Mary van Balen

October came so fast, I didn't notice its arrival. That is unusual for me. Decades ago, moved by the exuberant beauty of an October day, I wrote a song celebrating just that. Waiting up til midnight on Sept. 30, I sang in the season, year after year. (see October 1, 2009 blogpost)Once I had children, we sometimes waited up together and sang in the lovely month that held not only amazingly clear blue skies and flaming trees, but also my birthday.

We had a number of October traditions, the most recent being my emailing my now grown children to wish them a happy October 1. This year, however, I was just too tired to remember. I had had a busy week: a webcast and a retreat and all the preparation that attends both. I worked at the department store on Sunday, Oct. 1, and the only time I really thought about the day was when I was driving to the store.

The sky was not the clear blue I like to associate with the month. Instead, grey clouds hung overhead. The trees caught my eye, though. Their leaves were beginning to show red and orange.

"Wow, the trees are turning early this year," I thought as I passed maples and gums. And then I remembered. It was October. When September blew by, I didn't know. I clocked in and worked through the day, tired and thinking mostly of getting back home and going to bed.  Read More 

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
One tradition I never have difficulty keeping is having last minute preparations to do on Christmas Eve. Try as I might, I am never quite ready by December 24. This year I am close, though. Today I decided to bake more cookies than I had originally intended to make.

My daughter was in the dining room, sewing away. Christmas music sung by Cambridge College's King's Choir played in the background. (We both missed other CD's that are packed away or given to someone else. The Cambridge choir is technically perfect, but as my daughter said, lacks energy and enthusiasm. Eventually we turned it off.)

I pulled out my standard Christmas recipes, handed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. Ginger snaps were the first. As I worked in mom's kitchen I remembered decades of Christmases when the house filled with sweet spicy smells of ginger cookies baking. I don't think a more tasty breakfast exists than one of ginger snaps and tea. Read More 

PHOTOS: Mary van Balen
This year's Advent wreath reflects the non-traditional path I have been traveling and the beauties to be found in it. Many of my belongings are packed away and I was not sure what kind of wreath would mark the weeks of Advent. After unsuccessfully looking for the perfect blue and rose colored candles or candle holders, I decided to use what was at hand instead.

I drove to a friend's home, and together we walked past her old barn and along the paths that wind through fields and along fence rows to gather earth's bounty. I had nothing particular in mind and we kept eyes and hearts open to see what would be offered for the taking. Read More 

PHOTOS:Mary van Balen
I live in the house where she and dad raised my four silblings and me. I sit on their couch, launder clothes in the washer she'd used for years and gaze out the dining room window, watching squirrels scamper up and down the grand pin oak in the front yard. Just like mom did, and her mother before her. Over the past two years since she died, many things remind me of her and I miss her face, her hugs, her love.

Thanksgiving preparations put an ache in my heart, a deep-down "missing mom" that lingered over dinner and remained as I fell into bed.

I used her rolling pin to make pie crusts.

"There's nothing to making a pie crust," she always said. Her mother, Becky, who lived with us, had said the same thing. I believed them and have made my own pastry since I could reach the counter. With every handful of flour, every pass of the rolling pin over the dough, I thought of her and tried to put as much love as she had done into each pie.

"Mom," I said, "I could use one of your smiles, or comments that everything will be fine. Read More 

Happy St. Francis Day!

This was a feast day I celebrated with my children by baking animal-shaped sugar cookies or buying a big bag of animal crackers! Even when they were away in college, I sent animal cookies. This year I did not think about the feast until it was almost here, too late to send anything. I conveyed my greetings over email or cell phone, but that is not the same.

Of course, my adult children did not need the animal crackers. There is just something about keeping traditions, no matter how small, that connect our present to the past and the future. Traditions are a constant in a world that is always changing. Traditions bring the warm comfort of memories, especially appreciated when the present is cold and harsh. Next year I will try not to forget.  Read More