Monthly Archives: June 2020

Oh! To have you back for one day…

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marlakinnejuliano's avatarThere's something to be said...my Southern side of 50

(This was written seven years ago. Momma would have turned 95 today. I made her recipe on Sunday to share with friends. You should, too! You will not be disappointed…)

Momma would have been 88 today. Even more, she would have been a young 88. She would have been immersed in us kids and would have jumped at the chance to go shopping with us girls, to spend time with her grandkids and would have still loved being in her kitchen cooking with so much love.

  As she always said, she would have been giving us girls a “run for your money” had she been born during our time.  She was a classic, a true beauty, her own woman and the best Momma anyone could have asked for.  We kids each received a piece of her personality and talents–my sister received her compassion, my brother–her will to always see…

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Oh! To have you back for one day…

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(This was written seven years ago. Momma would have turned 95 today. I made her recipe on Sunday to share with friends. You should, too! You will not be disappointed…)

Momma would have been 88 today. Even more, she would have been a young 88. She would have been immersed in us kids and would have jumped at the chance to go shopping with us girls, to spend time with her grandkids and would have still loved being in her kitchen cooking with so much love.

  As she always said, she would have been giving us girls a “run for your money” had she been born during our time.  She was a classic, a true beauty, her own woman and the best Momma anyone could have asked for.  We kids each received a piece of her personality and talents–my sister received her compassion, my brother–her will to always see the better, and myself–her baking expertise and love for the written word. 

So, in honor of “Tukie” being 88 with Jesus and the apostles, here is her infamous Mighty Good Chocolate Cake recipe:

MIGHTY GOOD CHOCOLATE CAKE
1 cup butter 
1/4 cup cocoa
1 cup water
 
2 cups of sugar
2 cups of all purpose flour
 
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs (beaten)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Put butter, water, cocoa in pan and cook until boiling. Pour over sugar and flour and mix thoroughly. Add buttermilk, eggs, soda, and vanilla. Mix well. Pour into greased 15 X 10″ pan. Bake at 400* degrees for 20 minutes. (depends on oven)
WHILE CAKE IS BAKING PREPARE FROSTING:
1/2 cup butter or oleo 1/4 cup cocoa 6 tablespoons whole milk 1 lb. box confectioner sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup chopped pecan nuts
Combine butter, cocoa, milk and cook until boiling. Remove from heat; ad  powdered sugar, vanilla and nuts. Mix will. Spread on cake while the cake is still hot.
 
I miss you everyday.  You are alive in my heart as well as in my dreams.  I hope you are dancing with Daddy, laughing with Mackie and tossing a tennis ball with my Hannah.
I love you, Momma….scan0015
 

Regrets and The Chinquapin Patch

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I remember Momma saying how the years would fly by once I hit twenty five. She always demonstrated the passing of the years by blinking both eyes while saying “25…30…35…40…50…”

Like everything else Momma told me as a teenager, it went in one ear and out the other.
She was right.

I blinked and the years have sped right by. It somehow seems so surreal. One day you are dancing at your favorite club on Market Street and the next day you are at your orthopedist asking how the hell you can’t place your arm to touch the center of your back any longer.

Then, I thought about my Momma.

I thought about her mother’s, my grandmother, story about the chinquapin patch:

There was a young girl and she spent her day walking through the chinquapin patch with her Grandmother. Her Grandmother told her to pick the most perfect one as they made their way through the patch. As she walked, she would pick up the spiny nuts and, one by one, she would put them down. One would be too small, another too prickly. One would be cracked, another not shiny enough. She had a hard time not finding one covered in its thorns.
One by one, she picked one up just to find a flaw so she went to the next.
Until she got to the end and she was empty handed.

Momma seemed to tell us this story at least once a year. She reminded us that we were too particular about things: clothes, apartments or houses, boys…The version she told my older sister went like this:

A young boy sat with his Grandmother and asked her how she married his Granddaddy. She said “Let’s go for a walk”. On the walk she said for him to pick put the best stick he could find along the way. Some were short. Some were long. Some were weak. Some were strong, but none were good enough. He would pick one up just to replace it with another. He ended up at the end of the trail with nothing but a twig.
He sat and cried, holding the scrawny twig in his little hand.
His Grandmother simply replied, “And that is how I married your Grandfather…”

Two stories. The same ending, both about not ending up with what you wanted.

Regret…

We walk through life, sometimes running.
When we are younger, we think we are indestructible. Little things don’t seem to worry us because it is about the big picture and how we are going to look, feel and how it affects us. We think we have all of the time in the world.

We look at life shortsightedly.
We never know if we will walk the path and get the prize or will we end up empty handed.

My Mother lived with regret. On her death bed, she spoke about all of the things she wished she had done, the places she longed to visit, the experiences she felt she had missed. It was very sad, really, but it was also a wake up call.

It led my sister to follow her dream of opening her own restaurant.

It has led me to writing again and planning my next steps in food and heart.

We all walk through our own patches in life. Some are moments of blind faith where you jump in with your soul and land on your feet. Some are periods of falling over and over again because you get stuck with a burr in your heart or head.

Those are the tough ones–the ones where you get in your own way.

In life, there are mistakes and there are lessons. The mistakes are the ones we do voer and over again, but they do not have to define us. The lessons teach us to look harder, to search deeper, to love harder.

I guess, you could say, I am still walking through the Chinquapin patch.

Mourning at 30,000 Feet

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I started a hope chest in my mid twenties–trinkets, books, hand blown ornaments and even crib sheets–all Winnie the Pooh for a nursery and a child I would never hold.  I thought I had mourned this years ago.  I thought I had excepted the loss. I thought wrong.

Two years ago, on a flight from New York during a delay, I had ample time to catch a movie.  I chose Goodbye Christopher Robin.  My favorite characters, my happy place turned into my own heart’s reckoning.  I sobbed. I cried off every layer of mascara. And this came in just the first ten minutes…

My mind went to a Waverly fabric trunk I purchased at a downtown Charleston estate sale in 1990. It was so beautifully made.  I decided it would hold many memories and dreams.  The first piece I placed inside was a hand crocheted quilt lovingly made by my Granny Kinne’s hands.  Intricate, but tattered, much like my life at the time.  Then, one by one, I placed each of the Winnie the Pooh treasures I had collected.

Newly married and looking to start a family we landed at the best fertility doctor we could find.  He said we had an antibody between us that did not match.  I have no desire to be graphic here, but, on a slide in the lab, my eggs literally ran, and fast!  Two years of heartbreaking cycle tracking, garage held meetings based on ovulation where you would stop your work day, send a beeper message and leave emotions in the driveway followed by three rounds of IVF.  All failed attempts.  All eroding at the marriage. No one ever prepared me for that.

As a child, you dress your doll babies, place them in the stroller and speak to them about how much they are loved and how their daddy loves them, too. You tell them stories and, in your head, you know you will one day be a wonderful Mommy telling your little girl or boy how they had always been there in your heart and in your head.  My fairy tale did not work out that way.

No baby.

No marriage.

I would have adopted.  He only wanted someone to carry on the family name.

We divorced.

I left with my hope chest.

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard….” A.A.Milne

Life moves forward, if you let it.  I found my own place, continued working in sales with salons and started dating again.  Dates lead to a relationship, the relationship lead to living together, living together lead to a pregnancy.

What???

I remember going back to my infertility doctor because they were a mile away and having an ultrasound and pregnancy test. I remember the shock when Lila told me they felt I was about two months along.

What??  Are you certain??

I just cried.

Looking back, I am not sure if it was because of the joy or because of the loss of my marriage, but I went home and opened the hope chest.  Every little piece still tucked away just waiting to meet this new little baby.  It was January.

We started looking to buy a home and planning for a future.  We visited his family in upstate New York and I remember laughing so hard when he presented me with a ring out of a gumball machine saying “it’s the best of its kind”.  IMG_9395

We were moving forward. Life didn’t let us.

Easter Sunday, two months later– I miscarried, in church.

I really did not know how to deal with the grief.  I threw myself into my work.  I had no real faith circle.  I had no answers. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want much of anything. I pushed the loss away and watched our relationship disintegrate.  I moved the hope chest and my hope into the attic.

I never mourned. I never said goodbye.

How could I?

I never even said hello…

Fast forward to 20 years later, sitting on a Delta flight, watching what I felt would be the a sweet pick-me-up kind of movie to start a long day.  What transpired was a muffled wailing of tears. I scared the man next to me so horribly because I could not catch my breath.  He rang the flight attendant.  I sat in a crumpled mess finally acknowledging the pain, the trunk and how that loss had never gone away.

“You’re braver than you believe and stronger and smarter than you think.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

I sold the trunk some years back and gave away the many pieces with the exception of a choice few.  I did not keep them to remind me of the loss, but to remind me of the love I had for that little person who never got to see my world with her.

I imagine the day when I will see her again and maybe, on that day, I will hear her call me “Momma”.  I was certainly blessed with the four months when I was…