Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
A Flooded Neighborhood Grocery in Kingwood, Texas — Image by kenne
We are here in Kingwood, Texas staying with one of our children, Jill, and grandson James in Kingwood, Texas, which is part of Houston. It flooding down in Houston, and unless you are on a mountain top disconnected from the social media world, this is not news to you. Record amounts have rain has fallen causes massive flooding, even in places that have never flooded.
Thousands of people are flooded out of the homes, and many have no place to go. Many of these people are those who are bearly able to get by on a daily basis. Many are the people who do our dirty work.
“Who’s gonna build your wall boys?
Who’s gonna mow your lawn?
Who’s gonna cook your Mexican food
When your Mexican maid is gone?
Who’s gonna wax the floors tonight
Down at the local mall?
Who’s gonna wash your baby’s face?
Who’s gonna build your wall?”
— Tom Russell
Today I spent part of my day driving through parts of Kingwood, a planned community where poor young Hispanics would not be able to afford to live. Yet, one-third of the Houston population is Hispanic, some of which may not be here legally. Regardless, without many of this population; Who would be doing our dirty-work? Who will help clean up Houston after Harvey? I was thinking about this question and its answer today during my drive when I saw a large group of people coming out of a local grocery store that had been flooded.
— kenne
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Bye-Bye — Image by kenne
“The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye,
the story of love is hello and goodbye…until we meet again”
― Jimi Hendrix
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Kenne Jaxon (September 13, 2014) — Image by kenne
Good and Bad Children
Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle;
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.
You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewildering,
Innocent and honest children.
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places–
That was how in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
But the unkind and the unruly,
And the sort who eat unduly,
They must never hope for glory–
Theirs is quite a different story!
Cruel children, crying babies,
All grow up as geese and gabies,
Hated, as their age increases,
By their nephews and their nieces.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
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Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Agnes.
(The following was originally written and posted September 5, 2012.)
Willie Agnes Poe passed away (September 8, 2006) after three months fighting post-surgery infection. During the last few weeks of Mother’s life, she shared stories of her childhood and often talked about playing with her close childhood friend, Fern. (They remained close throughout life.)
“We had so much fun playing in the cemetery — Can you take me back to the cemetery on the hill?’ she would ask. “I can see the man in black with a big black dog,” she would go on.
In her last days, the man in black visited her. As we were talking, she looked straight ahead, “…see him, he is here! Don’t you see him?” Then she would turn and ask, “Can you bring me a big black dog? I want a big dog! Can you get one for me?”
“Yes, we can,” would be my reply, We were making arrangements for Jill to bring one of their black labs by for Mother, just two days before she passed on.
On August 26, 2012, the family gathered in The Woodlands to celebrate the life of Willie Agnes Poe, which involved a brunch at Cru’ Wine Bar and a gathering at the pedestrian bridge over Grogan’s Mill Road.
After moving to The Woodlands in the mid-1980’s, Mother would walk the trails from her Grogan’s Landing apartment, which included the pedestrian bridge in a six-mile walk around the TPC golf course. Over time, Mother became functionally blind, limiting the trail walking, but not her walking. Early each morning she would spend a couple of hours walking back and forth over the pedestrian bridge. Our gathering at the bridge ended with a symbolic walk over Agnes’ bridge.
Why this celebration now? Because Mother had donated her body to the Texas Medical Center after her death, we didn’t have a family gathering to celebrate her life. It was our understanding that Mother’s ashes would be sent to us 2-3 years after her death. As it turned out, we didn’t receive her ashes till this past May.
Hall Cemetary
Several months after Mother’s death we got word that her brother, J.C. had died. I knew immediately we were going to Alabama. How I know just how important it was to bring closure on the Mother’s life. While in Alabama, Joy and I made a point of going to Lincoln, then two miles out to the country church and cemetery in Refuge. She was always at her happiest when talking about her childhood in Alabama, even more so during her last days with us. She always wanted to go back but knew she would only be able to in her vision of those childhood memories. It doesn’t go unnoted that with the importance of Hall Cemetery in Refuge, Alabama, Mother didn’t desire to be buried there. For her, a higher priority was to give her body to medicine.
While visiting Hall Cemetery, I wanted so to turn around and see two little girls playing in the cemetery on the hill – to see the man in black with the big dog – to hear the laughing, and see the joy when the big dog came running to the children. Instead, Joy and I walked silently, on this sunny fall morning through the small cemetery on the hill, which now represents the burial-place of the last surviving member of the Confederate army. As fate would have it, as we walked through Hall Cemetery, a black dog appeared.
By making the journey to Hall Cemetery, I have for my life captured the feeling of two little girls laughing and playing in a world that never vanished from Mother’s vision of happiness. Real or not, it was real for her – now it is real for me, and I might add, Joy.
kenne
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A Celebration Of Life
“When the child was a child, it didn’t know
It was a child
Everything for it was filled with life and all life was one
When the child, when the child
The child, child, child, child, child
And on and on and on and on, etc. And onward
With a sense of wonder
Upon the highest hill. Upon the highest hill
When the child was a child
Are you there
Shassas, shassas
Up on a highest hill
When the child was a child, was a child, was a child
Was a child, was a child, was a child, etc.
… and it’s still quivering there today”
—from, Song of Being A Child. Music by Van Morrison, Words by Peter Handke
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Guest Artist, Katie Turner Bailey
Truth never dies. The ages come and go.
The mountains wear away, the stars retire.
Destruction lays earth’s mighty cities low;
And empires, states and dynasties expire;
But caught and handed onward by the wise,
Truth never dies.
Though unreceived and scoffed at through the years,
Though made the butt of ridicule and jest,
Though held aloft for mockery and jeers,
Denied by those of transient power possessed,
Insulted by the insolence of lies,
Truth never dies.
It answers not. It does not take offense,
But with a mighty silence bides its time.
As some great cliff that braves the elements
And lifts through all the storms its head sublime,
It ever stands, uplifted by the wise,
And never dies.
As rests the Sphinx amid Egyptian sands;
As looms on high the snowy peak and crest;
As firm and patient as Gibraltar stands,
So truth, unwearied, waits the era blest
When men shall turn to it with great surprise.
Truth never dies.
— Anonymous
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Kate and Jaxon Bailey
Kate and Jaxon Bailey
Kate Bailey, Jaxon Bailey, Katelyn Turner and Nick Bailey
Kate, Jaxon and Katelyn — Images by kenne
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View From Colossal Cave: Vail, Arizona (Children and Grandchildren: Dave, Katelyn, Jaxon, Kate, and Nick) — Image by kenne
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