Have a great weekend, all! (((((((HUGS))))))
Have a great weekend, all! (((((((HUGS))))))
77 degrees as I post this, headin' for around 87 today (coolin' off a bit).
Thunderboomers possible (yet again) . . .
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Week in review:
Monday, Cinco de Mayo: 
Tuesday, A Chinese Lesson: 
Wednesday, Aloha! 
And, I think it was JustAmy's BD too. 
Thursday, absolutely "incredulous"!
Some of you already know the last time I saw my mother was when she and Daddy placed my two little boys (then 6 & 7) and me (27) on a plane to join my husband in South Dakota.
We managed to get to Atlanta; a two-day shutdown blizzard in Chicago lifted so I could get through there, although we missed our connection out of St. Paul-Minneapolis. Waited all day in the airport there for a flight at 4 p.m. to Rapid City, landing on a snowy Christmas Eve.
The next year was idyllic, roaming the beautiful Rocky Mountains; eventful, with the birth of our daughter September 30th; and dramatic as two weeks later the Cuban Missile Crisis dominated our Strategic Air Command life.
Ha! That was just a prelude for orders to go to Fairbanks, Alaska, departing the day after Christmas to go through Canada and the Alaska Highway to our destination.
There of course was no way to get to Florida to visit and then to the top of the world, but my mother and I wrote often until January of 1964 when she was stricken with an aneurysm, resulting in her being paralyzed, blind and unable to speak.
She passed away on my second son's tenth birthday in July of 1965 when I was 31, and I'd never gotten to hear her voice again.
She never saw my daughter.
Fast Forward through Gypsy Woman's Life to 1972 when we were out of the service and back in Florida.
Moving so often and renting mostly, I never hung photographs on walls, hauling boxes of them around. Jennifer was then 10, and thus, I realized, hadn't seen pictures of my parents.
One day, going through a box, I showed her some.
The moment I held up my mother's picture, she exclaimed, "But Mom! That's the lady who came to me last night when I was crying about Striker!!"
We had had to find a home for our beloved dog (Collie-Cocker Spaniel mix acquired when she was one), when we left the service in 1969.
She related when she was going to sleep, she was thinking of him amd crying, and suddenly "The Lady" appeared at the foot of her bed and comforted her!
She was adamant that the lady in the picture was the one who had been there and comforted her.
I add that she never had been a fanciful child with imaginary playmates - was a grounded military brat in her early years who rolled with the punches.
Thus am I sure Mom prompted me to get out the pictures to have 'confirmation' of what happened - and am certain of her continued presence, joined a few years later by my Dad.
I can tell you, too, living in this small South Carolina town where my grandfather and grandmother (her parents) lived in the 1920's - he the minister of a church right off the Center Circle by the County Courthouse - I can often 'feel' the prayers they offered here for their children and grandchildren!!
We are surrounded by the love of those gone ahead - - - and in giving love and kindness to others, honor their memories, and love grows - - -
Giving thanks from a grateful heart,
LadyX
Please give your living mothers a hug for me...
