My baby turns 15 today!! Where does the time go???

 

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Kent

I lay in the bed every morning and listen to the news before I actually make my way up and out.

As I’m lying there this morning, I realized that the news is a depressing topic.

In the space of about 15 minutes, they reported on three family tragedies. The first one being local. A father set his house on fire, killing himself, his 9-year-old son, mother-in-law and his 8-year-old daughter is now in critical condition in the hospital. The other two were national news. One was the tragic news about the man who killed his wife and dismembered her body and I forget what the other one was but it was just as gruesome as the others.

As I’m listening to the horrible accounts of these tragedies, I’m thinking that it is such a sick, sad world that we live in sometimes and I almost hate to turn the news on anymore.

Before I could even finish my thought, I heard more sad news.

There was an accidental house fire where two young brothers died. Then there was report of another fire off-campus of a college not far from me that claimed a couple of more lives. Not to mention all the reports of the local armed robberies at banks and convenience stores.

But wait…there’s more

A Macaw Parrot was bird-napped from his home back in November. The bird has since been returned to its owner and the woman responsible for the abduction has been sentenced to two months in jail.

And when you finally think it’s nothing BUT bad news….you get a silver lining around the cloud.

Tonight’s Mega-Millions Lottery is at an all time high of $355 million dollars and they are increasing the speed limit on a local highway.

Well….damn….finally some news that makes me want to get out of bed and start my day.

I thought that this month being March and the celebration of St. Patrick's Day that it would be a good time to go back in time (and my memory) and do a little shaking of the family tree.

My great-grandmother came from Ireland around 1913. She was 17 years old when she came to Philly to live with a cousin to help out with their children.

When she left Ireland, she left behind her parents and either 6 or 7 siblings. She never went back to Ireland once she left at 17. I can't imagine not seeing my loved ones for the rest of my life. I know times were different then but it still had to be hard.

Anyway...

I don't know much about her time living in Philly, other than she was there for about 2 years before moving south. She met and married my great-grandfather and had 3 kids. One of those kids being my maternal grandmother.

As a young child I remember going over to my grandma's house all the time. My great-grandma lived with her. Even though my great-grandmother still had a very strong accent, I don't remember ever asking why she spoke differently than we did. Maybe it's because I grew up around her and it was normal to me. I never had any trouble understanding her but some people did.

I remember her being a very caring person. Full of fun and laughter. She was always quick with a smile and a hearty laugh. She was also very quick to piss off. I think this is where I get this trait from .

I remember her being a very busy woman. Although she didn't work outside of the home she was always doing something around the house. When she wasn't cooking, cleaning, or ironing, she was crocheting blankets for family members. I'm not sure how it all came about but she started entering her blankets in the competition at the state fair. She won a few ribbons and had her picture in the newspaper for one of the winning blankets.

Even though I saw her frequently and lived within the same town as her, she always wrote me letters. I would look forward to going the mailbox to pluck out that letter that I knew would be there. I would rush to my room to read it and hurry up and respond to her. The letters usually consisted of snippets of silly information about her going to the grocery story or maybe to the beauty parlor. She would tell me about her day or days and ask me about school or about my pets or my brother or my mom. I actually pulled one of these letters out not to long ago and reread it and let my kids read it. Some of her wording is 100% Irish. She never lost that and I think it's great. My kids got a kick out if because it was different to them. She had a wicked sense of humor that came across loud and clear in these letters. That one letter had us all rolling with laughter in the livingroom floor.

It was great to go back and read something that she wrote to me and the whole time I was reading it, I could still hear her voice like it was yesterday. Funny how something stays with you.

I am named after her and have turned out to be a lot like her in personality. I don't know if my mama planned on the latter one or not but that's what she got

We live on five acres so we don’t really have neighbors that we can see. There is a house on each side of us and one behind us, all separated by woods. These neighbors we do not really associate with. We are friendly, but we do not hang out with these neighbors.

The other ‘neighbors’ that I refer to at times, are the ones that live within about a 2-3 mile radius of us. Otherwise known as ‘The Loop’.

When one takes off from their house to make ‘The Loop’, one knows they will not be back at their house for at least two or three hours and most of the time it’s longer than that. By the time you stop at this house and bullshit or help out with something, it’s time to hit the next one and do the same, and so on around ‘The Loop’ until you make it back home.

 Of course, with each stop you make, someone will have this to taste or that to taste. This may be food, alcohol, or anything else that you can put in your mouth. They definitely believe in eating and drinking. The only problems I have found with ‘The Loop’ is needing a designated driver to get your ass back home and the wildfire like intensity to spread the latest news.