chatty cathy revelations

my daughter and i went into the card store a few days ago in search of the perfect ornament for someone special. one of the traditions in our family is to give an ornament to each other every year. my mother started this tradition and i've continued it to the point that when my children leave their respective nests to build their own elsewhere, they will have at least one large box of ornaments (perhaps two). and of course, half the fun is in the choosing of the ornament -- something special to represent each distinct personality. every year when i decorate my tree and pull out my ornaments from others, i am reminded of the year they were given, the person who gave it and the special place each person holds in my heart.

so as we were looking through the ornaments at the store, i happened upon a chatty cathy doll ornament complete with a string to pull to make her talk and was suddenly transported back in time to when i got my chatty cathy doll and what eventually happened to her. i know that hallmark has done an excellent job of recreating toys from my past (barbie, radio flyer wagons, lionel trains, madame alexander dolls, gumby, to name a few), but it was a surprise to see chatty.

she had been one of my favorites as a child because she would talk to me -- sometimes when no one else would. face it, as a parent i've learned how difficult it is to keep several balls in the air simultaneously and still give a child the amount of attention they deserve or need. so i understand better now why sometimes my parents couldn't pay attention when i thought they needed to. but as a child u just start to think that maybe there is something wrong with u and perhaps ur just a figment of someone's vivid imagination -- well, at least that's what i did. so chatty became my confidant. i told her stuff i didn't tell anyone else. and she responded -- ok, she responded with canned responses but when ur 5 or 6 that doesn't really make a difference.

probably one of the saddest days as a child was when she got broken and we won't even discuss it because its not pretty. but her leg was broken off and her chatter box stopped processing the phrases correctly and she was reduced to little more than gibberish... it was devastating to realize that i wouldn't be able to have conversations with her anymore when she would respond in some coherent manner -- even if it was only with canned responses. and so she got relegated to the toy box with the plastic cushioned seat and all the circus animals on the outside and i grew up not giving her a whole lot of thought through the years because as i got older my mom became my best friend and the one i could talk to about anything.

until the day i saw the chatty cathy ornament and realized that i was missing my old "friend". missing ... something .... i figure i've been missing something for a while now. i miss my mom ... as i always do at this time of year ... i miss talking to her about things that are going on in my life. i have other friends and as my daughter reminded me yesterday when we chatted briefly about me perhaps moving, that i can make friends easily. but the thing is, i would miss my old friends. i would miss the easy way we chat about things, how there is never any judgement. that advice is given gently. support and encouragement come naturally and isn't forced. i can be who i'm supposed to be with no mask to hide the "sins of the past". that all takes time and energy to build that trust with someone. do i have that in me to do again? to redo my life for what feels like the umpteenth time.

my daughter said she's pretty "flexible" and "wouldn't mind a change". but she's young and can adapt easily (as she has proven by going off to college and settling in so readily) -- as i did so many years ago. i'm not so sure i can now. sometimes i'm scared by what is ahead. i have friends who have travelled all over the world to countries i can't even fathom myself going to, and i realize that i'm stuck in my need to have things planned out. that's why now, this period of time in my life, is so frightening to me -- because there is no plan, i can't see how the pieces will come together and it scares me and the only thing that keeps me grounded is papa god -- as he always has these past 6+ years. still, i long for the simple time of being a child, not having to think too much about how to make a go of it, not many worries in my life and playing with chatty cathy.

thoughts on b'days when ur past the half century mark

so yesterday was my birthday and i turned um yeah -- 53 -- and someone reminded me that that's more than half a century and i'm like yeah u can leave now.... its not that i mind getting older, i just don't need to be reminded of it -- coz i already know it -- like when i roll over in bed and try to get comfortable and realize there is no comfortable anymore in bed. and really, in my view its just another day.

i'm a january baby and we tend to get short-shrifted in the present dept. like the december babies. but for me it was never about the presents. evidently i was born in the middle of a snow storm. my dad (a music educator at the high school) was having a meeting with students and parents at the house and my mom went into labor. not being the type to make a fuss, she waited till the meeting was over to tell my dad she was in labor. their first attempt to make it to the hospital in the snowstorm was thwarted and they had to take another route. the only way they knew where the road was was because of the telephone poles. good thing she was in labor for 18 hours -- gave them lots of time to get to the hospital. idk if she was awake or not because in those days -- they tended to knock women out with drugs during delivery. she wasn't awake for my brother's birth, but whether she awake for mine or not, idk. but i do know that my father was not present in the room when i was born -- fathers were NOT allowed to be present during the birth of their children.

when i was younger, i would tell my mom on my birthday how much i loved her and thank her for giving birth to me. even when i moved away from her home, i would call her on my birthday. some ppl would say that was odd -- i think it was appropriate considering all she did for me. that first year after she died was really hard for me -- the holidays without her were miserable, but when my birthday came around and i realized i couldn't call her with my usual message of love and gratitude, it was particularly hard.

i had two "parties" on my birthday growing up. one when i turned five (which we have silent movies of because that was BEFORE video cameras with sound) and one when i turned 16. my 16th b'day party wasn't anything like the ones u hear about nowadays. i think there were like 6 ppl there (including my then boyfriend and my best friend Patty who would eventually become my boyfriend's girlfriend -- we won't even go there). we have pictures. its not pretty (think early 70's and hippie clothing). when i turned 21 it was not a big deal and i didn't even go out and drink -- like most ppl do -- i wasn't into that stuff.

somewhere along the line, b'days became just another day. i can't quite put my finger on when it happened, but i was pretty much ok with it. i never liked ppl making a fuss over me anyhow, so it was just as well to try and ignore the birthdays. it wasn't that i was trying to stop time or turn back the clocks, although sometimes i would have liked a "do-over". i just didn't want the attention.

several years ago on my birthday i was having a bad time of it. my marriage was falling apart and life just generally seemed like the pits. i was doing laundry because it was "just another day". it was really cold outside and i didn't know that the drain pipe to the washing machine was frozen, so when the washer started to drain, water went flying out all over the place until i could get to it to get it stopped. i had to call the person who managed the apt. bldg. we were living in. he came out and took a blow torch to the pipe -- which was plastic (u could smell the melting plastic). unfortunately, he also tried to burn down the building because he set the fluff from the dryer on fire. i wasn't able to use my washer for a while until they could get someone out to replace the drain pipe that he melted. with two children in the house, that's not a good thing. i basically sat and cried and said it was the worst birthday i'd ever had. it was probably right around then that i resolved i was going to completely ignore my b'days.

i always made a big deal about my kids' b'days. i would always try to have a few friends over for them and do the whole cake and games thing for them. they had friends who had big deal parties, but my kids had to contend with smaller scale just because we couldn't afford to do a whole lot. i learned how to be really creative and stretch a dollar while still allowing the kids to have a good time. but there was one b'day for my daughter that was particularly bad and i won't go into the details suffice to say that it was controlled by one of her teachers at school and not by me and thus made for a bad time (she says) for her.

when i got divorced my daughter and i moved into our current abode a week or so before her b'day, which is three days before mine. she wanted a sleep over so i basically busted butt to make sure there was enough sleeping space amid boxes for the girls she invited. sometime in the middle of the night the freezer door got left open and all the food in the freezer thawed. i had to throw out a bunch of stuff and with no money to buy more i figured it was gonna be a pretty miserable month. actually, friends came to the rescue and it was all good. but my daughter basically told me that her birthdays were always miserable (and evidently that was all my fault). ever since then i've tried really hard to make them happy events, but she always manages to find something wrong with them. i have resigned myself to the fact that i'll never meet her expectations when it comes to making them happy for her.

at what point does it matter how many b'days we have. i mean they tout in the news the ppl who survive over 100 -- although even that doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore -- now its if u live to be 110. i think about what god wanted for us when he created man. that we would never know sin and never die. ppl lived hundreds of years. but our world just got more and more corrupt and as it did, our longevity went down the tubes. now we're content with 70, 80, or 90 years of life.

my dad used to say that living another year sure beat the alternative (death) -- he's turning 83 this year and can sometimes be a cantankerous old man. but i used to think (and still sometimes do) that dying wouldn't be so bad because i'd get to go be with papa god.

honestly, even with all the junk in my life, i have liked getting older and hopefully wiser. but i realize that things rn't like they used to be and never will be again. families don't live together for generations anymore and the youth don't learn -- or want to learn from their elders -- most of the time there isn't even any respect for their elders and y should there be when most of the time their parents can't be bothered with them for want of fulfilling their own needs. what i have to look forward to is being cantankerous like my dad, or worse yet, incapacitated in some way, unable to care for myself and not knowing who i am or where i am (like my grandma and grandfather were), possibly being subjected to abuse in some facility because my family can't be bothered with me (oh that's subject for another blog some day). my dad says that if he ever gets to the place where he can't take care of himself he's going to shoot himself -- i think he won't be able to if he can't even take care of himself, but w/e. let him live with the idea that he will control his demise if that keeps him happy. sometimes i think that my mom was blessed because she didn't have to suffer with some awful illness, she didn't have to know what it felt like to be incapacitated in any way and she got to be with papa god -- something i know she was looking forward to. but she missed out on getting to see her grandkids and be a part of their lives. that perhaps is one thing i will be sad about -- not seeing the next generations come into the world or seeing them develop.

i've seen a lot of changes in the world -- some good -- some not so good -- and i know that it probably will only get worse before jesus comes for his bride. ppl r rude to each other -- even when they r in the wrong -- there is no sense of value anymore -- we've become a throw-away society -- if it doesn't work, get rid of it -- even with our own families it seems. there is very little attempt on the most part to try and get along with each other -- find some common ground where we can stand side by side with each other and make things work for the common good. if it doesn't work, don't fix it, just throw it away. i'm as guilty as the next guy of that sometimes.

the only thing that birthdays do for me now, r to make me look at where i have been and where i am and wonder where papa god is going to take me before he takes me home. it's not exactly the kind of "celebration" that requires cake and partying....