Happy Memories and Happy Mother's Day

I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days about how blessed I am. I have been especially thinking recently about what a charmed childhood I had. Most children today cannot relate to the childhood that I remember.

I was born in the Deep South in a time when families still lived close to one another. I was blessed to have parents, grandparents, and great grandparents who loved me. That’s right, great grandparents. You see when I was born; I had all four grandparents living within 5 miles of my house along with 2 great grandmothers and a great grandfather.  My mother’s grand mothers were also living, one in North Alabama and one in South Georgia. Life for me was a joyful time of sitting on knees, receiving hugs, silver dollars at Christmas and on birthdays, and waiting for divinity, fudge, cards and letters to arrive in the mail.  I was a very happy spoiled little girl.

Besides the great grandparents, I had numerous great aunts and uncles, and even great-great aunts and uncles. These wonderful people who were actually my grandparents aunts and uncles also spent many afternoons and Sunday mornings at church molding my life.

I had cousins for days. There were thirteen of us on Daddy’s side and 5 of us on Mama’s. Not to mention the second and third cousins. Holidays were magical and Friday and Saturday nights as a small child were spent playing outside until dark and then lying on the couch while the adults watched Lawrence Welk or listened to Jerry Clower records or played a card game known as Rook.

Summers were spent in the creek or playing baseball in Grandmother and Granddaddy’s yard while waiting for Granddaddy to fry fish and waiting for the ice cream freezer to freeze. Sometimes the older boys would let me help with the ice cream by poking the drainage hole with a stick to keep the water draining or letting me sit on the top of the ice cream bucket to keep the churn in place.

The other part of my time was spent with Granny. Granny was single (widowed) and fun! I thought she was old at that time in my life but now I realize that she was very young. She died at age 51 when I was 12. With Granny and my aunt LaVonne while she was still at home, I had a great time! When I spent the night, we had what a 5 year old would consider wonderful meals. Frozen pizza and tater tots, or TV dinners, things that I did not get at home. Breakfast was buttered toast and milk coffee. We watched the Pink Panther cartoon because it was Granny’s favorite and she told us stories at bedtime. She played baseball with us and we spent time in the back yard picking up pecans and eating them.

Mother’s Day stands out in my mind as a very special day. We got up on Sunday morning and went to church as usual. But once there, it was different from the usual Sunday. Every mother there had a corsage.  The mothers who had lost their mothers had white corsages and the ones whose mothers were living wore colored corsages.  But all of the mothers were special on that day.

On this Mother’s Day, I would like to wish everyone a wonderful day and say, “I love you!“to my Mother, and “I miss you!” to my grandmothers and great grandmothers. 

I am going to leave you with some pictures of some of my favorite women in my life!