Homemaker

I remember every Saturday morning, my grandmother would visit and make us a plate full of pancakes, smothered in syrup. We'd go to her house to visit and there were always shortbread cookies, crowned with a Hershey's Kiss, or, my favorite, a slice of delicious caramel cake awaiting us. Her home smelled of warm sourdough bread, as did she. She'd sit and eat a cookie with us and drink a hot cup of afternoon coffee in the winter, and a cold bottled Coca Cola wrapped with a napkin in the hot summer. She always had a project, as she was a talented seamstress. She'd sew matching outfits for my sister and me. When we'd spend Saturday nights with her, she'd tuck us under a warm patchwork quilt that she and her 96-year-old mother had carefully constructed. It's these thoughts that come to mind when I think of a homemaker with my grandmother at the heart of it.

February 1 was my first day as a homemaker, as I changed my career in nonprofit to a vocation as a full-time homemaker and mother to a daughter that awaits us in China, whom we've not met yet. I feel very privileged and grateful to have the opportunity for my life to mirror the legacy of my grandmother. I have a deep appreciation for her gifts and talents which were always demonstrated with a faithful, dedicated, and humble heart.

Recently, I was in the kitchen making a dessert which called for ground vanilla wafers. I was diligently pounding away at the ziplock bag filled with crumbs (it's trickier than you might think, at least for a novice). I laughed to myself as I thought that my grandmother would probably be chuckling at me -- for every time I pounded on the wafers, little crumbs would spew out of the pin hole that was in the bag.

Ahh, but we must start somewhere. "He who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it".