Just Thinking

 

This morning as I was down loading a new patch for some program on my computer. As I sat and watched the bar as it loaded, I thought to myself, what a different world I live in from my Moms world. As I sat there I thought how different the world is from 1969. She died just before her thirty-first birthday.

So this was what I was thinking, she wrote letters on a typewriter sitting at our dining room table. Now I just leave a comment on a blog, and status on Facebook or send a text on my phone. She would have never in a million years, believed some of the things I have seen on Facebook. Heck, I didn't even say the word pregnant until I was 10!

 

She lived a very well ordered life. None of this running about. She made her own clothes, she never let us eat anything but apples for a snack. I do not remember her ever making cookies. We also didn't go to the doctor either. She would worm us in the spring with sulfur and cream of tarter. She believed that sugar gave you bugs in your intestines and that was what made you sick. She also thought the T.V. was a huge waste of time and we had to play outside. It didn't matter if we dug to China, or if we spent days in 100 plus temperatures, we were to play outside and if we got thirsty there was the hose to drink out of.

She would read to us out-loud for hours. She would tell us stories and draw us pictures. She would tell us stories in French and work on our accents. She sewed and embroidered and did crochet. She made rugs and read books. She wrote her congressman and loved repainting furniture. She loved gardening and in the summer we only ate from the garden. People were always at our house. She was very shy and quiet, but she had such quick wit and such a dry sense of humor that when she did talk, the visitors would be laughing so hard they would be crying. She was always taking these poor mothers in who had just had a baby and the mother would sleep and sleep. ( Always in my room and my bed.) My Mom would play and take care of the babies. She really loved babies.

 

I always knew that God  took her home so soon, because I thought she was just perfect. In every way. I do have some things that do crop up in my brain though from time to time. She had this temper and if you made the mistake of crossing her, she could cuss better than any sailor you ever heard. Completely and utterly inventive. (Never us kids just Dad) She never ate food. She was so afraid of gaining weight she just drank iced tea. When we would bring her breakfast in bed, we always brought a glass of iced tea and a pack of cigarettes.

 

Our life was so much simpler in the 60s. We spent summers swimming and playing baseball. We read comic books and climbed trees. We played with kittens and puppies, because she loved animals so we always had so many around.  Once a year on the fourth of July we would get to have red Kool-Aid and hot dogs. Cooked on the BBQ. So that after the coals died down we could light our sparklers and then I would  run around like a crazy person with a wire of flaming fire in my hands. Writing my name in the sky. Then stepping on the hot wire and getting a blisters on the bottom of my feet.

 

We would save pop bottles and take them to the liquor store and turn them in and when we got enough money we would go to the drive in. In those days they showed a cartoon, usually Tom and Jerry. Then Dad would go to the snack bar and get grape soda and pop corn. Best stuff I had ever ate. Our Disney movie would come on and then the parent movie would come on next. We were supposed to go to sleep in the back seat with our pillows and blankets. I still have mental scars from peeking over the seat when they watched The Graduate.  

 

I was just thinking about all of this as I am sure she would have loved being able to type instant letters to her congressman. To have daily updates on bills that were in congress. She might even have loved Netflix. She loved babies so much I wish she had known mine. I think she would have been my greatest fan when I started home schooling and I know that we could have had such fun hooking rugs together. Since none of those things ever happened, nor will happen. I just do the next best thing. I love my kids and grand-kids for us both.
I wish you the best Forth of July, watching fireworks, eating hot dogs and maybe having Kool Aid.--- red of course.

~Kim~

 

"My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso."
Pablo Picasso