pirkey's Blog

I have five children, each one a little less than two years apart. When my children were small, I became rather disenchanted with the reading material I found on sale for children. Much of it had to do with grown-up issues, with thinly disguised attempts at entertaining children. It seemed to me that much of it merely wanted to push young children to be small adults, instead of the children they were.

What I wanted for my own children was reading material that helped them understand 'values' and also entertained them on a child's level. No 'preaching,' as some publishers considered that kind of children's literature, but just good, old-fashioned stories.

So I started writing stories myself for my kids. Some of these stories they each carried back and forth to their teachers to read for the enjoyment of their schoolmates. Needless to say, they became rather 'dog-eared.'

As the years passed and my children grew up, those children's stories were put aside as life took over. I now have three grandchildren by one of my daughters, and another grandchild with another daughter.

I knew the old stories I had written for my children were being read now to my grandchildren ocasionally and, of course, I hoped they enjoyed them. But, honestly, that's as far as I thought about the subject.

Until one day, when my 5-year-old granddaughter, Brittaney, stood in front of me, with her little hands on her hip and determination on her face, as she asked me a simple question.

"Grandma, when do we get our stories?"

"What stories?"

"You know, grandma, the stories like you wrote for when you had kids. I've been waiting for mine, and now I'm five already. When do I get a story with me in it?"

The question caught me completely off guard! Off course, I had used my own children's names in many of those long-ago stories, and the natural assumption Brittaney had obviously gotten was that grandma would write stories for her and her brother and sister, also. Ah! Seems my intuition had been asleep lately!

"You know, honey, I've been thinking lately about writing a little story for you." I lied. "Remember that beautiful butterfly that landed on your hand the other day..."

Well, that was the nudge I got from a determined little grandchild to get 'what was coming to her.' Before I realized it, I was back into writing children's stories. I now have some twenty new ones.

Speaking of a young BraveHeart Girl...!

Pirkey

Hi, everyone. I am still trying to find my way around this site, and there seems to be many things I don't understand yet. For instance...

How do I post a picture. I've been asked to post a picture, but I don't know how.

I am an affiliate with an Internet Marketer that I have checked into and have a lot of respect for, but I don't know if it is okay to post his link with an article about his product????

Speaking of links, I don't know how to highlight a link, or if I'm even supposed to do that????

How do I become a friend to others who have asked me?

I have other questions, but that's enough for this time. I just don't want to do anything I'm not supposed to do here.

I hope I don't sound too much like a dummy, but If you ask me any question about writing anything (except poetry!), I can most likely answer that. But I'm not so good about technical things. (And, yes, I do consider videos and such technical.)

Pirkey

Several years ago I, like so many others in the world, was having a lot of back pain. I was in Seattle at the time, so I went to a back specialist there. I was told that I had degenerative disc disease (also like so many other people), and that I needed a back operation on my discs. I opted to not have the operation at that time.

A few years later, when I was in Albany, New York, the back pain had gotten worse, so I went to another back specialist there. The diagnosis was pretty much the same as before--an operation was needed on my discs. Again, I declined the operation because, after all, millions of people have had that operation, and I had not read where any of them were left completely free of pain. And besides, many of them had had to have not one, but several back operations to somewhat stop the pain.

Three years later, I found myself in Iowa and, by that time the pain in my back had become so excruciating that I could only walk a few steps at a time before bending over nearly double.

Well, another trip to a specialist, but I didn't hold out much hope for help. When the doctor walked into my room with my e-rays, I was ready to hobble to the door to make my escape. Then he gave me the news I had never heard before.

"Of course, you have degenerative disc disease, which you already knew. But you have something else, also."

That stopped me short on my exit.

"What?" I asked

"You have scoliosis of the spine." He continued.

"Is that serious?"

"Yes. It's the reason your pain has become so severe, and you cannot get any relief no matter what you do."

Here it comes, I thought. The suggested operation I had been avoiding for so long.

"Do I have another choice besides an operaton?" I asked.

"Of course, there is always an alternative."

An alternative! Of course, that was what I needed!

"What's the alternative?"

His next soft-spoken words hit me squarely in the midsection with the REASON I needed an operation--the reason no other doctor had given me.

"You can wait--and it won't be much longer--until your spine collapses, and you'll be put in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. An operation then would be out of the question."

Well, guess what? When I had the information I needed in order to make the right decision, I chose the operation! The operation itself was so intensive that it had to be done on two different days, and the recuperation period was longer than I had anticipated (always the optimist, I had thought a couple of weeks for the recouperation would be enough. HA!)

From the moment I got out of bed and began doing a little walking, there has been NO pain in my back. That operation was done two years ago, and still no pain. I now have a steel rod, with bolts and screws, in my back, and no pain when I walk.

I'm not sure that I would have gotten the same outcome if I had had an earlier operation, since scoliosis was never mentioned to me by other specialists. But I do know that once I had the exact information I needed for an operation, it was easy to make up my mind.

When my granddaughter Carissa was four-years-old, she was visiting with me one summer day while my daughter was running some errands. The day was hot, so Carissa splashed around in the small outdoor pool for awhile. When she came in, I realized she had not brought a change of clothes. I toweled her off as best I could, then looked around for something for her to wear, since her own clothes were sopping wet.

With her help, I found a pair of my old shorts (the smallest ones I had), and one of my T-shirts. The shorts were way too big for her tiny waist, and they hung down to almost cover her shoes. To remedy that, I used a tie-on belt through the loops of the shorts to hold them up. The T-shirt completed the outfit, but it was also too large for her small body and hung down past her knees.

I was about to go into the kitchen to fix our lunch when Carissa grabbed my hand.

"Gramma, can we go for a walk before lunch?" She asked.

The question took me by surprise. Not that we didn't normally go for walks in the neighborhood, because we did. But looking down at her, she looked like such a little ragamuffin that I could imagine what the neighbors would think if they saw her that way.

"Uh, no, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Well, honey, someone might laugh and make fun of you."

"Why , Gramma?"

"Because..."

I looked down at my granddaughter, and she was staring up at me with the most innocent expression in her blue eyes, tears just beginning to well up.

Well, that's when it hit me, and if it were possible, I would have kicked my own behind! Here I was being given the truest kind of love a grandmother could ever hope for, since my granddaughter obviously thought she looked grand because she was wearing my clothes. Nothing could have made her happier, or pleased her more.

Laugh at her? Just let 'em try!!

"You're right, honey, it's a wonderful day for a long walk. We can have lunch any time."

Pirkey

Sometimes it really does take a BraveHeart woman to survive a daughter's teen years! For instance...

After an argument about curfew time, my defiant teen stood in the hallway with fire in her eyes and her hands on her hips. Then she flounced (isn't that a great word!) off to slam her bedroom door, after one final word that seemed to sum up her entire take of the situation. The word was, "Whatever!"

Well! Just what did that mean? I wondered, at a loss of how to answer. She was fifteen when she first flung that word at me. Somehow, it didn't sound at all like my normally sweet-tempered daughter. I couldn't help but wonder what had just changed between us.

Over my daughter's growing up years, we had many instances of 'conversations' that ended in that same shouted "Whatever!" And the inevitable slammed door. Actually, it became quite common as she tried to extend her boundaries in the wrong direction.

But as she grew to womanhood, albeit seemingly defiant and determined to make my life pure hell, I began to understand the inuendoes in that single word. At different times, it meant different things.

Sometimes, "Whatever!" meant (again) "I hate you!" Other times it meant, "I'll pay you back by not speaking to you for a month!" Still other times it meant "Okay! I'll just sneak out my bedroom window!" Ha! I was ready and waiting for that one. (After all, did she think I never thought of any tricks when I was her age?)!

I think one of the funniest times was when she proclaimed to the whole world, "I'm nothing but a servant around here! Now, I have to pick up my room, and run the vacuum cleaner! Well, whatever!"

And so on and so on. But eventually, without my realizing it, something had changed in a profound way. Just before she graduated from college with honors, she turned to me and winked. "Thanks, mom, for being there for me all these years. You know...Whatever."

Have you, as a BraveHeart Woman, had your "Whatever!" moments with your teen daughter yet? If not, don't even try to make sense of them. Just be aware of the world of challenge that one word can mean, and realize it is merely her way of believing she is under control of the situation. Have heart. It does get better.

Pirkey