Run, Lola, Run!!

Doesn't every good story start this way???

I have many good memories of my very early years with "country gramma" (mothers mother) and my great-grandparents, my "Pa" and "town gramma" (my mothers grandparents).Hopefully I can put some of the best times I remember into a context that will allow you all to share the laughter and the tears I feel when I go back there.......

I have been told that I shouldn't go back......its the past.  Maybe so, but I think that going back not only reminds us where we started from, but teaches us what things not to do along that journey called "Life".... At the same time our memories serve as free entertainment!! (I am always in search of a bargain.....lol)

It was a warm day in paradise, September 7, 1949........oops........I was born!! I can't really tell you all what happened in the months that followed but apparently since I was born the first week of September......I'm guessing school was starting and since my mother was still in high school, I take it my great-grandmother began taking care of me from the git!

At two years of age is really where my memories begin.....its a timetable that I put together myself. My "Pa" still worked in the shipyards at Pearl Harbor and he died when I was three. Some things remember like it was yesterday! We lived down a lane high on a mountain top overlooking in one direction Diamond Head and the other direction you could see Pearl Harbor.....from the second floor veranda. Even at two I was able to realize that I was their whole world! I don't think I was ever a baby....I couldn't tell time but I was able to look at the big school wall clock in the kitchen and know when the little hand was on the 4 and the big hand was on the 3 then it was time to walk up the lane to meet my Pa. 

An older Asian man parked his vegetable truck in front of the Morages house everyday and I could get an ice cream and my Pa would pay him when his ride dropped him off from work.

He would ask me everyday......"what you like girl?" I would reply...."one vanilla ice cream please".  And smart enough at this early age to realize in time that I could ask for another!! And he would tell me......."where your stick"? So with that......sometimes I would have time to eat three ice creams......hold on to my sticks and Pa would pay for them when he got there!! At two, life was all about ice cream and dinner!! Sure enough when Pa and I would walk down the lane dinner would be ready! Its no wonder I was as big around as I was tall!!!

Pa had a stroke when I was three, I don't know the time frame that he lived after that. He would lie in the bed and he couldn't talk anymore.  I had a little two step stool that he built me so I could reach the bathroom sink to brush my teeth and I would carry it to the side of his bed and put his glass of water with a glass straw in it....to his mouth so he could drink. I would part his lips and put the glass straw in between his teeth so he could sip. Then he would smile at me when I removed it........now really at two??? Weird I don't remember him eating anything, but I remember his funeral and waving goodbye to the first man in my life that I would love.