Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Findings

We're on vacation this week (thank you God) and taking it easy.  One of the things we're doing is going through those last few boxes that never got unpacked, and now I am going through an old milk crate full of college papers, mostly very bad poetry, and things my mother saved from my youth (including music festival comment sheets, report cards, letters to Santa, and ALL my baby teeth, EWW says my cielo).

Here's one thing I ran across.  Probably this is something my parents had us all do before we moved from my "hometown" where I was born and lived until I was 9, when we moved to Austin, TX for Daddy to got to seminary.  The heading and numbers are in my mother's hand.
Things I Like Best To Do in Monticello:
1.  Ride my bike.
2.  Go to school.
3.  Play with my friends.
4.  Play in the ditch. (this is the creek that ran alongside our house.)
5.  Visiting my older friends. (these are the elders whose love has held me in good stead life-long)
6.  Playing with Punkinseed. (our cat)
7.  Playing baseball.
8.  Getting dirty.
9.  Playing school.
10.  Going fishing.

Does this list surprise anyone?  I didn't think so!  I love it!  And...it would still be pretty similar today...just add music, which I wasn't quite in love with yet although it was certainly very much part of my life, and I'd be set!

UPDATED! A few pages later I found this (written on a typewriter!):

Dear Mommy and Daddy, 
I love you very much.  And I think you are the very best Mommy and Daddy there could ever be.

Do you really think I will find some new friends when we move?

(here the writer discovers the tab key...and uses it with glee...tabs deleted here for ease of reading!)
Did you know that I have some good things about moving?
1.  It will be a new experience.
2.  I will hopefully find new friends.
3.  I will go to a new school.

I have some bad reasons, too.
1.  I will miss my friends.
2.  I will miss our house.
3.  I will miss going down in the ditch.

Your loving dauter, (hey, I was only 9...)
[Towanda]

3/16/79

I really did love that ditch.