BAKING BABIES

Over the last five years or so the grand kids and great grand kids have been popping out like Christmas cookies from the oven. My grand daughter Patsy just baked a baby brother for little JR. Grand son Josh's little one, Summer Rose is walking and Joe Eagle Eyes and brother Benny the Badger are taking Karate and Taekwondo and Maria is driving.

   

When they all converge on us at the Holidays, Mystic Canyon takes on a rather international World Cup look. The Wife Carol and sons Pat and Phil are Choctaw, Polish and Irish. Somewhere in there is some Cherokee and Chickasaw too. Then Salvador and Columbia are represented by the daughters in laws Yani and Claudia. Then we have the grand kids and their spouses from Guatemala and Mexico. I round it all out with being Irish, English, German, and wee drop of Scottish. My ancestors came over so long ago I don't really claim any connection to the old country other than as a historical reference.

So if you're scratching your head and wondering, just how did a hundred percent white guy end up with this crowd? That's a very long and winding story worthy of a book all to itself. Let's just say I married into the Choctaw tribe and the south of the border bunch adopted me.

I'm an orphan of sorts with no offspring of my own. My immediate family are all gone and the rest of my Texas relations avoid me like the plague. Can't blame them really. You see I wasn't the black sheep, they would have been happy with one in the family. No I was the guy that skinned roasted and ate the cute little fella. I've always been partial to sacred cow too, it's great with habanero barbecue sauce.

Just kidding, I wasn't really that bad. Okay I was, but I've long since reined in my wayward ways. Now days I don't do such crazy things, I just write about them. That's right even though my stories are fantasy I lace them together with thongs of truth. You can use your imagination to try and unravel the threads, or not.

In closing I'll impart this wee nugget of truth I didn't go rouge later in life because of some tragic turn of events. I was born a rebel. I was disowned at five by my father a drunken reprobate and abandoned by my mother a talented but irresponsible artist. I've been a survivor by sheer willpower and I have never blamed anyone for the circumstances of my life. I have always viewed it as a great adventure fraught with many dangers lurking behind dark portals. Perils must be overcome by wit or by force, and then you find treasures. Some glitter like gold while others are what you build a family on like baking babies to carry on your legacy, such as it is. I hold no stock in the belief that blood is thicker than water. I know without reservation that a merry band of modern day comancheros bound by love, willpower, raw determination and a well stocked Christmas tree can hold against all storms.