Granny's tickle spot!

4 year old Elyse



18 years ago with the Walker family: At 2 days to glory, Granny was laying in the living room. We thought that by hanging around the river to heaven, maybe God would take us all with her or let her stay with us. She was obviously in alot of pain and suffering. We were too, but we couldn't let her go.

I was the least of the children, only 6 years or so in the family. I had other things to do and I let my precious husband and daughter, who were both enraptured in her gaze, know that there was another side of the family who were also waiting for us.
I didn't know that this was the last time that we would see her. I was 1 week from delivery and seered by my own griefs and pains. Unthawed out from my own pain and I couldn't see the signs that this was the last embrace.


My poor husband, torn between, dying mother and emotionally distraught grieving wife and pregnant woman. Elyse was his only stable comrade in that struggle. He capitulated and decided to go with me, after praying with his mother and telling her to hang on and that he would be back on Monday.
I kissed her and Ben kissed her and Elyse stuck her face right in the neck spot and she yelped out a giggle that startled us all. A little 4 year old could find the only sweet spot that was left in a body wracked with the grief and ready to let go of this mortal and putting on the immortality. Maybe, if we would have stayed, we could've convinced God to take the entire family with Mom.
We couldn't go yet, but she left us here and here we stay, grateful that there is a God who we know has a road of purpose for us to travel that Granny stands with Jesus to meet us at the end. She is rejoicing with her Saviour now! We await the consumation of the age!
Grands can draw out a giggle from the deep!

A Long line of Love!

I truly appreciate the teamwork that Aunt Lorraine and Dad exhibited to keep their marriages over the long-haul.
I had occasion, recently to reminisce how much Aunt Lorraine has shared with me about the difficulty of this middle season of marriage. She tells me about the ins and outs of dealing with the emotional season of having health challenges and trying to empathize with the health challenges and hang on to one another when it might get hard. She sometimes calls Uncle a grumpy old man. When she first told me, I thought it gossip and put it aside. I now know that this was real womanly instruction. I am in that season now where my own health challenges and my husband's sometimes collide. Love in the family has prepared me to know that this is not a new phenomenon and I am not the first to have endured it.
They never talked to eachother much as a sister and brother, but they made a pact with eachother to do it a different way than their mom and come what may they are well on the way to accomplishing that goal. I respect that. You made a vow, they say! I didn't like you sometimes either brother and probably when they called eachother they said to eachother, "it could be worse, I could have spent the rest of my life married to you, brother or sister!" I mean I love you and everything, but I am glad to have gotten away from you! :) This time, this love is for keeps, no backsies!

In the footsteps of her illustrious Aunt Gloria...

My precious 21 year old wrote and produced an entertaining play for the girls of the church this weekend. She got them involved in learning about the Book of Esther. In service to God she took an entire day to write the script and gave out the parts to the girls and they liked it, I hear.
I told her that for years and years and years and well we know for years, (Even though Aunt Gloria is still younger than all of us) Auntie has been entertaining her ladies in waiting with Biblical plays at Antuns. God love us, we have a little of all of the women and men in the past.
Thank you God for the godly heritage and children who love Him and want to serve Him!

If I could Kiss my Daddy.

If I could have just one more minute to feel his warm cheek,
If I could have just one more minute to see my Daddy smile,
I would wait, I would drink it in, I would listen to him make
the point. I wouldn't try to finish his sentence. No matter how-----
long it took.
I would listen---
I would look at him---
I would keep my lips right there on his cheek---
I would wait that one more second and try to hang onto it---
These are the connections that make the hope of heaven so precious---
I told my sassy Senior this morning.
"Don't cry like I am this morning!"
"Go and kiss your Daddy!" Don't take this time for granted,
You don't get another chance to feel this sweetness.

Mommy's bobby pins.

My mommy told me the story of a little girl who wanted to get away from boarding school so much that she made a little altar in the schoolyard with 2 bobby pins and prayed diligently to God to make her parents get along so that she could go back home. God answered and she didn't ever have to go back to Holy Providence and she started a journey in prayer that has taken her around the world and back again.

God reminded me of that little girl this past Sunday, while we were on our way to church. The clouds parted in the most perfect cross that you ever want to see and peering through was the sunrise. Elyse said Mom, "look at the cross in the sky" and I said "where is it?" Sure enough, we all oohed and ahhed and enjoyed the wonder of the cross in the sky. That was the beginning of the liturgy of the day. The Holy Spirit started early, that Sunday, showing me the connections on this past Sunday. Usually, it is the beauty of the bells as we are marching into church that starts my perception of the themes and connections of the day.
This past Sunday, whoever was on cloud duty was a part of the liturgy committee and was letting me know that they were aware of Holy Providence also. I said to myself that the angels must have taken off their bobby pins to let us see the sunrise that God was showing.

It was an extra special Lord's day for us. We had a special singer and the Pastor preached about the bigness of God and the choir sang my favorite song by Larnelle. I don't remember now which one :)

It would take me ten years of writing, just to give you the connections between what the Word of God was in the service and the angel's bobby pins that let us see the sunrise. I have to write it because the children don't get the bobby pin joke between the angels and myself and the only people who know about Holy Providence are in New York. God is over all and thankfully we have all eternity to reminisce about the connections that God wove through our prayers. It will certainly take that long!

Interview With Uncle Elijah!

Welcome, Uncle Elijah,









How are you? and How can a young man follow you and get to be where you are?









I spent a morning smalltalk session with Uncle to try to crowbar out of this highly effective,yet very quiet admired elder brother of the Walker family, some of the secrets of his successful academic and professional journey. Uncle is an inventor and a retired biomedical engineer. Amazing man. He is a man of few words and he shared with me what his father said to him. He said his father always told him the positive things that he expected him to accomplish. He said that his father's positive words and the desire in himself to change his surroundings were a positive motivation to accomplish things in his life.
Uncle Elijah stated that he had initially studied engineering because he wanted to be a pilot. His pilot ambition took him into an academic route of study that included an engineering course of study. This delight directed path, kept winding and widening and now he is both a pilot who flies occasionally and an engineer.
Goals accomplished are sweet to the soul!

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust!

Uncle Elijah is visiting with us

from Maryland! We are all so excited. We made a big sign and we welcomed him with open arms. We wanted him to enjoy his stay. I will take pictures and put them on so that we can remember that we had him over. We all are happy to see him, especially his baby brother...:)

EZRA IS 5 Years Old today!

The cutest little fellow you want to see, is Ezra. Cute and astute and acute and my baby. I am not a baby he says. All of the aunties came to visit the young prince at 120th when he was born and I was honored. I still couldn't get out of the bed for pain and laziness and sullenness; but they visited me anyway. They each brought gifts and blankets and good wishes. Family love welcomes the stranger and the little ones. He's not an angel, like aunt Ju always says, but he's close!

Today would have been Uncle Pat's birthday!

I never sent him a birthday card but I thought about him every birthday for the last 4 years since Ezra was born almost on his birthday. I remember being at Grandpa's funeral and hearing him say, "it's my birthday." I said, "it is?" I kissed him and wished him happy birthday and admired the fact that he was so selfless to share his birthday with the inlaws of his nephew. I had no idea that I was going to have a baby on the next day. I loved him so much, but life never really gave me the opportunity to show him. He lived long enough to out live dad and see dad's youngest grands and even the great-grands. What a beautiful man he was.

Show and Share day and birthday come together...

Ezra thought that everyday is his show and share day. No, honey, it says on the list that your show and share day is Thursday, this week it falls on your birthday. 5 years old this week. 5 years ago we were stumbling between funerals of Uncle Mose and Grandpa Bob. My belly was making me grumpy and cranky and I was still a whole month before delivery. Not at all expecting Ezra to come a month early. That is his personality.
Glum is Ezra's vocabulary word today. He just throws out words to catch his mother's attention. I LOVE IT!
Today's word was glum. I retorted telling him about the Jackson 5's song that included "DON'T cry, don't cry, don't cry!" Christmas won't be the same this year. This is how we knock down the generation gap. I can't believe we get to talk to someone 40 years junior and find a position of commonality.
It reminds me of Grandma Monica and Grandma Ruth who were 40 years my seniors and music and Tom Jones and Elvis and Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole and Fats Waller and Paul Robeson and their interests were scaled down for us to understand them.
Love in the family!

Dad said...

Uncle Pat had lockjaw one time. He described to me in detail how Uncle could only open his mouth a very little bit, when he had it. Those two were very emotionally attached.
Because Dad's dad wasn't around Dad watched Uncle's every move. I said Dad, how come Uncle Pat looks younger than you do? He said, because he doesn't have children. Dad was Uncle's child. We don't know as much about Dad as Dad did about Uncle Pat. Man to man.

Aunt Roz called it right!

She saw Enoch and she said, look at "Sonny". Sonny used to be up under Mu, just like that. He was 5. I think, I was a little offended that she was comparing him to Sonny, who had been dead for 50 years already. That was her baby brother and I tolerated her Sonny stories that followed. We had come to show the older ladies the baby and listen to them in the hospital rooms.
She said, the rest of us were out on dates and going to the dances and enjoying life and Sonny would leave the dance and say I am going home to check on Mu. How are you, mom? is the constant question. Somehow these precious momma's boys are very aware of mothers' frailty and the fact that she could be gone in a heartbeat. I don't know how Mu lived past Sonny's death. Hearts that intertwine like that only God can heal. She lived many years past Sonny. The aunties, Grandma Ruth, Uncle Charles and Aunt Helen kept it going with the stories and the loving remembrances of the 106 that we children never got to see.
This morning my "Sonny" followed me in prayer all over my living room and I remembered what Aunt Roz said. He is like Sonny, not a soldier, but a sensitive soul, with the love of his mother in tow. As though he carries my weights with him. I must remind him that I have one God who carries my soul and that his soul is not strong enough to carry me and himself. That's what Mu didn't tell Sonny. She was never the same and didn't get out of the bed for an entire year after he died of sclerosis of the liver from his alcohol after the war.
Prayer doesn't have that effect on the body, thankfully!

Mr. Tony stories

Yesterday, I told Ezra a Mr. Tony story. The story of Papa as a young man. The man that I knew was 23 when I was born and a very fast runner. He didn't have to whistle for us because he could chase us. The whistle developed as the legs grew slower.
One day I saw a boy pull the fire alarm on the corner across the street from the Polinese's,(our neighbors). Papa's feet came bounding down the steps from his shower, still somewhat damp and fully dressed. Out the door he bounded and caught that boy and held him there, a teenager, until the firemen came to take it from there. He was a hero on the block and a protector of his little pea patch of chilluns (us). I still remember the sound of my father's feet like tiptoes, lightly running past me and the wind that I felt from his fast body running past me.
Mr. Tony, said William, can I take Jayne on a date? Dad just looked at him and went inside to get the gun. Never again, did anybody on the block, even ask that question.

Mi Sobrina esta en Espana,

No bibe mucho, Haber desaparacido! Quiero mucho

How very far we have come! We miss you guys very much!

It is Jo Jo's birthday and from NC to NY we are all celebrating.







This is a blessing and a beautiful time to enjoy the days and to rejoice with the people that you love. This is living!





Happiness passed from generation to generation. Encouragement and joyful behavior.







Don't eat my hotdogs!



"And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down!"








"We are captured on the carousel of time...We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round in a circle game!" Joni Mitchell






Thank you so much for the pictures guys!

Warm rains of the back to school time.

Today they are getting on the bus. The 2 little fellows, partners in crime. Like Sonny and Charles, Like Roy and Patrick Like Robby and Paul and Tony and Abby and the great men duos in my life; I am having the wonderful privilege of seeing the teamwork of what makes boys become comerades. Will they be like Tom and Huck or like Holmes and Watson, will be built upon what they do now. They are on the bus stop in the warm haze and it makes me cry to see those baby boys so independent, now. Ethan and Ezra. Ethan the eternal naturalist, who would rather learn about the mating habits of spiders and preying mantises than about people. Ezra, his sidekick, who studies his brothers with intense emotion. Ezra knows how many chews it took for Ethan to lose his tooth over dinner the other night. Manly love, is amazing. God help me to challenge them and grow them in the right path. They get to enjoy the sunrise on the bus in the morning on the most beautiful road in the world, that is a start!

Eating Strawberries...

I am running out to take the boys to school; even though the bus picks them up right in front of the house. Today, I took the two little Walker boys, looking like BUD AND BUD,(Grandpa and Uncle Willie) right to the door.
My heart leaps everytime I pass the beautiful huge olympic pool and the gorgeous tennis courts that are around the corner from the school and belong to the residents there. It is beautiful and spacious and breathtaking. Someone really thought out this community well. The school area is so organized with the traffic patterns and the police helping to guide the traffic in and out of the school. All those children have to do is learn and study. There is no noise pollution or craziness impeding their academic success. They have every opportunity and I know that sometimes the beauty and the ease of life can make children take these good gifts for granted. I hope not though.
I walked both boys into the school to speak to Ezra's teacher and explain his absence and the other mommies were doing somewhat the same thing that I was. The children here sit outside the classrooms and wait with a book before classes begin, a very interesting process. I wonder how they get along without a little romp outside before school. I feel they need to shake their sillies out a little bit before having to sit for hours at a time...
Dad said to run boys around in the morning would help. I am going to have to include some rope jumping with my boys to assure that they don't get into trouble through out the day...And maybe some strawberries for breakfast.

The Heritage of MU!

My Daughter, my friend...

What alot of giggling we do as women together. Talking about our wishes and dreams, encouraging eachother in dieting and cooking and disciplines. It is awesome to enjoy being the mother of 2 godly young women. They each have very different interests and ambitions. One is matronly and political and the other is artsy and cosmopolitan. I enjoy them both and am learning alot from each. Thank God.

Jo Jo's birthday!

Happy birthday to you! All of the girls are in their 40's and we are enjoying the time, I guess. I remember a little fat faced girl, running on the beach without her pamper and marrying every little boy on the block. I remember having to blend the two names Amy and Joanne because we always had to call them together. I remember the whistle blowing and the begging for mercy so that our panties wouldn't be seen by the Rochdale crew. I remember an amazing nurse who had the courage to run into the city on 9/11 and visit her charges in spite of the chaos and confusion because she was not afraid of the buildings.
I admire my sister, Jo!


Oh boy, I forgot, Jo is still passing for 18. :) Sorry I told your age, Jo, Jo!