STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

July 21, 2005 

Today's Queue Stories
~**~**~**~

WONDERFUL WRINKLES

By: Joseph J. Mazzella

     I noticed something amusing while I was shaving this morning: the lines in my forehead have quit disappearing all the way. They are easy to see too because the long, thick, wavy hair that used to cover them doesn??™t come down that far anymore. It has become trapped high up on top of my head in between my ever rising forehead in the front and my ever growing bald spot in the back. It hasn??™t quite stopped growing on the sides of my head yet, however. In fact, my hair even sparkles in the sun now that there is more silver in it than brown.

     I know that society must think I am strange to be laughing at this rising and wrinkled forehead and silver hair, but I really don??™t mind my body growing older that much. I know that it is a natural and beautiful process that lasts from the second we are born until the second we die. I even enjoy watching those laugh lines appear when I smile in the mirror. It makes me happy to know that most of those wrinkles are in the right places and come from almost forty years of laughter and smiles. I look forward to them deepening even more in the future. I myself have never seen a smiling face no matter how wrinkled that was not beautiful.

    Laugh at your wonderful wrinkles then. They are the evidence of a million smiles. Rejoice in all the signs that show how long you have lived and how much joy you have shared. Delight in the laugh lines and love lines that write their beautiful history in your face. Toss your face cream in the garbage and send the botox needles and plastic surgeons back to Hollywood. You are beautiful just the way you are.

     Remember that God loves you and wants you to be happy. You were made to laugh and smile. You were made to choose love and share joy. If a lifetime of doing so brings a face full of wrinkles then a face full of wrinkles must be a wonderful thing.

Joseph J. Mazzella
joecool @ wirefire.com

Joe lives in West Virginia with his wife

and three children. Various dogs and cats

have adopted Joe and his family for their

own. Joe enjoys his family, beauty, love

and hearing from his email friends. Joe

likes to take the time to smell the

roses and enjoy the beauty around him

as he goes about his daily life.

~**~**~ 

MY AFFAIRS WITH ???EBANI HOUSE??™ THE HORSESHOE HOUSE (April 2005)

By: Georgewaters Ojeigbe ??“ Lagos, Nigeria gojiegbe@jhplc.com

Lots of times in our lives we playfully or accidentally come by an area, building vehicle even person or any other thing which may eventually play a significant role in our lives.  Sometimes, we could have joked, admired or commented on that object which later may be part of us.  This simply tells us that the future is unpredictable.  Life takes you any where, to a place you love and other times to a place you may not cherish but that is just life for you.  What does it hold we don??™t know except the almighty creator who has every detail about our future off head!

I utilized my childhood well, I played the best I could and I enjoyed the jokes that were frequent in the home where I grew up.  Jokes were not too far from my finger nails then.  I tike them and they came out like shaft from grains of rice.  Beautiful it was in those days when you needed not to worry who brings the foods home or how and when they came.  What you needed were at your disposal, although the growing up days was filled with turmoil and anguish poured out by the parents in quote fashioned out in their own way.  That is by the road side now.  In this write up I am heading somewhere else??¦

It was a custom in my home in those days that every long vacation; as we used to call it (long vacation used to fall on Christmas seasons, it could be from late November to January or early December to January).  As I was saying, the custom was for us children in the house to go on holidays in LAGOS, the glittering city and pride of Nigeria in the days when it was still the capital city when things were almost in good place.  I am talking of the early 80??™s.

In one of my holiday visitations to Lagos, I believe it was around 1982; just 12 years of age then.  We were leaving for home after the day??™s activities ran out in my auntie??™s restaurant located on Gbamgbose Street were we used to go to when they decided not to leave us at home all alone.  Gbamgbose is one of the streets linking up Tinubu Square and Obalenda.  We were supposed to join a public bus from Tinubu bus stop to Oyingbo, Kano Street where we were living then.  Unfortunately, the buses where not forth coming, a common occurrence in Lagos of then and you could remain at the bus stop for ages before struggling to join a molue like some desperate dogs fighting hard to catch a bone!

After a long wait at the bus stop my cousin, Sister Yeside who is now late, being the oldest in our midst which included other cousins like Tosin, Lanre and Yemi (the Thomas family) suggested that we keep trekking and maybe we could get a bus further down the road.  I noticed that the more we walked, the less the buses showed up.  As a novice in Lagos I took it as one having a good time seeing places which is far different from where I came from in Benin City.  You know, for a new comer in Lagos means to start counting those skyscraper buildings, especially the ones along BROAD STREET.  God help you in those days if any agbero didn??™t ask you to pay for the number of buildings counted.  We started walking down the road like one just had been set freed from ALAGBON Police Station or the renowned KIRIKIRI Maximum Police Station.  In those days the only time we could have our freedom from the eyes of those peering adults at home were times like leaving the restaurant on our own and such times even Sister Yeside tend to turn into a baby girl.  She was just about 6 to 7 years older than the rest of us; the egbon of the house!

We finally decided to link up Marina Road through Gbamgbose just to be able to view the Lagos lagoon.  The then floating restaurant located on the lagoon water just right in front of where is now called Leventis Bus Stop was still functioning to its best.

On the way I was taking good note of every item including the billboards, the road side railings for pedestrians (all vandalized now), the foot bridge and the spotless taxis used in Lagos then.  Suddenly when we arrived at the foot bridge at Leventis Bus Stop my cousin, Lanre who I am a year younger than and me never wasted time in experimenting the usefulness of the pedestrian bridge as without order from the grown ups we ran on the bridge until it took us to the other side; back and forth.  Such times the grown ups also would involve themselves in the pretence that they were trying to get hold of us bringing us to order??¦  False??¦! They too were catching the fun.  According to Yoruba Language they are simply referred to as ???sister agbaya??™ or brother agbaya??™.

Something caught my attention. Whoa??¦ who planted such beautiful flowers around here??¦?  Those flowers were between purple and pink colours.  They were sprouting higher into the bright bluish day sky.  The cool lagoon wind of then was making the green leaves dance before the public.  Those flowers spread for a good length.  From the metal fence (barbwire) used in barricading what I now know to be the car park, I could touch some of the flowers to embrace and cherish them the best I could.  But next, behind the flowers was a building which reminded me of one of ???THE FAMOUS FIVE??™, a series film shown on Nigerian television stations in those days.  The Famous Five which included a dog discovered that building in the film.  The building contained some treasures unknown to the world.  The film went on and on, about the treasures, about who kept them there and how the Famous Five got the police there on time before the hunters could carter away the treasures and I was fully gazing at the building.  Next I began to see myself as one of the Famous Five.  Childhood was full of imaginations and fantasies.  In my mind I knew that this kind of building most have been built by the colonies but who owned it I didn??™t know then.

One clear observation was that each time I come by that building it never seemed to have an end (the triangle shape which it is still associated with till date).  After the encounter, I never had another opportunity to walk by the building except when in a moving vehicle on a Sunday morning going to CHRIST CATHEDRAL CHURCH.  Ever since I noticed that building I was always eager to review and overview it on and on without getting bored.  Every new visit to Lagos was looking forward to seeing the building that caught my attention at my first walk on that Marina Road, CMS.  I guess that those well taken care of, wonderful and beautiful flowers of then contributed more to my interest on this ???HOUSE??™.

Years later I got out of school and finally came to Lagos, yet I can not keep away from that building and I never bordered to ask for the owner or the name of the building.  The only problem was that its keep loosing it beauty as the colour of it began to fade away gradually and the flowers were no more taken good care of as in those days.  Sometimes ago I saw one of those gardeners or so cutting them as one cutting a log of wood, I felt bad.  In fact I keep my reservation to myself.

Sister Yeside ended up working for John Holt and there was a time that she took me in her car to lots of the group??™s branches in Lagos, from Abule Egba, to Oregun, to Apapa her base but she never took me to the Head Office which I didn??™t know by then.  She resigned from the group and was absorbed by another organization and life kept changing for the best for her until her last breath at age 39.

Well, finally as an independent man I found myself working on that same Lagos Island with a company where I moved to another outfit on same island until one day I had the opportunity to step into the long admired building for an interview (I traced it through the description on the letter head before realizing where I came to) it was like a dream because not until I got there before I realized that I was to be interviewed in the building which I have secretly admired since I was the age of 12, although those flowers were no more the same again as it were over a decade ago.  For the first time I walked in the building, saw from the inside and said to myself ???WHAT A WORLD, YOU DON??™T KNOW WHERE YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF TOMORROW???.  Truly, I started working as a member of staff there and sometimes I try to move from one end of the building to the other end but I discovered that most of the doors linking each other were locked up and I stand in one of the windows to stare at the other part of the building to realize that it??™s a two face or three face house holding two addresses recognized as 149/153 Broad Street and the other as 6 Broad Street.  Yet the novels of hiding treasures kept coming back to my mind.  I looked at the Pamela Holts inscription on the staircase and I say to myself there are treasures hidden behind that slab.  I walk on some parts of the building and some parts of the floor sounds hollow, I say to myself there could be some hidden treasures here dug and buried by Mr. John Holt, probably safeguarding them for the owners before his transmuting to the other side of planet earth.  I once joked with Mr. Dipo Oyedipe of Treasury Department that I am going to find the hidden treasures here and I have got to first of all locate the secret door and the chamber (as it were being writing in those novels; ???and the heroes found the secret door to the treasures??™). I could remember that he only smiled, being his usual self anyway.  But he never understood my heart felt for this building which I have admired for years before now. Well, that insinuation of hidden treasures came from the fact that I was used to reading story books filled with hidden treasures, I mean books like Treasure Island, North Pole and many others.  Sometimes diagrams were drawn showing the type of building in front of the novels or the inside of the novels and sometimes they have the look of EBANI HOUSE on the cover page or the inside.

I reflect back to those days of the early 80s and remember how I first saw this building and now I am standing right inside of the same building that once looked unreachable to me.  It has now become part of my life.  Where ever I tell my life story I will always mention this building because I have had the cause of being there.  What a coincidence of life!

Today, I now know that it is inscribed ???EBANI HOUSE???, but I call it ???HORSESHOE HOUSE??™.

(Ebani House is where my place of work group head office was formerly located at, owned by the company before we relocated to the present property.  Obalenda, Oyingbo, Abule Egba, Oregun, and Apapa are little towns in the Lagos metropolis.)

THE END!

Georgewaters Ojeigbe

gojiegbe @jhplc.com

BIO-DATA

I was born on 21^st April, 1970.  I live in Lagos, Nigeria the most populous city in Africa. I sing in a Church music group where I fellowship.  I love sports.  I love admiring the heavens and other wonderful works borne from Jehovah??™s hands.  I discovered the power of writing stories, encouraged by Carol.  Thanks for her existence!  I am pet lover minus snakes; I so much hate this creature called snake but others I prefer.  I like to do lots of home works like creating my art works, gardening, making some home furniture, fitting electrical appliances etc.

~**~**~ 

GETTING UP WHEN YOU'RE FEELING DOWN

Steve Goodier

Do you ever feel blah? Ever wish you had a permanent "picker-upper"?
If so, this may be for you.

In the 1920s, if you were looking for a little pick-me-up with your
mid-afternoon snack, you might have reached for a cold, refreshing
glass of 7-Up. Well, it wasn't called 7-Up back then, it was called
"Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." (Say THAT three times fast!)
Inventor C.L.Grigg's original recipe included the antidepressant
lithium until the 1940s as a "picker-upper" (www.cadburyschweppes.com)
That's also probably why the original Coca-Cola formula included the
stimulant cocaine.

Today, people not suffering from serious depression understand that
they usually don't need mood-altering drugs to cope with daily life.
But most folks struggle with bouts of mild depression, despondency or
"the blahs" from time to time. How do you pick yourself up when you're
feeling down, without the aid of Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda?

Of course, talking about the reasons you're down, making needed
changes, watching your diet, getting enough exercise and sleep,
developing a positive mental outlook and utilizing spiritual resources
are all important pieces of our emotional puzzles. But one important
strategy for feeling better (and one that's least used) is helping
others in need.

* Visit a shut-in neighbor.
* Write a letter.
* Call a friend who has been struggling.
* Volunteer at church, synagogue or the local food pantry.
* Rake someone's leaves.
* Bake homemade bread for a new neighbor.
* Wash your spouse's car.
* Volunteer to baby-sit for a young mother.
* Plan an unexpected act of kindness.
* Give a gift for no reason at all.

The needs are abundant, and those who put aside some regular time to
do something kind for others will often forget they were feeling low.
It seems that extending a hand to others likewise lifts us up!

Corrie Ten Boom beautifully said, "The measure of a life, after all,
is not its duration, but its donation." And if you've been feeling
low, the best time to donate a piece of yourself is now!

~**~**~ 

Poetry Section

~**~**~

When Grandma Rocks the Baby

Debra Shiveley

When Grandma rocks the baby -

So many hours spent,

Singing, whispering to one so dear;

Her silver head is bent.

And as she rocks so slowly,

Until the early dawn,

Grandma thinks of others,

Who have come - and gone.

Baby smiles and listens,

To Grandma's gentle song,

Cuddled in those loving arms,

Sleeps the whole night long

When Grandma rocks the baby,

Don't speak of books or Spock.

Remember?  She's a Grandma!

It doesn't spoil to rock!

D. E. Shiveley
Merribuck @merribuck.com

Copyright 1978

Note:  I wrote this when I was 9 as a test.  My mother couldn't believe I was writing the poetry I was and gave me a test.  "Write about Grandma or the first day of school."  I wrote a poem on each while she made a pot of coffee.  Under 5 minutes.  Cheeky, little thing, wasn't I! LOL

~**~**~

The Winds

Debra Shiveley

The winds whispered sorrow

From the sky far above,

But the birds were of happiness;

The sun, of love.

The clouds were of tenderness

As they looked down upon my soul;

The universe caressed me,

As I watched my love grow old. 

And as my love departed,

With a tender kiss,

I raised my arms to heaven;

The heavens knew my wish.

D. E. Shiveley
Merribuck @merribuck.com

Copyright 1978

~**~**~

Semantics

Debra Shiveley

I've been gone for a while.

Did you notice?

Did you miss my smile;

My voice?

Where you lonely?

Did you cry?

Wee you happy?

Did you wonder why?

Did you mark my absence?

Did you know I was gone?

Were you all alone?

How long?

D. E. Shiveley Copyright 1978

D. E. Shiveley
Merribuck @merribuck.com

About Me:

Hello, my name is Debra Welch.  I'm 52 and the very proud mother of a soon-to-be 13 year old son named Christopher.

Christopher is adopted, so I have some writings on the subject, and he was born with a moderately severe unilateral clefting of the lip, gums and hard and soft palates.  He is beautiful!  Chris also has learning differences: ADD, Dysgraphia, and Executive Function and Working Memory Deficit.  He is the joy of our lives.

I have been writing since age nine.  My father came to visit and plopped down a pad of paper and a pencil.  "Write me a poem," he said "and call it 'Poetry Problems.'"  This is when I learned that my father and great grandfather both wrote poetry.  I was being tested.

I have just finished co-authoring a novel with my cousin titled "Jesus Gandhi Jetta Mae Adams," a murder mystery set in Columbus, Ohio and am starting my second novel.

~**~**~

Writers Feedback

Carol,

   I too have seen the growth in your writing and in your soul over this course my friend.  I am so happy for you and I know that you will continue to grow, learn, and become better as a writer in the months to come.  Wishing you every joy, Joe

"pulling his own pistol out he told them to leave or
he would kill them, they left."

This says it all, Charly's my kind of guy.
He's gotta be from Texas?

SENIOR WRITERS

Agee, Vance;  Apted, Violet;  Baker, Kathy;  Batt, Al;  Berry, Nell;

Boda, Ginger;  Bryant, Sharon;  Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.;  Crider, Mark; 

Deming, Barb; Goodier, Steve;  Harris, Kathy Anne; Hunt, Sharlette; 

Jacobson, Gary;  Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Jenkins, Pamela;

Liles, Norma;  Mazzella, Joe; Ojeigbe, Georgewaters;

  Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan;  Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam;

Walker, Bill;  Walker, Joe; Warner, Gorden K;

Whirity, Kathy;  White, Robert;

STORYTIME TAPESTRY STAFF

Publisher: Carol Roach-founder

Moderator: Thelma Hartselle-co founder

Moderator: Clara Westerfer

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