Essay...33º

A few days ago I published an "anaphora" tracing Herbs life from birth to college.  Today I am publishing my life, birth to my senior year in high school. This has been easy, but now I have to figure out how to continue telling the story of how we met, married and the following 50 years....Still keeping the "anaphora" style as this is my writing assignment for May...Please remember that both stories are how I remember things....That these stories in places are really close to the facts and in other places are figments of my imagination! So keeping that in mind, read on...I welcome feed back, comments, emails...Hugs to All...  OWAV:)

The sun shines on a cold October day 1942, baby girl is born at the family home, the last of 6 children. The sun peeks from behind a cloud, mother needs bed rest, recovery is slow. Sun is obscured when surgery is scheduled. Two older sisters step in to care for the new baby and sun shines again as new little girl grows by leaps and bounds drinking jersey milk from a bottle and soon the mother can be found working in her garden. The sun shines as her days are spent playing cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood children or running through the sprinkler, clad only in underpants as the sun bakes her skin to a golden brown. Then a sun filled day she starts to school, has to wear dresses and tight shoes. The tooth fairy arrives; a gap-toothed smile shows in the 2^nd grade photo. 

The sunshine dims as Father becomes disgruntled with endless day of work and mooching relatives. Clouds obliterate the sunshine as trucks are loaded with machinery and livestock. A touring car and a pickup complete the caravan and they travel 500 miles over treacherous roads arriving at “Jughandle Ranch” in the middle of a blizzard.

The sun shines on a frigid December day and Santa arrives that night to fill the stockings, one orange in the toe, mixed nuts and hard candy on top. Gaily wrapped packages under the tree adorned with icicles.

The little girl starts school in one room with a potbelly stove and children dressed from head to toe in wool, most of them fluent in a strange language as well as English. The sun shines high in the sky when spring arrives, slowly melting the snows of winter. The next 4 years fly by as she and a fellow classmate spend the summers riding bikes, mixing skunk cabbage and dandelions into mud pies they leave to dry in the scorching summer sun.  The sun shines as she learns to milk cows, play the saxaphone, drive a tractor and a team of horses named Bert and Dick. Sunshine dims when her sister clues her into the fact that Santa Claus and parents are one and the same.

Sunshine dims, puberty strikes but she remains her Daddy's girl, a “short curly do” replaces the braids. Sticking close to her father’s side, she is the hired man, always trying to lighten her father’s load. The sunshine hides behind a dark cloud as she enters high school, now it matters what you wear, jeans and t-shirts are exchanged for pleated skirts and sweaters with tags that say Jantzen, or White Stag, that is, if you belong to the “in group”. This girl watches from the sidelines or maybe settles in the middle group while the sun makes a come back. She enjoys making new friends and relates well to the teachers. Parties, dances, president of “Girls Club” gives her the social interaction she needs and she finds a niche in the music program, fills her spare time with bus trips as the band goes to festivals and the pep band follows the teams to ball games. The sun shining now moves into the autumn sky as parents silently watch their baby girl grow up.