Health

I've had some time over the last week to think about health and how it can be both fragile and resilient. The fragility. I work hard at staying healthy. I try to do all the right things for my health. Still, one day I can be feeling great and then just a few short days later, something overtakes my body. 

Last week was one such week. Early in the week I felt energetic and was getting a lot done. By mid-week, I was feeling off, tired, and maybe like something was going on with my sinuses. Thursday afternoon I was in so much pain I wound up in an urgent care facility. I went from feeling on top of my game to what was the worst pain I've felt since childbirth in less than a week. I'm doing much better now (that's the resilience part). But it just amazed me how quickly things fell apart. I didn't even have a bad cold leading into this sinus infection.

I'm grateful for family members and friends who stepped in to assist this past week. As we were leaving the urgent care facility, we discovered our car's battery was dead. A friend from church came and gave us a jump, then followed us all the way home. My daughters and husband cooked and did everything for me so I could rest for a couple of days. My gratitude abounds.

I'm bouncing back. I'm getting back to cooking, cleaning, exercising, creating, and taking my turn to be there for my family members. I'm thankful that I got a head start on Valentine's planning before this past week. It wasn't by design, of course, which makes me all the more thankful. I'll be working on a couple of Valentine family favorites over the next couple of days. I hope your week is off to a great beginning!

"Valentine's Day is a Homemade Holiday, Really"

homemade holidays
hearts that I cut from red paper, using glue dots to attach to the inside of the kitchen windows-
-a fraction of the cost of commercial window decorations

Those were the words said to me by my daughter earlier today when we took a walk around the neighborhood and talked about this new month. Many people say that Valentine's Day is a commercial holiday, created and driven by storekeepers, florists, and greeting card companies. My family has historically taken a homemade approach to the holiday.

February 13, in the year my mother was 8 years old, my grandmother sat on the edge of my mother's bed, tucking her in for the night. After her bedtime prayers, my mother blurted out, "oh, by the way, I need Valentine cards for each of my classmates tomorrow." As moms, haven't we all had one of the these moments when our child informs us at the very last moment that they need a special X,Y, or Z for school tomorrow? (Mine was a princess costume for the 3rd grade play.)

After a moment of "ackkkkk!" my grandmother finished tucking my mother in and put her mind to creating some Valentine cards. As you would guess, this was back in a time when stores closed at 5 PM, so there would be no thought to purchasing cards. Even so, this was also during the Great Depression. Purchased cards for an entire class of schoolchildren would have been prohibitively expensive for my grandparents' budget. One thing my grandmother did have was oodles of creativity and supplies to match.

Friends of my grandparents owned a shop in town and had gifted my grandmother with their outdated wallpaper sample books. I'm not sure what my grandmother did with these books, but they came in handy this winter night. My grandmother stayed up till the wee hours of the morning, clipping and snipping the floral pages into fanciful shapes. At breakfast, my mother signed each lovely handmade Valentine. To my grandmother's satisfaction, my mother exclaimed upon returning home from school that her Valentine cards were the prettiest of the class. 

My own mother carried on a tradition of homemade holiday decorations, making cards with us when we were children, and handcrafting gifts. Perhaps this is where I get my own inspirations for creating holidays "from scratch" and now share with my own children. So, it's no wonder that my daughter would say that Valentine's Day is a homemade holiday. It's a legacy that was passed from my grandmother to my mother, to me, and now on to my own children.

Happy February, everybody!