Tonight I'm starting to prepare the food for tomorrow evenings dinner. It's time again for "Katie's Dinner".
With nearly every marriage there comes something else....a Mother in Law. My own was what is commonly known as "a corker". Katie never had a lazy day in her life. She worked hard, and if she was at your house you worked, too. When it came to yardwork Katie set a pace that soon had anyone working with her begging for mercy. When any of us needed help with any project she was there to dig in. Nothing was too hard, too heavy or too dirty for Katie to dig into.
Katie worked at a local laundromat well into her seventies, and she was an asset because she treated her job as if it were her own business she was running. She helped raise grandchildren, helped run a business for her son during a very rough time in his life, and she never seemed to run out of energy or love for any of her brood.
In the seventies my husband Larry, our three kids, and I moved in with Katie while waiting for a house we'd bought to be vacated. She simply moved over, made room and welcomed us. Every morning I'd be up early to make breakfast and get the kids ready for school. I would fix her a cup of coffee and take it to her bedroom, and she loved it. It became one of the stories she always told over and over to the family....and I was glad to be a part of Katie's family.
Late in her life Sunday became a day when Larry and I would often have Katie and my Dad to our house for dinner and to visit while we did yard work or tinkered around the house. My father loved Katie, and they would sit in lawn chairs in the sun and talk.....at least as long as Katie could stand to sit still. After we ate and visited Katie would head home, usually as she left she'd hug us and say, "Thanks for putting up with me."
On one of those Sunday visits she and I sat talking, and she said, "You know, someday I'm not going to be here and I wonder if my kids will lose touch. I worry about that." Katie was the one who visited every one of her kids and took the family news from house to house.....before the internet she was our family's answer to Facebook. I thought she'd live forever, but I said, "Katie, I promise that as long as I can I will get everyone together once a year. I'll do my best to round them up."
So......years after she left us all wanting more, we have Katie's dinner every year about this time. I time it just before Thanksgiving because we all have our individual holiday plans and life gets hectic. Other than the family reunion it's usually the only time the four couples sit down together to catch up on what's going on with our kids and grand kids and life in general. And of course there are always plenty of Katie stories.
It's a little thing....just a promise in passing. This dinner every year for Katie's "kids" is my thank you to a lovely woman who never asked for much, and gave everything she had. I hope I am as lovingly remembered. Life is good.
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