Memorandum from Mary Kay Murphy
Mary Kay Murphy, Ph.D. District 3  School Board Member

New Year's Reflections on
 "Fruitcake Weather"

   My mother never met a teacher she didn't like, especially one who taught my brother and me. Her way of showing appreciation to our teachers was to prepare a homemade fruitcake as a New Year's gift-fruitcakes as only our mother knew how to make them. 
   A gifted cook and baker, our mother perfected a holiday fruitcake specialty from her own recipe baked in rectangular loaf pans and that she monitored to perfection. In preparation of a gift to celebrate the New Year, our mother worked at a feverish pitch to prepare these special homemade gifts for all our teachers. 
   Alabama novelist Truman Capote called this time of the year "Fruitcake Weather." My mother would have agreed with him. Her annual ritual of making fruitcakes for our teachers began when our mother, my brother, and I rode the Number 5 bus from our house on Monroe Drive to Gaylord Street and the destination of our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
   Once inside the store, our mother began with military precision to amass the necessary supplies for her annual bake off. She assembled one by one in her shopping buggy whole almonds and pecans, maraschino cherries, candied pineapple, Karo syrup, brown sugar, dried fruit, brown eggs, and all purpose flour among the ingredients vital to her secret holiday recipe.
   Arriving home after the bus trip from Gaylord Street, our mother initiated the assembly plan for her renowned production. After combining the prize ingredients, she mixed the batter to just the right texture and poured it into rectangular loaf pans lined with waxed paper that she trimmed to make collars for the baking cycle.
   She tested the center of the cakes for doneness by inserting a straw from her broomstick. When the straws she extracted from the cakes were free of any dough that might have adhered to them, she determined that the cakes were done. 
   After the cakes were sufficiently cooled, she basted them with juices and spirits, turned down their waxed paper collars, lovingly wrapped the cakes in cheesecloth, and stored them in crock pots in her basement Fruit Cupboard. There no daylight could interfere with the steeping and fermenting of the citrus juices so vital to bringing the cakes to their New Year's perfection.
   Sometime between the third and fourth weeks of steeping, our mother declared the cakes ready for their final destinations: the classrooms and desks of our teachers just in time for a New Year's gift after school resumed from the holidays.
   The final leg of our mother's holiday fruitcake journey began on the day after the holiday break when she would gather her gaily wrapped and fragrant packages of homemade fruitcake, accompanied by my brother and me, and walk the twelve long blocks to our school. 
   She would knock on the teachers' doors, thank them for extending the lamp of learning to my brother and me, wish them the best of success in the New Year, and ask if there were any way that she might help them. 
   There were limits to what our mother could give. She did not drive a car. She did not have money for lavish gifts. Although the presents of homemade New Year's fruitcake that our mother brought to our teachers were humble, the real gift that she gave was of herself and her abundant and generous spirit. 
   She knew from the bottom of her heart that what our teachers did was important. She had no other way to let them know of her appreciation than to give them something from the depths of her talents and her ability to give.
   At this time of year-as we wait joyously for the New Year to begin-it is my deepest desire to follow my mother's great example. It is my desire to let the teachers in Gwinnett County Public Schools know of the depth of our appreciation for the great work that they do. It is my desire to thank them for extending the lamp of learning to all the students in our community. 
   While I cannot knock on the classroom doors of each one of our community's teachers to thank them for their commitment to teaching and learning, I thank them nevertheless for their outstanding work, now-in "Fruitcake Weather," as my mother would say-and all throughout the school year.
   There is no greater gift that our teachers give to our students and our community than the gift they give of themselves from the depths of their talents and abilities. 
   Those of us in Peachtree Corners, Norcross, Duluth, and Berkeley Lake are deeply in their debt.

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