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

Sincerely Yours

Sometime, 1965

From where I sit on the counter, I can see the entire kitchen, even the top of the stove.  My mother bends to put the skillet of sizzling batter in the oven. The house is quiet.  My father is at a Meeting for Grown-Ups.  My brother and sisters are at a Big Kids Movie in town.

October, 1999                                                                                            

Mama,

         The first frost has come.  The rose hips all down the lane are bright red.  The blackberries are too ripe to jam now.  They might make a nice wine.  I brought in the pears a few days ago.  They are in the “keeping” room now where it’s cool.  I think I’ll try making pear honey with them.  

Leaning over the kitchen sink, my mother points out a dove feeding in the grass of the back yard.  She picks me up from the counter and holds me as we listen to its fluttering calls.  She tells me a story about doves that I haven’t remembered for years.

         I always think of you especially in the kitchen and the garden.  I think you would enjoy where we live.  The sheep are in the back pasture again, looking through my living room window.  From the front windows I can see the farmhouses dotting the hillsides all around with little puffy white sheep surrounding them, too.  In the evening the mist starts down at the river and climbs up the hill to our house just before the light is gone.  The last of the summer roses stand in the yard, still beautiful.  I don’t have the heart to cut them and bring them in the house.  I’ll let them enjoy the last few days they have on earth.

Together we walk outside to pick tomatoes, spring onions, and cucumbers for our supper salad.

         Sometimes in the mornings when the sun is low on the hills and the light is golden,

 I stand in the garden like the roses.  I like to be just where the angle of the sunlight meets the slant of the hill if there is really such a place.  There seems to be.  It is nice in the almost quiet of the hillside while the morning birds sing all around.  The bees are drunk on the overripe apples and they drone around slowly. There are feathered seeds floating on a breeze so light I can barely feel it.  The sun ignites them for just a moment before they float on, fade, and disappear.

We fill my mother’s apron and then carry our bounty over to lay it carefully on the edge of the porch.  Mother lifts me up to the pear tree, and I point to the fat little fruit with a blush around its edges.  She picks it for me and we sit together on the porch steps next to the makings of our salad while I take little bites of the pear.

         At times like this I am both happy and sad.  Happy to be here, walking on this earth, seeing and hearing and feeling these things.  I think of the people who were here before with their troubles and hopes and moments of joy.  And I feel sad knowing that there will be an end to my turn someday, too.  This place will still be here, but the world will move along as it does without me to watch the light change.

My baby teeth make a pattern of tiny holes around the middle of the pear.  I hold it up for her to admire.  She tells me those little teeth will fall out someday, and I’ll grow a whole new set. I tug at a front one, calculating, and she assures me that what she’s telling me is the really, truly truth. I wonder how she knows so many things.

         And I am sad for all the time I’ve had to spend so far away from you.  Sometimes I forget how far apart we are because in my mind you are always with me.   I carry you everywhere I go.

Back in the kitchen, Mother lifts me again to the top of the counter so I can watch her work. She opens the oven to check on the cornbread.  She carefully washes the vegetables, slices them, and arranges them in a small platter as if for company coming.  She tells me we’re pretend company tonight and we’ll make a tea party of our suppertime.

         When I was younger, I sometimes felt very critical of you.  Now that I am right in the middle of my child-raising years, I am amazed at how you managed as well as you did.  You were a motherless daughter who married a fatherless son.  But I wouldn’t trade my childhood with anyone.  I don’t know how you did it.  I think you have a great gift for loving people.

She sets the table with our good dishes and, once I have washed my hands, she shows me how to set out the flatware, just so.

         I love you and miss you every day.  Sometimes, though it is like you are right at my elbow.  I change bed linens and I remember helping you do the same.  I work in the garden and remember following along the rows with you.  I read books to my children and remember the ones you read to me.  I cook and fill the table with dishes all in the middle.  My family prays and eats and I am thankful for them and for you and for the feeling I had as a child sitting at the table you and Daddy filled. 

                                                                                                           

We sit, and my mother dishes tomatoes, spring onions and cucumbers onto our plates, shaking a bit of salt and pepper over each.  She cuts them into bite-sized pieces on my plate and tucks a napkin under my chin.

         Everyone needs that when they go out into the world.  No one should leave home without a few good dinners in them, some bedtime stories, and the smell of ripe tomatoes to fall back on.

Still, the first bite of tomato is much too large and I can feel the juice running down my chin.  My mother reaches over to wipe it away with her napkin.

         And the memory of laying your head on your mama’s lap, where everything will surely be all right.

When we finish our salad, my mother steps to the oven to take the cornbread out. It looks like the sun. It even smells warm and golden. 

         Thank you for the family dinners. For the nursery rhymes and the fairy tales, for the talks over coffee, for biscuits in the morning.  Thanks for telling me the truth as you knew it about life.  You have been right so often.

She slices the warm cornbread and crumbles it into two bowls, pouring milk over the top.  Bringing the bowls and spoons, she notices me gazing from my place at the table through the back screen door, enchanted at the red and purple sunset.  The dove’s call flutters around us like kisses.

         Thanks for loving me no matter what.  Thanks for having faith in me even through the times I disappointed you.  Thanks for paying attention. Thanks for giving me your time. 

We take our bowls out onto the porch, where we sit on the steps again and slowly spoon warm bites of cornbread and milk.  We watch the sun go down behind the pear tree, and follow with our eyes as the dove flies away to her roost at the top of the barn. We have all the time in the world.

         Thanks for your lap.  Thanks for showing me how to be a good mother.  Thanks for filling me with good feelings and memories.  They have held me up through this wide world so far. 

The horizon is a heart-stretching blend of colors. I am full of cornbread and milk. My mother smells of warm cornbread and lily-scented talcum and Jergen’s hand lotion. I scoot closer to her on the step we share, careful not to spill the milk left at the bottom of my bowl. Her arm encircles me. She kisses the top of my head.  I am completely happy.

         I love you, Mama. Thank you.

We sit until the twilight bleeds out into dark and she carries me to bed. I don’t know yet that she will begin to lose herself to Alzheimer’s before I turn thirty-five.  I don’t yet know that she’ll leave this world before I’m fifty.

         Your youngest daughter,

Sometimes the letter that means the most to you; that makes you happy and peaceful and thankful, is not one that someone wrote to you. Sometimes the letter you are most grateful for, in all your life, is one you sent to someone else in time. 

Still likes to sit on the counter.

                  Thanks for coming.  Come again soon.

                  

               Leann

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. -K. Gibran

                

Really

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My beautiful daughter stands on the stage in a pool of light.  Her head is turned slightly to the left, her eyes tilt to the right.  She is smiling, and singing, surrounded by other young people, and a few older.  One is in a wheel chair.  All of them are smiling, just like my daughter. 

This is so fitting.  This is so circular, this moment.  If I look back down the years to her birth, I can see that this moment was waiting out here for her.  It arrived in a package from my sister just after she was born, my first child. 

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. My sister sent a copy of the book just after her birth, knowing how we'd both loved the story from our own childhoods. I read it to my daughter from before she could focus her eyes. I treasured its message.  But I didn’t know then how much more I would come to understand and appreciate it over time.

 
The play I am watching moves on, familiar, bittersweet, comforting.  The best stories are like that.  My daughter began rehearsals in November.  Now it’s March, and VSA Arts of Loudoun County is presenting the final performance of The Velveteen Rabbit  at the Franklin Park Arts Center in Purcellville, Virginia.

 
 It’s brilliant. Slightly imperfect, but perfectly Real.  

“What is Real?” the Velveteen Rabbit asks the Skin Horse, “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you’re made. It’s a thing that happens to you,” the Skin Horse answers.

“Does it hurt?” the Rabbit asks.

“Sometimes,” the Skin Horse tells him. “But when you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”

"Does it happen all at once, or bit by bit?" asks Rabbit. 

 “It doesn’t happen all at once,"  the Skin Horse answers.  "You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. And once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again.  It lasts for always.”

Over the years of  raising my own children and working with others, it has become my belief that, as well as pride in their accomplishments, every parent has at least one private fear for each of his or her children-- some concern for a personality trait or weakness or perceived shortcoming or flaw. 

With children like my oldest daughter, these fears aren’t hidden.  They are in full view for all the world to see.  There is no covering up autism and its attendant learning difficulty, language deficit, and behavioral issues.  There is no pretending to the world outside your door that your child is as perfect in every way as you'd always dreamed.

And so you become Real, real quick. Sometimes, it is painful.

The music swells, the cast returns to the stage for the final bow. For too many of the  people on the stage, there are not as many of these moments in their lives as they deserve.  But there is this one, now.  I clap until my hands sting. I stand.  I sing with them. I clap some more. 

All those years ago my sister wrote on the flyleaf of the book she sent my baby daughter:

“I know you’ll be smart and pretty, but I hope you will also be kind.  Not everyone has advantages or opportunities to become their best.  Even as you excel, think of those who have not or cannot.  How they must feel.” 

So many years ago. So much has happened since then.  Still such a long road ahead.  And I know that I won’t be able to walk beside her that whole, long way.  If only everyone in the world tried every day to be just a little more Real, I wouldn’t have to wonder so much how she’ll find her way when I’m gone. 

The night sky is a marvel as we leave the small theater.  We drive home under the stars and my daughter points out all the constellations she can remember.  Her favorite is the drinking gourd, because it helped guide runaway slaves to freedom long before she was even thought of in this world.  My oldest daughter strongly identifies with the underdog.

 As we drive along, she hums a little piece of a song from the play. I smile.  Sometimes a song in the dark is all you have. Sometimes it can see you home.  That is what, every day, I hope and pray.

Will grow up to be Realer than she ever planned.

     Happy Easter.                                                                       

     Leann 

. . . you are my sunshine . . . 

Sisters, Sisters

I journeyed back for a short, sweet visit to my sister in Alabama last week. It was lovely to spend time with my family down there, especially with one of our South Carolina cousins who’d come to stay as well.  In between cooking, talking, and eating, we took some time to clear through a few rooms of my sister’s house.

Sweet Home.

She sent me home with, among numerous other things: our Aunt Sadie’s sewing machine, our grandfather’s cross-cut saw, our grandmother’s rocking chair, our old family ice cream freezer, our father’s Coleman ice chest, some cuttings from a white wisteria I’ve long admired in her front yard, and a brick. Just the one brick. 

Spring comes softly and sweetly that             far south. At least it does most years. So one delicious morning, we decided to drive into the country to the first community I remember as home. Despite the cheerful baby blue sky, sad changes soon became evident. Only last spring, which was far less soft and sweet than this one, storms raged over the area, bringing tornadoes.

It looked as though someone had let slip the dogs of war.  Trees were blasted. Large, old ones-- far too many to count.  Houses were gone, just gone. The double punch of the recession and damage had decided Billy Parker to close his grocery store and garage after what must have been forty years of business in the community. It stood padlocked. Empty. Lifeless.

 At the top of the rise where my childhood church once stood there was, now, just the top of the rise. It was a sobering drive. 

 So we looked for and found a few places that were still as we remembered them, and we remembered them together.  After awhile, we started to re-remember the places that weren't there anymore as well, along with the people and happenings that made them worth recalling.

Black Walnut is a great favorite.

I would have taken a picture
of the whole cake, but it was gone before I could.

Then my sister took us back to her house and baked us a pound cake.  It was delicious.  She makes wonderful pound cakes.  And she gives me her recipes.  She's a very generous woman, my sister.

And so was my other sister, as well.  Among other things, she taught my nine-year-old self how to crochet.  That must have taken patience and sacrifice.

And that one brick?  My nephew picked it up from the remaining rubble of the church mentioned above, the one that mostly blew off the rise.  This would be the nephew who is the only child of the sister who taught me how to crochet when I was a nine, back before she died at the same age my youngest child is now.

L-R: Leann, Brenda, Joan

You, know, I think Thomas Wolfe had a point. You can’t go home again.  At least not to the same home you left.  But I have to wonder if he’d have written that book differently, or at all, if he’d had sisters to help ease his heartache with laughter and pound cake and bricks.

Benefited greatly from being the youngest child.

I hope you spend some time with someone you love today.  Thanks for visiting. Come again soon.  

Kept everybody's toys.

Leann

. . . and you can stay as long as you like . . .

How to Play Saturday Morning Kitten Footie

Looks innocent enough.

Possibly not what immediately comes to mind.  Read on.

What You’ll Need

1)    One kitten, old enough to eat solid foods but young enough still to be curious and active.

2)    One Saturday morning with nothing on the calendar. No projects, no appointments, no chores at all. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Make it happen.

3)    A teammate with an astute appreciation for time-wasting, a sense of fun, and the temperament to withstand numerous tiny bites and scratches.

4)    One fairly indestructible bed covering, or one which is already far beyond further damage.

How to Play   

1)    As the morning light tiptoes into the room, you and your teammate are conscious much earlier than necessary because you have reached an age, now, when you wake up at the same time every day, whether you need to get up or not.

2)    If necessary, wake up the kitten also.

Left-side play.

    3)    Recline comfortably, propped against as many pillows as possible. One person, usually the one on the left, begins play by moving his or her left big toe ever so slightly until the kitten notices and attacks.  Immediately cease movement of that toe.

    4)    While the kitten is still attacking the big toe of the person on the left, the person on the right begins to jiggle his/her right big toe in an alluring fashion until the kitten’s attention is diverted, and with one enormous pounce, the kitten lands on the opposite side of the bed from where she was originally, and begins to shred the bed covering over the right toe of the right side person.  Immediately cease movement of that toe. Continue play in this manner until the kitten loses interest in toes.

Right side play.

    5)    Using the same technique, and keeping all appendages safely under the indestructible bed covering, continue play using hands, alternating from one person to another until the kitten loses interest in hands. Revert to toes.

6)    Laugh with your teammate like idiots at every pounce as though you haven’t played this game hundreds of times and have never, ever, before watched a kitten rip all over your shredded bedspread.

7)    Repeat steps  3-6 in a pseudo-infinite loop.

8)    While repeating steps 3-6, muse aimlessly about how many cats and kittens have lived with you over the years and how they’ve added to your enjoyment of life.

9)    As you notice out of the corner of your eye how the morning sun lights up his face, shift your attention to your teammate.  Be reminded of how he laughs with his eyes more than any other part of his body. Marvel at how, just at this moment, he still looks like the 17-year-old you fell in love with. Think of how he’s made your life so much richer than you ever could have imagined. How when you were young and breathlessly silly over the boy, you thought you couldn’t possibly love anyone in the world as much as you did him.  Now you know it.

Fifteen bottles and counting.

   10) It occurs to you that you could measure your life together by the cats you’ve known, and also, you think oddly, by the number of those little bottles of Tabasco sauce that you’ve gone through together. It also occurs to you to wonder how many more kittens and bottles of Tabasco sauce the two of you have left to share.

   11) Notice abruptly that you can vaguely make out the shape of your mother-in-law standing slightly past your teammate's right shoulder. She looks exactly like she did just after your father-in-law died, a few months before she followed him.  She has the same sweet, sad look on her face as the morning she told you in a broken whisper how hard it was after nearly fifty years together, to wake up every morning, every single one, without her high-school sweetheart there anymore.

Patsy loves Jerry forever, and vice versa.

   12) In an unsuccessful attempt to ease the painful little catch in your chest that that the last step produced, take in a sharp breath. Remember to breathe out.

   13) Now turn your attention to the door as the dog pushes it open and walks in to snort disgustedly at you for giving too much attention to the kitten again. She gives the three of you a hard stare.  For a moment you all stare back at her.  Suddenly, she passes an explosive parcel of gas and twists quickly around to face her own bottom as if trying to catch it.  Then she turns back to you with a look that says, “Where on earth did that come from?”

Our Scout is a long-suffering dog.

14) Laugh. A lot. Rolling all over each other and the tatty bed covering, completely routing the kitten.  Laugh as though this morning, and the both of you, will go on forever.

Not always quite as idyllic as they appear here,
 but not bad for thirty years, three kids, one dog, nine cats,
and fifteen little bottles of Tabasco sauce.

The thing to remember about Saturday Morning Kitten Footie is that there are no losers in this game.  Only winners.  Including the dog.

Hope you find laughter in your day. Thanks for visiting.  Come again soon.

Will grow up to be luckier than she deserves.

Leann

No kittens, dogs, or husbands were harmed in the writing of this blog.

.

Pepper in My Coffee

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Look what the Dirty-Dish Fairy brought me

It’s sunny and cold this morning. Sunflower seeds dangle off the deck in a feeder that’s supposed to be squirrel-proof but isn’t quite.  One cardinal and a group of chickadees peck at it with enough gusto to keep it turning like a carousel.

The dirty-dish fairy visited me in the night, as he often does now that my adult children have moved back home to live.  God bless their little cotton socks.

After my first dishwasher-load of the day, I’ve got my coffee and Pandora going.  Love me some Pandora.  It’s a Leon Redbone kind of day today.

Starr, aka, Lizzie Borden

The coffee is thick, black, sweet, and spicy, just the way I like it, and I’m having it in the company of Scout and Starr, my daily household companions.  I’m the only coffee drinker in the house.

Scout the Wonder Dog

My best coffee companion was my mother.  She taught me to like it by the time I turned three.  Yes.  I guess now that would raise some eyebrows.  But I don’t think it’s done me any harm and it’s certainly brought me many happy memories of time with Mama.

Of course she didn’t just pour me a big, hot mug of Red Diamond and tell me to have at it.  No. 

In the mornings, in the farmhouse we lived in when I was tiny, our family started the day with a cooked breakfast—eggs, sausage, biscuits, jelly or preserves—and there was a great bustle as my brother and sisters ate and ran for the county bus that took them to the local high school. My father would have been out and gone for some time by then.

That left just Mama and me.  When the door slammed behind the last departing teenager, Mama tidied the table and sank the dishes into the sudsy pan. Then she got a cup and saucer out of the cupboard and poured a thimbleful of coffee in, filling the rest of the space with milk.  She brought it to me with a spoon and a warning to, “blow on it a bit before you drink it, baby, it’s still a little hot.”

If I close my eyes, I can still see how slim her hands and arms were then, and graceful. How the giving loosened her normally composed expression into the play of a smile around her lips and eyes.

After she poured herself another cup, thick and sweet and black, she sat down next to my high chair, admonishing me to eat “just another tee-niney bite more,” or asking me if I remembered to put on my underwear that morning. 

Yes, I was that young. Sometimes I forgot.  Besides, I hated underwear.  Also socks. And shoes.

But I loved, LOVED, my Mama.  And I felt like I shared the Queenship of the World with her when she sat that little cup and saucer next to my plate.

To this day, my favorite coffee is percolated.  But most days, being as I’m brewing for only myself, I use a French-press.  I sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on the grind, and in winter I mill a good bit of black pepper on top before adding the water.

Nothing is as warming in the winter as peppered coffee.  Except for mother-love.

Still hates underwear

Good day to you. Thanks for coming.  Come again soon.


      Leann