Thank you Lord for the sound of little seven year old girls playing with horses and a doll house. The chatter is so unusual for this day and time. One is playing the mother and she is telling the other all about life with the horses. They are talking in their pretend voices to each other.
They came in and I broke my rule and let them eat lunch in front of the TV. And this was rewarded by the choice of Net Flex and a cartoon probably written before my children were born and they were glued to the screen. Life lessons not now taught about little kids preparing a Christmas present for Santa. They washed his clothes, decorated him a tree and lifted his sleeping body up in a sheet while they put fresh clean sheets on his bed and then lowered him back onto it. They made him gifts and one was a cube with their pictures on it and when he looked a note that said do not forget us next year. They actually thanked him for giving to them and followed by doing something for him.
Yes this morning is a day to remember. They are being seven not going on sixteen. I love it! I have baked cookies and made tea for them so Eddie can take them to have a tea party with Alex's little tea set, down by the creek when they get bored playing.
I woke up in pretty good discomfort with my back this morning to have a lecture from my husband on I wasn't taking care of it properly and letting it heal. Shoot, I think the sum total of what I have done this week was make beds, cook and cleaned up the interior of the car. Now that was a bad job, however I didn't feel it was hurting me at the time. He said he would clean for me if I would just tell him what to do. So I told him he needed to vacuum before mopping otherwise it would just turn to mud balls. Probably not but I thought he was using the little steam cleaner mop and didn't realize he intended to use the regular sort, which would catch anything loose and sweep it right along.
He left me in bed and I laid there with tears streaming down my face. "Mama you never taught me how to get old." You never taught me how to sit on my back side and let my husband do my jobs for me. And she didn't. She worked side by side with her husband while he cut fire wood and she raised bottle calves and took care of chickens and a huge garden. She hated house work but she loved working out doors. She mowed the yard with a push mower well up into her early 70's. She worked in the yard planting, weeding and watering flowers and trees till we moved her away from her home. I remember one time we were shopping (which was also not her cup of tea). She had gone in to a dressing room at my insistence to try on a dress and stood in front of a 3 way mirror, maybe actually, for the first time in her life. When she came out she had tears in her eyes and I will never forget her words nor the look on her face, "Lill I am old." Mama was about my age at the time.
Well self pity turned to humor a little later. My vacuum cleaner sits in the corner with it's hose in a praying stance. My walls have tears running along the base boards and my furniture now need vacuuming where throw rugs that normally take in the dirt from outside were casually thrown across their arms. Thank you Lord for a willing husband and for a great sense of humor which thankfully kicked in and allowed me to keep my mouth shut. Well not soon enough, maybe this is why the baseboards took a hit. He was vacuuming and, I as always spoke before I thought and told him he was suppose to use the cleaning tool for the floor and not the big part because it would just scatter the loose stuff on the floor. Oh! me Lord teach me to keep my mouth shut and only put out praises.
If I behave and don't die from taking motrin while my disc decides to deflate, I hope this summer will bring many days like today for Alex. It is my intention that she have little girls come and play while she stays with us. She has had her first years of life with just us old people and very few times had children her age to play with. I hope we can take them places and let them be kids. Places where no TV, no video games, no computers, and please Lord no cell phones. I want them to have the opportunity to at least know what the other side of life is all about before they grown up and miss it. And Lord please let Eddie and I have health to watch them play and grow up.
As she and I were making the beds together this morning and she was not really wanting to be there, I tried to teach her a lesson that I feel our young are not being taught and they are floundering out there in a world they did not know existed. At 15 to 17 they are told what to do all their lives and never given responsibilites then thrown into situations they have no idea how to handle because they were never taught to think for themselves. They have no idea what consequences for their actions are all about. I think this is because they were never allowed to fail, be picked up wiped off and told to try again. Nobody wants to give them the time it takes to accomplish this.
I don't want Alex to wake up being eighteen years old and never having learned to think for herself and how to do things properly and realize they are important. Simple things like making beds, picking up wet towels, and cleaning her room for now. These are things that require a discipline she will need to serve her well the rest of her life. A child needs for us to do it with them at first and after they are shown how to do it properly then expect them to do it for themselves.
I tried that idea when mine were young, there is your room clean it up. Once I found a jar of Marie's salad dressing (thankfully lid in tact) under our son's bed growing something inside the jar. I believe he was thirteen at the time.
I did too many things for them, gave out too many orders, and did not spend enough time encouraging and listening to them. I wish I could go back and have a do over on this account.
We did clean house together. Those poor kids helped me move everything out of the house in the front yard, shampoo carpets, put that horrible liquid gold (I think was the name) on all the paneling and then before dark have it all back inside and in place. That was when we had hand me down furniture that didn't weigh much. Carol was six years younger than our oldest child, therefore she missed most of this part of life on the farm. Poor Robin and Tim were my furniture moving hands.
In 1980 I went to work at SWEPCO and purchased the first living room suit we ever bought brand new. Trust me that one did not go out the front door and back inside. I believe it was that year we bought the bedroom suit. It was a blessing I only worked a year or I would have filled the house with heavy furniture and I would have gone insane because every spring I couldn't clean by moving all the furniture around. This is probably why I have a bad back. Eddie said he knew one night he would come in from work and find the commode moved. That of course was when he worked shift work.
This reminds me of a memory of our 17 year old Robin. I came in from work one evening and she said, "Mama I hate coming home to this empty house every day." Thank you Lord my job only lasted a year. She was responsible for taking care of an eleven year old sister and a 15 year old brother. However, she and them had been reared together, and their dad came home from shift work. So they were rarely alone. He might be asleep or I would be home no more than a couple of hours after they were.
I can only imagine a young man of 17 being responsible for a brother he has never had to take care of and a sister that only recently came into his family. Both boys having been told what to do all their lives and never having to make lifetime decisions on their own and suddenly are responsible for taking care of a lot of farm animals, and a little sister they don't even know and have never around before.
The conversation in the bedroom has turned into "why are you flushing your brother down the toilet."
And now they have gone for their tea party down by the creek with grandpa. And grandma sits here throbbing back and the camera lays in the bedroom on the desk. Maybe this will be a photo shot that the Lord will place in my head and never let me forget.
Ah! life is golden when you have little girls around.
