Kitten Whiskers Are Soft?

How seemingly small events can influence another's enire, life

The things that warm our hearts, maybe even make us cry. When we think longingly back to a time in our minds to when we were children surrounded by family, happy events.  When a tear falls down from our eye down over a cheek and puddles below.  This is one of those “Whiskers On Kitten Moments”, that over time we learn to treasure.  It became a part of our very identity years ago, is now a sentimental moment that keeps our roots alive.  Creating an everlasting bond to the past.

Now fifty-one years ago, we lived on long country dirt road out in McCracken County, Kentucky.  I had one friend, whose name was Becky Davis, who lived across the road.  On her carport she had an ‘Easy Bake Oven’.  And boy did we Bake with that oven.  For at least two years, we played with that little and had the most amazing time together.  We learned to interact together, learned how to play together, how to behave with each other.  We learned everything together. Then in June 1958, my dad got transferred from TVA in Paducah, KY. To TVA in Chattanooga, TN.  It was his home town so he was eager to get back home near his whole family.  But, for me, and my friend Becky, we were devastated.  One week later, without saying word of goodbye, we parted company, and I got into the back of a Cardover Red 1957 Pontiac Star Chief Pontiac.   I watched her disappear out of sight through the rear window, and cried my eyes out.  For hours, I blubbered in the back seat, begging to go back home, but dad just kept on driving.  How, I thought to myself, how could he be so cruel and dispassionate.  It took me years o overcome my loathing over his treatment of my heart and my mind.   But, I would never get over Becky, and her loss in my life was always going to have an effect on my life.  I lost personal capital from my life:  identity, trust, faith and confidence.  I was a basket case for a decade.  And, really to this day, I am a lesser person because of that cold callous, heartless event that clouded my very existence.  I would never forget about Becky Davis, or her EASY BAKE OVEN”.  

I wrote her hundreds of letters over those next few years, but she never answered me once.  And, I think she was just as angry over the separation as I was.  She was also damaged emotionally, and writing to me was never going to solve the problem.

But, when I think back over the years of my early life, I regret the way we were forced to par.  But those memories have stuck with me and they have been a part of my very existence now for 52 years.  She will always be a part of me, and I will always be part of hers.  There is still joy there, and a sense of belonging, a sense of timelessness, and sense of happiness.  And, most of all that warm, internal sense of true, deep, internal feelings that make me know that there is such a thing as ‘Whiskers on kittens Moments.  This is just my most favorite of such moments.

 

 

Whiskers On Kittens Moment #2:  I was always so enamored by my cousins who lived in Haleyville, Alabama.  They were our ages, and they were so much moreworldly, and used words that I would get into trouble for using, and I mean a lot of trouble.   We were always picking up bad habits from them, but it was always me and my brother that paid the price.  But, you see they had the sawmill slats for bats,  and had the tall ‘bend over pines’ you could ride to the ground in circles.  They had the huge chicken barns to capture chickens out of.  It was in those tall pines you could hear the snow whistling through pines.  That eerie whoosh that repeated for hours on end without abatement. They had the wells to dig down into the ground by hand shovels down 40 to 60 feet.  They had a sensation in the air.  A Sensation that I always attributed to the Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.  It was just like that in central Alabama those few years.

And since we went down there every 3 weeks we were always leaning ‘new’ bad things to do to get us in trouble.  We got spanked a lot, we were made prisoners in our bedrooms, we couldn’t ride our bicycles out of the yard for 7 days or for 2 weeks

You see as time would have it, my oldest cousin, who was so randy in youth, spent two tours of duty in Vietnam, and after two years came home in the spring of 1967 only to die in a boating accident in South Carolina in 1970.  He drowned after being struck by a spinning propeller blade.  My other two cousins are still living their lives in Alabama.  But those three cousins influenced my life and gave my life impetus in those early years that still makes my life what it Is now. 

All of those things that they brought into my life in those early, pre-teen years, give me a background that will never change.  They gave me a bond to the past.  A bond that has given me roots.  Given me a reference point for life.  And even a reference point for the end of life. 

And even though I suffered much punishment in my youth over the randy things, and words I learned when we would visit them, I still have that rainbow connection.  There are still those Whiskers on Kittens Moments.  Still those warm moments, those moments in time that cause you to feel the warmth of their hearts and hearths.  And, I can’t and won’t deny those moments.  Why, because they are so much a part of me, I am warmed by them and comforted, and that is what it takes to create and Keep  a “WHISKER'' ON KITTENS MOMENT.