He makes all things beautiful in His time.

It is gracious of God to make a new day and to give me the delightful husband and children that I now have. 47 years young and blessed!

My Daddy was the strongest man that

I could imagine. He was tall and the other children on the block thought so too.
Julia and I had imaginary friends, Charlie and Steedy. Dad would talk with them with us alot of the time.




I remember being in the car with Dad when Mommy went into the hospital to have Jackie and on the radio came "Leaving on a Jetplane". Julia went hysterical. As she was often doing. She's not coming back. She's not coming back! I think we both started to go hysterical and I think Dad had to pull over to calm us down. We cried and cried and cried. But eventually she did come back home and then we stopped crying. Thank God for Aunt Karla, who watched us alot when Mommy went to the hospital to get the new sisters from heaven and then came baby Jo

Jo is the only one who didn't get the joke here

She was a bundle from heaven as were the other two gifts. Jo wasn't untouchable like Jackie and there was no Ms. Newsome to tell us not to touch her. So we did. She was funny and imaginative like the rest of us.






Every night when it was time to go to bed, Dad was at work and Mom couldn't do anything because she was nursing the baby and couldn't get up with the baby in her arms so we just occupied ourselves with everything we could.
We stood on eachother's backs to turn on the light in any room that had a light off and went ravaging.



I loved to go into the cabinets when we were playing hide and go seek. I discovered Mommy had a stash of sugar cubes in there for the Rosarian ladies' luncheon. Every time I went in there I took 1 or 2 cubes and popped them in my mouth. We hadn't discovered candy yet. It was a real treat...until the Rosarian luncheon came around.
Mommy said, Jayne, go into the cabinet and get me the box of sugar cubes for the ladies coffee and tea. I turned blue. I don't know how much was left, not much though. The whole neighborhood heard my mother screaming at me about that mishap. You guys know that I have been eating sugar ever since. :)

It is Sunny and warm and in the 60's down here

Now I see why your cheeks didn't automatically come out of the chair.:)






















My peach tree, now inside the house, gave me 3 blooms for my birthday. My kitchen is aglow with the warmth of its blooms, as I attempt to keep it alive indoors before we find its terrestrial home in our yard somewhere. Nothing freezes in weather like this.
This makes me think of the day that we walked on Baisley lake. Julia, Jacqueline and I were in the car with Dad when we were as little as we were in the picture. Dad started talking about how he and his boys would walk on the frozen lake in Januarys when they were frozen and I think that he forgot that he was grown and the next thing I remember we were out on the ice. Dad's face suddenly became very pale as he becconned us away from him. It had taken me so long to get onto the ice that I was not as close to him as the other 2 were. I was the last one on the ice and I was the last one off of the ice and Dad was very upset with me that I didn't listen when he said to get off the ice. I was so scared of climbing up the steep hill to get off the ice.
Later on, he said he had started to hear the creaking of the ice under his feet and terror had hit him. We had no idea. It was fun though.

Showers of blessings!

It is raining cats and dogs outside today and I am 47. I am looking through the photos and remembering the wonderful birthday presents that I received almost every year or so I got a new brother or sister for a present. I am so grateful for them all and so glad that God reminded me of His overwhelming favor in these things by sending a downpour to mark my day. I am thinking back to the 1 through 5 years and I think I will entitle them open mouth insert foot. All of my photos have my mouth wide open. The one photo with me walking around with my mouth open, I remember as the day that we lost President Kennedy. That was the last time I remember standing there smiling like that.
Dad said that I was such a greedy baby that I would've gobbled my mommy alive, it looked like. They were always trying to get a handle on my appetite. I ate alot and I sang alot and I still do. Learning self control is not natural to anybody and clearly not to me. My new years resolve is to control my candy snack eating binges and that is not easy on your birthday.
My wonderful husband brought me flowers and candy and ordinarily I wouldn't even share a one of them. Let's see how I do with that.
Dad said that he wanted me to be faster than everybody else's baby on the job. So he put me on the floor as soon as my legs could stand it and tried to encourage me to walk. I am not blaming my brain damage on the resultant fall, but something must have caused the silliness:).
Dad and I spent enormous amounts of time with eachother and he tried to make me memorize stuff all of the time and sent me on little errands into this room and that room to get stuff to increase my memory. He made me memorize phone numbers from here to Brooklyn and that type of thing and he was into every class I had at school to see what I was remembering of what I learned. That is why he called me his "Frankenstein monster".
This is a picture of Dad's dad Ethan Jack Bodden, when I was born.

Grandma's hands''

God bless Aunt Gloria and I hope she feels well today.

Hands that sew and hands that show, hands that give and hands that live. Grandma gave to us the sense that we could and that she would support what we could do.
Take all you want but eat all you take... That was what we heard from her again and again. She loved parties and fun and beauty and courtesy. I went out to dinner with her and Uncle Barry when I was 12, I remember and I didn't know I was supposed to eat fries with a fork. Embarrassingly, I picked up my fork at the kosher deli, where we went, and ate appropriately.
Grandma was always good for some lesson on ettiquette, such as that. Her birthday was a special occasion all of the time. Because we shared the day together hers and mine became unified. Special day. Thank God for Grandmas and I hope I can be a good Grandma when it is my turn.

Now it is the countdown to my birthday

The bulletin board reflects that fact and we had a precious birthday visit from my brother-in-law, Elijah. We are getting ready for the big day. My children are all with me and we are struggling, but rejoicing at God's good pleasure to give us a wonderful Church family and friends down here to celebrate and encourage us along this journey of life. I always feel a little homesick during birthday time. This is home now and we are making memories for little people to launch into the future with. My present memories for them will include decorations which we intend to put up this week and lots and lots of interaction with one another. These things, we minimize so much, but they are really the only things that last.
Last night was movie night in the house, they always watch together, but I rarely can harness my mind long enough to sit for a movie. I just can't watch that stuff on tv.
We watched an oldie called A Date with Judy from 1949 or 50. It was enjoyable to us and gives us things to talk about from our different age perspectives.
I just love the time that we are able to spend with eachother around any project, from cleaning to watching. Now back to the drawing board of what is for dinner on Sunday?

Today is Aunt Jackie's birthday!

I can't say that I remember Jackie being born, but I do remember that Mrs. Nuesome was our Nanny when Jackie was a baby. She was untouchable. We always got smacked on the hand for touching her. Don't touch the baby. Don't touch the baby. That's all we ever heard. Mommy and Daddy went out on a date, when Jackie was a baby. They were going to a play on broadway, or somewhere in the "city". Then, the lights went out. I remember being scared but Mrs. Nuesome just sat watch over baby Jackie to make sure we didn't "touch the baby". I said, Julia can you do this, and I stuck my face in the chair and pulled it back out. Julia said yes I can and she stuck her face in and got stuck. That should have been my cue to touch the baby. I didn't though, we just screamed and cried together and talked about her face staying in there forever, until Mrs. Nuesome got some vaseline and unstuck her. Happy Birthday, Baby Jackie.

I guess the subway knows more about me than my family...

I spent more time on the subway than I spent with my family, through high school. I dreamed about the subway last night and that did much to dissipate the homesickness that I sometimes feel. I do not miss the rat race of running to catch the train, but I do miss the solace of the subway sounds and smells :-{ and being alone with just your thoughts in the midst of a million people. We could be in traffic down here and see fewer people than would be crammed into one car on the F train going home from school. To be that intimate with a city of people who you will never know, is the New York state of mind. It is lonely down here not to be able to spend an hour leaning against someone on the train and know that you will never see him or her again. Here you will see that stranger again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. It is a beautiful difference of perspective on life. Love and the milk of human kindness is different, depending on where you are from. I do miss NY but I am really learning to love North Carolina and what it means in my soul is learning to really care and do something about that care. Not just shrug my shoulders at the immensity of the problem. Confession to God is what I do and what I neglect to do. The problem is bigger, but I can make it worse or better. God help me to start in me and in my house where we will SERVE THE LORD Which is what we intend to do.

Today, I discovered the FACEBOOK

Today I went with Christopher Columbus across the ocean on my computer and discovered the FACEBOOK. Mi Sobrina, challenged me to find the facebook, which I call "estupido".
She said TIA no esta estupido, esta buena. Today somebody walked away from their facebook and I saw my sisters and my beautiful brother and started crying again that I am not in NY. I was ooohing and aaaahing at the most beautiful man in the world and my husband had to leave the room. I have a picture at the top for those of you who don't know my "BOY." Thank you for sharing the pictures and stuff on the facebook, now I am sad that I am not at home and jealous that I have no grands to blog about. I will live and go back to my simple life of blogging about my own daily pleasures.

The sweet by and by

I sat next to mom Walker on the Turkey ritual, once in my life and it will stay with me. Mom had intentions for that turkey and the turkey was going to come into obedience to her commands. She had good taste in her hands and she was going to pull it out of that turkey.
The turkey sat on the table still stiff from the cold and the thawing process. The muscles of the turkey were tight and immovable at first glance and I had the philosophy that the less we touch the thing the better. I really don't and didn't like the feeling of cold bird in my hands it is yucky. Even after the cleaning process, I prefer to season and cook. Mom showed me that it is a relationship you are forging and she with me and us with the bird. Mom said take some of the butter and put it on the bird, "yuck!" Definitely not one of my favorite things to feel, at that time. She had seasonings including paprika and seasoned salt and various other things and we were going to put them into the turkey and not by osmosis. I didn't know that she was seasoning me for her son also.
We took the turkey that day and rubbed and rubbed and touched it in places I had no intentions of putting butter. Mom, you put butter there too? She said not a word to me except, rub the turkey. When she was finished with that turkey it was a different bird, relaxed, not beligerant, not frozen and most definitely seasoned. I saw seasoned as sprinklings of different items on a "bird". She changed my perspective and showed me that she was "pulling" good taste out of that bird. It was a bird and now it was a meal and I could've tasted it before we put it into the oven, Yuck!
When it was done, it was fabulous and the spiritual lesson of love and comradery follows me this 18 Thanksgivings later. I love that my mother in law loved her family enough to share her secrets of love and seasoning with me and I do miss her, too.