Anyway, a digression
If anyone was wondering what was up with all the Recipes lately, it's because I fished my mother's little brown binder out just before Thanksgiving. It's been living in my bag since then, because every year when I pull it out, I decide I'm going to type in the recipes from it. At least, the ones I use sometimes.
Partially this comes up because this is the time of year people do baking, and partially, because I always associate this time of year with my Mother's death. She died December 31, about eight years ago now. She was with us for Christmas -- dying, attached to an oxygen tank and taking morphine, but still mostly there. The night before she died, she finished correcting the last of her student's papers, and then never woke up.
It makes New Years an odd holiday for me, because it's nothing to celebrate. I'm not a big partier in the first place, and I avoided celebrations for a good many years because I did not want to bring everyone else down.
To me, we only ever had one more Christmas after that. My father lives in New Mexico, with his wife who wants him to have as little to do with us as possible, and my oldest brother is in Michigan, now with a baby. My middle brother is still in New Jersey, but he has his new wife and his political career. Which leaves me pretty much alone.
I have friends. I know I have friends. But I don't really have a family anymore.