Posted on Friday, June 16, 2017, 8:13a.m.

Today, dear friends, I’m grateful for…

Dancing in the morning while serving breakfast at a golf outing

Repurposing wood pallets

Patrick’s sense of purpose

Tuna salad wraps for lunch

Taking a well-deserved break from the media

What are you grateful for today?

The best part of baking with Mom was being next to her and learning, though it didn’t feel like learning until I was on my own trying to remember that secret ingredient in her chocolate no-bake oatmeal cookies. Those cookies were my birthday cake of choice for years. “Just stack ‘em on a plate and stick the candles in the top row”, I said, and she did. Let me make them for you sometime (candles optional, but hey, every moment is a party waiting to happen, right?).

Mom’s cooking was simple and direct, and kept us alive while we all lived together in the family home. Her go-to menu included roast chicken, boiled dinner, spaghetti with meat sauce (five kids and individual meatballs wouldn’t have stretched as far), chuck roast with vegetables, tuna casserole, and endless iceberg lettuce salads. She also baked and you should know—her coffee cake was epic. I wasn’t a big fan early on because it was like a spice cake and that wasn’t ever my favorite. But at some point in my pre-adolescent years, I set that aside and once I saw how the ingredients came together, it all made delicious sense, especially the part where you added the baking soda to the vinegar-soured milk and it foamed up and over the rim of the glass measuring cup. That was cool for a middle school kid fresh out of science class.

Fast forward to the charity golf outing at my hospice workplace in June, which took place one week before the Kids’ Grief Camp it helped fund. I offered to cater the event’s breakfast in an effort to drive more of the monies raised toward the camp budget, and had been looking for an excuse to try some decadent new recipes on a new audience. Shortly after we moved out here, I entered some of the county fair’s baking competitions and did pretty well for years and then it was time to do something else; the golf outing breakfast seemed a good place to start. At least two days before the event, I took over the kitchen making scones (apricot ginger, cranberry walnut, chocolate almond with a bourbon cream glaze), muffins (lemon blueberry, cherry cheesecake) and tray after tray of Mom’s coffee cake, cut into squares or baked as individual muffins and arranged on platters that were carefully stacked into the backseat of the red Tacoma the morning of the event. As with most golf outings, we got an insanely early start, setting up breakfast in the shelter house on the course just as the sun was rising over the trees that skirted the 16th hole. I’m a bit fussy about presentation and committed to efficiency wherever that’s helpful, so made sure that when I arrived, all I had to do was cover the serving tables with that five foot wide paper covering that comes in 20’ rolls and creatively arrange the plates and platters of baked goods among the baskets of bananas and pitchers of orange juice. The coffee bar had its own table with plenty of room for golfers to linger and chat, and a few other hospice teammates joined me on the other side of the whole set-up. We looked smart in our khaki capris and t-shirts bearing the organization’s logo.

I’m not a golfer, so am only watching this culture unfold in front of me as they line up to fill small paper plates with what looks appealing to them. The clothes, the special shoes and gloves…Sometime in the wee dark hours of the morning, while I was loading up my truck with muffins and coffee cake squares, foursomes of all varieties were also loading their cars with clubs, terrycloth towels with one corner bearing a metal grommet, perhaps an extra poncho or jacket in case the rains showed up, and quite looking forward to chasing a tiny white dimpled ball across dew-damp velvety grass, getting their photos taken for the company’s charity wall back at the office. We fed them, handed out prizes for holes-in-one (hole-in-ones?) and offered them beer from a cart that made its first appearance on the course around 9:30a.m. I don’t think any of my hobbies or pastimes are that involved. But I suspect what got them all out of bed, besides love for the game itself, was the poignant connection they had to our work. Perhaps we tended to one of their family members as she exhaled one last time, or helped a grandchild learn healthier ways to grieve the sudden loss of a younger sibling. Strange at it may sound, this day in the sun gave them a fun and necessary way to say thank you, to send that gratitude forward to someone they’ll never meet who will also vigil at a loved one’s bedside, feeling lost and rudderless. We’ll alter our morning routines to do something like that, gladly.

This was the first year Mom’s coffee cake was on the breakfast buffet, two years almost to the day after she’d passed, and I had peeled off a few more layers of sorrow, coming to a more peaceful place with her complicated departure, (“family dynamics” as we say in hospice care—they are ever-present and plentiful. Best advice we can offer is proceed with caution and be gentle with yourself). I was lighter than I’d been in months, and in that rolling hill setting with its grand and sweeping views in all directions, I felt like dancing. So I did, right there in the serving line, to the back-beat of a funky playlist on my phone as our good golfing patrons came forward smiling and filling their cups with coffee. “Thank you so much for being here today. We are grateful for your support!”, a cheerful greeting welcomed each and every one of them. “Well, whaddya have here?” they’d ask, pointing to the carb-crowded trays. “That’s my mom’s coffee cake, signature recipe—nothing like it anywhere!”, I’d reply, and we’d replenish the platters’ empty spots as quickly as we could. They returned for seconds, wrapped in napkins to take with them on the course (I wonder to this day how it pairs with Busch Light), and I smiled gratefully, knowing that Mom was happy to feed them.

Those golfers don’t know the gift they gave to me that day. I still hold it close and dance.