I followed suit with the banana hats

So many times, they made fun of my hats. When I wore them, they were certainly not in style, but I wore them anyhow. I see now that I was following a theme that was far beyond me. Families grow sometimes, without us realizing the emotional task ahead of us. Years and love is growing and costing and plowing ahead.\
I am grateful that God says that blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them, children. The world is full of children of the women who spent their strength to deliver. My banana hat, my mommy's banana hat and Carmen Miranda's banana hat are a joke, but the children who came out of those hats are not bunnies. They are influences upon the world.

My Mommy had her own banana hats in those days

This was a picture of us leaving Atlanta in 1965. I was not looking forward to my plane trip with those two siblings of mine who were screaming and crying. I am sure I did my own amount of screaming and crying at the earpopping experience on the plane in 1965. I remember Paul was crying when we left as though we would never return and I could not believe that a ten year old boy could cry. It was a trip I will never forget. I remember Aunt Dorothy washing our faces and taking us into her home and Peachtree Street and my little friend Patty. Hospitality to little people goes a long way. And what a brave young 23 year old woman to get on a plane with the three of us!

I just loved Carmen Miranda!

More than a banana covered hat and an expert dancer. Carmen Miranda was the picture of the prosperity available in this country to whomever would be diligent and resourceful. She used her influence and gifts to change the stereotype that was assigned to her. A sexy woman, whose beauty engaged and enthralled and used that reality to show women how to direct the minds of lust to the task at hand. ie. In the movie A Date with Judy they gave her the part of a dance instructor and she was able to teach this man to Rhumba and keep his mind on the learning of that skill and not get distracted by the beauty of what he was touching in the lesson. It was amusing and instructional.
The lesson I seemed to see in that was that it is not in our power to make men not lust, but it is in our power to, with the power entrusted to us in their lust to get the job done. Whatever that job may be. We may not have the job of a Rhumba teacher, but in whatever we do, let us keep our minds on the task at hand. That is not always easy.
Do we get high on admiration of our skills or beauty and lose our focus or do we direct the day for good. She was a revolutionary. Let us be also....