I believe as we all grow older, we remember so many things -- good things, happy memories from years past.
I lost a dear cousin this past week, and as I grieved him, I remembered the good memories I had stored inside my memory bank. I remember the summers I spent at his house and going to revival at Heron Baptist Church for a week during the hot summertime.
I remember my aunts’ cold cellar where she kept her canned vegetables and things that needed preserving for the winter ahead and how I always loved to go down into that cool dark space. I can almost see the small dining room, just off the kitchen and the table with the oil cloth where we sat to eat meals.
When I was just a young child, we always gathered at my grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner, and he and his family were always there along with extra aunts, uncles and cousins. We would walk down into the woods where the overflowing streams ran swiftly over the moss-covered rocks and to the persimmon tree that grew on the bank. There was always quite a number of cousins around, as there were six siblings in my mother’s family and all of them had several children so there was always an abundance of cousins to keep us company.
As I have grown older, I have lost close touch with all these special kinfolks as their parents have all gone home, and people just don’t have family reunions the way we did back in the “good ole days.”
I have lost several of these cousins, but several are still here, and I just wonder why I let this loss of camaraderie happen. We get so caught up in our families, our jobs, our passions of life that we just stop visiting, even by telephone or getting together for a meal ever so often.
I realize COVID stopped lots of this closeness, but we were guilty of this lapse in closeness even before this malady hit us.
That is one thing I want to change this year: to have weekly or at the very least monthly meals where my family gets together to share our lives and enjoy a meal, even if it’s just an order of pizza. I want my children and their children to have some of the cherished memories that I have of growing up in a large family and the attachment with cousins.
I am making it a mission for me to find all my cousins’ addresses or phone numbers and touch base and catch up on their lives and relive some of the most precious and unforgettable memories of our yesteryears.
My grandmother was an excellent “from scratch” cook, and she always had some of her tea cakes for us to grab.
Tea Cakes
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup sugar
¼ cup butter
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
Cream butter and add sugar and well beaten egg and flavoring and remaining ingredients. She never used a cookie cutter she just rolled them out and cut different shapes with a knife. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes or until edges are browned.
