I enjoy watching the little miracles that happen each week between my #SundayMessages. This week, well, it was especially fun!
Like everyone else, the time leading up to Thanksgiving always gets extremely busy. For me, while I’m finishing up my regular shows, I start preparations and changes for my Christmas shows. There are also the commitments with other projects and scheduling to coordinate for the year ahead. And in the midst of work, I’m like every other mother and grandmother trying to make sure the holidays are filled with fun for our children. For me, our sweet babies need these joyous memories to lean on through the tough adult stuff.😂 I probably feel strongly about this because I didn’t have much of a childhood, since I started working at such a young age. However, I know my parents did everything to help us have as normal a childhood as possible filled with happy memories.
They went to great effort to take us back to our home in Huntsville, Utah, whenever we had a break from the studios in LA. My mom even enrolled me in the 2nd grade for a couple of months in Huntsville so I could see what it was like to be a normal kid in school. 🥰 During that time I made some great friends and we always played whenever we came back to our home there. My bestie in second grade was Linda Montgomery. She was so kind and helped me transition into the school world I knew nothing about. She is the kind of person you may not talk to for 10 or 15 years and then, boom, when you do see each other again it’s like you were never apart!
Linda is my sweet friend I circled in the middle row!!
So when I received a call from her the first part of last week asking if she and her sister Julie (who became my other Bestie 🥰) could stop by since they would be in my neck of the woods, I knew I would move heaven and earth to see them; after all, it has been over 15 years. But wait, the story gets even better!
That was on Monday, so Wednesday, my husband and I were cleaning out one of our storage units. He reached into a large box that was filled with hundreds of random photos and pulled out this little one. That’s the only school photo taken of me from second grade in Huntsville!
Seriously isn’t that crazy?! And here I was going to see my second-grade besties the next day! Sooooo fun!!!! This wonderful family, without them even realizing it, gave me a sample of a “normal” childhood. It’s where I learned to catch and gut a fish, hunt, row a boat, shoot a BB gun, garden, cook, drive a tractor, collect frogs, have a pet duck and chicken, and shoot a bow and arrow to name a few (I know, just call me Woodsy Mama). 😂Linda and Julie and their family were also good friends with all my brothers; we were one big happy family! ❤️❤️❤️
Their mom was Donny’s and my first piano teacher and the maker of the best homemade jam ever! She remembered how much I loved it and had Linda and Julie bring some fresh strawberry and raspberry jam to me.💖💖💖 Those are such happy memories from my childhood!!! Mrs. Montgomery, now 91, was a great friend of my mother’s, and every time we would return from a faraway place where we had been touring, she would have fresh dough waiting on our front porch with a bottle or two of her jam so my mom could make fresh scones for breakfast!!! I love her so much for these memories. She reminds me of my mother…loving and kind with family always being first; we spoke about it all when I was with them.❤️ When we first sat down to dinner Thursday, Linda reminded me of a funny story. I put her on the spot one day in our rowboat with Donny and me when I said, “Linda do you want Donny to kiss you so you can say you’ve kissed Donny Osmond?” Her eyes got so big😂 I said, “Donny kiss her!” So he leaned over and gave Linda a kiss. She laughed as she reminded me about this and said she’s been famous ever since because he was her first kiss! 😂 Dinner with them was such a great treat especially since it happened so right before flying out to do the rehearsal for my Christmas tour and the last regular concert for the year. The nostalgic feelings I had reconnecting with them was the perfect familial backdrop to start the holidays with.
I thank my mother and father for all the effort they put into creating magical holidays for us kids. My mom loved always trying to make wherever we were, “home”. No one has a perfect childhood, we can dwell on that, or, on those moments in our past that did give us such joy. And then we wait, always with hope, for the new memories that are right ahead. I pray we never take the innocence and simple joys from our children too soon. I also pray we can create a safe place for them, a place they know they’re loved….because I know love can get us through anything no matter how challenging the road!!!
It’s not easy to be away from my family during the holidays but being with Linda and Julie reminded me of all the reasons I even do a holiday tour. It’s a time to remember old friends and the hope of making new ones…I have friends like Julie and Linda I don’t see for decades and then when I see them, it feels like we’ve never been apart. I think it will be like this when the Savior returns, we will feel like no time has passed, and after we catch up we will be so happy to be “back home.”
These are my classmates from 1967.
Back row: Susan Doxey, Jamie Peterson, Jerilyn Clark, Penny Thompson, Doug Allen, Jerry Storey, Thom Summers. Front row: Linda Montgomery, Pam Thompson, Rowdy Muir.
PS Jerry in the photo was my first crush😂
#gratitude
#remembertheSavior