My Sister the Sunglasses Fashonista

That's my little sister, the one on the right, in her St. Patrick's Day get-up.  Cute as a button, isn't she?  She looks the same as she did ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago.....  It must be from shielding herself from harsh lights when she was a little girl.  It's the only thing I can figure.  Let me explain.

I am seven years older.  I remember more than my sister wishes, I'm sure.  Mornings at our house were special.  Mother was up early, getting ready for work, getting everything ready for us to go to school and preparing our breakfast.  When it was time to get up, I was UP.  Mother would come to the door, flip on the overhead light and call me.  "BILLIE!  Time to get up."  (This perhaps has a lot to do with my life-long aversion to overhead lighting.)  Then it was my sister's turn.  Bright lights?  No.  A lamp, far away from her bed was turned on very low.  Mother would coo for my sister, walk over to her bed and give her the sunglasses placed on the nightstand before she went to bed the night before.  Black framed, old-lady sunglasses clamped firmly on her head, my sister would drag herself out of bed and to the breakfast table. 

Every morning, there we sat.  Well, there I sat.  My little sister was so far down in her chair, it could hardly be called sitting.  Those sunglasses, firmly in place so no light could get to her eyes.  I remember finding this very irritating.  Now I wish those days were back again.

I threatened to write this about my sister so she proclaimed herself to be a sunglasses fashionista.  And so she is, to this day.  Look at her!  So young and so CUTE!  I should have worn shades in the mornings.....

The Scent of a Memory

Funny how a smell can take me back in time.  When I hug my daughter, who is now 30 years old, she smells the same to me as she did when she was a baby.  She has a scent that belongs to only her.  When my daughter was in the hospital after her accident, that scent was incredibly strong.  It blanketed me the moment I walked into her hospital room, every time I walked in the room.  I never told her that.   And Emma.  When she was a baby I could sit with her and smell the top of her sweet head for hours and never tire of it. 

My grandmother had a scent that has stayed with me all my life.  I remember a time not too long ago.  I was going through a difficult time in my life but pushing through it.  One late Saturday afternoon I was standing in my kitchen and there it was.  MaMaw's scent.  It lingered for a while and it was gone.  Imagination?  MaMaw trying to tell me it would all be okay in the end?  My mind trying to comfort my heart?  At the time, my daughter and granddaughter were living with me.  I didn't mention this to my daughter but she overheard me telling my mother about it the next day.  She came to me and told me that she smelled the same thing in her room.  MaMaw.

Today, I was making supper early so it would be ready for Emma.  (One can hardly call country style steak dinner, so.... supper.)   Emma loves country cooking so I decided to make country style steak.  We don't eat like that often so it's a treat.  While supper was cooking and smelling so much like MaMaw's house on Sundays, I sat down at the kitchen table to make a few reminder notes.  While the smell of supper cooking was wafting through the kitchen, the back of my neck and arm started to tingle.  I stopped writing for a minute and the tingling went away and came back.  I thought about it off and on all day, wondering what it was.  Most folks would say it was nothing but I choose to believe it was something.

Several years after MaMaw passed away, my uncle renovated her house and moved in.  My husband and I stopped by one afternoon to help him with something.  It was 5:00.  Suppertime.  When we got to the back door, I could smell supper cooking.  The smell was as overwhelming as if the biscuits had just come out of the oven.  This was in 2000.  MaMaw left us in 1993.  Imagination?

Most of my memories are accompanied by smells.  I can still smell the halls of Grove Park Elementary School.  My daddy and the pleasant mix of English Leather and Winstons.  The flowers on a Sweet Bush or Carolina Allspice, I think it's called.  When I was a little girl, I loved to have those flowers to smell.  A kind old man would let me pick them and I would wrap them in a wet paper towel and "tin foil" to take home.  I would smell them until the flowers fell apart.

Emma stays with us on Wednesday nights.  We read a story and as always, I snuggled with her while she was falling asleep and there it was, that sweet, sweet smell she brought with her into this world.

The Fixer

For as long as I can remember, I have been the self-designated fixer.  If I care about you and you're broken, I try to fix you.  An exercise in futility if there ever was one.  In recent years, I have tried to break myself of this habit.  You know, the physician heal thyself mentality.....  I've done a good job loving my people and allowing them to be broken and fix themselves since I "fixed" myself. 
Today, between grocery shopping, cleaning and all the other things I do everyday, three loved ones crossed my path who have a few cracks in them.  One, the cracks are deep, very deep and absolutely cannot be repaired by anyone but the loved one.  Just as I was about to provide my solution, I caught myself.  No, Self!  Don't do it!  So I mustered the strength to tell Loved One #1 that I understand the problem and have witnessed other loved ones struggling with the same demons.  But.  But, LO #1 will have to find it in himself to fix himself.   Oh, what a hard thing to do when I really wanted to say I would be there as quickly as possible to tell him exactly the steps to take.  So, now I am hard at work at the second job I thought I had quit., worrying.
Before I could get my worry on good for LO #1, LO #'s 2 and 3 appeared, obviously in need of some minor tinkering.  I reminded myself again that I no longer try to fix people and stayed quiet.  Now, if I can figure out how not to pull a double shift of worrying.

Rubber-Toed Keds

 What makes little things pop into our minds?  While running an early morning errand, I remembered my excitement each Spring when it was time to buy rubber-toed Keds for my daughter, a pair in each color.  Red.  White. And blue.  I couldn't wait to put them on her with her very white socks and to keep the laces bleached snowy white.  I bought a pair for my daughter's daughter when she was barely walking and felt like I had stepped back in time.  I thought every little girl should wear them.  I remember my daughter not being nearly as excited as I about the new shoes.  Generational, I suppose.
I love Keds.  Haven't had a pair in a very long time.  To me, that new pair of white Keds always meant Spring had arrived.  But with the new Keds came extra work, keeping them clean and white.  Without fail, someone would run over my foot with a cart the first time I wore them grocery shopping, or step on my foot.  But I stayed true to my love affair with the white Keds, scrubbing the canvas and bleaching the laces until finally they frayed and came apart. 
My  warm weather shoe wardrobe was complete with a new pair of white Keds and 99 cent flip-flops in various colors.

Seasons

Today I thought of all the Springs in my life.  Yes, I know the names of season are not capitalized but I think they should be.  One particularly bad year seventeen years ago,  Spring came and turned to Summer before I noticed.  I promised myself to never let that happen again.   I thought back to recent Springs.  Four years ago, without a clue, I was standing at the edge of the worst time of my life.  It's good we don't know what lies ahead because we might not choose to go on if we did.  And certainly, after the worst times, things will get better.   Last year, life was taking yet another turn.  A turn for the better, to a more peaceful existence.  This spring is not the most exciting time of my life but it is one of the best.  I am in an easy place, contentment and self-satisfaction.  I love the details of my life and having the time to notice the seasons changing and all that each season brings.

The Glue

Chocolate Shadow Cake

Special request this week for a Chocolate Shadow Cake.  I will admit, I was very proud of the end result and the batter was good enough to swim in!  So, the cake must have been delicious.

Finally, it came to me how to attach the yoke to the dress I was making for my granddaughter.  It's finished and another will be done tomorrow.  Then on to another.  I think after I finish these dresses for her, I"ll make something for myself.  Then, kitchen curtains.

What else did I do this past week?  Oh!  I made that orange marmalade.  It's very pretty in the jars.  I decided to find a place for them that didn't hide them.  Looking at the jars makes me happy.  Then I moved on to strawberry jam and baking, baking, baking.....  It's what I do and I love it all!

I wonder often how I ever accomplished anything when I had a job.  I have no time left at the end of each day and much left over than I didn't get done.  I'm always busy and always tired but content.  After working for more than 30 years, I do what I love.  Bake, cross stitch, clean and sew.  I can pick my granddaughter up from school.  Or say I can keep her when she gets sick.  Old fashioned?  Out of touch with the times?  Probably.  I have always felt that the homemaker is the glue holding the family together.  I wish my time to be the glue had come years ago.