2009 ... New Year's resolutions ... and looking back

Holidays are always the most difficult time of the year for me. No family close and even though I've lived in Kentucky for nearly 10 years now, it will never truly feel like "home" to me. I can hardly bear to listen to the song "Home for the Holidays" during the Christmas season, it is something that won't happen for me.

The holidays I remember the best were the ones that included my parents, grandparents and close family friends. Those memories, of course, lead to others and I find myself thinking "I wish I'd had a chance to tell them ...."

That phrase is often finished by " .... thank you for doing this for me." Almost never for something purchased and given as a gift but a gifts of time and attention.

I tended to be more of a "Daddy's girl" perhaps in part because as an only child, I was the "extra help" and the help was most often needed outside. So many of my interests were more in line with my father's ... geology, mining, arrowheads, rockhounding ... and I was horseback doing ranch work from the time I was able to get on and steer a horse in the right direction.

There were many times after I was an adult with children that my mother watched the children while Dad and I "worked". But the time I remember most ... appreciated most ... and most often wonder if I thanked her for ... was her keeping both kids while my Dad and I went on a 4-day trip back to the area in Montana where they met and were married.

She would have loved to go as well, seeing places she had wonderful memories of, places they had been together, still a few people they had known then. But she stayed home and kept the two grandchildren so I could go. I have wonderful memories of that trip, even some tangible evidence of it, one of the few keepsakes that I still have. We placer mined in a creek where Dad had mined as a young man and I have a small gold nugget we found together.

Did I ever remember to thank her for making this memory possible? or did I just bubble over telling her how much fun I had and everything I got to see?

Looking back, the things I regret are the things I did not do ... acts of kindness that I failed to see and do at the time ... actual words of thanks I neglected to say ...

So my New Year's resolution for 2009 is not about getting more organized, or getting more work accomplished, or projects I want to complete.

It is to remember to thank those who do things I appreciate ... to make the effort to say "Thank you ... I appreciate your help, your thoughtfulness, your time".

Things I miss at Christmas

I think everyone has things they miss from their "Christmas past". As we get older, there are family members no longer with us and friends in far places, things change and it seems there are always a few empty places in our hearts.

Sometimes, however, it can be the little things that would not seem to be a big loss, but things that loom large as Christmas approaches. I know some of the things I never truly think of during the rest of the year seem to suddenly gain importance at Christmas.

We don't do much Christmas now but for years, when we were still putting up a Christmas tree, I missed going out on the ranch and finding our tree, cutting it down and bringing it home. We looked for cedar trees, because the pines in that area were not very full and cedar usually were smaller and bushier. They always made the house smell so good, with such a distinctive smell, but you can't find cedar trees now at the commercial Christmas tree sellers.

I miss my Grandfather particularly at Christmas. I always enjoyed watching him look through his presents to find the one from my father. Grandpa chewed plug tobacco and it had gotten to be a tradition that Dad's gift to him every year was a carton of Horseshoe plug tobacco. It was what Grandpa always looked for and unwrapped first, took a chew and would always say the same thing "There, now I can relax, I've got my 'tobaccy'."

Another thing I truly miss at Christmas is my Grandmother's mince pie. She made and canned her own mincemeat and made the most wonderful piecrust I've ever eaten. Neither my mother nor I could ever make good piecrust. Although Grandma tried to teach us both many times Mama and I just simply could not seem to get the hang of it. I can remember the big dishpan of flour Grandma used, watching her cut up lard into it, taking it out and rolling it, but no matter how often she guided me through the process I never could get it to turn out like hers.

I finally gave up and started buying frozen ready-made pie crust at the store. While it wasn't all that traditional, it was at least edible. But I remember trying to make mince pie for the first few Christmas dinners after I was married and not home for Christmas. I bought mincemeat in the jars, followed the directions, but was very disappointed. It tasted nothing like Grandma's mincemeat pie.

I finally found a receipe for sour cream and raisin pie that I ended up making a tradition, which isn't bad. But at Christmas I still find myself wishing I could ... just once more ... put a bite of Grandma's mincemeat pie, still warm from the oven, in my mouth ... and ask her again how she made it.

"I want" ... the comercializing of Christmas

A series of posts on one of the lists regarding Christmas wish lists for underpriviledged children sponsored by various charities caught my interest. The original tone questioned these children asking for expensive items when they "needed" things like coats and warm boot with a tendency to be put off by these requests. I have to admit to thinking a bit along those lines myself but more thoughtful posts made better points and started me really thinking about the situation and remembering my only truly serious "I want" from my childhood.

The one "store bought" thing I can remember wanting very desperately when I was a child (maybe 7 or 8) was a child-sized saddle in the saddle shop. I rode bareback because the saddles we had were adult sized and my parents wouldn't let me ride with one since they were afraid I'd slip and get my foot through a stirrup. This saddle was light enough for me to pick up and carry, I could reach the stirrups and it smelled so good ... that new leather smell. I can still remember how very desperately I wanted that saddle and struggling to blink back tears as we left the shop.

But when we got home, my mother sat me down and went over the $$. Even at that age, I was raising "livestock" for my spending money, chickens at that time. I sold them in the fall, gave half the money to my folks for the feed and then put as much aside as I could to buy more chicks the next spring. I knew how much it cost to buy a chick, how much I would probably get when I sold them, that some would die so I wouldn't have all of them to sel. I knew I'd have half that money to buy more chicks the next year and if I chose to spend it on something else, how much I could spend and still have money for more chicks. At that age, I was already not expecting my parents to buy things to give to me ... not "big" things. Special little treats, an ice cream cone when we went to town, a particular kind of cereal, material for a new shirt ... but not "big" things.

I could see in black and white the numbers showing that it would take me 3 years to save enough money to buy the saddle even if I didn't increase the number of chicks I was buying each spring. By that time I was already planning sell enough chicks in the next year or two to buy my first pig ... for more potential income. I realized that I couldn't do both and agreed that more chicks ... and then the pig ... was a better decision.

I was able to make that decision though because I knew how much money I could selling those chicks, how much it cost to raise them to butcher weight and what my profit would be. It was obvious I couldn't do what I wanted to do with the chickens ... and the pig ... if I took most of that money to buy the saddle. My parents didn't say I couldn't save to buy the saddle, if that's what I wanted, they just showed me the numbers and that it wasn't possible to do both.

I'm not sure that it is as easy for parents to explain the economic facts when they are working a job that pays "X" $$ ... and having to explain that the house payment, car payment, utilities and food and everything else has to come out of that ... and there isn't enough left over for whatever it is. It was difficult enough for me to realize how much money something cost when I had something as concrete to refer to as "X" number of chickens brings me "X" dollars ... and to make more I need "X" dollars to buy "X" more chickens. If I can't buy more chickens, I don't get more money. I could understand that.

Children rarely connect $$ with "want". They see things advertised on TV, hear other kids rave about things they have and of course they want "one of those" too. It takes time ... and careful teaching by the parents to start them along the path of "if I want this, it costs this much and means I can't have that" as a part of maturing.

Without the advertising and hype generated by the companies producing these products, my parents weren't dealing with the problem of advertising targeting children and designed to convince them their product was a "must have". So for them, it was just taking the time and patience to present the actual facts to me in a simple enough way that I could understand and then give me the freedom to make a choice.

I have ended up coming to the conclusion that the "I want" syndrome is really not the fault of the child or even of the parents who are dealing with explaining economic realities that are more complex with fewer concrete examples. And you can't even really blame the companies who build the toys and then advertise them ... they wouldn't be in business, employing people, if they didn't.

But I do feel fortunate that I did not have to contend with those pressures as a child ... and am very glad I am not raising children in today's society.

Thoughts on "Black Friday"

Black Friday is a modern happening, a term I never heard as a child or young adult and my personal feeling is that like so many developments in the last 30 years or so, it is another step in the wrong direction.

An employee killed in a "customer stampede" in a major store? A shooting in a Toys-R-Us store? This is progress?

I remember the "day after Thanksgiving" not as "Black Friday" when you went shopping, braving hordes of people all scrambling after the same item on the sales tables but as a day when you stayed home. There was still plenty of turkey and ham left over, plenty of dressing, cranberries, fruit salad and still a choice of pumpkin pie, mince pie or chocolate cake as well as a cookie jar full of ginger cookies I'd helped my Grandmother make and frost.

Because there weren't meals to cook, you got to skimp on some of the usual household chores and talk about getting the Christmas packages wrapped and sent out. Since nearly all of the gifts were handmade, they were mostly finished ... things from handquilted pillow tops to fruitcakes that had been sitting on the shelves in the pantry since fall. There would still be fudge and divinity and cookies to make for some gifts and the few "store bought" gifts were already ordered through the Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward christmas catalogs.

There were very few store-bought gifts that I can recall from my childhood. Most of those, in fact, were books. With a former schoolteacher as a mother I was a reader at an early age and she encouraged books as gifts, I'm sure. The Will James books were favorites for many years and in fact I still have some of them on my bookshelves now and the Black Stallion books were probably the reason I have always been enamoured of Arabian horses and horseracing.

I can't help but think how long I've enjoyed some of these gifts ... I may not still have the actual book I received as a child, but some of those books are still on my personal bookshelves now some 50 years after I first read them ... and still enjoyed.

I can't help but wonder how many of the children who receive gifts that their parents have battled for through "Black Friday" to secure will remember those gifts with appreciation ... and still be enjoying the results of those gifts ... 50 years from now?