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The other day I was having a conversation with my cousin/nephew. Cousin by blood, nephew by adoption, mine. Anyway, I made the comment that I was never supposed to have been with someone. As in I was never meant to have a great love in my life. I belt stunned him.

Allow me to explain, I was never supposed to exist. My biological mother had four children, she should have had none. I was number four and the result of something bad happening to her.

I was not wanted and shouldn’t have existed in a perfect world. I think God looked down when o was born and said dang she wasn’t supposed to happen but here we are.

I have been alone since then, oh my grandparents loved me but if I’m being honest, I was a burden to two elderly people. Then for roughly 7 years I lived in literal hell. My biological mother took me away to live with her and her husband. Let’s just say it was proven then that God did not hold me in high regard.

But then when I was 12 I was rescued, I had parents, siblings, a family. God took pity on me.

Then I married, I believe that angered God, because I was meant to be alone. After my son died I think He took pity on me. I got to have my beautiful three children.

Then I was a single mother, a statistic, but I was finally what I was supposed to be, alone.

I do meet someone and actually got engaged, once again, not what God wanted. It was disaster. He was horrible.

Thank goodness that ended.

This walk down memory lane really made me think about not being one of God’s favorites. It reminded me of a Star Trek episode, the one where they are sent back in time and they have to beam a pilot aboard because they damaged his plane. Spock tells Kirk that they can’t send him back. He’s done a historical search and this man is not remarkable. He’s ordinary and contributes nothing to society.

The man is stunned and you can tell the life goes out of his eyes. Ordinary, unremarkable, contributes nothing. As a kid I didn’t understand that, as an adult I feel that keenly.

But here’s the flip side, later in the episode Spock tells Kirk they have to send him back. His son does something remarkable and contributes to society in a meaningful way.

It’s that part, I’m unremarkable but my children are not. They are extraordinary, amazing and my son’s children are extraordinary and amazing!

That’s why God allowed me to have them, so they could make a difference.

I’ve always known that I’m God’s joke, when He needs a laugh He looks in on my broken life and laughs. The perfidy of a human, thinking they matter when they don’t.

I do look at other people’s lives who are clearly in God’s favorites and wonder what that feels like.

My parents were some of God’s favorites. That doesn’t mean they had an easy life, quite the opposite. They grew up in a tough era in Oklahoma and our country. But they had each other, I often wonder what that would have been like. To have someone to share burdens with, share responsibilities with. Sometimes I wonder how I was singled out to not have that type favor. Then I remember, I wasn’t supposed to exist.

Today is one of my favorite days, it’s the day God gave me a beautiful, smart, funny and amazing daughter. I know I’ve said this before but it bares repeating, I prayed for a daughter who would have big brown eyes, long dark hair, one who would be strong, funny and compassionate.

God gave me that and more in you, I loved you so much and am so proud of you.

I know you’re not a teenager and you have been on your own for quite a while but there’s so much more that I feel you need to know.

It’s just too soon for you to be a fully grown adult, it happened way too fast. You have grown into a smart, capable fully functional adult. One who carved her life out to fit your own expectations and you are nothing short of amazing.

I hope you have an amazing day, filled with laughter, love and the knowledge that you deserve to have a peace filled life, with abundant joy and adventure.

I love you so much,

Mom

As many of you know, today marks an important day in our family’s history. It is Foy and Odela’s wedding anniversary. January 13, 1934, it started everything.

The only thing stronger than their love of each other and their family was their mutual love of Christ.

The story I want to tell today takes place after they acquired me. Mom was a seamstress (important to the story) and she wanted to go to town and get buttons for a dress she was making for me.

So dad drives and off we go to TG&Y, we go to the fabric department and we start looking at buttons. Please keep in mind these buttons are for MY dress. Mom finds buttons she likes, dad finds buttons he likes. They compare and contrast, all the while I’m just standing there looking confused. I finally said do I get a say in the buttons I like.

They both turned and stared at me like they had forgotten I was there, then they both began to laugh and dad said well I guess since they’re for your dress it only makes sense.

For the record I didn’t choose either of their buttons because I didn’t want them to think I was playing favorites, I was the new kid on the block after all.

I will give you a bit of advice, find someone in life that you can laugh with, that treats you like you are the most important person in their world. Find someone who treats you the way Foy treated Odela. With respect, kind words, loving attitude. Find someone who treats you the way Odela treated Foy. With respect, love and appreciation.

Find someone who values your opinion and really listens to you.

I miss them every day, I’ll always be grateful that they let me into their world and allowed me to be myself.

I always wonder if they knew how much I loved them and how much they taught me.

Happy Anniversary Foy and Odela!

Texas KitKat, where do I start. I still remember the day we first met. I had just transferred over to the ICSC, you had just gotten the job with Southwestern Bell after being laid off at Lucent.

You were excited to be there as you could bridge your service in 5 years. We instantly bonded as friends. There literally was nothing about you to not like. From your infectious smile to your optimistic personality.

From the beginning you were my diet buddy, willing to try any crazy diet or exercise fad I could come up with.

I’ll never forget the time you called me and told me you found this deal on Groupon to get rid of cellulite. You said go buy a package and let’s go together. Off we went, this place very literally wrapped us in Saran Wrap. Right out of the box! Then tied black plastic trash bags around us and had us get on tread mills. We were running for our lives on those things! All the while laughing our butts off at how ridiculous we looked.

At the end we were a sweaty mess, cellulite intact, with no shower to clean up in. We had to put our clothes back on over that sweaty mess and drive to our homes.

We laughed so hard over that fiasco, we both considered it money well spent.

From lunches to working out together after work to your unwavering support of my love of Dean Cain, you have been a tried and true friend. I’ll never forget you and always be grateful for your friendship. Also without you I wouldn’t have Stormie, who has been an amazing companion.

I’ll never forget the day you sent that text telling me you had cancer and you didn’t know how to tell your mom.

I know without one single doubt I will see you again. Until then find my mom in heaven and tell her you are my friend. She’ll give you a great big hug.

Tessa recently got her drivers license and it reminded me of the time my mom got so irritated she hollered at my dad. Not yelled, hollered, which was a rarity, in fact that was the one time I ever heard her raise her voice.

Yes, it had to do with me driving, or learning to drive.

My dad was working on his car in the front entry way of the property, right in front of the fence that went around the yard around the house.

He had the hood up and I was walking past on my way to Tammi’s house. Not an unusual occurrence, but this time my dad stopped me and said he needed my help.

He asked me to get in the car and rev the engine, he was working on something and needed someone to do that so he could check the timing chain.

I said ok and hopped in, instead of the car being in neutral, it was in reverse. I stepped on that gas and went through the fence. Mom flew out of the house and just hollered, DRIVERS ED! And went back in.

Dad and I looked at each other and he just said well I guess that settles that.

Apparently this had been a bone of contention, mom wanting me to take Drivers Ed at school and dad saying he could teach me.

So to Drivers Ed I went, when the time came I did pass my drivers test. Well, sort of, I didn’t parallel park, but the tester was a friend of dad’s and said I would never need that anyway. 

I will never forget, though, mother flying out of that door, I had never seen that side of her, but when she put her foot down, we all listened. 

I miss them every day, I really miss her wisdom, her gentleness and quiet humor. I miss my dads booming laugh, his intelligence, his love of learning and I miss his love of life. I miss their unwavering belief in God, their pure faith and the way they lived their lives. God, family, country, it was inspiring and left and indelible mark on their whole family.

There is a movie, Peggy Sue Got Married, it is about a woman going to her high school reunion and she has a medical event and seemingly time travels back to when she was actually in high school.

I think about that a lot, if I could time travel and go back to one time period in my life, what time would I go.

I would go back to the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school.

It was a fun, innocent time, lazy days spent laying out getting a tan with Tammi, watching soap opera’s every day, starting with Ryan’s Hope and ending with The Edge of Night. 

Picking vegetables out of the garden, from green beans to corn and digging potatoes. Then sitting next to my mom and snapping green beans. Trips to Wagner, OK for peaches, for canning and freezing.

With my brothers and sister coming over to help with that as well, my nephews and niece being there. The laughter, the pure fun, Friday night skate adventures, a simple time. Just one day, just to hear my dad laugh and my mom whistle, that would be enough for me.

I know, without one doubt I will get to hear both of those things one day. However, that knowledge does not stop me from missing it now.

Today is Jeffrey Andrew’s Birthday, and honestly it is hard to believe it has been 39 years since the day he was born. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a pink hospital, St Francis to be exact. There wasn’t a name back then to describe what Jeffrey was to me. But there is a name today, he was my rainbow baby. I just knew he was a gift that was hard won.

Even after he was born it was rocky, he was born with water on his lungs and taken right into the NICU. Where he stayed for six days, those were some of the longest days of my life. I had to go home without him, fun fact, we were between homes and living with my cousin Cindy, it was a nice place to be able to land. I honestly don’t know how I would have handled it without her and being able to talk to her.

We brought Jeffrey home to Cindy and Mark’s home, we were waiting for our house to be built. 

I will tell you this story and maybe a lot of parents can relate to a sleep deprived story. 

I was nursing Jeffrey and the hospital did not tell me they were supplementing with formula, so when we brought him home it was a nightmare situation. I would literally feed him for an hour, he would scream for an hour then wake up and do the whole thing over again.

One night Jeff told me to go to sleep and he would hold him for that hour he was screaming. 

The next thing I know I am waking up to Jeffrey screaming and Jeff frantically looking for him. He had fallen asleep and was yelling that he had killed the baby because he fell asleep and could not remember putting him in the bassinet.

So here we were tearing up the bed looking for Jeffrey, and he is just screaming his head off. All of a sudden I stopped and said wait, if he’s dead he couldn’t scream. Then I looked in the bassinet, there he was, I started to feed and Jeff said he had had enough. He got dressed and went to the store and bought a can of formula. 

We made a bottle and Jeffrey drank 6 ounces and slept for over 7 hours. He was starving, he was used to that bottle after me feeding him and he was not getting enough to eat.

Sleep deprivation is a real thing, he was fine and then finer after the formula. 

Jeffrey I love you so much, and as much as I miss the little you, I love the man you have become. 

I hope you have the birthday you deserve, you are an incredible man, father, brother, son and husband to your wife Amanda. 

I pray that your life is everything you ever wanted and more.

Happy Birthday Son! I love you so much!

This past Saturday evening, all of a sudden, I thought about my first high school boyfriend and I wondered how he was doing. I very literally have not thought of him in decades. So, I did what any sane person would do, I googled him.

Turns out he is dead, he died two years ago in 2022, to say I was shocked is an understatement. He was just a few months older than I am.

I tried to find an obituary and could not, the funeral home posted a notification of death and said there was no obituary.

I became curious, did he leave a wife, children, I know of at least one brother, is he still alive. Did he leave friends, cousins, anyone that cared about him. 

I flew to the book of faces to see if I could find him, I did, it’s pretty locked down, but I could see one picture of him. Two likes and one comment from a woman that looks to be a relative.

There were no I miss you’s, no other interaction, the last picture was from 2021, a year before he passed.

I went back to the funeral home website, only one person wrote on his memorial page. 

Arthur Kent King, we met at Tulsa Vo-Tech, he was loud, obnoxious and it was instant teenage love. He was from Broken Arrow so it was perfect as I did not want to date anyone from Owasso. My family was too entrenched in Owasso, I wanted someone no one knew.

He was perfect, we argued, made up, fought, laughed and both loved OU. 

A perfect teenage union, I remember the last time we fought, it was for good, we were over. I went home and cried buckets over that boy. He was the love of my teenage heart.

I would go on to marry and have children and forget about him in any capacity except for a sweet memory. 

We were in Photo-Offset Lithography together, his family owned a print shop, among other things. He told me his mom was a doctor and his dad owned businesses, construction, print shop and other things.

My family did not own those things, we were not equal economically, but we were equals intellectually and both fluid in sarcasm.

I don’t really know what his home life was like but I do remember one story he told us, mainly because as a class we forced him to.

He came to school completely bruised up one day, I mean from head to toe. We were all shocked and wanted to know what happened. Who had he angered with his sarcasm and argumentative way.

After much brow beating he told us the tale.

His dad had told him to do something and Kent (we all called him Kent) said you do it. I don’t know about y’all but those would have been fighting words in my home and apparently they were in his as well.

Anyway he said his dad looked at him and said oh do you think you are man enough to say that in my house?

Then Kent bowed up at him and his dad, having been a middleweight boxer in the army, went and got boxing gloves from a closet.

Then they went into the backyard and his dad said this is your chance, do your worst. Needless to say Kent never got a lick in and his dad taught him a life lesson. Obey your parents, it’s their house, not yours and watch your mouth.

I am saddened by the lack of care and lack of an obituary, everyone deserves at least an accounting of their life. I hope he died surrounded by loved ones and that they keep his memory alive.

I may never know what happened and why he died at such a young age, and yes, 58 is young. 

I’ll always remember him as my great teenage love.

Do you ever sit back and wonder where the time went? There are three specific days I do that, today is one of them.

Happy Birthday Thomas Alexander Graham Bell! I can’t believe you are 33 years old today, the memory of you being born is so crisp and clear it feels like yesterday. In all honesty I wanted you to be born on the 13th as that is a good luck day in our family but that day the year you were born was a Saturday and since you were a planned C-Section my doctor vetoed that. 

He did ask why and I told him and he said he was not giving up his Saturday for that reason. He was pretty funny about it, so the twelfth it was. 

Your Granny Dee and Great Grandpa Wells came down to take care of your brother and sister while we were at the hospital having you.

It was a bright sunny, Texas summer day, the nurse thought you were our first child based on our excitement to see you. When we explained you were actually our fourth child she was shocked. She said people who are on number 4 are usually blasé about a new baby.

We were eager to meet you and tell you how much you we loved you.

You were and continue to be a constant surprise, your intelligence, humor and commitment to your family is something to see.

I am in awe of you and so proud of the man you have become. I pray every day that God continues to bless you, with your beautiful family and in your business life. 

I value our conversations and I am ever grateful that God gave you to us. Our family was completed when you made your appearance. 

Your sister nicknamed you Mr Sunshine face due to your sunny disposition as a baby. You woke up smiling and laughing, you reminded me so much of my dad, your grandpa. He always had that sunny disposition as well, along with being sensible and pragmatic. You come by your personality honestly, I see generations of Testermans in you.

I hope you have the best day EVER, I love you so much, I hope that your day is filled with the love and laughter of your sweet daughters and amazing wife.

Happy Birthday Thomas Alexander!