Category: Memoirs

Oct 12

Life’s Joys

I hear so many people wish to recover their youth.  Other than a longing for a slimmer, stronger body, there is nothing in my past that I would be interested in reliving.  I don’t want to go back and change it.  That might cancel out many of my joys.  Although, for most of my years, I was stressed out and struggling to make ends meet there were more joys than sorrows.

I still don’t have much money, but it doesn’t bother me as much without children begging for things I can’t afford to give them, like anything beyond the bare necessities.  The sentence I remember most clearly hearing from my two younger daughters was, “Cover your ears, she’s trying to tell us we’re poor again.”  Even though my reasons for leaving their father were good ones and I never considered going back, I felt guilty about the lower standard of living they had to adjust to, just when they were becoming teenagers with all the associated craving for the “latest thing.”  There were years when even providing three meals a day was a challenge.  But, those years helped shape them as well as me into the people we are today.  Changing them would change us.

We survived and all five of my children are strong, independent, and self-supporting.  Their children are just entering adulthood and seem to be learning how to be the same.  Three of them have gifted me with great-grandchildren.  I was closely involved in the raising of about half my grandchildren and am currently serving as caregiver to one of the greats while his mother works and goes to school.  Grandchildren can be much better than children.  There is usually less responsibility and expense, but just as much love and joy and “keeping up with” that young one helps you stay young as well. ( Read more )

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Sep 14

Hanging On

Relationships are complicated and they never really end.  Even when you have no contact for years, the memory of that previous life still links you together.  Yesterday, I found out that my second ex-husband is dying.  I haven’t talked to him in more than 15 years.  The only time I’ve seen him since then was at our oldest daughter’s wedding.  He & his latest wife stayed on one side of the reception hall and I on the other.

If this gives you the idea that our breakup was nasty with bitterness all around, you’d be wrong.   We fought the same battles over and over, until I finally decided there would be no meeting of the minds and I couldn’t  live with the probable end result of that.  So, I took our two daughters and left.  We continued to communicate for a while.  He tried to reconcile and I cooperated at first, until it became obvious that we were still covering the same ground with the same result. Eventually, I moved away.  At the time, there was little in the way of employment opportunities here and I had two daughters to support.  I know that I destroyed his world.  That knowledge makes me sorrowful.  I know how devastated I would have been if the positions had been reversed.  Still, given the same circumstances, I’d have to do the same thing again.

If you think we still live in different states, that’s also wrong.  We live 30 minutes away from each other.  When I first returned home because my mother had been put in a rest home due to Alzhiemer’s, I was willing to build a relationship that would allow him to see our grandchildren when they came to visit me.  He rejected the offer.  He had remarried by then and seemed to think I was trying to damage his new relationship.  Again, I was sorrowful, this meant he would only get to spend part of one day with them, when their mother came to get them.  If he had been willing to accept my involvement, he could have had them all to himself for several days during the weeks they spent with me every summer. ( Read more )

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May 22

My Church Background

I was raised in the church.  When I say church, I don’t mean Protestant or Catholic, I mean Christian.  We attended the First Christian Church in my hometown, but my real religious education came from bible readings and devotionals at the dinner table every night.  In the beginning, it was just listening while Mom or Daddy read but, as soon as we were old enough,we shared the responsibility.  We’d take turns reading the scripture or the meditation.  Sometimes Mom would do the prayer, at others one of us would read from the Upper Room or Guidepost.  I didn’t even realize until years later that everyone else didn’t necessarily perform this ritual.

I was baptized when I was 10 or 11.  To be honest, I’m not sure exactly when because it wasn’t a big milestone at our house.  It was just part of the routine, like starting school when you were six.  My cousin, who was the same age and my best friend, went in at the same time.  It was expected…normal.  We didn’t even consider what it meant, at the time, we just did it because it was time.

My real conversion came much later in life, but that’s a story being told elsewhere.  In later years, I sometimes attended other churches with friends and it was a real shock to find out how restrictive some of them were.  Our church teaches that we have a responsibility to study the bible ourselves.  To pray and reach out to God and make our own decisions about the right and wrong of living a Christian life.  We have no creed to follow unless you consider taking communion every Sunday a creed.  As I learned more about our denomination, how it started, what it stood for, my pride in my church became almost sinful.  Finally, it just became my history.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to share that history with you.  I hope you will find it enlightening and inspirational.

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May 15

Addictions

There’s a strain of addictiveness running through our family genetics.  My maternal grandfather started drinking during the early days of the Great Depression and crawled ever deeper into the bottle.  He lost everything except his wife and children. They spent the rest of his life taking care of him.  He died from a stroke, complicated by pneumonia when I was only a child.  Like twins, it skipped a generation and popped back up in my oldest brother.

Eddie discovered alcohol when he was barely into his teens.  As he got older, he stepped through the gateway to marijuana and pills.  He admitted freely that he had a problem with addiction.  In fact, one point of pride for him was the fact that he avoided cocaine.  He said he heard how addictive it was and knew, based on his history, it would hook him for life.  So, he just refused to try it.  One of my sons was unable to be that strong, he has served jail time for cocaine possession.  He’s been clean for more than 3 years now and he says he still craves it at times, so maybe Eddie was right.

Alcohol abuse is more accepted, but it can be just as destructive.  My brother never owned anything except his clothing, tools, and an old truck.  He loved kids, but never had any of his own.  In fact, he mostly lived with our parents his whole life.

He was fiercely loyal to his family and friends, he had a strong sense of honor.  Even at the worst of his addiction, he was reliable and always did all he could to keep his word.  He had a real talent for drawing, but no training.  He just dabbled with it, sometimes to amuse the children, at others just for himself.  He never tried to build it into anything for profit.  It may have been a private dream but, if so, he didn’t express it.

Instead, he painted houses and hung wallpaper all his life.  No matter how much he drank at night, he always got up and went to work the next day.  He might be mellowed out on pot before he got there, but his hand was so steady he could paint window trim without tape and never leave a spot on the glass.  Everyone knew he was the best and local contractors would gladly provide him with transportation back and forth to the job.  He didn’t get his driver’s license until he stopped drinking at the age of 47.

He died eleven years ago of liver failure made worse by a Hep C infection.  He was only 55 years old. If you didn’t know him,  didn’t know how much he was respected and loved, you’d think his life was wasted.  It wasn’t, it was just crippled.  He meant a lot to many people, but he could have been so much more.

Most of us have lesser addictions: over-eating (which he also had), gambling, smoking.  But the specter of alcoholism haunts us.  We fear it so much, that some of us expect anyone who takes an occasional glass of wine to eventually succumb.  We warn all our children to be careful because, “Alcoholism runs in the bloodline.” In spite of the warnings, they all drink, some with more control than others, because alcohol is so pervasive in our society.  Young people are actually pressured to over-indulge.  “Holding your liquor” is a requirement for acceptance at many levels of society.   I can only watch and pray that they will be able to control it, at least as well as Eddie did.

 

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May 06

Family Resemblences

Look at the photo above. Do you see how much we all look alike? The noses, eyes, face shapes, and smiles? I am amused whenever one of my granddaughters says someone told them they look like their mother and they don’t agree. I understand because I used to feel the same way. I thought I looked mostly like my Daddy and I was proud of it. As I got older, the mirror showed me my mother’s features.

I used to say that my three oldest children looked more like each other than either myself or their father. My two younger daughters looked so much alike as children that they could have been twins if not for the three and a half years between their ages. As they got older, their features changed and the resemblance lessened. Now their faces are growing back toward each other again. I see myself more in them also. There was a time when I thought my oldest daughter was the one most like me, but that too has changed.

Even though I, like them, hate to have my picture made and seldom like photos of myself, this picture has become one of my favorites. In it, I can trace the resemblances of three generations and, since I see my own mother in my mirror, add that resemblance back to the fourth one. I find it especially meaningful this week as we move toward Mother’s Day.

Yesterday afternoon, my middle daughter started the celebration for this year with a bouquet of beautiful yellow roses. She gets some such for me every year because she knows yellow roses are my favorite. It has become a tradition for us. She brought them early this time because she saw them in the store and thought that particular bunch was especially beautiful. She said she was afraid, if she waited until Sunday she wouldn’t be able to find others as nice. There will be other tokens, phone calls and cards, but this gesture is a memory that I will cherish because it says she wanted to give me the best possible.

I love my all my girls (and my boys too, but this is about the feminine side) and am very proud of them. They are strong, independent, and successful women. They have raised beautiful daughters who are on their way to becoming the same. I only wish my own mother was still here to enjoy them with me.

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