Archive for the ‘Julie Kay Smithson’ Category
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
I pass the gracious home on Elm Street in London with its “For Sale” sign out front, its spacious porch still looking as welcoming as ever.
I realize that things have a season, a time, a purpose. Can the time and season of Our Community have come and gone so quickly? Say it isn’t so — but know that each issue of this publication makes me feel like a better person, a stronger member of our community, and more positively focused on our part of the world.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
My familiarity with March weather is from the perspective of a Buckeye, an Ohioan in the United States of America. In this part of the world, March is a tempestuous siren, a flirt bringing balmy weather one day and a slap-in-the-face with snow and ice the next. Wind can be a beast that seeks to peel one’s warmth away with its bonechilling fingers.
Days lengthen, nights grow more brief, and the powers that be tell us we are “saving” daylight when we have a 23-hour-long Sunday.
Birds arrive from sunnier climes and set up housekeeping, always on the alert for “cheep wrent.”
At this point in time, winter brooks no interference from spring, though the snows don’t last like they did just one short month ago. Icicles and snowmen vanish, to be replaced by green sprouts coming up through still semi-frozen ground.
It’s fair to say that, while April may be fickle, March in Ohio can be a real weather scoundrel with April tagging along behind!
While I was blessed to have many fine teachers, Mrs. Dora Hobbs and Mrs. Orpha Strong stand out. Mr. Wilkie, Mr. Ron Houser and Mr. Campbell are also remembered in warm memories. Mrs. Strong’s quiet, grandmotherlylike demeanor, while still being a fine teacher, are a fond memory, but it is Mrs. Hobbs who remains the cornerstone of my twelve years of structured, official schooling.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
My first two years of school were in houses, because the housing subdivision north of Dayton, called Huber Heights, outpaced Wayne Township’s school capacity. In second grade, our teacher became ill and was replaced by Mrs. Dora Hobbs. As little kids, we only knew that our teacher was sick, and Mrs. Hobbs helped us in many ways that she may never have known.
I brought home glowing reports to my parents about how beautiful Mrs. Hobbs was & how kind she was to all of us. Then Mom attended a PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) meeting and returned home in tears. She told my dad, “Honey, Mrs. Hobbs is a physical wreck! She is crippled from polio, wears very thick glasses & barely gets around.”
All I knew was that Mrs. Hobbs cared, she loved us — and that memory remains strong as ever, 51 years later. It is my hope that this dear woman — who worked full time teaching youngsters at a time in her life when her health might well have kept most people home — would be proud of the curly-haired, blue-eyed student that told her parents about the beautiful Mrs. Hobbs.
Each of us has a precious memory of one teacher that stays strong throughout our lives. What’s yours?
… And still teaching: Wiggles Blue Heeler
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
How can it be that I’ve continued living in the seventy-one days since Wiggles Blue Heeler — my companion, confidante, best friend forever, and so much more — shed his earthly body? Born on Sunday, July nineteenth, 1998, Wiggles Blue Heeler aka Many Kisses, left the cares of that earthly body behind on Sunday, December fifth, 2010, at 7:14 AM. The last physical kiss he bestowed upon me in the vet’s office, on the floor as we waited for the help that he needed when there were no more options left. He kissed the young lady vet and her younger gal assistant, too, trusting the three of us to keep my promise to him not to let him suffer.
Wiggles’ spirit is with me constantly, shoring up my floundering, grief-stricken one. Proof of his presence manifests in many ways, and it is comforting.
Wiggles Blue Heeler shed his worn-out blue heeler earthly trappings December 5, and he was truly ready, thanking me and the two young vets who helped him, by giving us kisses. I thought I’d lose him two days earlier, but he gifted me with 48 more precious hours, giving even as his life was ebbing, showering me with affectionate, consoling kisses.
It is not that I am less, now that he has shed this life, but rather that I am far more because Wiggles lived!
Looking around, there are reminders of him everywhere (as though I needed reminding!), but now I see and am consoled by the things he no longer needs, corners he needn’t fear bumping, and all those places he once trod at a light and lightning-swift pace — as a child’s book says, “Slow down, dingo dog; you are moving too fast!”
Wiggles taught me patience, unconditional love, gravity-defying exuberant joy at the smallest of things, how to see without the use of physical vision — because he always saw the world and everything in it, with his heart — and how to forgive crabbiness, because his person was afflicted with occasional bouts of frustration. I pray to grow in love — because of his teaching by example, every minute of his life — and make him proud of what his life created in me.
All the terms of endearment encircle me, just as his presence is so near and so warm, swaddling his mommy in comfort on this vividly blue-sky day in December. LittleFoot … Many Kisses … Punky Brewster … Dear, Sweet Heart … Punkin Munkin … PooCheeser … The Sweetest One … Wigglety Woo … My Little Wommie (his first name was Wiggles Wombat) … and so many, many more.
Thank you for your prayers for us, which have uplifted us and taken any sadness away. Silly me, thinking I’d be lonely without him. He’s still here, in a form that no longer suffers.
Blessings bestowed upon me and countless others by Wiggles Blue Heeler are replete with joyful events and now, rejoicing memories. When next we meet, I’m certain that we will know one another instantly, because we each carry the other in our hearts and souls!
Thank God that He chose me to be Wiggles’ person and chose Wiggles to be my dog of a lifetime. This is the best day of my life: Wiggles is no longer blind or sick. In fact, his incredibly warm and loving presence is in every nook and cranny of my heart and soul!
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
I voted the day after absentee ballot voting opened, about a month ago. The continued false pretense that there are only ”two” major political parties is pathetic. There are several other political parties, including, but not limited to, Constitution, Green, Populist, Socialist.
The Bible clearly lays out that there are different seasons — a time to plant, a time to reap, times to be born and times to die. As Our Community newspaper sowed seeds of faith in Madison County, now those good-news seeds must grow where they have been planted and bear the fruit that Lynn and Brenda Adams knew would ripen.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
Seasons change, and autumn takes summer’s place in the seasons of 2010. Much has happened in the first nine months of this year; surely many more memories will be made in the next three months before we bid the first decade of the 21st century adieu and offer our hope renewed to 2011.
What to do now?, we all seem to be asking one another. We’ve prayed mightily, yet still Lynn seems destined to join Brenda for a new chapter in their lives in the Lone Star State. The original job that brought this lovely pair to our Buckeye State wrought change no one anticipated, effectively catapulting Brenda and Lynn into a new ship fresh from the shipyard, built of good wood, good news and, sometimes, controversial views. We were all made better for the presence of Our Community in our community, our county.
Just one brief year ago, the decision of The Madison Press to print my colorful autumn photos in black and white was the start of Lynn and Brenda’s decision to invite my usually Wiggles-inspired writing efforts to join Our Community. I had no formal training in either photography or writing, but through the belief that the Adamses had in us, “From Us To You” has become a column near and dear to several hearts, not the least of which is mine. A writer for another local paper even asked if he might write the book review of a volume that these columns seem to be pointing toward. More than one good Madison Countian has suggested regularly that I put pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard — and “get cracking” on a book about Wiggles, my precious Australian Blue Heeler cattle dog.
To have been a part of Our Community in this positive light has breathed new energy and verve into my very core. I know that faith brought us — publisher/editor, sales/advertising dynamo, columnists, photographers, advertisers, readers, consumers — to this place we stand today. It is of no great consequence whether the free weekly leap of faith begun by the duo from Oklahoma ceases its better-than-two-year run. Forever in our hearts, from season to season, Our Community lives on!
EDITOR’S NOTE: We know it’s autumn and not spring, but this column is just too good not to publish, even as we welcome the chill of another Midwest fall.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
April swirls about me as the hill falls beneath my feet toward the creek. In some places the ground is still cold; in others, it is being warmed by a tender spring sun. Trees are transitioning from bud to leaf; winter-dormant grass is flirting with gamut of green. A young blue heeler cattle dog frolics, still busy learning from my actions whether he should join the herd or observe from a polite distance. He chooses to observe. Good dog! Greatness dipped from the gene pool has been provided to me in spades. If only I can always remain cognizant of that.
Muzzles dripping from their morning thirst-quencher, a clot of horses watches my approach. They’ve come down from the barn, tummies full of third cutting alfalfa. Ears up, gentle souls survey this person they know well. No flies have come yet to make them stomp or swish. Morning eases into day as the night before retreats.
No grain required
One young lady is first to nicker hello, closely followed by her father’s more throaty welcome. The bay filly and her father look so alike — their color only a tiny part of the equation. They share so much more. Strong bones and hooves, short backs, tulip-shaped ears, black-tipped, well laid back shoulders, musculature built upon generational DNA, minds ever-learning and curious, eager to please, full of playfulness but with no dearth of heart. Read the rest of this entry »
It seems that the most unlikely places remind us of other things — things we have planned to do, places to go, something on a grocery list, etc. Why, at a certain place on a local road, I think of something I left at home that I should have brought along — and it’s just a wee bit too far from home to turn around and go back to retrieve it — is always a mystery. This has occurred at the same place too many times for it to be mere coincidence.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
Another common place for a reminder is when we’re in the “library,” that famous reading room replete with towels and other toiletries. Why, when we’re sitting there in relative peace and quiet, do things surface in our minds that we need to prepare in the kitchen or purchase at the store?
The middle of the night is a time for me when things seem to bubble up in my mind, thought about but not when I’m awake enough to write them down. Next morning, they’re gone with the wind!
Sometimes I’ll see someone doing something — a husband and wife taking a walk, a family out shopping for the weekly groceries, a pedestrian out for a stroll — and it will remind me of other times or of other people I know or have known.
The particular inflection of a voice can call back memories of another time, another place. Reflections of a time in one’s life when a certain someone said something in a special tone of voice, perhaps with a gentle touch, give pause during the busiest of days.
An aroma such as that from a campfire, or fresh-from-the-oven pie or roast, can remind us of a holiday — one that may be decades past — with loved ones and at-that-time memories being made, recollections that will last for most of our lives. Should we grieve and wax melancholy over these things? No! There is a saying that memory is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven, and, save the ravages of Alzheimer’s or dementia, that is true. It need not be painful, but can be cultivated into something that brings a wistful smile tugging at the corners of our mouths, a sparkle into eyes that may have gone cloudy with age.
All that reminds me are parts of what make me, me, and you, you!
Have you ever been working in your yard, trimming and pruning unwanted, broken or damaged twigs and branches, and almost ‘done in’ a very special and unique insect? I seem to do this at least once or twice each and every year.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
Walking sticks and praying mantises have built-in camouflage: their shape and color mimic the twigs and branches where they spend most of their time. You may spot one or the other, or both, while out for a hike or walking your dog at a local park. Look closely, because these insects have very effective coloration and body camouflage.
These amazing insects travel in our garden midst daily, often remaining unseen as they help rid our flower beds and growing vegetables of destructive plant pests. They go about their lives in harmony with nature, arriving and departing with the summer season. I confess to being fascinated with both, wondering how it is that they come to my humble yard and enjoy my limited offerings. Perhaps, like hummingbirds, walking sticks and praying mantises travel the neighborhood, collecting enough food to sustain themselves.
When next you are pruning/trimming around the old home place, and start to zero in on what looks like a small branch, please give it a second glance. It might be one of your best garden insect friends!
