Dear Sisters,
One of my assignments for the writing class I am taking is to write 2 times on our blog before my next lesson. I was going over the notes I wrote while at the ranch last week for Sisters Week and thought I would write about a few things that we did, especially for Our Sweet Donna, who could not be there with us.
The first weekend we spent time with Uncle Bart, Cathrine and Ben and their families. Valeria, Ben's wife, taught the little girls how to make ribbon head bands. She had boxes of yarn and ribbon spend out around her on the ground under the shade of the awning of her trailer. She and Catherine and the girls sat there for hours making beautiful headbands, with ribbon streamer, some even had flowers. The girls were so excited.
The Children had so much fun feeding, holding and loving the baby goats. There were new ones born everyday. We stood just off the back porch and watched Mother Nature bring two sets of twins into the world. Of course there were two or three babies who couldn't get attached to their mommy's, so Ruth started teaching the children how to feed them with a bottle. Uncle Lee warned her that if she started feeding them, she would have to take them home with her.
Saturday night, we had hamburgers and hotdogs and some yummy salads. When it got dark we built a fire out by Brad and Lilly's camper and they brought out their radio and turned the wild music up loud. (Mother would not have approved!) Lilly did a strip-tease for us. (Mother would not have approved!) Even Janice was shaking her stuff. In the morning, she said that the dancing made her feel better.
Monday morning, we set up the quilt, passed everyone a notebook and started telling stories. We did some timed writing, giving everyone a beginning sentence and then timing them for fifteen minutes. The first one was, " The first time I saw Penny......"and then they would each write about Penny and father and mother and the time she drove the car off the road, because she was so mad at father. We got quite a few stories written this way. And we quilted some more and only gossiped a little. We finished the quilt on Wednesday and wished it had lasted a little longer, it was so fun.
On Wednesday, I decided I was tired of the boxes of food stacked in front of mothers china chest, so we brought in a wheel barrel and started chucking everything out of the pantry. The only thing we saved were some big plastic containers of Spices. We moved everything that was related to baking over to the baking cupboard by the door. We cleaned and painted the pantry and the next morning moved all of the food we brought into the new clean pantry. Wow!! That looked good. The girls kept commenting on their total Surprise! that Jelene had so much energy and was in a cleaning frenzy.... I said. "Well, since I have a maid at home, I guess I've been storing up cleaning minutes and didn't even realize it."
We only had one real good fight with Janice the whole week. Helen informed her that we were going to go through the upstairs sheet and blanket shelves and she told Helen that the second shelf was hers and not to touch it. And Helen kindly said, "Yes, we will go through the second shelf too." Janice got mad and would not back down. We could hear her upstairs later, moving everything from the second shelf into her room.
Thursday I made it up to the middle bedroom to clean off the shelves that held some of Mother's school papers. I wanted to go through them, to see if there was anything we might need for our book. I found twelve large manila envelopes stuffed with decorations for each month of the year. Each envelope had a month written across the top , January, Snowflakes, February, Valentines and so on down the year. They each held pictures and cut outs from coloring books and magazines, to be copied or traced, then colored and glittered and cut out to hang in the window and on the door, to bring each season around in it's proper turn.
The second shelf was devoted to Cheerios boxes that were cut up and saved, just in case Mother needed to send pictures between two pieces of cardboard to protect them. This shelf also held every eight by ten manilla envelope anyone had ever sent her, to be reused again, with a new label taped over the old one. (I have a bunch of those in my cupboard, as we speak!)
On the bottom shelf I found two rolls of butcher paper rolled up with two big elastics holding it tight. Unrolling them, I found the words to all the songs we sang at Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we all gathered at the ranch in years past. Mother had them all printed out in her neat handwriting, so the grandchildren could read and sing along with us as we sang our favorite holiday songs. As I looked at the words, I could here the clear sounds of us singing, "Ding, Dong, Ding, Fa, La La La La La... all of us gathered around mother at the piano.
I rolled the songs back up and fastened the elastics to the ends, and placed the rolls back on the top shelf. Beautiful memories. Beautiful Mother.
My sweet sister Kay, loves to talk before she goes to sleep. So, as we lay in Mother's bed each night, we talked about the things that happened that day. Then when she was ready to go to sleep, she would say, "Goodnight, sis." And I would say, "Night, Love." One night as I was falling a sleep I realized that I have shared a bed with her more than anyone else beside my husband. She was always a nice bed partner. We were sharing a bed the night Mother woke us to watch Lilly make her grand entrance into the world. And now every time we go to the ranch we get to share Mother's bed. Because we are the oldest. We're old now. We deserve the best bed. We're old. And I am the bossiest. And I'm old.
Mother's bed is soft. You just kind of sink into it and let out a big sigh and relax and sleep. As I lay there I wondered how many nights she wept in this bed for her children, the way I have in mine. As we grew older and told her of the sad times we had as children, things she didn't even know were going on in our little lives, did she weep for us, and wish she could have protected us from all the bad in the world? I'm sure she did. Did we make her sad by some of the things we said? I'm sure we did. Watching her great big family grow brought her joy and pain. It's called Life. And She Marched On! Mother was a wonderful woman. She taught us to march on too.
Loves and Kisses, Jelene
