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Real Mothers don't eat quiche; they don't have time to make it.
   Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils are probably in the
sandbox.
   Real Mothers often have sticky floors, filthy ovens and happy kids.
   Real Mothers know that dried play dough doesn't come out of carpets.
   Real Mothers don't want to know what the vacuum just sucked up.
   Real Mothers sometimes ask 'Why me?' and get their answer when a
little voice says, 'Because I love you best.'
   Real Mothers know that a child's growth is not measured by height or
years or grade...It is marked by the progression of Mommy to Mom to
Mother...

    The Images of Mother

    4 YEARS OF AGE - My Mommy can do anything!

    8 YEARS OF AGE - My Mom knows a lot! A whole lot!

    12 YEARS OF AGE - My Mother doesn't really know quite everything.

    14 YEARS OF AGE - Naturally, Mother doesn't know that, either.

    16 YEARS OF AGE - Mother? She's hopelessly old-fashioned.

    18 YEARS OF AGE - That old woman? She's way out of date!

    25 YEARS OF AGE - Well, she might know a little bit about it!

    35 YEARS OF AGE - Before we decide, let's get Mom's opinion.

    45 YEARS OF AGE - Wonder what Mom would have thought about it?

    65 YEARS OF AGE - Wish I could talk it over with Mom.

   The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure
that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman
must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart,
the place where love resides. The beauty of a woman is not in a facial
mole, but true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the
caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows, and the
beauty of a woman with passing years only grows!

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Black and White

(Under age 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE . and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T; SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.

Posted in Emails

Posted in Emails

  A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and
said,   "Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like."
The Lord led the holy man to two doors.

He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the

middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the
table  was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy
man's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly.  They
appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long
handles that were strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach
into the pot of stew and take a spoonful.  But because the handle was longer

 than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. 

The Lord said, "You   have seen Hell."

 They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the
same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot
of stew which made the holy man's mouth water. The people were equipped
with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, "I don't understand."

It is simple," said the Lord.   "It requires but one skill. You see they have

 learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves."

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Too Busy for a Friend

 One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name.  

Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.

It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.

That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual.

On Monday she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. "Really?" she heard whispered. "I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!" and, "I didn't know others liked me so much," were most of the comments.

No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on.

Several years later, one of the students was killed in VietNam   and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student. She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.

The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.

As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. "Were you Mark's math teacher?" he asked. She nodded: "yes." Then he said: "Mark talked about you a lot."

After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.

"We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."

Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.

"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."

All of Mark's former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home."

Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album."

"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary"

Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. "I carry this with me at all times," Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: "I think we all saved our lists"

That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again. The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be.
 So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.