Holly’s Happenings

I have to admit that the things that have happened over the past few weeks have really gotten me to looking back at my life! I know that I do quite a bit of complaining about my life, but I honestly do feel very fortunate to have lived the life I have!

Yes, I have had some fairly traumatic things happen in my life, but I’ve also had many more wonderful things happen as well! I grew up on a farm, in the country, with a very wonderful family! Life was always very busy! If we weren’t in the fields planting, fertilizing or harvesting crops, we had livestock to take care of! During the times that those things were taken care of and I didn’t have anything to do, were the times that I had the most fun.

Growing up like I did was a completely amazing experience! I learned the lesson about how good it feels to do hard work and I learned that it’s the simple things in life that bring you the most happiness! Things like laying on a blanket in the yard on a summers day listening to CKLW and trying to figure out exactly what animal that cloud in the sky looked like. Or swinging so fast and high on a tire swing that you swore you were going to crash into a huge tree limb!

Eventually I replaced CKLW with WIOT and when my parents started becoming grandparents they replaced that old tire swing with one of those really nice wooden swing sets because it would be safer for their grandchildren. But my point is that it’s those simple things that I remember the most about my childhood, and it’s those memories that mean the most to me! Life was so different back then compared to what it is now.

On this past 4th of July my mom had all seven of her grandchildren as well as her two great grandchildren together for the first time in quite some time. Usually one or more are missing or her step grandchildren are present as well. So she wanted to make sure to commemorate the occasion by getting pictures of all of them!

I hadn’t seen the pictures yet, mostly because I just haven’t spent much time with my mom in the past month. So I was really surprised when we picked my daughter up from her house Sunday evening on our way home from the races and they showed me that they had printed out the pictures that day. They turned out so awesome!

My daughter also let me know that she and my mom went through several boxes of pictures that mom had found up in the attic. She then went on to tell me about all the pictures of me from my childhood she had seen. It was kind of fun reliving the moments the photos were taken as my daughter was telling me about each photo she could remember. I also found out that there are several pictures of me with my father, I had no clue mom still had pictures of me and dad left. So either this weekend or next I plan on taking a trip up to my mom’s house to go through these pictures. I’m sure I’ll cry over many of them, I almost did just listening to my daughter talk about them…LOL!

I think when I get them home I’m going to scan them into my computer, that way I have the actual pictures but I also have copies of them backed up on my computer. What would be cool after I get them scanned would be to put them into a digital frame that I could set out and be able to look at them or show them to people when they come here to visit! I have many fond memories of my childhood, several of which were captured in a picture, and it will be nice to relive them!

The first time my life was touched by the death of someone I was close to, I was honestly too young to remember how it felt, but I do remember the sad looks and tears on the faces of the people that surrounded us in the room at the time. That was when my maternal grandfather passed away. I won’t pretend to remember when it was, but if I had to make a guess I’d say sometime around 1970. Next came my maternal great grandfather, I don’t remember much about him other than he always had a pocket full of pecans.

Why am I talking about this? I just received a phone call telling me that one of my cousins made the choice to take her own life just a few days ago, the day after her 52nd birthday. She is not a cousin that I am close to, as a matter of fact I haven’t talked to a single member of her family in over 13 years. They never liked me at at my paternal grandmother’s funeral, they made it more obvious than they ever had. Being the person that I am, I simply decided that it was best to cut all ties to them. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t thought about them over the years, because I have, and hearing that she chose to end her life really bothers me.

She is the 4th person whom I’ve known in my lifetime that has made the decision that death is better than life. Being one of the people that is left behind wondering why, I wish it were possible to make people who think suicide is an option how WRONG it is! I may not have been close to my cousin over the past 13 years, but I do have some VERY fond memories of things we did as children together, and those are the memories I choose to keep close to my heart! I’ve called her parents and offered my sympathy, they took it warmly and thanked me.

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE…..if you EVER think that suicide is the answer to your problems, think about a song, written and sang by a VERY young man named Blaine Larson, that perfectly explains my feelings on it! You can watch the video HERE but be warned, it’s a country music song and will possibly make you cry! Rest in Peace CLP, may your demons finally be at rest!

Well, to be honest, she’s not so little any more! My “baby” is 13 today, and it’s so strange to think that 13 years have passed by since she came into this world! She came into this world quicker than anyone expected, and she’s spent the past 13 years forging her way through life exactly how she entered it!

Some days I’m in awe of the young woman that she has become, but I’m so very proud of her! Yes, we do have our rough moments, like last night when she knocked my monitor off it’s stand and it landed on the floor with a sickening thud. She was so scared that I was going to be angry with her, and initially I was, but a monitor can be replaced and she can’t! (The monitor, amazingly, is perfectly fine)

I’ve thought long and hard about what I could give my daughter for her 13th birthday that would show her just how special I think she is. She’s not a little girl anymore, and I needed to find a gift for her that would reflect the importance of this birthday. But no matter what I came up with, it just didn’t seem right, it didn’t give me that “THAT’S IT” feeling!

But my dilemma ended when the UPS man knocked on my door and delivered a package from PearlParadise.com. I received a BEAUTIFUL string of black freshwater pearls from them, and when I opened the package and seen them, I KNEW they would be the perfect gift for my daughters 13th birthday! The beautiful leather box that they come in lets you know, even before you open it, that what is inside is very special, and I wanted to let my daughter know just how special she was.

Gone are the days of dolls, play dough and coloring, they’ve been replaced by days of clothes, makeup and boys. Soon we’ll have proms and in a few years she’ll be graduating from high school and hopefully college, and maybe after that the day will come that her daddy walks her down the aisle. And thanks to PearlParadise.com, she’ll have a beautiful string of black freshwater pearls to wear around her neck!

It’s strange when you “wake up” one day and realize that your kids aren’t little any longer! My oldest child is just a few weeks away from being legally old enough to get his learners permit to drive. It seems so strange to think back now and remember him as a baby that I held in my arms, or the little toddler who proudly proclaimed “I eat Pop Tart cereal” in his first sentence.

Now his spare time is filled with phone calls from his friends, MySpace messages and video games. And the things that he and his friends talk about and do crack me up! Last night my son was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. When I asked him what was so funny he showed me a message on his MySpace from one of his friends that said “The treadmill stole my cookie, should I run after it?”.

And it’s so strange to think of my daughter, who is just a few weeks away from “officially” being a teenager, as the little 2 year old girl who, curled her tiny little toes into the molding on the car door and used that to boost herself up enough to flip into an open car window. Now her days are filled with boys, music and sports! But one of her favorite things to do in her spare time is play with the dogs and she always seems to get the dogs doing something when she’s playing with them that make all of us crack up laughing!

Yes, there are days when I wish I could turn back time with my children and have them still need me for everything, and there are days that I dread thinking about what life has in store for them! But I know that they are at a stage in their lives where I need to give them enough space so that they can spread their wings and learn things for themselves. The days of mom being able to do everything for them have passed and I can only hope that I’ve taught them well enough so that when they spread their wings and fly, they soar like eagles!