An Aside Day

Sarah is 34 today. I really have been a mama all my life, a blessing as apparently it's something I've always enjoyed except for a few dark moments. For close to 40 years now I've been obsessed with nutrition, I'd watched my mother plant small gardens, she'd once had to frequent a certain grocery store back then in the late 1960s as it was the only one that carried yogurt, something I'd somehow acquired a taste for, passing the good-food gene down to Sarah, all her life she's eaten well, for her birthday she'd requested several books written by chefs with interesting backstories while I'm still poring over garden tomes all my life, now adding old-timey titles to my repertoire such as Elizabeth Lawrence and other great writers.

Tabby will be five tomorrow, putting my oldest and my youngest children 29 years and a day apart - stretching out my parenting for a very long span of time.

Pretty soon all my grandchildren except Saray's three wll live somewhere on our dirt road, yesterday though she'd dropped a hint that when she finishes her studies at Georgia State, they'll be returning as well. I sure hope so as her oldest daughter is in kindergarten in a county with a shoddy reputation, they'd even lost their SACS accreditation which is a squalorous predicament, not a real word but descriptive nonetheless.

Falling asleep thinking about Ellen's carrot cake, her daughter and her husband and his large family, I remembered Adele too had blogged this. (Mom, click the green line here and you can read all of Adele's blog - an aside as I teach my 77 year old mother the rudiments of keeping up while 600 miles away)

One Thanksgiving around the time Ellen had died, Grandma and Grandpa were up in Virginia. Yolie, then around 16 years old, took it upon herself to cook the turkey since I'm meat-challenged. Both my brothers were coming to my house so I'd prepared them Heavenly Hash, something Grandma always fixed on holidays. I knew my brothers were reeling from the loss of Ellen, yet both spoke up at dinner that day, "We never liked this s%it anyway," causing the first laugh we'd experienced together since Ellen had begun her second battle with cancer.

Now I can't fix that bowl without grinning at the thought of Gary's poor choice of words. However my younger children absolutely love it and the tradition of having it every year only at holidays. It is a glutenous mess of mini-marshmallows, maraschino cherries, crushed pineapples and cream cheese, but it makes my little kids very happy.

Audrey is joining us for Thanksgiving, now a supervisor over foster care in the next county, you'd think we'd be the last family to hang with, but I gotta think our normal suits her. She's been Yolie's best friend for years, a best friend outside the family is hard to come by for my kids, trusting someone else...there's a challenge, but Audrey immediately rose to the occasion the minute the two of them met in college. Audrey'd then worked in the same emergency shelter that eventually gave my my darling daughter, Carolina. (Another aside - yes Robin L. I will ask her what you'd asked me to check on.)

Today after my five hour marathon on the highway getting Fabian and another guy who gets to come back home for Thanksgiving, I'll make spinach quiche and a huge spinach lasagna with whole wheat pasta to serve tomorrow.

The kids are home today, I'll load up a dozen kids to ride with me, Carolina and Miriam will babysit the others, and then I hope to not leave my property again until church on Sunday.

A by-the-way in that daily I hear from folks out there introducing themselves, readers with big families, a lady in Arkansas yesterday with 15 kids, telling me this is where they see their normal verbally splashed about, resembling their families and issues so peculiar in the adoption world. I seem to have a different readership at adoption.com, but no less versed in these challenges.