Grains of Sand

Christmas Memories 5 Today marks the anniversary of my mother's passing. But please don't think this post is going to be a "downer." On the contrary, though that Christmas some eighteen years ago was the worst Christmas my brother and I will ever experience, it morphed into perhaps the best one anyone could have planned. I didn't have the same plans that God did for that Christmas. My father had passed away three months earlier, and my greatest desire was to make this first Christmas without dad a good one for mom. The baking and gifts that I planned to take north with me were done when I got the call to tell me that mom had suffered a massive heart attack. I wondered if I would make it home in time to see her. All night on the bus (the only way I could make the trip north just days before Christmas) I willed the driver to go faster. When I arrived at the hospital direct from the bus station, mom actually looked good. By the afternoon, she was failing and shortly ...

Christmas Memories 4 My mother was ill for many years and there were times when she looked for ways to lighten her load of responsibilities. One Christmas she decided that cooking a turkey was just too much work. Traditionally some kind of bird is required for Christmas dinner so she chose to buy a big chicken. The day came and she put the chicken into the oven to cook while she prepared the rest of the meal. Everything looked wonderful, and smelled equally good as it sat on the dining room table waiting to be enjoyed. The chicken was served. We took a bite of the long-anticipated feast. Tough—as those proverbial nails; so tough that the bird was almost impossible to chew. Was my mother annoyed! That big "chicken" wasn't a chicken at all. It had been, in its former life, a rooster. We struggled through, soothing mom's ruffled feathers as we gamely plowed through the meal. Now I don't know what makes a rooster tough. I do know that there are even some hens that mus...