“You’re going to cry when I graduate, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
That was enough to satisfy my youngest daughter, Jessica, back in September. She’s the last of my eight children to graduate high school.
She graduated Friday.
We have a few college graduations left, but by and large, the work is done. The time is finished. The investment complete.
I cried, not why she thought I would, but I cried… Continue reading 31 Years, 3 Months, 1 Week, 2 Days
I’ve been thinking back about an older couple I knew when I was in college. Loved them! Great, rock solid, influential people!
He developed cancer. After a valiant fight, Hospice was called. Hospice was there round the clock during his last days at home.
They were always a very kind, loving couple, quite expressive in their love and admiration for each other. They used pet names, like Sweetie Pie and Sugar Plum, Honey Bear and Honey Bunny, along with other pet names as terms of endearment.
They would greet each other, usually in a higher pitch voice with great emphasis on their tones, sounding like they were talking to a bouncing baby or a favorite animal.
Their transparent physical, emotional and verbal affection for each other was fun to watch. I learned a lot from them.
But that was in life. Death was a little different. Continue reading Sweetie Pie
He walked in front of me. He was on a mission. So was I.
Shopping in a grocery store is easy. Little list. Grab it. Go.
He was quick too, except his handful of items needed a shopping cart.
Two 5-gallon containers of peanut oil, five boxes of fish seasoning, eggs and four bags of cornmeal.
His clean overalls said he had already cleaned a ton of catfish from either trot lines or baited holes. And now he was about to have a party, a fish fry, and he was fidgeting to get the fryer started.
There was still one thing in his basket that didn’t make any sense to me. He handed the little deli bag to the cashier who asked if he had two, or three, fried chicken tenders. Continue reading Help One
One of my sons, Todd, told me a story that still lingers several years later.
He had several jobs at once in college, but quit them all to work in a college intern. He continued to work, however, for a gentleman in his 80’s he’d met a couple of years before. The man was in great shape, but hired Todd to do heavy labor work around his farm.
As Todd got to know the man and his wife, he really liked them, a lot.
Unfortunately, she had Alzheimer’s, and was getting progressively worse in the short time he’d known them.
One day sitting in the gentleman’s pickup, he told Todd he would need him to work more to help look after the place.
Staring out the front windshield, he spoke quietly, as if thinking out loud. He said his wife’s memory lapses were becoming longer, and more frequent.
Occasionally, she would snap out of it and be back to herself instead of the confused, absent minded stranger. He was was forced to move her to a nursing home for proper care. Continue reading A Thought To Remember
It’s our large family tradition. Easter egg hunts for the children AND adults.
The kids go first, eggs with candy, bubbles, little toys, and more candy.
Then the adults hunt. We had 13 adults hunt this year because 5 of our adult gang couldn’t make it. Janet and I sat back and enjoyed watching the 13 go after it.
Fun, fun!
It’s basically the same each year, but with new twists thrown in. The twist this year was games made up of random teams.
The first-place team in points from the Egg Toss, Egg Spoon Race and Rabbit Race (tow sack races) got a first-place head start hunting eggs, followed by the second-place team, then the lowly third-place team. Continue reading Everybody Wins
She smiled, then flashed her big beautiful brown eyes before scooting over beside me and asking what I knew she would ask.
“Daddy, will you dance with me?”
Dancing. It terrifies me. On the other hand, I don’t mind looking like a fool on the dance floor because other than a slow dance, I know that’s how I’ll look.
Now my oldest daughter, Shawnna, who was 14 years old at the time, was asking to dance with me at her basketball fund-raiser in the school cafeteria.
There’s only one answer. “Absolutely!”
There were lots of girls there, only a handful of guys, and even fewer fathers. If you lined all the other males up and rated them from first to last on the dance floor, I would by far be last, dead last. I didn’t, no wait, I still don’t know how to two-step.
Shawnna is a very kind, observant daughter and knew I would dance, but also knew I didn’t like dancing because quite frankly, I don’t know how. As if our roles reversed, she smiled, took my hand and said, “Come with me. I’ll teach you.” Continue reading Dance On
My first career was in public mental health, including the part where people are committed to state psychiatric hospitals. I met a lot of super nice people during this time from law enforcement to medical personnel to social workers to the clients themselves. Truly, everyone needs a little help from a friend at times. That’s life.
Many I knew on a first name basis because they were in and out of the clinic, and most became friends on a professional basis. Even when they were struggling, you couldn’t help but like them! One was an older lady who was intelligent, charming and graceful.
She quit her meds though and shortly thereafter, her family brought her in. It was bad enough she had to go to the state hospital for her own safety.
After she got out of the hospital, she was back to her charming self.
We always got along well, but after the commitment, she decided she didn’t like me anymore. Not one, single, BIT! Continue reading Grocery Store Delimma
Seven years ago, my oldest daughter wanted a little pet. An inside cat was out of the question. So was a dog. At least until I had a momentary lapse of sanity.
We went to a flea market to look around. If I’d known how things were about to play out, I would’ve walked right by the old woman sitting under a shade tree selling puppies.
She was selling little breeds. Without hesitation, all four daughters zeroed in like heat seeking missiles to a cage with four puppies, half Chihuahua, half Japanese Chin.
Half Chihuahuas! God made Chihuahuas as a practical joke on rats. They’re noisy, obnoxious, cranky little animals that on their best day look genetically defective.
These, however, looked like the furry Japanese Chin part. Before I knew it, the heat seeking missiles exploded. Shawnna was holding the runt of the litter, all nine weeks old, in the palm of her hand talking to it like it was a little baby.
I’m convinced now the old lady selling them set the hook right then. I just didn’t know it right then. Continue reading Flea Market Flea Bag
I know it’s unrealistic, politically incorrect, and uncool, but I loathe cell phones. Lucky people live where there’s no cell service!
Maybe it’d be OK if it was JUST a phone, but it’s a camera, recorder, computer and alarm clock. There’s more technology in a smart phone than all the systems added together used to send the first man to the moon! And whoever heard of microchips? Chips are supposed to be made by Lays, not drain the living life out you!
Plus, Europe says it causes cancer! And then you pay a ton of money for unlimited talk, text and gigabytes of data. Nobody should be bit by a giga!
Maybe it’s just me? Maybe if I grew up not knowing anything but internet and cell service, I would fully appreciate cell phones?
Nope!
In my old-fashioned, decrepit way of thinking, cell phones are like Congress: you get a lot of talk, end up paying a lot and get virtually no return on investment! (Virtually…see how I snuck in tech word there? No wait, it’s virtual. Nevermind.) Continue reading #Bring Back Rotary Phones
There was a long line for the first interview. It was person after person in rapid succession. I wrote “high risk, high reward” on his application because everything pointed to him striking out as an employee, but IF he made it he would be a home run.
A few days later I was getting pretty desperate and went back through applications. There he was. After a bit of head scratching, I called and left a message. Within minutes he called back as excited as an elementary boy alone in a candy store.
He was 15 minutes early to the second interview the next day, which is a good sign, but hyperactive as that same elementary kid who ate ALL the candy!
I asked him to tell me about himself. A gun fired and the race started. Without breathing, he told me he had graduated from high school seven years ago and everything about himself except which was his favorite tooth. Continue reading High Risk, High Reward
RabBits 