Skip to main content

A Trip to Atlanta and A Ladies' Tea

My mother is about to turn 85 years old. Her birthday is next Thursday, Veteran's Day, but we can't celebrate in the middle of the week, so tomorrow, my sisters and I will be hosting an open house in her honor.

Most of my family lives near Atlanta, so I'll be flying down there later today, and I'll be sleeping in my mother's guest room for a few days. It's furnished with my grandmother's four-poster bed and matching dressers, lace curtains and a braided rug made by my grandmother years and years ago. She used scraps from her sewing to make rugs for every room in the house.

My sister, Karen, who lives near my mother, is opening up her house for the party, and since she's invited nearly 30 women, we're doing an open house instead of a more formal sit-down affair. We're all capable of making food for this sort of thing, but we decided to give ourselves a break and have it catered, complete with a traditional coconut cake. I've got to tell you, a lot is riding on this cake for me. My mother used to make this southern dessert when we were kids. It's a white layer cake with a seven-minute icing topped off with shredded coconut. Not just anyone can make a proper seven-minute icing. It's a complicated business, and I've never tried making it myself. It's possible the catered version with have regular white frosting instead of the crunchy stuff I love, but either way, it will still taste like the best of my childhood.

Over the winter, my mother will be giving up her house and moving in with my sister. Her eye sight has gotten increasingly worse, and she spends so much time alone, it isn't healthy. The move will be a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it's going to mean having to sort through decades of belonging and choosing what to keep and what to give away or sell. What will happen to the China in the cupboards and the antique plates on the walls? What will she do with all of the clothes she keeps even though she hasn't worn for years? The garage is full of my father's old tools, and the closets are full of all the stuff people shove in their closets year after year after year.

Emptying a house is no easy task for anyone, and it's going to be gut-wrenching for my mother, I'm sure. At least for the next few days, we'll spend a few days in her house as if she were going to spend the rest of her life there.

Comments

dive said…
Happy Birthday to your Mom, Robyn.
Have a great time down there in the South. I trust the weather will be a little warmer than you've been having lately.
I do hope the coconut cake comes out exactly like you want it to.
Madame DeFarge said…
Hope it all goes well with the great bake off. House clearing can be miserable, but I'm sure its for the best.

Popular posts from this blog

Cindy Loo Who In October

What is it with people and Cindy Loo Who? Of my last one hundred blog hits, forty have been direct visits from regular readers, and fifteen have been as a result of people searching for "Cindy Loo Who," the little pixie from Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas . A couple of years ago, I posted an image of the original Seuss illustration as compared to the TV cartoon image, and for some reason, that post is bringing in the crowds, relatively. Maybe it's the weather. It isn't even November yet, and already we've had frost and have had to dust off our winter coats. When it gets cold like this, I start to think about Christmasy things like listening to Nat King Cole and decorating the tree. It's ironic because I am offended when retailers start pushing holiday stuff early, but I don't mind my own private celebrations. When my sister and I were much younger and still living with our parents, we would pick a day in July, close the curtains to darken the ...

The Ultimate Storyteller—in Life AND in Death

I wrote about The Autobiography of Mark Twain in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper. You can read it here , if you want. This is the photograph I had in mind while I read Clemens' dictations. He really was a masterful storyteller, even when rambling on about the poorly designed door knobs in Florence or in describing the Countess Massiglia, who he described as a "pestiferous character." About her, he said, “She is excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward.” And I laughed out loud.