Welcome to day 5 of this year’s Christmas countdown on the blog!

If you’re stopping in for the first time, you can get caught up by starting back on day 1 to understand this year’s theme, otherwise…

After the first three Europe-based memories and yesterday’s Christmas tree memory, today we’re off to a tiny little English-speaking community, nestled in the largely French-speaking Kent County, along the Little Bouctouche River… McKee’s Mills.

McKee’s Mills

It’s referred to simply as McKee’s for those who call it home or who have roots there… and we have roots there.

In the little cemetery, perched on the hill just below what we referred to growing up as Irene & Viola’s, there are gravestones commemorating the lives of my family back some seven generations. It’s one of the reasons why, though I’ve never lived there, there is a very real tangible sense of belonging there.

The year was 2005 and Timo, by far our biggest newborn (and the only one to be ‘fully baked’ – as the others arrived early) spent his first Christmas on the farm.

The kids & I spent the better part of an afternoon building a fort in the heavy snow that had fallen among the fir trees that separated mom & dad’s place from the orchard at “Ally & Rhoda’s” (photo above). Later that night we lit a bonfire and we all enjoyed hot chocolate in the night air, admiring the stars in the clear sky and spending time together.

I think this is the only picture I have of the kids with my Grandma & Grandpa Hicks. Gram had to live in a nearby nursing home as she’d picked up a staph infection years previous, while wintering in California. She lost the use of her legs and couldn’t return to her home with grandpa (There’s a whole miraculous & faith-inspiring story to share there, but I’ll save it for another time).

Photo note…

As I look through the photos on my laptop, for these posts, I’m cognizant of the fact that I have fewer full-family Christmas photos with Liz’s family… there are two reasons for that I think:

• There were fewer times that we went to Belgium for Christmas, and even when we did…
• They don’t put up a tree, so there is generally not the same “must-get-a-family-pic-in-front-of-the-tree” reflex.

McKee’s Mills Memories

If you’re reading this and you have a connection to McKee’s Mills, or you are interested in reading about rural living in the mid-20th century, I published a short book on the community, taken from my grandfather’s journals, written in the years preceding his passing and after my grandmother passed away. It’s available here, on Amazon.

Thank you sharing this memory and…