Personally I don’t have any problem admitting that I use my fingers to count. Mrs. Engle (First Grade), Mrs. Carter (Second Grade) and Mrs. Hoskins (Third Grade) I think they would be proud of me today, after all, I am using the skills they taught me in grade school after all these years. My reason for counting is that my parents are celebrating their 55th Wedding Anniversary this week and I used my fingers in tens to count the years. I am smiling thinking who is most exciting right now? My elementary school teachers because of their effort to teach me to count, or is it my parent’s because I have actually remembered their special day? Either way, I used my fingers to count, and doing such reminds me of a day that seems so long ago, and yet just like yesterday.
Grade school does fill our memory banks with people, places and events. Like when Arjay Elementary got a new teeter totter, now that was exciting! Schools today can’t have teeter totter like we had, they were metal, steel, wood and had nails and bolts that kept the seats on so you could have fun for all the time recess would allow. Certainly they were not child proof because I had plenty of splinters and busted knees from hitting the ground and playing way to rough. Come to think of it, I am not even sure if there was a child protection agency for toys back then, if there was, I cannot recall having even heard of them back then.
Thinking about children and parents, if I had been born in this generation my parents would no doubt be in jail from all the moments of corporal punishment they dished out to me. We all know spanking children is against the law now, and discipline is illegal, or at least so it seems. Funny how things change in life, and what once work has been discarded for a new method. Now I am not sure what the newer method is, but I know it normally means kids get what they want, when they want, and no one says anything to them, its just the way it is. Well, one thing I know for certain, that wasn’t the way it was around our home growing up. If I got a whipping at school when I got home I would get a whipping by mother and then one by dad too…..not sure what that method is called, but it sure seemed to work.
When I think about my parents and their celebration of 55 years of marriage I think about a much different time. Two love birds growing up on Stinking Creek in Knox County and they drove to New Tazewell, Tennessee to get married. Now, just a funny side not for me personally. When I look at their pictures from 1956 I see the signs that say New Tazewell from their wedding pictures and my mind gets to thinking that someone needs to change the sign….New Tazewell is not new anymore. We’ve got Tazewell, and New Tazewell, let me see…maybe Newer Tazewell for now? It is amazing, everything seems to change, but then somethings never change. My parents like many got married in Tennessee, visited Devils Garden and traveled 25E when it was a winding two lane road that somehow even now fills the memory with cherished moments of life back then.
The Bible says that Children are a blessing of the Lord, and that is a good blessing for parents, because if you were anything like me, Lord knows it was only Him that kept me alive and being beat to death by my parents! Being a child and knowing that God looks at us and tells parents they are blessed puts a lot of pressure on kids to live up to God’s word. One fact for certain, I am thankful that my parents married, brought three of us into existence, and have raised us in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Not that we always followed it, but that they did it. There is something that needs to be said for a 55 year commitment and from this baby child the thing that keeps jumping out at me is that I was the one who was blessed.
Thanks mom & dad for all your love and congratulations on 55 years of marriage. You are a great example!
Until then
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment