For Everything, There is a Season

I was watching TV on a recent Sunday afternoon and my favorite episode of "Sex and the City" came on. Now, I know some people don't like this show, but personally I find it very realistic of the way that women think and what they want. I always enjoyed Carrie's musings at the end of each episode. The particular episode that I am referring to is the episode that was aired after 9/11 called I Heart NY. At the end of the show the character says the following "Seasons change, so do cities. People come into your life and people go, but it’s comforting to know: the ones you love are always in your heart and if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away."

That quote hit home for me one day last week when I got a call from my neighbor when I was growing up. Joe is just a little older than I am, I do his and his wife's taxes every year. Joe's parents and mine lived next door to each other. His mom, Vera lost her husband, Cecil in 1987. I had always loved Cecil and he had a filled a fatherly type of role in my life at times. After Cecil's passing, I knew that Vera was quite lonely and I kind of made it my mission to find someone for her. That's how she came to meet and marry her current husband, Gene.

I knew Gene from when I worked at the shipyard. Gene was a crane operator and I worked around him quite a bit when I needed riggers to get equipment on the ship for me. It was December of 1988 and I had went into the trailer where the crane operators were to arrange to get some equipment on board the USS Saratoga, which was the aircraft carrier that we were both working on. We were all making some small talk and for some reason I asked Gene what he was going to do for the upcoming Christmas holidays. He responded nothing. Then I asked if he had any family nearby and he said no. Of course then that piqued my interest so I asked if he was married and when he replied no, of course my matchmaking instincts went into overdrive.

I promptly started questioning him about different things and when I found out that he came from Alabama, I knew I had hit a home run as Vera was from Alabama too. I immediately asked him if he minded if I fixed him up with a neighbor and for some reason he said sure. Why not! As soon as I walked out the door, I promptly called Vera and told her that I had found her match. She was a little skeptical, but I had them exchange phone numbers and she asked him over the very next morning to have a cup of coffee.

I saw him pull up to her house the next day and was quite impatient to find out how things went. Lo and behold, as soon as Gene left, Vera came out the back door and told my mom and I that she was smitten and was from the first moment that Gene stepped out of his truck. She made the shocking remark "I'm going to marry that man!" and sure enough, three months later in March, they were married. I am happy to say that I ended up being Vera's maid of honor and Gene's brother was the best man at their wedding.

A few months later Butch and I made the decision to get married on September 2, 1989. However, I had somewhat of a dilemma. I had asked my dad to please come to my wedding to walk me down the aisle but my dad has some big issues with people and crowds. I think the biggest issue he had was as he quoted "I am not giving my daughter away. I am not coming to the wedding." He had not even met Butch, refused to come to our house or anything even remotely to meeting him. My dad can just be strange like that. I didn't beg because I knew it wouldn't do any good, so I just kind of resigned myself that this was the way it was going to be.

I thought about asking my brother to do the honor of giving me away but since he was only 17 I kind of shelved that idea too. Then one day when I was mulling things over I realized that Gene would be the perfect person to ask. Vera and another one of my mom's friends, Sharon, were doing my flowers, Sharon's husband Norman was our photographer, who better to ask than Gene to do the honor of walking me down that aisle? I asked him and he promptly said yes. The rest is history as they say. Of course as you can see from the picture below, I was pretty nervous that day as I was holding onto his hand for all I was worth.

A few years later, Gene and Vera moved back to Alabama after Gene retired but they missed our area and came back and settled on the North Carolina coast right over the Virginia line. I last saw Gene about a year ago at a surprise birthday party that Joe and his wife, Ann held for Gene. He was the same Gene as always. Happy, smiling, laughing and just having a good time. Time had passed but Gene had not changed a bit.

I got the call from Joe telling me that Gene recently had been diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer and that it had spread to the brain. He told me that Vera and Gene had decided to go the hospice route and that time was getting short. He said that Gene was bedridden and was not always lucid. I told Joe to please tell Gene that I loved him and to thank him yet again for being there for me on that very special day in every woman's life. I just could not bring myself to go see him in pain that way. I wanted to remember him the way that I always knew him, vibrant, alive......damn, this is so hard.

I have been working on this post for over a week. I got the call yesterday. Gene died at 12:20PM at home. Yes, for everything there is a season. We are born, we live and one day we die. As the quote in the beginning paragraph said "People come into your life and people go, but it’s comforting to know: the ones you love are always in your heart". Gene, you will always be in my heart. Thank you for everything. I love you. As long as I have my memories, you will live on.

Ramblings of a Tired Mind....

Wonders never cease! Two blog posts in one day. I guess that's where insomnia can come in handy. After a while everything just shuts down but my brain continues to race around even when I am feeling like a zombie in "Night of the Living Dead", original version please....no remakes for this girl! Just a side tidbit here for later posterity, that movie scared the hell out of my mom when it first came out back in the sixties. I remember her telling me about it. When I finally got to see it, it was kind of like, what was all of her fuss about????? Thinking back though, I remember holding the covers of my bed up to my chin so that Dracula couldn't get me when I was about eight and used to scare myself watching Creature Feature every Saturday night in the early seventies. It was a local program that came on that had all the oldies but goodies in the horror genre, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and all the rest.

I don't actually know why I'm doing another post as I have one on a holding pattern that I have been working on for a week. I'm such a bad blogger. Today I will just ramble and see where it takes me.

First off music, I'm currently listening to the Clash "Rock the Casbah". Per the internet it supposedly came out in 1982 but personally I remember dancing to it the summer of 1983. There were certain years in my book that was banner years for music. 1971 was the best as far as I am concerned. I spent that summer around the pool at the apartment we lived in in Norfolk Virgina that my parents moved to when we left Dillwyn and moved to the Tidewater area. I was eight years old and Rod Stewart, The Stones, Aretha Franklin and so many others were so popular. If I close my eyes I can still smell the chlorine of the pool and feel the hot concrete under my feet. My mom was pregnant with my brother, Scott, and everyday she took me to the pool, music piping out of the speakers. My parents were happy, I finally was going to have a sibling as I had wished for a little sister, of course he turned out to be my little brother and will always be my little brother even though we are now 45 and 37. Life was good. I love Scott so much. We talk everyday and I can tell him anything as I think he can me. We are very much wired brain-wise alike. We both battle many of the same issues, depression probably being the major one. I can always call him and say something totally off the wall and he will understand and relate. We used to be pretty opposite in a lot of ways, but now we are on the same page. It's funny how life is that way. I have always admired my brother, he is so smart and very articulate. I know Butch used to get mad because Scott and I would talk at least once a day but he never was close like that with any of his siblings so I don't think he could understand.

The second best year for music in my opinion(and remember this is MY blog so my opinion counts but I love comments) was 1983. Ahhh, the year Michael Jackson released the Thriller album and every song was a hit. I was dating someone that I was totally enamored with and looking back I can honestly say he was really the first guy that I really, really loved in an adult way. He drove a red convertible Corvette, he was eight years older than me and every weekend we went out somewhere and went dancing or to some party. Again it was summer and the smells of the beach, the wind blowing on a Saturday night, cruising the Virginia Beach strip in his vette with the top down, I think it was the perfect summer for a young lady of 20 and everything in life completely ahead of her. Now for the fall from grace. That October we broke up and he broke my heart. Listen up girls, fairy tales are just that, fairy tales.

That's what I say to Katybug when she walks around the house talking about Tinkerbell, and fairies and Princesses. I don't necessarily like when we spoon feed our daughters the same old crap about the Prince and happily ever after. There really is no such thing. As you can tell, from last nights post and todays I have kind of an issue with the male population at times. I think I was taught in the old school ways of moms stay home, dads work, la-la-la-la-la. That's not what actually happens though. Ask my mom and look at me. My mom had to go to nursing school while I was in high school. As I have posted before, she went to school days and worked the 11PM-7AM shift and still found time to study. I don't know how she did it. She was first in her class with an "A" average. I remember sitting and calling questions to her night after night after night. She did this because my dad couldn't keep his butt at home where it belonged. Don't get me wrong, I love my dad, but there have been many times that he was a complete ass and he knows it. At least now he has changed and has been an awesome grandfather to Jessica and I'm happy that she gets to experience the good that I always knew was under his gruff exterior. There are times though that I wish he could have been there for me like at my graduation or even coming to my wedding. My mom though was always the rock and I will always love her for that. I love both of my parents for coming together in the last several years. They have lived apart since I was pregnant with Jessica but have never divorced. I know that they still love each other even though they don't always get along.

Oh well, enough ramblings for now. My tired mind needs to do a little housework as my sheets need to go in the dryer and my bed must be made before I finally fall into it this evening. Hopefully sleep will not elude me the way that it did last night. Otherwise another post may be forthcoming.

You might be a redneck if........

you have a weasel in your refrigerator????????

Yup, you got it!! A weasel, or better yet and to be more specific, a least weasle. My brother, Scott, called me Thursday afternoon and asked had I gotten his pictures yet of the weasel that he discovered Wednesday evening in his fridge. Apparently, his barn cat got a hold of this weasel somewhere around the chicken coop and had done her barn cat job by killing the weasel. Scott's wife, Felicia discovered Miss Patsy's job well done and since my father was there to inform her that not only was it a weasel, but a least weasle, and "I haven't seen one of those in 40 years" she decided to take him to the taxidermist and have his hide tanned. Scott, unbeknowing to all this, thought that he would enjoy a glass of milk when he got home from work that evening and went to reach into the refrigerator for the milk when he got a surprise and this is what he found. Scott told me, in all confidentiality, that had he known that she was going to put a weasle in their fridge one day(Scott and Felicia just celebrated 16 years of marriage on April 17) that Felicia's chances for matrimony would have went waaayyy down!!!

Just some other info though regarding least weasles and that is they are the smallest of the weasle family and that in classical and medieval European mythology, it is sometimes said that the only thing which can kill a basilisk is a weasel, though it would be killed in the conflict as well. So, for all of you Harry Potter fans out there(and BTW, the latest movie is opening two days earlier!!!!!! jumping up and down here)this is a nice to know tidbit of random, useless information.

My mom came over on Friday evening and of course I had to tell her about the least weasel and the pictures that Scott had sent me which led to our discussion on what I was going to title this post. Personally, I liked "what's in your refrigerator" just like the Capital One ad "what's in your wallet" but once we got to reminising about other things that were redneck related I agreed with my mother and decided on "you might be a redneck if....". Now, without further ado I will give you a few more reasons to discern if you might come from redneck stock.

1. Obviously, if you open your fridge or freezer door and find some dead animal carcass or parts of the dead animal staring back at you you might be a redneck. In my lifetime it was normal to find either a dead turkey or deer head staring up at you when you opened the deep freeze. This was of course so that the deer head(or some other part) could go to the taxidermist to be stuffed and mounted. Not only was the heads of deer mounted but my dad also had a gunrack made of deer feet turned up to hold his guns. My, what a beautiful addition that would make in your home decor.(I'm saying this quite facetiously) Personally, the best use for them was to be able to hang your clothes that you couldn't put in the dryer from the horns. On a clothes hanger of course.

2. Anything is edible as long as you have gravy and fried onions with it. Deer, turkey, rabbit, squirrel and goodness knows what else is fair game. As my mother said on Friday night there was even an occasional groundhog served. Her father's personal fave was squirrel for Sunday breakfast and that he enjoyed the brains as well. Now, I'm one that likes liver, but even I think eating the brains of anything is going to far. I know, don't knock it until you have tried it.

3. Roadkill can be fair game as long as you don't eat it. Now let me explain this one. In seventh grade I had a teacher who loved science projects. Mr. Godfrey assigned the class to get 20 animal prints in plaster of paris. Twenty would earn you an "A", fifteen a "B" and so on. Now my mother would not settle for me having anything less than an "A" and when you are trying to come up with twenty animal footprints it is pretty daunting. My brother even got his feet in plaster of paris. (he was only four at the time, and a human is an animal) My mother decided we were going to my maternal grandmothers house to get some other prints as she had ducks, geese and other small farm animals. On the way there we passed a opossum that had obviously been hit but not too bad. What does my mother do? Well, what any good country girl would. We pulled the car off to the side and got that opossums prints in plaster of paris. Same thing when we passed a raccoon. I do want to say, I was the only one in class to make an "A". Thank you mom!!!! BTW, the raccoon was skinned and I tanned his hide and got extra credit for that. I bet Mr. Godfrey still remembers me.

4. Never, and I mean never run away from home and take the new black and tan hound puppies with you!!!!!! It will result in a tail whupping. I was six and decided I was going to run away from home. My parents watched while I packed my suitcase and didn't say a word when I walked out the door with every intention of "leaving home". Miss Brave decided she really wasn't as brave as she felt and decided she would be safe if she had a hunting dog with her on her journey. I went to the pen and let out the newest hounddog additions so that they could run away with me. They were probably about six months old at the time. Anyways, off we go to the main road which was probably about a quarter of a mile away from our house, if that. When my father discovered what I had done, I was promptly picked up with the puppies and I got my tail beat. Not for running away, but for showing the puppies where the road was. Now we know where I ranked on his list.

5. Even at three, you know how to play poker and shoot craps for money and you win!! I think my fathers side of the family thought they were gonna get some easy money and let a small child play poker. What they didn't count on was I was good and I usually ended up being the only sober one at the table, therefore it was easy pickens in my book. My mother said she was also mortified the day she pulled up from work and found me sitting on the hood of my fathers car in pink gingham, no less, shooting craps with my dad and his cousins. When you hang out with the big boys, you play the big boy games.

Now, what's in your fridge......

Memory Post

As I was driving to my destination on Wednesday, I heard a song on the radio that triggered a memory that I have since shared with Jessica and Lewis and thought would be a great memory post for the blog. For me, music brings memories. The song that I heard was "All of my Love" by Led Zeppelin. Not only did I hear it on my way, but I also heard the song again on my way home. A 1980's song twice in one day, on two different radio stations. I usually don't believe in signs, but this was just meant to be.
Senior Banquet May 1980

The song brings back memories of the winter of 1979-80, specifically the twin snowstorms that hit Tidewater and brought our region a record 41.9 inches of snow that winter. The first storm was February 6th and brought about 18 inches of snow in Chesapeake. The second was March 1-2 and brought 22 inches. This was simply unheard of for Hampton Roads. We are lucky to get an inch every couple of years. In fact, the weather is calling for snow this weekend for us. Ironically, it is supposed to start on March 1. Could history repeat itself? I for one, secretly hope so!!!
Christmas 1983

On to the memories though. The memory that this song really triggered was of my best friend Janet and I. Janet has been my BFF (as they would say now) since I was in fourth and she was in fifth grade. She walked up to me when my family moved to our neighborhood in Deep Creek and wanted to know if I played Barbie's. She was taller than me (at that time, but not for long) and was pretty demanding that I meet her in her backyard later that day. We met and fast forward 36 years later and I still consider her my best friend. We may not see each other like we used to, but we still talk at least every couple of weeks and if we needed each other, everything would be dropped at a moments notice. Janet was my maid of honor at my wedding, she was in the delivery room when Jessica was born, and in fact when I was in labor, she and her husband announced that they were expecting, and their son was born almost exactly nine months to the day later.
January 1990

Janet and I were both seniors that winter (I had skipped a grade and was graduating a year early) and we were both dating midshipmen at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. We had taken numerous trips up to Annapolis to go to the various dances. In fact, the song mentioned above was popular the weekend that we went to the Valentines Dance at the Academy. We would usually drive up on a Friday afternoon and come back on a Sunday evening. Looking back, I can hardly believe that our parents would let us do that, especially considering that we were only 16 and 17 years old . I would drive my moms Pontiac Sunbird, and off we would go. Once there, we would stay at a chaperones house and then go to different activities all weekend. Usually in the winter, there was ice skating, sledding, and of course going to the formal dances. The sunday that we came back from the Valentines dance, I got pulled over by a state trooper right outside of Gloucester and luckily was let go with just a warning for speeding. That was a secret that we kept to ourselves for a VERY long time. Hey, we wanted to use that car to go back and my mom would have had our butts if I had gotten a ticket.

Two weeks later though, she almost did have our butts for the little stunt that we pulled after the second snowstorm. On that Tuesday, March 3, I think everyone was feeling a little stir crazy from being cooped up in the house and Janet and I decided to take a walk. Our neighborhood was about a half a mile from the old Deep Creek High School. We had attended the old school until our senior year when the "new" high school was opened. Part of the old school was a three story gymnasium. On the way on our little walk, we stopped by the small nursing home where my mom worked. She had pretty much been stuck there as the next shift could not get in due to the roads being impassable. My mom was working and going to nursing school at the same time. Looking back, I don't know how she did it. She worked the 11PM-7AM shift and then would go to school during the day. She would catch a few hours of sleep and then go to work and study at night while the residents slept. Anyways, we stopped in, chatted for a few minutes and told her we would be going back home once we finished our walk.

We had just gotten out the door and out of sight when we heard a car coming. It was a couple of guys that Janet and I knew from band class. Al, Buddy and Danny were in Danny's Volkswagon Bug and I don't even know how they were driving as the roads were so bad, but they stopped and told us to get in. They were going to the old high school so that they could do donuts in the parking lot with the car. Sounded good to us, even though my father would have shot me knowing that we were in the car with three guys. That was just a big no-no to my dad. Once there, we came up with the bright idea of going out back to where the gymnasium was and I don't remember who decided to start climbing up the gym but that's just what we did . Getting up the side was the easy part as there was a ladder attached to the side wall. Standing on the roof, I remember Danny saying something about wouldn't it be cool to jump into the snow drifts that were up against the side of the building. There were drifts about 6-8 feet deep but being the stupid teenagers that we were it never occured to us that there could have been anything in them. We just all took that leap of faith and off the roof we went straight into those drifts. I remember being literally stuck up to my neck in the snow.

Looking back, what in the world were we ever thinking? Telling my mom about it later, she about went through the roof. What if we had been hurt? What would we have done? Why would we even consider doing something like that? I don't know even to this day. Janet and I were just talking about this when we chatted two weeks ago. Of course, we still giggled and no, we still can't tell you what possessed us but one thing is sure, we will never forget the second snowstorm of 1980.

Memories of the Past

I'm going to try to post one memory per week. This was one of the reasons for this blog so that one day my daughter will have my memories here and won't have to rely on what my brain can still recall.

This picture is of my paternal grandfather, Clyde Lincoln Chidester. He would have been 86 today. His middle name was in honor of President Abraham Lincoln, since he was born on Lincolns' birthday. My mother very graciously let me scan it and when I took the picture out of the frame, I discovered on the back that this picture was taken on September 19, 1945 in Brussels, Belgium after the end of World War II. It states "To my Darling Wife and Baby". That would have made him twenty-two when the photo was taken.

I always called him Granddaddy Clyde. When I was about three years old, my parents and I lived with him and my grandmother while my parents were building their house in Dillwyn, Va. I remember following him into the bathroom in the mornings while he shaved. I would stand on the toilet and he would put shaving cream on my face so that I could "shave". He would give me a razor with no blade in it so I could be just like him. I would also sit at the kitchen table in the mornings while he drank his coffee and I would be allowed to get a cup of coffee and would imitate him as he would always pour a little into the saucer below the cup so that it would cool quicker. I would do the same, although I know now that my coffee was more milk than the real thing. Maybe that is why I have such a love of coffee to this day.

Every afternoon I would stand in their front yard, waiting for that red Ford truck to come around the bend. He would usually have something in his black, metal lunch box for me. He worked construction and was very good at it. My grandmother would fuss at him in the afternoons because he would be dirty or have concrete on his pants or such. When he went to work though, he was always pressed and starched. He always had ink pens in his shirt pocket and they were usually from some construction company. I liked them because in the end where you clicked the pen was a clear area with a little truck in it that would float back and forth. Sometimes he would put me in his truck and off we would go to the Tastee-Freeze at Sprouses Corner. I would always get a cheeseburger with only mayonnaise, french fries and usually a Coke or sometimes I would get a Coke float.

I never remember him getting impatient with me or fussing or yelling. My brother, Scott and I were his only grandchildren and he certainly doted on both of us. I remember more about him, as Scott is eight years younger than I am, so unfortunately Scott does not have the memories that I do. He had several tattoos on his arms and he would let me sit in his chair with him and color them in. I also remember when I was very little how he would ask me to say yellow. I couldn't pronounce my y's very well and would say "lellow". The same with refrigerator, I would say "bigerator" and he would get a big kick out of hearing me say those words back to him.

My nickname then was "Baby Bear". I had this idea that my Dad, Mom and I were really the Three Bears and that we had came out of the forest and turned into people. I know, I was a strange little kid with a VERY active imagination. Anyways, my grandfather would call me Baby Bear as well. It's funny because years later when my brother came along, he was called Baby Duck. I don't remember where that one came from if we were the bear family, but who knows?

When I was about twelve we were riding around in his truck one day (he always had red or red and white Ford trucks) and he let me drive. I got us stuck in the red clay on the side of the road. He just laughed and said someone would come along and get us out and sure enough they did. That's how patient he was with me. If I wanted it, I think he would have moved heaven and earth to see that I got what I wanted.

During the sixties he would always watch Hogans Heroes. That was one of his favorite shows. Now I find that kind of confusing, since he was stationed in Europe during World War II and he fought in France and Germany and I know that he saw a lot of devastation and suffering. He was in Berlin when the Allies took back over and I remember him talking about the Allies blowing up the city and how a bank blew up and German money was flying everywhere. He also collected stamps while he was there and I have his stamp book with his collection. My mother says that he told her a story about how he was patrolling an area and he ran into a young German soldier. He said he wasn't sure who was more frightened, him or the other soldier. Apparently the other soldier asked him for a cigarette (as the Germans were out of everything at that point) and he shared one with him. After finishing, the other soldier turned around and walked away. They were both just two young kids fighting on opposite sides.

The last time that I saw my grandfather alive was in February of 1990. My daughter, Jessica was only two weeks old. I wanted him to see Jessica, but he had been ill and was in McGuire Veterans Hospital in Richmond, Va and babies and small children were not allowed in, even as visitors. My husband and I snuck Jessica into his room so that he could see her. A nurse caught us but when we explained the situation she simply smiled and left the room. Luckily, we had just bought a video camera and caught the moment on film. A month later he died and I lost my last living grandparent.

I wish Jessica had had the honor of knowing him. He would have been so proud of her. I know that with all of my heart. Happy Birthday Granddaddy! I miss you, but I still have you here in my memories and the memories that I share.