Log Cabin Wedding

 All images via my iPhone and a photo heavy post 

my friends but worth the look.

Our friends Cathy and Randy were married behind a log cabin from late 1790 or there about. This is the old door they stood in front of for their vows covered in  beautiful wisteria and bridal veil spirea flower arrangements. This property belongs to Cathy's best friend who is a professional florist who has done the flowers for the Georgia Governors Ball. I cannot convey the beauty of the grounds, house, and cabin. I wrote about their love story and engagement in my Hold Everything Lightly series in Love At The Hardware Store.

More bridal veil spirea and popcorn viburnum collected from an old home place nearby.

Many of the tables were covered in toile and the china on our table was transferware. 

The inside of the cabin was brimming with primitives and guests could eat at this table.

Now I want a cabin in my side yard. 

When asked what kind of cake she wanted Cathy said no cake. She replied "I want cakes." She had eleven different cakes made by her friends and family. We sampled as many as we could. The Humming Bird Cake was my favorite.

The Caramel Cake was gone before we got to the cakes. We had a wonderful time at this log cabin wedding. The attire was casual so Joe and I wore cowboy boots which was fun.

Thank you for your sweet comments yesterday. I am sore but doing just fine today.

♣♣♣

Please visit my Poise products review Cooling Off and enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win a one hundred dollar Visa gift card.  It's my first product review and it was a challenging subject but I did it y'all. 

Linking@Wow Us Wednesday

joy and peace

Olive

A Tease and A Win

Layering table linens gives a table more interest and besides that it's fun.

This post is a tease for a tablescape that I will post later in the week.  

The lace tablecloth was my Aunt Judy's.

 You can read about her in my Hold Everything Lightly series here. 

Aunt Judy loved antiques and was quite a character.

I am seriously gone over this china, Old Castles of Britain by Johnson Brothers.

Brown transferware evokes fall for me. 

When I saw this china at an estate sale, this summer,

 I went back the second day and bought it for half price. 

I drove home thinking about how to photograph it. 

That's when you know you are a nutty blogger I suppose.

Right? 

These charming burlap flatware holders (I have four) were won by me at Amy's blog All things Home. 

They were made by Amy's friend Kim who has an Etsy shop.

 Kim was so sweet to work with. 

You can visit her at Sew Cute Creations by Kim. 

 She makes pretty pillows and wreaths too.

Thanks bunches Kim and Amy.

♦♦♦

Please come back for my next post, on Monday, for the full Tablescape.

By then I shall have edited the images. 

Why I take a hundred photos of china and pumpkins needs some explaining.

happy fall y'all

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #13 {The Baby The Hard Way}

To want a baby and not be able to have one can drive a woman to the edge. Over the edge. When I was in my late twenties I went through an expensive infertility work up.  I prayed the prayer of Hannah of old many times. To anyone going through this process now keep waiting for the miracle. Here is my story.

I was married to Stephen, working full time as a registered nurse at the medical university and going to college at night to get another nursing degree. If you work in an institution of higher learning it is expected of you to get advanced degrees. It is a matter of status and prestige. Yet my heart was not in it. I wanted a baby. Going to class for hours each evening was making me miserable. My pay would increase perhaps a dollar an hour which was not entirely worth the effort. I have never been concerned with prestige or status. I was concerned with providing excellent patient care and advanced in my field based on that principle alone.

I started seeing what would turn out to be numerous doctors about our inability to conceive. Eventually we ended up with a well known French doctor. We both had an exhaustive physical that cost the earth. We both had medical issues and were prescribed medications. I took daily Prednisone. I had many diagnostic and surgical procedures. I had fifteen vaginal ultrasounds. They were appalling. After the doctor would see an egg on ultrasound she would say " Go be nice to your husband." Eventually my labs indicated a possible pregnancy and an ultrasound found a beating yolk sac. To say I was thrilled after about twenty negative pregnancy tests is an understatement. I was more numb than anything else. I made them draw blood because I did not believe the urine dip. The French doctor saw something he did not like on an ultrasound and I had more surgery while pregnant to sew up my cervix. A few weeks after that I was hospitalized with kidney stones. Because I was pregnant I passed two stones with no pain medicine. I hit a doctor, with my fist, when he was palpating my abdomen in the emergency room. Pain, untreated, does breed violence. In me anyways.

 At some point in the summer I was sent to a High Risk OB/GYN doctor and he said I was his patient from then on and could not work anymore. I cried when I told my head nurse. I had home health nurses come to the house for a time.  I had to lay on my left side for seventeen days because I was very sick with HELP syndrome. It was formerly known as toxemia of pregnancy.  I had acute kidney failure, liver damage, hypertension, and was starting to have total organ failure. There was no choice but to deliver the baby to save my life. My platelet count was so low I was bleeding out of every injection site on my body. A C-Section was done and CC was born at 2 lbs 9 ounces. They had a full neonatal ICU team in the operating room. CC, at 32 weeks gestation, because she had been under such uterine stress was SGA (small for gestational age) and IGR (intrauterine growth retardation). She lost the 9 ounces and had to start over from two pounds. I spent the next twenty four hours in ICU and have no memory of it.

CC spent ten weeks in the NICU. I had worked in the NICU but when it is your baby in that isolette it is an entirely different matter. Stephen was wonderful with her and not scared of the tubes and IV's.

She came home weighing 4lbs 5ozs. She had to be holding her heat and feeding well. I was able to breastfeed her until she was one years old. She remained smaller than most kids her age and I always thanked God for giving me a baby for just a little longer.

CC is now a young adult, in college and and I would do it all again and more to have her. 

She is my advanced degree, in life.

 She is a joy for any and all who know her.

Keep praying for the miracle

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

                                                      ---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

thank you for reading 

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #12 {Not A Bad Start Really}

This is a re-write, of sorts, from a memorable prison episode I wrote about here in February of 2010. It has strong adult content. Click off if you cannot handle that. It is about my first day as a mental health nurse in a state prison.

 A nurse needs to choose her attitude.
 Whether to cry, laugh, or fall into the depths of despair. When I transferred to work at a different state prison it was never mentioned that I would be the mental health nurse on the weekend. I would be the only one in charge of all the psychiatric inmates. Also, I was in charge of staffing just to keep it interesting.
 The prison had four crisis stabilization beds. Which means inmates who are suicidal, unstable, or terribly mentally ill are placed there. Some of them are cutters and have been stitched up and they rip out the sutures routinely. Sometimes they are naked and tied with leather restraints to a mattress. Sometimes they are naked because they want to be (they have paper gowns). An officer checks them every fifteen minutes. The nursing and medical staff checks them frequently as well. Needless to say it is full on electrified chaos. There are an additional twelve step-down crisis beds in another building the mental health staff supervises. The mental health inmate population in this prison averaged around six hundred inmates. The weekend RN can be called to see any of them at any time.
The first weekend I had to work I did have the wisdom to insist that another RN orient me. I had never had mental health training outside of college. Any RN with as many years of experience as I had does have some mental health experience. But still......

My first day, a Saturday, a frequent flyer was there. Let's call him Derrick. He was twenty years old. White, deathly so, as he had not seen the sun in many many months. His favorite distraction was self stimulation. Most inmates do this but Derrick had achieved a special status as a master at this among the staff. Dr. Tice, seventy years old, said one day that he almost envied Derrick this ability. We laughed ourselves silly at our sweet Dr. Tice saying that. I was being oriented by Linda, a RN, a character herself. We walked back to that CSU first thing. I said hello to Derrick through the thick prison glass. He said " Shut the Hell Up You White Motherfiiing Bitch" and threw urine under the three inch space in the door onto my white shoes. I don't recall what I said to him at that moment. I did back out and clean my shoes. Linda was howling with laughter. She said that was typical and not a bad start really. Really? That was when I had to decide on my attitude. I laughed and laughed.
Then I called Joe and he laughed with me, at me, and for me.

The remainder of that day was uneventful. I learned that everything done for the mental health patients had to be written in triplicate. That right there was worse than Derrick by far. Linda and I walked out those six locked gates with satisfaction because we finished on time after that massive stack of nursing documentation and our patients did not hurt themselves, us, or anybody else. Unexpectedly Joe was sitting in the parking lot on his big motorcycle, he took off his helmet, smiled handsomely and said
"I'm here for my Bitch."

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983


joy and peace
Olive 

Hold Everything Lightly #11 {Love At The Hardware Store}

Joe and I have a mutual friend named Cathy. 

She is full of irrepressible joy and is a big talker.  

She was not always joyous or fortunate in love. 

This is her grown up love story.

After what Cathy thought was twenty three years of a happy marriage, Cathy's husband told her he had found a place to rent and walked out on her. Their two sons were twenty one and fifteen at the time and Cathy was forty. She was devastated and grieved the loss of her marriage for six years. She had the support of friends and lived rent free in the church parsonage for three years but never unpacked. She met two gay men who accepted her and her grief and she slowly decided her divorce was final indeed. One friend is fat and one thin. She calls her little group "Two Fat Friends and A Friend." Cathy has a delightful sense of humor and has no problem making fun of herself. She is prone to exaggerate her size and her age.

A year and a half ago she was invited to a low country boil to celebrate a goat pen being cleaned. Yes, a goat pen cleaning party. It was here she met Randy, a long haul truck driver, for the first time. He was tall just like Cathy. She is five feet ten inches and he is six feet five inches. He is six years younger than Cathy. She sat next to him and they talked all night. No phone numbers were exchanged and Cathy assumed she was too fat and too old for Randy.

A few days later at work two friends called her and asked if it was all right to give Randy her phone number. They have been dating ever since. Cathy was aware he had her a ring made in Florida last July but Christmas, her birthday and other days came and went. Had he changed his mind? Was he not going to ask her to marry him? They were deeply in love. He was The One, her partner and friend. At age forty nine she was ready to make that commitment once again.

They were driving down to Augusta one day this spring and while on the interstate Randy opened the console and pulled out the ruby and diamond ring. He said "Do you want to get hitched?" A little nonplussed by this setting Cathy responded "I guess so." Cathy laughs when telling this and says "We met in a goat pen and got engaged on the interstate."

After that romantic proposal they arrived in Augusta. Randy wanted an air compressor at Harbor Freight, a sort of big hardware and tool store. The problem was it was eight hundred dollars and they did not have that much money. The customary 20% off was excluded from the air compressor. Cathy, excited and a professional business woman herself, was not having it. She asked for the manager. She said to him "Do you see how old I am? I just got engaged. Do you see that big old redneck over there? I am old and fat and he loves me just like I am. I want that air compressor for his engagement present." She says all this as she wiggles that big ole ruby ring in the managers face. The manager replies "What about six hundred and fifty dollars?" Randy says "Let's load it on the truck," smiling widely at his bride to be. Customers and the staff of the store cheered.

That is Love at the Hardware Store.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

 

 To read other parts of the series please click on series title in Pages at the top of the page

thank you for reading

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #10 {The Third Lesson}

Dion, a twenty one year old man working for a newspaper in Alabama, had been at the Sheraton all night drinking. He got in his Camaro and drove down the Gordon Highway in Augusta, Georgia. The highway has four lanes divided by an expansive grass median. Freddie, forty two, a welder,  was working the night shift for the railroad,  had gotten off work at five am and was giving a buddy a ride home. Freddies's pick up truck was a vintage 1967 Chevy and he loved it dearly. It was old and beat up but it suited him just fine. He often helped folks out and giving a guy a ride home was not unusual. He was alone in the truck when Dion crossed three lanes of traffic, the grass median, and hit Freddie head on.

I was off work that early Friday morning and saw the TV news report about an accident on the Gordon Highway. I paid no attention to it until the phone rang. It was my Big Sis and she told me Freddie had been killed by a drunk driver.  She asked me to drive to our mother's house and tell her in person. I do not remember telling mother, nor much of that day. My daddy went to the emergency room and identified his broken body.  Daddy and I picked out new jeans and a jean shirt with buttons that snapped because that is what my brother wore nearly every day. Burying him in a suit would have been five kinds of wrong. Buying those clothes was one of the most difficult tasks I have ever been asked to do. That was the moment the enormity of our loss hit me. Freddie was beloved by many and the funeral home was packed with people for his service. 

Freddie was six feet two inches tall,  with blonde hair and blue eyes.

 When he was a teen and I a tween we were often mistaken for two girls, from behind, because he had gorgeous long hair. He was quiet and sweet. He walked away from confrontation. If a fight started at our house (and they often occurred), he walked out the door. He taught me how to drive a stick shift. I nearly stripped out his clutch but he was patient with me. He was seven years older than me but we were pals. At the time of his death he lived three houses down from mother and would do anything at all she needed. She was never the same after his loss. His one fault was he was a He Man with She Problems. He constantly picked the wrong women to date or marry. 

He was too sweet and they invariably took advantage of him.

He had a nineteen year old son and his life forever changed that day too.

 Because Freddie was going home from work my nephew inherited a lot of insurance money. A grief stricken nineteen year old can get into a heap of trouble with a lot of money and he did just that. Freddie's son looks so much like him, sometimes it hurts to look at him. My brother would kick his sons butt if he were with us now.

The funeral was just the beginning of the whole process because the state had to prosecute  Dion. Going to court with my parents was not for cowards. Daddy was popping nitroglycerin pills for chest pain. Mama was taking Valium. It was more than this registered nurse could take. I did not go to court  the second time Dion appeared. Turns out I was a coward after all. To my parents credit, they forgave Dion and he served only three years for vehicular homicide. My Big Sis was not so forgiving and he better hope never to meet her. Forgiveness freed my parents to move on.

I have a photo of Freddie with CC, when she was two in my kitchen where 

I see it every day and it makes me smile and ache for him. 

He loved her so much and I loved him all the more for loving my premature baby.

 Freddie's death was my third lesson in holding everything lightly.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

To read other parts in this series click on the series title in Pages at the top of the page.

thank you for reading

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #9 {Sickle}

Sickle Cell Disease is a cruel, complex, and debilitating disease.
The hemoglobin cells are in the shape of a sickle and look like little  crescent moons. A sickle is used on a farm to fell crops like wheat and is crescent shaped.  Sickled cells do not flow normally and get stuck in vessels and joints causing lack of oxygen and tremendous pain.  This puts patients in "sickle cell crisis." This disease harms organs, muscles, and bones. I took care of these patients for seventeen years.

 Here are two of their stories.

Ruthie

I met Ruthie when I was young and so was she. 

 Ruthie was eighteen to my twenty years. She was in sickle cell crisis, needing IV (intravenous) fluids and IV narcotics. Sickle cell patients often required copious amounts of pain medications. They could be difficult to care for because the pain medicine prescribed did not work fast enough or good enough. When morphine and Demerol on demand pumps came along they helped but we were still constantly adjusting the dosage and calling the Hematologist who cared for these patients. Ruthie was admitted, in crisis, frequently to 5 South and later to 5 North, 3 North, and 5 West. All general medicine units where I was the charge nurse. The hospital became her second home. Her physician, Dr. K was and is truly a  kind and gentle man. He had compassion for his hurting patients. I always marveled that sometimes they fired him because he did not give them more Demerol. Ruthie never fired Dr. K she had too much smarts for that. She had a sense of humor too and smiled often. There develops a kind of rhythm to caring for the same patient over the years and Ruthie and I had that. 

One hot Georgia summer Ruthie was admitted to the corner room of 3 North 

with abdominal pain and kept asking for warm compresses on her tummy. Warm compresses did not exist in our hospital and so we would heat a wet towel in the microwave (this was not a brilliant plan). Ruthie's abdominal pain seemed difficult to access and hard to medicate. She wanted those warm soft compresses. She began to demand them. Then her abdominal skin was burned by one of them (incident report). "First do no harm" was all I could think of at that point.  She did not care. She wanted another one when I said "No" and Dr. K said "No." Dr. K wrote a psychiatric consult. The psychiatrist came the next day to see Ruthie and went to her room and after a minute stepped into the kitchen and heated her a wet towel. 

I was taken aback.

He had not read the consult.

Ruthie died, at home, before age thirty due to sickle cell disease.

Reggie

Reggie, a free spirited guy, was admitted to our 

medicine units over the years in sickle cell crisis many times too.

 He was an older patient for this awful disease.  One time, at age forty, he was admitted to the emergency room in crisis and they tuned him up with IV fluids and IV pain medications. Then they sent him off on his way. Reggie did not go home that day, he had other plans, he told me mysteriously. When the emergency room doctor got his lab results back  he had a shock as Reggie's hemoglobin was 3.0 (should be at least over 8). He could not reach Reggie so he sent the Sheriff to his house and scared Reggie's mama to death. When the Sheriff found Reggie, having fun downtown drinking a few cool ones he confessed later, Reggie was appalled they had scared his mama because Reggie lived with a chronically low hemoglobin his entire life. A low hemoglobin that would be deadly to most of us his body had learned to adjust to because of his disease. He was admitted to my floor that day and I gave him a couple of units of packed red cells. 

Then he was really tuned up.

I do not know what happened to Reggie. 

I hold out hope he is still with us.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983 

thank you for reading

Olive

 

Hold Everything Lightly #8 {Extension 2802}

I have edited this post for time because it was posted at 9:58 am May 1st but Blogger posted it as 9:58pm April 30. That is why I am sending it out again.

I was attracted to the terrible frantic pace of a teaching hospital because I didn't know any better.
 I liked fast and that hospital seemed fast paced and somehow more thrilling than other hospitals.
 I thought if I could survive there I could work anywhere. That prophetic thought proved right in the end although I never left the University (the prison nursing jobs I had were part of the University system). A teaching hospital is not quiet, patients do not get rest, there are droves of students and doctors and consultants. You cannot turn around without a student asking a question. Each of my patients had four doctors at least. The halls have a hustle and bustle, a noise that hardly subsides until evening. I was hired by a head nurse that I do not remember because she then resigned and I was put in charge. I did not have my registered nursing license yet. Back then you practiced with a graduate license until your board results came in. Here I was in charge of 5 South, telephone extension 2802, a thirty six bed unit usually staffed with two RN's, two LPN's, and four nursing assistants and was a graduate nurse. I had a pulse so it worked for them, I suppose.
I was too green, stupid, and scared to leave or protest.

The labyrinthine halls of the fifth floor took me to a bathroom to the right of the nursing station where I would be sick every morning. Across from the nursing station was a small work room surrounded on three sides by divided windows and we called it the "Birdcage". We sat there, which time rarely allowed, and wrote our nursing notes. The old part of the hospital was where 5 South was located and the patient rooms were too small and four rooms contained four patient beds each which I found reminiscent of the 1950's. It made for lack of privacy and difficulty caring for patients. We also had a few patients on ventilators who had 24 hour nurses at the bedside.  We did peritoneal dialysis for patients with end stage kidney disease. I struggled to care for twelve to fifteen patients and be in charge of the staff and answer the questions of numerous doctors and accept calls from admissions. Code 99's, when the patient is found pulseless and/or in acute respiratory distress, were not infrequent and I became experienced at handling the code cart and CPR (not both at the same time of course). I barely floated in the miasma that was that horrible place.

 I took care of the first AIDS patient diagnosed in our hospital (it was the early 80's). My heart was broken by families of these AIDS patients who often deserted them. We had young leukemia patients that we gave units and units of packed red cells and units of plasma to and often times we lost them. I was so young myself I had not yet built that steely core that protected me from these deaths and each patient loss was crushing for me. One particular patient, Janice, was in her late twenties and was the mother of four young children. Her husband left her when he realized how ill she was with leukemia. Her mother took care of her and the children. She was readmitted to 5 South at Christmas and our nursing staff anonymously gave Christmas gifts to her and her children. Her mother called me a month after her discharge and told me Janice had bled to death in her arms at another hospital.

Three years after I became a  RN I started shaking uncontrollably in the "Birdcage" and could not stop. The patient deaths, the long hours, shift work, and being in charge of the cage were too much and I crashed off the 5 South cliff emotionally. By this time we had a competent and compassionate head nurse and I received the help I needed. I am also thankful for wise and caring doctors who were there at the time. Anyone who was born in the frenetic fires of 5 South were in no place to judge and knew it.  Funny enough my husband (Stephen not Joe), parents, and church did not take my mental instability quite as good.

I do not remember the telephone extension of any other nursing unit I worked on in all these years, at the University, but I shall never forget 5 South's extension 2802.  I had paged interns and residents to that number a squillion times and it is imprinted in my memory. When I am eighty five and have frontal lobe dementia perhaps I will be dialing 2802, 2802, 2802.

♣

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

To read posts 1-7 of  Hold Everything Lightly  click on the series at the top of the blog.

thank you for reading
Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #7 {A Simple Wedding}

I met Stephen at church.

 Not my family church, Green Pond Baptist Church, where my dad's people attended for over two hundred years. No, I was bad and went to the First Christian Church of Jackson where a young South African pastor was visiting because he was studying for a degree at Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina. His name was David Webster and his wife was Pam.  They had four young daughters. I was sixteen and had never heard a British accent before in person. David was and is a compelling speaker and pastor. Droves of young people and adults started to come to hear him speak. This is when I was thought to be in a "cult" and essentially excommunicated from Green Pond Baptist Church. I actually lived with David and Pam for a short time. Daddy allowed me to get a passport, plane ticket, and a South African visa. The plan was I would finish my last year of high school in South Africa and live with the Webster's. The plane was set to take off on January 3. Stephen asked me to marry him on December 21st.

Stephen's family was all that mine was not.

 His parents had been married for thirty some odd years. They were people of faith and went joyfully to church. They sat down together for meals, homemade biscuits, beef roast, vegetables, coleslaw and dessert every Sunday after church without exception. I was attracted to him and his family. Other than with my aunt and uncle I had never had what he took for granted. He did have some reservations about marrying me because of my parents. We waited to marry until I completed my first year of college. I wore that engagement ring the last year and a half of high school proudly.  I was eighteen when we married and two weeks later turned nineteen. Stephen, soft spoken, kind, sort of a farm boy was twenty three,with blond hair and blue eyes.  I knew we would have beautiful babies.

The wedding took place at an outdoor venue, Hopeland Gardens, in Aiken, South Carolina on May 23. I had thrifty habits back then too. My gown and veil were purchased second hand and were gorgeous. The entire event cost me no more than a couple thousand dollars and I planned it with the help of Steve's sister. One of the songs I had for the wedding was "Fairest Lord Jesus" an odd choice but a favorite of mine.  The gardens had curvy serpentine brick fences and small reflecting pools. We floated large white magnolia blossoms in the twin reflecting pools. Daddy did give me away and that image is priceless to me however the wedding was a disaster. Mother was admitted to the hospital that morning with a kidney stone and my darling brother Freddie was beside her in his tuxedo listening to her holler (no doubt she was in terrible pain) and he was conflicted and upset. He came to the wedding after all that and stood in the heat. The man who married us carried on and on. It was so hot Freddie fainted on the grey wood deck we were standing on and broke his nose. Freddie, who was over six feet tall fell like a tree, he fell hard. An ambulance was called for Freddie. They asked if I wanted attention too because I nearly fainted after Freddie.  I was upset and hot so I went and changed out of my beautiful wedding gown. In the remainder of the photos I am in my little skirt and top but I was cool. The reception went fine, considering the circumstances, and everyone was kind and loving to us. 

There is a pool of blood, on the otherwise pristine pale grey deck, in the wedding photos.

After the reception we drove to Savannah Georgia for a honeymoon. 

We were glad to escape our own wedding.

 More glad than most couples I fear.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983 

To read other installments in the series click on Hold Everything Lightly  

at the top of the blog page.

♣

thanks for reading

Olive  

Hold Everything Lightly #5 {Summers}

Everything about my childhood was not grim. 

Mother with her odd mountain wisdom and cunning, think Hatfield and McCoy cunning, decided to send me to Hangingdog for the summers.

Hangingdog, a community in extreme western North Carolina was where mother grew up and where my uncle and aunt maintained the family farm.

 Kenneth and Judy had two daughters one two years older and one two years younger than me. I was perfectly sandwiched between those girls. Uncle Kenneth farmed the land full time and Judy worked in the larger town of Murphy part time. They ate everything they grew and seldom went to a store. They had chickens and pigs. I remember Judy once exploded a chicken all over the ceiling with a pressure cooker. It took days to clean bones off that ceiling and I am still wary of pressure cookers. They grew beets and canned beets and we ate beets every day. Judy made me eat beets and I detest them. 

Try eating beets once or twice a day for three months.

Judy came from a wealthy Murphy family and was quite eccentric.

 She talked different, her speech was precise and elegant. Not a mountain dialect at all. Not like mama and Kenneth. She was thin, tall and had a long face and long, long straight black hair. She looked a lot like Cher. The driveway to the home place was winding and long and the place was isolated at best. Judy would mow the grass stark naked. This was rather alarming to me. She had me embroider Pot Pocket on her jean pocket. I do not believe it was a joke. The county they lived in was a dry county and allowed no liquor or beer sales. But no worries, the moonshine flowed bountifully from those mountains. I tried it once in the back seat at the drive-in theater in Murphy. White Lightning indeed.

 I have never tasted ignited gasoline but that is a good analogy.

When I was in my mid thirties Judy called and said she had a quilt of my grandmothers.

 She and Uncle Kenneth had been divorced for many years by this time. I drove to Murphy to get it. Judy looked much the same, long black hair flecked with grey and she still had that voice. She had always been passionate about antiques and the past. The house, upon my arrival, was brimming with vintage and antique items. To the degree that we could barely walk through the rooms. We made our way to a back bedroom and she opened an old steamer trunk and took out eight quilts and handed me one. She said it was grandmothers. I am confident she knew the correct quilt. She also offered me a job as a nurse. I turned her down as I had no desire to relocate, but there again, Judy always had the ability to surprise. It is entirely possible her motive was to get me there to care for her family member but I appreciated the quilt. My cousin has given me numerous vintage items of my aunts over the years and I treasure them. Perhaps my love for things of the past was sparked by Aunt Judy.

Judy died far too young, Kenneth is still with us and my cousins reside in Texas.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

                                                      ---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

To read other parts of the series click on HOLD EVERYTHING LIGHTLY at the top of the page.

Thank you for reading

Olive 

New Series A Departure For Olive

I am starting a series called Hold Everything Lightly on Olive Out that is a departure from the routine topics of vintage decor, thrifting and decorating. I am seeking to record, especially for my daughter and my sisters, the story of my early years and what happened prior to them coming on the scene. It will not be pretty or nice. There is death, violence, abandonment, drunkenness, and loss. Embracing, in writing, the dysfunctions I have known all my life is harder than I expected  I use a quote for the series from someone I have admired since I read her book the "The Hiding Place" when I was fourteen. Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian, imprisoned by the Nazis in Ravensbruck concentration camp where her sister Betsie died. I make no claims to any analogy between Corrie Ten Boom and my life. I would never do that. I have not forgotten what she wrote about holding that which you love lightly. It has held true for me as so many close to me have been taken early in life or circumstances have drastically altered my path.

I hope you can stay with me despite the heavy content. I have written the first installment and cried the entire time. I venture to say that I will anger some or all of my family members at one time or another. As the installments unfold it will become apparent that as I grew older I was able to understand and forgive my parents for their mistakes. I do pray my cardiovascular system holds out. I also trust my sense of humor and faith, both of which were born of this story shine through.

The first installment will post on Wednesday 2/29/2012.
I am in the process of deciding how frequently to post in the series.
 This is real work for me while taking photographs, editing, and writing about estate sales and decor is pleasure most of the time.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open." 

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

Olive