"Liquidators"

My children are napping and I've had a long soak in the tub, and decided that I needed to do a little cleaning and reorganizing. So I began to go through all the little shoes here in the basket by the back door. There are way too many pairs for three little kids. So sorted and bagged they are, and we're less 18 shoes now. That's single shoes, not pairs. But it is nine pair, which is too many extra shoes to have, that do not fit. Especially since I'm the official "shoe picker upper" in this house.

Looking at all those shoes reminded me of when I was a child of twelve and was very aware of what everyone else in the world was wearing on their feet. They were wearing something that I wasn't, and something that my Mother wouldn't buy for me. Penny Loafers.

After what I'm sure was much harping and whining .... Mom finally decided that I could have a cool pair of Penny Loafers too, and off to "Liquidators" we went. Liquidators was a store in the small little Illinois town I grew up in. It was where my Mom shopped a LOT! Being only twelve, I didn't know the difference in stores, and Liquidators was just like the Ritz to me!

Only today (honestly) did I put two and two together, and only today it hit me like a ton of bricks, ... and only today did I realize that Liquidators was a "sell-out" store or "seconds" store.

It actually took me thirty-nine years to realize why my new "Fake Leather Gray Alligator Penny Loafers" didn't look like everyone Else's did when I was twelve years old, and it left me scarred me for life!

I vividly remember the day Mom bought those shoes for me. I was hard to deal with, mouthy, and wouldn't make a choice .... and she made the choice for me! It was a lesson learned .... but did she have to make me wear them to school? She did.

Be Blessed Everyone.

Hedgeville (Part Two)

Her name was Ruth Hedge. She was my Grandmother, and the woman that taught me about God, and about being humble and gentle and kind. She lived her life by a motto, and taught me to live mine the same way: to always give more than you take, and to always love.

My Mother and Father built a house across the road from my Grandparents on a lot where an old house used to be. It was buried to make way for the new one.

To my Mother, I'm sure it was like going back home again. She was going to live in the same place where she grew up. She was going to be able to look out her front door and see the house she'd lived in for many years. Mainly, she was going to be home again. Just a walk a cross the street to her Mother's house. To the woman that she loved very much. I'm sure she had many plans for the two of them.

I'm sure it wasn't in her plans for her Mother to die just a few short years after she built her home there. She didn't know that she would be taking care of this woman until she passed away. I do know that my Mother would not have had it any other way. God works in myterious ways sometimes. He brought my Mother home when her Mother needed her the most.

I never lived in the house that my parents built then. I was already gone from home. My brother and three sisters did live there for a few years, and one by one they too moved away. My parents divorced and my Mother lived there for years. She remarried and eventually moved to the country. The house in Hedgeville was calling my name, and I listened with my heart, and I moved there with my family.

My kids never got to meet her. She was gone before they were born. But my Grandfather still lived in the old house ... and my kids knew him. He was rough. But he was tender with them. He loved them and he lined them out. They grumbled, but secretly, they loved living in Hedgeville.

He'd sit on his porch swing early in the morning and smoke a cigarette. Most mornings he was working in the garden or mowing his yard by six o'clock. I remember my kids complaining about the buzz of his lawn mower so early in the morning.

He got older and they got bigger, and then they mowed for him. It was never at six in the morning, and he grumbled. They grinned, and did it their way.

Many mornings in the summer, my youngest son Jared would cook breakfast for my Grandfather and they would eat under the shade tree in his yard. My Grandfather loved that boy as much as he loved Hedgeville.

There's more to come next time. Be Blessed Everyone.

Hedgeville (Part One)

It's not really a name. Not a legal name anyway .... but it was known by all, in the little Illinois town I grew up in.

Five houses and an old shack stood this side of the levee. A small self-ordained community, and everyone was related. I spent a lot of time there while growing up. My Grandparents lived in one of the little houses there.

My Grandfather came there from Arkansas as a little boy and put down roots in that little river town called Mt. Carmel. He married my Grandmother, built a house there, and never left. It was their home. My Mother grew up in that two bedroom cracker box house, along with her two sisters and four brothers.

My Grandmother's house was plain. I never knew that she was poor. I think she knew, but she never complained. She never complained about not having money, or the finer things in life. She had her family, and she had her God. She worked as hard as she prayed, and I never remembered seeing her tired.

I do remember the coal stove that stood in the living room, and the water pump outside the back door. I remember before she had running water in the house, and before she had a telephone or an indoor toilet. I remember the pictures that hung on the living room wall, and I remember the old Jenny Lind spindle bed that stood in the corner of my Grandmother's bedroom. The bed that I know she slept in all of her married life. I remember that her closet held treasures, with the best being an old box of pictures that I loved.

Mainly, I remember her bible, sitting on a wood cabinet that my Uncle made for her. I loved her bible, and sometimes she would let me thumb through the pages. Once in a while I would come to a paper that she had written on, or a dried flower from her past. She never left me when I looked through her bible .... she was always right beside me. Right beside me, and always in a dress. I remember her hands, and her fingers .... they were so gentle, and she was so patient with me. .... and she loved me, and I knew it.

I remember long before the levee was built, when the river used to flood the Illinois banks. When I was small, we would get in a boat at my Aunt Grace's house and paddle almost half a mile to my Grandmother's house. What fun it was. It was exciting and it was an adventure. I don't ever remember the water getting in her house, but I remember we would tie a rope from the boat to the porch post, and climb out onto the back porch. As I think back, I always wondered why the old house was built up so high in the back.

My Grandmother never drove a car, and she rarely left her house. I remember my Mother or my Aunt would take her to church every week, and if I was lucky ... I got to go with her. She believed in God, and she never cussed. She never raised her voice, and she always laughed .... from deep within her belly.

As I grew older, I remember the days that I would visit there. My cousins and I played in the old hog lot next to her house. We sat in the middle of the road and sifted through the gravel to find the indian beads and Grandma gave us jars to keep our beads in. I loved spending the night there with my cousin. There was something so special about being there. I belonged there, to that area, to Hedgeville. It is my roots.

In the summertime, the men would go to the river and dig mussel shells to sell. I remember the smell on the river bank as they would cook the shells to open them. Every once in a while, a perfect pearl was to be found. I remember gathering the shells as they cooled down and I remember getting to sort through the pearls as if they were diamonds. On really hot days, I would get to wade into the river with my Father. I can still remember that feeling of mud between my toes as I felt for the shells in the river.

Hedgeville is gone now. Progress came along. The houses are gone and a new bridge is coming through. When I go over the bridge leading into Illinois, I am so sad. A part of my life is gone. It's missing now .... the houses are buried and only the levee stands. But in my mind, I can still see Hedgeville in all it's glory ... my Grandmother's garden, and her grandkids playing in the yard. I can hear the giggles, and I can hear my Grandmother calling out to us. It will always be my home.

Her name was Ruth Hedge. My Grandmother, and the woman that taught me about God, and about being humble and gentle and kind. She lived her life by a motto, and taught me to live mine the same way: to always give more than you take, and to always love.

It's funny how life goes. I've talked before about that time line of life that we all live on. My kids can't fathom the changes of a few years. They don't know life without modern conveniences, or luxuries ... and they don't know the wonderful things they've missed in their life. But thirty years later, they did get to live in Hedgeville, and to them it was wonderous. Come back to read part two.

Be Blessed Everyone.

Memories of a Grandmother (Part Two)

Click here to read the beginning ....

I loved my Grandma Imo. To a little girl who was in awe of this woman, that brought gifts and stories and lots of love from far away .... getting to visit her, and have her to myself was the best thing in the world to me.

The summer I was eleven, for two weeks, I stayed with my Grandmother in Peoria. It was so exciting, and I remember looking forward to it for at least a month before I got to go.

It was right after the 4th of July, she came home to visit, and I went back with her. It's funny because I remember the trip as well as the entire visit. Right outside of Bartonville, where she lived, was a bridge. This wasn't just any ordinary bridge .... but a bridge that arched across a wide river, and one that lifted in the middle to let barges travel down the river. I was so amazed with a bridge that had stop lights and raised itself up in the middle. I remember being mesmerized watching the slow moving barge pass under us. It was as if I was in another world.

As we got close to Grandma's house, I remember watching the street signs. Watching for Pershing Avenue. Just a little street that curved around to another street. Not very long, and not many neighbors. Just a small little white house that sat back off the street. I know I'd been there before, but my memory doesn't let me go beyond that year I was eleven. As we pulled into her driveway, I felt so happy to be there.

The little things are so clear. Meaningless little things that tickled me as a child. I remember how clever it was to have a little rubber ball on a string hanging from the ceiling of the garage, so that when she pulled in, and the ball hit the window .... she was "home," in far enough, and could safely close the garage door. I remember her slowly inching towards that ball like it was yesterday. Forty years ago.

As we walked into her house, everything was just like I had pictured. She had talked so much about her house that I knew what I would see. She had pictures of her Grandchildren everywhere, and all the things she had made. The same things she had made for us, and my Mother, and my Aunts and cousins. Her refrigerator held all the little magnets she made. I was in awe of those magnets. I moved them everywhere and I grouped them together. Just like the ones I had at home.

That summer I learned to sew. She taught me how to work her sewing machine. How to thread a needle, and how to embroidery. I was eleven, and I absorbed everything she had to teach me, as if I were a sponge. She showed me how she made her own patterns. In my youth, I thought she was way beyond other Grandmothers. She was so talented, and so crafty, and I wanted to be just like her. There was nothing that she couldn't make ... and everything was so beautiful.

I learned to string beads, and I learned the difference in polyester fabric, and I played in her fabrics and put colors together and we made little doll quilts. She made my Barbie doll clothes, and put them together on little cards with shoes and little Barbie purses with ribbons.

It was a summer to remember .... one that I always will. As I grew up, she taught me more, and her craftiness never slowed down, until she could no longer go. When I was grown, she gave me her sewing machine, the one she taught me to sew on when I was eleven. I cherish that machine. She gave me her patterns that she made my barbie doll clothes with, and she gave me the pattern that she made the dress that my first daughter wore home from the hospital. Those old hand drawn patterns mean the world to me.

She crocheted little hats for Joey to wear in the hospital since he was so small. She worried about his little head getting cold. One of the treasures that I love the most is a dress that she crocheted for Juli from rose colored thread. I know much love went into making that dress for her Great Grand-daughter. This Spring, I'll take Megan's picture in that same dress.

My Grandmother went to Heaven almost ten years ago, but not before my children got to know her well. She followed the same traditions with my kids that she did as I was growing up. I still have the monkey socks she made and all the little toys and dolls she crocheted for my kids. She gave them a quarter when she came to visit, and when she stayed the night with us .... we sat up until the wee hours of the morning .... playing Yahtzee and Scrabble and talking about old times.

Her birthday would have been last week, and I've thought a lot about here lately. I was so lucky to have had a Grandmother like her.

Life is wonderful when you have someone that you love ....

Be Blessed.