represents the best of the season to me. If you will indulge me for a minute I will tell you their Christmas story. It begins in 1932 when my mom was 13. She had recently moved from the rural mining and farming community of Echols Ky, just north of Paradise, to the big city of Beaver Dam Kentucky, population 1,036, to attend high school. She was living in a boarding house with her brother as there was no educational opportunity past 8th grade at home. While Echols was only nine miles down the road, this was the early 1930s when reliable transportation was a luxury for country people. My mom had often ridden a horse to grade school and walked when the horse was not available.
My grandfather, Claud Burden, always put the education of his seven children as a priority. Like Loretta Lynn’s papa he worked all night in the coal mines and farmed during the day. Still they were richer than many of their neighbors because my papa owned the little country store/post office/gas station that was the heart of the community. My grandmother or one of the children took care of the customers during the day. My mom, the oldest girl, took over the running of the house and caring for the babies when school was not in session. There were no lazy children in the family, but I know my mom’s labor was sorely missed when she headed off to high school.
Mom on the far right, age 13
Having her days free from household chores gave her time to apply herself completely to her studies. She took them very seriously, but it was the week before Christmas, mom’s freshman year, and Santa was making an appearance at the Beaver Dam Deposit Bank. Mom’s new group of friends from school begged her to walk downtown with them and see all the holiday decorations. I can almost hear their giggles as they dared my mom to go sit in Santa’s lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas. I’m not sure what she asked for or what he promised, but I do know that four years later she and Santa got in his brand new 1936 Packard touring car and drove across the Indiana state line to get married. You see, the Santa whose lap she sat on was my then 17 year old father, picking up any odd job he could during the great depression to help out his widowed mother. Meeting the shy pretty girl really turned his world around. It was hard times for everyone and I’m not sure how my father managed to convince my mom to cast her lot with him, especially since she was offered a modest scholarship to business college after she graduated. She often talked about missing out on higher education and was always modest about her amazing achievements despite of it.
Mom age 17, 1936Dad on the far right, sitting on the front bumper, aroung age 20
The years were hard, but the match they made was stronger than any adversity. In the winter of 1942 Mom and Dad were living in Louisville. Dad had not been drafted for WWII because he was older, had a family, but most of all, skills desperately needed for the war effort. He was working in the shipyards supervising a welding crew, building PT boats. They were living in a tiny trailer with their four year old son and Christmas was a few days away. There was no money or time to travel home and not much under the tiny tree mom had managed to fit on a table. As they sat finishing supper one dark evening someone knocked on the door. They cautiously opened it and there stood Santa with a bag of toys and candy canes! You can imagine the delight of that child and those young parents, away from home, living on a shoestring, and here’s Santa with his joyful ho-ho-ho and a gift for their little one. Mother made a vow from that day that she would play it forward and bring the same joy to other children when she was able.
In the 1950’s, back home in Beaver Dam, living in a one bedroom house with her now three children she finally realized her dream. She borrowed $25 from her father and bought material to make a suit and beard for my dad. They started going house to house, first to friends they knew, but soon Santa’s fame spread and he was going to every home of families with children in the county. He also made appearances at churches, orphanages and parades. For years Mom sat in the car waiting while he went inside. Finally she could stand hearing about, but not being a part of it no longer. She made her own suit, bought a blond wig and joined the happy party. This picture is them 30 years later with much upgraded costumes, making a stop on one of their rounds at Christmas. Mom has been gone for 30 years now and Dad for 17, but never a Christmas goes by that I don’t get a note or text from someone in my home town who remembers the excitement and joy of Santa’s visit when they were children.
The world has changed so much since then, but my wish each year is the same, that everyone keeps the spirit of the season all year long, no matter where they live or what they believe. When Santa is driving that sleigh around the world may he bring the gift of love and peace to every house, to every child.
