***This is a few days old...but I'm pasting it over from my MySpace account. It's a tribute to my mom.***

It's May 14th. Brenda, my mother, was born today in 1950. She died in 1991 and was barely 41 years old. Which is basically, my age.

On her birthday every year I try to tell Baeleigh a good story that she will remember to give her an idea of who her grandmother was, even though she never met her.

Here is this year's story...

It was a hot and humid muggy morning at my house in the quaint town of LaRue, Ohio. It was a Tuesday in July and my cousin Nikki was spending the week with us, and we were already getting bored. We spend two days at the pool (our eyes were sore from the chlorine and from staring at Kyle Stofcheck in the lifeguard chair) and had already toured the entire town on our bikes.

Speaking of bikes...an old blue car seemed to be following us every where we would go. We were petrified. I still remember the license plate: EBG 977. We memorized it just in case we had to call the police. Oh, Wait, we didn't have a phone. And the rent-a-cop was in town only on Thursday (if we were lucky). Oh well. Good to exercise the brain.

It's was 11:00 p.m. Lightbulb: Let's toilet paper someone and soap their windows! The household was asleep. We tip-toed down the creaky old narrow stairs from my bedroom. We made it to the bathroom to stuff soap in our pockets and toilet paper under our shirts. We got to the kitchen...

"Renee...what are you doing?" My mind froze - !!! "uhhh..." I muttered. My mother smiled hugely. I was confused. Why isn't she mad?? I was so confused, I pulled the soap out of my pocket and handed it to her. Brenda frowned. "Why do you have soap," she sneered, "If you use soap it will come off with water. You need paraffin." My 5 foot mother walked over to the kitchen sink, opened the door underneath and pulled out paraffin wax, the stuff used for canning and to make buckeyes.

She torted, "Girls, if you are going to do something, do it right."

So we ran past Hot Shot's loud mouth dogs and ran up to the trailer on the other side of our property. Mr. Gantt was our very own "Boo Radley". We started with his car...it was blue...it had a license plate number of....EBG 977!!!

Nikki hissed, "It's that car! It's that car that follows us!" We panicked. Ran back up the road past the loud mouth dogs and back home. (Of course Mr. Gantt wasn't following us...he turned out to be a dear friend.)

In every situation, my mother was a blast. She was always the life of the party. She always wanted us kids to enjoy life. She loved life and loved us.

That was probably my favorite summer...Oh, to be eleven again. I would go back if I could. But since I can't...the stories shall continue...

xoxo
Nat.