Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Sickness hits the house.

My poor baby is sleeping from fever. He is laying down and very weak. His tonsils are red. We are pulling out all of the home remedies, at the first signs of this. I had noticed that he was a little more jumpy the past two days, but I thought that the relaxed summer schedule had him hyper. Turns out he was brewing a sickness...Poor baby! Hindsight is 20/20. He has houseful of nurses and praying people over him, so we are not worried, just active at watch and care of this precious one.
Y'all pray for us
, as they say, down here in the South!

Thursday, June 24, 2010

My very first sunflower blooms.



I have tried and tried to plant sunflowers in my garden. I think that the birds must eat them, or something, because I never got any, until this year. I protected the little plants from getting weeded by my overzealous weeding crew. Those are weeds mom, they kept saying. No they are not. Don't pull them up.
My protection paid off this year and I have a small but well loved bunch of sunflowers growing in my garden.
I have seen other gardens with 6 and 7 foot sunflowers and huge blooms on them. Mine are only 3 or 4 feet tall, but I am happy to welcome their beautiful blooms among my treasured flora. I have pansies and daisies and impatiens which didn't make it in the restructuring of the garden by my landscape architects Enoch and his father :(. They decided that my impatiens were in the wrong place and pulled them up, to my upsetment. But the sunflowers were left. They are so beautiful. I have only one bloom today and 8-10 others to come. Hooray!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Father's Day at the Walker House!







We were happy to give breakfast in bed and his favorite dinner to the best father in the world. We are blessed to have a man who loves the Lord and loves his children. Gifts and time and attention were well warranted and we love seeing his happy face as we render trinkets for his tireless service.

Friday, June 18, 2010

I had a good day off.

It was soooo hot. I had all kinds of intentions.ie. 2-3 hours on the courts, gardening, math time with my children. I just wanted to get them motivated. I fell to the heat and the laziness of the surroundings. I took Ben to work and got the children out to the courts and by the time I got there, I was already soaked in perspiration. Ethan got a good 15 minutes and everybody else got 20 minutes, before their complaints were heeded by me and I let them go to the swings. There is no heat like this in NY. It is only in the 90's but the air is so thick and wet, it feels heavy when you breathe it.
But the football team at Ben's school, had no problem working out in this weather. They were running and playing. I felt so inadequate. 1 day a week trying to take a day out at the courts and I can only stand 1 hour. We came home and slept for 2 hours and that was it for the rest of the day. We had alot of fun, complaining about adjusting to our new environment. We are full fledge North Carolinians and Charloteans now, having been down here for 4 years. I hope that Ezra will be adjusted to the heat to be able to romp and play in the heat like those little fellows on the football field.
I miss the cool breezes from the ocean. :(

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

We get these most beautiful cloud formations, down here.





It is sooooo hot! You really thank God for Air conditioning. Halleluia, we try to keep it about 75 in the house. Outside the air feels thick and unbreathable, about this time of year. It has taken us this many years to stop hibernating in the summer. The first year, I fainted at the school, wearing too many clothes and we slept the whole summer. Now we are learning to cope with the change of climate. I don't wear girdles, in summer anymore,LOL. And God has accomodated us with much more rain to cool us down more often. So we are actually learning to love the NC Summer.
We still dream of the cool of the NY skyline and the wonderful cold breezes off of the Battery Park waterfront. The beauty of the fog rolling in at Sunken Meadows and the Rainy days at Jones Beach. We had fun in NY and we are learning where to find those fun things here in NC. Here, wherever you go it is hot.
The clouds look like mushrooms and make all sorts of weird shapes when they are getting ready to rain on us. They turn blue and purple and there are sunbeams around them that look heavenly. We have a joke, when we see the sunbeams around the purple and blue clouds, heavy with rain and hail that the angels are having a party and they slide down the sunbeams and boogy at the bottom and at the top of the slides. ("Go Gabriel, its your birthday!") we say. It is delightful to imagine them enjoying the beauty like we do.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Entering the 28th year of marriage...Now, at 48 years old, I am determined to...

I am determined to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord.

I am determined to forgive my enemies.

I am determined to motivate my children, with the blessings that God has blessed us with.

I am determined not to let the passive, inept, inactive Christian sentiment cripple me from instructing and affecting my children to love and obey the Lord.

I am determined to share the stories of the grace of God to draw my children to action in the Lord.

I am determined to focus on the responsibility of rearing my younger children, although my hands are feeble and my heart discouraged.

I am determined to worship and praise God, in the midst of my midlife malaise.

I am determined to improve my service and activity for God and family and country.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Thursday, June 10, 2010

My baby is in Middle School Now!


Ethan's graduation day!



5th grade graduation is today. I will see my boy rise to the next grade and go to middle school next year. It is a day to celebrate and we will!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I was reminscing of the most tremendous grief that I had felt, 27 years ago.




My children always humor me when I go into these grief stories, right before my anniversary. I tell them about my Grandma, how much I loved her and how hard it was to say goodbye to her.
I tell them, every year that she was so excited to want to see me marry Ben. She didn't quite get to the wedding. She passed away 27 years ago yesterday.
She told us not to stop, on account of her. This was most important to her.


Breakfast was done and Enoch was going to the bus and all three boys started cheering. What is going on? It is a rainbow, a whole rainbow, right in front of our house! They were excited. I was awestruck! We got the camera and tried to catch it, but it was a brief exhilaration for the morning. God, Himself had given us a gift in the morning and we are grateful.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

My Ethan, Safety Patrol!


I took off some time to go to the awards ceremony of my 5th child, Ethan. He's grown so big, now. I love to see the inward motivation that happens when one is the 5th child in the family. Nobody forces the issue, with him. If he doesn't toot his horn, he won't get acknowledged.
We had a family meeting the night before the awards ceremony and everybody laid out their schedule and what we were going to do. We all knew that it was Ethan Week. Everyday would be some celebration for something. Except, we forgot about the awards ceremony. So it seemed random that we woke up and Ethan said, are we going to the ceremony tonight. TONIGHT? Why didn't you remind us of this in the meeting. We have one working car, so that meant that I had to leave work to take Ben to his second job and keep the car so that I could take Ethan to his award ceremony.
The house exploded with contentions. It seems that the 5th child is the pin in the family grenade. Nobody else wanted to go to it, but Ezra. So, Ez and I went with the camera and enjoyed watching Ezra get a certificate for his participation in the safety patrol. He was proud of this accomplishment and it is an accomplishment, with the schedule that we have to keep, all of the family responsibilities in motion. He was a little disappointed that he didn't get an honor roll award for the whole year. But, he's grown so much and done so much this year, I told him to celebrate that. I love that he has that inward determination to work hard over the summer to improve his skills. He's such a character. Field day is Wednesday and Graduation is Thursday. Pray my strength in the Lord.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Cultural misfit---

Evvy and me at the awards ceremony
Oh my, Elyse and I started clapping Glory to God, this morning, when we heard the praises on the radio, in the gregorian style. We acted out and clapped and started chanting "Go! gregorian" Ben said that is inappropriate, you are not supposed to "act black" to not black music was his unspoken meaning. I thought it was glorifying God in the Holy Spirit. If it is the Holy Spirit, why can't we act out anytime Jesus is praised in truth? It is not dignified. When they sing gregorian, we don't praise Him like that. Why? We were not in public, we were in the car?

Don't mind her, he often says, she is not from this country, referring to me. The children know the appropriate times, for some reason. Whenever Black people- "go there" it is appropriate to "Praise Him" No matter what they are saying. I am sitting there saying, what are they getting excited about, she didn't say anything to glorify God. So we had an argument about it. Somebody is going to have to help you with your cultural misfortune, he said to me. You are so culturally stubborn. I am not trying to be culturally stubborn. I am trying to praise God. Nobody taught me how to be "Black". I learned to praise God and listen to the words, apart from the cultural rearing. So sometimes I am the only one praising God and shouting, like when we went to a concert of some children praising God, in Latin. Why are you shouting, Mommy? Don't you hear what they are saying, isn't it always right to praise the Lord, when children are praising Him? You are embarrassing us. I am sorry.

Ben saw a girl and said, she reminds me of you, because she speaks English.

I said, Honey, I am speaking slang, with you. I am trying to be Black. You know what I mean, he says. No, I don't. I speak the same English that you speak. No you don't, he says.

Now, I know that my husband thinks that I speak "sidditty". I married him to be "Black". No matter how much I try to fit in, He goes up to people and tells them, that I joke and do different accents. He will go to a strange person and tell them, my wife is from your country. He is not joking. Every other country, but Black America. I said is it not black to speak articulately. I am trying to pay you a compliment, He said. I missed that joke.

Aren't you happy to be articulate? Aren't you trying to be articulate? No! I have been trying to talk like you.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate!"

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Yesterday we celebrated Mem"oriole" Day!

Ezra learned about the orioles. We read Wikepedia and found a good picture of an oriole to put on the screen saver. He knows that it is Memorial day, but since his pronunciation is still developing, we went with it.


Excitedly, he ran upstairs to tell Evvy about the Oriole that is on the computer. This woke her up, quickly, she thought he said that we were having oreo's for breakfast. She ran down the stairs and was looking under the computer, on top of the computer. Ezra said there were oreos on the computer. We laughed, not oreos, Orioles. It is MemOriole day? We looked up orioles and put one on the computer, before I had to go to work. We did sing a song or two in honor of our heroes, but the joke of the day was the oreo breakfast that they thought that I had made them. :)






Happy Birthday Juju!




Ju's birth story is burned into my memory. Mommy and Daddy were going to Aunt Helen's birthday cookout and Dad wasn't there yet, he was in the shower. Mommy's water broke and everybody knew that she was destined to be a show woman, to make an appearance like that. Most of all me. I have been telling my children the stories of our shows at night with the mirror spotlight and the day that she stuck her face in the chair and Ms. Newsome had to use alot of vaseline to get that face out. I thought that I could pick Jackie up, because she was crying, that was my constant smack. Don't touch her! They had to tell me that all the time. We just wanted to kiss her, what was so wrong with that? Well, I am grateful for the 21? years that we have spent being sisters, no matter how old we get it will always be 21 years now, because I can't count higher than that anymore. LOL. It doesn't matter that our children are older than we are, they can get old, we won't. XOXOXOXOXOX

Title- The Studious One!

Title-  The Studious One!
artwork by Elyse

Of biscuits and syrup

Of biscuits and syrup
tasty treats

Happy Saturday!

Happy Saturday!
a day at the Raptor Center.

Widdle Emmie in outer space school

Emmie jumped on the bus and off it flew out into the atmosphere. There was a set of clouds with turbulence right above the house and it took a few minutes for my Emmie to buckle her seatbelt. They hit the bump hard and it knocked my Emmie out of her seat and she bumped her head. The video camera came on and the monitor looked through and stated, Ms. Emmie, where are you? You are not in your seat. Where are you? I am alright I fell because I hadn’t buckled correctly. Well jump up Emmie we have a long way to go and you have to be buckled there is entirely too much turbulence in the stratosphere for you to unbuckle now. As soon as we are through this weather system there will be straight sailing but right now you must buckle. Emmie scrambled into the seat with intensity and purpose now. She watched every cloud pass her window and her nose was pressed to the window trying to see the top of the house as it drifted slowly out of sight. Soon they were not only out of sight of the house, the sun came out brightly and just as quickly they were putting on the atmospherical breathing apparatus and the outerspherical lights. The ABA and the OL. These precautions were to make them appear to be satellites to the radar as they were out in the ionosphere. Emmie knew all about this now. She had gone to the orientation and had a good breakfast and it took them 20 minutes for her to get out past the atmospherical pull and to feel the zero gravity. It would be 15 minutes before the gravity simulators would take effect, a glitch in the system which was being worked on. Until then, they enjoyed the couple of minutes of floatation, while being connected to the seats by belt. The first thing they saw everyday was the strataflotsam. The items which had been dumped into the atmosphere by earlier generations. What would their generation do about this ecological waste area that remained floating above their heads? This was a question for the generations. For now it was the area that they had to guide through on the way to school.

Midnight at the OASIS

Midnight at the OASIS
Sunset in Huntersville

My little Emmie

ran to the bus on the first day of the last year of school. 2 buns on the side of her head. She kissed me and ran at dawn to the bus. She was starting the adventure of a lifetime. I would never see that little girl again, she was going to woman school!

My Father and I 1989

My Father and I 1989

to the tune of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

A VISIT TO PAPA











Are you going to Mary Immaculate?

Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



Remember me to the one who lived there,



He once was a true love of mine,



Tell him to buy me an acre of land,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



Between the muddy Hudson in Jamaica Bay,



Then, He’ll be a true love of mine,

Tell him to sow in it seeds of pure cream,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



And build Ice cream mountains and buildings of whipped cream,

Then, He’ll be a true love of mine,



Tell him to reap them with sickles of M&M’s,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



And chew bubble gum and eat till we’re done,



Then, He’ll be a true love of mine.



Tell him to run it off down the motor parkway,



Apricots, Chocolate Cherries and Pie,



After your done 50 pushups



and jog down the West Side Highway,



Then he’ll be a true love of mine…

(Don’t wait for me today dad, The kids are sick again, My tummy’s bulging again, My heart is aching again, And now there’s no love there…)





He once was, a true love of mine….So, Girls, I do beg you don't miss your Daddy,Apricots, Chocolate cherries and Pie,You have one short chance to see him on this side, Go visit him and let your light shine.