Christmas Coming

There were things we longed for then. Longed for them all the year round. Things we wouldn’t buy for ourselves, but hoped someone else might. That was back in the day when Coca Cola was something bought at a store to drink on the spot. For twenty-five cents. A treat. Like ice cream and candy bars.

There were so many things we didn’t have, that we were rich in longing. In looking forward to things. And there were a fair few number of things we didn’t know we didn’t have. And we didn’t miss them.

There is a little girl back there in that time. She’s standing on a front porch in the chill of an Alabama winter night. The porch floor is painted red, the last of multi-generations of paint layers. The pictures those imperfectly scraped old layers make are more noticeable in the shift of shadows and light from the windows of the house.

She is waiting in a plaid coat and a red velvet dress, the Christmas dress that her mother has made this year. Church services are over now, but she is allowed to leave it on, because it’s Christmas Eve.

They have moved. To a little house on a little lot, on a road between hills, in town. Even the horizon is snubbed here, and the girl is lonely.  There are no animals, except a few impersonal dogs and cats. No horses, no chickens, no cows, no quail, no rabbits.

The neighbors are different here. She can’t figure out what they do all day or where they go. But there is nobody around and nothing much interesting happens. Even her father goes off to work each morning.

There are no farmers in this neighborhood. No farriers. No orchard men. No mechanics. Everybody buys everything. Even their clothes come from the stores.

There are children, but they are afraid of her. Or of her dog, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.  The girl feels mean and ugly trying to chase him home so they won’t run away from her again. And she’s not sure exactly how to play with these town kids, anyway.

Her church, and all the people in it, are miles down the long highway.

She goes to school now. The first thing they taught her was the Itsy Bitsy Spider which she thought humiliating and a waste of time. Now, at least, she can read, which is her most prized skill.

Her father opens the door to ask if she wouldn’t rather come inside where it’s warm, and she says, no, she’ll wait here. He hesitates, then steps outside to stand with her.

Darlene did not move to town with them. The girl misses her, but she does not blame her imaginary friend. She wouldn’t have moved, either, if she hadn’t had to. She wonders if Darlene misses her, too. Here in town, she can’t even manage to pretend up Elvis anymore.

The worst part is that one by one, her sisters have married, and her brother as well,  and they’ve moved into their own homes. So now, it is just herself and her mother and father. In this town. Where nothing interesting ever happens, and where she finds it hard to even make up anything interesting.

            This night, the sky over the little valley is like the lining of a blue/black satin hat, and there are stars like the glisten of tears. It is sharp cold for Alabama. Cold enough for a plaid jacket. Cold enough to make the girl’s nose run.

            The scent of the cedar Christmas tree in the house is so strong it wafts onto the porch. That heavenly smell is a good repayment for the rash the tree left on her hands when she decorated it. Inside the house is as layered with smells as the porch is with paint; coffee and chocolate, coconut, sweet potato pie, warm pecans, and chili.

            The living room is small. The tree fills up a good eighth of the space. The lights are big bulbs of wild colors that were bought in the late 1950s but somehow manage to keep going year after year. All the ornaments on the tree have histories that the girl never tires of hearing.

Inside the house her mother moves around the kitchen singing along with Bing Crosby on the radio, just a few snatches of words here and there, and just off-key. The chili in the large pot bubbles. The mother stirs it, then moves to the counter to finish icing a cake. The kitchen is small, too, and as bright and happy as this woman.

The little girl hears snatches of her mother’s singing and catches the lilt of happiness in it. She reaches up for her father’s hand. He squeezes it, jingles the change in his pocket, and smiles down at her.

They are coming.

All at once, all together, the older children are coming home, bringing their own young families. The house will be full. The girl craves the sight of them like salt.

She stands on tiptoe and lifts her chin to look further down the road. Her father says it won’t be long now. They’ll be here soon.

The girl knows that when they arrive, there will be food and presents and laughter and teasing. There will be a long chain of hugging bodies. Children will be lifted up into loving arms and admired and tickled, and sometimes tossed around the room like acrobats while their uncles and fathers and the children themselves laugh, and their mothers and aunts turn their faces away in horror.

There will be bowls of chili passed from hand to hand and crisp grilled cheese sandwiches passed along as fast as they come off the griddle. There will be a river of iced tea and hot coffee.

There will be a confusion of presents and a riot of opening them. The children, including the girl, will joyfully wade through a crinkling sea of ripped, shredded wrapping paper, lifting and throwing it, draping it over the heads of annoyed adults before it is finally snatched up and tidied away.  Then the children, her included, will play with the empty boxes while the grown-ups tease more, and laugh more and talk longer.

After awhile they will all grow quieter and calmer for the last, sweet course. Everyone will crowd into the tiny kitchen and wriggle and jam themselves around the table for more coffee and cake and pie and cookies.

In that warm kitchen, the womb of the world, they will tell stories. Of their ancestors. Grandparents and aunts and uncles who died before the girl was born, and other people she can just remember. About the childhoods of her brother and sisters, or the courting days of her father and mother. Of the animals they knew and loved, and the people they knew and didn’t. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad. Listening to them, the girl will sometimes forget to breathe.

When the youngest children begin to fall asleep, the brother and sisters and their families will pack into the cars and drive into the sweet, sharp silence of midnight.

But right now, in the house, the mother and father and the girl wait. Wait for the ones they love, and Christmas, to come to them. What there is now, is longing. Longing, and looking forward. Christmas coming.

There will be many other Christmases for the girl. Some of them will bring complete happiness; a few will bring complete devastation. Years later, when she is a woman, when she has lived through Christmases in too many places to remember them all, this is what she will remember of the childhood ones. This is what she will see, and smell, and feel when she closes her eyes and casts herself back.

The waiting. The watching in the night. The sweet expectation. The view of the soft sky cut through with gemstone stars. The smell of her mother’s cooking and the sound of her singing voice. The feel of her father’s hard hand holding hers. Look up, he’d say, let’s us look for the Star of Bethlehem.

But the only stars the girl wants to see are twin headlights turning down the long, dark road,  toward the little house. They are coming. Surely they’ll be here soon. Surely by now, they are almost home.

Will make peace with the wing and the wheel.

 Merry Christmas. Thanks for coming. Come again, soon.

Leann

Happy Birthday To Me

I’m sending this out to the universe this morning with deepest gratitude for all the things my life has been made of so far.

            For being born into a family of people who welcomed and celebrated me from the very beginning. Who taught me and tolerated me and loved me no matter what.

For my parents’ wisdom, integrity, sense of humor, and stories. For my brother’s and sisters’ patience, indulgence, and examples.

            For my earliest friends, young and old. For my first church and community in Glencoe, Alabama,  and everyone there, who put up with me, and showed me love beyond any reason I ever gave them to.

           For all my teachers from first grade onward. Thinking of them and the good things they brought into my life still lifts my heart.

            For finding the young man I would marry far too young and still making a go of it for thirty years and counting. Such dumb luck. I had a strong feeling he was special from the beginning, but I had no notion of how deep and wide a river he is. I am thankful every day.

            For my children. My greatest teachers after my mother and father, the loves of my life after my husband. For the second childhood they brought with them. For the adults they have become. They are good people. Kind-hearted. It’s like I won the lottery.

            For the greatest gift my husband gave me; time with them. Their whole childhood to enjoy. He worked long hours, and agreed to do without many things in our early years so that I could spend my creative energy and attention on our children while they were very young. For me, that is a pearl beyond price. Bergman and Bogart will always have Paris. My children and I will always have San Pedro.

For everyone’s children, everywhere. They wake up a tired world. Seeing things through their eyes keeps my heart young. I’m grateful for time spent with them, grateful to share the world with such people.

For all the animals I've had the privilege to know, beginning with Lady,  all the way to Scout and Jackie Chan and The Devil Herself; from the ones who took care of me to the ones I've taken care of. Animals are such wonderful creatures. I have been lucky to have almost always had pets and access to the natural world.

            For the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met there, the stories I have to tell. If you are one of those people and you’re reading this, thank you for being a part of my story, and for letting me be a part of yours.

            The universe is filled with wonder, and I’m glad that I was born into it, if for no other reason than so I can wonder at it. I cannot believe how fortunate I am to have been born, and to have lived so far in a world so wondrous.

            I may not have loved every single minute of it. There have been moments of dental work and a few other trying times. But overall I just have to be one of the luckiest little so-and-so’s in all of creation.

          

            Life is so sweet. And so short. And so precious. And I have known such sweetness, and been shown much kindness. More, I think than others who may be far more deserving. I often have a vague feeling that I am getting away with something. If I die today, just this, so far, just all of this, will have been enough. Anything else from here on out is icing on the cake. Happy Birthday to me.

Has had her cake and eaten it, too

        Thanks for coming. Come again soon.   

            Leann

        

How to Tell It's Christmas

 “Is it Christmas today?” I ask again.

It was hard to tell then. There was no snow in Alabama like on the cards and in the movies. No mittens and hats and snowballs fights. No horse-drawn sleighs.

Winter comes to Alabama in damp browns and blacks and grays. It was hard for a young child to tell when Christmas is coming in 1966.

            But this is the year I have just learned that Christmas can't come until after Thanksgiving. The turkey that has lurked around the chicken yard all summer, terrorizing me, has disappeared suddenly. Something else to be thankful for.

            And my mother and sisters and I have been to Mama Clark’s to buy fabric and trim for Christmas dresses. My sisters take a long time to pick out fabric. They like new clothes. I don’t like  the the feel of new clothes. I like old clothes. Mama picks out my fabric.

That day, my mother and my sisters and Mama Clark spend a long, boring time considering ways to adjust last year’s patterns for this year’s fashions and so save us the cost of buying new ones. I pretend up Darlene and Elvis, and we play together awhile.Then I fall asleep on Mama Clark's back porch swing.

            My mother is spending more time than usual at her sewing machine. Its whir is a background noise in the house, even as I fall asleep at night. And I spend time every day before my afternoon nap, spilling my mother’s full button jar onto the table, raking through the contents for buttons to set off the red or gold or russet cloth of our new clothes for when they are finished.

            My mother spends more time than usual in the kitchen, too. The heat has been turned off in the spare room to store the extra food. That room is filling up with fruit cakes, tea cakes, tipple cakes, and all kinds of good things to eat, along with the supplies for baking to come that has overflowed the kitchen cupboards. The black walnuts we picked up in the fall or the pecans my grandfather brought us, or the apples my mother has dried. When I follow her in there, it smells like a gingerbread house. We cannot have any of it until Christmas.

            Lately, in the middle of sending me to fetch something for her, my mother will stop herself.

 “Mama needs her house shoes” she’ll begin, or “sweater” or “scissors. Will you run go look under my bed,” or  “in the hall closet,” or  “in the spare room . . .”

 Then she’ll stop and put a finger to her mouth.“Oh, never mind, honey,” she’ll say, “No. No, don’t you go. Mama will get them herself.” 

It will take me years, slow child that I am, to properly understand this one.

            Sunday a while back, just before the service was over, the deacons passed the plates around a second time, and everyone in the church, young and old, drew out a name to buy a gift to put under the tree for the Christmas Eve service. My mother says I can have three whole dollars to spend on a present, and that I can’t tell anyone but her that it’s for little Bette Griffin.

My Sunday school teacher has taken me aside and measured me for a set of wings, a gown, and a halo. She has showed me how to walk down the middle aisle of the church sanctuary; step, pause, step, pause, looking very serious, as The Angel of the Lord should do. I have to learn a new Bible verse.

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

It’s a lot of words to remember. Instead of learning my nursery rhymes, I practice it with my mother every day. I tell her, “This is a lot of words. I would rather just say, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.”

 My mother says. “This is not that hard. You already know all your nursery rhymes. If you can learn all that, you can remember this.”

“But they rhyme,” I say. 

 “Nevertheless,” she says, “you can do it.” She turns her chin down and looks right in my eyes.  “And if you stand up in the church on Christmas Eve with those wings and that halo and say Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater to the Shepherds, there will be a spanking waiting for you when we get home. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

 “Now,” she says, “say it again from the beginning.”

So I have to remember all the words. And I have to remember to walk slowly. And I have to remember not to say Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. And not to reach back and scratch at my wings. Or to bend over. Because then the halo falls off. Every time.

One day, my daddy and I go into the woods and pick out a tree. We find it in just a few minutes. He lifts me way up to tie an old rag around the top of it so we can spot it when we come back for it later. My daddy sets me back on the ground and looks down at me. He is very, very tall.

He teases, “Look at those long arms and legs sticking out from your coat, girl. I’m going to have to put a brick on your head to keep you from growing so quick.”

Then we take a walk in the woods and call to the birds there. My daddy can call just like a bird and you can’t tell the difference. We hunt mistletoe. We go to the lake and skip rocks. We row around the lake. When we get home, Daddy tells Mama that it took so long because cedars are getting hard to find. And he winks at me.

One morning, Mama tells me in a couple of weeks on Christmas Eve, Santa will visit our church and I can tell him what I’d like for Christmas. I can ask for one thing, politely. One thing only. Because it is not good to be greedy. Greediness will make children grow up crooked.

“Can I ask him to turn me into a horse?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

“Can I ask him for a monkey?”

“Absolutely not.”

            Then what is the point? I think this to myself, but say nothing. I look out the window at the damp, black and gray landscape. It looks just like the pictures on the tv set.

            “Can I ask him for snow?" Mama thinks about this.

            “Yes,” she says, “but don’t be surprised if he can’t work it out for you this year. He’s very busy.” She looks out the window, too. “You should probably ask him for a new coat.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yes, ma’am.”

I would much rather have a monkey than a new coat.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asks, “and a piece of pie?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

My mother pours a dollop of coffee into my cup of milk and cuts off a nice chunk of sweet potato pie for each of us. I know that I’m getting pie for breakfast to make up for the fact that she won’t let Santa Claus bring me a monkey or turn me into a horse. There is no question about it, now.  I am completely certain that my mother runs everything. Even Santa Claus.

After pie and coffee, we sit at the kitchen table with construction paper, scissors, and a rubber-tipped bottle of mucilage. I love the way it smells in here. Coffee, cinnamon, lemon cleaner, and glue. My mother cuts longs strips of red and green paper and shows me how to make them into a chain. At first I count them, but when we get past ten, my mother helps. There are twelve. We hang them on a nail in the kitchen.

Mama says I can take one chain off every night before I go to bed, and count them every day.

“You mean after all this work we’re only going to tear it up?” I say.

“Yes,” she says, “and when we get to the last chain, you’ll know that it’s Christmas Eve.”

I think about that for a minute. I have an idea. “If we take a bunch of them off every day, will Christmas come sooner?”

“No,” she says.

“So Christmas is coming in that many days no matter what I do?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a lot.” I say.

“We have a lot to do,” my mother said then. “The days will go by quickly.”

And she was right again.

Still waits all year for German Chocolate Cake

Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann

You Never Know

When I was a very young child, I believed that leaves turned into birds and flew south for the winter. Back in those days, when I was trying to figure out how the world works, I got a lot of convoluted ideas about life.

Surrounded by mostly adults out on our farm, I listened to and interpreted their conversations the best I could. My parents and siblings often talked about seasonal changes, of the birds flying south for the winter in autumn, and of the leaves falling. Those two things especially got mixed together in my mind. The next step in belief only required a bit of magic.

And the world then was full of magic, it seemed to me.

 One autumn morning in about the third year of my life, I sat on the front step of our house while my mother sat on the porch shelling corn.

I should have been helping her with the shelling, but mostly I sat there with an ear of dried corn on my lap and an empty bucket at my feet, watching the wind blow. A strong blast shook the oak tree in the front yard. That tree was a close and favorite friend of mine. A couple bales of leaves drifted down to the ground below.

But as I watched, it appeared to me that instead of all drifting down, some leaves drifted up and sailed over the cornfields and the trees, with beaks and wings silhouetted against the wide, gray sky.

 So I thought that special leaves, maybe the most colorful ones, get to turn into birds and then fly south for the winter. Kind of like going to heaven. It made perfect sense to me at the time.

When I told my mother what I had discovered,  she smiled and continued with her corn.

A year or so later on the same porch, again shelling corn, this time with one of my big sisters, I watched the scenario play out with the oak tree in much the same way I remembered from before. Sitting there idly with ear of corn in my lap, I told my sister about how leaves turn into birds and fly south for the winter.

My sister put down her ear of corn, sucked the blister on her thumb, and regarded me with a scowl.

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard a four-year-old come up with,” she said. “There must have already been some birds roosting in that tree and they flew away when the wind got sharp. You’re too dreamy. Everybody with any kind of sense knows that leaves are leaves and birds are birds.”

“And you need to get busy,” she added, indicating the empty bucket at my feet. “You’re old enough to shell more corn than that.” She grudgingly went back to her work.

I looked down at the empty bucket as devastation washed over me. My sister was a senior in high school. She could tie her own shoes. She could read a book to herself. She knew just about everything there was to know about everything.

I looked back up at the oak and wondered, if leaves don’t turn into birds and fly south for the winter, how could I even be sure that the stories that old tree had told me all summer were true? Or that the tooth fairy could find my house? Or that someday, if I worked at it hard enough, I could grow up to be a horse? And marry Elvis Presley?

I figured it would be better not to mention things like that anymore. And so I haven’t. Mostly.

Fall is and always has been my favorite season. As an adult, and a homeowner, I’m now almost completely certain that the leaves on our trees don’t turn into birds and fly south for the winter. Or at least, the majority of them don’t.

The majority of the leaves from our trees, after a great deal of effort on the part of myself and my husband, spend the winter at the bottom of the garden, turning into homemade dirt.

Which is not a bad end for a leaf. It’s a nice spot down there, surrounded by hickory trees and oaks. I go down there myself to sit in a little patch of sun that finds its way in, Scout and I, and the Devil Herself of a morning sometimes.

Cup of coffee. Toast and jam. It’s a nice place to sit and watch the wind blow when I should otherwise be working. I can listen to any stories the trees might care to tell. And its a good place to keep watch in case any of the leaves get enough gumption to magic themselves into birds and fly south for the winter. You never know.

Any excuse will do.

 Happy Thanksgiving.  Watch the leaves.

Leann

The Carpets of Hartsfield

Saying goodbye to my grown child was one of the most disorienting experiences I've ever lived through. Talk about cognitive dissonance. This was written after the exit of my youngest child and only son. I'm posting it today in sympathy with a great, life-long friend, Jackie, who just delivered  her only girl, our Kristin, to a university several states from home. 

A million miles of carpet covers the floor at the Atlanta airport, and the walls are lined with art. Time expands and contracts here.  All around us people hurry along wishing for more of it, or sit and wait, wishing for less.

In an invisible cone of privacy I say goodbye to my child, my last one, my boy.  Touching his forehead at the hairline, I smooth back thick strands. I can’t help it.

I have to reach up so far to touch his head now. There, just there, is a small whorl of hair, like the eye of a storm.  The first time I saw it was the day I gave birth to him.

Photo by Chelsea Lindsey

Goodbye.  

For him, the word is a portal, an opening, the beginning of his new life at university, out in the world on his own.  For me it is the closing door of a house that I don’t live in anymore. I lower my hand and take a step back. I think of all the things he doesn’t know yet. I breathe in. I breathe out.

The walls of the airport in Atlanta are lined with art, and a million miles of carpet cover the floor. In an invisible cone of privacy I stand on one small square, alone, an island in the great ocean of people all around me.

Goodbye I say, goodbye, goodbye, as nineteen years and most of my life turns.  He smiles and waves. Then he faces forward and dives headlong into the tide.

Our boy.

Knows now there's never an end to it.

 Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

               Leann

For All the World (at 31 years, today)

We wait for a cloud to cross the road--stand and watch it wisp toward us as if it was an ordinary thing.
Inches from our feet, the land drops away into trees so darkly green they glow blue.
Serrated tops fold ridge over ridge far away into the west.
It looks for all the world as if we could step off.
Just step off and walk back across them to that day on the divide 
when we were going places we'd never been.
On the continent's backbone we'd imagined melted snow flowing down either side beneath us toward opposite ocean, walked through congregated mist into the clear horizon of countless, rolling, smoky miles.

White particles of moisture catch my thoughts and carry them back, a warning, a blessing for us, standing there on that other mountain then.

Be careful, I think. But be unafraid. Some of what comes next will be hard. Hold hands. Don't let go.

The cloud moves through us, moves beyond, exploring treetops, sinking onto sharp branches, seeping into stony ground.
In a long, slow caress the westward sun turns you to gold. Your freckles are gone now, I know, and time has touched your hair, but I can't see you as other might.

The sun is always in my eyes when I look at you.

Facing north we drive the spine of the mountains; sunset gilds us on one side and limns the darkness on the other. The space between us shifts with golden shadows.
You open a hand, I fill it with my own. The rain begins.
Drops spatter, flatten, and lengthen across the windscreen, joining, clinging, sliding like lovers in sinuous patterns across the glass.
They dance for a moment in the fractured, fleeting illumination of headlamps, then fling themselves headlong into the deep and velvet dark.

Will ride out on the same clown she rode in on.

Thanks for visiting. Come again soon.

Leann

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