Grandma and the Coat from Hell

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Since there were five kids in our family, Grandma did her best to help out when she could. Sometimes I still hate her for it. Once she went to the Goodwill Store and bought me the ugliest coat in the world. I didn’t have a problem with Goodwill. It was ugly that bothered me. It was a knee-length brown hounds-tooth wool dress coat of the style not

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Nursing Slip Up

I was reporting back to a doctor on his agitated emergency room patient I had just been caring for.  Meaning to say, “He was really bucking and fighting.” I got tangled up and said “f–cking and biting.”  Trying to recover before the doc reacted, I snapped back,” but fortunately I didn’t get bit!”

Poor, Sweet Emma Lou (from my mother’s memoirs of the 1930’s)

When my mother Lizzie left Virginia as a young bride around 1913, she was most lonesome for her baby sister, Emma Lou, a precious blue-eyed blonde of eight. Emma Lou had been born when Grandma Sarah Perkins was past forty. Grandma must have been dismayed by a burst of fertility, eventually giving birth to five more children, the last

Grandma and the Coat from Hell

Since there were five kids in our family, Grandma did her best to help out when she could. Sometimes I still hate her for it. Once she went to the Goodwill Store and bought me the ugliest coat in the world. I didn’t have a problem with Goodwill. It was ugly that bothered me. It was a knee-length brown hounds-tooth wool dress coat of the style not

“It couldn’t be helped!”

Mother has stage-four Terminal ADD. It hasn’t killed her yet, but it came close several times.  Back when I was a kid, it was called being disorganized, procrastination, and not getting things done. Having five kids, a-worse-than-unhelpful-husband, Mother had more work than six women could have accomplished. That put the icing on the cake.  Daddy should have been a

Mother Tried to Raise Me Right

Church was hard on me Church clothes were designed by the devil. My mom made fancy dresses with twirly skirts, puffy sleeves, lace, fancy collars, and gigantic sashes that tied in the back in a big bow. Just in case I might get a little comfortable, she starched and ironed them till they were so stiff they could stand alone. Getting ready for church started Saturday night with a bath and hair washing. No problem with that. The trouble started when Mother got out the hair pins and tissue paper. She clamped me between her knees