She has her mother's smile and her stubborn streak. And now, she has inherited her mother's dream.
"It's kind of like I've been training my whole life for this," says Christa Jones, who grew up mixing, sifting and kneading alongside her mother, Mary Scarcliff, at the Lighthouse Bakery on Dauphin Island. "My time with Momma was always in here in the bakery. Our quality time was spent helping her in here and learning from her."
To the shock of her family and the Dauphin Island community, Mary was diagnosed with an inoperable and quickly growing brain tumor just after she and her husband, Daniel, celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary this past Christmas Eve. She was given two months to live.
Mary might have had a premonition that something was wrong. She and Daniel had sat down with Christa, their youngest child, just before Christmas to talk about the future of the bakery. Mary explained that she was getting older and hoping to retire, and she was thinking about selling the bakery or, if Christa wished, turning it over to her.
Christa, who went to night school for her real estate license a few years ago, had mixed emotions. Taking over for her mother would mean a lot of responsibility. Then again, she would also be able to continue the legacy that Mary started when she opened the bakery in 1997.
"A rush of honor and pride came over me," she says. "Knowing that they believed in me to carry it on was such a precious gift."
That was just days before Mary learned about her brain tumor.
Christa, who's been running the show at the bakery since Jan. 19, hears over and over again that she has some big shoes to fill. She always replies: "Good thing Momma and I wear the same size shoes, then!"
She and her mother really do wear the same size shoes. And Christa does things at the bakery just like her mother did, starting every morning at 2:30 a.m., when she and Robbi Thrower meet in the spotless kitchen to get started on cinnamon rolls, cream cheese danish, turnovers, muffins, cookies and all the other fresh specialties that will fill the display case.
The bakery's Sunday brunch is as popular as ever, with Christa making the crabmeat omelets that her mother made famous. On Sunday mornings, there's a line along the front porch, down the ramp and into the parking lot. The bakery also serves caramel almond rolls only on Sundays, and on Saturdays, it offers fresh French bread.
"There are people who schedule their vacation time around when we're open," Christa says proudly.
'It was home'
Christa's mom Mary was born in Morocco, one of seven children in a U.S. Air Force family. After stops in France and Germany, her father moved them all back to the United States when Mary was 4.
Mary learned to cook by helping her mother make everything from scratch. Bread was a particular skill that Mary honed, already dreaming of having her own bakery one day.
When dating Daniel after meeting him in college, she even drew a picture of her bakery -- an old house, revived and repurposed, with a porch across the front and dormer windows.
They were married and living in Virginia when Daniel, who is from Mobile, took Mary to Dauphin Island for a visit. "They felt like it was home," Christa says.
They felt that so strongly, in fact, that they decided to move there with their son, Sean, and daughter, Erica. They bought two wooded lots, and Mary designed their house, which they built themselves. In photos from that time, Mary, pregnant with Christa, leans over a skill saw.
A licensed physical therapy assistant, Mary worked in hospitals and eventually as an instructor at Bishop State Community College. She also threw herself into life in her new island home as a volunteer firefighter and an EMT with Dauphin Island Fire and Rescue. She helped raise money for the community's first fire truck and served as president of the local chamber of commerce.
And she opened that bakery that had been in her mind's eye. She gave it the name Lighthouse Bakery, for the Sand Island Lighthouse.
The building was very small, just 450 square feet. Says Christa, who was 10 then, "There was no room to store anything."
But Mary made the most of it, and, four years later, spotted a 1912 cottage -- one of the oldest homes on the island -- for sale. It looked just like the picture that she'd drawn way back when, except that it only had one dormer.
The Scarcliffs bought and renovated the 2,400-square-foot house, which Christa says is haunted by a friendly ghost who likes to turn lights on and off. They kept as many of the house's original features as possible, like the porch with gingerbread trim and the old windows along the front.
They wanted it, says Christa, "to be comfortable and relaxing, like going to your grandmother's house."
The bakery on Chaumont Avenue has become a fixture on Dauphin Island. The mayor, Jeff Collier, even calls it a "must-see."
"It adds to the uniqueness and charm of our island community. Anyone who visits will say that's one of their favorite stops," Collier says.
Christa's children, Stanley and Bella, go to school at Dauphin Island Elementary, where kids leave bikes unlocked and have a view of the water when they step outside of their classrooms. "Dauphin Island is a modern-day Mayberry," Christa says. "Everybody waves and watches out for everybody else. Even if you're not related, it's family."
'Willed it to happen'
This past Christmas was filled with blessings. Christa was engaged to Ricky Jones, who she says is the first man she's ever met who is "just like" her father. "Daddy is very gentle, soft-spoken, patient, funny, corny, go-with-the-flow," she says. "That's how Ricky is."
The whole family was together at the Scarcliff home for the first time in some 15 years, Christa says. "It was awesome. Just like when we were growing up."
And, after talking with her parents, Christa decided that she'd indeed take over the bakery from her mom. She just didn't realize how soon that would be.
On Dec. 27, her mother called to say she wasn't feeling well and was going to the doctor. When she arrived at the doctor's office, she was sent directly to the emergency room. A CT scan revealed a large glioblastoma in her brain.
Mary had been diagnosed with eye cancer years earlier and had lost peripheral vision in her right eye. But the tumor appeared "out of nowhere," Christa says.
The family sought advice from five specialists and made a trip to UAB, but "every single person who saw her said it was too advanced for anything to be done."
Mary is now in hospice care. But while she was still well enough, Mary spent an entire day in the bakery kitchen going over recipes with Christa, ensuring that she could make everything by herself.
"I got all but a couple," Christa says. "We had some funny moments trying to get that out of her."
On the first day that Christa opened the bakery on her own -- a job that had always been Mary's -- "she was determined to come see me," Christa says. And she did.
When Christa and Ricky set a wedding date of Jan. 28, Mary decided to make three spectacular cheesecakes for the reception.
She kept that a secret, of course, confiding only in her husband and Robbi, her "right hand" at the bakery.
"Mary is a very stubborn woman," says Robbi. "It's her way or no way at all."
The night before her wedding, Christa saw cheesecakes cooling on racks in the bakery. "I burst into tears," she says. "Daddy told me how Momma worked so hard. It was amazing. She willed it to happen."
Christa says, "You can't tell my Momma 'no.'"
("You can't tell Christa 'no,' either," says Robbi.)
On the day of the wedding, despite having several seizures, Mary woke up early to finish the wedding cake, which ended up being "the last thing she made," Christa says. "That meant so much. It was probably the best cheesecake I ever had."
Within a week, Mary was no longer able to walk.
'The bakery lady'
On Jan. 19, Christa posted on Lighthouse Bakery's Facebook page: "I did it, Momma! We are open and everything is made."
While she certainly wishes her mother could still be there working beside her, Christa is confident that she's doing just what Mary wanted her to do.
As the weeks have passed, Christa has learned a lot about what Mary -- "the bakery lady" -- meant to her patrons. Many have sent cards to her. "It's been really cool to read the stories," Christa says.
One man wrote about being on the island after a hurricane blew through. The power was out, and he had no cash in his pockets. But the Lighthouse Bakery was open, and Mary told him to come on in and get something to eat.
Later, he came back to pay her, but she wouldn't hear of it.
"She was constantly doing stuff for people," Christa says. "She wanted to make sure everybody was taken care of."
Christa and her father take turns sitting with Mary. "Most days she's coherent, talking to us and eating and drinking," she says. "But some days she won't open her eyes. We've watched her stop breathing twice."
Her mother isn't going to give up easily. "She's a fighter," Christa says. "She struggles, but she keeps fighting for another day."
She's stubborn like that. It seems to run in the family.