Dad and Mom met at church in Peoria, Arizona. They became youth leaders in that same church after marriage and starting a family. At some point we moved back to Oklahoma where my Dad’s parents lived. My dad was one of twenty-one children. Hearing Aunts and Uncles talk about their childhood can be very entertaining to say the least. I have a lovely set of Aunts and Uncles, and at last count I had around forty-six first cousins.
Don’t think for a minute that you can’t have close relationships when you have that many cousins because that can’t be further from the truth. I remember going to church on Sundays then the entire family would go back to Grandma and Grandpa Beesley’s house for a huge lunch. Then, all us kids would play. We didn’t have video games or cellphones, we had dirt and each other! Then, when we got older we had music, dirt bikes, horses, and each other. I still have the muffler scar AND the pitchfork scars on my right leg, as well as the scar on my forehead from being dragged by a car to prove it! (The car thing was my own fault!)
Grandma Beesley was a faithful, devout Christian. On the flip-side of the Beesley coin, Grandpa was an alcoholic. Grandma was in church every time the little country church door was open. The only times I can remember Grandpa in church was when he was super intoxicated. I remember once him showing up at church then raising his hand to pledge to mow the church lawn every week. I wondered if he would remember that pledge the next day. Another time that I remember him at church was at an Uncle’s wedding. He ended up stepping on the bride’s dress. Then the last time I saw him in church was in Okfusky the day of his funeral. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever seen my Dad heartbroken cry. The Grandparents seemed like complete opposites. But the older I get the more I realize that they had some type of connection that was deeper than eyes could see. After all, there had to be a deep commitment to have raised all those children together. My Grandfather also didn’t seem to interfere with my Grandmother’s relationship with God either. I’ve never really thought about that before.
My grandfather was born on December 23, 1894. Can you even begin to imagine the World he lived through. The Great Depression, Dust Bowl, World Wars, the Vietnam War that sent his young son back without his legs, the start of the Olympics and the birth of icons like Coca Cola and Better Homes and Gardens, whom I now sell Real Estate under, and so much more. The inventions of televisions and air conditioners! This year, he would have been 129 years old. He passed away in 1973 at the age of 79 from a stroke. My Grandma was around 66 when he passed, but she never had any interest in remarrying. Thinking about that, she was 4 years older than I am now. She passed away in 1997 at the age of 90 years. I can still hear my Grandmother’s voice praying. She was a prayer warrior and because of her faithfulness to God our family is one of faith. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren can count ourselves as blessed that our roots began with her.
My parents were both very devoted to God and their family. Unlike my Grandparent’s Beesley, they didn’t seem like opposites at all. They ended up moving back to Arizona when I was in 5th grade. Dad became the Pastor at The Pentecostal Church of God in Peoria, Arizona. This was the very same church where they met. A lot of our lives were spent in that little church on the corner.
My Mom was pretty high-strung. When she got mad we all knew it. There was no mistaking that as plates flew overhead and the yelling at us was ongoing. A lot of people didn’t know that because they didn’t live in our home. On the opposite end of that spectrum was Dad. Quiet like he was always thinking. That drove mom nuts! I can remember her asking him during one of her angry tiraids, “what are you thinking right now?” His answer surprised me and that’s probably why I remember that moment so vividly. “My thoughts are my thoughts and I don’t have to tell you what I’m thinking!” I was absolutely shocked that mom’s angry rant completely stopped in its tracks! I remember holding my breath, afraid of his answer knocking her anger scale up a few notches. Instead, it stopped her in her tracks. She seemed taken aback by his answer. She chucked just a little then said “well okay!” And her fit of anger was over. Cut off as fast as it had arrived. I was blown away! That was not at all anything close to the response I expected.
Dad was known to prank Mom on occasions. Us kids would laugh so hard and those pranks, looking back on them now, was him scaring poor Mom. He would be riding in the car with her driving and would have his arm out of the window. When she passed another car he would beat on the door as if she hit the other car. It would startle and scare her. When she yelped out, he would laugh hysterically. I also know that paybacks could be fun for Mom as well. I remember one winter the fireplace was roaring. Mom made chili and we all ate a piping hot bowl of it in our living room in front of the fire, bundled up under blankets. Mom took the fireplace poker and stoked the fire, then stepped toward the kitchen. About that time a bunch of firecrackers started going off in the fireplace and I don’t think I’d ever seen my Dad jump off a couch so fast. Again, us kids thought it was funny after the fright of the moment wore off.
Looking back at that time with adult hindsight, I’m sure we were all in front of that fireplace eating hot chili because we were incredibly cold. That house didn’t have central heat and it was cold and in the dead of a frozen winter. We had to use the restroom in a pot on the porch because we only had an outside bathroom. And when I say bathroom, I mean an old wooden, stinky outdoor John. We hauled our water or drew water from the well. Us kids didn’t fully realize it then, but we were very poor. We didn’t have a car or a telephone at some points either. Had it not been for family, I don’t know how any of us would have survived. But we did with the grace of God. But the biggest testament to my parents was that us kids didn’t know we were impoverished. Mom made our clothes, as did my Aunt Dorothy and my Grandma Poe. I didn’t own a new store bought dress until I was around 12 years of age. I had dresses that came from a store, but the name of the store was “Goodwill.” I lucked out with new shoes though when my feet were turned in and I absolutely had to have corrective shoes. Those little beauties came in one style: UGLY!
When I was 12 yrs old, my influences were the boys closest to me. It had consisted to that date of my two brothers, Chuck and Randy, and my Uncle Eddie. Mike Beesley, my closest cousin, was one of my most influential childhood friends. That love still exists even though Mike moved to Heaven and never calls!
Mom wanted me to become more girlie. I’d become a pretty big tomboy since my major influencers were boys. She had obtained a credit card from Montgomery Wards. That upset Dad greatly. In fact, when Mom died she had a credit card in her wallet that dad didn’t know about. He was very upset she had $200 racked up in debt on that card when he found out. With the help of that Montgomery Ward credit card she enrolled me in “The Wendy Ward School of Charm.” Y'all may laugh, but I literally begged Mom to enroll me in clown school, not Wendy Ward’s School of Charm! I seriously wanted to go to clown school and had seen an ad on the wall at school. I came home, cleaned my room, cleaned the kitchen, made family dinner buttering up the atmosphere to get Mom in just the right mood to ask her for clown school! I didn’t ask for things as a kid, we just didn’t. But this was different, this was my future career. Haaa I laugh, but at the time I was serious!
But, I ended up as the oldest student in Wendy Ward’s School of Charm.” I am being totally serious when I tell you that I felt like Jethrine Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies in a room full of Barbies. One time each week for several weeks, the group of charm school students would meet in a room above the Motgomery Wards department store. The lesson plan included spending a couple of hours learning how to paint our finger nails, apply make-up, how to walk (yes, with a book on my head) and sit with good posture. Its purpose was to teach us “lady-like” behaviors. But, I wasn’t allowed to paint my nails or wear make-up, so I really didn’t see the benefits of sitting in a room full of Barbies looking at me like I was some kind of religious weirdo! The class culminated with a Montgomery Wards Fashion Show. I was taught the “modeling walk, pivot and turn, and supplied with two brand new dresses to model for the crowd.
To this day I remember the smell of those two new dresses. It was absolutely intoxicating! I felt like a million bucks instead of feeling like a Flintstone! I remember my Grandma Poe coming to my fashion show. Her being there did something to my soul. It’s THAT feeling, a feeling I will never forget, that makes the Grandma me want to be at as many of my Grandchildren’s events as I can attend. To show them how important they are to me. I felt so important that day and Grandma’s presence was a huge part of that feeling. We hear the term all the time “comfort food”. Well, Grandmas are “soul comfort food”.
After modeling, my wonderful, thoughtful, generous Grandmother who had made most my clothes to that point, purchased me that $26 Montgomery Wards dress. I was blown away. My Mom tried to talk her out of it, telling her we could just stop by Goodwill on the way home and try to find one similar. As those words came out of her mouth, my heart sank. The more she told Grandma that buying new was a waste of money because I would just grow out of it, the lower my heart sank.But my Grandma saw that! I remember the russtle sound of the shopping bag as the clerk gently folded my new dress and placed it in the bag. I remember what my Grandmother looked like with her wallet in left hand taking money out of it with her right hand. Then, the clerk put the receipt in the bag and handed it to Grandma, who handed it to me. If I’d have been a peacock, my colorful tail feathers would have filled the room. After that, my Grandma bought me two more new dresses. She kept buying me dresses every week until I had a closet full. I’m sure that she saw how that first brand new, store-bought dress made me feel. I had such wonderful Grandmothers. Both very different, but both so full of love and understanding.
As I sit today beside my Dad’s hospital bed, tired from spending the night in a chair, with nurses coming in all night (one always leaving the door open when she’d leave) and I’m thankful for so much. Yesterday, a Chaplain came to Dad’s room. He told me that his morning devotion with his Chaplain team was about how God promises to bless a ministers generations to follow, for a thousand years. He said, you need to tell your family that they will have blessings because of your Dad’s sacrifices to lead others to serve God.
There are things, and people in this life who forget or just don’t care that we are all just humans who come with flaws. We are not perfect because we didn’t have that perfect childhood. In life, we may have regrets, and we have definitely all made mistakes. Some people, and it seems that’s especially true for many from the current generations of entitlement, that if there’s a different way of thinking, or an opinion that doesn’t match their own, then we are sometimes treated as if we aren’t human, with feelings too. There’s a quick reaction to withdraw without giving the other person the opportunity to talk out differences. Instead the “block” option is the immature choice. If I have learned anything in this life, it’s that we are grateful for what we have. I’m not a social climber, in spite of Miss Wendy Ward’s techniques, and I never will be. I am simple. The things I want are simple; loyalty, mutual respect, happiness, family, and God, and not at all in that order.
My parents loved their family. If they were needed, they were quick to be there. They constantly prayed for their family. They even experienced hurt from family that was greater than any other hurt because that love was supposed to be unconditional, like theirs. They poured their lives, their time, and their emotions into their family. Sometimes, they made mistakes or said too much. Sometimes dementia and Alzheimer’s said something different. I remover my Mom in the last few years of her life would say exactly what she thought. She didn’t think about how it came out or who was caught in the crossfire. It wasn’t out of any type of malice, it was because of the disease. I have sometimes said things to entice people to think, when really I should not have. No malice, no aforethought, just trying to get people to appreciate opportunities or be grateful for what we have. We can’t change any of our passed, we can only change the future and holding grudges and anger holds us back.
Facing aging issues now with Dad is sad to see and even harder to navigate. Looking back over the last 6-8 years, I can see clearer. I used to get so upset with my Mom for getting in the middle of situations trying to “fix it” only to make it worse. But know I know, she couldn’t help herself. The disease wouldn’t allow it. I’m convinced more than ever that my parents were great actors for many years. They were declining mentally, and in the completely lucid moments they knew it. That’s why I’d find out without hearing it from them that they’d had two fender benders in a week. Or that Dad made a drive through at the local tractor supply store. It’s also why I’d find my Moms pin cushion by the pond, and her car keys locked in the shed with her freaking out that one of the kids must have played with her keys. It’s why Mom drove them everywhere because Dad got lost constantly when he’d drive. They made up excuses, but looking back it becomes very clear….
To be confined…
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