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

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