History Lesson #2

So.... Here's the deal! Ive learned so much about raising kids as a single Mom from my single Mom! I have learned so much about a blended family from being raised in a blended family, and Ive learned so much about being divorced from living through a divorced family!


Its not sad... its life! Its my life... As I see it :-) Not censored by people that have been a part of my life but just the way I see it...


Last week I talked about how my life began at 9 mo old, and after that blog I received a few phone calls from family... mixed reviews... to say the least! LOL... I am blogging about my life and my memories as I see them not as others remember them... so please bear with me and understand that I will write this blog just as I remember it...


My earliest Childhood memory was when I was about 18 months old... maybe two! I remember being in those thick big girl panties... you know the ones, they are thick through the middle because you might have an accident in them, but they are cotton and in the little girl kind, they are usually pink... Anywho... so in pink thick cotton panties, nothing else on... I remember trying to get up into this rocking chair in my Mom's living room. It was one of the wooden rocking chairs that had wicker in the middle and it rocked very far back... so as I was holding onto the sides and trying to climb in it, it was rocking too far forward and I couldn't get in it... I was little... At the same time as I was trying extremely hard to accomplish this huge feat, my Mom's "friend" Mitch Owens came to the door and she let him in... I remember looking up, seeing this guy and feeling very very embarrassed that I was not dressed!! So I ran to my bedroom and hid... That is my very first childhood memory...

My Mom was a typical busy single Mom and I stayed with my grandparents a couple times during the week so she could enjoy some social life... I fondly remember riding home to my Grandparents house in the back of a VW bus... it's the car my Bappy drove to and from work and after he picked me up from daycare we would ALWAYS stop for snacks on the drive home... Cheetos!!! That was my snack of choice... I remember the orange fingers!!

Even though I didn't know my real father and I hadn't yet met my soon to be Daddy, I was such a blessed little girl... My Mom and I spent so many "just us girls" times together... I have some very very great memories of dancing in the living room to the record player with the smell of incense burning... singing to Debbie Boone and Amy Grant at the top of our lungs...

I remember thinking I was a big girl on the tractor with my Bappy... we would drive through the woods to the garden and I can remember the smell of wild chives growing along the bank of the creek that ran at the back of the property... I picked them and took them back for Grandmaw to use in the dinner she was cooking...

 

I remember my Mom dressing me for Halloween in a Tiger suit she handmade for me... she drew whiskers on my cheeks with her black eyeliner pencil... Grandmaw was there taking pictures as she ALWAYS did...

I also remember the sad times of being the daughter of a single Mom... I can vividly remember standing beside Mom's water bed patting her back while she cried face down in her pillow because she was heartbroken over some dude... Most of those guys are still somehow a part of her life and everyone is happy and life has moved on... its a lesson that as I grew up and became a young single Mom I remembered... life does move on and we all survive, even when we hurt so bad we think we are going to die... we don't die, we love again and tomorrow the sun always comes up !


I tried when I was heart broken as a young woman to not let my daughter see me cry, but I also didn't hide my life from her... There was a time when I was about 24, I was so heartbroken... I couldn't help myself and I started crying in the car on the way home from work...Wenie was in the car... She was about 4 years old... we got home and I went straight to my bed and cried in my pillow... she came to the side of the bed and her little chubby hand was patting my back and she said "Mommy, why does (we'll just call him the Fireman) make you cry?" and I thought about the time I did the same thing with my Mom and how I learned about broken hearts and boys making girls cry... I just told her that he wasn't mean, I was just sad because of some stuff that she didn't understand and that it would all be okay, I promised her I wouldn't let him make me cry anymore... and I didn't... The tough lessons I learned from watching my Mom struggle helped me to be a strong woman and stand on my own two feet just like she had done with me...


I handmade those early Halloween costumes for Wenie because that's what I remembered... and those are the things that make me smile.


So now on this journey I call Life... I get up everyday knowing it wont all go my way, but that in the end... if I just live, learn, laugh and tell those I love, "I love you"... I will come to the end of the day a stronger woman, because I saw my Mommy do it my whole little life... as I see it ;-)

Signed,
The Happy Handmade Halloween Tiger