Today, I’m remembering a song my grandmother used to sing to me and my mother and I sang it together forever…
I just took a peek in the pantry
And there on the row of shelves
sat a row of pies
that would be a surprise
to the Mince Pie King himself.
My grandma is here and my grandpa,
my cousins and Auntie May.
What is it about?
We’ll soon find out
for tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.
Happy day before Thanksgiving to all!
This weekend, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I did some shopping here and there, getting ready for the holidays. Everywhere I went I left with a smile on my face because of how friendly and nice everyone was. The clerks were friendly and smiling. In the grocery store, people laughed when we bumped carts and made light conversation with strangers as we picked out or favorites for the upcoming feast. One lady and I almost collided as I left an aisle and she joked that she shouldn’t be texting while driving.
At one store, some lovely people were handing out papers asking shoppers to purchase goods on the list to help with Thanksgiving dinner for men at a shelter in town. I gladly did so and was greeted with smiles and genuine gratitude from the volunteers. People were talking to strangers about the big game that night and laughing about the cold outside while they went about their shopping. The people handing out samples of food were laughing with the customers. It was the same everywhere I went. When I picked up a prescription, the lady commented that our birthdays are both coming up in a week or so. We talked about that.
It shouldn’t seem strange or unusual, but it really kind of was. Nobody seemed in a hurry or annoyed or frustrated. Everything was moving smoothly in all places. People pointed to their cars so I could follow them to get a place, people thanked clerks, clerks thanked customers. It was nice out there, running routine errands.
I hope everyone stays this sane, this relaxed during the coming weeks. I’m going to try and do my part and make sure I shop with a smile on my face. Aren’t we supposed to enjoy the holidays? Aren’t we supposed to be shopping for people we care about and doing extra things for people who need us? Isn’t this season supposed to be fun?
Remember during the coming weeks, when you feel rushed or pressured, to slow down, relax, hum a holiday song, smile, and do what you can to make this season, no matter what holidays you celebrate, what it’s supposed to be. . .the nicest time of the year!
Bit by bit, I’m cleaning out my garage. It had gotten out of control as I stored things for relatives and friends and kept things I might sell in a garage sale or might use later. I’m still sorting.
There was a moment when I thought I might be on the brink of being a hoarder, but then I recruited some of my grandsons to help me dig out and discovered some hidden bonuses. First, I found a box of old directories and date books, which I have kept since 1975. I have actually used them to find dates for things nobody else can find. There were a few directories from groups I volunteered with that contained a list of past presidents that helped us put together a history of an organization. There were other directories that helped me remember names of people I worked with. The date books have helped me date old photos and events through the years, not to mention giving a timeline of my life when I need it. I confess to being a keeper, a keeper of old photos, letters, memories. There is a difference in being a keeper or being a hoarder. I hope.
There was a lot of junk in the garage, still is. The biggest decision was not to do a garage sale which would take an inordinate amount of time and energy, but to start throwing away and giving away. Local charities are glad to get stuff like I had in there. Some of it was leftover merchandise from when I owned a gift shop and I’m thrilled they can profit a little from it.
The best part was watching my grandsons discover things and ask questions. There was a conversation about things that belonged to their grandfather who died before some of them were born or things that belonged to their uncle. They wanted to take things home with them, which I let them do. They found out things about their relative and about me that they didn’t know. I gave one who loves making movies a camera that was my father’s. Later I found a photo of my father using one of his cameras, emailing it to him to make a lasting connection.
When my mother died, my sister and I spent weeks going through her things. She had already cleaned out a lot of cabinets and drawers and closets and given us some precious items, but there is always the chore of touching every single thing in a house, every little bobby pin (remember those?), scrap of paper, piece of clothing in drawers, closets, a house. A lot of stuff. It turned out to be fun, full of memories and stories and laughter, a last way to connect and learn about her life. I’ve heard other people say this, too, and it’s true that the things people want in the end are the old cookie jar or some object that strikes a memory rather than the most expensive things.
So, I continue to sort and clean out and am close to being able to get my car in there again. There is still much that needs to go, and it gradually will, I promise. I want to leave things that my kids can laugh about, wonder why I kept it and figure it out, discover something new about me, or remember something fun from our lives. My goal is to be more historian than hoarder. I’m digging through, excavating so to speak, a job that will never end.
I hope when I’m gone, my kids say, “What a mess.” And then, “What a life!”
On Veterans Day, it’s appropriate to thank all of our veterans and their families. Thinking back on my own veterans, my thoughts go to all my family members who played a part in any war. Thanks to all of them…
My father, a Lt Colonel in the Air Force in World War II, who was a Squadron Commander flying bombers from Africa to Italy. His men never forgot him.
My grandparents who sent three sons and a son-in-law to war. Their youngest son, pictured with my grandfather, didn’t return…shot down over Germany.
My grandmother never got over that loss…
My other grandmother sent both her sons to war. She stayed home and packed parachutes at Ardmore Air Base.
My mother worked on the Air Base, where she met my father. They married at the end of the war.
My husband, who served in the Navy during the Viet Nam War. His post was state-side, but he served with pride.
I salute all the men and women who serve and those who wait for them. It’s about all of them giving for all of us. Thank you!
Fall used to mean hunting season in my family. My grandfather started hunting as a boy in Kentucky and must have hunted for 60 or 70 years. After being in Kentucky, I picture him with his brother, bringing home a mess of birds for the family dinner. He taught my father to hunt and my father taught my brother and then my husband who taught my son.
Not everyone in the family loved it, but those who did loved it with a passion. It was the whole experience that they loved, I think. They were bird hunters, quail mostly. My grandfather hunted pheasant, too, and my husband and father went on a couple of prairie chicken hunts. My husband hunted duck about once before he gave that up as not the same experience. And dove hunts came later.
First, there were the dogs, pointers and setters, smart and loyal to the end. I remember a long line of hunting dogs through my life with short names to call them easily in the fields. Buddy, Guy, Tim, and our favorite name of all, Grandpa. My daddy got Grandpa from a man who had named him that because he thought he acted like an old grandpa. We always delighted in calling “Grandpa” to bring him home. When my husband died, he left me with Tim, the ever loyal and loving English Setter who was his last hunting pal. When I finally felt he needed to be where he could hunt and run, I gave him to one of the men who had hunted with them often. Tim looked at me once before he left that day and then jumped up with his paws on my shoulders to look me in the eye as if to tell me Thank You. It was a moving moment with a sweet dog.
You couldn’t hunt quail very well without the dogs, so they worked with them all the time. Before hunting season even began, there were the days when they just went to run the dogs and get them ready. I think the men just liked to watch them work, running the fields with such abandon, spanning out for a mile and returning quickly at the sound of the whistle. It was all part of the experience.
Here’s one that must have belonged to my grandfather, maybe to my father, way back when.
Finding a field to hunt was another ritual. My husband spent a lot of time looking for fields that were likely places and checking with the owners to see if it was allowed. For a long time, he and my father had private use of a property about an hour away where they hunted and our family fished the pond. Later, when my father had quit, he hunted with buddies in rural areas in northern Oklahoma. They knew all the hunters in the county and found lots of good places.
The night before the hunt was spent on the phone making the arrangements, oiling the gun and boots, packing the vehicle, a pickup in later years, laying out the clothes, the jackets with pockets for shells and game. It was a ritual, part of the deal.
I could hear him leave in the morning with his thermos of coffee, the only time he liked to get up early being for a hunt. I could hear him say “Kennel” and the dog would jump into the back of the truck or car, ready to go, tail wagging. Time to drive through the dark to reach the fields at dawn.
Dove hunts started September 1 in Oklahoma and you need as many hunters as you could to work a field. No dogs on this one. Quail hunts were smaller with as many dogs as you trusted to do the job. Walking those fields on cold fall mornings breathed life into the hunters I knew. They loved bringing home the game, but they loved being outdoors walking, working the dogs, watching the birds fly just as much. On the days when they came home almost empty handed, there was the same excitement because of the day they’d had.
Another ritual was the hunters’ breakfast in small rural towns, filled with hunters coming in after the first run of the morning, telling the stories, eating the huge breakfasts provided at bargain rates in those great little cafes. It was another part of the deal.
Then there was the homecoming, cleaning the birds, cleaning the gun for the next time, cleaning the mud off the boots, packing away the jackets and gear. My husband even liked to cook the game, using his Hasty-Bake in its finest way. He got a great dove recipe from someone he met in a field and we couldn’t wait. I can’t tell you how I miss having game to eat these days.
Some people don’t like hunting in any form, but it was such a part of my family that I understood. They were actually some of the greatest conservationists I knew since the last thing they wanted was for a species to be over hunted.
This fall, as I drive through the countryside, I study those fields and imagine the men I loved walking through them with the dogs running ahead. I understand their love of the land, of the rituals, of the season, of the hunt. I miss all of it. I miss them.
Today is my son’s birthday. Thirty-eight years ago today I was lucky enough to bring him into this world where he shone so brightly. As his mom, I’m trying not to get sad or do something worse and make him seem bigger than life or better than he was. I can hear him saying “Mom!” The truth is that he was a whole person who lived and loved his entire life and, like a true star, he left some of his shine on those who met, knew and loved him.
He was a cute little boy, a loving little boy, a funny little boy, a mess of a little boy.
He was a sweet kid, a fun kid, a sometimes exasperating kid. He was a kid who embraced pop culture from the beginning, always on trend.
He was a teenager, a handsome teenager, a teenager who worked hard and played hard and studied when the mood struck him or a teacher inspired him.
He was a college student who partied and danced and went to class and learned what he learned. He rallied for women’s rights, he formed an improv group, he graduated years after he should have, but he graduated.
He was a young man who became an uncle to his three sisters’ kids, loving them with all his heart.
He was a cancer survivor for 10 years. He rose to the disease, fighting it with everything he had. When he returned from radiation, I found him comforting other cancer victim online in chatrooms. He volunteered at the hospital, working with cancer patients when most would have rather have been away from that world.
He fell in love, deeply in love, and married in all his Scottish finery.
And he continued to have fun.
He was a brother
and a son
He became a father, a father who loved his little girl with all his heart.
He lived his life right up to the end, teaching us all how to fight through pain every day
He lived a life, a complete life, a circle of life. Today, his wife and daughter, his sisters and their families and I will celebrate that life with Clayton’s Pie Night, pizza (which he delivered in college) and pie (which he loved to bake). His life touched his family, his friends, strangers who met him.
I sang the song to him as a child, as I did to his sisters and to my grandchildren.
You are my sunshine.
May we always bask in the light that he brought to our lives.
Listening to my 4 year old granddaughter repeat the old Halloween taunt…Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat…in all its variations was a cute reminder of Halloweens past. I looked it up to see when we started celebrating this strange holiday and found it was brought to America by the Scots-Irish at the end of the 19th century. It’s been around a long time, being celebrated in ways that haven’t changed so much. I see vintage Halloween decorations at antique shops and flea markets, vintage surely meaning before my time…
When I was little, we dressed up, mostly in homemade costumes. I remember witches, cowboys, gypsies, devils, wolfmen and vampires,ghosts and being a hobo. Does anyone even know what a hobo is these days? We had store-bought costumes that were silly plastic masks and some kind of cheap material to wear and Superman and Batman were popular then as now…
And we had our paper dolls to play with…
When my baby sister was maybe six months old, my Daddy carried her around…she was dressed in a pink snowsuit with a rubber monkey mask…to show the neighbors. I still remember how adorable that was. That may be the only time I remember Daddy going with us although I’m sure there were a few other times. Mostly we grabbed pillow cases and ran house to house as fast as we could, filling the case and then unloading it at home and going for more. Those were pretty safe times in the 50s. We’d bring the candy home and lay it out on the floor or the bed, organizing it by treat to see how we did. Some of the neighbors made popcorn balls or caramel apples for us and we had banana bites, root beer barrels, candy bars (real size ones – none of those little bitty bite-sizes), tootsie rolls, tootsie pops. There was no Halloween packaging although sometimes people bought little Halloween sacks and filled them with unwrapped candies like candy corn. I heard rumors of people giving dimes although I don’t remember getting them. We snacked from the candy we kept under the bed for days, weeks.
There were Halloween parties decorated with black and orange crepe paper, cardboard decorations or maybe those kind of paper decorations that fanned out into 3-D pumpkins or black cats. And pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns. We bobbed for apples and munched on Rice Krispies treats or cookies. Houses were decorated with pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns and those cardboard decorations taped in windows. In high school, there were a few costume parties. Hayrides were popular, real hayrides on big wagons loaded with piles of hay. These were popular because it was a great make-out date, even on church hayrides. Think of laying in the lay with your boyfriend, snuggled up against the cold, bouncing along under a starlit night…
Halloween has evolved during my lifetime, an understatement to say the least. When my four kids were little, we had more decorations, there were more pumpkin patches and we made an annual trip to find our best pumpkins. The carving took place close to the day, putting them out on Halloween night. If we put them out too early, they got stolen or withered. We didn’t care who took them after Halloween, just not before! There were no fancy cutting tools or designs, just pumpkin faces you made up. Pumpkin contests and Halloween parties were a big deal at elementary school.
My post-war generation threw Halloween parties for adults and kids alike. There weren’t too many, but, right after having our fourth child, we dressed as rabbits to laugh at ourselves in an age when birth control and zero population growth were the ideas of the moment. We didn’t plan to have four children, but there we were…my 6’4″ husband was a cute pink bunny and I was the prolific mommy bunny.
Sometime when my kids were little, the stories of razor blades in candy and drugs slipped into treats began and we had to take more cautions. The dads went with the kids, standing in the street talking while the kids ran to familiar houses for treats. The freedom of being on your own like in the days of my childhood was gone. Sure, there were scary houses in every neighborhood back then, enhanced by our imaginations, but we weren’t in real danger. It was a scarier world now. My son and his friends were allowed to travel in groups by the time they were 9 or ten, but they had to check in often and we inspected their candy.
In the early 90s, I opened a gift shop, about the time that Halloween was becoming a billion dollar industry. It became one of our biggest shopping seasons with decorations, specialty foods, and novelties exploding onto the market. The candy companies learned that packing items for the holiday made a big difference in sales and costumes became more sophisticated for all ages. Halloween was celebrated in bars, on airlines, in offices. Adults loved acting like kids, playing make-believe.
By the time I had grandchildren, Halloween was a big deal. In the age of political correctness, when people decided that this was a pagan holiday celebrating evil, Halloween parties changed to Fall Festivals in schools and churches. Only the name changed in the long run. We had our little goblins…
…the adults dressed up…
and the holiday continued to grow. And grow.
Yesterday, I was at a Halloween costume parade in the neighborhood, marveling at the costumes on all ages. There are a lot of super heroes and movie monsters and princesses and even the dogs have a costume contest. I had just looked through a brochure of different ways to make hot dogs look Halloweeny, food being one of the creative ways we celebrate these days. Television is full of Halloween movie festivals, Halloween episodes of your favorite show and scary movies are scarier than ever.
The holiday permeates our culture these days. It’s a celebration of harvest and fall colors and shorter days and cooler weather and imagination and creativity and acting like a kid and facing the scary things in life with a sense of humor.
Boo!
It Halloween time and all the scary movies are returning. One that frightened me and stuck in my head forever was “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” which came out in 1957 when I was in 6th or 7th grade. The images are so vivid to me of the man who kept getting smaller and smaller until he lived in a dollhouse, terrorized by the family cat and household spiders. The old black and white movie was well done, at least to this young mind. He got so small his wife couldn’t see him anymore and he was lost in the house.
Yesterday, I was measured at a doctor’s office and seemed to have shrunk. I still think she measured me wrong, but whatever. Good grief, I take enough calcium and eat enough dairy and exercise. Another strange thing about aging. Those movie images came back to me along with the fact that I would be getting smaller as my grandchildren get bigger and bigger – a couple are already around 6’4″ and still growing.
Scary movies have nothing on real life. The good news is that the movie ended on a positive note as the incredible shrinking man realized that he was going to shrink to atomic size but that there was no zero in the universe and he would always be a part of it. As the minister said at my son’s memorial service, “He is now all around us.”
In the meantime, look for the little woman in my family pictures. That will be me. Incredible.
Confetti Thoughts is a year old today…that means I figured out how to set this up and started writing a year ago. Some random thoughts…
1. I chose a good name, Confetti Thoughts, because I have been able to write about whatever was on my mind. Some people blog about a single topic, but I didn’t want to be limited.
2. I haven’t messed with the look since I started. Other blogs are much fancier, but that isn’t what this is about and I can just see me doing something crazy and not being able to get out of it. I don’t even remember how I did this look, to tell the truth. I may experiment this year or I may not. I did get an app to transfer photos from my camera to my iPad while traveling so I could post from the road, which was handy.
3. The blogs that I may love the most may never get read, which is interesting. I have one post that has gone around the world and I find that pretty funny. There are others which would fascinate me way more, but it is what it is.
4. I have readers everywhere on the globe. I have no idea how that works, if their computers translate it or they all speak English or what, but it’s pretty amazing to think someone in Korea or Africa or Australia has ever read something I wrote.
5. Most of the comments I get are from friends or on Facebook, but occasionally I hear from a stranger and it’s nice. I also get a little spam from people promising me that I can make money from my blog with their help or things like that.
6. There are billions of bloggers out there and some of them write beautifully, some write from their heart, some are boring, some have pretty strange topics, some have beautiful pictures. I’m just impressed that writers of all ages, from all countries are doing this. I love that people like to write.
7. I love having a place to post some fun photos, which I love to take, and to write about things. I do it for myself because it would be pretty vain of me to think I’m improving the world or something important like that.
8. I avoid politics pretty much because that brings out the craziness in people and I hate finding out that people I have liked so much can get so rabid and full of hate over issues. It’s hard to have a decent discussion these days with people so polarized.
9. I’ve made it a year without writing about my 3 dogs and 2 cats very much and just a little about my 8 grandchildren and my 4 children. Not that they aren’t the most interesting things in my world, but enough is enough.
10. This has been a discipline in that I try to write at least a few times a week. Every day would be too much for people reading unless you’re as entertaining as The Pioneer Woman. Sometimes, while traveling I took a break. Or when I had surgery. I always thought I could write about anything and I seem to find something. This is my 156th post, which seems pretty good, I guess.
Anyway, thanks to my friends who tickle me with their compliments. That’s what friends are for. Thanks to strangers who share the writing and send it around the world. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this out of all there is to read in books, newspapers, internet, whatever media is coming round the bend.
Cheers to year two!
My youngest grandchild turned four today and several times her conversation started with “Remember when…” We laughed because it sounds so funny for a little one to be looking back at experiences she remembers in her short life, short compared to ours. I was thinking about it and realized what a big step it is. Up until now her life was all about what lay in front of her. Now, she has a little bit of past and she’s remembering and comparing it to now. Wonder how long she’s been doing this and just didn’t have the verbal skills to tell us about it?
I’m constantly astounded by how much a child learns in the first few years as those little sponge brains soak up everything around them. Today’s children must come out of the womb knowing how to use all the technologically advanced gear we carry around. This one has almost never lived without an iPad and there have always been cell phones in her little life. She’s my first grandchild whose life is over photographed (I plead guilty without shame) due to digital photography and the ability to edit and send photos immediately. She’ll never even think about those things because it’s all she’s ever known. I wonder what incredible things lie in her future?
We were driving through downtown today and she was remembering other times we had been there and what we had done, which streets we had been on, who we were with. She’s been doing that for quite awhile actually. Her little history is pretty exciting to her, which means we’ve all done a good job providing great experiences for her.
This is a big day. From now on, she’ll be forever saying, “Remember when…” and adding more chapters to her story. Looking back at my own story, doing my own personal “remember whens,” I can only hope for her and for all my grandchildren that they have a wonderful life full of love, family, friends and great memories. Of course, we know there will be the not so good times, and this little one has already had more than her share of those as she lost her Daddy and Grandma, but I hope that there are so many good “remember whens” to get her through the sad times, the hard times, the challenging times.
When you get to be my age, you have lots of memories to deal with, to sort through, to put in perspective. Your brain is so cluttered with a lifetime stuffed into that internal file room that you sometimes have to do a search to find what it is you want to remember. Today, I enjoyed listening to a little one with a brain that is filling oh so quickly ask me to “Remember when…” Today was a special day to add to her memories and I’m so glad I was there.
Confetti Thoughts 