Life is a Flower Garden

I was born April 15, 1949. As my mother would say, " That's the year God sculpted Brenda, a soft, brown angel with dancing hazel eyes, to send to rescue our family." My mother always tried to be positive with me because I grew to be her fattest young daughter at one point, but then the tallest and the thinnest girl in the family. (Either way, as a teenager this was not a "pro" in getting dates with most guys I was attracted to because they loved the well-endowed, but short and petite, young girls.)

Any way according to Mother, I was super intelligent. As a baby, for example, I could crawl up and down stairs at the age of six months; speak in compete sentences at one year; change my own diaper at one year, and do a host of miraculous things that amazed her, and any one willing to listen to my mother's description of her "gifted" child. (Much later-- actually, once I had become an adult-- Mother informed me that she had tried to abort me. You see, after having three children consecutively, when mother discovered she was pregnant with me, she felt she could not handle another child. If it had not been for her cousin Harriet, a registered nurse during that time, who convinced my Mother after her failed abortion attempt with me that God ordained my life, I would have been an incidental blot of blood.

Happiness:

Interestingly enough people always ask, "Did you grow up happy?" My immediate thought is does anyone grow up 'happy' all the time? (I don't think so.) Certainly I have some happy (pleasurable, fond, and/or stimulating) memories as a child, pre-adolescent, and adolescent. I remember, for example, Mother buying my two sisters and me our first embroidery kit and teaching us how to embroider lovely patterns. Also, she introduced us to knitting (which I was never good at). I loved having her hands caress my little fingers as she tried to guide my 'pearling,' always assuring me that I would eventually 'get it,' I never did.

Also I recollect how Mother would gather all of the children around her as she sat on the couch, and, with us nestled at her feet, she would dramatically read Biblical scriptures from the old and new testaments, poetry by such infamous authors as Langston Hughes, (who, by the way, she trained under in Arizona), Gwendolyn Brooks, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Blake, etc.

Because Dad was an officer in the army, how fondly, I remember having the 'privilege' of going on what was called the military reservation. This was several acres of uninhabited fertile forests where ripe yellow and red plums, delicious blackberries, and a variety of other fruits grew. I thoroughly enjoyed going through bushes and thorns picking this succulent fruit and the joyful camaraderie I experienced with my family.

In third grade I remember being thrilled to see, as I peeped behind the stage curtains, my gorgeous parents enter my elementary school auditorium for a play I was about to star in. My five feet one inch, one hundred ten pound mother looked absolutely beautiful with her milk and honey complexion and her long black hair flowing down her back. As her hazel eyes sparkled, I saw her straight, pearly white teeth when she flashed a smile and blew her traditional kiss in my direction. As I surveyed the audience, I could see she was wooing the crowd. Mother was wearing a yellow, pink, and blue floral print dress that I absolutely adored and heels that made her look at least three inches taller than she actually was.