Find A Good Book

My children went to Detroit Public Schools. There are not many good teachers there.

I realized one day that one of my sons could not read. 

Of course I went to visit his teacher the next day. My son was 7 years old. And he could not read. 

I talked to the teacher for quite a while. She told me that she was afraid of my son. If she would announce that it was time for the class to get out their workbooks he would just cross his arms and stare at her. 

I said, " He is 7 years old. Tell him to take out his workbook!"

My children were taught to mind adults. However like all children if they see a weakness they will exploit it.

At the end of our meeting I asked if there was an extra reading book that I could take home. I would work with him at home. She was happy to give me one.

Now I love to learn. It comes easily to me. But I am not meant to be a teacher. The patience needed is not in me. But I wanted my children to be educated so we went to work.

Then the following week my son came home with an armload of books. I was expected to teach every subject his grade was learning. Back to the school I went.

This time I spoke to the principal. I explained that I wanted to help with his reading but his teacher was being paid to teach. I could not be responsible for the rest. 

He explained that the teacher was going through a nasty divorce. So she takes it to work and does not have to do a good job because she cannot control her feelings?

I was talking to my neighbor later and venting my frustration. She informed me that her daughter had the same teacher a few years earlier. Her divorce had been final at least 10 years ago. 

So I taught my son to read. As a matter of fact I had to teach all of my children to read. They are all very intelligent so it was not difficult.

I am happy to say that they are voracious readers today. No thanks to that 2nd grade teacher and all the others.

Why A Vacation

 I am back from vacation. 

I did not go to some exotic resort or any place fun.

Within less than a week I lost 3 family members who were dear to me.

My husband's younger brother died. He had been ill for a long time. He was the last of the siblings in the family.

He was as much a brother to me as my brothers with whom I shared parents. He left his wife, seven children, and a number of grandchildren.

Then a niece's husband suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. He was a registered nurse and highly admired by many people.

The doctors told my niece immediately that they did not expect him to live.  Modern medicine helped him live in a coma for a short time. My niece, her children, and grandchildren are devastated.

The only cousin I had who was my age died. She had a few medical problems as we do as we age. Left behind is her husband who is not well and a house full of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

I needed that time to deal with the knowledge they are gone. I am not looking for sympathy here. Our lives move on. I just wanted to let you know why I was gone. I am back now.

Vacation

 I need a vacation I will be gone for a couple of weeks or so. Talk to you when I am back.

Moms Know

My little boy was sick. As his mother I knew it.

He was listless. His eyes did not sparkle. He had no fever or any of the other obvious signs of illness. I am his mother and I knew something was wrong.

I took him to the doctor several times. Each time I was made to feel like I was imagining illness.

Finally I took him to another doctor. He did a few tests. Then he took an x-ray.

My little boy had pneumonia.

He had it the whole time. Medicine was prescribed. In only a few days he was running and playing with his brothers and neighborhood children. His eyes came alive.

Once the pneumonia was cleared he became completely healthy again. Today he is 6'3" tall. 

I am angry with myself because I knew he was sick. I took too long to have another doctor take a look. Moms should listen to themselves and then make others pay attention.

Bedtime

My brother went to sleep every night at 8 o'clock.

No matter where we were or what was happening he went to sleep at 8. We often found him curled up under a table.

When he was little one of my parents would scoop hum up and put him to bed. As he got older another problem developed.

He was too big to carry to bed. But if someone shook him to get him to go to bed he did not completely wake up.

In his sleep he would just mindlessly walk. We had to stop him from walking toward stairs or the picture window. 

We learned to let him get to his feet. Then we would gently hold his shoulders and guide him to bed. All would be fine.

I was talking to him on the phone not long ago. I was laughing with him about going to sleep at 8 every night. His wife laughed and said that he still does.

It is good to know that some things never change.

What Did It Look Like?

My mother was so talented. And she loved to write.

Mom mostly wrote short stories. I was quite young when she had a couple of her stories published in women's magazines.

Once she was very late coming home from a meeting with a publisher. I was about 6 years old and it was the very first time I made supper for the rest of my family.

I made a gourmet meal of scrambled eggs and toast. I am still proud of myself.

Back to Mom's stories. I have never seen anything she had published. I am guessing it may have been a little too racy for little eyes.

I have read other things Mom wrote. She has great stories. I am in awe of her brain.

However... my mother never met an adjective she did not like. She can use 30 different words to describe a pencil. It drives me insane.

It makes me think of the Elizabethan writing style. I felt that was too descriptive too.

It just goes to show that although I am like my mother in many ways description is not one of them.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

Here we go 'round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.
Here we go 'round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/miscellaneouslyrics/childrenslyrics/herewegoroundthemulberrybushlyrics.html

Most of us have heard that song. Many of us sang it to our babies.

My grandparents as you know had a farm. On the farm were a lot of mulberry trees. The trees gave us red, black, and white mulberries.

White mulberries are larger but not as sweet and juicy. The black ones taste the best to me.

Grandpa hated the mulberry trees. Birds like the berries. Unfortunately their droppings stained whatever they landed on. It seemed like there were droppings on everything... laundry on the line to dry, the picnic table in the back yard, and machinery. He did not like cleaning the tractor seats every morning.

There was a big mulberry tree in the front yard. Grandpa decided it had to go. He cut it down.

To make sure it would not grow back he then chopped the stump into pieces. For good measure he poured lime on it to completely kill it. It was gone.

After a few years sprouts began to grow. It was not long before the sprouts were about seven feet high. Mulberries that grew on it were sweet and juicy. Best of all they were easy to reach.

Grandpa was not happy but he gave up. He had created a mulberry bush.

Three Billy Goats Gruff

I have insisted that each new baby in the family hear the same song as their first song. I sing The Unicorn to them. It is now tradition. 

I sing that song to them often. Of course there are lots of other songs too. Grandma cannot carry a tune but she sings at the drop of a hat.

My second grandson was walking through the room one afternoon. The radio began to play The Unicorn. My grandson got a shocked look on his face. He looked at me and saw I was not singing. With a puzzled look on his face he looked at the radio. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the radio. Me again. Radio. Me.

 I know he was happy when the song was over.

I also love to tell stories and nursery rhymes.

For some reason I remember telling my second grandson Three Billy Goats Gruff when he first came home from the hospital. 

I told all the babies stories. I taught them nursery rhymes. I sang to them. All the things I did with my own children. Life is good.

By the way for anyone who would like to sing or tell stories to children they are available online. All of them.

Memory

My oldest son has an astounding memory. He remembers things from when he was a toddler.

Sometimes it can be a bit frightening. I will say, "You are too young to remember..." He always remembers.

Recently we were talking about the apartment we lived in when he and his first brother were born. He says he remembers the apartment. He also remembers the apartment my parents lived in when they first moved to Detroit.

Then he really shocked me. He had a memory of wandering around an apartment he did not know.

I had completely forgotten about that!

I did not know he knew how-to open the door so I had not locked it. I was tending to his new brother in the bedroom. 

He opened the door and went exploring.

When I went to the living room to check on him. There was no HIM there. I looked through the whole apartment. No him.

We lived on the third floor... no elevator. There were stairs at either end. What if someone had snatched him? What if he had gotten out and fell?

I rushed to the hall outside the apartments. No baby boy. I started to run toward the stairs at the back.

Suddenly I noticed an open apartment door that was open. I went over and knocked being ever so hopeful that they had rescued my baby.

There was my son wandering around. He did not touch anything. He just wanted to look.

No one else was there. He had tried the doorknob and it opened. 

I snatched him up and took him home. Of course I explained to him that he could not just go into someone's home without an invitation. 

As I said before I did not remember this until my son brought it up I was astounded. I had completely forgotten the whole thing.

And from that time I made sure the doors could not be opened by little hands.

Croak

One town I lived in our house was on the main street which was a part of the main highway, We were the last house on our side of the street. It was a great place to live.

My favorite place to be was at the very top of a huge tree. It stood at the corner of our driveway. It was quite tall. Years before someone had placed two boards across the very top which made it comfortable to sit there.

I spent a lot of time up there. It was a small town and I could watch the happenings downtown.

I could also watch the comings and goings of the boy next door. He was much older than I was and I knew I had no chance. He sure was pretty to look at.

We lived in a 2-story house. It even had running water in the kitchen. The cursed outhouse sat out back.

We were also on a 2-phone party line. The other phone belonged to the drugstore.

Like most of our neighbors we had a root cellar. It was like the one in The Wizard Of Oz that Dorothy could not follow her family in when the tornado came. People also stored things they had canned and apples and potatoes in there.

I love rainy weather. When we got a good heavy rain there the toads emerged from all the root cellars. There were thousands of them.

The road in front of the house was completely covered with the little critters. Each one was about 2 1/2 inches long. All of them making the highway look like ocean ripples.

Unfortunately it was the highway. Every now and then a car would drive by. All you heard was POP, POP, POP.

All those poor little toads exploded from the pressure of the car tires.

The next morning we went out to see the carnage. There was no evidence of popped toads anywhere.

Got any ideas where they went? I do not.

Timmy And The Hershey Bar

 My nephew was always getting into mischief. He was a good boy. He just had a lot of energy. As you know an energetic child needs to be busy. 

If he is not given something constrictive to do he will find something to do. And his something will probably get him in trouble.

Timmy was about 8 years old. He loved watching movies using the VCR

Timmy had a Hershey chocolate bar. Hershey bars are a flat piece of chocolate. The VCR tape is flat.

Why he put the bar into the machine we will probably never know. The chocolate melted everywhere.

My sister tried her best to clean it out. That VCR never worked right again.

Timmy is in his mid forties now. He does not remember why he did it. I think it was because it was there.

The Ly Situation

I have another complaint. Ly.

Two innocent little letters. They are so often misused.

My example is the word bad.

If you feel bad you might be ill. Feel better soon.

If you feel badly you are not doing a good job. Think about it for a second. If you are holding a baby badly you might drop it. If you are bad at holding the baby have someone show you how. (Or you might drop it.)

To explain better bad is an adjective used to describe a thing. Badly is an adverb which describes an action.

I hope I was clear enough. We all need to speak more correctly.

The Movie

I am embarrassingly emotional at times. Just ask my children. 

I am not a fan of science fiction movies. I do not care about the doo-hicky that they invented that can transport people to somewhere else. I am not interested in all that mechanical stuff.

So when the first Star Wars movie came out my mother kept telling me that I should take my kids to see it. I was not interested. Who cares about life in the future in outer space?

Mom gave us each a ticket to see Star Wars as a Christmas gift. I was not thrilled. However I did take all four of my children to see the movie. 

I loved it! We actually went to see it several times.

It was such a popular movie that they began making the sequel and its sequel immediately. And of course we saw them as soon as they were available.

In the movies Luke Skywalker was the hero. He had been raised by his aunt and uncle. Darth Vader was the bad guy. 

Through three movies Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were trying to eliminate each other. Even after they discovered they were father and son.

Needless to say there were many MANY battles between them. 

In the third movie Darth Vader was killed... not by his son. They had a touching reunion before he expired.

In my family we each have a favorite place to sit in the theater, I sit a little bit ahead of the very middle of the seats. Each child has a favorite place and I know where they are.

It was such a loving scene between Luke and Darth when the father dies that I began to cry.

Soon I hear my youngest son who sat more toward the back and the left call in a loud whisper to his brother sitting more toward the front and to the right. "Hey! Look at Mom. She's crying because Darth Vader died." Not all the snickers came from my children.

But wait. There's more.

After the movie we went to the ethnic festival. It was being held beside the Detroit River in downtown Detroit.

As we walked along my adorable son would greet people saying, "That's my mom. She cried because Darth Vader got killed."

Isn't he cute???????

Do Not Be Afraid To Ask

I received a bill from the hospital after my baby was born. As I do with all bills I read it carefully.

I do not know medical billing but I did find something that puzzled me. There was a tray with a number that was charged twice. 

I had no idea what it was so I called the hospital and asked. The woman was very nice while letting me know that I was interfering with her day.

She looked in her list of medical terms. Then she looked at her copy of my bill. 

Tray number whatever was for performing a circumcision. They were charging me twice for my son's circumcision.

She very kindly took it from the bill.

If I had been afraid to ask I would have been overcharged.

A good thing to remember is that if you ask you will get one of two responses. In the case above the response was positive. I saved some money.

If the response had been negative the charge would have stayed on the bill. and I would have paid it. I would only have lost some time.

If you have a question always ask. You never know which answer will come but it is better than not knowing.

IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE

My son liked to watch Star Trek. All of them.

The second incarnation was Star Trek: The Next Generation. It introduced a character named Worf.

Worf is a Klingon. Klingons live for battle. When barging into war a Klingon screams IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE. It is a way of saying that if the warrior is brave in battle there is no more honorable way to die.

My son has an affinity for gadgets. He had one of the first home computers. He was on the internet as soon as it was available to him.

He kept telling me about all the interesting things he was doing. I really was not interested at all.

Finally one day he talked me into looking at it. He found a site I was willing to look at. I read it and learned a few things. Soon I was on the computer often reading that site.

Then I discovered these things called links. If I clicked on a link it would take me to a different site. Wow. I could find stuff. I would sit and click away. 

I found some things I liked. I found some things I did not like. I found some things that embarrassed me. I still clicked away.

Until... one day I clicked on a link. What appeared was a totally black page that somehow had a red tint to it. I was puzzled.

Then a loud deep voice told me IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!

I ran to get my son. I was terrified. I thought somehow I had clicked onto a curse of some sort.

My son just laughed at me. He explained that he had installed Worf's voice to sound if the computer crashed.

It's not funny!