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.

Daddy

             

He didn’t have much education, but he could spell, read, and do a little arithmetic. He could write his name and do it equally well with both hands, since he was ambidextrous.

He worked two and three jobs all his life. He was a barber and had his own shop when he lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Once he left the mountains, he milked cows, plowed fields, ran a little country store, and worked in the produce section in a grocery store in town and the only hair he cut was his children’s.

He drove a school bus for the county school for over twenty years. Drove that big old yellow bus,number 13,down the dirt roads in the country, even when rain would about wash them out…and never had an accident in all those years he drove.

Back in those days, there were no free handouts, so he worked day in and day out with two hernias the size of grapefruits…one on each side of his body...until he had to have the operation. Then he went back to work way too soon, in order to put food on our table. The surgery came undone and still he worked. Everyday… at least two jobs a day, that paid little to nothing…until he retired.

He had huge bunions, and corns on both his feet and yet he stood on them all day long to make us a living. I use to watch him limp into the house after working all day and my mama pour hot water in a metal basin. I can still see him plain as day, sitting in that old wooden chair with his feet soaking in that tin basin of water. When I get off work now and my feet are tired and hurting, I think about how my poor daddy’s feet had to have hurt so much worse than mine, and it makes me ashamed of my weakness.

One of my first memories is of him rocking me to sleep, all the while singing; ‘Calico girl won’t you come out tonight…come out tonight.’ He did this every night while I was small, because I was his baby girl. ( I remember him singing, ‘You Are My Sunshine’  to my mama. )

He never had to spank us. He never had to yell. He was one of those daddy’s that could give you that look and you would sit your butt down and be quiet in a hurry…but even during those times, we had no doubt that our daddy loved us.

He loved to hunt and fish. He would take all of us kids and mama to church and drop us out and then he would go fishing, coming back for us when church was over! But, knowing this, I have no doubt that he is in Heaven. He was a good man, a God fearing man, worshipping God wherever he was.  The way Daddy saw it, he only had one day off and he could fish for our supper and worship God at the same time.

Lying in the hospital bed, the day he died, he told me he was ready to go home. I thought he meant their home in Greensboro, but later that day, he called the preacher to come. I was there when he said the sinner’s prayer with that preacher…and that night, I was there with him when he took his last breath.

No, He wasn't rich and he wasn’t a highly educated man, but he was my first and best male role model. If I tell you that you remind me of my daddy, that is the highest compliment I can give and trust me, I haven’t given it very often, because not many men can fill his shoes. When he was alive, I knew all I had to do was call him and he would be there.

Someone once said;

‘Anyone can be a Father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy.’ 

No truer words spoken…

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Looking Back

Today, a young man came and installed some boxes on my TV’s. My cable service switched over to a different service and in order to keep getting my channels, I had to have these boxes…which of course means extra money tacked onto the bill.

It also means me trying to figure the dang 100 button remote out and then me teaching Dan how to use them….

Lord have mercy on me.

Looking back to my childhood out on Horseshoe Bend, I wonder why in the world I was in such a hurry to leave that place? Oh, to be able to go back and know then what I know now. I would hide under the bed and never leave.

I swear to you that I would be like Peter Pan and live out my life as a child.

For a long time, back then, we had no TV and when we finally did get one, it was all because my mama wrote an essay to enter a contest as to ‘why Frank, my brother, would love to have a dang dog’!

Mama was always writing and entering all kinds of contests..I may be partial, but my mama could write! Once she wrote an essay honoring my Aunt Em, and I forget now what Aunt Em won, but my mama got a cook book out of it! My Aunt Em was a wonderfully sweet lady and I am 100% sure it wasn’t very hard to  write an essay honoring her.

On this particular contest that mama won though, Frank was invited to be on TV to get his prize! I mean, can you imagine??  We are talking late 50’s, when TV was something fairly new and to be able to actually be on a TV show??? I don’t remember who actually took  Frank to Atlanta to be on  (what I believe was) WSB TV. I’ll have to ask my brother one day. I do know that Mama and Daddy were bound and determined to be able to see their first born get his prize on TV.

That TV we got showed 2 channels I think…and to get the picture, someone was constantly having to go outside and turn the antenna this way and that until it cleared up. I can remember my brothers having to stand out there in the yard and be ready to turn that antenna when wrestling was on! My daddy and Mr. Roger Boswell and a few other men of the community would have the best times watching that show, yelling and going on like little boys.

I can remember Mama always watched ‘As The world Turns’ and ‘Queen For A Day’ and I always secretly dreamed that one day SHE would be the Queen For A Day. She never was of course, but she will always be a Queen in my heart.

On Saturdays, we kids would get to watch Sky King, Roy Rogers with Dale Evans, The Lone Ranger, Tarzan, and various cartoons, if we were quiet and had done all our chores.

Other days we were always outside playing in the yard until the sun went down. You know, thinking back, we didn’t have very many toys at all…but that didn’t stop us from having fun. We played games such as leap frog, hide and seek, Red rover, and hop scotch…among all the other ones we would make up.

We actually used something back in those days that is in short supply these days…

i-m-a-g-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.

Yep, if I could only go back to those good old days.

People worked hard, but at least they worked. There were no government hand outs back then, and most folks would have been too proud to take it, even if it had been. 

Though it was a hard way of life, in general, it was a lot less stressful.

And the dang TV service was FREE!

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

 

 

 

WHEN GOD CALLS….YOU GO.

There’s not anything much more beautiful than Springtime.

It is my favorite time of the year. Everything is blooming, bees are a buzzing and birds are a singing. Looking up this Sunday morning, I could see clear blue skies with white puffy clouds floating lazily by, like ships sailing on the ocean and I am at peace.

There is a sense of calm that fills my soul today.

It is as if God is standing here next to me, whispering in my ear that things are going to be okay…that no matter what, HE has my back…that He has been here for me even when I have felt my most lonesome...my most unwanted and unloved. I, like so many others, have a hard time remembering that when I need him most…when  I am at my lowest.

HE is calling to me.

I have had so many offers to come to church this morning...all in different locations...all different denominations.

It is as if HE is saying..’It doesn’t matter where or in what form…you need to get there and you need to hear MY word.’

I feel sort of like a little lost child, because I know that I have been  seeking HIM too.  I need to hear HIS word. It has been way too long. Like the grass in my backyard that has went without rain for what seems like forever, my soul has become withered.

I need the SPIRIT of GOD to soak down into my soul. It has got be replenished, and rehydrated…so that it can become ALIVE. 

Today.

So, I am closing this entry out right now.

He has called me…

And I am going.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

Missing Parts

It’s 9:29pm and I am lonely. You see, there are parts of me missing.

You know how people are always saying, “ time flies ” ?

It does.

It’s like when you’re young,maybe nearing eighteen,  all your future lies ahead of you, so time seems to drag. Then you hit your twenties and time speeds up…just a little bit.

In your thirties, usually by this time, you are married or in a serious relationship and beginning to “settle down” . You are raising your children, working hard to provide for them, going to their school functions, tending to your home and in general very busy…Time is speeding up.

By your forties, your children are nearing graduation, your parents are aging, work is harder than ever,  your energy is lagging and you are wondering why you're always tired. Time is getting away from you.

You’re in your fifties. Your children are gone and too busy to come around because they are just beginning their lives. You are experiencing the ‘empty nest syndrome’. Your parents are gone, either by death or by Alzheimer's and sometimes…

God forbid…

Even the love of your life has left you too.

Yep, there are parts of me missing tonight.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.