I found this Momma Bread photo from ten years ago, and I thought about how I made yet another batch of it last week for Thanksgiving, slathered with roasted garlic harvested in June from our garden. This November, by the way, was the first year I didn’t plant next year’s garlic. It will be the first year there won’t be another garden here.
My children from ten years ago are now women, forging their way forward in a broken world. My husband and I celebrate our “pearl” wedding anniversary (30th) in January and are about to leave each other for two years, and that’s untrodden ground. All our parents from that wedding day are still with us, but we jump now with concern when a call comes from any of them.
Things feel precarious. And increasingly precious.
Truth? I’m just muddling along here, folks, and I screw up a lot. I remind myself to sit in gratitude. To look for the good. To focus on our love and unyielding support of each other. To allow everyone to have their privacy (you’ll notice I hardly ever write about my family anymore, although they are prominently featured, with consent, in Food for My Daughters and Bucket List).
I pray that I can handle my family’s future challenges with wit and grace and intelligence, which has always been my goal although I have yet to succeed at all three on the same day.
I pray for my loved ones’ safety in a changing world.
I pray that we are making the right decision about Uganda (the “Pearl of Africa”).
I just pray a lot, mostly while Traveling at the Speed of Bike. I go to my Thinking Rock, now that the Hand of God Tree is gone.
I went there yesterday.
I’ll probably go there over and over and over again in the coming months. To sit in gratitude. And to pray.
If interested, see the rest of my decade-ending “look back” so far this week:
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 