How Helen's Happenings Began

Even a child shows what she is by what she does. Proverbs 21:11

"She Sings As She Rocks..."

Nov.26, 1950

Just up from a nap, Helen is in the living room looking around for something to get into. Her first action presented a touching little scene. She sat patiently in the big chair while her shoes and socks were put on.. or should one say socks and shoes? Anyway, the routine finished she climbed down and went over to her little rocker. A few seconds later she sat down in it and began to rock and sing.

A little more than 60 years ago my mother, a young missionary wife sat in Mendoza Argentina. As she remembered that time in her life in her later years she remembered being lonely, missing her family in Louisville, Mississippi thousands of miles away. Then there was no e-mail, no Instant Messaging, or Facebook. Telephone calls were very expensive and her parents who lived on a farm in Mississippi still had an outhouse and certainly didn't have a phone. To call her parents she had to ask them to go to her brother's farm where there they did have a telephone. So how was she to keep her parents and my dad's parents connected to this growing family? Since my mother has always been a reader and subsequently a writer, she began a weekly little letter that she would call Helen's Happenings. Many years later after Daddy and Mother moved into Trace Pointe Assisted Living I was able to lay hands on a scrap book with some of the letters pasted there that my granmother Mamaw Whitten (mother of Charles Whitten who is my dad) had saved. What a blessing to reconnect with the thoughts of my young mother especially since those memories are slowly fading with the onset of Alzheimers.

January 1951

BIG EVENT TAKES PLACE

"On December 26, 1950 a big event took place in the life of little Helen. Up until that time she had hesitated to walk alone and wanted her parents to walk around with her so that she could at least hold on to a finger for support. Tuesday afternoon she was standing by Mother's chair in the living room and suddenly decided that she could walk. Since that time she has steadily gained confidence in herself and now she is showing the work that she can walk. Her latest accomplishment is to get up from the floor when she is sitting down without holding on to anything.

It's easy to see how proud she is of her little self. When she first began to walk, she would toddle from one parent to the other and would laugh out loud when she arrived. In this picture Helen is running so fast toward the camera that her hair is standing on ends. She has Mother's measuring cup in one hand and her plastic drinking cup in the other. This picture is on the side patio. "