01.11.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:50 am by Administrator
Yeah, a new year! Out with the old, and in with the new. Isn’t that what Auld Lang Syne is all about?
I’m grateful for it. What did you want to accomplish last year that you didn’t? What regrets do you have
about days gone by? It’s so easy to be fixated on the past. What did you do right? What did you do wrong? Well, you know what?
It’s over! It doesn’t matter now. It’s like a song I heard earlier today, “Yesterday’s gone! I’m moving on…”
Isn’t that a delicious thought?
So even though I am personally against making New Year’s resolutions (they don’t really work now, do they?), how about
we agree to let go of what’s been holding us back and simply keep moving forward. The past is past.
Permalink
11.11.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:27 am by Administrator
I’ve lost a friend. A woman with so much to live for: a young son, a husband, a loving family. She died just two weeks ago. Dr. Jacqueline Fleming Hampton was one of the strongest women I know. Life is too short. Yet it’s so easy to put things off, to say, “I’ll get to it when I get a chance.” Really? What if that chance never comes? Yet we often spend our lives betting on it.
Once when I was still living in my hometown, I saw someone I knew from high school. We were both in the parking lot of a shopping plaza. I don’t think she saw me. I remember thinking I should have called out her name and said something to her, but I didn’t. Instead, I rushed into the store, too focused on my own agenda for the day. The next time I saw her was from a distance at her funeral. She was lying in her casket. I never had a chance to speak to her, all because I wouldn’t take the time to walk across a parking lot and say hi.
Time is limited. Yet we act like we have so much of it. “I’ll do it later,” we say. “I’ll see them next week.” Who knows if you’ll be around next week? Do it now! I think I’m going to make that my new motto.
Permalink
09.23.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:36 am by Administrator
It has been 99 years, and I’m still mourning. It was a tragedy of far-reaching proportions that impacted generations of my family: the sudden death of my great-grandfather. He was only 42. A well-known physician and much loved family man, his death was the result of a car accident. It happened in September on a Saturday night. The year was 1912. My great-grandfather, John Henry Jordan, was on his way to a house call in Newnan, Georgia. That was not unusual for him. House calls were the norm at the turn of the century (last century, that is). It was when his car stalled on the way that the trouble began. Thinking that he was being helpful, a bystander walked up to my great-grandfather and lit a match to help him see better in the dark. The problem was my great-grandfather was standing by his open gas tank at the time. It exploded, fatally burning my great-grandfather who miraculously lived for 36 hours after the accident occurred. It was enough time to get his will and other legal affairs in order, I figure, because the paperwork I’ve found was in detailed, pristine condition. Most importantly, he said his goodbyes. The last one was to my grandfather, Edward, his only son. My Dad said his father, Edward, would tell him the story of how John Henry Jordan held out his arms and told him: “Come kiss your Pa goodbye.” Edward, my grandfather, was just 12 at the time. It breaks my heart to think of what that must have been like. My great-grandfather was so young, but nearly a century later, he is still not forgotten.
Permalink
09.02.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:22 am by Administrator
The loss of a pet is never easy. It doesn’t matter what kind of pet it is. When a bond has been formed, it is difficult to break. My sister, Kristi, and her husband had to put their cat to sleep last week. Fluffy was old and sick. The trouble was they didn’t know how sick. Not until it was too late. Suspecting something, my sister and my brother-in-law, Julius, decided it was time to take her to get checked out. They didn’t realize it would be the last time they saw her. Julius was there, standing by Fluffy’s side as she took her last breath, her green eyes slowly going dark.
It takes part of your heart, I guess, when you lose a pet. I think back to my childhood pet, Happy, a beautiful collie who looked just like Lassie. We came home from school one day, I was in the second grade at the time, and Happy was gone. Our dog never left our street and rarely our front yard without us. We figured someone must have taken her out of a fenced-in area of our yard when no one was at home. My Mother was so heartbroken that we never had another dog after that. We loved Happy. Now that Fluffy is gone, who knows if Kristi and Julius will ever get another cat. I guess there are some things only time can heal.
Permalink
08.25.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:07 pm by Administrator
There’s nothing like a Mom. I realize this more and more the older I become. I think as a teenager I, like most kids probably, didn’t fully appreciate my Mother. At least not as much as I should have. I took for granted the delicious dinners she cooked everyday. The clothes she, lovingly, washed and ironed. The constant trips to and from school, shuttling me and my friends to new stores, the way she always stayed on top of whatever was going on in my life at the time. She still does that even if I am 2,000 miles away. The distance didn’t stop her from flying to California to help me celebrate my birthday last month. She arrived my birthday week (with a beautiful new haircut to boot!), excited to do my favorite things with me, namely shopping and eating. She cooked up a storm, kicked me out of my own kitchen, and even prepared enough food to last me at least a week after she left town. I’m sure I take her for granted (even though I try not to).
When I think back over the years, it is amazing to me the difference my Mom has made in my life. It was her dream for both me and my sister to attend the all-women’s college we attended in the Northeast though she never told us. However, she was astute enough to nudge me over to that college’s table at my high school’s college fair.
“Oh, look,” she pointed out, seemingly innocently. “There’s a Wellesley College table.”
Throughout those four years up North and the cold, Massachusetts winters, she regularly sent me care packages filled with food, snacks, and all the comforts of home. I remember friends often stopping by my room because they said they knew I’d have food. When I was in college, she and my Dad flew up for every Parent’s Weekend and even other times in between when I wasn’t going home for the holidays. It was her idea for me to attend graduate school since I had already decided, without so much as filling out an application, that I wouldn’t get in.
“Fill out that application, girl,” she nearly scolded me at the time. Of course, she was right, and it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.
She has always championed everything I do whether rallying her friends to attend my high school plays or proudly sending off my published articles to out-of-state family members. She always encouraged me when I was up and comforted me when I was down, and she still does. She’s the kind of Mother who even adopts and embraces my friends, sending them cards and talking to them by phone. As an adult, I have a new appreciation for my Mother. I think I am more keenly aware of the sacrifices she made like going to graduate school after having four children and even back then taking the time to concoct a great lotion on our kitchen stove for us to use that is known today as EmmGerri. Yet she has always been there for us no matter the time of day or night.
I thank God for my Momma, and there will never be another like her.
Permalink
08.01.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:13 am by Administrator
There are things I can remember. Thoughts I treasure that I do not want to forget. I’m remembering my Grandmother. This week marks the one-year anniversary of her death. She and I had a lot in common. I was actually partially named for her (one of my middle names). She and I were also both the third children in our families and the first girl born after two boys. We shared a love of clothes (my Grandmother was always decked out especially when she went to church on Sunday) and a love of travel. My Grandmother saw a good part of the world, Europe, Panama, and crisscrossed the United States multiple times. She even took an Alaskan cruise in her later years. Didn’t leave the boat though.
“I saw Alaska from the ship,” she explained to me at the time. “I didn’t leave the ship, but I saw it.”
I guess that was good enough for her. She was close to all of her family and years after her Dad’s death, she still loved to brag about him. I think she thought her father hung the moon. Daddy Willoughby is what he was affectionately called by all of us. My Grandmother used to love to tell me about his farm, the lumber business he had, and the pharmacy he co-owned. She and her sister and brothers were blessed in many ways. As my Dad pointed out to me the other day, my Grandmother and her six siblings all lived to celebrate at least their 50th wedding anniversaries with each of their spouses (Daddy Willoughby, and my Great-Grandmother, Mama Willoughby, lived to celebrate their 76th).
I miss my Grandmother’s old stories and her rich, intoxicating, rhythmic laugh. I can still hear it clearly now. I treasure the memories of us doing things together like when she would proudly whisk me and my sister, Kristi, to downtown Newnan to buy us new dolls and milkshakes when we were kids. There was nothing like the family reunions and the Fourth of July barbecues. I also cherished the rare occasions like when it was just the two of us sitting at her kitchen table eating tomato sandwiches at midnight.
My Grandmother lived her life well. It was a wonderful life. She taught me how to live with dignity and last year showed me how to die with dignity. For that, I will be forever grateful.
Permalink
06.20.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:58 pm by Administrator
What is a father? To me, a father is kind, warm, loves unconditionally, is always supportive, and ready with a waiting smile and open arms. Those are just some of the characteristics that describe my Dad. I think, in addition to his four children, anyone who knows him would agree. To know him is to love him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home for Father’s Day this year, but I told him I’ll have to make it up to him. Celebrating fathers, I think, is something we shouldn’t take for granted. My minister, Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, said today a father paints an outline and life fills it in; I like that. My Dad has watched life fill in my outline, cheering me on through the victories and carrying me through the disappointments while helping steady me through the ups and downs. There is nothing that can compare to the worth of a father’s influence on a daughter. My Dad has made every difference to me. Wherever I have moved in this country, he has made it his business to visit often, find out everything about where I live, the neighborhood, the people. When I was in college in Massachusetts, he’d schedule business trips to Boston to spend time with me and hang out on campus with me and my friends. He and I also share a love of genealogy and classical music.
And my Dad is full of surprises. What many people who have known him for years don’t know is that, in addition to having a scientific mind, he is a gifted poet. He shocked me and my Mom by reciting one of his original works at my sister’s rehearsal dinner the night before her wedding a few years back. It was called, “What is a daughter,” in which he expounded on his love for my younger sister. One of my brother-in-law’s relatives liked it so much, she asked my Dad for a copy.
On this Father’s Day, I salute the man who loved me before I was born, has treasured me since I arrived, and has served as a model for me in so many ways. He is the embodiment of what a Dad is.
Permalink
06.19.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:20 am by Administrator
Forty-nine years. That is how long my parents have been married. This weekend marks their anniversary. What a blessing, I feel. I love looking through their old, wedding day scrapbook that my Mom made back in the day, witnessing the beginning of their love story as it unfolded. My Dad, with his sweaty brow, standing, waiting at the altar, and my Mom calmly taking a bath and dressing as she prepared to walk down the aisle “to meet her beloved” as she referred to him in the book (I still don’t know how she found the time to write in her scrapbook just minutes before she walked down the aisle). I love running my fingers across the beautiful wedding cards from their friends that my Mom lovingly taped to the pages, sandwiched between napkins with my parents’ names engraved on them. When my Dad looks at the beaming photo of him and my Mom right after the ceremony as they stood next to a waiting car, he says, “I don’t know who that person was.” He looks a little different now. He was about 40 pounds lighter then.
People have asked what my parents’ secret is to being married for so many years. My Mom says she hasn’t really thought about it.
“I guess patience and forgiveness,” she says. “We just go from day to day.”
For their anniversary, my parents like to keep things low key. No big plans, no extravagant trips, but for me, being able to witness the blessing of their marriage is celebration enough.
Permalink
05.29.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:27 am by Administrator
It blooms every year at about the same time, in the same place. Unusual, it would seem. I consider it a small miracle. It is a gift that keeps on giving from my maternal Grandmother who died nearly 20 years ago. She gave my Mom cuttings from her own rose bush back then. She probably saw it as no big deal. My Grandmother had a green thumb. She was excellent with anything in the garden.
My Mom planted them in our front yard without giving it too much thought. Yet year after year, they grew and grew. The rose bush is now in full bloom only once a year and always around Mother’s Day. I told my Mom it is her Mother’s Day gift. The roses always perk up a few days before Mother’s Day, and by the actual holiday, the blossoms are in full bloom, opening up to the sun and embracing the day. It is uncanny. The roses have even started to overtake my parents’ front yard, sprouting up in places where my Mom didn’t even plant them. I love to smell them and admire them. I think of how they’d make my Grandmother smile if she could see them, cascading down in all their glory.
It is always a downer when Mother’s Day is over. The roses, seemingly, go into mourning, drying up on the vine and withering under the sun. I’ll miss them, but there is always the promise of next year when I know, like clockwork, they’ll be back again.
Permalink
04.23.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:11 pm by Administrator
This is the week of miracles. I love this time of year. I love Easter. Everything that it stands for, and all that it means. It is a hopeful time of year. Rebirth. I think of miracles that have happened in my own life. Occasions where only a miracle could explain what happened. Being in the car with my parents and sister a couple of years ago, narrowly escaping what could have, by all accounts, been a fatal accident. Seeing my first niece, Rachel, just days after her birth, basking in the miraculous joy of it all. The most vibrant, colorful rainbow I’d ever seen suddenly appeared right after the funeral a few years ago for my Aunt Chris, my mother’s sister. That rainbow sent us comfort just when we needed it. Watching my little niece, Katy, stand herself up on a chair when she was three and proclaim to us the story of Easter which we had no idea she knew (her Aunt Kristi had shown her and Rachel a video about Jesus called “The Miracle Maker”). Getting Easter baskets as a child, receiving Easter corsages to wear to church from my Dad even when I became an adult. I love remembering the joy of it all.
Sometimes I think just being alive is a miracle. There is an alternative, you know. So this week, whether you’re celebrating Passover, Easter, or none of the above, just know that the possibility of a miracle is all around you and even lives inside of you. Breathe it all in, and expect a miracle.
Permalink
« Previous entries
