Creation Celebrations

While it is true that I'm impatient, all my impatience doesn't move The Almighty one little bit. For a long time, I was afraid to show my impatience for fear that it would be seen as a lack of faith. It's not that I don't have faith, it's just that I sometimes have to sneak a peak into the oven to make sure that the cake is in there. I'm so afraid that if I don't peak, I'll forget about the party and miss the cake all together.

I really don't think the The Big Baker minds if I sneak a peak; sometimes I'm even asked to watch the cupcakes for a while. Of course, if I peak too often the cake will fall, and if I get distracted for too long, the cake might burn. Sometimes The Big Baker will let me vary the recipes just to give me a sense of participation. I know The Big Baker will always start a new batch if I don't succeed in my small part.

I just never know when I'll get to be the birthday girl, so I always try to have my party hat close by; and I really like to be the one to help with the birthday cakes. This makes me feel more sure that I won't miss my own party when my time comes.

The parties I most remember are the ones planned just for me, my tenth and my fiftieth. I love planning parties for other people because it makes me feel part of the celebration of their spirits. While I'm waiting for my Party Into Paradise, I feel honored to be part of the creation celebrations of others.

Lots of Life

We're winding down on our home front just as all this party into paradise planning kicks in. The garden is still waiting for us to plow up our last potatoes, but I've done all the canning I intend to do, except for the bunches of beets still in the earth.

I'm not as fond of this year's grape jam, but that's because I had to use a different type of grape. These grapes were larger and darker, but produced a garnet-colored grape jam rather than the rich deep purple of the batches in years past. Oh well, the grapes were free for the picking off Mamie's trellises, and our didn't bear anything worth worrying over.

October will be quite busy beginning with Don's party on the first of next month, followed the next weekend by the Coker Creek Ruritan's big fortieth annual fundraiser, the Autumn Gold Festival. Richard and I will both be working booths, Richard collecting cash at the Ruritan roach coach and me bragging about Jack's book to generate sales.

I had hoped to have Nancy's book finished by now, but we're still running into technical difficulties with the cover. Persistence will finally pay, but it sure is frustrating getting from "G" to "O." (That spells "GO" -- for those not familiar with that colloquialism.)

I'm really looking forward to a visit by a friend of mine since we were in high school. She's actually the woman who picked up the father of my children on Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Day, back when we were both sixteen. I haven't seen her for years, but I'm sure she's still a man magnet, even though we're both bumping up against sixty.

As soon as Annette leaves, after seeing all our colorful fall leaves, I'm heading south for an extended stay. My baby boy's birthday is on Halloween. I like to go down and play with people's children while they go to my wild child's Halloween party.

With a wedding to attend in Houston in November, and a visit to our newly married nephew and his wife, followed by Thanksgiving and Santa's workshop cranking up in earnest, I don't think we'll have time to be bored until well into the new year.

Oh, and did I mention that we're hoping to host several families for "Holidays in the Holler" between Christmas and New Years Day?

I warned Richard before he married me that he didn't know what he was asking for when he stated that he wanted me to bring "life into his house." I told him he may not be ready for all the life forms I brought around, but did he listen? No...

Marriage Math

I like solidarity; he likes solitude.
Of course, we like cooperation
When we're both in the mood.
Maybe our extreme differences
Are the secret to our success;
We've needed both our talents
When exposed to life's greatest tests

He is quiet and careful; I'm a rowdy rebel.
We've learned to balance our ways
To keep our relationship level.
He gives; I take,
But not only for myself.
I spread his talents far and wide,
Like his personal Santa's elf.

Every spouse should have such a chore,
Giving that doesn't drain our love;
In fact, it produces more.
Marriage can leave a legacy
Even without producing children
This is possible only when
The two are more than one plus one.

Planning the Production

We're in the process of planning the last leg of Don's "Party Into Paradise" celebration in October in Atlanta. But for now, I'm back at our "House in the Holler" (or as Richard prefers to call it "Our Tennessee Mountain Home"). I'm one of the few people brave (or brassy) enough to cook for my newly widowed girlfriend She is, after all, the GA governor's executive chef), so we're having a mostly Cajun menu. That's what Don would have wanted, and it may be the only food I know more about than Holly does.

I like any "eat, drink and be merry" approach to life and death. Anything worth doing, is worth a few good laughs and a bit of scandal. What good does it do to get old if we still have to behave ourselves? Don's exit party provides lots of opportunities for all of the aforementioned misbehaving -- just like we'd do in New Orleans, but without the Jazz band.

I'll be mostly working from home, but intend to spend the week-ends between now and then working with Don's bevy of buddies to plan a proper production for his memorial service. After all, it's not everyone who gets to be memorialized at a governor's residence. This may also give me the opportunity to spend some time with my Atlanta girl and grandgirls.

Holly's brother is a minister and the governor is a teetotaler, so we're having the after-party at Holly's neighborhood clubhouse. Richard has signed on as a designated driver back to the hotels for all the party-hardies coming to town for the functions.

I refuse to believe that martyrdom for the sake of purging guilt is productive in entering paradise. I much prefer the belief that all our good works live on after we do, so we have to concentrate our energies on what we can do well. I happen to excel at party planning and partying. Martyrdom is okay as long it's worth the price in residual good energy created by it. I'll spend my life helping (while possibly raising a little hell) rather than hurting.

I'm very good at getting away with stuff; that's one of the reasons I love the Atkins diet. I can eat, drink, and be merry while I die(t). This is part of the Cajun survival system of working hard and playing hard, and letting the good times roll.

Please Pray and Participate

While we wait to honor the departing of one spouse through death, we're sadly faced with the dissolution of another family through impending divorce. This affects all of us, not just the two adults and their two children. Our family and our society suffer from any ceasing of family stability.

I know this because of the choices I made in my marriage almost thirty-five years ago, and the ripples they started that have now grown into tsunami-sized waves. From day to day and crisis to crisis, I never know when the waves break on the shore of our lives whether I will have ridden safely on the surf or been sucked into a riptide that lands me miles from where I had been standing. This is the nature of unresolved family issues.

Grace has, thus far, saved my children and their children from destruction, but this does not mean that they haven't been battered by the brokenness of their parents. Only succeeding generations will tell the tale of whether we succeeded in making amends for our sins, the sins of their parents.

Young families celebrate their marriages and the births of their children with many of their network in attendance, but how many of the people attending these celebrations commit to walking the walk with these families? Prayer is not the same as participation.

When a baby refuses to sleep and there's a toddler needing attention; when a husband is so sleep deprived that he can barely stand and still has to put in the hours to bring home a paycheck; when a young bride has spent her first pregnancy helping her mother die; and her second in a town of strangers, who is there to hold the parents, rock the babies, change the diapers?

Who will go to hell with them and raise them up out of the flames? We all need prayer, but we also need participation.

Planning the Paradise Party

Holly is hurting, but she has many sources of hugs. The networks she and Don built have produced incredible words and gifts of condolences from an international base of buddies.

Since she had Don cremated, she has much flexibility in when and where she'll hold his memorial service. The crematorium has a chapel, but I suggested even before he died, that the chapel and all the rest of the building would not be enough to hold the immense outpouring of friends and family wanting to help celebrate the life that Don shared with them.

Holly has worked as executive chef for the Georgia governor's mansion for over two decades. Her current boss has offered her the mansion as the place for her husband's memorial. Talk about being sent off in style!

Even by Atlanta standards this promises to be quite the event. Now, to the work of planning and preparing for the series of programs: transportation and lodging for people coming into town, service program, and after-party planning.

We've blocked a total of sixty hotel rooms in two separate hotels. I don't think that will be enough, but who knows how to gauge numbers for an event such as this? Don loved red beans and rice, so our meal menu started with that and we're now anticipating a full Cajun menu, but with no bottom feeders (catfish, crabs, or shrimp because Don didn't like them)and no "bugs" (Don's name for the raisins usually found in New Orleans-style bread pudding).

Don was New York Italian with all the zest for life that brings with it. I don't know how to say it in Italian, but in New Orleans we say, "Laissez les bon temps rouillez" (Let the good times roll.)

We All Must Mourn

My grandma used to ask me,
"Do you want to laugh or cry?"
She asked me this question
Without fully knowing why.

We all must mourn our losses
As we go about our days.
My friend is fond of saying
We all grieve in different ways.

Her husband made her promise
To celebrate his life,
Instead of having her focus
On their last days of strife.

My friend is the same;
She expects me to laugh.
The grief that I'm feeling
She doesn't need to know the half.

Her life's goal and her husband's:
Making people smile;
Leave your burdens at the door,
And rest your soul awhile.

She looks like her mama,
But she party's like her papa.
Neither sickness nor death
Is ever going to stop her.

She has surely lost the most;
He was part of her daily rhythm.
She deserves to be respected
In the way that she honors him.