This doesn't have a whole lot to do with books but I thought with my 60th birthday passing by on May 25th this would be a timely post. I wrote this about the time I had my first book published and I want to keep on writing as long as I can. Yes, I still feel melancholy sometimes, but most of the time I don't even think of my age. I want others to know you can achieve your goals, too, no matter your age. You just need the passion and perseverance.
I
Thought I was still Fourteen until I Looked in the Mirror
I had
arrived at my Aunt Helen’s funeral. I looked around the old wooden church
building, one I had visited many times as a child, in hopes of spotting my
cousins. There they were! I was shocked! Someone had stolen my cousins and
zipped them up in old people’s bodies. I couldn’t believe it.
They
weren’t supposed to have gray hair and wrinkled faces. And what was Uncle Bill
doing sitting up front? Uncle Bill had died many years ago – oh, that’s not
Uncle Bill that’s my cousin Billy.
Then the
realization hit me. I was the same age as my cousins. Did I look old to them? I
must have because everyone kept saying I looked like my mother.
I made it
through the funeral with many tears shed. I loved my Aunt Helen. She was my
Daddy’s sister and she understood him and loved him even though he could be
stubborn as a mule. While they were showing the pictures slides of my Aunt
Helen and her family, memories came flooding back.
There was
Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen together as I remembered them. We would go to Phenix
City, Alabama often to visit my Daddy’s other sister Aunt Maudie. When we did
we never failed to go out to the old home place and play with our cousins and
have an evening meal. After the funeral I visited the home place and the old
farmhouse where we had many wonderful times that weaved a blanket of memories was
no longer there.
The barn
was, though. As we drove up the long sandy driveway I spotted the barn.
Memories literally flooded my mind. The tears flowed and would not stop. They
lasted all the way home – a four hour drive, and for three more days. I had so
many mixed emotions. Why was I crying?
I called
my friend and asked her was I going crazy. She assured me that I wasn’t – I was
already there. With that being said she told me she had gone through similar
feelings.
I felt a
loss for that little girl who used to play barefooted for hours at a time with
her cousins and then when she was worn out be called in to have a family meal.
We were all seated around one long wooden table with benches on both sides. The
table, spread with home grown vegetables, was a place to visit and talk with
those you loved at the end of the day. After supper, Aunt Helen served the best
apple turnovers ever made.
I longed
for the time when things were simpler. A time when we didn’t have any and
everything electronic to occupy our minds. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my
computer and cell phone, but that simple time will never return. A time when
children used their imaginations during play. I missed my mother. I missed my
daddy and I missed my childhood.
I think the hardest realization to deal
with was my own mortality. Out of eleven children there is only one of Daddy’s
sisters still living. On my mothers side there is only a brother. I am in the
next generation that will start to pass away into a better life. And even
though I knew there is a better and everlasting life that awaits me the thought
of my own mortality hit me like a ton of bricks.
I didn’t
know what to do with the emotions. I had a decision to make. To give up and
decide I was too old to do the things I love or find a way to keep the negative
thoughts at bay and make the rest of my life count. Three books later guess which way I chose?
