Slice of Life - Neighbors

Carol and Amy at my dining table

Amy, Carol and me back in the day

Slice of Life is a weekly prompt to encourage writers to tell personal history stories. Click on the link to participate.

I have been blessed with great neighbors. I still have many friends who started out as neighbors. Sylvia has lived down the street for the past 20 years. She has a great joy in life and is an inspiration to me. She has faced loss and pain and she can't see well enough to drive any more but she works in her yard, cooks great Spanish food, makes jewelry and goes dancing every week. She has two grandchildren who are the same age as two of mine. Her daughter-in-law was recently crowned Mrs. Florida.

I met Mary when she lived on the next block in my old neighborhood. Our sons were the same age. She has been a true friend for more than 25 years. (Hard to believe!) Our lives have paralleled each other's in many ways and my house is full of gifts and garage sale purchases from her house to mine.

Back in 1980 Pat and Mary Beth lived a few apartments down from my husband and me during the year we spent in Pennsylvania. I was lonely and pregnant and my husband was out driving a truck across the country. I was so glad to see another pregnant lady one day. Mary Beth and I drank hot tea and watched soap operas together in the afternoon until my baby (Jaime) came early and then she was a great support to me, baby sitting the new baby when I needed a break. Her husband, Pat, became friends with my husband as well. I have lost track of them over the years, but I will never forget them.

Back in the 70's when my son was small and I lived in Arkansas, Carol was my neighbor, friend and co-worker. She had a little girl who was my son's age. She wasn't just a friend but was my family while I was far away from my own family. We will always be the best of friends. I believe the first charge she ever put on her first credit card was to come and visit me in Florida after I had moved away.

Back in the '60's I fell in love with the handsome boy next door.

Now my newest neighbor is my daughter, Jaime. They live a few blocks away. They are close enough to walk by in the evenings with the dog and Mia in a stroller. My grandson can and does ride his bike over almost every day. Dishes, tools, food and children move often from her house to mine. Thank God for good neighbors!

Summer Visits to the Farm - Crescent, OK

The old barn on our last visit about 1995.

The kitchen where my aunt tossed the egg shells into the sink behind her. The Hoosier cabinet is at the end of the room.

Uncle Glen, Rick, Aunt Esther, me and Jean, my father.

Me, my mother, Mary, Rick and Rusty the red cocker spaniel. This picture dated Aug. 1956

My father's grave

My grandparents' grave

I wrote the entry below for Magpie Tales -- a creative writing blog. Check it out here. I copied it from my other blog Simple Sunday Supper, but I have more to add below.

A few special summers at aunt Esther's Oklahoma farm. Real butter and cream for breakfast. The crowing of the rooster at daybreak. Waking in the little white bedroom up the steep stairs and looking down into the yard from the old wood-framed windows. A green Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen. A bathroom that used to be a porch. An unused formal parlor with carpet, a wood-trimmed velvet sofa and an old piano. A rose garden. Learning to sew. Searching through the hay bales in the old barn for eggs and trying to catch the wild kittens. My aunt cracking fresh eggs at the stove and tossing the shells over her shoulder into the sink. Eating fried chicken that had just been walking around a little while ago. Feeding a calf from a bucket with a large rubber nipple. Riding on a tractor. The sweet smell of cutting into a ripe, red watermelon right out of the field. Oh, and getting trapped in an outhouse by a mean rooster. (There was a ripe smell in that outhouse, too!) A few old photographs and some family stories. Some old phonograph records. I was a modern girl from the 60's. These are the only fragile connections I have to a simpler life style that is older than time. I treasure them now.

I wrote this about my summer visits to my aunt's farm, but the pictures above are from my last visit. My aunt no longer lived at the farm. We just drove out to look at it. The weeds had grown and the old barn was about to fall down. She asked my husband to check an oil well on her property. It had some kind of meter on it and she worried for years that they had been cheating her. He looked at it and said it looked all right to him. That seemed to satisfy her. I told her I admired the Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen with its built-in sifter. We went to visit my father's and my grandparents' grave at a little graveyard nearby. That was the last time I ever saw the farm. My aunt wrote me and told me that shortly after we visited, someone broke into the house and trashed everything and stole the Hoosier cabinet. My uncle Glen had died many years earlier in a farming accident. Aunt Esther is gone now, too.

Slice of Life - Grand Theft

Slice of Life is a weekly prompt to encourage writers to tell personal history stories. Click on the link to participate.

I wish I had a picture of Jaime's van. It was an old Voyager with faded blue paint but the air conditioning worked and it held all of Jaime's family and friends. Her father had helped her get it when the previous car died. She moved her CD/MP3 player into it from her old car and down the road it would go with the music playing, the baby seat in the back, full of groceries, kids and beach or camping gear. Everyone loved that old van. So you can imagine how she felt when she got up one morning and it was missing from the space right in front of her door. It was so ugly, she thought it was theft-proof.

Of course, the police came and took a report but there was no word. They found a stolen van with a baby seat in it but, unbelievably, it was a different van. (Come on, people! Who would steal an old van with a baby seat -- much less two?) Anyway, she didn't have replacement insurance so she made do with a borrowed car which was much smaller.

It was a year later when they called her and said the van had been found abandoned in Orlando. At first she was excited, but then she found out that it wasn't drivable and it had $300.00 of accrued storage fees. We appealed to her Dad for help and considered having the car towed, but he said to let it go. We didn't know what kind of shape it was in. It was like being robbed twice!

Tuberous Sclerosis Complex

Out little girl, not quite 5 years old, has been diagnosed with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. Here is a definition from the TSC Alliance website: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a genetic disorder that causes tumors to form in many different organs, primarily in the brain, eyes, heart, kidney, skin and lungs.

Mia has some benign growths in her brain that cause her to have seizures. The seizures are under control for the moment, but the future is very uncertain. We have discoverd that a ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective in controlling seizures so we are working hard to change our habits.

A ketogenic diet is based on an extremely low carbohydrate, high fat diet (think Atkins with more fat and less protein). We are learning. Our first step is to eliminate processed sugar and grains from Mia's diet as much as possible and to up the fat content. Bacon and eggs and a piece of fruit for breakfast and tuna salad and tomato for lunch are examples from menus I have seen. Mia's mom has never liked vegetables, but we are trying. It is a hard diet to follow and needs medical oversight but it can have amazing success in controlling seizures that are hard to control in any other way. BTW, I am not an expert on any ot this. Still in shock, actually. So if I have said anything incorrectly, please excuse me.

Bowling Party

Stephanie made a bowling ball cake.

Stephanie and her mom, Debbie

Allie and Steph

Jill's grandpa and her mom, Courtney

Hunter

Jaime and Aaron

Mia had fun and she got a strike!

Jill opening presents

Kids eating cake

Jill's new aquarium

Jill's bowling party was a great success. Stephanie made a great bowling ball cake. It was layered with chocolate cake and confetti cake. Stephanie bought a special pan to make the cake. I see a lot of soccer, basket and baseball cakes in our future. Jill squealed with delight at her presents and all her friends and family came. Mia was able to bowl with a special ramp they set up for her. She got a strike! Even Roger had a good time. All the other pictures are on Stephanie's camera because I forgot mine. BTW, after Stephanie went to all that trouble to make the cake Jill described, Jill said, "You could have just drawn the bowling ball with icing!"

Jill's Birthday at the Park - 8

I made 72 cupcakes to take to the park on Friday to celebrate Jill's upcoming birthday. They were already having a little "neon party" which included dancing around with a lot of glow-in-the-dark stuff. Jill had fun and everyone liked the cupcakes.

All About Jillian

Jill's 1st Birthday

Jill - 2 years old

Kittens
Dance class tutu.
Jill and Dora blanket
Cory and Jill

5th Birthday with Grandma
5th Birthday with Daddy and Stephanie. Jason is in the back.
Jill, 5, and her mother
Jill, 4th birthday, making cupcakes for her party at the water park
Jill and friends from dance class at her 4th birthday party
Which pictures to choose? I have so many pictures of Jill I am trying to highlight some cute ones that I haven't posted before. Her 8th birthday party is coming up. She has been my little friend and companion ever since she was born. She has always seemed older than her years. Happy Birthday, Jillian. I will always love you. I will also do a post of Jill's art work soon. I am always showing Mia's drawings but Jill has many good ones, too.
I need to tell a Jill story. When she first started to walk, we had a litter of kittens. She loved those kittens and she wanted to carry them around. We had to keep saying, "Not by the neck! Not by the neck!" Reminds me of when Jaime was little and we had some kittens. She would call them so sweetly to come to her and they would run like hell in all directions.
Another Jill story. Her first words or close to it. She was looking at a book out on the porch and my friend said, "Did she say 'Duck'?" We both looked at the baby. There was indeed a picture of a duck on the page. "I don't think so," I said. Then she turned the page and said, "Quack, Quack".

Jill was only 3 when we were at Jaime's baby shower for Mia but she was starting to read. She was also very good at recognizing logos. As she helped Jaime unwrap a present, she looked at the big box and said, "Oh, it's from Walmart!" Smart girl.