CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

Writing about my optimism ~ and where it came from ~ stirred up old memories. When I was asked how I became such an optimist (I've been called Pollyanna many times), my first thought was to say, "It must have been all those MGM musicals and Walt Disney animated features I watched growing up!" I'm serious. Those old musicals always had happy endings. So did the Disney films I grew up with. The good guy always got the girl and everyone lived happily ever after.

My parents often used the movie theaters in San Antonio as a babysitter for me and my sister Jean. Weekends there were always double features, and we would sometimes be on our second go 'round before someone came to pick us up! We especially loved the musicals, and would spend the intermissions in the balcony lounges singing the songs and doing our own versions of the dances. I remember there was a huge table in one area, and we would climb upon it and "tap dance"! (Ours were more of a soft shoe, shuffle, or stumble!) Watching Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly dance with one of their beautiful leading ladies gave us dreams of doing the same someday when we grew up. In the meantime, we had to practice! And practice we did. I begged Mother for some old curtains to make rhumba skirts or flowing gowns, and rounded up any kid in the neighborhood I could coax to come practice with us and be in our neighborhood "show".
The songs were made for singing.. Who can forget Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo from Cinderella? Or Uncle Remus singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah in Song of the South? Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote so many wonderful, singable songs for the musicals. I would spend my allowance on song books that were published with all the lyrics of the popular songs of the day.

Ahhhh... the "cowboy" movies! They were a big influence on me as well. Again, the good guys always won the girls, and rounded up the bad guys. Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Lone Ranger and Tonto ~ I loved them all! The Saturday serials could not be missed, and were also great to reenact with neighborhood kids! I loved to hear the rugged cowboys sing.

Even TV in the 50s and 60s had musical variety shows, and there were upbeat situation comedies (without the bathroom, potty mouth humor of today!) like the Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best... I could go on, and I'll bet you could, too.

I think they ought to bring back the big screen musicals. I loved Chicago, Mama Mia, and I think I will enjoy Nine, but it doesn't sound like the kind of happy-go-lucky musical that creates happy, positive people like the old time movies. I would love to see the return of the TV musical variety shows as well. Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin, the hootenannys of the 60s! It was hard to be in a bad mood after viewing these shows.

You can see from this picture, Jean and I never got over our love to entertain, although it took some coaxing to get her to wear the belly dancer costume and dance with me to Little Egypt at one of our big 4th of July parties. We had the most fun while trying on costumes at a local shop, wearing our "granny" glasses and giggling the whole time! Gee, I miss her.

Throughout my childhood, and well into my adulthood, I had two beautiful older women in my life who encouraged me, praised me, and loved me unconditionally. One was a cousin my grandmother's age who shared her religious beliefs with me in the gentlest of manners. She would take all of my spiritual questions seriously, and if she didn't have an answer right away, she would say, "I'll get back to you on that". And she would. Her name was Brooksey, and she took beautiful pictures in and around her home, even setting up a rudimentary darkroom. I got my love of photography from her, as well as her loving outlook on life.

The other was my paternal grandmother that everyone called Mom. I cannot remember a time that either of these kind women were critical of or mean to me. If they were, it must have been in such a constructive way that I didn't even realize it. For as long as she lived, Mom wrote me every single month. Once, when I remarried for the second time, I wrote Mom about my new husband. She wrote back, "Marilyn, I'm sure we'll love Win. You have always shown such good judgment in the past." I saved that letter, and still get a huge laugh every time I think of it. In her eyes, I could do no wrong

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And then I read Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking, and Psycho-cybernetics, written, I believe, by a well-known psychologist of the day. Up until that time, I got most of my information on living and parenting from such magazines as Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook. A whole new world began to open up for me. It took quite a few years for my shift from Pollyanna and purely innocent beliefs (I am still called an idealist, but I take that as a compliment) to grown-up perspectives on the connection between mind and body and the power of the word, but I was on my way! And I still loved to dance and sing while I was doing it.

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TRYING OUT MY WINGS

I visited the bald eagles' nest again last week, and I was thrilled to find one of the eaglets still there. I watched for over an hour with my camera poised, set on zoom. The most this little darlin' ever did was flap his wings and hop into and out of the empty nest. I don't know if he is able to fly yet, but his wings got a lot of action. As I was leaving, I spoke with a gentleman who had set up two cameras on tripods with long zoom lenses. He said he had been there for over three hours. The adult pair left shortly after he arrived and had not returned. This was unusual for them to be gone that long. The Saturday before, this man watched both adults and the two fledglings being extremely active ~ the adults flying back and forth and the fledglings in and out of the nest. I had an enjoyable hour in spite of the absence of the other eagles, and left promising myself I will be more diligent next year when they return to nest again.

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(March 27, 2016)
EDITOR: I re-read this post for the first time in ages. I wondered at the change in the link I had for the company. Research showed me the company not only went bankrupt, but the CEO Claudio Osorio and CFO Craig Stanley Toll were sentenced to prison for conspiracy and wire fraud. You may read about their convictions here Law 360. I guess I should follow up more closely on some of the events I write about!

I want to write more about the progress of the Haitian relief effort. There have been some exciting developments in the way of affordable housing, designed by noted architect Andres Duany, being manufactured by a Miami-based building manufacturer, InnoVida Holdings who is donating 1,000 of the small homes free. Sadly, another earthquake in Chile and now Turkey are really putting a burden on relief agencies. Even a $5 donation, when multiplied by thousands ~ or millions ~ can become a mountain of supplies. If you cannot do that, then pray. If you cannot do that, then hold a picture in your mind of those beautiful, happy people living in safety, well-fed, and able to get on with their lives. After all, thoughts are energy. And every good thing is made up of energy! So please send some positive energy their way.

I am holding pictures in my mind that show each of my friends and family reading this having a beautiful, prosperous life filled with all the "good stuff"!

Love and peace,
Marilyn

P.S.
After first posting this, I received an email from a dear friend and high school classmate. She wrote so delightfully about her own "movie memories" that I asked her if she minded if I shared it with you all as well. Here it is, and I hope too many haven't already read the blog:

"Oh, Marilyn, how your writing blesses me every single time."

"I can absolutely relate to the movies we saw during those formative and teen years. I was and still am a movie groupie (although there are so few made in the present time that bring this kind of enjoyment). My movie idol was Doris Day. I knew and constantly sang all her hit songs and learned to play them on my piano. Like you, a lot of Saturdays when I was very young, Martha Northington and I would spend a good part of the afternoon in double features at the Texas Theater on the very front row. When we finally would leave our eyes would be so red and strained that we could hardly walk out into the sunlight. On one of those Saturdays we went to Martha's and held a "funny book and lemonade" sale in front of her house. I can't remember whether or not we ever sold any wares, but we had high hopes and enjoyed the endeavor so much. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Gene Autry and his wonderful horse were some of the early movies enjoyed on those Saturdays. Also, the Lassie series had us crying our eyes out, and I think there were some heart rending horse movies as well. WOW! What innocent times those were, and how I love those memories.

When Grady and I married I was still in the frame of mind that all you had to do to be eternally happy was to get married and have children and, of course, live happily ever after. It didn't take long before I was disabused that movieland fantasy and learned that life as well as marriage and motherhood takes a lifetime of work and is often filled with disappointments and heartaches, as well as joy and beauty. But when I married at 18, these facts just weren't in evidence. There were no wonderful lifetime classes in high school to introduce us to the household financial, physical and emotional stresses involved in marriage and making a home. Don't misunderstand me, I wouldn't have missed a moment of being married to Grady Curry, but we both would have benefited so much from having had some pre-marital education and parenting skills before embarking on almost 35 years together and having five children all born in the first ten years of that marriage. I've often wished my children had had the benefit of parents who knew how to raise them instead of just growing up with them. Nevertheless, God has been eternally faithful in being present every single day of that time and still is.

Thanks, Marilyn, for the journey down that memory road, reminding me of how much fun I really had and how much I loved those movies all through those years. Like you, I really believe they were what formed my eternal optimism which, by the way, I still have all these years later."

With love,
June

FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, AND LOVE

I can see it now. My children and grandchildren will probably be rolling their eyes if they have their sound turned up as they read this! No soppy songs for me about the love of friends. My experience is one of joy and enthusiasm when I am with a dear friend or two. This song reminds me of an old movie -- maybe one with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Anyway, the only version of it I could find on my music website was this oldie by Kay Kyser. He was even before my time, although I heard him on the radio and maybe in old musicals when I was a little kid.

Joy, enthusiasm, and unconditional love. That's what my little house was full of this past Friday when my former (though she will always still be in my heart) minister at Unity of Denton (now New Hope), and dear friend Pam who so graciously let me live in her spare bedroom at one time. These two delightful beings were on their way to a Women's Retreat, and accepted my invitation to lunch. I had not seen Ellen in quite a few years, although Pam visited me in Ballinger. The time flew by way too quickly as we talked as fast as we could -- and tried to eat lunch as well! I finally put my spoon down, saying I can eat after they are gone... and continued to chatter away.

Someone recently asked me how I managed to be so upbeat and optimistic. I'm going to tell you a little story about how I came to this point in my life.

In 1988, I went through an extremely traumatic separation and subsequent divorce. During about a six month period, I was seeing a counselor, trying to make some sense out of the mess I'd made of my life. My youngest child had just flown the nest, my oldest had just got married, I was going through menopause, IRS tried to seize my property for my ex-husband's back income taxes (which resulted in a 5-year battle), and now another divorce! I didn't think I could bear it.

I really struggled with depression. For the first time in my life, when I looked for employment, I could not find a job. Texas had the highest rate of unemployment in the nation for a year or so during that time. An employment counselor told me that where once she had only ten applicants to send for each job opening, she now had hundreds in line for each job! That shook me to my toes. To survive, I sold most of my treasured antiques that I had collected for years for a new home we had been building. At times, I would go to a local flea market with boxes of my smaller items, and manage to sell enough to pay my electrical bill. (That wouldn't work now at today's electrical rates!) I was seriously considering driving my ancient little Sunbird down to the woods at the end of my property, putting a hose from the exhaust through the window. I did not want to do that to my children or to my aging parents, but I thought there was no other way.

Then, serendipitously, I came across several books at the library that gave me a new look at what was happening in my life, and a possible way to cope. The most important one turned out to be a book by Deepak Chopra, M.D. called Quantum Healing. Among other things, he espoused meditation as a way to get in touch with our spiritual self and perhaps accomplish healing in our life and body. As Chopra is of the Eastern tradition, he recommended Transcendental Meditation (TM). This was best learned through a teacher, who would give one a mantra of their own to assist them. I had heard of this in the past, so I set off to find a TM teacher. I located one in Dallas, and went for a "free" consultation. Turns out this was a very expensive method. They wanted something like $1,500 to teach me and give me my own personal mantra. They even asked me if I had any good jewelry I could give them in lieu of cash! I was devastated. I'm not sure if this is the case of all TM teaching methods but as it turned out, it was to my benefit that it wasn't free.

I was determined that I was going to learn to meditate. I talked at length to my counselor and she was eager to assist me. At one point she told me that there was a church that taught meditation, but she wasn't sure if it were Unity or Unitarian. She checked into it for me and said it must be Unity, as the local Unitarian Church consisted of a lot of UNT professors sitting around discussing how to save the planet from a nuclear holocaust. (A noble cause, but not what I wanted at this time.) We got the Unity address, and that Wednesday night I ventured into a small storefront church.

I had always tried to attend church of differing denominations during my different marriages. After a bad experience with one church when I was divorced with children to take care of, when the church sent me a bill at the end of their fiscal year for the balance that I had not tithed.. well, I was not excited about attending a church again.

I walked into this small "church" and was amazed. There were spiritual books for loan or sale that I had read, as well as a small booklet called "Daily Word" that my grandmother of all people had been subscribing to for me for years. I realized I had been being prepared for this "Unity" experience without my knowledge. I was tingling with excitement as I met Ellen for the first time! When she led us through my first Unity meditation, I knew that I had come home. Ellen, my dear sweet minister friend, (although it would be years before she was actually ordained a Unity minister -- she was a licensed Unity teacher at the time), you never knew that you were the one responsible for perhaps saving my life. I even remember the little metaphysical book you gave a talk on that night -- "Illusions" by Richard Bach. It was a favorite of mine. More proof to me that I was in the right place, at the right time!

The teachings I learned through Unity were always of a positive nature. No guilt or shame attached. And everyone was welcome... one didn't even have to give up their church affiliation somewhere else. We had at least two I knew of who attended both Unity and their original church. There was no creed.. and no condemnation. All was loving and supportive. Unity principles are based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, but do not preclude teachings from other spiritual disciplines. While I attended, we even had a Buddhist monk as a guest speaker. I learned Sufi dancing as well as how to make a Native American dreamcatcher and a talking stick. I participated in World Peace meditations. We had holy communion; once a year we held a bowl burning to rid ourselves of any negative aspects in our lives; and I saw many instances of prayers answered! What we hold in our thoughts we do create in our world! I now try to put all that I learned into practice -- and as a result I feel my world is beautiful. After all, I thought and prayed a lot of it into being! (With a little Divine help, of course!)

You can see that I feel having Pam and Ellen visit even for a short time was like having a blood transfusion! I am re-energized, and making plans for an even more creative and positive future! Thank you, ladies.

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There is absolutely nothing like a Little League baseball game to get the heart racing! Especially when it's a game of 6- and 7-year olds! A lot of these kids are the first in their family to play sports, so their relatives turn out in numbers. I think I cheered as much for them as I did when I was in school. Youngest grandson Travis was a thrill to watch, as he had three hits this game, batting in two runs. (Notice the baseball pants that are supposed to stop at the knees.) I think he was pretty proud of himself, too. Mommy and little sister Kelly played cheerleaders, as Daddy coached from the dugout. The sun was shining beautifully this day, and I was still full of warmth and love from the visit with my friends. It seemed like perfection.

That night we all trooped to the grade school Travis attends, where Amy is a den mother to his Cub Scout troop. I got a couple of good videos of the Award ceremony, as well as some cute photos. Amy makes a great looking scout, and she was especially recognized for all the volunteer work she so generously supplies. (I just had to show how cute you looked in your scout uniform!)

While Amy received recognition and Travis "walked across the bridge" to receive his Wolf badge, I think Daddy deserved an award for letting Kelly wiggle and jiggle and giggle in his lap for nearly two hours!

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I know you all have heard about the earthquake in Chile over the weekend. They were such good neighbors in helping the Haitian victims after the earthquake there. They sent search and rescue teams, as well as supplies, and even set up field hospitals. Now it is their turn to receive help. As of this morning, I could not find a particular organization who will be assisting them other than the United Nations. Many have offered, I'm sure, but so many are stretched thin by the ongoing efforts in Haiti. I would say to continue to send money if you can to the Red Cross, and indicate on your check that it is for Chile. Chile was hesitant to accept help, but finally agreed that they will need some assistance. Not only did they suffer severe damage -- although, fortunately, not as much loss of lives, from the earthquake, but many coastal villages and towns were destroyed by the resulting tsunami.

I've been watching the developments in the efforts to rebuild the Haitian cities. One company has designed, and is donating 1,000 free, a type of prefabricated structure for inexpensive residences that can be expanded upon as needed. These buildings are hurricane and earthquake resistant. What a great company... and what a blessing for the Haitian people. A home that will sleep eight can be constructed for as little as $4,000. They are looking for financing for a massive effort to rebuild there. I will keep you informed.

Continued loving thoughts and prayers will help work the miracles necessary for these people to resume their lives.

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I am planning to make a quick trip in the morning to see if my little fledgling eagles (eaglets) have "fledged"! I missed the last couple of weeks because of the cold, snowy weather we had. I hope they are still hanging around.

I also need to give you an update on my neighboring Great Danes. Piper in particular has had quite a time the past few months. She was punished and imprisoned in her pen by an electrical wire, which made me very sad and feeling responsible.

Until next time, let me hear from some of you. I am always eager to hear your stories as well as mine. And with your permission, I will be thrilled to share them!

Love and peace,
Marilyn