STARLIGHT, STAR BRIGHT…

Starlight

Star bright…

first star

I see tonight…

wish I may

wish I might

have this wish

I wish tonight.

How many of us, back in the days of our childhood…back in those golden days of care free innocence…have said this simple little rhyme while gazing up at those twinkling bright diamonds that our Lord displays for us at night?

I did.

In the darkness of the summer nights, while watching the lightning bugs flittering here and there with their little yellow tail lights blinking on and off, on and off , listening to all the frogs and crickets calling for rain…me and my sister Sue would be sitting on the steps of our front porch. Back there on Horseshoe Bend, way out there in the Georgia pines, two little country girls would be wishing their little hearts out on that ‘first star’ they happened to see.

I sort of figured sister Sue was probably wishing to marry Ringo Starr, the drummer for the Beatles. She had such a huge crush on him back then.  I loved Paul, but I saved him for my dreams at night…I wasn’t wasting any of my wishes on something that I knew would never happen in a million years!

Sue never did tell me what she was wishing for and I didn’t blame her back then. Everybody knew that if you told your wish, that it wouldn’t come true! My wish never varied. When I saw that first little twinkling star, I would wish each and every time with all my might and holding my breath that…

I lived in a house with indoor plumbing and paint on the walls!

I SWEAR I DID! 

So I didn’t tell sister Sue my wish either. She would have laughed her tail off at me if I had. I laugh about it now too when I happen to think about it, but I do know this much…

Wishing on a star must work sometimes, because I got my wish.

It may have came years later, but by gosh that little girl on Horseshoe Bend got her wish.

The grown up me just wishes that I had been a little more specific and used a whole lot more imagination!

Hmmmm…

You know…

I think I am going to go sit out on my front porch for a little bit and look at the stars.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Dead Things

           

Whew!!! Dan and I just got through cutting the grass and weed-eating. We got a pretty late start, but we got it done!

After we cut and trimmed our yard, we cut the old home place's yard. To do this, we put the lawn mower and weed-eater in the trunk of my car and hauled it up there. The dang mower died on us before we got halfway through, so we had to bring it back home and get the other one.

I did get the flower beds weeded though, thank goodness, before the weed eater died too. It just needs recharging.

The lawn mower, on the other hand is really, seriously…

D-E-A-D .

I noticed that the trees Amanda and Kelvin planted in the front yard are dead as door-nails! They are so dead, that they are dark brown from the bottom of the trunks to the tip top branches and look like trees you would see in horror films.

I had hoped so much that they would live. These two trees, one on each side, had lived longer than any of the others planted there since my daddy’s death.

I had hoped they would break the spell.

Back in the sixties, right after buying that little Mill Town house, my daddy planted two dogwood trees in that front yard. One on each side. They were the straightest dogwood trees you ever saw.  Bless his heart, he was always having to fuss at the grandchildren for trying to climb them or swing on the lower branches!  He watched after those trees like a mother hen watches her little biddies. He looked forward to seeing those trees blooming with their pretty milky white petals in the springtime.

My daddy was around 70 years old when he began his fight with emphysema. It was a fight that would go on for for several years. Early in 1985, he begin slowly losing the battle.

In the spring of that year, those two dogwood trees were so beautiful that every neighbor on the street were talking about them. Although weakened now by that hideous disease, Daddy would sit in his recliner, gazing at their beauty. He was so proud of them.  Everyday when I would go over there, Daddy would say, ‘Have you seen my trees?’

By the time the last few petals had hit the ground, Daddy was already too weak to leave his bed.

A little later on, in July of 1985, my daddy left this world for a far better place.

His beloved dogwood trees?

Well, they died too.

Both of them….

At the same time.

Although there have been other trees planted in that yard since, none have ever lived for very long.

Guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised today when I went up there and saw those two dead too.

Okay, enough of this…I have plenty of other work to do around here and have also got to go to town to do some errands.

I won’t get anything done sitting here reminiscing

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.