Sometimes, mid-stir, a memory arises…

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

I have been prepping some things and baking (way more than we will eat but it is so fun) and cleaning up every so often so I can start another recipe or three. 

At one point I was replenishing the flour and realized it was stacked precariously on top of all my notes as pictured above. 

There were worse scenes than this, but I was too covered in flour to touch my phone by that point. 

I am a messy cook.

You might think the disorder doesn’t bother me, but you would be wrong. I actually function better in a neat environment, but I am also usually so wrapped up in whatever my current project is…cooking, writing, studying…that I forego neatness and just plunge ahead. 

For example, I am currently typing on my laptop which is resting on the portable case stuffed with a charger cord, notebook and password book. My computer is wobbling and dancing and I would love for that not to be happening, but here we are. 

I digress from the point of this post. 

There I was this morning, emptying a flour bag into the container, with a notebook jammed under it, a sink full of dishes and every spoon and measuring cup used and I thought of my mom. 

She used to laugh at my culinary chaos. 

She was not a cook and so I would do a lot of the cooking and baking and she was on clean up duty. She always marveled at how I worked on top of one mess to make another. 

I remember her visiting us when our three were little and asking me how I worked in a kitchen where I had to step over toys and empty Tupperware containers that had been pulled out by one or more children. 

It bothered me and yet it didn’t as I kept going. She always suggested I put the little ones in a playpen and I always ignored her and the mess and went on. 

So there I was today, mixing up some goodies for tomorrow and remembering my childhood, young parenting days and my mom. 

And I missed her deeply. 

I missed our kids and I missed me being all those stages. 

And that’s the holidays, my friend. 

Memories come in unexpected ways and suddenly in the middle of whisking the dry ingredients, a wave of grief slides over. 

I can reassure any with tender recent losses that in time, these don’t knock you off your feet. 

As the years pass, they just come like gentle waves lapping the shore of today. 

They remind a person of all the blessings that have come and whisper hope for more in the future. 

Have a wonderful day today…tomorrow…whatever it looks like for you. 

We always have much to be thankful for. 

Happy Thanksgiving, friend. 

You are…always…dearly loved <3