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.
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:
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.
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.
I didn’t expect to be heard, for him to sit across from me and create space for all my woes— the back, the knees, the hips, the medications, the liver problems, the dreams of being a dancer again someday if only the pain would permit… nor expect him to examine my movement, strength, balance, coordination, and flexibility.
He was thorough and kind, asked about my living situation, support system, emotional health, career, hobbies, and activity levels.
He made suggestions, asked my opinion, answered my questions, and then we made a plan— together.
The spiral ladders of DNA that make us who we are could fill eternity with the variations and unique combinations of traits, but a few things remain constant as the sunrise— we’re all made of sugar, acid, and stone, at least, that’s the way I remember.
Deoxyribo is the sugar part; nucleic acid is nitrogen and phosphates found in the nucleus, the acid and rock. All living things have four bases that make up their chromosomes, two couples who are mated for life— Adenine with Thymine, Cytosine with Guanine, till death do they part.
We can’t do anything about our mendelian traits, they are etched in our bones, but other genes can be turned on or off depending on factors around, in, because of, or in spite of our efforts and the forces of nature, our environment, our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and everything else we are buffeted by against our will.
There will come a day when disease will be cured by fixing the program, turning on or off the genes we already have written in our code but simply need someone to tinker with a little, so much gentler than the draconian medical procedures of cut and remove, destroy and cauterize; our descendants will feel sorry for what we endured, and study us in awe of our blind faith.
@Home Studio – 354th poem of the year
Runner ups for the DNA photos to accompany my poem:
Strawberry Shortcake was such a lovely girl who lived in Strawberryland and rode a pink bicycle.
Her kitty cat Custard and friends Lemon Meringue Blueberry Muffin Angel Cake Apple Dumplin’ Butter Cookie Mint Tulip Lime Chiffon Raspberry Tart Café Ole Plum Puddin’ Tea Blossom and Huckleberry Pie always had her back.
And that smell, oh, that delectable Strawberry Shortcake delicious scent, the aroma of childhood for a sliver of children born in the 70s early 80s.
Between the covers so many worlds unfold into beautiful realities where she can be anything or anyone or nothing but a concept or a rhythm or a sound that inflates the silence with pulsating life on the verge of one final breath before the universe flings itself into new voids so she can invent something new.
@Home Studio – 349th poem of the year
Runner ups for the Book Girl photos to accompany my poem:
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