What Do You Get for a Couple Who Has Everything?

I'm very excited about this weekend's royal wedding. You've just got to admire a girl who waits for her prince as long as Kate Middleton did. After all, she waited so long that the British Press called her Waity Katy.

I remember vividly when Charles and Diana got married. It was so magical and fabulous. Diane looked so demure and princess-like. Who knew that those shy looks were more likely dread and fear? Who expected that within a few short years the fairy-tale romance would turn into a royal nightmare? But I digress.

I've been thinking about what to get Wills and Kate for a wedding gift. But, I guess my invitation got lost in the mail. So while Sir Elton John and the Beckhams are dressed to the nines and making their way to Westminster Abbey, I'll be donning my best pajamas. I might even bust out a tiara.

It is my understanding that, by royal command, Will and Kate are eschewing traditional wedding gifts in favor of charitable donations. But, just in case, I've come up with some ideas for things that I think would be perfect gifts for the Prince and his new Princess. And, I'd bet that most of them are things they won't be getting from anyone else.

Photo source

1. A his and hers spa outing. They’re bound to be stressed after all this public hullaballoo. And who doesn't need a little down time after a big event?

Photo by Mike Peel

2. A subscription to People Magazine delivered directly to their royal mailbox. Because the Princess shouldn't have to fight the crowds at the newsstand. After all, it’s always about them. It's practically their own monthly family album.

Photo source

3. Matching disguises … I mean really, would you want the paparazzi following you on your honeymoon?

Photo source

4. Custom cowboy boots. After all I'm from Texas and this gift would serve as a reminder that they've got a friend in Texas.

Photo source

5. A year of maid service from Merry Maids. I heard they’re not hiring household staff. What good is becoming a princess if you still have to clean up after your prince?

Photo source

6. Cookie of the month club – because, as my sister Bylinda would say, "God knows, that girl needs a cookie!"

Photo source

7. A week-long getaway to El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas. Not only could they see those famous mystery lights, they could stay in a teepee, a yurt, or a trailer. Any of those would be an experience I bet they’ve never had before.

8. A barbecue pit … I’m willing to bet Wills has never thrown a rack of baby backs on the pit or smoked a brisket to mouth-watering perfection. And with no household help, it’s time he learned.

Photo source

9. Matching tattoos … and, frankly, I think they should be wedding ring tattoos, because Wills isn’t going to wear a wedding ring. What’s up with that?

10. A Target gift card – In the USA, it’s the perfect gift for any young couple who will be furnishing their first home. With a Target gift card they could get anything they want … games, appliances, sporting goods, linens, etc. In my humble opinion, it's the perfect gift. I bet nobody gets Wills and Kate a Target gift card.

This post was inspired by the writing prompt "The Royal Wedding…ten gift ideas" and is part of Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writing Workshop.

Lessons from a House

Grams never had a particular house that she called home. Home was wherever we were living at the time. You see, my parents never owned their own home. We moved frequently from rent house to rent house and sometimes we lived with my Granny in her little country house. A couple of years ago, my sister Bylinda and I counted that over the years we had lived in at least fifteen different rent houses. There were lessons in all the houses that my parents rented.

Granny's house - Bryans Mill, Texas

I loved Granny's house. It was small and cozy and built in the shotgun style of the South. There were no hallways, one bedroom connected to the next bedroom, and there was no privacy, but I was young and I didn't know what privacy was. The ceilings were so low that Grandad, who is 6'5" tall, could not stand up straight inside without bumping his head on a light bulb. It was in Granny's house that I learned about family and love. Life in Granny's house taught me about the wonders of a country childhood. We played outside from dawn to dusk and ran wild through the pine trees. We picked berries and had tea parties with Granny. We slid down the hill into the creek on the seat of our pants. On rainy days we played inside and cut pictures out of magazines and catalogs. We walked to church on Sunday morning and again on Sunday night. We laid in the grass and watched the clouds go by. At night we could actually see the stars that make up the Milky Way.

One of the other houses that I loved was a grand old two-story house in Texarkana. We didn't live there very long and I don't remember much about it except that it was one of the few times that my sister Jan and I shared a room without the two older girls. Our room had obviously been a nursery in the past. It had fairy-tale themed wallpaper that I adored and a huge old claw-foot bathtub. I must have been about seven years old during the short time we lived there. This house had a banister that I loved to slide down. It was here that I began to understand that my brother Jimmy had very real limitations. One day, as I slid down the banister, I collided with him at the bottom. I shouted something like "what's the matter with you, are you blind or something?" For those readers who don't know, he is ... blind. Yep, it was the pinnacle of thoughtlessness. And I got in so much trouble, I got a switchin'! And, yep, I deserved it. There really is no defense for such unkind behavior, but I will say that to me, he was just my brother. I didn't yet understand the difficulties he faced. I just treated him like the rest of my siblings.

In all of these houses we were taught responsibility and we had to do chores. We girls learned to wash, dry, and put away the dishes as well as to sweep, mop, and dust. The boys learned to keep the yard. We were children of the 1950s and 1960s. Women were not yet liberated and bras had not been burned. Mom stayed home and had dinner on the table when dad came home from work. Girls did girl's chores and boys did boy's chores. Most girls of my generation and income level didn't dream of college or careers, we dreamed of having children and homes of our own.

Most of the houses we lived in had three bedrooms. The four girls shared one, the two boys had one, and, of course, Mom and Dad shared one. I learned a lot from those shared spaces ... important stuff like last one out of bed has to make the bed and don't leave your private stuff where your sisters can see it. It also taught me of shared confidences and respect for other people's property.

Another thing these houses all had in common was that almost all of them had only one bathroom for eight people. That taught me to be alert and not lose my place in line. It also taught me not to dawdle when I was taking care of business, because someone else was always waiting. Baths and showers had to be short because there was only one bathroom and only one hot water heater. The last one in the bathtub was fairly certain to get a cold bath.

The summer between my seventh and eighth grade year, my dad lost his job. We moved into a tiny one bedroom garage apartment in central Corpus Christi. By this time, Jimmy and Kay were living at the State School for the Blind, so there were only six of us in that apartment. Mom and dad slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room and the four kids shared the bedroom. We were there for almost a year while dad worked for a local tire company at what I'm sure was minimum wage. I hated living there, partly because I had to share a bed with my brother Charlie. I was appalled and humiliated. Didn't my parents know that brothers and sisters shouldn't sleep in the same bed? What I realize now is that I was lucky to have a bed and a roof over my head and that my parents did the best they could. The lessons in this tiny apartment were many. I learned tolerance and to crave solitude and quiet. I remember that outside the bedroom window was a huge tree that was covered with morning glory vines. I adored waking up to the view of beautiful blue morning glories every morning. I learned that you can find beauty anywhere, you just have to look for it.

From there we moved into a lovely three bedroom home on Corpus Christi's south side. It had beautiful hardwood floors and plantation shutters on the windows. It was bright and sunny and spacious. In this house I learned how to disassemble, clean, and re-assemble a crystal chandelier. That was one of my regular chores. Once a month I meticulously removed one crystal at a time, washed it, dried it and put it back in it's place. I didn't mind that chore at all. It was beautiful and it taught me the value and enjoyment of doing precise and detailed work.

These houses taught me how to say goodbye. When we moved from Texarkana to Corpus Christi I was just a few weeks shy of 10 years old. I'm fairly certain I cried all the way. Unfortunately, the constant relocating also taught me not to make lasting friendships. I don't have a single friend that I've known my entire life. The ability to maintain long-term friendships is something I had to learn as an adult. It didn't come naturally for me. I honestly didn't know how to maintain a friendship and stay in touch. But I've learned its importance and I've built the skills. I know that I have to put forth the effort and I do it when I find someone who is worth the effort.

Interestingly, the transient lifestyle of my parents also taught me that I wanted to put down roots. I knew that I wanted my kids to have a home and a sense of belonging and stability. My kids definitely have a place they call home. We moved into our current home in the summer of 1984. Katy was five and Nick was three when we built this house.

We chose this neighborhood because of it's schools and sense of community. I knew we had made a great choice when I took Katy to her first day of first grade. Her first grade teacher was Mrs. Bode who had been teaching at that school for many years. That morning, as I met other parents who had kids in the same class, I discovered that several of those parents had also had Mrs. Bode for first grade. That was exactly the kind of continuity I was looking for for my kids.

Both of my kids went to the same schools their entire school careers. Both of them graduated with the same kids they started kindergarten with. They have friends whom they've known since nursery school. They grew up in a neighborhood where they know the neighbors and the neighbors know them. They couldn't do anything that I didn't hear about. They have a sense of neighborhood, continuity, and the accountability that goes with it.

I'm proud that we were able to provide a stable home for them. But, you know what? Since Grandad has been sick and not able to help much with keeping up the house and yard, they've both encouraged us to move. They've both told me that home is wherever we are.

So I guess they've learned early what it took me longer to get ... a house is not a home ... home is where the heart is.

This post was inspired by the writing prompt "The House That Built Me" from Mama Kat's Writers Workshop.

Please Don't Make Me Go To Jail

When Grams was about eight years old, we lived for an entire year with my Granny in a little house deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. When I say "deep in the Piney Woods" I mean deep. Granny lived on a red-dirt road that was way, way, way off the beaten path. A trip to town meant going 15-20 miles to Naples or Atlanta, both little bitty towns in the early 1960s. But every now and then we would make the 50-ish mile trek to the thriving metropolis of Texarkana. In 1960 Texarkana, Texas (it's a twin city ... there is also a Texarkana, Arkansas) had a population of 50,000.

For us, a trip to Texarkana was an outing to the big city. There were a few major department stores in the downtown area. It was years before there were shopping malls or even strip centers. I think there was a Sears Roebuck, J. C. Penney, and Montgomery Ward. But the one I remember most was a store called Belk-Jones. The unique thing about Belk-Jones was that it had something we had never seen before, an escalator. While we occasionally went to Belk-Jones, Mom rarely shopped there. Honestly, I think she took us to ride the escalator which gave her a little break of sorts. Remember, she was trying to keep up with six kids. But, truth be told, Mom did most of her shopping at Bill's Dollar Store.

Like today's ubiquitous dollar stores, Bill's Dollar Store carried a little bit of everything. Most of our school shoes and many of our clothes came from there. A whole lot of Mom's shopping time was spent there. If we behaved, we were rewarded with choosing a small piece of candy or, occasionally, a very small toy. I don't remember for sure, but I'm sure the price range would have been 25 cents to a dollar. Certainly nothing more expensive than that. Again, there were six kids and Dad was an automotive mechanic. We didn't have extra money to waste.

I don't remember having many longings for things I didn't have. The fact of the matter is that I grew up in an age before the rabid consumerism that kids deal with today. There was no cable television with a thousand channels constantly hawking their wares to children. We had a black-and-white television that used an antenna mounted outside on the roof. And we lived so far out in the country that we usually only got one station. The only kids' shows I remember are Romper Room, Captain Kangaroo, and Top Cat. And some of those we watched when we lived in town; we didn't get them out in the country.

Romper Room image source

We played outside and we played with what we had. My Granny would give us cast off spoons to use as shovels to dig in the dirt. We played "store" with empty oatmeal boxes and empty cans from her kitchen. We used Monopoly money to pay in our own "store." Each of us girls had a doll and a teddy bear. And we made our own paper dolls by cutting out models and clothing from magazines and catalogs. And we loved it! We didn't know that there were kids who had play rooms and lots of store bought toys. It sounds hokey, but that's how it was.

But on one of our trips to Bill's Dollar Store in Texarkana, I fell in love with a little jewelry box that played music and had a magnetic ballerina that twirled on a mirror when you wound it up. More precisely, I fell in love with the tiny little ballerina with her tutu of pink tulle. I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything in my young life. I had to have it. I asked Mom to please buy it for me. She said no. I begged. She said no. I cajoled, I pleaded, I cried. I had to have that box, but most of all I had to have the beautiful tiny little plastic ballerina. But no matter how nicely I asked or how nastily I demanded the answer was an emphatic "no."

Music box image source

At this point, owing to the title of this post, you can probably guess what I did. That's right ... I stole it. Not the jewelry box, just the little plastic ballerina. I looked all around and found that not a soul was looking at me. I reached up and snatched that little ballerina off of her glass mirror and stuck her in the waistband of my shorts for the long ride home.

I was so proud of myself. I gloated secretly all the way home. I had my ballerina in spite of mother's denial. I would take her home and play with her to my heart's content. I had my coveted ballerina and she was mine ... all mine. This tiny toy was not community property, it was my very own and I wouldn't have to share it with my sisters. Then I got home and reality set in. Yes, I had my beautiful ballerina. She was mine but I couldn't play with her. You see, I shared a room with my three sisters. If I took her out and played with her, they would know that I had stolen her. And ... they would TELL! If you have sisters, you know the truth. There was no way that any of us could know something like that about any of the others without running straight to Mom to tattle. In fact, I couldn't even set her on top of the chest-of-drawers, where I knew she belonged, because then I would be found out.

So, what did I do? I hid her. I lifted the corner of my mattress and tucked her safely between the mattress and springs to stay until I could figure out what to do with her. There was only one problem with my plan, one small little consideration that I did not foresee. The next day was laundry day.

Early the next morning when my Granny stripped the sheets off the bed for their weekly washing, out fell my little ballerina at her feet. My heart stopped! But Granny just picked her up, tucked her into an apron pocket, and went on about her business without saying a word. I felt a huge sense of relief. Granny didn't know ... she didn't know I had stolen her. I had gotten away with it. Now all I had to do was wait until Granny took off her apron and I could recover my ballerina and I wouldn't even have to explain. I could tell my sisters that I got her from Granny and she would be mine with no questions asked. So, yes, I was willing to add lying to thieving if it would help me get my precious ballerina.

All day that day I thought I had gotten away with my little bit of larceny. WRONG! Sometime during the day, Granny took that ballerina to Mom who knew immediately where it came from, who brought it, and how it had been gotten. Then came bedtime.

When I went in to say goodnight, Mom had my ballerina in her hand. She confronted me and told me that she knew I had stolen it. She went on the tell me that such a crime would have to be reported to the store manager who would ultimately have to report it to the police. She further told me that we had to take it back and I would have to confess to the store manager. There was no sleeping that night. I tossed and turned all night long, imagining the worst possible outcome yet hoping that by morning all would be forgotten if not forgiven. But early the next morning, while Granny took care of all my siblings, Mom and I made an hour-long, silent drive all the way to Bill's Dollar Store. We went inside and I handed my beautiful ballerina to the store manager, told him that I had stolen it, and said I was very sorry.

In accordance with what my mother had said, he explained that he would have to call the police who would probably have to arrest me and take me to jail. I was terrified and completely silent as tears rolled down my cheeks. I don't know if my mother had called him ahead of time and asked him to play along with her or not, but he was very convincing. After he played his role for a while he decided that, since this was my first offense, he might be able to avoid calling the police if I promised to never steal anything again. I was happy to comply and very relieved.

Anyone who knew my mom would be able to tell you that silent was not her usual mode of operation. So, needless to say, the ride home was the farthest thing from silent. She let me have it every which way for the entire hour it took to drive home.

A couple of years later, some of my friends and I were in a Winn's 5 & 10 Cent Store in Corpus Christi. They all decided to steal some candy by tucking it into the waistbands of their shorts and walking out with it. I politely declined to participate and ran all the way home without them. I had learned my lesson.

This post was inspired by the writing prompt "You stole WHAT!?! Spill it" and is part of Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writer's Workshop.