Lilly Sway

I was taken aback with my sons early in the wee hours of today. I was woken up by my twelve year old at about 1:15 AM, and I must admit I was not in a greatest of moods, but then I remembered that I made a deal (as I do very often these days with my children, make deals that is) last night.  I get up early to see the lunar eclipse and they get up early and sweep the walk way, so good deal I thought.  I forgot how old I am and how tired I feel almost always, but I came around with a half cup of coffee and the real enjoyment at the sight of the preparation the boys had put into this big event. There was a circle of chairs on the drive way, and a lap blanket in case anyone got cold, water so that no one had to go back inside if a thirst came upon one of us, and there was even an umbrella since the leaves are still falling at this late date.

We three were the only ones that sat there this morning the twelve year old the fourteen year old and myself. I was hoping the rest would join in on the fun, but my husband was going in for minor day surgery and needed the rest for the grueling day ahead and my daughter had put so much effort into the Christmas decor around the house she found all of the handmade gifts that I had acquired through the years and placed them here and there, so she was exhausted. My oldest still at home was just getting in from a network job and was driving my husband to his surgery so he popped a shower and hit the bed.

“I wonder why this only can happen about every 4 hundred years plus”, my twelve year old son said. I said I know that we can read all about it later and that I was sure we could find the answer, but we are privileged to have the experience now. He sat there with his blanket ( he has the flu right now ) and his older brother told him to cover up because the flu could become worse with the morning dew. I was sitting there staring at the sky looking for the moon it had disappeared again behind the briskly moving clouds a huh, there it was again a hazy reddish glow and so beautiful it was.

We talked about so many things well into the morning hours and learned a lot of the things we were wondering about. I learned that both my boys want to be scientists and that they journal on occasion. I really did not know that, I wonder why not?  I learned that my fourteen year old feels as if there are too many rules that have not “changed with the times ” as he put it. I wondered which rules he was referring to specifically, but I did not want to address that  issue at this time. My twelve year old said Mom I love the way you are, and I have been sitting here wondering how strong you always are, because anything that come along you just deal with it, and never seem to not know what we have to do next. “So Mom” he said I wonder how can I get to be that strong”? I wonder how you got to be my Mother the one who just can deal with me being sick all the time, and cook everything I love, and just say well lets just try another time when things can go so wrong most of the time. He was referring to our plumbing problems we, a week ago, woke up to a flood in the house and the restrooms were not functional for 5 days.

We washed our face at MC Donald’s for the last days of school because  they had finals and the restrooms were always clean there, so we had not to wonder where we would go for the morning breakfast, and a clean rest room. I wonder what more could you ask for? I made arrangements for bathing with my sister in law and we made do with the laundry as best as we could(6 people makes for a quick accumulation of dirty laundry). I wonder how my mother dealt with it all. (we were 10) I really wonder how she always managed to be so nice, and good to us, and mostly I wonder how I became so lucky as to have these wonderful kids. We had to get up extra early for school study late and we made for a line at my sister in laws for the baths, and well the water heater did not keep up. I wonder if she is as glad to have our plumbing back in order as I am?

As we sat and discussed the futures of my children, and the seriousness of their fathers illness we laughed, and cried at most of the things that are all pent up in someone when they are stressed to their limits, but we gave each other a reinforced faith that all things will pass, the good, and the bad, and that we must strive for the things that are most important to our lives.  I wonder when my children became so grown up to be worried about the seriousness of the situations that have engulfed our family here of late. These are normal problems at best for many, but when things happen that are unexpected and expensive the impact can be overwhelming to a family and the impact can harshly affect or destabilize a home these days and times.

I wondered as we picked up our chairs and made our way to our beds if they (my boys) really felt reassured and hopeful towards their future. Even when they know so much is hanging by a thread. I know that I am very grateful for these small glimpses of the future plans these boys are setting for themselves. How great it is to have this particular time this morning with them. The lunar eclipse was the reason we gathered this early in the morning and it was great to be part of this Historic event, but we stayed out there so long for the laughs, and closeness, the melding of minds, and souls destined to be infected with love.

I laughed at knock knock jokes as if it was the first time I had ever heard them, my older child just as witty as can be performed a piece from his play that he performed at school last week, he add-lived and we could not stop laughing, until my neighbor came out to see what was going on. I wonder if he thought we were crazy. I found out that there are many reasons to always look on the bright side two of those reasons are probably snoring by now, because I did wake them up to sweep the walk way after all.

Well If you are wondering that I must be crazy to think the way I do, well I guess that’s fine with me. I would think though, that you might be wondering what happy things are in your life right now, or if you are missing out, because you are too busy being sad or worried about life.

Food For the Mind

Lilly’s Way

I would just like to address the facts as I see them. This is for those of you who say I am not real,  so that you will find an answer to who I am and what it is I really want. The answer then you must partake in and read. I make no claims nor exaggerate nor do I put video or pics or even games up along with my blog. I just write for me and my sanity and I really enjoy the interaction that stimulates people to think or rethink something in their lives that may need just that a thought or two. I have coaxed my son to help me pick out a picture or two that will be on my next post for some of you that must visually see things I talk about. I must propose that you let me do what I do with out the scathing remarks that are so hurtful and callus.

I love an argument, but I live for conversation that is real, and interaction. I adore people in general as we are a gift (you and I) one that expires soon enough, so why is it that hurt and hate and the like run rampant ask yourself do I really need to be mean, or ugly to this person, one I do not even know? Yes, ask that of yourself and then if you must be. well then I will keep on deleting you and those things from my blog thank you very much.

I find that people in general are not ugly. I know that in this day time, we live with everything on the fast track people just want to ( in my opinion) get along in their lives uninhabited, by other people. There are so many of the good things that people could say to each other, but a derogatory critique is what I usually hear like ( her dress is too short, he just cut me off in line, or why can’t the so and so just use their turn signal they are not the only ones on the road you know!) These are just the ones I have been privy to in just any where I go and I must admit the person in the short dress was to short, but she looked great in it so that could have been the comment by the lady next to me talking to her husband who was by the way in great appreciation of the young lady in the dress. Non the less. This young lady took nothing from the woman who commented the bad remark, as she herself with 3 children by her side looked really great.

I have to be real with you I do wear rose colored glasses some of the time especially when I am most challenged to do so. I see past the ugly or mean and I just say they must be having a bad day, or I say well that must be something that really intimidates them in a hurtful way that they feel as if they can not react any other way. I promise you that is not the case. I have experienced that all people can be nice and good if you can accept who they are. ( providing that we are not talking about the local bad guy the ones who live for the hurt and deceit he or she can inflict on humanity).

I myself was a child who on one sunny afternoon in the heat of August in 1968 got a glimpse of a father I know to be nothing but mean or hurtful, become the savior to a woman who came to our home in need of help. She was the woman I had seen many times before who did my mothers hair in our home. My mother’s skin was alabaster and she had become allergic to the sun. She could no longer go out doors in the summer time as the sun would have such an allergic reaction to her skin that she would break out in large hives and she would be in agony from the itching for weeks,  so in August the heat was too much for her to venture out completely covered up.

Well back to what transpired this day. This lady the hair dresser, well she came to our gate and asked for help, my sisters and I were making lemonade as we had every weekend in the summer for the men who brought out the sales fliers once a month, this was how you knew who had a sale at what store. The caged truck and trailer would bring out about 15 or so men, the indigent, the homeless, the local drunk men who did not have regular jobs, these men would be dropped off in most of the neighborhoods that I knew of, and disburse these store fliers to all the homes, or just tuck them in the fence line. Our corner is where they would gather and wait to be picked up after their fliers were all gone.

The days were long for them I always thought so anyway, we usually saw them dropped off at breakfast, and come suppertime they would start to gather for the ride home. My mother being the good soul that she was to all, had us make about five pitchers of lemonade on those days one for us and four for them we were jealous at times as there was never any lemonade left. we squeezed a whole sack of lemons on those Saturdays and all the work was gone in a flash. When we objected to the work my mother would say to us “The way to being a good person is to never judge anyone, always count your blessings, be happy to have what you need,  and always share what you have, she would tell us that only through the act of true giving is there receiving in life”.

We were already at the picnic table and the familiar faces of the cash way carriers were starting to gather one by one at our gate.The woman saw us and asked us to get our mom, she said that she was loosing her baby, we ran inside, not my mother nor my father ever drove (there was as incident I will share at a later date). anyway with no car the real tragedy was that most people were gone on a Saturday to shop or what ever people do and even though some of these men knew how to drive and offered we had no car. Town was thirty minutes by bus and 20 minutes by car, and the bus had already passed (there were no local hospitals as there are now just at almost every exit). My dad and mom saw the truck come for the men and my dad got in the front of the truck to stop him then he carried the lady to the truck jumped in the front seat with her in his arms and they left. All of the men who were still gathering saw the truck and were upset at their being left there to fend for themselves.

My mother being who she was, said that the man would come back but that we should make do until they did. She made a barbecue of burgers for the men since it was the twilight hour and the harsh sun was gone. The men insisted on cleaning and cutting the shrubbery,  and cutting the lawn for their meal, and they did, as the evening progressed some caught the bus, those who had money, and the others just waited for the truck to come back as it did about 4 hours later. Turned out the truck driver and my father got the lady to the hospital just in time for them to save her and the baby, and my father would not let the driver leave since there were no buses past 8pm to our neighborhood on Saturday, so they waited until she was out of danger. This lady’s husband got to our home at about 7:30 that evening he knew my mothers appointment was always the last of the day, because her hair was so long it was past her hips, so he drove straight to the hospital after my mom told him what had transpired.

The cash way men jumped in the truck and trailer as they had so many a time before but not before telling my mother that she was truly an angel of mercy. One man said that circumstance had put him where he was at this stage in his life and that the kindness of strangers was what made him struggle to get his life back on track. The child was born a month later, and the couple came to show off the child to my parents, my mother got her hair done every month at no cost to her for as long as I can remember. The lady said that she would never ever be able to repay my dad for his quick thinking in response to her plight.

She called my dad a hero and gave me a different view of my father one I do not think I could have seen on my own. Many people came out that summers end just to say that he was a good guy and that there were still heroes in the world. I watched it all, it was true my father did help with out a thought for himself, and he did most certainly help someone in dire straights. I could not understand how he the devilish man we knew him to be could be so humane at the same time, I then realized that there must be good in him somewhere regardless of who he was to us, as time went past me and I grew less and less afraid of my father I decided to be a bit more tolerant of what he was, for the sake of finding out why he was this mean person he had been to us,  and I did find that answer.

This is for another time to tell. It is for, when you can understand what a person has inside that makes him or her who they are. Then you will know why they do what they do.

Food For The Mind,

For Alice the best hair dresser I ever knew.

Lilly’s Way

I am getting ready to host a dinner, one that I have done for over thirty years. I have been slowly buying all of the ingredients for this quest. I am finally down to just buying the main course the meats, the bird, and the pig (just a turkey and a ham). I have stuck to this tradition for the sake of the wholesome feeling that all will eat a beautiful meal, and smile, laugh, and share both sad and happy times, at a gathering of family. What a small word family. This word is jam packed with faces in our world. I will see the new additions to our already big family, and the old faces that this dinner would not be complete without. The ones that are all knowing, who have learned the secretes of how to live with all that is ours for such a short time gracefully.

Oh what a great time we are preparing for, the house is ready to receive both young, and old. The dishes washed, the inviting table, and of course the menu planned. I have not really given much thought to ever sending out an invitation in about15 years or so they just all come. I will cook for as many or as few who care to just grace this home with their presence. I am trying to share old recipe’s with the younger women in the family but I think that I still have a few good years of being able to manage what I have been doing so long, because it is something I enjoy tremendously. I am pacing myself and preparing the bread for dressing ahead of time. I want to be able to have a good time as these days are few and far between. There are to date four family members no longer with us. I will keep moving forward and laugh at those funny things they used to say or tears will flow when I think of what they would have said, but either way this is a time for closeness, and happiness, for it will be gone as soon as it comes and although there will be belly aches, and spills, and over indulgences the like, it will be a fabulous, wonderful time.

I will wash the dishes smiling and clean up all that is messed up with love and memories as I have for so long for this is the greatest time of all time to share family and food.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Food For The Mind

Lilly’s Way

For Mom, and Rose I will love you always.