Memory Recall Time!

If you read my blog the other day about Mother's, er, excitement at the bank, you know she can be prone to getting a little upset.

This memory keeps bumping around in my brain, so I figured, eh, hey, why not just go ahead and share. That's what blogging is all about, right?

Anyway, when Brothers were around age seven, Mother and Daddy were picking them up from school early one day for a dentist appointment.

They were parked across the street from the elementary school, waiting on my brothers to come out of the school.

In a moment, my daddy told me on the telephone that night (I was living away at the time), my brothers came out of the school. Suddenly, another little boy came out right behind them. He was a very big "little" boy, a head taller and  many pounds heavier than my brothers.  (He grew up to be a very big man, in prison now for murder. But this is now and that was then.)

The bigger boy walked up behind Brothers and shoved them both in the back, knocking their books out of their arms.

Daddy said he turned to say something to Mother about it, to find she was  no longer in the car. He then turned his head to the left, and there dear old Mom was, slappin' that boy up a side a da head.

What a family!

I was laughing so hard at the tale I could hardly breathe. Mother came on the line, hysterically crying. "I've hit another person's child! How could I have done that?"

Laughter. Me, Daddy.

"This is NOT funny! I've done a terrible thing!"

Laughter - me, Daddy.

Ahhh, good times.

At any rate, she called and apologized to the boy's parents. They weren't too happy, but they did accept her apology.

I think this story embarrasses my brother's to this day.

Mother, too.

Not me, buddy.

Not me.

A Birthday Salute

Today is my mother's eighty-fourth birthday. She was born in 1929, a terrible  year by historical standards for the financial world.

She is an only child and never suffered because of the Great Depression. Her grandparents were farmers and loggers and one grandmother was a mid-wife.

They made do, I reckon.

Her mother had rheumatic fever as a little girl and was told to never have children, because of the damage it had done to her heart. Obviously she ignored that, twice.

She had a miscarriage before she became pregnant with my mother. She was alone in a cafe' that she and my grandfather owned. A drunk man came in and attempted to rape her. Although he was unsuccessful because of my grandmother's fight, she miscarried later on that day.

My grandfather set out to kill the man, but he disappeared into the mountains, never to be seen again.

Anyway, Mother was one cherished little girl.

She was involved in everything in high school. She was on the staff of the annual, she was in the glee club, she was one of "our queens", she was also on the first squad of cheerleaders the high school ever had.

She was married to my father from age twenty-two to age almost fifty-nine when he passed away.

They kept it a secret for several days, both going back home to their parents house.  She got a friend to spend the night with her before she got the  nerve up to tell her parents she had married.

You see, my daddy was a bad boy. A rebel. Not someone her dear old dad would have picked.

Oh, well.

After my father died, realizing my mother was still a fairly young woman, I approached her with the idea that if she ever wanted to date, I wouldn't object.

She looked at me like I was crazy. She said, "I love your daddy and would take him back tomorrow if he could be healthy, but  honey, I am done with men."

And so she was.

Except for, of course, two sons, a grandson, a son-in-law and now that grand great-grandson.

I guess that's enough men in any woman's life.

So here she is at year eighty-four.

Time really has flown, and I know time is shorter -  not just for her
- but for all of us.

That means we are to  live it to the fullest, to be the best we can be and to honor others.

So if your mother or father is still living, don't forget:

Honor thy mother and father so that thy days may be long....

Mama must of done a good job.

April First, the Day of Fools

If my daddy was still alive, (he died at age fifty-nine, the age I am now) he and my mother would have been married sixty some odd years today. I think it's sixty-two, but don't hold me to it.

Of course, that immediately begs the question: "Why the heck would anybody get married on  April Fool's Day?"

I've asked that question, of course.

"We just wanted to get married on the first Sunday of April and never thought about it."

Family.

They were already in their twenties. Mother is an only child and Daddy was the baby and the only boy, so they were both, shall we say, a little spoiled?

They got married in secret and both went home to their respective parents.

Did I mention they were in their twenties?

I think Mother finally got up the nerve to tell when she had a best friend spending the night with her.

Did I mention she was in her twenties?

My mother's father disliked my daddy. Intensely. Which, my mother openly admits, is one of the reasons she  married him.

Did I mention they were in their - oh, never mind.

Daddy was a rascal. He was rebellious. He got kicked out of high school, went to Young Harris College where he got kicked out again, for fighting.

He smoked, he drank, he gambled.

He was mischievous and funny and couldn't hold onto a dollar if  his life depended on it.

My mother, because of that, became a secretive money  hoarder. I mean, it wasn't, like, stacked up to the ceiling with only a little walk way to get through the house. I mean, she'd look you right in the eye and say, "I don't have a penny," when you knew good and well she had a few hundred stashed in her wallet.

She still does that, sorta. Yet she is very generous too.

Back to their early years: Both sets of parents 'helped' them make it in this old world. Which was beneficial to me, who was the only grandchild on my mother's side and the only one in town on my daddy's side. I got lots of fierce love and was as happy at one's house as I was the other.

Their  marriage was tumultuous at times, and as I grew older, I hated some of the things my daddy did, embarrassing me a lot. There were times I wanted my mother to divorce my daddy.

Then he mellowed, she mellowed, and they spent the last several years really enjoying each other, I think.

He had to go and get sick. And who wouldn't, the way he abused his body for so long?

So he 'up and died' at age fifty-nine.

He never saw his two granddaughters. He left his grandson, whom he adored, a three year old with only vague memories of him.

The price we pay for a misspent youth, as they say.

I still miss him, of course. And mother still talks about him. I guess she wonders what it would have been like to still have him by her side.

Ah, well.

He'd probably still be playing practical jokes, she'd still be broke.

But after the sun went down, they'd still have each other.

Today may be the fool's day, and I reckon we all need to recognize that. Because after all, aren't we all a fool for something - or someone - at least once in our lives?

Happy April Fool's Day.

Of Stinky Brothers, Hunky Boyfriends and Falling Christmas Trees

Long ago, in a house about five miles away, lived a family of which I happened to be a member.

I was fifteen, my stinky twin brothers were five, and my daddy had gone to pick up my mother from work.

My handsome, hunky fifteen year old boyfriend showed up early, and I figured it wouldn't hurt for us to be alone (if you excluded the stinky twins) for a few minutes. He wasn't allowed to be at my house unless some parent or other was present, but for a few minutes, what could go wrong?

May I take a moment to say: HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Five year old boys get stinkier by the minute when a boyfriend is around.

I hope, nay, I pray, they have been repaid for their vile behavior of long ago.

Trying to get just two minutes of kissy and cuddle from my absolutely gorgeous boyfriend, I turned my back on aforementioned stinkos, and what, you may ask, did they do?

I'll tell you what they did. They climbed behind our rickety, starting to dry out Christmas tree and TURNED IT OVER.

No one can be as embarrassed as a fifteen year old girl in front of her movie star looking boyfriend.

If one could kill with tinkling ornaments, I would have returned to the land of being an only child.

And beautiful boyfriend? He was laughing so hard he couldn't get off the couch.

But, finally, when I told him my parents were going to walk through that door ANY MINUTE, he got it together, and being about six feet five inches tall, he picked up the tree, and screwed it back into the stand with no problem. (He had three stinky baby brothers, so it was probably no big deal to him.)

I mopped up the water, gave the tree fresh water, and we hurriedly put the ornaments back on, albeit in a haphazard way.

I doubt my parents even noticed, as I was the one who did all the decorating anyway. But I figured they woulda caught on if the tree had been lying prone in the middle of the living room floor. They weren't THAT disinterested.

My stinky brothers, of course, had turned into angelic cherubs, due to fear of beheading.

So, by the time my parents got home, we were all watching TV as though nothing had ever happened.

And my stunning boyfriend did not dump me because of the incident.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is true love.