How are you creative?
I write. That is the most creative thing I do. I also garden, crochet and am learning to knit. I am finding knitting very challenging. So far, I am creating only messed but I will get it. I am persistent.
Creative
Day: December 25, 2024
Annual Christmas Tree Hunt
I am the product of a mixed marriage. Mother embraced Christmas with all the enthusiasm of a four-year-old while Daddy had to be pulled, kicking and fighting into the season, dreading the ruckus and expense. Mother felt the Christmas tree had to be up no later than December 18, to get maximum joy from it. Daddy dawdled around as long as possible, insisting December 22 was the earliest it could go up. He always put it off until Mother was about to blow a gasket.
Finally, he’d hook the trailer to his old tractor, fetch his power saw and call us to all pile on for the search. We’d bump over rutted farm trails, hanging on for dear life. Mother and Phyllis would be clinging to the little ones while Mother yelled for Daddy to take it slow. Daddy had plenty of kids and assured Mother we were having a great time as we clutched the rails. Most of the time we were. Before long, we’d be combing through several groves while Daddy rejected tree after tree. Finally, he’d steer us toward the one he’d earmarked weeks or months earlier.
The roar of his power saw signaled the fall of the tree. Sometimes, Mother wouldn’t be quite satisfied and would bring home an extra, which she wired together with the first to make it fuller.
Eventually, the tree trimming was complete, every ball, string of tinsel, and special ornament in place. Mother garnished it with shimmering fiberglass angel hair. Every year when the lights came on, we oohed and ah’ed our gorgeous tree, assuring ourselves that this year’s was the most beautiful we’d ever had.
Miss Laura Mae’s House Part 14
I had been waiting all summer for Miss Laura Mae’s dewberries to ripen. For weeks we had strolled down to check the progress of the berry patch right behind her barn. She said berries loved manure. It’s hard to imagine how anything loving something so stinky, but I couldn’t wait till they turned black. While I was sneaking a couple to sample, her old dog sauntered up and lifted his leg on the bushes, convincing me of the value of soap and water. I hoped they loved pee, too, ‘cause they’d just gotten a healthy dose.
Finally, one morning, she spread me two hot biscuits with fresh dewberry jam. “I kept these biscuits hot just for you. I wanted them to be just right for this jam.” I don’t know that I’ve ever had anything better than those hot biscuits and that heavenly dewberry jam so sweet and tangy it almost made my jaws ache.
“Oh, this is so good.” I licked the jam that spilled to my fingers.
“It’s my favorite. I’ll give you a jar to take home with you,” she promised. “Don’t let me forget!”
“I won’t let you forget! And no one else can have any of my special jam,” I blurted out in my greed.
“Well, maybe I better give you two jars so everybody gits a taste.” I could tell she was trying not to laugh.
That seemed like a tragic waste of jam, but answered. “Yes, ma’am.” In my gluttonous imagination, I’d envisioned myself sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, eating jam with a spoon straight from the jar. Mother must have read my mind, because those jars found their way to the top shelf of the cabinet with the honey, coconut flakes, and brown sugar as soon as we got home. I’d learned from sad experience, stuff on the top shelf was emphatically off-limits. Not two weeks ago, I’d nearly broken my molars chomping down on white rice straight from the package, thinking I’d found coconut somehow left in reach. When I was settled safely on the back steps with my messy snack, the conversation began.
“Well, how was your trip to Myrtle’s?” Mother began. “I sure missed having coffee with you in the mornings.”
“Ooh, I did too! It was fine, but I sure was glad to get home. Myrtle’s a good woman, but she’s got kind’a snooty since she married Joe Jackson an’ he’s got a little somethin’. Well, I guess she always was a touch snooty. Mama always said her mama had her nose in the air. I guess Myrtle got it from her. She sure didn’t get it from me. Anyhow, me an’ Myrtle didn’ coffee in the kitchen even one time. Wednesday, while Myrtle was a’gittin’ her hair done, I slipped out an’ helped Thelma, the woman that comes in to help a couple of days a week. I got to know her last time I was there. I cleaned the refrigerator an’ stove while Thelma was a’ironin’ so we had a fine visit. Then I made sure the back door was locked and me an’ Thelma sat a few minutes an’ had coffee. I probably wouldn’a had to lock the door with that yappy little dog o’ Myrtle’s, but I sure didn’ want Thelma to git caught a’settin an’ a’gittin’ in trouble on my account. I’d brung her a pound cake from home ‘cause I remembered how much she loved the one I’d brought Myrtle the last time. They are so much richer made with yard eggs and homemade butter. Yeah, I always thought a lot o’ Thelma. We had a fine visit.”
https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2016/04/30/miss-laura-maes-house-part-13/
Sew and Sew
In the years after my big 4-H apron failure, I had little interest in sewing. Mother did take time to show me how to use her “new” second-hand electric machine enough to sew up rips. She was a barely adequate seamstress with only the basic skills to show me, even though she made most of our clothes. She avoided challenges steering away from fussy details.
Mother rarely took time for mending, so if I got a rip, I was on my own. Of course, I mastered sewing on buttons. I think one afternoon she guided me through making a simple gathered skirt on a waist band. The button at the waist had a wide overlap, making it ok without a zipper. The waistband had no interfacing to make it hold its shape. My stitching wavered. All in all, it was tacky and amateurish. It screamed homemade!
In the eighth grade, all girls had to take home economics. I made a flannel robe with a snap front. All went well till I had to sew braid down the front panel, covering the snaps. I had trouble keeping the braid lined up over the snaps. I broke several sewing machine needles by sewing too close to the edge of the snaps. I think the department was running out of needles, so my teacher did the last few inches. The robe was an improvement over the skirt I’d made at home with Mother’s help.
I was delighted to get a B on it, but I think the teacher had had enough! I wore that robe till it shredded. I felt like I’d learned quite a bit.
The Christmas I Hated My Gifts
The same Christmas I got Rocky the Rocking Horse, the best Christmas present of my young life, and Monkey, my sidekick(until I left him outside for the dogs to chew up), I got a big hard, plastic baby-doll with molded hair. It came with a bottle, was dressed in pajamas and had exactly one diaper. That diaper was history once Mother demonstrated its amazing ability to pee its diaper. It made me mad when I saw the baby doll, anyhow, since I’d told Mother, “I don’t want a doll. I hate dolls.” The wet diaper was the last straw. I pitched it into the bowels of the toy box to keep company with Tinker Toys, broken crayons, and last year’s despised doll.
Before Christmas this year when Mother asked what I wanted, my list included a live pony, cowboy boots, pistols and holsters and a real monkey in a cowboy suit. My list did not include a doll. Insanely, she had insisted, “But, every little girl has to get a doll. Now what kind do you want?”
Remembering last year’s floppy baby doll, I tried to come up with something I could stomach. I heard girls at school say they wanted a Bride Doll. In my complete disinterest, I forgot exactly what kind of doll to ask for. “Uh, I GUESS a wedding doll would do.” I didn’t want one, but at least it wasn’t a stupid baby doll. When another baby doll showed up under the tree, I was disgusted, thinking I had confused Mother into thinking I wanted a “wetting doll, not a “wedding doll.” Daddy handed me my final gigantic gift from under the tree. Since I’d already gotten Rocky the Rocking Horse as a pony substitute and a stuffed monkey instead of real-live monkey in a cowboy suit, this was my last shot at pistols and a holster set. I ripped into the package, and horror of horrors, discovered a tin tea-set with a Dutch Boy and Girl on a background of blue and yellow tulips. Mother went into raptures over it.
“Oh, I always wanted a tea-set like this when I was a little girl.” Well, if she’d had that tea-set and I had a feather up my butt, we’d have both been tickled to death. Fortunately, I’d learned long ago to keep my mouth shut when I didn’t like presents. Rocky and Monkey and I went on our way, making the best of that Christmas. That tea-set, still in the box, went under my bed.
Months later, one of the neighbors died. I didn’t get to go to the funeral, of course, but my cousin did. It sounded pretty entertaining to me. We decided to stage our own. I scavenged through the toy box and found my Christmas doll and dug the tea-set out from under my bed. Dumping the dishes, I lined the box with one of Mother’s better towels and we prepared the body for burial. My cousin Sue and I conducted the services, complete with plenty of hymns and wailing. My brother Billy and Cousin Troy attended, but only because we promised to provide penny candy afterward. It was a lovely service, the burial site mounded up with gorgeous roses we’d rounded up from the bushes belonging to Mrs. Dick, the seventh-grade teacher who lived next to us. Mother made us return the roses to Mrs. Dick and apologize, though I can’t imagine they’d have been much use to her since we’d snapped them all off right below the head. There would have been enough of them to fill a tub for a romantic rose bath, though I seriously doubt the lady was in the mood judging from the expression on her face when we apologized.
Nutsrok 