You are so drop dead gorgeous!

Grace was the mother of two boys. Redheaded they were and I looked like their sister. It fooled people so much that often I was mistaken for Grace’s daughter.

The oldest of Grace’s children was probably the cutest kid I have ever seen.

Like I said, his hair was red. But, it curled just a little bit. And his eyes glowed with merriment and happiness and sometimes mischief. Give him a green top hat and you’ve got yourself the cutest Leprechaun ever!

He was the first peace maker. He was everyone’s friend and everyone’s comforter. He had the ability to get between me and Jack and steer us in some kind of direction, so we would make a decision.

(So, who was the real leader, I wonder?)

He never met a person he didn’t like. Everyone was worth knowing and he was awed by everyone he met.

He asked question, after question, after question. And he was always learning. Always making something.

The greatest thing he ever made was pure joy. Spend one minute with him and he made you feel good about yourself. Loved. Liked.

And apparently he had dreamy eyes and a killer smile. Wendy thought he was drop dead gorgeous! She wrote him her first love note in the first grade.

And, of course, he was ever so sweet to her.

So, he shall be called Gorgeous.

Inside and out, he always was and still is.

The Fort That Jack Built

I am going to introduce my friends in order of birth. (Though, I am still the oldest.)

I was a loud child, boisterous when my feelings weren’t hurt, bossy as long as I knew I wasn’t hurting someone’s feelings, and always rarin’ to go.

I met my match when Jack came into my life.

Jack was just as boisterous, just as bossy, and just as ready to live life as I was. Consequently, we fought a lot.

I had ideas about what we should do for fun and so did he. And God help us if our ideas didn’t match. We would argue for probably 10 minutes, wasting precious play time, while our friends groaned and waited for us to make up our minds.

I won a lot.

But so did he because I was a tomboy and Jack loved to play games outside and build stuff. He would build forts in the empty lot next to his house. We would help…most of the time.

The girls didn’t like it when I let Jack win. (Let…he he he.) They weren’t tomboys and didn’t want to play Hide-And-Seek, or build forts. Maria was so annoying whenever we would play Hide-And-Seek. Whenever she was “it”, she would say she was tired and go back inside. It always stopped us from playing. (SO ANNOYING!)

When I won, we usually made the boys dance to the soundtrack from “American Graffiti”. I’m pretty sure the only reason why they are good dancers now is because we made them practice at such an early age.

Jack and I were the oldest and the ring leaders and we fought for control. But I couldn’t have thought up all the fun we had on my own. He is, without doubt, the best instigator of fun I have ever known. In this instance, he is a lot like his mother, Jo.

And though we argued, and I could make him pretty cotton pickin’ mad, we loved each other anyway. I wouldn’t have my driver’s license if it weren’t for him. My wedding reception would’ve been ruined if not for him.

And as adults, we can still fight. (You should see us play Charades.) But he is our protector. Our champion. And if I could steal a few lines from a song that reminds me of him…

“Nothing’s gonna harm you. No one’s gonna dare. Others may desert you, not to worry, whistle I’ll be there. Demons may charm you with a smile, for awhile, but in time…nothing can harm you, not while I’m around.

…they should show you exactly who Jack was and is.

Our Friends

I was not a shy child. Maria definitely was. Wendy definitely WAS NOT.

We complimented each other rather well and have made some lifelong friends because of our compliments. The three of us had a little bit of everything.

When we met our friends for the first time, Wendy was still cooing from her baby seat. She got passed around between Jo, Grace, and my mother. But she certainly watched us whenever we ran into her line of sight.

There were four new friends for us…three boys and one girl. With Wendy in the mix, we outnumbered the boys…thank God! Of course, Wendy wasn’t big enough to help out, yet, but we girls did pretty good.

Whatever the girls wanted to play was what the boys played. And even if the boys tried to make a stand and play without us, they almost always tried to mess up what we were playing. (Which meant they really couldn’t bear to play without us.)

It was cute when the boys tried to stand up to us, but eventually, they would always…

Rock Around The Clock!

(He, he, he.)

Stay tuned for their names…

Room At The Inn

There is always that one house where everything happens. For us, that house belonged to a family of four.

My dad met these very special friends at his RCIA classes. The wife was the one who always saved a seat for him. I am pretty sure she figured out really quick that Dad needed everything to be saved, including his seat.

I am going to call her Joseph. Jo, for short.

She reminds me of Joseph, Mary’s husband. She always does for everyone else, regardless of how it affects her. She takes a lick and keeps on ticking. Maybe I should think of her as the Energizer Bunny…

No…she’s Joseph.

Her house was where all the action happened. She always had room for everyone and made sure everyone had fun while they were under her roof. It was, in fact, a second home to me and my sisters.

Jo loves first, laughs second, and advises third. Her memory is long and very vivid. One of my favorite things to do was listen to her remember things from her childhood. It made me realize how very important my childhood would be to me. And I did my best to soak up as much of it as I could.

Jo had Halloween parties, and Christmas parties, and Easter egg hunts, and slumber parties, and Just-Because parties. Eventually, the younger girls got into the party planning and began to create their own parties.

One centered around training bras. (But that is another story for a later post.)

If I learned one thing from Jo, it was to pay attention to the people who crossed your path. You never know what gems you might discover hidden inside. And if you got stepped on, so what?

Mary’s husband had one of the most important roles of all. And he takes a back seat in the grand scheme of things. But, without Joseph, things would not have been as “right” as they were.

And that is who she is. A person whose heart and words making everything right.

Jo…a very small name for a larger than life heart.

But, she doesn’t have to wave around a flashy name to make her mark. She does it just by being in the room.

Pretty Irish Girl

Did you know Sean Connery can sing? Not like Pavarotti, or Crosby, or Strait. But he can sing.

And his song reminds me of her…

My mother joined some ladies group at church and made a friend. She was the mother of two boys, very active, very fun, and red-headed.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, being a redhead is no easy task. And, top that with being the ONLY redhead in a family of five and you’ve got one sad girl who hated her hair. I blamed it on everything. If I stubbed my toe, it was because I was a redhead. If I got in trouble, it was because I was a redhead. If we couldn’t afford a toy from the store, it was because I was a redhead.

And it didn’t help that my younger sisters got a lot of attention from strangers. People would gush over them, saying how cute they were, how sweet. And while they grinned and giggled, I pouted and blamed it on my red hair. Boy, was I self-centered!

But then, one day, I met her…

We will call her Grace. It is one of my favorite Irish names. It comes from the name Grianne, meaning love. Which is a perfect way to describe her…grace and love.

I attached myself to her first because she was a redhead, and I knew no other person with hair the same color as mine. Then, she became someone to talk to, someone to share my deeper worries with. I didn’t trust many with my feelings. I was too afraid others wouldn’t care and wouldn’t listen.

Even if you don’t know what to say, one should always listen when one is sharing one’s feelings.

And she was very good at that. And very good at making me feel special.

And she made being a redhead look beautiful. Effortless. She gave me hope that one day I would wake up, and not remember that I was redheaded, that I would be able to step outside of the abyss that made me hate the way I looked.

There is nothing worse than obsessing over your own issues. You cannot enjoy others. You realize you are putting yourself first, and why in the world would you do that? God did not put us on this earth to love and worry about ourselves.

But she gave me hope. And as I got older, she taught without a single word, that yes, I was a redhead. And yes, it defined me. But it did not control me. Or my fate. And I was beautiful because of it, and in spite of it.

My Grace…

Thank you.

Sean Connery sings!

4:1

The banty rooster has clucked his last cluck.

Maybe 3 to 1 wasn’t so bad, but now…there’s four of them in the house.

Hens…

Imagine…always being in charge of your hen house…being able to cluck and flap all you want…and those hens had to take notice.

And then, without warning, the rooster cock-a-doodle-dos and…no one pays attention.
In fact, the hens appear to not even hear the rooster.

Did he crow? Who knows?

There are things to do, feathers to groom, topics to be discussed. Who has time for the macho rooster? What does he do for us anyway? Protect us from the fox?

The hens can scream their way out of any tight fix!

And so…the banty rooster pouts. And pouts some more.

But no one pays attention to his comforts any longer. He must evolve.

So, the macho rooster, in order to be heard by his hens, must his raise his wing to speak…and wait patiently to be noticed.