Great grandmother Watson

 Letters to Mom, March 28, 2021

Dear Mom,  This is your memory letter from your daughter Kathy, in Tennessee.  Barbara told me that she was able to come inside and see you, hug you, and hold your hand.  I am very jealous and miss you so much.  She has graciously offered us her guest room to come see you.  We are thinking of making the trip sometime after Easter.

 Here is my Memory.  "I am a people pleaser.  I'm sure it started in childhood with the desire to please you and Dad. I also wanted to please Bobbie so she would play with me.  Probably the best way to explain this principle is the story of "Why I touched a Bumblebee!" I touched a bumblebee one day because we were outside playing with some neighbor kids and Bobbie told everyone that she was brave.

   Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, I announced to her and to our friends that I was brave too.  Bobbie immediately told me again that I was not brave.  I countered with, "Yes, I am!"  She continued to taunt me by saying, "I bet you wouldn't touch a bumblebee."

    I might not have been so quick to declare my bravery if I had seen the bumblebee on a nearby flower (as my older sibling had also told me that when you are stung by a bumblebee you have 10 seconds to remove the stinger  or you die!)

    So not to disappoint my sister I bravely went where no man has gone before and touched the bee.  Surprise!  It stung me!  My sister, (always my cheerleader in acts of stupidity) began to declare to the neighborhood kids that I was the bravest of the brave.  As she chronicled my deed of bravery I slowly began to count. (One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand) .  I think I was up to eight of nine with death on the horizon before she detected my panic dance of death and pulled out the stinger.

   You would have thought that I learned a valuable lesson that day...(maybe I have, looking back over the event now.)  I am not so trusting as I once was.  I have found that I don't have the time or the desire to be anyone other than me.  I have decided that life is too short for anything other than comfortable shoes.  One size fits all is a myth. Look, before you leap is great advice.  I am not brave and a bumblebee will sting you if you touch it.  As for my big sister, I still want her approval and attention.  Lord help me if she dares me to display my stupidity in some other way.  You know I will....right after her!  

   I hope you enjoyed this story mom.  I am sure you never knew about this encounter other than putting baking soda on my bee sting.  Bobbie and I had stories that we used against each other to keep from getting into trouble.  She would say, " if you tell mom, I will tell her about the time you..."  Point, counterpoint, we maintained a fine balance of power.

   One thing that all three of your girls agree on is our love and prayer for you.  We pray for you every single day and can't wait to see your again and hug you, and hold your hand.  Love you, Mom.  Your daughter Kathy

Letters to your Great Grandmother...My life as a Brown Bunny

 Dear Mom, This is Kathy and I have a memory story for you from my life that I am sure you never knew.  I call it "My Life as a Brown Bunny"  I hope it makes you smile.

    I have always been a person who embraced life with great exuberance and gusto.  Life was a daily mystery with strange and delightful twists and turns.  My world was a safe place where strangers smiled at children, neighbors knew your name, and it was safe to play outside till the street light went on.  Life was simple and pleasant.

   I loved kindergarten because you could color, cut with scissors, play with other children and sing.  I loved to sing and what I lacked in musical ability I made up for in volume.  I was thrilled to find out that my class would be able to sing two songs in my school's Christmas program. We practiced our two songs for weeks before the performance.  I knew those songs backward and forwards!  I could sing louder and longer than all my friends.  Imagine my surprise and delight to be singled out with four of my peers for a special assignment the day before our big day.  My teacher called the five of us over and explained that life was composed of "White Bunnies and Brown Bunnies".  "White bunnies," she said, "get up on the stage and sing, but brown bunnies are special!  "Brown bunnies get to act!"  Did she say act?

      A star was born instantly that day.  I had grand dreams of being a dancing snowflake or prancing elf.  My teacher had chosen me!  My parents would be so proud!  My sister would be envious of my success.  We all eagerly awaited our new assignments with breathless anticipation.

    "Tomorrow night," she said, "While all the other white bunnies are singing I want you brown bunnies to act like you are singing but don't utter a sound.  It's our secret, so don't tell the white bunnies or your parents. Let's see if anyone notices. "

    

 The night of our school's Christmas program came and went.  My class performed Jingle Bells and one more song.  The white bunnies sang and the brown bunnies acted our little hearts out.  The five of us became opera soloists without ever uttering one note.  Pavarotti could have learned from our performance.  We opened our mouth wide, gestured frantically, and swayed with the music.  We threw ourselves into our roles and for that brief moment, we were stars.

   

 Later that night my older sister, who I adored, asked me why I was swaying and jumping around the stage looking like a wide mouth bass out of water?  I proudly told her my secret...I was special, I was a brown bunny with acting abilities. 

   

 Had she been older and wiser, perhaps she might have let me have my moment of stardom, but  reality is cruel, and she told me that brown bunnies can't sing and my teacher didn't want us to drown out the other kids.

  

So I spent most of my life knowing that I am a Brown Bunny.  Brown bunnies don't sing, Brown bunnies don't dance, Brown bunnies......(you fill in the blanks.)  I have lived my life with the brown bunny mentality.  I've finally decided that brown bunnies are special.  We have a rare ability to not take life so seriously.  We sing off-key, we dance to the music in our head, we laugh inappropriately, we love intensely, we celebrate each day and each moment. 

Little did I know that my kindergarten teacher gave me a great gift.

Letters to your great grandmother

Letters to Mom,                                                               March 13,2021

Dear Mom, This is your weekly memory letter from your daughter, Kathy, the one that looked liked Dad. 

 Barbara is your firstborn.  I called her Bobbie when I was young.  I remember Saturday nights you would put "Bobbie pins" in our hair to make it wavy for church the following morning. I used to think that was the reason I called her Bobbie.  Much later you rolled our hair with clips and I remember calling them "Kathy pins" and thinking I was just as glamorous as my sister.  When I was 14, baby sister Beverly arrived, and again I had another sister who always took center stage.

The three of us are entirely different. Bobbie is beautiful and smart.  She made straight A's in all of her classes and was a member of the National Honor Society.  She was a debutant and was presented to society at the debutante ball.  My beautiful brainy sister could be quite scatterbrained at times like the day she drove the car to High School with her girlfriends and that afternoon rode home on the bus because she forgot she drove that day.  Needless to say, her girlfriends were not amused waiting by the car for an hour before she remembered and got a ride from a teenage boy back to the high school to pick up her friends.

I was not the smart one unless it was something I really liked.  You and Dad gave me a lecture, "I don't care what grade you make as long as it is the best of your ability, but don't you dare bring home less than a C".  So I made up my mind that if you were happy with a "C" that was my goal.  I will admit to also being the lazy one and came very close to failing many subjects, but through frantic prayer, and tutoring from Bobbie I could somehow manage a C minus.  You and dad were always disappointed but I always thought and chuckled to myself, "If you only knew how close to failing I actually came you would be congratulating me right now!"  

 I was  "everybody's buddy" but definitely didn't stand out in the crowd.  I played a tenor saxophone in Junior High and was in band and orchestra and still can't really read music to this day.  I got a pity date to Prom 3 days before the event and you were upset that I didn't give you enough time to make my dress.  I was just thrilled to be invited and go out with my friends. All my high school friends were in the Honor Society, I was just thrilled to graduate.

Baby sister Beverly was a big surprise to all of us.  We got to name her as long as you and Dad agreed to the name.  Bobbie and I pitched out our favorite girl names only to have someone else in the family say, "I knew a girl with that name and I hated her."  Bobbie wanted to name her Joy but Dad vetoed the name.  He said, "Girls named Joy were usually sweet or terribly misnamed and he didn't want to take his chances on the name."  We finally settled on the name Beverly because the only Beverly we knew we all liked.  Barbara's middle name is Leigh, so she wanted Beverly's middle name to be Lynn so they would have the same initials.  So here I am stuck in the middle with Barbara Leigh and Beverly Lynn.  It's tough to be a Janet Kathleen.

Baby sister Bev is an island all her own.  She is very different from Bobbie and me and basically grew up as an only child.  She has a very strong personality and either loves you or hates you with very little sway in-between.  She is your best friend Mom, and a strong advocate for you.  She has a temper like your father (our grandfather Carden) and feels things very deeply.  She called you daily when you lived in Virginia Beach and would call me if she couldn't reach you insisting that I drive 4 hours to your house and comb the streets to find you.  She never married and would come home for several weeks in October on vacation from United Airlines

to cook, clean, do yard work, clean out the attic, linen closet, and your clothes closet.  She has a good heart but would frustrate you as she moved things to where she thought they should be and not where you usually stored them.

So, Mom, that's us, (Brains and Beauty) (Fun and Fabulous) and (Fire and Ice) your 3 very different daughters that adore you, pray for you daily, and would love to see you and hug you.  Hope you enjoyed the stories and will write more next week.  

Your Daughter Kathy

This picture is of Lyra Jane your great-granddaughter.  She just completed 100 days of kindergarten with a little old lady photo.  It made me laugh and I thought you would get a chuckle from it.

Letters to your great grandmother

 Dear Mom,  This is your adorable daughter Kathy, who lives in Tennessee writing you a memory from my childhood that you may not remember.  I hope it brings you joy and lets you know how very much you are loved and cherished.  Charlie (my husband) and I pray for you every single day and are so happy that you are well.

It was the best Christmas, it was the worst Christmas.  It is the one Christmas I will never forget.  I was a spoiled princess.  I had never gone hungry or lacked anything.  When I wanted a particular toy or object I usually got it.  I may have had to wait till my birthday or Christmas but whatever I asked for would "magically" appear.

   The Christmas I was 11 and Bobbie was 14 we were told that Christmas would be very lean as we needed to replace the family car.  You and Dad had long ago revealed Santa's real identity so you both felt like we could reasonably be included in this family decision.

    Christmas at our house was always very lavish...lots of presents, toys, games and new clothes.  So even though you both had announced not to expect any presents other than what the aunts, uncles, and grandparents sent, we really didn't believe it.

    One reason we didn't believe that there would be no Christmas was the mysterious noises, whispers, paper rustling, and frantic cries of "Don't come in here right now!"  After all, we reasoned, neither of us could drive...so a new car was not a family gift if only our parents could take it for a spin. We also thought you were just telling us this just to see the joy on our little faces come Christmas morning when, "Surprise, Santa came after all."

    "They really wouldn't really cancel Christmas," my big sister assured me.  Christmas morning arrived in our household, no one was allowed in the living room until Dad went in and turned on the Christmas tree lights.  We had sliding "Pocket Doors" leading into the living room from the hallway that was closed on Christmas Eve.

    You, Mom, turned to us in the hallway and said, "Do you want to go open your presents or go sing Merry Christmas to the Car?  What kind of question was this?  Who wants to go sing Merry Christmas to the car?  Let me at those gifts.  "Gifts! Gifts!" we cried in unison.  "Okay, you said and slid open the door, revealing our glorious Christmas tree and gifts...just the way we left it on Christmas Eve.    

    One quick look at the tree was enough to depress this 11-year-old. "Let's go sing to the car, I said, clearly disappointed.  "Oh no," you replied, "Let's go open our gifts.  So we did.  It was disappointing.  It wasn't anything that we wanted and I was totally miserable. "What's that string attached to the tree?"  Near the top branches was a note that read "To the Watson family" and the string led to the new car in the garage.

     "Let's follow the string and go sing Merry Christmas to the car!" you encouraged, knowing how disappointed we were at having no presents.  We went to the garage very begrudgingly only because Dad had on his "You heard your Mother" face, and we knew it was pointless to argue.

      So we opened the garage door and there sat the car.  Our new car, the car that had robbed us of our happy childhood.  The car that neither of us could drive.  I really wanted to kick the tires or spit on the wheels but we were encouraged sweetly by you Mom and also by the stern, threatening look on Dad's face to sing "Merry Christmas to you, Merry Christmas to you, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to you old stupid car!

    Oh look, you said Mom, "The string is caught in the trunk....maybe we should open it up and look inside."  "I'm going inside," I announced tiredly of the whole let's get a new car for Christmas incident and hoping I was adopted and my real parents might be inside waiting for me with my Christmas presents.)

   "Oh no you don't," Dad said, opening the trunk revealing the entire space filled with gaily colored boxes, packages, dolls, games, stockings, ribbons, and candy.  "Not until you help bring these presents inside."  Presents, gifts, wow! maybe this new car thing wasn't as bad as I originally thought.  My emotions went from sad, angry, and miserable to all smiles, excitement, and total joy.

    Presents, more than I had ever imagined at any Christmas before or since.  Presents, my parents really did love us more than their car after all.  "I told you so,
" Bobbie said to me wiping tears out of her face but not sounding nearly as confident as she wanted me to think.

   So that was our miserable Merry Christmas.  You told us later that was the first time you both had to sneak presents from the house into the trunk instead of the other way around.

    You and Dad really surprised us that Christmas.  Thank you for making our childhood memorable.  We always knew you both loved us and were good providers.  We would always ask Dad where he was going at Christmas time and he would just smile and say, "I'm going to see a man about a horse."  I always wondered what happened to our Christmas pony?

Thank you Momma for your love and prayers.  I hope you enjoyed this story about our most surprising Christmas. Your adorable daughter, Kathy 

letters to great grandmother

 Monday Memories...Letters to Mom

Dear Mom,, This is your weekly memory letter from me, your adorable middle daughter Kathy.  As the middle child, I hold a special place in our family. I was the baby sister for 14 years till sister Beverly was born.  When Barbara married and moved to Germany with Joe, I became the oldest at home.  So I have filled all three roles.  I like to think that I' the sweet frosting in the middle of the sandwich cookie!

I was the "little sister" for most of my formative years.  My sister, Bobbie, is three years older and was your favorite child (at least I always thought so).  Mom, whenever you were frustrated by our behavior you would lecture each of us by comparing us to one another.  My lectures were "Why can't you be pretty and smart like your sister Barbara?"  Barbara's lecture was, "Why can't you be sweet and loving like your sister Kathy?"  We grew up thinking "Mom always loved you best" of each other.

As the little sister, I got to bask in her glory.  I was always Barbara's little sister.  It was especially hard to have teachers that had taught my brilliant sister and then taught me.  Like most little sisters I adored her and of course, to be included in her world was a real treat even if it meant carrying the majority of the burden.

 Both of our parents had lived through the depression so they were very frugal with money.  We had one bike that we had to share.  It was a big bike and we were still pretty small.  Dad ended up putting blocks of wood on the pedals as our legs were too short to sit on the seat and pedal.  Did I say share?  There were two scenarios.  She would ride and I would run along behind the bike till she lost me, or her favorite scenario...I pumped and she rode on the back.

We would make snowmen together.  She rolled the snow till it was too heavy for her to lift and then she would have me move it to where she wanted it displayed.  My sister Bobbie had a slight build and my Dad told her that a stiff breeze would blow her away and suggested she carry a rock in her pocket to weigh her down.  Me, I was the Bulldozer, made for endurance.

It was always my turn to do the dishes.  I was always the last one to do whatever Mom said not to do.  It was always my shoes that tracked up the floor and I was "it" in every game.  She would come up with the ideas and I was always willing to go along.  If she said she was brave, so was I even if it meant touching a bee to prove it.  To say she got me in trouble with our folks would have been an understatement but I never seemed to learn.

She was the first one to hear my secrets, the one I would conspire with, the one I would wake up at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning to see if it was too early to wake the folks yet.  She was also the first one to experience all the firsts.  She was the overachiever, I felt fortunate to just be included in the game.

Now that we are both grandmothers, I can't imagine what my life would have been without her.  She is one of my best friends, my greatest supporter, and my personal cheerleader.  We talk alike on the phone, we both have the same crazy sense of humor, and when we are together people naturally assume we are sisters.I think it has something to do with our silver hair and like mannerisms.  I know she was disappointed when she found out I was a girl and wanted to know why.  Dad told her that the hospital was all out of boys so she suggested maybe we should take mom to another hospital.

I hope you enjoyed my memories of growing up" the little sister" .  I hope it brought you sweet memories of our childhood.  We love you so very much and pray for you every single day.  We will be so glad to be able to give you lots of hugs.  Miss you Momma.

That sweet middle girl,  Kathy