Memory Lane

Writing yesterday's post about inclusion started me thinking about all the activities my kids were involved in, both in the community and within our family.  After all the troubled teen years, I sometimes forget the great times we had when the kids were younger.  So I dug out some of my favorite photos from our favorite places or events to share with you all.

One of my favorite destinations has long been Pedernales Falls State Park, and the surrounding Texas Hill Country.  Here the river runs over and around massive boulders, creating many small falls and pools.

Marcus, Jesse, and Gabriel at Pedernales Falls.

 After exploring the falls, we went to a quieter section of the river to wade and swim.

Hollis, Leslie, and Gabriel cool off in the river.

In nearby Johnson City are many attractions related to President Lyndon Johnson.  Near Johnson's boyhood home is the old Johnson farm.  There the kids were terrorized by this turkey, who, for some reason, was attracted to their wheelchairs.  (Note the look of terror on Hollis' and Cedric's faces.)

Attack of the Killer Turkeys!

Another favorite destination was Padre Island National Seashore on the Texas Gulf coast.  We made several trips there and always had a great time!

Cedric, Jesse, Marcus, Leslie, Gabriel, Hollis on the beach.

Marcus and Hollis

One of my favorite pictures of Leslie!

Closer to home, we frequently headed down to Glen Rose.  Sometimes we went to Fossil Rim Wildlife Refuge, where the kids enjoyed the petting zoo area.  I call this picture "Stubborn, meet Stubborn."

Leslie meets her match.

Usually, we headed to Dinosaur Valley State Park, to see the dino tracks in the riverbed, wade in the river, and have a picnic.

Misha and Hollis cool off in the Paluxy River.

I loved going to Burger's Lake in Fort Worth ever since I was a kid, and my kids loved it, too.  An old style"resort" dating back to the 1930s, the spring fed lake always feels so good on a blistering hot summer day!

Marcus and Jesse floating in their tubes.

I enjoy remembering these times.  I hope my kids do, too.

Every chapter

Returning from St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, I left the interstate to take the route through Muskogee. This was the hometown of my grandparents and my parents. As a child, I spent a week or two there every summer, staying with my maternal grandmother, "Gaga" Adams, and making the rounds to visit all the other relatives who lived in town. Gaga was the last surviving grandparent, and after she died in 1974, I had not been back to Muskogee since her funeral.

I headed straight for the cemetery, where I stopped in the little office to inquire about the location of the graves. First I found my paternal grandparents' grave and the nearby grave of my dad's sister, who died last fall at the age of 98. Then I drove to Gaga Adams' grave.

And then the tears welled up, as all the memories from so many summers washed over me. I remembered the anticipation as we neared Gaga's house, usually after the sun had already gone down. How vividly I remembered that sort of cooing sound she made, as she fussed over us, and how she smelled of face powder and Sweetheart soap as she kissed us. I remembered that we sat around her Formica kitchen table and ate vanilla ice cream with Hershey's syrup. I thought of how the whole family would sit in the little living room, and the grownups would talk, and I would amuse myself or, if my aunt was visiting, too, I would sit on the floor while she brushed my hair. And I thought of those times when Gaga took us out to her beloved Sallie Brown School, the little two room schoolhouse, once a chapel, where she began teaching at the age of 17.

And the tears ran down my cheeks as I realized that when my brothers and I are gone, there will be no more direct memories of these precious people. At some point they would be like others in this cemetery: a name on a headstone at an unvisited grave.

I came back home in a somber mood, weighed down by the thought that the real loss that comes with death is the end of a lifetime of memories, and the end of the living connection with the past. And then I happened upon John Donne's Meditation XVII, which begins, "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated." How those words spoke to me at that moment!

Treasure hunt

So I've been going through lots of boxes, throwing out and sorting, trying to get organized for our upcoming move to St. Louis. I am a confirmed pack rat. I've been this way ever since I was a kid. My brother Jim is just the opposite...so neat and tidy and unsentimental that I've often compared his living quarters to a monk's cell. When we were kids, he would be cleaning out his room, tossing things in the trash with abandon...and I would be fishing them right out, saying, "Oh, you can't throw this away! Can I have it?" So I have boxes in closets and the garage, many of which haven't been opened in years. It's not exactly a picnic, but the one rewarding aspect of the job is finding treasures that I haven't seen for the longest time. I have thrown out a lot of things (WHY did I keep THIS?), but, yes, I am very sentimental for some mementos.

I found an old scrapbook, which contained this class picture of my sixth grade class at Meadowbrook Elementary (1963-64), on the east side of Fort Worth. Amazingly, I remembered the names of about 2/3 of the class, and my friends on Facebook provided the rest. This was a time of great stability, and many of these kids were my classmates from 1st through 12th grade.

I found this envelope, with the note on the outside, written in my grandmother's hand, "Found by Nathan S. Adams on the Battlefield in France World War I." Inside were this rosary and the flight wings. Unfortunately, this wasn't the only thing my grandfather brought back from WWI. He came back with a severe case of PTSD, which was known as "shell shock" in those days. After a decade or so of deteriorating mental health, he was committed to a VA psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life. I met him only once, when my parents took me to Shreveport to see him for a brief visit.

I found the box that contained special items related to my kids. For most of my kids, at least the ones who were adopted at younger ages, I kept the outfits that they wore home the day I brought them home. This is the outfit Marcus wore home at age 3. I remember that his social worker almost cried when she saw him in it, saying with great emotion, "Oh, someone bought him new clothes for this day." His foster mom did not come out to the car to see us off...it was too hard to say goodbye to this special little boy, whom she had started on the road to emotional healing after he was so severely injured by his birthmother.

I made this purse during high school or college. I never took art in high school...didn't want to take the risk of ruining my grade point average. But I hung out in the art room sometimes with a friend of mine. Ms. Dorothy Weatherby, the art teacher, said to me one day, "I know something that I bet you would enjoy..." and she proceeded to show me how to macrame. I later bought some instruction leaflets and made this purse. When I found it in a box this week, I was somewhat amazed that I had made it!

This is our venerable copy of "Little House on the Prairie," which was a gift to my brother from my grandmother during WWII.

This is some of Jesse's art work, probably from kindergarten or first grade. As you can see, his calling as a beautician had early roots.

I was SO happy to find my old monkey, JoJo. I'm not sure who sewed JoJo, but it was my brother's before it was mine, so it was probably made around the time of WWII. So this little monkey is somewhere between 60 and 70 years old.

Now this may be the most inexplicable memento (I told you I was a pack rat). This jar once contained a yellow salve, compounded at Morrison's Drug Store on East Lancaster. It was my mother's cure-all when we were growing up. Scraped a knee? Go get some of that yellow medicine. Burned by steam? Go get some of that yellow medicine. Got a blister on your heel? Go get some of that yellow medicine. I have a feeling that it had sat in our bathroom cabinet so many years, that it had long lost its effectiveness, but we kept using it. Morrison's Drug Store had significance to me for other reasons. The store was robbed one evening and Mr. Morrison was murdered. It was the first time that crime had intruded into my world.

We awaited the arrival of Haley's Comet with great anticipation. I bought Jesse this shirt; the back says, "See you again in 2061." We drove out to Lake Benbrook at 4 AM to try to see it. I was expecting a huge fireball blazing across the sky with a flaming tail. I'm not sure we actually saw it, but we convinced ourselves that we did. We bought donuts on the way home. I had the boys draw pictures of the event and we wrote a story about it, which I also found tonight.

These cute little shoes are Korean slippers that were sent with Leslie when she flew to the US when I adopted her. Evidently they are unisex, because Hollis arrived with a pair, too.

Here are some of my political buttons that I've collected over the years. For several years I thought I might never have a winner among my collection, but there have been several now.

These are baptismal stoles from the baptisms of my first 7 children. The three children who came from Russia had been baptized in the Russian Orthodox church.

I'm sure there are more treasures squirreled away...more boxes await!