Winter
New
Year
Mama began the New Year with a big, white coconut cake. We all
made New Year's resolutions. Weeks of cold weather lay ahead,
but we had passed the winter holidays and reached the point where
we knew that the next season that lay ahead was spring, beautiful
spring. January and February were birthday months: Mama, Daddy,
Joe, Lincoln and Washington. We celebrated with favorite cakes.
Joe and I made dozens of Valentines. The seed catalogues began
to come; Aunt Merica and Mama talked and talked about the new
plants they might grow. Daddy was growing weary of being cooped
up; he worked on a project in the shed and on warm days went off
to do work people were now eager to have done.
As
the winter wore on, Aunt Merica brought in fewer and fewer eggs.
The old hens had about stopped laying. Instead of rich caramel
cakes, Mama made one-egg cakes. Instead of cornbread, we ate corn
pone which required no eggs. We ate with the rhythm of the seasons
and the cycles of the animals. Soon the ice in the streams would
break up, the snow melt, and at the barns the cows and the ewes
would nuzzle new born calves and lambs.
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