Sunday Stealing: The 11/11 Questions meme

What is your favorite possession?My laptop and my Kindle, if we are talking material goods. I have several items of my mom's that I would really hate to lose or break.

Do you like to read? If so, which books do you love best? Oh yes, I think it is a shame when someone says they never read books, etc.  My favorite author is Jane Austin, I have read every thing she has written and everything written about her, including the vampire spoofs. I love to read science fiction and autobiography.  My favorite book is Little Women, I've read it several times as well. I especially like fiction.

RemembeRed

We’re doing something short and sweet for this week’s RemembeRED post.

Imagine your life, or a part of your life, as a title and tagline.
That’s it. Give us the title, and give us the tagline.

The Life and Times of a Moderate

Please Don't think I'm Wishy Washy, I will try to see your Point, but I Won't Argue with You. 

The More I Wish I Knew

Prompt this week was Unfulfilled

A & M Stillwater as Dad may have known it.

I knew what I wanted.  What was my dad’s like as a boy?  I was unfulfilled as he passed away before I could question him completely.  What I knew of him was as a father. I knew that he was accomplished, he went to college at Stillwater, Oklahoma, joined the Marines after college, during WWII. He went to law school on the GI Bill, after he married my mom and raised my little brother and me.

Dad didn’t talk much and when he did he spoke slowly, thinking, on each word, that was a boring to a young kid, so what I have learned about him, his family, my mom, even my husband, who often comes up with information he gleaned from being around him. Now that we have moved to Missouri, I want to hook up more often with my cousins who I have reached out to this Christmas and go to the family reunions, which seem to be less often.  

What I know is he must have been a bit of a rascal.  He didn’t like peas as an adult, because as a kid he ate raw peas until he made himself sick. He was a good looking boy, from the pictures I have seen and he had a girlfriend named Lydia.  He often harassed mom with the song Lydia, the Tattooed Lady. He went to college because he didn’t want to be a farmer. To hear him tell it, to us kids, his youth was not misspent and he was a perfect child. As I grew older I did discover that he would run liquor from Arkansas, back to Stillwater with a frat buddy who had a car. I also learned by asking about a scar on his head, he was kicked out of Marine OCS because of a fight (the guy hit him over the head with a bottle).  Mom always counted it as a blessing as most young men just out of OCs were killed in the Pacific, almost upon arrival. He spent the war in New Found land ferrying Germans to POW camps in Texas. 

So I guess I was not so unfulfilled, but I wish there were more stories told before he died.  Mom is gone since 2002, and she shared what she knew, when I asked.....If only I had asked more.

Dad grew up in Homestead,OK,, stayed in CA after WWII

I had to go to Internet for pictures. Project for 2012 get my family pictures scanned

House Cleaning- Metaphorically Speaking

I have been literally cleaning house for the last several months, while getting ready for our move from California to Missouri. I have been metaphorically cleaning house as well. Mr. BC and I have been married for MANY years and have moved many times, usually every two or three years.  Those moves were relatively easy, as happens, when one is moving every few years.  Our moves were fast and compact.  This move differs, in that we have lived in this house for 27 years and moving to his late mother’s home in Missouri.  We went through many of her things with his sister last year; however the house is still furnished with his memories and much of her stuff.

With so many years in the same house, this move and attendant house cleaning, is more difficult.  We have grown from a house and garage, to a house, garage, attic, and storage unit and many junk drawers.  With the detritus of our life, we have outgrown our surroundings.  We have been brutal. When it comes to the garage, Mr. BC is clearly a hoarder. However, in the house, unless it was his belongings, I sorted through things without much consultation with him.  It is still slow going, what with those pesky memories intruding. We truly pared down and only kept the most important and most used of our possessions.  Salvation Army, recycling, yard sales and the dump  gets the rest of the stuff.

All of this sorting and moving has been stressful, tempers have flared, muscles have been pulled and feelings have been hurt. We have had a lot of togetherness since retirement and I am now looking towards cleaning my metaphorical house with some alone time after Christmas.  I am flying back to California to spend time with DD1 before the new baby arrives; and to pack the rest of our belongings. We need the time away, both of us need to remember that we are Fun People!  Mr. BC will join me the first of February to await the birth of our grandson and for the last of the literal house cleaning. We got a house to sell and Fun to Have.

RemembeRed

Think of a time that you “cleaned house.” Consider the subtext—we’re not writing about Windex here. We’re writing about relationships. Or feelings. Or a captured moment in time.

Conjuring Up Memories

A suffusion of light warms the sanctuary,

Azure blue mosaics rain down from the dome.

Incense permeates the air, 

As the saints overlook the couple, hands raised in blessing.

I smile through my tears, my heart seems about to burst.

The chanting of the choir has stopped and the priest begins.

I do not recognize the language being spoken, but understand the meaning.

Two becoming one, my child no more, a new life together begins.

My memoir prompt this week comes from Assistant Editor Galit.

This week I want you to conjure something. An object, a person, a feeling, a color, a season- whatever you like. But don’t tell me what it is, conjure it

         
                                         

This is what I was conjuring.