There are reminders of my mother, Opal Terrell Teal, everywhere. In these months following my back injury I have had more time than ever for reflection and remembering stories, though the distraction of pain and other health issues has delayed working on recording those stories. Recently, I asked our oldest son if he would like to have the red enamel pan. Only the story that accompanied it would have led anyone to say yes to this chipped and rusted enamelware. Mother told me when she gave it to me: before she was married in 1931 at the age of 18, she sold tins of salve to earn money to buy a set of pans and a coffee pot. This is the remaining piece of that set. I only wish I had asked more questions about her early days of housekeeping and cooking. 

I photographed the pan sitting on another reminder. Mother did needlework, taught by her own mother and grandmother who both crafted many works of needle art - sewing clothes and quilts, crocheting doilies and booties and lace, embroidering linens and collars, even tatting with a little silver shuttle that I still have. Years after I married and had my own children, she maintained her love of crocheting. My sons and grandchildren all have afghans she crocheted. This lovely cream afghan is one she made for me and is edged with fringe. It is on the foot of my bed right now, ready to pull up for a nap. I am still covered with her love.

Magic Dressup Trunk

Maddie, summer 2010

Nora, summer 2019

During Maddie's recent visit with us, we enjoyed so many special times. She spent time and had fun with all of us in this multigenerational household - oldest to youngest!  Maddie is now 13, but when she was a little younger than Nora is now at 5, she came to stay with us and loved dressing up using all her imagination and the dressup collection we kept in the front closet. When they pullled out the dressup trunk a couple of weeks ago, Maddie found an old skirt of mine that she remembered making into an outfit  and modeling for us. The two girls found a hat and ribbon and sunglasses to complete the ensemble and proudly displayed the results.

There is still magic in that trunk!

Change and Challenge

It has been 10 and 1/2  years since I accepted my own challenge to begin this blog. I did not know how, only why, I wanted to do this. In the first post, On January 12, 2009, I admitted "Blog? The word is strange to me. I know what it is. I read other blogs. But I do not know how to blog. The word as a verb instead of a noun is vaguely unsettling because it implies an action I do not yet know how to perform. But I will learn. I will. 

Forty one years ago tonight I was beginning the labor that would bring our first son into the light. On that cold Saturday morning, mighty work was required but then came the overwhelming joy. The work that can deliver words that have grown within me into the light of print and scrutiny may be absorbing and intense as well but with joy I ask for grace in the passing on of life and story.  

Again, I have needed to determine to learn, and to ask for grace in the passing on of life and story...

I see that it has been 2 months since I last posted - April 13, 2019. Later, during that night, I fell, fracturing a vertebra in my lumbar spine, launching me into a season of change. I wrote recently about this and Joe's recent vision loss in another blog: https://stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/return/

In all the challenge of wearing a thoracic brace for 3 months, beginning daily injections that must be on my calendar for 2 years, managing pain making my own health management a necessary priority while yet being available to Joe, and learning to accept help there has been a great deal for me to keep on changing and learning. And, as I wrote all those years ago, I will.

The Untried Melody
Howard Thurman

I will sing a new song.
I must learn the new song for the new needs
I must fashion new words born of all the new growth in my life---of my mind---of my spirit.
I must prepare for new melodies that have never been mine before,
That all that is within me may lift my voice unto God.

How I love the old familiarity of the wearied melody,
How I shrink from the harsh discords of the new untried harmonies.

Teach me, my Father, that I might learn with the abandonment and enthusiasm of Jesus, 
The fresh new accent, the untried melody,
to meet the need of the untried morrow.

Source: from "I Will Sing a New Song" in Meditations of the Heart

Our Vitex greens and blooms. Again.

"The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung." ~Walt Whitman

Family Fun

Jeremy, Maddie, and Jordann spent a week and a half with us.We said Goodbye with both smiles and tears and blessed their travel home. While they were with us, we enjoyed doing as much together as we could pack in the days!  The photos show how much!

                              Fishing in the little lake behind our house.

        

Catching up with talks and hugs!

Cousin Time!

Cooking and Eating!

Tea for Two and Friends

Revisiting Favorite Places.  Secret Places.

Making music and listening!

They made hummingbird nectar and put out 4 new hummingbird feeders!

Jordann's Canvas Art

There was more, of course - they went to the zoo, to a splash pad,  and picked strawberries. The girls and Jeremy drove down to Galveston and Surfside for a day. Maddie brought back tiny lavender lined shells to create a butterfly picture.Jordann and Nora worked jigsaw puzzles. They had movie and popcorn nights and a Dutch Baby one morning for breakfast! We did art projects  and picked roses. It was snowing when they left Nevada, and Spring had arrived in South Texas.

We made precious memories.  Joe and I reveled in being with our children and grandchildren.  I am thankful for Joe and for each of these, the generations who follow us. 

Friends and Valentines

This is a valentine that I keep in my kitchen year round. In fact, it has been around many years. It has sat in its frame in my last 3 homes, so that could be up to 25 years, but on the reverse side, there is only written "Happy Valentine's! Mignon" We began friendship in our second grade year, and it continues. Although we don't see each other often, that bond forged so early remains. Enduring friendships are rare and precious. Joe and I say that we are forever friends - a solid foundation for a solid marriage.

I watched my grandchildren get ready for February 14 last week, remembered all the ways it is celebrated. and smile as I consider how the tradition changes, but also stays the same.  I got texts from my older granddaughters, and tiny candy boxes from Nora and Oliver. Joe and I had a Valentine lunch and planned to prune the roses. Kristen wound up doing that for us because Joe's eyes and my shoulder kept us from using our new garden gloves and pruning shears . That was a valentine labor of love!.

Keeping and Letting Go

When I was a little girl, I had this miniature rocking chair plus a few other pieces of doll house furniture. It is strange to me, but I do not remember having a doll house although I remember in detail most of these pieces of tiny furniture. I loved this little yellow and red rocking chair and the tiny grand piano. Both sit on one of my bookshelves, in front of a row of books.

There was a family - a mother, a father, and a baby. There was a refrigerator with a door that really opened, and a table and chairs. And there was a pink plastic bathtub and pedestal sink. Some of these survived until I did have a dollhouse, a Victorian house I had made by paraplegic craftsmen at a hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. In our time there, I added a few handmade wooden pieces, a 4 poster bed and other small things. As my granddaughters were added to our family in later years, they loved the dollhouse and our odd assortment of furnishings. We added bottle tops for vases and coasters for rugs. Over time, the doll house began to fall apart and when we parted with a great many other things in order to make our move with Ben and Kristen and Nora, the doll house wound up being rescued by our oldest son, Sean, along with the remainders of furniture.
https://tinyurl.com/FarewellHouse


Long before that happened, I had picked the little rocker and the piano to sit where I could see them. I don't know why I chose these 2 pieces. But when I let my story telling heart imagine, I think of all the ways rocking chairs have been important to me - savoring the stories of being rocked and sung to when I was a baby, then doing just that with my own babies.

I think too how much I love my real piano and the way I feel when I am able to sit at its keys and pour my feelings into music.

The things we keep, and the ways we let them go speak volumes. This story is one of my ways of letting go.

55 Years!

Our 55th, as in every anniversary, passed during Christmastide.

We were married three days after Christmas in 1963 after dating for 11 months. Choosing each other then was only the beginning, a glimmer of what grew to become intentional, tenacious choosing as years unfolded. Unlike many weddings now, we had no wedding planner, no announcing for saving a date, no plans for a honeymoon. We chose the date because we decided we wanted to begin our life together then instead of waiting until after I finished my degree in nursing at Oklahoma Baptist University 5 months later. We decided this in October, a little over 2 months away from our wedding. Joe was recently discharged from the army, had a job with Petty Geophysical on a field crew that was at the time located in southwestern Oklahoma. I was finishing a degree;I was in Oklahoma City. He had made many trips to Oklahoma City in his Karman Ghia so we knew it was not a great commute. The plan was for him to find another job in Oklahoma City and move there.  The announcement of our engagement appeared in the Jacksonville paper on my birthday, November 14.

The timing was historical. On the day he was to arrive in the City, as I walked through the nurses' residence on my way back from John Wesley Hospital which was adjacent, I found a cluster of students in the large room at the front where the only television in the building was located. Unusual, because most of us had classes or shifts to work at the hospital. As I paused, I learned that our nation's president, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated while in Dallas, TX. Many in the room, including me, were in tears. So November 22, 1963 became forever a date to be remembered. But I also remember it because Joe was on the way. We would find a place where he could live, he would find a job, we would be married very soon.  Most brides have many things on their list to  check off in the weeks before their marriage. I was no exception, but my list included exams for that semester and completing the construction of my wedding gown. I had made one trip with Mother to Tyler to try on wedding dresses, but buying one was out of the question. So I sketched one I had admired, with Mother's help selected some patterns, fabric, lace, and put my sewing machine to work.  

When Joe and I went to Texas for Thanksgiving weekend,  my mother and I cut out patterns from the lace, appliqued them to the slim skirt of the dress and circular train, and stitched on what seemed like hundreds of seed pearls.

Details of my wedding day drift through and settle. The arrival of my best friend and maid of honor, Jo Rita, along with Mary June and Sue and my sister Janice. Laughter. Last minute alterations and adjustments to my dress because I lost so much weight. Sugaring inexpensive Christmas bells for a topper to the cake my mother's friend had made. Having a hamburger for a quick supper. Wearing a plaid shirtwaist dress and realizing it was time to put on the dress! Hearing that Joe and his best man, our friend, Eddie Ballard had gone to Tyler to a movie the night before. They saw Spencer's Mountain with Maureen O'Hara.  No bachelor party, no bridesmaid weekend somewhere. No elaborate reception and dinner. The wedding rings we had ordered from a local jeweler were lost in the mail! Judy and Arnold (Joe's brother) let us borrow theirs! It was a Saturday night. When the organ chimed 7 times, my nervous Daddy and I started down the aisle toward my choice, my love. 

The phrase in our wedding vows "I take you..." means I choose you. The choice has been made every day since. 

I still do!