Wordless Wednesday - Bewitching.....

The Demise of Halloween

“Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!”

We knocked on doors and exclaimed loudly as we made the rounds of the neighbors’ houses. My mother insisted we dress in “Halloween” costumes; no fairy princesses or knights in shining armor left our house. One year she made me a witch’s costume and I was so pleased with her ideas that I later copied them for my children. She sewed a simple black loose fitting dress, made a black witch’s hat from poster board, and added hair of Spanish moss gathered from outdoors. She blackened a couple of my teeth with crayon, made my face as ghoulish as possible with make-up from her dresser and I carried a thick, knobby stick from some unfortunate tree. Mother had other creative ideas for costumes, but the witch with moss hair was my favorite. Of course, after the first time, we learned to put the moss in a hot oven for a short time to kill the resident critters.

When we shouted “Trick or treat!” we really meant it. Fortunately, everyone gave us treats so we did not often have to think of tricks. Store bought candy was coming into fashion, but we preferred the home made goodies that most people handed out – cookies, popcorn balls, caramel apples, and very infrequently, coins.
“Stick your hand in and take as many as you can hold in one dip,” invited the occupants of one home holding out a bowl of pennies. Small hands can’t hold much, but the dream of a fortune was there.

I only recall one grouchy soul who refused to give us treats. On top of his refusal, he announced that we had better watch out.
“I am a policeman!” he announced in a loud, intimidating voice.
Policeman or not, we didn’t feel he should be allowed to get away with his refusal. After all we were supposed to” trick” if he didn’t “treat.” It took us a while to decide the offender’s fate. We didn’t want to be destructive and get into trouble and we certainly didn’t want to go running down the street with a policeman chasing us. After much discussion, I was chosen to sneak quietly over to the water spigot on the side of his house. I turned it on just enough to have a steady stream of water, but not hard enough to draw his attention. There were no known repercussions to our prank. We just hoped he had a flooded yard the next day.

Halloween was not celebrated in the countries where we lived as my own children were growing up. In Peru, All Saints Day was celebrated more as a night of revelry before a day of religious fervor on the first day of November. In Australia, Halloween was not mentioned, but they celebrated Guy Fawkes Day around the same time. By the time we moved back to the U.S., Halloween seemed to be facing its demise. Homeowners turned on their porch lights if they wanted to hand out treats and the “trick” part of the phrase was all but forgotten. My children had a sample of running door-to-door collecting treats until the Pixy Stix incident.

In Pasadena, Texas, the year after we arrived in Houston, Ronald Clark O’Bryan gave several children Pixy Stix laced with cyanide. Two of them were his own children whom O’Bryan planned to kill for the insurance money. Other children were given the laced candy to throw investigators off the track. His son died and O’Bryan was executed by lethal injection 10 years later. Halloween was never the same after that. Most children stopped going door-to-door and the ones who continued the tradition were advised to only eat commercially produced, and wrapped, treats. Hospital Emergency rooms offered to X-ray the bags of loot. For several years, needles, pins, razor blades, and other dangerous items were found in the treats by X-ray. Concerned parents banned trick or treating, turned their porch lights off and started hosting neighborhood parties.

We lived in a sparsely populated area with about 15 homes, only half of those with children, so the neighborhood planned progressive parties. Our children moved as a group from house to house with a different activity and treat bags at each house. A pinata, active games, and bobbing for apples, kept the children busy until they arrived at our house. We had a bonfire and a bubbling “cauldron” with refreshments to top off the evening.

Halloween has lost its fervor, it seems. Some children are allowed to beg for treats, but the idea of tricks seems to have disappeared. Halloween as we knew it, a fun holiday with good memories for children, has given up the ghost.

Proper Words and Peanut Butter Sandwiches

I worked in an inner city hospital of a large city, a designated Level one trauma center. We never knew what would come through the doors. I thrived on the chaos, trauma, people, all the out-of-the-ordinary happenings and cases. It was energizing. I was an adrenaline junkie. All the time I worked there, I kept a journal. I reread it occasionally as a reminder that outside my carefully controlled life, there is another world. Perhaps, one day, I will allow glimpses into that world through my writing.

While I was having a peanut butter sandwich for lunch (I need to go to the store :) and thinking about what to write today, I remembered my 9 year old GD-Em's experience at school. She is being taught to write , and say, what she means. I would not have thought that would be a challenge for her because she has always been very literal. For instance, when she was two years old, she always insisted on being right next to me in the kitchen while I was cooking. One day I almost tripped over her.
"There are too many little girls under my feet!" I announced with some frustration.
She immediately stopped what she was doing and began looking under my feet.

Thus I expected her to be able to explain things rather well. Indeed, it only took her a couple of tries to get it right. For a school assignment, she chose to write instructions for making a peanut butter sandwich. The teacher made the sandwich using her instructions.
"Put some peanut butter on the bread," Em wrote.
The teacher took a small dab of peanut butter and put it on the bread and gave it to her.
Em was more explicit on the next try.
"Put peanut butter all over the bread."
The teacher carefully spread the peanut butter all over one side of the bread, turned it over and spread peanut butter all over the other side of the bread.
What a wonderful way to teach children to think about what they what to say and to get their points across properly.
GD-Em finally did get a proper peanut butter sandwich and learned a lot in the process.

As writers, professional or not, we all struggle to use just the right words to get our points across. Whether we write books or letters, the words we use are important. It is too bad many people lazily rely on common trash words instead of searching for one that will convey the meaning they desire. If you are interested in expanding your vocabulary and saying exactly what you mean check out Wordsmith. You will be able to confound your adversaries and never be at a loss for words again.

Butterfly - Collodi, Italy

Linus Quilts

The "Peanuts" cartoon strip been a popular icon for many years. It appeals to the casual reader while imparting some philosophical ideas to anyone willing to search a little deeper. I am not sure that is what its creator, Charles Schulz, intended, but that is what has happened.

Along the way, we have grown to know and love the characters and, perhaps, even identify with one particular one. In 1995, Karen Loucks gave birth to "Project Linus" never stopping to dream of the potential impact of her acts. The name was based on the character of Linus from the "Peanuts" comic strip.

Linus Van Pelt inspired the term "security blanket" with his classic pose. He is the intellectual of the gang, and flabbergasts his friends with his philosophical revelations and solutions to problems. He suffers abuse from his big sister, Lucy, and the unwanted attentions of Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally. He is a paradox: despite his age, he can put life into perspective while sucking his thumb. He knows the true meaning of Christmas while continuing to believe in the Great Pumpkin.

Karen initiated widespread giving of handmade quilts, blankets, and afghans to children who seemed in need - hurt, abused, abandoned, sick, lonely - children trying to handle whatever life was throwing at them. It worked! The quilts gave comfort and security to children adrift in a world not of their choosing. They wrapped themselves in the love and concern given by strangers whom they would never meet. It was theirs. It was tangible. It helped. The tragedy at Columbine H.S. is a prime example of the power of love in the form of a quilt.

I am honored to have been on the construction end as well as the giving end of Linus Quilts. Our quilting group regularly makes and sends to a central spot, small quilts for small humans, and I have frequently given quilts to children in the Emergency Room (ER). Children who are brought in from car accidents, rushed to the ER in the middle of a cold night from their warm beds, and those just traumatized by adults who had no business having children in the first place.

An incident was related to me by a paramedic who transported a 6 year old girl from school to the ER.
"She asked to hold the flowered, stuffed bear that was hanging above the stretcher. So I gave it to her."
"What is her name?" she asked.
"Whatever you want to name her, " he told her.
"I want to call her Mrs. Flowers."
The child talked and played with the bear all the way to the ER. When they arrived at their destination, she handed the bear back to the EMT.
"Will you look after her and always call her Mrs. Flowers?" the girl asked.
The EMT handed the bear back to her and told her it was hers to keep.
"Really? You mean it is really mine to keep forever and ever? My very own bear?"

Yes, child, it is really yours. This was early in the history of the "Linus Project." What a shame we had no quilt then to wrap around you with love. Many people are striving to make sure no child is left out.

"Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece"

As a military family, we were always on the move, but we always made time to visit my Dad’s parents. On one visit, when I was talking to my Grandmother, she became very serious and asked me to please hurry and study medicine so I could find out what was happening in her head. When I tried to pursue the subject, she refused any further conversation about it. She obviously had some inkling there was a problem.

My Granddaddy invited us all for dinner one evening and Grandmother cooked. There was plenty for two, if you were not very hungry, but barely enough for 11 of us to have a taste-testing. I think that is when my dad knew there was a real problem. He took us aside, asked us to be patient, and promised to take us out for hamburgers after dinner, but seven hungry, young children didn’t understand what was happening. I am not sure anyone understood what was happening. If the military thought you needed a family or parents, they would have issued them. The Air Force moved us to California.

When Daddy retired and we were getting ready to move back to Texas from California, it was decided my sister would go early and stay with my grandparents to help out until the rest of the family arrived. I was to accompany her since I would be starting college classes about that time. Plane travel was not common then, so we took the bus and Granddaddy picked us up at the station. Grandmother greeted us when we arrived at the house, but she became increasingly upset when she saw the luggage. She did not recall the arrangements everyone had agreed to and demanded that my sister leave. I was confused, my sister and Grandfather were devastated. My sister had always been Grandmother’s favorite and we could not reconcile the anger. Fortunately, a cousin took my sister in until the rest of the family arrived.

Grandmother would leave to drive to the grocery store and disappear for hours. She didn’t recall where she had been. The police stopped her a couple of times for driving on the wrong side of the road. Granddaddy had to take her car keys away from her. She became paranoid and didn’t recognize us much of the time. Normally sweet, quiet, and retiring, Grandmother became more belligerent. The doctor diagnosed her problems as “hardening of the arteries” and told us to put her in a nursing home. It was believed arteries got clogged and cut off oxygen to the brain. We didn’t know about Alzheimer’s at that time.

You don’t die from Alzheimer’s. It just erodes your mind and taxes your loved ones. It is diagnosed by the exclusion of other possibilities. Susan Gourley (Fort Wayne, IN) has made a quilt for the nationwide quilt exhibit called "Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece." It is one of 52 quilts in a traveling exhibit to interpret Alzheimer's in some way. The quilts’ journey began in August 2006 and will continue until July 2009 with all proceeds benefiting Alzheimer's research.

Susan’s quilt includes some poignant questions any mother would ask if
faced with the loss of the most precious memories of motherhood:
To my dear child,
What if I can not remember the soft touch of your hand?

What happens when I do not know your smile?

What if I do not know my face as I see it in the mirror?
What about when there are no memories for the day as the sun says its final goodbye?
What if I can not remember that I loved the warm smell of the top of your head?
What if I will never remember I held you in my arms as you slept?
What if I never again have the chance to remember who I was and who you were to me?
What if I can not remember that I loved you?

I wonder if my Grandmother was troubled by questions like these. I wonder if I will ask these questions one day.

Writing

I have written some wonderful things!

Unfortunately, those "writings" never made it to paper. The things I write in my mind seem to be so much better than the ones I put on paper, but the ones on paper last longer. So thank goodness for writing groups.

The regular group I write with fits like a comfortable old shoe. We have been together a long time and shared so much of our lives that we seem to have few secrets left. We all scurry to plan our schedules around our writing meetings and our facilitator struggles to find subjects we have not previously covered. Still, we look forward to these therapeutic meetings and always find more stories to write. Our focus is producing stories for our families and future generations.

I met with a new group yesterday and found a different perspective. "New" is difficult. It is a breaking-in period where we dance around our introductions to one another, define our goals, and become familiar with different writing styles. It is an interesting, well-traveled group with members who write extremely well. Several are published authors and, although not their main focus, have an interest in publishing in the future.

I am inspired and encouraged by both groups. I share the interests of both groups. It has been a week full of writing and I am replete. Today I will fulfill my need to work with my hands so I will go to a Linus Quilt workday. Do you know about Linus Quilts? I will explain later.......