Post #62 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Memoir Writing Contest Featuring Favorite Holidays
“Hey Matilda. Let’s have a KitchenScraps Holidays Contest.” When Kendra called me on August 21 with the theme for our September-October contest, we had no idea how many of you would respond. Looking back, this was a natural. We all have times of the year that are special. In the large number of entries that arrived in our electronic mailbox, we had some days that we’d never thought about as holidays. But, of course, they are. It just depends on one’s definition. We think you are going to enjoy all the stories we’ll be publishing.
Before moving on with the announcement of contest winners, we’d like to say that if you entered you are a winner because you moved outside your comfort zone and submitted your work for others to read and evaluate. Not everyone who submitted has placed in this specific contest. However, we thank you for the time and energy that you put into your work and urge you to enter one of our 2011 contests, which will be announced in January. We’re calling them 11 Memoir Writing Contests for 2011.
Drum Roll………………..
This was the hardest contest yet for us to judge because so many of the entries had intriguing elements — a great opening, evocative descriptions, touching stories, tempting recipes, and the list goes on. In the final analysis, we are quite happy with the results and invite you to congratulate the winners, read their stories as we publish them over the coming months, and share these gems with your friends.
Within each of our three winning categories, names are listed in alphabetical order.
We have two Grand Prize Winners, each will receive one of our Thai Silk Writing Journals. The two winners are:
Heather Summerhayes Cariou with her story we are publishing today — The Sweet Ghost of Christmas Past
Janet Grace Riehl with her story that will be published next week on her birthday — Passage into Elderhood: Happy 60th Birthday
We have four Honorable Mentions:
Tracy Kauffman-Wood — Easter Bonnet
Marguerite Kearns — How My Grandmother Risked Her Life for Votes for Women and Survived
Sharon Mortz — Mix Water, Flour and Eggs
Judy Watters — Groundhog’s Day 1956
And our Finalists are:
Catherine Alexander — Kerr Jars
Susan Berman — Bad News About Our First Maracaibo Christmas
Donna Donabella — The Night I Saw Santa
Connie Doty — Getting Ready for Christmas with First Graders
Mary Edge — The 1958 Christmas Tree
June Baker Jefferson — The Best Gifts
Carole Jones — Tradition
Debbie Weiss — The Sixth Night of Hanukkah
Jean Wong — Every New Year’s Eve
This week we are delighted to publish Heather’s winning story, just in time to take our thoughts to the holiday season and the bittersweet memories of family.
THE SWEET GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST
Heather Summerhayes Cariou
Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, Christmas in our house meant collecting pinecones from our yard, and frosting them with glitter to make a centerpiece. My younger sister Pam and I cut snowflakes out of white paper and taped them to the windows. With cotton balls, glue and more glitter, we fashioned quart-size milk bottles into snowmen to decorate the fireplace mantle.
We wrote letters to Santa Claus, care of Hengerer’s Department Store in Buffalo, hoping Forgetful the Elf would read them on Channel 7 TV. We eagerly awaited the first snow, each morning standing on tiptoe on our beds, craning our faces up to the window, anxious for the frosty miracle to occur. At last we woke up to a yard that looked as if it had been sprinkled with icing sugar. We raced in our pajamas to the front door and flung it open, leaping as our bare feet burned on the frozen cement stoop.
“Snow! Snow! Snow!” Our breath hung in the cold air like frozen lace.
The best part of Christmas, though, was the shortbread my mother, sister and I baked into buttery gold stars that melted in our mouths. Every year, full of anticipation, we opened the old red Purity Flour Cookbook to the familiar dog-eared recipe page, smeared with our fingerprints from holidays past. We dug out the Christmas music and played it all day long while we chopped and mixed and measured. We sang carols and fueled ourselves with the raw cookie dough and tea. We licked our fingers, green and red from sugar sprinkles, sticky with icing, and we laughed.
We cherished this ritual, bittersweet though it was. You see, we never knew from year to year if that particular Christmas would be my sister’s last, as she had been diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at the age of four.
Yet buoyed by a determination to never give up, and aided by treatments developed through continuing research, Pam was able to share our Christmas ritual well into our young adulthood.
When what was to be her last Christmas came, she was just shy of her 26th birthday. I remember how she sat at the end of the kitchen table, tethered to her now ever-present oxygen tank. The plastic oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth. Her shoulders rounded forward, rising and falling with the tide of her breath, riding an ocean of fatigue. She was so tired, tired of breathing, tired of hoping, but not yet tired of living, so she pulled hope along on the end of every labored breath. She creamed the butter in the big yellow mixing bowl, chopped the red and green maraschino cherries, and filled with delight, licked her sticky-sweet fingers, looked at me and laughed.
In that moment, as in so many others, Pam taught me both the necessity and power of creating joy in the midst of adversity. She believed that every day, and every relationship, could be a gift if we looked at it that way.
“If we take the chance of seeking out beauty in the world about us, every moment of every day can be treasured,” she once said. “I have learned that no matter what misfortunes or joys one may be faced with, life will surely go on…with love.”
I have honored my sister’s legacy by becoming a warrior on behalf of my own life, framing every experience I can with love, creating joy where I am able, and adopting her motto, “Never Give Up!”
This year as always, I will spend a day in December enjoying the ritual baking of shortbread cookies. Stars, holly and angels to melt in your mouth like buttered gold. I will put music on the stereo: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Bing Crosby. I will fuel myself through the afternoon with strong tea and raw cookie dough. Pam will be there with me in my heart, sharing her love, courage, faith, and her sparkling, contagious laughter. Together, we’ll make Christmas come alive once more.
Purity Flour Cookbook Christmas Shortbread Recipe
2 cups butter, softened
1 cup icing sugar (powdered sugar) or brown sugar (I use ½ and ½)
¼ tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
Cream butter with vanilla and sugar. Mix in flour a cup at a time. Split dough into two batches. Roll one batch out onto floured surface and cut with cookie cutters. Repeat with second batch. Decorate with colored sprinkles and/or chopped maraschino cherries. Bake for ten minutes at 350 degrees.
