Tag: writing

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Happy Anniversary Foy and Odela

Today is the day, the day that started everything in our family. The day that Foy John Testerman took Odela Mae Allen as his lawfully wedded wife. The day she took him as her lawfully wedded husband.

Did they wait until they were financially stable to get married? No. It was during one of this nations worst financial crisis it had ever seen. The Great Depression was going on, there was no money, Oklahoma was officially a dust bowl. Red dust everywhere, but in Love County Oklahoma there was magic.

A tale as old as time, a pure, old fashioned love story was unfolding, one that had been 15 years in the making. You see Odela had been in love with Foy since she was 5 years old and he was 7 years old. It just took him a little bit longer to come to his senses.

He had to travel to California and back to realize the best thing ever has been right in his own backyard all along. They started a family, first Jimmy then Nell (Linnie Nell, officially) then Jesse. Then many years later, after their own children were grown and they had grandchildren they took on the last child, Angie. That’s me.

Their love knew no bounds, they gave freely to their children, grand-children and great grandchildren. Their neighbors, friends and church family would also expeirence their generosity of spirit.

I often think back to that house 5 miles outside of Owasso, Oklahoma, where I learned what family really meant. I wish I could go back for just a few hours and sit with them and tell them what they did for me has carried on, their legacy can be seen with all of us.

From their oldest grandson, the first, who willingly gave to this country by joining the Air Force, serving with honor. I hope he knows how proud of him his grandparents were.

I wish I could tell them about my children and how they turned out as adults, I know my dad would have loved to have seen his granddaughter carry on the Testerman legacy of taming wild beasts. I know he would love to have seen my boys grow up to own their own businesses and become fathers themselves.

He would have been thrilled to see twins in the family again, since he, himself, was a twin. Oh how he and mom would have laughed at the antics of those girls, the Agents of Chaos.

I know they have met their sons at the gates of heaven, celebrated eternal life with them, and are waiting for us all to join them one day.

I wish I could go back and tell them how much I have loved being adopted by them, how much I love my sister, Nell, their only daughter until I showed up.

I wish I could tell them how grateful I am to this day that they got married, persevered, raised their family then had so much love left over they included me in their circle.

I wish I could tell the world how much of their life was dedicated to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. How they lived every single day as an example of how Christianity should look.

Happy Anniversary Foy and Odela I hope you are celebrating in Heaven and that you have coconut cake!

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Musings

I came across a picture recently of my Aunt Lela Evelyn Testerman Dye, Aunt Leona Estelle Testerman Hammer and my grandma, Lela Mae Hammond Testerman.  I give their full names as genealogy matters and I believe it is important to remember peoples names. 

Women give up their names and take their husbands names and blend into that family and there is nothing wrong with that. But they have a whole other name and a life before said husband and children and grandchildren and I think it is important to remember who they were before they took another name.

Having said that, I know I don’t talk a lot about my childhood, but these are my biological mothers sisters and her mother. 

My Aunt Evelyn worked for years for JC Penney, she was a seamstress there, the Oklahoma City location, I believe it was downtown, if I am remembering correctly. Anyway, June, my biological mother, really didn’t have anything to do with the majority of her family.

But she did with Aunt Evelyn, I remember one year she gave me two dresses, they were exactly the same but one was green and one was red. I was roughly 5, I loved those dresses, I wore them all of the time. There came a time I began to get taller, staying the same size. The dresses became way too short, even for that time period. So June took me and the dresses to Aunt Evelyn at her job. She took one look at me in the dresses and instantly came up with a solution. She added a ruffle to the bottom of both, she found material that was an exact color and texture match there in her workshop at JC Penney. I was so happy that day, those were the only dresses I had, hence they were my favorites. Having so little as a child leads to making sure my children had more than a few outfits and shoes in their closets. It is a behavior that also trickles down to my grandchildren. 

Both Aunt Evelyn and Aunt Estelle were strong women who lived through the depression and WWII, they knew about sacrifices and having very little.

They both had wicked senses of humor, a trait they got from their father Wilber Ambrose Testerman. My grandfather, that man had a true Testerman sense of humor. I say that because his brother, Foy John Testerman, the man that would become my father, had the same sense of humor. My grandmother took everything literally and even though she did have a sense of humor it was not like a Testerman. 

I miss all so very much, as the days become shorter and the holidays loom nearer, I become more sentimental. a trait I typically do not have, I am very pragmatic and practical in nature. Well by learned behavior, one becomes practical due to circumstances of life. 

I just wanted to share my aunts with you and keep their names alive. 

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Simple Comforts

I love this new schedule, I find I love having a leisurely morning where I drink my coffee, sit and read the funny papers (online) and Dear Abby. It almost feels like working part time hours, I am no longer exhausted to the point where all I can do is come home and lay on the sofa. Now at the end of the day I still have energy, I can stop at the store, go shopping, do laundry, in other words a normal life. It feels good. I feel human again, I honestly did not realize how tired I was until I started working this shift, and realized how good I felt, physically.
I am still getting used to the Mac keyboard and the different ways I can spell check. I always use spell check, I am a fast typer and mistakes are inevitable. The last time I took a timing test I was at 95 words a minutes, with minimal mistakes. Of course that was looking at words on a paper and typing them. When I am typing something from a paper, I don’t even see words, I see characters. I don’t even know what I am typing until it is over, then I read it.
A lot of times I write out my thoughts then type it, I am very old fashioned. There is something about putting pen to paper, it clears the mind, one becomes more cognizant, at least I do. It could be due to the fact that when I was growing up there were no computers in houses, we had a typewriter, but it was a manual one, and difficult to use if you were a fast typist, the keys would get tangled if you went too fast. So writing on paper was it for me. It is comforting to me, that creative process.
Oh well, I must stop now, get dressed and go to work to help the people with their internet connections!