REAL MEN DON'T WATCH TELEVISION

 Here's another one of those stories I used to tell in another life in another place. People always ask how much of it really happened, and how much I imagined. The answer is, I'm not sure I can remember anymore.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a little girl in Alabama. Many things were the same then. Mamas and Daddies loved their children. Summer came every year. Elvis was the King of Rock and Roll.

Some things were different then. People did fun things that were sometimes dangerous. And sometimes they let their children do them, too.

At least my father did. He was always doing something. He was the most exciting man in Alabama. And the best looking. And the smartest. He was tall.  He was strong.  He was tough.

And he had scars.

L Uncle Ralph, R Daddy, M Rattlesnake

He had a scar on his face from a motorcycle accident.   He had a scar on his hand from wrangling a horse.  He had a scar on his back from surgery.  He told me he had some other scars, but that I didn’t need to see them.

Now, my daddy was very different from my mama in many ways.  But the most important one to me was that he didn’t say no nearly so often as she did.

My daddy said things like, “Sure, I guess you can take your shoes off.  It’s almost April.  Just watch out for the snakes and the fire ants and the sand spurs and that broken glass right over there.”

Or, “Well, why not?  You’re almost four. I guess it’s about time you learned to use a pocketknife.  Here.”

Looking up at me through leaves and branches, he’d say, “No, not yet.  You’ve got about eight feet to go. No, you’re not too high. Keep climbing.  Don’t worry. I’ve got you if you fall.”

My daddy was an optimist.  He believed that whatever happened, most things would turn out all right.  My daddy liked to have fun and take risks.  He liked to drive fast and zigzag a lot.

He was not the least little bit afraid of getting hurt.  But he was terrified of getting bored. 

 

R Daddy, L Tug

One time my daddy said to me, “The hole is not that big.  I’m going to row real hard, and if you bail real fast with your worm can, I believe we'll make it to the other side of the lake in this old boat, easy.”

Another time he said,“Find you a stick.  Not that one, here, get this big one.  Don’t scare him. Now try to work your way up around to his head and distract him with that stick.  See can you get him to clamp down on it.   I’ll slip up on him from behind and grab him by the tail.”

One day he said to me,“Don’t look down.  Just keep on sliding out on your bottom, like me.  Now put one foot on this side of the roof and one foot on that side.  Good.  Now hold this bag of nails for me and hand me one when I ask for it. “

Another day he said, “We're not going to drive all that long way around to post this sign just over there.  Look at that big old log over the gully.  As long as I don't lose my balance, I believe I can just walk right over.  Hold your daddy's jacket.  Watch this.”

Later, in the emergency room when they had patched him up, he’d say things like:

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It don’t hardly hurt at all.”

“I believe this might be a little sore tomorrow.”

Lots of other times my daddy said things like:

1945

“We don’t have to mention this to your mother.  I don’t mean for you to lie to her.  Don’t ever lie to your mother.  That would be wrong.  It’s just that we don’t have to give her all the details if she don’t ask for them.  I mean, if she sees my bandage and asks what happened, we should just say I had a little accident.  And if she notices your shoes are missing, we should say we lost them at the lake. That’s all true.  And it is just the right amount of information.

But now, if your mama says,

‘Did your daddy get that bandaged hand from trying to catch an alligator by the tail while you distracted it with a stick you were trying to get it to bite, and then after it whipped around and bit him, he let go of the tail and he had to grab you up so quick your sandals fell off and the alligator ate one and you left the other one behind in the mud?’

Well then, you’ll have to give her a straight, “Yes, ma’am.”  You cannot lie to your mother.”

I had lots of adventures with my daddy climbing rocks and swinging on muscadine vines, avoiding skunks and catching snakes.  He really was the most exciting man in Alabama.

There were only two things my daddy and I didn’t agree on.   But the first thing was a big one.  It was terrible.  It was so bad I tried not to think about it. 

With Buddy and Bubba

My daddy did not like Elvis.

One time we were driving along in my daddy’s pick-up truck when Elvis came on the radio.  My daddy said, “Here, baby, take the wheel so I can fix that.”

So I took the wheel and steered the truck.  Daddy had to feel around under the seat and find the pliers to change the station because the radio knobs were missing.

Later at Billy Parker’s Garage, while the dents got banged back out of the truck fender, the insurance man came to talk to my daddy.

“You ought not to let that four-year-old drive the truck, Frank.  Her legs are too short to reach the pedals.”

 My daddy’s sucked his teeth and shook his head.  “I had to change the station, Earnest.  That rock n roll music is dangerous.”

The other thing we didn’t agree about was something that my daddy didn’t like me to do.  He didn’t like me to eat grass.

I pulled up grass for our horses and fed it to them through the fence--clover and false nettles and loosestrife.  One time I tried some and it tasted pretty good, so I kept nibbling it now and then. One day, I just got down on my hands and knees and started eating it like the horses.

When my daddy noticed me doing this the first time he told me to get up from there and go on and play.

When he saw me the second time, he asked me what I was doing.

“Eating grass,” I said, spitting out green bits in between words.

“Well stop it,” he said.  Then he looked at me like Mama sometimes looked at him.

The next time he caught me eating grass he said,“Stop that.  Don’t you know grass is for horses, not people?  That grass might be poison-- it might make you sick. You need to stop that so you can grow up to be a big strong girl.  Don’t you want to grow up to be a big, strong girl?”

“No, sir, ” I said, “ I’d rather grow up to be a horse.”

With Michael

“Go inside the house,” he said, “and don’t come back out until you know better than to eat grass.”

But I really wanted to be a horse when I grew up. So I kept eating grass. When he caught me doing it again my daddy was very angry. And he did the scariest thing he could think of.

He took me to my mother.

She was, as usual, at her sewing machine.  Daddy pushed me in the door and said, “Honey, you got to do something with this child. I just caught her eating grass again.” 

Then he limped away.

My mother’s sewing machine stopped whirring.  She turned to me and sighed.  She told me to sit down on a chair. She said, “Sometimes things turn out different than what we plan.  Do you understand what that means?”

I said,  "No ma’am."

 She said,“Let’s think this through together.”

“Do you remember when you and your daddy rowed the boat across the lake?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did that turn out the way you planned?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What happened?”

“We got wet.”

My mama clasped her hands and rested them on her knees.“Do you remember when you and Daddy tried to catch that alligator?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did that turn out like you planned?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What happened?”

“He got bit and I lost my shoes.”

My mother smiled and continued.

“And do you remember what happened when I caught you helping Daddy patch the barn roof?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did that turn out like you planned?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What happened?”

“That was a bad whipping.”

“Yes, it was,” my mother said. She held up her hand with her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. She said, “And you came this close to getting one, too.”

I stayed real quiet.

“Now. Do you remember when Daddy decided to cross the gully on the hollow log?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did that turn out the way he planned?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What happened?”

“We had to get a rope and the mule to haul him back out. And an ambulance.  But it was exciting.”

Mama gave me a hard look. I stopped smiling.

“The point is, can you see that things don’t always turn out the way you plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ll now. Let's think about this.  What else eats grass besides horses?”

 I thought. “Cows?”

“That’s right.  What if you keep eating grass and you don’t grow up to be a horse like you plan?  What if you keep eating grass and you grow up to be a cow instead? Do you think it would be fun to grow up to be a cow?”

I thought again. No, I didn’t. Horses were graceful.  Horses were fast.  Horses had flowing manes and tails.  Cows were heavy.  Cows were slow.  Cows had bottoms all covered in poop. 

I answered my mother’s question. 

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” she said, “because I don’t want you to grow up to be a cow, either.  Just so we both understand -- you will not be eating any more grass.”

“No, ma’am, I won’t.”

“That’s just fine.  Because you need to understand that if I catch you eating grass again, you are going to get what your father got when I walked outside and saw you sitting up there on top of the barn handing him roofing nails.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s my good girl,” my mama said. She gave me a big, long hug with a little pat on my bottom at the end.

Then with a loud screech, the screen door banged open and there was my daddy, smiling wide enough to eat a banana sideways  He had a big stick in one hand and a bucket of feed in the other.  He had a rope coiled around his left shoulder.

 He said to my mama, “If you’re done correcting that child, can you give her your apron, please?  No, not that one. The other one. The red one.”

Then he said to me, “Come on, girl, we got to get moving. We got some work to do. That old bull’s done broke through the fence again. Me and you got to go get him.”

 

Still her daddy's girl

 Happy Father's Day. Thanks for coming. 

 Come again, soon.

Leann

Remember That He's Gone

When I left for Alabama, the coming day was just a pink smudge on the horizon behind my left shoulder. The honeysuckle vines had begun to stretch their tendrils and reach for the next rail on the fence. The rosebuds dreamed on their stems.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I remembered when he was born. How our family waited for three days, my mother becoming increasingly, uncharacteristically fractious as she prayed for my sister to give birth safely. And he was safely born, despite his large size, and his mother’s preeclampsia. My sister, who’d been mad for a girl-child, forgot all about that the minute she held him, her first-born. He was such a blond fairy baby, all cherry-pink-and-apple-blossom-white. Such a beautiful, sweet boy.

By the time I hit the 81 South, the sun had cleared the horizon behind me and I’d remembered past the worst of it. How his mother was taken so young. In the time it took for a city truck to run a stop sign. How he survived that accident with stitches in his dandelion hair. I remember still, how they felt under my palm, those bloody, crusty cuts, when I rocked and comforted him that endless February afternoon. Her husband, my crazed parents and shocked siblings struggled with the technicalities of her sudden death. The arrangements. That tiny boy cried for his mother as least as long as it had taken him to be born. I cried with him. More death would come to us, and soon. I was eleven that year.

Passing Knoxville, I skimmed quickly over my memories after that. There is a reason that fairy tales contain dire consequences for motherless and fatherless children. A song kept playing on the radio that expressed my feelings of sadness and anger. And more sadness. And more anger.

I know that time stops for the grieving. In the space between hearing the news, and living through the funeral, life goes into an odd slow motion. Like being stuck on a merry-go-round in the wrong gear. And it feels so strange and unforgiveable to look out and see that, all around you, the world continues at normal speed.

After Chattanooga, I stopped remembering, and I began to contemplate what I was driving into.

His children are beautiful and smart and strong. His wife is loving and courageous. So I have the greatest hope that they will be alright now that he is gone. I pray for their comfort. And for the rest of us who loved him so.

I hope for some peace for the man who unknowingly drove a farm tractor in front of his loaded rig and watched it swerve, crash and ignite, shocked and horrified, as the cab burned down to the frame in what must have seemed like the pause between two breaths.

I left my hometown years ago. I’ve been many places. Wherever I was in the world, there was not a day in my life without him in it. Not a day without all of my family in it, especially the young ones. My niece and nephews, so close to my own age, so far from my own experience.

I saw them in the faces of my children, and of the children I worked with over the years. I held them close. They were always with me, wherever I was in the world. Someone once asked me if I believed that houses are haunted. I said I believed people are haunted, not houses. I believe it still.

At his memorial, I lingered to touch his motorcycle jacket and boots. I’d thought as we both aged, and our lives slowed, we’d have found time for each other again, someday. But he wasn’t granted age. Sometimes, there just isn’t any more. I headed back to Virginia in the dark of an early morning.

That fairy child grew up to be, in many ways, a hard man. Hard to know, hard on himself. A hard worker. Sometimes hard to live with. Now hard to live without. And hard to forget.

On the coldest day of this winter, they’ll release his ashes on the top of Cheaha Mountain, as he instructed his friends in one of those conversations we all have, but only half believe in.

When I pulled into my driveway, I could see that the rosebuds had emerged from their dreams into riots of flowers. The honeysuckle blossom thickened the air with a sweetness that was hard to bear. That song on the radio started over again just before I cut the engine.

I’ve seen him several times since then. A shadow on the floor. A movement at the corner of my eye. The rumble of his grown-man’s voice as the air conditioning hums into action. It's not him. It’s not the house. It’s me.  

All the winds of northern Alabama find their way to Bald Rock up on Cheaha. I can see just as clear how it will be on that cold day this winter. His ashes rising upward on the same winds the hawks ride, up there at the top of the mountain, swirling together higher, and higher, hanging in the air. Then drifting down, falling like the mercy that is surely owing to his children, into the valley where our ancestors lived and worked and died.

I hope I can be there on that day. I hope, in time, I can remember that he’s really gone.

Knows now there are some things she'll never understand

 Leann

 

With him, still

Not so long ago and far away in another life, I was a storyteller. Here’s one of the stories I often told this time of year:

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a little girl in Alabama. Some things were the same then. Mamas and Daddies loved their children. Spring came every year. Elvis was the King of Rock and Roll. Some things were different. Little girls almost always wore dresses. My mother made all of my clothes. Everybody we knew went to the same church every Sunday. Twice.

I was the youngest child in the family by many years, almost as young as a grandchild. I was not unappealing to look at, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a ready smile. Unfortunately, I also had a busy brain and a mouth to go with it, and was forever asking inconvenient questions at inconvenient times.

            My mother, God bless her, loved dressing me up for church on Sundays. So did my teenaged sisters. I guess they thought they might as well have some kind of fun out of me in exchange for putting up with my behavior for the rest of the week.

So on Saturday nights they picked out my dress and slip and shoes and socks and underwear. They bathed me and washed my hair. They slathered my hair with Dippity-Do and filled my head full of itchy, pokey brush rollers. It was all more of a trial than any four-year-old should ever have to endure.

            But on the Saturday night before Easter, these ridiculous rituals would go into overdrive. My mother would have been working for weeks by then, making her idea of the perfect Easter outfit for her baby. One that that bristled with lace, embroidery, puffed sleeves, ribbons and bows. My mother and sisters would turn me into a pastel petit four for the day, an overly frosted little pink and white cupcake with blonde hair. An Easter confection.

            Of course, I did not want to be a little pink and white Easter confection at that time in my life. Back then, my goal was to someday, eventually, grow up to be a horse and/or marry Elvis Presley. His magazine photos were plastered all over the walls of the bedroom I shared with my big sisters.

To that end, I got together with my imaginary friend, Darlene, every day. And when Darlene arrived, it was the easiest thing in the world to pretend Elvis up for a visit to our house, as well. Once there, he would very obligingly play whatever game Darlene and I had gotten going, with my dog, Chipper, and my pet chicken, Irmengarde in tow. Darlene and I could always count on Elvis to liven up an otherwise dull afternoon.

But, oh, those Easter weekends! The newness of those clothes! I hated the scratch of lace. I hated the binding of ribbons and elasticated puffed sleeves. And the unforgiving white patent leather shoes. And white cotton gloves, for goodness sake. And a straw hat with an elastic strap under my chin. Horrors.

I failed to understand how the wearing of castoff boy's britches and tennis shoes and a t-shirt to church on Easter Sunday could prevent the Easter Bunny from coming or Jesus from rising from his tomb. It was all very confusing.

But my mother and sisters were on a mission. A mission to try to make me the cutest little Easter brat at Mamre Baptist Church. So, with my hair let down and combed out, they worked me into new underwear, socks, shoes, gloves, and confectionery dress. Then I was made to stand on the little bench in front of my mother’s dressing table, where I could see myself in the big, round mirror from head to toe, and be admired by all the females of the family.

So there I stood on the Easter Sunday morning of my fourth year, a successfully potty-trained human being who had left her high chair far behind. Stuffed into itchy, binding clothes, my stiff, sprayed hair in a perfect “flip” around my shoulders, I felt like some sort of sacrificial lamb to fashion. Oh, the indignity.

I stared in the mirror, feeling my pre-school gorge rise, until finally, I exploded. First I kicked off the shoes and wrenched off the gloves and socks. I threw the hat across the room and began to tug at the ribbon around my waist. Next I pulled the hated dress over my head, that object of all those hours of my poor mother's loving work.  As I tugged and wriggled and twisted off those clothes, I growled and whimpered like a caged animal.

And then there I was on the little bench, staring up at my mother, wearing only my little white cotton slip and panties. My face was blotchy, my hair enmeshed in tangles from the struggle to disrobe. Without a sound, my sisters melted out of the room.

From the doorway, my mother stared back at me, outwardly calm, inwardly seething. But she had been a mother much longer than I had been a child. She was much smarter than I was. And more patient. As she opened her mouth to say something, the kitchen phone rang.

“You stay right there and don’t you move, young lady. I’ll be back to deal with you in a minute.”

So I stood, sniffling and trembling with anger. Darlene appeared. I began to tell her my troubles. My mother soon returned and stood at the door, watching me talk to the empty air around me. My abandoned clothes had come to rest in various unlikely places around the bedroom she shared with my father.

Curiosity being one of my foremost character flaws, I turned my attention to her. “Who was that on the telephone, Mama?” I asked, still sniffling.

My mother’s expression changed then. Her eyes took on a shrewd look. She was wise enough to recognize an opportunity when one presented itself.

“Who that was on the phone, young lady,” she said, “was Elvis.”

I stopped sniffling. Darlene disappeared back from whence she came in an instant. My mother had my full attention now.

“Elvis heard about the outfit I’ve been sewing for you this Easter. He wanted me to take a picture of you wearing it.” Here my mother nonchalantly studied the nails on her left hand. “I told him I’d see what I could do, but not to expect too much, because you were cutting up such didoes about it.”

I exploded again, this time into action. Running around the room, I gathered up the hated clothes, talking a mile a minute about how I’d have them on before she knew it, how I’d comb my own hair and buckle my own shoes, and if she would just go get my brother’s camera, I would stand very, very still, and smile real pretty, and be good the rest of the day. No. I’d be good forever and ever. And ever. Amen.

Mother disappeared down the hall and shortly returned with the camera and my sisters. They made a couple of adjustments to my ensemble and took me outside. Darlene waited for me there in front of the camellia bush. And that’s where my mother snapped my photograph. For the King.

Then my family piled into the car and headed to church like every other Sunday of our lives. Darlene waved us all the way down the road to the turnoff.

I’m sure my Easter basket was lovely that year. I’m sure I hid eggs and ate candy and had a wonderful day. But what I remember most about that Easter is imagining the look on Elvis’s face, all the way up in Memphis, when he got my picture in the mail. At Graceland. Who really wants to be a horse when they grow up anyway?

I have lived through a fair few Easters since that one. I think about those years sometimes, of my family, and the world we knew then. I think about Darlene. She must surely be getting as long in the tooth as I am, these days. I miss her.

Not long ago, I visited Graceland. I did not see my photo there. I’m sure it must mean that Elvis carried it with him always, perhaps in his wallet. I like to think he could see Darlene in that picture with me. That Elvis Presley had the only existing photo ever taken of the two of us together, all those years ago. I like to think that somewhere out there in the cosmos, it’s with him, still.

Still hates breaking in new clothes.

Happy Easter. Thanks for coming. 

Come again soon.

Leann

 

             

This is How

It began to rain the morning after that long night. Rain in the daytime, something I didn’t see much in southern California. I was homesick for it. 
There was an atrium in the middle of the ward. You and I walked around it a long time, watching the sky. Listening to the drops fall from leaf to leaf. I leaned on a handrail when the pains came. 
One after another the other babies appeared until there was just one name left on the board at the nurses' station. Mine. Your father went to check on your sister, then to pick my mother up from the airport. In between he held my hand, letting go only when I grabbed that handrail.
 You were born late in the afternoon. You answered a question I’d been asking myself for months. How will I ever love this one as much as I love the first one? 
This is how. Like this. Just like this. Here you are. Just as much. Always have, always will.  

Happy Birthday

   

Becomes a happy mother three times

                        

                          Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

                               Leann

Here's To the Next Times

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Sweet potato pie and Earl Grey Tea

It’s the middle of December. I awoke this morning to a world wrapped in cotton wool, all sound deadened in the mist. Today, we’ll add our star lights to the front porch.  We’ll take out our Christmas books and begin to read them. We’ll turn on the Christmas music. Soon we’ll decorate the tree.

And here’s where we are this year: Still in Virginia. Still in the last house we moved into, except for our youngest daughter, who has moved on to a place of her own. My husband is now working for a different company, and he’s finding his work there quite satisfying.

My son has happily changed his university major to athletic training, works all the hours God sends and has managed somehow to make the dean’s list for at least the last two semesters he’s told us about. My oldest daughter works at two hospitals and assembles electronic components, takes riding classes, belongs to a drama group, and several social groups as well as taking literacy tutoring every week. She has a lovely boyfriend.

Our youngest daughter loves her job at an animal shelter in a nearby town, and is settling in to her new digs in a neighborhood that seems to suit her well. I love the place. We text or talk every day, and we get to see her almost every week.

Sadly, we lost our cat, Panda, this year to old age. He was thirteen. His ashes are buried in the back garden under the new fig tree. But before we lost him, he had time to enjoy many happy arguments with his two new friends:  Starr, also known as The Devil Herself, and Jackie Chan, the Ninja Kitty, two kittens that we took it upon ourselves to house and provide for.

Now I have a wonderful word for any of you whose children or close acquaintances go to work at an animal shelter. It’s the handiest word ever if you use it, which I didn’t. The word is: No.

Our dog Scout remains as wonderful as always, just with more gray around the muzzle, but as ever, still a puppy at heart.

I continue to substitute teach, mostly at my favorite elementary school here. I also occasionally work for a company that organizes moving and estate sales, which I quite enjoy. I am blessed to work with overwhelmingly lovely people.

The mist is lifting now. Birds swoop and dive around the multiple feeders in the front garden. The hawk that lives just into the treeline must be hunting elsewhere this morning. Foxes live in that part of the wood as well. One of them occasionally saunters across the back garden at first light. I see him sometimes sniffing the woodpile as I pour my morning coffee.

It doesn’t seem like over two years since we left England. And then again, it seems longer. Sometimes it feels like time is one of those big rubber bands that stretches and stretches and then snaps back with a pop.

This is our third Christmas back in America. It has been such a long transition, this last one, the move from England. It has been so full of twists, good and bad. Such drama. And while I told myself I embraced my new life, still, I held a great part of myself back.

A moment of silence

 I have found it quite difficult to let go of the memories of what was our daily life in Harrogate, and to compare it with our life here: Our neighbors there, our friends, our home, our back garden, our doctors, dentist, favorite shopkeepers, pubs and restaurants, schools. The Harrogate Theatre, that wonderful old place. And Betty’s. Oh, Lord.

Without thinking about it, without realizing it, for the longest time, I silently held back my affections from this place, resenting it only because it is so different from the life we had there. Then realizing what I was doing, I stopped and took a good look around.

 This is not Harrogate. But it is a wonderful place, and we are lucky to be here. And now that I’ve forgiven it for what it is not, I’m really beginning to love it and to see all the wonderful opportunities the area offers.

Still, we’ll always love Yorkshire. Always miss it a bit. I’ll probably always pathetically tear up at the first strains of Jerusalem. Can’t help it.

It was a warm Thanksgiving this year. After a meal of fried chicken, baked salmon, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, collards and biscuits with lemon cake for afters, the five of us waddled out to the woods behind the house for a stroll on the trail. It was mild enough to remind me of my childhood Thanksgivings in Alabama.

We  meandered mostly together through the woods along the creek, gathering pine cones for the fire place.

It is a never-ending source of wonder to us that these big people in our lives are the same ones who used to be so little as to fit in our laps. And they won’t understand for years what it’s like sometimes for my husband and I to be with them as they are now, remembering how they used to be, and who we were when we were younger with them.

Or know the frustration of being unable to remember some of the last times--the last time we tucked them in bed;the last time we kissed an owie; the last time we read them a story; the last time they fought over who got to sit next to one of us; the last time we picked them up from school.

American fireplace--English post box

The frustrating thing about last times is that you don’t always think about or even know when they happen. Not for years.

Such is life. So here’s to the next times. The ones that we hope are coming. Here’s to watching It’s a Wonderful Life  yet again, and decorating the tree. Here’s to having our big, festive meal on Christmas Eve, and sleeping in on Christmas Day, and eating leftovers. Someday other family members will join us. Some Christmas we’ll be on our own.

A daily reminder

Because as we have found, life is mostly transition. And like my mother told me many times in an inadvertent lesson, “Don’t nobody want to fool with a fussy plant. Get you one that’ll bloom wherever you put it, and can take some rough handling.”

So Merry Christmas another year. We wish you happiness in whatever and however you celebrate. And we hope that you are always able to bloom wherever you are planted.

Still waiting for Santa

 Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.  

Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann

 

The Day Before Thanksgiving

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 I wrote this some few years back, when my children were teenagers.  It's interesting to think of what's happened since then. I wonder what will happen next?

 

It’s the day before Thanksgiving.    My kitchen is covered in cooked sweet potatoes, cornbread waiting to be crumbled, simmering mushrooms, chopped onions, garlic, cranberries, apples, and sage.  As I chop and simmer and sauté, I think of holidays past and future; of other homes; of my life in America and in England; of the many faces and voices that I love and miss.  Like the character in Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, I sniff the air and know Christmas is coming, “It’s fruitcake weather.”

            My three children are scattered to their own interests today.  They are moving in directions that don’t always include their parents now, wading in to the shallow end of lives of their own, and I prepare for this holiday in a quiet house for a change.

            I’ve never cared much for change, but I’ve come to make my peace with it over the years because I have learned in a long, slow lesson that everything changes, given enough time.

          And this is the largest one so far.  My babies are gone.  They have disappeared somewhere into the long legs, strong jaws, and steady eyes of the young adults I find myself surrounded by now.  It’s disorienting.  I miss their little selves sometimes; their soft, round arms and legs, their tiny voices; the whispery smell of sleep in their hair in the morning.  But I like these young people who think they own my house -- even with their immature attitudes about the division of labor and money in a domestic setting.  They give me reason to hope that, in time, they may just turn out all right.  Or at least avoid lengthy jail sentences.

            We went for a family walk not long ago, the five of us--something that doesn’t happen as often as it once did.  We took our dog, Scout, to the reservoir not far from here on a crisp, golden autumn day.  It was muddy underfoot, of course, and we trudged around the water talking, grouching, arguing, complaining and laughing as usual.  We are our own moveable circus of noise.

            Along a narrow avenue of trees I fell behind with my middle child, my daughter.  We walked slowly, and lazily watched the others ahead of us.  They played at the water’s edge throwing a stick for the dog and competing to see whom she would bring it back to first.

            Yards away from them, I stopped in mid-stride, entranced by the scene around me.  In a pause between two heartbeats I caught my breath at how beautiful my family looked to me just at that moment.  My feelings must have shown on my face.  My daughter asked what I was thinking.

            I told her to look closely at the family around her, as we were that day, because our times together like this would slowly come to an end.  What we had always been as long as she could remember--the circle of five-- would only last a while longer.  Before long our circle would change, and we would not go back.

            Standing under the falling leaves I thought about how families grow into their own private cultures.  They form and grow, and then change to form other circles, other cultures. Being with all of them that day was like watching a drop of rain gather on the edge of a leaf, just before it falls into the stream below and is carried away to become a part of something else.

            My daughter and I watched together as the others tussled over a stick and jostled each other and argued and laughed.  She put her arm around me and rested her head on my shoulder.  While we stood there our circle felt close and safe.  I thought,  “If I stand here very still and quiet and if I don’t move or breathe, this afternoon will go on always with no one having to grow up, or grow old, or separate, or die.”

            But our feet got cold.  Somebody started an argument.  Scout lost the stick.  Our moveable circus slogged back to the car where we ate crumbly cookies and shared hot tea from a plastic thermos lid and argued about who was muddiest, whose feet fit where, and who had more room on the seats.

            Driving through the Dales toward home I thought about how we are born into one circle--a good one if we are lucky, but how we have to cultivate the second one ourselves.   I drank in the three-hundred-sixty degrees of wonderful outside the car window, and I was so thankful for everything around me and behind me---for all of it---especially the birds.   I am so thankful for birds.

             There was a time in my life, a long time ago, when the only thing that comforted me was watching the birds that came to feed on the crumbs I left for them on the garden wall of our rented house in California.  That was a lifetime ago when my husband and I first came to understand that our oldest child’s autism would take our family down a different path than the one we had planned for ourselves.  I didn’t want to go down that path.  I didn’t even want to look down it.  I was scared to death then of the rest of my life.

So all through those dark days, I held on tightly to those birds.  I fed them and watched them every day until, well, we had some very fat birds in our neighborhood.  And after awhile, I found I was able see all the other good things in life again.  I am grateful for those birds.  There has been so much to enjoy, after all.

            Everything changes given enough time.  Everything. I don’t even know where we will be at Thanksgiving next year, or Christmas, or how often in the coming years the children will spend those holidays in our old circle. 

But today, it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and my kitchen is covered in a great plenty.  My husband and children will be home again soon. 

            Steam has stippled the wide windows that look over the walled back garden.  I crumble cornbread for stuffing and watch through abstract patterns of beaded water as the birds dart between bare branches and swerve through the air.  They collect the gifts I’ve left for them and fly on; high over the rooftops and into a horizon I cannot see from here.

Still prefers ham.

            Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for coming. Visit again soon.

                            Leann

. . . so this old world must still be spinning around, and I still love you . . . 

Welcome, September

On my walk with Scout a few mornings ago, I noticed that some of the leaves are letting go, drifting down ever so slowly by ones and twos.  They settle on the walking path or land in the creek to meander along its length to places Scout and I seldom reach on our walks.

Setting out a pitcher for sun tea this morning, a thing I’ve done scores of times over the course of the summer, I couldn’t help noticing that today something was different.  In the slant of the sunlight, the temperature, the dew point. Something.

I’m still eating watermelon and peaches and strawberries.  But the cherries are gone from the shops now. And there is that thing, that feeling, that difference, that tells me the year is shifting again.

Seasonal change is one of the only changes I consistently face with any degree of enthusiam.  And my favorite one is almost here again.  When I hear the first geese call.  When the leaves have gone multi-hued.  When the sky turns that high, wide, forever-after, cloudless blue that comes with September. Then. Autumn again.

Warm fires at night. Apples. Jack-O-Lanterns and roasted pumpkin seeds. The spicy wildwood smell all around the outside of the house. Stew and soups and warm, buttered bread. Thanksgiving.

Soon, it’ll be time for pepper in my coffee again.

By January, I’ll be tired of Christmas, and by February, I’ll be weary of gray skies and snow.  But in September I’ll be drawing in, wrapping up in soft sweaters and warm socks. Baking. Knitting. Always writing. Dreaming of sweet potato pie in November, and the lights and songs and stories that December will bring.

I’m generally not happy about most change.  But autumn change is as comforting as the taste of pumpkin butter or the haunting call of geese at twilight or the musky smell of woodsmoke. And as hopeful as the morning chatter of neighborhood children, drawn to the corner of our street to await the arrival of the big, yellow bus.

Welcome, September.

If you love it as much as I do, please comment and tell me your favorite thing about September.

Still plays in leaves.

 Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann

I end not far from my going forth

By picking the faded blue

Of the last remaining aster flower

To carry again to you.-Robert Frost

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqU8FpdgiZE