 of everything feeding her internal database, from which she draws constantly, enriching everyone’s lives.
She’s my daughter. I have no words to describe how much I love her. There are no words. Just a million and one little moments, the tiniest moments, really. [How can it be that I can look at her two great columns of legs hanging off the bed as she sleeps (before righting them) and they shout to me ‘All is well with the world’?].
She’s going to make one formidable woman. “Heaven help the world” is all I can think to say, for I know she’ll do just what she wants to do always and ain’t no-one going to be stopping her. All I can do is give her a firm base from which to fly.
My sensitive, strong, beautiful son. My beautiful formidable daughter. I could look upon both of their faces all day long forever and always but always find something new, something else to love.
This is, they are, what make me smile. Always.
Day 4 of Fab-ruary: a month-long series of prompts aimed at ‘finding the fab’ (prompts here). [Feel free to join in as many (or as few!) as you’re able. If you do link up, make sure you hop around the other ladies who’ve linked up too, to leave encouraging comments, so that we can make sure we get a good ‘community feeling’ going].
Corr…some of these prompts are hard!
Once we learn to slow down and mindfully enjoy our lives, riches appear before us: the riches of our ordinary, daily, lives. Once we learn to see these riches, all things ‘other’, that have the potential to tempt and distract us, pale in to insignificance. I’ve found that, living in this way, I’ve learnt to be happy with what we have and where I am, physically, spiritually and emotionally. I still desire a better future for us, obviously, but that desire is rooted in an acknowledgement that only by being in, and working from, a stable, centred, place will I be able to achieve this ‘better future’. And my stable, centred place comes from living with gratitude for, and in wonder at, my ordinary, daily riches.
Can’t wait to hear everyone else’s responses!
Data Scout Notes: 2020: NAC...Sat out due to NCAA transfer rules in '19. Transferred from Louisiana Lafayette to Ole Miss in summer '19. Medical redshirt w/no stats in 3 gms, missed rest of season due to injury in '18. 3rd team All-Sun Belt w/6-54-9.0-1 rec in 8 gms in '17.Of all my Mammy’s children I am the first born and the longest living. The others all gone to join Mammy. She was named Mary White, the same name as her Mistress, the wife of my first master, James White. About my paopy. I never hear his name and I never see him, not even when I was the least child around the old Master’s place ‘way back there in Georgia more’n one-hundred twenty years ago! Mammy try to make it clear to me about my daddy. She married like the most of the slaves in then days. He was a slave on another plantation. One day he come for to borrow something from Master White. He sees a likely looking gal, and the way it work out that gal was to be my Mammy. After that he got a paper saying it was all right for his to be off his own plantation. He come a’courting over to Master Whites. After a while he talks with the Master. Says he wants to marry the gal, Mary. The Master says it’s all right if it’s all right with Mary and the other white folks. He finds out it is and they makes ready for the wedding. Mary says a preacher wedding is the best but Master say he can marry them just as good. There wasn’t no Bible, just an old Almanac. Master White read something out of that. That’s all and they was married. The wedding was over! Every night he gets a leave paper from his Master and come over to be with his wife, Mary. The next morning he leaves her to work in the fields. Then one night Mammy says he don’t come home. The next night is the same, and the next. From then on Mammy don’t see him no more, never find out what happen to my pappy. When I was born Mammy named me John, John White. She tells me I was the blackest ‘white’ boy she over see! I stays with her till I was eleven year old. The Master wrote down in the book when I was born. April 10, 1816, and I know it’s right. Mammy told me so, and Master told me when I was eleven and he sold me to Sarah Davenport. Mistress Sarah lived in Texas. Master White always selling and trading to folks all over the country. I hates to leave on account of Mammy and the good way Master White fared the slaves, they was good people. Mammy cry but I has to go just the same. The tears are on my face a long time after the leaving. I was hoping all the time to see Mammy again, but that’s the last time. We travels and travels on the stage coach. Once we cross the Big River (Mississippi) on the boat and pick up with the horses on the other side. A new outfit and we rides some more. Seems like we going to wear out all the horses before we gets to the place. The Davenport plantation was way north of Linden, Texas, up in the Red River country. That’s where I stayed for thirty-eight year. There I was drug through the hackles by the meanest master that ever lived. The Mistress was the best white woman I over knew but Master Presley used his whip all the time, reason or no reason, and I got scars to remember by! I remembers the house. A heavy log house with a gallery clear across the front. The kitchen was back of the house. I work in there and I live in there. It wasn’t built so good as the Master’s house. The cold winds in the winter go through the cracks between the legs like the walls was somewheres else, and I shivers with the misery all the time. The cooking got to be my job. The washing too. Washday come around and I fills the tub with clothes. Puts the tub on my head and walks half a mile to the spring where I washes the clothes. Sometimes I run out of soap. Then I make ash soap right by the spring. I learns to be careful about streaks in the clothes. I learns by the bull whip. One day the Master finds a soapy streak in his shirt. Then he finds me. The Military Road goes by the place and the Master drives me down the road and ties me to a tree. First he tears off the old shirt and them he throws the bull whip to me. When he is tired of beating me more torture is a-coming. The salt water cure.  “Here’s at you.” the Master say, and slap the salt water inte the bleeding outs. “Here’s at you!” The blisters burst every time he slap me with the brine. Then I was loosened to stagger back into the kitchen. The Mistress couldn’t do nothing about it ‘cept to lay on the grease thick, with a kind word to help stop the misery. Ration time was Saturday night.  I reckon the Master figure it to the last bite because they was no leavings over. Most likely the shortage catch them! Sometimes they’d borrow, sometimes I’d slip somethings from out the kitchen. The single women folks was bed that way. I favors them with something extra from the kitchen. Then they favors me, at night when the over-sear thinks everybody asleep in they own places! I was always back to my kitchen bed long before the overseer give the get-up-knock. I hear the knock, he hear me answer. Then he blew the horn and about the lend call, are you up, and everybody know it was four o’clock and pour out of the cabins ready for the chores.  Not on the Davenport plantation, but some others close around. The slaves talked about it amongst themselves. After a while they’d be a new baby. Yellow. When the child got old enough for chore work the master would sell him (or her). No difference was it his own flesh and blood, if the price was right! I traffic with lots of the women, but never marries. Not even when I was free after the war. I sees too many married troubles to mess up with such doings! Sometimes the master sent me alone to the grinding mill. Load in the yellow corn, hitch in the oxen, I was ready to go. I gets me fixed up with a pass and takes to the road. That was the trip I like best. On the way was a still. Off in the bresh. If the still was lonely I stop, not on the way to but on the way back. Mighty good whiskey, too! Maybe I drinks too much, then I was sorry. Not that I swipe the whiskey, just sorry because I gets sick! Then I figures a woods camp meeting will steady me up and I goes. The preacher meet me and want to know how is my feelings. I says I is low with the misery and he say to