Lil Easy

Hello, 2024. Despite the fact that you sound like some Orwell/Asimov book pitch, I promise you I’m trying. Thank goodness no one writes checks anymore. I would surely be putting last year’s date on every transaction between now and late August. Once the queen of the vision board, the supreme ruler of the resolution, the princess of the new planner, & the sultan of the paradigm shift, you have me worn plumb out already, 2024. That’s why I am taking this moment, printed word influencer though I am not, to make an official announcement. Clink the champagne glass. Knock the gavel. In the words of 1996’s DJ Kool, 28 years ago (egad), let me clear my throat. After much thought and intense scrutiny, I have decided to make my word of the year (drumroll) easy. Make that easy with a lil e.

2023 was a fine year. I pushed hard. It’s the way I have always handled things. For instance, once, I lost a child and had to suit up for a cancer fight. Pushed hard. I went back to work too soon, for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong career. Pushed hard. This past year, I met some intense GI issues head on, pushing myself into new dietary habits. I completed the 75 Hard program, a literal push. I cleared out space where the big kids & grandkids could live, a physical push. I wrote more columns. I joined more groups. I worshipped harder. I prayed with intensity. Sourdough bread surrendered to my push. More intricate cookie designs were baked and iced into being with my consistent pressure. All this pushing culminated into a frenzy of holiday activities in 2023. I doubled down on tree decorating, making all the ornaments for my ode to Dickens in Christmas tree form. I wrapped every gift in a matching motif. I added velvet blankets, packing

up the cotton ones until the season turns warmer. I baked my own socks off. I stood in my kitchen for 3 days, practically sleeping in standing form, equating myself to a thoroughbred, though a pack mule would probably be a more apt description. We ate delicious turkey, sweet potatoes with swoon worthy praline topping, dressing my own Granny Stilwell would applaud, and the chocolate tres leches cake I worked all year to perfect. Push to the max.

Yesterday, I noticed a tiny red circle on my phone with the number one nestled in the center. It was on the sideways lightning bolt pink and purple app, aka Messenger. “Hmmm, I wonder how long that’s been there?” I said inside my own head but probably out loud, since talking out loud but thinking I’m contemplating something in my brain is a wicked good skill of mine. Bippity, boppity, click, what is this? My cousin Reneè had sent something to a group I created several years ago called “Stilwell cousins.” I find that messaging en masse is a very pleasant way to relay unpleasant info without having a dreadful story on repeat. I learned this lesson during my cancer treatment. It was exhausting, post chemo, to make all the phone calls to all the people who love me so they could learn things like blood count results, scan readings, and even port viability. Back then, emails were the way to go. Nowadays, we bulk text. Hence, I breathed this group into being as a way to communicate the details of my father’s passing and, a few years later, the fight I was waging with my mom against Alzheimer’s, more of life’s hard pushes.

Thankfully, Reneè had only good news to share. It was a picture of my Granny Stilwell. Though she passed in 1993, she is one of those women whose legacy continues to magnify as the years tick by. Annie Mae Davis Stilwell was a woman of meager means. She was a mother of 5 and a grandmother of too many to count. Great grandchildren are still surfacing in quite a head scratching manner, though that is best left for a spicier column. My favorite Granny story is the one where her boys were young. It was during the Great Depression. Granny was outside collecting eggs when the fight broke out. With four stair step aged sons and one precious daughter, the aggressor and the victim of the story is apt to change depending on the identity of the teller. Despite the fact that my Gramp’s barbering business had surely taken a hit in these dire times, hence the extreme need for eggs, Granny had pushed as hard as she wished that day. She is said to have wasted an entire apron front cache of eggs on her wrestling boys. I can still picture my adult father, laughing until tears filled his eyes, listening to his mother tell this story. He claimed she was an eggcellent shot. Dad jokes were around back in the 70s when I heard this story, too. Annie Mae was a survivor. She never learned to drive. She walked to the First Baptist Church in Wilmer, TX every Sunday, without fail. She made the best vegetable soup, and her coconut cake is still spoken of with legendary admiration. In the picture I received, Granny is standing in her happy place, the pier of her tiny lake house on Cedar Creek Lake. Behind her is the single wide trailer where we all spent many happy nights. Her bonnet style hat is tied under her chin. She’s holding her favorite cane pole with a visible red and white bobber. No doubt she’d spent the prior afternoon wading through the water with a minnow net in anticipation of this moment. She looks, well, easy. Thank you, Granny. I needed this reminder that there are times when we must push hard. But, there are times when we can be easy, with a lil e. Here’s to 2024. May the minnows be plentiful, and the fish be a biting.