Sunday Vivre

I’ve had some major events happen this week; some good… some???

I felt like a funeral crasher yesterday when one of my favorite uncles when I was a young girl, and still is today, died this week and I attended his funeral, without my older sister Shirley by my side. I can honestly say, that I only knew 3 or 4 people there, it was uncomfortable to say the least.

I slid in – in my usual manner; late.  Realizing at that moment, I’d forgotten to send flowers, for the first time ever in my life. I don’t know where my head was at? But in the grand scheme of things, I guess it was par for the course. Hopefully, no one really noticed, few people there knew me anyway.

Afterward, I attended the farewell gathering, where I was hit with, yet another big bombshell… when my aunt just plainly announced to the woman seated across from her and talking about her husbands family, that the son she had cared for since he was only two years old, after the death of his mother, was not her husband’s son, but my dad’s.

I know… she nor I had a clue what to say, so I thought… just roll with it… shake it off.  So in my usual fashion, I got his name and the name of his late mother. You know the genealogist in me… I was going to get the story. Not gossip since my other aunt sat there and agreed to it all. I guess it was common knowledge. Not to me or her, but you know that dang elephant in the room.

I have to admit… I do love those sudden foot-in-mouth experiences. They tend to always get you stirred up. But somehow, way down deep, I must admit it felt deliberate. Maybe I’m wrong. But I guess, I now have yet another brother. Don’t worry, I won’t drop his name – like it was dropped on me yesterday.

I come from a long line of goings-on, so this came as no shock to me. My dad had admitted to me years ago when we lived in California that he had a son with Doris Fox, but I shook it off as just more stupidity aka a drunken confession.

I don’t really have any desire to meet or to know him, but would like to hang him off a branch of this twisted old family tree. That is all I’m going to say on the matter.

I knew my father had lived with other women when he and my mother split up and had numerous affairs. He carried on an affair with Helen for years – the old bar maid from Hello Dolly’s in Trenton. She was married at the time but I don’t think any of my dad’s friends and family were too faithful to anyone. One uncle carried on and affair with some old lush by the old Dry Cleaners for years and years and yes, she was married to. Yuck! Luckily, they never had any lasting evidence.

I’m thinking things must have been really different back then, because everyone we knew at the time had been married three or four times and still carrying on with anyone that would have them. Men and women alike.  Not sure how their marriage vows read… (they had to have been very different from mine)… all I can say is Nasty… is the word that comes to mind now. No excuse. And Tiger Woods thinks he invented it. (shaking my head and laughing here) The bible says there is nothing new under the sun but there are still things that make me crazy.  This just heads the list.

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I did get a major answer to prayer this week. I had prayed for 7 long years for a wrong to be made right and not two hours after I finished praying… it happened and all I can say is… “THANK YOU, LORD!” Now, I will continue to pray that it is made known.

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I called my brother Ralph today, I know… he was shocked too… if you know me, then you know I never dial the phone, I just wait for it to ring. So after he was over the initial shock and after assuring him that there was no emergency, we had a nice long conversation about dad and his numerous affairs. Then we started reminiscing about our childhood. He was cracking jokes about how we were related to everyone around Middletown and the surrounding areas. He told me that whenever he was sneaking around doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, someone would have already called Mom and alerted her to the situation. He felt like there were relatives aka spies everywhere. We laughed and swapped a few more similar stories before we hung up. It was almost a very nice talk.

I had called him while I was on my way to the worst dinner I’ve had in a very long time at Lone Star in Middletown. I let Steven pick between Olive Garden & Lone Star before he drove back to college tonight and of course to ruin the evening, he chose Lone Star. It was a nightmare. I think they were trying to break the sound barrier with the noise and the volume was actually louder outside than in, if you can imagine that. So there was no escape. Babies screaming and numerous dishes breaking, I will repeat… a NIGHTMARE! I swore I will never return but I said that the last time, when it was all things considered,  were actually worse.

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My niece Teresa Ann Parsons has a birthday this week, so I’m thinking, if her mother is feeling better maybe… just maybe we will go for a Girl’s Night Out! I know that I for one… could use it.

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That’s about it for this week, I did get several genealogy requests that I will try to look up tomorrow with a heavy work week ahead, but we all know that it’s my passion in life. So until I get the time to read more books, write more posts about what really needs to be said and done, I will just wish you all a very happy work week and may God watch over and keep you all. And to my newest discovery I will just say, “Welcome to the Family!”

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world. ~ Joel Arthur Barker

 

Colorful Shades of Gray

Another little ditty from the in-box…

 

Moths are very ugly creatures. At least that is what I always thought until a reliable source told me otherwise. When I was about five or six years old, my brother Joseph and I stayed overnight at our Aunt Linda’s house, our favorite relative. She spoke to us like adults, and she always had the best stories.

 

Joseph was only four years old, and still afraid of the dark, so Aunt Linda left the door open and the hall light on when she tucked us in to bed. Joe couldn’t sleep, so he just lay there staring at the ceiling. Just as I dozed off to sleep, he woke me up and asked, Jennie, what are those ugly things near the light? (I had always liked that he asked me questions because I was older and supposed to know the answers. I didn’t always know the answers, of course, but I could always pretend I did.) He was pointing to the moths fluttering around the hall light. They’re just moths, go to sleep, I told him.

 

He wasn’t content with that answer, or the moths near his night light, so the next time my Aunt walked by the door he asked her to make the ugly moths go away. When she asked why, he said simply, because they’re ugly and scary, and I don’t like them! She just laughed, rubbed his head, and said, Joe just because something is ugly outside doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful inside. Do you know why moths are brown? Joe just shook his head.

 

Moths are the most beautiful animals in the animal kingdom. At one time they were more colorful than the butterflies. They have always been helpful, kind, and generous creatures. One day the angels up in heaven were crying. They were sad because it was cloudy and they couldn’t look down upon the people on earth. Their tears fell down to the earth as rain. The sweet little moths hated to see everyone so sad. They decided to make a rainbow. The moths figured that if they asked their cousins, the butterflies, to help, they could all give up just a little bit of their colors and they could make a beautiful rainbow.

 

One of the littlest moths flew to ask the queen of the butterflies for help. The butterflies were too vain and selfish to give up any of their colors for neither the people nor the angels. So, the moths decided to try to make the rainbow themselves. They beat their wings very hard and the powder on them formed little clouds that the winds smoothed over like glass. Unfortunately, the rainbow wasn’t big enough so the moths kept giving a little more and a little more until the rainbow stretched all the way across the sky. They had given away all their color except brown, which didn’t fit into their beautiful rainbow.

 

Now the once colorful moths were plain and brown. The angels up in heaven saw the rainbow, and became joyous. They smiled and the warmth of their smiles shown down on the earth as sunshine. The warm sunshine made the people on earth happy and they smiled, too. Now every time it rains the baby moths, who still have their colors, spread them across the sky to make more rainbows.

 

My brother sank off to sleep with that story and hasn’t feared moths since. The story my aunt told us had been gathering dust in the back corners of my brain for years, but recently came back to me.

 

I have a friend named Abigail who always wears gray clothes. She is also one of the most kind and generous people I’ve ever met. When people ask her why she doesn’t wear more colors she just smiles, that smile, and says, “Gray is my color”. She knows herself and she doesn’t compromise that to appease other people. Some may see her as plain like a moth, but I know that underneath the gray, Abigail is every color of the rainbow.

 

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“For me, music and life are all about style.”
-Miles Davis

 

The moral is…

This has circulated on the Internet for some time. I do not know its origin, but am always taken with the appropriateness for virtually any situation.

 

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might this contain? The mouse wondered…and then was devastated to discover that the package contained a mousetrap!

 

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning:

 

There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!

 

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

 

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

 

The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”

 

The mouse turned to the cow and said, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house.”

 

The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you but it’s no skin off my nose.”

 

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.

 

That night, a sound was heard throughout the house…like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

 

The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

 

The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

 

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

 

But, his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.

 

To feed them the farmer butchered the pig.

 

The farmer’s wife did not get well. She died.

 

So many people came for the funeral; the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

 

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

 

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember…when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one and other and make an extra effort to encourage one and other.

 

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He fables, yet speaks truth. –M. Arnold.

 

Headlines That Could Stand Some Editorial Oversight…

Headlines That Could Stand Some Editorial Oversight…

 

·          “Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says“      Really?

 

·          “Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers“     I’ll bet even the Chief W. L. Wilcox would think this a bit excessive.

 

·          “If Strike Isn’t Settled Soon, It May Last Awhile“     I suspect that is the case.

 

·          “Kids Make Nutritious Snacks“     I’m sure I’d prefer peanuts or chips or something.

 

·          “Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant“     Seems like a fair and impartial trial might be better.

 

There is always choice

love what you do… till you do what you love!

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“Feel the fear, and do it anyway.”
-Susan Jeffers

 

Memoires, fiction, and poetry

Drawing on the diaries, letters, memoirs, and research notes a good genealogist never tires of the hunt. We check every nook and cranny to seek out whatever shred of evidence we can find on a persons life as if we were going to write the Biography of each and every person in our distant past for all of history to receive.

 

We use our cunning wit to leave no stone unturned in our never ceasing quest for answers.  We hunger for names, dates and places as others for food. We call every person we can think of to try to find that one tiny piece of evidence that we have the right person.  We check; birth, marriage and death certificates and all the physical resources we can think of; courthouses, libraries, historical societies and cemeteries to find that last missing detail.

 

If only, our loved ones would have taken a few minutes to write their own stories or those closest to them had jotted down a few precious moments they’d shared together, then we could read of their life stories and share their history with our children and they with theirs.

 

Every good publisher says that each person has at least one book in them. I would challenge you to write your own Memoir and/or autobiography as if you were detailing it for future generations. Add your own flair and personality to every page so that your great grandchildren would know you if they met you on the street one day.

 

Keep a journal or daily diary to connect your ideas and current events. Write tales of; happy times, past love’s, your daily life, mistakes, sickness, heartbreak and misery make your record a living, breathing piece of history, an archive of grace and beauty for future generations to cherish.

 

In the end, the trick isn’t necessarily what goals and values you pick, though. You know yourself and where you want to be. The real trick is disciplining yourself to consistently write it down. Just as the architectural wonders of the world always being with a detailed blueprint, your hopes and dreams are far more likely to materialize when you put your plans and values down in writing.

 

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“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten; Either write things worthy of reading, or do things worthy of writing.” — Benjamin Franklin, May 1738