2024 was a difficult year, made all the more difficult by losing my grandmother, who was one of the people I would commiserate with about all the challenges.
It started off with a bang at 3am on New Year’s Day with taking my husband to the emergency room for a kidney stone.
I spent more time this year in doctor offices, hospitals, or watching my grandchildren so my daughter could be by a hospital bedside than I care to even try to tabulate.
This will not be a list of my woes, nor a lesson in counting my blessings. I do not have the energy for either right now because I am recovering from some sort of upper respiratory infection that has caused me to end my year in a rather puny state.
This is simply an acknowledgement that 2024 was hard—painful—and I am eager to begin anew with fresh perspective and a sober heart to love, create, empathize, meditate, pray, read, sleep, live, learn, and grow.
Photos taken New Year’s Eve 2024 by Rebekah Marshall.
It is winter in Texas, though our photos make us look like we are on some tropical island where the weather is always a balmy 75 degrees and we can wear shorts and short sleeves year round.
The fire is to pretend it is wintertime, so we can participate in the festivities of making smores, roasting hot dogs, and sitting around a fire pit for New Year’s.
We are good at pretend. It is actually one of our preferred states around here because pretend is usually much more interesting and fun.
Charlotte had a dramatic argument with the fire pit lady for shooting sparks out at her. It was quite believable.
Julian scared himself watching a giant marshmallow transform into a huge, flaming beast with fire bursting out from inside a hollowed out cave, turning from dinosaur, to alligator, to terrifying skull; its ability to both expand and melt was nearly too much for his imagination to handle.
Maybe later this week we can pretend some snow into being and make a snowman to start off the new year right.
@Home Studio – 365th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Fire Pit photos to accompany my poem:
We’re going through Mema’s old cookbooks to see which to keep and which to let go, and the slices of 20th Century home life represented through food are an interesting study. If I had more time, I would categorize them and photograph them all by decade before selecting several recipes from each and do themed nights from the 50s, 60s, 70s and so on. But, alas, I do not have that kind of young people energy anymore, so thinking such thoughts and then writing about them is about as far as I can get, and that is ok.
Take for instance, a Home Economics textbook from 1944 called Everyday Foods that teaches girls to wear an “inexpensive house dress, or smock, or apron” and it “should be washable, attractive, and of course spick-and-span.” Also, don’t forget your “handkerchief…placed safely in a pocket.” Wouldn’t want to forget that—super important. Girls are also encouraged to be very careful what they eat. They are given a list of “What Carelessly Chosen Food May Do To You: It may give you a ruined waistline and a poor figure, a pallid complexion, bowlegs, premature old age, and deficiency diseases.” They were seriously warned against “pellagra, beriberi, rickets, anemia, and scurvy.” I hope the boys were warned somehow, as well.
Other favorites are the 70s style cookbooks that favored varying degrees of red, yellow, and brown thematic layouts featuring many Jello desserts and shrimp cocktails. I notice a lot of celery and things shaped into balls—ham balls, coconut ice cream balls, Swedish sausage balls, cocktail meatballs, chilled melon balls; I could go on. And what is baked Alaska? I am so confused, even though I was alive during that decade. And bisques, who was eating so much bisque? Do people still eat bisque?
The 70s also saw the invention of the crock pot. People weren’t exactly sure what to call this new cooking art form, but my favorite is the Crockery Cooking, though “crockery” as a term never really caught on. It sounds fancy. There is an introduction that explains how to use a crock pot and why it’s a good idea. I love it.
The 80s was the decade of microwave cooking and Mema had several books that not only teach what a microwave is, how to use it, how not to use it, and how to cook every imaginable food in one—bake a cake, bread, pie, check; oysters casino, escargot, clams-in-the-shell, coquilles, check; whole casserole, check; coffee, check; steak, small turkey, whole roast, check; the microwave is a miracle invention capable of revolutionizing the American kitchen, but rule #1: “Do not attempt to operate this oven with the door open.” I guess people had to be told you can’t sit and watch it cook with the door cracked a bit the way you would with your stove or the lid of a pot. The Amana Touchmatic II Radarange Microwave Oven Cookbook does due diligence with teaching the importance of not using metal implements (it even explains arcing), and assures the reader that every recipe has been tested in a real microwave by a “trained home economist.”
We also found a binder of recipes from Grandad’s mother, Frances Capitola Bearden, including such delicacies as giblet sandwich spread, chicken a la king, potato candy, mince meat (for which you need an average size hog head), loquat jelly, prickly pear jelly, spudnuts, potato donuts, salt dough for kids to play with, homemade soap, and the best carp bait for fishing with (which include Wheaties, cottonseed mill, and black strap molasses, among other interesting spices.)
I did not inherit even one ounce of interest in cooking, but my daughter is very excited about trying some of these recipes, and it is going to be an adventure to taste some long lost delicacies of the last 80 years. Mema was like me, a functional cook, capable of feeding whatever size crowd needed a full belly with satisfying results. Nothing fancy, nothing gourmet, but tasty and filling. The fact that she saved so many recipes with the good intentions of trying them out someday makes me chuckle because she, like me, didn’t even like to cook. She just enjoyed reading the recipes, looking at the pictures, and imagining the fun conversation at the dinner parties when everyone would be gathered around the table having a good time. It wasn’t even about the food. It was about the entertaining, the laughter, the storytelling, the getting together. It was about all of us that she loved and wanted to nurture with food.
@Home Studio – 364th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Cook Books photos to accompany my poem:
Grandad has a Mini Coke when he’s craving a soda, but isn’t really supposed to be drinking sugary drinks because he’s diabetic.
They are the perfect size for Julian, if he’s been granted permission by his mom because it is early enough in the day, he’s eaten real food, and he’s already had some water—basically the stars have aligned and a sugar bomb is allowed.
But for me, it does not hit the spot. I feel like Hulk in that commercial where he and Ant Man are fighting over the last Coke and, of course, they end up sharing because Ant Man only needs a drop to be satisfied, but poor Hulk gets the equivalent of a thimble full to drink. What the heck? He needs a 10-gallon drum of Coke to quench his thirst.
That’s how silly I feel drinking a Mini Coke.
@Home Studio – 363rd poem of the year
Runner ups for the Mini Coke photos to accompany my poem:
My sweet Aunt Mary would absolutely say that it is not a waste of time to spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. What greater way to spend one’s time than analyzing each forked twig and bough, penciling on paper the exact tally for limb 27.4? All my powers of focus, balance, strength, and intellect are at play, and Amelia (that’s the name of the tree in question) absolutely adores the attention. It’s been years since we spent an entire day together and we’ve missed one another immensely. I may or may not complete the task, but that is not important. The act of singular wonder amidst nature’s display of resilience is the thing.
My dear friend Mary would also understand my anger at certain words when they will not appear in my mind’s screen, how my brain screams words like resentment and frustration and hate at the missing word, but what I really mean is, please come back, I miss you, I need you, don’t leave me.
Mary and I know we’re not invited, but still sort of wish we could experience being a whirling dervish because there’s something in the spinning magic of their dance that speaks to our souls.
Once, when I was a bird, I flew over Mary as she took her morning walk along the tree line. I waited to see if she would notice me, but she seemed lost in thought, or maybe prayerful. She chuckled to herself, as though laughing at her own joke, then stopped to study something in the dirt.
When I grow up, I want to be Mary’s dog Percy. Oh, to be loved with such devotion and cared for in my old age, as Percy was. To be accepted, encouraged, admired, and appreciated just for being me—stinky, silly, lazy, and a devoted friend. To sit all day and listen to Mary chat and read, napping with my head in her lap as she scratches my ears, saved from rough beginnings by the kindness of that gracious lady. And when I died, I would not argue about whether or not God made me. I would know.
@Home Studio – 361st poem of the year (After reading Mary Oliver’s book of poems A Thousand Mornings.)
Oliver, Mary. A Thousand Mornings, Penguin Books, 2012.
Runner ups for the Mary Oliver photos to accompany my poem:
Photo taken 12/25/24 by my sister-in-law Brittany Hefner.
Christmas morning was all the fun and family it should be this year, with 3 little ones to enjoy the excitement of gifts and games.
The grown-ups sat around drinking coffee and feasted on homemade cinnamon rolls, egg tater tot casserole, mountains of bacon, biscuits and gravy, eggnog bread pudding with eggnog whipped cream.
There was just the right amount of silliness and chaos and squeals, and plenty of laughter, as we all reconnected.
We continued the tradition Mema liked to share from her childhood— orange, apple, pecans, walnuts, and peppermints in everyone’s stockings.
Mema would be pleased that Grandad was right in the middle of it all, and was as thrilled as a kid to open the biggest, brightest flashlight known to man as a gift from one of his grandsons.
Last night, neither Grandad nor I could sleep. His legs were hurting and restless, my cough was keeping me up, so we were wandering the house like ghosts at 2am. Come look, he said, after swinging open the back door, standing in the doorway in his pajamas. Feel how heavy it is, he said as he handed his new toy flashlight to me. Well, turn it on, he said. I pushed the button and nearly gasped as the entire yard all the way to the barn was bathed in daylight. It felt magical, such power in the palm of my hand.
Mema would have swatted both our behinds, and loved that we are all taking care of each other.
@Home Studio – 360th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Christmas Breakfast photos to accompany my poem:
Photos taken 12/25/24 by my sister-in-law Brittany Hefner.
My husband loves to drive around aimlessly looking for Christmas lights this time of year when Christmas music is the only thing that plays on Magic 95.5 FM on the car radio.
There are always entire neighborhoods that seem to have caught the spirit, and those are to be expected, but more surprising is the one house that chooses to decorate in the midst of a sea of surrounding darkness.
Or my favorite, the lone darkish house in that over-the-top community that obviously is just too tired or disinterested to participate fully, and instead throws a few lights over one little bush.
We always judge like we are experts in house lighting, forgetting temporarily that we have never put a single light on any house ever, but that doesn’t matter because we are mad with power— The award for biggest carbon footprint goes to, drumroll please… The award for best Star Wars themed yard goes to… The award for most snowmen The award for prettiest light show The award for Halloween-turned-Christmas The award for most nostalgic The award for creepiest gigantic blow-up creature hovering above the house The award for most crap thrown together at the last minute
And a few honorable mentions for the ones who look like they started to decorate, but got tired halfway through and just gave up.
@Home Studio – 359th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Looking at Lights photos to accompany my poem:
We saw a bunch of blow-up Christmas characters this year. They have gotten really popular.
Grading papers is one of the least loved responsibilities of most teachers and certainly not a favorite pastime of mine.
It is probably one of the tasks I bid farewell with the most glee when I retired from teaching human beings and switched to AI.
Little did I know, I would be toiling over their interpretations of various responses to prompts, as I have for multiple decades, and with much the same amount of enthusiasm.
I will say, I have not been spit at, called any names, or felt the need to put an arm’s length of physical space between us, just in case, when giving feedback.
But I still get attitude, excuses, attempts at humor to deflect, shifting of blame, and half-hearted apologies, occasionally, to keep me on my toes.
A righteous man puts others before himself, serves his community with humility and grace, and is faithful to his vows, both to God and man.
Born on a farm, no running water, no electricity, salt of the earth, family man, believer in human rights, treating people with dignity, and freedom of religion.
He was the first president to talk about climate change, an environmentalist at heart, a lover of the earth, supported renewable energy by putting solar panels on the White House.
He signed legislation to manage hazardous waste, protected over 100 million acres of Alaskan land, and more than doubled the National Park System.
He passed the Ethics in Government Act to protect whistle-blowers, established FEMA, and was part of some of the first emergency planning in America.
He created the Departments of Education and Energy, and established full diplomatic relations with China, which created the basis for our world economic system.
He championed human rights around the world and was the first president to focus on these issues and appoint a woman as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights.
Mr. President Jimmy Carter is the first president I remember, his serious face talking about important things on our black and white television on every single channel, interrupting.
That’s how different it was back then; when the president spoke, everyone stopped what they were doing to listen. I was enamored of this kind man with gentle eyes.
I knew nothing of politics, nothing of the burdens adults endured, but I knew that this sincere man was doing what he could to make the world a better place with every ounce of his soul.
Rest in peace, Sir; your debt to the world has been paid with every house you helped build, person you lifted up, oppressor you held accountable, and kindness you shared.
@Home Studio – 357th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Jimmy Carter photos to accompany my poem:
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