I remember Thanksgiving on the farm, the Kentucky homeplace where my mother grew up. I see the spacious kitchen of the low-slung log house on a blustery November day. A section of tree trunk blazes in the great fireplace, adding pungence to the roasting-turkey-scented air. Uncle Herbert sits on a stool, pumping the butter churn braced between his knees. Aunt Margaret shapes dinner rolls for baking. Garden green beans bubble in a pot and two pumpkin pies cool on the counter.
My grandmother once commanded this kitchen. I recall her as a worn and frail woman dying in a bedroom of our home when I was five. Here, I feel her more vigorous presence. I imagine her marking time by the sun’s rise and set and the season’s changing colors outside the windows.
She came to this kitchen as a new bride. In the warm haven of this room she rocked five babies and coaxed growing youngsters through their school work. Newborn lambs warmed by the fireplace and one spring four orphaned owlets followed single file behind her as she worked. When tuberculosis claimed her husband, she raised the family and managed the farm. I see her, late of an evening, sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee cup, struggling to stretch meager resources during the Depression years, writing a letter to a daughter away at college–through the generosity of relatives.
The old house is gone, replaced by a new one that is occupied by strangers. But the old kitchen and my grandmother live in my mother’s stories and my Thanksgiving memories.
Thanksgivings Remembered
Breadcrumbs
This morning I experienced one of those odd little events that whisk me back to a particular moment in time. I was tossing breadcrumbs for finches, sparrows, and a pair of turtledoves that winter in our backyard. Then, in an instant, I felt myself standing on the front porch of the sprawling red brick Old Woman’s Home on West End Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee.
It was the summer of 1965. I was seventeen years old. My father had a sales meeting in Nashville and I went along to visit my great aunt Valeria Wheeler Cochron – “Nona” to me. She insisted I come for lunch. I would have preferred a hamburger and fries but I joined the table of white haired ladies and made polite conversation. After lunch, the women retired in little groups to sofas in the lobby or cushioned chairs on the porch. Nona remained behind, gathering all the uneaten dinner rolls and crumbling them into a paper napkin.
Nona led me through the lobby and pushed open the screen door. When her foot hit the porch I heard a clattering and chattering cacophony. A squadron of squirrels scrambled down a tree trunk, leaped onto the stone porch and lined up at attention. Talking to them like children, Nona doled out portions of bread.
“She seems to have a way with animals,” a dainty little woman whispered as I watched the spectacle.
Nona gave up her dog and cat for lifetime care at “the Home”, but she did not give up being a friend to animals.
Halloween Bunny 1955
Mother sewed the rabbit costume from an old sheet. The fluffy tail pulled the zipper that ran all the way from the top of the hood covering my head. With a rabbit-face mask in place, I was completely concealed.
We lived in a cluster of eight houses surrounded by Southern Indian corn fields. My trick-or-treating was limited to the neighborhood. The treats, however, were special. Mrs. McDevitt had fudge and sent home an extra piece for my father. Mrs. Roehm had sticky popcorn balls wrapped in red cellophane tied with ribbon. There were caramel-dipped apples, brownies and shortbread slabs, little bags of peanut butter cookies and chocolate covered pecan clusters in foil. And, of course, mother’s sugar cookies. Everything was homemade.
In the last house on our side of the road lived Grandma and Grandpa Brown – no relation, that’s just how we all knew them. Grandpa Brown was not well and spent much of his time in bed. When the white rabbit appeared on the doorstep, Grandma Brown took me inside to his bedroom so he could see my costume. I took off my mask so he could see it was Cynthia from down the road.
Mom and Dad did not worry about the safety of my treats or my going into a neighbor’s house when invited. It was a different world in my childhood.
Artist Writers
While browsing in my local library’s new book section, I spotted Donald Friedman’s The Writer’s Brush: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Writers (Mid-List Press, 2007). Most of us recall illustrations by authors Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, Kahlil Gibran and Ludwig Bemelmans. Did you know Pearl Buck was a sculptor? William Carolos Williams painted landscapes? Patricia Highsmith and Colleen McCullough also painted?
Perhaps I was struck by this combination because I was an art major in college and did not start writing seriously until I was well past 40. After I returned Friedman’s book to the library, I picked up a recent issue of TIME magazine and found a “10 Questions” interview with Janet Evanovich. She, too, was a college art major!
Featured on Ask Wendy
Wendy Burt interviews me today on her blog http:askWendy.worpress.com. Please stop by and get acquainted.
Oh, To Read Like A Girl Again
Michelle Slatalla kicked-off 2009 with a The New York Times essay that catapulted me back into childhood days lived inside a book. In “I WISH I COULD READ LIKE A GIRL” Slatalla yearns to experience again the joy of childhood reading, of living for a time in someone else’s universe. She observes in her three daughters (ages 11, 17, and 19) the transition from “allow[ing] the novel to carry them so effortlessly from one place to another that for a time they truly don’t care about anything else” to shedding “the childhood gift of being able to suspend disbelief” as they become critical readers. I saw myself in Slatalla’s youngest child who “comes to the dinner table wearing the hollow-eyed, devotional expression of someone who has just glimpsed something wonderful in a distant land.” Slatalla reminds me that my goal as a writer is to create a story so engaging that young readers can live for a brief time inside my imagined universe. May 2009 be a good year for reading and writing.
Greetings at Christmas
While sorting a box of old family photos recently, I found this vintage World War II Christmas card designed for a member of the armed services. My grandparents sent it to my father in 1942 while he was stationed with the Army at Camp Maxey, Texas. Dad kept it among his papers where I found it after he died. It reminded me that times may change, but contact with folks back home is still vital for military men and women stationed far away. This holiday season I am thinking of military families and praying for peace.
Bethlehem
Every Christmas of my childhood, I went to Bethlehem.
Mother began the season by bringing out the box of carefully wrapped figures for the manger scene. It was my job to arrange the figures on a dining room shelf to 
recreate the scene of Jesus’ birth in a Bethlehem stable. Ours was a mismatched set. The figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby were one piece, cast in a white faux marble inside an arch decorated with flowers and cherubs. It was a gift from a great-aunt and uncle. The rest of the figures were plaster painted to look like china. I spent most of an afternoon arranging and rearranging shepherds, lambs, a dog, a cow, and two angels. The three wisemen and camels I placed at a far end of the shelf and every day I moved them just a fraction closer to Bethlehem.
On Christmas Eve we dressed up and bundled up to go to church. Lit only by candles in the dark window arches and on the altar, the sanctuary felt mysterious and magical. Pine boughs scented the air. People slipped quietly into pews and whispered greetings to each other. A voice from out of the darkness read the Christmas story from the King James Bible and the organist played the Christmas hymns we all knew by heart. Bethlehem Church in Evansville, Indiana was one of a string of churches built by German immigrants. We ended by singing Stille Nacht in German as we passed the flame to light our individual candles and spread a warm glow into our world.
Several weeks ago, as I have done every year, I brought out the box of carefully wrapped figures. Mary, Joseph and the baby are untouched by time. The other figures are chipped and cracked. My childish artistry can be seen in eyes redrawn on an angel’s face. I arranged the figures on a new shelf and recalled my childhood wonder at the story they told. On Christmas Eve I will close my eyes and go to Bethlehem once again.
Pathfinding in the Misty Past
A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now.
- From “A Ghost Story” by Mark Twain in Sketches New and Old, copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens.
This year I have been writing short story. I don’t need the comfort of a fireplace to see faces from the past or hear voices long silent. They live in my head until I let them speak through my stories.
My story “Working Girl” won third place in the 2008 Women Writing the West short story contest. It will be published in 2009 by Women Out West Magazine. Set in 1918 Denver, it is based on true experiences of my late friend Marie Richey Collins. Researching Denver newspapers of the period gave me new perspective on the years of World War I along with similarities and contrasts to our current era of war. I knew Marie in the last decade of her life. Through writing her story I met the woman of her youth with hopes and dreams yet to be fulfilled.
The Baby is Birthed
No matter how many books a writer has published, each one is like a newborn. It is an exciting moment to hold it in your hands, turn the pages, and see your words in print. Chipeta: Ute Peacemaker, my new middle grade biography, debuted November 7-8, 2008 at the Colorado Association of Libraries Conference. The publisher, Filter Press, reports it drew “favorable comments from librarians.” The Filter Press website offers information ABOUT THE BOOK and an opportunity to READ A SHORT SAMPLE from the text. In addition to the publisher’s website, the book is available through AMAZON.COM and Barnes & Noble.
