• The sixth day of August 2014…

    August 6, 2014 / 10 Comments

    Another day in August…another milestone.  Joy and sadness.  Laughter and tears.  This was originally posted in Sweet Journey Home on August 6, 2013.  What can I say?  I don’t think I can say it any better.  I look forward to seeing my family in the South the first two weeks of October.  My niece Cindy makes everyone’s heart sing and laugh!  Here she is in the pic below with her two wonderful children.  Happy Birthday, Cindy!  I love you!

    cindydawnandclayton2

     

    The Sixth Day of August…

    There are some days in life that are just bittersweet…today is one of those days.

    On a sweet note, today is Cindy’s birthday.  She is my sister Gerry’s firstborn.  Cindy is beautiful with a heart of gold…just like her late Mom.  She has an ever ready smile and a wonderful sense of humor.  We are always laughing when we’re all together.  An amazing pianist and wonderful teacher, she must bless the hearts of the students at the college where she teaches.  No doubt, she blesses the hearts of our entire family…just as she blesses mine.  Happy Birthday, Cindy!  I love you.  Wish I could be there to celebrate with all of you!  But I will see you in October!

    Love this photo from about 1957.  Cindy was almost 5 and I was 12.  (Guessing at the year and ages here.)

    Apparently, I’d propped her up in the car window!  I was a really good baby sitter!

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    Sadly, today also marks the tenth anniversary of my beautiful sister Dot’s death.  She fought a courageous battle against AML (Acute Myloid Leukemia) but Heaven needed her.  She had such strength and optimism.  She believed in FAMILY more than anyone I have ever known.  Dot remembered special days with a card, a note or a call.  She organized family reunions and made sure that we all got together.  She had a gift for staying in touch.  Dot had the burden/privilege of being the oldest…maybe that comes with the territory.  As I shared in the previous post, searching for our family roots was Dot’s inspiration and I will honor her by finishing it.  She would like that.

    How I would love to answer the phone and hear her quip one more time, “Hello!  What’s going on besides the rent?” with that smile in her voice.  I miss her every single day…but I will see her in Heaven.

     I love this picture of my sister when she was about 21 years old. 

    Dot21

     

     

     

     

  • Birthdays in Heaven…

    August 1, 2014 / 9 Comments

    I wonder about a lot of things.  I always have.  Thankfully, there is the Bible, the inspired Word of God, to fill in a lot of the blanks.  Maybe with all the things we really  need to know.  I know in Heaven there is no more sorrow, no more crying, no more night, no more illness – no more growing old.  We are young and strong again.  I know we “will know as we are known”.  We will recognize one another!  Since we won’t be growing old, as we do on this earth, then I have to assume we won’t be celebrating birthdays.  Or maybe we will remember the birthday that we had on this earth?  The Bible doesn’t tell us that.

    If my sister Gerry were still on the earth, she would be celebrating her 84th birthday.  But she’s in Heaven and young again.  I dreamed about her last night.  I dreamed about her birthday and everyone was celebrating.  I believe that she is celebrating in Heaven today!  Happy Birthday, Sis!  I miss you more than words can say but I will see you again in Heaven!

    gerryaugust1961

     Above:  boating on Grenada Lake about 1963.  

    Below:  At their house “on the hill” mid 1980’s.  

    She’s probably making a joke in Heaven about her 80’s hair!

    gerryandsonnyhillhouse

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    Gerry

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    August 1st is also the day of celebrating my daughter-in-love Amanda’s birthday.  She really is very much like my sister Gerry – the same heart of gold.  I will always remember when my son brought her home from college to meet us.  His father and I fell in love with Amanda right there on the spot.  I clearly remember telling my son, “you can marry her or I will ADOPT her, but either way, I am KEEPING her!”  I’m so happy to be her second mom.  Happy Birthday, Amanda!  I love you!

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    August 1st is also my daughter and her beloved’s wedding anniversary!  Tonight, I will be babysitting as they go out for dinner to celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary.  Where did the time go?  Thankfully, that time gave me four wonderful grandchildren.  I have two sons and one that I consider my precious son as well!  I am blessed!  Happy Anniversary!  I love you both!

    For more pics and stories of the first day of August, read here.

  • Pineapple Upside-Down Cake…

    July 31, 2014 / 5 Comments

    I was at my desk working on (or at least contemplating) getting some bills paid and filing the stack of papers piled on the edge of my desk.  As I sat there feeling more than a bit unmotivated, the phone rang.  Susan, my friend and downstairs neighbor, was calling to ask if I could help her with a small writing/publishing project.  I replied sure, but that it might have to be tomorrow sometime.

    Wise woman that she is, she mentioned that she just happened to have a freshly made pineapple upside-down cake.  Warm from the oven.  Of course, she had no way of knowing that pineapple upside-down cake is a trigger word for home.  In the dessert department, there are any number of trigger words for home that she could have used:  lemon ice box pie, fresh apple cake, fried apple pies…yellow cake with homemade caramel frosting.  Any one of these would have done it.  Needless to say, I postponed paying bills for a visit and a big slice of pineapple upside-down cake.

    When I was growing up, my Daddy usually worked the 3-11 shift on Saturday evenings.  So, Mama and I had our little Saturday night ritual.  She’d make delicious homemade spaghetti, salad, rolls and lemon ice box pie or pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.  We’d take our plates into the small den adjacent the kitchen and eat while we watched Perry Mason.  I was a mystery fan even back then.

    Eventually, I was old enough to date on the weekends but usually preferred a Friday evening date to a Saturday evening one.  I enjoyed our Saturday evening Perry Mason time together and our pineapple upside-down cake…

     

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    The photo above is from one of my favorite go-to sites:  All Recipes!

  • “I’ll go to my grave loving you”…

    July 23, 2014 / 7 Comments

    The year was 1975.  My sweet, gentle Dad had heard this song on the radio and asked me if I could find the record for him.  He loved my Mama dearly and he loved this song.  At the time, I was not a fan of country music – and definitely not a fan of the Statler Brothers – but I bought a tape player and the song for him (and a few others).

    I watched as he listened to the sweet harmony and the words of the song…and his eyes teared up.  The next thing I knew, there was a tear trailing down my cheek.

    He did go to his grave loving Mama and his four daughters and all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren…four years before Mama.

    I think about this song from time to time…and about Daddy’s love for and commitment to his family.  I’m thankful for that legacy.

    MAMAANDDADDY1968

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     The preview photo at top was taken about 1952 at the Memorial Gardens Cemetery.  

    I wrote a post entitled “All Too Soon” about the photo and the years on Mamie Road here.

  • Miss Glorioso…

    July 1, 2014 / 6 Comments

    Have you noticed that the older you get, the sharper your long-term memory becomes?  (We won’t talk about the short-term memory!)  A few of my classmates and I have been together since the 6th grade at Kingsbury Elementary School.  That is a very long time.  All the way through graduation at Kingsbury High School.

    Memories are amazing when you think about it.  I can remember my sixth grade teacher, Miss Glorioso, like it was yesterday.  She was beautiful.  Italian with coal black hair and big, dark brown eyes.  I believe we were her first class to teach after graduating from a university in Mississippi.

    Miss Glorioso actually made learning fun and I think that is about the highest compliment one could bestow upon a teacher.  She smiled a lot and loved teaching.  If she couldn’t get a point across, she’d act it out in front of the class – like action verbs.  I think she is the one to thank for my strong grasp of grammar.  I remember once,  much like the American Girl movie, Molly – An American Girl on the Home Front, her handsome fiance came for a visit to the classroom.  The rest of the girls and I were in love with the romance of it all!

    My classmates and I have been wondering what happened to Miss Glorioso.  Using our sleuthing skills, a few online sites and the help of a classmate’s 6th grade report card, we determined that her given names were Jennie Marie.  Through Ancestry.com, I found that she grew up in Mississippi.  We just don’t know her married name.   We don’t know if she’s still alive.  I’m guessing she was about 11-12 years older than we were at the time, so she would be 79-80 now.  I have no idea how long she taught or if she would remember her class from 1956-57…but the class remembers her quite fondly.  It would be wonderful to know if she is still alive and how she is doing.  We would love to tell her how much she meant to each of us all these years later.

    If you know Miss Glorioso, would you email me at the contact link above?  There are a bunch of us “sixth-graders” who would like to say Hello and Thank You!

    Diannepreteen

     Speaking of long-term memory, I believe the dress I was wearing in the photo above was lavender.  I was wearing the “crinolines” beneath to make the dress stand out!  Such was the style way back then…

    GREAT NEWS:  I found Miss Glorioso!!!  

    We just had a nice telephone conversation,

    and she was so happy to learn that we remembered her! 

  • Mama’s teacakes…

    June 18, 2014 / 5 Comments

    Sharing a nostalgic post today from My Southern Heart.  Originally published October 12, 2009.

    When I was growing up, there was only one car which my Dad took to work.  This meant, of course, I walked to school.  Granted, we didn’t live on a farm after my toddler years and it wasn’t a five mile walk through blizzards, but there were some cold, rainy, snowy days on my .31 tenths of a mile to and from school.

    One of my sweetest memories is coming home from school to find my Mama there and the wonderful smell of something baking.  Sometimes, there were sweet potatoes baking in the oven as part of our supper or Mama’s special meatloaf that I’ve never been able to quite duplicate.  Often there were cupcakes…warm and ready to be iced.  My favorite, however, were Mama’s vanilla teacakes…a bit like a sugar cookie but fatter and softer like a cake.  Often they were iced with Mama’s special chocolate icing.

    One day this past week, we were watching an old episode of The Waltons (I love the Waltons!).  Grandma Walton had made her special sugar cookies or teacakes.  Right that moment, I wanted one of Mama’s teacakes more than anything in the world.  After the show, I searched through Mama’s cookbook which I had compiled until I found it…the recipe for her teacakes.  I baked them on a Pampered Chef baking stone instead of Mama’s old cookie sheet which is long gone.  I also “dropped” them on the cookie sheet instead of rolling them out.  I dipped a slightly moistened juice glass in sugar then “flattened” each one out.  Next time, I won’t flatten them so they’ll be fatter and softer, but they were still delicious.

    Just one bite of that teacake, and I was a teenager coming home from school again to find warm teacakes in the oven…

    Mama’s Tea Cakes

    1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

    1 & 1/4 cup sugar

    1 egg, beaten well

    1 teaspoon vanilla

    1/4 cup milk

    2 teaspoons baking powder

    2 & 1/2 cups flour

    Cream the butter.  Add sugar gradually.  Add egg, milk and vanilla.  Sift dry ingredients and add to first mixture.  Roll out mixture to about 1/4? thickness.  Cut with round cutter and bake on a greased baking sheet at about 375-400 degrees.  Delicious iced, especially with chocolate, or sprinkle with sugar.

    Enjoy….

    Read here to find out when and how I discovered that I had actually NEVER lived on a farm!  

    That was an identity crisis!