Musing on Memories...

This is a picture of me in my favorite head scarf (I've got a flat twist style under here that I'll unveil tomorrow if it's cute. :lol:). I have yet to find another scarf that truly stays on my head at night. I'm not even sure what material this is, but it doesn't snag my hair or anything. But let me tell you why this is REALLY my favorite scarf.

I "stole" it from my mom. Yep. I'm one of those kids who takes stuff from her mom. :lol: I must have needed a scarf one day, and probably asked to borrow one. I'm sure she dug through her drawer of scarves and other hair accessories, and handed me this one. I can't even remember when I got it from her, but it's been around for a while. Every time she sees me with it, she says, "that is MY scarf!" We laugh...but she's not getting this scarf back!

OK...if she really needed it, I'd give it back. But really, I just like having little pieces of home with me. My sisters and I laugh about this all the time. My sister Pam has this ceramic bowl that we used to always use to mix up cake batter and other goodies. I have this old glass candy dish (and do I put candy in it? Nope! In college it held the pens and pencils on my desk). I don't now what my sister Shelley has. I think I have the old cookie cutters as well...and I can't even tell you the last time I made some homemade cookies that required cutters. But I got 'em! Once, I was at the flea market when I first moved here, and I bought these HUGE wooden utensils. You know the ones - the fork and the spoon that every black family had on the wall in the 70s? They reminded me of home. I think I paid $2. And note that my mom still has hers on the wall. For years, my mom forbade us from removing our baby books from the house. A couple of years ago she finally said, just take 'em! So now I have my baby book with photos, my first footprints, report cards from elementary school, and notes from my pre-school teachers. I love it. I know everything that's in there, but I just go back and glance for GP sometimes.

These are all the items that remind me of Bruce Street - that's the street we grew up on. We lived there until I was 19. In an old school colonial house. We had a basement and an attic, in addition to the main floor and upstairs. We spent so many good times in that house. When I go home I usually drive by...I wish my parents still lived there. Those were really the good ol' days. I was able to go to the bus stop by myself. I walked home from school with no issues. My high school sweetheart kissed me for the first time on the corner of Bruce and Salt Springs, while it was lightly snowing. When I was little, and it would snow really hard, my brothers would be charged with shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house, and our driveway. I had a mini shovel and I would go outside and "help" with the shoveling. I remember it taking 15 minutes just to get dressed to go outside. Then we'd be out there for 15 minutes and our toes and fingers would be numb, and we'd be back inside. I'm sure my mom just shook her head.

Bruce Street was the place of the late night Pokeno parties my mom used to have. The place where a lot of our holiday gatherings took place - Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July. We had a huge backyard...sometimes my mom would let all the neighborhood kids come to our yard for Easter Egg hunts. If my friend Jemica and I couldn't finda 3rd person for double dutch, we would tie the ropes to the chain link fence back there, and the two of us would take turns jumping and turning in the driveway.

Our house was right at the crest of the hill. The sewer cover that was in the middle of the street, across from our driveway, was "home base" for kick ball and baseball. The utility pole across from our front yard was the start of many street races. The tree to the left of our driveway was the base for hide and go seek. Many games of "red light-green light" and "freeze tag" were played in front of our house.

Even when we couldn't go outside, we had plenty of stuff to do in the house. We had a sunporch off of the den. In the summer time if it was raining, sometimes we'd sit out on the porch (it was screened in). We used to roller skate in the basement. Matter of fact, I have a scar on my right shin to this day, from accidentally skating into my dad's tool box. At some point my parents got a pool table from someone, and we used to play pool down there. I had a love-hate relationship with that basement. I don't do creepy crawlies, and of course there were always spiders, and in the summer time, the snails used to get in. Blech! But, it was the coolest placed to be in the summer time, because we didn't have central air.

The attic was sweltering in the summer time, and freezing in the winter time. That was our place to accumulate our "junk." Stuff we weren't using, but we absolutely HAD to hold on to. My mom would wake us up in the summer time at 6:00 am to clean it out. The attic door was the basketball rim for me and my brother. We'd take an old wire hanger and untwist the top, then bend it into a circle. Hang the "hook" part of the hanger over the door - instant hoop! We only played with a tennis ball, though. And he always cheated.

I could really go on here for days...I had a really blessed childhood, and I think my brothers and sisters would all agree. I just love looking around the apartment and seeing reminders of it. I could be having a horrible day, but then I see that candy dish, and I smile.

What are some of your favorite childhood memories? Do you have "pieces of home" around your residence?

I Miss You!

My aunt (left) and my mom...June or July 1989, right before my sister's wedding

July 30, 1945 - December 20, 2001...

Like Michael sang, "gone too soon." My Aunt Lennie would have been 64 today. Esophogeal cancer. What was crazy is that she had stopped smoking years prior. But she said she felt like she had some kind of blockage in her throat. I think she knew something was wrong, and that's why she waited so long to get it checked out. Had she gotten it checked out sooner, would she still be here? We'll never know.

Aunt Lennie was my mom's youngest sister...the youngest of my grandmother's 6 kids. She was the life of the party. She made family gatherings so fun, because she was always being crazy. We have lots of photos of her just making silly faces. She was always there for us. She never had any kids, but she was like a second mom for us. If my mom decided to take us to Darien Lake (which is now a Six Flags park), she would be along to help with the driving. If I remember correctly, she is the one who got my brother into bowling.

She and my mom were really close. They had each other's backs. They used to always act silly together, but my mom knew if she needed something, she could count on Aunt Lennie. Back when my brothers were toddlers, my grandmother lived with us. My brother Jay had done something bad (who knows what he did, lol). He got a spanking. He was full of theatrics and that prompted my grandmother to say something to my mom about the way she was disciplining my brother. My mom started telling my grandmother that she couldn't tell her how to raise her kids...knowing my mom, it came out a bit attitudinal. Well grandma didn't take kindly to that and she reached out in reflex and socked my mom. My Aunt Letha, mom's oldest sister, wanted to know what mom did wrong, etc. Aunt Lennie called laughing and said, "well did she get you with the upper cut, or overhand?" That was the kind of personality she had. She could see the humor in just about everything.

Aunt Lennie had this way with animals. I don't know what it was. She could go to a shelter, and if there was a dog in there that hated everyone and everything, the dog would somehow just be in love with her. That's how it was with her second dog, Mookie. She had no intentions of getting a dog that day, but when they took him out of the cage and let her hold him, that fool would not go back in the cage. And he was aggravating. One of those little ankle biting noise makers. But like I said, he liked her. It was the rest of us he could do without.

When I got out of undergrad, I spent the summer in Buffalo trying to find a job. Ultimately it didn't work out, and I moved home. I ended up finding my first claims job within 2 weeks of being home. I'm glad I went home, though. I ended up getting on a bowling team with my Aunt and my mom. We had so much fun! We came in first and second place in the two years we bowled. And we also took a trip to Atlantic City. That was my first time in a real casino. I'm so glad I got to do those things with her. If I had moved down South right after college, I would have missed out!

I remember when I first got the call that she had cancer. My sister Shelley was the one who called and told me. I was upset, but I just thought - radiation and chemotherapy, and we'll move on with life. She had her treatment, and we thought she was going to be ok. This was the spring 2001. I remember at one point during her treatment, they accidentally punctured her esophagus. She had to go in for emergency surgery. But since they were in there, they tried to remove the cancer as best they could, and rebuild her esophagus. Even though we were pissed that they punctured her esophagus, we thought it was good that at least now they could go in and get the tumor out.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving, 2001. I remember talking with my mom, and she said that Aunt Lennie just didn't look well to her. She went into the hospital the week after Thanksgiving. They told her the cancer had spread to various organs, and they gave her 6 months to live. She never left the hospital and she was gone 3 weeks later.

When my mom called me and told me that I needed to come home, because Aunt Lennie wasn't doing well, I just remember going numb. I told my managers, and they were very understanding. I arranged my PTO, and my other aunt got me a buddy pass so I could fly out immediately. I flew in on the 19th and went straight to the hospital to see her. She was very weak. They pretty much had her on morphine and she wasn't talking much. But I'll never forget, when I walked in the room and she saw me, her eyes got so wide. She didn't know I was coming. I hugged her, and held her hand. She said that she liked my hair (I had cut it short and she hadn't seen it). We sat with her for a little while, and then we left. I remember trying not to cry, because I didn't want to upset her, and I didn't want to upset my mom. But I knew that was going to be my last time seeing her. The next morning, I woke up to a call from my mom, saying that she was gone.

That's the first time someone I was really close to had passed away. My Uncle Rafe had died from cancer in 1989, but he lived down south - we didn't get to spend that much time with him. But this was different. I cried my eyes out for a few minutes. My mom was distraught. I really didn't have much time to break down, though. I had to make the calls to people, because my mom couldn't handle it. I really wished my sisters had been there that day, but they were still en route. Things had to be taken care of, and we just had to get it done.

Sometimes, I wish I had NOT seen her at the hospital. I wish my last vision of her would have been when she was happy and healthy. But other times, I'm glad that I did get to see her before she passed...I know she was glad to see me. I could see it in her eyes.

I love looking at old pictures of us from Thanksgivings and Christmases past. We talk about her all the time, and her memory definitely lives on. I found this old picture of her, me and my cousin. It was summer time, and we were at the annual cook out that the hospital used to have (my mom and both my aunts all worked at the same hospital). We all have our bathing suits on. We've climbed up into a tree, and she's holding us there. We're all smiling and happy. I think I was about 5 years old. I'm going to try and scan it later, and if I can get it done, I'll upload it here.

I miss you, Aunt Lennie! But I know you're up there cutting up, probably with Uncle Rafe. You two have probably started your own bowling league, like Monique said yesterday. :)

Friday's thoughts...

Another business week is coming to an end. The world is reeling with the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. With Farrah, we knew she was sick - like we know that Walter Kronkite and Patrick Swayze are not doing well. But Michael? I guess that some people knew about the Rx drugs. Perhaps that's why CBS News already had a special cued up to go by 10:00pm, when we had just found out he died around 6:00pm. Somebody knew SOMETHING - the general public just didn't know.

His death, and the many postings about old songs and videos, has made me think back on happy times in my childhood. My sister P was THE ULTIMATE Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 fan. There were huge posters of Michael all over our room. She took the Thriller album cover and opened up to that pic of him in the black and white, and tacked it to the wall. She had pages ripped out from Right On! magazine. I remember at one point, she tried to tack some pictures to the ceiling, but they wouldn't stay. There were three big posters - one was of him posing in that famous yellow and white outfit he had. The other one, he had on jeans and a brown leather jacket. The last one was a HUGE picture of his face...he was posting with his hand on his chin, and he had on a red and white striped shirt. She even had one of those black light posters - you know the fuzzy ones, with the fluorescent colors. They glow when you shine the black light on them. Do you think we had a black light? Yeah, right! But she had that poster up!

And then the one memory I never let her live down: taking down my train!

We lived in this old colonial house. The room we shared was kind of a split bedroom. There was the actual bedroom, and then connected to that there was a sun room/sewing room. That sun room didn't have any heating ducts or anything. I'm not sure what it was supposed to be, or why it was designed like that. My oldest sister, S, moved into this little sun room, and then P and I shared the bigger room (I really wish I had some pics to scan in to show you). I had this "alphabet train" - it was part of a coloring book I guess. S and I had colored in the letters and the "train", from A to Z. We put them up on the wall in our room so that it flowed like a train. That was my only decorative contribution to the room.

I came home from school one day, and do you know P had taken down my train, so she could make more room for MJ????? But that wasn't the worst part - the worst part was, she just threw the train away!!!! Now by this time, I think S had left for the Marines, and I ended up with her "room." I coulda put my train up in there, or something! Verklempt! You owe me a train! LOL

Back to the reminiscing. Unlike some of these lazy chil'ren folks are raising today, we had chores to do. Saturdays were usually the days where we would have to clean up our room. We had to clean out our closets. We had to clean baseboards sometimes. We had to get on our hands and knees with the Mop n' Glow (do they even make that anymore?) and clean the hardwood floor in our bedrooms. We were not allowed to have messy bedrooms; we couldn't claim the room as our "domain" - all the rooms were my parents' rooms - they paid the mortgage!

The soundtrack of these cleaning sprees was The Jacksons. P was always Michael; I never got to sing lead. I lodged my complaints to no avail. I was Tito/Jackie/Jermaine/Randy/Marlon - I sang all the backgrounds. We had the moves from the cartoon. We used the handle of the dust mop as our mic stand. If we needed a cordless mic, we used a brush. We sang all the hits - ABC, Stop The Love You Save, With A Child's Heart, Never Can Say Goodbye, Mama's Pearl...P knew all the words to EVERY song...I knew my background parts and some of the leads. She joined the fan club in the 80s, and they sent this record. I think it was mostly them talking about things, and then on the B side there was a "surprise song" where they just improvised. We learned that one, too.

I don't remember what age I was, but one day I got the crazy idea that a 78 record would float like a Frisbee. So I took the "Destiny" album and sailed it across the room. Why? I have no clue. Well, I had no aim then (and still don't now), and the dang record hit the door frame and cracked a chunk out. I'm sure she was livid, but she didn't try to kill me. She still kept that dang record, too. She just couldn't listen to the first two songs on either side. Fast forward to college...I was in the music store down the street from my school. I saw the Destiny CD and I bought it. I sent it to her with a card and apologized. :)

My oldest sister always (jokingly) apologizes that she left me in P's clutches, to be tortured with Michael Jackson and the Jacksons (she enlisted in the Marines when I was 9). But I loved it! We had so much fun! When I was a child, I got to be a child, and my sisters were a big part of that. I wasn't running around worrying about teenage things as a child. I was just goofing off and having fun with my family, and the rest of the Bruce Street gang. Music was a big part of that - that's probably why I love old school music so much as it is. I have several MJ/Jackson 5/Jacksons albums on my iPod, and they are great for road trips. When I hear the old songs, I always flashback to the old days on Bruce Street...and it brings a smile to my face.

RIP, Michael...thanks for the memories. :)