Category: homeless

I have been nominated for the Liebster Award and I owe a very special thank you to Shonessa! I have been blogging for a few months and didn’t know this award existed so it was very exciting to be nominated.

These are the rules to follow after reception of this award:

These are the eleven questions I was given:

1. What is your best childhood memory?
2. What do you feel most proud of?
3. What is your favourite music?
4. What is your dream place and why?
5. What teacher in school made the most impact on you and why?
6. How do you spend your free time?
7. What are your top three favourite books and why?
8. What is your biggest fear?
9. What is your strongest personal quality?
10. If you could witness any event of past, present or future, what would it be?
11. What does a perfect day look like to you?

1. My best childhood memory is collecting pollywogs with my brothers.
2. I am most proud of raising my son, despite the hardships of being raised in all the wrong ways, he somehow became the well-educated, caring and all around incredible man he is.
3. My favourite music is old time Country & Western. I love to go to my playlist on  iTunes as I work or relax.
4. My dream place has always been Australia. For some reason I cannot fully explain, I would love to see these creatures in their natural environment. It is a mother thing and I love how finally these newest generations reinvented the baby carriers.
5. John Naccarato is the teacher who made the most impact on me. Prior to becoming his student I’d received very little elementary schooling. Not comprehend most of what was expected of a child my age the school system was set to send me to Glengarda. Glengarda was a facility for children with mental handicaps. John Naccarato had found me lost deeply into a book which normally was read by high school and college level students. He fought the system, demanding I be tested. The tests revealed high was in the superior high range intellectually, I simply had not been properly schooled. I thank him for that.
6. I spend my free time writing or in my gardens.
7. My top three favourite books are the Bible, for the many gifts of courage and wisdom I have gleaned from the pages, Love You Forever by Robert Munsch which is a gift from my son in 2003. Love You Forever deeply touches the heart of any parent or child who reads it. The Street Lawyer by John Grisham because, while the book is fiction he paints a very authentic picture of the homeless.
8. My biggest fear is illness for all obvious reasons.
9. My strongest personal quality perseverance. My life story examples this.
10. If I could firsthand witness any event past, present or future it would be the time of the age of the dinosaurs before the cataclysmic events that caused their extinction.
11. A perfect day looks to me exactly like the start of this day, blue skies, few puffy clouds, many different species of birds chirping and soaring above and the delicious fruit growing on my vines.

Eleven facts about myself are:

1. I will be 60 soon,
2. I have very few grey hairs to prove it,
3. I am the mother of an incredible and loving son,
4. I am married to an awesome man,
5. I run a homeless shelter,
6. I was homeless which gave me the experience to open and operate a homeless shelter,
7. I beli
8. eve in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in my own personal system,
9. I am far from perfect but I try hard to find the real inner person in those who are unkind to me,
10. I accept that some of those who are unkind to me may not have a real inner person, so I give up on them and give them to God,
11. I am always dealing with allergies and will soon be tested,
12. I have survived cancer, I am such a lucky woman.

I nominate:

My Own Calcutta

Heart 2 Go

Tooba Aftab

Somerberry

I Saw I Thought I Wrote

These are the eleven questions for all of you, they were given to me and I loved the challenge:

1. What is your best childhood memory?
2. What do you feel most proud of?
3. What is your favourite music?
4. What is your dream place and why?
5. What teacher in school made the most impact on you and why?
6. How do you spend your free time?
7. What are your top three favourite books and why?
8. What is your biggest fear?
9. What is your strongest personal quality?
10. If you could witness any event of past, present or future, what would it be?
11. What does a perfect day look like to you?

My old-as-me and paint-stained wooden ladder resting against my broken attic steps.
© Zora Zebic 2016

Two larvae from the Monarch Butterfly Hatchery in my backyard.
My husband Barry was explaining to me how the lowly milkweed plant is genuinely a more magnificent gift than most gardeners would think. The reason – Monarch Butterflies are drawn to the plant as a perfect nursery for their eggs. The eggs hatch into the beautiful larvae shown in my photo. The worms, fully grown, attach themselves to a leaf where they will transform into a cocoon which is called a chrysalis. After ten days the regal Monarch will emerge and fly away.
Having finished telling me the story Barry pulled the car into a gas station on the highway. To my amazement, I saw a field of milkweed plants! Barry dug one up for me, and when we got home, he planted it. My milkweed has spread out into the lawn and Barry, unwilling to mow them down has taken to mowing around them!
From seed to larvae to chrysalis to butterfly. What a glorious and fantastic life!
© Zora Zebic 2016

Mother Earth displays her remarkable beauty even when she presents herself in her starkest robe of simplicity.
© 2016 Zora Zebic

I love this panoramic view of my husband Barry on the suspension bridge at Blue Mountain.
As a child, I had no trepidation of heights. Strangely our fears develop as we age.
I’d been breathless, clammy hands slipping from the rail on my third attempt to cross the bridge. A group of tourists waving little Japanese flags passed by, most dropping their gaze from me. I’d guessed they didn’t have the heart to watch my display of fear. One man though stopped, and he’d loudly said, “You’re not worth the money.” A young girl at his side had grown a look of shock at him.
I pondered what he said and realized he’d meant I had wasted the cost of the admission to the park. I resolved to get my money’s worth and cross that bridge.
The rowdy Japanese youth jumping up and down forcing the bridge to sway perilously did not make the crossing easier; but dammit I’d been determined to show that man he was mistaken!
When I’d reached my goal, crossing the bridge I’d patted myself on the back until the realization set in; I had to pass it once more to get back down the mountain! 🙂
© Zora Zebic 2016

She’d been a delicate child, but most who entered her life saw an exterior that did not match the interior soul. She climbed trees and onto rooftops without fear of heights. She did not fuss about her hair or the way she wore her clothes. She had no concern for the shell that housed her spirit. She kissed the bugs she found in the garden and ate the beautiful flowers, delighting in their delicious pollens.
The question that persisted in her mind was, “Why do the grown-ups hate me?” It was bad enough the other children evaded her as though she carried a communicable disease.
A voice only she could hear, spoke, shattering the fog of despair that had enveloped her mind, saying, “You are not a product of this world. They fear what they don’t understand. They attack in hopes you will defend yourself in a way they perceive to be normal. They wish to be the ones who can claim to have performed the miracle of healing. They do not comprehend they would destroy your spirit were they to cause this transformation.”
The voice consoled her and caressed her spirit with the final words, “Be still and be strong my beautiful flower. One day I will come back for you.”
© Zora Zebic 2016

She was always so melodramatic, my friend Lucy and today was just the beginning of another I Love Lucy Day.
I met her in the hallway outside the cafeteria of the hospital where we both worked and Lucy true to form sprouted an extra appendage; a trail of toilet paper from the bottom of her shoe. “Lucy, do you know about the toilet paper?” I asked with a sigh. “Of course! I glued it to the bottom of my shoe when I got in this morning.” That said, Lucy reached into her smock pocket and produced a small tube of glue. “Reinforcement in case it becomes unglued!”
“So this is how today will play?” I asked with a smile as Lucy melted her grin into her pretty pity face. Today Lucy had decided to capture herself a doctor.
I’d seen this gig once before in a bar. All night long other women pointed to the toilet streamer and giggled with glee. Lucy wore a pained look and as she walked past every guy she thought was cute while lamenting to me, “It is so embarrassing I had to wear these old shoes. Now everybody is laughing at me.” On every occasion, the ‘cute guy’ would glare at me, and I imagined they were thinking how terrible I was for not telling her about the toilet paper. Ah well, that was the price to pay for being Lucy’s friend.
© Zora Zebic 2016

The shoplifter sashayed down the aisles. “Weird to walk that way, shouldn’t it draw attention?”I’d thought as I watched her slip a toaster, still in the box under her coat. “Should I tell somebody?” I pondered, weighing my scales of justice on the matter but my considerations were interrupted.
“Lady, you’re coming with me, we got to go to the office.” said the store security guard.
Relieved to be unburdened of the decision to do or not do the right thing I watched them walk away. My eyes connected with a man standing behind me. I watched in wonderment as he slid laundry soap pods under his leather coat!
“Nice day for shopping Ma’am?” He asked rather than stated and watching his face gain a menacing appearance and I remained silent.
© Zora Zebic 2016

No pennies in my piggy bank
Still, his playful smirk I see
My pretty pig cast in plastic
Though hungry, smiles at me
© Zora Zebic 2016