Life in a Bubble

By Avie (Allen) Phillips

Life in a Bubble is about living a fairly secluded life that required dependence on God to get her through the challenges of day-to-day life that seemed to come one right after another. Some challenges came in her very young years when she realized the differences economically between herself and her family compared to others. Another even greater challenge came when she watched her mother, the one who was the glue that held the family together, die suddenly. Avie had just turned seventeen the month before, and because of her secluded lifestyle, she was really more like thirteen. Soon after, her elderly father checked himself into the VA hospital, thrusting her into an adult life head-on, trying to figure out how to survive on her own.

After marriage and having a child within the same year and shortly after taking on the responsibility of her baby sister who was now a teenager was another hurdle for her. Then came dealing with the second child having migraines that started during his very early years. After having three normal vaginal deliveries, the fourth child required a cesarean section. Around age eleven, this child began having seizures, and life with epilepsy began. Challenges with that came having to care for that child and then as an adult and making decisions for and with her.

The next big challenge came with caring for her husband of fifty-six years with end-stage congestive heart failure who became almost total care before his death. Then approximately three months following his death, after getting a booster injection, she herself developed symptoms of polymyalgia rheumatica and rheumatoid arthritis. Life itself is a challenge for anyone, but caring for others and hoping to make the right decisions could only be done by studying God's word for answers and lots and lots of prayer by herself and other prayer warriors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887516868

Book preview

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Life in a Bubble

Avie (Allen) Phillips

ISBN 979-8-88751-685-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88751-686-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Avie (Allen) Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

To protect the privacy of certain individuals, the names and identifying details have been changed. This is a work of fiction. Any names of characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

To my dear and precious mother, who to me was as close to the persona of Jesus Christ than any other person I have known. She was a quiet, humbled person who truly believed that every word we speak we will have to answer to God for. When she did speak, it was words of encouragement, compassion, sympathy, empathy, joy, celebration, and many other attributes. I never heard her use foul language or words to hurt anyone. She was true to her convictions though, and even if it meant standing up to loved ones when some of the things they did didn't fall in line with God's word, she would softly but strictly remind them. Thank you, Mama, for being the type person you were here on earth for the very short time I got to be with you. You were the glue that held our family together. I love you dearly!

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

To my dear and precious mother, who to me was as close to the persona of Jesus Christ than any other person I have known. She was a quiet, humbled person who truly believed that every word we speak we will have to answer to God for. When she did speak, it was words of encouragement, compassion, sympathy, empathy, joy, celebration, and many other attributes. I never heard her use foul language or words to hurt anyone. She was true to her convictions though, and even if it meant standing up to loved ones when some of the things they did didn't fall in line with God's word, she would softly but strictly remind them. Thank you, Mama, for being the type person you were here on earth for the very short time I got to be with you. You were the glue that held our family together. I love you dearly!

Acknowledgments

I want to thank all the people who have touched our lives, whether positive or negative, because the impact of everyone we meet shares in our lives in some form or manner. I thank most of all our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose presence I can personally say has been with me throughout my life even before I knew who he was. I'm telling this from my perspective and what mine and my family's lives were before they were changed to a way of life I would never have suspected.

Chapter 1

Early years

As far back as I can remember, we were a happy family. There was Mama who stayed home and took care of the house and children, all nine of us, and Daddy who always had a garden with fresh vegetables in the summer, but he also did carpentry work for people in and around our small town. He had no car, so he walked everywhere he went. In conversations with my siblings today about Daddy, we wonder how he must have been as strong as an ox to carry his toolbox, one he made himself, and all those tools that must have weighted him down. He had all the supplies he needed to do any kind of carpentry work, like a saw, hammer, chisel, screwdrivers, a large ruler, and many, many others. Mama was a quiet, pleasant person that seemed to be in the kitchen most of the time. She cooked three big meals every day. We usually had somebody besides our family joining us at most of those meals. I can recall my brothers' and sisters' friends just hanging out at our house, and they all loved Mama. She always had something cooked, and I think most of them liked being there because she treated them like one of her own.

She came from a big family too, and sometimes her dad, my Pa'pa as we called him, would come and stay with us. I think my mama got some of her characteristics from him, especially his patience. He was a huge man in my eyes, gentle, and always had time to sit and talk with us kids. He smoked a pipe that smelled so good when he would light it, but oftentimes he would just chew on it. When he walked through the house, his feet made a slapping sound on the floor. I recall loving to hear that sound. It was always a joy to have him at our house.

In my mind's eye, I can still see him coming into the kitchen for breakfast and hear the slap, slap, slap of his feet. At meals, because of his poor eyesight, sometimes we would try to fool him and tell him there was a worm in his peas. He'd just say, It ought not to have been there, and keep on eating. We would visit them in Atlanta periodically, and as my mind drifts back to that time, I can almost smell the basement where we would find him in his study reading his Bible. I think that had a big impact on me as a child to know that the Bible must be a very important book because he was always reading it. As I mentioned, he couldn't see very well, so he had to use a large magnifying glass to read. He was so gentle that he could sit outside under one of the big trees in his yard, and the squirrels would come and eat out of his hand. I still miss him, and when I think of him, there is sadness in my heart that I haven't been able to see him again. He died when I was about fifteen years old, and I never got to say goodbye. I wasn't able to go to his funeral because my baby sister, Judy, was sick, and I had to stay home with her while Mama and the others went to the funeral. It's not as though he died, but that I just never see him. His dying must have been really difficult for my mama because she was so close to him.

Then there was Mama's mother, Ma'ma. She was of small statue, but her presence took over a room. One particular incidence stood out in my mind when we were at their home. My younger brother, Robert, and I were in the living room. She had all these little knickknacks everywhere, nothing like our house. Robert picked up something off the coffee table and was looking at it. He was probably about four or five years old at the time.

Well, Ma'ma came to the door, and she didn't have to say a word. She had a look that let you know in a hurry if she was displeased with what you were doing. Robert took one look at her, put down whatever he had in his hand, and went flying out of the room screaming. It's funny now, but I'm sure I was scared to death she was going to beat the daylights out of me just for being there. When I think back to how tough she seemed, I'm sure she wasn't mean like we might have thought she was. She just had that look that made you think she was. I have had my children to tell me that sometimes I have that look when they are doing something I disapprove of, and some of my other siblings have told me that they also at times have that look. Anyway, she always made us a spice cake when she knew we were coming, and that is a nice memory. I loved going to their home, which wasn't often because they lived in East Point, Georgia, which seemed the other side of the world to me. Besides, we had no car to go anywhere.

Some memories of my very young childhood, probably ages three or four, were one when one of my older sisters took me to school with her. She rode the bus because we lived in the county, and I recalled some of the older kids on the bus had quince that they would cut into pieces and sell them to others on the bus. I do not remember being at the school that day, but I do remember the driveway or road to our house from the school bus seemed like a long walk, but I have seen it since, and it's only a short distance. It seemed that way because I was so small at the time. When we got home, Mama had peas and corn bread for us to eat. This was her practice since lots of times there wasn't much to take to school except maybe a biscuit or something of that nature.

Another memory was when I must have been about four or five. There was a black family with five children who lived down the road from us. I had heard that one of the boys was playing with a loaded gun and didn't realize it was loaded and shot his mother by mistake who later died. That Christmas Mama wanted us to share what we had with those children. I usually got a small doll and a tea set and some fruit, but we were just happy that Santa had come to our house. Another black boy who would come and play with us lived on the other side down the road. All of them were at our house playing when one of my aunts who was visiting from East Point came to the door and yelled, Go on home now, we've got company. I thought that was hilarious because she and other aunts and my grandmother were the company.

I'm not sure of my age when another event occurred, maybe three or four years old. I would be playing with my brothers in the yard and all of a sudden pass out. My older brother, James, said he always got the blame for me passing out. I recalled there being a sawdust pile in the yard, and I was on top of it when I must have passed out and then I only recalled coming to at the bottom of the pile. It was suggested by my family that I did it on purpose to get attention, but think about it. Can someone pass out purposefully and just in the blink of an eye? You would have to hold your breath a long time for that to happen. I wonder to this day, was I having seizures that later stopped as I grew?

Another story concerns a scar I have on my right leg that occurred when I was very, very young, maybe three years old. I was told that I was climbing onto the china cabinet and pulled it over on me. It broke most or all of Mama's dishes, and this was the only injury that I suffered (God watching out for me!). My oldest sister said weeks later she pulled out a large piece of glass from my leg. We never went to the doctor or hospital. I still have that scar as a reminder.

During those very young years, I recalled the ice man coming with big blocks of ice to put in the refrigerator to keep things cold and the milk man bringing the bottles of milk that he left at the front door. We had a cow though, and the older ones had the job of milking the cow before going to school, and of course we had chickens.

When I was about eight or nine, Mama was cleaning up the kitchen after a night meal and went to throw out scalding water she had used for some reason. She was unaware of our dog that was lying just outside the door. She threw the hot water out, and it scorched all the hair off the poor dog. She felt so bad about that.

Another memory was when I was about that same age and in second grade. I had gotten two new dresses for the school year. Both had sashes on them, and I would want Mama to tie them really tight. She said if she did, they would break, but I would insist they had to be tied tight. Of course, they did come apart at the dress seam, and Mama would have to sew them back up. I don't know why I had to have them done that way. About that same time during warm weather, I remember we would all go out onto the front porch after supper (back then it was breakfast, dinner, and supper because we had three big meals) just enjoying the nighttime. We caught fireflies and played chase while Mama and Daddy sat on the porch watching us. I had gotten really tired, so I lay down on the edge of the porch and went to sleep. I woke up sometime during the night, and everybody had gone inside and gone to bed. I guess they didn't notice me. I wasn't sure if I had done something wrong, so I didn't wake anybody up. I just jumped into bed and went to sleep.

I have a memory of my sister, Tommie, and brother-in-law coming to our house. He had a horse that they were trying to ride. My daddy got on the horse, and his legs were so long they almost dragged the ground. It was so funny watching him.