Fall is in the air

Fall is in the air....and it is wonderful. This is probably my favorite time of the year. The changing of seasons is such a great time for reflection. The line from the movie...You've Got Mail when Tom Hanks tells Meg that he wishes he could "send her a bouquet of sharpened pencils" because of fall, well I have the same feeling. School started and the evenings are cooler, the leaves are fallin' off the trees and the mums are blooming. I can't wait to smell the first fire from burning leaves, mmmmmm! The crispness in the air and the warmth from a bonfire are all part of our memories......growing up on a farm as I did, I can remember the long days of summer turning into fall nights and loving the autumn that was on it's way. Where I grew up my school was one of the last great ones. It was Murray School, on Bradyville Pike and my teacher was Mrs. Maude. I was in her classroom for 1st through 3rd grade and it was the best years of my life. I can't really remember why we were all in that same room so long, all I know was that it was a small school but big on fun. Mrs. Maude was at least 60 years old them...I thought, but she was actually probably about my age now(not 60, lets leave it at that!) She wore big black shoes, typical school marm kind and cotton shirt dresses, buttons down the front with a skinny belt. Salt-n-pepper hair and such a sweet disposition. I LOVED HER! The classroom was amazing. This was the first place I had ever seen an easel. A real one and we painted actual pictures. It was heaven for me, an aspiring artist even then. We always had a huge cedar christmas tree and she decorated the room so nice, until the year she had the silver kind with the light that made it different colours! How horrible! It was the worst but it showed the times, middle 60's. But back to the fall....we always had a harvest festival, every year and the whole area, the people living all around came to it. We had cake walks, yummmm and they were so fun and we felt such pride when we won. And each classroom had an activity. My favorite was the fishing room. It amazed me how I always caught something good. And then we had candy apples and popcorn balls and it was decorated all fallie! Oh a kinder gentler time...for a while. Then soon they closed the school down and BUSED us all to Buchannan School with mean kids and mean teachers (so I thought!) and all my security was gone. The school was big and impersonnel and scary. So the end of 3rd grade and the beginning of 4th were awful but not as awful as what was to come. My parents went through an awful D I V O R C E as the song went. We had to move from my beloved farm to the city. My daddy was gone to the other woman and we were left with my mom picking up the pieces of our lives. She amazed me and at the same time I hated her for doing this to me. But she was not at fault. Why did it have to happen? I thought about it every day. Everything I had ever known was gone. What would happen to us? Little did I know the fear she must have had. How was she even to get out of bed everyday and go to a bad job and then another and then another on the weekends only to see us in small little bits of time. My two older sisters had to raise me, my beloved brother joined the army, helicopter pilot, 2 tours in Veit Nam. The bravest person I have ever known but he was gone, far away. My mother looked for him in the mail and when he would return it would only be for short visits. I still miss him to this day. I wish I could hug him daily to make up for loosing him when I was so young. Though he made it through that awful war I never have spent very much time with him since. But when I do I so enjoy it. I hated his wife when he married her...she took my spot, he couldn't move home because of her. I had thought. But actually he ran away to the war, our father was so horrible to him, poor young boy, he was robbed also along with me. I soon loved his wife, she is a sister to me as like my own 2, whom I adore. My ramblings only remind me of God's mercy in my life-though I only knew of HIM much later, I feel his hand was guiding me all along. HE knew where I needed to be someday, to find my way back home. I think the Lord likes fall also. He created it!