2019 - Gratitude Month #7 - Medical Care

Gratitude day #7

Today I am grateful for good medical and dental care.

Really. I should be dead.

I was born to a woman in her 40s. In today's world, that doesn't seem like much. In 1955, it was. Mom developed high blood pressure that would never leave her; putting both her and me at risk.

I had normal childhood accidents. But, I wasn't often taken to the hospital or the emergency room.

However...in my adult life, I have become a hazard to my own self.

I will always be grateful for the good and tender and clean conditions surrounding me when each of our children were brought into the world. When the last one was delivered, there were some frantic moments that resulted in emergency surgery. We made it, when only a few years ago neither of us would have.

Our children had the opportunity for good care, and we kept on top of it. We wanted to give them the best start in life that we could.

Just over ten years ago, I nearly lost my life due to a bowel obstruction. I can't recall a time where my life was in such peril. I was rushed to Columbus for surgery that began at 11:30 pm, and lasted through the night. I was hospitalized for a month...then was released. Out for a week...then back in with a collapsed lung. Out again...then back in for pleurisy.

It was when I was reading my medical records that I realized what peril I had been in. It also made me realize how important prayer is - especially the prayers of others. I was so out of my head that I couldn't formulate the words to even say one. I had no choice but to depend on the prayers of others to say what I could not say.

It would take me nearly a year to recuperate.

I later learned that a distant cousin would die of the very same thing that I had. He dropped to the ground at a gas station, and they couldn't save him.

For some reason, I was saved. I will spend the remainder of my life figuring out why, and to show my gratitude to God for preserving my life.

My grandmother used to say when your foot, your tooth, or your ear hurts, you hurt everywhere...for, you just can't concentrate on anything when you have pain there.

She would know. She always went barefoot. She had one tooth. And, she couldn't hear very well.

How grateful I am that doctors can tell what is going on in my body without actually having to go in there. We live in a day of medical miracles. May I never forget that.

Ever.

2019 - Gratitude month #6 - The Sisterhood

Gratitude day #6

Today I am grateful for my sisters; aka "The Sisterhood".

I grew up alone. I loved it and hated it both. My parents were older, and didn't really want lots of kids running through the house or the yard.

So, it was just me...with three sisters who were each old enough to have been my mother. It was actually like having four mothers.

I had nobody my age. But, we're all the same age now. Time has a way of catching us all up.

Through the years, I have learned a lot about how to behave with class and dignity as a female. Never once have I heard them swear, or curse, or use the Lord's name in vain, or talk with what I would call a dirty mouth. I've seen them angry and frustrated, but always maintaining their own respect.

They haven't known me for 64 years, but I have known them that long. They're the ones who saw my mom through a pregnancy in her old age, all while they were finishing high school or in their first years of nursing school.

Fern and Jean and Betty and I have laughed ourselves silly at times. We have gone on genealogy trips together, tromped through cemeteries, covered our mouths to keep from laughing when getting directions from a man in Kentucky:

Me (driving): Can you tell us where the Baptist Church is?

Man (sweeping driveway): Well, what's wrong with the Church of God?

Me: Well, not a thing. We're just trying to find the Baptist Church.

Man: Well, you ought to be finding the Church of God.

Me: I'm sure it's a fine, fine church. But, there's a reunion being held at the Baptist Church.

Man: Well, they should have had it at the Church of God!

Me (backing out of driveway): You know, you're probably right. When I find them, I'll be sure to tell them that.

My sisters were trying to hold their faces together. Me? I'm trying to save us all.

We have buried our parents. We have buried two of their husbands and our son. One day, it will be one of us...

And, the Sisterhood will never be the same.

I am grateful to have had such fine women in my life, who took a bratty little sister and elevated her to a respectable level.

They are fine, good, and decent women who helped raise me.

2019 - Gratitude month #5 - America

Gratitude day #5

Today I am grateful for the country I live in.

My family has been here since the mid-1700s on every single one of my lines. I have no one that arrived here in the 1800s forward.

I can't imagine what it must have taken to leave their native countries and head to this unknown, unproven land. They came from Scotland and Ireland, England, and Germany, and pretty much nowhere else. In the 1700s they were all living in either Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, or North Carolina.

Kerry and I have had the privilege of visiting all 50 states, and love the beauty and uniqueness that each one has. I particularly like grazing the best foods through each state, while Kerry will study the maps to imagine how the roads and trails came to be.

As Mr. Kerry is working for the Board of Elections today, I am particularly mindful of the right and privilege of being able to vote. Election day was not a happy time in eastern Kentucky when my parents would have voted. It was a time for meanness, threats, and sometimes shootings.

As much as I love our country, I am also saddened by the hate and vitriol that is prevalent on every turn. I have seen terrible things spewed by my FB friends, and entire relationships destroyed.

One of our Church leaders asked us in the past month to pour our hearts out to God and pray for our country and its leaders. Kerry and I have done that in every prayer, and ask those who also believe to join us in that prayer. We are in need of great healing, and the Great Healer is the one who can assist in that happening.

My heart belongs to this country, to my state, right down to the countryside where I live. I am grateful to have been born and raised here.

And, I pray for it. I can't recall a greater time when it has been needed. We must not turn on each other.

2019 - Gratitude Month #4 - Grandchildren

Gratitude day #4

Today I am grateful for my grandchildren.

And, I have a whole gaggle of them!

You couldn't live much further apart in the United States than where they live - California and Maine! Every year we have been able to visit both of them. This is the first year we are not able to see either of them.

And, I'm telling...it's difficult.

These young people like us. And, we have such joy when we get to come and just be grandparents. Because of the distance, we aren't able to physically be there for birthdays and holidays, for Grandparents' Day at school, and other momentous times in their lives. I can't begin to describe how difficult that is.

But, in our minds, these children are perfect. They have all been brought up well, and are kind and decent in their behavior. When eating in restaurants, it's easy to see that their parents have worked with them teaching them manners. Those who may have cringed when they saw so many children come through the restaurant door soon notice that they will behave better than most of the adults in the room.

Kerry and I pray for each one of them by name every day. It's not a very nice world to grow up in, and we pray for their safety, that they will make good choices, and that they will love life like their grandparents do.

We cherish their letters and cards to us, their phone calls and texts, and just everything about them.

Like I said, they're perfect. And, we are so grateful for them.

2019 - Gratitude Month #3 - My home

Gratitude day #3

I am so grateful for my home. It is the most beautiful building in all of North America; perhaps the world.

We don't move around much. We have lived here for over 35 years, and I want to stay in our home for as long we are able to.

Kerry found our home while delivering mail to a bank. There was a catalog there that shows different properties for sale in the area, and he picked one up. On the back page was this house. It had been part of a foreclosure, and was available at a good price.

So, he brought it back to our other house to show it to me.

I was not interested at all. We had three children and I was heavily pregnant with the fourth. The third child had been in and out of the hospital. My mom was dying.

There was no way.

Kerry decided to bring me out and show it to me. That was all it took. A short time later, a realtor opened it up for us to see, and a lilac bush was in full bloom, whose scent was filling up the entire downstairs. It was Mother's Day weekend.

Our first offer was accepted, and we made our plans. While I was delivering Erik in the hospital, men from our church were moving our household. We now lived in a 16-room house on 1 1/2 acres of land.

It has been one of the greatest blessings we have ever had.

Birthdays, Christmas mornings, camping in the backyard, Kerry climbing trees with the kids, holiday meals, Family Home Evenings (gathering with only our family every Monday night, and shutting the world out), piano lessons, teaching the kids how to harmonize, funeral gatherings, taking shelter during tornado warnings, hunkering down during snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures, etc.

I think our beautiful home has seen it all.

One particularly tender memory comes from the many times the six of us would arrive home late at night. I was dog-tired, and would go in the house...alone. Where was everyone else?

They were in the yard with their dad looking up at the night sky as he showed them the stars and the constellations. We have no light pollution here in the country, so he would be teaching them in either the front yard or on the deck. All five of them would have their necks craned upwards as they marveled. Kerry was also teaching them to look heavenward for many reasons.

Our house burst with joy at each new accomplishment we would have - learning to walk, being potty trained, getting a good grade, and welcoming someone home.

And, our house wept as we said our goodbyes to our oldest child, whose voice would no longer be heard within its walls.

I guess the important thing is that if something ever happened to our house, I would still have a home, which is much more than the physical structure. Kerry and I planned our home before we ever owned one.

Today I am grateful for my home, the learning that has taken place within its walls, my shelter for keeping the evils of the world out, and for the people who grew up within its embrace.

That would include me.

2019 - Gratitude Month #2 - Dad

Gratitude day #2

Since Gratitude day #1 was about my mom, it would be only fitting that this day shows my gratitude of my father.

Just like my mom, Dad was born in the eastern hills of Kentucky; the middle child of a large family. He would often tell me of some of the escapades he and his brothers would get into, and I sat there in horror! I grew up as an only child. I just couldn't imagine.

There wasn't much opportunity to better your life in those early days of the 1900s. His father and brothers had gone to West Virginia to work in the coal mines, then came on back across the Big Sandy River to Kentucky. Later, Dad would return to West Virginia and join his brothers working in the mines.

Dad only went to sixth grade, and spent three years in the fourth grade. Mom had gone to eight grade. Dad particularly valued any opportunity for education, for the opportunities didn't exist for him.

He and Mom met each other at some sort of a country church function, and were married in Kentucky. It could have been a dance, or Sunday School, or just "dinner on the ground." She was always sort of vague about it.

Their first two daughters were born in Kentucky. Shortly after, Dad took his family to West Virginia, where one more daughter was born in a town that no longer can be found - Ethel, WV.

It was from there that Dad was drafted into World War II to serve in the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. From what I can recall, he was the only one from that coal camp to be called up. Thanks to the kindness of friend Randy W Whited, who retrieved his military record for me, I learned a whole lot more about his Navy service than I ever knew before. Even my sisters didn't know some of the things in the record, for they were very young when he was gone.

Dad arrived in Pearl Harbor after the attack, but could still recall with a shudder how the base looked. They were still retrieving bodies to be shipped home. While he was gone, my mother became deathly ill, and his service record shows the tremendous amount of correspondence written to get him back home. Finally, it was approved, and he came home on a cargo plane, not realizing that he was riding among dozens of coffins.

Mom recovered, Dad went to work as a plant manager for the Pepsi-Cola bottling company, and all seemed well...until those Mormon missionaries came along. Mom and my sisters were so pleased with the decision to join; Dad wanted nothing to do with it. Plus, the missionaries were pushing Dad.

You just didn't push my dad.

So, as with so many others who were taking the highways north for better jobs, Dad made a trip to Ohio. He was looking for three things:
1. That better paying job.
2. A better opportunity for education for my sisters.
3. No Mormon Church.

He found exactly what he was looking for, and moved the family in a blizzard on January 1, 1950. Just four months later, the Church opened up the area for proselyting, and two missionaries knocked on my mom's door.

My beer drinking, cigarette smoking Dad began to listen, and was baptized two years later. He was Bishop of the local congregation when I was baptized.

Dad was a good man that I never had to fear. His talent amazed me, for there was nothing he couldn't build if he needed it. He built me the best wheat grinder out of a washing machine motor he found at the dump, which I still have and use to this day. He was an engineer without a degree.

I was my dad's "boy". He had started his own refrigeration and air conditioning business, and often took me along on his service calls. He taught me not to be afraid of taking something apart to figure out why it wasn't working. Open it up. Keep all of the pieces in order. Examine it to see what's working and what's not working. Carefully put it back together. Trust it to run better.

It worked for washing machines.

It works for life. If your life isn't quite working out well, do the above steps. Then, trust what you've done to get it in order.

I miss Dad. It's because of the sacrifices made by this hard-working man that I am who I am today. He wasn't the kind to gush and tell me I did a good job, but he would certainly tell everyone else how proud he was of me.

It's okay. He brought me ice cream; and it works the same way.

Mom and Dad started me on the genealogy path, for joining the Church taught them the value of talking to those who were still alive to tell their stories. I went with them everywhere, for my spelling and my handwriting was a bit better than theirs. While my friends were at the beach, I was in a graveyard somewhere.

I am grateful for both of my good, good parents. And, I can hardly wait for their embrace...

2019 - Gratitude Month #1 - My Mom

Gratitude month #1

It's November. And, it's when I do my daily gratitude posts.

I know it's probably cheesy, and it may be something you just want to scroll on past. But for me, it gives me cause to stop and reflect on what I do have to be thankful for.

And, as in the past I begin the month with gratitude for my mom; Ida Stevens Clemens.

Mom was born 106 years ago today in the back hills of eastern Kentucky. She was the oldest in a large family, and was the only girl. There was a baby sister who died at age three from being "liver growed" (ask me), but Mom held her own with all of her brothers.

She survived the 1918 flu epidemic that took several of her brothers and many of her cousins. Both she and her mom were stricken, but made it through. She recalled leaning up on one elbow to look out the window, only to see row after row of coffins with no one well enough to bury them. She kept a snippet of a journal recalling that terrible time, which I transcribed and sent in to either the History Channel or PBS. (I forget.)

She married my Dad in 1932, who was the middle child in a large family. I asked her what it was like getting married and living in the Great Depression. She said they didn't even know one was going on. They were poor.

Mom, Dad, and my three sisters were living in West Virginia when two missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knocked on their door. Mom listened to what they had to say, and knew they were offering her much more than what had been in her life. Being a strong woman in 1948, and against the wishes of her husband, Mom and my three sisters were baptized.

I am amazed. She was a "don't mess with me" type of person, and when I came along several years later, I grew up with that same attitude. Weakness was not in her nature, nor my sisters', and certainly not in me.

Mom passed away in 1984, just a few months after her last grandchild was born. Sometimes I am jealous of my sisters, who had her more years than I did. When she died, I was only 29.

I miss her so much, for not a day goes by that I can't think of what she would have done, or what she would have said, or would she just have said nothing at all, and give you "the look".

We all know "the look". If I was naughty at church and happened to see her at the end of the hall, I knew that shortly she would be marching down that hall, her arms pumping and smoke coming from her nostrils. Don't even bother trying to outrun her. She had nine brothers.

I had the Mom that was meant for me to have. And for that, I am grateful.

And, I can hardly wait to see her again...

PS...I constantly get comments about how much I look and act like her. And best of all, think like her. The double photo below is her on the left, and me on the right holding one of our preemie grandsons. When I first saw the one of me, I was trying to recall where Mom was when it was taken. It wasn't her. It was me!