Mother's Day Letter

 May 6th,2021

Happy Mother’s Day.  This is your weekly memory letter from your Tennessee daughter Kathy.  My favorite recent memory of you was being able to come to see you last month.  It made our day to see you, hold your hand, kiss your cheek and hug you. It also made my face light up the second day when they brought you into the living room and you said to the assistant, “Oh look, it’s my Girls!”  My heart danced and I’m sure I had the silliest smile ever.  I know you don’t remember that day, but    Momma I will never forget it.  I think it’s what we call a “God Wink”.

Mother’s Day was always special at our house.  Dad would always get us girls' corsages.  On Mother’s Day, the carnations would be red because you and your mother were living. Dad would have a white carnation boutonnière because Nanny had passed away.  We all went to church and because it was Mother’s Day, (Not Kid Day), Dad made it a point that we all sit together with you.  We always went out to eat so you wouldn’t have to cook that day.  Bobbie and I would make you a gift like the beautiful cork earrings we made from a kit.  We took a straight pin and put colored beads on them, and Bobbie would press them into the cork. She glued the decorated cork to earring backings. They probably weighed a ton and were tacky, but you told us that they were beautiful and wore them anyway.  Dad would buy a special dessert from the grocery store and always had a gift for you.  He made Bobbie wrap it.  We always had Mother’s Day cards for you too.  You had a variety of homemade cards and gifts from your adoring girls. I miss not being able to sit beside you in Church.  I know that   Bobbie and Joe will be so happy to be able to take you again.

Charlie and I always enjoyed going to your Ladies' Sunday School class at Thalia Lynn Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.  Charlie always said he was just one of the girls.  The other ladies were so gracious and made us feel very welcome.  You were a greeter at Church for 25 years Mom.  You would go early, and welcome visitors to the church and take them to whatever Sunday School classes they were looking for or to the Nursery.  You always had a warm inviting smile and would welcome everyone as they came through your door.  I also remember the deacons would come out and hold umbrellas over the head of the ladies and kids if they were dropped off at the door during the rain.  We would leave after Church when we came to visit because Sunday was always a special time of the week.

When we came to visit you. You always insisted on giving us gas money which was always way too much and made us promise to call you when we arrived safely.  It was such a special way to say I love you.

I love you, Momma.  You have blessed my life in more ways than I can ever express.  Your memory might fail you, but your stories are safely tucked in my heart and passed on to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 

Love You….Kathy

 

Easter Sunday Letters to Mom

Dear Mom,                                                                                    April 5, 2021

Happy Easter, The Lord has Risen, The Lord has Risen indeed.  This is your daughter Kathy in Tennessee writing you your weekly memory letter.  You mom, made Easter a very special time in our life when we were growing up and even when we had our own children.

Easter at our house was a dress-up occasion. You made sure that Bobbie and I   always got new spring dresses, white gloves, hats, socks with lace, and new shoes.  I never really liked to get dressed up, except on Easter when it was springtime and my dresses had ruffles and lace and made me feel like princes.  I loved to twirl around and make my skirt take flight.

No one in our household was fond of hard-boiled eggs especially me. Back then, there were no such things as hollow plastic eggs, so you would tap a small hole at each end of the raw egg and blow them out. The eggs were hollow then and we would dye them and decorate them and eventually hide them over and over again till they got smashed or stepped on by the neighbor kids.

The Easter bunny usually hid candy marshmallow eggs for us to find in the house and there was always a chocolate Easter bunny in our baskets.  I always ate the ears first but not until after Church.

You were the source for the Easter Dresses for our girls.  You would send sister dresses with ruffle pinafores.  I used to laugh because you once told me that you hated pinafores when you were growing up.  I asked you,”  Why if you hated      pinafores,  you kept sending them to my daughters.”  You  laughed and said, “because they are cute and I don’t have to iron them.”

You loved to garden and would have flowers on the table and decorate the living room with Easter items.  You always took us to church every Sunday and especially on Easter Sunday when we really thought we were “the Easter Parade” and looked fabulous .”

You made every event in the calendar a reason to celebrate and taught me the joy of being a family.  You made family celebrations special even when we did not have family members nearby.

Thank you Momma for your Godly influence and example.  We love you and pray for you every single day.  We can’t wait to visit you, hold your hand and tell you the stories of your life in person.  If all goes well we will be making our way to Alabama to see you soon.

 

     Love,   Kathy

Letters to Mom

Letters to Mom, March 28, 2021

Dear Mom,  This is your memory letter from your daughter Kathy, in Tennessee.  Barbara told me that she was able to come inside and see you, hug you, and hold your hand.  I am very jealous and miss you so much.  She has graciously offered us her guest room to come see you.  We are thinking of making the trip sometime after Easter.

 Here is my Memory.  "I am a people pleaser.  I'm sure it started in childhood with the desire to please you and Dad. I also wanted to please Bobbie so she would play with me.  Probably the best way to explain this principle is the story of "Why I touched a Bumblebee!" I touched a bumblebee one day because we were outside playing with some neighbor kids and Bobbie told everyone that she was brave.

   Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, I announced to her and to our friends that I was brave too.  Bobbie immediately told me again that I was not brave.  I countered with, "Yes, I am!"  She continued to taunt me by saying, "I bet you wouldn't touch a bumblebee."

    I might not have been so quick to declare my bravery if I had seen the bumblebee on a nearby flower (as my older sibling had also told me that when you are stung by a bumblebee you have 10 seconds to remove the stinger  or you die!)

    So not to disappoint my sister I bravely went where no man has gone before and touched the bee.  Surprise!  It stung me!  My sister, (always my cheerleader in acts of stupidity) began to declare to the neighborhood kids that I was the bravest of the brave.  As she chronicled my deed of bravery I slowly began to count. (One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand) .  I think I was up to eight of nine with death on the horizon before she detected my panic dance of death and pulled out the stinger.

   You would have thought that I learned a valuable lesson that day...(maybe I have, looking back over the event now.)  I am not so trusting as I once was.  I have found that I don't have the time or the desire to be anyone other than me.  I have decided that life is too short for anything other than comfortable shoes.  One size fits all is a myth. Look, before you leap is great advice.  I am not brave and a bumblebee will sting you if you touch it.  As for my big sister, I still want her approval and attention.  Lord help me if she dares me to display my stupidity in some other way.  You know I will....right after her!  

   I hope you enjoyed this story mom.  I am sure you never knew about this encounter other than putting baking soda on my bee sting.  Bobbie and I had stories that we used against each other to keep from getting into trouble.  She would say, " if you tell mom, I will tell her about the time you..."  Point, counterpoint, we maintained a fine balance of power.

   One thing that all three of your girls agree on is our love and prayer for you.  We pray for you every single day and can't wait to see your again and hug you, and hold your hand.  Love you, Mom.  Your daughter Kathy

Letters to Mom... My Life as a Brown Bunnie

Dear Mom, this is Kathy and I have a memorable story for you from my life that I am sure you never knew.  I call it "My Life as a Brown Bunny" I hope it makes you smile.

    I have always been a person who embraced life with great exuberance and gusto.  Life was a daily mystery with strange and delightful twists and turns.  My world was a safe place where strangers smiled at children, neighbors knew your name, and it was safe to play outside till the streetlight went on.  Life was simple and pleasant.

   I loved kindergarten because you could color, cut with scissors, play with other children and sing.  I loved to sing and what I lacked in musical ability I made up for in volume.  I was thrilled to find out that my class would be able to sing two songs in my school's Christmas program. We practiced our two songs for weeks before the performance.  I knew those songs backward and forwards!  I could sing louder and longer than all my friends.  Imagine my surprise and delight to be singled out with four of my peers for a special assignment the day before our big day.  My teacher called the five of us over and explained that life was composed of "White Bunnies and Brown Bunnies".  "White bunnies," she said, "get up on the stage and sing, but brown bunnies are special!  "Brown bunnies get to act!"  Did she say act?

      A star was born instantly that day.  I had grand dreams of being a dancing snowflake or prancing elf.  My teacher had chosen me!  My parents would be so proud!  My sister would be envious of my success.  We all eagerly awaited our new assignments with breathless anticipation.

    "Tomorrow night," she said, "While all the other white bunnies are singing, I want you brown bunnies to act like you are singing but don't utter a sound.  It's our secret, so don't tell the white bunnies or your parents. Let's see if anyone notices. "

    

 The night of our school's Christmas program came and went.  My class performed Jingle Bells and one more song.  The white bunnies sang, and the brown bunnies acted our little hearts out.  The five of us became opera soloists without ever uttering one note.  Pavarotti could have learned from our performance.  We opened our mouths wide, gestured frantically, and swayed with the music.  We threw ourselves into our roles and for that brief moment, we were stars.

   

 Later that night my older sister, who I adored, asked me why I was swaying and jumping around the stage looking like a wide mouth bass out of water?  I proudly told her my secret...I was special, I was a brown bunny with acting abilities. 

   

 Had she been older and wiser, perhaps she might have let me have my moment of stardom, but reality is cruel, and she told me that brown bunnies can't sing, and my teacher didn't want us to drown out the other kids.

  

So, I spent most of my life knowing that I am a Brown Bunny.  Brown bunnies don't sing, Brown bunnies don't dance, Brown bunnies......(you fill in the blanks.)  I have lived my life with the brown bunny mentality.  I've finally decided that brown bunnies are special.  We have a rare ability to not take life so seriously.  We sing off-key, dance to the music in our head, laugh inappropriately, love intensely, and celebrate each day and moment. 

Little did I know that my kindergarten teacher gave me a great gift.

Your 3 very different daughters

Letters to Mom                                                          March 13,2021

Dear Mom, this is your weekly memory letter from your daughter, Kathy, the one that looked like Dad. 

 Barbara is your firstborn.  I called her Bobbie when I was young.  I remember Saturday nights you would put "Bobbie pins" in our hair to make it wavy for church the following morning. I used to think that was the reason I called her Bobbie.  Much later you rolled our hair with clips, and I remember calling them "Kathy pins" and thinking I was just as glamorous as my sister.  When I was 14, baby sister Beverly arrived, and again I had another sister who always took center stage.

The three of us are entirely different. Bobbie is beautiful and smart.  She made straight As in all of her classes and was a member of the National Honor Society.  She was a debutant and was presented to society at the debutante ball.  My beautiful brainy sister could be quite scatterbrained at times like the day she drove the car to High School with her girlfriends and that afternoon rode home on the bus because she forgot she drove that day.  Needless to say, her girlfriends were not amused waiting by the car for an hour before she remembered and got a ride from a teenage boy back to the high school to pick up her friends.

I was not the smart one unless it was something I really liked.  You and Dad gave me a lecture, "I don't care what grade you make as long as it is the best of your ability, but don't you dare bring home less than a C".   I made up my mind that if you were happy with a "C" that was my goal.  I will admit to also being the lazy one and came very close to failing many subjects, but through frantic prayer, and tutoring from Bobbie I could somehow manage a C minus.  You and dad were always disappointed, but I always thought and chuckled to myself, "If you only knew how close to failing, I actually came you would be congratulating me right now!"  

 I was "everybody's buddy" but definitely didn't stand out in the crowd.  I played a tenor saxophone in Junior High and was in band and orchestra and still can't really read music to this day.  I got a pity date to Prom 3 days before the event, and you were upset that I didn't give you enough time to make my dress.  I was just thrilled to be invited and go out with my friends. All my high school friends were in the Honor Society, and I was just thrilled to graduate.

Baby sister Beverly was a big surprise to all of us.  We got to name her as long as you and Dad agreed to the name.  Bobbie and I pitched out our favorite girl names only to have someone else in the family say, "I knew a girl with that name, and I hated her."  Bobbie wanted to name her Joy, but Dad vetoed the name.  He said, "Girls named Joy were usually sweet or terribly misnamed and he didn't want to take his chances on the name."  We finally settled on the name Beverly because the only Beverly we knew we all liked.  Barbara's middle name is Leigh, so she wanted Beverly's middle name to be Lynn so they would have the same initials.  So here I am stuck in the middle with Barbara Leigh and Beverly Lynn.  It's tough to be a Janet Kathleen.

Baby sister Bev is an island all her own.  She is very different from Bobbie and me and basically grew up as an only child.  She has a very strong personality and either loves you or hates you with very little sway in between.  She is your best friend Mom, and a strong advocate for you.  She has a temper like your father (our grandfather Carden) and feels things very deeply.  She called you daily when you lived in Virginia Beach and would call me if she couldn't reach you insisting that I drive 4 hours to your house and comb the streets to find you.  She was never married and would come home for several weeks in October on vacation from United Airlines to cook and freeze individual meals for you, clean out your closets, organize the attic, and the linen closet, throw away accumulated magazines and newspapers and do yard and garden work.  You fussed that you could never find anything after she left but it was an amazing gift for all of us when it came time for you to leave Virginia Beach and move to Alabama to be with Bobbie and Joe in your own cabin across the street from her.

So, Mom, that's us, (Brains and Beauty) (Fun and Fabulous) and (Fire and Ice) your 3 very different daughters that adore you, pray for you daily, and would love to see you and hug you.  Hope you enjoyed the stories and will write more next week.  

Your Daughter Kathy

This picture is of Lyra Jane your great-granddaughter.  She just completed 100 days of kindergarten with a little old lady photo.  It made me laugh and I thought you would get a chuckle from it.

My Miserable Merry Christmas.

Dear Mom, this is your adorable daughter Kathy, who lives in Tennessee writing you a memory from my childhood that you may not remember.  I hope it brings you joy and lets you know how very much you are loved and cherished.  Charlie (my husband) and I pray for you every single day and are so happy that you are well.

It was the best Christmas; it was the worst Christmas.  It is the one Christmas I will never forget.  I was a spoiled princess.  I had never gone hungry or lacked anything.  When I wanted a particular toy or object, I usually got it.  I may have had to wait till my birthday or Christmas but whatever I asked for would "magically" appear.

   The Christmas I was 11 and Bobbie was 14 we were told that Christmas would be very lean as we needed to replace the family car.  You and Dad had revealed Santa's real identity long ago, so you both felt like we could reasonably be included in this family decision.

    Christmas at our house was always very lavish...lots of presents, toys, games and new clothes.  So even though you both had announced not to expect any presents other than what the aunts, uncles, and grandparents sent, we really didn't believe it.

    We didn't believe there would be no Christmas because of the mysterious noises, whispers, paper rustling, and frantic cries of "Don't come in here right now!"  After all, we reasoned, neither of us could drive...so a new car was not a family gift if only our parents could take it for a spin. We also thought you were just telling us this just to see the joy on our little faces come Christmas morning when, "Surprise, Santa came after all."

    "They really wouldn't really cancel Christmas," my big sister assured me.  Christmas morning arrived in our household, and no one was allowed in the living room until Dad went in and turned on the Christmas tree lights.  We had to slide "Pocket Doors" leading into the living room from the hallway that was closed on Christmas Eve.

    You, Mom, turned to us in the hallway and said, "Do you want to go open your presents or go sing Merry Christmas to the Car?  What kind of question was this?  Who wants to go sing Merry Christmas to the car?  Let me at those gifts.  "Gifts! Gifts!" we cried in unison.  "Okay, you said and slid open the door, revealing our glorious Christmas tree and gifts...just the way we left it on Christmas Eve.    

    One quick look at the tree was enough to depress this 11-year-old. "Let's go sing to the car, I said, clearly disappointed.  "Oh no," you replied, "Let's go open our gifts.  So, we did.  It was disappointing.  It wasn't anything that we wanted, and I was totally miserable. "What's that string attached to the tree?"  Near the top branches was a note that read "To the Watson family" and the string led to the new car in the garage.

     "Let's follow the string and go sing Merry Christmas to the car!" you encouraged, knowing how disappointed we were at having no presents.  We went to the garage very begrudgingly only because Dad had on his "You heard your mother" face, and we knew it was pointless to argue.

      So, we opened the garage door and there sat the car.  Our new car, the car that had robbed us of our happy childhood.  The car that neither of us could drive.  I really wanted to kick the tires or spit on the wheels, but we were encouraged sweetly by you Mom, and also by the stern, threatening look on Dad's face to sing "Merry Christmas to you, Merry Christmas to you, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to you old stupid car!

    Oh look, you said Mom, "The string is caught in the trunk.... maybe we should open it up and look inside."  "I'm going inside," I announced tiredly of the whole let's get a new car for Christmas incident and hoped I was adopted, and my real parents might be inside waiting for me with my Christmas presents.)

   "Oh no you don't," Dad said, opening the trunk and revealing the entire space filled with gaily colored boxes, packages, dolls, games, stockings, ribbons, and candy.  "Not until you help bring these presents inside."  Presents, gifts, wow! maybe this new car thing wasn't as bad as I originally thought.  My emotions went from sad, angry, and miserable to all smiles, excitement, and total joy.

    Presents, more than I had ever imagined at any Christmas before or since.  Presents, my parents really did love us more than their car after all.  "I told you so,
" Bobbie said, wiping tears out of her face but not sounding nearly as confident as she wanted me to think.

   So that was our miserable Merry Christmas.  You told us later that was the first time you both had to sneak presents from the house into the trunk instead of the other way around.

    You and Dad really surprised us that Christmas.  Thank you for making our childhood memorable.  We always knew you both loved us and were good providers.  We would always ask Dad where he was going at Christmas time and he would just smile and say, "I'm going to see a man about a horse."  I always wondered what happened to our Christmas pony.

Thank you, Momma, for your love and prayers.  I hope you enjoyed this story about our most surprising Christmas. Your adorable daughter, Kathy 

,

January 12, Letter to Mom

Dear Mom,                                                                    January 12, 2021

 

This is your middle daughter Kathy. I am the one who is named after you ...Janet Kathleen. I live in Tennessee with my husband Charlie.  I asked you once when I was growing up why you called me Kathy when my name was Janet.  You told me that you were always going to call me Kathy but  Kathleen Janet didn’t flow like Janet Kathleen.  Your mom, my grandmother, would send me a birthday card every year with Kathleen Janet Watson on it.  It always secretly made me laugh that she didn’t really know my name.

   One childhood memory I have of you, mom is that you would write to your mom every week.  I remember watching you type your letters on an electric typewriter.  So for your birthday, I have decided to follow your example and write you a weekly letter.  Not so much what we are doing but to remember the stories of my heart.  These are the stories I will tell my grandchildren about my     Momma and Daddy.

  Since we just had a New Years' celebration, Bobbie and I were talking about the New Year Celebration we had in Idaho when I was 5 and Bobbie was 8.  You and Dad had a New Year’s adult party the year before so you promised that we girls could have our own party the following year.  I think we just had friends who were our age that lived on the base.  I remember we had Beverly and Cami Nickel and another little girl that Bobbie knew.  We all got dressed up and went to the base movies.  We got to see “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with Ethel Merman. 

Dad got all of us popcorn and drinks and we thought we were so grown up.  The movie ended at 9pm and we got to drive around town with party hats and noisemakers yelling, “Happy New Year”. I am pretty sure we were all home and in our beds long before the New Year’s countdown.  It made me feel really grown up and important.

    Your granddaughter Suzy, my middle child and the one most like her grandmother (YOU), loves to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her boys.  They all get dressed up and she plans special food and games till midnight and she has a balloon drop from her ceiling.  This year they had a confetti cannon in her living room.  She says she is still vacuuming up paper shreds! 

     We miss you, we love you, we pray for you every day.  Much love….Kathy

Anne, Your great grandmother Janet Carden Watson has Alzheimer's Disease and has very limited memory.  So when I am with her I tell her heart stories I remember about her.  She just laughs will say," Did I really do that?"