Brand New Past

So many funerals recently.  Too many goodbyes.  It's caused me to desperately cling to what I remember of them.  I miss you all...  Picking up my rose colored glasses, this blog is for you... I choose to only remember the good.  Creating a brand new past... nothing sad, other than that fact that those days are gone.  Here we go:

Hello 80's... been a long time.  I remember Klepinger Rd.  Anxiously awaiting my Aunt Linda to come over and play with me.  I miss her laugh, I miss her crooked feet lol, she made me pigeon toed and never knew it.  She drove a stick with both feet.. she was an original- but I wanted to be her clone.  She would come in and kick off her shoes, sit down and immediately overlap her feet... i copied her.  I wanted to be her.  Now I look exactly like her and her own children can't stand to look at me.  My hair, my eyes, my hips and my smile... all Aunt Linda.  I miss you. 

I remember Luther Vandross blaring from the stereo- "It's so amazing to be loved... I'd follow you to the mooooon in sky above"... me too.  I remember my mother singing at the top of her lungs trying to capture each and every butterflied run that came out of his mouth.  Or what about Anita Baker... she was ALWAYS present, "Giving you the best that I've got!"... ohh man.  I actually thought my mama KNEW Ashford and Simpson the way she would perform it at every barbecue..."SOLID!!..SOLID AS A ROCK!" 

I miss my daddy.  I miss waiting for him to get off work so I could help him take off his smelly work boots and steal half eaten candy bars out of his stinky work bucket.  I miss the sound of his laugh... and that gap in between his teeth.  I miss how big his belly was and how it seemed to sit upon the skinniest legs ever!  I miss his curly hair and hazel eyes.  ---I can't stop these tears---  I miss the gang of family that was always around him.  He loved his family so much.  I miss our "Detroit" Stevenson's that would keep us up waaaay past our bedtimes waiting for them to arrive.  The moment we gave up that waiting and just crawl in the bed, they would always end up pulling into the driveway... it would ALWAYS end up being an all night affair!  In the morning there would be kids and adults strewn all over the house sleep.  I miss yaw.  I miss Aunt Mary who was like my second mama!  I miss Uncle Lonnie who liked hangin' out and playing in the yard with the kids more than the adults.  I miss "us" being the 3 musketeers!  If you saw one, the other 2 weren't too far away. 

I miss stealing pickles with my cousins.  I remember that summer in Newnan, Georgia at Aunt Gent's house where we all messed up our ankles running through the Georgia pines at midnight.  Those were the days.  I remember the feeling of "home".  Of knowing that whenever I stepped through the door, I had my mother, my father, my sister & brother just on the other side.  All Together.

I remember when there were still houses that led allll the way down Gramont avenue- before they put the highway there.  My grandparents had so many friends and neighbors and it was non-stop porch sittin', gossipin' across the yards and yelling greetings back and forth!  I remember walking down to the store at the bottom of that hill on Gramont that resembled a small hut, but always had the best Chico-Sticks.  That made me smile.  I remember those raggedy cats that used to hang in my grandparents yard because he fed them everything!  I miss eating fresh produce from my grandaddy's farm.  I miss waking up with my grandfather before the sun came up, drinking his maxwell house coffee that he brewed from this super old coffee maker.  You could see the coffee bubbling at the top.  I would go back to sleep and wake up to the sounds of "The Young & The Restless" that my granny watch faithfully everyday, followed by The Price is Right!

I miss the holidays.  Daddy loved them so much.  It was the time where family "didn't have a choice" but to all be together.  I miss everybody hiding in their own corner of the house wrapping presents.  I miss Christmas morning as child.  It was always snow on the ground, and the nights were always filled with food, wood ablaze in the fireplace and the "itis" making everybody lay out with pants unzipped in front of it. 

I remember being on my Uncle Eric's boat and almost drowning in the lake after falling off of the intertube that he pulled us on.  I miss his jerry curl too! lolol

I miss how slow my grandma Bessie talked- lol!  That was my daddy's sweetheart.  I miss my dad's cousin/brother, Uncle Will.. you'd never know they weren't brothers.  They always talked the loudest, sang the loudest and wore the loudest clothes... I miss yaw.  I miss my grandma Emily, who always wanted you to fix her food, only, she wanted you to "put it in a cup".. trying to pretend she wasn't eating a lot! lolol.. she would ask you to fill up that cup like 60 times during the course of a dinner! 

My heart aches for it all.  It churns in my belly... white hot pangs of sadness.  I want my son to know you all.  I want him to know the "stock" in which he came from.  They all live in me and now him.  Why didn't I know that those truly were awesome days?  I remember when they were all here.  I think I like my "rose colored" glasses.  They block out the things that devastated me....  I only want to see these things..

I think I'll stay here awhile ... in my carefully sculpted, New Past...