A Gift from a Dear Friend

I am very appreciative and happy tonight. This desktop computer I am using is one my brother-in-law bought for a great price when he retired and he is letting me have it now. I love it. It comes with monitor and keyboard as well.

My computers have been nothing but frustration for me the past summer and I was ready to toss them out. It all began when I installed Windows 10. This computer has Windows 7 and works great for me. I purchased a Netgear N300 WiFi USB adapter and immediately picked up wireless service.

The computer had been wiped clean so Stu had a friend install Windows 7, Chrome and Word for me. I will install a photo program later. I feel I have stepped back a few years into my comfort zone. I will keep this computer as "bare-bones" as possible. I am tempted to take my older computers and have them stripped. Then I will only add back the programs I like to use.

If only the makers of Microsoft understood that many of us want the less sophisticated machines, not the ones with all the bells and whistles. I'm sure many young techies love all the extra stuff, but folks I know prefer the less complicated and more user friendly computers we used a few years back, before Vista, Windows 8 and Windows 10. Who decided we needed all the extra options? I need Word, email, Google, Blogger and Facebook. That is it!

If you hear me singing and see me smiling, it is because I am very happy with this computer. Thanks, Stu. You are the best!

Stuart A. Moring

I Can't Find Anything Good Enough

Saturday we will celebrate a birthday for my sister, Gay. She doesn't look any older than she did last year at this time, but with the sadness we have shared, she has aged inside, as I have. I wish everyone had a sister like Gay. I am afraid I have taken her love and her caring for granted many times, and I am sorry. She has been my closest confidante throughout my life. She has been a nurturer and a cheer leader for all of us who are close to her, my nieces Lyn and Lee, and their mother, June.

From the time we were young, I admired my little sister. In school, although a shy person, she played clarinet in the band and made majorette, one of the cutest ever seen at Albany High.

Majorette for Albany High School Band

She always had my back. We were so close that sometimes my brothers thought of us as one person. If I gave an opinion in a discussion, they assumed Gay held the same position, and vice versa. But we are two separate people with different lives and different ideas about many subjects. I often ask her advice.

Gay is an artist with talent in several areas of the arts. I have her pet portraits hanging on my walls. I have one of her sculptures on a table in my living room. I have published one of her stories on my blog. Gay loved to dance and earned a special degree with emphasis on Modern Dance. She sings in the choir at church and one of my brothers once said she had the best voice of any of the seven of us. That was a large compliment as my brothers sang professionally at one time.

Gay is the one in the middle as they dance on the campus at UGA

As I think about her birthday coming up, I think how bereft of joy our lives would have been if she had not survived pneumonia that threatened her life when she was an infant. She was the last baby, but was not spoiled. June, who was old enough to be Gay's mother, said she wouldn't take a million dollars for this baby.

Gay Council 

I was never lonely growing up because I had Gay. We shared a bedroom, double-dated, and I changed colleges to go to her school. We even shared a room at the university. Together we could accomplish anything, and we have some family stories about our working together. 

The tall one is me, and Gay is the small one .

When doctors gave up on Mother after her stroke and recommended we find a place for her in a nursing home, Gay and I would not. My sweet sister left her husband in Cincinnati to come and be a round-the-clock caregiver. She stayed a month. I lived close by and continued my part time job, but came every afternoon to help Gay. Because we brought her home and worked with her, Mother regained memory she had lost and enjoyed the last ten years of her life surrounded by family. She and my father were together for their 60th anniversary. That would not have happened without Gay.

Mother and Gay 

After Barry died, Gay was there for me at all times. I don't know how I would have managed if she had not supported me and helped me both emotionally and physically with all I faced.

I watched Gay's same loving spirit as she nurtured June in her last years. She wanted to bring her sister into her home and care for her, but it was not possible, so she spent hours each day trying to improve the quality of June's life. I know June appreciated it. She told me.

How can anyone find a birthday gift good enough for such a selfless, generous, kind and loving person? I don't know. If anyone has any ideas, please tell me.

Christmas Day, Love and strange gifts for kids

December 25, 2008

Today begins the twelve days of Christmas. We began our celebrating and gift giving today.Tomorrow we shop for the presents we wanted under the tree.



Family gathered today and as always we laughed, ate good food, and told stories. Only two of my siblings were with me, my two sisters, but down in south Georgia and North Florida my three brothers enjoyed the holiday with their children and grandchildren.



Once many years ago, there were seven of us who gathered at the "big house" where my parents lived. One of my brothers who couldn't imagine Santa coming anywhere except at that house, brought his boys down early on Christmas morning to see what was under the tree. This brother usually gave his kids some live pet or animal.

One Christmas Eve after Mother, Daddy and my sister and I were in bed and sound asleep, Daddy said he awoke to a noise. He recognized the sound but had no idea why it was coming from the family room of our house. He lay there a minute or two and when he heard the bleating of a goat, he smiled and relaxed. Santa Clause had evidently brought a billy goat for Christmas.



Over the years my nephews were recipients of everything from puppies to ducks to baby chicks. He loved to see their eyes when the little boys walked in and saw the gifts under the tree. In the middle of everything was a cage with some live animal. I'm thankful he never gave them snakes.



To be his kid at Christmas was to always expect the unexpected. He loved Christmas and made it a magical time for me as a child and for his four boys in later years. This Christmas he wrote a song about all our Christmases past. He sang it to my two sisters on the phone, but I know it will make me sad so I hope he won't sing it to me, but will send it to me in the mail. Then when I began bawling, I can do it in private.



Families are not perfect. There are few if any Hallmark parents and siblings. But there are Hallmark moments and mixed in with the bickering and petty jealousies, we often forget those special times. On days like today, my mind takes me back to a simpler time, a slower time when love for each other was the most important element of being. When the love between our parents and the love between each of the seven of us, overcame any challenge we faced. We were all for one and one for all, and together we were strong enough to take on the biggest threat or problem. Distance and time has brought into focus the wonderful world we enjoyed growing up on a farm. Memories of that time grow more precious as we look back knowing we can never retrace those steps.