Grateful-and Holding



Here's the challenge. Write for 5 minutes. No rewrite. No edits. Write straight from your heart for the pure joy of forming the words and sentences that put expression to your thoughts and feelings. Then, link up to The Gypsy Mama and share the link. 

Its 5 Minute Friday, y'all!  Come on and join the fun!

The prompt:  Grateful
Go:

In April of 1981, I sat in front of my black and white television with an infant in my arms and a toddler at my side and watched the first launch of our new Space Shuttle program. Tears of wonder and awe streamed down my face.  I was not yet a full-blown space nerd, but I was entralled with the program and wanted to be sure that my children grew up aware and excited about the US Space Program. 

I thought of watching launces during school and that thrilling Sunday evening when we saw the pictures of the first moon walk.  It was an exciting time to be alive.

Little did I know in 1981 that my life would take the course that it has, or that space flight would become such a part of my life.  My husband, my amazing Rocket Man, builds space flight hardware.  He is a NASA subcontractor and has been involved with the Shuttle program for 29 years.  I have walked the past 13 years of his career with him.

It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to be beside him on October 28, 2009 when  ARES IX launched successfully and to know of his part in it. 

Tonight... this morning...I am watching the end of that era.  Atlantis is on the pad and the clock is at T-3:00:00 and holding. 

And I am very grateful.  Grateful to have had a brush with this noble dream and program of a proud America.  Grateful that I can tell my grandchildren and great-grandchildren that their Granddaddy was a part of that.  Grateful that something so amazing and awesome a part of our everyday life.  Grateful that when I crest the hill of my daily drive, I look out and see Saturn Rockets strongly standing sentry at the entrance to our town, Rocket City USA.

The beginning and end of an era.  And I am grateful to have been a witness.  I will not soon forget. 
Godspeed, Atlantis.  Fly true and wing your way back to us.  For all you represent.  For all your proud moments of glory.  For the brave crew who have flown you over and over again.  I am grateful.
Always.
Grateful.

photo added after timer...taken with my phone
from the television coverage of NASA TV

Home

Here's the deal:  We write for 5 minutes from our heart.  We write unedited. We write for the joy of it.  We write without rewrites. We write and we link up and we share with each other.  Pretty neat idea. Come with me and join http://www.thegypsymama.com/ for 5 minute friday!  You won't be sorry, I promise.

The Prompt:  Home
Timer set for 5 minutes

Go:

Home.  I used to think it was a house.  Where I grew up.  Where my parents were.

No longer.

Home. It became the house where my children were.  Where we laughed and sprawled and crawled and it was a vast array of different houses, as we were a military family.

No longer.

Home.  It turned into a place I didn't want to be because it was as empty as my soul when their father left and the children scattered and I was facing a dark and uncertain future...alone.

No longer.

Home.  Now it  is that place where I handed my very wonded and bruised heart to a man whose heart was so tender and also war-worn.  Home is where he kissed me and in that kiss I began to believe that my heart could heal.  Home is where he put his arms around me and they have stayed.  Home is where he brushes my hair from my face and whispers, "God Bless my Molli and keep her in His care" in the middle of the night when he thinks I'm asleep. Home is where he intentionally works out to stay strong should I need him to lift me and carry me up the stairs on days I just can't make it myself.   Home includes all of our children and grandchildren and extended family, but mostly, it is that circle of unending, undying love of a union born from hurt and pain, cemented with grit and determination, blessed of God and nurtured with love, care, tenderness and laughter. 

Home, for me, is in the presence of the Rocket Man of my dreams.  Where he is, where we are togehter...that is home. My forever love.  My heart...Ed Massey

Stop

{Picture added after the timer}

~Mollianne

Somehow

Somehow, I thought I'd have more anwers than questions when I reached my {clears throat loudly} mid-fifties!  Silly me.


Somehow, I never really believed that I'd have to exercise more and eat less as I got older to maintain a size 6 body.  Ooops!  That one is in the rear view.  Silly me.


Somehow, I thought that once I was no longer listening for babies needing to be fed, children who might be ill or having a bad dream, teenagers sneaking in after curfew, or a husband who worked shifts...I would sleep deeply and soundly all night long.  Silly me.


Somehow, I thought that my energy levels would always remain high and I would be able to clean house all day and go dancing all night...forever.  Or at least long past this age.  Silly me.


Somehow, I thought I would magically become disciplined in all aspects of life when I attained midle age.  Silly, silly me.


But you know what?  Where I am...still full of questions, size larger than 6 body, insomniac, less than energetic and still not as disciplined as I would like to be...I'm mostly okay with most of that.  Because what I have somehow gained over the years is more grace. 

Grace to learn to trust God more fully for all my needs. Grace to become friends with me.  Grace to give myself a break.  Grace to linger over the good things and try to forgive the bad.    The grace of being loved wholeheartedly by a good man.  Grace to enjoy my grown up children and their spouses, my stepchildren and my adolescent grandchildren.  Grace to embrace my aging parents in new and poignant ways.  I find new graces daily and cling to them.


Somehow, in all that grace, I've found that I sort of like me.  Lots more than I ever thought I would.  Silly me! 

~Mollianne

Cranky!

It doesn't happen often, or at least I don't recognize it if it does, but I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  Feeling cranky.  Really mean cranky.  And I don't know why.

The first person I talked to was Chef Phil at work.  When he asked me how I was, I said, "I'm cranky."  He kissed me on the cheek and told me I might be cranky but I smelled nice.  Instead of saying, "Thank you!" as my Mother and Neenie taught me to say when someone said something nice, I said (maybe snarled), "Better to smell nice and be cranky than to stink and be cranky."  But I smiled after I said it.

When another co-worker asked me how I was feeling, I said, "Cranky!"  We went on to have a nice conversation, in fact...we laughed about it.

Rocket Man called to check on me, as he often does, and I told him I was feeling cranky.  He asked why and I had no answer.  I told him I was just cranky and that was that.

Even my Mother called and I told her I was cranky and she laughed. She told me, as she has for years, "You have the same pants to get glad in that you had to get mad in."  Wisdom from Ruby Jean, a dear friend.  We then laughed about my crankiness.

As the day wears on, I find that the more I say I'm cranky, the less cranky I feel.  And the more I am inclined to laugh at my earlier assessment that I'm cranky.

Seems that my crankiness abated a bit once I was in a nice, air-conditioned building that felt cool. 

I'm anxious to see if I feel cranky when I go out in a few minutes. 

I'm not much of a mathematician.  But I have come up with a formula.  It goes like this:

Ho + Hu + SRDMB = CM

{Hot + Humid + Sweat Rolling Down My Back = Cranky Molli}

I'm afraid its gonna be a lo-o-n-g summer!

~Mollianne

Five Minute Friday...On forgetting

Here's the challenge.  Write for 5 minutes.  No rewrite.  No edits.  Then, link up to
The Gypsy Mama

The prompt:  On forgetting
Go:

I'm learning to live with it, but I don't like it. I have some neurological issues and one way it manifests itself is that I forget. It is mostly short term memory loss, but still...it is unfamiliar territory to me.

I have to write things down. All things. I used to keep a calendar because it was socially acceptable, but I didn't need it. I remembered all the appointments, birthdays and other things that one puts in a calendar. I remembered my schedule and my childrens' as well. I knew those things. Just knew them.

I could remember your birthday if you ever told me the date. I just remembered. I couldn't remember my husband's birthdate last week. I look at my grandchildren and ask, "What is your name? Do I know you?" I do it to be funny, but it is because the name is simply gone.

I live with the fear that I will forget more and more. That I will forget my husband, my children, my grandchildren, the life that we have worked so hard to build together. That I will forget my faith. That I will forget myself.

Stop

In Which I Say Much of Nothing about Why I Haven't Blogged Much of Late

In the midst of a vacation, a tornado, an anniversary, a birthday and some other stuff...life has gotten totally out of hand here in MolliWorld.  And while I am filling up a notebook with things to post about, I haven't gotten around to posting anything lately. 

In fact, not much has gone the way I planned lately.  I'm not complaining, I'm simply rolling with it. 

So, while I'm in the process of some major changes involving my blog, I'm not actually doing much in the way of blogging.  Please bear with me.  Things are about to change...in a big way.

Rest assured, Rocket Man still rocks my world.  I'm still working at the Church House.  The Boys Fantastic are still in the picture.  My Annie with the million watt smile is another semester closer to graduation.  Our left west coast kids are doing A-okay.  I had a very nice, if somewhat low key, birthday.  Things are rocking along.  I'm just not writing about it at present. 

Stay tuned, though.  Because I'm about a month away from my next round of poison steroids.  I'll be writing like crazy, if past infusions are to be repeated.

I hope you are all doing well.  We're having a normal 3-day weekend around here.  Rocket Man has already asked if he can buy me breakfast tomorrow...and if I want to go to work with him tomorrow, since he's working on Saturday.  Ah....the good life!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!

~Mollianne

Happy Birthday, Bobo!

A repost from our family blog about my maternal Grandfather.  Add a year to all the dates about how old he is and when he died...everything else is right.  I miss him, still. 




Malcolm Anderson Younger, aka Bobo

 Today is the 103rd anniversary of the birth of my Grandfather…we call him Bobo. Malcolm Anderson Younger. He died 33 years ago, so really, he’s been gone more of my life than he was here. But he made a huge impact on my life and today, I honor him and his memory.



I used to have a letter that he wrote to me. I lost it to water damage about 20 years ago, but I know what it said. He wrote it on May 27, 1957. He had just put my Grandmother on a train to Louisville, Kentucky. She was coming to help Mother. You see, I was seven days old, the third child and my oldest brother was only four and a half years older than I. Mother had her hands full. Bobo’s letter said that he was sending me the best gift he could possibly send. He sent Neenie. He assured me that I was a very welcome addition to the family. He told me how much he admired my Mother and my Daddy. He added that they were all thrilled that I was a girl, because they needed a baby girl in the family. Then, he told me that he would pray for me every day of my life.

What an amazing promise, and I’m certain that he kept it. I’m sure it has made all the difference in my life. It was a wonderful letter! My mother gave it to me when I was a teenager and I kept and cherished it until it was lost, along with much of the memorabilia of my childhood. The love he gave me in that letter remains in my heart today.

There are many things, facts, I could tell you about him. What I want to tell here, though, is how I remember him. The smell of coffee in the morning makes me think of him. My folks weren’t coffee drinkers, but he was. When I woke up in the morning and smelled coffee, I knew that Bobo was in the house. If I got up quickly enough, I was likely to see him in a chair, reading the morning paper, doing the crossword puzzle.

I was 10 the year my great-grandmother, Bigmama, died. Bigmama and I were grand friends, and her death was the first death that was personal to me. I felt a loss at her passing. We gathered at the family cemetery in the tiny town of Oakland, Tennessee to bury her. I was overcome with grief, the first true grief I’d ever experienced. I was sitting next to Bobo and as I melted into tears, he put his arm around me and gathered me to his side. He pulled the ever-present handkerchief from his coat and wiped my eyes. He told me to hang onto the handkerchief, in case I needed it. He told me not to be sad, that everything was going to be okay.

He came to see me graduate from high school and was still with us when I came home from my first day at work as the hostess at a busy restaurant. I hobbled in the door. My feet were killing me! Bobo sat down beside me and rubbed my feet. He smiled and said, “Poor little working girl! Poor little girl.” I knew he was teasing me, but he was rubbing my feet and he could have said anything he wanted to at that moment.

When I was to be married, I asked him if he would help officiate at my wedding. That brought on even more teasing. He told me that his fee was going to be quite large. He complained when I showed him the scripture I wanted read. He gave me a bad time about the cost of tuxedo rental. He told me he was an old man and he couldn’t stand that long. In March, before my June wedding, he told me that he needed me to come to his house before the wedding and get some stuff he had for me. So we made plans to make a quick trip to Missouri near the end of May. I knew that he had refinished an antique washstand for me. I had no idea that he had built a hope chest for me. I was so surprised when I got to his house and there it was. It is beautiful and to this day, it is my most prized possession. He designed it and built it out of walnut. For me. A beautiful and cherished gift.

I got dressed on my wedding day and different family members were coming in for pictures before the ceremony began. Bobo came in and told me he had something special for me. He had a dime to put in my shoe for good luck. He told me that he had gotten it the day I was born and saved it for this day. Another cherished possession.

During the wedding, as my groom and I knelt on the bench, Bobo prayed over us. We were kneeling with our hands clasped and he had his hand over ours as he prayed, squeezing tighly. Before he was finished, one of his hands was on my cheek. I opened my eyes and his face was wet with tears. He’d have sworn, I’m sure, that the tears were a result of a tear duct issue he had, but I know that they were tears of joy.

The last time I saw him was just shortly after the wedding. We were ready to start out on a great adventure, my groom and I. We were driving to Florida to a tech school and then on to Germany for our first duty assignment in the Air Force. It was mid-afternoon and really time to go. I was avoiding my husband like the plague, sitting in the kitchen with my grandparents. As much as I wanted to start my new life, it was so hard to think that I was going to walk out that door and get in the car and drive away. The minutes ticked on and I said one silly thing after the other. Finally, Bobo took my chin and made me look in his eyes. He said, “Mollianne. Its time for you to go. Your husband is waiting and it is time. Everything is going to be okay.”

That is the last thing he said to me. That is what I carry in my heart. Everything is going to be okay. It has to be! Bobo said so.

When I think of him, I think of a man called by God who spent his adult life in the ministry. A man who answered the call to duty and served (and was decorated) as a chaplain in the Pacific during World War II. I think of his engaging smile and piercing eyes. The practical jokes he played on his friends. The way he used to whistle under his breath. The manner in which he absolutely adored his wife and daughter. The pride he had in his grandchildren. His amazing woodworking skills. His quick step. A camera in his hands as he documented my childhood. Coffee and a newspaper. Crossword puzzles. Those coveralls he wore when he retired. His amazing intellect. His hands that were gnarled with his old pal, Arthur. The schwitzel he drank every night before bed. The love that he showed to all he met, both in his words and his deeds.

He’s been gone a long time, but he is very much alive in my heart. His name lives on, carried down from generation to generation. My brother is Terry Malcolm. My brother’s son is Terry Malcolm, Jr. My grandson is Malcolm. I have a great-nephew who is also Malcolm and one who is Anderson. Bobo was a man who left a legacy so mighty in our family that his grandchildren who never knew him, or if they did-they can’t possibly really remember him, have named their children in his honor. That, my friends, says a lot about the man, Malcolm Anderson Younger.

Happy Birthday, Bobo. I know that if you were here today, instead of saying that you were 103, you'd say that you were nearly 110. I love you and I miss you.
 
~Mollianne