Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Family & Life Stories

Thank God it’s Monday, again. I always look forward to every Monday. They’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, have a happy Monday.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we’re now approaching the “hustle-and-bustle” season. A few of my favorite things about November, besides Thanksgiving and the family gathering, is that it observes, among other things, Family Stories Month and Life Writing Month.

The latter is meant to celebrate and encourage people to put their personal stories and life experiences in writing. Documenting memories requires writers to reflect on their past, which is already often done between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Life writing preserves one’s history for their family and future generations.

Just last month I wrote in Family Stories of Women’s Small Business about some of Mom’s life and family stories, which she often shared in her newsletters and books. I mentioned that I wanted to put all of her excerpts together into one ‘Family & Life Stories’ book. Unfortunately, I don’t have all of her newsletters so I’m sure I’m missing a lot of of her stories.

When it comes to gatherings, nothing seems to bring people together more than food. That’s why Thanksgiving is one of the most favorite family gatherings among Americans. All-in-all, we probably love food almost as much as we love each other (sometimes more).

Seriously, though, cooking together and eating together is a great start to sharing those family and life stories. I think that any time spent collectively, as a family, bonding and enjoying each other’s company, is priceless. This reminds me of a wonderful idea I’ve often promoted in my blogs: recording your family’s stories and memories during family gatherings.

I wish I could go back in time to our family’s holiday visits at my grandparents’ homes with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and do just that, myself. I can, however, make that my New Year’s resolution, going forward – recording our family’s stories and memories during our gatherings and maybe creating a “just because” family night once a month.

Somewhere along the way, generations have made “family time” a less important priority. Lindsey Veeh proposed in her timeless article, 6 Ways To Bring Your Family Closer Together (June 3, 2013), to “make Sunday night family night. Invite extended family over to promote bonding with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives.”

The benefits of having Sunday suppers (without electronics) can actually improve family’s ties. Simply, by setting aside uninterrupted time for quality conversations during at least one family meal a week, has been proven to strengthen personal bonds.

Traditionally, during a Sunday supper, you’re likely learn more about your family – things like their current personal goals, hopes, concerns, struggles – as well as their favorite stories and jokes. Pass around the old family albums. Simple prompts like old photographs can induce memories of friends and family and life’s special moments.

Family is one of the most important gifts we’ll ever have in life. Both of my parents felt that way, as did their own parents. Me and my husband and our children feel the same way, too.

We should celebrate our family every day and cherish the time we can spend together. Celebrating family-togetherness is just another one of those things we should do every day – rather than just on special occasions.

“They” say a picture is worth a thousand words – just start writing about what you see and remember. Don’t worry about grammar, sentence structure, or punctuation (yet). Focus on getting the words and thoughts down, first – you can organize and restructure them later.

So many times, in my own writing efforts, my OCD tendencies have been known to take over, correcting grammar and punctuation right off the bat – as I go. However, as a result, I often lose some of my ideas and my train of thought.

I’ve learned that by, first, jotting my ideas down as they come, in any random order, I can later elaborate more on each of them and then put them into some kind of flowing order of thought. I admit it kind of rubs the wrong way on my OCD tendencies but it does work well.

Photography has come a very long way in a comparatively short amount of time since the arrival of digital cameras and SD cards for the masses, made available to normal consumers in the 1990s. Now, pictures are often used as a form of record-keeping, as well as a form of learning.

I’m grateful that Mom’s written stories of our family and ancestors are bonus “records” that can accompany her various photo albums and scrapbooks. Mom and Dad, their parents, and their grandparents, all believed pictures were important records of our lives and ancestry.

I often go through all of their old albums that I inherited, recalling many wonderful memories of special occasions. I scanned all of their old photos, recipes, cards, letters, and other bits of our “family history” and put them on USBs to share with my kids and siblings, as well as for safe-keeping.

Now, thanks to the digital age, we all get to have copies of their albums on one small, convenient USB stick. Digital picture frames have even expanded on our family picture-viewing pleasure.

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

My Cup Runneth Over – And I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, pp. 6 & 7)

REDISCOVERING – OLD PHOTOGRAPHS

WRITER, DAVID MAZEL, in a Boston newspaper, talked about looking at old photographs, as if gazing into a lost world, and I know exactly how he feels. I was shuffling through a shoebox full of photos from years ago, feeling it was some other world entirely than the one in which we now lived…

Where warm memories could stir and awaken me to consider just how well we did with so little, as Paul and I and our five (now, adult) children developed our family enterprise. Over the years, some images, of how [our] recipe business began, have remained indelible.

Others, however, have changed; like the shifting patterns in a rotating kaleidoscope… From that very first article that I wrote for the Royal Oak Tribune [in 1950], when I was 14 years old, to the [last] issue of our Secret Recipes^TM Newsletter_©…the work has been, truly, a labor of love…

I must have spent hours studying the pieces I wrote in my early days – remembering where I was [and in] what I believed and expected from life when I wrote them.

There was always a certainty in each article [and] every book begun but not always finished, then, that life was good and surely God was a loving presence. This always carried me through. It still does.

Mom wrote a series of family stories, in her books and newsletter issues, about Dad’s grandma’s “Back Door Bakery”, in West Virginia, based loosely on decades old kin-folklore. Grandma operated the small bakery business out of her own home to help make ends meet, while raising many children and helping Grandpa run their farm, as well.

Mom wrote extensively about the family saga in her self-published cookbook, Mixed Blessings (March 1984), weaving the family stories in and around the recipes of that book, including some recipes that supposedly came from Grandma’s kitchen journal.

The stories seemingly began in her 1981 newsletters, however, after Grandma Pitzer had passed away and Dad got all of her photo albums and scrap books, as well as some other family records. Again, I say that looking at old photographs can induce memories of life’s special moments – and that’s where stories often start.

AGAIN, MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipe Report (Secret Recipe Report, St. Clair, MI; Volume 8, Number 5; Issue 89, May 1981; p. 8)

OLD FASHIONED TASTE – CLASSIC HONEY DESSERTS

AT “THE BACK DOOR BAKERY”, Grandma tried to keep the chores divided among the 11 children and Grandpa, to the point that life ran smoothly. But with the bakery attached to the back of the house, when all of the children were young and still living at home, confusion sometimes interfered and plans went awry!

Of course, Grandma blamed Grandpa. He wasn’t really a shiftless soul, as so many of Grandma’s sympathizing lady-friends thought. It was just that Grandpa made bad investments. She referred to him often as her “Jack-in the-bean-stalk” man.

She would send him off to town with a carriage full of her baked goods to sell and he would return with a handful of “magic beans” – just like Jack did in the fairy tale we all remember. Well, family talk claims that once Grandpa returned with a dozen beehives in exchange for a carriage full of fresh bakery products. Grandma… made Grandpa sleep in the cellar…

[GRANDPA’S ELIXIR]

KNOWING GRANDPA’S FONDNESS for “the grape”, imagine how he doctored up some of Grandma’s recipes in the bakery! Aunt Vivian tells of a time Grandma had the older girls glazing the tops of hot loaves of plain “Batter Bread” with a spiced honey and butter icing, to which dear Grandpa had added a generous “slug” of his private flask!

Well, the ladies of the Temperance Society were standing in line to get that marvelous “elixir” with the tranquilizing mysterious herbs that Grandpa whispered to them would restore their youth, erase old-age wrinkles, and put a man under their bed! Had Grandma known about that, Grandpa would’ve been assigned to the cellar for a whole year!

LAST THOUGHTS…

Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my memories of my mom, her memories, and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.

https://www.balboapress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001062253

IN CLOSING…

In honor of TODAY, being National Homemade Bread Day, and November, being National Raisin Bread Month, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Dark & Moist Raisin-Oatmeal Batter Bread”, like Rags & Roses (Orleans, MA); as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 148). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)]. As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.

#NationalHomemadeBreadDay

#NationalRaisinBreadMonth