A Flabbergasted Winner

Flabbergasted, Surprised and Astonished

Have you ever been totally astonished? Even flabbergasted? (That's one of those words that just sounds exactly like what it means. Love those kinds of words.) But back to being flabbergasted. I was last Wednesday when my book, Love Comes Home, won the Selah Book of the Year Award. 

My books have been in the running for prizes before. The Believer was a finalist for the Carol Awards given out by the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) group. The Outsider was a finalist for the ECPA Fiction Book of the Year and Angel Sister was up for RT Book Review Magazine's Inspirational Book of the Year once. Sort of one of those always a bridesmaid and never a bride situations. And so when I found out my book, Love Comes Home, was a finalist for a Selah Award in the Historical Romance Category, I was excited because it's great to even be a finalist, but I didn't expect to win. Not at all. 

However, I did decide to attend the banquet because the place where it was being held, Ridgecrest, North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains looked like such a peaceful and beautiful place when I checked it out on the internet. And it was. A plus was that it's not all that far from my daughter's house in South Carolina. So going to the awards banquet in order to have a couple of days to unwind at Ridgecrest and then a visit with my daughter seemed a good idea. Not only would I have an excuse to dress up, I would enjoy seeing some writing friends I knew would be there. I could sit at my table and clap and be happy for the winners. 

I Won!!

Then amazingly enough Love Comes Home won the Selah Award for the Christian Historical Romance. That was a wow right there. But when they announced the Book of the Year and Love Comes Home won that too, that's when the wow went straight to flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. But Eva Marie Everson, who was presenting the awards, had a plaque with my name engraved on it. And she gave it to me! I was smiling, with a few tears mixed in, all night. Felt just like I was at the Oscars or something. Well, maybe not exactly like that. But it was exciting and fun to have my book win. Oh, and Darrell and I also had a relaxing day enjoying the scenery and peace and quiet at Ridgecrest too.

Don't Forget About the Mother's Day Contest

One more week to get your entry in for my contest celebrating mothers. You can check out the prizes and details on my website Events Page. Some of you have been sending in stories about your mothers or special Mothers' Day stories. I appreciate all of you who enter and doubly appreciate you sharing a story. 

First here's one from Kim that made me smile.

My story about my mom isn’t from Mother’s Day, but rather my wedding day a few years ago. It’s my favorite mom story (and that says something because I have a lot!). My sisters and I helped mom pick out a new outfit for the wedding, she got her hair done at the same time I did, and I even gifted her with jewelry for the occasion. At the wedding and reception so many people told her that she looked great (and she did!), that she stopped me at one point and asked, “How bad do I normally look?” My mom has been gone nearly four years, but that story and many others make me smile when I want to cry.

Love that story, Kim. And here's one from Cam that seemed to fit Memorial Day weekend and did make me remember Mom. 

Your newsletter brought to mind my own mother’s battle with dementia...she passed away 5 years ago at the age of 95 no longer knowing her children. It was sad...she was a bright, up front, outgoing woman...who graduated from college at a time when women didn’t even consider going to college. She spent her life working as a teacher, and a secretary and, after retirement, volunteered so much that she won an award. She was a mother to be very proud of, and as I get older I realize that fact more and more. A dear uncle of mine told me once that after he lost his parents (my grandparents), never a day went by that he didn’t think of them.  And, oh, he was so right!

So...cherish the memories, remember the good days and always acknowledge that it’s ok to shed a few tears!

Thanks for the great advice, Cam. We do need to cherish the memories of our loved ones. And if your mother is still down here on earth with you, hug her and tell her how much you love her. 

A Sister Walk Back in Time

"For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to life one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands." ~Christina Rosetti

Took a walk with my sisters this afternoon and we attempted a selfie. Needed an extension on my arm. It wasn't quite long enough, but looks like our smiles are still showing. Sisters are good for smiles. 

In some ways, we took a walk back in time as we went to the farm where we grew up. When I was a young teen, I used to walk back into this wooded area every chance I got, especially in the fall when the trees started changing colors. There were several landmarks that I noted each time and so today I looked for those places. 

This old tree is one of them. It was along the main path and at its base was a rock with a hole in it. I always stopped there to give that rock another look. Now the tree is old, surely in its last days since only a few branches showed leaves. The rock was still at the base of the tree. Well, of course it was. Rocks don't get up and walk away, but the rock was covered with a thick layer of dirt and moss. I could have dug around and uncovered that hole in the rock, but I didn't. I left it undisturbed. It wouldn't have had the same wonder it had when I discovered it as a kid. No where near.

It was interesting to hear the landmarks my sisters had noted and remembered from their young days. A burr oak here. A persimmon tree there. And a creek or two. And what about that pond up on top of the hill? Or where was the hickory nut tree where we used to gather nuts in the fall? 

We walked and walked. We talked and talked. We laughed and wondered why we weren't seeing more deer. Guess we forgot about the talking and laughing. We looked up at the tree tops and down at the late season flowers. We began to wonder if we'd ever see civilization again, but we did see trees. Beautiful hardwood trees that are taking over the property. And we were glad we had shared memories.

My sisters and I are sharing a lot right now as we go through all Mom's things in her house. Mom was the last one standing and in her house, she stored the memories of two extended families. Those memories are being passed down to us and to our children now. So many things with little or no market value but that are invaluable to us because in those things reside memories. 

That's what our walk did too. Rekindled memories of when we were teens and wandered through those trees. The trees weren't the same. They were better since the hardwood trees are beginning to smother out the cedars. A beautiful place to walk and share with my sisters and to remember. 

Do you have special places you can share with your siblings? 

"God said you'll need somebody to drive you crazy, to get you in trouble, to know you as no one else does, to love you when no one else will ...And so He made a sister!"

Sorting through the Odds & Ends of Mom's Life

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. ~William Morris

Mom's been gone for over a month now. For a while it's felt like she's still at the memory care facility and I need to go see about her. But that's not so. She doesn't need anybody to see about her now. She's in a better place. Her smile is back. She's laughing and glad to finally be "home" with her mother and dad. She would sometimes say when she had a moment of clarity before the dementia got worse that she was ready to go on except she didn't want to leave us. Then at the end she no longer remembered us so perhaps that made it easier for her to leave. 

We've begun going through her things. So far we've just scratched a little of the surface, but already we're seeing things with no real value except that they meant something to Mom. All the odds and ends of a life well lived. There's the newspaper article with my picture when one of my earlier books was published. Then we find a certificate she received for work with the Homemakers. We go through piles of bird magazines because she did love her birds. We find enough greeting cards and stationery to fill a shopping bag. I know she intended to send each and every card to her many friends. The old Scrabble game that dates back to our childhood is in a shirt box. She saved it even though someone gave her one of the deluxe game boards that swiveled and had little pockets for the tiles. We found the dictionary so well used as she worked her crossword puzzles that it was falling apart. 

Mama's memory is soaked into everything we pick up. We find Dad's jacket with his horseshoe champion patch sewn on it. And there in the back of a closet are his clay court croquet mallets. We take garbage bags full of things to Goodwill and put other garbage bags in the trash. But we also have piles we keep for ourselves. Things we can't seem to part with. I think we're all going to have to build on a storage room. And we haven't even started on the real memory drawers. 

But it has to be done and I'm fortunate to have two sisters to work through the memories with me. What can we save? What will we do with this? Do you want it? Where will we put it? How can we part with it? The questions echo between us.

Mom has keepsakes from her family and from Dad's family too. And now we are going to have keepsakes too. But the best keepsake is all the memories of times with her. We will part with what we have to with sadness, but we'll never part with the memory of her love.  

Have you had to sort through a loved one's things? What was the hardest part of that for you?

Grandma Camp and Book Clubs

Did you ever go to "grandma" camp? That's what I call it when the grandkids come to spend a few days. We don't worry too much about anything except food on the table at mealtimes, having plenty of Popsicles and doing something fun. One of the things we did with them this year was go fishing. I think my son had taken his twin boys fishing already but without fishing success. We picked the right day, the right pond, and the right bait. I don't do the fishing stuff. That's their Pa's expertise. But I went along to enjoy seeing them and to make sure nothing but fish got hooked or fell in the water or ... well, you know the drill. 

Thank goodness my other son was along to help with taking hooks out of the fish. They were catching and releasing, and as my son told his wife when she came, they weren't fishing they were "catching." Seven kids fishing and seven kids caught fish. Even my granddaughter who freaks at the sight of a bug, was putting worms on hooks and pulling fish out of the pond. I was amazed. But just take a look at this little guy's face when he looked at the big fish he pulled in. He told everybody after that about his "big mouth bass." 

They had fun. Grandma and Pa got tired but enjoyed getting to spend time with the kids. It was a rough week for us. Losing my mom last Saturday and her funeral this week. We had already planned the kids coming to stay while my son and his wife went on a business trip. Having the kids kept me hopping and didn't leave much time for thinking. That will come. I'll miss seeing Mom and hugging Mom, but she was ready to move on to glory. 

Another thing already planned was a visit to the Lexington Senior Citizen Book Club. I love book clubs and I like it when I'm able to visit with the club. This was a great group of readers. They read my book, Scent of Lilacs. (By the way, it's still a free download if you haven't grabbed it for your e-reader yet.) They had some great comments and then tried to stump me with questions about Hollyhill and Jocie and friends. It's always interesting to hear what other people think about the stories that I write. Are you part of a book club? I'd love to hear from you if you are. 

And it will be fun to know what memories you have of "grandma" camps when you were a kid or maybe you're the grandma making fun sleepovers for your grandkids. Share a story if you want. I love getting your comments here too.

Wednesday I may come up with another mystery picture contest. Meanwhile, if you're a member of the Book Club Network, you can come check out Revell Books giveaway there. 5 copies of Love Comes Home and 5 copies of several other authors' books too. Revell's Facebook page featured Love Comes Home on their Fiction Friday. If you see this before 10:30 a.m. Monday you can still hop over to their page and leave a comment to be in that drawing. 

Thanks for dropping by and don't forget to tell me about your memories of "grandma" camp.

The Saddest Disease - Dementia

"I want to go home." That's my mother's constant desire these days as her dementia continues to worsen. She's not talking about heaven as some people might think. She's quick to say she's not ready to move up to heaven just yet. Most of the time, the home she's talking about is her mother's home where she grew up. This is a picture of Mom when she was around sixteen or seventeen with that mother she wants to see and her older sister, Evelyn. Mom's on the right and Evelyn is on the left. Evelyn went to business school after high school and she looks very business like in this photo. 

 

Sometimes, but not as often, the home my mother wants to go to is the home when I was a kid. At those times, she might be thinking my sisters and I are young and playing out in the yard. She needs to watch us and cook supper for my father. She can't understand why people keep telling her she is at home when she recognizes nothing around her. She no longer remembers where the bathroom is in this house where she's been living for over twenty-five years. The furniture is new to her, even those pieces that she's had since her early married days. She has no idea where all the knickknacks sitting around on the shelves came from. She's forgotten how and where she gathered them or inherited them when others in the family passed on.

 

Harder to explain, she thinks the pictures in the magazines are real at times and the people on television are actually right there in the room with us. She gets irritated at them when they keep talking and ignore her. Last week when I was here, I started watching the UK ballgame with her. By the end of the first half she was saying she thought it was time for those boys (the ballplayers) to go to bed. Usually by the time darkness falls, she's tired and resigned to staying at this house one more night.

 

I've quit trying to tell her that she is at home and just say we have to stay at this house. It's nice and warm. Has all the conveniences and yes, it does have bedrooms and her gown is in one of the bedrooms. That's always a relief for her. Of course, there have been times when she refused to put on her gown and wore her clothes to bed. I assume so that she would be ready to go when somebody finally remembered to show up to take her "home."

 

At first it was difficult for me to lie so blatantly to my mother. But now I say things like Dad's working late in the fields. Perhaps picking corn by the harvest moon. Or he's getting the hay in before the rain. We tell her that her mother is visiting relatives out of town. I tell her that we'll have to wait until tomorrow to go "home." When she says she drove the car down this morning or was just at the grocery store, I nod and pretend that very thing happened. When she says Ann came and got the kids, I say, that was good. 

 

I lie over and over again. But as I wrote on here once before, the truth no longer matters to my mother. She has lost all the truths of her life except for that dream of going back to when she was young. To when she was needed. To when life was fresh and easier. To when she can almost remember how things should be. She doesn't remember that time right either. It gets all mixed up with what's happening now and even what she sees on the TV when it's on. We often have to avoid or turn off the news so she won't identify with the bad things happening. 

 

So we continue taking it one day at a time and sometimes one hour at a time. And it is so very sad. I think it is harder for my sisters and me than her other caretakers because we know what Mom has lost. We know what we have lost. And we're sorry, so very sorry to have lost our mother this way. We still have her with us, but we've lost the mother who was our friend, our biggest supporter, our encourager, and maybe the mother that someday we will wish we could go "home" to be with.

 

I don't write about Mom too often here because it is so sad. But I know many of you have prayed for Mom and for me, and I appreciate that so much. Prayer has been the "medicine" that has worked best for Mom when things were really going south. So thank you all.

 

On a lighter note, keep in mind you can check out the Bookfun Network site and leave an answer there to one of my easy questions for a chance to win a copy of my book, Christmas at Harmony Hill. More opportunities to win the book or other prizes will be showing up so stay tuned or sign up for my newsletter if you haven't already. Also, you can still leave a comment here until Wednesday to throw your name in the hat for Jan Watson's books.

 

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a blessed and happy Thanksgiving!

 .

 

 

 

 , .

This Old House - Saying Goodbye

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." ~Harold Wilson

Things change. That's the one thing in life you can be sure will happen. Maybe not every day, but then again maybe every day. Sometimes we want to hold time in a bottle and keep the world from changing for a little while, but we can't. The sun comes up and goes down. The seasons change. Children become adults. New babies are born. To everything there is a season and throughout it all the one everlasting constant is that things change. 

The top picture is the homeplace being torn down - its logs showing for the first time in well over a hundred years. I don't know how old the original house is. The second picture is the way the house looked in I'm guessing the 1930's or 40's, with some of my great aunts in the yard. You can see the front porch behind them where many afternoons were spent visiting, perhaps breaking beans or shelling peas. My grandfather sat on this porch during his last years, a flyswatter in his hand to kill the pesky flies. My children swung on the porch swing "high as the moon" and sometimes off to dreamland. Inside are even more memories. Overnight visits almost every Friday with my beloved aunt. Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with little salt cellars at every plate. It's where I first touched the keys of a typewriter. It's where my children came later to spend the nights with their beloved granny and granddad after my aunt passed on. A memory not only in every room, but in every board of every wall, every wooden step. And now the house has been sold. The new owners had it inspected. The house was condemned and is being torn down. Change can make a person's heart hurt.  

I stopped the other night to ask the new owners if I could take some pictures. So even though seeing the house meeting its end is sad for me, I also found the log structure that had been revealed fascinating. Look at the rows of rocks carefully placed between the logs like a miniature rock fence before the builders added the chinking. I can imagine the men building this, sawing down the trees that surely were growing so majestically in this place before the settlers came and began clearing them away to grow crops and build houses like this one. This house was bigger than many I have seen in history books, and it would have taken several men to get the logs in place. It was built with care and skill and has lasted maybe two centuries or near to it. But all things change. 

"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress." ~Bruce Barton

Progress can't be stopped. The new owners deserve a nice house on their property. The house being gone won't make the memories disappear. It'll just make the family, at least those of us left, who lived there and made those memories a little sad. 

Does change sometimes make you sad? 

The Winners but the Biggest Winner - Me

Tonight I've finally got the winners of my Scent of Lilacs Celebration Giveaway. It wasn't easy, let me tell you. I pick the winners by random numbers. Each e-mail I get goes into a special folder and the sender gets numbered according to when I receive the e-mail. Well, imagine my extreme distress this a.m. when I click on that folder and it shows a number as to how many e-mails are stored there, but then instead of the messages coming up this little box comes up that says the folder is empty. All the other mail folders work fine. Messages pop right up. Panic time!! I thought I might have to wade through all my sent e-mails to try to figure out which of you had entered the contest. But then I tried my iPhone and wonder of wonders the messages came up in the folder on it. Not sure how or why that happened or why they don't show up on my desk computer or my laptop, but do on the phone, but I'm just glad they did. I'm going to tell you who won. Really, I promise I am! But first let's enjoy two more grandmother stories. 

Donna shares a wonderful story of how sometimes the Lord blesses us in the midst of troubling times when the last thing we're expecting are blessings. Here's her story -

 I have many stories I could tell of my grandmothers, but my greatest grandmother blessings I actually received as an adult.  Following a stroke (her granny's stroke), I helped my dad and my aunt care for my granny by staying 2-3 nights a week with her.  I would work all day in a classroom, drive a morning & afternoon bus route, then go to my granny's house, cook supper, and then do whatever granny needed, which most nights had to do with quilting. She couldn't cut fabric anymore, nor use her sewing machine, but she could still hand piece and quilt. So many times I would be so tired and not want to set up a new quilt top in the frames or cut out quilt squares & place in ziplock baggies so she wouldn't get confused. I didn't realize it at the time, but while I did these things for her, she was bestowing on me the blessings of knowing the stories of her life. She gave me the desire to write and share similar hardships, trials, faith, & love with others. Later at her bedside as she was going to sit at the feet of Jesus, I realized that she became an integral part of the woman I had become. 

Next Rosemary shares how an object can keep memories alive for us.  

"I would like to share a little story about my grandmother. Us kids 

 would go over to visit and she would give us slices of fresh homemade Portuguese bread, with butter on it and serve us little tea cups with tea in it. We would sit with her in her favorite chair which was in the kitchen. She had a large black iron stove that had the metal round tops that would come off. You must be able to picture the stove I am talking about; anyway, we would be warm and cozy. That same chair we sat on with her, my mom sat in it and would watch out the window to see if the bus was stopping to see if my dad was coming to visit, he was a sailor and stationed in Boston Massachusetts - 1951 ...  yep !!!  well, I sat with my grandmother in that chair, and I fed and rocked my granddaughter in that same chair, reupholstered, in 2003 and I still have that chair in my sitting room!!!  I love that chair and its memories!!!!

And I have loved the memories and stories of your grandmothers. I read every one of them, often with a smile and sometimes with a nod of the head that yes, I have felt some of the same things you felt. You have all been such a blessing to me that I am, without a doubt, the biggest winner tonight. Thank you! 

But there are a few of you who are also winners. Drum roll, please! The 1st place winner of the lilac Grandmother's Bible is Sharma D. of KY. The two 2nd place winners are Diane K. (not sure which state yet) and Rita W. of CA. They will get a grab bag book by a Christian author and their choice of one of my books. And Tawnya P. of  WI won't be able to say "I never win" any longer. She wins the lilac candle and her choice of one of my books. I've sent all of you winners e-mails and I'm waiting to hear back from you which books you are choosing as your prizes.

Now what memories should I ask you to share with me on my next Celebration giveaway? 

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.  ~From the television show The Wonder Years