Simple things

A warm hug from your devoted dog, a fluffy snowfall, the aroma of the turkey broth (from the Thanksgiving bird's carcass) simmering on the stove--all simple things that bring us joy!  These are some of my favorite things.  As I find myself well into the last half of my life on this earth, I also find myself remembering more of those memories from the past.  After all, that really is all that we can depend on--our memories.  My siblings will probably agree that those days when we grew up in a much less complicated era, were some of the happiest, and this time of the year causes me to reflect.  Growing up in a small town with two very frugal parents, we had no idea as children, that we were poor.  We had everything!! With five acres to romp on, and always a lot of snow, we would bundle up and head out to build snowmen, and snow forts, and throw snowballs.  As we continued to get colder and wetter, we would eventually relent and go in to warm by the oil stove in our small living room.  (We eventually got a wall furnace, but we couldn't all back up to that as easily as the oil stove.) Our thin knit gloves, and the wool "headscarves" that we girls wore didn't keep us very warm, but we sure had fun!  Mom would make snow ice cream.  It had to be clean snow of course, and then she would pour homemade syrup over it.  We had lots of chickens and a cow, so dad would make homemade eggnog.  I still make old fashioned fudge that you cook over the stove and stir forever.  Mom always made that at Christmas time.  I always saw beautiful trees at my friend's homes and vowed that I would have one when I grew up...and I did.  But we always got our tree Christmas eve and Dad would bring it home....he probably got it for a few cents and it was always such a pathetic looking tree on a wooden stand.  It truly was a Charlie Brown tree.  But after we put a lonely string of lights, and the worn tinsel and garland on and added the few old ornaments as well as the homemade ones from school projects...it was beautiful. I sit here and look at my 5 Christmas trees all decorated with lovely glass ornaments collected over the years and still remember the simpler times with family and homemade fudge and that beautiful scraggly tree.  We got a silver aluminum tree later.....not nearly as memorable. 

Not so much of a simple thing is our new Mac computer above.  Note that we had a wet bar in this area and we decided to make a home for the new computer.  My dad would be so amazed at the technology at hand now for all of us and as I post this blog, I still sometimes long for those wonderful simple things. We  had a radio as our only means of getting  news of Santa, the old wind-up Victrola, the old oil stove and fudge and the Charlie Brown tree.