For My Mom at Thanksgiving

Warning:  This post is just me talking, mostly.  And it's long.  Sorry, no pretty pictures today.


The little lady in the center
of the picture, below, is my mother.  
Our two daughters and my sister's four girls surround their Muttie.

I don't remember exactly what year this was -- 2004, 2005?  
We had not yet moved to That Old House; this is in the living room of our last home.
That's my brother-in-law Scott's ear in the lower right corner . . . it was Thanksgiving Day.

Maybe someone else in the family can pinpoint the year.
I think it was the Fall that Aine was born, as I remember Mama holding a baby girl in her arms.
Now ask me if I can remember what year our great-niece Aine was born.

Whatever the year, it was the last time Mom joined us for Thanksgiving.
The Alzheimer's was already taking a terrible toll on her cognitive and other abilities;
it was a triumph of her will and my father's stubbornness that they got to this last gathering.

The next time they crossed the rivers to New Jersey from Long Island, it was to assisted living.

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Alzheimer's took Mom's life in January 2010.
As all too many of you know, losing somebody this way is a long, slow, heartbreaking ordeal.
One of the heartaches is realizing that your grief, afterward, is all mixed up with relief.
That feels so wrong. 

In the year that followed, I was absorbed with our Dad; at 90, he was getting more frail, and there were repeated hospital admissions for one thing or another.  When he passed away, 13 months after Mom, my grief was keener, more immediate, and I missed him terribly.

And it bothered me that I missed Dad more than I had missed Mom.
I thought it was because Dad had been there with us, was still enjoying life, loving parties, making cell phone calls, watching his big screen TV, flirting with pretty girls . . . he was still Dad, and still very much a presence in our lives.

But my feelings for Mom are more complicated.
I began grieving for her in 2002, when I first suspected that something was seriously wrong.

As Alzheimer's destroyed more and more of her brain, it took her further away from us,
and really -- isn't that what grieving is?  Mourning the loss of someone's presence?

By the time she left this Earth, most of her had already gone.  And so had much of my grief.

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So that brings me to this year, and Thanksgiving.

And in my holiday planning, my TBDBT List making, my menus and timelines and guest lists and more . . . 

I am missing my Mom.  More.  More keenly.

I guess I've entered a new phase of grief.  I'm grieving for all we lost in those last 8 or so years, all those phone calls that never happened, all those laughs that weren't shared, all those memories that weren't made.

I am ridiculously angry that my mother suffered so terribly in the grip of this monstrous disease; what good is anger if there's no one you can be angry with?  Stuff happens, and Mom drew the short straw on this one.

In an odd way, it feels good to be feeling so bad.

I'm grieving the old Mom, the whole Mom, the Mom before Alzheimer's began dismantling her brain.

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So, Mama, I'm doing a little more crying these days.

Like, now.

How lucky we were, you and I, the two Catherines, to be so close,

laugh so well together, argue so well sometimes, too.

Hello, Mrs. Tip Top Lady Bread . . . wish you were here.  -- Cass

Mom's Recipe Box, jammed with memories.
I like seeing her quirky handwriting.

Foodie Friday, Hooked On Houses Party, and Last Chance for my Giveaway!

Click here for more Foodie Fun, thanks to Gollum!
************************And click here to link to Hooked On Houses Friday Blog Party,
hosted by the amazing Julia.

That Old House is a mixed bag today: Foodie Friday -- Hooked On Houses Blog Party -- Odds & Ends -- and a last chance for anyone to enter my Giveaway for a
Johnson Bros. gravy boat:

Click here!

Catching up on some Odds & Ends, down below, but first... for Foodie Friday, the recipe for Grandma Cake. You will thank me, yes you will, as this cake elevates the simple to the sublime. It is just pure goodness. And it's even better a teensy bit stale.

Grandma Cake... recipe and a little background!

My grandmother was born in Norway in 1875, and grew up in a house that dated back to Viking days. She lived until I was in college, and she was nearly 100. She'd wanted to make that century mark, but she didn't get her way on that one, although she did on nearly everything else in her life.

She raised 7 children in New York City, in a big house on the rich farmland where JFK Airport now stands. My father is her youngest, and he is nearly 89.

She was a remarkable woman,
Margrethe Olave Eskeland Lindtveit.

She could draw sewing patterns freehand, sewed all the clothes for her big family, including coats and men's shirts, knitted like a machine, crocheted, tatted, and, until they rotted apart from age and sunlight, a set of Hardanger curtains she made as a young bride hung in my family's dining room.

She had the greenest thumb this side of Eden, skipped lunch to afford fresh flowers, was barely 5-feet tall, opinionated, smart, determined, and she scared her family witless. Not one of your pushover grandmothers, my Grandma.

She walked barefoot in the morning dew 3 seasons of the year, had long glossy brilliant white hair that she washed in an enamel dishpan with a bar of coal tar soap and then dried outside, in the sunshine, the hair streaming down her back; to my sister and me she looked like an aging enchanted princess.

She loved boats and fishing and her husband Gunvald devotedly (and probably equally), could gut a fish and pan fry it to perfection, baked the flakiest piecrust, and made a bundt-style cake that is the best food, ever, anywhere on the planet.

She gave that recipe to my mother, least loathed of her daughters-in-law, and my mother promised to pass it on to me. She never did. When Mom sank into Alzheimer's, I figured the recipe for Grandma Cake was lost forever.

But recently my sister Peggy handed my mother's recipe box to me:

Lo and behold, there it was, right in front . . . the Holy Grail:

I love how my Mom wrote "Serves 12 - 15."
What family was she thinking of?
If you click on the picture, the recipe will greatly enlarge and you can easily read it. I love that it's in my Mom's distinctive handwriting. But, in case you have trouble deciphering it, here is the recipe:

GRANDMA CAKE
3 cups flour (unbleached)
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. mace
a pinch of salt
1 cup butter (no margarine; Grandma will rise up and smite you!)
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. pure vanilla

Mix all the above thoroughly and beat at high speed for 3 to 4 minutes. Bake at 350 for approx. 1 hour.

(It's not written down, as you are clearly just supposed to know that the cake batter goes into a greased bundt or tube pan before you put it in the oven!)

This is not a fine-grained pound cake; it has a rather coarse crumb, and the outside gets quite dark and caramelized looking and as the cake ages a day or two the "crust" gets a bit of a crunch to it. Oh my. I may have to bake this. I don't bake anymore because Howard and I aren't eating sugary things. I may have to make an exception. Please let me know if you try it!

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Update... I made the Grandma Cake ... Yum
Pics and story here!
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And now for those Odds & Ends...

You know that I am hooked on That Old House, and a bit obsessive about getting it "just right." If you remember my powder room metamorphosis, I asked for opinions on curtain fabric, and most of you thought "toile" and some even said, "black and white toile." Methinks you were right!

I just happened to have a sample of a cream and black toile, so up it went on the window frame with a piece of trusty blue tape. I liked it:

Then I remembered a toile I bought 2 years ago at WalMart for $1.00 a yard.
Yes, ladies and maybe a gent or two, that's $1.00 a yard.

(Pardon the wrinkles! It was stuffed in a drawer.)

This isn't your quality toile, no fancy name on the selvedge, but it is already mine, and there is enough for a nice full swag on the powder room window. Free is good.

And there it is, taped up, and dragging down the wall.
(When I find something nice for a buck a yard, I splurge. I bought a lot.)

So what do you think?

It's thin, but I'll line it. I think it will do just fine.
Stay tuned for the "after" pictures!

And speaking of befores & afters. . . I used a red and white tureen in yesterday's Tablescape Thursday post, and before I put it back on top of
Grandma's china cabinet . . .

...(yes, that very same Grandma)...

I thought it might look good on my nearly-nekkid sideboard:

Hey, it's a start.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone! I will announce the
winner of the gravy boat tomorrow morning (Saturday).
Not too early. . . .

Love ... on Wordless Wednesday

Welcome to Wordless Wednesday, hosted by Dixie at http://frenchlique.blogspot.com/

My parents, 5 years ago, on their 60th Anniversary. . .. . . and then just last spring, my father visiting my mom at a rehab facility. She has Alzheimer's and he has Parkinson's, and they can no longer live together. He visits every day.
That is LOVE.

My other blog post today is about the old knobs -- doorknobs, bedknobs, even a knob on a window lock -- in That Old House. Please visit!

A gathering of family and strangers: A typical Thanksgiving!

It's two weeks to the day since we celebrated our first Thanksgiving in our new old house. We thought we'd be down about five in our usual head count, but it seems that Nature and Thanksgiving both abhor a vacuum.

We welcomed 3 complete strangers, California natives (poor things!) with no East Coast family. Niece Alice invited one of the Californians, niece Becky invited two others. We were delighted to have them.

So all in all we were a modest group of 27.Howard and I, married 30 years, have hosted Thanksgiving all but 4 years. It is the perfect ecumenical holiday; everyone celebrates, so there's no chance of offending anyone's beliefs, or non-beliefs. Everyone believes in eating. And everyone believes, or should believe, in gratitude.

It was odd, planning for Thanksgiving in a different house, after 20 feasts on Riveredge Road. In that old house, I knew where everything was and where everyone would sit, and our kitchen was so narrow that there was only room for Howard and me in it -- no spectators allowed. We realized this year, with the kitchen so open to the conservatory, that people could HEAR us. Yikes.

I discovered the day before the feast that I was missing the long banquet tablecloths, half of the old silver flatware I use at the holidays, and various bowls, pots, etc. Time to improvise.

Plus ... our dining room is a good size, but not large enough to seat 27, especially now that "the cousins" are actual complete and full sized humans. It's no longer possible to jam 10 little bottoms cheek-to-cheek at the far end of the table, as we used to do at the long living room set-up on Riveredge Road.

(Picture of dining room, before setting up the long rental tables. So serene before the chaos!)

We put a "cousins" table in the conservatory, a kids' table, with "kids" ranging from 18 to past 30.

The 13 "grownups" got rented tables, diagonally placed, in the dining room. The dining room table was moved into the parlor as a drinks table, and the parlor chairs and sofa were moved back against the walls to make room for more chairs for chit-chat. With a fire going, it made for a lovely, cozy nook for my Dad and my brothers to sit and have a really good jaw.

My daughters, bless them, retrieved all of the Thanksgiving china from the bottom of a breakfront, and made sure all the wineglasses were spotless. Or nearly so.

It was a good dinner. The food was what Thanksgiving food should be: traditional, not poisonous, cooked in a timely manner, and EATEN.

And we all were grateful. Dion, above, and Connie, below --- enjoying the special
cookies our niece Becky brought for them.

I am thankful for so many things this year, too many to list. But my joy in a family gathering is shadowed by my mother's absence. I want her there to encourage me and tell me I did a good job, to call me the next day for our "party post-mortem" conversation. But she can't be a part of our family gatherings now, and she will never see this old house we love so much. Mom is a prisoner of Alzheimer's Disease, and lives in a facility only 10 minutes away... so close as the crow flies, but light years away from reality.

But to have my husband, my daughters, so much of our family, and those three complete strangers, to sit at our tables and break bread (and wishbones) with us -- now that is a blessing indeed.

Next Thanksgiving -- the draperies in the dining room will be actually SEWN and not just fabric panels hung by clips, and I will by then have found that missing silver flatware. Probably.

On to Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year!