I know my turns coming.....it's the curse every parent plants on their child.

This photo has a story. I do not know what the original story was/is but it goes way back in our family. The question is, how far back? Where did it originally come from? I don't know.

This photo hung in our barn. Everyday since I was a tiny girl I would see it hanging on the wall in the barn. Why in the world would this photo be hanging in someone's barn? Did my parents hang it there or did it come with the place when they came all the way out from New Jersey to Montana and bought the farm house that was over a hundred years old, barn included?

Also in this same barn was a box that appeared to a little child as being huge! It was ignored for several years until the sides started to deteriorate or little fingers started to dig holes into the sides of the box spilling forth the shipping contents onto the barn floor. If you took the packing peanuts and folded them in half they made a really cool popping noise and were then dropped onto the cement floor as more were pulled from the box, folded in half, and after hearing the delightful popping sound dropped. Eventually more and more of the packing peanuts found their way to the floor and the hole in the side of the box grew bigger and bigger until one day the item the packing peanuts were protecting was revealed. DIAMONDS! An entire box full of diamonds. Big ones! I can remember holding one in my little hand. The diamond covered my entire hand. For some reason, I was satisfied with just one even though I could see there were many more of several different sizes.

I'm not sure how long I played with that diamond before my mother found me out and explained to me that it was not a diamond but in fact a piece of glass that went to her chandelier and I needed to put it back so that someday when she had a home she could hang her chandelier in, she'd have all of the pieces.

My mother is a lady. She was born in New York City and when she gave birth to seven daughters and one boy she was bound and determined we'd grow up to be ladies and a gentleman. I'm sure all went to plan until we moved to the farm. Mother packed up her beautiful chandelier in the hopes of bringing it out one day, polishing it up, and hanging it in an entryway that would best show off its prismatic light.

My mother never gave up trying to teach us girls how to behave. I think that at some point she hoped that the chandeliers inside of our cardboard box exteriors would one day shine.

One evening as we were all sitting around the dinner table eating, I picked up a spoon full of red Jell-o, slurped it into my mouth and turning to my sister said, "Look, it's a zit"! I then took my fingers and squeezed my cheeks making the Jell-o start to pop out of my mouth. A quick glance at my mother and the look on her face made me suck in the Jell-o quick. A little too quick and as I choked and coughed, out came the Jell-o flying across the table. I sat there in horror. Dripping off of my mothers face and eyelashes was slobbery red Jell-o and underneath the red Jell-o was an even redder face. A face so red with anger that I sat paralyzed waiting for what was to come next trying hard not to start giggling but my face turning a bright red to match my mothers from the effect of holding in the giggles.

My mother sputtering turned to my father and said, "Bud! Do something"! It was then that I noticed another red face. The face at the head of the table trying to suppress a laughter that could not be suppressed. Tears streaming down his face he looked at me and said, "Rachel, apologize to your mother"!

My poor mother. All she wanted was her daughters to grow up to be chandeliers and instead I grew up to be a photo of a baby with spaghetti all over my head.