snapshots

“We kill time. We save time. We rob and get robbed of time, we lose time, and we have all the time in the world. But no one of us is powerful enough to stop the march of time or slow it down.” (actiTIME, February 20, 2020)

I was born on Easter Sunday in Navasota, Texas on the 21st. of April, 1946. My mother and daddy joined millions of other WWII survivors who married their childhood sweethearts as soon as the young soldiers came home from the hinterlands – or from England in my father’s case. They eloped in May, 1945 when my mother was eighteen years old and my dad was two years older. My dad sold appliances at a furniture store in Huntsville when I was born but we moved to Houston when, as the story goes, my dad realized he needed more income with a new baby to feed. The “story” is suspiciously silent about his employment in Houston.

He floundered for a while until the GI Bill rescued him with money for college to pursue a teaching career; and my mother’s mother rescued his little family when she made room for him, my mother and a baby almost two years old in her very small home in Richards, Texas, the same town where both my parents were raised. They had come full circle to the place and people that loved us all

me and the grandmother who took us into her home

(circa 1948)

To steal a phrase, it took a village to raise me. Although we lived with my maternal grandmother Louise Schlinke Boring who I named Dude because I couldn’t pronounce Louise, my paternal grandparents lived across the dirt road and down a little hill from our house. I stayed during the day with my other grandmother Betha Robinson Morris who I named Ma because, well, she had my grandfather I named Pa. Dude worked every day as a clerk in the general store, Pa had his own barber shop to run, and Ma was my entertainment – the greatest storyteller of all time.

Ma and me in front of her house

(circa 1950)

During the past week April 21st appeared on the calendar for 2021 – this time marking five and seventy years since that Easter Sunday in 1946. Good grief. The laptop I’m using for writing this post has a screen that is roughly the same size as the one for the first television set my daddy bought for us in Richards. That small console held a television which broadcast three channels in black and white, signed off every night at midnight with the Star Spangled Banner playing as the Stars and Stripes waved farewell for the evening. My laptop never signs off unless I tell it to, will play the national anthem only if I can Google it, and I must select an emoji to wave farewell to me at midnight or any other time.

The social media well wishes, birthday cards, phone calls, flowers I’ve received this week have made me remember each decade of my “good ride” because I have friends and family from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s and 20s who have remembered me. I have smiled at our shared memories, laughed at our conversations and am beyond Thunder Dome grateful for everyone who reached out to make this week special for me.

all good rides begin somewhere –

mine began on a horse in Texas

This week our good friends Nekki and Francie took Pretty and me out for dinner on my birthday, and as we were getting ready to leave, Nekki asked me if I had any wisdom to offer the much, much younger women at the table. Hm. Without too much reflection I said time is fleeting, moments are passing way too fast, make sure you spend those moments wisely doing things that make you happy with people you love…or something like that. If only I’d had this:

“We kill time. We save time. We rob and get robbed of time, we lose time, and we have all the time in the world. But no one of us is powerful enough to stop the march of time or slow it down.”

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if I could save time in a bottle, I’d like to save every day with Pretty…until eternity passes away