When it comes to Christmas, the farmer doesn’t like to hoe the same row twice. Just because he got you a pearl necklace in 1996 doesn’t mean you won’t get a bug zapper in 1997. Though the gifts will run the gamut, at least he has figured out that I don’t consider a Christmas gift optional. In other words, the weather is not a factor in whether he puts a package under the tree for me.

But I suppose it’s the Christmas tree itself that is the source of our most memorable Christmas blowups. When I grew up, my family had a Christmas Tree Tradition. We wore the same grungy clothes, loaded up the same Chevrolet, and headed to the same farmer’s field to cut down the same type tree. Having a tradition meant that there was only one negotiable – the circumference of the tree.

The farmer and I, on the other hand, have to negotiate everything. And we have had every known variety of Christmas tree, from living to dead, from pint size to cellular tower size. We have bought them, begged them, cut them, and swapped calves for them. When it comes to Christmas trees, I never know what the cat will drag in. Literally…. Much less, when.

This year I made what I considered a reasonable request: a short, fat fir. Imagine my shock, therefore, when the farmer drove up with a long, skinny tree hanging off the back of his Ford pickup. I could see at once that this year’s Christmas tree was not a fat fir but rather a skinny, barnyard cedar.

I was speechless. “I knew this tree would take your breath away,” the farmer said. “Best of all, it’s a freebie.”

When I asked what the cedar had going for it, the farmer stated, “I am sick and tired of being ripped off by money-grubbing Christmas tree guys who charge you an arm and a leg for a tree that was cut in October and is on its last legs. This tree is fresh because I just took the ax to it this morning.”

The farmer said that the tree, with its wonderful cedar smell, was just what the doctor ordered. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight when I said I couldn’t smell a thing. “Go take a sinus pill,” was his comeback.

“We do have a problem,” the farmer admitted. “The tree is too tall for our house. And I can’t cut a foot off the bottom because of the double trunk. You just go on about your business, and I’ll make the tree fit.”

I never doubted that he would. The solution to our tree dilemma was, as I often say, a “no brainer.” Give a Southern man a chainsaw and enough gas and he can fix anything.

Sure enough, in no time the farmer had given the tree a flattop. And with a flourish, the cedar was stacked in the living room corner. At least, I thought, the treetop angel won’t wobble. To make amends, the farmer vacuumed up the evidence from his Christmas tree chain saw massacre.

Martha Stewart would have had a coronary.

Nor will you read about such exploits in the Christmas edition of Southern Living. Indeed, if all you knew about a Southern Christmas was what you read in Southern Living, you would miss all of the guts and most of the glory.

At your house this holiday season, may your tree be beautiful and may good will prevail. And may you celebrate with joy the true Glory of the season.

During our farm years, while I was toting in firewood and toasting my anatomy around the wood stove, I frequently dreamed of getting away to someplace warm. Back in those days, visions of going to Blacksburg on a summer afternoon was almost too much to hope for.

Dreams do come true, unfortunately. Last week, some 12 years later, I got to escape to Jacksonville, Florida, for a 4-day, 3-night planning meeting. Drat is the mildest word I said as I packed. While packing, I dreamed… if only I could be back on the farm, living the simple life, toasting myself around the wood stove. If only I could stay home the first weekend in December.

But apparently, the men who run our company don’t run their castles. I daresay nary a one of them has to decorate the house, shop the outlets, or address Christmas cards. And I am confident that I was the only attendee who packed 425 unsigned, un-addressed Christmas cards in her briefcase. For women, December weekends are worth more than a truckload of stock options.

Regardless of the season, not all travel was created equal. There is vacation travel and there is business travel. These are about as related as fourth cousins twice removed. Business travel means you have to pack hose. Heels, too, and skirts and jackets. Besides your basic suitcase, you must tote your computer. Lastly, you had better take along a second suitcase to haul back the notebooks, manuals, and brochures you’ll be given to see you through January or the next millennium. On the return trip, you end up dragging twice your body weight in suitcases through the airport. Then the magic moment arrives, the moment you learn whether your are stranded, delayed, or merely cancelled.

In my former life, I did not believe I would live long enough to see Florida. With business travel, however, unless there’s a break in the clouds while you are circling the airport, you can travel to Florida without ever seeing it. During 4 days in Jacksonville, my only sighting of the Atlantic Ocean was from the plane. A few palm trees planted outside the hotel and strung up with Christmas lights were the only clues that it was Florida.

Nor did this Florida trip net any fresh seafood. Business meetings serve up the official business entree: chicken if it’s a mixed group; beef it it’s a predominantly male group. With the official entrée, you get zucchini medley, several 4-inch raw green beans, and rice. For lunch there is a deli buffet, and breakfast is bagels with all the trimmings. You soon learn to snitch an apple and/ or sesame onion bagel, for you’ll nearly starve to death after dinner. Unless you are willing to fork out $8 for room service and another bagel.

The other challenge of business trips is what to do during the golf sessions. This time, with Christmas leaning heavily on me, I decided to hoof it to a mall for some Christmas shopping. The cheapest item I saw was a beaded tiny pillbox, elegantly priced at $56.

Back in the room, I took a couple of aspirins and called home. Buying the pillbox would have been the better deal. The hotel’s telephone surcharges started the moment the farmer answered the phone and began his spiel about how much grain the horses had consumed for supper and which Snack Shop specials he and Miles had ordered.

What you are most likely to get on a business trip is homesick...Especially at Christmas.

When one of the ladies in the Sunday School class announced that she had a radical idea, I braced myself. Thank goodness her idea was kosher. “Ladies,” she suggested, “Let’s take a day trip someplace exciting!”

Being the teacher has its perks. Which meant I’d get to pick where we would go.

The next Sunday I proposed that the class accompany me to Seagrove, NC, for fellowship, food, and pottery shopping. I could tell by the reaction that our class was split right down the middle: half of them believe in pottery and the other half don’t.

Being the teacher, I reminded the ladies of the role of pottery in the Bible. Our trip, therefore, would have religious overtones. That pretty much stifled any opposition.

There are basically two reasons for Seagrove’s appeal as a tourist spot. First, when our four boys were small – i.e., throwing boomerangs and darts around the house -- buying pottery would have been as foolish as starting the fire in the wood stove with dollar bills.

The other reason is the trip the farmer and I had made to Seagrove several years ago. That shopping expedition lasted 30 minutes and consisted of breezing through 2 of the 116 pottery shops in the area. When it comes to Seagrove, the farmer says “Been there, done that.” I say “Been there, not scratched the surface.”

Wisely, the class agreed that Seagrove would make a great pilgrimage.

It had been a long time since I had been out with “the girls.” My first thought was that we would talk shop, so I brought up the recent meeting of the NC Baptist State Convention. In no time, one of the girls changed the subject to the ins and outs of school mergers and the ups and downs of grandparenting.

By the time we had solved the problems of the world, we were in Seagrove. We staked out the place, started with the stores uptown, then fanned out over the community.

At first, we were overwhelmed with the types and quantity of pottery. So much pottery, so little money. By the middle of the afternoon, we were getting a handle on the diverse pottery styles available.

I kept offering to get out of Dodge, but they wanted to visit “just one more shop.” We wondered what it is about a piece of pottery that makes you want to pick it up, feel it, turn it over, all the while oohing and aahing.

Overall, I reckon we handled 800+ pieces of pottery. As it turned out, we had the moral fiber not to buy every piece we coveted. And the coordination not to drop a single piece.

Almost as an afterthought, I had cleaned out the trunk of my car before leaving home. “ Surely you won’t charge that much pottery,” the farmer had said.

As it turned out, we girls eventually packed the Toyota’s trunk. And felt noble about it, because we were buying not for ourselves, but as good Sunday School class members, for others. We came, we saw, we bought your Christmas present.

By the time we returned home, it was 10 PM. Our feet were tired; our pocketbooks were lighter. Best of all, our spirits were lighter. For one brief moment, the cares of the world had retreated. I temporarily forgot that I was not 14.

When girls get together, laughter rules. Going out with the girls is almost as much fun as coming home to the boys.

Though Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, you would never know it if you drove by our house.

There isn’t a yard decoration in sight, unless you count the inflatable deer target that a son hauled home from his latest shopping trip.

For an ex-farm family, fall yard decorations should be a piece of cake. We have enough connections to fill 14 yards with hay bales. But, indeed, probably it’s because we farmed so long that decorating the place with hay bales is not something I have a hankering to do. Ditto for decorating with bales of cotton, sheaves of corn, or collections of pumpkins.

Inside the house, if you were looking for clues as to what day is coming up, you would not suspect Thanksgiving. Instead, you would think it’s Yard Sale Day.

There was a time when I used to drag out the horn of plenty for Thanksgiving to create a focal point. Thanks to Betty Feezor, I even glued together globs of old newspaper to create paper mache fruit for our horn of plenty. That fruit ended up in the sand pile and/or the gutters, thanks to four little boys who could take creation apart faster than Betty Feezor and I could put it together.

Although creating ambience is one of the reasons God created woman, ambience is something I no longer get worked up over. Nor has the farmer felt like stepping up to the plate to fill the decorating void.

Frankly speaking, both Martha Stewart and Wal-Mart would go broke if all Americans were like the farmer and me. The longer we are married, the more I realize that the farmer would have made a good Shaker. All he requires is one chair, one table, one lamp, 2 coffeepots, and 4 afghans. Everything else is superfluous. As for holiday decorations, left to his own devices, he would probably hang a red bow on the grill of his Ford pickup and call it Christmas.

Not so for women. When it comes to Christmas, we don’t get off so easy. In fact, I’ve already lost one night’s sleep, dreaming it was December 23, 1999, and I had not even begun addressing cards, decorating, shopping, wrapping, partying, planning, cooking, bills-paying, visiting, church-going, and dieting.

These verbs are the reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. At 77, Mama is still in charge of our family’s Thanksgiving. Each year she hints of retiring, but we bribe her. In addition to helping her with the cooking, we promise that we’ll rake her yard if she’ll host Thanksgiving one more time.

You can’t imagine how good it feels to leave work, put the family and sweet potatoes in the car, and set out up I-85 singing, “Over the rivers and through the woods, to Grandma’s house we go…”

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a holiday that has not been subject to overkill. A great Thanksgiving consists of a good meal, a few hours with family, and time to reflect on how blessed we are. Throw in a football game or two, and pumpkin pie, and you can have an outstanding celebration.

May it be so at your house as we reflect on the blessings that overflow our lives – and brace ourselves for Christmas.

The leaves are not the only things that have been growing more beautiful with each passing fall day. There is also our granddaughter.

Morgan Elizabeth is now 7 weeks old. She’s not as old as a summer vacation, yet it’s hard to imagine life without her.

Especially since last week, when another miracle occurred. After a month of just staring at her grandparents, Morgan finally figured out that there is life behind those bifocals. So she has begun communicating with us. You call it “cooing;” I call it “communicating.”

She is better at communicating than I am. Until she was born, my male-dominated vocabulary had gone unnoticed. Intellectually, I realize that we have a granddaughter. Realistically, I don’t know which will take longer to get used to: calling her a “she,” or calling myself a “nana.”

It’s a brave new world. Thank goodness we live around the corner.

This past week, Morgan bravely ventured out into this new world. The time came for her mom to return to work. Though our church provides an excellent daycare, leaving her there basically tore Morgan’s parents out of their frames. Looking back on the week, Morgan was probably the only one unfazed by the change.

On the second morning of daycare, the new parents had to go into work extra early. So our son said he’d accept my offer to take Morgan to daycare. The night before, I did a quick reread of the first chapter of my 1965 Dr. Spock paperback. Dr. Spoke might as well have written it in Greek. Jason put me through a hands-on infant car seat demonstration. In the good ole days, babies got to drive -- but that’s really ancient history.

The next morning, Morgan arrived at our house before daybreak. Right off the bat, I rousted the farmer out of bed and put Morgan in the bed with me. This may or may not be kosher, but it sure was cozy. Our granddaughter went back to sleep, but I woke up so that I could watch her sleep. Gazing at a sleeping baby is probably the closest that most of us ever come to seeing an angel, I thought.

Then clocks started going off, meaning it was time for the morning rush in order to go do something important. For a few precious moments, I caught a glimpse of what was truly important. Then the clock buzzed louder, reminding me that I’d better hurry and scurry. How was I going to complete my morning ritual and get the baby to the church on time? There was coffee to be perked and the morning paper to be read. There were dishes to be done, hair to be curled, and a dog to be fed. What would I do with Morgan while I was in the shower? What would happen to my quiet time? How was I going to manage my bowl of Cheerios? And, the biggie, how would I be able to try on clothes until I came up with something to wear? Flossing my teeth and making my lunch were out of the question. As it turned out, this morning ritual proved to be great entertainment for Morgan. Still it took twice as long as usual for me to get ready for work. Driving to work, I was quite relieved to notice that I was wearing a skirt and shoes.

Morgan arrived at daycare late. Bad late.

But her grandmother walked away with a new appreciation for young parents, especially mothers, who juggle so many responsibilities and priorities -- and get it right.

If yard decorations are any indication, Halloween is a holiday whose popularity has soared. Whether it’s Charlotte or Shingle Hollow, apparently half the population has gone ape over Halloween.

Allow me to go on record as stating that the farmer and I are not philosophically opposed to Halloween. However, on a scale of 1 to 10, Halloween has rated about .5 in importance at our house. Even when the children were small.

What amazes me about Halloween’s newfound popularity is how much money grown adults will cough up to do Halloween right! Nothing about Halloween comes cheap.

Take pumpkins, for example. Plain vanilla ones cost twice as much as a watermelon. Painted ones go for much more. My beef with pumpkins, painted or unpainted, is that they are so seasonal. They’ll rot on your front porch quicker than you can say “trick or treat."

Indeed, some of the worst guilt trips I have taken have been over jack-o-lanterns that I allowed to go bad. But the alternative is not much more appealing. Preserving last year’s pumpkin required 10 hours of hard work and resulted in 22 pies – and 26,000 calories.

When it comes to Halloween bingeing, there is something better than a bait of pumpkin pie. Frankly speaking, my Halloween favorite is the chocolate candy; specifically, the candy you buy and/or pilfer out of your children’s treat bags. To be on the safe side, I feel compelled to stock up on several pounds of 3 Musketeers, Hershey miniatures, and Reese’s peanut butter cups. The temptation to eat up the leftover Halloween candy is overpowering – despite the thousands of additional calories.

But perhaps the biggest Halloween expense is not the food but the costumes. I reckon because we were raised between the Baptist church and the railroad tracks, I grew up with the notion that only people who lived in California had store-bought Halloween costumes.

We hardly had enough money to buy pajamas. So buying pink panther or space invader costumes would have been unthinkable. And since Mama was not a seamstress, there was no chance of her converting an old bed sheet to a ghost’s costume.

We were allowed to go trick or treating, usually wearing just a 29-cent scratchy facemask. You could count on it: the elastic string holding the mask in place would NOT go the distance. Thus we did our trick or treating, mask-less and costume-less. Looking back on it, I reckon you could say we were ghastly disadvantaged.

Of course we went trick-or-treating on foot – and in the vicinity of the parsonage and the church. To make the night extra eerie, the cemetery was smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood.

No yard decoration in suburbia can conjure up the eeriness of tiptoeing through a Baptist cemetery on a fall night with a full moon. When it comes to spooks, I’ve been exposed. Maybe that’s why I have a ho-hum attitude towards Halloween. “Been there, done that.”

My friends who are Halloween nuts say that the least I should do is fix up the inside of our house for Halloween. They also tell me I ought to buy a stuffed spook and get on with the program.

What they don’t know is that our house IS decorated for Halloween. In “early spider web.” And as for a stuffed spook? I have a husband, stuffed in the recliner. And he can howl on demand, make things disappear, and charm the horns off a billy goat.

My mother keeps having birthdays. Come October 21, my sisters, brother and I take up the challenge of surprising Mama with just the right birthday gifts. But what do you give a mother who already has everything, including her health, her mind, and a 1985 Chevrolet with 38,000 miles?

I reckon none of us can ever outdo the farmer, who made gift-giving history the year he hauled a truckload of horse manure up I-85 and dumped it in Mama’s yard. Mama had been hinting that if she only knew someone with unlimited access to manure, she sure could use more than was in the 5 pound-bags of sterilized “stuff” from Wal-Mart.

Mama lived to see her dream come true. However, after this generous gift, Mama has taken to heart that old maxim, “Be careful what you ask for: You just may get it.”

The older she gets, the more we tend to give Mama birthday gifts for her yard and/or pantry. Last year, we hauled 2 truckloads of rented yard equipment, grass seed, and lime to Spencer (NC) and worked her yard over. It’s probably fortunate that it didn’t rain for the next 6 weeks, or Mama might not have survived her 76th summer.

Especially since she mows the yard herself – with a push mower, of course.

This year was our brother’s year to shine. Mama had been hinting that if she just had a ladder and could call back 40 years, she would shape up the sweet gum and oak trees in her yard. Broadus took the hint and spent all of last Saturday sawing off limbs. This was a wonderful birthday gift for Mama, but it sure went hard for my sister and me. Who do you think toted all those limbs to the curb?

Mama reminded us that in the old days, she often visited her mother and ended up outside doing yard work. “Yes,” I wanted to add, “but in the good ole days, daughters hadn’t just spent the grocery money getting their hair and nails done.”

Despite these investments, my sister and I spent last Saturday alternately toting limbs, raking leaves, and mowing grass. We have the blisters to prove it.

Unfortunately, our tree-trimming brother is a perfectionist. Which means that by suppertime, Cynthia and I were on the verge of pulling the ladder out from under him. Literally.

By evening and for her birthday supper, Mama requested pizza take-out. This is 1999, after all. And in many ways, Mama is 77 going on 27.

“But didn’t you give your mother any real gifts?” some of you are wondering by now. We gave her the gifts adult children usually give mothers who have everything. In addition to our time, we gave Mama pansies, pictures of ourselves, and groceries.

The grandchildren remembered Mama’s saying that nobody had given her coffee last year for Christmas. Therefore, for her birthday, 2 grandsons fixed Mama up with a Y2K survival kit, including not only coffee but also creamer, hot chocolate, and Hershey candy bars. The boys had attached little notes of instructions to each of the grocery items.

On the Hershey bars, the grand finale, the boys had written: “Grandma, in honor of your birthday, Charlotte has named a road after you: I-77."

What do you give the mother who has given you everything? Donations to CROP, in her honor. And gifts of self, time, and laughter.

In Mama’s case, however, splurge. Throw in a 6-pack of generic toilet paper.

This is the season of the year that I would normally write a glowing column about the 1999 Cleveland County Fair -- and its pickled beets, Jersey cows, and Demolition Derby.

However, 1999 is probably the first year in history that I didn’t set foot on the fairgrounds. Used to be that a team of wild horses couldn’t have kept me away from the Cleveland County Fair. This year, however, a 7-pound infant , our granddaughter, pulled that off. Although I can eat elephant ears with the best of them, this year I stayed home to gaze at and whisper into Baby Morgan’s tiny ears.

It is too soon to tell whether I will ever come up with a topic that excels that of our new granddaughter. Certainly, we quickly have come to identify with the person who observed that if he had known how much fun grandchildren are, he would have had them first.

Of course, not all of the wrinkles are ironed out. I really do want to be a good grandmother; I just don’t want to be called “Grandmother.”

As I told the farmer, “grandmother” sounds so formal. It doesn’t sound like what you would call a woman whose idea of a big time is to float down Sandy Run Creek.

“If not ‘Grandmother,’” the farmer asked, “what’s wrong with ‘Grandma?’” What’s wrong with “Grandma” is that that is the name my mother goes by, and her mother before her. The farmer asked, “Well, what about the mother before her?”

“She went by Oooga Mama,” I said. “She and Oooga Papa were named for the horn on their Model T. “ The farmer suggested if I were to be named for a sound, it should be the sound of the computer dialing into the modem – or of popcorn exploding in the microwave.

The farmer has bragged that he is not vain. He simply wants to be called “Paw Paw.” That’s fine -- he is 58.

I, on the other hand, am not that old. Furthermore, what I’ve discovered is that lots of us Baby Boomers are in a quandary about what to be called. In fact, there is a best seller waiting to be written on “Names for Modern Grandparents-To-Be.”

A creative friend suggested some derivation of my first name, such as “Big Kat” or “Mama Cat” – or even just plain “Kat.” The possibilities are endless. With a name like mine, that’s what scares me.

So I did some research on the farmer’s side. His mother was called “Nanney.” I hold her name and her memory in such high regard that I don’t feel right about claiming her name. Her mother went by “Granny.” This could work if I could get all 456 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies out of my mind.

When Morgan was born, I shouted that she could call me anything she wanted to. I meant it, sort of. Morgan’s parents said they couldn’t bring her home from the hospital until I had a name.

“All right,” I said, “what about ‘Nana’? There’s one mighty special grandmother that I know of who is called by that name.” The farmer asked was I sure? … that to him “Nanner” was just short for "Southern banana."

To humor me, the family is trying to learn the correct pronunciation and spelling of “Nana.” I love my new role. The name, well, the farmer says I’ll come round.

After raising 4 sons, I had wondered whether the farmer could adjust to having a girl in the family. Our granddaughter made her debut on my birthday, September 24.

So far, the farmer has come out smelling like a rose. I, on the other hand, am having to learn a totally new role – and vocabulary.

Imagine my shock at learning how sexist I’d become. Turns out that the only language I know is Boy Baby Talk, as in “Hey, little fella,” and “Yessir, yessir, you’re mighty special.” Though pink is what I’m thrilled to see, I’m still operating out of a blue mentality.

Indeed, raising a girl is going to be quite an adventure for this family. We have, however, crossed the first hurdle: persuading our son not to do the nursery in camouflage.

Not all our friends got the message. Baby Morgan has been given sleepers and blankets with a raccoon theme. I reckon this is in honor of her Dad, who prior to her arrival was a diehard coon hunter.

In fact, one cousin got so carried away at the arrival of the coon hunter’s daughter that she gave Morgan a camouflage sleeper with lace on the collar! Finally, the grandmother in me came out. I told our son Jason he should not let Morgan wear that outfit in public. Jason said not to worry, he’s saving that outfit for her baby portrait.

I’m not sure that he was joking.

Which is why we have been needing a girl in the family. In the worst way.

Of course, Morgan is already changing her father. When Jason went through his adolescent rebellion, he quit piano lessons and took up the banjo. It was a long while before I cottoned to the idea. For better or worse, Jason’s wife, Stephanie, has been supportive of this blue grass phase.

When it comes to their daughter, Morgan, they don’t want her ears to hear anything but Mozart, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff. The bluegrass CDs have taken a backseat to the classical CDs. When I looked shocked, Jason asked didn’t I know that classical music would be better for Morgan? Didn’t I know that Mozart would stimulate Morgan’s brain cells better than country music? It took the farmer pinching me to keep from blabbing, “I told you so, I told you so.”

Not blabbing. That’s the hardest part of being a new grandparent. Everything else is wonderfully easy.

On her third night on Planet Earth, the farmer said if we hurried we could get to Kmart in time to get our roll of baby pictures developed at the one-hour photo lab. Miles, who has retired his Baby Miles jersey, was flabbergasted. “But, but,” Miles stammered, “ya’ll don’t believe in one-hour processing – or in going to Kmart after dark!”

The farmer told Miles that it would be inconceivable to go to work Monday morning without pictures of Morgan. Period.

Now that we have a granddaughter, we’re definitely into the next step -- spoiling her. Every grandparent we have talked to has assured us that spoiling is the reason God invented grandparents.

However, after 10 days of getting to cuddle an infant, I’m not sure who is spoiling whom. After work, instead of straightening the attic or edging the yard, we get to rock our grandbaby. No doubt about what’s taking place: Morgan is spoiling us rotten.

The doctor had predicted that our first grandchild would arrive September 18. Had he consulted the lunar calendar, he would have known better.

From the outset, there had been the remote possibility that the grandbaby would arrive on my birthday: Friday, September 24. If the old wives’ tale about babies’ liking to make their appearance during a full moon was true, there was a chance.

Last week, the days passed and the moon got fuller – but no grandbaby. Then, at 6 a.m. Friday, our oldest son called to report on his wife’s whereabouts: the hospital. Normally it takes an act of Congress to get me out of bed. But Friday, I let out a whoop, threw the covers over the ceiling fan, and jumped to my feet, shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Never mind that I had just turned 53. At my age, I reckon I should have been able to stifle myself.

The farmer decided there was nothing we could do but go to work and wait for a progress report. Around 10 a.m., Jason called to say that we might want to come to the hospital because it looked like everything was a go. The farmer was mowing the grass at Shelby High School when he got the word. The next thing that happened was that he flipped the lawnmower over and rolled down the bank. Say what you will about OSHA, but what saved this grandpa-to-be was a roll guard. And a guardian angel.

Therefore, the first miracle of the day is that the farmer and I arrived at the hospital in one piece. We should have enrolled in a grandparent’s class. We especially needed the sessions on relaxation and breathing techniques. For the next 7 hours, we paced, prayed, and predicted the sex of the baby.

In a nutshell, the farmer and I both were basket cases. Ask the hospital’s cafeteria personnel, who observed us do lunch. First we tried to carry our meat and vegetable servings in our bare hands, till one attendant said it sure would work better if we would take a cafeteria tray. “Good idea,” the farmer said, so we loaded up our trays and walked right by the cash register without stopping to pay. Thank goodness the attendant chased us down. The last place this granny wanted to go on her birthday was to jail.

We paced some more; i. e., all afternoon. Finally, at 6:55 p.m., the nurse came out and said we had a baby and that all was well.

What joy! A grandbaby, born on my birthday……but what was it? The nurse said our son would be out in about 15 minutes and would tell us. Of course, I knew what it was. After having 4 boys, what else could it be but a boy? My mother-in-law had had all sons, we had had all sons, the family was on a roll.

Jason came out grinning. Then he spoke some very unfamiliar words: “It’s a girl!” It took 1.5 seconds for this new thought to sink in, but when it did, I screamed. Loudly. Woke up all the babies – plus all the post-op patients. Next I sobbed. The joy had to come out somehow!

“Her name,” Jason said, “ is Morgan Elizabeth.” Morgan Elizabeth is healthy and incredibly beautiful. And she’s already stolen the hearts of at least 5 Hamrick men.

The farmer is tickled pink. But he is at a loss to explain how our family was fortunate enough to have a girl. Upstreet, he says that “the Y2K” has hit the Hamrick men – that they’ve gone to having girl babies.

What I think is that maybe “the Y2K” has fixed them.

What I know for sure is that God is still in the joy business. And the miracle business. And even the surprise business!

One of the biggest indicators of our nation’s prosperity is that America has turned into a nation of collectors. In fact, a super way to “break the ice” is to get folks to tell you what they collect. If you need to bond with someone, ask them to tell you how they got started collecting frog memorabilia - and why. There are as many crazy stories as there are zany Americans. And people love people who ask them their stories.

It used to be that people had hobbies: embroidery, whittling, photography. Nowadays, ask a person what their hobby is and they will tell you what they collect. They’ll say, “My hobby is collecting North Carolina pottery,” or “My hobby is collecting celebrity autographs.” Or even, “My hobby is collecting women’s hats.”

What about you? If you haven’t jumped whole hog into collecting, you probably are contemplating it. I don’t recall exactly the moment and the hour, but one day I woke up and smelled the coffee.

“Kathryn, you don’t collect anything special!” I thought. “You’re not getting any younger - you really should get started on a collection.”

“Well,” I defended myself, “you collect recipes!” “That’s passé. Besides they quit printing recipes worth cutting out, unless you would actually eat Portabello Risotto with Argula and Humus.”

Collecting quilts was a possibility, or possibly milk churns. But I didn’t want to add a wing onto the house. With collections, storage is a factor.

The farmer was no help at all. “Why don’t you just collect old North Carolina license plates?” he said. “If they get in the way, you could nail them up on the side of the barn!”

Beanie babies had not been invented, so I considered other possibilities: salt & pepper shakers, baseball caps, stamps. But these items are already taken. And the last thing I want to do is get in a hair-pulling with someone over Hawaiian coconut salt shakers.

Then the farmer and I went to Coon Dog Day in Saluda, which is THE annual event on our social calendar. Our son had gone to Coon Dog Day and had turned into a Plott hound collector/breeder. So I knew the risks. But after the Coon Dog Day parade, I dashed into one of the small stores and there they were: a little pair of blue ceramic cows. Eureka! But they wanted $5 for the pair.

I whistled for the farmer. “Cline, I want to pick your brain – and your pocketbook. I’m going to start a collection of pairs of blue and white cows -- in honor of our years in the dairy business. What do you think?”

He gave me the $5 and kept his thoughts to himself.

That was 5 years ago, before the invention of Ebay. Ebay is that wonderful Internet auction site where you can bid on and purchase stuff you forgot had ever been made. All hours of the day and night, people are putting North Carolina pottery, frog memorabilia, and lap robes up for auction. And pairs of blue and white cows.

What began as a pair is fixing to become a herd. For when you start a collection, what you end up with is more stuff. I reckon that’s the American way.

Among the many tasks that moms never get reimbursed for is the task of taking care of their children’s important stuff. This job begins with our first kindergarten art project, and grows to include our immunization records, graduation caps and gowns, and college textbooks. Mothers have to set their children free, but they surely don’t like to part with the stuff of our childhood. In fact, they hold onto it forever.

Until they reach their 75th birthday. At this time, a different set of juices kick in and moms begin hinting, “I’ve been going through the stuff, trying to get rid of as much as I can – in case something were to happen.

My mother added, “By the way, what do you propose I do with the sombrero you bought in El Paso in 1961? It’s got a lot of wear left in it, and I hate to throw it away. Do your reckon Cline would wear it while he’s bush hogging?”

Thus went the conversation the last time I visited my mother. I knew Mama was dead serious when she said, “I gave your sister Cynthia her Roy Rogers books.” This was the litmus test - there was no turning back.

She added, “And I’m thinking of telling your brother Broadus to come get the baseball game Santa Claus brought him in 1959. By the way, you can have the box of 1966 newspaper clippings you brought back from Bogota, Colombia. Don’t see any reason for me not to give them back to you.”

We went to the attic. Sure enough, there in Mama’s attic were my high school, college and wedding memories. And Mama was fixing to shed the stuff! She was retiring as Storage Coordinator for our childhood memorabilia.

Amongst the other exciting stuff freed up were my Sunday School pins, high school diary, and the front tooth a dentist pulled in the 7th grade. It was, however, troubling to find a new book I’d received as a graduation present that had gone unread: it was an advice book written by Miss America of 1965. Frankly speaking, wonder how I managed all those years on the farm without this information?

Downstairs I looked in Mama’s bedroom closet and there they were: the wedding dresses. Mama had 3 daughters and 3 wedding dress. Mine has been hanging there since June 1970. Dare I ask for my wedding dress? Being past 50 years of age surely gives a daughter some rights.

“Mama,” I began, “don’t you think it’s time we took our wedding dresses home? They really are in your way. How do you ever find your hand-me-downs with these dresses taking up so much room in your closet?”

Mama said, “I don’t know what you’d do with your wedding dress. It probably doesn’t fit.”

She’s right - it doesn’t. But I promised Mama that I would take care of the dress, so I brought it home and hung it over the living room couch. The dress brings back so many memories.

Especially of how lucky for me that Mama served as my Storage Coordinator for half a century.

I had always known it was just a matter of time before the farmer and I ended up in Maine. Especially after the farmer learned of the 57 miles of carriage roads in the Acadia National Park. Twenty-seven years and lots of Rockefeller money went into these carriage roads, which may be one of the park’s best kept secrets.

As soon as the farmer heard of them, he became obsessed with “hauling buggy” to Maine, literally. “A thousand miles isn’t too far to carry our horses and buggy,” the farmer had mused. The handwriting was on the wall, so on his birthday, I surprised the farmer with plane tickets to Bangor – in a commuter plane with no room for horse trailers. A couple of friends decided to throw in their lot and go with us.

Next I jumped on the Internet and reserved several carriage rides. And I told the farmer that in addition to the 6-hours of buggy riding, we alalso would meet someone famous.

That famous person was Paul Bunyan. There’s a 30-foot statue of this world-famous logger in the heart of Bangor. The highlight of our trip, I thought, will be photographing my husband standing beside Paul Bunyan.

Paul Bunyan, however, turned out to be anticlimactic. For no sooner did we arrive at Bar Harbor than we managed to get ourselves introduced to the Governor of Maine. Our first day’s schedule included a ferry trip over to Nova Scotia, where we would spend one night. While we were waiting on the ferry, a horde of Harleys roared into the parking lot. “There goes our vacation,” I thought.

This group quickly blew our stereotypes of bikers to smithereens. The photographer traveling with them gave it away. “Just a bunch of lawyers who are biker-wannabes,” the farmer said.

Then one of the bikers emerged from the pack, approaching cars, shaking hands. He looked at our car’s Connecticut rental license plate, extended his hand, and said, “Angus King, Governor of Maine. Are you guys from Connecticut?” By the time Max had finished pronouncing “Boiling Springs, North Carolina,” the governor knew we had come from way off down yonder.

Later, aboard the ferry, the Governor came over and sat a spell. He spoke of his admiration for our state’s governor and our emphasis on education. I jumped on the opportunity to pick the Governor’s brain for a little free vacation advice. “Stop in Machias for fresh blueberry pie,” he said, “and tell them I sent you.” What a great Governor! The blueberry pie could have been the highlight of our trip…

But then we ran into Walker, Texas Ranger. We were having lunch at Jordan Pond House in Acadia National Park, and I was irritated that we had been stuck in the furthest corner of the restaurant. “We can’t see anybody stuck way off down here,” I said.

“How about Chuck Norris?” Max asked. We turned around and there in person was Chuck Norris, being seated at the table next to us.

I sent the farmer to the car for cameras. The farmer, who is 6’6”, strode back in, swashbuckling, with cameras hanging from his neck, loaded for bear. Chuck Norris’ friend smiled but waved his hand at Cline, meaning “No pictures, please.”

We decided to sit a spell, and enjoy the magnificent view of Jordan Pond, Bubble Mountain, and Chuck Norris.

People have said, “You should have taken his picture or talked to him anyway.” Obviously, these people have not seen Chuck Norris on television.

Our Maine vacation was perfect. But it could have turned out otherwise, had we managed to get Walker, Texas Ranger, riled up.