Category Archives: social and emotional

Life Transitions

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Since I left high school in Towson, Maryland in 1971, I rarely have looked back to those teen years. In fact I have never driven by the site of the school, not even to get a glimpse to see if anything has changed and I’ve never returned for a high school reunion.

A couple of summers ago when I was in the area of where I grew up, visiting family, I did drive by my three childhood homes, all within the same neighborhood. How I was feeling was hard to grasp. I suppose it could be described as a mixture of beautiful feelings and a very quick dash of sadness that life marched forward. The melancholy feelings lasted only a few brief minutes.

Funny, isn’t it, how some people live their entire lives in one place feeling completely fulfilled and others move on. For me,  I can’t imagine having stayed for all these years in the same environment where I spent my childhood.

My husband feels the same way. He left his childhood surroundings on the northern shores of Massachusetts (north of Boston) and never looked back. I suppose we were meant for each other – Baltimore girl, Boston boy, parents to a son raised in Vermont – now living in Albuquerque, New Mexico – a transient three, aren’t we?

Its taken me a life time to learn there is truth in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quotation, “the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”   I’ve come to many more conclusions about how life takes unexpected turns as I have written my memoir.My reckonings will give me plenty more to write about.

towson high school

Photo Above: My high school in Towson, Maryland.

Interesting fact: Swimmer Michael Phelps, holder of 22 Olympic medals, also graduated from this school about twenty-five years after me.

Photo below: Overhead view of where I grew up – moved to three different homes in the same neighborhood. My dad built all three. The first house was a small cape style house, then onto what might be described as a southern colonial farmhouse and then to a 1970’s modern-style home which is smack in the middle of this picture.

Glenellen ct arial view-1

Tomorrow’s blog is about a hard learned lesson that happened in the 2nd of my childhood homes.Sue’s memoir

Do return to All Things Fulfilling tomorrow. This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.

Moving and Birth

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untitled“Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.” ~ author Lisa See

At the end of last week my husband and I changed residences. As we went through the process, I began to think of the analogy between moving and giving birth:

Through both you have to do the work and you are faced with labor. Yet if you want to make way for newness in your life, you must bear down, face it and go through it, whether you want to or not.

Once you’ve gotten through each event, you can look back and laugh. You forget all the pain and agony that was packed with the experience.

I’ve moved many times throughout my life. My most transient years were after I graduated college until the time I married. Come on back tomorrow to All Things Fulfilling. We will be visiting the neighborhood where I lived for the first 18 years of my life. It is where many of the stories in my memoir took place – in Towson, Maryland.

Sue’s memoir

Voice of Conscience

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For art to be relevant, artists must address the social and spiritual issues of our time. ~ Suzi Gablik

This week I’m taking time to focus on Project REGROUP. Here is what it entails:

R – Reviewing the future

E – Envisioning a message

G– Growing ideas for new horizons

R- Rejoicing, in new directions

O– Organizing thoughts and concepts

U – Utilizing whats been started

P – Praying that the voice within me steers me right

Regrouping is often associated with failure, disappointment or recovery. Many people automatically equate the word regroup with set-backs.

I look at it from a different tact – from the perspective of positive energy flow. Where do I want to place my attention next? I’ve got some ideas beginning to sprout, now I need to listen to what  my readers are saying. “How can I creatively communicate from a different level,” I ask myself.

heavens to betsy

My  family is probably sending communications saying “Fanny, what’s Sue up to now?” to the central character of my book. With my publication, she has come into a different realm. 

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, the author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.

Sue’s memoir

See you tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling

 

More than a Coincidence?

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curiousImagine this. Here it is in a nutshell:

Twins separated by birth, find each other at 39 years old only to discover they have lived mirrored lives.

Jim and Jim have a fascinating story to tell. Although separated at birth, each of their adoptive parents gave them the same first name – Jim. Each had two marriages with wives named Linda and then on the second go-round, Betty. Toy was the name of each of their dogs from childhood, and they each had one son James Allen and James Alan.

Their careers paralleled each other – deputy sheriffs, both! They drove the same cars, drank the same brand beer and are smokers of the same cigarettes. Even though, remember, they were  out of touch for 39 years.

Twin telepathy? It’s a curious thing. What else could it be for these two brothers? How can you call that many commonalities just a coincidence?

Interested to read more true stories about twins? Here is a link. http://bit.ly/1iiBcdU.

Stories like these make people want to read more about twin dynamics.

This blog brought to you by the author of “Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.” A story of multi-cultural love, faith, healing, life lessons and above all things – twins!

 

Histrionics of Twins

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Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles. ~ Nora Roberts, From the Heart

Pet white mice!  “They’re so cute,” we’d say to our parents. “We want one to play with.” My sister and I nagged at our parents to let us have a domesticated mouse until finally they gave in. Did anyone else have one or more of those creatures as a kid?

Ohhh- now, that pet brings back memories to yours truly and her sister. We kept our mouse in a glass aquarium with a screen over it for a cover so it wouldn’t escape. However intruders were more the problem. More than once we were awoken in the middle of the night by loud squealing. A wild mouse that came from somewhere within our house had found it’s way into the cage. When we turned on the bedroom light to investigate all the noise, we caught the mice in action mating. You’ve never seen two little, screaming naive twins scamper into their parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night so quickly! We jumped on mom and dad’s bed with wide-eyes to apprise our parents of the situation!

Three weeks later, an unexpected development! We learned more about the facts of life, when we awoke to little, translucent pink  bodies squirming in the clear glass cage.

photo of white mouse withbackpackWho knows where the newborn babies went when they disappeared the next day. As a young child, I figured the cat clock hanging on the wall in our bedroom, that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog,  had come alive and eaten them up. After this happened twice, my parents sent the pet white mouse packing!

Would your parents have let you have a white mouse for a pet? I grew up in a bit of a crazy house. Domesticated white mice were only the start of the many animals that could be found inside and out on our family’s property – more about our zoo in my memoir.  Add a wonderful character named Fanny into the mix of the menagerie, and life was lived differently than many of our neighbors.

Oh….I can only image the stories my parents could tell about the histrionics of life with two twins.

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, the author of Gift of a Lifetime:Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.

 

Memoirs Connect People

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Kit Cat

“Each day provides it’s own gifts.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

I am very excited! Last week I reconnected with a childhood friend who I have been out of touch with since I graduated high school in 1975. That was many,many moons ago – do the math!

Out of the blue, she connected with me through my Facebook page and said “that she had learned I had published a book and had ordered “Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected” for her Nook. She had questions about a few details of our childhood in trying to recall exactly when we moved down the street to our second childhood home, built by my father. When I was an newborn we lived next door to her parents. She said, “I still remember the cat clock you had in your bedroom.” Hard to believe after all these years she’d remember, with clarity, a detail like that.

Did any of you readers have a cat clock like the one in the image?  It’s still available through the Vermont Country Store! http://bit.ly/1hVqDkQ.

Mine hung in my bedroom. It  was a gift from my maternal grandparents to my twin sister and me.  They both passed away when we were very young children, and the clock is a remaining memory that I associate with my mother’s parents. I remember laying in my bed mesmerized every night watching the cat’s glowing eyes go back and forth, along with it’s swishing tail  until I drifted off into laaa laaa land.

What I have since learned from my childhood friend, Cindy, is that her sons, Brian and Jason Lyles, are involved with a publishing endeavor also. They recently published The Lego Neighborhood Book: Build a Lego Town  which gives tools to create your favorite architectural styles in homes and buildings. How cool is that? http://bit.ly/1hd18dm 

If I hadn’t written a memoir, who knows if Cindy and I would have ever connected again throughout our lifetime! So today’s story is all about neighborhood and community connection! See you tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling.

 

 

Twin Bonding

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OMG its twins

Welcome to Twin Week on All Things Fulfilling. Even if you are not a twin, we hope you will enjoy learning something about multiple births that perhaps you never knew before. We will be sharing some fun stuff!

There is a website that has informative twin facts, that I hadn’t seen previously.  Did you know –

“Twins bond in the womb. By examining 3D ultrasound images, a study in Padova, Italy found that fetuses start deliberately interacting at 14 weeks.”

If you wish to read more interesting statistics about multiple births, please visit this link http://bit.ly/PkaMA5.

My mother gets tickled pink when she thinks back to when my sister and I were children and how we used to have our own “twin language.” Without a doubt, we did chatter away in our own little world, that no one dared enter when we were in the “zone.” And if you were to ask my mother, she’d say that even as adults when my my sister and I get together we still enter into the “private twin zone” and like many twins, we finish each others sentences. We communicate in ways that seems to exclude others – including our husbands. It is not intentional – it naturally happens.

Have you seen any of the popular You Tube videos with the two little toddler twins carrying on in their own language, enjoying each others’ company. Whatever it is they are jabbering on about, they are having a very fulfilling and meaningful experience. The video is so incredibly precious!  http://bit.ly/PkeiKX .

Check it out – it will be the best 55 seconds you have spent in a long time. It will begin your Monday morning with a smile.

See you tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling.

 

Pillow Dreams

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Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers. ~Hans Christian Andersen

The infamous Dr. Phil says that children should not have to bear adult problems. I admire my parents for they had plenty of adult stresses as a  couple who married quite young and  lived on pins and needles for many years due to “twin issues.” I feel throughout my life, my mom and dad did a fabulous job of letting us kids be kids, unburdened with adult problems. http://bit.ly/P3bMbE.  I am grateful for that.

The other day I was going through my baby book and came upon a letter that I had written to the tooth fairy when I was in elementary school. Here it is verbatim:

untitled (2)“Dear Fairy,

Will you Please keep the tooth under my pillow and give me monney. Wedesday I will put my tooth under my pillow and then you can take it.

From, Sue”

I wonder what my big dreams were for the money that I was expecting? After all it was probably a whole dime the tooth fairy was willing to give me- realize it was  the 1950s! It seems to me from the note, I needed to put my big fortune into spelling lessons rather than something sweet like candy to give me cavities.

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned the medical bills my parents incurred as a result of giving birth to twins and my medical circumstances. Now that you have seen this letter, do you think I had an inkling that my parents needed some assistance, and I was going to try to help with my big windfall from the tooth fairy? Or do you think I was just being a kid knowing that the tooth fairy doled out money? I wonder. You never know about kids way of thinking.

This blog is brought to you by http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com. See you back here tomorrow!

 

Originations in Baltimore

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“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” ~ Steve Maraboli – Life, Truth and Being Free.

dialing for dollarsWas Dialing for Dollars broadcast in your home town when you were growing up? This show originated as a radio show in Baltimore, Maryland and then became a syndicated TV show in cities around the country. The show had a run of 38 years and gave away $800,000 to suburban housewives who sat by the telephone waiting for the host of the show to call their number.  It finally terminated when more sophisticated game shows began to be aired and fewer households had stay-at-home moms who were in residence to answer the telephone. Here is how it worked, if you don’t remember it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialing_for_Dollars.

I know my mother wished upon a star many times that Dialing for Dollars would call 4-6750. It was our home number and those were the only digits you needed to reach our family back in the 1950s. Then as the population grew,  dialing VA4-6750 (Valley4- 6750) became mandatory. She and my father had medical bills they needed to pay from having given birth to twins – a not so common occurrence in the 1950s and they could have used the money.

The other day I was going through my baby book, and I found the obstetricians bill from when my twin sister and I were born.  There was a personal note on it from the doctor that said “I realize you have incurred very large medical bills with these births, I have tried to keep my charges as low as possible. Please know you can pay whenever or however it is convenient.” The bill was for $140. Seven years later when the doctors figured out how to give me a long and fulfilling life, much greater medical bills were added.  The bills became very staggering for a young couple who by then had three young children and were going through a very difficult time in life.  However, unexpected and more difficult circumstances occurred but that finally allowed them to financially rebuild their life a little bit.

Compared to medical bills in today’s world, my parent’s medical bills were a pittance. But with the wages of that era, everything is relative. Medical bills are a strain on all people who live within very tight budgets. The very technology that helps people to live long lives today is expensive to develop, maintain and use. I do get it, but our medical insurance system does need overhauling and I don’t think we are even close with a viable solution.

Come on back tomorrow to All Things Fulfilling. I will share with you a letter I found in my baby book that I had written to the tooth fairy. It made me chuckle when I read it.

 

Connecting to the Great Outdoors

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“Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.”  ~Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

If you are a baby boomer, no doubt you learned to read from the Dick and Jane series. For forty years (1930s – 1970s) these books were used by elementary school teachers around the world to teach children the art of reading.

dick and jane jumping ropeDid you ever notice how the Dick and Jane series had so many pictures of children engaged in outdoors activities? The books typically featured images of kids walking the dog, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, planting flowers, pulling wagons, playing ball, lying in a hammock under the shade tree day-dreaming, and flying kites outdoors.

Miss Zerna Sharp, known as the “Mother of Dick and Jane” http://bit.ly/1pwGk0u had great insight in the creation of the series because she felt that students would enjoy learning to read and find it much easier if they identified with the children shown in the illustrations. If she were alive today to redo the series to make the stories more relatable for this generation of children, she’d probably be horrified to realize what would the illustrations would look like. Rather than publishing pictures of fit children playing outdoors, I suppose we’d see images of  children engaged in all things digital and figure drawings of children with physiques that look very different than those of the children from the 1930s – 1970s. dick and jane use the force

We are living in a very visual age. With the power of digital marketing perhaps we need to stir children’s interests and entice them into wanting to experience the great adventure of life called the “great outdoors.” Personally, I think our whole society would benefit by becoming more aware of our connection to mother nature and all that she has to offer.  And it may even save us some trips to the doctor!

Those are my independent thoughts, words and views for today. See you tomorrow on http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com. Have a great day, and remember to get outdoors for some fresh air! It’s good for fulfilling the mind, body and spirit.