family – doreenslife.com

No Place Like Home

In this upside down time that we’re living in, the one constant for most of us, is home and family. I’ve been happy to see families connecting on deeper levels, paying more attention to each other, a slower kind of pace, and even cooking together and dinner at the family table.

There’s been new levels of creativity and new music coming out of this. I’ve seen the best of mankind coming to the help of ones in need on more levels than I’ve seen before. Patience and kindness in abundance. I hope when this is done, that all the good things keep being the normal. That we consider each other with respect and continue to let kindness and thoughtfulness be our actions toward one another.

I watched “The Wizard of Oz” on TV the other night, for the umpteenth time. At the end, when Dorothy keeps saying, “There’s no place like home,” I started thinking about that phrase.

My heart has always LOVED being home! Don’t get me wrong, I also LOVE to go out to see a movie, eat at a restaurant, roller skate, go to the ballet, out with a friend, and many other things, but when I am done, my home is where I head.

I have moved about 25 times in my 58 years of living. I have lived two of the places for 10 years each, so, there was a lot of moving in the other years.

Sometimes, the imagination of picking up and going somewhere completely unknown, appeals to me. Not to escape life, but to live it differently. To live awhile somewhere, learn a neighborhood, see different aspects of life. Try different jobs and cultures. Be a wanderlust. I’ve probably watched too many old western movies with the cowboys moving from town to town.

But this imagining is only for inside my mind. This dream could have only been for a single me with not much family. This version, of me with family all around me, is the best dream I could ever have had.

I still have many dreams and many more things I would like to accomplish in this lifetime, but the two most things I’m thankful for, is family and home.

Christmas Songs

As a child, Christmas was all about me. I would get the Montgomery Ward or Sears catalog and circle all the toys I wanted. Every toy commercial was something that I had to have. I would lay awake on Christmas Eve, as long as I could. Sometimes I thought I heard Santa.

Before I became a teenager, the wonder of Christmas dissipated from finding out things about the season that I had believed since I could remember. I’m trying not to ruin it for any young readers. But the one thing that always made me have a little wonder were the Christmas songs that were played on the radio and on records.

Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, The Carpenters and many more made me dream of being a grown up. I thought there were chestnuts roasting and sleigh rides in my future, cozy fires and a partridge in a pear tree.

Those things would still be nice but my mind goes there whenever one of my favorite songs are played. I seem to love them more every year. That, along with the decorations on my Christmas tree, the memories of who made or gave them to me over the years, the ones my children and grandchildren have made. The angel one that I made when I was eight months pregnant, was stuffed so tight with stuffing that I must have been trying to mimic how I was feeling. I still smile when I look at it.

When I was in my early 20’s, I needed a clothes dryer. With two very young children, it was hard to hang the clothes outside and corral them. I can only go one direction at a time, and they usually went different directions. I had a friend offer me to sell some popsicle stick sled ornaments, at her booth at a local fall festival. I started several months ahead of time and had lots ready. When I told her I wanted to sell enough to buy a dryer afterwards she said I never could sell that much. Back then, a dryer could be bought for around $250.

I sat at the booth and would paint the names on any sled that was wanted. I sold them for one dollar each and the week after the festival, I went and bought a brand new dryer with cash. I was so happy.

As a young woman with a family of my own, I would plan family parties around the holidays. I always wanted to see my aunts more then I got to growing up, so that was a way to do it. Plus, lots of cousins made it fun. As I look around, with Christmas songs playing, my family generations all around, from the age of 77 down to 4, I am again in wonder.

One, how fast it has all happened, secondly, to see my four year old granddaughter singing Jingle Bells and Have a Holly Jolly Christmas. Thirdly, is to love that the traditions and things that I love about Christmas, is being presented to the generations that come after me. They can choose what they like best and will continue to pass along what they love. Maybe two hundred years from now, my lineage will still be singing, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”, and dreaming of a day when they will have their own families with their own Christmases. And that is something to really be in wonder about.

The Art of Needle and Thread

I love needlework! When I was in my mid 20’s, I had my aunt teach me how to do counted cross stitch. I also like piecing material together for quilts or projects. Plus, I took a wool felt class with my mother years ago and fell in love with that too. These give me plenty to do in the long winter months.

There’s just something about a needle pulling thread, whether by hand or by machine. The rhythmic in and out, pulling the thread tight enough to be smooth, but not too much to pucker your piece.

I don’t consider myself good at these, but adequate. Cutting and sewing the pieces all alike, I find that many end up not looking exactly like the others. I just smile and say, “Well, that’s my spin on it”. My crafts definitely look homemade, even if I’d rather they looked a little more polished.

I did some paper piecing for a sewing class instructor once. She showed me how to do it and showed me her piece. It looked almost like a computer had put it together. Very straight and no nonsense. When I gave her the ones that she gave me to do, she looked at them and said, “Well, I can use these to show how this technique can also look homemade”. Enough said.

But, over time, I’ve seen the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, Picasso and the like, and realize that my humble work suits me just fine. Art is in the eye of the beholder. My eyes would like to see more symmetry in my quilting, but when I’m off this planet, and having a blast in Heaven, my family will have my creations that I poured my love into. And hopefully, the misshapes and crooked lines will give them one more smile when they look at it and remember me.

Grandma’s in the House – Supervisor

By late spring, I took a second job. It was a part-time, afternoon shift job, sorting mail. The garden suffered, in that the weeds grew pretty good that year.

When I had a day that I wasn’t working, I would head outside. It’s my favorite place to be. (My mom said I used to throw myself on the ground and cry and cry when she would bring me inside, when I was a very small child even). Back to the story…So, I would hear the door squeak open and see Grandma peak her head out and look for me. I figured she was making sure I was okay.

There was an old corn crib on the property that Tom converted into a chicken coop for me. I was painting the outside of it. I heard the door squeaking open and shut frequently, but didn’t think anything about it. Then, when Tom got home from work, I heard her telling him that I wasn’t working today (meaning at the house, not the job). She said I was napping in that building down there. That’s when I realized I had a supervisor.

I was working in the garden when I heard the back door squeak open and close, and I knew she would be coming to the front door next. That was one time in my life I was glad that the doors squeaked. The weeds along the edge of the garden were about three foot high by then and I dove down behind them. This was repeated whenever I heard the back door open. She always went there first and I had time before she got to the front door. The report that night was that I was goofing off somewhere, that I wasn’t working.

Grandma asked me one day, why I had so many coffee mugs. She said you need only three. One for each of us. (There were 4 of us living here, us three, plus our daughter, Andrea who Gma called “that girl that lives with you”.) I told her that we got mugs when we go on vacation somewhere, and also that I like pottery (LOVE is a better word for it). The next day, a mug “fell out” of the cupboard and broke. Hmmm….

On days that my mother and me went grocery shopping, Gma would tell Tom that we were off sitting and drinking in bars all day. That’s kind of funny, being that my mother is a preacher’s wife and the trunk load of groceries that I brought home. And I never had alcohol breath. Did not know where she got that story.

Also, with her being 90 years old, had some “bathroom issues”. She was always telling me that it was because of my cooking. I said that was strange, because no one else had that problem. So, sometimes when my husband is having stomach issues, he’ll look at me and say, “It’s because of your cooking”. He thinks he’s funny.