Viola Jane. Two sweet names that play on my lips. Their syllables ring bells and its melody releases a cool smooth mist to my brain. Some undisturbed ancestral bond begins to awaken. I love her deeply for she is flesh of my flesh. I see the old repeating in her. I see eyes of my aunties and toes of my uncles. I hear ancient wisdom whispered in her voice. I see the new too. Her daddy’s nose and her mama’s cowlick. The first time I felt the weight of her warm little body wrapped up so tight some primal call stirred deep in my soul. She fills my arms like the firm, quick click of a jagged missing piece to this crazy puzzle called life . Her eyes are bright blue like a new morning sky, the shape of fresh raindrops falling soft on their sides. She peers innocently from their delicious depths. Her tiny dimpled hands reach for my face and the feel of her kisses mangles my heart. That desolate empty room I kept locked up so tight, bursts right open and reaches full occupancy now this cheeky little chamber maid 
fills it so well. Her plump little nose, upturned so perfectly, perches uniquely above her fresh white, gap tooth, smile. A face full of secrets, a face of innocence, her future wide open, her future not told. I ruffle the baby hair that tickles my nose and I nuzzle her neck and I kiss that lone lock of hair that adorns her forehead. This wonder filled child smells of mysterious wisdom of some other life I dare not peek. She brings me her humor jingling from her rose perfect lips. Her simple giggles and quick teases radiate from those eyes, those bright blue eyes. She works her perfect sweet magic and pulls me into her little girl world. She commandeers this adoring audience, as she observes the world in her quick quiet way. With a blink of her eye and a bat of her lashes, she chirps out words on musical notes. Her pure sweet beauty squeezes my old lady chest and it’s all I can do to breath in her love. Then she gives me a hug and she blows me a kiss. I rock my love and her sleepy small voice calls out, a melancholy reverb bouncing through my bones and my mind and my soul. “Mee Maw, Mee Maw!” She calls to her granny. My arms are content, my heart is complete. I hear a distant ancestral sigh as she closes her eyes. Then sweet baby girl, sweet grand daughter of mine, whispers so quietly, “I wuv you Mee Maw! 
Sweet Viola Jane
10 Jan 2014 2 Comments
in Heart Talk, Uncategorized Tags: ancestral, Child, childhood, family, Grandchild, granddaughter, grandma, grandmother, granny, home, Human, life, love, memories, primal, Soul Mate
Oh Daughter of My Daughter
10 Jan 2014 Leave a comment
Oh daughter of my daughter
Oh granddaughter of mine
Beautiful of most beautiful that God can create
Your tiny soul peered up at me
Our age-old destiny set
As our eyes met
Your heart took mine
You smiled at me
Like old soul mates do.
Her Forgotten Days
06 Jan 2014 Leave a comment
in Childhood Musings, Heart Talk Tags: Alzhiemers, Blog, Child, childhood, God, home, hope, Human, life, love, memories, Mother, Parent
My fingers glide effortlessly on this keyboard with a will of their own. I begin to type and a love song banters and begs to be freed. Sweetly my words flow as sounds and memories mesh and nostalgic joy begins to sing of her forgotten days.
I want to tell you about a woman. My words can never recreate the person she really was. Words will never show that special twinkle in her eye as she swept up an unsuspecting visitor with her inquisitive conversation.
She loved to engage people in banter.She had a way to pull them in and warm their hearts. She was always interested in where they were from and who they knew, places they had traveled.
I often wondered how she knew so much about so many things. She had always just been there at home with us twelve children and dad. How did she lead friends and visitors along and have the knowledge to take them with her across the ocean or up a mountain and down to the devil, back up to God.
As I would quietly climb onto her lap and lay my head on her shoulder, she would rock me back and forth; talking on and on for what seemed like hours.
Yes, my mother loved people, truly, genuinely loved to interact with them. Cared about what they had to say, enjoyed hearing of their adventures, hurt when they hurt, rejoiced in their happiness’s, triumphed in their successes.
She was my idol as I would sit on her lap at the kitchen table and she rubbed my back while discussing what flowers to plant and and how to put up garden vegetables with the neighbor lady. She was my idol even when I would take my little hand to turn her face to me, vying for her attention.
I loved her voice and her absent hands on me as she gave herself to her visitors. I loved her laughter and the way her words wove and bound those around her and held them close and made them feel important.
I love the legacies she has left my family. I love the movements she started in the seventies. I love the stories of all the strangers she brought into our home, giving them food and drink and support, listening to their sorrows and bolstering them up. I love the person she was and the person she wanted to be. I love that she was my mother and I was her daughter. I love that she gave herself whenever she could.
I love the memories I hold in my heart of her.
A Lovely State of Somewhere In Between
27 Feb 2013 5 Comments
in Childhood Musings Tags: Blog, Child, childhood, coming of age, Girl, home, hope, Human, life, memories, neighbor boys, Relationships, Romance, roots, Sibling, slow bike, spring nights, summer, thirteen year old, Tomboy, Woman
Thirteen was a lovely state of somewhere in between. Lean and brown and nimble, on the edge of something unknown, precariously teetering between my childhood and my womanhood. I had nowhere to feel comfortable. No place seemed to totally claim me, not my past and certainly not my future. That familiar little, knocked kneed girl with the dirty face and tangled hair,too quickly, it seemed, was slipping from me. That summer I had noticed my cutoffs were beginning to hug in a new way. My tan legs showed curious new curves, forgetting the gangliness that ten and twelve had brought. Long dark hair had taken on a thick healthy glow and flowed as soft as silk whenever I tossed my head.
The neighbor boys had begun to snicker and elbow one another, speaking when they thought I couldn’t here. “Ha, you see our little tomboy lately? I think she’s wearing a bra!” They had started to call now in a different way, requesting long walks or slow bike rides on warm spring nights. Gone were evenings of ramping bikes or running races. Each one showed at my door, shyly and awkwardly, at different times to sit on my porch and chat.
Bewildered and incensed, I wanted to shout at them, to grab their necks and shake them awake. Please, see me! I’m here, still just the girl next door, the same one who grew up beside you, who knows every little annoying thing about you. Don’t try to tease me or grab me or hold my hand. Leave me alone. I don’t want to grow up. But that certain power that turned my face to red also crept within my body, spreading its warmth.
Body emerging with softened angles and mysterious allure, I pedaled my bike on that old paper route and contemplated this certain power I dared not use. Men, grown and with hair all over their bodies were straining necks, whistling out their car windows and honking horns. In my girlishness, my face burned as I pedaled faster. I didn’t know this attention and yet it gave me a secret warm glow.
I broke a window that year, on my birthday. A mixture of feelings, I always seemed to be fighting lately, swirled through my mind and body. I was sad and lonely and I didn’t know why. I wanted to run and play with my brother and his friends but I wanted too, to be grown up and experience a first real boyfriend. I didn’t want men to look and honk but it did feel nice. I threw that last newspaper a little too hard and slam! It broke the glass on that door. I burst into tears, how could this happen to me on my birthday? Mortified, I rubbed away those tears and stomped up to the door to apologize and offer to pay.
In my dark mood, I jumped from my bike and ran into my house. There in that bright warm kitchen, my favorite meal of spaghetti and chocolate cake and colorful, papered presents awaited. There too, my big sis, Amy and her little babe, Laura, who I often babysat. I opened my presents and found things a thirteen year old would appreciate; perfume, cool colored undies with the days of the week printed on them, a pair of jeans with a sweet design on the pocket. My family had gathered around the table and my sister had come home just for me. My mood shifted. I felt okay again, comfortable again, there with my family’s love showering around me.
I hung there, in that lovely state of somewhere in between, for at least another year. I learned things, secret things that you just come to know. Things that I now know happen naturally and sweetly. The real power of a woman, the true heart of men, all of those things were far ahead. But that year, that year I got a little glimpse of what was to be. And so it was, as easy as a baby’s sigh, with my family’s love there to steady me, I set aside my little girl ways. I began to move gently and gratefully into my own womanhood.
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When I Was 12
22 Feb 2013 3 Comments
in Childhood Musings Tags: Arts, coming of age, Fleetwood Mac, Human, life, Lyrics, Rhiannon, Stevie Nicks, summer
Stevie Nicks (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)
Sitting at my laptop on a snowy day off work. Delicious words whirl and twirl through my head but how to put them on paper for you all to enjoy? Jamming to Pandora gets my memories stirring. How creative was Fleetwood Mac and heck, all of the entertainers of the 70’s! Maybe it’s just my age showing, maybe I”m getting old and think that everything from my era is the best. Maybe but maybe it’s just the truth.
Rhiannon by Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac now pours from my laptop speakers. On it’s lyrics floats a starry summer night of mine, sitting around the campfire in our backyard. I had a friend spending the night and we were camping out. The transistor was our companion and the fire was begging for some serious staring and contemplating life.
But alas, where was this so called friend. She informed me that she preferred to be in the house with my big sister, Peggy. All of twelve years old, I was learning some hard life lessons this night. Some people really didn’t want to spend time with wonderful little old me! They just wanted to get closer to one of my cool older siblings. Later I would find this especially true in the case of my older brother, Jeff, but this first time it was my sister, Peg, 4 years my senior, that was the intent of my friend, Jess.
Jess was a couple years older then me, a tall, beautiful blondie with a carefree personality. Flattered by her attention to me I had quickly agreed to have her come for a camp out. I should have seen that coming I reprimanded myself as I turned up the radio and poked at the fire.
The fire sparked as I gave it some good hard jabs and I turned my face upwards towards the sky. The sparks floated up with a fierceness and died out with a small wisp of smoke.
“Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes through the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?” (Nicks).
Stevi Nicks rang out as the words filled my mind and I kept my head up, shifting my gaze to the millions of stars twinkling above.
“All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win?”(Nicks).
With the crackling of the fire, sensual rhythm and mystical words filling my little girl senses, I felt something begin to stir inside me.
“She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless.”(Nicks).
I felt my sadness seeping out and something new began to dawn within me…a feeling I didn’t recognize. There was a mixture of wonderment, hope, freedom. These words were speaking right to me. Some kind of a promise for my future was in her words, as if someone somewhere was calling to me and telling me good things were to come. Someone, someday would be mine and stay with me and be my forever.
While my sister, Peg and her boyfriend had clandestine meetings at Lake Siemer, I spent that summer laying in his car playing his 8 track player. Fleetwood Mac, Blue Oyster Cult, Rod Stewart and whatever 8 track was available to me, I lay there with my eyes closed and drank them in. I believed them. I held on to the hope of them. I learned the lessons they taught.
Well, people, girlfriends, men, coworkers have come and gone and sometimes its my fault and some times not. Sometimes it’s mutual. But thirty some years later, I realize I’m still learning life’s hard lessons. Still, whenever I hear this song, I am slammed right back to that long ago summer night and the smell of fire and the huge huge sky full of millions of sparkling things that was my future.
When I was twelve, the word’s of the 70’s became my life.
Nicks,Stevie. “Rhiannon” Music by Fleetwood Mac. (Rhiannon). Reprise. 1975.
Blessed Blue Aura
22 Feb 2013 Leave a comment
in Childhood Musings Tags: Blog, books, childhood, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas lights, Dreams, Eggnog, family, Father, Human, Jesus, life, Mary, memories, Parent, Relationships, roots, Santa, Santa Claus
blue christmas (Photo credit: rojam)
I started this post before Christmas. I just got busy and never finished…thought I”d go ahead and put it out there even though it’s past due.
Such a busy month looming right ahead of me! Starting this weekend, the first weekend of December 2012, holiday cheer will be spread every weekend of the month. I should be cleaning and scrubbing and doing the wash. But I keep feeling a memory tugging at me. It began at work. The gym of the school, decorated like a huge Christmas fantasy by the custodian, contains a tree decked out in solid blue lights.
Oh my! The impact that solid blue lights have had on my life. It’s the most magical of all magics dreamed up in my childhood. My mother adorned our tree every year that I can remember in all blue lights. Sometimes as a wee girl,I really wished for multi-colored lights. But now as an adult, I so cherish the feeling of a solid blue tree. The bulbs of my childhood were huge and cast a beautiful hue that filled that darkened dining room where our tree stood each year. I remember staring at it and blurring out the world as all my hopes and dreams of Christmas night danced in my head. The excitement it created in my little heart blooms every time I see such a sight to this day. The feelings are so old and familiar but somehow I cannot recreate them until the blue lights catch my eye.
The blue lights create a holy aura and I reflect on Mother Mary and her newborn babe, Jesus. Such a peaceful calm overcomes me and a deep love of my life and my family surrounds me as I cast back. I remember the Christmas Eve car rides with mom and dad to see all the pretty Christmas decorations of our townsfolk. I remember mom running back into the house for some forgotten thing after we were already packed into the station wagon. We never figured out that she was Santa, working hastily to pull things out of her closet and place them just so before running back out to join us in the car.
We only knew that upon returning home we would find that Santa had paid a visit. I remember the wonderful brown paper bags scattered around the tree, each with a name for every one of us children. Those blue lights bring the ecstasy of reaching into those brown bags and finding that special gift. We never realized that many times they were hand me down toys from some other child. A toy was a toy and we didn’t care if it had some dings or imperfections. It was prized in it’s newness to us.
We opened gifts from each other and the torn, discarded wrapping paper would pile so high that it was thrilling in itself. Excitement revealed itself as board games and new dollies and walkie talkies and books appeared. Mom and Dad would share a glass of Egg Nog, spiked just a tad, and mom would kiss his cheek. We snacked on nuts and tangerines and hard candy as we shared our gifts with each other all evening until it was time for Midnight Mass.
Even now, as I see solid blue lights adorning some house, my memory flashes to our old Christmas lights in that dining room. It seems to me we were illuminated in a blessed soft blue aura swirling around us, pulling us closer and binding us to one another, forever.
God’s Angelic Author
14 Jan 2013 4 Comments
She bore twelve children and we just called her mom. We never realized that she was a young woman once, with dreams all her own. We’ve glimpsed old photos of her with sassy pigtails and a tiny waist. But those old photos never whispered the ambitions and aspirations she relinquished to give us life. We only know that our father came home from the war as a young man to find his best friend’s little sister all grown up. Beautifully, she came walking down the steps. Stunned, he looked up and said, ” Why Mary Ellen! You’re all grown up!” Her blush was to be the very beginning of a beautiful 52 years of life together.
Such a simple lady, living amongst her children, serving her husband, toiling beside him there on that sweet land they loved. A dreamer was she, a lover of words. Many a play day echoed with the sound of her old typewriter clackity-clacking in our ears. Through her writings one could easily realize that when she looked her eyes saw that the dirt was gold, and the trees were majestic, the wind, that blew the leaves, the warm breath of God. Hers were mystical words that created an amazing world.
Her writings were actually little pieces of art. Words and sentences wove together to form one grand masterpiece. When we cut them apart to search for quotes to adorn photos at her funeral, we found that each small sentence was somehow a great piece of wisdom. So beautifully carved and laid there before us, were they, that we didn’t even realize she was gone. It seemed to me that she was there, just above our shoulder, nudging us and whispering to us.
My niece and I poured over her old photos and simultaneously mused through her writings. Brittany would pull out a photo and magically the sentence I was reading would seem to match right up to that picture. We felt such a closeness to her as we toiled away on our little project. We wanted to stay there drowning in her words and memories. Let tomorrow and tomorrow come and go while we drank her words and relived her life. We felt happy and sad. We felt her presence.
Maybe she had finally reached her highest ambition. The Alzheimer’s fog would have cleared for her now and I could imagine her making little memos of the rippling, swooshing wings she witnessed. I could hear her laughter as she scribbled precious words to her Lord. I imagined the twinkle in her eyes as she took note of his incredible creations, painting all of Heaven with her beautiful words. Perhaps finally she was there at the throne, God’s angelic author.
