Jim Rode Photographer

For many of you who read my blog, you encounter the holiday dilemma in the coming months with Thanksgiving and Christmas, perhaps Passover, or Kwanzaa. Here is the dilemma... "Do we go to your parents house, or mine? Who gets which holiday? When do we simply stay at our own house?

I was reading about the Women of Ravensbrook. During the Holocaust, the Nazis crowded about 1000 Jewish women into a barracks designed for 240. They were forced into hard labor and suffered with little food, no medicine, no heat. The entire system was set up to work them to death. They could be killed at anytime on the whim of any guard.

Each evening, jammed together, suffering the cold and hunger, most sitting and sleeping on the wooden floors, they would talk. Talk about the food they missed, seeing their family again, cooking for them, recipes. Although punishable by death to have paper of ANY kind, one woman was able to find torn discards of paper, and wrote down the recipes for everyone. She would hide the scraps and the precious pencil. The women wanted to pass on their recipes, even if they didn't live to cook again.

When I think about the thoughts they expressed, the stories, the recipes, their longing to simply to be with family again, I think of the holidays in a whole new way. I think we can care for our families, and find creative ways to spend time with our parents. Passing the holiday talking, laughing, sharing with them...that's the recipe for life.