Category: Family

Giving Thanks

Our lives have not always been easy. We struggled financially for many years. We failed each other many times, but we always got up and made things right. There were many times when it would have been easy to give up, to quit, but we refused. We were never satisfied with failure or with doing things half-assed.

So today I’m thankful for a certain willful stubbornness. A refusal to accept the status quo. Studly and I are living proof that if you work hard and treat others as you wish to be treated that there’s a good chance you’ll do okay in this world. No, we aren’t wealthy. But we are comfortable. We won’t have a fortune to leave our kids. But we have a whole lot of love to leave them. And stubbornness.

Here’s hoping that this Thanksgiving Day allows each of my readers to take a moment to think on all the really good things in their lives. I’m thankful for each of you.

Thanks, people!

Old Married Couples’ Club

Married folks tend to learn each other’s tics and tendencies over time. I’ve made note of some of the things that we just do because we’ve been yoked together for so long. Some of it isn’t all that pretty, but some of it is just right. I guess you’ll have to decide which is which.

Crack each other up with just the right facial expression.

Fart and/or belch freely, then apologize sincerely before farting and/or belching again.

Steal each other’s portion of the blanket.

Hold hands unselfconsciously.

Snore unabashedly.

Find each other’s lips on the first try in the darkest of rooms.

Know exactly where to scratch when their partner has an itch.

Finish each other’s sentences. Sometimes correctly.

Elaborate on one another’s stories.

Watch a program they don’t want to watch because their partner wants to watch it.

Understand the “look” and adjust as needed.

Commiserate with one another’s angst, even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you.

Be the bright spot when the other’s is dim.

Anticipate the other’s needs, such as bringing home a new bottle of wine without being asked.

Refrain from making a joke at the other’s expense.

Gladly be the butt of a joke when necessary.

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Something I Love

I’m sitting at Whole Foods enjoying a non-fat chai latte, medium, almost too hot to drink, and checking my email on my phone. There’s a funny message from Studly Doright. It was sent to three recipients: our son, our daughter, and me. It struck me how much I love that–that our family group is united in that email. Even though we’re hundreds of miles apart, Studly knew we’d all find the message amusing. At some point today each person will read, giggle, and perhaps shake his/her head at what our well-loved patriarch has wrought.

Yes. This is something I love.

Long Distance Grandparenting

Studly and I live in north Florida. Two of our grandchildren live in Texas and three live in Illinois. Needless to say I don’t get to see them often. But thanks to this new-fangled invention called the Internet 😉 we manage to stay close.

This past weekend technology almost made it feel as though I was right in my daughter’s home in Illinois. She and the youngest grandchild, 2 1/2 year-old Harper, called me on FaceTime as they often do just to show off some new song or skill Harper has learned.

During this call I asked Harper about her new “big girl bed.” She got so excited and asked her mom if she could hold the phone. That’s when the adventure began. Harper carried the phone down the hall and into her room. She placed the phone on her pillow exclaiming proudly that Nana was in the big girl bed.

I pretended to be a baby and cried quite convincingly. So Harper told me not to cry and showed me her dolls and stuffed animals: Apple Dumpling, Hello Kitty, and a baby named, appropriately, “Baby.”

Harper read me a story about a puppy named Biscuit. When I asked to see the pictures she’d lay the book on top of the phone. We played and talked in this manner for at least half an hour, then Harper covered me up with her blanket and left the room.

A few minutes later her mom came in and found the phone. Apparently I was supposed to be sleeping.

Now to those of you who are fortunate enough to be able to hug and kiss your grandchildren every day this might seem kind of silly. I’d give anything for even 10 minutes of in-person time with my grands, but this interaction was incredibly sweet. Harper didn’t seem at all bothered that Nana was in the phone.

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Peace, People!

It Only Hurts When I Move

Friday night (Halloween, 2014) Studly and I, along with his sister, Angie and her husband, Steve, ventured into the frightening world of Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando.

Angie and Steve flew all the way from the panhandle of Texas to help me bring closure to my glorious birthday month. And how do I thank them? By dragging them through one terrifying haunted house after another.

Imagine, if you will, Halloween on steroids. The big draw for us this year was “The Walking Dead” house in which we had to negotiate the claustrophobic confines of the prison and then make our way to Terminus while keeping out of the reach of walkers and cannibals alike. It was absolutely everything I’d hoped it would be–heart stopping horror at every turn.

Studly played it pretty cool all night until we went through the “Dusk ‘Til Dawn” house. It had snakes. Dangling, coiling, lurking, slithering snakes. Fake snakes, but Studly’s worst nightmare nonetheless.

Forever My Baby Girl

Long ago, in a hospital far, far away…

A beautiful baby girl was born. Tiny, with a full head of dark hair, our Ashley completed our family. We knew she’d be our last kiddo–and perhaps we spoiled her a little. Ok, a lot. But she was easy to spoil.

At her four week checkup our general practitioner noticed our baby had an irregular heartbeat, a slight murmur, he said, and sent us to a pediatric heart specialist in Amarillo. By the time we were able to see Dr. Jones, Ashley was almost six weeks old. He diagnosed her as being in the early stages of heart failure and immediately sent us to the hospital.

What followed was a controlled panic fueled by guilt. Our baby seemed quite healthy to us. How was it we hadn’t noticed the slight blue cast to her lips when she cried? Well, she really didn’t cry much, only when she was hungry, needed a diaper changed, or was being bathed. She was so easy to comfort.

On December 8, 1980, I sat in a hospital room at St. Anthony’s hospital in Amarillo, Texas. As I nursed my baby girl, television programming was interrupted to inform us that John Lennon had been murdered outside his apartment building in New York. Dr. Jones walked in the room at that moment to find me crying, and he sat with me as we watched the shocking news.

Dr. Jones finally told me he’d made arrangements for Ashley to be transferred to a hospital in Houston where she’d most likely be undergoing surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect. So, just before Christmas, Studly, my mom, our son Jason, Ashley, and I flew to Houston.

A great deal of testing and waiting, waiting and testing ensued. Our poor baby was poked and prodded and hooked to tiny electrodes. She remained happy throughout. In fact, the only thing she protested was bath time, and she hated that with a passion. At midnight before her scheduled surgery I was instructed that she could have nothing to eat. Did I mention earlier that I was a nursing mother?

The two of us managed to cope through the night with the use of a pacifier and lots of snuggling, but by 10 a.m. I’m not sure which of us was more miserable. My baby was hungry and crying. My breasts were swollen like two overripe cantaloupes. Studly kept pestering the nurses about our situation. Then Mom went in search of someone who could help.

At noon I hefted a swollen melon under each arm and marched to the nurses’ desk. I told the nurse on duty that our little one had been scheduled for surgery, but that no one had come and that little Ashley was really hungry. Her suggestion–perhaps she could suck on a lollipop. I lost it. In my imagination I took one breast and squirted milk right in her eye. In reality I blubbered something about boobs and infants and being scared and why wouldn’t someone do something.

The nurse apologized and went immediately to find an answer. Within a few minutes we had a doctor at our door. The delay had resulted from a split decision. Some of the surgical staff wanted to operate. Others wanted to try medication to regulate Ashley’s heartbeat to see if the defect would close on its on and reevaluate in six months. At that point, I didn’t care, I just wanted to feed my baby.

In the end, there was no surgery. The doctors put Ashley on a form of digoxin and she thrived. Every year we went for heart check ups, all of which were great, and eventually there was no trace of a defect. Hooray for split decisions!

Our Ashley is 34 years old today. She is bright, beautiful, sassy, stubborn, and the mother of three of my beautiful grandbabies. Sometimes when I look at her I still picture her tiny face just as it looked so many years ago, watching me as I held her close. She’s grown up, but she’s still my little baby girl. Love you, Ashley.

Peace, Baby Girl.

P.S. Ashley your gift is going to be late.

Wagons Ho

Many years ago my little family embarked on what seemed like a journey of epic proportions. Native Texans, who’d never even had a proper interstate vacation, we found ourselves in the midst of a major move to North Dakota.

Studly had gotten the first of several important promotions in his career. To move up with his company we literally had to move “up.” It was a big deal for us, and an opportunity to make our lives better, so in spite of the heartache of leaving our families back in Texas we embraced this move to the unknown.

That’s not to say that there weren’t tears. Our eight year-old daughter cried for at least the first two hours of the 13 hour drive. I cried almost that long. We waited for Christmas break to make our move so the kids could start a new semester in Linton, North Dakota. The gray December skies outside our car matched our moods.

Studly who had been living in North Dakota for the better part of two months, had flown home to Amarillo to drive with us to our new home. Our belongings were following in a moving truck. There were four humans–Studly, our son J, daughter A, and me in our small car, along with one medium sized hyperactive dog and a doped up cat. Surprisingly we traveled well as a group, stopping only for meals and potty breaks, and we made good time.

Somewhere in the sand hills of Nebraska we decided to look for a place to stay for the night. We were north of North Platte and south of Ogallala on highway 87 when I spotted a sign advertising a motel eight miles off the main highway. Studly pointed the car west and soon we were pulling into the parking lot of an old fashioned motor court, the Shady Lady Motel, with a sign in the front window that read, “Where Strangers Become Friends.”

The name of the motel and the sign should have been enough to make us think twice about staying the night, but we were exhausted so Studly went ahead and rented a room. We stayed exactly three minutes. Nothing about the room made us want to stay–not the cobwebs in the corners or the mouse droppings on the floor or the weird toilet/shower combination situated next to the ancient television set. I insisted that Studly march right back into the office and check us out. For once he listened to me and we got back on the road.

Less than 30 miles from the Shady Lady we came upon the Thunderbird motel at a major crossroads. To the west lay Ogallala, Nebraska, and to the north lay Pierre, South Dakota. The Thunderbird was a clean, inexpensive, welcoming oasis on our journey. The pets were more than happy to get out of the car and soon snuggled together in one of the rooms–a phenomenon that would never occur again, but the cat was still stoned on tranquilizers, and the dog was just goofy.

After a good night’s rest we headed toward Pierre. At this point, Studly began lecturing us on the dangers of living in North Dakota. His two month long experience in the great white north had apparently qualified him as an expert on extreme winter living. He warned the kids about attempting to walk home from school. He lectured me about driving on icy roads. He lectured the pets about taking too long to do their business. By the time we hit the South Dakota line the kids and I were scared to death of frostbite, hypothermia, and snowmobiles, not necessarily in that order.

Studly stopped at an army/navy surplus store in Pierre (rhymes with “beer”) so we could purchase winter hats, gloves, and coats. Newly armed, we felt confident that we could survive even the worst winter in North Dakota.
Of course, that winter turned out to be one of the mildest on record for North Dakota, but it was great for helping us acclimate.

The months right after our move were picture perfect. Studly had found us a beautiful home to rent on the banks of Beaver Creek (crick to the native North Dakotans). Our children became very close friends out of necessity. I wasn’t working or going to school, so for once I got to be the mom who had chocolate chip cookies baked just in time for the school bus to deliver the kids home every afternoon. Yes, we missed the folks back in Texas, but it finally felt like we were living our own lives, like we’d cut the apron strings and ventured out into the wonderful, wide world. Those were very good days. Cold, but good.

Peace, People!

Hall-iday Inn

My junior year in high school my dad decided to take a job in Dumas, Texas, with Piggly Wiggly. He’d worked for the chain in Floydada, Texas, and then tried his hand at store ownership there. His partner in that endeavor lacked a couple of necessary attributes, money and business acumen, and soon that business failed. So when Daddy was asked to take over the store in Dumas, it was a blessing. For everyone but me.

I’d gone to school in Floydada since kindergarten. All of my friends were there. My future was all mapped out. I was a junior, for Pete’s sake. What kind of parents make their child move their junior year in high school? Well, apparently parents who need to make a living.

They let me finish out the school year in Floydada. I lived with my mother’s parents for three of the longest months of my life, and then moved to Dumas in late May of 1974 to rejoin my family. I moped a lot. There I was in a strange town during the summer of what should have been the best time of my life. Truthfully it ended up being a pretty great summer, but I certainly didn’t want anyone to know that. “Work the guilt,” was my unconscious motto.

My dad had the brilliant idea that we should embark on family camping adventures that summer, so he bought this ginormous green and white striped tent at a garage sale. It was hideous, but he got this crazy notion that we should dub it the Hall-iday Inn. Our last name was Hall. Pretty clever, eh?

Soon we were immersed in a frenzy of camping. Many weekends we’d head to Lake Fryer near Perryton where we’d swim, pretend to fish, and be jolly. We even took the tent to Tres Ritos in New Mexico where Mom stepped on a rusty coat hanger and had to have a tetanus shot.

One fateful weekend we arrived at our campsite near Lake Fryer after dark and had to set up the tent by flashlight. I called dibs on the top bunk of the double decker cot and after we all made trips to the communal outhouse we retired for the evening. Sometime in the wee hours a fearsome storm blew in. A boom of thunder woke me. Bursts of lightning flashed outside the Hall-iday Inn. Then a gust of wind forced it’s way beneath our tent and blew us over and over and over. I screamed like Shelley Winters in the “Poseidon Adventure.” Mom told me to shut up.

Once the tent stopped rolling we took stock of our physical well being. Mom and Dad were fine. My younger brothers were accounted for, and I was ok, but embarrassed by my histrionics of the previous few minutes as we went tumbling toward the lake. We couldn’t find the zippered entrance to the tent, but Dad had his pocket knife. My brothers begged him tearfully not to cut the tent, but that seemed to be our only recourse to escaping from that collapsed canvas of doom.

Fortunately we had friends camping nearby who came to our rescue and took us in for the night. As I recall that ended our camping obsession, and we went back to being a normal family. I never could have admitted to my dad how much I enjoyed those camping trips. Those really were the last times that the five of us vacationed as a family. Those were the days before I met Studly, before any of us thought too much about the changes that were upon us. I hope I told Daddy “thank you” at some point for bringing us together in that tent in the summer of 1974.

Peace, People.

Whatchamacallit

When I was a kid in the ’60s growing up in Floydada, Texas, we called the refrigerator an icebox, a fridge, or a Frigidaire, regardless of the brand.

When we went to get a soft drink, it was always a “coke” even though that might mean a Pepsi or a Sprite or a root beer. It wasn’t until we moved to North Dakota that I learned not everyone did that. Up there, it’s a “pop” and in Kansas, a “soda.”

In our living room, we sat on a couch, but my Grandmother Hall called hers a divan and my Nannie Grace called hers a sofa. I’ve heard it called a davenport, but I can’t remember by whom.

Our noon meal was dinner and our evening meal was supper. We learned differently when we moved up north. There the noon meal is lunch and the evening meal dinner. That difference caused a bit of confusion when interacting with the natives. We’d invite folks to supper and they’d look puzzled until we gave them a time. Then they’d say, “Oh, you mean dinner.”

And we’d say, “No, that’s at noon.”

“Oh, you want us for lunch?” ”

“Well, we’d prefer fried chicken.”

Who’s on first? That’s right.

In Texas, if one was planning to do something in the near future she might say, “I’m fixin’ to…” as in “I’m fixin’ to defrost the icebox.” Truly it sounded more like “fixinta”–“I’m fixinta cook supper.”

And we were always “carrying” someone somewhere. Grandma Hall didn’t drive, so she would ask us to carry her to the store. She was an able bodied woman at that time, so carrying meant giving her a ride in our car–no heavy lifting involved.

Objects for which we didn’t have a name were called “doohickeys,” or “thingamajigs,” or “thingamabobs.” People whose names we couldn’t recall were “Old Whatshername,” or “Whatchamacallit.” It was possible to have a conversation that went like this:

Mom: Do you have that thingamabob that came off the icebox?

Dad: No, I took it over to old Whatshername to see if she had one of those doohickeys.

Mom: Well, Grandma Hall asked us to carry her to the store to pick up some fixings for a big dinner she’s fixinta have after church tomorrow. I can run by and pick up the doohickey while I’m out.

Dad: Be sure and get some Coke.

Mom: Okay. What kind?

Dad: Dr. Pepper.

Inferior Homes and Gardens

Some women are HOMEMAKERS. These women can put together an impromptu dinner party for thirty while simultaneously stitching Halloween costumes for their grandchildren without breaking a sweat. Their homes are immaculate and their decor like something out of a magazine. I have friends who fit this description, but I am not one of these women.

I’m the dreaded anti-homemaker whose arrival was prophesied in the book of Martha Stewart, Chapter IX, verses 3-7, “And lo, there will be among them women who can neither cook nor sew. Women who will weep and rend their garments when the microwave fritzeth. And these women shall feel no shame. Yea, ‘tho they walk through the halls of Betty Crocker and Southern Living, they shall gather no knowledge of domesticity. Woe unto the partner who finds himself yoked unto her, for his days shall be filled with ramen noodles and take out.”

My mom tried to teach me the domestic arts. She really did, but I had no interest. Even baking a cake from a box puzzled me. Every single step had it’s own special rules: “It’s this way, not that way. Drain this, not that. Flip it like this, no, no, not like that. Here. I’ll do it.” Her need for me to be perfect in the kitchen was superseded only by my total lack of interest.

Our home economics teacher, Mrs. Craig, did her best to mold me into a practitioner of the domestic arts, as well, but her efforts were for naught. I did learn multiple ways to freeze cantaloupe in her class, though. To this day I hate cantaloupe.

Mrs. Craig also taught a sewing unit that culminated in a runway type style show. We were to find a dress pattern we liked, buy the material, and make a finished outfit that we would then model for our final grade. My pattern was for a jumper and blouse. I selected a light weight blue denim material for the jumper and red and white checked gingham for the blouse.

I worked on my outfit every day in class, but as the date of the style show grew near I was still woefully behind schedule for completing the project. With many painfully patient late night hours of assistance from Mom, I had a presentable, ok, darned cute outfit for the style show. I’d venture to say it was one of the best final projects that semester, and I received an A for my efforts. Of course, Mom threatened to disown me if I ever signed up for a home ec. class again. She needn’t have worried. Happiness was home ec in the rear view mirror.

Mom has been gone for many years now. She pretty much gave up on me ever becoming a competent homemaker, but I’d want her to know that I’ve become an okay cook and a decent housekeeper in middle age. She’d be astonished and proud.

Peace, People!