Tag: legacy writing

Legacy Writing 365: an extra day for Leap Year


Mother in front of the tree during the last Christmas my parents would spend in this house. So many things were changing–had changed–and I think they were ready for a new adventure. I don’t remember exactly when they put the house up for sale or moved. I don’t know if she knew this was the last Christmas in the house where their first four grandchildren had come as newborns, and later for holidays and birthdays and visits.


First they moved into an apartment in Tuscaloosa, where their married life had essentially begun decades before. Even though they’d downsized, we all still showed up for holidays. Here, Debby, Terri, and I are being goofy.


Later, they rented a house in a nice little neighborhood in Tuscaloosa. My father was volunteering at the library. Mother was still making holidays welcoming for us all. Daniel and Terri were living in North Carolina, so I’m not sure if we saw them that Christmas. Here, Josh is sitting with his Uncle David and his grandfather.


I’ll venture a guess that this is Gina, Debby, and Sarah. But I’ve been wrong before, and it could be Sarah, Debby, and Gina. The Debby part I know I have right!

Since Daniel wasn’t with us the following Christmas, either, when my parents had moved to a small town in Kentucky, I’m putting a summer photo here with the guys: Daniel, Josh, and David with Daddy. Daddy was writing “fictionalized” memoirs for the local paper, and Mother was just loving small town life and the house they were in.

The next Legacy Writing post will be the final one for this project and this year…

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In Friday’s post, Uncle Gerald and his family had celebrated Christmas with us in Alabama. Either that Christmas or the next one, we went to Mississippi to celebrate with them.


There are a lot of gifts under Gerald and Lola’s tree. His kids must have been very good that year!


Here’s Cousin Terry in her very cool red leather dress. These are the mod fashion years I still love.

Aunt Verble and Uncle Jim lived in the same town as Gerald and Lola. We went to their house, too, that Christmas. Here’s a photo of Verble’s daughter, Cousin Ruth, on the couch with her mother.

I love that old pole lamp in the corner. As Lynne says, “Everyone had one of those in the Sixties.” I recently found one to put in the workspace I keep in Tim’s apartment.

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As I’ve said before, at least the exterior of Dr. Boone’s rock house in A Coventry Christmas comes from the house we lived in when we moved back to Alabama when I was in the sixth grade. Here are some photos from our Christmas in that house, when Uncle Gerald and his family shared the holiday with us.


Cousin Gordon is helping Mother open her new four-slice toaster. So that’s when we got it! We had it forever, until it was just her and Daddy at home. I don’t know if one of us took it or she donated it. Eagle eyes will notice that my reindeer, with his original, uneaten felt antlers, is pulling the cardboard sleigh on the mantel. I think Hallmark sold the sleigh to display your Christmas cards, but Mother always wrapped little fake packages to put in ours. I’m sure it was my idea to add the reindeer, and she went along with it.

In that wooden bucket where she kept her magazines, I see Redbook and Ladies Home Journal, and even better, I see Look with this cover:


Psychedelic Beatle!


You may see a Christmas tree, an unlit fire, and Rudolph pulling that sleigh again. I see a print of a Confederate soldier on the wall and the Declaration of Independence over the fireplace. I can’t count the number of times I read the Declaration of Independence in our former house while I was eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in the den. I doubt I ever ate cereal in this living room.

I don’t think Cousin Bruce and David were with us on this Christmas Day. That explains why there are only two, instead of three, identically shaped and wrapped packages under the tree. Those would be Debby’s and my chocolate-covered cherries. Mother always gave each kid his or her own box. Since Mother’s death, I still send them to David and Debby, and Tom gives me a box. I’m not sure any of us actually loves chocolate-covered cherries, but it’s a tradition, dammit!


I’m shocked that I can’t find a photo of the table laid with a Christmas feast. Maybe Debby or David has that photo. But I like the red berries Mother has put in the table arrangement, and I love seeing all the Christmas cards on the hutch and what appears to be an old console television in the dining room.


Our very sweet Aunt Lola. Those Confederate soldiers are still firing at the Yankees on the wall in the background.


Uncle Gerald, Kent cigarette in hand, is watching his daughter Terry open a present. On the table behind him is a brass double student lamp that looks like this one:

I may have this wrong, but I think Gerald and Lola had a similar lamp, and Mother admired it so much that they found one like theirs and gave it to her on some previous Christmas, birthday, or anniversary. I seem to remember that she still had it when she moved back to Houston in 2004, but it needed new globes. I don’t know if we donated it, sold it, or one of my siblings has it.

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I uploaded this photo to my Flickr account in December of 2005, but I don’t remember if I ever put it on my blog (that being LiveJournal all those years ago). I believe the photo was taken when I was home from college for Christmas. The angel was on the back of the piano, I think, and because I loved her so much and she said “home” like nothing else, I put her on the floor next to me in front of the tree and asked for a photo.

Years later, Mother asked us kids to go through her Christmas decorations and take what we wanted. Of course, I wanted the angel, but she wasn’t there. I asked about her, and Mother said she wasn’t sure what had happened to her; she’d probably donated her with some other things to Goodwill. I was heartbroken.

Back in October, I posted a picture of my sister and me in a legacy writing post, and the angel was in that photo, too, but she was practically new then and in full feather. Debby was visiting along about that time, and on a whim, I opened Google and typed in “Christmas angel white feathers.” I saw an angel similar to ours in an Etsy shop. When I clicked on it, I realized there were actually two of the angels, and without hesitating, I bought them. I showed Debby and told her I’d keep one and would send her the other at Christmas.

But the more I thought about it, the more it nagged me that I wouldn’t have three angels, including one for my brother. So every couple of days I checked eBay and Etsy. I found others, but some didn’t have the right faces, or their wings had been modified, or their feathers were the wrong color. I missed out on a couple of them on eBay by forgetting to check my watch list. As it got closer to Christmas, I made a decision. Neither of the two angels had their song books, so I made songbooks for them. And I decided that I’d send one to David and one to Debby. I believed that in time, I’d find another one to give to myself.

I kept looking, though, because I thought it would be so cool to photograph three of them before I shipped them. And just as I was reaching the critical point for mailing packages, I did another Etsy search one morning and there she was. Bought, received, and put in a place of honor on the mantel overlooking Santa’s workshop.

And indeed, I was able to get a photo of this band of vintage Holt Howard angels.

Debby said her angel is molting, but she’s done a lot of traveling and needs a bit of glue to freshen up. Geri texted me a Christmas Day photo of the one who winged her way to David.

Wherever our family’s original angel ended up, I hope she still has the power to make someone feel at home at Christmas.

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In the fall of 2001, the first Timothy James Beck book was released–the first published novel that I’d had a hand in. Tom and I traveled that Christmas, and when we visited Daniel’s mother Terri, she sat me down at the kitchen table and began handing me copies of the book to sign. She made me feel like a rock star, and since my sunglasses were still on top of my head from driving, I dropped them over my eyes and pretended I was someone special.

But the real someone special was four-month-old Steven, who I was able to hold for the first time during that visit. The somewhat stunned expression on his face is probably how I looked every time I remembered that our book had been published. I can’t go back and reread it now–I know there are a million things I’d do differently. Steven has undoubtedly aged better than It Had to Be You, but I’m still proud that something Tim, Timmy, Jim, and I began as an experiment among friends turned into five TJB novels.

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This is a photo from when my sister and her kids and grandkids were together during Christmas of 2008. Tom and I were able to celebrate it with them, and those days provided much needed joy after a tough year.

Even when any of us are many miles from the family and friends we love, they are the spirit of Christmas. I hope this holiday finds you warm and safe, with many happy memories and maybe the opportunity to make some new memories with the people who, and places that, populate your world.

In life, each of us writes his or her own novel. Wishing you great new chapters in the new year, and a very, very happy holiday season.

ETA: OMG! When I went to post the link to this on FB, I saw the most amazing video of Josh and Dalyn getting engaged. WE LOVE YOU BOTH, and Tom and I send a hearty congratulations!

Stole this 2011 Christmas season photo from Dalyn.

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“Mahkota” the Native Americans called the river. “Blue earth.” The name came from the fertile blue/black soil of the land along and beyond the river banks. It’s the land where he grew up, the land he farmed, the land that has fed so many of us since we first ventured into the territory that would become Minnesota.


It’s the land where he, just out of the Marines after serving in World War 2, brought his young bride from California to settle and raise seven children in a marriage that would celebrate sixty-six anniversaries.


It’s the land that gave him the fortitude and faith he needed to cope with the tragic illness and death of his firstborn son. This is how Tom and I came to know him. He never wavered in his love and acceptance of Steve, even though, like many parents of the 1980s, he learned that his son was gay and had AIDS in the same conversation. His pride in the man Steve was never faltered, and he would tell anyone the facts with his usual unflinching honesty.


I didn’t know the news when I wrote Sunday’s post. As Nan said in the card we received on Monday, you are with Steve and the angels now, Ron, no longer in the physical pain that was part of the last of your ninety-one years growing up on, living on, and working that rich blue earth. Thank you for being part of our lives. We will never forget you.

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My late friend Steve R was interested in angels and anything to do with angels. He was, after all, the person who introduced me to the angel books that my friends are still embellishing and coloring for me all these years later.

In the months after Steve died, Lynne and I were visiting a ceramics shop close to the neighborhood where we lived in the Houston suburbs. We could buy greenware there, sand and clean it, then return it to be fired. This was my first experience with ceramics, and I decided to do this angel for Steve’s parents.

When Tom and I were able to go to Minnesota to visit them, I fell in love with their old farmhouse. Among some of its features were stained glass windows, and this window was in a wall between two rooms inside the house. The angel had a place of honor there, where Steve’s mother could look at her while she played her pipe organ.

They have since sold their farm and the old house and moved into a place that’s more manageable for them. I don’t know if they still have the angel, but I do know that everything about Steve remains close to their hearts, just as to my own heart. One reason I enjoy the Christmas holidays now is because I know how festive he’d make them if he were here. Sometimes the best way we can honor the memories and relationships of those we’ve lost is to celebrate life. It’s what those who loved us would want most for us–our happiness.

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The first Christmas after I graduated from college, living in my own house, gainfully employed and married to my first husband, also gainfully employed, I thought it was time to be a grown up and have people over to my house for a change. Judging from my pictures and Mother’s from that day, I’m not sure exactly what hostessing meant to me, beyond providing a table (and my extra chairs being lawn chairs).


Looking at the table, I may have opened the cranberry sauce and put it in that dish, which is mine, and the china, crystal, and tumblers are mine, but there’s no way I ever baked that turkey, and those serving dishes are not mine, so I’m thinking whatever vegetables were in them were brought by my mother. That’s Mother, Daddy, me, Terri, Daniel, and First Husband sitting around the table. David’s taking the photo. I see Daddy already put some dressing on his plate before we could get the photos taken. My sister is looking down on us from her graduation picture behind Terri. I recognize some of the books on the shelf: Summer of ’42, Jaws, Valley of the Dolls, The Thorn Birds. That must have been my popular fiction shelf. The literary stuff is elsewhere. I also spy Mr. Santa Claus–that was the year he and Mrs. Claus were given to me by Lynne’s sister.


I think I made the mashed potatoes–which Daniel has already spooned onto his plate. Like grandfather, like grandson. But once again, judging by the serving dishes, Mother made macaroni and cheese, ambrosia, gravy, and the dressing. Yep, I really labored over preparing that meal, didn’t I?


My first Christmas tree as a true grown-up. Up on a table so Hamlet and Brutus wouldn’t pull off any ornaments. I still put those same candy canes on my trees now. Where are the presents? No idea. Probably on top of the piano to keep the dogs out. It does seem as if I might have made a little more effort to cover up that tree stand, doesn’t it? I LOVE that little TV in the corner. Even if I’m not actually thirty-five, at least you can see that we already had TV when I was twenty-two. AND IT WAS COLOR, so hush. Still have that painting that’s on the wall. Still have that basket that’s under the table. It used to have magazines in it. Now it’s the wastebasket in the guest room.


By comparison, in a house the next town over, here’s Lynne’s Christmas tree. With actual presents under the tree, the way it should be.

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My brother moved recently, and anyone who moves knows: You end up going through a lot of stuff and figuring out what to keep and what you should let go of. In a Christmas card I received from him and Geri today, he included one of the announcements my parents sent out when I was born.

Here’s the inside.

Good ol’ Dorothy, leaving off the year. It’s like she KNEW I was going to get all creative with my birthdate in later years.

In addition, he sent some of my old school photos, as well as something I don’t know if I ever saw before. It’s a little card, and on one side are my tiny newborn footprints.

And on the other side, some of the birth stats:

Thanks, David!

Hmm, it seems Dr. H. Wolterbeek wrote the year in disappearing ink. Crazy! I don’t know if Dr. Wolterbeek was the doctor my mother loved to tell this story about, but here it is.

On the day I was born, she went into the hospital telling them my birth was nigh. Just before ten a.m., a doctor examined her and said, “No, you have a while. I’m going downstairs for a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”

As he walked out, my mother looked at the nurse and said, “I’m having this baby.” When the nurse shook her head, Mother said, “You’d better look. I’m having this baby now!”

She felt vindicated when the nurse gave her a look and shouted, “MEDIC!”

As you see, I was born at 10:03 a.m. I know my mother; I think she turned it into a rush job so SHE could have a cup of coffee and a cigarette.