Letters to your great grandmother

 Dear Mom, This is Kathy and I have a memory story for you from my life that I am sure you never knew.  I call it "My Life as a Brown Bunny"  I hope it makes you smile.

    I have always been a person who embraced life with great exuberance and gusto.  Life was a daily mystery with strange and delightful twists and turns.  My world was a safe place where strangers smiled at children, neighbors knew your name, and it was safe to play outside till the street light went on.  Life was simple and pleasant.

   I loved kindergarten because you could color, cut with scissors, play with other children and sing.  I loved to sing and what I lacked in musical ability I made up for in volume.  I was thrilled to find out that my class would be able to sing two songs in my school's Christmas program. We practiced our two songs for weeks before the performance.  I knew those songs backward and forwards!  I could sing louder and longer than all my friends.  Imagine my surprise and delight to be singled out with four of my peers for a special assignment the day before our big day.  My teacher called the five of us over and explained that life was composed of "White Bunnies and Brown Bunnies".  "White bunnies," she said, "get up on the stage and sing, but brown bunnies are special!  "Brown bunnies get to act!"  Did she say act?

      A star was born instantly that day.  I had grand dreams of being a dancing snowflake or prancing elf.  My teacher had chosen me!  My parents would be so proud!  My sister would be envious of my success.  We all eagerly awaited our new assignments with breathless anticipation.

    "Tomorrow night," she said, "While all the other white bunnies are singing I want you brown bunnies to act like you are singing but don't utter a sound.  It's our secret, so don't tell the white bunnies or your parents. Let's see if anyone notices. "

    

 The night of our school's Christmas program came and went.  My class performed Jingle Bells and one more song.  The white bunnies sang and the brown bunnies acted our little hearts out.  The five of us became opera soloists without ever uttering one note.  Pavarotti could have learned from our performance.  We opened our mouth wide, gestured frantically, and swayed with the music.  We threw ourselves into our roles and for that brief moment, we were stars.

   

 Later that night my older sister, who I adored, asked me why I was swaying and jumping around the stage looking like a wide mouth bass out of water?  I proudly told her my secret...I was special, I was a brown bunny with acting abilities. 

   

 Had she been older and wiser, perhaps she might have let me have my moment of stardom, but  reality is cruel, and she told me that brown bunnies can't sing and my teacher didn't want us to drown out the other kids.

  

So I spent most of my life knowing that I am a Brown Bunny.  Brown bunnies don't sing, Brown bunnies don't dance, Brown bunnies......(you fill in the blanks.)  I have lived my life with the brown bunny mentality.  I've finally decided that brown bunnies are special.  We have a rare ability to not take life so seriously.  We sing off-key, we dance to the music in our head, we laugh inappropriately, we love intensely, we celebrate each day and each moment. 

Little did I know that my kindergarten teacher gave me a great gift.

Diva Remembers Skating

When I was 8 years old one of my favorite past times was roller skating.  The picture below is the street skates I used, complete with a skate key to tighten up the clamps on my shoes.  The skate key was very important or else the skate fell off every time you picked up your foot.  I lost many skate keys growing up and had to get my dad to use a pair of pliers to adjust the clamps so I could skate.

Not only were the skates heavy and awkward but I learned to skate on the sidewalks outside our home in Abilene, Texas.  Our sidewalks were cracked and if you had any speed at all and hit the rough and uneven pavement a fall was the predictable outcome.  I don't remember how many times I fell but I usually had bruises, skinned knees and elbows and lots of colorful band-aids to show for my skating adventures. ( Remember this was long before knee and elbow pads and helmets.  So if occasionally Diva acts goofy its probably from a childhood skating accident.)  Occasionally my parents would take pity on my injuries and take us skating at the local roller rink.

Ah.....the roller skating rink with a smooth wooden floor with lots of room to skate and shoe skates that they rented out.  Back in my day, it was 8-year-old heaven.  For my 8th birthday, my parents rented out the roller rink and had my birthday party there.  I was the most popular girl in school for that brief week.  I was able to invite all my classmates, Sunday School class friends, Brownie troop, neighbors, and friends. What could be better than shoe skates, birthday cake, presents, music to skate by as well as skating games and" couples only" skating time.  I skated with Jerry Cleveland my third-grade crush....he had braces, bright red hair cut in a crew cut, thick glasses and was the smartest boy in my class.  (Yes, sweet Emma....your Diva was attracted to Nerds even back in the day.  Jerry was a math whiz and did my math homework for me. (But don't tell great grandmother--she just thought I got really smart in math in that year!) 

   I broke my arm roller skating.  It was the first of three broken wrists that I experienced in the first, second and third grade.  My cousins used to say that "I was slippery", I think they meant that I was breakable.  It was my left wrist.  I was going too fast down an incline and couldn't stop myself from hitting a parked car.  I used my left hand to try and stop myself but it bent backward and I heard it snap.  I wore a cast on it for 6 weeks.

In high school, I used to watch Roller Derby on TV.  The girls skated on a banked track and it was really a physical contact sport.  My friends always laughed at me that I enjoyed watching it and called me the Roller Derby Queen.  I actually got to go to a game in Norfolk and meet one of my heroes...Joan Westin of the Bay City Bombers.  I laughed when Auntie Becky told me she was interested in skating with the Roller Derby in Saskatoon.

  Who knows maybe your she will fulfill one of my long lost dreams and be a roller derby queen

As I write this for you today I want you to know how excited we are to see you play soccer, skate, dance, write and create.  Poppa and I love you very much and pray for your every single day.  Know that you are always in my heart and in my thoughts.

Your Roller Derby Skating Queen......Diva