Tag: Children

Family, Love, Loved Ones

Son

Gail

If you only knew how hard it was for me. If you only knew that this decision was made with hours of hours of thinking. I was 17 years when I became pregnant with you. I loved your father. He was so handsome. My heart broke when he left me. Being a single parent had many challenges and there were many. I didn’t know the first thing about mothering. Nothing. No nurturing. I didn’t know what that was. My parents did all they could to help with financial ends and the baby sitting as I worked. Food was put on our table. Sadly though I suffered from debilitating migraines and panic attacks. There would be days that I could not get out of bed and begged for my suffering to be over. You would be picked up and left to stay at mom and dad’s. It would be for a couple of days till I got over the pain in my head and those days turned into a week. The weeks turned into a month at the most.

It was talked about many times by my mother that they would take you to live with them. I didn’t want to. I didn’t. I had loved you so much. You were just learning to walk and find your character. You were so happy. My heart breaks. They came one morning, my step dad and my mom and took all your stuff, your crib, your clothes, your many toys. It was agreed upon that I would have no contact. That is crazy that is how it came to be. I suppose they were afraid I would change my mind and snatch you away. I knew you were in the best possible place but I thought I would be able to see you. It became nasty.  This situation. The last I heard from them is the day I signed over a government check, a tax return and thus that was that. My baby was gone.

I was lost with out you. Lost. The love that I had was not near me. I was alone and on the streets. Truthfully I do not remember that time so well. I do know that I continued to work at the dry cleaners where I excelled. Party was my major thing to look forward to on the weekends. In spite of all what happened I managed to break free of my carefree ways. I was able to become stable and with monies to purchase my first home. This was the home I would provide for me and my second son and to help him grow. It was also a learning time for me. How to parent. It wasn’t easy but I really tried. My second son was to replace the love I had lost in you.

I know your life is not easy. My heart breaks once again. To have you phone me for money again and again and for me to say I could give you none but only wanted you to know how much I loved you. I need you to know this. I want only the good for you. You don’t need the money. Know that.

gaildd
Those carefree days
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Family, Heaven

My Sister

Gail

May I say she was a slip of a child, well I will because she was. She was funny, she was everything to me, she was my confidente, the one person who I totally trusted with my little girl secrets, my fears. The family dynamics in my early life were not the Dick & Jane of long ago although I wonder what that would have been like. I lived in the country with my grandparents as my father was in the army and gone much of the time. My mother worked in the city and when dad came back home, they would meet up and then come pick me up. Those times were so precious as I was so excited to see them both. There were a few of us like this, my cousins and I who went to stay with other aunts and uncles when my grandmother passed away when I was three. Call me confused too because I thought she was my mom and my cousins my brother’s and sister’s. Funny!

Let’s get back to my cousin who I called a sister, Julia was her name and we were always together, thick and thin. Her mother Flora was to pass away in the middle 60’s leaving little Julia with no mother, no father but she had us, she had me. In all this my mother had divorced my father and remarried  and we lived that life I was yearning for, the stability everyone needs to grow emotionally. My stepfather and mother decided to take in Julia to come live with us forever and I was so freaken excited that I cajoled them into picking her up and soon. My auntie had her and they were in a far off town, trying to make money to feed her family so we would have to wait until they came back. My mother received a phone call one night. Julia had passed away. She had contracted pneumonia after spending some time out in the cold.

You know that feeling when someone so close leaves you, when they pass away. It tears a part of your heart out. You try to make deals with God to bring them back, crying all the while, so desperate. And so the years went on and the feeling was always there and I would think of her time to time. I still do. Time passes and the hurt diminishes and now I think of the fun stuff we use to do. She always has my heart…always.

gail444
Gail, Julia and Mary in the background.

I have always had many people who I met that had gifts that would pass on to me that they would see a little girl with me, with short hair and a cowlick, much like Julia, wearing a long dress much to big for her. My theory about the dress was the one she wore in when she was buried, that can only be. So many to tell me that she is always there. I have to think that this why I have childlike qualities and this is due to her. To add to this my father who passed in 1986 is seen with me wearing a army uniform and my grandmother Julia wearing a long dress and her scarf around her head as well. All three travelling with me and me without a clue until my early 30’s. Boggles the mind now, doesn’t it. Believe that Spirit is always with you, giving you signs and they all have there own, you just have to ask.

Family, Intuition, Story Teller

Little Girl, Big Dreams

Gail

Old creepy house built in the 30’s, partial dirt basement with an old stone furnace with many pipes, much like an octopus, going every which way to heat the upstairs. Drafts that came from a crawl space in the side of a wall which you could open by taking a 5×5 piece of wood that was attached and held by two wooden fasteners. It was dank and musty and cool when we deigned to play in there or to retrieve the Christmas decorations. One of those octopus arms came in through one wall of the bedroom and into the other wall where the crawl space was. The steps to the upstairs was creaky and narrow and you really had to watch your way or one could trip which as a child I often did.

The one bedroom down there had two double beds, one sitting along side that crawl space wall and the other facing it. As a 9 year old I have to say my imagination some nights went wild with fear. Did I hear something shuffling along the floor? What was that bang, so light? I felt as though eyes were watching me and my skin had eternal goosebumps. My dreams were nightmares some evenings and then others like heaven sent. My mother in her wisdom had a medicine pouch made for me to put around my neck as I slept. It smelled…like..crazy. I suppose she was tired of me running helter skelter up those crickity stairs in the middle of the night to get away from I don’t know what. By the morning it would be on the floor or under my pillow but never around my neck as she had placed it. She took it away from me considering it a lost cause.  By the time I was 16 years old I was tired of this home and went to live with my half brother and his new family, thankfully.

Empathically I was picking up something but having no basis to what was going on in my tired mind, to having no one support me in my child like feelings. Many years now I may having a thought to what it could have been all along. Spirit, perhaps?

Intuition, Story Teller

Was that the wind?

Gail

I was always a very independent child, able to look out for herself. I had this sense of responsibility to myself growing up almost with no adult supervision. Don’t get me wrong, mom was kind of there but working and then tired or out for the night with friends. I was often left with babysitter’s, relatives, or my favorite, my grandparents until grandmother passed away. I have memories of me as a small child being pushed through a window as the babysitter had lost the keys and the window suddenly slamming down on my poor baby fingers slicing the tip. My mother coming in a rush after the doctor’s stitched and bandaged me up. Mad, she was.

The babysitters were not very reliable and often mean to a little 4-5 year old. I had one even pull a knife and had me cornered. My heart thumping and thinking my little life was over, very frightened and scared and wanting mom. I got out of that with my humor and likability. Cuteness has its ways. After that I was always trying to be ahead of what the other person might attempt to do with me and I wasn’t about to let that happen. Even at that young age. So I think on this and know that is when the intuition kicked in. When there was that tightness in my tummy, that was my warning signal. I have always had that.

Mom had divorced my real father and re-married shortly after and we then moved into a 1935 bungalow with a half dirt basement with an old stone furnace that made a whoosing sound every time it turned on. I shared a bedroom with my older cousin down there and at times the air space was comfy and at times my spidey senses were on high alert. I would scramble to my mother, practically skinning my knees on the stairs to get to her, to tell her that something was staring at me or I would feel a cool breeze rush by. I was told that I was imagining all this, to stop reading my crazy books about fairies and such and get back to bed. If only I could go back and tell that little girl that it was alright, to tell what ever, spirit wise, that it should go away. This went on for many years and even when my stepfather renovated the basement and made it quite livable there was still a cold spot once in a while, always in the same place. I was never so happy in my life when I moved out on my own never to have to think of ways to avoid the basement. The memory is long and these are important times in my life that make me wonder how as a child that I relied on my own spirit to get me through those days. But it is what it is and I am who I am for it. There are many instances about nightmares, things that go bump in the night and just knowing, but I leave that for another day.6 or 7 year old me~

Story Teller

Pet Store

Gail

My curiosity is piqued when I go near a pet store and on this day with the other half by my side I gravitated towards the front doors of the shop. A little boy all of 6 years sporting a cool mohawk haircut and wearing spiderman clothes stood near his mother who was talking to the store clerk.

I said to Ken, “I’m getting a hamster!” The little boy thinking I was talking to him replied, “NO, I’m getting a hamster!” I then moved on to the birds and seen a pretty little finch and said again to Ken, “I’m getting a bird!” The little boy loudly pronounced, “You’re never getting a bird!”

And so it was that this little bundle of coolness and way out thereness made us laugh. Again he challenged me by asking what was in a cage high above his head and me stating there was nothing in there, where upon he asked Ken to pick him up so he could see for himself.

We left with both Ken and I saying our goodbyes to this little dude and went on to the grocery store. As we were in the check out line who but should be there in front of us with his mother in tow but the little dude himself. “Are you following us?” I asked. “Are YOU following ME?! he stated. Gosh, did he ever make us laugh. Every once in awhile we bring that memory about him by one of us stating, “You’re NEVER getting a bird!”