Snohomish County's Voice and Vision Magazine

Welcome, Mother’s Day Heroes

Mothers are having a moment. On this special day, Welcome Magazine honors a select few for their sacrifices (especially during these unprecedented times), their inspiring stories, their constancy, compassion, and courage, and most importantly, their love. #HappyMothersDay

When Disaster Hits, Women Rise to the Occasion

…come Sunday, I plan to tune [the world] out for a day and just soak in some sunshine, check in with my parents and siblings, let my husband handle the laundry and the meals, play some backyard ping-pong and corn hole with my boys — and just cherish being a Mom.” —Carolyn Douglas, speaking for all moms

Mothers are having a moment.

COVID-19 might cower lesser beings. But not mom.

Ask any kid. Mom is a superhero. They can do anything. They’ve been known to lift two-ton cars, run into fires, face tornadoes head-on, go toe-to-toe with D.C. bureaucrats, sleep secluded in their cars at night after working full 24-hour hospital shifts…to protect their own.

COVID’s no match for a mother’s instincts.

If anything, this scary virus has brought out the best in moms everywhere. Brought them closer to their own families and communities during the never-ending quarantine, for sure. They’re rediscovering the joys of sourdough baking, French cooking (who else is following Julia Child’s famous cookbook, page by page?), canning, soap-making, victory gardening, knitting, fixing and detailing cars. They’re stepping in as teachers, sometimes dads, coaches, Tae Kwon Do masters, pastors, nurses, hair dressers, stylists.

Name it, they’re on it.

These hard-working, multi-talented super-women continue to do what they can to protect, nourish, and sustain their families through the hardest time imaginable in our recent history.

They are the heart and hearth, the mentors, the doers, the real, everyday heroes who sacrifice, who give, who love because they are moms.

Welcome Magazine’s own — publisher Fawn Clark, contributing writer Ellen Hiatt, Edmonds liaison Carolyn Douglas, who helped put 190 Sunset, among others, on the NW map, Cole Gallery and Art Studio owner, painter, art instructor, art judge, community leader Denise Cole, and important, outstanding working moms we’ve covered the past two issues — they represent just a smidge of the vastness that is Mother’s Day’s best.

We’re sharing some of their stories — what they’ve been up to, plans for their special day, what being a mom means — and linking to a few of ours about the working moms who do their part to save the world (or make it a better place), in between Little League, homeschooling, and soccer practice…you know, life.

As usual, Mom made it about everyone else.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Featured image: Our fearless leader, publisher Fawn Clark (left) shows off her first issue of Welcome Magazine to Corinne T. Jordan last Dec. at a Bon Vivant Art Culinaire Cooking Show in Snohomish, featuring Della Terra catering chef Cody Castiglia and Kasia Winery. During the COVID quarantine, Clark’s been happily rediscovering the joys of freehand sourdough baking at home with her grandson.

Carolyn Douglas, Communications and Media Consultant, Emmy-winning Broadcast Journalist:

I gotta admit, I don’t really feel deserving of any special tributes right now. Like so many other folks, I’m just treading water in a sea of chaos. My family is now my primary client.

My days are full of cooking, cleaning, homeschooling (my 4th grader), caring for a husband who’s recovering from back surgery, and navigating the endless disruptions and work-arounds stemming from life during a global pandemic. That includes trying to manage a chaotic end to Senior Year for my older boy in high school and Fall college plans that are suddenly in disarray. 

So I am just taking each day as it comes and trying to keep my head above water. It all feels so surreal, doesn’t it?  I am deeply grateful to the heroes of our community who are keeping our essential services running right now. And I pray for those who have lost loved ones to this virus. I think we are all grappling with the terrifying health and economic impacts of this pandemic.

So, I am especially grateful to have my husband and boys safely home with me this Mother’s Day weekend. As a communications and community outreach consultant, I feel compelled to follow the news of the day and the reactions to it. And with our city and state slowly starting to reopen, it’s time for me to start searching for a new client project or a part-time role in this “new normal” of remote work.

But come Sunday, I plan to tune it all out for a day and just soak in some sunshine, check in with my parents and siblings, let my husband handle the laundry and the meals, play some backyard ping-pong and corn hole with my boys — and just cherish being a Mom.

Denise Cole, Owner of Cole Gallery and Art Studio, Co-owner/Founder of ARTspot, Edmonds:

We have three grown kids: Luke, 32 — who lives with us, along with his wife Meagan and their daughter Tillie, 21 months — is really into sourdough baking right now, and works at Move’n not Shake’n. Maddy, 38, is a social worker in Michigan who usually travels all over the country with the Annie E. Casey Foundation as a consultant.

She is one of the top specialists in the country helping programs who help youth who age out of foster care to go to college. My other son, Jimmy, 29, is on the autism spectrum, but lives in Bellingham and works at 5 Guys Burgers. We’re proud of all our kids! They are so different and all so special! 

I’m pretty lucky in that I have my son, daughter-in-law, and Tillie (my 21-month grand baby) living with us right now!  We’re going to celebrate by slow smoking salmon in the tradition of the Northwest Native Tribes, with alder smoke. We’ll all be together around the picnic table and happy that we have each other!

Ellen Hiatt, Welcome Magazine Writer, Principal Consultant — Hiatt Studios:

There are so many kinds and so many stages of motherhood… what they all mean to me amounts to one thing: Love.

I love my children — the ones I’ve given birth to, the ones who have come to me by marriage, and the ones who have come to me because they just needed some mothering.

Lance is a grown man with a beard and a family and he calls me “Mama,” because I gave him the Love he needed when he flew in and out of my house to visit my twin girls. Dominic, who came to help us move out of a house and has never quit helping us, gets a hot sandwich on his way out the door, because I know he needs the love more than he needs the food. “He’s used to me mothering him,” I say. “Yep,” he says. “I love you guys.”

My twin daughters made me a grandmother just as I was given the blessing of birthing my first-born child. I sobbed the ugly cry when she was born. This child was the first of my “Fat Babies.” I needed her as much as she needed me. Then another Fat Baby came along and I thought my family was complete. Later, when I was blessed with a true love in a husband and partner, my family grew again with little redheads. Fat Babies One, Two, Three, and Four.

Blending families is never easy, but because my husband and I are the ultimate team, and because we never made any separation between “My” kids and “Your” kids — our challenges in parenting are pretty predictable. How many times have we deflected the question: Which kid is yours and which is his? We have no desire to separate them. They are all “Our” kids.

You see, there are no “Steps” in our family. There is only Love. OK — sometimes there is anger, frustration, laughter, joy. But the thread that binds us all together is knowing that we all belong together. We always have. We just took awhile to find each other.

Ellen’s Famous Butter Biscuits

It’s fitting that I share “Ellen’s Famous Butter Biscuits” recipe on Mother’s Day. The name of them reminds me of “Ellen’s Potato Salad” that my father-in-law raves about. The potato salad was my mother’s first, and her mother’s before her. Isn’t that what mothers do? Pass on our recipes?

The biscuits, though, have an even more special memory of mom attached to them. These biscuits sustained us all in one of life’s major transitions. We had moved our family of eight, plus one dog and two cats, across the country from Indiana and landed at a state park on Lake Goodwin, waiting for a rental house to open up. We camped for two weeks, living on the rations of Navy Bean Soup and butter biscuits every single day.  

My father had left a trucking job in Indiana where he was the lucky recipient of 50 pounds of dry navy beans. He stored them in a milk can. By the time we made it to Washington State, we were broke, feeding the cats berry jam. But we had each other, mom’s homemade jam, and a butter churn that came in mighty handy to churn up butter from the cream dad brought home from the job he gratefully found milking cows.

Making butter biscuits in a cast iron pan over the campfire, swimming in fresh lake water, making new friends at the campground — the stuff of dreams for nine-year-old me. I still love Navy Bean Soup, made simple with a ham hock and salt and pepper. But those biscuits. We quit making them for the next three decades until one day, sitting around a campfire, my siblings and I began to reminisce. So I took up the charge — graduating from Bisquick to a Better Homes and Garden recipe for cobbler biscuits.  

This recipe is for family gatherings, opening day of fishing season, camping, and memories. Be as generous with the butter as you are with your love.

Mix in bowl:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

  • Cut in 1/4 cup butter till mixture resembles crumbs.
  • Combine 1 beaten egg & 1/4 cup milk.
  • Add to dry mixture & stir till moistened.
  • Melt 1/8 cup butter in small 9” cast iron pan over even, low coals. Bake with lid on. Flip biscuits after about 10 minutes (time depends on heat). Bake another 5 minutes. Frying biscuits in butter makes an addictive, slightly salty, crunchy crust. Enjoy!

 

Find more recipes here.

Welcome, Mothers in the News:

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