Shorty's Granddaddy

Mother, Granddaddy & Me, Circa 1986

Mother, Granddaddy and Nannie

"No cowboy was ever faster on the draw than a grandparent pulling a baby picture out of a wallet." ~Author Unknown

http://youtu.be/7E88RUqyjts [Grandpa, Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ole Days/The Judds]
 
The year was 1907.  Theodore Roosevelt was President; the first [Maria] Montessori school opened in Rome;  Royal Oil and Shell merged to form British Petroleum (BP); Congress was paid $7,500 a year [TAKE US BACK TO THOSE DAYS, PLEASE!!!!!]; Pink Star won the 33rd Kentucky Derby in 2:12.6; Tommy Burns was the heavyweight champion; the automatic washer and dryer were introduced; The St. Louis Cardinals Ed Karger pitched a perfect game against the Braves, 4-0 in 7 innings; the United Parcel Service began running service, in Seattle; the Plaza Hotel (5th Av and 59th Str, New York) opened; Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth bought Barnum and Bailey circus; John Wayne, "the Duke" was born in Winterset, Iowa; Oklahoma became the 46th state in America; the 1st Christmas Seals were sold in the Wilmington Delaware post office; Ruyard Kipling received the Nobel prize for literature; the 1st all-steel passenger railroad coach was completed in Altoona, Pa; a ball dropped at Times Square to signal the new year for the first time; Julia Ward Howe became the first woman elected to the National Institute of Arts & Letters; Taxis began running in New York city; artist Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon/The Women of Avignon, which is one of the central works of 20th-century art; but the greatest thing to happen in 1907 was that my grandfather, Ryland Brown Whitlock was born on September 30^th.
My grandfather was a character! He was a real dandy [my brother called him "Dandy" when he first was learning to speak and my mother, regretfully, corrected him and dropped that term of endearment] from what my great Aunt Viola, his sister, once said to me. [She was a real character herself - story for another day] His dance card was always full. He married my grandmother when he was 30, which was considered late to get married for that time. I always found it funny-ironic that his middle name was "Brown" because he was a farmer.
I knew him as the kind of man described in the following saying: "my grandfather had silver hair and a heart of gold". I came into his life when he was 56 years old. He left mine when I was 28. Neither of our lives were ever the same with my coming and his going. I think he would agree with that statement.
Today, my granddaddy would have turned 104 years old. I’ve been thinking of him all day - pulling my memories out and examining them all. Each one is like a precious pearl, and I’d like to share some of them with those of you who care to read about him:
My grandfather wasn’t by society’s standards considered an educated man, because he didn’t go to college, but he was smart in his own ways, which were just as impressive. For instance, he knew that you could yield about 183 bushels of corn per acre. He also knew that you shouldn’t plant soybeans until you were certain that the last frost of the winter season was over, because the ground needed to be warm for best growth. He knew that soybeans needed to be planted in the section of his farm that got the fullest sun . He also knew to use nitrogen rich fertilizer for this particular crop, because they grew better in soil with a higher nitrogen content, and the soil needed to be kept moist for optimum growth. He knew that growing tomatoes required patience, because they can take a long time to grow, and he knew exactly when to stake them and exactly how far apart that stake should be from the actual plant so that you didn’t damage the root system.
However, the most amazing thing my grandfather knew, in my opinion, was how to tell the ripeness of a watermelon simply by a thump. He didn’t have to thump it more than once either. He knew by the sound that his finger made against the rind of that melon whether it was ripe for the pickin’. It was a marvel, because when he sliced it open, it was always a deep, beautiful, melon-red and as sweet as sugar. He could do the same thing with a cantaloupe - one sniff from where the vine had been pulled away from the plant, was all he needed to know if you were going to get a sweet one or not. My granddaddy taught me the culinary taste of how much better cantaloupe tasted with a sprinkling of black pepper too. If you’ve never tried it, you don’t know what you’re missing!
There were other things he did which I found fascinating. He could play a mouth harp like nobody’s business, and I never knew that two spoons held together just so and rapped against one’s knee could make music - that was, until my granddaddy showed me that it was so. He could produce some toe-tapping music with those spoons too.
Demonstrative love in the form of words wasn’t something he was big on. He told you he loved you with his hug. His hugs were Goliath in strenght. He held you tight and for a few extra seconds than a normal hug.
He whittled stuff too. It might not sound like much, but my granddaddy was really good at it. Try it sometime. I guarantee you that it’s not as easy as it sounds or looks.
He was also a GREAT story teller. Lord, that man could make your seams bust with the yarns he spun. It’s a gift to be able to tell a good story. As a writer, I know the degree of difficulty it takes to accomplish that particular feat. His always brought you to laughter with his stories, to the point of almost wetting your pants. I’m not ashamed to say that. It’s the truth. That’s how funny his stories were. It’s good to laugh like that. More people need to laugh like that more often!
As a farmer, he took on the hottest day of the year without a second thought, because his livelihood depended it. His families needs depended on it – on him being stronger and tougher than the elements. If it meant that he was out in the fields by 6 a.m. planting, that’s what he did. His days were long. They were rigorous. They were especially grueling during a time when he worked not only his fields during the day but worked a neighbor’s late into the night, because the man was unable to tend to his crops.
That was my grandfather’s Magnificent Obsession. For those of you who never saw the movie with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson [you missed a great movie], the underlying message of the film was this: practice doing good deeds secretly. Secretly was the key to the thought. You reap more spiritual benefit from doing something out of the goodness of your heart - never seeking praise for doing it, not wanting fortune or fame as a result.
The theme, from what I learned, was based on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew [6:1-4]

"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father, which is in heaven.....That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly."
 
That’s what my grandfather did by that gesture. Outside of his family and the family of the friend on whose behalf he worked, I don’t know if anyone else was aware of his good deed. It wasn’t what motivated him.  That’s what made him not only special, but a great man, in my opinion. Great men in history have done far less to earn that title.
My granddaddy was a big teddy bear. He could appear gruff, but he had a marshmallow heart. One of his tender spots was for his grandchildren. I remember the last year that we lived in Virginia, we went over to Nannie and Granddaddy’s on Easter Sunday for lunch and the Easter egg hunt.
The Easter egg hunt was as big a deal for my grandfather as it was for us. He was the one who hid the eggs, you see. I, being the baby of the grandchildren at the time, didn’t have the advantage that the other kids did, namely, being bigger and able to reason where good hiding places might be. So, my grandfather put an egg on top of the well, on the bench of the picnic table, on the stair of the front porch, at the base of the big tree that stood to the left of the farmhouse, in the grass beside the door of his small shed. When the hunt started, he took hold of my hand and took me over to each spot, saying "looka there, Shorty! Looka there!" [There’s a photograph of me standing on top of the picnic table counting all my eggs]
When I was four years old, my family moved to Jacksonville, Florida. It crushed my grandparents. My parents unintentionally were taking 3/5ths of their grandchildren away - four states away. It seemed like it was to the end of the earth.  It wasn't off course, but that's how it felt to all of us. It was hard leaving them, but I think it was toughest on them. I remember we left our German Shepherd, Storm, with my grandfather. He loved that dog! I think it was kinda like him having a little bit of us there with him everyday – something tactile. That dog had been devoted to us, and he became devoted to my grandfather. My grandfather was devoted to him also in his own, private way, and round it went, that perfect circle of love. We couldn’t wait, every summer, to go to Virginia to visit with my grandparents and to see Storm.
It was during those visits that the wonder of the farm was impressed upon me. Granddaddy sat each of us in his lap on the tractor and tilled one row of the field that he was working on. He let us ride in the back of his truck too. It wasn’t a typical flatbed truck like a Ford Ranger. This was a big truck used to harvest produce. It had plywood attached to either side of it that was painted green, and he tied a rope across the back so the bigger kids could sit on the edge and hold onto the rope. It was a BIG deal. He only went under 5 m.p.h., but it was an adventure. I never got to sit on the edge. I wasn’t old enough or big enough, but so I wouldn’t feel left out, he always gave me one of whatever vegetable or fruit we’d picked and told me that my job was to hold onto it and make sure nothing happened to it. It was an important job for a little girl, and from where I sat, a bigger deal then sitting on the edge of the truck and holding onto a rope.
Then, there was the hen-house. Every afternoon at about three o’clock, he let me gather the eggs. They were the most amazing things I’d ever seen - they were big and brown and warm. I’d never seen brown eggs except on my grandparents' farm. I’d always thought eggs were white, and when I held them at home, they were cold. [Yeah, I noticed stuff like that.] He held my hand and led me into that hot little house filled with screen windows and rows of wooden troughs, like you’d feed a pig from. They were filled with hay, and the smell of the hay was heavy in the air because of the heat. I was afraid of the chickens pecking at my feet, so he’d throw a little feed into the center of the coop’s floor to distract them, while I gathered those eggs in the basket. I looked forward to that part of the day most of all, and took great pride when my grandmother made us breakfast the next day because I had been the one to collect those eggs, and they tasted so good.
It was just as adventurous driving down to the pig pen. Granddaddy let us go down there with him when it was time to feed them too. He and my brother’d pour slop from five gallon buckets into the troughs, then he'd let my sister and I scoop water from the pail and fill the troughs designated for water. Once that was done, then he’d call "Soo-ee"! There’s an art to calling pigs. Let me tell you, if you don’t do it right, they don’t come. Some may disagree on this point, but I’m telling you what I saw. You have to make the call in a loud voice, then raise the pitch a bit to make pigs come to you. When they came over, Granddaddy would point out the pigs the sows and the hogs. One might thing the terms are interchangeable to describe all pigs, but they aren’t. A pig is a young swine that is not yet sexually mature. Now, my grandfather wasn’t that explicit with us, he just told us that the boys were called pigs. [No wisecracks.] He didn’t bog us down with the technical "swine" part of the terminology, because he knew that little brains could only absorb so much technical stuff. The females were hogs and adult hogs became sows. He explained it something like this: "that little gal right here is a hog, and that big gal over there, has all the babies. She is one of my prized sows. This little fella just turned from a piglet into pig..." That’s how he explained it. He was especially excited, as were we, if he got to show us a piglet.
I remember one time after I’d seen the movie Charlotte’s Web, asking my granddaddy if I could have one of his piglets. I wanted a boy piglet to name Wilbur. It put him in a terrible quandary because he didn’t like to tell us "no", unless it involved something that might hurt us.
"You can’t take a pig back on the train," he said. "Besides, I don’t think your Mama would like that too much. You need a pig pen to put him in anyway, and ya’ll don’t have one of those at your house. You just leave him right here, and you can visit him when you come up." That ended the discussion on the piglet. My mother was grateful.
My brother was his favorite grandchild. I say this with no envy in my heart. It didn’t bother any of the rest of  the grandkids either, because he didn’t treat us any different except for taking my brother off alone to do "boy things". I don’t know what those boy things were, and that’s a secret that my brother still holds private to this day. I suspect it was fishing or something like that or maybe taking him out into the woods and teaching him how to shoot a rifle...boy stuff. That didn’t sound like fun to me anyway, so I never minded. And, he use to let my brother go to the market with him when he sold his produce.
Jeff, you see, was the first grandchild, and the first boy at that - the son that my grandfather never had. Aside from that fact, my brother, along with my parents, lived with my grandparents for the first couple of years of Jeff’s life. It was a bonding experience that the rest of the grandchildren didn’t share with him. But, the love he had for all of us was the same. Case in point. I believe I’ve alluded to this in another post: my brother was a good "picker". What I mean by that is that he could pick on my sister and I until he drove us to distraction and/or to a level of frustration that was maddening! When he did that, my granddaddy would say to him, "you better knock it off, or I’ll pop you upside your head!" Never, in a million years, would he have laid a hand on any of us, but to a kid, it sounded like a big, tough, threat. My brother knocked it off, and my grandfather was my hero.
The other thing he didn’t tolerate amongst us kids was bickering back and forth. Usually, this occurred because of my brother’s picking. You wouldn’t believe the squabbles he could start or the ruckus he could create. I think it’s a badge of honor among boys when they can do that. My brother, as I’ve indicated before, was a master at it. Still, my grandfather would have none of it. Any adult knows that nothing grates the nerves more than a bunch of kids bickering back and forth incessantly. He could shut us down with a stern, "shut that fuss up!" He never needed to say it twice nor did he need to say another thing. Nothing settled us down anymore than that command coming from my grandfather, just like our father’s "you better settle down or I’ll take you outside" could. We knew what it meant. It was very effective.
We listened too. We had respect for our elders, and if we mouthed off to them or didn’t mind them, we were straightened out real quick. It’s a dying art these days. I couldn’t imagine talking to my grandparents or my parents the way I hear some kids nowadays speak to theirs. First of all, I wouldn’t have made it to the ripe ole age of 48 had I done it. Secondly, it wasn’t tolerated either. Lessons. That’s what he taught us in his own, grand-fatherly way - valuable life lessons. They were just as important and just as necessary to our overall ability to get along in the world as what my parents taught.
He wasn’t an overly demonstrative man with words, as I previously mentioned. There weren’t a lot of "I love you’s" when we were little, but we knew how much he loved us by the strength of his hug. He gave Goliath hugs as mentioned! And, when we were little, he loved for us to take turns sitting in his chair and watching television with him. His chair rocked, and he always rocked it a bit when we sat with him. It was soothing. You were the envy of the other kids if you got to sit in the chair with my grandfather. I remember the extra treat we got after supper too. Beside his chair, on the end table that had the white lamp with the light blue dot patterns on it, was his candy dish. It was filled with hard candies - all colors, shapes, sizes and flavors. He’d reached over and open the lid of that carnival glass bowl to the grand kids during television time, but the one who was in his lap got to pick first.
On Saturday nights, we watched Hee Haw. Outside of All in the Family, I think it was his favorite show. I remember one time, Tennessee Ernie Ford was on. I remember him pointing to the t.v. and saying sternly to my brother, sister and I.
"You need to pay close attention to this. This man can sing! This is music, not that racket you listen to!"
I paid attention. Ernie Ford was a great singer. I never hear "Shenandoah" that I don’t think of that night and my grandfather. [It’s what he sang that night.]  Yeah, I have always paid attention to something, when my elders advised me to.  I wish more kids today would listen to their elders.  But, I digress...
Then, always, when the vacation drew to a close, and it was time for us to go back home, he’d hand each of us a shiny, silver half dollar. That was a BIG deal back then. Fifty cents was a huge chunk of change. Thinking back on it, given the times and inflation, it was a generous gift for a farmer to give to his grandchildren, but that’s the kind of man he was.
My grandparents couldn’t wait for just the summer visits though. Each year, they drove down for Thanksgiving. We couldn’t wait to see them anymore than they could wait to be seen. Their car was loaded down with jams, jellies, pickles, canned green beans, canned greens, canned tomatoes, pear relish and always a Smithfield ham. I still remember the giddy feeling of knowing they were coming, and counting the minutes down from when they expected them to arrive – standing at the window and staring out, waiting for the first glimpse of their Ford. It was the same feeling being on the train, waiting for it to pull into the station, then searching the crowd as quickly as we could to find them. And, always, always, always, it makes me get a little teary thinking about it --- hearing them call to us, each of our names and running to them, arms wide open and feeling those big, strong arms of my grandfather wrap around me. I love you. It was loud and clear. There was nothing mistaken in its conveyance.
It was the same when they came to our house. Out the door we’d fly, arms wide open, running like we were in a P.E. class race to see who could reach them first, happily calling out to them. The hug was always the same: big, strong, full of love.
And, I can hear in my mind’s eye, my grandfather saying, "Come here, Shorty!" That was his term of endearment for me, because I was big on opinion but not height. [Some things haven’t changed]
When they left us to go back home, he’d say in a tone of cautionary love to his child’s child, "Behave and mind your manners!"
After we moved to Maryland, we drove down once a month to see them. The times had changed but the visits stayed the same. There was always the offering of a piece of hard candy. There were always the recollections of a story here and there during the visits. We continued to go out with him in the fields and work [He farmed his land up until six weeks before he passed.] and watching his old, worn hands masterfully slide over a plant, picking beans or whatever he was working on, like he’d barely touched it. There was the occasional concert featuring his mouth harp or the dueling spoons. Sometimes, we’d just sit on the front porch and talk about the happenings of this family and that....getting caught up with the news of the town: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, kid’s graduating from this or that, changes in the church and so forth, as the crickets chirped and the night fell as the stars came out. In those moments, there was nothing any better than that togetherness–that conversation.
I remember the last words he ever said to me as he walked me out to my car after a late-winter visit. In his later years, he began to tell us he loved us when we left him after, he gave us the big hug that evidenced that fact.
Then, he put my overnight bag in the backseat, and palmed me a $20. Next, he held the driver’s door open for me.
"Check those tires when you get home, ya hear. They’re looking a little balled."
I nodded. "I will, Granddaddy."
"You mind your manners."
Another nod of assurance. "I will, Granddaddy."
Then, he closed the door.
I looked up to him. [I didn’t need to be sitting in the front seat of my car to do that, mind you.] Still, un-abashed, I looked up at him and said. "I love you, Granddaddy!"
He cleared his throat. "I love you too, Shorty!"
Then, he said as I started the car. "You be careful now, ya hear!  Don't drive too fast! They’re a lot of fools out there who don’t pay attention to nothin’! Watch yourself."
I nodded. I didn’t say anything else, because it didn’t matter how old I got, I was always a little overcome with emotion and tears when I left him and my grandmother.
By the time I had slowly pulled my car around the circular, gravel drive of their house that led out to the main road, he’d made his way around to the other side of the house so that he could watch me pull out. He always waved and never turned to go back inside the house until the car was out of sight. I know this because I always looked back in my rearview mirror and saw him standing there watching me leave.
That’s the last image I have of him: standing beside the house with his hand in the air, waving goodbye as he watched me drive off. It’s a treasured memory.
I heard once, years ago, someone ask on a talk show, [which one right now, escapes me], but the interviewer asked, "if you could go back to one moment in time, where would you go?"
I’d go back to when I was young – on the farm with my grandparents. It’s like a Rockwell painting, those times – warm and heartfelt. I loved them. I didn’t know how much until they were both gone. I don’t need the question to make me wish, sometimes, that I could go back and spend just one more day with them. I’d appreciate it so much more. I know that now. Age and hindsight are wonderful things at times...
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt his big, strong hug, and I miss it - like I miss his laughter and his voice, especially when it was saying something to Shorty.
Today, I drove over to the cemetery to pay my respects. I kissed the etched stone of his name and touched his dates, and I told him this: "Happy Birthday, Granddaddy! I’m minding my manners, and I’m being as careful as I can be. But, most of all, I miss you and greater than that, I love you! Shorty loves you so very, very much..."

http://youtu.be/khxx3sCVhtE [Shenandoah/Tennessee Ernie Ford]

Super Man

"Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out into the ocean." ~Christopher Reeve

* I encourage everyone to find time to watch the videos.
** Please note that the opinions expressed here are solely mine.  They have not been endorsed by The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

http://youtu.be/G6doXa7fU74 [Video tribute I made in honor of Christopher Reeve]
http://youtu.be/gNz3_fC4ijY [Christopher Reeve on Carson/1979 GREAT interview]

When I was young girl, back before I started school, I use to help my mother do some of her chores around the house. She’d save her ironing, clothes folding and cleaning of the den to do during the time when a couple of her stories, a.k.a. serial dramas/soap operas, were on, and she let me help so that I wouldn’t whine or nag after her. [As a mother, you create peace of mind and a quiet atmosphere however you can!] Later, during summers off from school, the t.v. would, again, be on as we continued with that routine of doing chores, while we watched our stories.
One show that became of particular interest to me was Love of Life. The year was 1974. I was 11, and it was the year that I developed a crush on an actor named Christopher Reeve, who played bad boy, Ben Harper. It was back in the days when girls referred to guys as "dreamy", and he was. Lord, that man was dreamy! I was smitten. Until that time, my crush had been on Donny Osmond [He's dreamy too]. It was a new experience to crush on the wild side, i.e. a bad boy. It didn’t matter that Ben Harper wasn’t real. Christopher Reeve was and so was the crush. Holidays, Christmas and spring break couldn’t come soon enough for me, so that I could catch him on that show. In the meantime, I kept up with him via soap opera magazines, [my allowance money at use] because, at that time, no one had ever heard of a magical little device called a "VCR".
I stopped watching the show after he left it, but I continued to follow him. My favorite role that he ever did – it still makes my heart go pitter-patter a bit – was when he played Richard Collier in the movie, Somewhere in Time. I wasn’t alone. My sister, Pam, drooled over him too. I also saved my allowance money so that I could buy the cassette tape of the soundtrack. [Yes, cassette tapes - another dinosaur of my life and times...] I played it over and over. I’d never liked instrumental music much. Then again, I’d never truly considered it, but I loved the scores from that movie. And, Christopher Reeve was no longer a bad boy. His character was a romantic, and that appealed to me a LOT, because I’m a romantic too.
I read somewhere once that Somewhere in Time was also his personal favorite from amongst his repertory. I liked that. Even though he did not know me, we had something in common. The movie put a yearning desire within me to want to visit Mackinac Island. [Which my husband and I did a few years ago...story for another day.] Let me just say this: Mackinac Island is as gorgeous as Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour!
My crush, however, began to turn to a devoted admiration during Memorial Day weekend. It was May 27, 1995, when the news reported that Christopher Reeve had suffered a serious equestrian accident during a competition in Culpepper, Virginia. It was reported that a rabbit had spooked his horse. The details given were that Christopher had held onto the bit, bridle and reins, which were pulled off the horse, which, in turn, pulled him from the horse. His hands were tied together. As a result, he landed headfirst, all 215 pounds of him, onto the other side of the fence, and upon hitting it, his first and second vertebrae were shattered. It still sends a shiver down my spin just envisioning it again all these years later. It sent a shiver down my spine, back then, when it was reported that before paramedics reached him, he’d not been breathing for a few minutes. He was taken by helicopter to The University of Virginia Medical Center. I don’t know if I immediately said a silent prayer or gasped first? I do remember that gasp though.
"Oh, no!" I cried out, horrified by the news. "No!"
It didn’t sound good. From what I knew of Mr. Reeve, over the years that I’d followed his career, he was a very athletic guy. I couldn’t imagine what an injury like that would mean for someone who was known to be the outdoors man that he was? I began to follow his prognosis as well as his progress much like I’d followed his career 20 years prior: searching for any news I could find about him and his injury.
It was during this time that I developed the utmost respect for his wife, Dana. What a courageous couple they were to face what seemed like insurmountable odds with such fierce devotion and determination. It was a beautiful love story. I remember seeing his first interview with Barbara Walters after his accident. I cried when he said that he’d had a brief thought of suicide. It’s not that I blamed him. Who could blame him for feeling that? I mean, it’s hard to know what any of us would feel or want to do faced with that particular circumstance, and those particular odds. His reaction was a very human one, from where I sat. What made me cry harder was what Dana said to him when he suggested that "maybe we should let me go".  She said in response: "I am only going to say this once. I will support whatever you want to do, because this is your life, and your decision. But, I want you to know that I’ll be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you. And, I love you."
God, I loved her in that moment for giving him that gift, which I’m certain is something that he desperately needed to hear from her. They say that he never considered suicide as an option again. The day I heard of the courage and grace that Dana Reeve exhibited amidst this tragedy is when she also became a member of my "Most Respected and Admired" list. Dana raised him up, and Christopher elevated the rest of us! It was a conscious awareness that they both raised. He did it from a wheelchair, unable to feel below his neck. [He would change that a bit over the years with intense therapy.] Yet, he inspired and championed a cause not just for himself but for millions of other people who suffered from spinal cord injuries. His message became one of hope. He was a beacon - a bright light who delivered it, with Dana by his side ~ Super Man and his Angel - that's how I viewed them. What an inspiring and unbeatable combination! They were, quite simply, amazing ambassadors for this cause, and no two people could have better rallied for it the way they did. Instead of retreating from the public eye or crying "why me", they channeled their energies and focused attention where it needed to be directed, namely, stem cell research.
I remember reading something once that said in effect, "when you don’t think you can do something, that is when you must try the hardest." Mr. Reeve pressed on and began expanding his horizons in the broadest sense of that word. It amazed me to read of all the things he was doing and investigating in order to become as schooled and versed in spinal cord injuries and potential developments in that field, as was humanely possible. For someone who did not have a medical degree, he was articulate, eloquent and very knowledgeable on the subject. But, he was frustrated by things that were not being done, investigated or researched. Instead of being stuck in that frustration about the lack of progress and advancement in our country with regard to his type of injury and what was being done to aid in a cure for it, namely stem cell research, he took his frustration and went to Israel. It was there that he discovered a whole new world of possibilities and progressive thinking with regard to medical treatment in a country that was at the forefront of research in the advancement of rehabilitative care concerning spinal cord injuries.
Keeping tabs on him and what he was doing at the time, I found him as awe-inspiring as the work he was doing. I remember seeing Mr. Reeve on Larry King Live, while he was in Tel Aviv. I believe the year was 2003, but don't quote me on the date.  In any event, he spoke of the groundbreaking recovery process that patients there had undergone because of the advanced type of treatment and research that was being done in Israel. He explained that research progressed more rapidly in Israel than almost anywhere else in the world, with regard to this specific type injury, because Israel had made innovative – pioneering decisions about stem cells and what should be done with them where research was concerned. Much debate, he indicated, had occurred on the topic, but, in the end, it had been decided that secular law must prevail over certain tenants that were being used to hinder progress in that most vital area of research. It was something, he said that "WE need to learn in the United States." A different kind of Superman had been born in the aftermath of his unfortunate accident - not one who fought bad guys and crime, but one who fought against bad ideas and ignorance. One thing, however, stayed the same: they both fought against social injustice, and they both fought to help people who needed a superhuman influence.
Soon after, he began tirelessly advocating for stem cell research. He traveled across our country, making speeches about the issues he was facing as well as the discoveries he was making. He fought not just for himself but for countless others who would benefit from the things that he was learning about spinal cord injuries and the particular-specialized research that was needed to make paralysis a thing of the past. He began schooling the rest of us in the benefits of that research, stating that it would unlock the doors to a whole host of illnesses that continued to be mysteries to the medical community, and it would open the door to potential cures besides just spinal cord injury. And, he began speaking out to his acting community, telling them that they had a responsibility to make movies that address the world’s most important social issues. It was time to start tackling the problems that disabled Americans faced, he urged. In publically taking this stance, he took his prior, physical drive and competitive spirit as related to sport’s activities and harnessed that energy into an intellectual thesis based on scientific findings and personal experience that would become the blueprint for his legacy. His acumen of purpose was as insightful and impassioned in a humanitarian context, as his love of sports had been in a competitive one.
Instead of his circumstance slowing him down, it seemed to give him a renewed energy. I remember seeing him at the ‘96 Academy Awards. It was where he discussed his new-found desire to do all he could to bring awareness to these important issues that Hollywood, with its fame and money, could assist in effecting the change that was much needed.
"Hollywood," he said. "Needs to do more. Let’s continue to take risks. Let’s tackle these issues. In many ways, our film community can do it better than anyone else. There is no challenge, artistic or otherwise, that we can’t meet."
I sat glued to the television and remember the tears I felt as that audience stood for him and gave him a thunderous ovation.
He didn’t stop there though. He took his voice to the Democratic National Convention; he hosted the Paralympics in Atlanta; he was on the August 1996 issue of Time magazine. Also that year, he narrated the HBO film Without Pity: A Film About Abilities, which won an Emmy for "Outstanding Informational Special." In the span of a year, Christopher Reeve changed his seemingly, newly deemed persona as a perceived tragic figure, and showed us all that he was more of a Superman than that red robe and form-fitting blue body suit, with the large, emblazoned "S", had ever implied or defined.
Thereafter, he took a small role in a film which, I believe, truly revealed his hope for the future: A Step Towards Tomorrow.
His resume doesn’t stop there. Christopher Reeve was elected Chairman of the American Paralysis Association and Vice Chairman of the National Organization on Disability. He co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center, which is one of the leading spinal cord research centers in the world today. He also created the Christopher Reeve Foundation (currently known as the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation) which increased research through funding, and the use of grants to improve the quality of the lives of people who live with disabilities. Since 1999, TC&DRF has given more than $15 million to its quality-of-life grant program. To date, the Foundation has given more than $87 million in research. That puts a new spin on the word super.  Being disabled now myself, I have so much greater appreciation for what he has done on behalf of Americans with disabilities!
However, becoming the face for spinal cord awareness, research and progress wasn’t his only passion or accomplishment. He was an actor. He was a director. He was a writer. He did it all so well. He made it made it all look so effortless. He had a superhuman will. Often, for known reasons, he’s compared to Superman. Superman’s got nothing on Christopher Reeve. His courage and grace gave him more strength than all the Kryptonite in the universe and beyond.
In 1997, he made his directorial debut with the HBO film, In the Gloaming. The film won four Cable Ace Awards and was nominated for five Emmys including "Outstanding Director for a Miniseries or Special." Then, in 1998, Christopher produced and starred in Rear Window, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film. Not only was he nominated for a Golden Globe, but he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for that performance. As someone who first crushed on him because of his acting, I was glad to see him back doing something that he was meant to do, and that I especially loved seeing him do. While I loved the original movie with Jimmy Stewart, there was something intriguing about his portrayal of that main character which gave the movie more of a thriller aspect because we knew, watching it, that Christopher Reeve truly was in that wheelchair. He wasn’t acting that part. The reality of his disability gave the movie a much intenser quality with regard to suspense.
My sister and I watched it together, just as we had watched many, many times before, our favorite and his classic movie, Somewhere In Time. We were as enthralled with him in that movie as we were years prior, regarding the later mentioned, but our love of him had been expounded upon: we also had enormous respect for and immense admiration of him. He was a true example of grace; of determination; of perseverance. He was an odds beater. Life, as he lived it, would not keep him down or out or silent. He was a testament to an enduring spirit.
Then, in April of 1998, Random House published his autobiography, Still Me. [I remember because I used some of the money my husband gave me as part of my anniversary gift, and bought it.] I knew it was going to be good and do well. Christopher Reeve didn’t know how to do anything any other way. That book spent eleven weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and he won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album to boot. Not only did Superman pale in comparison to him but so did Midas.
One of his greatest humanistic disciplines though was that he believed that a cure not only could but WOULD be found for paralysis. He exercised to keep his body in the best shape possible so that it would be ready when that cure was found. While working toward that goal, it’s been reported that he began to regain some motor function, and was able to sense hot and cold temperatures on his body. I heard a story once, perhaps it was an interview that he and Dana did about progress... Anyway, one of his doctors, asked him if he had anything new to report about his recovery. He moved his left index finger on command.
He’s reported as saying, "I don't think Dr. McDonald would have been more surprised if I had just walked on water!".
It was a hopeful gesture. He had a hopeful attitude. He made us have hope too.
Because he felt that he needed to do more with regard to spinal cord repair, he and Dana created The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and Paralysis Resource Center, in New Jersey. Its mission is to teach paralyzed people to live more independently. Its actual Mission Statement reads: "The Reeve Foundation is dedicated to curing spinal cord injury by funding innovative research, and improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis through grants, information and advocacy." [I’ve supported it for years, and encourage others to support it too. They do GREAT work!]
In speaking about the facility, he said. "When somebody is first injured or as a disease progresses into paralysis, people don't know where to turn. Dana and I wanted a facility that could give support and information to people. With this new Center, we're off to an amazing start." That start has turned into an amazing endeavor, which continues on in both of their gracious-giving spirits and memories. This man [with the help of his wife, Dana] took a tragedy and turned it into a triumph, but he didn’t do it solely for himself. He did it to help others who needed a strong, determined advocate to take on this issue, on their behalf.
I remember how vigorously he and Dana lobbied for expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to include all embryonic stem cell lines that were in existence. I’d never heard of embryonic stem cell research until that time. Mr. Reeve was also a teacher who didn’t seem phased by the fact that much of what he was educating us on was considered controversial. Make no mistake, it was VERY controversial. He responded to that controversy by pointing out that the research would only use embryos that would be otherwise discarded. He said, "We don't want to create embryos just for research. We want to rescue these cells from the garbage...I don't understand how you can be opposed to that? I don’t."
A portion - PORTION of stem cell researchers use embryos that were created but not used for in vitro fertility treatments to derive new stem cell lines. The creation of a human embryonic stem cell line does require the destruction of a human embyro, but keep in mind that most of these embryos are to be destroyed because they are stored for periods of time that long surpass their viability otherwise. And, of course, a big part of the debate rests with whether a person believes that life begins at the moment of conception?  I use to believe that it did, but throughout this debate that's been going on for the better part of a decade, I'm no longer certain.  From my understanding of the argument against embryonic stem cell research, the fundamental premise of those who oppose it rests solely with the belief that human life is sacrosanct [I believe] and it's unable to be transferred [I do not believe, because of the organ donation program, i.e. heart, lung, face, etc].  It is also coupled with the belief that human life begins when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell.  From my examination of this debate, and trying to decipher what all the particulars mean exactly, an embryo is only human once it has developed cells that perform human functions. I've not found concrete proof that distinguishes when an embryonic cell is able to perform human functions.   Likewise, not all stem cell research involves the creation, usage and destruction of human embryos. Adult stem cells, amniotic stems cells and induced pluripotent stem cells do NOT involve the creation, usage or destruction of human embryos. Again, there is debate among doctors and scientists as to when exactly an embryo is able to perform human functions, and if there is debate among these highly educated specialists, then I'm quite certain I don't know for sure what the answer is.  It's a complicated issue.   In the United States, it is estimated that, at least, 400,000 such embryos exist, i.e. those to be destroyed because they've surpassed a viable shelf life, for lack of a better term. This has led some opponents of abortion to support human embryonic stem cell research.  Think about that for a minute.  If something is going to be destroyed, and there is no debate about that fact, why not use it instead to do good works that honor  life - that benefit it for other living cells which need it versus simply destroying it altogether?  That makes sense to me, but, then again, I've never been a "throw the baby out with the bathwater" kind of person.
Some even believe, from reading that I've done, that human skin cells can be coaxed to "de-differentiate" and revert back to an embryonic state. Human skin cells.  Isn't that amazing?  I read also that Kevin Eggan, a Researcher at  Harvard University, along with other researchers, have attempted to transfer the nucleus of a somatic [relating to the body] cell into an existing embryonic stem cell which would create a new stem cell line. I wrote that down exactly as I read it, because it's a little like reading Greek to me.  Still, another 2006 study indicates that differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state.  When something seems like Greek to me, I ponder it.  This is the question that I have: does that make them human?  Skin cells, differentiated cells that are reprogrammed and are embryonic-like, I mean... That doesn't sound human. Embryonic-like sounds more equivalent to faux fur or akin to leatherette material?  I don't know?  I'm asking....trying to reason it out.
What I do know is that Nancy Reagan is on record in support of embryonic stem cell research. Mrs Reagan has stated that too much time has already been wasted discussing-debating the issue.  Her direct quote: "I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this... We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more."  Amen, Mrs. Reagan.  Amen.  Hers is a powerful conservative voice in support of Christopher Reeve's position.
It’s not a political matter. It shouldn’t be a moral issue. It’s a call for concern and compassion to yield a cure for illnesses that range from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s disease. I don’t understand how anyone could think that it’s a bad thing, or that it’s wrong? I just don’t.
What I do understand is that Christopher Reeve was a tireless advocate for the things that he believed in. It didn’t matter who you were. If he felt you were wrong, he opposed the stance you took, but he did so graciously.
President George W. Bush limited federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cell lines that were created on or before August 9, 2001 [Mrs. Reagan pled for him to reconsider this position]. In doing so, however, he did allocate approximately $100 million toward research that met his personal criteria. For Christopher Reeve, the President’s proposition seemed like an initial "step in the right direction", though he admitted, at the time, that he did not know what the "existing lines" qualification meant, and he vowed to further investigate it. After he discovered from scientists that many of those old lines were contaminated, he fought against the restriction. For the remainder of his life, he valiantly continued his fight for responsible stem cell research.
In 2002, Christopher Reeve lobbied for the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 [For complete text, see H.R. Bill 2505]. I’m not a doctor, and I will admit that all the scientific lingo makes my head spin. However, my basic understanding of the bill is that it, in essence, allowed for somatic cell [somatic=relating to the body] nuclear transfer research, but banned reproductive cloning. Mr. Reeve argued, rightly so, that stem cell implantation was unsafe unless the stem cells contained the patient's DNA. That sounds logical enough. What I learned from my research [remember, I’m just a layperson] is that somatic cell nuclear transfer is done without the fertilization of an egg.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer [SCNT] is a laboratory technique used for creating a clonal embryo, using an ovum with a donor nucleus. It can be used in embryonic stem cell research, or, potentially, in regenerative medicine. Unlike reproduction, it can and should be regulated. I'm not 100% certain just what that "donor nucleus" refers to, but I know that there is no fertilization of an egg involved with this process. If you read up on this technique you'll find as I did that, presently, no human stem cell lines have been derived from SCNT research.
Therefore, I’m stumped as to where the "right to life" argument comes into play? I don’t see how it could. Unless I failed Biology in high school, which I'll admit I struggled with considerably but passed nonetheless, a non-fertilized egg means that no life can be developed, because male reproductive material [for anyone who wants that classification spelled out - sperm] has not been introduced into said egg. I’m no rocket scientist, but that doesn’t seem too difficult to understand, if you understand the birds and the bees. I believe it's one of the reasons Mr. Reeve was able to argue so vehemently in support of this research.  With this process, how is human life being harmed if there has been no fertilization of an egg, so that life is able to develop in the first place?  As I've said, I’m just a layperson, but I’ve followed this closely for years, and read a lot about it.  I think my non-medical brain has processed the information in a logical manner. I don’t see how a quantum leap can be made to make SCNT anything beyond this simply stated but rather accurate description of my understanding based on what I've read.  But, it's my understanding...
That being said, there was a bigger picture under development with Mr. Reeve’s support of stem cell research. He lobbied for scientists to be allowed to conduct stem cell research in the hopes of one day curing not only paralysis but OTHER illnesses too as previously mentioned. Those other illnesses include Diabetes, Cancer, genetically inhereited diseases as well as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and that’s not all of them.
I could go on and on about Mr. Reeve’s list of accomplishments. The point being made here is that when the going got tough, Christopher Reeve got going. After what happened to him in May of 1995, he could have very easily folded, said "to hell with it!  I'm done!" and retreated to his home to live a quiet life with his family. Instead, he used his pain; his celebrity and his voice to raise awareness for a cause that, because he championed it, has made a huge difference with regard to spinal cord injury treatment, advancement in the search for a cure and rehabilitation. It seems that we’re closer than ever to people walking again as a result of his efforts. It has been stated by doctors and normal Joe’s and Josephine’s, like me, that Christopher Reeve has done more for the advancement of understanding and treatment in spinal cord injuries and its repair than anyone else. I could not agree more!
Like him, I don’t believe in the Machiavellian principle that states, in essence, that decisions should be made for the benefit of people as a whole, nor that the sacrifice of morality is acceptable when doing so. Simply stated, from what I remember from my English Literature class, consideration for the minority of society should never take precedent over what's in the best interest of the whole of it.  It's one of several edicts of Machiavelli. I don't agree with it.
No. I don’t agree with or believe in that at all. I wish more people didn’t believe it either. I believe, as Christopher Reeve did that those who have the greatest need, need the greatest advocate.  I believe that those who have no voice, need the loudest one championing their cause.  I believe that not all things have equal advantage, and those in the "less than" column deserve to have the greatest defender of their rights.  I don't believe that individuals who live with disabilities, whose bodies have breaks and flaws are children of a lessor God.  And, I believe that it took a Super Man and his Devoted Angel to change that perception.  That's just what Christopher and Dana Reeve did.
I've not said it all, and I've certainly not said it perfectly.  Above anything that I've said with regard to stem cell research, though, I encourage everyone to investigate it for themselves and make up your own minds on the subject.  For me, there is no debate. I've made up my mind about it, and I come down on the side of the Reeves and Nancy Reagan, Michael J. Fox and countless others with a better grasp of it all than me.  Still, from what these notables have all said on the subject, and because they're respected members of their respective political parties, which are both represented here, I tend to agree with them.
Christopher Reeve, however, was the greatest and most definitive advocate on the subject, in my opinion, who once again, on a holiday weekend [Columbus Day] in 2004, experienced a life changing event.  Sadly, that time, heaven won, and we lost. I was both stunned and saddened when the news reported on Monday, October 11^th that Christopher Reeve had died the previous day of cardiac arrest that was brought on by an infection that he’d been fighting, which was common to those who are paraplegic.
"Oh, no!" I gasped. "No!"
Then, I cried.
There aren’t many celebrities who move me to such emotion or devotion. Christopher Reeve however was one of those exceptions. I had crushed on him for so many years.... 30 to be exact. My heart ached for his wife, Dana, their son, his other children, their friends and those of us who believed in heroes, because we lost one, on that day, with his leaving.
Today, Christopher Reeve would have turned 59. I can’t help but think, in this moment, of his words regarding heroes:
"I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."
Yeah. That’s right. That’s exactly right, and boy, was he a hero! He’s a hero who lives on because, you see, heroes don’t die. They don’t fade away either. They endure. Christopher Reeve wrote the book on endurance.
The other day, I received an email from his son, Matthew, asking me to honor and celebrate his father today.  I thought a lot about that request. This probably isn’t what he had in mind when that email was sent to me, but I wrote out my check today to help keep Christopher and Dana’s dream rolling on – moving forward. I’ll get it in the mail tomorrow. Today, however, I honor and celebrate him with my words and reflections, because I loved this guy! I still do. He was bold; he was brilliant; and, he was beautiful! The memory of him is as dreamy as he was. Though we didn’t have him that long, we are all the better for the 52 years he spent here with us....we are ALL so, so much the better....

http://youtu.be/ffSy3-PJ5QI [Excerpt of Christopher Reeve on the Oscars, 1995]
http://youtu.be/jtFW5SRItR4 [Christopher Reeve on Letterman, circa 1998]
http://youtu.be/4z507jWH2Kc [Christopher Reeve’s last public speech/October 4, 2004]
http://youtu.be/tThjO6ORM2g [News Report of Christopher Reeve’s Death/October 11, 2004]
http://youtu.be/QOYIKw1NGSw [Superman~Five for Fighting]

To keep the dream of Christopher and Dana Reeve rolling forward, please go to their website and donate. www.christopherreeve.org

See also, The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act.  You can find a detailed summary of the act on The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website, but this is worth noting:

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act (CDRPA) was introduced in both the House of Representatives (H.R. 1727) in March 2007 and in the Senate (S.1183) in late April, 2007. The CDRPA is non-controversial and has strong bi-partisan support, led by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and, Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mary Bono (R-CA), Jim Langevin (D-RI), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL).

Happy Birthday, Christopher! Rest in peace with your beautiful angel, Dana...we miss you both; we love you more, and we remember you always...

                               I always loved this cartoon. It seems fitting to remember them both.

Child of Mine & Puppy Dog Kisses

Elmer Javier Bosher-Perran

Came to live with us on September 19, 2009

"You are my sonshine...."~Author Unknown

*Please take a moment to listen to both songs; I dedicate them in memory of our son, William.

http://youtu.be/33Zd8fEsQAk [Fly - Celine Dion]
https://youtu.be/8Gwitx5SXN8  [The Day - Babyface]

Today is a milestone day for me and my husband. It is the day, had the doctor’s predictions been accurate, that our son, William David Bosher-Perran, would have turned 13. Thirteen. That’s a big number in a child’s life~it’s when they’re on the cusp of young adulthood. Thirteen years is also a short lifetime, and that’s what we’ve missed with our son: his short lifetime. We’ll also miss his adulthood; his middle age and so forth. Our son never touched down on the landing pad, so to speak.
He took flight half-way through my pregnancy in 1998 and went back to heaven, from where he came. He trailblazed it back. He was our little shooting star miracle, and he was a miracle, if only for that brief moment. Who knows why it happened? Perhaps, he heard the news on television through my stomach one night and thought to himself, "No way do I want to be a part of that! Sorry, guys, but I am outa here!"
If that was the case, really, who could blame him? It’s a tough world we live in, and it gets tougher by the year. Vitriolic. Harsh. Maddening. I worry about the children growing up in this cesspool of disagreement, stalemate, and bleakness. I worry about their futures. I don’t have to worry about it for my children, however. Is that a blessing? If I’m honest, which I always try to be, I’d say it was a mixed one. Nonetheless, I would have liked the chance to try and give them both a good life - to parent; to teach; to nurture them. I would have liked to have left some legacy behind that said Tom and I were here, that we loved each other...
Something greater than me had other plans. The doctors said my body fought like hell [their words] to keep William viable. There was a modicum of comfort in that thought, at least. Still, it didn’t escape me that the only tug-of-war I got to have with my child, is one that I lost. I never was very athletic. But, I am very philosophical. He wasn’t meant to live here with us. I don’t know what he was meant to do? The lesson of him coming and going like that, is something that I haven’t quite figured out, and I probably never will. Trust me, it haunts me sometimes...
In any event, losing my sweet William was the first of two such blows for my husband and I. I’ve taken some hard knocks in my life, but that’s one I’ve never fully risen from. It was a brutal hit. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I don’t think the greatest boxers in the world could get up from a blow like that. It not an attempt at grandiosity. Anyone who’s gone through this, will tell you the same thing. It’s brutal and devastating! And, there’s a lot more upset involved than not getting a big, solid gold, bejeweled belt at the end of the go-round. Unlike boxers, though, mothers and fathers who’ve lost their children through miscarriage and stillbirth know how it feels to simultaneously have the stuffing knocked out of us, while the rug is yanked out from beneath us for good measure. I mean, common wisdom would dictate that if the cosmos is going to level you flat like that, the world, at least as we know it, should shatter. Losing William felt just like that... There was a shattering of hopes and dreams.
I think a lot about that sometimes: why some people who desperately want children are deprived of them? Why others, who could care less about them and treat them like garbage; who toss them into a bag with duct tape over their mouths and bury them in the woods behind their houses, in cold, shallow graves with no markers, as if they were nothing more than an unworthy, inconvenience, are allowed to even have them in the first place? It’s a mystery. On the fairness scale it teeters somewhere below the zero mark. But, such is life. It’s filled with cruel ironies and unfair disadvantages and bitter pills...
The loss of William and his sister, three years later, are my bitter pills in this lifetime. They are my regrets – my do-over wishes...you know, the wishes one makes when they fail at something and ask for a do-over, because they know in their heart that they can get it right, if they just had one more shot at it. I stopped asking for do-overs after my second miscarriage. Should I have tried, one more time, for "the charm" of a third time? I wasn’t brave enough. I can take a strike or two, and I have. But, I don’t like the words "you’re out!", unless, of course, I’m at a baseball game, and it’s directed at the team I’m not rooting for...I was rooting for us.  I didn't want us to have to hear the "I'm so sorry" words again.  It was the best I could do for the home team at that point.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that life is a series of ups and downs – wins and losses. I’m not good at losing! I’ve got a competitor’s spirit. I get it from my parents. Who knows? Maybe, I should have tried again, but after the second loss, it just kinda felt like the cards were stacked against me–us, and I regretfully told my husband, "I can’t do it!" It’s not that I’m afraid of taking a risk. Lord knows, I’ve risked a thing or two in my life, but I’m very protective about my heart and my husband’s. I know how much they can take, and I don’t think either of us could have gone down a third time.
It was one of our "for worse" moments that the wedding vows we took together alluded to. He never blamed me for not wanting a third go round, and he never held it against me that I couldn’t give him the children that he would have been great at fathering. I remember one time when I apologized to him for not being able to carry them to term, he wrapped his arms around me and told me he had all he needed "right here,". He was referring to me standing inside the circle of his enclosed arms. I rested my head against his chest, and thanked God for gift of him. My losses have been great, but so have my gifts...
I don't take them for granted.
We so wanted children. We could have given a child a lot. [For those of you thinking adoption, at this point in the story, that’s a story for another day....] Anyway, we could have done that for a child - given him and her a lot - love, education, security, fun....we should have been able to try.
As I think of how we should have been able to try, I hear that haunting lyric in the chorus of that Rolling Stones song "you can’t always get what you want...",  echo in my mind, and I know it’s just the way life works sometimes. Sometimes, you get the gold like I did when I got my husband. Other times, you don’t even place, like what happened with our babies.
Then, when I think about that last line, [yeah, I think a lot...] Marlon Brando’s words from On the Waterfront come to mind: "I coulda been such a contender!"
I feel a long sigh release from me, over that thought. Oh yeah. We coulda been such contenders in the good parent department. I believe that. It seems a waste that two children lost out on all that love and nurturing. It is a deeper chasm of loss that we feel by being cheated out of that privilege. Does that sound bitter? Well....there are moments, ya know?....I’ve previously copped to that personal struggle. I work very hard to rise above it - that bitter pill. Some days, like this one, I think I’m more entitled to feel a little cheated and be a little more bitter over this particular loss.
I'm human after all.
My husband and I were talking about William yesterday. Thirteen.
"God!" he gasped when I brought it up. "Has it been that long already?"
It feels like a long time, but the pain of it is still yesterday. Not the crying every moment pain of it, but the raw, open wound of it...every year, at this time kind of pain. Actually, it happens twice a year, this particular pain – the day I lost him, and the day he was scheduled to be born. It’s when the scab knocks off of the wound, and it opens again - gaping open. The longing for and wondering of what we don’t have and what we missed out on are the predominate "ouches". Just for those days, it really "ouches" all over again! Okay, maybe Halloween and Christmas and Mother & Father’s Day and....well, you get the picture. Otherwise, we think good, happy thoughts of our angel, William, who’s making his mischief in heaven and giving my father and Tom’s parents a run for their money.
I wrote a poem about him years ago that’s called the same thing as this blog entry minus the "Puppy Dog Kisses". Our grief counselor suggested that I put my thoughts on paper about what this loss meant to me right after it happened. Yes. We went through several months of grief counseling. Some losses, require a little extra help coming to grips with. This was one of those losses. Anyway, she’s the one who suggested that I do it. She knew I was a writer. She thought it would be theraputic for me. It was. She was good at counseling. Her name was Mary, and she cried when I read the poem to her in our following session. She apologized to us for doing that, but she was a mother, you see, and she understood the magnitude of grief that comes along with losing the possibilities that come along with having children. I appreciated someone outside of our family shedding tears over William’s loss. I can’t explain that other than to say that it felt like someone other than us regretted that the world may have lost another Johann Bach or Albert Einstein or Georgia O’Keefe or Kate Chopin with the loss of our child.
She hoped I’d do something with the poem to help other couples and especially women who were in the situation my husband and I are in. I was never quite sure what to do with it? Perhaps, I’ll share it some day.
In the meantime, my husband and I were reflecting about what this young man of ours would be like at 13. It’s hard to imagine? I like to think he’d be an avid reader, like me. I like to think he’d be great at math, like his Dad. It’s hard to imagine what he’d be like - who he’d be like? Still, we do. We always will...
Then, two years ago, God put something in our lives that put a BIG smiley face on this day. My sister-in-law, Kathy, was in cahoots on this. She found a brother for Chuey, our Chihuahua puppy, and she brought him to us. We met in Baltimore, Maryland on this day in 2009. It was a gorgeous day, just like today. Kathy, God bless her, brought Elmer into our lives...our little cowboy puppy, who’s all snips and snails and puppy dog tales. Yes, I spelled it that way on purpose. Do we have stories to tell on him! [Another day...]
He is a pure light, genuine, feel good, bundle of love. He gave me a snuggle-cuddle after he was placed in the arms where our children would normally reside for snuggle-cuddles. He [and Chuey] fill that void in very fun, wondrous, happy ways. It’s no where near the same thing, as having our children here with us, but I think William approves.
I imagine he’s been up in heaven for a lot of years now hollering the way young boys do when they get fretted over something: "Please, someone! Give her something to hold and love! Give her something that will slobber her face with wet kisses and cuddle with her in her chair and make her think that she’s the best thing since Wonder bread...."
Well, Baby, you got that wish! Not once, but twice. I’m loaded down with snuggle-cuddles, wet, slobbery kisses and little ones who think I’m the best thing since Wonder bread! Isn’t symmetry ironic at times?  Two bundles of love fill my arms...
Then, in my mind, I hear him protest, "Mom! I’m NOT a baby!"
And, I follow through with the words my mother always said to me whenever I said that to her. "I don’t care if you’re 80 years old, you’ll always be my baby!"
That’s a tug of war I win...always...
So, these are some of my thoughts for today.
I’m attaching a picture of Elmer [one of Chuey will come another day...] so that I can share his sweet, funny, munchy self with everyone. There’s love in his eyes....pure love and light. It’s a simple thing but so necessary on a day like today. I’m a proud puppy Mama! Something sweet has helped replace the bitter. Coupled together, it equals bittersweet. It’s an apt description of what this day has become. Yet, when I think on it now, I chuckle a little over the irony, because this day gave me a sweet, funny little boy to love after all. Tender mercies...you learn to take them where you can get them.
Elmer and his brother, Chuey are tender mercies. They both help fill the void of significant losses in my life. They are blessings, and I am grateful.
This isn’t to say that I don’t still shed my share of tears today, but the last couple of years, it’s ended with heart smiles and lots of puppy kisses to make it all better.
Does it? Nothing will ever make it all better or make it okay or empty the sad place in our lives where our children would-should be. But, they’re safely tucked away in our hearts where love abides, and they’re in the happy place, over the rainbow where all things are bright and beautiful.
I’ll dry my tears now and sign off. I’ve got a puppy – scratch that....make it TWO puppies who want to play as our son up in heaven gives two thumbs up.
I listened to my sweet William’s songs today that are listed at the beginning of this entry. Yeah, they made me cry. Elmer and Chuey, however, don’t put up with that for long. They do whatever they can, short of standing on their heads to cajole the tears out of me and chase them away. Then, after they’re certain all is well again, they pounce, urging me to play. I fall for it every time.
In case you don’t know, playing with puppies – well, it’s kinda like falling in love. Hearing them bark and playfully growl as they wiggle their tails, dance all around me and try desperately to lick my face, is kinda like hearing angels laughing from up above...and God...God continues to bless me by adding sweet - a whole lotta sweet into my bitter...

                                             Picking up Elmer in Baltimore, MD~9/19/09

Cow in Calf

One of my favorite pictures, circa 1988

from L-R: Pam, Nannie, Mother, me

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother. ~Ann Taylor

http://youtu.be/7SOrmtqTVHc [Good Mother/Jann Arden]

Today is my mother’s birthday. She turns 72. What is more amazing to me than her being 72, is that she no longer seems to mind that people know her age. Trust me, this is a big deal! This is a woman who fudged so much about her age over the years that she thought for a time that my birth year was 1964. [It’s not.] So, when she mentioned a few years ago, that it doesn’t bother her anymore if people know her age, I called her out on it.
"I’m onto you!" I told her with a chuckle.
I think she realized that she was busted! Innocently, she asked. "What do you mean?"
"You just want to hear people say in awed disbelief when you tell them your age, ‘my God! You look FABULOUS!’"
She laughed. Not admitting one way or the other whether I’d hit the nail on the head.
I didn’t need her to. I knew I had. [And, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to hear every now and then that you look fabulous!]
"Mm hm...." I replied, laughing myself.
One of the benefits of age and being close to one’s mother is that you begin to know them and what they’re up to in the same way that they always knew what you were up to as a kid. It’s the back-of-your-hand kind of knowing.
That’s where I’d like to return for a moment: my childhood.
Before I do, let me make this preface. The title of this entry is from a paper that I’d written in a college English class. It was my final exam. The professor asked us to keep a journal for a month and, at the end of that time, find a recurring theme within our daily reflections and write a term paper about it. Between the lines of my comments–observations were traces of my mother – her voice–her influence on me. I could see, plain as day, her imprint. I submitted the idea to my professor who was hesitant.
"I don’t want this to be a bubble-gum paper," she told me.
I remember bristling by the classification. "You don’t think that one can write a serious, thought-provoking paper about a mother’s influence?" I asked, defensively.
"Okay, Ms. Bosher," she saw my point and raised my challenge. "And what are you going to call this paper?"
She was testing me to see how confident I was in my proposal. I looked her in the eye and replied. "I was thinking of reversing the metaphor that Sylvia Plath used in her poem Metaphors, where she used the imagery of a "calf in cow" to describe her observations about being pregnant. Instead, I’ll call my paper Cow in Calf to illustrate my mother’s influence and the observations that I have on that point, which came through in subtle ways within my journaling – a mother’s influence from child to woman."
She was quiet for a moment. I could tell, as she considered it, that she didn’t think it sounded "bubble gum". She took the paper that I’d written my idea down on and signed off on it.
"I hope it reads as good as your pitch," she said.
I smiled. "I think it will read better," I replied. I got an A on that paper.
I have it somewhere in a suitcase of stuff I saved over the years of special school items. It would be a daunting task to try and locate it now. My mother would be another year older, I think, before I found it. I know, however, it’s there. So, I’ll try and recall as much of it as I can and weave it into this updated version.
I hope she likes it as much as she did when she read the first version. It is my homemade gift to her for her birthday.
Let me begin by saying that I have a good mother. I feel very fortunate in being able to say that, because I know not everyone can. I do, however, and I’ve never taken it for granted. I hope my mother can say from her perspective that it’s so as well.
I have a saying that I found years ago and saved. Anyone who knows me, knows that I collect quotes and whatnot. I use to write them down in spiral notebook, but now, with the internet, I can pull them up whenever I want to. [Yes, I remember them...] The one I’m specificially referring to is this one by Linda Wooten. It says: "Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn't know you had, and dealing with fears you didn't know existed." As a child, I knew nothing about my strengths, but I certainly knew about my fears. This was a big one for me:
When I was in the third grade, the year was 1973, there was something called "busing" which came about after court cases were won which addressed prior racial segregation in the school system . It integrated black children into, until that time, schools that were comprised of all white children as a means to overcome the effects of residential and racial segregation. Children from different school systems were transported by bus into different districts. My mother, who worked as a secretary in a junior high school, was transferred from the school across the field from my elementary school, across town to another junior high school. It was very disconcerting to me. Until that development, I could look out the window of my classroom and see, across the field, the school where my mother worked. It was a comfort.
What wasn’t a comfort was the news that she would no longer be working at Southside Jr. High School. There would be no more looking across the field, seeing that school building and knowing that my mother was there. It was very unsettling to me. When I left to go to school in the morning, I didn’t know where she went. I just knew that she wasn’t across the field anymore.
I started to have anxiety attacks when I got to school. I cried. I cried a river. I cried so much each day to the point that they had to get my sister out of Mrs. Pennywit's 5^th grade class and have her come talk to me. I don’t think Pam minded being pulled out of class, but she was not too thrilled with her assignment, which was to calm her distraught sister.
"Stop crying!" she said sternly. "You’re not a baby!"
No. I wasn’t a baby. Still, I cried.
This ritual went on for a few days until, finally, my parents were called.
That night, when my parents tucked me into bed and after they’d heard me say my prayers, they asked me what was going on that was making me cry every day after I got to school? I was quiet. They pressed.
I didn’t know a lot about the new school where my mother had gone to work, but this much I knew: she had to cross over a railroad track. It’s funny how kid’s minds can work – the things they think about that seem so out of left field. I remember finally telling them what my fear was: I was afraid of my mother crossing over those railroad tracks every day. I was afraid that a train would come out of nowhere and hit her, and she would be taken from me. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know why I was afraid of that. Suffice it to say, I was, and it was very real to me. Instead of scolding me for being silly or telling me I was being ridiculous, my mother taught me my first lesson in respect for another person’s feelings.
She suggested to my father that she take me to school with her the next day so that I would know where she was, and I could see where she worked, and I wouldn’t have to think scary thoughts about it anymore. So, the next day, that’s just what we did. She got my brother and sister off to school, then off we went. My mother was a trailblazer! She took her daughter to work years before that concept became vogue.
I remember the drive to school; I remember coming upon the train tracks. When we reached it, my mother slowed the car down, then stopped. She showed me what she did every morning: she looked to her left then she looked to her right, and when she was certain that no train was coming, she crossed over the railroad tracks.
"I don’t ever cross the tracks if I see train coming," she assured. "I wait for it to pass."
I nodded. I felt better. It was a relief.
When we got to her school she showed me around. She had me color something while she went in to speak to the principal for a moment, then came out and took me around the school, showing me the lunchroom and the teacher’s lounge. Then, she showed me the most important place: her desk. On it, was a tri-frame that had a picture of my brother, my sister and me.
She turned on her electric typewriter and let me run my fingers across it. The keys jumped with a fast clicking sound, and there was a ball inside the open space that spun around as you touched the keys. It made me laugh. She let me pull the copies from the copy machine and carry them back to her desk. She let me put letters that she had typed into envelopes, seal them and lick the stamps that went on them. Then, I got to put them in the place on her desk for outgoing mail.
At lunchtime, we went out and sat beneath a big oak tree and had a picnic. My mother spread a blanket down onto the ground, and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips. For dessert, I had a Hunts snack pack chocolate pudding cup.
She asked me if I liked her new school. I remember nodding that I did like it.
"So," she told me. "When I drop you off at school in the morning, this is where I come. This is where I am until I come to pick you up. Your school has the phone number here, in case they ever need to reach me. I’m 15 minutes away. Remember how easy it was to get here from the house?"
Again, I nodded.
We went back inside, and she let me help her with the work that I could help her with. I got to help her open the mail and hold folders open in the tall file cabinet, where she had to file daily papers. Everything we did was exciting. She introduced me to teachers who stopped by for this or that, and when the school day was done, she let me take the plastic covering and put it over her typewriter.
That day, when we went home, she let me make the call when we got to the railroad track.
"Look to the left," she said. "Is anything coming?"
"No, M’ame," I replied.
"What about the right?" she asked as we both glanced in that direction.
"It’s all clear," I said.
"Then it’s safe to go," she replied and when I agreed, she moved the car over the tracks.
I never forgot the day that my mother took seriously my concerns and, instead of telling me that there was nothing to worry about, she showed me that there was nothing to be concerned about. I never cried again.
My mother was a very involved parent. She was home-room mother; she went on field trips. She made sure that, before the school year ended, she made cupcakes for all the kids in my class to celebrate my summer birthday, so that I wouldn’t miss out on that momentous event that the other kids got to enjoy, when their mothers brought cupcakes in during the year for their birthdays. It’s the little things. It’s the small details that are important – that make a child know they are important. My mother paid attention to the little things and the small details. She made her children know that we were and remain important to her.
It’s not easy being a good mother. My mother, however, made it look easy. I remember telling her once when I was in my 20's that I hoped I was half the mother to my children that she had been to me. Sadly, I didn’t get to mother my children, but that’s a story for another day. Still, given the opportunity, I think I would have done a good job, given the example that I’ve been blessed to have since 1963.
I was a clingy child. I don’t know how I didn’t drive her crazy, and who knows...maybe I did, but she never let on, if it was the case. I was clingy for a reason. After we moved from Virginia to Florida, my father went to Harvard for a time. I think I was five years old, and I didn’t really understand. I thought he had gone to heaven. As a result, I didn’t let her out of my sight. I didn’t want my mother to disappear too, so I stuck to her like white on rice. I know it upset both of my parents that I thought what I thought, and I suppose the reason I thought it was because the lady at the end of the street died of cancer, and was no longer there. Her children were left with their Daddy. I didn’t know, at that point, what cancer was, but I knew what being gone was. I asked one day where the lady went, and my mother told me that she’d gone to heaven. I guess my child’s brain associated being gone with going to heaven.
Even after my father called, specifically to talk to me. I still thought he was in heaven. I remember, after that phone call, she asked me if I felt better having spoken to my father. I nodded that I had and asked her if the lady down the street got to call from heaven and talk to her children? My mother bit her lip, troubled....thinking. She went to the encyclopedias we had and pulled two volumes down, then sat me down on the sofa and pulled me into her lap. First, she turned to a map of the United States and pointed to Massachusetts.
"Your Daddy is here," she told me. "In Boston. He’s not in heaven. I would tell you if he had gone to heaven."
I stared at the state. It was a long way from Florida, but it didn’t seem as far away to me as heaven. I didn’t know how far away heaven was. I just knew that it was somewhere up beyond the clouds. I didn’t even know what heaven looked like except what I’d been told in Sunday School.
I touched the place she had pointed to. "Boston," I repeated.
She nodded. "Boston."
Then, she pulled the next volume and opened it to Harvard University. She pointed to the school. "This is where he is in Boston," she told me. "He’s in school there – grown up school, and when he finishes going to school, he’s coming back home."
That perked me up. "Really? When?" I asked.
"Soon," she said. "In about five weeks."
She took my hand and took me over to the calender. She showed me what one week was, then she moved her finger down and counted the weeks off. When she turned the page, there were only two weeks down on that page, before he would be home. She took a pen and marked the day we were on then put an "x" over the day he was scheduled to come home.
"Why don’t you take the pen every morning and mark off the day until you get to this ‘x’," she pointed to the one at the end of the five weeks. "When you get to that one, Daddy will be home."
Sure enough, she was right. When I got to the end of all those check marks, my father came back. I still have the small Harvard sweatshirt he brought me. The first anniversary, a year ago, after my father really went to heaven, my husband and I went to Boston. We drove by Harvard University, specifically the business school, where my father attended. I remembered my mother taking the time to show me all the details of where he had been in a way that a child’s mind could understand it. I still don’t know what heaven looks like other than what I’ve been told in church. It’s a beautiful place is all I know. I remember thinking as my husband and I drove around Harvard, that I hoped heaven was as beautiful as Boston...
My mother also showed me that she had faith in me even when I was very young. She didn’t tell me that I couldn’t do something that could have been perceived as dangerous. Instead, she showed me how to safely do it so that it wasn’t dangerous, then she let me do. Using a sharp knife by myself and cooking are two things that come to mind, when I speak of this. I think it was because she was the daughter of farmers and did a lot of things in the kitchen when she was a young girl. My grandmother taught her how to move about safely in a kitchen, and she taught me.
Then, there were certain traditions that we shared. When I was a young girl, the last day of school was a half day. We got out at noon, then, officially our summer began. My mother always took us to Burger King for lunch to celebrate. It’s a little thing, but it’s a visceral memory. It’s been 40 years, yet to this day, I don’t ever eat a Whopper Jr. that I don’t think about the last day of school and being treated to lunch by my mother. It’s a warm, fuzzy feeling that never leaves when I go there. It’s something tangible that I can still do that makes that memory continue to have life to it, not just as an echo of the past.
My mother taught me how to apologize after a disagreement, but more importantly how to express true regret over something that was wrong and which needed forgiveness. I was a young girl in the company of a few of my friends. I mouthed off to my mother about something. I honestly don’t remember what it was, probably because she lightly popped my mouth with her hand, and that contact shocked my brain to the point that it’s one of a few memories that I can’t recall with precision. What was so devastating about it was that she did it in front of my friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t necessarily deserve it, it’s that I was coming into an age where that was the worst thing your parent could do. She knew it as soon as she pulled her hand away from my mouth and saw the look in my eyes. The silence in the room was suddenly deafening, and it was one of those moments where everyone paused because they weren’t sure what to do next? Like a snail, I pulled up into my shell and was quiet for the remainder of the time I was in that setting. When we were in the car alone, on the way home, my mother glanced over at me. I could see her glance peripherally, but I could feel it more than anything.
She cleared her throat and said regretfully. "I’m sorry I did that! I shouldn’t have done that!" She didn’t detract from the apology by saying, "but you shouldn’t have mouthed off to me after I told you to stop." No. She didn’t minimalize what her action meant to a 12 year old girl. She stood in the uncomfortable place of wrongness and asked me for my forgiveness.
I didn’t want to give it so readily because what she had done seemed so much worse to me than me mouthing off to her. It wasn’t like I had humiliated her in front of her friends. But, I had disrespected her in front of mine. In her mind, it was, I’m certain, equally upsetting. I forgave her. More importantly, I asked her to forgive me. It was a two-fer lesson and an important one. I learned something about respect and forgiveness that day. My mother has never lightly popped my mouth since, and I’ve never disrespected her in front of my friends.
Honestly, I don’t know how my mother did it all. She was a wonder woman but not in the comic book sense. She cleaned the house; cooked the meals; shopped for the groceries; did the laundry; tended to her children and worked to boot.
I remember my father’s response when he learned that I’d written my term paper about my mother and how her influence had effected me into my adulthood. I think he thought it should have been about him. I’ve never taken anything away from my father, and I give him credit where credit is due.
Still, for this particular assignment my mother and her influence was the clear choice as that is what came through in those journal entries. This is not to say that my father hasn’t had his own influence on me or imprinted upon me in his own significant ways. He has. My mother would be the first one to tell you some of those ways.
However, in raising us, my mother accomplished everything she did with two differences from my father, who traveled most of the time from the time I was about 10 onward. He left on Monday mornings and came home on Friday nights. He called during the week, and we spoke with him, but he was off doing important work with the union, and my mother was home with us. She didn’t have a wife to pick up her slack in certain areas. She didn’t get to sleep through the night when her children were in the bathroom sick. She was right in there with us, and she had to get up the next morning to get the other children off to school, schlep the sick child to the doctor, and deal with all the added responsibilities that the sick child posed, who was namely me.
It was never a case of one being better than the other. My father was a wonderful provider. He was a good man. He taught me many important lessons. He was a good father. My mother, however, was a better juggler than he was. It was that plain and that simple.
My mother taught me how to take care of myself as woman. How to be gracious and diplomatic without being anyone’s patsy and certainly no one’s fool. She instilled in me that it was important, as a woman, that I get the best education that I could so that I could always take care of myself financially, and never have to stay in a situation that was unacceptable to me or diminished my self-respect. She taught me from a woman’s standpoint, that I had a right to an opinion; I had a right to express it; my thoughts were as important as anyone else’s; and, most importantly, to never stand for anyone laying a hand on me. Yeah, I’ve got a good mother...
...And, when I think of my mother, I think of the woman who laid in the bed with me on nights when I couldn’t sleep, and stayed with me until I fell to sleep; I think of the woman who kissed the places that hurt, and if it still hurt even after she’d kissed it, she pulled me into the rocking chair and held me for a while, rocking me until the tears subsided and the calm of that movement made the anxiety of the injury not seem so earth shattering; I think of the woman who knew my favorite meal as a child and made it every year on my birthday; I think of the woman who was at every school function for everyone of her children; who accompanied me on field trips; who ran around town getting this thing and that for whatever function I needed it for, but she didn’t just do it for one child. She did it for three.
I think of the woman who always let me crawl into her bed and sleep with her if something had unsettled me in the night and scared me, and she never told me that I was too old to do it, because she knew, with age, comes different things that unsettle and frighten a person, and she knew, in times like that, that the only thing that could make it better was the strong, secure arms of one’s mother. I remember the woman who drove me up to college along with my brother and called me every day for the first week until she knew that I was comfortable being away from home. I think of the woman who came along with me in my catering adventure [a story for another day...] and worked hard alongside me; I think of the woman who drove over from Jacksonville to Gainesville to have lunch with me on my day off from work so that she could check out the man who I would later marry and couldn’t stop talking about. I think of the woman who helped me plan my wedding and pick out my dress. But most importantly and the greatest comfort over all of those other important things she did throughout my life and all the other comforts she provided me with, is this:
I remember the woman who held me after I lost both of my babies and rocked me in her arms and wiped my tears away and cried herself because it was one of but a few things in this life that she couldn’t fix for me. It was something that she couldn’t kiss away and make better. Still, in those most cruel of my life’s moments, there was nothing quite like that "mama hug"... Her "mama hugs" have sustained me through some tough moments. I am blessed to have such a good, caring, loving mother.
As a result, I’ve grown into a strong, independent woman, because my mother allowed me to be that insecure, clingy child. She let me grow through it and out of it at my own pace. She didn’t push me. Now, I’m able to stand on my own two feet, confident in the woman I’ve become, secure in the fact that I’ve been given all the important and basic tools I need to survive in this world. It doesn’t matter how old I become. The child in me knows that true home is always where mother is. Her door is open to me whether I’m four or 48. I speak to her everyday, not out of any sense of obligation but because I want to. That’s a testament to her.
This is her day, today. It’s one I celebrate with as much gusto as I do my own birthday because some days are just better than others. Today, for me, is one of those days. It’s when my mother came into this world. Nothing has been the same since!
Happy Birthday, Mother! I can’t believe you’re 72! My God, you look Fabulous!
In case I don’t say it often enough, the lyrics of this song sums up best how I feel about you, "I’ve got a good mother, and your voice is what keeps me here – feet on ground; heart in hand; facing forward to be myself..."
I love you to moon...

　
For those who would like to read the poem that was referenced at the beginning of this entry. I’ve attached it:

Metaphors, by Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train, there's no getting off.