Today It's All About The "Twins"...

My mom and dad, about the time they started working on their last two (of six) children. They were not deterred by the first four children, first a son, then a daughter, another son and another daughter.

They decided they wanted more... I'm not sure that they were ready for what they got, but they always swore that they loved us.



This, I'm sure, is what they wanted... All spiffy and hair combed and curled, me in a nice little dress, my baby brother in an age appropriate suit and a clean white shirt.

It was boy, girl, boy, girl until I came along to mess up the order of their lives on this day in 1945. They gave it (at least) one last shot, as it were, and on this same day in 1948 my baby brother was born.

Dad was ecstatic, he had 6 of the 8 children he wanted. There were 3 boys and 3 girls. Mom and the doctor said if he wanted 2 more to make it 8, he could have them. After all, mom was 36 when I was born and 39 when Bennett was born. Enough is enough, especially when the last 2 could think up and get into more orneriness than the first 4 put together.

All my sibs and I are tight. All in different ways. Baby brother and I have a special bond. The same birthday, twins, seperated by three years. I teased him for a long time that since he was born on my birthday, a Friday the Thirteenth, it took me years to decide it was good luck. But if you look close at the photos, you know what I know... It was great luck. For me, anyway, and I think he would agree.

My daddy said that when he came home and told me I had a baby brother for my birthday, he asked what I wanted for the next birthday... he swore that I told him twins.

I don't remember getting a baby brother for my birthday, after all, there was a mess of us kids already and I probably wasn't too impressed with another brother. I do remember, however, that I got my first pair of cowboy boots. Now THAT, to me, was impressive.

Now the first pair of boots has long ago bit the dust, but that bond with my brother, my twin three years removed, has done nothing but grow over the last 61 years.

So Happy Birthday Baby Brother, my 61 year old baby brother, from your 64 year old big sister. If we still had the boxing gloves we could go another round.

Oh, yeah... THIS is what mom and dad got... a bare-footed baby girl with fine, unruly hair and a dressed to the nines WITH a hat baby boy.



Aren't birthdays GREAT!!!

The Big "50"...

I've been thinking about what I wanted to share with you on this special blog and I think I want to talk about my family for a bit. My father was born in 1903 in Tennessee. Dad loved fun and joking and all us kids teased him and told him he had one leg shorter than the other from walking around the hilly country side in the backwoods of Tennessee.

My mom was born in 1909 in the rip-roaring state of Texas. Her mom and dad had a ranch out in the Texas panhandle around Canadian. When mom was getting up to highschool age, the family moved to Gentry, Arkansas. My father had moved to Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and was going to school at John Brown College. Mother enrolled for two years to earn her teaching certificate. And that's where they met and where a life time love was born.

They married in 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drove to Oklahoma City and lived in that city the rest of their lives. They had six kids over 17 years, 3 boys and 3 girls, and were married for 62 1/2 years when mom died at 85 years of age. My dad followed her home 2 years later at the age of 92. We always told mom, who was a stay-at-home-mom all her life, that she had a bunch of stars in her crown for putting up with dad. Dad always loved a good joke or a pun, loved to play Rook and was a bookkeeper all of his working life.

Now that you know that I wasn't found out in the field under a Prince Albert can, let's get to the good stuff. I wanted to mark my 50th post with something fun. The necklace and earrings pictured above will be given to one of my many (maybe) readers. You know, one of those bribes we all give to try to reap heaps of comments, praise, salutations and/or adulations.... The beads are pressed glass, iridized to give them a little extra pizazz. I picked the color and strung them in a more informal style because it's fall and also it's almost Halloween.

Simply comment telling me how your folks met, or you and your other half, or you and your dog...you get the idea. Tell me about the beginning of a special relationship in your life. All commentors names will be put in a hat with a little peanut butter smeared on one end of the paper and my sweet Chloe will draw the name of the winner.

Comments will be closed at 12 noon CST on Sunday, October 19, 2008, and the winner will be posted Sunday afternoon, or maybe later if I have to chase Chloe down before she eats the name... Did that sound professional?

Peachabowfumee...

My folks raised all us kids to be well spoken and polite. No cussin' allowed. If one of us would say darn, mom would say, "you might as well say damn.", and needless to say we knew better than to say damn. Same with heck, "...hell...', gosh, "..God.." and so forth. We knew that there were things that were not to pass through our lips because any stupid dolt could cuss and we should be able say what we needed to say without swearing because we were encouraged to expand our vocabulary so we wouldn't need to rely on words such as those. I guess when I was probably 12, my baby brother (9) and our best friend and next door neighbor (10) decided we would make a list of all the cuss words we knew, which would probably have been several less than George Carlin's list. We wrote the words down on a piece of paper and stashed the list in our 'treasure box', a metal BandAid box. Then we decided we needed to make up a word that we could say that didn't sound like cussin' but we, and only we, would know what the word meant and we wouldn't get in trouble that way. How we came about this word I don't think any of us remember and it would be totally speculative for me to try to explain, but whatever the method of madness was the word we came up with was "peachabowfumee". If you just sound it out as it reads, that's how it sounds in my mind to this day. Now you need to understand that I'm one of those weird people who couldn't tell you where I was, oh for instance, when Kennedy was shot or when men walked on the moon. I know they happened and I was glued to the tube as soon as I heard about the president being shot and I was probably in school watching when the astronauts walked on the moon, but I remember peachabowfumee like it was yesterday. I don't remember if any of us tried to spell it or not but that it was one of those childhood secrets held near and dear and not to be shared with anyone else, but we would be the only ones who would know...

So if any of your children and/or grandchildren come up with some strange word that they use and then look at each other and laugh hysterically, you might think of this post and know that they are living a childhood that they will remember and smile about when they get old.

Oh, and yes, mom found the BandAid box, emptied the contents and left it on the kitchen cabinet for a couple of days... and she never said a word, because she knew that we knew she knew, and we learned from it. How cool was my mom?!!!