The Year

I was feeling a little emotional today.  I was making perhaps the fifth apple crisp of the season and I had the radio tuned to the station that plays Christmas music starting right after Thanksgiving.  The song playing was one my Mom loved to sing at Christmas and I began to think about her while I was peeling the apples.  I got an awful big lump in my throat.  I'm finding that music is what brings memories of Mom faster than anything else.  I finally had to turn the radio off or risk having a salty apple crisp.

As you can see by the pictures, we had a bumper crop of apples this year.  I've made so many batches of applesauce I've lost count.  We've given apples and applesauce away and I'm beginning to put the sauce in the freezer.  I have a bowl of applesauce almost every morning--a bowl of applesauce a day keeps the doctor away.  They are wonderful to eat right off the tree, too.  What an incredible thing it is to be able to pick fruit in your own back yard.  My husband's Mom used to pick grapes, avocados, apricots, lemons, oranges--she lived in California then.

It's the time of year to compose the Christmas letter and that requires reviewing the year.  Anybody who has been reading this blog knows what I've mostly been occupied with--first my Mom's health, then her death, now the house/brother situation.  It's not over yet.  The house is all packed up.  Next is the cleaning, which will be extensive.  My brother is currently living in a room attached to the garage that my other brother lived in for about a year.  He has to use the kitchen and bathroom in the house.  I talked to a real estate guy yesterday.  He was Mom's lawyer so he knows about my brother and his difficulty finding housing.  He'll be meeting me at the house next week to talk things over, let me know how we should proceed from here.  I don't expect the house will go on the market before the first of 2012.

The holidays will be strange without Mom around so I'm glad we've decided to go to Utah to spend them with Michael's family.  We'll take a trip down to Las Vegas, too, and see a couple of shows.  Christmas will be white and noisy in Utah with the nieces and nephews.  My mind won't be on my Mom as much as if we were home.

Other things happened this year besides all that involved Mom.  Michael got tons of jobs done in the yard, which he listed for me to put in the Christmas letter.  I had a big triumph--I got published finally.  I got word this month from GreenPrints that they found a place for my piece in their December issue.    
(www.greenprints.com) That was so exciting!

We had lots of alumni lunches and we actually went on trips to Vegas, Reno and Alaska and we took short breaks for overnight trips to a couple of local casinos.  And I attended a writer's retreat in November and went to visit Ali and Zuzu in Wisconsin in October.  So we got some pleasure out of the year, too.

My hope for next year is that there won't be as much drama and heartbreak.  I want things to get back to normal and a little boring.  Boring can be comforting.