November 22 1963

On November 22, 1963 I was 9 years old playing out at recess at Benona School when a boy from a class ahead of me passed me by the tetherball yelling out "Kennedy got plugged, Kennedy got plugged" I couldn't understand what this smart alec bratty boy was trying to say. I'm not even sure if the teachers explained what had happened, I just remember confusion. It might be we were sent home early because all that remains of this memory is going home, full of that feeling of going to a warm, safe place where smells of food cooking and love surrounded you could be expected, to find out what the strange day meant. Upon entering the house it felt dark, cold devoid of the usual welcoming feeling. Then we found Mama, the source of all our safety and love and usually in constant motion sitting on the couch weeping. It was scary, and more confusing until I asked what was wrong and she explained the strangeness of the day that President Kennedy had been assasinated and that a brilliant light had been extinguished in the world. I never forgave that boy for his ignorant shouting and still can't believe someone would take joy from such a horrible event.

Catching up

Well almost a year since I blogged on my blog here how the time has flown! I turned the corner to 58 today & looking back over the last year of many mundane events day after day running into & stumbling over each other it would seem to be quite boring. Then I went back through my pictures of the year on my phone here & relived all the events that took place and realized it wasn't boring or mundane at all! Pictures of all the kids having fun, the picnics, the games of golf out little junkets we made time for, friends visiting, Dari home for a visit and it all added up to a jammed packed year after all! As you look back over your life too, you get to a spot where you feel, how boring I am, how dissallusioned and mediocre your life is and feel like you're drifting letting life live you instead of the other way around. It's all in the way you look at things though and being the essential Librian that I am many times my scales are out of whack and I can't see life as it is only from the unbalanced view.  The only remedy for this is to get the scales back in balance, don't sit and let life live me instead of the other way around and take a little action to get life where it is supposed to be.  Even though it still may not be the way I feel it should be it will still be better than where we are now!  We have let mercenary lenders and such only offer us what they wanted and it has taken a terrible toll to the point where we might have to jerk up stakes and move which doesn't make much sense to me so I've taken some action,  hope for the best and see just how much catching up we can do.  Whatever happens it will be a forward action which is better than going backwards as the last three years have been! When the mundane starts covering up all the good in life I've just got to remember that all the days inbetween have many blessings and excitement and love and there is always a way to catch up!

Soaring

I saw a hawk soaring in the sky on my way to Ludington today. As always I immediately thought of my son and sent him my love and hope that he is doing well. Not that this is the only time I think of him. I would wager not a part of each day goes by without thinking of him. His name is Darius Hawk! The poor boy remained nameless for 10 days after he was born while his Father and I wrestled and wrangled with the choice of this little guys name. Not that we had not picked out names, we just could not agree. I had picked Darius from the fifth grade on after reading Darius Green and his flying machine and always, always wanted that name for my first baby. The boy in the poem epitomized all I would think a boy should be. Smart, adventuress, inventive and high spirited. I wanted that for my son. Jr. wanted to name him after an old friend someone I didn't even know John Clayton Hawk. John, John REALLY!!! So the standoff took place I already planning to nickname him Dari which has an Irish sound to it & Jr., who already had two sons holding firm. Finally he relented and offered Darius Hawk. I thought on it, thought a boy might enjoy that and after 10 days Dari got his name. Not sure if he is happy with the Darius but he is the exact child I wished and prayed for! Intelligent, handsome, blonde as a little boy and dark haired as a man. Adventuress, loving, patient and kind with a unique sense of humor! The Hawk he does like because he named his owm son Tristan Hawk. So we each got our way in naming him and perhaps shaping him into the wonderful man he is. Although he is usually far away from me he is as near as my heart where my love for him abides. So when I see a hawk soaring in the sky I send him my love and know that in the naming of him brought him the caoacity to soar in life!

The Art of Keeping Cool

There is an art to keeping cool and I'm not referring to the incendiary hot flashes that overtake us old geezers and make you feel in 5 seconds flat as if you are vacuum packed in plastic with the heat turned up to 100. I'm talking about staying calm in hectic situations. Usually it's not a problem for me anymore. I have never gotten so upset with my spouse that I yell. The kids maybe when they were in that middle talking back phase and certainly the dogs when they are going nuts. Other people, especially co-workers I can usually keep cool even when in disagreement. Maybe not my boss who I have worked for 28 1/2 years for and communication at times with him can deteriorate and we end up in a yelling match behind a closed door. I often say I'd like a divorce because I've spent more time with him than his current wife. Other co-workers I usually never get so upset that I would shout at them. At work the 26 non-union middle management employees who without union protection , have for the last two years been subjected to a wage analysis that froze 10 job slot wages, increased others and a plundering of our benefits promised some 30 years ago. All done with the idea that the 225 Union workers would be compelled to follow. That did not happen. In the last two weeks after grousing, complaining and listening two everyones tales of woe and dealing with my own lowered self esteem at being told I was being paid more than I'm worth, a slim hope began to grow. Since the Unions had settled we took the opportunity to write a proposal to the board approved, we thought by the administrator. The board was gracious but struck out some of our ideas and asked for a committee of 3 meet with Greg and come up with a fair proposal. We talked at length with him he wrote it up and there were errors. Correcting them and adding one more request was met by the group as a go forward. After many back and forths admonishing by administrator we were asking for too much and one individual, who for the last two years would have all believe she lost the most even though she was in the part that got good raises while the red haired step children were out frozen in the cold marched in to my office threw the proposal on my desk and informed me what needed to come out. This was all per the administrator who is running around with scare tactics that the board will just slam the door on us if we ask for too much. She proceeded to bewail for the umpteenth time her losses and to drop the language to unfreeze the last 3 employees that will stay froze for 3-5 more years & I blew and yelled at her that everybody not just her had lost & at least she had gotten raises! Loud, real loud, so loud the 100 lb woman blew up against the wall and began to cry. Our other co-committee person mediated, we came to an agreement & finished the proposal. I appologized twice but she's still shook up. It comes on just like a hot flash & usually when someone is ill-treating someone else. I get half unfroze this year & I don't have the spirit to fight for myself but I will not sit by and watch people selfishly try to fix they're situation & ignore others. But I've got to keep cool, not shout and not scare people. I just have to remember that a succesful outcome will rely on cool heads and professional behavior. So next time you see me getting red in the face & start to open my mouth dump a jug of ice water over my head it just might help me perfect the art of keeping cool!

Pennys From Heaven

Something strange is happening each day in my office at work. Each time I go in I notice first one penny on my desk, then the next one on my chair. Today after being out on the floor working thete were 5 pennies thrown, strewn around the floor....I don't know where they are coming from. I keep scooping them up & putting them in a old plastic pig that states it's my retirement fund. Not very full yet:( Today when pondering their appearance I thought, they say spirits drop coins so who is it? I asked my Ma "Mama, is that you"? What is she trying to tell me? Watch your step? Your coming into money? Or maybe just saying hi I miss you. I guess I'll choose the latter and hope to keep finding these pennies from heaven. Who knows maybe I will get early retirement!

De' Je' Vue

The sun beat down on the blacktop road, the rays so bright for early October that the turning colors of the leaves and green of the road fescue seemed to be outlined in silver. The sky was bright blue with billiwing white cummulous clouds and the air was warm on this Indian summer day. It was a Sunday I think if my memory serves me right but looking down the tunnel of 54 years back I could be off. It was my birthday, my third birthday and for many years I thought I was remembering my second birthday but after careful figuring, where we lived, for how long and 2 years old seemed a little young to be remembering I realize it must have been my third. We lived on Baseline road over east of Shelby in Rickarts old house. Paddy had started kintergarten at VanWickles school, a one room country school that my Mother had attended as a child. He was 5 years old and had to walk to and from school over 2 miles each way. Quite a feat for a little guy but at the time he seemed alot older, he was my big brother and I looked up to him, envied the fact that he got to go to school and I couldn't. That Sunday Aunt Irene and my cousin Diane came over for my birthday. This made the day seem awfully special to me because Diane was my very favorite cousin! She was Paddy's age, 2 years older than me and she was fearless. She for many years was my idol! That birthday mama had made me a birthday cake but we were poor and couldn't afford ice cream. Aunt Irene said something like we had to have ice cream with birthday cake so we all piled into Grantz's old black Ford flatbed truck. Had to be a 48 or 49. But wait gotta back uo here, before the decision to go get ice cream was made Diane and I were playing with some feral kittens out by the gray old barn on the property. They had become sorta tame because I would always be checking on them, bringing them food and playing with them. Diane got a little black one to hold and decided she would take it home. stealthily hiding it in the heater vent at the floor of their old black truck. The vent had a sliding door to shut and open it so we decided to leave it cracked for air:) Back to the piling in to go to Cherry Hill to get the ice cream. We had just got 1/4 mile down the road topped the little hill that led down to, what was then Old 31 when the kitty clawed his way out scratching Aunt Irene's ankle and sending the truck down a 6 foot ditch. The particulars of going in the ditch, getting out of the truck and climbing the enbankment to the tarby road are dim. What my memory is of standing barefoot on the hot tarby, sun baking down on me with the bright blue sky highlighting the red and orange of the maples lining the road and looking down at the black truck sitting forlornly at an angle in the ditch that looked sooo deep to a three year old! Then the weird feeling of de'Je' vue sweeping over me as I stood there convinced I had been in that very spot, experiencing exactly the same things from another time. This stays to this day one of my first detailed memories. Maybe the shock of it all, I don't know even though the day did not go as planned, I loved my birthday, my family and myself that day. De'Je'Vue would overtake me up untill about 10 and then it went away. I miss it, because it gives you hope that there is a do over in life and maybe next time around we won't put the kitty in the vent or at the very least shut the vent all the way!

Regrets and Aspirations

One of the biggest regrets I have in my life is that I never finished college. Never even got an Associates degree. To begin, I never felt like my Mom supported me in my academic life. She, was herself angry because she didn't pursue her dreams of aquiring further formal education. She was a highly intelligent woman and till the day she died quested & thirsted for knowledge. You could not check out a book at our local library that didn't have her name on the check out slup. This may be foriegn to you youngsters of today of barcodes & scanning but in the old days you signed your name on the card in the pocket in the back of the book. It was helpful if you couldn't remember if you'd read the book before & my Mothers bold elegant signature was like a stamp of approval, that it was a good book. I don't know Mama was of a generation where the sons education was considered the more important and a daughters a second thought. It also could have been an underlying jealousy because she could not further her formal education she withheld her approval of any of my dreams to go to collage. I am envious of the younger generation who are going and especially those going abroad for theirs. Their life is wide open in front of them like the blank pages of a book waiting to be filled. Not that I regret my family, my work, it's just that not finishing a degree has thrown so many roadblocks in my career no matter how many subjects that relate to my work I study, without the degree the knowledge is not recognized and you advance your career only so far. Now my goal is to find new aspirations. Going back to school now for the work I already do would seem slightly ridiculous with such a short time till retirement. A better quest might be to go to learn a skill that will quell my disapointment in myself for not acheiving my dreams and also open up avenues to help me find useful work after I retire. Several paths interest me but I have to decide which to do. Many times this has been my stumbling block, not being able to decide what path to take. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" which path? I have usually taken the road less traveled and look where it's got me. I will figure this out, and know whatever it is I end up doing will become the right path as long as it is going forward.