Family Strength

 For those looking for a story, I thought of one the other day and don't think it has been shared here before. 

I would say I was in the 7th grade and I had this great English teacher Mrs. Klickyn I know I am spelling her name wrong and will look it up and correct it once the sun comes up. LOL. She was one of the best teachers I ever had. Anyway, we had to write a story about learning a lesson. I went home and was telling my parents and my dad who wasn't usually the first to help with homework said he knew a story I could write. As he told the story and I listened I didn't recall the incident that he was talking about but I have told the story so many times since I can see it happen in my head as I tell it.

My father told me that he and I were walking along a sidewalk, I was small maybe 2 years old. As we walked I tripped and fell and my father stood by me waiting for me to get up. These two ladies walking in the opposite direction approached and said to him, aren't you going to help her. My father responded I will not always be here to pick her up but I will be here to make sure she gets up on her own. 

That is it. That is the story and the lesson. Short and concise. Dad as a rule didn't pick us up when we fell or fell short of anything. He was there if we needed him but for the most part, he just stood by for us to be strong enough to get up on our own. 

Some might think this a sad story of a father not sweeping up his little girl and comforting her. But at my age now and maybe even back then I know I am stronger because of that very reason. My father passed away in 2021 as I stood in the church with my brother and sisters and all our friends and family this story came to mind. Dad had stood by us long enough for us to be strong enough to stand on our own. 

I didn't know the last time I saw him it would be the very last. I thought we would meet a few months later for our birthdays, but that was not what fate had in store. So for those that don't know my father passed away in Anchorage, Alaska in the hospital not from Covid but from complications due to having it. 

When I fall or falter and get back up I know it is because of the way we were raised that I am the person I am and I will get back up. 

Peace, Happiness and Love

So much of everything is the same. Today is the same as yesterday and tomorrow probably won't be very different. Last weekend and and again today I watched a couple episodes of a documentary about Rick Rubin and his place Shangri-La. His home, recording studio, paradise. I am not sure if it is perfection but it seems a simple life not an easy one or maybe it is? He has found a way to make it his own. The thing that interested me was that he is not a person whose music I would have been interested in but there are themes that I believe and after watching the first episode there is music he has made with people that I like. But he tells the musicians, if you are true to yourself you are successful. You may not have a top 10 gold record but you can walk away from your work and be proud of it. Today as I was watching he spoke of meditation and these musicians that come there find a inner peace that they didn't have. I don't feel like he tells them what to do but shows them. Asks questions, like do you like the way that feels? I am sure there are plenty of people that tell these artists what will sell and what won't but Rick wants you to be happy with your work. Try something you've never tried stick your neck out and at the same time look inside. On the episode I watched last week he said that is why there are one hit wonders. That passion they have when they are not making money isn't there when they try to repeat the magic. The influences are crazy and the fans that are let down when an artist can't duplicate it. They spends their whole life creating the first album but only have 2 years to get the next one out.

 As I watch I feel like he is a life coach I couldn't afford to go to. For someone to tell me Jeanne, you have to be happy. This isn't like asking do you like bacon with your eggs. This is saying what makes you truly happy and do it. Unfortunately I have not yet found a way to make money at the things I love but I have never stuck my neck out to do those things either. I do them in my spare time, at home alone, at 3am. Funny how my happiness and joy from writing or photography sometimes comes through hard times. Sometimes tears in my eyes before I even take the picture. That is how you know it is good. People don't understand that sometimes letting go of the things that make me worry bring tears to my eyes to but those aren't sad tears. Sometimes they are happy ones.

Sitting here today I thought I would listen to some music from the musicians I saw on this documentary today. I found at the end that one that I was going to look up has passed away since the filming.  Instead I turned on my XM radio and it was on Prime Country. Right out of the gate some Gatlin Brothers, All the Gold in California, then a Reba duet with Linda Davis Does He Loves You, then Love Me by Colin Raye if you don't know that song well the if you aren't crying listening to the words the last couple lines say "Between now and then, 'til I see you again. I'll be loving you, Love Me." When we were kids mom would leave us notes with what we needed to do around house before she got home and her signature was simply the word Love. I have always signed mine Love, Me.

Ironically this was not a word spoken in our house as kids. It was an understanding that we were loved. It was a given. We had food, clothes and lots of family. We never wanted for anything and as we grew up that is how we understood love. There weren't hugs exchanged or kisses it was the act of love that we were raised with. I didn't even know that it wasn't the way every one's family was until I got older and I remember a friend trying to hug me and I was kinda put off by this awkward showing of affection. Now as adults we have all learned how to show affection of this type but it still to me isn't all that love is. I still believe love is a verb. It is an action not a gift. Yes, a hug is an action but so spending time with a person, just visiting or talking. It is putting a roof over your head and feeding you. I know some are going to take that is being mean. It wasn't mean it was love. My favorite dad story is one from when I was very young walking down a sidewalk with my father and I tripped. He stood there and waited for me to get up. He didn't rush to grab me and wipe my knees. These two ladies were there and saw what happened and said to my dad, Aren't you going to pick her up. My dad said, She has to learn to get up on her own. I won't always be there to pick her up. I told that story in 7th grade for a project.  So to each their own but I know that story is love.

I know I always say I don't know what I am writing about when I start. This blog is a free form expression of the things in my head and at the time I stop to share them. As I spend this evening listening to the music that made me I think why in the world don't we have music like this and the answer is maybe love is given easily and everyone is owed something. No one wants to do anything the hard way anymore. People don't want to wait or put in the time. The last thing I want to share from this series was that people think that when they get their gold album they will be happy but that void can't be filled like that. This is why you have to be happy with what you do.

A Hard Road in a Good Car

Today I saw a picture of a coffee cup someone posted on Facebook and it said "What would the name of your autobiography be? And this is where I do some of my best work. I thought ok. Quick Jeanne, Think of a name for your autobiography. And instantly Hard Road came to mind but I thought that is not all there is to it. And in less than a minute I came up with A Hard Road in a Good Car. Typed it out because I thought that isn't bad at all and if I write things down I have a better tenancy to remember them. So, after working in the garage for a few hours and it started lightning and thundering so I thought this would be a good time to figure out about my Hard Road in a Good Car.

I do my best creative thinking in the shower. Probably why I take such long showers. Am I getting clean or writing a book? Sometimes it is hard to say but most days those thoughts are out of my brain by the time I am dry and off to work but today I have the time to sit down and write and I thought The road is my life but the car is that my body? Not really but it has served me well so far. Little more than a regular oil change and adding anti-freeze and windshield washer fluid. I do change the tires I have a mechanic I have known all my life and he takes care of my car so I don't have to worry. Then I thought unlike most people of my age I have only owned 4 cars in 34 years.

1978 Mustang II
1987 Mustang
1993 Cavalier
2005 Sebring

Now I thought about the cars and I thought about me and well a Mustang II was a small Mustang.
What is a mustang but a wild stray. My Mustang II years were 1984-1987 end of high school and beginning of the rest of my life. All of which I lived in the same house and worked at the same job and went to school most of those years or tried.

My Mustang years 1987-1993 Still wild but mostly on my own working full time and in debt. These years did not end because I got another car but because my Mustang was flooded with salt water in front of my house on Clearwater Beach during the No Name Storm or Storm of the Century in 1993. Whichever you like to call it. I will never forget telling my roommate when we got home from a late night out that it had never in my life time flooded where we lived. Well he woke me up a few hours later to 3 inches of water in our garage. We looked out the front door and all we could see of the fire hydrant across the street was the top screw. I took pictures the rest of the night and the next morning. Once the sun came out and the storm had passed David and I ventured out past the porch and his car was fine but that Mustang sat a little lower and it had water inside. I washed the car had it detailed but it only ran one more time and then Totaled from water damage. So this girl that didn't have a lot now had less. So she borrowed her Grandmother's Ford Fairmont. I don't count it as being mine. It like my life was kinda a shambles but it got me from A to B as they say.

Then 1995-2005 the Cavalier years. Not really a supporter of King Charles through the English Civil War or a horseman even though I had two Mustangs see it kinda tells a story all it's own. I was more of the adjective definition rather offhand, indifferent. These are the years I met and married Brian we moved from a house I had lived in for 10 years to the house we are in now. We traveled and were spending the money we made and the future was far away. I finally left my first job not by choice but that same job that got me that first Mustang II now 20 years later I had to leave.

Now the Sebring years 2005-today. What is a Sebring? It is a town in the middle of Florida is that it well ironically no. It is a word derived from yes, say it with me Swedish. Brian is Swedish. One definition says it is a bright warrior's name. Today I think of myself as a warrior when it comes to the struggles I have had. These last 13 years we have had our struggles.  Well I had never related the cars that I have owned with the periods in my life before today but it seems like I picked appropriately.

The story of my life didn't start in 1984 when I got my first car. Actually the first car I ever remember is my mom's 1963 Fiat. Three on the tree as they would say. I don't know if it is just funny now or really ironic but a Fiat is an authoritative determination. If that isn't my mother well it is. Now not that anyone would have said this apple fell far from the tree but mom did have that car until sometime in the 1980s. She took classes at PTEC back in the day to learn how to do body work and remove the rust and paint that car. My mom and dad had this car on their wedding day and someone used brown shoe polish to write just married on the trunk and it didn't matter how much she painted that car you could still see it.

As for my dad he has always been a mechanic. He can fix anything. When we were kids the shop he worked at would sometimes bring vehicles by the house yeah once a garbage truck pulled in the driveway at our house on the beach and a neighbor called and I remember my mom saying yes Linda it is a garbage truck in the driveway. I have heard stories of a 1950s corvette that he had that if he hadn't trashed would be worth a fortune today. As he found out when he went to the Corvette museum a few years back. Dad told us stories of working for a gas station as a kid and Mr Morrow I think was the man's name. He came and visited once. Dad told of him and his friend having to take two cars to the junk yard and that they played like demolition derby all the way to the junk yard never thinking the whole way how they were going to get back to the gas station after destroying both cars. But the vehicles I grew up with dad driving were our full size van first was tan with 2 rows of seats and the second was green with 3 rows of seats. Until 1980 or so dad got a blue El Camino. Just because it is interesting the definition "the Kings highway" or "Royal Road". Dad had that car well I would guess way into the Cavalier years if not the Sebring ones. I don't know if I want to see if my siblings cars fit into their lives like me in my wild days and now into my bright warrior days. I am just really glad that along this road that I have had some really good cars to ride in.

I think I could get a story out of this.

Silent Night

Yesterday I was reading online about a story telling event coming up and the theme was music. It said to come tell a true story about music in your life. A song from when you were young that you loved or one you couldn't stand. It said no notes or props and you have 5 minutes to tell the whole story with a beginning a middle and an end.

Well being that Christmas has barely passed by and our tree is still up I thought of Silent Night.
Now anyone that knows me knows that Silent Night makes me cry. Just the thought of the words will bring me to tears. And I thought of all of the things in my life that have brought me to this point. I was trying to think of where to begin.

Do I start when I was young and how my mother loved Christmas? So many gifts, and that she would put up two Christmas trees in our living room one with traditional decorations and one with decorations we had made. She would save the ones we made from year to year and decorate with them. But it always seemed as we were decorating you know five kids and a couple parents and next thing you know there would be an argument over something and someone was getting in trouble and someone was going to their room. Well fast forward a few years and I just learned to avoid that whole experience and would not be around when it came time to decorate the tree. If your not there you can't get in trouble.

Dad who didn't have a long fuse or a lot of patience for the holidays,  I remember him saying he didn't always know how to act because he didn't have a father while growing up. I was a little older when I heard of how he lost his father at Christmas.

Lets flash back about 40 years to 1950 my father he is about 7 years old and the tree is decorated and the house is all ready for Christmas and his father passed away on Christmas Eve. Well for those of you who didn't know back then in Ohio where my dad lived people didn't get laid out at a funeral home they were laid out in their own home. So there it is Christmas morning my dad and his two brothers and two sisters having Christmas with their dad laid out in a casket in their living room.
My uncle the youngest in their family recently told me that he didn't remember that Christmas he was only two but that his sisters had told him that he played with a car he got for Christmas along by his father that day.

We have gone from the 1970's to the 1950's and now to 1990 my grandmother, my dad's mom passed away on December 20. My grandmother loved Christmas. She always had a beautiful tree and it was the same every year and when I was a kid of my dad's brothers and sisters there was a time when we all lived within a mile of my grandma. That was 15 of 16 cousins most of which were young children at the time. We would all go to grandma's house on Christmas. She had a little chalk board by the front door and we would sign in when we got there. She would always take a picture of our names all crammed together. By 1990 however we weren't all as close in proximity and weren't all going to be able to go to grandma's for Christmas. But there we all were on Christmas eve at mass for my grandmother's funeral. Then back to her house for the wake. And the picture I have posted before that the whole family is in except for me. I went back to work.

I know I thought what a tragedy Christmas is for this family and how sad that is just to think such a thought.

So another 10 years have passed and I am now an adult and have found my way around the sadness that comes with Christmas. I have found that if I decorate the tree alone that there is no arguing. I just found as I got older my fuse got short around the tree and it was easier for me to just do that part alone.

2004 Christmas eve and there I am sitting in the same Church that we had my grandma's funeral all those years ago. Me and my youngest sister and her husband and her beautiful little baby boy. And that is the day that I remember for the first time that when the song Silent Night started to play and the words just rang in my heart. That little boy laying in his carrier next to me who when he breathed it sounded like a giggle. That little flap in his throat didn't close all the way and you would hear hee-eee, hee-eee.

By this time I have reached beyond the years that I would ever have a child of my own and this little baby was about the most beautiful thing in the whole world and all of my life and this reality all mixed together and when I heard the words, "Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace." I just started to cry. Still to this day I see the image in my head. Him in his little green onsie with a Christmas tree on the front.

Another 12 years later and I am sitting with my mom on Christmas Eve. She is bedridden after her second stroke and I am spending the evening wrapping presents and we are watching old home movies and I know in my heart this will probably be our last Christmas together and please God don't take her on Christmas.

But my mother the most stubborn person I know, knew that wasn't the way the story was going to end. We had our Christmas, just like in the past. The five of us all were together with her we shared gifts and stories and watched those home movies and there next to the fire place was that same tree.
That tree we decorated as kids. Now itself over 40 years old, with an ornament hanging on it that said Happy 40th Birthday from 2009.

So we have come to the end. This Christmas it was not the same. Now my mom is gone. But we went to church on Christmas Eve with my youngest sister and her husband and that little baby boy who is now 12 years old. There he was sitting across from me and when I heard the music start and I looked at his face and I heard hee-eee, hee-eee in my head and those words "Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.

I don't know if that is the kind of story they are looking for but that is the story that came to me.