Assignment

I was actually cleaning my bedroom today and found the book Cherokee Feast of Days by Joyce Sequichie Hifler (daily meditations) which had a list I'd made out, year unknown? that I thought I would post tonight. I invite any of you to list 10 things also:

List 10 Happy Childhood Memories:

1) Jumping on the furniture Saturday mornings with Dana (esp to find change in the sofa and chairs).

2) Making Grandma's (then Mom's) 1957 Packard's torsion level go up and down by weighing the back down sitting on it--usually me and Dana--then switching to the front and doing it again, and Repeat! It would make a little "bzzzzzzzz" sound and raise slowly up. We thought it great fun.

3) Grandma Link brushing my hair and making 2 ponytails on the sides. Mom and dad always cut my hair really short and the bangs straight across, higher and higher as they'd cut them crooked. So to have 2 little pony tails was exquisite!

4) Swinging--at school, Grandma's apple tree, our awesome handmade log swing. Way up high and flinging myself all around. And parachuting out. Had a trapeze bar, too, and I'd swing on that sitting or hanging by my knees. Our collie, Chi Chi, would try to catch me back and forth when I hung upside down.

5) Kind principal in kindergarten. Mrs. Thorpe. and the kind janitor, Mr. George. I was sick a lot and missed a lot of school and in hospitals for lengthy stays.

6) Snakes--garter snakes, of course, and all critters. My dad helped us not to be afraid of them and we took joy in searching them out and carrying them around with us, making necklaces and bracelets with them. They like being held. Of course, I didn't grow up around poisonous snakes, so I had that going for me.

7) Going for long drives in the country--the 4 of us--going up north every spring to hunt morel mushrooms, staying in cottages and cabins and at grandma's or aunts' houses in the summer and a lot of holidays--lots of cousins, aunts, uncles--old family friends of parents to visit. My dad had 7 brothers and 1 sister and mom had 2 sisters.

8) Eating mom's homemade cookies ;oD ... Raiding the cookie jar ALWAYS.

9) A few good friends--in the neighborhood and at school.

10) Riding my bike--gave me a way to go fast as I could never run very well or at all with asthma. I loved the little hill and curve our house was at the top of (still live there) and learned how to fly down or up the hill and curve with "no hands" ... such a feeling of freedom and speed.

11) (bonus # ;o) Hula-hooping. Thinking about buying one of those new-fangled gigantic ones that maybe I could use today as the kids variety just won't work for me anymore.

****Here's another tidbit with this note I found of a conversation Olivia deHavilland had with Erroll Flynn and her commentary:

EF: "What do you want out of life?"

ODH: "Respect for difficult work well done. What do you want out of life?"

EF: "Success."

ODF: And by that he meant fame and riches, and that wasn't enough.

-------"I decided I would torture EF and we had (scenes) with many kisses and I'd look

forward to and I'd mess up the scenes, 6, 7, 8 times and we'd have to kiss all over again...I

believe he had trouble with his tights."

*********

And for today's Cherokee Feast meditation:

August 17th:

We really never lose anyone. If they were ever a part of our lives, they are always a part of our lives. The important thing is not to regret what has gone before but to take from it the lesson, the experience that was in it for us. Life is a two-way street, not always sunshine and flowers but a few clouds, a few tears, go with it. It is a complex mixture of many things we are supposed to glean from it. We cannot park by what went wrong, nor can we linger forever by something we might have done right. It is a progressive, moving time filled with new experiences, memories b oth good and not so good, and many promising hours. It is possible to put our emotions aside and remember joy. But above all, the best is yet to be.

"The Great Spirit placed me here...to take good care of the ground and to do each other no harm." --Young Chief

**************

Remember those happy moments in childhood ... and also create some new memories now. Be happy and find joy. Jeff and I were sitting together in our living room last night and a humming bird just buzzed to the middle of the window beside us and looked in. In Native American spirituality, I've read the Hummingbird stands for "Joy".

Goodnight from your

SisSTAR.......with love and gratitude for your friendship.