Mama’s Perfect Biscuits

EDITORS NOTE: This is pulled from my Sisters Blog: GOOD OLD GIRL–give it a look, you won’t be sorry!!!

Mama's Perfect Biscuits.

Our legacy

In a week of so many highs and lows, it is nearly impossible to put into words the joy and grief. My week began with a great high, a personal success, a soon to be finish of a season of awful pain. By mid-week that joy was made complete, a mother’s heart was made whole again.

My joy came to a screeching heart by the next morning at the news of a horrific crime, someone else is catapulted into the depths of pain and fear and loss. The shock, of so many innocents to fall at the hand of a sick person, who himself was lost in his own pain.

My mind can not contend with this kind of sorrow, I do not allow myself to listen…to watch….to be pulled into the hype of the suffering of so many. A nation is in mourning, families at a loss of the precious children who God himself intrusted them with. What more could parents do…we never know when the last hug will be given.

Children are our legacy. Our very soul lives within the hearts of our children…their heartbeats are what keep us in pace. They give our lives meaning. Weather we have children or we are children, each one of us know the pain of loss when something like this event happens. My limited array of vocabulary can not fully express my heart.

I am a mother full of peace today because I have been given a great gift from God, but I feel the loss of so many who are lost in their sorrow, as if it were my own. Never to compare, I can’t even go there to feel that hurt, even my own losses can not stand up to you and your families emptiness.

My prayers are with you all. The Lord keep you in His embrace, Sandy Hook school families and Newtown, CT.

 

Tradition

This year my family traveled to visit our family for Thanksgiving in East Tennessee. This is never my first choice, to travel I mean, I am a home body as a rule and especially on a big holiday. I like to be the one doing the cooking. This year though, it worked out for us to go so we did.

My side of the family had a reunion a couple of weeks ago instead of the usual Thanksgiving celebration. We were blessed to have our precious Uncle Leon and Aunt Ornella as well as cousins John and Susan, which is always a special treat for us all. They have always lived far away so when they come home it is always a joy. My Aunt and Uncle are getting up in years and I have to catch myself when I hug them to not hug too hard because the thought always crosses my mind that this may be the last time. Morbid I know. Just trying to be prepared and enjoy them as long as I can.

It is not my intent, but I rarely get to see them and I just can’t bear the thought…..I as well feel this way about a lot of people in my life. We never know when this may be the last hug or laugh or words. Since my Mom has spent the last few years becoming less and less capable of knowing all of us, I am ever mindful of just how short life is.

This became even more relevant to me yesterday during our visit to my mother in laws home. I don’t see here as often now and when I do, it is always shocking at the amount of “slowing down” she has done. If you had asked me if it ever would have happened I would have never believed it, she was the Energizer Bunny before the bunny was….she never knew how to rest, take it easy…..always doing something. Even at a time of relaxation, she would be embroidering.

I learned how to cook for the most part from her. When I married the preacherman and moved to his hometown and was thrust amongst all the good cookin’ church ladies and I was enlightened to the world of casseroles and some of the best in Southern cooking. I mastered the Thanksgiving Dinner from my mother in law, this was the first food of hers I had ever eaten….on a trip there with my room-mate(pre-marriage) to see University of Tennessee vs Vanderbilt. Reason number twenty-eight on why I went…got to see boyfriend and check out his hometown. Mission accomplished and some great food for us hungry college kids!

It was evident this week that she is slowing down, she was more frail and smaller…..just like my own Mom, although my Moms mind is failing her, my Mom in law is still pretty sharp. It is just her body that is tuckering out. But I swear if she still wont hardly let me help her….frustrating. What is it about the

English: at 955 Airport Boulevard, near , in . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

elderly that makes them not stop or rather allow us to help. I hope I will be different, I hope I allow my kids to do all they can……or maybe that is how I feel now, sorry kids!

We had our lunch at a local, very popular restaurant, The Cracker Barrel. I was amazed at the amount of people who ate out for their Traditional Thanksgiving meal.  Do people not cook anymore? The over whelming part also was the amount of elderly people. I know this restaurant is a favorite of

the elderly as well as the Hardee’s breakfast, but it seemed there was mostly older folks. It actually made me sad and wonder…..where are all the children that go with these people. Did they choose to not be there with the Moms and Dads or maybe just like us went to the other side of the families dinner. I don’t know, it just seemed like of all the people there, ninety percent of them were older.

Maybe they have just “been there done that”, cooked the big meals, had the big house destroying family get together’s, broke the bank on all the pretty foods and accessories……maybe they are happy going out to eat and just driving home, in peace and quiet. I just don’t know. I think I was the only one who even cared, probably because two of my brood were not with us, I missed them and I missed not cooking for them all. My romantic view of life tends to get the best of me when I miss my kids.

On a side note: …..I also do not even want to obsess over the amount of people who play with those little wooden games with the golf tees that are on every table; the ones that have been scattered on the floor a zillion times and put back on the table and never disinfected. Then, while I watched people over and over touch those germ laced games and then pick up their fresh hot biscuits and jelly and eat them with the same dirty fingers……ugh, STOP!   STOP I would think, yelling in my head…..then I notice my own people doing the same thing….just as I had also done before…..ewe, wish I had not remembered that part…….I must have been tired, obsessing about all that. Some days it just doesn’t help to think so much!

So in the end, I chose pork chops for my special holiday meal….seemed to be a good choice, it had to be made fresh and it was good… unlike the big piles of turkey and vats of gravy and pans of mashed potatoes that have been made for hours …there I go obsessing again! I also knew I had a great home cooked meal waiting for me in a few hours when we traveled back home at my own Mom and sisters house. Happy to report is was awesome!

Thanksgiving deems to be getting squished out with all the shopping deals….I have never shopped on this day, truthfully, I have never had a large supply of money to do shopping with and I am also pretty protective of sleep and I have large crows issues…someone always gets trampled…..it ain’t gonna be me, sista! I have great Thanksgiving memories….a day for slowing down, a long weekend, throwing a football. Watching the parades and dreaming of living in New York……oh to be a kid again, the truth is my days are numbered and I know it. Soon I too will be enjoying my meals where everyone knows my name…..not CHEERS!…but my local Cracker Barrel!

Sister dear

I have found myself remiss!

Not that this is the first time this has happened … tends to be the normal for me these days.  Although, I did do the right thing yesterday on the historic day of my big sister’s birthday, the one thing I forgot … I am busy by the way … I am an important person! LOL Well, maybe just too busy, but, nevertheless, I omitted a very important blog post.

My tradition has been to celebrate, in words, my dear family members that have had an important day … i.e., birthday or whatever. And, I did do this in one fashion by way of her gift. But I forgot to write her a blog post for which I humbly beg forgiveness. Not to her because she would probably rather me NOT … but to myself.

I enjoy so much writing about my V.I.P.’s, and so, here is the make up!

In reference to the birthday gift … I made a lame homemade one! WooHoo, right?

What am I seven? Apparently so! But, there I went, making her a handmade gift. I think it was a hit, though, because it made us both cry! Geez we have gotten old. What goes around comes around.

Back in my younger days when I was in college and was having a “dry spell” so to speak and I would spend my Saturday nights watching “DALLAS” (which I loved, no haters out there, please) (and, yes, I am thrilled to have it make a comeback. Don’t call me at eight o’clock tomorrow night!) anyways … I would make collages.

I recycled back then. My love for magazines and love to create worked together. I would cut out words, like any good kidnapper, that were interesting and/or had a cool font … my graphics mind coming through there … and I made word collages.

Sometimes they were about certain subjects and sometimes just random. It was fun to me and they were very pretty and interesting to look at. Or, at least I thought they were. On the occasion of my Nephews graduation from high school I made him one. He probably thought … how lame!

I thought that with a collage I would say all the things to and about my sister that are sometimes awkward to say face to face. What do you do for a person who nearly raised you, when you got in the way most of the time … moving in and out on her for years? She has always had a soft heart for me, as I have for her. She has ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR ME! ALWAYS! More than anyone else in my family, before my husband of course. Even as grown-ups she has been my sounding board, protector, and comrade in arms.

Growing up she was the coolest of the cool. She was a true real hippie back in the ’70′s when it was cool to be. These kids these days ain’t got nothing on the gang back then.

With her long auburn hair and big hazel eyes she was gorgeous and seemed to attract many cute guys … which I LOVED. Her group of friends were fun to hang around … on a limited basis for me since I was like eleven-ish and beyond. Great music to be heard and embroidered jeans and jackets … cool drawings and ART. Must be where I got it from!

I could never show her how much I have loved being raised by her. She was a trip for sure and when you are a kid without any strong basis for feeling secure, she was there for me … always.

Happy Birthday sister dear, my friend, and fellow blogger … who is whippin’ my butt in the bloggosphere … Miss-out-do-me! I am happy to relinquish  to her the braggin’ rights. She deserves it all!

Happy Birthday Sharon … and many many more!

I hope she takes a better picture and replaces this one for me … she helps me edit since I am a hopeless failure at it!!!

 

Sister dear

I have found myself remiss!

Not that this is the first time this has happened … tends to be the normal for me these days.  Although, I did do the right thing yesterday on the historic day of my big sister’s birthday, the one thing I forgot … I am busy by the way … I am an important person! LOL Well, maybe just too busy, but, nevertheless, I omitted a very important blog post.

My tradition has been to celebrate, in words, my dear family members that have had an important day … i.e., birthday or whatever. And, I did do this in one fashion by way of her gift. But I forgot to write her a blog post for which I humbly beg forgiveness. Not to her because she would probably rather me NOT … but to myself.

I enjoy so much writing about my V.I.P.’s, and so, here is the make up!

In reference to the birthday gift … I made a lame homemade one! WooHoo, right?

What am I seven? Apparently so! But, there I went, making her a handmade gift. I think it was a hit, though, because it made us both cry! Geez we have gotten old. What goes around comes around.

Back in my younger days when I was in college and was having a “dry spell” so to speak and I would spend my Saturday nights watching “DALLAS” (which I loved, no haters out there, please) (and, yes, I am thrilled to have it make a comeback. Don’t call me at eight o’clock tomorrow night!) anyways … I would make collages.

I recycled back then. My love for magazines and love to create worked together. I would cut out words, like any good kidnapper, that were interesting and/or had a cool font … my graphics mind coming through there … and I made word collages.

Sometimes they were about certain subjects and sometimes just random. It was fun to me and they were very pretty and interesting to look at. Or, at least I thought they were. On the occasion of my Nephews graduation from high school I made him one. He probably thought … how lame!

I thought that with a collage I would say all the things to and about my sister that are sometimes awkward to say face to face. What do you do for a person who nearly raised you, when you got in the way most of the time … moving in and out on her for years? She has always had a soft heart for me, as I have for her. She has ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR ME! ALWAYS! More than anyone else in my family, before my husband of course. Even as grown-ups she has been my sounding board, protector, and comrade in arms.

Growing up she was the coolest of the cool. She was a true real hippie back in the ’70′s when it was cool to be. These kids these days ain’t got nothing on the gang back then.

With her long auburn hair and big hazel eyes she was gorgeous and seemed to attract many cute guys … which I LOVED. Her group of friends were fun to hang around … on a limited basis for me since I was like eleven-ish and beyond. Great music to be heard and embroidered jeans and jackets … cool drawings and ART. Must be where I got it from!

I could never show her how much I have loved being raised by her. She was a trip for sure and when you are a kid without any strong basis for feeling secure, she was there for me … always.

Happy Birthday sister dear, my friend, and fellow blogger … who is whippin’ my butt in the bloggosphere … Miss-out-do-me! I am happy to relinquish  to her the braggin’ rights. She deserves it all!

Happy Birthday Sharon … and many many more!

I hope she takes a better picture and replaces this one for me … she helps me edit since I am a hopeless failure at it!!!

 

Is this what is has come to?

In my effort to be a good daughter, which by the way, I fail most days…..I went over to my Mom’s this afternoon for a visit. To my joy my sister was there, also and they were in one of their usual Scrabble games. My joy was big because it is easier to be there when she is there too. It is painfully hard to visit with my Mom and it is shameful that I even say this thing. This thing that she would...”jerk a knot in me!” for even saying. My Momma, of before  Alzheimer’s,would have scolded me for such an attitude…but now she is a mere shade of her old self.

It isn’t only the Alzheimer’s to contend with but he is…. hard-a-hearin’ too, as the old folks used to call it. If I am not close by and looking at her straight on she is clueless to what I am saying. This brings up another frustrating subject. About the time my Mom started showing signs of the Alzheimer’s, my sister took her and paid for her a set of hearing aids. Sweetest thing in this world BUT….as I had guessed would happen (because I am younger and smarter!) my Mom would not even wear them! Ugh!

This of course has been a lesson in patience for my dear sister who was doing her best to love our Mom through this act of kindness. But to no avai….l she may have worn them once and no more….the cost was not cheap and at this point down the drain or still in the box, as it were. So during this visit it was me speaking, as loud as I could (and I have a big loud mouth…no comments please!) only to hear HUH????....augh!!!Jesus take the wheel!

The only good part was that every time…I would crack my sister up while saying something funny or smarmy under my breath as to not let my Mom hear me(because somehow she hears that stuff)….my sis would bust up laughing and so would I and our poor Mom siting there saying ……HUH! Bless her heart….in my sick mind it has become a sort of drinking game (without the alcohol!) for me to see how many times I can make my sister laugh after our mom says…HUH!

I am sure there is a special layer of Hell for people like me….and this will come back to haunt me when  I am eighty-three.  The conversation could not get more depressing though…(Mom)…”I have a knot on my head,…(sister) might be a mole?…..(ME)…I can call you Knot-head!…(Mom)……you would have to call me knot-face it’s on my face! Oh geez…the next time she brought it up (ten minutes later) the knot was on the other side of her head/face! Is this what it has come too? Sitting around talking about all the aches and pains we have and to top it off….. also she informed us we need to do sit ups as to lose the weight around our middles and then showed us how!….. for which my response was….”I think sit-ups are out of style now!”

I can honestly say that if what goes around comes around and I know it does (I am living proof) then good luck kids…all four of you can flip a coin to see who is stuck coming to see me on Sunday afternoon! Please know that I don’t blame you a bit….I know how you feel. What is the big deal about getting old? The big deal is we want things to stay the same…some things like our Momma’s. I want chicken and dumplins’ and chocolate pie like she can only make. That I will never get again…..bummer!I want to be able to tell her all my woes and her listen.

So to my crew….I will be with you in my heart…even if you don’t realize it and I have to say I know my Mom would be the first to gripe if this was her Mom…..actually I think she did, less than me of course because I am way more sarcastic than her….like I said, special layer of Hell waiting on me…..ouch!

Girls are smarter!

I LOVE MY NEW HAIR-DO!

Daisies are our favorite flower….and the happiest one!

Girls are always smarter and when you have a daughter that is smart it feels like you as the Mom are smarter too.

Of course it works on the flip side of that too…but that is not the point today! My girl purchased  me a new hair-do for Mother’s Day and I must say it was my favorite gift! Sorry to my three sons but let’s just be real….

Girls are always SMARTER!

No more just a fact…..thank you daughter dear! I love you BIG!

I was never worried

While thinking about my life as a Mother…..while the most recent holiday was just upon us, I reminded myself how amusing it is that I turned out as good at it as I am. Not to brag , but I would say I have been fairly successful. What I mean to say is to my knowledge my children don’t hate me…yet. Of course, keep hope alive kids…there is always time!

Cover via Amazon

To Begin With

My future was not always so bright in the area of potential motherhood. As a matter of fact my prospects for a date weren’t all that great! By the time I hit high school all my peers seem to peak in their developmental stride. Me, of course, never even knew there was such a thing as puberty…..fun for me in many ways, but not so much fun when you were as boy crazy as I was. Yes…I was that girl, I had tons of boy-friends! Not BOYFRIENDS! To my dismay, I just wasn’t the kind of girl they wanted….unless it was to hang out and ride around town and laugh and be the go-between in the hunt for babes! I guess you could say I was like ” Watts” in the movie Some Kind of Wonderful and I had several “Keith” characters I was crushing on. I promise I had more fun than the other girls.

Finally

By nearly all the way thru my Senior year at seventeen and three-fourths, I finally began to ….let’s just say mature! Just the beginnings though…..finally got a date or two….scared the crap out of me…..was not ready for ALL THAT! Would prefer to stay “Watts.” So I did and had the best time in the world. Apparently my reputation preceded me and I ended up in the annual with a snarky “staff” writer opinion! I went back to re-read what it stated and now I am even more bugged by it. Stupid freaks on the annual staff! They added a lot of snarky comments to the graduating seniors BIO.

See example A.

example A

Notice the last (2) lines….emphasis on last one! Of course maybe when I stated that...” Marriage will be a last resort unless someone comes along to change my mind.” caused the freaks to use this against me. This was only self preservation…a lonely girls cry for help…..sad, poor silly girl, yet to be grown-up! They make sitcoms about girls like me now! Born before my time once again…..story of my life! This still does not give the freaks rights to be judge and jury!

The joke’s on them…by college and about nineteen years old I was on my way….no Farrah Faucet-Majors (that was her name then!) but I could hold my own! In high school my awkwardness gave way to becoming a good person…not like the self involved girls (though I longed to be like them…I wasn’t that good!)

So.….when I was well into college, after I had loved and lost a couple of times, I fell for a good one and as to not give him “the big head” I will not embarrass him with the details. But I fell hard and fast and with him we had four gorgeous children AND I think I was a pretty darn good wife. He is still with me after thirty years and I am confident of thirty more. He did come along to change my mind and I have never looked back.

For all those awkward immature young girls out there who wonder if they were going to ever evolve into a woman…..hang on it will happen and I will tell you just as my Mom told me….when it happens you will be sorry….watch what you ask for! Enjoy the innocence and take time to enjoy the ride. Do like me and prove all those boys wrong…..the ones that peaked early and are bald or balding and have a bit of a belly…working on their second or third wife! It is their loss. And to all the ones who hold all the power in high school…I officially stick my tongue out at you…stupid bunch of freaks!

By the way.

……if there is a “stupid bunch of freaks” society that I have been rude to and UN-Politcally correct to…please forgive. This is my blog…I can gripe if I want to! And I was never worried!!

Am I Mother Enough!?…don’t get me started!

In honor of Mother’s Day I feel compelled to give the real and freakishly truthful NEWS about motherhood. This is not only a gripe session but is a call out to all the sensible mothers out there.

Being a mother is the hardest job in the world but also the most rewarding. We women are pretty special. We create people in our womb. Yes, we need help from the guys but still pretty awesome nonetheless! I see it as a great honor as well as a place of great responsibility.

I am not amused by the happy-go-lucky attitude of some people. This brings me to the point …

AM I MOM ENOUGH?

Get real!!!

Are you Mom enough?

If TIME Magazine can write a story on it, I suppose I can too!

Y’all had to take something so sweet and turn it into a curiosity, a non-news event.

Report on news that will cause us all to have good jobs or how to be millionaires in ten easy steps or something equally as moronic.

For Pete’s sake, we’ve been doing this for years. Y’all just now figuring all this out!?! I don’t remember anyone doing an expose’ on me nursing my four kids!

It is nauseating — your compelling news story on the FRONT PAGE is asking — am I mom enough!?!

SHUT UP!!

Is this the deciding factor? Nursing or staying attached longer to our children?

Do not get me wrong. I am all for it, breast-feeding that is. I had this honor — times four. It was joyful and precious and sweet and a special time in my life. I think any woman who chooses to experience this should be commended and honored, as well as those who choose not to.

It is each women’s “RIGHT” to choose what they do with their own body, if I am not mistaken. At least that is what I heard growing up in the ’60′s and I do still believe to this day. I also believe we all have a moral compass which guides us in all areas of our womanhood.

What happened to good taste and etiquette?

I do think that it shouldn’t be anything goes, which brings me to this article. Since when do we feel the need to broadcast one of the most intimate things between a woman and her child? What happened to the element of good taste?

Many years ago, when I was a young mother, still nursing my first-born, we had another couple over for dinner. About the time for dessert, the woman “whips out her left breast” and begins to nurse her baby right there at the dinner table!

My husband, being a man of great strength, looked straight ahead at me, never staring at this woman directly (much like the sun) while watching me nearly blow a gasket. No blanket to cover up, nothing! How rude could she be? Apparently VERY RUDE!

When I finally commented on it, the only answer I got was, “it is as natural as can be!”

BULL – she was an exhibitionist!

Don’t get me wrong. It is natural. And if I lived in the jungles of Africa, and that was the norm, then, by all means, I would be whipping it out with all the other women. They also had to carry big baskets on their heads and draw water miles away from their home and so on. We live in a MODERN WORLD here in America! I would like to see her work like a mule in that culture — selective freedoms I say!

God has blessed us with smart people who invented indoor plumbing and wagons to haul stuff and nice little comfortable recliner chairs — and doors with locks, behind which to go and nurse our babies in peace and quiet. We can enjoy this precious time with our little ones — instead of being out in a noisy room with people gawking at us. That cannot be peaceful and satisfying for babies.

Am I wrong here?

The unabashed drama of women who swagger around like Joan of Arc to prove a point — to prove they can! Oh Lordy, makes me want to choke. And, just in case anyone reads this and thinks — what a prude — wrong, so very wrong! I am the least prudish person you would ever meet. I have no false pride and am very aware of the world around me. That is the problem.

Back to the story …

I knew then this chick, who felt so free to sprawl out in front of God and everybody, was going to be a pill. A few years later this woman proved me right.

She managed to cause pain and discourse through her own family. Mostly, because she didn’t want anyone to be the boss of her! Give me a break! She had no character. And, if she had, she would have been more discreet about what is one of the most lovely acts any woman can perform.

These babies that we are given deserve the attention they should receive, not in a hurry up and get this done fashion, or as if they’re in the way of our lives. Take the time to nurture them.

So, after seeing this magazine cover, I must say it has become an homogenized world out there. Take something so sweet and make it mundane and common. Take all the goodness out of it and add in filthy stares and glares.

I promise you this, as the mother of three men, they were not looking at the picture with “oh how sweet that is” eyes. It was more like, what a babe! Wish that kid wasn’t in the way!

Once again, sex sells! Can’t fight city hall, I guess.

Furthermore, as if my rant hasn’t been enough, a word on the principle of “the attachment philosophy.”

Heaven help us!

Take it from a mother who nurtured ’til the cows came home, I couldn’t have been a more cuddly or huggy or kissy or allow my kids to pile up in the bed with us parent. We absolutely smothered them with attention and affirmation as well as a good whippin’ when they needed it. Not that I condone that. I have evolved! And, I wish we hadn’t, but we learn from this and it wasn’t done harshly. Just hard to think of it now.

Although, ours were normal kids with all the lies and trouble three kids can cause. We were a very close family and still are so we must have not done too badly with them.They are still pretty darn clingy, which I must say I love — most of the time!

I do feel that the twenty years (ugh!) I stayed home with them may have been better if I had left them a bit more. As I look back, a tour of duty at a daycare may not have been too harmful. It could have toughened them up. Helped them learn some street smarts and how to fend for themselves. My kids were woefully unprepared for real life and they weren’t even home schooled! (No offense to home schooled kids. That is just the banter people say — that they won’t be socialized enough!) My kids were socialized. I just think they were attached to me too much, which was my own doing I know! Mother guilt hard at work!

So when I see the front cover of a national magazine with a picture of a three-year-old boy attached to his momma‘s breast, I want to yell, “come talk to me in twenty years!!” I’ll be saying, “How’s that working for ya!”

Mother’s Day card (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the girls out there who have sacrificed their lives, bodies and heart for their children. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it was all worth it but I wouldn’t have minded not losing my twenty-something body. Yes, I am blaming my four for that!

It is Mother’s Day. I can do that just today!!!

Oh Brother!

Growing up in a large family can be at best, the most awesome time of ones life and at the worst, the most awesome time of ones life! I can speak of this first hand since I am the youngest child in a family of five kids. Yes the answer is clear now……the reason why I am what I am….I am the youngest child which makes me….the BABY! The last and bottom rung of the ladder….the bottom step in the stair steps of young uns’ in our family. But, someone had to be the first step…the jumping off point, if you will, to the beginnings of our clan which brings me to my thoughts for this day.

This is the special day that my big brother was born…nine years before me…the leader of the pack! I can not even describe the amount of adoration I have always had for my brother. It was borderline sheer worship at different times in my life…..who could blame me? He is the only son, my only brother and as old as he is in reference to me…that nine years was a huge gap. A gap that has always been more like a “grand canyon-esque” hole and I spent most of my teenage years yearning for his attention. Sadly he wasn’t there….at nineteen he volunteered and entered the Vietnam War.

Needless to say It was very hard to see him leave. Timing is everything. This exodus coincided with the season of change our family was in. My father had left us, high and dry, so to speak, they sold my beloved farm and my Mom, Me and two sisters moved “to town”. Since we lived in the country it was a big deal, at least to me. City schools and city kids and a world of adventure as well as fear.It’s tough on those mean streets!

My brother went through all his basic training and ended up becoming an ARMY helicopter pilot which no one was more prouder than me. But he gave up so much, he was in college, left his home and family but to him he probably chose the lesser of the two worlds. Life was hard for the oldest child back then, this beautiful boy who grew up fishing and hunting as well as being made to work like a mine mule. I think he was living the dream on one hand on our beloved farm but still having to “man up” to my father’s demands.

I was always intrigued by his bedroom and always wanted to sneak in there and see what secrets it held. I was reminded of his room many years later when I opened the door of my eldest sons room and there was an undeniable “boy scent!” It took me straight back to those days of standing at my brother’s door daring myself to enter in……chicken as I was I never did, but that scent of sweaty man boy was the same. Funny how things like that stick in your mind or should I say senses, just like the fact I can’t pick up a book without smelling it. Yep, I am weird! His kingdom was one that I had never trod but I desperately wanted in. The next few years were filled with anticipation and fear. I can not even bear to feel the pain our Mom must have felt knowing her baby was so far away in a War. This is one emotion I never want to feel. Breaks my heart for her but he seemed to take it in stride and had a big adventure….in case anyone ever wondered…he was the one who saved so many people as well as single-handed kept the bad guys at bay. He was/is an American HERO and there has never been any question about that.

When he came back from defending the American Way (Superman wasn’t the only one!) he went and met a girl and got married! About the time I thought he was coming back home…to ME! he gets married!!! Who does she think she is….. this hateful girl…I was not happy about this news and I was in a pout for a good while…even when I went to the wedding, I acted okay but I was mad on the inside. I had lost him for ever! I was never going to really get to know him. Probably a good thing because if I had ever learned of his frailties or human-ness I may have been crushed. In my world he is larger than life. Nobody had a greater big brother than me and if they ever tested that fact I would prove them wrong….I had my list of his bravery! I did get a few bonuses…the time he came home in his Shelby Cobra and he picked me up at high school….boy was that a thrill and I had to be the coolest Oakland High School girl ever! I eventually accepted this chick who stole my brother…..truthfully, I LOVED HER! She was kind and very sweet to me, I couldn’t keep from loving her. A few years later they made me an aunt and I was even more enamored with this beautiful little boy. Then they had another boy and these two were precious.

Later on they were transferred to a base closer to home which was great. I was able to go there to visit, stay the weekend and one time I was invited to go on base to a dance with them. Although I was a little disappointed because none of the guys gave me much attention…someone said it was because I was his sister and the word was…steer clear! So in that case, I wasn’t offended….even though I thought I was pretty cute back then…(ha-ha) it was even better that he was being protective. Ahhhh the best feeling ever! Though I think if my memory serves me I ended up figuring out how to bypass his protection….I was in college for Pete’s sake…a gal’s gotta flirt!

I have always been a little sister and have been blessed with great siblings who never really picked on me, they always nurtured me and looked out for me and my love for them all is BIG. My brother was always kind of mystery which probably was a preview to marrying a man…..seems like they all are a mystery to some extent. I always compared every guy I ever dated to my brother. Sadly my father wasn’t my role model, I loved him but he was absent enough to not be first and foremost. My brother was the perfect Man in my world. Oh the mocking I have endured because of my gushing about my brother. I just take it in stride and proudly laugh because I know he is amazing and I don’t care who I tell.

The years have kept us apart but he was there for me to walk me down the aisle on my most important day. The sweetest part was when I stated, as we were nearly walking in that…” I didn’t want to do all this!” meaning walking in and being stared at (the most embarrassing thing on earth) he quickly responded…”if this isn’t what you want we can go right out the back door!” AWEEE how sweet! “NO” I said, “I want to marry him I just don’t want to be stared at!” I really was bashful way back when!! So after I explained, we were good to go. he held my hand and I was so proud to have him by my side. It was just like I was a fairy princess. My favorite man was taking me to my new favorite man….it doesn’t get much sweeter than that. There have been other times in my life since then that he has been there for me…I have called him to pour out my heart, ask for help and counsel and sometimes just to shoot the breeze. Not that he is a big talker…but he is a good listener…not that he could get a word in edge wise with me anyways!

Distance and time has been the enemy of our relationship as it is for most siblings. We grow up and away, create new lives apart from our childhood, but I cant help but feel like the squirt kid sister when I am with them all at one time. I bow to their pecking order, keep my place and enjoy the placement of my step in this stair step world of brothers and sisters. We know each other in a unique way…we know each others history, real or like-real in our own minds. I know my fantasy life I built around my brother is mostly just that. But it is my memory and I can keep it in my heart just the way I want to.

Happy Birthday Big Brother! I love you and am proud to know you. You have enriched my life more than you will ever know.