memoir

Fly, Fly Away

Please read From Behind The White Coat. We can all help some out a little.

HIV/AIDS From the Perspective of a Nurse

Excellent article from Ten years a Single Mom

The Great Gum Heist

imageMy mother broke me from stealing.  It’s just as well.  I wasn’t any good at it anyway.  She was having coffee with her friend, Miss Frankie.  I was bored and used my ingenious ruse.  “I gotta go to the bathroom.” Continue reading →

How to Increase Your Blog Traffic Using Google Analytics

Look at this great tip from Reflections

Janice Wald's avatarReflections

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/heikoress/

Do you want to get on the front page of Google, so when potential readers search your blog topic, they can find you?  Did you hear you should increase your blog traffic, so that you can get on the front page of Google?  This post is not going to tell you how to do that.  This post is going to tell you the opposite.

Keep reading and you will learn how to use Google to increase your blog traffic.  Can you get to the front page of Google before you increase your blog traffic?  Absolutely, I did, and this post will tell you how you can too.

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Grandma and the Coat from Hell

Repost

Since there were five kids in our family, Grandma did her best to help out when she could. Sometimes I still hate her for it. Once she went to the Goodwill Store and bought me the ugliest coat in the world. I didn’t have a problem with Goodwill. It was ugly that bothered me. It was a knee-length brown hounds-tooth wool dress coat of the style not Continue reading →

I Quit! (From Kathleen’s Memoirs of The Great Depression)

One morning about a week after I started first grade, Daddy finished up the last of his coffee and ground out his cigarette as Mama scraped the few leftovers onto a plate for Ol’ Jack.  “All right kids.  Best be getting’ ready for school.”  He got up, putting on his felt had as he headed out the back door to do a couple of things before heading to his janitor job at Continue reading →

I Am So Sorry, Rosie.

Please excuse the offensive word used in context in this story.

Rosie was beautiful, the first black woman I ever knew.  She tolerated my stroking her creamy, caramel-colored legs as she washed dishes or ironed. Her crisply starched cotton housedresses smelled just like sunshine.  Normally, I trailed my mother, but on the days Rosie was there, she couldn’t stop suddenly without my bumping her. 

Rosie ate standing up at the kitchen counter with her own special dishes while I ate at the kitchen table.  I wanted to eat standing at the counter with her but wasn’t tall enough.  One day as we ate, she told me she had a little girl.  Pearl was three years old, just my age.  I was enchanted.  “Is she a nigger girl?”  Rosie’s face fell.

“Don’t say ‘nigger.’  That’s a mean word. Say ‘colored’.”  I was surprised Rosie corrected me, not knowing I’d done anything wrong.   I was also surprised to hear “nigger” was a mean word.  I’d heard it many times.

Rosie said no more.  I was relieved when she seemed to have forgiven me, soon allowing me to hug her and stroke her beautiful, smooth legs as she worked along.

It was years before I realized how deeply I’d hurt her.  I am so, so sorry Rosie.  I wish I could unsay that awful thing.

Addendum. I wrote this many years ago but repost it from time to time. I am seventy-three years old raised in a thoroughly racist South. Most people I knew were so racist their ears rubbed together. I graduated from a segregated school and never met one black child. I saw black children in town but we only stared, big-eyed at each other. My eyes opened when I went to college and made my first black friend. I would have loved to bring her home to meet my family but knew she would be unwelcome. All I had to do was open my eyes to see the truth.

Pooping with Brian

I got my daughter a Dalmatian for her thirteenth birthday.  I do believe that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.  For about a day and a half, Annie was sweet.  As soon as she got her bearings,she became a hyperactive, maniacal buzz saw, plundering and eviscerating everything in her path from shoes to the rag top on my husband’s MG, but that’s a story for another post.

At eighteen months, Annie’s hormones kicked in.  Overnight, she was transformed into a nasty-tempered, sullen,farting, bitch, such a blessed relief.  One day she was sitting between Bud and Mother farting up a storm.  Bud and Mother each kept looking accusingly at the other, thinking surely they would eventually do the decent thing and excuse themselves.

Deciding to take her show on the road one morning, Annie decided the best thing for her to do was to tunnel under our neighbor’s back fence to pay him a call.  Brian wasn’t in the yard, so she trotted into the house looking for him.  He was deep in thought, sitting on the toilet, enjoying some quality time.  Inspired by his wise example, Annie squatted and produced a fine example of her own.  Though I didn’t see the actual event, I did get to hear about it in great detail.

The Heartbreak of Dementia

Reblogged from Before Sundown

C.E.Robinson's avatarBefore Sundown

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by C.E.Robinson

This small woman grips the worn strap of a large black purse tucked at her side, and leans forward in the rocking chair.

Her gnarled fingers trace tiny rose petals in her skirt as if to find a path back to her life; the aging face of her daughter, her husband’s death, her 90th birthday party, her flower shop.

She sits in the same spot every day, near the entrance door, waiting for husband and daughter to take her home. The daily vigil stops when I call her name,

Ida Mae, let’s go back to your room and look at the photos of John and Olivia, and one we took last week with all the nursing staff at your ninetieth birthday party.

I visit often, hold her hand and tell her “back when I was a little girl” stories, she told me over the years. Triggering a…

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