It’s like Dorothy’s Shoes,we have them all along and we can go home at any minute!
Many times when I am writing a blog post it takes me a long time to think about the subject that I am writing about. I will write and re write. I will end up taking out huge portions that I wrote to simplify what I have written.
Last weeks blog post I thought was unfinished and when I went back to it after leaving it sit on my computer for a couple of days I realized that other than some final editing the post was basically finished. Like Dorothy and her shoes.
Turn around and click your pretty red shoes together and keep saying: there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.
My paternal grandmother told me when I was knee high to a grasshopper
Francie, when you grow up you are going to write a book about my life.
I think about this and it makes me cry because I was dyslexic as a child and would have never in a million years even thought that I would ever be writing a blog! Not to say that I even knew what blogging was. There wasn’t even the word blog. The internet had not been invented yet!
Frances, my grandmother, whom my sister and I called Mimi, was a writer. There can be such a strong loving close-knit bond between grandparent and grandchild. I was lucky to have such a relationship with Mimi and she lived right next door when I was growing up. Mimi was my spiritual mentor as well as being the most earthy grandmother I knew, or for that matter anybody else knew! Looking back on it I had the most amazing childhood imaginable.
As a child, and even way into adulthood, the traumatic events of my childhood stood out as stark reminders of humiliation and emotional pain. I loved school for the social aspect, but I was humiliated beyond belief and thought I was stupid and dumb because I could not read. I got Ds and Fs all the way through grammar school, even though I studied for hours after school with my mother. Bless her heart; she was trying to teach me to read. I remember in 5th grade and in Sunday school counting ahead to try and figure out the paragraph I would have to read aloud so that I would not make any mistakes.
I am finally coming into an understanding of how right my childhood was for me. I was receiving an immense education of what would later prove to be important for me to learn for my life’s growth and purpose.
Mimi said
Life is a school!
In the fourth grade I remember running home to tell my parents that I wanted to learn how to play the flute. An orchestra leader and choir director Mr. Biggens had come to our school and talked to us about learning musical instruments. I was thrilled with the idea to learn how to play the flute! As hard as school was for me I took to the flute like a duck takes to water. My parents bought me a flute. I was ecstatic as I opened the box to view my shiny stainless steel flute! I practiced an hour a day.
Little did I know at the time that learning how to play the flute was not only a positive in giving me something that I could excel at, but I also learned how to be a good reader! Playing the notes trained my eye coordination from left to right.
By the time I was to go to junior high I had become a good reader but I was still petrified to read out loud! Knowing my concerns, one day my mother drove me to downtown San Diego. We took an elevator high up into an old building. A pleasant man with a kind smile greeted us at the door of his studio apartment. I recall the musty aroma emitting from his small office. Mama said goodbye and left. The man asked me to read out loud. I read and he looked at me and said
Why Frances you read perfectly! Just go ahead and read!
This nice man had given me permission to do well. He belived in me so I then started believing in myself. My grades skyrocketed from Ds and Fs to As and Bs. Dorothy’s shoes, I had them all along! And now I am writing a blog.
Mimi, maybe your prediction will come true. Maybe I will write a book about you too!
Bye for Now,
Francesca