March BJP

I'm slowly recovering from my sinus surgery on Monday. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but recovering is going kind of slow. Right now, I feel like I'm having a sinus infection what with all the pressure in my head and the sinus pain under my eyes. I tried to go out today for breakfast & boy was that a mistake. Had to hurry home. I'm NOT ready for the public yet. One thing that I was worried about with having this surgery was if I'd be able to sit at my work station and do some beading. Have I EVER! As long as I keep my head still, I can work away the hours. Which is a good thing considering that television makes me a little nauseous still. So I've been creating new projects, sewing, and naturally beading.

This is my March entry for the BJP 2008-2009. His name is Shawnee. The beading & color manipulation on this one isn't as good as I wanted, but I wanted to do a beanie totally encrusted. Shawnee first started as one of the bears from my recycle project. He was sitting there all bright & naked next to his friends. I'd just finished reading a post by Jeannette Shannigan which really touched my heart. Jeannette is blogging about grief from the death of both her husband and son. Every word she writes is filled with raw emotion that makes the reader want to reach out & give her support for this journey she is documenting. I thought about my Dad. He passed away from complications due to lung cancer back in 1991. He was only 61 years old and had only taken medical retirement two weeks before he died. To this day, I miss him so much. I have a picture of he & I when I was 3 years old in my bedroom. I see him every morning when I go to sleep and every night when I change clothes to go to work. I have one of his hats (Daddy had a bald spot & liked to cover it up), and sometimes get it out. But of all the things I have of his that give me peace is memories. He & I became closer toward the end as he still was too proud to quit working though he could. He worked 3rd shift with me at the hospital, and got too weak to drive downtown every night, so he'd come here & we'd car pool together. We shared so much in that time in the car. He told me things that I never knew & he also told me things I probably shouldn't have known. I look in the mirror every day & I see his face. I look like him so much as does my younger brother, Victor. So he also has a real physical reality to me every single day. I think you never truly get over the lose of your parent. I know I can't. I don't think about his death so much after all these years, but I do remember funny silly things about Daddy that make me laugh.

So back to Shawnee. I was thinking about Jeannette's post & looked down at the beads I had on my work table. They were greens with some yellows that I'd been playing with. Then I felt my eyes glaze over & suddenly I was back at home watching Daddy eat his breakfast. Daddy ate the same thing every single day except on Sundays. He had a big bowl of Wheat Chex with at least 3 tablespoons of sugar and enough milk to fill the bowl to the rim. The bowl is what I focused on. He had HIS BOWL! and nobody ate out of Daddy's corn bowl. It was a yellow and green bowl that looked like an ear of corn. It had come from a set of popcorn dishes that my Mother got from Brother Mendenhal for a wedding present. It had 4 bowls, a salt shaker, and a wee little pot for the melted butter. I believe it was either Shawnee or McCoy pottery, but I'm thinking it was Shawnee. Other bowls weren't big enough for Daddy's breakfast (oh he also ate ice cream sundies from this bowl too & could he fill it up with pineapple toppings), so Daddy picked this last Shawnee corn bowl for his. I remember having to wash it afterwards & there in the bottom was a crust of that huge amount of sugar he added to everything. Daddy loved his sugar. He is the only person I've ever seen who could sit down at one sitting and eat an entire apple pie (the WHOLE THING) with a couple scoops of ice cream. Funny thing is that he was very fit and trim. I never saw an extra ounce of fat on that man ever. Next thing I knew, I picked up the bear & started to beaded the greens and yellows on him. Some places is looks like the kernels of corn, in other it looks like the green of the shucks which were at the bottom of the bowl. But each bead was for Daddy. After I finished Shawnee, I called & told my Mom about this project. She laughed & told me she had forgotten all about Daddy's Corn bowl, but that made her remember it. She told me she still had the salt shaker and pot. She told me they'll be mine someday. So, Shawnee made both my Mother & myself share one more thing of Daddy that day. And Shawnee will make me remember my Daddy & his Wheat Chex.