A SAFE PLACE TO FALL

Would you believe it! Some are asking when I plan to post again on my blog! That makes an old lady feel pretty good. Well, hey, what if it is just a few family members and two close friends who ask. So, here’s to you my "favorite people." Now, you other readers will know how to get in the "favorite" category. Just let me know you read this. I’d love it if you could/would make comments on the blog itself but I do understand it’s a bit confusing. I also think there is a way to "follow" a blog. It must be, because I follow a couple of blogs. I don’t have a clue how that began but I do know that I get notices through email when one of those bloggers posts something new.

I have a post in mind for gift-giving and plan to post that soon. I’ve been enjoying those on Facebook who post something each day during the month of November for which they are thankful. With this in mind, I was going to post 30 things of which I am thankful. That changed when I let Thanksgiving come and go without posting. Thanksgiving got me to thinking about so many things and I am going to share one here.

Everyone needs a soft place to fall. It doesn’t matter how young or how old you are, you need a safe place. I have always had one of those places and am grateful for those special places.

Early in life my safe place was home. Many times it was as simple as a fall but I knew I could find comfort in the safety of Mother kissing my "boo-boo" or if it needed more than a healing kiss she doctored it perfectly. My Daddy’s lap never lost it’s place of comfort. The last time I sat in that lap was mid-July 1957 the night before I left to return to Baton Rouge only to return on July 28 when I learned of my daddy’s death near midnight. He was only 58 years old and I a "mature" 22 year old with 2 children and one on the way. I will digress here....most people think of comfortable laps as soft and cushion-like. Well, that sho’ wasn’t my Daddy’s lap! He had finally gained a lot of weight before he died. He weighed a whopping 145 and didn’t have an ounce of cushion on those boney little legs, but they were the softest cushion for a little girl who needed a safe place to fall no matter the problem.

 My safe places to fall for as long as they lived....My momma and my daddy.

 

My mind wanders to a couple of more isolated safe places. There were so many special places a little girl could find at Alabama Poultry Farm in Notasulga, Alabama where my daddy worked. If I needed quite and solitude I would often retreat to my writing room in the shrubby where I had placed a board between the branches of one of the "huge" trees there. (Those trees really shrunk over the years....the older I got the smaller they got.) I spent hours in what I dubbed my writing room in the woods sitting in a little chair and writing my heart out. I even had a safe place on rainy days. That was in the attic high above the Big Hatchery. I was allowed there any time I wanted to go up, sit, look out on the world....well maybe not the entire world, but the world of Tuskegee Street.....and dream about other towns and states. I never considered other countries back in the 1940's.

 

We  lived up over the hatchery on the right.

 

My rainy day safe place was in the upper right hand window in the hatchery on the left.

 

My Writing Room was in the clump of "woods" on the right.

I had great parents but they didn’t always understand me and there were times I really needed my own space and that was a little further away. On the way to the pond, which must have been 10 miles from the hatchery back then, there was a tree that had a perfect place for a little girl to sit way above the earth and wonder what was wrong with her parents. Let me tell you a bit more about that tree......I went back once when I was grown and, would you believe, that tree had also shrunk. And the pond had been moved much closer to the hatchery. You know what? It probably wasn’t even 1/4 of a mile. I’ve often wondered how they moved that entire pond! I cannot remember the reason, but my mother did something that was very unfair. She needed a lesson, and a good one at that, so I decided to teach her that lesson. I ran away from home! I knew she would be heartbroken and crawl to me begging forgiveness when, if ever, she and Daddy found me. So, I took off! I walked way down the lane to the solitude of my tree, my soft place to fall when my parents needed to be taught a lesson. I climbed up and sat there thinking how my parents must be frantic by now. I almost felt sorry for them but they needed a lesson so I sat there and almost gloated. And then it happened! I heard the familiar whistle from my daddy when he called me in. I sat there. He whistled again and then yelled, "Skeeter, come on in. Supper’s ready." You know what? Those people didn’t even know I had run away! They thought I had just gone to my tree as I often did. It was the last time I taught my parents that lesson!

Everyone needs a safe place! I will share more of my safe places in a later post. I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving and wish for you a great December!