Tag: Memories

In the Waiting Room

On By dotluvs2writeIn Beauty, blogging, Health, humanity, Illness and Medical Treatments, Inspirational, Life, Musings, Past Life Activities, Personal, Religious2 Comments

While looking through one of my old spiral notebooks this afternoon, I found this little stream-of-conscience piece I had written while waiting at the children’s hospital with my family for results on my youngest son, Christoper’s MRI results on the remnants of his brain tumor. I’d forgotten I’d written this!

Since it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, I failed to write down the date that I created it. Considering this was a time when I was still married, I’m guessing this note was sometime between 2014 and 2020.

I found this very short message somehow touching and visceral, so I decided to share it here with you all, my friends from all over the world.

__________________

As I wait with my son and husband to be called back to one of the patient rooms, my body is a walking zombie with dopey (? can’t read) and sleeping waves rolling through me.

Christopher waits patiently to find out, as do his dad and I, what his MRI results are.

Yellows, oranges, and reds across from us with an astronaut posing with arms outstretched to take off any minute.

A blue sky with wispy clouds frame the silver suit flaming reds and blues.

Makeshift wings stand alert, unfolded and bold at his sides.

A blue screen sixty feet across sleeps, displaying no images. Is this a resting mini-theater scheduled for future shows?

Several images representing flying. Flying high, soaring, reaching, transcending illness, challenges, pain, and crossing over to healing an all-encompassing healing of soul and body.

Flying correlates with a sense of spiritual ascendency.

But truly, if I close my eyes, I could fall right to sleep.

This Valium affects me like never before, and not just takes off the anxious edge, but this time, it’s created a drowsiness where everything, including me, moves in slow motion, like those running on film that is slowed down, and the person’s arms and legs rotate like the gears of a clock running out of batteries.

Hopefully, soon, we shall be sitting in the patient room hearing something akin to no change or dissipated remnant. Only God knows.

____________________

In 2020, my son’s brain tumor disappeared. He’d had it since he was an infant (don’t know the exact point it appeared and grew in his head, but he was diagnosed with the brain tumor attached to his brain stem in 2003 when he was 13 months old). We were so surprised when the doctor said the tumor was gone, I remember. I nearly couldn’t speak. However, it was welcome news and joy grew inside me and life changed at that moment for Christopher and the whole family. Thank you, God!

~*~*~*~

Life in a Different Era

On By dotluvs2writeIn Beauty, Food, Fun, Inspirational, Life, Past Life Activities, Pets8 Comments

Today’s my birthday and thought I’d share some memories of my childhood. It does seem like a lifetime ago and definitely a different era.

Growing up, I was in the generation of kids that would come home from school and go outside and play all the rest of the day until around dinner time. And on weekends, all day playing with my friends mostly outside until dark.

There was a freedom then that is sadly missing in my youngest son’s generation and the generation of young ones after his today.

I would hop on my bike and ride all over the place around my neighborhood and sometimes to my friends’ neighborhoods that were a ways off from my own.

Riding on a bike was always such a freeing feeling. The wind streaming through your hair, brushing your face. A calming feeling as well. When you’d peddle fast, you felt like nobody could touch you, nobody could reach you, that you were almost invincible.

I had the popular banana seat bike with the looped handlebars. I had a blue one. 🙂

(example of banana seat bike via public domain pics on Google)

Lots of games to play outside, too, like hide and go seek, tag, ghost in the graveyard, and bloody murder. The last one I played with a whole stairwell of kids (two apartment buildings connected on Rhein Main Air Base in Germany).

Whenever I’d say to whoever I was talking to that we played bloody murder, the person wouldn’t know what that was. It’s basically the opposite of hide and go seek. The murderer hides and the people go around a particular large object. The murderer will wait until he/she has the best shot at tagging one of his/her victims by surprising them quietly. The person who sees the murderer coming for him/her yells, “Bloody murder!” and everyone screams and runs around the large object to base, which is the safe spot for everyone. Also, you can’t turn around and go back to base. You must continue running around the same direction and get to the base that way. It was a fun game. 🙂

I grew up playing with Fisher Price Little People and Barbies.

But at a certain point, our mom made us (my sister and I) choose which sets of toys we wanted to keep because we just had too many. lol So we chose Barbies.

We had so many awesome Barbies, and ones that were famous celebrities, too!

*Dolly Parton

*Jamie Somers (Bionic Woman)

*Cheryl Ladd (Charlie’s Angels)

*Kate Jackson (Charlie’s Angels)

*Steve Austin (the Six Million Dollar Man)

*Cher

*The Archies (from the comics) characters

My sister and I made up such elaborate stories with our Barbies’ lives. lol Surviving a Tornado, a murderer on the loose, a dying relative (or the main Barbie dying of an illness), big families with lots of kids.

I was around for the introduction of the Atari system.

We owned:

Centipede, Demon Attack, Frogger, Pitfall, Kaboom!, Keystone Cops, Enduro, Maze Craze, and Asteroids. And probably others I’ve forgotten to mention here.

My first video game was a miniature video arcade game that was small enough to set on your lap and play in the car (like I did) or in your room, or whatever. It was portable. The game was, of course, Pac-Man. Ha ha!

I was also around for the introduction of the Rubik’s Cube. That was so much fun trying to figure out then. I don’t recall ever really solving it, but maybe I did. Just don’t remember!

Times were simpler then. When your family would go on road trips, your sibling and you would sit in the back seat playing card games like Crazy Eights, or Barbies, or look outside the window at the trees going by, or follow the telephone lines as they undulated soothingly up and down.

In my grade school years, while in the car, my parents would be playing their eight tracks of Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and others. Later, at home we’d listen to the music on the stereo Mom would play from her favorites, the BeeGees and ABBA.

We had a pet Gerbil named Lucy when I was in grade school. My dad used to sing the Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to her. Hee hee. It was fun.

Board games were big in my house. Sorry, Life, Clue, were the main ones.

In late grade school, junior high, and high school, my family would play poker, rummy, Tripoli, and Trivial Pursuit. My dad won every time in Trivial Pursuit. lol

Going to the roller rink in sixth grade was a big deal. It was so much fun skating around the rink on those four cushy, fat wheels. The best part of the evening on the rink was when they’d shut off the regular lights and leave on the colored lights that would flicker around the floor. Then they’d play “The Hokey Pokey” with those flashing lights, and we’d do the dance.

As I was typing here, I must tell you what happened this evening.

My oldest son, Nicholas, and his best friend Alex, took me to Olive Garden for dinner. It was delicious. And I even splurged and had a slice of cheesecake! They treated me, and I thanked them!

Then we came home, and I was on my computer starting this blog, when my youngest son, Christopher, came home early from filling in for a coworker at his job. See, he wasn’t supposed to work today, but a coworker was asking him if he could fill his shift. So, Christopher, always so good at being dependable and helpful, went ahead and took the 4:30 p.m.-11:00 p.m. shift.

However, he came home around 8:00 or so. He came up to my room and dropped his backpack and looked sad. I was worried something had happened at work. He came over to me and gave me a hug. He broke down in tears and said he felt terrible working on my birthday. He cried at work, and they let him off early, at 7:30. I told him it was fine. It’s all right.

I was so touched.

He said in tears, “I didn’t even get to give you a hug goodbye before I went to work.”

I told him I understood.

Well, he said, “And I got you a present.”

Again, I was moved by this.

He went into the hallway outside of my room and brought in a comfy little solid and soft back rest to put against the head board of my bed. And I love it!

I told him it was so kind and thoughtful of him. I’d never forget this special gift. It was so practical and thoughtful! He knows I tend to sit here at times and type. And here he went to Target after work and bought this for me! What a sweetheart! I hugged him and told him I loved him and thanked him for his kind and thoughtful gift, once again.

I had him take a picture of me using it so I could share it with you all. 🙂

A very special birthday today. I feel completely loved and blessed. Thank you, God for my family and my life!

~*~*~*~

The Traveling Child

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Cultural and Political, Fiction Writing, Food, Fun, humanity, Inspirational, Musings, Past Life Activities, Travel6 Comments

teddy bear in suitcase

If you grew up the child of a military member, you’ll understand how life was for me.

My life revolved around moves on base and off, from as early as two years old to seventeen.

Since my birth in the state of Maine, my family moved from there to Taiwan, Massachusetts, Virginia, Alabama, Germany, Illinois, Virginia, and Colorado.

While in Germany, my mom took my sister and I with her to Greece each summer so that we could spent it with our yiayia (grandmother), aunt (thía), and our two cousins. We spent three summers in Greece, and the memories are fantastic.

Most of the time, we spent our days at the beach, playing mini golf, eating ice cream and watermelon, and tramping around the suburbs of Athens.

One time, my mom took my sister and I to a disco. It was fun dancing to the BeeGees on colored tiled floors produced by strobe lights and a disco ball dangling from the noisy room’s ceiling.

And the outdoor theaters were awesome–four walls without a roof, surrounded by beautiful flowers with the huge screen on the wall across from us.

My dad retired in Colorado, and I finished up my last year of high school in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Although attending my senior year at a completely unfamiliar and friendless high school was both challenging and incredibly abysmal, the fact that I fell in love with the light, arid, sunny climate and gorgeous mountainous scenery of Colorado helped lessen that year’s lows, and it only got better after I graduated, seeing how I hated high school.

When I was growing up, I was painfully shy, and it took me several months to get to know other kids. Nevertheless, I did each place we moved, and in some cases, I wrote to those I became friends with for many years, until most of them stopped writing.

Writing letters was a normal way of communicating in my day, youngsters out there reading this. 🙂 And writing letters and receiving them in the mail was akin to getting a surprise gift every time my mom would bring in the mail.

One friend, who became my best friend, I met while my family was stationed at Rhein Main Air Base, is still in contact with me today. We’ve literally kept in contact, visited with each other a few times, for the last approximately forty years.

Relationships like that are so special and cherished. In fact, I’ve talked to her recently, and she is planning to come visit me in a few weeks, depending on the COVID rules here in Colorado.

Childhood memories of getting in and out of airplanes, unpacking our things, starting at new schools, are embedded in my mind. Riding my bike with my friends, playing Barbies, going to the roller skating rink to glide around the circular floor and do the hokey-pokey with the lights off and colorful spotlights dancing around the huge space bring a smile to my face.

So many children were in the neighborhoods in which I grew up. You’d encounter them on your street or in their front yards, and soon, you were talking, playing–friends.

There was such freedom in the days of my childhood. You hear that often from older folks like me. But it is so true. Life was full of imagination, wonder, and riding your bike or skating around your neighborhood and beyond with no fear and little limits/boundaries, especially if you lived on base.

I wish it were still like that today. My sons didn’t grow up with the same freedoms I did.

All those moves exposed me to different cultures and different people, and I feel blessed to have had those experiences.

I bring all this up because not only am I reminiscing, but also because ideas of writing about the military brat’s life, using some of my own experiences to create a work of fiction has been swirling around in my head the past few days.

Perhaps this new idea will land on my mind’s runway, and a story will be written. I’m hoping so.

Were you a military brat? What childhood memories do you hold dear?

 

~*~*~*~

 

 

Pick up your copy of Passage of Promise  via Amazon or Barnes & Noble!

Me with PofP final print copy April 27 2020