A HOLIDAY MEMORY

I don’t write much about my holiday memories. They are simply too personal, whether positive or negative. So, I write about Grandma Ina instead, based on her letters to my dad. It’s historically interesting for me and I’m not emotionally invested in what happened in those years that don’t include me.

Hallie’s comment on a previous post reminded me of how difficult Christmas was when I was the mother of young children. Christmas 1979, Milo was just turning two and Clinton was two months. I had volunteered to bring peanut butter fudge to the Christmas Eve gathering at the family home. The recipe is simple:

Peanut Butter Fudge

Semi-sweet chocolate morsels (one package)

Butterscotch morsel (one package)

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 cup peanuts

Mini-marshmallows

Melt the morsels and peanut butter in the microwave. Stir in peanuts and marshmallows and spread in a buttered 9x13 pan. Allow to set in the refrigerator for half an hour. Voila!

So, you see, anyone can make that tasty, melt-in-your-mouth fudge in five minutes, but I couldn’t find that five minutes. Clinton had a bad day. The only time he wasn’t crying was when I held him, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. And of course, the two-year-old still needed my attention, too. And I had to pack for the overnighter at the family home. Bottom line: I failed to make that super-simple fudge.

Arriving at the Christmas Eve party that evening, I fessed up to my mother that I hadn’t made the fudge. “Vance, Vance,” she called to my dad. “Kathy didn’t make the fudge.” Whereupon, my dad set to work to make Fantasy Fudge when he really had more important things to do. I felt so small. It’s not like they didn’t have a plethora of goodies, but I had certainly misjudged how important that plate of fudge would be.

I drew a number of lessons from that simple failing that helped to shape the kind of Christmas we have today. Be flexible. Keep it simple. Nothing matters but that we’re together. KW

MOVING INTO THE NEW YEAR

Christmas and New Years are both history again after all the feverish making and planning and mailing. It did keep us going before Christmas, but it was fun and we surely made several somethings out of quite a lot of nothings. I decorated the house with lots of boughs and the mistletoe from the aunts in Drain, and your holly added so much to the window curtains. We still have our decorations and Christmas tree and I think I won’t take them down for a few more days. – Shirley Dobson

I find it a little depressing to put away the holiday decorations, so I say with Aunt Shirley, “I think I won’t take them down for a few more days.” In fact, I like to think of the holiday cheer as lighting the way into the dark months of the new year. We should have hope for peace and prosperity in the future, but for our family and the world at large, these are not peaceful times. KW

[The inmate who murdered our son Milo is scheduled to be tried in February on charges of first degree murder and tampering with evidence. His pleads “not guilty.”]