memories

Sitting On the Porch

Backstory

Today’s story is about those special happy places that people have. These are the sites tucked in someplace where dreams are conjured up, plans are made and broken hearts are healed. Your happy place may be in a tent made of sheets draped over furniture. It might be the back deck, the front porch, the rose garden, or the vegetable patch. Come along, hear my story, and tell me yours.

Sitting on the Porch

The other night, we were sitting on the back deck, watching the fireflies and gazing at the mountains that rise across the road. This is one of our favorite sites. We find calm and peace out there. The frenzy of the world tones way down and the sounds of birds and crickets give us solace.

How precious are the special places like this where moments take on special meaning, and lessons seem to sink in better and we made good resolutions and conjured up the best thoughts.

When I was growing up, my grandmother would hold court on the front porch each evening. If my sisters and I had been good that day, we’d be treated to orange soda and pretzels while Nanny told stories of her girlhood and my mother’s childhood.

Later, my mom sitting on the front porch in the evening was like a magnet for the teenagers in town. We lived right on the main street, where everyone passed by. Mom was fun, and the kids would pop in on their way to or from. She was particularly popular with the young men in town, Teasing them, listening to their adolescent fears, and providing motherly encouragement.

When my kids were growing up, we had a hanging swing on the front porch. We’d go out there in the evening and sing. They so enjoyed that singing.

What is your recollection of a secret place or a special place where life was good? Remember it, and enjoy.

P.S. Thanks for being here so many Sunday mornings, reading or listening to these stories. Consider making a comment at the end. Always love to hear from you.

[Show #362]

Christmas Decorations

Back Story

Every year, merchants present new decorations for the holiday. Modern themes are often glittery and colorful. It’s always a big decision whether to go contemporary and get new stuff or reveal in things old and traditional, coated with memories, secrets, and love.

Christmas Decorations

I do so look forward to dragging out all those tried and true Christmas decorations each year. I look forward to tub after tub of memories opened, explored, spruced up, and lovingly placed around our home.

The wreath chosen by my mother for its lush colors. The hand-made ornaments of my childhood. The treasured nutcracker with the year 1936 in my grandmother’s handwriting on the bottom. The wooden toys that march across my mantel each December. The collection of angels, each a gift from someone who decided to add to my unannounced collection.

With Christmas carols playing and candles burning, I can almost feel the presence of those I have loved over those years, paying their Christmas visit and adding to the smiles the memories bring. Some of my best times with them were during the holidays. So those special memories seem stored in the tubs, along with the garlands and tinsel, to be opened and celebrated and added to each year.

Here’s wishing you many fond memories of Christmas past and the makings of more during this holiday season. Annette Petrick, wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas.

P.S. Each year, when the Christmas boxes come out, I check hopefully for photos. I’d just love to see celebration moments captured for posterity. Alas, there are no photos. No matter how hard I look. I so admire people who remember to take the shot. Our people seem so busy enjoying each other that no one brings out their Kodak Brownie.

[Show #251]

Looking Back

Backstory

To celebrate a special birthday, family and friends prepared a video about my life. I wanted to tell you about it. It may show how some ideas for Consider This came about. May I have that privilege?

Looking Back

Hey, I’m back to that surprise party again – the one they gave me on my birthday. What a delight it was to be in the company of so many who cared enough to come out and spend an afternoon with me.

My son Michael put together a video about my life – much of which was a surprise to some. Friends from the old days didn’t know about this radio show. Grand-kids were amazed to hear about my life before they came along. As the video wound through the years in photos, it was humbling to see so many opportunities presented and accepted.

New friends didn’t know I came from coal country in Northeast Pennsylvania and decided on my career path at age 7. That’s when my first story was published. Then there were the 30 years I lived in New Jersey, where we raised our 3.7 children.

The video mentioned my travel to Caribbean islands and Germany and Poland and the number of times to Hawaii.

It covered my 20-year career, first in association management and then as a keynote speaker, facilitator, and consultant. I worked with more than 200 different organizations.

Few of the 62-people watching the video had been part of my whole, long and bumpy life. But my sister Karyn had been there, and she told the story with affection, adding whimsy and color to the broad strokes. I am so grateful for the attention and the interest, and the love.

P.S. What aspects of your past would you like to be known?

[Show #604]

Save

Reunion

Backstory

I met Bill’s relatives through their Christmas cards with scribbled messages of an idyllic childhood farm life. They all lived hundreds of miles away and plans to get together never seemed to work out. Finally, I lobbied for a visit with them. It did not take much to convince him to take a summer road trip back to the farm.

Reunion

My guy had mentioned it casually for years – He’d like to revisit the farms where he spent the summers of his youth: catch up with his cousins and their parents; meet children and grandchildren, show me the ole swimming hole and where they ran the combine.

And here we were on Route I-81, heading for upstate New York. He had contacted family members up north who made it happen and we were on our way to a fish fry; their family version of a reunion.

As we drove northward, I tried to picture how each would appear to the others. What would have changed; what stayed the same for all this time. Some of them had not seen each other for 40 or 50 years. For others, the visiting gap spanned at least a decade.

As they showed photos and swapped stories, it was evident that these were people who respected and admired what each had become. I could see how their shared experiences early in life had influenced decisions made in later years. They sang, laughed, and shed a few tears with their memories.

When it was time to leave, amidst goodbye hugs and promises of visits to come, I was really thankful for the folks who had not just talked about reuniting but made it happen. They closed the gap of people related by blood and separated only by geography.

P.S. That reunion has remained a fond memory for many years now. The in-person get-together sparked Internet communications and phone calls that have kept us all in touch. Someday we may even get around to Zooming.

[Show #221]

The Mason Jar of Buttons

Backstory

Loving children seek ways to communicate with elderly parents, even when Alzheimer’s blurs memories, steals words and causes confusion. Each encounter is a challenge, as the disease progresses. Listeners sometimes share their stories, as Amy did.

The Mason Jar of Buttons

Spending time with my mother has always been special. Now that she is slowly slipping away to dementia, it is even more important. Mom has trouble focusing and remembering. So I look for things that will engage her. This day, I was thinking about buttons.

In the depression years, women wasted nothing. When a shirt or dress was too worn to wear, it was cut into pieces to make rag rugs, and the buttons were saved to reuse. Living in that time, my grandmother kept her buttons in a mason jar.

Decades ago, my mother had given it to me.

That simple mason jar had traveled with me from house to house, unopened, chuck full of buttons. Why did I keep them? I knew I would never use them… but I cherished them as part of my mother’s history.

As I dumped all those buttons into a bowl in front of her, a huge smile lit up my mother’s face. Running her fingers through them, she chattered on about what those buttons said to her. What kind of clothing they were on, who would have worn them and when. As she did, my heart swelled that I could bring her this measure of contentment.

How inclined we are to discard things from our past. If I had tossed that jar, unopened for two decades, I would never have seen my mother’s smile of recognition – at the mason jar full of buttons.

Thank you for letting me share this with you. Somehow, I knew you would understand.

P.S.

Speaking from inside Alzheimer’s –

I’m confused beyond your concept,

I am sad and sick and lost.

All I know is that I need you

To be with me at all cost.

– Excerpt from a poem by Owen Darnell

[Show #634]

When Christmas Is Sad

Backstory

On my sad Christmases, I would write. The keys on my computer would fly. It might be spilling all my sorrow, putting my anger into words, shouting out the injustice of my circumstance. Others shed tears to cope. Some go away, avoiding the setting of their last happy holiday. Others return to that special place. Some folks are lost, seeking a means to calm the hurt.

Click to listen or follow below to read.

Christmas Sad – #123

There are times when Christmas is sad. You may be missing a loved one, or you may be far away from home, on your own, or you may be the one left behind with your loved one serving of a battlefield halfway across the world. Sometimes it helps to remember not only this sad Christmas, but all of them, stacked up in a row from childhood until now.

Considering all of the holidays in our lifetime, some are bound to be better than others. But, ah, the good ones were really fine. Think about them and you’ll simply HAVE to smile as you remember words and actions, laughter and love.

Take out photos and relive those times, so warm and loving. No one can take those precious memories away. They may be the greatest gift we were given. Once a good thing happens, it can always be conjured up again in your mind. It can always make you smile as you remember, relive and enjoy it all over again.

So this Christmas, whether it’s one of your best or not, may you have the comfort of memories of Christmases past and may you smile and enjoy them all over again.

Wishing you a Christmas with a peaceful heart.

P.S.

It’s so easy to become sour when holiday plans go awry or you are sad. You want to blame someone or take it out on somebody. Instead, do something for someone else – or a lot of elses.

Take over someone’s job so they can be home with family on Christmas.
Serve at a soup kitchen – dressed up nicely for the holiday.
Sit with someone who is ill, so the caregiver can be with family.

As the holidays rush upon us, don’t become the Grinch who stole Christmas. Help bring peace on earth to your little corner of the world, no matter what.

[Show #123]