If any of you have followed my blog you will obviously notice that I have not written for quite a while. Life. Happenings. Children. Church. Service. Volunteering. Family. Health. Vacations. There are so many reasons or excuses for me not to write.
Everyone's life is full of what they feel is important to them. For me, family is important. Whether I choose to visit with family members, help them, love them, pray for them--whatever I choose to do with my day is how I show what is truly important to me--and I try each day to show a different family member how much I care about them.
Now this is the tricky part: I am one of eight children. All of us are married. (16) All of us have children. At the last count there are grandchildren 37 grandchildren (53) with 18 married (71) and 18 great grandchildren (89). Both of my parents are still living (91). Only one of my grandparents are still living and she will turn 90 this year (92). Three of my nieces are due with a baby this year (95). That is just my side of the family. My husband and I have seven children and one granddaughter. (Already counted in the above totals.) My husband has three siblings still living that are married (6), his step mother (7) and her son, daughter-in-law and 3 grandchildren (12). That brings to total to 107 people that are close family members. My math could definitely be challenged but you get the picture; you can see how hard it would be to try to show every single member of my close family just how much I care for them daily. This is one of the advantages of modern technology--to keep in touch easily.
Facebook is a great way for me to catch up on my nephews and nieces and their families. Occasionally I have siblings that post something but not too often. Emails are great too--especially if they are from relatives that have no few methods of contact; for example, they may be missions for our church, or volunteering in the Peace Corps or some other organization, etc. Sometimes letters and packages are hard to send, let alone receive in third-world countries. I love getting picture updates!
Texting is also a fun way of keeping in touch; with a simple emoji you can send a thought to whomever you wish. Personally, I like the "microphone" that is a part of my cell phone. I can communicate with others a lot faster than trying to type each letter singularly. I also like to send one-word thoughts, such as "*hug*". I instantly feel warmer inside knowing that the person I send that too will know that I care about them.
Here are two other suggestions of communication: whistling and actually knocking on the door to see if someone could play.
Do you remember the days of "Kick the can", "Sardines", "Hide-and-seek", "Red rover red rover...", basketball, kickball, and other fun games that the whole neighborhood would join in? How about the various ways of choosing who is "It": "My mother and your mother were out hanging clothes. My mother socked your mother right in the nose. What color of blood came out?" Yes, I know, that is not a good one, but honestly I couldn't remember another off the top of my head.
One day my friend Lisa told me that we could make lipstick out of rose petals. This sounded like a brilliant idea to a ten-year-old girl with three older sisters. This is a memory that comes back to me whenever I weed roses. Those were the days of great curiosity and creativity. Sometimes we would play "School" or reenact a TV program such as "Charlies Angels", or we would ride our bikes or run over to the school to play on the playground equipment. (My favorite was the "monkey bars"!) My friend Suzy loved the "see saw"; she loved to bounce people. I would have to say that one of my very favorite things to do when I was younger was to jump on the trampoline; I could jump for hours at a time. I never seemed to get tired. So many fun memories of long ago.
In my childhood days my father would let us know that it was time to come in by whistling a few certain notes, sometimes "taps", then start counting to 10. All of the neighborhood knew that we needed to be inside the house by the time my dad reached 10. I remember taking my time coming home instead of running. My dad simply locked the door and I missed dinner. I went to play basketball in the driveway until they were done. As soon as the meal was finished I was told to clean up dinner. This may not seem like such a big deal, but remember that I am one of eight children, plus two parents. We had a "hook up" dishwasher that would work for some of the dishes, but inevitably there would be dishes that would need to be hand washed and dried. No letting them dry in the sink or any such "nonsense" for our family.
Today I don't like to answer the door unless I know that someone is coming over because the person at the door is usually a salesperson. In our community there is a sign that says that soliciting is not allowed but this definitely doesn't stop them; and, of course you have the neighborhood children who are selling something for their school, club or sport programs. How do you say no to them?
Video games and on-line streaming seem to have replaced the essential play that children were born to experience. I remember playing "Pac Man" when it first came out. As a family we delivered newspapers every day; three routes in the morning and two in the afternoon. For Christmas one year we got the "Atari" game system. This was BIG! We each got a game cartridge in our stocking and mine happened to be "Pac Man". I have a distinct recollection of my mom coming downstairs and telling me and my younger brother that we needed to go outside and play. We were so worried about losing our scores, getting to the next level and, of course, beating the other person's score. She was right though. When we got outside to play I couldn't care less about coming back inside to play.
A lot of the parent's of the families I grew up with still live in the same neighborhood. There is something happily nostalgic about seeing them and how they have changed. I love listening to them talk about their families--the good and the bad. I care about them. One neighbor in particular lived across the street and they also had eight children. They also had a large tree just made for climbing! Every chance I got I climbed that tree all the way to the top. I loved looking out over everything and seeing long distances. Climbing down the tree was another matter altogether; I would have loved to have had a trampoline right under that tree that I could jump out onto! I know that I made the neighbor nervous because she had her husband cut down the tree. I remember coming home from school one day and seeing the tree branches lying all over the lawn. Why would anyone want to cut down such a great tree?! Now, as an adult I totally get it.
