Flibbertigibbet

 My mother called me a flibbertigibbet. She was not being insensitive. I am amused by silly songs and anything else for that matter. 

I love interacting with a two-year-old child. We understand each other. I love it when their imaginations awaken.

I drive to the top of a hill and gasp. The beauty of the scenery takes my breath away.

I will dance anywhere. Not like no one is watching. I do not care who is watching.

From the time they were very small my children and I would go out to dance in the rain. 

Elm trees have seed pods that have sort of a tail to catch the wind to blow them to new locations. We call them helicopters because the tail spins as it falls. One time my granddaughter took a double handful of helicopters to her upstairs bedroom. She tossed them out the window. They caught a little updraft. It separated and lifted them before they spun to the ground. It was glorious!

The man who bought the farm my mother-in-law and father-in-law had owned before they died said he welcomed anyone from the family to walk the hills they had owned. We were overjoyed. Every time anyone comes to visit we climb the hill and roll down.

You have not lived until you bend over to smell a flower. Then you examine every petal and leaf. Enjoy the colors. Watch them close for the night. Or open in the morning. 

As you know I love music. If I hear a song I know I sing along. Of course I cannot carry a tune. Does that stop me? No. My children and grandchildren have on occasion asked me to stop. 

One day I was walking with my son and daughter. I told them I knew it was hard having me for a mother.

They said, "Not really. We thought all mothers were like that."

Poems

 

I enjoy poetry. It is words not quite set to music.

If I am writing poetry it is most often in the form of a limerick. I have no idea why. I suppose that is the rhythm in me.

Of course nursery rhymes are important. They are usually the first poetry children are exposed to. Things like Humpty Dumpty, Little Boy Blue, and Mary Mary quite contrary are only three of the well-known nursery rhymes. There are so many. 

One of my favorites was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very very good,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

My daughter taught it to my little niece. When my niece recited it she said, "And when she was bad she was hooo-id. So cute.

A. A, Milne wrote Halfway Down

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!

And then there is Mom's favorite by Dorothy Aldis called Hiding

I'm hiding, I'm hiding,
And no one knows where;
For all they can see is my
Toes and my hair.

And I just heard my father
Say to my mother —
" But, darling, he must be
Somewhere or other;

" Have you looked in the inkwell? "
And Mother said, " Where? "
" In the inkwell , " said Father. But
I was not there.

Then " Wait! " cried my mother —
" I think that I see
Him under the carpet. " But
It was not me.

" Inside the mirror's
A pretty good place, "
Said Father and looked, but saw
Only his face.

" We've hunted, " sighed Mother,
" As hard as we could
And I am so afraid that we've
Lost him for good. "

Then I laughed out aloud
And I wiggled my toes
And Father said — " Look, dear,
I wonder if those

" Toes could be Benny's?
There are ten of them, see? "
And they were so surprised to find 
Out it was me!

Are those fun? No wonder children love then so.

May Day

 When I started school it opened a whole new world for me. I had new friends. And I learned new traditions.

May Day was a tradition I knew nothing about. 

On the first day in May Mom and I made "May baskets". We filled extra-large paper cupcake cups with various candies. A long and colorful pipe cleaner made a pretty handle for the basket. I think there were other decorations but it has been a long time. 

All the baskets we made were placed side-by-side in a cardboard box and put in the car. Off we went.

Mom told me when I got to a friend's house I was to take a basket and go to their door. When I got there I should knock on the door and run to the car. If my friend caught me he or she had to give me a kiss.

So I knocked on the door and ran like the devil was after me. But Mom had neglected to tell me to leave the basket first! 

She told me to take the basket back and leave it. By this time my friend Susan was running toward me. She took the basket and kissed me on the cheek.

The rest of the baskets were delivered more successfully.

I miss old traditions. I wonder why they stopped.

Feral Cats

 When I first came back to this tiny town to retire it was like a paradise. Almost.

We have undrinkable water. We have to use bottled water for anything we need to put inside our bodies. 

We also had feral cats. Thousands of them. They were all over this little town.

My son told me that they picked on his father's little dog. When they let the dog out the cats would surround him and not let him back into the house. My ex-husband would have to go out to rescue him.

I do not know where they all stayed. Often I saw them strolling through the yard or on the street. They seemed to be coming from the creek at the end of our street.

Several times we saw a man who lived a block away out sweeping his sidewalk. One day my son was on his way to the post office and saw the man running into his house. The cats had become aggressive with him. He had to escape because he could not fend them off.

After about two years I noticed that almost all the cats were gone. I have no idea where they went.

I like to think there was a cat Pied Piper who lured them to a waiting vehicle to be transported to families who would love them. Realistically they probably used some sort of poison.

Every once in a while I see a kitty wandering around town. But not the huge numbers there were.

Who Am I?

I know who I am - good and bad. To learn that all I have to do is take a look at my grandparents, my parents, and my children. 

My father's parents were interesting to say the least. 

My grandfather worked as a brakeman for the railroad. I did not know him because he died several years before I was born. I have never seen a picture of him. He was a drunk who was able to work. I know Daddy loved him and was also angry with him a lot of the time.

When I would show a picture to my children of my grandmother they always asked who was that mean-looking woman. Grandma was a mean-spirited woman. I am not sure she liked children and probably should not have been a mother. But Daddy loved her a lot so there was good in her. I loved her too but I did not like her very much.

My mother's parents were loving hard-working people. When I was a child they had their farm. They also had young children. My youngest uncle is three years older than me. (One of my cousins was older than our uncle.)

Grandpa had been a real-live cowboy in his younger days. I do not know how he learned but he played guitar, banjo, and fiddle. He loved his horses and taught us all to take care of them as well as to ride. He always had his pipe in his mouth... so much that he wore his teeth to where the pipe stem fit right there. He worked hard on the farm and raised 9 children. 

Grandma was the best cook. She had been cooking since her mother died when she was young. She made fresh bread every day on a wood stove. She wore her black hair rolled up all day but night it came down to her knees when she brushed it. She played the piano. They used to provide the music for barn dances. The thing she did that fascinated me the most was that she could wring the neck of a chicken. It took the head off quickly.

My father was the eldest of two late in life brothers.in a family of 9 children. He quit high school to enlist in the Navy during WW II. He was the one to take us to ballgames and dances because Mom was busy with babies. He loved doing it. Daddy could do anything. When we built our house he did most of the work. We all helped but he did it all. Plumbing and electrical included. He was outgoing and never met a person he did not like. People liked him too.

Mom was the smartest person I ever knew.  She was third born in a family of 9 children. We went to college together. If we were writing a paper we called each often to try to get the perfect word. Mom was a good cook too. She made a dessert that we are still trying to get right. It was the only time she was selfish and would not share. She had seven of us. There were also six babies that were not carried to term. She was always busy with babies and we loved it. She was also a loving mother to us.

My children are so much alike and yet so different. Because of them I have become a better person. They inherited both good and not so good from their father and me.

My oldest son has always been interested in computers. We gave him one of the first home computers made. He programmed it to roll the various dice for Dungeons and Dragons. He got none of that from me.

My second son is a go-getter. He wants what he wishes NOW. That he got from me.

Son number three was in a hurry to grow up. He is a good husband, father, and grandfather.

My daughter has been an experience. Did you know that little girls actually cost more than little boys?

I have learned from each of these relatives. I hope I make them all proud. Often I fail to be the person they wished I would be, I am still a work in progress I suppose.

Hello?

I have told you before about my beloved high school. It looks like a castle and sits at the top of a hill. As a matter of fact it is known as The Castle On The Hill. The students were the Lords and Ladies of the castle.

I will not describe the school more than I need to here because I have done that before. And you can do a web search if you are really curious.

There were a lot of 'jobs' that needed to be done. Some did not require a full time employee and there was no money in the budget for them.

 Some offices accepted student volunteers to spend a free hour each day to assist the person in the office. They might run errands to the supply area to replenish for the office. Or maybe do some filing. Or maybe even help grade papers.

There were other jobs too.  All were voluntary and it was considered to be an honor to help the school.

A job that I had was switchboard operator. 

There were a lot of offices that used telephones. When a caller needed to speak to someone specific the operator connected them.

There was one phone number to call the school. The calls had to be routed to the correct phone.

You may have seen the switchboard in old movies. The is a board with holes in it mounted on the wall. On the table in front of the board was a series of connecting wires. Only the connectors were visible. 

The operator wore those old-fashioned headphones. When the phone rang the operator would pull up one of the connecting wires and plug it in to a receiving hole at the bottom of the board.

"Central High School. How may I direct your call?" That is how I would answer. 

Once in a while the caller would have question I could answer like what school were we playing against in football. Usually there was an adult in an office they wished to speak to. 

Then I would pull out the cable of the matching color, plug it into the hole belonging to that office. I pushed a little button in front of me to ring the phone in that office. 

When their call was ended the lights for their colored wire would go out. I would remove them from their holes and they would rewind into their places on the table. 

There were maybe 15 or 20 sets of wires. I seldom used them all. It was fun to be an operator for an hour each day.

Secrets

 I hate secrets. Not secrets about things like a surprise party or Christmas gifts. I am talking about secrets that can affect important things.

I was raised in a time when parents protected their children from anything bad. It is understandable. I tried to protect my children too. However some things need to be known.

When my children were small I wrote letters to grandparents letting them know. how the kids were doing. Most of the time the news was good... learning to walk, getting good grades in school, playing in little league, learning a new dance in dance class. Grandparents deserve to know all those things.

Not all the news was great. Sometimes the kids got the flu. Bones were broken. Cuts needed stitches. Tonsils needed removing. Grandparents deserve to know that.

My oldest son began to talk very early. I wrote to his grandmother and told her all the things he could say. When she came to visit she heard him and said, "My God Emma that kid can talk!"

My youngest son was still in diapers. We lived on a short street with no traffic so the children often played by the side of the road. My son kept bending over and biting into the road and eating the dirt. I thought it was funny until I noticed that his little legs were bowing. A visit to the doctor told us he had rickets. Vitamins fixed him right up.

Those are things grandparents deserve to know.

I had been married for a few months. I had the day off work so I went to visit my family. I visited with my parents for a while. Mom was sewing as we talked. 

I asked if my sister was upstairs. I would go up to see her. It was suddenly abnormally quiet. I asked again. Nothing. I asked more forcefully. and became worried. Still nothing. 

I aggressively planted my feet and aggressively told them I wanted to know where my sister was. Without looking up from her sewing my mother said, "You don't need to know."

I will admit that my sister was a wild child. A picture of her buried under the back porch flashed through my mind. 

Instead I firmly said," Oh yes I do need to know. She is my sister."

They relented and told me my sister was in a home for unwed mothers. No one was going to tell me! I think they thought I would not notice.

I thought my brothers and other sister knew. None of them knew until the precious little girl my sister gave up for adoption found us 20 years later. That is except for my children. I do not keep secrets from them.

Medical conditions are useful to know. Heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, eating disorders, and any other condition you can think of are important for many reasons. Family members need to be able to tell a doctor what things to watch for. Family members need to be able to understand what you need if there is a problem.

As I said I hate secrets. There are things family members have the right to know and a person has no right to make it a secret.