Dusky Pink Midnight Rose
Tag: memories
One Flower…
Love Blooms Here…
Cases of Marshmallows
I think we all wonder what we could have done differently, at least once in a while.
Well, I did some intense wondering the other day.
If I had it to do over again, I would pack up my three babies and a trailer full of supplies and I would drive up into the mountains.
I would build us a home in the woods, a big log cabin.
I would add a huge screen room for us to play in when the weather was rainy or snowy.
When the weather was good, we would tramp through the woods and learn about plants and flowers and butterflies and birds.
I would teach my kids to respect nature.
We would grow our own vegetables and then we would can and preserve them.
We would make jellies and jams from the berries that grew wild and apple pies from the apples growing on our own trees.
I would be their teacher, not the radio or the television, not the gang on the corner. I would teach them about music and we would play vinyl records on our record player, which would be powered by our solar generator. No Satanic music in their ears, no lyrics demanding that they “kill the effing pigs” or screaming “I want your sex.”
I would teach them how to read and how to write.
I would teach them everything they needed to know to go out into the world, but the world would not have polluted them.
They would not have watched me fight to hold on to myself. There would not have been angry, controlling, critical men in our lives.
They would have never seen commercials that used sex to sell everything from shampoo to cars.
They would never have eaten at McDonald’s, getting hooked on disgusting hamburgers made with pink slime. They would have home-baked bread that they helped me cook and they would learn to cook and bake.
They would have squirrels, butterflies, rabbits and the birds in the trees as pets.
Our little home would be surrounded by trees, grass, flowers and vegetables.
My supplies would include books for all ages, finger paints and crayons, scissors and tape and glue, glitter and paper. I would encourage their artistic spirit because we are all born with a creative spirit but it is fragile and so many things can crush it. They would be encouraged, not held down by a limited, biased school agenda.
In the fall, we would twist branches into wreaths and decorate them with pine cones.
We would decorate our Christmas tree with homemade sugar cookies, popcorn and nuts and the flowers we dried in the summer.
We would sit under the stars and roast marshmallows. Oh yes, I would bring cases of marshmallows.
They would have a chance to grow up without negative influences and they would not spend hours watching other people live on the television set.
Angels would surround us as I tucked them into bed each night.
I think we all wonder what we could have done differently, at least once in a while.
A Can of PINK Paint
It all started with a can of pink paint. I was sitting on my porch when my husband came home from running errands and he proudly handed me a can of hot pink paint.
He had a big smile on his face as I whooped and hollered and took the can of paint from him.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said. “Is this for my porch?”
“I got it to do the front door,” he answered.
“You said you wanted a hot pink front door, but if you want it for your porch, you can have it. I wasn’t sure how dark to get anyway and it might be a bit light for the door.”
“Oh yes,” I said, “much too light for the door, perfect for the porch.”
“Well it’s your porch and you always said you wanted it pink, with a yellow ceiling, so why not?”
And that is exactly how a can of pink paint started a three-day work of love project.
He went back to the store and bought me a perfect sunshine yellow for the ceiling and a darker hot pink for the front door. We painted the porch together and it was exciting to watch a daydream turn into reality. We don’t usually work well together, but our 32nd anniversary was the same weekend we painted the porch, so maybe that’s the reason we spent three happy days together, painting, tearing out a thirty-year old rug, laying a new floor and having fun.
By the fourth day, we were giving each other a bit too much advice, but we finished the porch without a fight and that makes the porch even more special to me.
The morning after we finished he went out and came back with a surprise, an antique plant stand, the perfect last touch. Now, no matter how dreary or rainy the day gets, my porch is glowing with happy, sunshine, flowers and good memories. I also got the PINK front door!
Painting In The Dark
Last week, my husband and I painted our porch. We did the ceiling in sunshine yellow, some bright pink on the trim and we weren’t sure what to do with the panels on the bottom.
After painting the first day, I took a shower and tried to relax. When it was dusk outside, I went out on the porch just to see the colors again. First thing I noticed was the yellow ceiling carried its glow to a wall outside.
Looking at all the changes that we had already made, I got in the mood to paint just a bit more. I stood there, trying to decide what color would go best on the bottom panels, but I drew a blank. I said, “Oh God, I don’t know what color to pick.” (I was serious.)
The light out there was low and I didn’t want to go in for a flashlight to shine on all the paint cans, so I opened a can of what I thought was a pale pinkish gray lavender that I had gotten on sale. Somebody had ordered it up and then had come to their senses, that’s my guess, and it had just been waiting for me to come along.
I opened it and began to paint the bottom panels. I couldn’t really judge the color that I was using without a stronger light, so I just hoped for the best and after painting a few panels, I went to bed, thinking if it looked awful I could always paint it again.
When I got up and went out on the porch, I said to my husband, “Wow that lavender actually matches the paint we used to trim the house. It looks pink.”
He took a look and he said, “Yeah it does, because it is the same color as the trim on the house. I got another gallon to touch up outside.” We started to laugh.
The color was perfect because it brought the porch in line with the trim outside and it blended well with the sunshine yellow and the hot pink.
I never would have picked that color for my inside porch, but when I blindly reached for a can, prayed and hoped for the best, it turned out perfect. Maybe that’s how things happen when we give it to God and we let go.
Maybe painting in the dark is the only way to choose the right color. I don’t know but it worked for me.
I have to believe that He helps me with the little things, the minute by minute decisions I make each day or I couldn’t believe He helps me with the huge things.
Even so, it was a wonderful surprise to see that my hand had been led to open the soft pink paint because that shade brought the room together with the outside of the house.
Sometimes, you just have to paint in the dark and hope for the best.
Jeanne Marie, 2014
…and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight…
I wish I lived in a little New England farmhouse with the wood stove burning and a fire in the fireplace. Beans would be cooking on the wood stove, snow would be falling outside my window and you, living right down the street.
I would sneak over and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight so you would come out to see who it was and then I would dance in the snow under the moonlight and it wouldn’t hurt because the cold snow would make my foot pain better, and you would shiver in your doorway and say, “Get in here, you idiot!”
I would grab two icicles from your front window and dance into your warm kitchen and we would have hot chocolate with pink marshmallows and we would laugh.
We would talk for hours like when we were little girls and we would forget that we are not little girls anymore because when we are together we are just sisters. We are not old, we are not crippled, we are not grandmothers, we are not great-grandmothers (me) and we are not old ladies.
Because when we are together, we are young girls again with our future in front of us and we laugh…and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight…
Broken Shoulder, Crippled Girl…No More
Broken shoulder, crippled girl. Always in pain, always aware of every muscle and every bone, every bump in the road, every slight movement which jars her shoulder.
I know her. She is safe, familiar and predictable. She is not who I was, but she is who I have become over the past ten years. It started so innocently, shoulder pain I couldn’t manage. Then, two botched shoulder surgeries, rotator cuff torn twice, arthritis, the shoulder of an old woman. A fall off a porch which completely tears the rotator cuff off the bone. The doctor’s assistant says, “Your arm is f—–and she does nothing. Orders no tests, has no solution. She says, “Why bother, we know it’s destroyed.”
Broken shoulder, crippled girl spends thousands as she visits three more doctors in three different states and they politely tell her that they can’t help her. Two more doctors in Florida. (Four states total.)
One doctor she turns down, she doesn’t trust him and he is arrested a short time later for Medicaid fraud. Doing unnecessary operations. Good instincts.
The other doctor says he can help her, but she will never lift her right arm above her waist again. He shows her a device bigger than both her shoulder joints! She actually considers it and schedules the surgery because at this point, she would allow a doctor to cut her arm off.
Then her husband, God bless him, he says there has to be a better solution. He does research on the internet and he finds a doctor he thinks she should consider. He shows her the doctor’s web site and they watch the surgery together, the same surgery she would have on her right shoulder. She calls the doctor’s office and expects the usual run-around (fax us all your medical records and we will let you know if the doctor will see you) but she is given an appointment for the next week. When she meets the doctor, he says he not only can, but he will fix her shoulder and she will have complete use of her right arm again.
Hope, barely visible for so many years, hope rises like a mist in her soul. Surgery with the doctor who promises she’ll never lift her arm high enough to curl her hair again is cancelled.
Hope rises like the bright orange and peach rays of a sunrise over the Oklahoma prairie.
But wait. What will happen when her shoulder is fixed, no longer a crutch to lean on, an excuse to leave herself out of life, too hurt to move, too aching with the pain to even want to breathe, who will she be when that is gone?
She never asked to become the crippled girl, it just happened, but she did her part, learned to adjust, learned to live in constant, agonizing pain. Even a living Hell, if it is home, even Hell can become the place where you learn to live. When you are stuck there, you fix the place up, do the best you can and you own it. Where did she live before the pain, who was she before she became the broken shoulder, crippled girl? When did she become this handicapped woman?
It was a slow process from there to here. One bad surgery changed her life and then another to fix it made it even worse, the pain became unbearable, but she had not chosen the pain.
She didn’t want the pain, she searched for doctors to help her and she visited doctors in three states and not one doctor would touch the mess.
So, she lived with the unbearable, she adjusted, she compensated, but she changed.
She has never quite given up the hope, even when the hope was a ghost she could not touch, years of chasing a dream that if one doctor could cause the pain, maybe, just maybe, another doctor could find a way to take away the pain.
Now, here she is, miracle of miracles, on the edge of being fixed after so many have said no. Now, one young doctor has said yes, I can help you. Young enough to be her son. As the day draws near, she is excited but she is also afraid.
He tells her he will do a reverse shoulder replacement. He will return full use of her arm and now she is hoping, hoping with all her heart, with every breath, hope shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and all the glimmers in her soul, hoping that it’s true, praying that he can do what he has promised.
Yet, pain has become a way of life and she knows from experience, he could actually make it worse. Plus, if you take away the pain, what will replace her obsession? Who will the broken-shoulder, crippled girl be when she is a girl without a mission? Her mission for the last ten years has been simple. Find a doctor who will fix her arm.
Her daily chores now are simple, manage to get showered and to get herself dressed, do a little laundry, clean a tiny corner of the house, survive, just survive, collapse after supper in tears from pushing her broken shoulder to its limit all day.
Sometimes she just barely manages to get out of bed and get herself showered, crawling back into sweats and a tee-shirt by 4:00 P.M.
Sometimes, that is the only chore she can complete in twenty-four hours.
She will need a new mission, a new attitude.
Is she so attached to the pain now after all these years or is she attached to the pain pills that she has needed to swallow in order to move her shoulder, to dress, to eat, to live? Pain pills that barely touch the bone scraping on bone agony, just enough relief to stop her from screaming aloud, to stop her from jumping off a bridge in total desperation.
If the operation is a success and she believes it will be, because Doctor Levy has looked directly at her and promised with words that touch her heart, then she knows the pain pills have to go away too.
Ten longs years of four pain pills a day. What has that done to her brain, to her motivation? Are you afraid broken shoulder, crippled girl? Are you afraid to be whole, free from excruciating pain?
Is pain addictive or are the pain pills you have counted on addictive? Are you still strong underneath the pain or has your spirit been damaged too? Are you strong enough to fight when the pain is stripped away?
You have been fighting so hard, for so very long, but you always knew the enemy. PAIN. Pain has ruled your life for a decade, so what will rule your life after your pain is gone? What ruled your life before the pain?
Writing. Will you write again, will the ideas pour out of your mind and once again stream into articles, will the keyboard return as your best friend and will it be an extension of your right arm again, an extension of who you are once more?
Yes, I think so. I remember that woman who would write day and night, night and day, write and write. Will she come back to me? Wait. I think I see her at my keyboard. Yes, that’s her, writing, inspired by a glimmer of hope, flirting with the very idea, the hope of becoming more than the broken shoulder, crippled girl. She will trust this doctor, take a chance.
Post Note: My shoulder operation was performed one week after I wrote this article in October, 2011. It was a total success. My surgeon was Dr. Jonathan Levy from the Holy Cross Hospital, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He used a prototype that allows full movement (his own invention) to replace my shoulder joint, in reverse. Besides a twinge now and then when I forget to exercise the arm or to take a break from the computer, my arm is healed. I’ve had 99% range of motion since just two months after the surgery. I have several types of arthritis, and I still have a severely damaged spine and a broken joint in my right foot, but the pain from each is bearable with one-third the amount of medication and this pain, while keeping me from wearing pretty shoes or walking any distance, this pain does not run my life.
Once more, I run my life. I finished a book that I started twenty-odd-years ago, the year after my surgery and now, once more, I write something every day. I started this blog after my surgery and then I met Michelle Marie and we started thinkingpinkx2.
The creative thoughts flow so fast that I cannot even keep up and yes, I am truly living once more, not just surviving.
Thank you, Doctor Levy. (First picture)
The two cuties in the second and third picture are my husband Jerry and my son Rick. Thank you guys, you are my heroes. Rick was in a serious car accident just two months before my surgery and when he flew from Oklahoma to Florida to help me out after my surgery, it was a miracle to see him walk in my door under his own steam. After what I saw him recover from, just having him with me gave me courage. But that’s another story…
Eyelashes
Eyelashes by Jeanne Marie
We choose a corner table in the cozy country restaurant, two grown women, yet…I feel that we are playing dress-up. Pangs of guilt and anxiety needle me. I had to sneak away from Mom to steal this time with my sister. She looks as guilty as I do.
My sister and I are two pieces of a puzzle, day and night, the sun and the moon. We complete each other. Years of clinging together through the dark nights, years of my father’s rage, my mother’s silence, dysfunctional machinery that welded ropes of love, hope and faith that even we have not been able to destroy.
It doesn’t matter how long we’re apart; we begin our conversation where we ended on my last visit, as if no time had passed. Once, after a serious argument, we didn’t speak for three years and still; when we made up, it was the same way.
We talk about how we are workaholics, always working for (or loving) men who try to control, use, abuse, manipulate, annihilate and dominate. She tells me that at least I always fight back and stand up for myself. It’s true.
However, we agree that I accept the abuse too. I just make a lot of noise and end up quitting or running away. I’ve never resolved the situations. My life is paved with unresolved relationships.
I talk about starting my hypnotherapy to quit smoking and how when I am under, I always end up in deep, murky moats, smoky castles with walls built from bricks of terror and abandonment. I tell her that they dumped a baby out of a shopping cart into the smoke and her eyes open wide. I didn’t know if it was Sue Sue or me in that carriage. It felt like we were the same baby. I start to cry and light another cigarette. Two years of therapy and I’m still smoking.
“I’m almost fifty and I don’t want to deal with my childhood anymore, I just want to be okay. I just want to quit smoking.” I tell her. Tears fill her eyes.
We order breakfast and settle in with our coffee, letting it soothe us as I light another cigarette.
We need to talk about Mom, the reason I’m home this time. Our oldest sister has already agreed to take responsibility for Mom when the time comes. I’d always planned to be the one, but find now that the time is near, I’m not able to take care of my own needs, let alone imagine caring for anyone else.
“Is she still able to take care of herself?” I ask Susanne. “Keep track of her medicines and her doctor’s appointments? She has cried wolf so many times that I don’t know if she is honestly too confused to function on her own, and even though I just spent a week with her, I still can’t tell. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Alice in Wonderland,” says my sister. “Alice in Wonderland. I have been Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party my entire life. Nothing is ever what it seems.”
She talks about the falseness of our “loving, nurturing mother.” A mother who nearly destroyed her by trying to be the man in her life, her father, her husband, her daughter’s father.
I cringe as she talks, remembering my sister trapped, pregnant, the husband to-be my mother drove away, how I helped my sister work and escape when she turned eighteen. How she ran away into a world crazier than the one she left behind and preferred it still.
“Do you remember when dad was ranting and raving and he used to tell us that someday we’d find out that Mom was the reason he was crazy? Well, he was so right. My life has been nothing but a Mad Hatter’s tea party.”
She has mentioned Alice a lot these past few days. It has been years since I heard about Alice, so I know there is something she needs to say.
“Don’t you know?” she demands. “Don’t you know that Mom is your father figure? The dominating male figure in your life? How could you go through years of therapy and never figure out that your inability to deal with men is her fault?”
I know by the frustration in her voice, that she has wanted to tell me this for a very long time. I start to cry. Her words cause my stomach to flop over, my heart pounds with panic.
My gut knows that she is right. I just can’t believe that I have never seen it for myself. If my sister is Alice, I must be Sleeping Beauty.
“With all the therapy you’ve been in, haven’t you ever focused on Mom?” she shouts.
“No. I didn’t. I knew what she had done to you, how she controlled you and kept you a prisoner with Danielle ‘till you were eighteen, but she never wanted me. I was always the one that could handle her. Now I can’t handle her anymore and I realize that when I thought I could, it was only an illusion, I never had control. It was all just part of the game. She controls me too.”
My voice is soft and teary. Her voice is shrill and full of angry emotion. Her pain is the lighter fluid that sparks our conversation.
She cries out, “I can’t handle being around Mom. When I’m around her, I start to pull all of my eyelashes out again.”
I am startled, shocked by the degree of my sister’s torment. Yet, as she speaks the words, she is touching her eyelids in a familiar way. I have seen her do it a million times. How could I have ever thought that she had mascara in her eyes so often?
She continues, her voice taut with pain. “Mom is not normal. She hates everything about babies and childbirth. She hates kids. She is so sick. You know how I eat so fast? Well, one day when we were eating she said, ‘Watch me eat. Watch how I chew each bite slowly. Eat like this. Watch me. This is how you eat your food. Look at me.’ It was awful.”
“When you were little?” I ask.
“No! I was forty-one years old!”
We sit surrounded by elderly couples who pretend not to listen as we talk about our mother, our childhood.
Do they wonder if their own children sit in crowded restaurants exposing family secrets?
I feel as if I should shush my sister because the details that are pouring from her mouth are dirty and tattered, personal, best left to a therapist’s couch.
Her passionate grief, the shrill horror in her voice, the way she touches her eyelashes as she speaks, all these things freeze my words.
I decide that she is the only person in this room that I need to be concerned about.
“Why can’t you see the way that she has damaged you too, why do you think you never feel good enough? You had the same mother as me! You suffered the same things that I did. Do you think you escaped her mind games, her torture? Nothing was ever good enough for her; we were never enough for her. That is why you can’t deal with the men in your life, the same as me.”
My blind eyes are wide open now.
“We are so strong to have even survived, don’t you know that? We are both miracles. We are both so special, so gifted and she has not been able to destroy that in us. We are survivors.”
As we stand, we hold onto to each other for a long moment before we walk away with our heads held high. You can almost hear the people in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Do you think we should have charged admission?” I ask her.
She laughs as she says, “Ya, cause then we could have used a microphone and sat in front of the fireplace.”
Ironic. When Dad was screaming, we used to hide in the old, unused fireplace in our bedroom.
I am grieving the loss of my sister even as we drive away from the restaurant together because I’ve learned that each time I leave her and fly home to Oklahoma, she will wipe me from her heart, erase me from her mind and that I won’t exist until I walk back in her door. I have to accept that it is the only way she can deal with her pain and her anger when I leave her.
Sadly, I know that one day I will knock on her door and she will not open it. She will erase me along with her past, leaving me behind as she runs away to another Mad Hatter’s tea party, an insane event that makes much more sense than her reality.
My baby sister Alice and me, Sleeping Beauty.
I Don’t Believe You
Letting go of your hand
although you tell me
I cannot stand
unless you are by my side.
You mixed your lies…
truth, shaken and blended
to create a sweet disguise
under your mask I did not peek.
No, I will not behave.
No, I will not be quiet.
No, I will not be a slave
to lies I once believed.
Tell me this…
where is the woman
I used to know?
Where is she now
where did she go?
Trying to leave
you beg me to stay
weak in the head,
I must be, because
suitcases are unpacked
clothes are put away.
Breathing ain’t easy
when you’ve been
crushed by the muck.
Leaving is hard
but it’s the staying,
oh ya, it’s the staying
that sincerely sucks.
The Christmas Cactus
The Christmas Cactus…
The white blooms are from my sister Sue to her daughter, Danielle. Danny asked me to save its life when it was weak and dying. I mixed it with my half pink plant. It was half a plant because someone, not me, didn’t listen when I yelled, “STOP!”
By the way do you think men ask you to watch them back up and guide them just so you’ll get out of the way? Because they never do hear you yell “STOP!” or see you waving your arms in the air.
Anyway, my half a pink plant that my mother-in-law gave me when I moved here was very special to me and the half that Sue gave to Danny was very special to her.
At the time, that piece of white Christmas cactus would be all that I had left of my sister, Sue. I cried when Danielle trusted me with it. These two halves blended well and created a beautiful, full, gorgeous Christmas cactus. 
I added a piece of peach cactus in thin areas and it bloomed in July. Really. If anybody has a Christmas cactus that has bloomed in July, even in Florida please let me know!
This Christmas cactus was dying, broken, and to the eye, worthless. I tenderly replanted these shattered, sickly leaves in one pot. I fertilized them with love, tears, Miracle Grow and prayers. It has grown and bloomed into a family treasure, just like my Great Nana’s gigantic Christmas cactus that we have passed through the family. (By the way whoever has custody of it now, I would love a piece to add to this new one.)
Merry Christmas to all the women in my family from me and the Christmas cactus. If I was going to dedicate a plant to all the men in the family, it would have to be a rose and they know why.
Love from all my Angels and me, Jeanne Marie
Color Me PINK…
From where I stand…
From where I stand…
Sometimes…
Sometimes…I just want to go home.
Three Sisters…
About Writing
It seems to me that when I have time to write, my mind doesn’t cooperate and I don’t have a thing to write about anyway. Yet; when I’m busy, I have so much to write about and I don’t have the time.
I’ve been thinking about it because I have been extremely busy this past year, flying all around the country at least once a month and sometimes more often.
I’ve met three great grand-babies in two states, attended my nephew’s funeral, driven my daughter (who lives in Oklahoma) to court three times and then one more trip to deliver her to serve her sentence, reconciled with a sister and a daughter I have been separated from for about ten years, made several long over-due visits to family and my adventures have included numerous miracles.
I also had a miraculous operation on my right shoulder three years ago and I haven’t written about that experience yet. My son survived a horrendous car accident three years ago and nope, I haven’t written about that either. I have so much to be grateful for and yet, I haven’t honored these life altering events in my usual style, writing.
I do carry a journal everywhere I go, especially when I travel and I write quite a bit in long hand, but getting it into the computer and into my blog is the challenge for me.
So, to be kind to myself, I just whisper, “Good writer, at least you wrote some of your experiences down on paper. Somebody will read your journals, someday.”
While that soothes the raging writer in me, a woman driven to write and share since she was eight-years-old, it doesn’t solve my dilemma.
The over whelming task of organizing the thousands of articles, poems and stories that I have written by hand over the last eight years (not even counting the boxes of typed writing in my spare bedroom, AKA, the Writing Room) is my toughest challenge.
I debate with myself about hiding all the notebooks in the house (hundreds) in an attempt to force myself to write on the computer, thus cutting out the transfer task.
I would do it, but I think that I just don’t want to write on the computer anymore.
Strange, because I wrote constantly on my computer from 1990 to 2007. My computer felt like an extension of my hands and it became the writing tool that I used exclusively.
However, my enthusiasm for technology died down somewhere along the way.
I have rediscovered the rush that flows through my veins when my pen races across the lined pages of a new notebook. Perhaps my pleasure is triggered by the smell of the paper or simply by the old familiar style of writing.
As the pages fill, including editorial notes clear to the borders, my pulse pounds in a rhythm that the computer never arouses.
I need to write because words swirl around in my brain until I write them down and not because I chose to be a writer, but because I am a writer.
I started this article to tell my friends how much I have missed writing and connecting with them through their posts on WordPress. Did I mention that I have a very short attention span? On the plus side, I wrote this note on my computer!
We have put our home in Florida on the market and we are looking for a home in New Hampshire. My 14th grand child is due the first week in December. I don’t think I will be slowing down soon!
Jeanne Marie
Life and Death
Recently, my nephew lost his battle with the family illness, alcoholism.
He was the oldest grandchild in our family and the very first baby I fell in love with, a passion that has stayed with me ever since. My three siblings and I have never lost a child, so this is a first for us and we are struggling to accept that he is really gone.
Although I was only 12 when he was born, my sister asked me to be his godmother. He was a gorgeous baby and by the time he was a year old, he had long blonde curls all over his head. I loved those curls. When he got his first haircut, I was devastated. I begged his mom not to cut his curls, but his dad thought he looked girly and he insisted on the haircut. I remember being so mad at both of them and I remember crying for days over the loss of his baby curls.
My sister lived at home when he was born, so he and I spent many nights snuggling and playing. I remember his colic and I remember all the nights I held him close to my body so my warmth could relax his hard little tummy, always walking him because he would cry as soon as I sat down.
He knew he had a problem with alcohol and he fought this disease with all his might, with every ounce of strength he had and he never gave up the struggle, fighting his demons until the last day.
My sister, his mom, used to dream that I was lost and that I was being dragged under in a swamp filled with snakes and monsters. After I became sober at age 23, she never had that dream again. I always say that she and her church friends prayed me sober against my will but the truth is that God does have a plan for each of us and He alone knows the reasons. We were not able to pray my nephew sober.
Yet, our human nature wants answers. God must get so sick of people at the Pearly Gates asking, “WHY?”
I want to ask, “Why me and not him? Why me and not my daughter?”
I prayed my heart out for my nephew, talked to him for several hours about how sobriety was possible for anyone, if it was possible for me. It just wasn’t in the Plan for him.
God doesn’t give us everything we ask for and He did give us Free Will. He also says no and maybe. My nephew was a no, my daughter is a maybe.
Right after Robbie’s death, my sister said that if his death saved one person, it would be a comfort to her. That happened so quickly that my head is still spinning. Another nephew was at home, sick, while his mom was at my sister’s house.
He is a recovering drug addict but lately he has been drinking, a lot. Beer with shots of vodka, the same poison that killed his cousin. He got nervous after he found out about his cousin because his eyes were turning yellow and his urine was dark brown. He went to the emergency room the next morning and he is now in intensive care. His spleen is swollen and his liver is inflamed. His cousin’s example made him go to the hospital and hopefully, with God’s grace, he made it there in time. (He is home and doing much better now.)
Life. It is what it is and it’s not always a picnic in the sunshine.
But if we could only remember that we make our own sandwiches and that we choose the drinks that we pour down our throats, that we pick the poisons that we put into our bodies, if we could remember that God can only work with what we give him, that He won’t force Himself on us, if we could remember that we are given choices, maybe there would be more addicts receiving a yes and less addicts destroying themselves and hurting everyone that loves them.
My sobriety is the greatest gift God ever gave me and I don’t know why me and not my nephew, why me and not my daughter.
During the coming days, as I try to comfort his mother, my sister, and as I mourn the loss of this man that I have loved since his birth 48 years ago, I will pray for courage, I will pray for strength and I will continue to pray for my Maybe Girl.
You are welcome to join me.
Blue
Blue you seduced me with your
False promise of love and peace
Buried my face in your blossoms
Wiped my tears dry on your leaves
Saw past your dark corners
Focused on petals hinting of white
While you painted my soul bruised
Poisoned me with your blue seeds
Blue secrets you are so cruel.
Free Smiles From Carter~My great grandson
Home is where you bloom…
He Gave Her Roses…
Free Smiles
The Mountain of Sand
On the mountain of sand
trying to stay balanced
holding breath because
one tear splashing
and it could crumble.
Not moving but
it doesn’t matter
the giant ants below
doing their work
one grain of sand
by one grain of sand
her fate will be decided
by others at the foot of
the mountain of sand.
On the ground distant
rescue teams and daughters
shout, JUMP, JUST JUMP!
Take a chance and JUMP!
Busy trying not to crumble
a mountain of sand today
it’s clear she doesn’t listen
doesn’t even look their way.
Rescue teams and one daughter
give up in disgust and walk away.
One daughter refuses to leave
running alone beside
the mountain of sand
she waves, arms open wide
screaming in the wind,
“Take a chance and JUMP!
JUMP, JUST JUMP!”
Holding breath
she is standing still
on the mountain of sand
and it is plain to see
there’ll be no jump today.
Words by Jeanne Marie
Photo by Rick McClellan
Happy Pink Saturday
Miracles
I am constantly, seriously blessed. Do you see the sunlight in front of me and behind me? I don’t think that is even possible. This picture was taken during a sunrise at the beach last week.
I have hundreds of pictures of flowers from this past year where the sunlight is behind the flower and it’s wrapping around to the front. I have pics and videos where the sunlight is dancing in front of me and the sunbeams are reaching down to me. I have butterflies that flit around my face and shoulders and then, they pose for pictures. I touch a plant and it bursts with blooms and growth.Three great grand-babies in a year’s span and a granddaughter due in December!
If you know me, you know how much I love babies and grand-kids, so these babies are a colossal blessing.
When you see the pics where my arms are reaching for the sky, here is what I’m doing. I am lifting everything and everyone I love up to God. I am opening my soul and inviting the power of God, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth and the Rain to flow into my soul, to guide my heart in all choices I make that day. I ask God to take all my pain and my burdens. I release all negative energy. I am embracing the moment and grounding myself in the power of God. (My daughter Jodie taught me this grounding exercise about 15 years ago.)
My problems don’t go away when I do this, but my stress level goes down.
It changes how I look at life that day, creating a positive glow in my heart.
Speaking of miracles, I have been asking God for a miracle. Something so big that I could really see it, something just for me. He delivered.
My baby sister Susanne talked to me this week for the first time in ten years. I don’t even know why she walked away from me to begin with and I am not going to question why she has reopened the door to her heart and invited me back in. I’m just going to love her.
Hi Susanne. You are my miracle.
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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