I whispered,’ I am too young.’
And then, ‘I am old enough.’
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I could love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.
O, penny,brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O, love is the crooked thing.
There is nobody wise enough,
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love,
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I don’t know how you make the time
To do the things you do,
You cook and clean and wash my hair,
when is there time for you?
You helped me with my homework,
you took me here and there.
You gently tucked me into bed
and softly said a prayer.
I know you get up early,
to see that we aren’t late.
How do you get us fed and clean,
and always look so great?
I guess what I am saying,
is you mean alot to me.
And I appreciate the things
you do- for us, your family.
Though once a year is not
enough to hear these things I say-
I love you, mom, with all my heart!
Happy Mother’s Day!
To set the reader in the mood for a typical Friday night partying with friends, along with a little ditty that I happened to read on Facebook recently that we sang “way back in the day”, I want to have you think back and remember, or perhaps experience for the first time what it was like to be young and “free”, with little responsibility and even less material things. First of all , remember, we didn’t care about material things. It was part of the idea of being a hippie. We didn’t call ourselves “hippies” as a rule. But a lot of other people did. It wasn’t near as evil or mysterious as outsiders suspected. It was usually just a group of friends, sitting around in the sparsely furnished living room of a friends “pad” or house, enjoying a little pot and a lot of munchies , such as M n M’s, potato Chips, candy bars, soft drinks, beer, whatever we could get-whatever someone could afford and brought to share.
I am not advocating this lifestyle or condemning it, though as a mature adult, it seems rather trivial.
Some of the friends had jobs or went to school, some of the girl had babies. Most were in their late teens to mid twenties. The furnishings in the living room often consisted of thousand dollar stereo on which to play albums and 8 tracks which a lot of our money was spent on. The stereo was often sitting on a long board with cement blocks as legs. The house was filled with hand-me-down or throw-away type furniture. I don’t remember the houses being dirty or lacking in style. It was clean and the furniture well arranged. The door to other rooms often had strings of beads hanging from ceiling to floor. There were lava lamps and psychedelic posters on the walls.
The music was the best part of being with friends on a Friday night or any other nights. No one was forced to take drugs, and usually, the drug of choice was marijuana. The music we listened to consisted of my all-time favorite (still), Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, J.J. Kale, old favorites from the Woodstock era, or any southern hard rock groups friends brought in to share with others. We turned the music up loud, sang along, pretended to play the guitar (some of really could, but not of the quality of the groups we listened to. It seems there always one person who put on a one man show of pretending to play the guitar, sing and dance around the room.
These were fleeting times, soon all of us would either rejoin the real world of college, jobs, family, or fall through the cracks that lead to more dangerous drugs and lifestyles. Still, I remember them fondly, and I imagine a lot of other people do too. I have seen a recurrence of a “hippie” like, earth lover types lately, and, to be honest it makes me smile. The new hippies may eat food that was (and is) strange to us who lived their youth in the 70’s, but they still decorate in a similar, though maybe more sophisticated manor, they still have beads on the doors, the pictures are more likely to be beautiful woodland scenes than psychedelic posters, the music more modern rock, hip-hop but still mingled with the favorites that have lasted the years.
Now, for those of you who have stayed with me this long-your reward-the song or “ditty”, if you will that has been sung by generations of hippies, just to get a laugh.
(Sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row your boat” )
“Roll, roll, roll a joint, twist it at the end. Light it up, take a puff, share it with a friend!”
Peace and Blessings to the ‘hippies” of any age who may have smiled as they remembered….
WordPress Friends:
I am looking for PROMPTs to write about. I used to write for quite a few, but it seems they have all stopped publishing. If you know of anyone who publishes PROMPTS to write for, please, let me know! Thanks.
beebeesworld
Today, he sits in the drivers seat as we listen for the rumble of the school bus, listen for the squeal of the brakes, and I watch him disappear into the bus as I scoot into the drivers seat.
If it were not for an error in the school drivers ed list, he would already e driving, so I am savoring these few extra moths when he has to be my chauffeur, my co-pilot.
Two or three years ago, it seems he played with Lego’s and played video games, this year his is studying computer coding and just finished an internship for the school system in this area. Where has time gone?
In three years, he has grown eight inches, and has almost caught up with his brother, who is 6’5” tall.
I miss my baby, we were so close. All of my children and I were close. The one I lost at age 15 when he collapsed while playing baseball, I dream of, eyes wide open , of who he would be, what he would be doing eight years later. I feel cheated, lied to. His death cost me more than words can describe.
I enjoy days with my daughters, chasing babies as I once chased them. They sigh and say, “I don’t know how you did it with six when two drive me crazy!” And I just smile and say, “Mom’s with lots of kids grow extra hands and endless hearts.”
The nus stop is beside my oldest son’s house, where he, his wife and three kids live. To see those little white heads running up to me and saying, “I love you, Beebee.” is a gift beyond compare.
Still, I have learned there is nothing like your own children. Grand kids as wonderful, but they are not yours. You and your own children have secret languages, know each others inner thoughts. You know how they like to be held, you can nurse them when they are fussy. You have your schedules, your speial subjects that you enjoy, things that arre privte between only you and yours.
Don’t get me wrong, grand kids are great, Not just because of the old addage that “You can send them home.” but that they are rather like a glimmer of your own child mixed with a gleam of their other parent. Sometimes you catch a familiar look or action that you remember from long ago-a smile, an impish grin, a silly giggle.
To see your last child. drive away in his own car, leave for college, get married, is so much more exciting to them that it is to the mom-left alone, feeling useless. A largely stay-at-home mom like me especially suffers when they have lost a child forever and have to watch that last living child spread his wings and fly. Your tears are filled with both relief and pride.
I was an only child. I learned about sibling rivalry from my own kids. I dreamed that my kids would grow up and be like the siblings I never had, but they didn’t. They are siblings to eachother-not to me, and I have to settle for being the mom who was once everything and is now, one who wove their being, but has found herself out of yarn.
I’m am surprised and proud of my youngest son. I was/am an old hippie, jeans and peasant shirts, leather sandals, guitars and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He dresses is suits and ties, has computer skills that make me feel illiterate, he worries that his teeth are shiny enough, that his shoes are clean enough. I wonder, sometimes, where I got him. Certainly, thank goodness, he is the opposite of his father-a Harley rider who enjoys road-side sales booths and collections of used clothing. At least my son and I think alike- finding joy in discovery, whether in nature, or in technology.
One day, it seems, a mother is looking into the eyes of a new life, never knowing what that child will become , And then, in the blink of an eye, that baby is a child, a teen, a young adult, a father or mother themselves. Life goes by much too quickly, sometimes bitter-sweet, just realizing that as they grew older, so did you.
Having to look in that dark glass of what might have been when we loose a child, is the worst pain a mother can feel, yet each moment spent with that precious child glimmers like a diamond. I don’t have another mother who is a close friend that has lost a child, neither can I can tell you how many times I would have liked to smack the well-meaning people who have , lost for words, remarked, “I know how you feel, I lost my sister, brother, friend,( fill in the blank). NO, they do not know and I pray they never will.
Next spring, watch the first pale leaves emerge from a flower, look at it each day as the green grows darker and buds start to form. Close your eyes and inhale the sweetness of the bloom, then let the flower go to seed and plant the seeds again next year. Life does not stand still, it must be protected and revered.
Read “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran if you want to get a beautiful picture of the phases of life. Read it to your children, sing to them, teach them poetry, and don’t be surprised when one day your grandchild repeats that poem or sing that song as he walks beside you along life’s path.
School Daze Haiku Set
Alarm rings out-wakens me-
That first, dreaded day of school .
Where did summer go?
My schedule is wrong-
Sleepy-eyed counselor visit
Schedule more sleep, please.
Tomatoes fall over
Pumpkins lay like huge balloons
Tears fall, goodbye summer
August-my birthday
All I want is more summer-
Less classes and bells
Yellow buses hum
I just want to go back home
Drink more cocoa with mom.
Across the room, a picture of the two of you,
Its seems like yesterday, but its been 8 years,
in the purest hell. You- taken only four months later.
Your little brother now 6’3” and growing-
the girl who has his heart isn’t me.
I am alone in my heart-I’ve taken in my sick dad-
and the daily reminders of why I left home at 18
haunting my every quiet move, with doors down,
curtains up to accommodate walkers-hospital supplies.
Every time I think “life” can get no worse, it does.
I need you, I need your brother to be little again.
I want to teach 6 kids about bugs and butterflies
and play in the creek. I want to live, love, dream.
Tonight, if and when I close my eyes, please,
my beautiful young man, stolen for no reason,
come to me, be with me, let me remember life.
She wiped the tears upon her dress.
“I’ll take no more.” She did confess.
As he stood staring at the sky. He whispered to her, “Darling, why?”
“You leave when autumn’s just begun with furs, and grains and many guns. You stay until the melting snow drives you back home, more crops to grow.”
“I must.” he told her, gun in hand. “to sell our furs and crops again.”
“It does not take four months of cold to travel there and back, I’m told.”She glared at him with angry eyes as clouds approached in autumn’s skies.
“But weather makes the trip back home to dangerous to make alone.” She listened not to his protest, and brushed the dust from her worn dress.
“The children need you, so do I. I cannot bear to watch one die, the way I did this season past, with no one here to help the rest.”
“I know.” He bowed his ruddy head. “I’ll find some other way instead.”
“John Griffith takes the trail nearby.” She told him through her misty eyes.
“Then I will ask if he will go, with me, through ice and cold and snow.” He walked to her, the children came. They gathered there, out of the rain.
“Tomorrow, I will go to town and look until I hunt him down.” He smiled and drew her near his chest.
She felt the heat of his warm breath, and knew this winter, they would stay, but not alone, sick and afraid.
Walking on the island shore at night always held a fascination for me, especially with my young teen. We would walk along, watching as the lights on shore glimmered off the amazing expanse of water all around is. It was one of those moments that needed no words, the feelings, the magic, spoke for itself.
He reached down and picked up something, turned to me, held it up and smiled. It was a whole conch con, shimmering in the starlight. Wow! I said, as we walked on. I will never forget that night. It is burnt into my soul. A tear runs down my cheek even now. It was the last night we ever spent on the beach together.
After the darkness,
Blue skies surround me
Clouds drift on the horizon
Drifting away at last
Every day is different
Fresh and exciting.
Gladly, I look for
Hovering bees and bugs
Ice melted at last.
Just one warm day
Keeps me hoping
Long after cold returns
Moonlight sparkles
Night times stars
Overhead-your head and mine.
Perhaps I treasure nature
Questioning it’s rhythms
Reining in its surprises
Turning from chill to warmth
Until I come upon the first
Violet, a sure sign of spring.
Wonder if other over it as much
X-citined as I am
You may know-tell me
Zestfully smiling.
beebeesworld 