I have been busy with work. Actually I am trying to get a little ahead of my work so I can go home to Arkansas this week end. My sister Amy and I will visit my Mom on Mother's Day. I will leave work on Friday afternoon and drive to Augusta, Georgia for a flight to Memphis. I will meet Amy there and we will drive to Calico Rock, Arkansas. That is where I grew up and I still call it my home.
My Mom never re-married after my father's death. She was still young at that time. She is a very good woman. She raised Amy and I with little help from others. She taught us how to work and play. I am not sure what type person I would have been if I had my father's guidance while growing up. But I do know that my Mom gave me everything I needed to become successful. And thanks to her I know how to cook and clean house too : ) I remember how I hated to mop floors and wash dishes and clothes when I was a kid. We all three in the kitchen cooking dinner each day. She taught me how to cook almost every thing she cooked. Now I have no problem making my dinner when I get home at night. I make up my bed as soon as I get up and do all the house work and laundry each Sunday. I hope this information is not too boring for you. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that Mom is the person who taught me how to play the piano and baseball too!
I have a close network of friends here. It may seem odd that the girl are mostly Amy's age and the boys are mostly my age. The reason is that the girls are all of Amy's friends and the boys have always been my friends. Amy and I started having parties years age. We would always invite our close friends. As a result, this group all became friends. I am sure you will hear me mention several of them in my correspondence. Amy live in Augusta for several years. That is where most of the friends live. Amy moved to Alabama several years ago but her friends remain active with us. Almost everyone is from a different section of the United States and, like me, they have no family here. so we have become a family of sorts. We sometime refer to ourselves as a surrogate family. Almost all of them will be going to visit their real families this week end.
I have attached a poem I wrote several years ago while on a visit to my home in Arkansas. There is a stream flowing through the back of the property. I played there as a child. There is a small waterfall and river stones litter the banks of the stream. It was there that hundreds of years ago, Native Americans selected rocks to make arrow heads. Still today I can find the arrow heads that did not meet the quality they needed. They would just throw them into the water. I found many of them over the years. But then during a visit with my Mom I returned to that same place and found more arrow heads. I wrote this poem about my thoughts...so many years passing and the evidence of history remains.