Familial Research and Development

Mom needed to take a trip to the neighborhood grocery store. Hey-back then that's what there was. There was no big super store and no chain grocery stores of any significance. So don't be thinking why not just a trip to a big store-back then most city dwellers did NOT have their own ride-they relied on a bus or even cheaper than that-shoe-leather express. I was small enough and we were going to get groceries she would have to carry so with Bobby and I in tow she used (I don't know if we had one or if she borrowed a neighbors) a little red wagon. I was so slow afoot, I got to ride in the wagon to the store and back again. I was sitting toward the back of the wagon and hung my right hand over the side. Somehow I found the wheel with the inside of the far side of my right middle finger and I let it drag against the wheel. There were a couple times I twisted my hand and my finger kind of got stuck. There were a couple times she realized what I was doing and yelled at me to stop...

One holiday when we visited Grandma and Grandpa Nelson they gave each of us kids a 50 cent piece. That was LOT of money to me and I was totally unaccustomed to having any. It was nap time and I had no choice but had to lay down to take a nap (tired or not-that was the protocol-I understand now, it wasn't so much that the kids needed naps but rather the adults needed a break from the kids) and was told to put my money on the nightstand so I wouldn't lose it. When I awoke Grandpa had replaced it with 2 quarters. Also I hadn't remembered the 50 cent piece and hadn't noticed it had been traded out. Finally the teasers couldn't bear it any longer and began their comments of, "Well, maybe it doesn't matter to her. Maybe she doesn't really care. Maybe she wants to just let whoever wants it take it. Maybe I ought to just take it back. See, she still hasn't remembered about it." Then when I did get the hint (2" X 4" reminder) I was all in tea...

On three separate occasions I went to school with a black eye. The last time sticks in my memory most. Dad had tried to help me with my reading words. He got impatient and hit me. Not must once but multiple times. Every time I didn't read the word right or remember right or stammered or hesitated I got whacked upside the head. If I flinched he'd snicker and come at me with his other open hand. The next day as I was leaving for school mom stopped me at the door-her chair was only 6' away so it was easy for her, sitting there, to say just a minute... She asked me to look her in the face. I did. Then she asked me to bend over and act like I was picking something up off the floor. She had to re-explain it a couple of times because I was too close to the door to bend over safely and I had back away (problem one) and I was angled to slip out the door-not open it really wide (second problem). Then she said, yes I guess if they call I can tell them you accidentally hit the door kno...

In 5th grade Dr. Boaden (PhD) talked the Kiwanis club into sponsoring 4 elementary students to Disneyland. I was one of them. I had a ball. I rode a mule train. No really-they had one. There were like six or eight mules daisy-chained together and you rode on them in a saddle along a trail which had miniature houses and villages-it could easily be where Storybook land boat ride is now. I rode the Matterhorn. I rode the tea cups in Alice in Wonderland's the Mad Hatter ride. I loved It's a Small World and the Submarine ride. I never had dreamed of an experience so wonderful. To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement. About a month after this event I was invited to go to the Kiwanis Club luncheon and tell them how much fun it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. I was 11 years old and could NOT articulate how much fun I had and how great it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. The spaghetti lunch was good!

I remember going to mom one morning and telling her my tummy hurt. She looked at the clock and said, "It's probably that you're hungry. It's only another hour until lunch time. You can wait that long." I hadn't had breakfast. That's the way it was. Every day. She took really good care of her babies, but when we started growing up a little (started to 'ugly up') we didn't get the same care. We weren't old enough to do some things for ourselves and she wasn't doing them for us either. It's not like there was cold cereal in the cupboard. The market was just coming out with all the fun stuff (Cheerios, Alpha Bits, etc.). Dad didn't believe in feeding cereal to humans-cereal is made from grains and grains are animal feed. Whatever. So she couldn't even fix us a bowl of oats, or Cream of Wheat, or Germade without suffering dad's wrath. By the time I was in grade school I went every morning with nothing in my tummy. That's ...

Sometimes you just don't want to say something out loud-especially if someone listening might hear it from their perspective and not from yours-else ways they may take it wrong, or hard or something like that. I just want to say some things and not have anyone take it a wrong way. This is presented from my perspective-my opinion-my "I feel" statements. We went on vacation this year. We've been doing that more than we ever could before and it feels absolutely wonderful. Our main impetus was to go see Jacob and Sharon as he was returning from Afghanistan. I wanted him and Sharon to know how important to me they are and hopefully by finally being able to make it out there we could show them. Also, I had a horrible nightmare just after he left and I wanted to know it wasn't so. So from my perspective, the most important part of our vacation (the focal point) was to see and hold Jacob and know he was safe and to see and hold Sharon and know that she was doing okay. In ...

Purportedly because I had good grades in school dad wanted to take me to the County Fair and experience the carnival rides and games. Looking back-and after talking with mom-I know that wasn't the full truth. In all actuality he wanted to go (that's the reason most parents have for doing fun things with their kids) and mom knew that if she went with him he'd want to ride the rides and terrify her. So, he took me, we rode the rides and he terrified me instead! The Ferris wheel-looks innocent enough, but when we were at the top waiting for the Ferris wheel to finish loading dad started rocking it. I did what any normal human being would do-I screamed, grabbed the bar across the front, ducked my head to the back of my white-knuckled hands and held on for dear life. He was laughing so hard-I don't recall hearing him have such a good time before. Then there was the threats of I'd better look up and see the city. It took all the courage I could muster to do so. Yes, it wa...

I had a horrible infestation of warts on my fingers-around the cuticles. The kids at school would tease me. It's not as if there weren't enough other things to tease me about (Smellson-play on my last name as Barbara wet the bed EVERY night and left her wet, stinky, un-laundered PJ's on the floor and of course I left all of my clothes on the floor so they soaked up the aroma). To 'help' me dad would use his pocket knife and shave off my warts every week or so. It was very painful-and I think at my young age it was very frightening to have someone using a pocket knife on my fingers. My warts eventually went away. Whew! But my fingers were going to experience another trauma. Maybe that's why the warts went away. On at least two occasions I stupidly let my finger get closed in the car door. Both times it was pretty bad. The nail fell off-it was a bloody mess. Dad would actually-again-use his pocket knife to clean up and off the debris and then would have me soak it...

I'm certainly hoping that my adult children don't share this with their children-they may read it the wrong way-like permission to break the commandments despite what their parents teach them. In second grade I figured out that other kids (it seemed like ALL of them) brought pocket change from their parents to buy their hot school lunch. They ate something different every day-in the lunch room. I got to sit out at the wood picnic tables outside my classroom and eat my Velveta American Process Cheese sandwich and sometimes there was an apple chaser. I still like cheese sandwiches and apples-I just don't like Velveta cheese. Well most of the kids would leave their lunch money in their desk ('cause it might fall out of their pockets when they played during recess). I discovered that I could be 'late' leaving the classroom and take a nickel here, a dime there, until I had enough to buy a school lunch. Can we say d-u-m-b-o? One of four kids in the family, all attendi...

My dad was loud. Anytime he was angry, frustrated, or upset he was louder than normal. At home watching the news-he was mad at the reporter, mad at the politician, mad at whoever was making whatever decision that didn't agree with his stance on how it should be handled (whatever 'it' was). When he was driving down the road he yelled at others-even if he was in the wrong-it was all their fault. He would come home and yell about the people at work and how they had made him mad. If you rode with him in the car anywhere or 'helped' him while he worked on one of his projects-he would be talking VERY loudly about how wrong mom was and how no good she was. Sometimes it was Bob he was mad at or the education system, or just the general societal laws that we are all required to live by. As I grew older and became more aware through reading and associations at school and through the general public education I realized that he was very, very wrong. I could see and understand h...

This picture is of my big brother Bobby, my grandpa Flint and myself. I was less than a year old-I was still wearing a diaper So this was probably taken sometime in late 1954-maybe early 1955. It was near Thanksgiving when mom got the telegram telling her that grandpa had died. I'm not sure who was hurt by it the most-she or me. He was her dad. He saved her life when she was 7 and laying in the hospital dieing of double pneumonia and empyema. This was pre-antibiotics and pre-IV to replenish body fluids. He spent the night spooning ice water over her cracked and dried lips. Mind you modern medicine at the time dictated they take half a rib out and secure a tube in her chest and let it drain into a glass gallon jug on the floor to get the pus away from her lungs and heart. Well.. back to my story. I don't recall how old I was when I heard about it and if I weren't so lazy I could look it up-I have his death certificate just two feet away from me in the file cabinet-but those ...

Our back yard wasn't huge and it wasn't tiny either. If you were moving it with the push mower it was too big. If you were weeding it, it was way too big. In reality it was average for the track houses in our neighborhood. We kids weren't allowed to play with the neighbor kids at their houses. If they wanted to come to our house, they were welcome. There wasn't much to attract them to our house. Little things like we had a black and white TV and theirs was a color TV; our home was not clean, we had no toys, we didn't wear stylish clothes-in short we had nothing of interest. We ate coon, possum, deer, fish and wild goat meat for dinner more often than we had chicken or hamburger. You always seem to want what you don't have-the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. So not having ALL the stuff and not being able to play with 'their' stuff and watching the commercials about all the stuff I'd never get to have-well, I grew up covetous. Maybe be...

I really struggled in first and second grade trying to learn and understand math. I'm talking simple addition and subtraction. I had been teased so much by dad that I couldn't trust-not anyone and not anything. In other words just because 2 + 3 equals five, that did not mean that 3 + 2 equals five. Nor did it mean that if it did this morning it would this afternoon, or tomorrow. My saintly second grade teacher, Miss Hanmore, finally got some popsicle sticks and gave me a whole passel of them. She helped me use tactile means to figure out that 2 + 3 or 3 + 2 are always going to equal 5. Always. Math wasn't my only challenge. I struggled with reading as well. The teacher would make reading flash cards for me to take home and practice the words. My dad would 'help' me practice my reading words. I went to school many times with black eyes due to his 'help'. I still have memories of sitting at the corner of the dining table with him holding the flash cards and f...

Nearly every weekend we went fishing. We'd drive down to Stearn's Wharf and dad would buy a bucket load of live bait-anchovies. We'd drive up to either Goleta Beach or to Gaviota and he'd fish all day. I loved going. It meant I could walk the beaches and roam free. I found soda pop bottles along the beach and would turn them in at the little candy/food/bait shack and get a penny a bottle deposit that I could use to buy a nickel candy bar! Goleta beach h eld the special memory of the day we took Sargeant (our German shepherd dog) with us. I was told I could take him for a walk along the beach. Hah! I tell you, HAH! He saw that wide open beach and he took me for a walk-for all of about fifty feet-then my pants were so full of sand that I let go of the leash. He eventually found me again. I was terrified of telling my dad what I had let happen. Gaviota beach held a different-unique memory for me. It was my favorite beach to go to. It seemed smaller-not as easy to get lost....

The teacher seemed flustered. I couldn't understand why. I was the one who should be flustered. Afterall-she asked the class to put their name at the top of the page she was handing out. How do you 'put' your name anywhere. I knew how to put clothes away, dishes away, food away (in my tummy), but my name? That was point one. Point two was I had no clue how to write my name-which after I looked all sad and hurt she finally decided to come figure out what was wrong. I told her I didn't know how to 'put' my name on my paper. "What?! You don't know how to write your own name?" -Write? She expected me to write? How? I had no clue. Then she came down to my level with the kindness that you would expect a teacher who wanted to help kids learn stuff would do. She carefully taught me how to write my first name-fortunately it is a short name! I can now 'put' my name at the top of the page! In first grade we made witches for Halloween. They were made w...

In my eyes, I feel strongly that the writer of the blog has two responsibilities. First and foremost-tell the truth. It may be as you see it and therefore if there were 1, 2, 3 or more persons involved when the 'truth' happened-they will each have a version (probably differing) of the 'truth'. Tell it anyway. They can tell their version of it. Which brings me to the second responsibility. Second-express yourself. Something I learned from a marriage and family counselor was when someone makes an "I feel..." statement it is not to be refuted. The person is expressing themselves from their perspective-accept it. You don't have to agree with it-but arguing is not acceptable. When you feel something-you feel it. That's all there is to it. Accept it.

I remember a long drive moving to Santa Barbara. It felt like it took forever. I guess one of the things that made it feel so long was that I had stuff on my lap and under my legs so there was no where to move or stretch-no way to get 'more comfortable'. There were no such things as kid music playing on the radio and even less of a chance of getting a kid/family oriented movie playing on a portable DVD player. Steamboat Willie may have been released to movie theaters in 1928 but it didn't come out on DVDs until 2003-a far cry from 1959 when we were moving. Besides that 8 minute movie could only have entertained us for so long! There was something pressed against the lower outside of my right leg and made it hurt a lot. Mom kept telling me to look out the window-as if that was going to relieve the pain! We had a Pontiac-olive green and beige with a white top and a hood ornament that reminded me of a Mohegan. I think that was mom & dad's first car. They hadn't had...

In Kentucky there had been a public pool we went to swim at. There was a slide in the water. I kept going down it even though the water was too deep for me to breathe in for how tall I wasn't in the landing/sitting position. I nearly drowned but wouldn't stop going down the slide. Someone finally picked me up and like a cat dragging a rat home took me to my parents and told them to keep me from going down the slide. Dad didn't find a job in the LA or Long Beach area so we ended up moving to Buelltin for about a year. Dad had caught a wild magpie which we kept it as a pet. Grandpa Nelson owned the motel and diner where we lived. I attended a public pre-school in Buelltin. I think the guy who played the Cisco Kid came to school to perform. I attended a public school for the fall semester. I really liked school. I got to learn, someone answered my questions and opened my mind to my potential. I liked school. I really liked learning. One summer day I took some matches outside a...

There was a layoff at the Reynold's Metal factory and about the same time the University of Louisville was buying up the houses in the neighborhood so they could expand. Mom and dad sold their house (they paid $4,000 for it). They had Mayflower come box everything up. But they were running out of room so I had to choose only one toy to take with me. Dang it. It was hard to choose between my big yellow dump truck which I played with the absolute most and my doll which my sister played with the absolute most. What to do? So I left the dump truck and brought the doll. I had the impression mom was mad about that. I think she wanted me to take the dump truck so she could give Barbara my doll-later she could say that I didn't choose it so I must not have wanted it. I played with that doll clear through to the 6th grade. I never had a Barbie doll-just my curly short blonde haired doll. Then we rode the train all the way to California. We'd walk from our train car to the dining car...

It was the BIG thing to do. The government pushed it, the communities supported it-It was THE thing to do. So we all did it. We went in to get our small pox inoculation. Back then the parents would get one of those small plastic bubbles from a gumball machine and tape it over the inoculation site to keep the kid from scratching it. They were warned by the doctors and nurses administering the shots that if a kid was allowed to scratch it they would have severe scaring and possible secondary infections. Mom was convinced that any skin wound would cause severe scaring. That may or may not be true. She touted it a miracle that the small pox inoculation did not work on me because the Sunday after the inoculation we went to church (usually only did that twice a year-Christmas and Ester) and I was squirming around. I remember that part of it. I really, really had a hard time sitting still for anything-this was called squirminess when I was a kid-now it's called ADD or ADHD. I was climbing...

My Grandpa Nelson took Bob and I to the neighborhood store. I suppose it was more to let grandpa get out and see the neighborhood, get the kids out of the house, and get away from the women. Whatever the reason we were out with him. I know it's supposed to feel wonderful being with grandparents but we saw them so very rarely and it was really a struggle to have an affinity for them. He bought us each a Duncan yo-yo. I had a hard time choosing a color but decided on the yellow one. Bob chose a green one. These were made of a hard plastic-one of the early uses of plastics in the commercial/public market sector. When we got home I pouted horribly because Bob's green one worked and my yellow one did not. I really threw a royal tantrum until Grandma Nelson could stand it no longer and insisted that Bobby (being older, more mature, and wiser?-huh?) trade with me. So I gave up my pretty, bright, happy, yellow (broken-it wasn't really-I just didn't know how to work it) yo-yo fo...

Evidently Bob did something he shouldn't a otta done and daddy gave him a good whippin' right then and there... In the front yard... In front of the neighbors... Who thought it was excessive for what Bob as a five year old had done. So the neighbor, with all the guts needed, called Child Protective Services and filed a report. They then followed up with an investigation (imagine that! long before lawsuits were mandated as the moral consciousness of society). Ultimately Bob was taken away to a foster home for a while. I wasn't because mom begged and pleaded and promised that dad had never once used aggressive behavior on me. Barbara wasn't because she was a breast-fed baby and had begun having health issues (febrile convulsions). That was perhaps the bestest Christmas we had ever because the Episcopalian church used a Sub for Santa program to bless the lives of the community and we were the recipients of their love. That Christmas held the greatest Christmas-magic of my ...

This picture was taken in 1924. Was it really cookie love? Nah, I don't think so. Grandpa Flint would come to visit and he'd have a little brown bag in his hand. He'd stop at the bakery on his way over (smart grandpa-he knew how to win friends and influence people). He would have me sit on his knee and be the number one kid in his life. He'd bring cookies and I got to eat as many as I wanted. He made sure I had one for each hand and THEN he'd let Bobby have one and no matter how fast Bobbie ate his (he was three years older than me and could eat fairly fast) Bob didn't get another cookie until I had finished one. On his lap, in his arms, I KNEW I was loved. Maybe that's why to this day I like cookies so much! Seriously, as I look back I really feel that special time was when I truly felt that I was loved. I had felt that I was in my mother's way and later I felt like I could NEVER be what dad wanted me...

Dad collected a bunch of bottle caps. Some came from mom's coke bottles and some came from the store. You see, dad could go down to the store, open the big cooler (like a huge-sized ice chest), grab a bottle, pay the nickel for it, open with the bottle opener built-in to the outside of the chest and sit and visit with the other neighborhood men sitting around doing the same thing. I think he asked the store owner if he could empty and take home the bottle caps. See, he had devised a plan to satisfy a need the family had, a want to not be wasteful/to show how clever and smart he was and to be unique (weird) in another way. Once he had as many as he thought he needed he set them out in a rectangle pattern and nailed each one down (smooth side down). This made a door mat you could wipe the mud off your feet. Worked great when we had rainy weather AND if you had something on your feet. I used to have to jump a big jump to avoid it with my barefeet! It was somebody's birthday and mo...

There are two stories my mom told often about me. I was so young I really don't remember them happening-but I'm sure they did. One was about how I had climbed up on the kitchen counter top, opened the cupboard door and started eating the sugar (which was kept in the sugar bowl). I heard her coming and got down as fast as I could. She came up to me and asked what I had gotten into. I shook my head no and said nothing (my mouth was full). She said she heard me in the kitchen cupboard, saw the sugar on the counter top and on my face and she was sure my mouth was full of sugar. Then she asked again, "What did you get into." My mouth still wasn't empty (I really did stuff a lot in it) so I again shook my head no. Finally she said I know your mouth is full of sugar. I do remember this part-I shook my head vehemently no and tried to say no. Then she called me a liar (appropriately). She told me never to do that again. Later in life I had kids who wanted to do the exact s...

Bob and I helped Mom carry home some groceries one winters day. I think it was only a few blocks between our house and the neighborhood grocery store. As a four year old it seemed like a very great distance. Mom had me carrying a six pack of bottled Coke. It was so heavy-for me. Mind you the bottles back then were relatively small they only held 6 1/2 ounces. Yes, there were six of them and yes they were in glass bottles and yes, I was only four so for me they felt very heavy. It was winter time, there was snow on the ground and hands were very cold. I whimpered and whined. Mom and then Bob joined in telling me to go on. After a while I stopped and sat down in the cold snow (I told you I was stubborn). Mom said I'd get colder sitting there and I'd be warmer sooner if I'd get up and go home. I sat. Pretty quickly they gave up and just walked off. I cried. It didn't stop them. It didn't even slow them down. So I ended up getting back up before they were out of sight a...

We lived in Louisville, KY and it was a very small house. Although there was a floor furnace (I don't know if it was heating oil or natural gas) my parents used a pot-bellied stove to heat the house because except for the cost of gathering wood-the heat was free. We were supposed to be taking a nap. I fell asleep first. That usually translates to I would be the first to wake up as well. Everyone else was asleep. I went to my red rocker by the pot-bellied stove and rocked for a while. I loved that rocker and I loved the sensation of rocking. After a while I went looking for the crayons. I knew better than to draw on the walls so I took a crayon and started drawing on the stove. The crayon spread on so smooth and creamy. Then it would start to bubble, change color, darken, go black and even smoke a little and definitely started to stink. I tried several colors. They all eventually turned black. After awhile the heat began to get to me and made me sleepy again. I went back to bed and...

Seriously, I have NO idea how that got up there. First of all it was kept in the bathroom way up where I couldn't reach it AND there was no stool AND I was too little (and ignorant) to be able to climb on the toilet and get into the cabinet where it was kept so I KNOW it wasn't me. Also I couldn't climb up on the top bunk AND I certainly couldn't carry a tube of toothpaste and climb up AND I didn't have the capacity to throw it up there. It's totally understandable that my parents were upset that the toothpaste was wasted. Minimum wage was like 50 cents/hour and a tube cost pretty close to a dollar. It was a new thing to be able to buy toothpaste in a tube. Up until then you used baking soda (not powder) or you bought a can of tooth powder to sprinkle on your tooth brush and then brushed your teeth. All I know for sure is I was taking a nap when the deed occurred. Later when dad got home from work he got upset when he was sitting back relaxing in the front room ...

I remember getting up in the evening to go to the bathroom and as I was halfway there, daddy was leaving the bathroom drying his hair with a towel-stark naked. I remember seeing something hanging down from his crotch. That's the last time I ever wanted to look at anything for details! One day we went for a family walk. The University of Louisville was just a few blocks away so it was a favorite and safe place for a family to go for a walk. I remember walking up a grassy hill and rolling down it again and again. That evening when I took a bath my skin hurt. The barbs on the grass blades cuts young tender skin. It was not a fun experience. Our little home was heated with a floor furnace in the bedroom hall area between the front room and the kitchen. There was a grate across the top of it. It seemed so deep and dark. I was genuinely afraid of it the whole time we lived there. I had a little black dog, a Scottish Terrier. I was given the privilege of naming her. I called her Jet. She ...

We were supposed to be taking a nap on mom & dad's bed. Neither of us could really fall asleep. Mom had left her cigarette lighter on the night stand. Barbara reached for it first and tried to open it and make it work. I took it from her and showed her I knew how to work it. When I lit it she shrank back in fear. This was an unexpected reaction so I pushed it toward her to get her to repeat her reaction. That's when her hair caught on fire. The sad thing is, now as a mother I can look back and figure out what happened, but for the longest time the story my mom told me and any and all who would listen to her that I was so jealous of Barbara's curly hair that I tried to burn it off. Silly mommy. I see now that she didn't want to accept responsibility for her responsibility in this error. This picture is of Bobby, Barbara and me. It was taken Easter Sunday, April 6, 1958 so Barbara would have been 2 years old-and as you can see, her curly hair grew back just fine and i...

One evening my parents were dieing Easter eggs at the kitchen table. I had woken up to go to the toilet. Dad yelled at me to go back to bed when he saw me at the doorway. Mom said to him she didn't want me wetting the bed. So he grouchily said I could crawl to the bathroom which was on the other side of the kitchen. I thought as I crawled-why should it matter if I see the eggs? Another memory was when Barbara was in the 'Johnny Jump Up' swing/spring seat in the doorway. Bob and I used to twirl her around. She loved it. She would giggle and be so happy. The unit was screwed into the door and would tend to come unscrewed. Mom would yell at us to not do it as Barbara could get hurt. One day while mom was visiting outside across the fence with a neighbor. She had left Barbara in the 'Johnny Jump Up'. Bob and I kept Barbara happy and entertained by twisting her around. Sure enough the screw came undone and she fell and hurt her head. Why do moms always have to be right?

From ages 0-5 I remember a few things and have recorded them in this journal. I have divided up this journal in 5 year sections. Each section deals with a five year span of my life. I remember a hot summer's day in Kentucky (Lyons Ave., Louisville, KY". I went on a walk with my Dad. I was barefoot-had to be or I would not get to go with him as he didn't want to wait for me to get shoes on. Although he cautioned me not to step on the cigarette butts, I guess in my 3-year old mind that meant that I should because I (in my stubborness) stepped on every one of them. Some of them were still lit. I remember having a very hard time falling asleep for my nap because my feet hurt from the burns on the souls. Some parents have a knack for talking with kids and coaching them. Some kids can trust their parents and do what they are told. Me? I'm a bit hard headed (that's putting it mildly) and I seem to have to do things the hard way-reinvent the wheel. The accompanying picture...

Mama always told the same stories-to everyone and anyone who would listen. I heard them so many times I could repeat them word for word AND be one sentence ahead of her! There were times-like when I was a teen-that those stories were so annoying to hear-yet again. However, she had taught me well that adults should be respected (whatever the personal cost) and one way that respect was demonstrated was by listening in patience (a form of love in this instance) to the stories she wanted to tell. This picture is of my mother holding her first born son-Bobby. It was taken in January of 1951. Of course, I am my mothers daughter, so I did the same thing. I told mom's stories and I told my stories and our familial stories. Until the day I caught one of my teens (respectfully not rolling eyes) but mouthing the words (two words ahead of mine) of the story I was telling. At that point I decided to do a personal check. I began observing how frequently I told the stories, who I was telling the...

Not only did she say this about me, she said it in front of me (at least it wasn't behind my back!), AND to an audience of over 200 people! But you know what, she's right. I am crazy. One would have to be to not use birth control and accept 9 pregnancies in a 10 year span. One would have to be to be a stay at home mom in such circumstances. One would have to be to accept whatever they 'think' God is saying to them instead of following the council the world would offer. Oh wait-what did I just say? "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths," Proverbs 3:5 - 6.

She asked a very silly question. Coming from her mouth-well-you can't help but smile and want to entertain it. So I engaged in the conversation. Why is it that whenever she wants to interact with you it's worth the time and effort? As with all loved ones, the last time will be the last time and you just don't know when that's coming. So you live for the moment and enjoy each second. I guess that's what we need to learn to do. Living for the moment sometimes helps you keep a balanced perspective on those things that are most important. Those things of an eternal nature.