Its that time of year again, my beautiful friends. First off, Merry Christmas to all!!! I hope that the holidays bring you much joy, love, and peace for you and your families. I am, of course, working today in our FC to ensure that those of you who bought last minute gifts for loved one will make it there with our same day delivery. To be honest, I don't mind being here. As a chef or a bouncer, I am used to working on the holidays or my birthday, so now working for Amazon, I am use to this as well. It keeps me out of the apartment and keeps me out of trouble.
In truth, the holidays have not been holidays for a long time. In May 2004, I lost the center of my world in my paternal Grandmother, Dorothy Williams. If there ever was the epitome of grace, love, compassion, life... it would be her. If Love had a currency, it would be my grandmothers image stamped on the coin. All year long, she would knit, sew, craft, everything she could. I would come over to her apartment and she would be sewing something. She would do this all year long, then during Christmas, she and her local church sewing club would donate everythi9ng that they made to our Riley's Children's Hospital so the children there battling through the toughest part of their young lives would have something to open from "Santa". I drove these gifts to Riley once and it took two car loads stuffed to dangerously full. She baked magnificent pumpkin bread for Thanksgiving, she baked heavenly cookies for Christmas making a dozen platters of a dozen different cookies. My favorite were alwayst5he snickerdoodles ( although the date nut pinwheels, Fried cookies, and oatmeal raisin were always devoured with equal enthusiasm). Her cookies were legendary and those who received these gifts were truly blessed. After she passed, I inherited her old sunbeam mixer, and I still use it today. I took up the mantel of trying to do the Christmas baking. I would bake for up to 14 hours just to duplicate whom all she baked for and her cookies. How she did this for so many years was amazing. At her funeral, Junior (who was my mothers boyfriends groundskeeper) came up to me and said that for years he loved her baking, but when she started making his own platter of cookies, he felt like he was a part of family. It was always touching to me to see how many people whose lives she had touched come pay their respects. Its been 10 years and my heart still aches for her as if it was only yesterday.
If you have people in your lives whom hold your heart as lovingly and tenderly as my grandmother held mine, please cherish these holidays with them. learn from them, emulate them, hold them as the standard that you want your lives to be lived and honor them by loving others as they love you. If there was any holiday with that I could impart, it would be this. Have a safe and wonderful holidays, my dear SG friends. I hope that your lives are as enriched as my heart still is because of This wonderful woman.