Say yep to life

yep

I've enjoyed the word yep for as long as I can remember.  Its source for me must have been television.  In my earliest memories of hearing that word, a man is saying it.   It's like yesiree, which I would have heard on the Howdy Doody Show in the early 1950s -- "yessiree Bob."

I wonder if the generation that grew up watching The Muppet Show says, "Yep Yep Yep."

Okey-dokey and okey-doke came from watching "The Little Rascals" on television.

Okey-dokey.

Yippee.

Yessiree Bob.

After starting out as a boisterous child (my father's adjective -- he didn't want boisterous children), I became a shy quiet child who didn't say much in public.  I didn't want to be a cowgirl.  I didn't want to grow up to be Dale Evans or Lucille Ball or any of the other women I saw on television or in the movies.  I wanted to be a brave and solitary cowboy and say, "Yep." And since that was impossible, I wished I could grow up to be a brave cocker spaniel like Lady and have a friend like Tramp who would help me to defend the baby.  And most of all, I didn't want to be like the aunt in this clip:



Yep.

Not yep yep yep  (-:

And then there's wow and wowee.

My wandering mind just said,  "Say yep to life."

Here is the only time those words have ever been written on the internet until now, and I had been so sure that lots of people were saying yep to life.

This is my 64th summer.  Wow.  Wowee.  Yep.

To see a most beautiful place to walk, look here.

SWEET LADY

Although I was praised by my mother for my drawing of a horse when I was five years old, she was enraged when I showed her this when I was six years old, not long after the second of my two younger sisters was born. My mother was overwhelmed, trying to take care of three young daughters. My father was often away on business, was experiencing setbacks in his career and had had a spinal fusion as well as having had his gallbladder removed. It was a difficult time in their marriage to say the least.

My recollection is that she screamed at me for using up an entire box of stars. Additionally, I had cut out magazine images of a woman in bed alone during the day, images that resembled my mother, who suffered from narcolepsy and severe migraine headaches. In 1954, my mother began taking prescription Dexedrine, which may well have contributed to her hair-trigger rages. She took oxycodone for her headaches.

My sisters and I learned early to avoid her anger by being quiet during her frequent naps and attacks of migraine headaches. Until my mother died, I never understood her anger. It frightened and bewildered me. After her death when I was 45 years old, I began to experience my own anger for the first time and understand how much she suffered from her anger. She didn't want to be an angry mother. Angry or not, my mother saved my collage/drawing.

In 1955, Walt Disney first released "Lady and the Tramp" to the movie theaters. At 6 years old, I could think of nothing that would bring me more happiness than to be a sweet dog like Lady and be loved by a handsome dog like Tramp. My mother wasn't happy. I did everything within my power to avoid her anger but I failed. I didn't want to grow up to be like my mother. I never played games about growing up, getting married and having children. Although my family wasn't Catholic, I had a friend who was Catholic and who had a nun doll. I asked for a nun doll for Christmas but was given a very sad-looking bride doll who appeared to be only a child.

I escaped by way of the colorful world of Walt Disney movies, through books with illustrations, in my love of animals and in the freedom I had to wander alone in the fascinating California oil field/desert environment where we lived at that time. My mother instilled me with a fear of anger, but she also provided me with escapes from that fear that she, too, must have experienced.

My mother was a Sweet Lady who suffered in ways that I didn't understand as a child. Before marrying my father, she had married a "Handsome Tramp." That marriage, one I didn't know about until I was 17 years old, ended within a year.

Each time I tell this story, I learn more about my mother, my life as a child and the part that art played in our lives. Her dream from childhood was to be a writer. I don't know if she was able to write at all when my sisters and I were very young, but by the time I was in grade school, I remember that she was writing short stories and encouraging me to write poems and stories, as well as to draw.

As I do this thinking back again, my desire is to remain aware of my creative and holy ground in the present.

Early Calendar (1955)

When I was a little girl, my favorite movie was "Lady and the Tramp," which I saw with my family at a movie theater in the summer of 1955. My favorite part of the movie was when Lady and "the Tramp" went to an Italian restaurant and shared a plate of spaghetti, which led to a kiss. At 6 years old, I wanted to grow up to be as good and beautiful as Lady and to marry someone as brave and handsome as "the Tramp," but I doubted that anyone would ever want to marry me when I grew up.

I remember making the above "calendar" (see previous postings for my Calendar Series), choosing the letters that made up my name, drawing shapes, cutting out pictures from a magazine, pasting the pictures on the paper, and carefully placing big stars to fill out the page. My mother had narcolepsy and cataplexy, along with migraine headaches, which is why I cut out the pictures of the two women who appeared to be sleeping during the day, one of whom appeared to have a headache.

My mother was sleeping during the day while I worked on this project. I was proud of my creation and showed it to her when she woke up. My mother was enraged and scolded me for using up all the stars from the star box. At the time, I felt awful for using up all the stars. Now I wonder why she was so angry. Maybe it was a side effect of the narcolepsy medication, Dexedrine, that she started taking in 1954 after my youngest sister was born and continued to take on a daily basis throughout the rest of her life. Maybe she had a migraine headache. Maybe it was because I woke up her up to show her what I had made. Maybe she didn't know why she was so angry. I'll never know.

I remember that the last time I saw her, 10 months before she died, she told me that she was tired of being angry. It was only after my mother died that I was able to fully feel anger, and only then did I begin to understand my mother.

I am so glad that my mother saved this.