Sweet dreams

Sleeping in the car - with your head on someone's shoulder - that's the way to travel.

(My oldest daughter at age 3, sleeping on my brother's shoulder.  My son and younger daughter resting on each other.)  

Who do you trust with your hair?

Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges,

but eventually you find a hair stylist you like. 

~Author Unknown

 

Cutting my son's hair 1982

My sister cutting my step-brother's hair 1975

 We've saved a lot of money in haircuts over the years, and not just from barbering the boys.  My sister and I started by using the scissors on our own heads when we were little girls.  I don't have that picture, but I've seen it - not a pretty sight.  But later on we improved on our skills.  My husband hasn't been to a barber since the early 1970s when he was required to have a military haircut.  My sister has been barber for both of her sons and her husband.  When her oldest was a toddler she cut his hair while he slept because that was the only time he was still enough. We had a beauty shop session on our last girls' weekend.  Shampooing, cutting, and styling someone's hair in this way is a laying on of hands of sorts. They're all intimate acts of service and the one receiving the service is putting trust in the giver.  Having someone shampoo and massage your scalp can be a healing experience.  

We hope to get together for girls' weekends several times a year - maybe we'll make the beauty shop sessions a regular part of them.  Those haircuts may not be professional, but they are blessings.

Sewing the memories

Easter 1982

When my girls were young I made Easter dresses for them every year.  The dresses they're wearing in this picture were my favorites.  They're slightly different variations of the same Vogue pattern, with tucks in the bodice and tucks around the hem.  The fabric was from Wade Mill where my mother-in-law worked and was printed with tiny rosebuds.  My son was wearing a Carolina blue John-John handed down from his cousin.  I wish I remembered what he was laughing about!
I made many of the dresses and other clothes that my girls wore when they were growing up.  I made costumes, confirmation dresses, cocktail dresses, and later their wedding dresses.  I made pocketbooks and book bags and Barbie doll clothes.  It gave me much joy. Most of those things are gone - handed down or worn out.  But they survive in these pictures, and for that I'm grateful. 

Ice cream and pigtails

My sister and my daughter cranking ice cream.

Summer 1974, making ice cream at my husband's parents home in Anson County.  Probably peach ice cream made with Georgia Bell peaches.  Hand cranked, the old-fashioned way.  It was our semi-annual visit to North Carolina during the years that we lived in Fairfax County, Virginia.  My sister, between her junior and senior years of college, was traveling through and stopped by for a visit.  We soaked up all that family time in those semi-annual visits and lived off of it for the next six months.  While in North Carolina we'd buy jars of Duke's mayonnaise and six packs of Cheerwine.  We ate crowder peas and Silver Queen corn and fresh tomatoes from my in-laws garden.  They'd give us jars of pickles to take home. 
My oldest daughter, then 3 1/2 years old, helped crank the ice cream.  She now has a 3 1/2 year old of her own.
Family, vegetables from the garden, homemade ice cream, and a 3-yr-old in pigtails.  Blessings all.

One photo, many blessings

So many blessings in this picture

• The man leaning against the lamppost is my husband.  He would soon be leaving me for four months in Coast Guard Officer Training School.  We swore we'd never spend another night apart after those four months.  His draft number was 29, but he escaped the draft by joining the Coast Guard.
• The coat he's wearing was his daddy's Navy pea coat, worn in World War II.  One day, years later, I left it in my unlocked car and someone stole it.  My husband wrote about it in his weekly newspaper column and a kind woman knocked on our door with her own husband's pea coat in her hands.
• The house in  the background is the much loved family lake house when it was only a few years old.
• The larger dog is Sam, who adopted us one summer.   He appeared one day and was so hungry that he tried  to eat the hose.  He loved us all but he and my dad had a special bond.
• The smaller dog is Zippy. She came to us when we were children and she was a puppy.  When Sam came to live with us Zippy was an old lady of a dog,  but Sam gave her a new outlook on life.  
• The car in the carport, a Carolina blue Toyota Corolla, was our first new car.  We kept it until our oldest child was old enough to drive it.

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.  ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

A storehouse of blessings

Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. ~Robert Caspar Lintner

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! ~Henry Ward Beecher

Warm happy memories are like a storehouse of blessings.  When the days are long and dull and that normally thankful heart is having difficulty finding the blessing in every hour, we can draw on those happy memories.  They cheer us, bless us, and transport us.

A few months ago I purchased a relatively inexpensive slide scanner.  In the 1970s and early 1980s we used slide film for our photos.  We have boxes and boxes of slides stored in a trunk.  Occasionally we get out the slide projector and have a viewing, but digital photography has spoiled us.  And we want to be able to preserve the slide images and share them.  

And so I've been scanning - an entire tray at a time in the beginning and a few slides at at time recently.  The scanner doesn't like flash pictures or any pictures with a great difference in light levels.  But nevertheless, I am happy to get as many images as I can stored on my computer.  And even happier to be remembering all of those vacations and holidays when we were young parents with small children.

 Each one of those memories is a blessing.  Through the month of November, I want to share some of them with you.  

 We're a family of readers, and the children got an early start.  My oldest daughter was almost always happy to read to her sister and later to her brother.  

I did a little running in my younger days - even ran in a couple of 10ks.  My sister encouraged me and stuck with me through those races.  Here we are returning from a run on Thanksgiving Day in the early 1980s.  Don't you just love the socks?

Summer vacations at the lake - the hammock - so many great memories!

More to come - stay tuned!

"The days are long but the years are short:"

A little over a year ago I came across this video and was moved enough by it to find out more about Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project.

I followed The Happiness Project on facebook where this link on keeping a one sentence journal was posted.

I loved this idea for a one sentence journal designed to prompt happy memories. I didn't have a good history of journal keeping.  In a college freshman English class I was required to keep a journal for a semester and what an intimidating exercise that was!  I couldn't write a word without imagining the grad student instructor critiquing it and snickering under his breath.   I bought a nice leather journal a few years ago with hopes of being less inhibited, but my entries were sporadic and self-conscious.  But a one sentence journal - just daily notes on what I wanted to remember?  That was something I could handle - and I was in love with the idea of being able to look back over time to what had happened on any given day in previous years.

I bought a book for my new sentence journal within a few days of reading Gretchen Rubin's blog about it and have been faithfully recording something almost every day since.  I'm almost two months past the one year mark and so I'm able to look back now at 2009.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer in early 2009.  By October he had been through chemotherapy and radiation.  My entry for October 27, 2009 reads "Daddy received good news at Drs office - all blood work was good - he's maintaining!"  The good reports continued until December.  He died March 24th.  Over the coming months I'll be remembering those last few months of my dad's life as I look back in my journal.  It will be hard remembering his pain - but remembering his love and the time spent with him will be a blessing.

My dad and stepmother Thanksgiving 2009.

As Gretchen Rubin says "The days are long but the years are short."

*note:  I've also been recording longer and more frequent entries in my other  journal as well as blogging here and at Ginny's Garden.  As with many other things in life, expressing myself has become easier with practice.