Music is a part of life

I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t a part of my life. Some of my earliest memories are of riding in a VW Van with an assortment of young people that my parents were in a gospel group with. Others are of music playing on the record player or the radio in the house. Mom sang often while I was growing up. Her soft airy soprano voice wove harmony to the alto and soprano voices of we children as we sang in the car on the way to church.

I sang in the choir in middle school and high school. My voice has changed since then but I still love remembering the music. The joy of being in the high school music room during lunch hour and listening to the piano or the radio with other students was incomparable.  It was a time of freedom and laughter and acceptance.

When my daughter was first born, I sang to her from the start. Her first lullaby was actually Silent Night. She still gets sleepy when she hears it. (smile) Many miles were walked up and down the hallway in our little home as I sang her songs to sooth her. She was not a difficult baby but hearing music made her that much easier.

My radio plays in my car all the time. I have eclectic taste when it comes to music. Often I prefer country music and would love to hear the older country more often… things with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. Fortunately for me, the station I listen to the most plays a lot of these artists on Saturday nights.

Family gatherings often include music. When all 4 sisters and Mom are together it is guaranteed to have music going on. We love to do the karaoke thing, but will sing just about anything that we can. To hear us do some of the old gospel rounds is amazing. I have video of my next sister after me singing with me and Mama as we were entertaining the toddlers while we got dinner together. Erinne had a lower voice than I did for a while so she tended to do the lower while I did higher and Mom wove around us.  I wish I had more recordings of these times.

I often play jazz on the radio at work for a soft background noise. It is soothing to the ear and helps to make the day go faster. I seem to get a lot more work done with the music playing than when I don’t have it on.

I can’t imagine my life without music. I am thankful for the memories I have of it and smile at them.

The right stuff

I came home Monday evening to be told that the metal pipes under my kitchen sink had disintegrated and needed to be replaced. I was very upset as I hate having to repair things in the house. My eighteen year old son and I gathered up the parts and headed to Walmart to try to find what was needed for the repairs. We purchased a few items that we thought would work and headed home again. My son worked under the sink for several hours trying to get things fitted up properly and it didn't happen. My husband called on his way home from work and said he would pick up parts for it and we could get it fixed when he got home. Again my son worked under the cabinet with the 2nd set of new pipes and tried to get them to align properly. The plastic nuts just weren't connecting to the metal drain in the sink. Son was completely frustrated and decided to go take a shower and go to bed. I attempted to get the nut to align properly and also had issues. My husband managed to get one of the nuts on but it cross threaded and of course that wasn't going to work.
Tuesday night when I came home I crawled into the cabinet to try to get these pipes to fit. I fussed and fumed and grunted away as I was trying to get that stupid plastic nut to screw onto the metal drain. I pulled the metal nuts off the old pipes and tried to get them over the plastic pipe to fit to the metal drain. The metal nut wouldn't go over the bend of the plastic pipe. It just wasn't working and I gave up before I threw the pieces across the room.
Wednesday night my husband stopped and bought a third set of pipes with an additional piece to them, a little plastic piece that was straight for the plastic bend pipe to fit onto. The metal nut fit around that little plastic piece and then the bend pipe fit onto that piece as well. The job was complete in ten minutes and I had a working sink again.
It never fails to amaze me how quick and easy a job can be when the parts are correct and line up properly.

Postal memories

Today someone mentioned the postal service to me. It made me remember my growing up years at the local post office. My father was a mail man for all the years I can remember. For most of that time he had the route that took him walking the entire way through the two main business streets in town and then over the course of several local residential streets.
Sometimes Daddy would walk to work even and be there at about 7:30 to start sorting the mail for his route. The back room of the post office was a busy area, full of bags of mail that had come in and boxes and packages. There were male voices deep and rich with laughter and pleasantness. The men my daddy worked with were always kind to my siblings and I. There was a dustiness to that back room as well but you knew the people that worked there enjoyed what they did.
Many days at the end of Daddy's shift I would be sitting in the little break room at the back of the post office waiting for him to be finished so we could go home. We kids knew that we needed to be quiet and respectful, but that we were allowed to do our studying or reading after heading there from our various afterschool activities. It saved Mama a drive into town to pick us up and then having to come back in for Daddy. We lived 3 miles from town central so it was a lesser walk to get to the post office and wait.
Sometimes as our bus was waiting for the junior high kids to get on in the afternoon we would see Daddy walk past on his route. Often my brother would jump off the bus and go walk the rest of the route with Daddy. He did a lot of the route with him on Saturdays as well. I know that it was good for them to have that time together. They were the only men in a housefull of women.
I know that times have to change but sometimes I wish it were like yesteryear when times were simpler and mail was delivered with a smile and a friendly wave. When people were not in such a rush and there was more respect for each other.

A Child's Gift

I was reading a blog of another person who spent many years in the town where I grew up earlier today and it caused me to remember something with a smile.
He was talking about picking Lady Slipper flowers, a wild orchid that is protected in the state of New York. Perhaps back in the years he picked them they weren't protected. I remember picking one that I found as a child. I was told after I picked it that it was against the law to pick them. I was terrified of being arrested for picking a flower. I was all of about 9 years old at the time.
I had just wanted to give my mother something I thought was so pretty and I had never seen one before. The usual bouquets that were picked for my mom almost every day they were in bloom were made up of wild violets with their delicate stems and dandelions with their yellow petals.
Mom would smile at each bouquet brought to her and put them in a little jelly jar or a shrimp coctail glass with a little water. She got many such bouquets and usually several times a day as there were five children of varying ages bringing them to her.
I can still see the bouquets put on the windowsill over the kitchen sink. They were picked with such love and desire to show that love. It was a child's gift to a loving mother.

Helping Hands

Over the last year or more I have seen posts on my facebook page for this community function or that where the money is going to help someone in the community that is dealing with a hardship, usually cancer. I have to say that I admire how the community gathers around its people and how others are so willing to assist in the little ways they are able.
Sometimes though I wonder if the money isn't the easiest part to give. I know the need for it is there as there are bills that need to be paid. But I wonder about the emotional needs that are there as well. What about going to the home of the young mother who has found out she is fighting cancer for the 2nd time and asking to have her kids for the afternoon so that the mother can have a rest? What about bringing over a favorite meal for the family to eat so they don't have to worry about cooking that night? How about the mother of three that has two children with disabilities and no help from the children's father because he is a deadbeat? How do we help her out?
I wonder sometimes if people don't offer the spiritual and emotional assistance because they just don't know what they can do to help or if they are worried it will be taken wrong. Sometimes for those of us that grew up on the Island it is a matter of being given the opportunity to gather stregnth just from breathing the salt air of the ocean and feeling the sand between our toes because someone has given us 2 hours alone. Sometimes it is helping that single mother by just sitting and letting her talk or cry or rant.
Many times the prayers of "prayer warriors" is all that can be offered. Sometimes we think that isn't enough for us to give. Trust me when I say that God hears those prayers and is working in His time to make things go according to His plan. It isn't always easy to rest and wait for His timing. It isn't always easy to understand why the sickness isn't healed right away or why He takes someone back unto Heaven when we would rather keep them here. It is easy to rail against the inequity of it all.
I find though that our needs get met in many small ways and sometimes big ones. We as a community need to look for the means and ways to help. And we as the recipients of the "helping hands" need to appreciate the ways people try to help us out and Count our Blessings even when they seem so small.

Learning an old lesson all over again.

God has a way of teaching us life lessons over and over again. Sometimes I think it is because we just didn't learn it right the first time. Thankfully He does it lovingly even if sometimes it takes a hit over the head.
I was taught again the lesson of not saying anything if you can't say something nice. I always have tried over the years to keep this lesson in my mind. How little did I realize that I hadn't been applying it as often as I should have especially somewhere that is should have been obvious to have used it.
It never fails to amaze me how God teaches us either. When we least expect it He is able to use something in our lives to teach us the lesson we need to be taught.
I have not always been as kind as I should have to someone even if they were not aware of my unkindness. God has made me aware of this today. My prayer is that HE helps me to remember this lesson today and in the future so that I can give forth the kindness to everyone that I would want given to me and to those that I love.

pictures in the mind

Today a coworker was talking about an old fashioned style toaster. She forwarded a picture of what she meant to another coworker. He then showed me the picture and it was completely different from what I had pictured in my mind.  The picture she sent was of a rounded sided toaster, standard two slice but more of a toaster from the 50's than what I had in my head. I was picturing the toasters that looked like a triangle that had the heating element in the center and the doors hinged to hold the bread in place then you had to flip the bread to toast the other side of it. The man who got the picture was thinking of a toaster oven. I asked my husband what came into his mind when I said "old fashioned toaster" and he got a picture in his mind similar to what was in mine but his was to be put over a stove for the heating of the bread.
It made me laugh when I thought of all the different pictures that come into mind when words are put together. My mother blogs as well at http://kathleen-thewordsmith.blogspot.com/    A recent blog she had was on the old style typewriters and other old fashioned items.
Her blog made me realize that so many of the kids today won't have ever used anything other than a computer keyboard or a tablet. They won't know about typewriters and carbon paper and phones that had cords attached and rotary dials. They don't know about phonographs and reel style lawn mowers. Many children today don't know about camping in a tent and dealing with the heat because they haven't been exposed to it.
Technology is great but sometimes I wish for the days of yore when things were not as easy and instantaneous.