Design Update - Turns Out, It DID Matter!

My previous post was about my mother's hurricane maps, her love of hurricane season, and her respect for the force of Mother Nature. I also created a collage, of sorts, using her hurricane tracking maps and a few photos from the 2004 and 2005 hurricane season.

I mentioned that it was a little primitive looking, and I also said that I didn't care.
Turns out, I did.
A lot!

The collage looked like a child had created it, and I'm sure that if I had made it back in 1960, Mom would have loved it. But it's 2015, and I really didn't like it once the sun broke the next morning. Besides, the frame was so huge that I would have had to move Mom's barometer over to either the right or the left about 8-inches in order to make room for both on the same wall.

After another trip to AC Moore, I framed each of the maps individually, with no photos - nice and clean. I didn't cut the maps, just folded them so the main part of the maps are showing.

I really like this. It's a keeper. Sometimes we just have to find our way, right?

There is a storm out there in the Atlantic that we're keeping an eye on. Needless to say, Mom would be on needles and pins, but we're still making plans to go camping this weekend.
Like Scarlett said, "After all, tomorrow is another day."
We can prepare Monday, if need be.

Sharpen your pencil, Mom. There're tracks to mark.

Through the Eye of a Storm

In my continuing efforts to downsize, keeping the things that mean the absolute most to me, while also keeping it clean and organized, I recently went through my mom's hurricane maps (among other things) and divided them up between my siblings and me.

These are her hurricane tracking maps from 1980 through 2012.

Her earlier maps were put to good use when my niece used them

for a science project while in high school in Texas.

I thought it would be hard to let go of them, because each hurricane track of each year is written by her own hand - displaying the progression of her essential tremors. That's just the type of 'stuff' I usually have the most difficulty parting with. And, hurricane season is what sparked the most energy out of Mom. But I was good with it, and now everyone has a bit of her weather history to share with their families.

She'd never admit it, but, just like television's meteorologists, Mom lived for hurricane season. Hot off the presses, Mom had her annual tracking map ready, unfolded, placed on top of her coffee table, pencils sharpened and note paper sitting there for taking down storm coordinates. When the weather advisories came on, you didn't dare disturb her.

Here's Mom sitting in front of the battery-powered TV with my husband during hurricane Wilma in 2005, getting the latest information from the powers that know - even though we already knew. We were sitting in it for heaven's sake! Look at how astonished she appears to be. The power is off and other than the TV and the flash of my camera, we're sitting in the dark, the wind is thrashing, water is dripping through the ceiling and we can hear something banging up against the house, but can't see anything because of the shutters. Still, though, she's astonishingly amazed by the weather report she's watching. You just have to laugh.

I know I've shared in the past how she would buy new toys for us at the start of hurricane season in Miami and then when the power went out, she'd keep us entertained with those new toys. I still believe that's why I also look forward to a day off because of a tropical storm or a hurricane. There are far worse things than being locked-in with those you love, right?

After yelling at me, she'd faint if she knew I've told people it was her favorite time of year. The truth is, Mom respected the weather and all its force. I remember a small tornado hitting our street in Fort Pierce when I was a young child, maybe 4-years old. I remember her grabbing me and my baby sister and taking us into the closet of one of the bedrooms; sitting there on the floor until the noise turned to silence.

Most vividly, though, I remember one year - after Alzheimer's had basically rendered my father's helpfulness useless - my mother put up several of her shutters herself. She knew my husband and I were going to come to her house after work to do it, but she didn't want to "be a burden," and started putting them up herself.

It wasn't just our own weather that she kept an eye on, she followed the weather wherever family was living. She'd phone her brother in California if fires were burning, she'd phone her sisters in Illinois if the rivers were cresting, she'd phone my sister if it was unseasonably cold in Orlando, etc. She could name the types of clouds, and she could predict weather patterns based upon her barometric pressure gauge that still hangs in the hallway just outside what was her bedroom door.

All of this brings me to what I did tonight. I kept only three of her many hurricane maps; the three that meant the most to me: 2004, which was the busiest season for us here on the Treasure Coast, 2005, because the entire alphabet and then some was used for names, and 2012, because she passed away right in the middle of tracking a storm.

I know these maps won't mean a thing to anyone else, so I decided to make a sort of collage using the three maps, some newspaper headlines and a few photos from the 2004 and 2005 seasons. I also know it looks rather primitive, but I don't care. It will hang in the hall next to her barometer that we still rely upon today.

And every time I look at it, I'll be reminded of how I also need to learn to be respectful of the force of the weather.


Thanks for the good hurricane memories.

Happy Birthday Week, Day 7: The Wind Beneath my Wings

Today I'm grateful for my mother's love.
Nearly all I am today is because of her love, her steadiness, her patience, her advice, her willingness to bend and so much more.

I miss her as much today as I did yesterday.

Happy birthday, Mother. I hope you've had a special week.

 

“But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.” ― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

Happy Birthday Week, Day 6: For the Love of Family

On this sixth day of my mother's birthday week, I'm appreciative of her passing on her love of being with family.

We likely all have family gatherings for holidays, weddings and other special occasions. Mom enjoyed those times, because there was always so much life, so much excitement, so much fun, talking, screaming and nonsense - no matter what brought us together. I've learned since her passing that she was definitely the glue.

Growing up - between our own family, my sister and her children, my brother and his family, neighbors, and often times old friends of my parents', we'd have a houseful of laughter, a lot of food, practical jokes, eating a lot of food, stories of what's been happening since last we met, more eating, board games, playing outside, and dessert. They were great times that I wouldn't trade for the world.

As we got older and grew apart, I still looked forward, even became dependent upon, those short visits with family - and - as long as mother was there, didn't want the time to end.

One of the "funnest" times was a more recent holiday gathering: Thanksgiving 2004, which we combined with celebrating the end of the worst hurricane season on record. We had been hit with the center of back-to-back hurricanes, only two weeks apart, and the season went through the entire alphabet of hurricane names. It was a tough summer, so we celebrated. My husband's family also came. Everyone brought something that got them through the power outages, the wind, the hunkering down, and they each told the story as to why that particular thing was so important to them. My niece told of making sun-tea, but left it out too long and it fermenting, becoming Hurricane Hooch. It really was great, animated fun, but much better understood had you been there.

I'm so grateful for the Sunday drives we took in our old convertible when I was very young. Our little family of four, together, loving each other and being together. (By then, my older sister was married and my brother was in the Air Force.)

I'm so grateful for all the memories of family gatherings, whether it was for holidays or just Sunday meals. Our house was always full of the scents from Mom's cooking.

I'm so grateful to have been connected to my new-to-me cousins, whom we met this past April. It saddens me that Mother didn't get to see us all meet for the first time, because I know she would have been thrilled. I wish we were close enough (logistically) to get together more often, but thanks to today's technology, we do connect nearly every day.

I'm so grateful for the time I get to spend with my older sister and brother, and I wish my younger sister would come back into the fold. Mother was the glue that bound us and now that she's gone, well, things have changed.

I'm so grateful for my husband and my son and his wife. I love, love, love being with them. Since Mother passed away, my daughter-in-law has taken care to see that new traditions are being created between the four of us. I love her for that.

I'm so grateful Mother taught me to love from my heart.

Some family fun in 2006.

I love and miss you.

Happy Birthday Week, Day 5: Attitude of Appreciation

5 more reasons for me to be grateful to my mother:

1. She taught me how to read. My mother sat me down in front of her every single school night and made me read out loud to her during third- through fifth-grade. I hated it then, but appreciate it today. It wasn't that I couldn't read, it was that, just like today, I was easily distracted and then couldn't always remember what I had read. So, Mother taught me to focus so I could comprehend. I still don't enjoy reading -- funny thing to admit after spending the past 10-years as an editor, but it's true.

2. She never complained.  Her father died when she was only eight- or nine-years old, so her mother (my grandmother) was left to raise six children on her own. From what I've learned, my grandmother was about the hardest working woman in Southern Illinois, working all the time in order to provide for her children. Although my mother wasn't single, it's those lessons in frugality that Mother continued to teach us when we were growing up. When my parents began to struggle financially, Mom went to work in a T-shirt factory, standing on her feet in a sweat box all day in deplorable conditions. But she never complained, and I appreciate that she never made me feel like I was the burden that forced her to work in such conditions so I could go to the movies, buy new shoes, go to football games and all the other demands of one's senior year in high school. Later, when Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and Mom locked herself in their house with him for nine-months before deciding that he needed to be placed in a nursing home, she never once complained.

3. She allowed me to be me. My high school years, especially my senior year, were rough. My parents absolutely hated my boyfriend, and while my father would try to ground me and keep me away from him, Mother patiently waited for me to get him out of my head. Unfortunately, Daddy was right on this one, but I appreciated that Mother wanted me to figure things out on my own. She also encouraged me to "be who you want to be. Don't worry about what others might think."

4. She served the Lord and others. Mom had a voice that others dreamed of, and until her Essential Tremors took that voice away, she sang in the church choir faithfully. She passed that gift on to  my older sister, who sings like a bird still today. Mother volunteered - at school events, as my Girl Scout leader, at church dinners and other gatherings, and later in life, she participated in local non-profit events such as walk-athons. She donated her time, talent and treasure to various causes that touched her heart, especially anything related to Alzheimer's disease (since that's what took Daddy away from us).

5. She taught me how to be a good mother and wife. I am a good mother and I am a good wife. How many women say that out loud? Many of us question our capabilities, time spent with family, etc. But I know I have been a good mother and wife, because I know I had the best example. Am I like her? Not always. Mother waited on my dad hand and foot - I do not do that. She laid out his clothes for him every morning. Do I do that? No. She had dinner waiting for him on the table when he got home from work. Do I do that? Well, in all honesty, I wish I could, and I would if I didn't also work outside the home. She always, always carved out time for us, whether it was to take us to the community pool, to teach us something new, to lay on the terrazzo floor with us for naps or read to us, to huddle with us during hurricanes - and I always loved that time.

On Day 5 of my mother's Birthday Week, these are the things that I'm thinking about and wishing everyone could feel about their mother as I do about mine.

Here's Mom participating in a fundraiser for a local Alzheimer's organization.

Thanks, Mom.

 

Happy Birthday Week Day 4: May Your Bobbin Always be Full

Today I celebrate being able to sew - clothes, home accessories, bed spreads, curtains, pillows, etc.

As I mentioned yesterday, Mom began teaching me when I was in fifth-grade, at the age of nine. On summer afternoons, we'd often set up tents in our carport, using bed sheets, towels, blankets, the card table and whatever else we could think of. We'd fill the inside with pillows and Mom would crawl in and read to us, play board games with us, serve us Kool-Aid and cookies, and teach us to sew. Sometimes, we'd build our tent in the house and she'd put on her gospel records and sing along. Her award-winning voice was so beautiful. I thought she was a opera singer.

 Looking back on those days, of course I realize now how special they were, but I think I realized it even then. I always asked for more; more time to learn to sew, more time to play games, more time to sing, more time with Mom.

The first thing she taught me about sewing was, of course, hand stitching. She gave me a tiny square of fabric and taught me how to make a 'dress' for my Barbie. Since I was going to a church Sadie Hawkins Day dance later that week (Yes, I said Sadie Hawkins Day. If you don't know what that is, Google it.), I decided to make my Barbie a costume for the dance. After sewing together what was basically a tube, I added tiny patches to it and made her a matching scarf to wear with it. She was all set for the dance. It's pictured below on the right.

The next time, Mother taught me how to sew on buttons. So, again, I made a basic tube, but this time it was a wrap-around skirt, held together with three buttons. Then I also made a smaller tube and sewed on two straps, making a top to go with the skirt. (Shown above on the left) Cute, huh? And so coordinated.

Then I graduated to shifts. Mom had me hand stitch bias tape around the neck and arms, and hand stitch the back seam and the hem. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the stitching.

In keeping with my theme this week of appreciating all the things my mother taught me, I thought I'd show you how to transform an ordinary table setting placemat into a holiday pillow.

What you'll need:
placemats and polyester filling (stuffing)
sewing machine
scissors and thread

I went out in search of some Halloween fabric and saw these Halloween placemats at A.C. Moore for a dollar each. I decided they'd work perfectly for pillows, so I bought four. I already had the stuffing, but it's about $4 for a bag.

I made mine so the ghosts are on one side and the pumpkins are on the other.
With wrong sides together, sew up three sides right along the edge of the placemats. The mats have a finished edge, so no need to sew them wrong side out and turn them. This is much easier.
Fill with stuffing, then sew the open end closed.

Viola' -- it's done!

I know, it's nothing spectacular, but it is simple.
I could show you my satin and lace wedding dress that I handmade with hundreds of tiny covered buttons going down the back, a three-piece suit I made for my husband many moons ago, all the matching outfits I made for our little family when our son was young, business suits from my banking days, a bedspread and matching curtains -- and remember Leisure Suits? I made them, too.

Learning how to sew was the catalyst for all of my creativity. I'm so grateful to my mother for her time. A few months after she passed away, I made a quilt using her everyday clothes and her favorite lap blanket.

Happy birthday, Mom.  I love and miss you. I always will.

Happy Birthday Week D Day: Unconditional Love

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 97.

When Hospice came in to care for her about 10 days before she passed away, she looked up at me and said, "I thought I was going to live to be 100." That was and remains the saddest thing I've ever heard, because she was so disappointed. I was accustomed to always being able to take away her disappointments, but this time, I had no control. Only weeks earlier she had been to a County Commission meeting with me where they had recognized a woman who had reached her centennial celebration, and Mother thought it was so special for Commissioners to do that. She spoke about how she looked forward to that one day. And I believed it would happen, too.

Tonight, my husband and I honor Mom with Publix fried chicken (only Publix, no other), mac and cheese and key lime pie -- all things she enjoyed. I know she's smiling.

I have so many memories of celebrating my mom's birthday, but all of them are as an adult. I don't have any childhood memories of birthday parties or even birthday cake for her. So, I went to my sister for the scoop. She assures me there were celebrations, most often at the restaurant my parents owned in Mounds, Illinois. My dad wasn't good at taking it upon himself to buy Mom birthday, anniversary or Christmas gifts. He usually had someone do it for him. So, my sister tells me that my aunt always took care of making sure Mom's birthday was celebrated in a big way.

This is a pic of my mom and a friend working at the little diner

my parents owned in Mounds, Illinois.

Once we moved to Miami, I have no idea how Mom's birthday was recognized. I just don't have any memories of that, but I do have great memories of how Mom saw to every detail of holiday meals. She went all out, long before Martha Stewart came along. We always had a houseful of guests and friends, and Mom made it all. No pot-luck at our house.

Here's Thanksgiving 1976. How beautiful is this table?

Mother spent so much time with us. She taught me to sew when I was just nine-years old. We began by making Barbie doll clothes. We would "build tents" in our carport using bed sheets and card tables, and Mother would crawl in with us and sit there for hours as she showed me how to hand-stitch. She thought the 'real' Barbie clothes were too expensive, so she made all of the clothes for our Barbies. Just look at this evening gown, shawl and suit she knitted for my Barbie.

I wished as a child these clothes could be mine.

Actually, I wouldn't mind it today. Look how pretty that suit is!

We held a huge surprise party for her 89th birthday, not for any reason other than I wanted her to see how loved she was. My brother flew in for the day from San Antonio, my cousins came in from West Palm Beach; everyone was there.

A couple of years later, we took her on a cruise to Mexico to celebrate her birthday. What a blast!

Mom boards the ship in Miami.

Fun in Cozumel.

While I miss her just as much today as I did when she first left this earth, I also know how blessed I am to have had such a loving, caring, attentive and special mother.

I don't care that I'm 61 and still missing your smile, your advice, your love.

Every day I wake up, I always have you to thank. I have your guidance, your warmth,

your love, and your heart: someone who loved me unconditionally, right or wrong.

You will always be my Mom.

It's time to come home.

Happy Birthday Week, Day 2: What Do You See in the Couds?

Tonight I celebrate my mother by appreciating how she taught me to see in things what isn't always obvious.

I'll start off by telling how she and I would look into the clouds; she'd look in one direction and I in the other. Then we'd tell each other what we saw. When I was very young, she'd spread a bed sheet out onto my dad's perfectly groomed yard and we'd lay there watching the clouds form animals, faces and more. Two days before she passed away, we sat in the family room, facing out towards the backyard and gazed at the clouds. When I asked her what she saw, she said, "I see myself feeling better." (I hadn't thought about that until now.)

As you know, Mother was my Girl Scout leader for many years, so she also had the ability to take ordinary, everyday items and turn them into useful or decorative items. For instance (and I sure wish I had a photo of it), in the late 1950s early 1960s, she made a beautiful Christmas tree centerpiece using only Styrofoam balls, toothpicks and spray snow. She poked hundreds (more likely thousands) of toothpicks into I don't even know how many Styrofoam balls, sprayed them with snow, stacked them on top of each other like a pyramid, hung tiny little glass ornaments on it, and put it in the center of our dining room table. I remember it being so stunning. After Christmas she'd wrap the spiny balls in plastic and box it up for the next year.

My husband and I took our baby girl Ginger to the doggie beach yesterday, where she romped and played and I wished I had her energy. It's so much fun to watch the dogs all running, playing and getting along. Oh how I wish everyone could live by that example, don't you? Anyway, the shells were scattered here and there along the beach, so I thought I'd gather some and use them to frame a photo my husband had taken of our baby girl. (In know, I know, it's been done before. But I first did it back in the days of yore when I was a Brownie. Back then, we had to use Elmer's glue and hold things in place until the glue almost dried.)

There usually aren't many shells at this location, but the tide was way, way out

and that uncovered a bunch of shells. I was picky, wanting only certain kinds to go with the crab claws.

I just hot-glued some sea shells, crab claws and raffia around some corners of an old frame. Yeppers, I said crab claws. They were all over the beach, so I grabbed a few. See, what I'm saying? Mother taught me that. Mother taught me to use what I could pick up off the ground.

Here's the finished frame. My honey's going to love a pic of his baby girl. (It'll probably replace one of me, since space in his shop is so limited. ha ha)

Why a photo of our dog?  Mom always loved my Sheltie Prince Sam, but he became ill the day she passed away and we soon lost him. She would have enjoyed Ginger, but she's much more energetic than Sam ever was.

Mother taught me to see the beauty and usefulness in all things. I guess that's why I have such a hard time throwing things out.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
― Confucius

 

 

 

Thank you, Mom, for all of my gifts. Happy birthday week!

Happy Birthday Week, Day 1: Merry, Merry Take a Cherry

In recognition of what would be Mother's 97th birthday, I'm going to celebrate this entire week by honoring the gifts and talents she passed on to me.

She began teaching me how to cook when I was in her Brownie Troop 612. So, tonight I'm baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies -- but this isn't entirely her recipe. I've tweaked it just a tad to make the cookies a little thicker than hers used to come out. And - have you seen the new Nestle Toll House Delightfulls chips? I accidentally came upon them, not at the grocery store, but at one of my favorite bargain stores - Big Lots. They had four flavors, and the one I'm using tonight is their dark chocolate morsels with cherry filling.

Mom loved chocolate covered cherries, and Santa put a box of them in her stocking every year that I can remember. But here's what set my mom apart from all other moms: I like chocolate covered cherries, too, but not the cherry. I'd let the chocolate melt in my mouth, then I'd suck away the cherry syrup, then -- I'd spit out the cherry. But it wouldn't go to waste. In fact, nothing ever went to waste in our home. What would become of that cherry? Mother would eat it. She would take it right from my fingers and into her mouth. She did that my whole life. Would your mother do that?

Chocolate Chip Cookies
What you'll need:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour          3/4 cup sugar          12-oz. of chocolate chips
1 tsp. baking soda                         3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. salt                                       1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup softened butter                     2 eggs
1/2 cup 1-minute oat meal flakes

Set your oven to 350-degrees and grease a cookie sheet.
This recipe makes about three dozen 4-inch round cookies.

Combine the dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, salt and oat meal - in a small bowl. (Notice, there is a 1/4 cup more flour in my recipe than in others, and note the addition of oat meal. These two ingredients help make the cookies just a little thicker, but you don't taste the oat meal in the finished cookies.)
Beat the butter, both sugars and vanilla in a large mixer bowl until creamy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Gradually beat in the flour mixture.

Okay, can I just say that we could stop right here and I'd be happy. This bowl of cookie dough could be my dinner. Is that wrong?

When combined, add the chocolate chips. The new Delightfulls only come in 9-ounce bags, so that's what I used. (Truth be told: You may have noticed that the bag of chocolate chips was already open. I couldn't help myself. Mom never would have done that; she always exercised complete self-control. I get my sweet tooth from my dad, who always wanted to start dinner with desert.)

Of course, you can add 1 cup of chopped nuts, if you'd like. Mother couldn't eat them, so I never added them, and didn't tonight.

Mom always, always let us lick the mixing beaters.

Nothing's changed there. Yummy!

Using an ice cream scoop, put balls of cookie dough onto your prepared cookie sheet. My baking sheet is a 21-year old, well seasoned, Pampered Chef stone. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Bake the cookies at 350-degrees for about 15-minutes. Keep and eye on them, because you want them to be light in color.

To begin our week of celebrating my mother, Julia Ethel (Steele) Jackson, we'll be having Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies for desert (and maybe a scoop of ice cream, too.)

“When I sound the fairy call, gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall, cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry, take a cherry, mine are sounder, mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter for the eater, when the dews fall, and you'll be fairies all.” ― Emily Dickinson

Happy birthday week, Ma!