Finding the Positive in Wrinkles

    Today as I waited in the drive-thru for my ice cream salad I looked ahead and noticed the girl working the window.  It was a girl that I graduated from high school with.  What was so shocking to me is that she looked EXACTLY the same as I remembered back in high school.  Now let me go ahead and confess that I have been out of high school for thirty - yes, 30 years.  Her hair was a beautiful shiny auburn, if it was from a box you'd never know.  Every hair was in place even as the wind blew!  Her complexion was creamy white and she was strikingly beautiful. 
     As I continued to wait, I raised my eyebrows to take a peek at myself in the rear view mirror.  There it was - the wrinkle just above my right eye.  I like to refer to it as "The Earthquake".  It's kinda like a backwards comma, deep and long.  I'm not sure exactly when it got so distinct, but it is there, and by this time of day, caked with make-up.  Not a good look.  I take my fingers and try to stretch it out, but no luck.  Then I notice the "laugh lines" around my mouth.  I fake a smile and see if they'll disappear but again, no such luck.  For added fun, I noticed a pimple on my cheek.  What am I?  14 or 49?  My hands grip the steering wheel and I notice my skin looks sorta dry and spotty.   My chubby fingers that my mama always said I would "outgrow" were as chubby as ever. Apparently mama was wrong - or probably she was just trying to be kind.   I begin to feel a mid-life crisis coming on right there at the Chick Fil A.  My heart starts to pound.  Crap!  Am I gonna have a heart attack right here?  I've never been a very vain person, but secretly I begin to wonder if my ageless, pretty class mate ever had children.  Blaming my kids on my gray hair always worked, so why not these wrinkles?  ;0)
     By this time, I am face to face with my old but beautiful high school pal and realize that I can't change a thing.  Yes, I have this pimple and wrinkles and I have ordered an ice cream salad in the middle of the afternoon.  All this causes me to think.
      I decided right then and there I just as well embrace my imperfections.  As a matter of fact, being the positive person that I am, I am going to find the good in them.  So, here's my thought.  If "The Earthquake" came about due to me squinting my eyes in the sun on my favorite beach in the whole wide world (Panama City Beach) then let it be.  The fact that I left my sunglasses back in the hotel room because those kids of mine were driving me crazy explains my forgetfulness.  See, I told you I can blame anything on being a mama. 
     If the laugh lines came from me laughing at my kids, grand baby boy, crazy friends, family, etc. then may they multiply.  Nobody loves to laugh more than I do.  I truly believe laughter adds years to your life - so may I laugh until I am very old and covered in lines. 
     I know for a fact that my hands are all wrinkled up because I use scalding hot water when I wash dishes.  Where's the positive in that, you ask?  Well... Praise the Lord I have dishes to wash.  I love every minute of cooking for my sweet family and cleaning up is just part of that.  Plus I think I have a touch of obsessive compulsive behavior and feel strongly that only the hottest water can kill the germs! 
     I am thankful for my chubby but otherwise functional fingers, and I am just happy they work correctly.  They have let me hack out a living working on a computer of some kind for the past 25 years.  Not to mention the hands I've held, the hugs, the love, massages, tickles, and praise they've allowed to give.  As for the pimple, well . . .  I got nothing.  Sorry, I said I was trying to be positive, not perfect! 

    When I smiled and paid my friend I told her how great she looked.   She laughed it off and said she'd be turning 50 soon. "Me too!"  I told her, and then she said something I won't soon forget.  She said "I kind of like getting older."  "Me too" I said again.  As I drove off I realized I wouldn't go back to my younger days even if I could.  However, if I could, maybe I would use that moisturizing cream more faithfully and I'd remember my sunglasses.  

September 19th

     Today is September 19th, my mama's birthday.  September slipped up on me this year as always, and has become bittersweet.  Perhaps more bitter than sweet.  She's been gone now almost two years and I always think that when her birthday comes around I will do something really awesome like have a cookout and celebrate her life.  In my plan I will light a candle or let some red balloons go in her memory.  However, since she's been gone I haven't been able to do any of those things.  As a matter of fact, just getting out of bed is the best I can do.
 
     She loved celebrations and even planned her last birthday here on earth to a grand scale.  But instead she wound up in the Hospice In-Patient Care unit, in and out of consciousness.  She knew it was her birthday, and she recognized people, but it was a hard, tough day.  I would rather remember her happier, healthier days.  My sweet Lindsey reminded me that she is much happier today in heaven and I truly believe that, but I still miss her here.  I miss her smile and her laugh and the way she called me "darling".  To this very day when something funny happens I have this thought that I need to call her.  And then it hits me.

     If she were here today I would have made a cake and Wayne would fry her fish and hush puppies.  I would have bought her a blouse from her favorite store (Belk's) and the girls would have gotten her fall wreathes and decorations.  She would have insisted on helping me clean up even though it was her day.  Now those are just dreams that make my heart ache. 

     Call me crazy, but sometimes I feel her presence.  I see her in Dalton's sparkle in his eyes when he giggles, in Dana's courage, and in Lindsey's strength.  While I'm at it and confessing my hysteria, I have this feeling that Dalton somehow knows her.  Maybe it's just because I love him so much and now I know exactly how she  felt for her grandchildren.  I didn't understand then, but now that she's gone, I totally understand and I think it is so unfair.  We could of shared that "grandmama love", but then again, between the two of us gushing over our perfect and beautiful grandchildren, the world probably just could not take it!

     The best I can do with all of this is try and love with all my heart and live each day with purpose.  I see God in every little aspect of my life and He has been with me all the way.  I am incredibly blessed to have had her for my mama and we enjoyed many, many happy days.  So today I put one foot in front of the other and simply say, "Happy Birthday Mama,  I love you."

Sweet Girls

The Old House

       Last week I had a meeting across town and I was actually early, so I decided to drive by our old house.  The "old house" is the term we've given the house that Wayne I moved into just about 6 months after we married.  It was a two bedroom, one bath, 900 sq. foot, little bitty house.  We moved in on July 4, 1980, just the two us.  It was a house filled with love and laughter and before too long, sweet little girls. 
     It was the house that we brought both of our babies home from the hospital.  Both times, I remember coming home to a house full of family and friends, a little bundle of pink lace in my arms.  My mama was always in the kitchen, cooking up a delicious lunch for all of us, something I miss to this very second.  
     It was the house that had a big magnolia tree in the front and the blooms would fill the whole yard with a sweet, sweet smell.  It was the house that had rich, dark soil in the back yard (unlike the red clay here at our home now).  Wayne had a garden each summer that took up two-thirds of the entire back yard. We had fresh butter-beans, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplants and much more.  Each summer we'd freeze enough veggies to eat on all winter, and enough to share with neighbors as well.  This garden is where Dana and her best next door neighbor friend, Matt, had the infamous tomato eating contest.  I am told by witnesses of this event that they ate the tomatoes right off the vine, to see who could eat the most.  Being the competitive child that she was (and still is) Dana won.  However, about midnight that night, she lost, if you know what I mean.  She got sick.  Real sick.  Thus the reason she will not eat a tomato to this very day! 
      It was the house where we were friends with  all our neighbors.  Our neighbor two doors down became like family to us, and kept the girls while we worked.  I was so blessed to have Mrs. Gruber and will be forever thankful to her for loving my family.  She is the person who invited Wayne and I to church, and even when we were hard headed and would not attend, she took Dana to AWANA's every Wednesday night.  It wasn't long before Wayne and I started attending also, and it changed our lives.  For the good.  Very good.
      It was a house of kool-aid and snacks.  I absolutely loved being the house that all the neighborhood kids could come to.  For years I made a pitcher of kool-aid every single day.  We had picnics and bunny rabbits and puppies and even a hermit crab once.  The girls learned to swim in our cheap-o above ground pool and jumped on the trampoline 'til dark almost every night.  It was the house that I actually hung clothes out on the line.  I remember one summer it was so hot, I could hang out wet towels and in thirty minutes they were completely dry!  Rough and itchy maybe, but dry! 
     It was the house where the linoleum was worn out in front of the oven in the kitchen.  Dana had started taking clogging lessons and LOVED to dance in front of the oven because she could see her reflection in the oven door. It was the house where little Lindsey would stand on the back porch and yell "Pissy, Pissy?"  She was calling our beloved dog, Prissy.  Her little lisp was so adorable.  It was the house where Lindsey would line up her baby dolls and "teach" them, scolding them for having a bad "attitude" which I found hilarous coming out of a 3 year olds mouth. 
   It was the house that got too small for a family of four.  One bathroom was not working out for three girls and one daddy, so we put it on the market never expecting to sell it.  Within a week a man and his son came and looked at the house and signed the papers that day.  Suddenly we were moving from our sweet little house, excited but sad all at the same time. 
     It had been a house of love and peace for both Wayne and myself.  Both of us grew up with alcoholic fathers and knew what it was like to live in a house filled with worry and fear.  Wayne promised me that he would never drink in fear of becoming like our fathers, and he kept that promise.  So I suppose the story here is it's not really about a house.  Big or small, it's the love that's inside that makes it great. 
     As I slowly rode by the old house, I felt a twing of sadness.  It was run down a bit, the grass was high in the backyard but I could see the girls old playhouse.  Mrs. Gruber's house still looked the same, but she is gone.  Gone much too soon after a hard battle with cancer, but she was such a sweet Christian woman, she now lives in a real mansion in heaven.  All these memories came crashing in. 
     When I got home that afternoon to our "new house" Wayne had just finished cutting the grass.  The yard looked amazing and manicured thanks to my hard working hubby and I was so thankful.  Thankful to God, not to have a bigger house (we've been here since 1991, it's no mansion) but thankful to still have a loving home.  Not a house.  A home.