A Glimpse

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No one ever said life is easy, but I believe by giving yourself permission, you will find you have more control over your life than you realize.
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I'm Julie.
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I hope you will join me by taking responsibility for yourself, by only controlling the things you can and letting go of the things that you can't.
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By doing this, you will have discovered the secret to having happy, healthy and more fulfilling relationships.
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This is Nearest and Dearest Podcast.
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I'm Julie Rogers and you are listening to Season 3, episode 10, A Glimpse.
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I know it's been some time since I last released a new episode.
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Life has been busy.
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We had our grandchildren visit us on the river, along with other family as well.
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Summer keeps going by faster and faster.
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Just the other day, my daughter, Ashley turned 39.
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She shares her birthday with my dad.
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You might remember me sharing with you that I wasn't close to him.
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I have some regrets about that.
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I came across a note I wrote in May of 2020.
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I was sharing my thoughts about my dad reflecting on my childhood.
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I reread it and decided to share it with you.
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As we get older, our memories can start to become blurry.
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Living our lives and creating more and more moments that get stored in our minds can start to push back those once vivid memories into smaller fragments that can cloud over.
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Maybe I'm sensitive to the realization that my mom lost her life due to Alzheimer's and I want to remember as much as I can to understand who I am.
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I only have a couple blurry memories of my dad in the house I lived in with my five other siblings and our mom.
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I have tried to reach as far back as my mind will let me to picture him actually with me.
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It's always been the saddest part of my childhood.
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That has lingered in my mind and heart.
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My parents divorced when I was around 10.
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I was the middle child and the oldest daughter.
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I have three older brothers and two younger sisters.
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We lived in a small town, actually a village in Northern New York, Brown Boulevard in Brownville.
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Our house was historic.
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General Jacob Brown, who was an American Army officer in the War of 1812, used the house as an Army headquarters during the war.
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His home was directly across the street and we knew it as the mansion.
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Fond memories of running across the street, playing there as kids with our neighborhood friends.
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The mansion was glorious to behold, with large gray stones stacked three stories high, set back far enough to showcase a beautiful green grass front and a circular driveway.
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It also held our public library.
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During the summer months the village offered a summer recreation program at the mansion.
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During the winter, the huge backyard made the perfect ice skating rink for all the residents to enjoy, along with a decent-sized hill to go sledding.
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We didn't always have sleds but would drag an old piece of cardboard big enough to sit on and slide down.
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The older kids would make an ice ramp just before the bottom that would send you sailing into the air.
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Living in Brownville during the mid-60s to mid-70s was heavenly.
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My siblings and I were fortunate to start our youths in a neighborhood.
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The saying it takes a village to raise a child is exactly how we were raised.
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I was always barefoot, running out the door to play with my friends.
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Hide and seek, dodgeball, mother may I, hopscotch, jump rope and riding bikes were everyday pleasures.
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My dad was a lineman for the local electric company.
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As the years went by he was a dispatcher and retired from that same company.
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My mom was a secretary for a local propane gas company just one of many other full-time jobs she did to support our family.
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Most of my vivid memories are with my siblings in the house, throw in a couple of my best childhood friends in the mix, and I had a wonderful start in my youth.
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However, my images of both my parents together are somehow lost.
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I have always wondered if that's because I focused only on my happy memories, overshadowing the sad ones.
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To be clear, I only have one specific memory that involved both my parents.
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They were members of the Brownville Legion, post-588.
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My dad served four years as a mechanic in the Air Force before marrying my mom.
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She was very active with the ladies' auxiliary.
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My sisters and I were also part of the junior auxiliary.
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One particular night Mom attended her ladies' meeting.
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Dad was home with us kids.
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I was around six years old and I was upstairs collecting empty glass 16-ounce Pepsi bottles from my brother's rooms.
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I was going to return the bottles to the general store down our street to buy penny candy.
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I was playing dress-up and slipped on a pair of mom's high heels.
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Being only six, I thought I could just simply walk down our wooden staircase holding two six-packs of empty Pepsi glass bottles with those high-heeled shoes on without a problem.
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I clearly remember landing on my face, my body flat on the floor and hearing the clanking of those bottles, some ahead of me and others behind me screaming at the pain my left arm felt.
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My dad heard me and came to my aid.
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At first he thought I was going to be okay, there was no blood and I could walk.
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But it was supper time and he insisted I try to eat.
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I was left-handed and when he realized I couldn't pick up my fork he knew I must have broken my arm.
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He took me to the emergency room and sure enough I did.
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The doctor set my arm in a cast and we drove back.
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There were no cell phones in the 70s to alert my mom and I don't remember if he called the Legion from the hospital, but I specifically remember Dad pulling up to the front door of the Legion.
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I got out and ran into Mom's arms.
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She looked shocked and was crying seeing me in a cast.
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The only other vivid memory of my dad in our house was dad giving my sisters and me a bath.
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It was a tender, gentle moment.
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What was significant to me was what I remembered him saying.
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" I guess you are clean, julie.
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This is the color of your skin.
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You see, my siblings all have blue eyes, same as our parents.
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I have brown eyes and dark brown hair, almost black.
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My brothers have various shades of brown hair and my sisters are blonde, and so was my mom dad too, before he lost most of it as he aged.
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I stood out as being different compared to my siblings, especially compared to my sisters.
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My skin tone was olive and theirs was fair.
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It was so noticeable that my older brothers would tease me and say I was either adopted or mom and dad found me on the side of the road.
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It was always said harmlessly, but it always stuck with me as a kid.
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My Uncle Bob, my mom's only sibling, who was younger than her, along with my siblings, would call me the Guinea.
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Now, at that time, I had no understanding what a guinea was.
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The other nickname was Wop.
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All I knew was I had the nicknames as far back as I can remember.
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It kind of made me mad sometimes and other times it made me feel special.
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As I got older I realized those names were offensive to the Italian-Americans.
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I looked into the origin of those slang words very recently.
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I found Guinea comes from Guinea Negro and originally referred to any black or any person of mixed ancestry.
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This dates back to the 1740s.
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By the 1890s it was being applied to Italians, almost certainly because they tend to have darker skin than Anglo-Saxons or Germans.
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By 1911, the term began being applied to Hispanics, although the reference to Italians is the most common.
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The only two people in my immediate family who never called me the guinea or the wop were my parents, at least not that I can recall.
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As I grew into an adult, married, raised two children, my mom started to really take offense to my family who were still calling me those nicknames.
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My youngest sister shared with me an incident that happened one evening during a get-together with some of my siblings and our mom for dinner.
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Someone at the table, the family went to a local restaurant, mentioned my name.
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I wasn't there for the gathering, I was living in Connecticut at the time.
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Just brought my name up and called me the Guinea.
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Mom was so mad that she made a big deal about it and caused a little scene.
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My sister was flabbergasted and decided to actually get up and leave the restaurant.
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That was a pivotal moment where my mom told my siblings that she did not want to hear anyone refer to me as the guinea or the wop, and how much it offended her and was disrespectful to me.
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It will be five years this October that I met Joe, my biological father.
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I am still very grateful to have connected with him.
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It was the missing puzzle piece that has eluded me for most of my life.
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I believe in embracing true gratitude.
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It has been the gift that keeps giving to me.
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In a world that is filled with chaos, conflicts, wars and unspeakable tragedies, I believe when we realize we can only control ourselves, we will live a more peaceful life.
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I recently put a quote on my refrigerator as a reminder - "In life, the only two things you can control are your effort and your attitude.
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Everything else is not up to you.
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End quote.
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I looked up who the writer is Sylvester McNutt, a best-selling author, podcaster, public speaker, course creator and father.
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I'll share a hyperlink in my show notes if you would like to read more about this insightful, wise young man.
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By surrounding yourself with positive, like-minded people who you choose to be part of your life, will always attract more peace, gratitude and love.
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The views and opinions expressed by Nearest And Dearest Podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nearest And Dearest Podcast.
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Any content provided by Julie Rogers or any other authors are of their opinion.
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They are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
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Thank you.