Category: Family

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Siblings? What Siblings?

I was born an only child, with four siblings. My oldest sibling (Mercedes/BT) is 15 years older than me. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless is 13 years older. I have no recollection of them even living at home when I was a child. By the time I was beyond my toddlerhood and into a full-blown childhood, Ron and Rob, who are 10 and 6 years older than yours truly, were teenagers—which means they were never home. And then they were out building their own adult lives. I was home alone, sibling-wise, for most of my growing up. My nature is that of a lone wolf, so having the run of the house to myself suited me just fine. It was as if my parents had their family, and then I sort of wandered in from the Pre-existence and made myself at home.

Bow Tie o’ the Day in these pictures is the bow tied on my hoodie. Note my cork gun is present in one pic, so there’s no question of my paternity. The pup you see there is the family dog, whose name was actually Dumb Dumb—which is weird because the word “dumb” was kind of a swear word in our house. You could not call anyone “dumb.” No matter how dumb they were.😉

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Mom Never Ceases To Amuse

The wind was so fierce it blew Mom’s Tie o’ the Day clean off her neck. Or something like that. But her hair is perfect. Mom has always loved her hairspray.

This slide has always been a family favorite. Even Mom looked forward to seeing it turn up in the slide rotation. It is dated 1968, but I don’t know where it was taken. I should have paid more attention to location details during our family get-togethers for slide-watching on the living room wall. The exact circumstance of the picture is unclear, but I have a feeling Dad was giving all the directions. “Hey, Helen. Go stand sideways over by the edge, facing into the wind.” He probably cracked a joke about “mountain ranges” or some such thing. I’m sure she was replying to him with jokes as snappy as his. I’m also sure they were both loving every minute of it.

She misses him so.

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Yes, That Kind Of Day

You know the sort of day I’m writing about. Your bib apron is fastened to you with a Bow Tie o’ the Day on your back. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve played too hard. You’re so exhausted you collapse into a sudden sleep on the rug between the living room and the kitchen—still clutching your melting ice cream cone. Yup. That kind of day. 😂

FYI This is one of my sisters. TIE O’ THE DAY is pretty sure the star of this slide is my firstborn sibling, Mercedes/BT. It was taken in the early 50’s.

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Still Wanna Hug My Mother. Right Now!

Giving Mom a hug has been on my mind all day, so slides of her are what y’all get here. I know that if you’ve met Mom, you adore her, so that works out well for all of us.

In the first picture, my brother Ron shows up in his Bow Tie o’ the Day again. It’s a dapper outfit. I think the baby Mom’s holding in one of the photos is my brother, Rob. The picture of Mom eating on the porch in her slippers is a gem, but my personal fave photo here is of Mom fishing in her curlers. That’s one thing I’ve never done in my life. I must put it on my Bucket List. Note to self: Buy curlers and fishing pole.

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Just Sayin’

This is one of my favorite photos of my mother. She looks so pretty, despite clearly being under the weather. She wrestled with her own depression demons, at a time when nobody talked about such things. Still, she never gave up on getting through the storm. Notice that she’s reading her scriptures.

TIE O’ THE DAY has only one thing to say this morning, and I’m yelling it in my head: IT HAS BEEN 122 DAYS SINCE I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HUG MY MOM, AND I DON’T LIKE IT ONE BIT! I understand the reasons it has to be so, and I’m grateful Millard Care and Rehab keeps her so very safe and entertained. But understanding why something has to be the way it is does not make it any easier for me to not hug my mother for 122 days in a row. A hug over the phone is just not the real thing.

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Bling And Bands

Suzanne offered to model Bow Tie o’ the Day and Face Mask o’ the Day, along with my new “business cards.” I thought adding jewelry to the staging of the pic would add an extra dollop of visual interest for y’all. You’re now looking for the business cards, I’m sure.

Believe it or not, when I’m out and about, strangers often ask me what’s up with my neckwear—especially the bow ties. The sillier the neckwear, the better. I’m happy to listen to their comments and answer their questions. I tell ’em about this tblog, and sometimes they scribble a note to themselves about the tblog name. So I thought, “Hey! I need business cards to hand out.” But doing things the usual way is not very stand out-y, so I cogitated about what kind of business card isn’t really a normal business card. Ta-da! The tie-o-the-day.com wrist bands. That’s more me-y. I have to wear a few at a time so I have ’em handy to give inquisitive folks I meet along the way in my day.

FYI Suzanne loves every one of her rings, whether they’re valuable or plastic. She has eclectic taste in jewelry, but sticks close to vintage pieces. She regularly wears a particular vintage ring set which is beyond meaningful to me for a host of reasons: she wears Mom’s wedding ring. How cool is that?!

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I’m The One In The Bow Tie

I’m sharing this washed-out slide before it completely fades away. It’s a swell photo, but I had to make a DIY Bow Tie o’ the Day before it qualified to be in a post. My Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless (SWWTRN) probably also wishes to Remain Faceless, but too bad for her. The crowds demand to see my SWWTRN occasionally, especially when she shows up in a slide taken in 1967. We were both such flower children at the time! She is thirteen years older than I am, but we have always been tight. We “get” each other’s wit. And I have always been in awe of my SWWTRN’s resilience, relentlessness, and quiet generosity. Those are three of her best qualities, and striving to emulate her example of those characteristics is often what keeps me going.

FYI Yup, my SWWTRN is wearing a wiglet. Wiglets used to be the thing, back in the time of hippies. I guess. I dunno.

BTW We always snapped our photos across the alley in my grandparents’ yard—with their luscious foliage as background. No matter how hard Mom worked to bring forth a beautiful garden for us, our yard grew only a smattering of pitiful flowers and towering weeds.

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But Not Like Queen Elizabeth

I apologize that this slide is of such poor quality. It is over 65 years old, so I’m lucky to even have it. The dapper little lad is my oldest brother, Ron. Look hard and you’ll see he’s sporting Bow Tie o’ the Day. It’s a family thing.

I owe Ron bigly for giving me some of my cool. Ron taught me how to play basketball. He taught me how to golf. Ron dressed with flair, fedoras and all. I learned some of my snarkiness from him too. Ron even baptized me.

And he gave me a name. Not a church blessing name. But a name that has stuck for more than five decades—at least, between us. He nicknamed me “Queenie.” I don’t know why he chose that name for me, but I suspect it was likely because—as the baby of the family—I was spoiled by my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, and so on. My wish was their command, I’m sure.

I was called Queenie so frequently while Ron still lived at home, that one day I came home from elementary school and found that Mom had renovated my bedroom door. This is a photo of the actual door, which still hangs in its original place at Mom’s old house in Delta. One day, the “Queenie’s Castle” door will live with me, where it belongs. It will perhaps become the door to The Tie Room, here in my current castle. That would be groovy, eh?

No matter where the castle door is, I will always be Ron’s Queenie. He’s my big brother. And he’s my friend.