Memorial Day

What are you doing to honor this day?  Yes, it's a three-day weekend, warm weather has finally arrived.  The sunblock and flip flops are waiting by the door.  The pool's open and you're going to work on the tan.  Maybe later on you'll do some grilling and enjoy a beer or glass of wine.  After all, you've still got Sunday and Monday!

That's all true.  But while you're relaxing, can you take just a few minutes to remember those who can no longer enjoy those American liberties?  Can you salute them in your mind - the fallen heroes and those who still serve?

Say a prayer for my grandson, 1st Lt. Zack Chrismon, who's somewhere in the Middle East.  It's over 100 degrees and he's missing his loved ones while he risks his life for his family, for his country and his fellow countrymen.  Can you do that for me?  For all of us?

If you're sincere in your heart and mind and this link doesn't bring a tear to your eye, then I don't think anything will. Skip the ad in 3 seconds, watch and listen all the way to the end.  This is how it should be sung.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCavKL2zdjM

Happy Monday!

 Are you loving this spring weather?  Hot one day, cold the next?  Such a pleasant relief and not a bit boring, huh?

Without a 9 to 5 job to structure my life, sometimes I don't really know what day it is.  Friday is easy - it's the WEEKEND!  Saturday and Sunday are easier, everybody's out and about.  Monday, well, everybody's going back to work.  And then come Whatstoday, Whatstoday, and Whatstoday (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, in case you're wondering) and I don't have a clue!

But I do know today's Monday and I'm hoping you have a productive one.

Here's an excerpt from the final page of This, Too, Shall Pass (yes, I began with the end in mind), which is nearing completion.  Maybe another week or two.  Writing Before The Lake was fun.  This one is NOT fun, and I will be happy to be finished with it.  Sometimes the past is best left in the past but, again, sometimes it's important to shed the light of day on the darkness and that's what I've tried to do.  Hopefully, someone else will benefit.

With the stroke of a pen, a writer can tug a comforting smile from our lips, or trace a tear down our checks; he can make our hearts flutter with trembling fear or soar with joy.  Many a patriotic thunder found its voice flooding from the writer’s pen, as noted artists from the past have demonstrated.  A writer has the ability to spark imagination and to instill a curiosity that invites the reader to explore their own personal feelings, to evaluate the resulting emotions, perhaps to form an opinion as a result of the writer’s fearless exposure.   

Whatever it is that the writer would have us feel in his earnest endeavor to present to us the gift of his soul, it matters not whether we agree.  A writer’s only desire is that we listen – with open hearts and minds - and that we try to understand.

Now that I'm a Tar Heel again, I'm Feelin' It!  You? 

Click on this link for our native son who's definitely feelin' it!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qidv_uK-5Ig

Wishing You Happy Mother's Day!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.

Mothers all over the country will be celebrated with cards and flowers, gifts and lunches.  

Why do I feel like this is somehow backwards?  I have three children; Steve, Mark and Beverly.  They are all upstanding citizens who love their children and honor me all year long.  Isn't that to be celebrated? 

My mother made her own Mother’s Day dinner every year.  We all went home.  I don’t remember there being any gifts.  The only physical concession to the day was wearing the rose to church; a red one if your mother was living, a white one if she had passed on.  While I can’t pretend to know what she was thinking, I don’t believe she felt the least bit uncelebrated when we devoured the meal she made and gathered around the piano to sing her favorite hymns before we left.  We devoured the meal because she was the best cook in the world; we sang the songs not because we wanted to (truth be told, we were all eager to be on our way) – but because we knew it was the moment she waited for and we wanted her to be happy.  I believe she was feeling fulfilled. 

That’s how I feel – fulfilled. 

I hope your Mother’s Day tomorrow is everything you want it to be.  If you’re wondering what Mom wants for Mother’s Day, just let her know you’re thinking about her – tell her in person, over the internet, or through a phone call.  Just let her know you’re thinking of her.  That’s all she wants.  I know.  Because I am a mother.  

Moving on . . .

Welcome, warm weather, spring flowers, bird songs.  We have left behind a long, cold winter; snow, sleet, freezing rain, hazardous travel conditions.  Time to pull out the summer wardrobe; shorts, bathing suits, flip flops, How grand it feels to step outside into warm temperatures, no jackets, no gloves, no scarves.  Instead, it's sunglasses and sunscreen.  There's a feeling of freedom, of being able to accomplish the impossible.

Happy times are here again.  Sharing the beginning of Section Three and moving on...

"There comes a day, and you really don’t know when it actually occurs, that you have to make a decision.  Stay in the hopelessness of yesterday where your misery is, if not comfortable, at least familiar?  Just like the squirrel that will turn back in the path of an oncoming car trying frantically to get back to where it started from in  familiar territory only to be run down by the car – when safety was just inches away?  Or will you refuse to look back, unwilling to continue inside the trap that has held a painful grip on your past, refusing to fall victim to the oncoming slaughter? 

For me, I decided to continue on the path into the unknown future, to embrace the painful changes that would come.  I had sought out every method of recovery I knew about; Al-Anon was so important in my recovery.  Yes, I use the word “recovery”:  Alcoholism and drug addiction are not just diseases of the obvious victim; families are equally at risk of becoming victims.  I wished no longer to exist in bondage.

Eventually, there came a time when I found myself feeling once again the sunshine on my face, hearing the song of the birds, drinking in the beauty of nature.  Laughing, feeling tenderness, reaching out to the new day without the feeling of impending doom – the feeling of doom that I had lived with for far too many years.  Life was returning.  Slowly, but it was returning."

 Check this one out...  Satchmo blows it and Ella blows it away!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDOEsQL7lA

I want SPRINGTIME!

I know it's only the middle of March.  I know that here in North Carolina we could actually have another month of off-again on-again cold weather.  I know it could even snow.  But I am soooo ready for warmer weather.  I want to see green leaves sprout full out on the trees.  I want to see budding flowers push through the soil and wave in a gentle breeze. I want to feel the sun's warmth on my face, my arms, my back.

I want SPRINGTIME!  

In the meantime, the earth is warming and even though the temperatures are still dipping low there are signs of new life.  The grass around my apartment building is turning a patchy bright green and golden sunshine pours through the double windows that frame my view of this miraculous new birth.  Birds are calling to one another and flying in pairs, searching out a nesting site.  Jonquils are in full bloom, narcissus are pushing forth, and here and there tree limbs bulge with the tender greenery that promises spring.  

So don't despair - SPRINGTIME is on its way.  And, in the meantime, I continue constructing This, Too, Shall Pass.  The first of three sections is complete, so I'm on schedule to have this book available for Mountain Spirits Festival in October in Rocky Mount, Virginia. 

I want to share this excerpt with you from Section 1.  It was birthed in a park I found in Charlotte where I often took my little ones to play and later on sat through many Little League baseball games.   It was also a spot I sought out often when life grew too difficult.

"...As I sit upon a knotty root, how grateful I am for the comfort and tender quietness I find here.  Far of in the distance, I hear the faint hum of traffic and the laughing chatter of children, happily at play.  About me in the forest, I hear the rustling sounds of tiny creatures as they scamper from hiding place to yet another hiding place.  Somewhere, a pine cone slips from the evergreen’s grasp to find a final resting place upon the forest’s cluttered floor.  Sunlight flickers through the leaves and spreads in ever-changing patterns, moving lazily about, as a gentle breeze ripples through the trees.  Now, all the world seems far removed, and I am at peace with the child of God that I am.  Tension slips slowly away; mind and soul are lovingly caressed, held spellbound in this moment of surrender.

A stranger wanders past; we share a greeting smile, and the spell is broken.  Time has come to venture back into the mainstream, face to face with reality and the inescapable cares of the world around me.  With a silent prayer of gratitude, now I can return with a strengthened belief that I, too, as the Mighty Oak, can survive for yet a while."

And on a lighter note, here's a gift from me to you.  Springtime in 3 Minutes!  Enjoy!!!

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=springtime+music&qpvt=springtime+music&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=7F614CA231C7FC20B8BA7F614CA231C7FC20B8BA 

Meet me again?  I'll be looking for you..................

Special Days - Special Times

Today is a special day - My daughter Beverly's birthday.  I am so, so blessed to be able to celebrate this grand occasion with her.  There will be a birthday dinner on Sunday with good food (I hope), birthday cake and loved ones.

As I continue to pull together this vast collection of writings from the darker days, it's important to stay focused on today; to concentrate on all that is good and all that is precious.  It's too easy to regress in life - to look at the past and allow it to define us.  It is my sincere wish that this next book to come - This, Too, Shall Pass - will nurture and encourage those who are still living in their darker days.

Here's an excerpt one of those writings in support:

 Because It's There

And if today is not what I would have it be,
If somehow all seems against me, as if all Pandora’s woes are set to undo me,
I will not run and hide; but I will don my armor and set my guard.
For I know that someday soon, mayhap as near as Tomorrow,
The sun will smile on me again,
And all the odds will be in my favor, where naught can slow my step,
And I shall reach the Mountain Top – subdue and conquer my world,
Because it’s there!

My birthday wish for you, baby girl, is that you are never far from your mountain top.  Happy birthday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWXCaXQmKI

Hello, Sunshine! Goodbye, Snow.........

I never have liked snow - not even as a child when the neighborhood youths would gather at the top of our pastureland, build bonfires, and ride to the bottom of the hill on whatever they could use as a makeshift sled.  I'm content - even happy, maybe ecstatic - to gaze through my window at the beauty of nature's white landscape while I'm staying warm and dry.  My friends and family in Virginia are reporting 12 - 20 inches of snowfall and I might add I'm really, really happy not to be snowed in atop the Bedford mountains.

I'm making progress, albeit slow progress, putting together my next book - This, Too Shall Pass.  I'm finding it difficult to stay with converting the old typewritten pages into the document I will upload to Amazon.  Sometimes I can't remember what motivated some of the pieces, and sometimes I'm on the verge of depression, but I'm going to carry on with the process because I believe there's a purpose in this book.  People are suffering today - trying to cope with the problems I faced...that I was delivered from.  Hopefully, they'll be able to see their deliverance and just hang on by whatever means they can find until it comes.

Here's an excerpt from some of the material.

I walked the shadows of darkest night, looking neither left nor right; Seeing only straight ahead. Too soon to probe the past now dead.Crouched in the shadows, the formless shape of Failure looms with bitter taste.Helpless to cast a ray of light to bring the shadows into light.Only time can ease the pain and bring my soul to peace again.

To God be the Glory!  I am a survivor.