I still am surprised

It is hard getting used to – this being the old one in the Scott House. I came to that house as a baby in 1948 and it wasn’t bad. I didn’t realize it but the war was over and won and the country’s mood was pretty good out here in rural Indiana. The background of the land was the same – small town general store,  big old brick school house just north of us, a big garden with a patch of strawberries running right down the middle, the smells of woodsmoke and Grandma’s and Mother’s cooking.

My grandmother was almost 45 when Mother was born and her dad five years older. I came into a world that was a modernized turn of the century place with stories of sleigh rides and horses and buggies and sicknesses without antibiotics.Eisenhower wasn’t president yet and there were no interstates.

I had an aunt who was 18 years older than mother and an uncle who was 15 years older and cousins who were older.

It stayed that way for a long time. Then my uncle died and a couple of years later it was 1998  and I was 50. My aunt died around Christmas that year. My father became ill just after the next Christmas and died in four weeks. For a decade there was a lull; things were different but we didn’t talk about it. Last year Mother died.

It’s just me now. Every now and then it sneaks up on me and goes “Boo.”  I think it goes Boo because the effect is that it’s scary.

Well, soon, daylight will come and I guess I’ll do what my grandparents and parents did – keep on living my life until I too am somebody’s ghost.

One thought on “I still am surprised”

  1. wow, miss a day and I get three posts instead of one…. whoo hoo! It’s party day! AmeliaJake is on a roll!

    My Sister’s Farmhouse – she went through quite a change all at once. It seemed abrupt. A falling out with the almight PioneerWoman, a falling out and rejection of God, a shutting down of My Sister’s Farmhouse and opening of the New Rachelle blog…. all with little explanation…. who knows how the mind works. I’m still trying to figure out mine.

    Alien tree, bobbing cow head. Yes, a picture is a must. I will admit it’s giving me some ideas….

    Being the “old” one. I guess I’ve never really thought about it, chalk it up to my youthful nature. I guess my goal has always been to outlive my mother, which actually is not that far away, another two years and I’ll have done that. THAT is sobering at times. I often wonder what my mom would have been like at 60, or 70, or 80. I wonder if she would have approved of me, of my kids, of how I raised them, of my life…. then I wonder if it should really matter but it still surfaces sometimes. I guess it is sad that I catch myself at times thinking…. “would mom approve of this” instead of “would God approve of this.” But do we ever really stop being moms or being daughters? I don’t think so. Anyway, revel in being the oldest one, it gives you all sorts of excuses for being eccentric…. you can blame anything on age. good or bad.

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