To Mary Ann From Daddy

On December 18, John William Howard Teal, my father, was born to Thomas Jefferson (1877- 1958) and Ida Mayfield Teal (1870 -1958)  Ida must have considered her first child a gift for her own birthday on Christmas day a week later.  Three more children, another son and two daughters were quickly added to the family because Ida was in her late thirties when she married.  Times were hard for poor farmers, so Howard, his sisters Edna and Lela, and the youngest, a brother named Woodrow worked hard along with their parents on farms, one in an area called Mt. Enterprise in Cherokee county, finally settling in the community of Bullard, Smith County, Texas, where they farmed and had a small weathered clapboard house. I remember visiting my Teal grandparents.  Papa Teal, 7 years younger than Ida, was a round white haired man with a red face.  He was hard of hearing so he seemed very loud and gruff.  Ida was a tiny woman with white hair worn in a tight bun.

Daddy was loving and attentive to his parents, especially his mother, calling her "Mama."  Many people have told me he was one of the kindest men they every knew.  He was also kind and caring to our Mother and to my sister and me. He did have a temper but rarely lost it.  Since he only had a 7th grade education, he worked very hard to earn a living. He was working at Cameron's cafeteria in Tyler, TX when he and Mother married.  They both continued to work there for some time. During World War II, they moved to New Orleans, LA so he could work as a welder in the shipyards. After they came back to Texas, he worked in the Bon Ton Cafe in Jacksonville, and eventually owned a restaurant with his brother. Later he owned and operated the Bus Station Cafe across from the Liberty Hotel in Jacksonville.  My first job was in that cafe. I was twelve years old, and pleased to greet customers and take their orders.

Although they didn't live on the farm, my parents purchased land from my maternal grandparents where Daddy kept a small herd of cattle, had a garden with a fruit orchard and grew some crops.

Daddy made a profession of faith and was baptized in the cotton gin pond in Bullard before he and Mother married.  He was a faithful member of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville and rarely missed a church service where he could be found on the same pew two rows from the back every Sunday.  He loved his grandsons and they loved going with him to feed the cows.

I never doubted that he adored me and I adored him.  He was proud of my good grades and the fact that I went to college.  He has been dead for over thirty years but I still miss him.  It is part of Christmas for me to honor his birthday.  He was not big on gift giving, but every Christmas he put chocolate covered cherries under the Christmas tree for me from him.  Today, I bought a box of Queen Anne Chocolate Covered Cherries and put the unwrapped box under the tree with all the wrapped gifts.  Thank you, Daddy - you are still a gift to me.

Garden Gifts

Fall gardens on the South Texas Gulf Coast are sometimes even more productive than Spring plantings, but not this year.  Tomato plants are big and leafy, with only a few small green tomatoes.  Peppers are still growing, but barely.  A combination of unusual wet cool weather has all but stalled any further setting of blooms. My youngest granddaughters have just spent some time here, and prove that though the gathering may be small, the joy is large.  There are a number of reasons I choose to garden, and these grins are one of them.  These little girls have helped me in a number of ways, and I am thrilled to pass on the joy of harvest to them.  This week, as we have cut herbs and gathered peppers and chopped and cooked together, our Thanksgiving has been much more than a meal.  It is a celebration of the happiness of being together, working together, and gathering all the family around Grandma Terrell's old oak table.  The table is now mine, and I am now the grandmother, but I probably won't ever call it Granmary's table.  The girls, however, will, and I am glad. I am thankful for those who have gone before, and these who will go beyond.

Opal and Howard

My parents, Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal and John William Howard Teal, photographed on  July 2, 1943
They were married on December 27, 1931. This photograph was taken at the wedding of H.P. and Catherine Terrell.  H. P. was Opal's youngest brother.

November is a month when many focus on gratitude.  For several years, I have kept a daily gratitude journal to use as part of my morning meditation time.  I write down 5 things for which I am thankful.  Some are very small things - a bird at my kitchen window, the way morning light casts a lacy shadow on the wall, a phone call.  I say thank you, too,  for the biggest things in my every day:  God's faithfulness and love, for the way he is working in my family's life.  I give thanks for food and shelter and good hugs from Joe and our sons.  I am grateful for my daughters- in- law, and my granddaughters' laughter.

 I was born on November 14, 1940, so today is my birthday. I am grateful for my parents' life and love which began my life.  Thank you, God, for Opal and Howard Teal.  Thank you, Mother and Daddy, for loving each other and for loving me.  I never doubted for a moment that I was cherished.  Your faith and love and your hard work to provide good things for me continue to sustain me. You live on in me, in your grandsons, and in your great grandchildren.   You are part of everything I ever write down on my gratitude list.

Family Photographs

This picture wall is between our master bedroom and great room which also has our kitchen, so I walk through the area many times a day - from first thing in the early morning to last thing before I go to bed at night.  In the eight years we have lived in this house, I have rearranged the wall a number of times, particularly as new babies join our family circle.  Sometimes I stop to adjust a frame or touch a smiling face. Often, I stop, loving the connection with individuals and the gathering of all of us as family.  Those are the times I thank God for Joe and our sons and their wives and our grandchildren.  Through the ups and downs of our lives, we remain connected.  Sometimes I let my eyes travel from frame to frame, praying for daily strength and peace, fortitude in adversity, wisdom in plans, discernment for challenges, joy in new beginnings,   and overall that we will love God and each other well. Soon we will add another photograph.  Our family is growing.  I am blessed and grateful. Our story continues!

Sharing

After a day at work for Joe and a day of waiting for him to come home for Bella, they settle down in their favorite spot to stop and sit awhile.  Joe makes a fuss about whose chair it is and she turns around and wiggles a few times to find just the right way to view her world, but there is no question - it isn't his or hers, it is their chair. I wouldn't think of taking that place to sit! What furry friend shares your chair?

Scattered Memories

I heard a loud crash early one morning last week and rushed to check on Joe, who was getting dressed.  Then I walked through the kitchen and front part of the house looking for damage.  One cat was sitting calmly on the back of a chair but the other cat hid for the rest of the morning.  I didn't have to guess which one had knocked a bowl of homemade pot potpourri onto our ceramic tile floor. Skye came to spend the day with me and as she helped me take this picture and sweep up the broken pottery and remains of dried herbs and flowers , we talked about the damage and how breaking something can make us sad.  She wanted to keep the broken pieces of the bowl and some of the dried rosebuds to put with her fairy garden supplies.  Then we swept the rest into the trash.

It was only after I looked at the photo that I thought more about why this dish of dried petals was special.
Every thing in the bowl was from our garden and had been added one at a time.  The tiny Katrina rose buds and petals from a fragrant Maggie rose and the yellow rose which clambers over an arch,  tawny, leathery Magnolias, lavender fronds, pieces of basil and rosemary, even a dried slice of Meyer lemon.  All were gathered and collected in a small hand thrown bowl fired in a speckled jade green glaze that I bought when we lived in Indonesia over 20 years ago. Some of the rose buds had been picked by little girls and proudly presented as a gift. Joe likes to bring me a flower or piece of herb when he comes in from the garden. It was a joint endeavor.

So I was sad, not for the things broken and scattered, but for that which they represented: the growing and choosing and gathering, the connection and love of my family. And once again, I know that I can let go of things, but that I keep the love.

July 4, 2013

Many years ago we had a 78 rpm recording by Senator Everett Dirksen titled Gallant Men which we enjoyed listening to with our small sons during patriotic holiday celebrations. The record won a Grammy award in 1968 for the Best Documentary Recording.  We lent the record and, most likely in one of our many moves, lost track of who had it.  There have been many 4ths of July, Memorial Days, and other commemorative occasions in the years since when Joe would remark or I would remember "that record, Gallant Men."  I was pleased to find the recording on YouTube this year.  Among several selections, this one is chosen for its audio quality, not to plug Capitol records. Senator Dirksen's deep gravely voice and sincerity still touch me as do the words.  It would be easy to become discouraged at the polarity and disagreements in our nation today, but we can still be most grateful for living in a country with freedom, and for the people now and through the years who give their lives in service to all of us.

When all is said and done, the real citadel of strength of any community is in the hearts and minds and desires of those who dwell there.
Everett Dirksen 

Texas Summer

Summer on the Texas Gulf Coast does not wait for the calendar to mark the solstice.  By late May and early June, we experience burning heat, sprinklers on the lawn,  homegrown tomatoes and hot peppers, katydids singing in the evenings, Crepe Myrtles and Chaste Trees blooming, suppers from the grill, iced tea, cold watermelon, bees buzzing around the basil.  The Touch Me Not seeds are popping, Morning Glories are purple delights, roses slowing down for a second breath, and there are a hundred shades of green. I may complain about being hot, but I love so many things that summer brings.

For Memorial  and Independence Day celebrations, we get the little flags back out to line the sidewalk, and celebrate  birthdays for Joe and Ben.  July brings a bumper crop of figs on our tree,  Vacation Bible School fun, plans with my granddaughters, and family outings.  It will get hotter, and we will watch the hurricane tracking news. We keep ceiling fans whirring and add a buzz fan or two for the back porch. I am thankful for cool evening breezes wafting scent of honeysuckle and cooling the flagstone paths in our garden.

 Summertime!

"Now summer is in flower and natures hum 
Is never silent round her sultry bloom 
Insects as small as dust are never done 
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun 
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee 

Are never weary of their melody
Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine
Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine
That lift athirst their slender throated flowers
Agape for dew falls and for honey showers
These round each bush in sweet disorder run
And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun."

- John Clare, "June"

Good Times

We spent the night at Maddie and Jordann's house last week, and they modeled their new tops for me.  Maddie will celebrate her 7th birthday next week while they are here for Spring Break.  We have a list of things we want to do that includes planning a birthday Tea Party, having fashion shows from the dressup box, pressing flowers, doing leaf rubbings, making cookie press cookies, having a picnic in our Secret Place,  going ice skating, picking strawberries, planting new herbs in the garden, going to the American Girl Doll Store, and having lots of play time with cousin Skye. I can't wait!

New Orleans

Street cars. St. Louis Cathedral. Jackson Square.Canal Street. Lacy wrought iron gates. Beignets.  Coffee with Chicory. Boiled Shrimp.

Before you decide this will be another blast of Superbowl hype, let me correct your impression by adding another item to the list - Lizardi Street, where my parents and I lived after moving from Texas around 1942 for Daddy to work in the shipyards during World War II.  Located just north of the Mississippi in what is now the Lower Ninth Ward, the tiny house was owned by Mrs. Castaine, who rented part of it as an apartment for us. Two years old at the time, I have memory only of what I was told about the way we lived there.

Daddy worked the night shift at the shipyards.  Mother took care of me and cooked the shirmp he bought from shrimp wagons bringing in fresh harvest on his way home - his supper, my breakfast!  Then she dressed me in a pretty dress or striped overalls and took me out to play or walk, anything to keep the little rooms quiet enough for Daddy to sleep before heading off for another night shift.

 My Texas grandparents missed me and wrote long letters telling my mother so.  Phone calls were a luxury and limited to brief exchanges only when necessary.  Once for  a birthday present they sent me new house slippers, filled with orange slices. Rarely, we made the return trip to East Texas, always a glad reunion.

Years later, I would visit New Orleans on business trips and enjoy wonderful meals at Antoines, Glatoire's, and Commanders' Palace. I would walk down Bourbon Street and explore antique shops in the French Quarter.  I would photograph wrought iron  balconies and gates, and once again ride the St. Charles street car.  We would stop for beignets, coffee, and shrimp po-boys.  I would fall in love with he foods and learn to cook them.  My mother never wanted to return to New Orleans after they left.

Katrina changed the city forever.  I am glad to see the rebuilding and restoration of neighborhoods and many of the city's treasures although I am unable to discover whether Lizardi street has recovered much.  I am glad for the attention New Orleans is receiving from being chosen for the location for Super Bowl 2013.  I won't be watching the game, but I have enjoyed my view of the city.

And I still love shrimp, any time of the day.

                    Dressed in a grass skirt to model the shell jewelry and rattan bag brought back as a gift for me                                          from my Uncle Travis, who served in the Navy in the Pacific Theatre during WWII.

Celebrating Beginnings

                                                             Happy Birthday, Sean!

Two weeks ago, those in our family who live in this part of Texas gathered to enjoy the hospitality of our  son, Sean, his wife, Teion, and their daughters Lauren and Skye.  We enjoyed the traditional New Year's Black Eye Peas and Cabbage (with a twist of Indian seasoning) as we welcomed the beginning of another year and thanked God for the blessings we share as a family.  Forty-five years ago, Joe and I celebrated the beginning of 1968 in San Antonio as we waited for Sean's birth.  The morning of January 13, 1968 was blustery and cold as I struggled into a coat I had made for myself that no longer would meet in the front to button!  Our lives changed forever with his birth, and we celebrated it with joy.  There is even deeper joy as we celebrate his life after these years shared.  Each year, New Year's thoughts and plans will always include our pride and gratitude for him.  

In recent years, I have seldom put away our Christmas decorations before Epiphany, which has now come and gone.  I even leave a couple of little trees up and add red tissue paper hearts so they become Valentine trees.  This year, I was late getting to the rest of "all things Christmasy".  As I stripped the big tree in our family room, I held each dear old ornament for a second and savored the stories they tell. My camera helped.  We don't limit the tree adorning to things we have bought for that purpose; these items hanging near each other here are a good example.  The glass ball in the center hung on our family tree when I was growing up, so it has graced decades of trees.  Many of those trees stood at the window of the small living room at 1128 Sunset Ave. in Jacksonville, Texas where my parents moved in 1944, and was still in use for many years after I grew up and left home to start my own family.  Daddy died in 1982, shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary.  Mother eventually stopped putting up a big tree and passed some of the tree decorations on to me, so they have traveled far and outlasted any number of trees! This ball and its peers hold dear memories of my childhood and my parents, but it also speaks endurance to me!

On the left is a small torn piece of paper with a tiny handmade Christmas tree.  It arrived one year as a card from dear friends.  I love it perched on a branch as it reminds me of friendship and how much it means to make something for a friend.

On the right, the small cross-stitched banner is my own handwork.  I love the little carolers.  I love more their song.  So, as I go back and forth to the garage with my boxes packed with Christmas heirlooms, they leave behind their message.  Joy to the World, the Lord has come!

Imagine

Celebrating our anniversary last week and heading into both our 50th year of marriage as well as the year 2013 has meant spending time in reflection and gratitude, savoring memories and looking forward to making more. Joe is the love of my life, my partner, and my forever friend.  Our sons are my pride and joy; my granddaughters fill my life with delight and laughter, more than I could have ever imagined.  That is why I love this image of our oldest son, Sean, and his daughter, Skye.  They are standing in our kitchen, surrounded by my pot rack,  the little altar at my kitchen window where I worship even while washing dishes, and that word, "Imagine" on the cabinet top. Just to the left is a smaller phrase, harder to see, but very big in importance.  On it are the words "Celebrate Family,  Friends, Tradition.  Here in one small photo - what a wonderful life!
 

Snowflakes

Cutting paper snowflakes can make young children into magicians and grandmas into little girls again.  There is mystery involved in the folding, choosing just the right place to cut, and carefully trimming little triangles and curves and slashes.  But there is wonder in the unfolding!  Much like the real ones, no two snowflakes turn out exactly the same.  I have never lost that sense of expectation and trying to imagine how this one is going to turn out.

Forty-nine years ago Joe and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple.  That December found us far from our Texas family and friends, in Corvallis, Oregon.  The original plan for Joe to enter graduate school there had been delayed.  In the meantime, he did any odd job available, including painting houses.  I worked as a nurse in a busy pediatric practice within walking distance of our apartment.  One of our doctors had a farm outside of town where we were invited to come cut a Christmas tree. We tramped around the hillside brushing away blackberry vines to find a perfect small Grant pine.  Its symmetrical, graceful branches had wide spaces that were perfect for decorating.  But we were beginning our home and our traditions.  We had no old familiar ornaments to unbox and remember.  We also had no extra money in the budget for buying same.  So we hung a few candy canes, made some string balls from twine and starch and balloons, and carefully cut lacy snowflakes.  That year I knitted my new husband a green sweater with sleeves twice as long as his arms.  He painted a tiny recipe box for me and pasted "Good Things You Can Fix" on top.

The photograph is the few snowflakes that remain after all these years.  I framed them last year for a gift for Joe.  This year we will remember our 1964 snowflakes when we make paper snowflakes with our grandchildren.  If you have never cut a snowflake, try this project.  You will agree with Charles Dickens - "It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself."

For some wonderfully fancy paper snowflakes, visit  www.bontempsbeignet.blogspot.ca/2011/11/faux-sneaux-flakes.html

Richmond, Texas

For the first twenty-eight years of my marriage, we moved alot.  Twenty one times, in fact.  There were assorted apartments, duplexes, old houses, new houses, even a 3 month sojourn in a hotel in Indonesia.  Every time we moved, we said our goodbyes to one place and our hellos to another with the glad anticipation that in yet another place, we would make a home.  And we did.  But when we returned to the United States after living in Jakarta for nearly five years, we settled in a place that has been home for twenty years now. We have lived in two different houses, but within the same neighborhood.  We have a Sugar Land, Texas postal address, but live just beyond the edge of the Richmond, Texas city limits.  Although our work and shopping may take us frequently into Sugar Land and beyond into Houston, our feeling of community is in our neighborhood and in the small town of  Richmond.  There is our church, and a sense of returning to the kind of small town which nurtured me in my growing up years.

Freeways and cell phones and internet connections may link our lives in ways I could never have imagined as a young girl but I am rooted in this place and with these people.  Appreciation of history is strong here, as evidenced in a recent anniversary celebration for the town.  I love to be at home here.

Marlin

What do these things have in common other than the fact they are all colored glass?  I could say that all three pieces belonged to my mother, as did the aluminum tray. They were all originally purchased in what was once termed a "five and dime" store.  True, too that each piece of glass reflects a part of childhood images: the little cruet filled with vinegar for my mother's favorite wilted lettuce salad, the ashtray once holding Daddy's Lucky Strike cigarette ashes, the candy bowl that held lemon drops.

My story is not about where the items came from, or what they were used for.  It is the story of how they changed from plain clear glass to the colors of honey and amber. Each one of these pieces was carried on one of our family's rare summer trips for an unusual purpose.  Hardly a vacation, still somewhere to go and much anticipated, Mother, Daddy, my sister Janice, and I for several years traveled from our home in Jacksonville, Texas down to central Texas to a similar sized town where we stayed in a tiny motel room cooking our own meals.  There were no theme or waterparks, little scenic attraction, and no relatives to visit.

 Why would we use Daddy's precious one week of time off from work to do this?  One reason:  Marlin, Texas had a mineral hot springs. Located about four miles east of the Brazos River,   Marlin had a clinic and bath house where people with various ailments (Daddy had rheumatism) could go for a round of hot mineral baths as healing therapy.  Daddy signed up for a week's worth of the baths at the bathhouse. He encouraged us to drink the mineral water for its health benefits, but I hated the taste. Mother, my sister, and I amused ourselves in various ways, the most exciting thing being taking dime store glass to the mineral water fountain in the center of town and leaving it for the hot mineral salts to splash over  We checked it every day. Yes, it was still there, along with assorted other glass objects that people had left - to my knowledge, no one ever took anyone else's glass.  By the end of the week, the glass had turned varying degrees of golden colors, an enchanting kind of magic to me. 

It was a long time before I learned more of Marlin's history. While digging to find a water supply for Marlin’s 2,500 residents in 1891,  engineers struck sulfur-laden water that gushed out of the ground at 147 degrees F. Several physicians interested in the curative properties established clinics, bathhouses and sanitariums. More wells were drilled, hotels and boarding houses opened their doors, and by 1900, Marlin was a popular spa emphasizing medical water treatments. The New York Giants baseball team trained there from 1908 to 1919.  Some think it was not  mere coincidence that the Giants won the National League pennant in 1911, 1912 and 1913.

In the 1920s, the Marlin Hot Wells Foundation for Crippled Children established a hospital to treat young polio victims  In 1929, Conrad Hilton built his eighth Hilton Hotel in his chain in Marlin, a nine-floor, 110 room Falls Hotel, which could be seen for miles from the city limits of Marlin. Across the street was the Marlin Sanitarium Bathhouse. An underground tunnel connected the two buildings. A fire destroyed the underground tunnel, the Sanitarium Bath House was torn down, and the Falls Hotel was closed. Despite sporadic attempts to revive them, Marlin’s mineral-water establishments were pretty much gone by the 1960's.

 The hotel remains the tallest building in Falls County. The location of the bath house is now the city post office and a gazebo park. Another former hotel, the Arlington Hotel on Coleman Street, is now the location of a Mexican restaurant, Lupita's, and the Marlin Inn.

Today, you can drink mineral water  from a fountain from that era, right next to the Chamber of Commerce Office. You can soak your feet too, (they've thoughtfully provided a separate facility for that )  Water has laxative properties, which locals have timed at 43 minutes!.  I think it is fun to visit the fountain, but I don't seen any glassware transformation going on there these days.  I still don't drink the water, but Lupita's is a great place for lunch.

Honoring People and Places

"We clasp the hands of those who go before us.” – Wendell Berry

Home has for many years meant the place I lived with my husband and our sons (and now gather them with their wives and children).  We have made a home in many places and learned to move on and call another place home.  But, as Eudora Welty says so beautifully,

There may come to be new places in our lives that are second spiritual homes closer to us in some ways, perhaps, than our original homes. But the home tie is the blood tie. And had it meant nothing to us, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and we would carry no compass inside ourselves to find home ever, anywhere at all. We would not even guess what we had missed.

I am grateful for the piney woods of East Texas around Tyler, my birthplace, and Jacksonville, where I grew up. I also warm with a smile when I think of Bullard, the tiny town in between those two.

Both my parents grew up in Bullard.    Because both sets of my grandparents lived there, it is part of the place of my childhood and fondly remembered.  The Bullard cemetery is where a great many of my ancestors are buried: parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great grandparents!  But this is no longer just a little country community, a "wide place in the road," my Daddy called it.

I read with interest how Bullard has changed and grown.  One of the old buildings I remember as Ferrell's Drug Store used to be the location of the medical practice of the Ferrell's daughter, Dr. Marjorie Roper.   We called her Dr. Marjie. She is a legendary physician and has always been one of my heros.  She practiced family medicine in Bullard for 60 years, retiring, she says, because she was not computer literate!
http://americanprofile.com/articles/doctoring-for-decades/

 I was recently sent the link below telling of her plans to convert the old pharmacy.  I think I need to go to Bullard for a museum trip.  But I will also take some herb bouquets to place on cemetery markers, honoring those who have gone before me.

Longtime doctor transforms historic pharmacy into museum#.UIVCe2TOPOI.gmail

Mother's Purse

Today, in tribute to the day in 1913 on which Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal was born, I am being grateful for the birthday which made my own birthday possible, and for the strong woman who gave birth and life to me.
She never went anywhere without her purse.  I have the ones shown here, and most of the contents!
Happy Birthday, Mother.

Mother’s  Purse

1.

pastel patterns sparkle on

beaded pouch dangling 

from tarnished chain

room only for a hankie

hung from your thin

flapper girl shoulder

2.

fun dressup became working casual

brown beige black grey

bag with zippers

pockets and handles

capacious, strong, heavy holding

keys and address book

wallet and check books and coupons

driver's license, children's photograph

a pleated plastic headwrap

S&H green stamps

Kleenex and comb and metal folding cup

red lipstick worn to slant

nail file and Ritz crackers

always anchored on your arm

2.

Red pocketbook with gold snaps

monogrammed “T”

inside pockets sparsely filled

½ roll Tums

1 cough drop

nail scissors

allergy card no

penicillin or codeine

Dr. business card

sticky note with

my children:

names and phone numbers

$6.00

Thompson Funeral Home card

kept until we needed it

held now in a hand missing

holding yours

                                                

Most of my garden photographs get posted in my blog www.stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com . Most of my kitchen stories and recipes get told at www.kitchenkeepers.wordpress.com .   But this blue pea vine that blooms so profusely at my kitchen window reminds me why I love vines so much: they are quite alot like families.  There is something magical about a climbing vine in a garden. Vines seem to have a mind of their own and grow here and there in many directions - but they need something to cling to or climb on, a support.  Like morning glories and moonflowers, they reach for the strength of a trellis or rail and hang on, blooming and blooming some more.

Families can be like that too. Especially in our marriages,  I think sometimes we are branches of  the vine and at other times we need to be the trellis, offering support for each other's growth and change. As I age, my children help me do things I once could do for myself or for them. So last night, as the blue pea vine peeked in my kitchen window, I cooked a pot of seafood gumbo with my granddaughter's good help while my son hung curtain rods for me and my daughter in law stood on a ladder to change light bulbs. I am thankful for my trellis and glad I can still bloom.  They loved the gumbo.

Tribute to Friends and Family

"From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord's name is to be praised."    ~ Psalm 113: 3

This week started with end of summer and start of school stuff.  It is hurricane season here and there was a storm brewing, Monday was the beginning of school for our 4th grade granddaughter, and Tuesday the first day for our first grader. Both my recently planted tomatoes and I were wilting in the heat and grateful for long cold drinks of water.  Joe was busy with work and medical appointments. By the end of the day on Monday, my cool pillow was the only place I thought I was headed.  Suddenly, everything changed.  We were on the way to the hospital instead of to bed.  Joe, who has had so many surgeries on his left knee, was literally brought to his knees by that joint collapsing and dislocating.  We found ourselves in a swirl of pain and prayers. Calls to our doctor and our son, who came to help resulted in emergency hospital admission and on to the operating room where the out of place pieces were put in place and snugly encased in a thigh to toe cast.  It is going to be a painful, challenging recovery but he is addressing it with his typical courage and good spirits
.
All this to say, I am so grateful for God's provision for our peace in the middle of this storm, which felt like the pounding confusion of hurricane winds to us. 

Isn't it good that we know we are not alone in dealing with this?  We are grateful for access to medical care, and most of all so thankful for our family and the friends who help us and love us in so many ways.  Our sons gave us their time and strong arms to lean on.  Ben made our dinner when we came home from the hospital.  He even remembered his Dad had said mac and cheese sounded good. Our son who does not live here was connected and encouraging by phone.  All 3 daughters in law responded with loving attention.  And I am overwhelmed with appreciation by the emails and Facebook messaging as well as phone calls from our friends.  So it was natural that when I thought about a blog post for today that I wanted to give the spotlight to all of you who love us so well and help us so much.  As the photo of a note I received many years ago declares "Hope your day starts and ends on a beautiful note!."  I might add ...you certainly make the notes in my day a symphony!


Postscript:     The note I mention was the last letter I received from Doris Nutt,  a longtime friend and mentor on October 22, 2001 although I got a birthday card a few weeks later which she mailed before she died.  She taught me at church when I was growing into and out of my teens, and was so important to me as a friend and mentor that I (along with other women who had the same blessing of knowing her) called her Mamma Nutt.  Her faithfulness, loyalty, and unselfish giving of herself remain an example to me when I think of friends.  When she passed away, friends found her with her Bible open in her lap.  All those years ago, her encouragement and teaching helped to equip me for the storms of today.  I am thankful for family and friends, then and now.