Showing posts with label grandchildren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandchildren. Show all posts

Friday, August 15, 2014

Admiration

As Nora nears 5 months old, she is increasingly aware of color and patterns.  She is more sensitive to faces, smiling at those familiar to her and exhibiting wariness or alarm at those who are not. She fingers spots and dots on toys, reaches for the bright paisley of my shirt and the textured wood panel of her changing table. Here, she is fixed on the butterfly quilt that belonged to one of the grandmothers she is named for, Opal Terrell Teal.  As I smiled and watched her admiration, I thought of so many stories the quilt could tell.

Opal was my mother, making her Nora's great grandmother.  The butterfly quilt was made as a gift for Opal on her 17th birthday in 1931, a common pattern choice in those depression years that so needed the butterfly's symbolism of hope.  The women who chose these colors and patterns and stitched every tiny, even stitch were Opal's mother and grandmother, making them Nora Opal's great-great grandmother and great-great-great grandmother.  I stood as I watched Nora admire their handwork, thinking of their stories and hers.  They could not have known that almost a century later, a beautiful little girl would so love what they made. But I am confident they know now.  Opal herself did not know when she passed the quilt on to me how I would keep it and love it and give it again.  But I know she joins Clyde and Earnestine in blessing Nora and returning the admiration. Hope is a wonderful gift to pass on.


Friday, August 1, 2014

Two Girls, One Dress

        Nora 2014


                        Skye 2003

Among my favorite photos of my sons are three separate pictures when they were babies. They are lined up in a small frame that holds the images of each of the three dressed in the same navy blue suit, evidence of the way we passed down clothing from boy to boy. These two photos will join those as pictures that make me happier every single time I look at them.  Eleven years ago, our granddaughter Skye wore a sweet dress that I had given her, and smiled sunshine into my heart.  The dress has been passed down through 2 more granddaughters (I am still looking to see if we have any pictures where they wear the dress) - and now, Nora is wearing the same dress and gracing us with her own happy smiles.  She wore the dress recently on the day we celebrated Joe's 77th birthday.  Skye is now almost as tall as I am, and loves her baby cousin.  When I saw the two of them smiling at each other while the one who wore the dress first cradled the one it now fits while she fed her, there was a lump in my throat and a few happy tears.  Shared dresses don't tell the story, but they do help remind us of shared joy and love passed on and on. Family hand me downs!


Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Together

The happiest times on my calendar right now are the days I care for my granddaughter Nora! Every third week is "our" week.  At 3 months, there are certain constants: feedings, diapering, and naps. I love the tending that requires. And I love the joy of the in between times - the cuddling, conversation and cooing, the rocking and singing and togetherness that refills her and comforts her and is important to her as well as those first 3 essentials.

She doesn't mind my crackly voice singing "A, You're Adorable."  We make it through that song every diaper change. If there is an entire clothing change, we sometimes get through several songs from The Sound of Music!  She talks to me with her eyes to say thank you, and flashes a coquettish grin when I brush her hair.

Yesterday we walked outside to catch a raindrop and she smelled a basil leaf when I made my lunch. She likes dots and patterns so I choose the blouse I will wear for her. We play peek a boo and pat a cake and chant nursery rhymes. When I rock her to sleep, I sing many of the same old hyms that my mother and grandmother sang to me. We have discovered that Christmas carols are wonderful lullabies!

Our other granddaughters are a joy to me and teach me just like she does that there is so much to look forward to. They help me remember some favorite lines from a poem by Mary Oliver:      "Pay attention.
   Be astonished.
    Tell about it."
 - all so much more fun when we do it together!

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Crawfish Season

My granddaughters are such a source of delight for me, often reenacting a scene straight out of the past when their daddies were the same age.  In this photograph, Maddie has captured a large crawfish from one of the mounds near their house.  Her gleeful grimace may be a touch more dainty than those I remember on the face of her Dad and his brothers, but I love hearing that Maddie and her sister Jordann have now lured their neighboring friends from the grip of Minecraft and Dora the Explorer to this sunny spot outdoors to join them in their quest to "catch critters."  I am sure my son enjoyed showing them how, which is exactly what he did nearly 40 years ago!  Our sons were 3, 5, and 8 when we moved to a house that backed up to a creek in Plano, Texas.  They didn't have any trouble making friends once they got out their string and bacon and began fishing for the crawfish that were all along the creekbanks.  In good old East Texas lingo, they called them "crawdads."

The boys enjoyed keeping one for a pet now and then.  They had captured a very large crawfish which was being kept in an aquarium on our kitchen buffet. My mother came to visit and as usual, she got up earlier in the morning than any of us and slipped barefoot into the kitchen to make her first cup of coffee.  She suddenly woke up the rest of the house when she started yelling because she didn't know what had invaded the kitchen floor. The boys had unwittingly caught a mama crawfish that had dozens of tiny babies clinging to her swimmerets  She had crawled out of the tank, slipped onto the floor, and scattered little crawfish everywhere.  Mother thought they were bugs, and indeed, in some places they are called mud bugs!



Friday, March 28, 2014

In the days just over a week ago when they knew their baby would soon be born,  I told my son that giving birth was hard work, yes, but that it was the most exquisite thing that ever happened to me. The beauty of welcoming a grandchild is another layer of that kind of breathtaking awe and wonder.  Part of this is being privileged to see that amazing awareness and tenderness in my son and his wife as they experience all it means to be a parent. Part is the hope, knowing, newness, and wonder in my granddaughter's eyes. Thank you, Ben and Kristen, and Nora!



"To have grandchildren is not only to be given something but to be given something back.
You are given back something of your children's childhood all those years ago. You are given back something of what it was like to be a young parent. You are given back something of your own childhood even, as on creaking knees you get down on the floor to play tiddlywinks, or sing about Old MacDonald and his farm, or watch Saturday morning cartoons till you're cross-eyed.
It is not only your own genes that are part of your grandchildren but the genes of all sorts of people they never knew but who, through them, will play some part in times and places they never dreamed of. And of course along with your genes, they will also carry their memories of you into those times and places too—the afternoon you lay in the hammock with them watching the breezes blow, the face you made when one of them stuck out a tongue dyed Popsicle blue at you, the time you got a splinter out for one of them with the tweezers of your Swiss army knife. On some distant day they will hold grandchildren of their own with the same hands you once held them by as you searched the beach at low tide for Spanish gold.
In the meantime, they are the freshest and fairest you have. After you're gone, it is mainly because of them that the earth will not be as if you never walked on it.
Frederick Buechner  on Grandchildren.    originally published in Beyond Words

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Nora Opal

On March 19, 2014, we welcomed our granddaughter, Nora Opal into our arms.  She was already in our hearts. The only thrill more wonderful than cradling her and feeling her melt into my arms is watching my son as he holds and adores her.  I love seeing them:  mother, baby, and father, God's good gifts for each other  - precious new family.  We celebrate!

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Celebration

Today my friends hosted a wonderful brunch to celebrate Kristen and Ben and Nora Opal, who will soon arrive - our fifth granddaughter!  Extended family and friends shared good food, strawberry lemonade and cupcakes, and presented the first time parents with gifts, good advice, and baby blessings.  Most of all, I recall the laughter and joy of us all.  And the pure delight in Ben and Kristen's faces.  Above is a photo of the sign on the front porch which sat between rocking chairs.  We are waiting with open arms, Nora!

Friday, December 20, 2013

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.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

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.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

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.


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Beginning Again


I have begun a knitting project, or shall I say begun to finish one I started over 40 years ago!  When I was pregnant with our first son, I finished a lovely cream colored knitted shawl in which we wrapped him for his trip home from the hospital.  Each of his two younger brothers also came home wrapped in the shawl, as have each of my granddaughters now.  But when I was pregnant with our 2nd son, I started something that would be "his" by knitting some wide lace intended to grace a receiving blanket.  Anyone who has been pregnant while running after a 2 year old will understand why that project barely got started.  When son #3 was on the way, I picked up the lace again and completed another 8 or 10  inches.  Now that son is 40 and expecting his own child and I have once again begun to knit on the lace.  It isn't easy getting started and striking my stride on a project that old, plus I had to order some yarn that is as close to the original as possible.  I hope I successfully complete it this time.  Arthritic fingers don't knit as nimbly! :)  I used to knit while I watched TV, but right now I am keeping my eyes glued to the pattern and the knitting!




Friday, September 13, 2013

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!

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Gardens and Granddaughters


As you can see, Jordann is really getting into gardening these days.  She loves picking the tiny clusters of Wild Cherry tomatoes that have taken over the herb garden.  She and her sister, Maddie, also love popping a tomato in their mouths for tasting while they pick!  These plants have come up volunteer all over the garden this year, and although I have pulled up many of them as soon as they appear, there always seem to be more. The tomatoes are only half as big as most cherry tomatoes, and are great for tossing into a salad, but the plants are so sprawling and invasive they are crowding out everything else.  So, this weekend, I will be pulling them out and getting the raised bed ready for fall vegetable and herb planting.  This is clearly a lesson that applies to other parts of my life:  just because something is pretty,  interesting, fun and flourishing doesn't mean it is the right choice or the best time for me to let it continue to use up my time and energy.  I am always learning from my garden.    

When Jordann comes back to our house for another visit, she may notice the jungle of tomato vines is gone, replaced with something else that is good to eat and fun to harvest.  And I know that she will be just fine with that. As in the picture below, Maddie and she will take a basket and gather what grows in the present.  I learn that from my granddaughters - that loss and change do not always mean sorrow.  That new things are good, too. And that doing them together is the best of all.       

I love what my garden and my grandchildren teach me.

                                                        

Friday, June 14, 2013

Ladies Day at the Spa

When any one of my granddaughters is here, we have fun. But when all 3 of the younger girls get together, there is never a dull moment.  I may leave a few prompts or props for them to find (new stuff in the dressup trunk, empty boxes, beads and shells with the art supplies, and plenty of fresh fruit and veggies for creating snacks), but the ways they come up with to use those things never fail to keep me laughing.

Last weekend we were grateful for heavy afternoon rains on both days.  But climbing trees and dancing in the rain changed to indoor play when thunder and lightning deemed it necessary.  Undaunted, they retired to the bedroom where the dressup supplies are kept.  A few minutes later, when I checked on them, I found Skye with her turban wrap reclining on the chaise lounge and was told they were having a Spa day!  Furthermore, they needed cucumber slices for their eyes.  What's a grandmother to do but slice up a garden fresh cucumber and deliver?

Maddie and Jordann added their veggie beauty aid and lounged on a mountain of pillows.


But apparently the under 10 set does not require lengthy lounging.  In fact, it makes them hungry!

So they ate their cucumbers, which probably beat anything else for a refreshing treatment!

I love being a grandmother! Who needs a day at a real Spa?  I don't need cucumbers to make me glow!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Tea, Tree, and a Tooth



Maddie celebrated her seventh birthday at our house last Saturday with a tea party, complete with butter cookies and lemon tea served in tiny china tea cups that were mine when I was seven!  She knows how to dress up in a pink swirly dress and drink from dainty cups but she spent more time climbing trees and helping in the garden than sipping tea while she was here.



 Look at her smile in the top two photos.  Then notice what is missing in the next picture...
She pulled her own front tooth to finish a big day of celebrating!


The evening she and her mom and sister left to go home, Maddie released some ladybugs in the garden. The ladybugs are still hanging around on the roses and mint.  Maybe they miss her.  I do!

Friday, March 8, 2013

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!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Playing Dolls

I went with my daughter in law and granddaughter this week to a newly opened store in Houston, the American Girls doll store. Skye's doll, Molly,  went along because she was going to get her hair done - the doll, not the girl!  The store was packed with little girls carrying a variety of American Girl dolls.  It was a beehive of  girls, complete with shrieks and giggles.  We watched as the doll was strapped into a miniature salon chair and covered with a shampoo cape.  A stylist (one of several)  spritzed and brushed out all the tangles that several years of play had created, then braided Molly's hair and tied on new ribbons.  I was proud of Skye.  The huge store is filled with tantalizing dolls and all their pretty outfits and accessories, everything from teepees to canopy beds and garden tea sets.  So many things to ooh and ah over.  Skye's mom and I did our share of admiring.  But Skye stuck with the budget and left with only the new hairdo for Molly. It was tempting, and maybe someday we will go back.  But there is a lesson here for many of us much older than 10 years:  delayed gratificaton, sticking to a plan, and enjoying what we can afford without complaining.  Good for you, Skye!  

Friday, December 21, 2012



Carol of the Birds

I am strangely attracted to a Christmas carol rarely sung -
 treasure of music, words with sweet mystery,
 quiet, wondering melody
Questioning feathered twitters.

“Whence comes this rush of wings afar,
Following straight the Noel star?
Birds from the woods in wondrous flight,
Bethlehem seek this Holy Night.
Tell us, ye birds, why come ye here,
Into this stable, poor and drear?
Hastening we seek the newborn King
And all our sweetest music bring.”

Stirring some ancient warmth within me
I play the notes and sing each verse,
 decorate a small Christmas tree
with vines, berries, woodland birds.

Greenfinch, Philomel sing
Re, mi, fa, sol in accents sweet
from woodland edges, farmland hedges
Noel, Christ on earth with man to dwell

Someone singing this tune for 400 years,
before that, once an older one now lost?
Could it be I am pulled by what I cannot remember?
Song and my great grandmother both born in southern France

She died when I was a baby.
Did she sing it, rocking me
in the old wooden rocker in which I rock my own grandchild?
Noel.





Saturday, December 8, 2012

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




Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Again!

                                   
                       Howard Teal and his first grandson, Sean Parker, Christmas 1968


This picture speaks to me of Christmas past and Christmas present, even Christmas yet to come.  My Daddy is holding our first son. How proud he was!  Sean loved his Papa, and already loved books. They are delighting each other with the reading of The Night Before Christmas.  Can't you hear "...up the chimney he rose?"  With this book, as in most, arriving at the last page meant "again, read it again!"

So, as I bring in the boxes of decorations and begin pulling out all the old familiar ornaments and set up the manger scenes, I am brimming with both tears and smiles, thinking how good it is to do it again.  I set up our advent wreath and candles and fill the big basket with all the children's Christmas books read and reread so many times.  I stack my Christmas piano music and practice the arrangements of White Christmas and Silent Night that I have played for so many years now.  I  am thankful that I did most purchases for gifts before Thanksgiving, so that shopping is not on my to do list, and I can spend  more time re-calibrating during Advent.  I listen to my favorite Christmas CD, James Galway's Christmas Carol.  On the way to Bethlehem, again.