GRANDMA'S STINGY AND GREAT GRANDMA'S CRAZY

I am becoming my grandmother when it comes to money and I remember saying as a kid I'd never be that tight with money, ever.   Now, I watch pennies LOL, well not QUITE that bad, but close.  To my great consternation, my bank is adding a $3 fee to the fee foreign ATMs already charge  -- and I was thinking SIX f*cking DOLLARS are you kidding me? a vision appeared of my grandmother .... that woman could tell you TO THE PENNY what she paid for a sack of flour and can of lard back in 1957 and my paternal grandmother was  not a dainty southern belle either. She was a big, tall, strapping woman, probably 5'10" in flats and she towered over us in her Sunday "pumps"... speaking of which, I am pretty sure if she earned $57.84 (the average weekly wage for women in 1957) she NEVER rounded up to 6.00 or even $5.80 in favor of the Lord in her Sunday tithe, God got His rightful $5.78.

And that flour and lard?  I can STILL hear her voice in a thick not quite South GA, not quite FL dialect

       "back, well 'hun  I b'lieve it'da been nineteen hunerd and fifty seb'n, Debbie Jean, mmm hmmm, nineteen and fifty seb'n" she'd slap her knee and continue with this strange exclamation -- never did figure out the source  "peeeee-heeeeee (yeah, that one) I paid a quarter and two pennies (holding up two fingers for added illustration), two WHOLE pennies.  Can you b'lieve that? ummmmm ummmmm ummmm."  (I can translate if necessary LOL)

Mamee was a trip. ... and STRONG?  People think Southern women are steel magnolias?  I guess some were and are but not Mamee, other than her incredibly green thumb and seriously, if she could have touched the clouds they'd have turned green , there was NOTHING flowery about her.  Large thick hands and feet, broad shoulders, wide hips MADE for bearing children, she was a ROCK, immovable in a storm and she raised her children with an iron fist (except one who came along late, VERY late in life ... he was a little older than me and the same age as my cousin, the son of their first born Inez and like most last, late children he was spoiled rotten. Again, I digress (good weed does that ... )

I am so sorry that my niece and nephews never really got to know her or my grandfather, and now my great nephews, nieces, the whole passel of them don't get to hear these wonderful stories about my grandparents (a little on both sides but heavily on my deeply damaged father's side).  The rift was so great, the family so fractured by mental illness (both diagnosed and undiagnosed) that the GOOD stories, the ones worth remembering and passing on, are all but dying.

Sure there was some shit, dirty laundry, creepy uncle stuff but there is also some rich, rich history there too.  I don't see the point in sharing far and wide, down through time, the dirt ... share it with a trusted few "family historians" and let THEM decide which generations and who to share it with ... it could be vital information in diagnosing dementia, Alzheimer's, pedophiles, heck, you never know we may one day be able to genetically manipulate violent behavior --- (God, we'll be bored to death) but seriously, a plethora of illnesses down the road.  It's high time mental came out of the closet and joined everyone else in the light ... but that's another blog/post.

Heaven forbid I or one of my kin -- the more distant the better -- goes on a shooting rampage ... we will need to blame it on someone so RIGHT NOW, this instant, if I decide to go out making a statement by doing something so completely insane as to slaughter a bunch of innocents, I'm blaming my great great grandmother ... damn I remember her but sooooo very vaguely.  She was already suffering from ??? dementia ??? when I was old enough to know who she was ... but bless her heart, I remember her being chastised because she had two different shoes on when we were getting ready for church one Sunday. I could NOT have been more than 4 or 5 years old --

AHHH, I digress --- I'M BLAMING NANA -- she died in in one of the "old school" state mental hospitals at Chattahoochee FL, which to this day has a horrid reputation for patient handling, abuse and neglect.  Truthfully, I was too young to comprehend the magnitude of what was transpiring, but I so remember the bitterly divisive arguments among the children (her grandchildren - my aunts, uncles and father, wow it just occurred to me that it was aunts and grandmother, my father and grandfather, my grandparent's youngest was my age).  I don't think that family was ever the same. My father used to say it changed him but BS, he was mean as a pit viper LONG before that. I hated him but I loved him ... I was 40 before any of it made any sense.... secrets. (another story LOL) ... but to this day I wonder what Nana had and what or how it might impact future generations ...

Aging, it's a HUGE looming scary problem for baby boomers and worse, we are now the meat in the stew, our kids are going to be asking "What are we going to do about Mom/Dad?"  (lightbulb: a blog on retirement communities)

After being accused or ranting (I am SO proud because I know if it pissed someone off someone was paying attention) I've decided to do this blogging thing again ... took me forever to find one it's been so long... now I have to figure out how to share these things.

Why Are We Here?

In Memory of My Friends:
Ruthie Haynes and the Donn Brothers
you all died too young

I watched this video How to Identify and Collect Psilocybin Mushrooms  and thought "I don't BELIEVE we used to do stupid sh*t like that" ... drive by a cow pasture after a rain (today we say "what cow pasture?") but yeah, we REALLY did have cow pastures in our little "urban" areas, anyway, drive by and say "wow, dude, cow pies, there might be MUSHROOMS" and we'd all pile out of the van and go digging around in cow sh*t looking for "purple rings" so we could run back home, brew some tea, make Kool-Aid or wine spritzers and try to commit suicide (or murder most foul if you let your friends drink it first)!!  Because, by today's standards and with our gradually maturing hindsight, we now UNDERSTAND that is exactly what we were doing.   

The great security and romance versus the inherent risk and tragedy of youth is the total inability to visualize MORTALITY.  Men and women "of a certain age" see their mortality crystal freakin' clear ... if we are up to 3D? 4D? then mortality is like 50D at that "certain age" and gets more clear daily. We are old, there isn't much that we haven't seen or done at least once... more if we liked it.

My heart tells me THAT is why we are here ... we are here to get old.  Don't panic. I'll get to "why some die too young and some don't".  I've heard it said that we are born to die and there is definitely truth in that statement. It's factual, undeniable, no 99.9% correct there - it's signed in blood, these old bodies are definitely going to poop the party but WHY are we here if it's just to die? First, I DO believe in eternal life, but I'm not into that at this moment ... my question is why the journey? and why do some live to see a one hundred  and others one day?  Whether or not you believe in eternal life and if you don't perhaps MORE so ... you must wonder "what is the point?" ... "why these hills and valleys?" ... "why is life so f*cking difficult?"

Simple.  I think we are born to grow older and wiser ... it is our ultimate destination, the culmination of our journey and whether we live like it or not, the mentally healthy among us do grow wiser.  ALL the sh*t that happens to us, how we act, react, the roads we take, people we meet, the people (and pets) we lose, it's our history and we learn from it, often too late.  We all know someone who died too young and each of those deaths should have taught us something.   It sounds silly even to me but I believe THAT was their purpose in life.  We have absolutely NO idea how the Lord might have used that person to further His greater goal.  Again, I don't want to muddy the waters here with religious overtures ... I simply believe that not one single life is taken or lost that cannot be used to achieve good, even achieve a greater good and perhaps, just perhaps, that was the way it was meant to be from the day that person was born.

There is no denying that each death of someone you knew or loved as a child, teen, young adult impacted you ... maybe even in ways you didn't or still don't recognize.  Multiply that by every single person who knew the person, knew about the death or might later LEARN about the death. It's just not that hard for me to imagine a death of seemingly little importance, impacting someone who will profoundly change the future. The dichotomy of death is that it can be both beautiful and tragic.  The beauty is that it can change other lives for the better, the tragedy is when we waste the opportunity to MAKE their death meaningful. Learn from it, use it to save another life, let it change us for the better.

ALL our experiences, the highs and lows, the pain, the pleasure, the sacrifices and rewards shape us, how we REACT to all that stimuli becomes who we are ... Ultimately, we each in our own way become history. It is our purpose to share the stories that made us survivors, that led us to our destination, good or bad, right or wrong.  Often the most negative of outcomes can bring the most positive change in the lives we touch.  We can teach even if we are not "teachers", we can guide with our "school of hard knocks" wisdom, we can tell what we did wrong and what we did right, what worked and what turned out to be epic fails, every single one of us has the power in us to hold out our hand and help someone else become a better person.  THAT I believe is our purpose in life ...