SUNDAY WITH MY MAMA

      
I went to see my Mama today after I left church. I caught her while she was eating her lunch and I was so happy I could watch as she ate all of it!  I wheeled her to her room after she had finished and turned the TV on for her to see. She seemed to really enjoy watching The Brady Bunch. The little kids on the show were all singing and The good Lord knows my Mama loves children and singing, so that was right up her alley.  
Later on, I gave her the rag doll that was sitting on the top of the cabinet there in her room. I had the biggest lump in my throat watching her holding and humming to it. Like a little child, she was having the best time cuddling that doll! Since she was humming, I tried singing some of the old Gospel hymns that she use to play on the piano at Church. I was hoping it would bring her back to me for just a little while, like it did during the last visit… but she didn’t sing with me today. She just kept humming  and mumbling to the baby doll. That’s okay though.
She was happy and that is all that matters to me.
       
Mama had a runny nose today and I was constantly wiping it for her. ( I told the nurse and she was to give her something for it when I left.) As I gently wiped her nose, it got me to thinking of how many times she did the same thing for me and my siblings. She seemed to always have a hankie handy when she needed one. There were six of us, so she probably spent a good deal of her time wiping little snotty noses!
Let me tell you, if you are fortunate enough to still have your mama and she can look at you and know that you are hers…Do your best to make her happy now, because once upon a time, that mama did all she could to make you happy. She probably sacrificed, did without, cooked your meals, stayed up at night with you, held you, rocked you, and the main thing;  she still loved you, even when you weren’t very lovable.
Sort of like how God loves all of us, you know??
Back when we were all still little… back on that old dirt road we called Horseshoe Bend… my Mama did without plenty and worked so very hard just trying to raise all of us. A lot of folks say that they wouldn’t change a thing about their lives. I know I would and I would do it in a heartbeat. 
I would go back in time and somehow make her life a lot easier than it was… or die trying.
I would start out by being  a better daughter.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Estell

Estell Dunn was one of a kind and one of the hardest working women I've ever known. At one time, she was 80 years old and was still keeping up with us much younger ladies at the BBQ. She made the slaw, she made the tea, she made the sandwiches, (which she piled the BBQ on!) and she stirred the old black pot of Brunswick stew. 

Before she retired, she could pull 11 hour days as good as we could. I think people born in the 1920's were made from better stock than we baby boomers, because she never showed her age back then. She looked years younger than her true age and it wasn't because she had a life of luxury. 

Estell did not have the easy life of a child as children do in this day and time... She often talked to me about her being just a little child out in the cotton fields picking cotton under a hot Georgia sun, and being grateful when her parents told her to stop picking and go home and cook supper for the family. A supper she would cook on a hot wood stove. 

Later on, she would marry and have all her children at home except one. When I asked her why she chose to have one in the hospital, she told me that someone had told her it was easier having babies in the hospital! So she went to the hospital. I still laugh now thinking about how mad she said she was when she found out she still had to have every pain even in that hospital! 

Looking back through my first  journal, I found an old post I had written on Jan. 27, 2007 about something she once told me...

She loved Danny like a son and one day, a year after Danny had passed away, she was saying to me that Danny was probably up in Heaven fishing. I made the remark that I wish I was up there fishing with him. Man, did I hear from her about that! She said; "Hush your mouth child!! My husband been dead going on 22 years. He can go fishing and as far as that goes, he can go hunting up there all he wants to...but he better not come get ME to go with him! No! No! No! He better not even think that ESTELL is going with him, cause I want to be down here just a little while longer!"

Time passes so fast. Estell eventually retired from the BBQ, but we still kept in touch for a while. Sadly, later on, not so much, but I still sent her Christmas cards each year. I heard today that Estell passed away yesterday. She would have been 90 in August. I am so glad I got to know her and that God let her be in my life for a little while.

Rest in peace my friend and if you happen to see Danny, give him a hug from me please.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

The Forgotten Draft of 2009

I put a Blogger app ( where I write in my blog) on my phone, so i can get to my blog faster. Looking through my DRAFTS that I had not published, I came across the one below. Wyatt was born in June 2008, so from what I see here, this was written around Valentine's Day 2009, when Wyatt was only 8 months old, and only 3 years after losing Danny. I just never published it. 

THE DRAFT:

Here is a picture of Wyatt getting a french-fry! Not a tooth in his head, but like his grandpa Danny, he gums it! lol

A little later, he picked the cash receipt up off the table…So, I asked him to “hand it to grandma”…and was SO surprised when he politely turned around and handed me the receipt! He actually understood!

He is sitting up good in a high chair now . He is 25 inches tall ….and weighs over 17 pounds….and though you can’t tell it by the pictures, he has sky blue eyes.

Can you tell that I love him?

My daughter and her fiancée gave me a bouquet of pink baby roses mixed with other flowers on Valentine’s day…and Wyatt even ‘signed’ the card that had ‘To Grandma’ on the front of it, that he gave me!

After working 11 hours on Valentines' Day, my son surprised me by having a box of Whitman's Chocolates sitting on the kitchen table for me when I got home! He had gotten Kelvin to take him to the drugstore up town to buy them, bless his

These are the kind that Danny always bought me in our latter years of marriage.

It was then that I broke down and cried….

I was thinking that Danny would be so proud of our children.

After putting it off for as long as I could…for my feet are like lead when it comes to going there…I finally got up the nerve to go up to Danny’s gravesite to put flowers on it.

I always look down at his name and softly whisper ; “ I love you Danny Noggle.” and then when I get no answer…

I end up by yelling out; “I love you Danny Noggle” It’s as if I could just yell loud enough… he would hear me and answer…

Like he use to.

I know it’s crazy…I know it…but I do it anyway…Even though each time I go, I tell myself that I won’t.

So…I finally went to his grave…and put a dozen red roses in the vase there on his marker.

Now, Danny hated to cut grass where rose bushes grew…because he always managed to get cut by the thorns and would come home just a fussing.

I hope he doesn’t mind me putting those roses there…

Knowing how he felt about roses, it is the first time that I have ever put roses on his grave.

But to me…

A rose means l-o-v-e and God knows I love him…and always will.

It gets so hard; being here on this earth without him. It is not a day goes by, that I don’t think of him…not a night that I don’t tell him ‘goodnight’ and ‘I love you Boo’ and then eventually fall asleep…only to dream of him.

I think he has claimed his own little brain cell in my mind, because he is a permanent fixture there…

It’s okay though…

He was already a permanent fixture in my heart….

And had been for nearly all my life.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

DIDDLY SQUAT

It has been nearly 6 years since my last post. Guess it's true that the older you get, the faster time flies.  

I can still remember being a little country girl out on Horseshoe Bend. It would seem like forever before Santa Clause would come back around!

Now, the days fly by like leaves in the wind. It seems like I'm just paying the last of the monthly bills when the next month's statements start arriving in the mail. 

Things I've noticed that keep rising in price while I've been growing older.( not necessarily in order)

 1. POSTAGE STAMPS

 2. EGGS

 3. CABLE TV

 4. GROCERIES

 5. GAS 

 6. ELECTRICITY 

 7. INSURANCE

 8. TAXES

 9. RENT

10. MEDICINE

A few things I've lost while growing older..

 1. MY HUSBAND

 2. MY PARENTS AND FIVE SIBLINGS

 3. MY ABILITY TO KEEP MY MOUTH CLOSED

 4. MY PATIENCE WITH STUPIDITY 

 5. 'SOME' OF MY ANGER

 6. ME THINKING I KNEW IT ALL... 

WHEN I DIDN'T KNOW DIDDLY SQUAT.

What is diddly squat?

 IT'S NOTHING. 

I KNOW NOW,  THAT IN MY YOUTH,

I KNEW NOTHING.

They say hindsight is 20/20.

IT'S TRUE.

I can look back now and realize how much I DID NOT know, but THOUGHT I did. 

“Courage Is Being Scared To Death, But saddling Up Anyway.” ― John Wayne

We were just two young teens walking home late one Fall night from the local highschool football game. We weren't in a well lit section of town and had at least four more blocks to walk before we would be at our homes. Suddenly a car load of screaming boys flew past us honking the horn. To make matters worse, whoever was driving that car was squealing tires and turning it around down at the end of the street and was now speeding back to where we stood. 
We thought for sure it was a car load of hoodlums.
With the car quickly approachimg us, Danny said, "RUN! Call the law! I will stay here and fight them if I have to."
Now, this was in the 1960's, when cell phones hadn't even been thought of yet. So, you couldnt just stand there and call 911 for the police like you can now. With no houses around, you had to go find a phone booth and the closest one was blocks away. I knew I wouldn't be able to get him help quick enough, so I shook my head and stubbornly stood there. 
With him begging me to leave him there the whole time.
Thankfully, once the car got close enough to us, we saw that one of the boys in that car was a school friend, who only wanted to offer us a ride home! Whew! We were so relieved!
This happened so many years ago that I may have forgotten some of the smaller insignificnat details, but let me tell you this ...I will never forget that night.
The love for that brave young teenage boy still lives on deep within my heart and not a night goes by, that he doesn't come back to visit me in my dreams.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

SOME CROOK STOLE MY DAD-BLAMED ELECTRIC METER

This morning, I got up, flipped on the bedroom light, next the living room light, then the kitchen light. I was intending on getting me a cup of coffee before I had to go to work, until I remembered I had some bills I needed to write checks out for. So, I was sitting at my old desk, writing out those checks when the dang lights went out!  First thing that hit my mind was that tropical storm NATE had sure gotten here quick. I look outside and although it was cloudy, there was no storm. I begin to walk up and down the street asking neighbors if they had electricity….

All of them did.

So, I came back into the house and called Georgia Power and reported an outage. In a few minutes, I get a text from them saying that my electricity would be restored at 9am. In the meantime, since I am the only one on the street without power, I get worried that a power line may be down on the side of my house where my electric meter is located. So, I stepped outside and go around the front of the house corner to check. The line is still up where it should be…

 BUT…my meter is GONE!

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, who would steal an electric meter and who would do it in broad daylight when all the lights in the house were on…meaning that somebody was already up and awake and would surely notice whent he lights went out???

I stand there in front of where the meter is suppose to be and start dialing Ga Power back. This time I get through to a live person. I explain to her that I had previously called to report an outage and this time I was calling to report a missing meter! The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Mam, I just called and reported an outage.”
Her:  After checking my idenity, “Yes mam, it has been noted and your power will be back on at 9am.”
Me: “ Well, I just went outside to check for downed wires and found out that my electric meter is actually missing. Did yall pull it out?”
Her: “ Mam, your meter is there.”
Me: “ No mam it isn’t.”
Her: “ Well, I show that it is running”
Me: “ Mam, it is not here, so if it is running, it is running somewhere else”
Her: “ Are you sure you are looking in the right place?’
Me: “ Have yall moved the meter recently?”
Her: “ No, it has never been moved”
Me: “ Then, yes mam, I AM looking in the right place and nothing is here, except the exposed wiring.”
Her: “Okay. I will note that your meter is missing.”
Me: “ Please do. Thank you.”

After I hung up, I go back inside and get my battery operated lantern that I bought after Hurricane Irma hit us about 2 weeks or so ago. I go to the bathroom, set my lantern down and jump in the shower.  I have to go to work and I need a shower.

It wasn’t until I got out that it dawned on me that I didn’t have any electricity to blow dry my hair!

I got dressed and went outside just as the man in the Ga Power truck was pulling up in front of my house.  He gets out and starts looking up at the top of the pole in front of my house. I take him and show him that my meter is missing. He said, “yes, it’s gone.” Then I ask him if they pulled it for some reason. He tells me they didn’t pull it and besides they would never leave the wires exposed like that. He goes to the truck and gets a meter and puts it right where mine use to be … until some dad-blamed crook stole it.