If I Was Smart Enough To Advise

If I were to give my children advice…  it would be a shot in the dark.  I’m not an expert.  I was a child.  I have always been around children.  I continue to have children in my life.   That’s pretty much the extent of it.  That in no way makes me an expert.

However.

I do love my children.  And I tried.  And I failed.  And I succeeded.  So I have experience.  But I have no sure fire tricks to a successful life.

So if I were to give them advice there is absolutely no guarantee it would be good, or even correct, advice.

But I am going to give it a shot.  In the dark.

When you buy a house?  Get a small one.  Keep it nice.  Clean.  Make improvements.  Don’t get more house than you need.  Pay it off.   Use your money for other things.  A home is important.   You should make where ever you are, home.  What you spend on it is not important.  It’s how you spend your time there that matters.

Pay your bills.   First.  Always.   You can’t go out to eat five times a week?  Good.  You shouldn’t be  doing that anyway.

Eat your meals around the dinner table.  Just like we use to do.  And not once did I ever hear you complain about mom making you dinner, sitting down with you, and talking to you.   Oh, you complained a lot.  But never about being fed and sat with.   Do it with your family.

You can not spoil your children by loving them.  That’s nonsense.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that.  Hold them as often, as much and for as long as you like.  One day they will be too big to pick up and keep safely in your arms.  One day they will wonder off to bed without waiting for you to tuck them in and sing them “Amazing Grace” and read them a book.  You will finish dinner dishes one night, you will go look for your beautiful child who was reading a book in the living room.  You will find her/him in her/his little bed.  Fast asleep.  You will be exhilarated that you have an extra fifteen minutes of peace.  Then it will hit you.   Your child didn’t need you for those few minutes of comfort.  Then, you will be sad.  And you will remember it forever.   So do it.   Love them.   Hold them.  No matter how much you hold them now, years from now it will not have been enough.   You won’t regret it later.   Trust me.

Speaking of singing.  Sing to them.  Your voice is comfort and love to them.  Pick a song just for them.   My two?  You know what your songs are.  And I know them.  And for the rest of your lives, when you hear your song-it will be as if I am singing to you.   And when I hear them?  I have a flash of holding you as a plump baby and singing it to you, dancing in our living room.  I say “dancing” with finger quotes high in the air.  You know I can’t dance.  I swayed.  I sang.  You loved me.

You can spoil your children with lack of discipline.  None of us get everything in life.  None of us need everything in life.  Give them what they do need.  Help them to decide what is important to want.  And help them to learn the value of earning what they want.

Save a little money from every check.  Five dollars?  Good.  Fifty?  Better.  One hundred?  Fantastic.  Little savings add up.  Even if it adds up slowly.  Eventually it will add up to a month’s rent or mortgage.  And that adds up to comfort.  Knowing you have something for troubled moments.

Don’t expect to know everything.

Don’t be afraid to ask.

You don’t need 2,158 friends on Facebook.  But you do need a good friend or two to talk to.  Share good times with.  Hang your head low over coffee with when you’re so tired you could sleep standing up.   Laugh with people you trust.  Find fun in people, not things.

If you don’t want your child to grow up speaking badly or negatively about others….don’t let them hear you speaking badly or negatively about others.

If you want love in your home, bring love in to your home.  Share the love in your home.  No one else can do that for you.

Every day when you come home from work, spread your hands out over a brick wall or an outside windowsill.   Lie your troubles from work or life out there.   You can pick them back up on your way back out the next day.  Chances are you’ll find less troubles waiting for you when you go to leave again anyway.   Home is where the good, the safe, the security of life and love is.  Leave all of the other stuff outside your front door.  (Credit for this one goes to a story I read years and years and years ago.  I just don’t know where I read it.)

Love your mom.   Even if she doesn’t know what she’s talking about half the time.

If you get advice from someone and you don’t know what to do with it?  Take it, thank them, and put it in storage.

He Spoke To Me In 1926

Sometimes we find things out too late.

Or we learn too late to take the time to find things out.

Or both things happen.

And something incredible is missed.

In my head though, I manage to take little bits of something and put them together to create something magical.  If only in my head.  And if only magical to me.

So be it.

I’ll take it!

My grandfather Stephen was born in 1899.  Look, he is quite dapper.

My Grandfather

During the course of the last few years and with much assistance by my aunt and uncle I have learned much about him.

He was quiet and faithful.

Athletic and active.

One of Grandfather’s numerous teams.

I remember Grandfather.  Very fondly.  I remember his quietness.  And his back scratching (the best ever).  I remember him quietly reaching up to his ear every single time the herd of us stampeded in to his home.  He would sit there quietly and let us sit on him, climb on him, and he would just smile away.   Dad told me many years later that he was turning his hearing aide off when we came in.  I would like to think it’s because we were quite loud enough and he didn’t need it to hear us.  Not that he didn’t want to hear us.   I believe I am correct in my assumption.

There’s more to this man than I can tell you here.  Sadly I did not have the wisdom in youth to ask this man about his life and the things he saw.  The things he lived through.  He served in WW I.  He went back for WW II and they told him he was too old.  He had family stories I’ll never know now.  And now I can’t ask.  All I can do is look through what has been left behind.  In my relatives memories and my Grandfather’s belongings.

And there is one thing that I found very recently that has made me one very happy granddaughter.

Who knew that something he did in 1926 would impact me on a snowy and cold night almost 86 years later.

All he did was write two words in his daily journal.  And I know, I know, that when he wrote those words almost 86 years ago-they were for me.  Because who else would read them and have any idea or care about them?  No one.  Just me.   So again, I am correct.

Fast forward to the 2000 era.   I love my biking.   Love it.  I am most at ease on my bike.  Pedaling. Even sitting in my bike room pedaling is very pleasing to me.    My love of biking doesn’t end with the bike.  I love to read other people’s stories about biking, trips around the world, trips around continents, trips around their country, family trips.  Whatever.  Just love it.

One year Husband got me a book.  ”How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle”.  By  Frances E. Willard.

I love this book for many reasons.  But one reason is I agree with some of Ms. Willard’s views on the benefits of the bicycle.  So much so that I quoted her on a piece I made for our bathroom:

It’s really not crooked. I’ts me sitting on a laundry basket trying to take this picture.

Not too many people I know of have a clue about Ms. Frances E. Willard, or her book or anything about her very busy life.

I don’t talk to my family about such matters.  They humor me about some matters but not too many want education about bike loving stuff.

Friends, some humor me.   Some, I have even given this book of Ms. Willard’s to.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with my Grandfather?

A few weeks ago when we were working on more family history we found one of Grandfather’s diaries.  The one from 1926.

This is what he wrote:

At first I was extremely excited that perhaps Grandfather (and Grandmother prior to her becoming his missus) went and actually saw Frances Willard.   Alas, that was all dashed when Husband pointed out Ms. Willard was deceased, and had been since before Grandfather was even born.

He mentions a hall.   And it was over crowded.   Perhaps they went to see a play about her.  Or someone reading some of her writings.   Or talking about her suffragist type works.

The point is, he wrote those two words.

No one else would have cared.

The book ended up in my hands.  I flipped through every page.  And those two words jumped out at me and grabbed me by the eyes.

Those words said:

Look Colleen, you and I have something in common.   You will see this and know that this something you are fascinated by, is something I share with you.  You will see this and when you get excited and think about the two of us with this common appreciation, you will make a big deal out of it in your head.  And more importantly, your heart.  Enjoy this!

Though I missed out on huge opportunities with him.  And I didn’t learn about Frances E. Willard until long after he died.   I managed to make magic.  I learned something, I found something, I put it together.   And connected.  Magic.

I Out Lived Fear

It is probably a safe assumption to make…. that those of us who have been molested do not keep pictures or mementos around, of those who have molested us.

And I don’t.

Or didn’t think I did.

But today I was working on a little project.  Well, more to the point – some of my friends who are more technologically advanced than I am, were working on a project for me.  I was there to enjoy.   Years and years ago my father loved to tape us as we grew up.  ”Tape” as in record on an 8 mm movie camera.  No sound.  No real direction to the tapes.   Just hundreds of snipets of our lives.  Caught.  Captured.  Recorded.  We had had them transposed on to VHS tapes decades ago.  Now, we were working on putting them on DVD.

Though neither my father nor the brother operating the camera had anything that would resemble a steady hand or an ability to focus they did manage to capture some clear shots.

Trapping our geeky appearance, crooked teeth, torn jeans days of childhood.  Showing full heads of the thickest hair ever grown on humans.  Recording us dressed all nice and neat or covered in mud and muck.   Mixing all of the moments up.   Christmas.  First communion.  Graduation from grade school.   Baby moments.  Toddler moments.  Adolescent moments.  Running down hills, back in the day when running down hills was loads of fun.  Even more so when dad was down there to catch you because you rolled up so much momentum that if he didn’t you ran for days before you could stop.  And the best of fun, when he pretended he was going to catch one of the bigger kids and didn’t.   And those kids had to guess whether they would be caught or end up rolling in the dirt.  Fun times.  Laughing times.

There’s my baby brother in those old fashioned rubber pants you wore over diapers.  There he is a little bit bigger.  Potty trained.  But .. oh look, he loves to stand outside and pee in high arcs.  How do we know?  Because it is caught on 8 mm.

There’s mom sunbathing.   There’s mom yelling at dad to stop filming her.  Yes, you can read her lips.

It is also true that  fake fur coats were all the rage in the 1970′s.  I am absolutely sure of their unrealistic nature.   There were no animals that hue of blue.  Or patterned with that awful zig zag weave.   God would not do that to an animal.  But yes, parents did it to children.  My oh my.

And there…there!  Faces of my grandparents!  All four of them.  Proof positive of Grandfather’s incredible back scratching!  Grandmother who I remembered with a sternness, but looking at her as an adult….she is trying so hard not to smile.  She was having fun.  Grandma and Grandpa!!!!  Arms around kids.  Kids climbing upon them.   Grandma Maggie !   Wondering what in the world happened that she is suddenly swarmed upon by children everywhere!   And she was getting Corny the wooden plaque my brother made her.

Faces of neighborhood friends flash before the camera.

Faces of my parents older friends, people I remember.  There’s Tolley!  There’s Ralph!  There’s Mr. Corbit!  So many far away faces.  I smiled inside.  They’re all gone now.  But not forgotten.

Places of childhood memories flit back and forth from one day to a year later.  To five years earlier.   There was no rhyme or reason to how we put the 8 mm tapes together.  No time line or order.  We just wanted to preserve them.

Then.

Sitting right there.   In front of me.  From many many years ago.   A face on the  TV screen appeared.

The face of a monster.

I said out loud “that’s the man who molested me”.

I’m not sure what the others in the room thought.  I didn’t look at them.  My friend said “him?”   I said yes.   She was immediately disgusted.   And I love her for that.

I can’t say I was startled.  I can’t say I was surprised.  Though it’s been many years since I have seen these videos I have seen them before.  Surely I knew it was there.  I didn’t have a shock.  I didn’t even care.   I just said it.  Out loud.  Because it’s true.  Because it happened.  Because I can say it.  My moment didn’t pivot out of control.  My heart did not palpitate.  My life is no worse for having seen him.  I will likely edit him out once we get it transferred and have the ability to do so without ruining the rest of the memories.  But even seeing him did not ruin my memories of today.  He went off of the screen.  And an image of my baby sister came on the screen.  Immediately my heart lifted.  Immediately where there was emptiness there was now fullness.

For an hour and a half I watched parts of my life flash and flicker.  I laughed as I watched my very dignified brothers skip and dance.  Thrilling at the idea of showing their children their parents as goofy children.   Goofier, I dare say, than they would ever have believed.  I groaned at some of the clear shots of our outlandish outfits.   Groaned even more at the out of focus clips that lasted for nearly a minute.  Knowing the out of focus face is no longer with us.  Seeing dad so handsome and young.

Seeing my life from a different time.

And not caring-

When I saw his face.

Because he does not matter.  Because my life is full.  My moments have outlived the fear he inflicted.

Because I am stronger than the face.

Because  there is no victim here.

My life mementos do not include….him.

Halfway!!!!

When we were growing up our father use to drive us 63 miles from home to the farm.  Every weekend.   Over the years my feelings towards these trips  vacillated.   At some points in my life it was  “every weekend of my life, oh super yay!”.   Other times it was “every blessed weekend.  Oh my God”.   No blasphemy intended.   Nor vain taking.   Just exaspiration.

The traveling of my youth was not the same as today.   A 63 mile trip today is an hour or less.   Depending on who’s driving.    Back then it was minimum of an hour and a half.   It was a trip.   With luggage.  Food.  Our own drinking water.  Everything needed for every day living. In addition to the actual act of traveling, in my family,  there was a hierarchy.  A very strict and guarded hierarchy.

It went like this:

Boys.

Then everyone else.

This is not an exaggeration.  Ask any of the “everyone else”s.

Even in the car/truck/van/camper.

So whatever vehicle dad was driving you can bet there was a boy sitting in the front, shotgun.  It was an enviable place to be.  You got to see everything.  And it was an important place to be sitting.  Because it had it’s privileges.  It meant you were older, and/or, more important than everyone else in the car.   Everyone can try to deny it.  But when you have older siblings and they always got that seat and you were crammed into a space with the rest of the brood, you knew you were not as important as that one in the shot gun seat.

So, every weekend we packed in to the vehicle of the day.  And made a trip to the farm.  Then on Sundy evening we redid everything and had to take a trip back from the farm.   And so my life went.   And it is also no exaggeration when I say it went on like this for a number of years.   Years I tell you, before I ever had the privilege of shot gun.  But at some point in my life it finally happened.   The time arrived, and there I was, sitting in the front.  Shotgun.  The vehicle at this point in our lives was an old beater van.  I don’t know where dad got it.  But the boys fixed it up.  Painted it tan.  Finished the inside with shag carpet and beanbag chairs.  It was night time.  Dad nods his head to his left at some point on the trip and says “there it is”.

I said “what?”

He said “you tell me”.

I looked.   And looked.  And looked some more at the approaching low and long lights.  I had no idea.   I told him “I don’t know.”   I stared, very hard.  Because I was not seeing something I thought I should see.   What?   What?!

He was quite dismayed that I had no idea.  He kept questioning me.  Forming the question differently:  what’s that building?   I don’t know; what does it mean when we get here?  I don’t know; how far have we gone?  I don’t know; how far do we have to go?  I don’t know.  He seemed convinced if he asked me in the right, different, way I would know exactly what he was talking about.

I did not.

With great surprise and exasperation he explained.

At 31.5 miles there is a building.  Off to the left, on the other side of the highway.   It’s a motel.  Not that I knew what a motel was.  And not that I knew the significance of that motel.

The road was much longer to me then, than it is now.  And it seems in my memory that we drove that road for many many minutes staring at the upcoming lights.  The upcoming lights to something, something my dad thought was important.  But I had no idea.  Because I had never sat here.  I had never been part of the communication shared between him and the boys.  I had always been in the back of the truck/van/camper and never been part of the travel education.   Up to this point in my life I would get in the vehicle and sleep, or read, or fight with whoever I was crammed in next to.  Then we would arrive at the farm and get out.   Or, if returning home, get in at the farm, and get out at home.

This was different.

He was talking to me like I knew something.   Or should know something.  I felt like I was letting him down.  It didn’t occur to him that over all of these years where this was now common knowledge to him and the boys that it was not something I had ever been a part of.  He had never taught me this.

I was surprised at his surprise.

Finally he told me.  That motel marks the halfway point between home and the farm.  And on the return trip, it would of course mark the same halfway mark.

It wasn’t long after that trip that dad started to point out to everyone in the car the lights at night, or the sign during the day.   And who ever was awake or paying attention would yell out “half way!!!!!”

Today I’m heading to a party and have to pass that motel.  It has a different name.  But it’s still there.  And I still consider it halfway.  To where ever I’m going in my life on any given day that I pass it.  I have to travel that freeway on different occasions in my life now.  Never to go to the place known as my childhood home.  And no longer to the place in my history known as the farm.

But I can not pass it without hearing dad tell me it’s halfway.  Or without one of my smaller siblings yelling out “half way!!!”

Which is kind of nice.  Because no matter how old I get when I get to that half way mark?  I feel like I have only gone half way.  And I am suddenly very young, with so much to learn.  I’ve only gone half way.  And for part of that way I didn’t know where I was coming from or where I was going.   For part of that way I had dad driving.  I pass the half way point every time I go that route.   And no matter where I’m going, it is always half way.

And every single time I pass it … for the very briefest  moment I have a flashback to sitting shotgun, being with my dad, being naïve, being young, and still only being halfway.

With so much further to go.

My Doppelganger

Eerie…………………………………………………

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

……………………………………………………………………………isn’t it!!!!

 

Please take note of the breaks in my bangs.

This is important.

 

 

Dora The Explorer Image courtesy of:  balloonmaniacs.com