For New Year’s: Tribute to a Southern Belle
In thinking about the New Year, I’m reading through our message board, and re-capping the year. Love this post by one of our Grocery Game members, who saved $7,000: http://terismessageboard.thegrocerygame.com/showthread.php?t=149656 And there’s SO many more. That board is a goldmine of inspiration and just good ole money saving advice.
I’m very proud of our Grocery Game community. Read the message board and find that we are people who live within our means, come rain or come shine, and we’re having a good time doing it. This is how we should resolve to live in 2010. Then my mind kept going back to a Southern Belle I once knew, who could tell you alot about the good life…
Her name was Dixie.
Dixie never had much in the world’s eyes. She wasn’t born rich. In fact, her father was shot down in World War 2 when she was a year old. Her mother was young and gave her up to be raised by her grandmother and aunts. When she was about thirteen, her mother had married into a better situation, and sent for her. I’m told by her sisters, that Dixie always wore a cheery smile, always saw the best in a situation, always had fun, and was kind to her much younger sisters. She carried no apparent animosity for having been left behind all those years. To know Dixie, one would expect that “chin up” attitude. Make the best of it. Enjoy…
Dixie was eventually married to a minister, and continued a life of simplicity in terms of shopping frugally, cooking food that was delicious, and yet inexpensive. She didn’t have the Grocery Game. But she sure had that Grocery Game spirit!
Dixie sewed her own clothes and her three kids’ cloths. Beautiful outfits, using remants creatively to save money at the fabric store. She also bought clothes at Salvation Army, and always looked like a million bucks! She was one HOT lady!
Dixie wasn’t one to follow the crowd. She liked bright colors, and once decorated her whole kitchen in stars and stripes. One day, she was wearing a particularly wild looking pair of shoes, that she probably picked up on some clearance table or garage sale. Someone made a joke that they looked like something the kids made in Vacation Bible School. No offense taken. She laughed out loud!
Dixie knew how to have a good time. She didn’t have money to spend on extravagant family outings. But she would pack a picnic lunch, and head out to the beach or a park. And if the crackers accidently got soggy in the ice chest, it was “all good”, “Look, we can roll it into balls and feed it to the ducks!” She was a hoot! Dixie had a zest for life, and wasn’t going to let soggy crackers spoil her day!
Dixie was nicknamed “Dr. Pursy”. If you needed a bobby pin, a nail clipper, an aspirin, a bandaid, or anything else, ask Dixie. She’d have it in her purse for sure. And might even tell you how she got a deal on it. Her famous line was, “I know just the thing.” She knew all the cheap, tried and true remedies. Dixie was a survivor. She rarely complained about her “simple” life. Rather, she enjoyed each day as if it were her last.
I was nineteen when Dixie died at the young age of thirty nine after a long battle with a terribly painful disease. Though she suffered on and off for the last thirteen years, she did it with grace, and never let a day go by without squeezing out every last bit of fun that could be had. I think it was her battle with her health that made her value every moment of every day that she had to live, as if it were her last. Who would know? She never showed anything but joie de vivre, the joy of life! She would rather take the kids to the park, than to mop the floors. She had her priorities straight in my book.
Alot of what I live by, is due to her and her zest for life. Her zeal was not contingent upon how much money was in the bank, but rather, just how much fun she could have with whatever she had.
No matter what life deals to you, richer or poorer, sickness or health, poverty or wealth, I hope you will resolve to live 2010 and years ahead like Dixie would.
I’m missing Dixie today. I will miss her always. I’m afraid I can’t say anything more, except, “I love you Mom.”
