It is easy to say, that everything is a coincidence, a fluke, a matter of being in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time.....I don't believe that. I will tell you about my life, a little slice of it from when I was born until about 10 yrs of age.....
I was born to Ken and Zora Miller in 1959. I was their only child, my mom had been married before and had 4 sons, but since I was the little princess my mom had wished for, I was special. My dad, on the other hand, this was his first and only marriage, he was the proclaimed forever bachelor, until he met my mom, and didn't like little kids. Until I came along. Some say that marriage and babies, change you. To some degree, I guess that is true, but what happened throughout my life has been anything less than amazing.
My parents, were both in the bar business. My dad a bartender, and my mom a hostess at the bar. They met there, my dad was in awe of my mom. Dad was very quiet and reserved and mom was full of life and didn't take anything from anyone. Especially when it came to men.
They got married, in 1958 and just a year later, I came along.
Shortly after my 2nd birthday, my mom was getting tired of all the things that "came" with the bar business. They sometimes would take me to the bar, of course I was about 2 at that time, and they began to see that it wasn't the best environment for children, especially a little girl! Since they didn't own the bar; they were just employees, so they could walk away. She woke up one Sunday morning, dressed me up and said to my dad, "Were going to church", you see she too had parents that had taken her to church, somewhere in her life.....So, as God would have it, my dad had the day off and was up and dressed for this new thing called church. Now, daddy wasn't a church stranger either. His momma and entire family attended a small hometown church in rural PA. He just thought that when he went in the Navy at 17, he didn't seem to have much use for "that God thing". My dad was a quiet soul, but in his youth quite a rebel rouser.
That morning, they went to a church . They went a few times more, but one day in particular, when the altar call(when the pastor asks if you want to come to the front of the church for prayer or to commit your life to Christ), the Spirit moved upon them. Both my parents to their dying days said that one "pulled and the other one pushed" the other to that altar call that day, but I know that God intended for them to go together, to accept Christ into their lives as a couple. And that day, they became saved by grace. Well, then Monday came....my mom worked days/dad worked nights so they could stay home with me. After a while, mom stopped working and dad kept working at the Bar. Each day began to seem more" out of place" for dad. People would ask him, "have a drink tonight?" He used to drink WITH his customers, now he'd say "No thanks, I've become a Christian and I don't drink anymore." Wow!!! I'll bet the angels were singing then! So, finally he quit the business, and went into manufacturing. Several years later, we moved from Oregon, when I was about 6.
As I mentioned before, my mom had 4 sons, and one of them lived in Oregon, and was having some "marital issues" His wife would call my mom, saying "we need help", etc.......So, my mom, being the kind of woman who would try to help no matter what...decided that we would pack up and move up to OR to help my brother and his wife. So, we did.....Portland here we come......We moved to the North part of Portland, and as God would have it, there was a house for rent, right next to my brothers house. So my mom could help take care of grand kids, and keep an eye on my brother. My niece and I used to pretend we were sisters at school. Crazy stuff. I remember picking blackberries off the big bush on the side of that house..I remember a cat I had named Kelly, that got killed by traffic outside because it was a busy street. I remember having a cool halloween party in the garage, my parents were great at the dramatic thing, with what looked like a real operation with, blood and gore everywhere....it was only spaghetti, ketchup and yolks for eyes....(Hey in the dark, it was pretty neat. You would have had to have been there.....anyway,)
A few months later, we got involved in a little church, next , we were asked to live in the parsonage at that church and take care of the grounds/church upkeep. My mom stayed home with me, and my dad worked at Freightliner on Swan Island. Time passed, and I really wanted brothers and sisters, that were my age and lived with us. So, my parents started a foster home for kids in the care of the State. For the next ten years, and some 100 kids later, they weren't just my parents , but "proxy parents" for many others. My parents cleared all the background checks and everything. But the state had ONE rule, they said that my parents couldn't "discipline" them. My parents being strict Baptist Christians, said that the kids would be treated no differently than their own. So, we got our first kids....a brother(12)and sister(16) and a "secret". My parents were so amazing! The sister, would now be just a girl in High School, and the brother in middle school. The secret....the little girl, a small girl only 15 mos. That was the big sisters "daughter", although we never knew that until much later. In the meantime, little sister, who was very sick when the kids came to our family; through proper care and feeding, my mom had gotten the little on back to health. A very happy baby now. When the kids first came to our house, the little girl had trenchmouth and malnutrition. Her mother, just a babe herself, didn't know how to take care of her, and I don't know where "her" parents were, maybe these kids were abandoned. The little angel didn't speak at all when they first arrived. But now, she sang and played patt-a-cake. I know when my mom would go shopping, the little girl would sing "Jesus Loves Me", and she started to speak whole words as she had been attending our churches Sunday school. All the kids did, me the sister, the brother and more and more kids were added to our house. One day, in about 4th grade, I was called out of class, to tell me that our mom was waiting in the office for us. I don't remember how many of us were at the house now, but I would say that there were at least 5 of us kids total. Our little sister, the one that had come so far, had died. She had a heart problem from birth, and her little body was racked with some type of infection. All I remember is she was home when we left, and not when we came home. I think she was in the hospital only for a short while and died there at the big Children's Hospital in the city. All I know is that shortly before the convulsions started, my mom said that the little girl would come to her, while she was doing dishes, pull on my moms skirt and point to the front door. My mom would go to the door, and no one was there. This would go on for a few days. Some people believe that you see angels coming to take you home, before you die. I believe that happened with my little sister before her death. She died in 1969, she is buried locally, and what I remember about the day of her funeral, would affect me the rest of my life in some very unusual ways...that is for another post.
1 comment:
wow.....great post sis.
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