Why?

To:  My awesome, wonderful, perfectly perfect children, all four of you . . . 

(and, of course, all of your children and those children's children)

From:  Me, Your Mommy.  I am so, very honored that God chose me to take care of you. 

This is a gift.

This is a really special gift.

This is my story.   In my words.

It's my most heartfelt hope that it becomes a family keepsake and contains stories that are treasured for generations.  It  is not now,  nor will it ever be a spot to air dirty laundry, let skeletons out of the closet or cause hurt or harm.   It is, however, the honest to God truth.

Still, days pass and seasons change.  Minutes become hours, hours become days and suddenly years have melted into decades.  We stand there, looking back at a tangle of memories, childhood treasures and stories that we can barely wrap the wispy fragments of our memories around, and we think . . . I should have written that down.

That's the point.

I'm writing about my childhood.  I'm writing about my parents along the way.  I'm telling stories of how uncles met aunts and how our family came to be.  I'm telling about my first cassette tape, my horse, our animals, my room, climbing trees.  I'll tell you about finding love, losing it, being heartbroken and finding hope again.  I'll make a valiant attempt to explain how I managed to make it to adulthood without earning an allowance.  Be amazed at how Coke used to come in bottles and be 10 cents.  Giggle at the thought of my mom sending me to a movie with a dime in my pocket so I could use the pay phone to call home for a ride when the show was over.  Laugh with me.  Cry with me.  Come along, won't you?

This will be a story in the  making for years to come.  The goal is to eventually, print it and bind it.  Eventually.  But the goal today is to start it . . . and to feed it and grow it into a really, really special gift.


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Writing disclaimer . . . . because it is the year 2012 and safety to me and my family is of utmost concern, you'll have to decode names later.  To preserve the innocent and protect the guilty, I won't use real names.  Instead, I'll provide a key to nicknames along the way, or later.  Also, because the goal of this writing endeavor is to publish eventually, I won't be labeling posts.  Just read it . . . from cover to cover, the good old fashioned way.