Red Skelton - Clem Kadiddlehopper

My friend posted a blog and in his replies, he made comment to Clem Kadiddlehopper. Those two words took me down a path of reminisces. Tuesday nights, pajama-clad laying in front of a big old black and white fuzzy television. (This would be prior to 1969 when daddy rolled in the new Zenith "Chromacolor" Cabinet Television into our lives.) My parents bickering if I should watch it. I always got to. The skits were bawdy and fun, my parents would laugh. The bawdiness always went over my sweet naive head. Red Skelton’s Comedy Hour was a staple in the '60s in our home. I remember when my ma showed me a Red Skelton Original Clown Painting. I was stunned that ‘My Red’ could paint like this. It was that moment that I wanted to paint too! I got an artist set for Christmas that year, but I could never do the canvas justice. This thought pattern brought the feeling of a better time came back to me. Thank you Steve-O for a sweet gift this morning!

Red Skelton - Clem Kadiddlehopper

Red Skelton - The Pledge of Allegiance

and I am smiling ...

love me later~tj

 

I am left in a void that is threatening to swallow me whole.....

My Ma.

She didn't want me. That's how I started out in this life. Daddy wanted me. Ma was 22 and already tired from raising those boys. Another child was the last thing she needed she told my daddy, but he wanted to try for a girl, a princess for him. And so I was conceived. She told me this story that always ended with this line, "I wouldn't have given up on you the second I laid my eyes on you". She has spent her life never given up on me. Clumsy as I have been throughout this life, Ma was the one who always steadied me. She'd pick me up dust me off and set me straight again.

She has been my most influential teacher. She has taught me everything I ever needed to know about life. Her pride in the little things in life gave me a good understanding of what is important enough to strive for to be a success. She counted her riches in the sticky little kisses her great grands left of her cheeks. She counted her assets in the crystalline sounds of laughter coming from her children. The treasure box of her life was filled with the her grandchildren's accomplishments.  

Family was the backbone of her life. She lived that, and showed me how to as well. Family gatherings every Easter, babies and old folks, always welcomed. During these times you could not walk through Ma's house at night without tripping on someone. People laid out sleeping in every room, on every floor. Love and laughter and gatherings were my Ma's gift.

She stood next to me when my children, Scott and Becky were born. She stood next to me years later when my grandchildren Brody, Cloey and Daisy were born. She is the foundation of my family. As we grew older the bond between us strengthened. I held no secrets from my momma to her chagrin, and still, she remained my biggest and most loyal fan.

 

My momma was so much more to me than a parent. She was my best friend, my travel buddy, my partner in crime. She was my confidant, and my rock. She may not have been an obvious hero, but to me she was. I have no idea what my life is going to look like without her in it. I wonder if she knows how afraid I am, in this world without her, alone with a vast emptiness growing inside of me.

 

Ma was 77 in November. Her spirit and tenacity has served her well throughout every one of those years. My momma was quirky, adorable, endearing, fun and beautiful. I am the luckiest woman in the world, because I get to say that I am Shirley Butcher's daughter.

 

I love you momma.

Till we meet again.

Pain Filled Goodbyes

Life is so full of pain.

Today step grandson left with his mother. The woman is a real piece of work. I'll leave the details of the encounter in my brain. Needless to say it was memorable. Daughter's husband never took to the court to get a paper saying he'd stay. The mother will drop step grandson back off when he fails to live up to her expectations of how a son should act....

Left in the wake are 3 grandchildren crying over a lost brother. A father crying over his lost son. A step mother crying over her lost son, I didn't add the word step. She loves that boy like he's her own.

I'll see this little man back in life again, the next time his mother doesn't want him anymore. I left him with tears in my eyes, and I told him that I love him to pieces and that I'll be here waiting for him when he comes back. He asked me if I would still be his Yaya. I told him forever and ever, he'd never be alone, just close his eyes and Yaya will be in his heart.

What else could I say to a six year old boy who entered my world and became a part of the very fabric of my life.

Mr. Little Man, Yaya loves you - forever and for always.

What a crazy twisty road I have been driving down for the last 6 or 7 months. Life was good, then my then my daughter moved back home. She brought with her a husband, a son, a daughter, a daughter, a son and a cat. And mayhem, and noise, and pouting, and screaming, and hatred, and emotions, and prepubescent tantrums, and autistic tantrums, and 6 year old tantrums, and 8 year old sass. I have had days of enough stubbornness to supply a mule farm for a lifetime.

Then there is the flipside

I love that my days are filled with these people in my home. I really like them. They are sweet and silly and joyous. They make me laugh, and giggle, and dance to a music that is not heard but felt.

To those days that are less than joyous, the screaming in each others faces, gouging fingernails into faces, spinning and stemming, meltdown over technology, fighting over movies kind of days, I think back to when the house was quiet and I lived alone, and the babygrands visited. I recall those days fondly, and I miss them a lot.

To those days that are marked with giggles and cuddles and reading, and playing I think back to when the house was quiet and I lived alone, and I recall those days as empty, holding a void that was dark and lonely.

So there we have the road I have been traveling. Ups and downs. Rights and lefts, Starts and stops.

in the end, I'm happy.

Santa Continues His Journey

Santa Daddy

My favorite Santa Claus pictures of my children and of my grandchildren are with my Santa Daddy. The last time he wore his suit was in 2007. For eight long years it has hung in my closet. The last time he wore it, he took it off and told me to keep it, so I can play Santa. I could never fill his shoes, so there it has hung. I pulled it out this year for the first time. I cried as my hands ran over the velvety flocked suit. I think he'd be happy that Santa has started making visits again. It's going to live in someone else's closet now. The suit will make magic happen for many more children in the years to come. I think I did the right thing.

Cloey and Brody with Big Grandpa Santa 2007

Brody with Big Grandpa Santa 2007
 



Carrying on .... 2015



Through Jaundiced Eyes

The protestors stood in the dark. The only illumination was from what was left of the burning rubble of literacy they refused to allow the children to read. I watched the smoke curl up from the ashes of accomplishment. It started this afternoon at 4:30. It began to unfold as they stormed the front of school house. Arms full of books and cans full of fuel. I was dumbfounded, frozen in place as I watched.

I simply cannot understand such an alien, utterly bizarre mindset. Just about everything on earth rouses the holy ire and outrage of fundamentalists book burners. Everything they don't understand, everything outside their narrow little circle, which means just about anything you can think of, is evil and Satanic in their jaundiced eyes.

These protesters, who are not parents of children in this school are denouncing this community as a den of iniquity, why they don't even live in this school district, or even in this state. In fact, I found out later, the two rabble rousers who instigated this war of the words are a Texas couple who run a well-organized and bottomless-pocketed book-banning organization that has a devoted following among fundamentalists.

Our school district has policies in place if ever a book is challenged. They’ve never had to memorize the policy. A book has never been challenged. A parent must fill out a complaint form. No one else has a right to complain - and the book must stay on the curriculum or the library shelves until it has been reviewed by a committee.

Time after time, I have since read, bigger school districts are yielding in the most cowardly and craven manner to fundamentalist bullying, withdrawing the books immediately, and sometimes summarily dismissing the teachers who used the offending books in their classes. When parents complain, the school will offer them the option of letting their children read an alternate book, but the fundamentalists rarely accept any compromise. They don't just want their children reading "Satanic" books, they don't want anyone to read them!

In fact, in Warsaw County, Indiana, the school board simply handed the disputed books over to the protesters, who then publicly burned them, which brings me to where I am today watching, in perplexed fascination. One minute, doing the business this town brought me here to do, the next minute frozen to this place in time.

I am pondering over the question in my head whether parents really have an absolute right to instill their children with such frighteningly hateful, bigoted and backward attitudes?

As adults we have a right to believe as we choose, however outlandish and flat-out wrong our beliefs may be. But when adults seek to trap their (and everyone else's) children in a bizarre world of darkness, hatred, blind fear and anti-intellectualism, it seems to me to be a very perverted use of parental rights, let alone Constitutional Rights.

To quote Annie Kinsella from the movie Field of Dreams, "They're talking about banning books again! Really subversive books, like "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Diary of Anne Frank".... This is the kind of censorship they had under Stalin!.... Who wants to spit on the Constitution? Who thinks the Bill of Rights is a pretty darn good thing?... All right America - I love ya!"

tjs© February 4, 2008

I'll be gone for a while ...

I'll see you when I get back.