Meeting Bing and Bob

My grandmother Cordelia, my father's mother, met Bing Crosby and Bob Hope sometime around 1956, and to me it's a really interesting story. You can tell a lot about a celebrity's character by how they act when there are no cameras or publicity people around.

First, a little background. 

Cordelia Henderson was raised in a farming family in Hephzibah Georgia. She was a schoolteacher when she met Algernon Thompson in 1923. She was about 31 years old. My grandfather Thompson was about 35. Everyone called him "Thompson," including Cordelia. Below, a photo from their courting days. It was quite unusual for people in their 30's to get married back then. Usually people were married in their late teens or early twenties.

Thompson and Cordelia had three sons, Lewis, Bobby and Tony [my dad] and lived in Hephzibah. Grandaddy owned and ran a small country store during the Depression, and during WWII he worked at the Armory in Augusta.

Thompson had fought in France in WWI. Chemical gas was used during that war, resulting in a lot of casualties. I don't know if Thompson was exposed but he developed emphysema later in life, and he had never smoked. 

By 1957 he was very sick, too sick to go to my parents' wedding in February. He was in the hospital in Augusta and Cordelia had spent the day sitting with him. She left to go home and bathe and eat, and was walking out to get in the car when she saw two men nearby, wearing golfing clothes. Lots of famous people traveled to Augusta to play the Augusta National, home of the famed Master's Tournament.

To her astonishment, the men were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, two of the most famous entertainers in the world at that time. Bing Crosby was her favorite singer. The two men chatted politely with her for a few minutes. They didn't have to do that. They took the time to be nice, and to interact with a fan who could do absolutely nothing for them. 

 

I love that story. 

Thompson died not long afterwards, and Cordelia died a couple of years later, but after telling my mother the story.  

In 1969, Bob Hope's daughter married Nathaniel Lande, a customer of Dad's bank. Mom and Dad were invited to the wedding, and they went. Mom got several funny stories out of all the celebrity encounters there.

In 1973 Bing Crosby died on a golf course in Spain.  

Moments of Glad Grace

In his immortal and haunting poem "When You Are Old" W.B. Yeats talks about moments:

"How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,"

 

-excerpt from "When You Are Old" by W.B. Yeats  

 

The best parts of life are such small "moments of glad grace."

When I was writing my memoir about my son’s adoption, The Michael Chronicles, God gave me a huge blessing. It took me some time to recognize it. Reading over the old blogs gave me back those years with my mother and my children, the early, joyful years of our family life, a life I knit together carefully.

Memory is a funny thing.

I tend to remember in vivid, horrifying detail the terrible things that happen to me. I remember standing next to my grandfather’s grave and feeling the most profound sense of sadness, so profound I could barely move. I remember driving home after my father died, sobbing in the car. I remember crying after I was laid off from my job…

I have other memories though, thank God.

Certain small moments stick out in my mind. I remember being hyper aware of where I was and what I was doing during those instances. I recall the sunlight, the smell in the air, the certainty that I needed to hold onto these small moments of grace, that make life worth living.

Snuggling with Papa. I remember how it felt to be held on my grandfather’s lap while he read Heidi to me. The feel of his soft wool shirt on my cheek. The smell of Old Spice. His soft tenor voice and the gentleness that contrasted with his enormous and powerful body.

Lying in the ocean's salty embrace. My father liked to walk out into the ocean, past the breaking waves, with me floating alongside him, feeling the buoyancy of the water, the sunlight on my face, the sound of the birds. Dad was always so hyper, so frenetic, but walking along the ocean floor with me showed me his calm self, at peace in the water.

Sitting down to eat at the polished pine table in my grandmother’s dining room. The smell of fried chicken, biscuits, and green beans. The sweet tea with lemon. Everyone passed the bowls and platters of food hand to hand. Gentle joking. My father always told my grandmother that her green beans were the BEST, and he would eat them all if nobody stopped him.

A late afternoon at my parents’ house on the lake in East Tennessee. Brother and I were home from college. We threw a frisbee back and forth in the front yard. Mom and Dad rode around on the riding lawn mower, laughing at Mom’s trying to drive the mower, the dogs trotting alongside them. I remember a whisper in my ear, insistently saying Remember this.

Riding through Atlanta in a taxi after the ordeal of two long international flights, my small son on the seat beside me. After the monochrome Asian city in Kazakhstan and the cold terror of possibly missing our flight in the Frankfurt airport, the sight of my hometown seemed like paradise. We rode through the neighborhood and my eyes hungrily regarded the pink and red azaleas, the white camellias, the magnolia blossoms, the towering pines. I thought, This is for you, my darling. This eden, this city I love welcomes you with beauty and love awaits us in the sacred space. Home. 

Here you will eat your fill. You will play in the sunshine. You will grow strong. You will learn. You will know the fullness of love and I will rejoice because I have finally done something I can be really proud of – I became your mom.  

All those past moments, the ones etched in pain, the ones etched in peace, the tears, the drudgery, the aching muscles and aching heart – all of them led to my beautiful, odd little family. 

Pay attention, Reader. Please. It’s not about money, or Likes, or accolades. Pay attention to the small moments. 

Remember walking down the street holding your daddy’s hand? Remember the scent of Mom's perfume, and her kiss on your face? The excitement just as you meet someone you know you could fall in love with? Hold onto those moments of glad grace.

Never take the small moments for granted.

 

The Michael Chronicles and Adoption

I am delighted to announce that I have written a new article and it's been posted on adoption.com:

The Boy Who Chose Me

It recounts my journey to adopt my son Michael and tells a bit about his first year home.

They couldn't use all the photos I sent, for space reasons, but below is the first photo I ever saw of Michael, which was on the adoption agency's website: 

  The trips to Kazakhstan were fascinating and exhausting. I felt like I was in a different world. Below, the courthouse in Petropavlovsk. As a paralegal, I've been in many courthouses but never a bright blue one.

    Below that, Michael on the main street, which is really lovely and there are no cars. The bottom shot is the same street from a different vantage point a few weeks earlier, when snow was everywhere.

At home, it was a different story. Michael helped in the kitchen and in the garden, and got used to life with three females, and one canine female!

 

 

He learned to ride a bike and got to play soccer, and later tennis.

 

Below, some more recent shots.

Check out the book, The Michael Chronicles, on Amazon.

 

#olderchildadoption, #specialneedschildadoption, #adoptionfromkazkhstan, #photosrelatedtothemichaelchronicles
 

Remembering My Brother, Part 1: Childhood

The past month has been one of the hardest months of my life, and I have cried more tears than anyone can imagine, but I am finally ready to express what has been in my heart. Perhaps this will lighten it just enough so I can get through a day without crying. I hope so. 

My brother Algernon Bruce Thompson was a complex man, not an easy man to know. Like most people, there was a public man and a private man. 

He started off as a little man, of course. I wanted to share some memories of my childhood with him, because he was so important to me.

 One of my earliest memories is of my big brother sucking his thumb, and putting my thumb into my mouth so we could both sit and self-soothe -- although that term was unknown in 1962. When I came along my parents said "Dee is your baby, too." Although he was not quite 3 years old he took that seriously. We played together, shared snacks and chewing gum, and dared each other to do things like eat the dog's food or put frogs in the toilet.

When he went to school I missed him terribly. My mother stayed at home and my mom didn't play. I watched a lot of TV... Bruce would come home and tell me what he had learned that day, and sometimes read me a book. 

Although we fussed and fought like any siblings, we also stuck together. If one of us was able to sneak into the kitchen and get a cookie, we told the other one. We made "forts" out of Dad's army blankets on rainy days. We spent one afternoon riding down the steps in the empty cotton basket that usually stored our toys -- a stunt that scared Mom to death when she caught us. 

We each had our "climbing tree" in the backyard. I tried to climb Bruce's tree once and the yard man had to get me down. Bruce laughed at me.

At my grandparents' house, as little kids, we took baths together in the bathroom just off the kitchen. I never thought anything about it. On a normal day, at home, I took my bath in the kitchen sink, where I could play and watch Mom cook dinner. Friends came in and out. 

When I got big enough, Bruce and I both played with the little girl next door, Joanne, who was right between us in age. [see photo below] 

I grew up a tomboy because when I was 5 we moved away from the Herd Avenue house and Joanne was no longer next door. Dad took me and Bruce with him on his weekend errands and I loved going to the hardware store, Sears, or sometimes to one of his cousin's houses. Dad expected us to help with yard work. I happily made mud pies at home, but with my short hair when we were out in public people sometimes thought I was a little boy. 

The next house had woods behind it, and Bruce and I spent a lot of time back there. We waded or fished in the creek, climbed trees, hiked everywhere, and made our own playhouse out of sticks. We had to be home by dark.

My parents had a lot of social obligations in Augusta. They went out several nights a week. We delighted in testing the boundaries of the babysitters. One very strange old lady told us if we didn't obey her the "boogerman" would get us. Bruce laughed. I just thought she was nuts. She refused to ever return, telling Mom that any child not afraid of the "boogerman" was unruly and needed to be spanked. (We both got spanked regularly but not for that reason.)

He loved to tease me. In second grade Mom and Bruce and I were scheduled to fly to Louisiana to join Dad, who had been in school out there for several weeks. I had never flown before. At the airport, Bruce said they would weigh me and if I was too fat I would have to sit in the back -- if they even let me on the plane at all. We walked up to get our tickets and I saw the scale and started crying.  

In 4th grade it was discovered I needed glasses. Bruce quietly told me the eye doctor would have to use a big piece of equipment to pull my eyeballs out of my head to examine them. I cried. The eye doctor told my parents he had never had a patient get hysterical before about an eye exam. Mom and Dad knew immediately what had happened, of course.  

In 1971 we left Augusta and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. It was exciting but scary, far away from family.

When we moved, I was in 3rd grade and Bruce in 6th. We continued our wandering but the woods in Knoxville were not close by, so we spent more time playing in our big backyard or at the neighborhood swimming pool. That first winter, there was a lot of snow, and we had great fun sledding and making snowmen. [see below] We had never seen snow, living in Augusta.

When I was in 5th grade and Bruce in 8th, a bomb threat was called in. All of us had to stand outside for what seemed like forever while the bomb squad was called to the school. Bruce quietly slipped away from his class and found me, and we walked home. It was only about a mile. 

My brother was always there to defend me from bullies. The day I started third grade, in Augusta, he attacked a much bigger boy, a huge kid in our neighborhood, who never bothered me again. In 9th grade a boy on the school bus was saying very mean things to me and Bruce punched him in the face. The boy never said anything to me again, about anything. 

When I was about 14, Bruce had a friend named Jim, who liked to pinch my fanny. He never did it when Bruce was in the room, however. Jim thought I was cute but he was 16 and had no wish to get on Bruce's bad side. 

Mom had a hard time feeding Bruce as a teenager because he was a HUGE eater. The crockpot was used daily. One day, Mom ran into the mother of a friend of Bruce's, in the grocery store, and she said how much they enjoyed feeding Bruce every night, which puzzled Mom. We fed Bruce's friend Steve every night. Both boys got away with the double dinner scheme for months. Steve's folks ate early, around 5:30, and we ate around 7:30. 

When I was just 15, my childhood pal went into the Army, and became a completely different guy, much to the shock of all of us. He had gained a lot of weight his last year in high school. In addition to double dinners, he sneaked off campus every day at lunch and went to the All You Can Eat buffet at Pizza Inn, until the manager finally told them not to come back. 

Basic training whittled him down considerably, as you can see below. When he got off the plane from his training in Arizona none of us knew him except Mom, who screamed when she saw him and ran and threw herself in his arms. Dad and I thought she had lost her mind. Bruce was skinny, wearing a cowboy hat and smoking a cigar. Mom knew her baby boy. 

 His college years were my high school years, but Bruce came home often. 

Bruce taught me to shoot, and gave me sound advice about being safe on campus when I started college. When I was a Freshman he came to visit and all my friends swooned over him. I have to admit, he was a cutie. [photo below, from that time period]

When he graduated from East Tennessee State in 1982 he went right into the Army, as per the terms of his scholarship. They sent him to Texas, and he didn't get to come home for Christmas. My Dad cried all day. It was a horrible Christmas. 

 He came home as much as he could, however.

[stay tuned for more tales of my brother in future blogs]