I was driving to Kensington Easter Sunday morning. On the way I passed a place where Katie and I have walked together a few times. Every time I drive through this town I think of her.
“Oh Katie.” I said out loud.
“I love you mama,” she replied, also out loud.
Proof that it’s possible to continue driving, even when your eyes are leaking.
The news has been so sad lately. Images of California neighborhoods fully engulfed in flames mixed with those of President Carter’s coffin being delivered to our nation’s capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. The lines of people solemnly passing by the coffin in the Rotunda. And, more privately, two different friends of mine learning to live without their own parents.
But this morning my husband and I watched the state funeral for our 39th President, and afterward I felt a little better. No, California isn’t better, the devastation there is beyond understanding, and my friends are still deep in grief, but watching the ceremony honoring President Carter took the edge off my sadness.
Not to say I didn’t cry a little bit during the service. The first tears fell when President Ford’s son, Steven, spoke. Before he began to read his dad’s eulogy for President Carter, he extended his heartfelt condolences to the “Carter children.” It seems back when his own dad died in 2006 the Carter kids offered his family support and comfort. Now he was returning the love.
I remember the funeral of President Ford, it was only a couple years after the funerals of my own parents. The pain on the faces of the Ford children was so intense and I knew, deep inside, what they were feeling. I wanted to hug them all and tell them they were not alone. And now here are the Carter children. Not children anymore by any means, but still grieving their dad a year after their mom. Heartbroken.
Most of the speakers caused me to shed a tear, each of them deeply touched by the life of Jimmy Carter. The grandchildren speaking made it clear that his legacy is in good hands, that the mission of making the world a better place will continue uninterrupted. Grandson Jason heads up the work, and spoke so movingly of his PawPaw, making us laugh and cry, just like, I’m sure, all the kids, grandkids and great-grands are doing tonight as they sit around telling stories after a long day sharing their Jimmy with all of us.
And one of the sweetest moments came toward the end while Garth Brooks and his wife Trisha Yearwood sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Somewhere in the middle of that quiet, gentle song the camera swung to President Biden who was singing along. “Some may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
So what was my big take-away from this celebration of love? That Jimmy Carter was a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and that he was a regular guy who wore shorts and crocs and struggled with his new fangled cell phone just like all of us.
For a couple of hours today I could forget about all the stuff going on in the world, in our country, in my part of the universe. For a couple of hours I could immerse myself in times long gone, remembering most of them, the celebrations, the grief, the wins, the losses.
I was reminded that we’ve been through hard times before and we made it to the other side. And I’m reassured that there are more good, regular people out there than we sometimes realize. And that most of us are just regular folks trying to do the best we can.
Just like President Carter did for the entirety of his 100 years.
I’m headed home now from a week at my parents’ house on the lake. I hadn’t been there in a few years.
First covid happened and then we had other priorities for a couple years. It was hard to find the time to go South.
While I was there I had a few days without any agenda where I mostly sat on the deck and watched the water in the lake change over the course of the day.
Years ago my mom used to try to convince me that folks in Alabama enjoyed fall color, though I’d always argued certainly not the color we have in Michigan.
I was down there, this year, at the perfect fall time, with yellow, green and red popping under warm southern sun.
The leaves across the way reflected in the lake as I sat on the dock, memories of years past flitting through my mind.
I wished my parents were with me at the lake house. I wished my mom was making potato salad. I wished my dad was telling stories.
I spent the week surrounded by memories of times when we were all together. It was both a sad and a happy week.
Mostly a nostalgic week.
Which, I suppose, was the purpose of my trip.
Even though my mother has been gone for almost 20 years, it feels important to acknowledge her on Mother’s Day.
After all I had the best mother ever! She let her band of four kids roam the lake and woods together without getting upset when we came home wet and muddy.
She fixed meals for her family of six every single day even when she’d worked all day at running her retail business downtown.
She supported our interests whether it was music or writing or photography or swimming or boating or building forts in the woods. She encouraged us to be the best we could at whatever we loved.
She sacrificed things she might have wanted to do in order to provide us the ability to do the things we cared about.
She smiled when we painted her a card or brought her flowers from the field, no matter how crazy our art was or how wilted the flowers.
And she loved that we all turned out to be productive and independent people, in no small part because of her.
Thanks, mom, for pushing us and putting up with us and loving us through all the muddy, crazy years. I hope you have the most beautiful flowers up there in heaven, though I’m sure you won’t think they compare to those we picked for you decades ago.
When someone has been gone a long time you begin to realize you won’t ever be able to take more pictures of them.
So often when I write about my folks I wish I had something new to share with you. I think about how you must be tired of seeing the same images. But what I have is all I’ll ever have.
Right?
Well, mostly right. There was that time that I was thinking about my folks a lot and was so surprised when I received a letter from one of their friends that held a photo I’d never seen of them taken in the early 50s, before kids. That was a treasure, and I still smile when I see it.
Months ago my cousin, going through his mother’s things, came across some photos I’d never seen before. He sent me copies via email and to be honest I didn’t look at all of them then.
Time went by and I was cleaning up emails this week when I ran across his, and remembered there were pictures attached. I thought I’d seen them all but I was in for a treat as I clicked through them.
Look how young they were! Look how young I was!!
Treasures are so much more special when they come as a surprise.
Thank you to my cousin for sending these treasures to me. They sure make me smile.
My mom used to say she wished the radio stations continued to play Christmas music after Christmas day. Back then you had to be in the same room as the radio in order to hear and she didn’t have time to listen before Christmas morning. She had four kids to shop and wrap for and a big holiday dinner to prepare.
She didn’t have time to enjoy the season until it was over.
I wish she could have attended the concert our Clarkston Community Band played last Friday evening. Pretty lights and lush music shaped our theme of “Let there be Peace.”
I don’t think there’s a better way to get in the spirit of the season than to go to a live concert, right in your own community, performed by your friends and neighbors. The musicians might not be professionals (though sometimes they are) and the performance might not be perfect (though sometimes it is) but the spirit is real and the motivation is pure.
Friday night songs like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, “White Christmas” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas” got us all into the right mood. When the audience sang along on a medley of Christmas carols I had to stop playing for a moment and just listen to all those voices joined together.
Pure magic.
Yep, Friday night we filled that auditorium with love. Toward the end of the show lots of children came up on stage to ring jingle bells as we played “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the hope they could convince Santa to stop in for a visit. These kids were very convincing, and Santa showed up right on cue. Their faces, when they realized he was standing right behind them, were priceless.
More magic.
And then Santa conducted our last piece of music, “Sleigh Ride,” because it’ can’t be a holiday concert without a ride through the snow behind prancing horses, even if it’s all only in our imaginations.
Friday night we all came together for a moment of celebration and peace, even knowing the world is filled with unrest. We all left that night smiling and you can too. This season, check your local high school’s web page. There’s likely a holiday concert or two near you this very week. Please take time from your preparations to support those musicians. They’d love to see a full house and you’ll be glad you went.
I guarantee there will be magic bouncing off those walls.
Happy Holidays to you all.
I have a few images from dad’s childhood. He was six years older than his little sister, my Aunt Becky.
She loved her big brother so much, when he was killed by a tired semitruck driver December 23, 2004, she was heartbroken. They are together in heaven now, I imagine it was a pretty special reunion.
This coming Tuesday is Giving Tuesday. I hope you will consider giving to the nonprofit I’ll be highlighting, CRASH (Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways) which is a partner with P.A.T.T (Parents Against Tired Truckers) to form the Truck Safety Coalition.
We provide support to families of those lost in semi crashes, and to those who have survived crashes too. Every year there are more heartbroken families.
And we work hard at changing regulations, rules and laws in order to protect everyone on the road. But the crash statistics are going up, more than 5,000 dead, almost 150,000 injured in 2021, the last year for which we have numbers.
So we can’t give up, can’t even slow down now. Please consider helping us on our mission to provide comfort, to make a place for families to put their grief, and to make our roads safer for everyone, truck drivers included.
Thank you for the years of support you’ve already given me.
Shutterfly just popped up in my Facebook feed with photos from 11 years ago.
My aunt and I were in Alabama with my siblings for Thanksgiving. It doesn’t seem like it was eleven years. And look, we were all so much younger then.
This year is our second Thanksgiving without her, and this year my husband and I didn’t make it south. But we’ll get down there eventually.
Guaranteed.
Meanwhile, we hope you all are having a wonderful Thanksgiving, even though sometimes change is hard.
I was talking to my mom yesterday evening. Not literally of course, as she’s been gone since July of 2004. Not even out loud because my husband and my dog were watching football nearby and the Lions were winning.
No, I was talking to my mom because I was making an apple pie with apples I’d gotten from an orchard a couple of towns west of here. It was a last minute decision to run over to Spicers Orchards to get old fashioned baking apples, on a beautiful, crisp Sunday afternoon.
My family used to go to Spicers when we were kids, in the 60s and 70s. Back then it was a one building small place with acres of apple, pear and cherry trees. I have lots of good memories of all of us there.
But it’s not small anymore.
When I arrived, late in the day, I noticed right away all the additional parking. Most of which was filled with cars. An entire field that used to be, well, a field, was parked full of cars. Not to mention the regular lot next to the building that houses the bakery and picked fruit and jelly and stuff. And another full lot across the street.
Something told me Spicers is not the same anymore.
I hadn’t worn a coat, assuming I’d park in the lot and buzz into the store, grab some apples and go. Apparently it wasn’t going to happen like that. I tromped up and down the hills and finally made it over to the store.
For the weekend (I assume just the weekend) they had moved the sale of donuts outside and the line, double wide, stretched from the back of the building, where the tables holding the donuts were, to the winery on the other side of the huge parking lot. There seemed to be nothing left of the small local orchard I remembered. It just wasn’t the same.
Inside, where apples and cider and fudge and ice cream and jelly and cookies and bread were being sold, the line went from the cash registers (now 4 instead of 1) to the back of the store. The place was packed with people.
My first instinct was to turn and flee.
But I was there, so I found some courtland baking apples and a half gallon of cider and I got in line, trying not to feel claustrophobic as people pushed by, their arms laden with goodies. I have to say those cashiers were expedient, and I was paying and back on my way walking up and down the hills to the distant car before I could consider buying a cookie.
So I was telling mom all of this while I was peeling and slicing apples, as I was mixing and rolling the pie dough. It’s not the same, I told her, just not the same.
Then, with my head in the pantry, grabbing some sugar, I had a flashback to a pie she used to make. We called it cheesecake but it obviously wasn’t. There was cream cheese and maybe lemon pudding, in a graham cracker crust. For half an instant, probably because I’d been talking to her about Spicers, I thought I’d just ask her what was in that pie.
It’s still a gut punch, even after nineteen years, when I realize all over again that I can’t ask her anything anymore. It’s not the same, mom, just not the same.
But the apple pie? It pretty much looks the same as the apple pies mom used to make for us decades ago. Mine isn’t as pretty as hers were, but I’m betting it tastes the same.
Some things, regardless of commercialism, never change.
I met Pops over a simple dinner at a chain restaurant in Arlington Virginia many years ago. It was the evening before our semi-annual Sorrow to Strength Conference, and Pops’ daughter, Pina, was attending for the first time. Her husband had been killed on his way to work when he was hit by a semitruck. My husband and I met her, her Pops and her mom, Veronica, for dinner to provide support and comfort, so she wouldn’t feel alone attending the conference the next day.
Of course she really wasn’t alone at all. She had her mom and her Pops, a retired Air Force Veteran, who pushed her around hilly Washington DC for the four days of the conference in a wheelchair because she was recovering from knee surgery.
But, getting back to Pops.
After dinner that night the waitress asked if we wanted desert. “Do you have any ice cream?” Pops asked. They did, but a limited variety. He hesitated. “I’ll have some if you do,” I said. They didn’t have his favorite flavor, but he decided we’d indulge because, he said grinning wide, “there’s no such thing as bad ice cream.”
I’ve never forgotten those words, or Pops, though we spent only a few days together.
Pops died last week at the age of 86, and yesterday his family and friends said their last goodbye. I remembered him in my own way, by picking up a container of his favorite flavor and indulging for a few moments, while thinking of him and his family.
There’s no such thing as bad ice cream.
I share this memory with you to honor Pops, in a way. He was a good, upstanding person with a sweet soul who made this world a better place. Thank you for your service, sir. And for joining me in a scoop of ice cream all those years ago.
Godspeed.
Change Is Hard 