Do birds have eyes?

I sat at the kitchen table swinging my legs and watching her. She perched on one foot with the other propped against her leg just below the knee. I could hear the chop of the knife and smell the onions, but all I could see was her back.

Crossing the room and standing beside her, I tried to balance myself in her flamingo stance but almost toppled. She never glanced my way. My face barely cleared the counter so I tiptoed to watch her cut the onion. The knife moved effortlessly always stopping within a hair’s breadth of her hands. I craned my neck to watch her face, but she was finished with the task and moved on.

This is like so many memories of her. I remember her actions. I remember her words. I don’t remember looking her in the face. She was beside me. She was in front of me. She was behind me. I think I was thirty before we ever talked face to face.

More than ten years after she closed her eyes the last time, I cherish those few memories that include those eyes— the crow’s feet of smiles, the shadow of worry, the glimmer of pride.

I try to look people in the eye—especially my children and my grandchildren. I want them to remember my soul, not just my actions or words.

Remembering

I was born in Germany where Dad was stationed in the Air Force. We moved to the States when I was 2 and settled in West Texas where Dad was an instructor at Goodfellow Air Force Base. When my parents decided we needed to find a church, they found Baptist Temple because it had the same name as the church in Kansas City where they were married. I began my way through the children's classes.

The first day of the Beginners' Department, I joyfully marched in with all the other fresh four year olds to the big kids class. We sang new songs and divided up by age and gender to our own classrooms for the first time. I relished in the bright decorations on the walls and listened intently to a story told with pictures on a flannel board. I sat taller because I just knew I was so grown.

We were Sunday School attenders. My family went to Sunday School and the went home. We didn't go to the church services. But my new department teacher invited me to Children's church! I pestered and pestered until finally my parents started staying for the church service so I could go to Children's church.

On Palm Sunday in 1966, a bright-eyed five-year-old little girl listened intently while the teacher told the story of the crucifixion. I can still see the flannelgraph figure on my Jesus dying on the cross. For the very first time, my heart was pricked with conviction. He did that just for me… just to pay the penalty for my sin.

After church, that image burned in my mind. We ate lunch and went out to play. My little brother had several disabilities and I always helped him play. I was pushing him around the neighborhood on our green pedal tractor when he decided to stop and look at something. As he wandered off,  I rested on my knees behind that tractor and the conviction of the Cross flooded over me.

As a five-year-old little girl, I bowed my head there in the sunny April Sunday afternoon and asked Jesus to be my Savior. I ran in and told my mother and the next Sunday, Easter, after church my pastor knelt down to my level and for 20 minutes asked me questions about what I had done. I remember him standing and looking at my parents and saying, "She knows what she did and she understands."

Every April, as the newness of spring bursts forth around me, I remember the newness of salvation that I knew that April so long ago.

And I'm thankful.

Memories are funny things

Sometimes memories are like the evening tide. While standing still, the memories slowly lap at your toes and before you know it, you are in knee-deep. Other times, they crash over you like the unexpected surf driven by an unseen storm.

This week, I was straightening the lobby at the clinic where I work. I was restacking the magazines and sorting the children's books when I was broadsided by memories from 40 years ago.

Hundreds of hours of my early childhood was spent in waiting rooms and lobbies while my younger brother was treated by speech pathologists, physical rehab specialists, chiropractors and pediatricians. While the professionals helped my brother overcome the challenges presented by a high fever as an infant, I read books.


The Children's Book of Bible Stories, Little Golden Books, and Highlights for Children.



Some might think it wasn't fair that he was sick and I had to sit for hours waiting for him. I think it was wonderful.

When I was almost 7

I had a condition that required several surgeries and inpatient tests. For one of those surgeries, I entered the hospital on December 26, the day after Christmas. That way I wouldn't miss school. So my Christmas present checked into the hospital with me: Baby Tippie Toes and her tricycle!!!

I haven't even seen a picture of Baby Tippie Toes for decades until I Googled her today and once again, I felt the same wonder that my six-year-old self felt.

Aren't memories amazing?

My Computer Journey

I am a Mac Geek! Yep, Apple all the way since 1989.


This was what our first computer looked like. It was an Apple SE with 1 mb of RAM and, get this, a 20 mb hard drive. We were screeching fast! I did publish, print and distribute a homeschool record-keeping system with this thing and we ran all of our church records on it.

The day came when the SE was just a little too sluggish. If you had a computer back then, you might remember clicking to open a file, going and doing a load of laundry and coming back to check if the file was open yet. That was fun. So we upgraded to this little baby — an LCIII otherwise known as the Performa 476. We had color and AOL with a portal to the World Wide Web. And boy, we had a 28.8 external modem. A new age had dawned.


For a little bit anyway. Then the Internet was starting to catch on and Steve Jobs gave us the iMac — one button access to the WWW. It was so popular that other companies started making toasters and curling irons in Bondi Blue. I still have a Bondi Blue scanner in a closet somewhere.


That little computer was my right arm for several years but eventually, it graduated to a designated church computer and I got the white wonder for my personal use. We lovingly named this guy Petrie because he reminded us of the baby pteradactyl in The Land Before Time. He could bob his head ever so cute.

Then last year, I moved up to the BIG time and I mean big — 24" screen. It is so cool for working in Photoshop. I can have two or three pictures open side by side and do all sorts of things. This is the computer I am using today to type this. This computer is not being replaced but rather I am adding to my collection. Any day now, the friendly delivery driver will pull up in front of my house and bring me one of these:
A MacBook Pro. And I am excited. For the past 10+ years, my Hero has forbidden me to have a laptop. He said it was for my own good because I needed to get away from my computer and my work sometimes, but he has finally consented. I can't wait to see the things I will be able to do with this new jobbie! I can sit in my recliner and watch Food Network and surf all at the same time… oh, yeah, and study and work on school, and do my church duties, too.

This has stuck in my mind

and the thought keeps making me laugh.

I heard one of those, "When we were kids . . ." things and it said, "When we were kids, no one had to look for their keys … they were in the ignition!"

The really funny part is, it's true. When I was in middle school, there was an advertising campaign to get people to take the keys out of the car! How funny is that?

I was

40 years old at the time of the 9-11 attack on America
38 years old on the first day of Y2K
36 years old when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash
34 years old at the time of Oklahoma City bombing
33 years old when O. J. Simpson was charged with murder
32 years old at the time of the 93 bombing of the World Trade Center
29 years old when Operation Desert Storm began
28 years old during the fall of the Berlin Wall
25 years old when the space shuttle Challenger exploded
23 years old when Apple introduced the Macintosh
22 years old during Sally Ride's travel in space
20 years old when Pres. Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr.
18 years old at the time the Iran hostage crisis began
15 years old on the U.S.'s bicentennial Fourth of July
13 years old when President Nixon left office
11 years old when Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot
8 years old at the time the first man stepped on the moon
7 years old when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated
4 years old during the Watts riot
2 years old at the time President Kennedy was assassinated

Some things get better with time

There are dishes that you prepare that are supposed to sit for a while before you eat them so that the flavors "marry." Pea salad is one of those dishes. I haven't made pea salad in almost ten years.

As with most things in my life, there's a story behind that little bit of information. My mom was a terrible cook. She could slaughter a box mix. Really. However, there were a few things that she could fix better than anyone. She could fling a mean hamburger. I still don't know what she did to them, but she made hamburgers better than anyone I know. She was also the queen of fudge-making. I've tried for years to use her recipe and get the same results, and sadly, I fall short. (My sister inherited the crown.) She could also just whip up a marvelous pea salad.

Shortly after she went home to heaven, my family was eating at a buffet and I was at the salad bar. I saw the pea salad and found myself standing in public with tears coursing down my cheeks. I would never have Mom's pea salad again. It sounds like such a little thing, but my heart was truly broken. I couldn't hardly eat anything the rest of the day. Time passed. One day several years later I was again at a buffet (hey, with six kids, you do what you can) and I saw the pea salad. This time, though it was bitter -sweet, I wanted some. I ate it quietly and thought of Mom.

Today, for the first time since before she died, I made pea salad. This time the memories that flooded my heart — memories of a woman who couldn't hardly boil water but could stir up a pea salad to die for — this time the memories made me smile.

1966

As I prepared to enter kindergarten at Mrs. Jaebker's Finishing School, this is what was happening in the world:

In China, Chairman Mao launched the cultural revolution. Anyone with an education became a suspected enemy of the state.

The United States Supreme Court ruled that poll taxes were unconstitutional.

MasterCard is born as Master Charge. Next year, Congress would hold hearings to debate the legality of credit cards.

IBM introduced single-cell Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM).

The first effective vaccine against Rubella (German Measles) was introduced.

The United States Congress voted to prohibit prayer in public schools.

The Supreme Court ruled in the Miranda case giving birth to the Miranda warning: "You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney to assist you prior to questioning, and to be with you during questioning if you so desire. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have an attorney appointed to you prior to questioning."

Twenty-seven years

I slept better last night than I did all those years ago. I was too excited to sleep. It was an incredibly rainy day but that didn't matter. I was going to be Mrs. Mark Cannon and that was all that mattered.

Wondrously, the clouds cleared an hour before the wedding. Everything went off without a hitch and I was hitched!!

For these 27 years, Mark has stood beside me through the rain and through the sunshine and I couldn't be happier.

Summertime!

I was asked the question the other day about my memories of summer and thought I'd share the answer here.

When I was a kid, the day school got out we shed our shoes. Mom would pick up several pairs of 50¢ plastic flip flops for us to wear to the store or to church. And I grew up where people say 110° F without blinking. Do you know how long it takes to scrape melted tar from the bottom of the feet of a kid who ran barefoot on the blacktop all day?

On Saturdays, two great things happened: I got 50¢ allowance and the Bookmobile came to the Pic & Pac (convenience store) at the end of the street. With my allowance, I could get a bottle (and later a can) of Coke and two comics. Then a with a stop at the Bookmobile, I could pick up 10 books for the week. By the time I was 8, the librarian who drove would pick out several books for me in particular because I had read all of the ones they usually brought.

I'd walk back home (until I got a basket for my bike) and sit in the shade and drink my Coke while I read the hours away.

A few nights a week, we would lay a pallet of blankets out in the backyard and sleep out there because it was cooler than being in the house.

When August rolled around, we'd go to Payless and buy shoes for everyone @ 2 pairs for $5 and we had to start wearing them a couple of times a week "to get used to them" before school started.

I know that nationwide, the 60's were a tumultuous time, but on the backside of the West Texas desert, it was a good life. (If you skip that whole crazy mother thing.)

Ride, Terri, Ride

My parents specialized in outside toys. Outside toys meant we weren't playing inside. When you have five kids in eight years, outside is a good idea.

When I graduated from kindergarten, I got my first bicycle. It was 1967 and like all other transportation at the time, bicycles were cool. I got a purple banana seat bike. I was cool. The only problem was, my dad didn't believe in training wheels — throughout my entire childhood my dad didn't believe in safety nets, but that's another story.

So I had to learn to ride without training wheels. Oh, and my dad believed I should teach myself. All of those comfy, cozy images of a parent running along with a kid on a bike and letting go … yeah, that didn't happen.

I couldn't ride in the street, either until I learned to ride. This was interesting. I had to learn to ride in the driveway and many times the car was in the driveway. Are there any other fascinating elements we can add to this scenario? Oh, yes, the rose bushes beside the driveway … you get the picture.

But, this little 6-year-old girl was determined, and despite the bumps and bruises from cracking into the car, and the lacerations provided by thorny rose bushes, I learned to ride. I lived on that bike for most of my childhood.

There were other outside toys, too. We had a swing set and a jungle gym in our backyard. (And we actually had hard dirt under our play equipment.) Yep, the little girl with the fashionable pearl necklace is me. You will notice that I had on a blouse while the boys had on t-shirts. I was feminine. The grumpy boy in the dark blue t-shirt is my brother. The other two boys were our best friends, Cliff and Rusty.

When I was ten, my brother got a pogo stick for Christmas. I could tell you how cruel this was since my brother's disabilities made it hard for him to even walk a straight line, but I'm sure my parents had a reason.

Jimmy didn't see the reason though and he gave the pogo stick to me … after it got left in the driveway and run over by the car and the handle was broken off. But, again, determined, I learned to pogo without a handle. I could pogo a mile without stopping. Looking back it probably shook something loose in my little brain and that would explain some things.

Ah, yes … the magic of childhood. Honestly, it was a rough and tumble childhood, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I learned to improvise. I learned to take a fall and get up and go on. I learned to avoid the thorns. And I learned to savor the sunshine on my head and the wind through my hair as I rode a purple banana-seat bicycle across the West Texas desert.

1961: The year I was born

What things cost:

• Car: $2,275.00
• Gasoline: $0.31 per gallon
• House: $18,800.00
• Bread: $0.21 per loaf
• Milk: $0.60 per gallon
• Postage Stamp: $0.04
• Average Annual Salary: $6,471.00
• Minimum Wage: $1.15 per hour

What was on television?

• The Defenders
• Dennis the Menace
• Lassie
• Candid Camera
• Bullwinkle Show
• Car 54 Where Are You?
• The Rifleman
• Ben Casey
• I've Got a Secret
• The Price is Right
• Bugs Bunny (One of my personal favorites!)
• Dick Van Dyke Show
• Dobie Gillis
• Steve Allen Show
• Naked City
• Bob Newhart Show
• Donna Reed Show
• The Untouchables
• Dr. Kildare
• Hazel
• Route 66
• The Flintstones (in primetime, no less)
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Avengers

Newton Minnow in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters said:

"But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

"You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it."

If only he knew . . . .

What new things were introduced?

Coca-Cola introduces Sprite.
Johnson & Johnson introduces Tylenol.
IBM introduces the Selectric typewriter.
Jim & Linda Long introduce their first child: me.

The Grocery Store

When I was a small child, a visit to the commissary was a full-fledged family outing. My parents always got two baskets — one for children, one for groceries. The first stop in the door was the animal crackers. (As long as we were eating the cookies, we weren't begging for other stuff.)

Then we made our way down the narrow, dimly lit aisles and my mother filled the other basket with cans and boxes and glass jars. When we got to the checkout. The lady on her stool had to scan each item — but wait, she wasn't scanning them with a machine. She had to scan each item with her eyes to look for the little price sticker put there by some stock boy. Then she had to enter each amount into her numeric cash register.

Then came 1969 and the barcode scanner. Now, stockers just open cases and fill the shelves with pre-marked cans and boxes and plastic jars. Somewhere in an office, a clerk changes the prices on a computer screen and the checker just swipes the item across a mysterious glass pane in the checkout counter.

Still, when I go to the grocery store, I often have my grandson with me and I pick up the magical box of Barnum's Animal Crackers.

Toys From My Childhood

Do you remember these great toys from the 1960's?

Etch-A-Sketch



Needless to say, my drawings did not look like this!

Then there was always the Easy Bake Oven.



Maybe it was just me, but the stuff I made in this thing was nasty! That I have burn scars on my hand from the lightbulb!

Talking about burns . . . Did you ever have a Thingmaker?



I wonder how many kids went to the emergency room, after "heating them up"!

The games were a lot more fun!

Did you ever play Operation? (I loved that game!)



And Twister!



This was back when they made real toys.

In My Lifetime

Do you remember when pop-can tabs looked like this?


That's what they looked like until 1974 when the stay-on-tab was invented. I was already a teenager! Can you imagine how many of these little tabs would be laying around today if we still used them?

In My Lifetime

I was reading a news story yesterday about some scientists who were working on a thing called "The Grid" that is supposed to replace the Web. Okay, we'll see, but there was something in the article that stunned me. The article said the Web was inventing in 1989!

Wow! I was in my late 20's before we had the Web? It seems like it's been forever! I do remember when AOL opened up a gateway to this thingy called the web, but even then it was so hard to find stuff.

Last week was the 35th anniversary of the first cell phone call. I was in junior high then.

These things have me wondering what other life-altering changes have occurred in my relatively short life. I plan on posting some of those things in the coming weeks.