Thinking About My Childhood & True Friendships

I was pondering everything that happened in 2009 and I know I am very fortunate because I know so many others who have lost their jobs and mine is still intact. My folks were older when I was born. I was number 5 in a house full of kids. My late oldest sister Pat was already 16 when I was born. Following her was my brother Bill (14 years older then me). Then Ed (7 years older) and Mary (5 years older) . I grew up in a classic phamily home. My mom Cecilia stayed home and held the home front while my dad Ed worked as a head roller in the steel mill Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI). I was a spoiled kid. I was the baby and my father doted on me. My poor mother had her hands full! I was painfully shy until I was about 12. Entering kindergarten is took the elderly teacher Mrs. Killian, the school principal and the first grade teacher both Benedictine nuns to pry me off my mother's leg! I had already established two lifelong friends, Karen Mesojedic Clark who was born four months and eleven days after me. She became my dear friend when our mother's decided she was big enough for me to play with! Today my dear friend is a Colon cancer survivor and wife and mother herself to Catherine recently graduated and attending grad school in Minnesota with her new husband Chris. Karen and her hubby Chris reside in Boise, Idaho. Then have been together since 1972. Wow! I was thinking about growing up because Karen lost her precious mom this September. She was 95 years old! Those losses are so difficult. It brings an end to our maternal matriarch and sometime we wonder if we can accomplish half as much as our mom's did with more resources!

My dear friend Lynette Zinno is still holding down her home front with her mom Irene. Lynette is the friend I met while crashing our tricycles about 52 years ago! She is a special ed teacher in our hometown of Pueblo, Colorado and she lost her dear dad when we were only 16. He died from a heart attack at a Bronco game in Denver in front of her little brother. I remember jumping into my sister's lil yellow wagon (stick shift) and trying to make it to her house about 20 minutes from mine! I laugh about it now but you have to understand the devotion I had to that girl! Me and the words stick and shift don't mesh! LOL! I am lucky to still be here and not suffering from severe whiplash trying to get to her that sad Sunday afternoon.

I treasure phamily and I treasure my lifelong friendships. It is funny how people come into your lives exactly when you need them. Take Barbara Shobe Boyack for instance. This girl became my pen pal from an ad I placed in Tiger Beat magazine back in 1967! I remember choosing her because she lived in California and as a child I had longed to go there. I was her maid of honor at her wedding and my one regret about our friendship is the fact that I wanted her to stand up for me too when I married. But I had a very unconventional wedding. My dad was very ill and I knew he was waiting for me to marry. I knew he adored my first daughter Noelle even more then he had once adored me! He was afraid that being a single parent I might never marry and he would be gone on to a better place and never know if someone could love that little girl the way he did! So my husband of 25 years and myself married quickly and quietly May 3, 1984 in an old room attached to an old church in North Denver. We were married by his friend's uncle, a former prison minister. My husband was blessed because he had his best buddy Dave stand up for him. I had to have Lynn a girl I lived with briefly when I moved to Denver and really didn't mesh with. I always regret that. But 11 months and one day later my dad passed away and I knew he was finally at peace because his lil dolly Noelle was happily placed in a real phamily.

Today is a memorial service for Lucy, a spitfire ole gal that I had the honor to work with at the University Hospital back in the 1980s. She was the most unconventional woman with a different look about life. She was mom to 12 children and she never appreciated the fact that the Catholic church, she says, made her have all those kids without considering her own feelings! She despised Christmas and every year pulled out her sweatshirt with the big bold words BAM HUMBUG! printed on it! She did it to get to our boss Patty, a very pristine woman. Lucy always said "Anne, you'd hate Christmas too, if you had 12 damn children." I think Lucy would have been a better mom and been able to handle it differently had she been born 30 years later! The times were tough for her but let me tell you all of those children became wonderful people. I worked with her daughter Deirdre Ibotson Miller in the Admissions office also and she was a wonderful person although her raising was very unconventional. I will miss this wonderful service today but my thoughts and my prayers will be with the phamily.

I will end this today but tomorrow I think I will come back and talk about the wonderful friends I have collected throughout my life. There is absolutely nothing better then a true and trusted friend!

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Helen Keller