Category: writings (Page 10 of 66)

Yesterday we took a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway,
and out of my memory banks fell remembrances
of how one Sunday every fall, we got up at dark thirty,
met a few families at the courthouse,
and caravaned to the mountains to see the colorful leaves.

We stopped at a roadside picnic table,
and after lunch,
the kids took a walk in (yes, IN)
the nearby creek
while the parents relaxed and talked up a blue streak.
(The sun photobombed this photo from yesterday.)
(Which is perfectly fine.)

My friends laughed and skipped
from stone to stone on one foot,
and I joined them . . .
for maybe two stones
before I fell into the creek.
I was clutsy, no question about that.
(And I’ve not developed physical grace with age.
I’m still unsure on my feet
when walking to the falls that are at our front door.
The Engineer says I need to put my feet down with more authority.
I say he just needs to hold my hand.)

We never had a towel
and had usually thrown away the picnic napkins
on those childhood day trips,
so I’d just drip dry,
and shiver all the way home
despite being wrapped up in Daddy’s suit jacket.

Now it’s true
that we went to the mountains to see the leaves,
and it’s true
that we had a picnic,
and it’s most definitely true
that I fell into the creek every darn time.
But I can’t imagine why Daddy
would wear a coat and tie for a leisurely day-long drive
through the mountains of north Georgia.
That just doesn’t make sense.

Stories are constructed.
Memories are fallible.
Some tales are ruined by questions.
Some tales are never questioned and should be.

But that doesn’t mean stories shouldn’t be told.

He was caught up in what I call the medical pinball machine, bouncing from one doctor to another. To look on the patients’ faces in the waiting rooms was to see people whose identity was now invested in their health. Or, more specifically, lack of it. We’d exit the exam room, and every patient in the waiting area looked at us expectantly. “When do you have to come back?” was the sorting question. Say you didn’t have to come back for six months or a year, and everybody sat back in their chair and turned their attention back to their magazine. Say you had to come back in three months or less, and they moved even closer to the front edge of their chairs, sat up straighter, and ooo-ed and aah-ed in a kind of envy or respect. Three months or less meant you were Really Sick, you see, and these people had an illness rating system that didn’t cotton to imposters. Daddy was on the every-three-months plan with the cardiologist, which is to say he was well respected in that waiting room.

I turned the appointments into a Social Occasion, letting Mother invite a friend and taking everybody to a new restaurant after the carefully-timed mid-morning appointment. On this particular day, Mother invited Miss Eleanor Jones to go with us. Daddy sat up front with me, and the girls sat in the backseat so they could talk – or “visit”, as Aunt Rene would say. Anticipation is part of the fun, so I told them I was taking them to Athens Pizza for lunch on that bright, sunny springtime day. Daddy was excited about it, but something changed after his appointment, and he turned grumpy and didn’t want to go. “Just take me home,” he said. “You can take them to eat somewhere in Fayetteville after you take me home.” Mother and Miss Eleanor were disappointed, but not to worry. I drove straight to Athens Pizza, telling Daddy he could sit in the car and assuring him we’d eat fast.

My made-on-the-fly plan called for me to park in the sunshine, leaving Daddy in the car with the windows up. Mother and Miss Eleanor wrung their hands and clucked with concern, but Br’er Jeanne just ushered them right on into the restaurant where the hostess greeted us.

“How many are in your party?” she asked.

“There are three . . . now,” I told her looking at my watch, “but there’ll be a fourth joining us in, oh, about fifteen minutes.”

Only then did Mother and Miss Eleanor relax.

We were shown to our table, and I moved a chair to make room for Daddy’s eventual wheelchair. We ordered our drinks, and, even though it hadn’t been 15 minutes, I decided Daddy was just about fully baked, so I excused myself and headed for the car. Daddy saw me the minute I rounded the corner, and made ready to get out. I wheeled him in, and we all enjoyed a leisurely and delicious Greek salad and pizza. Years later Daddy asked me to take him back to Athens Pizza, and on the way, I told him the rest of the story about that first visit. He laughed and laughed and laughed then said, “You know me better than I know myself, don’t you, Doll?”

Which wasn’t really a question, you know.

~~~~~~~

Today’s Daily Dahlia

~~~~~~~

Gardening was something my Granddaddy Hewell flat-out loved doing. He had no sense of landscape design, but he had two green thumbs, and that’s enough because as a little girl, I didn’t give a twit about what was planted where, I only cared about spending time with my granddaddy.

He grew day lilies, and it seemed to me as I stood there beside him surveying the back yard, that they went on forever (or at least into the next county). They certainly filled the land as far as my little 3′ high eyes could see. Every day after work during day lily season, Granddaddy came home, changed from his banking clothes to his gardening clothes, and we headed out to deadhead, plucking the spent blooms and tossing them in a trashcan. We told each other the highs and lows of our day, and once that was done, we worked silently. Side by side.

Granddaddy had a greenhouse – a real glass greenhouse – with raised tables and a hose and spigot and everything. Inside those four glass walls, he started seeds to give them a head start on life, and nursed ailing plants back to health. One year we spent the afternoon of his birthday working in the greenhouse, Granddaddy stood on the ground, his hands busy in the dirt, while I stood on an upturned wooden box next to him asking questions (many of which began with “Why?” or “What if?”) and, every now ‘n then, fetching him what he needed.

Mother, Daddy, and I had recently moved into Granddaddy and Grandmother’s house to help Granddaddy tend to Grandmother who’d had several strokes and had to have everything done for her. While we worked in the greenhouse that day, Mother was in the kitchen, and before Granddaddy and I even knew we were hungry, she hand delivered two of the most beautiful cakes you’ve ever seen: a birthday cake with chocolate icing and yellow embellishments for Granddaddy and a kid-sized matching cake for me.

His whole face broke into a smile, and he did that little understated chuckle that meant he was very pleasantly surprised. Me, I danced a happy, happy, happy jig. It was Granddaddy’s birthday, and I got a cake! Mother had never made me a Jeanne-sized cake before, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. So as we ate our birthday cakes right there in the greenhouse (Mother didn’t even make us go inside and wash our hands!) I posed what was likely the best idea I’ve ever had: I suggested that Granddaddy have a birthday every . . . single . . . day. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, I could tell he wasn’t so keen on the idea, but I believe given half a chance, I could’ve sold it to Mother.

Now I’m not saying he was set in his ways or anything, but it was around 1971 before Granddaddy Ballard got rid of his mule. In this photo, we see him about to fetch the mule to go prepare the spring garden. Isn’t it adorable the way he almost has to reach up to unlatch the gate? He’d plow the garden plot behind the house, creating straight rows in which he’d plant corn, butterbeans, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and string beans. Though the mule dwarfed Granddaddy, they made a good team, working together to make a neat, bountiful garden.

And I’m not saying she was set in her ways or anything, but every morning for I don’t know how many years, his daughter/my mother Ada stopped by on her way to work. She seldom stayed long enough to sit down. She’d just ask how he slept, see if he needed anything from town, give him a hug, and be on her way. Before she got out the back door, Granddaddy always put something in her hand. It might have been an apple, a peach, a Three Musketeers candy bar, but she never left his house empty-handed.

One year when she stopped by on her birthday, she left with an apple, a $100 bill, and a story . . .

“Now lookahere, Ada,” he started out. “You’ve always thought I named your after my mule, but let me tell you something once and for all: I didn’t. I named your after my mother. But if you want to keep on believing that I named you after my mule, fine. Just know this, though: of all the mules I ever had, Ada was by far my favorite because she was the easiest going, least stubborn, hardest working, even tempered, most reliable, best damn mule that ever walked the face of this earth.”

Ada Elvira Lucky Ballard Sams,
my great grandmother

The Engineer believes in letting a dog be a dog, but because I wanted to occasionally take Phoebe outside the house, I (strongly) suggested we take her to doggie school. The first week of an 8-week class, the teacher said she’d always wanted a Corgi, and by the second week of class, she had one named Callie. Callie and Phoebe became fast, dear friends at first meeting. We’d walk in the front door, Phoebe would spot Callie, Callie would spot Phoebe, and the two would run towards each other with great, huge excitement. They’d begin to enthusiastically wrestle play in the center of the classroom, occasionally sitting back to catch their breath, and they didn’t stop until class was over. The Engineer and I just watched the other dogs perform their homework and learn next week’s lesson.

Long about week five, we entered the building and, as usual, Phoebe and Callie raced towards each other and began playing in the center of the circle. When they sat back to take a breathing break, Phoebe looked around at her other classmates, saw them sitting with their nose about seven inches from a treat (It was “wait for it” week.), and thought to herself, “Well, if you don’t want it, I do” then ran around the circle snatching every single treat from every single dog.

It took a whole lot of apples to get her socially promoted.

We’d just moved into the new house, so workers are bustling around everywhere. One morning while bringing materials in, a worker looks at me and asks, “Did you know you have a bat in the house?”

“No, where?”

“Up there,” he says, nodding in the direction of the vaulted ceiling in the gathering room. I look around but see nothing, so when he comes back out after dropping off the materials, he points. Following his finger with my eyes, I see a small black spot. He assures me it’s a bat, and I immediately know the source of that high-pitched keening I heard when The Engineer left for work that morning.

My daughter is amused and names the bat Leopold. You can call me a fool, but I’m just not comfortable having a bat inside my house – cute name or no – so I call my pest control contractor. “John,” I say, “there’s a bat in my house. Can you come relocate him?”

“There’s nothing I can do about bats,” he tells me, “but I can tell you what to do, and it’s not hard. Get a stocking and stuff a couple of your husband’s socks down into the toe. Bats work on a kind of radar, you see, so go open the nearest door then sling the stocking with the socks in the toe around and around and around in a circle. The bat will feel the breeze, get the picture, and fly out of the house.”

“John, that’s never gonna’ work,” I complain.

“It’s not hard,” he assures me, and he starts over. “Just get a stocking and stuff a couple of your husband’s socks down into the toe, then open a door, sling the sock-stuffed stocking . . . ”

“Stop right there, John. That’s why your method is not going to work.”

“Huh?”

“Where on earth am I gonna’ find a stocking?”

~~~~~~~

I spent part of every day trekking down memory lane and telling stories here in this e-nest. If you’d like to read along, why don’t you just mash the “right this way” button in the orange ribbon at the top of the screen and follow the directions. It’s free, quick, easy, and mutely appreciated.

The Daily Dahlia

Teeth have played a prominent role in my life. There’s the financial side that includes the Tooth Fairy dropping off quarters under my pillow in exchange for a tooth, (and though I haven’t run the numbers, I’m pretty sure I didn’t have enough baby teeth to cover the dental expenses that were to come). The first bulletin board I created as a fourth grade teacher was a big ole’ mess of teeth under the words “I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing”. And of course there are the countless times I’ve fantasized about punching somebody’s teeth down their throat.

I’m not real sure when the Dental Dread started. Maybe it was the awful gag reflex inducing impressions, the retainers, the rubber bands, and finally the removal of braces. Maybe it was that summer day when a poorly-timed appointment meant I had to leave the Loretta Young Show in progress, not knowing till this day if she got out of that iron lung. Or maybe it was the time I caught the dentist on a bad day . . .

I am called back relatively promptly – maybe 20 minutes after my appointment time (which meant 35 minutes if you count arriving early so I could complete the paperwork and keep the office running on time). With me seated in the chair that had the potential to become an expensive carnival ride, the paper towel clipped around my neck, and the table of sharp, shiny, (hopefully) sterilized instruments rolled close enough for even me – the one with no peripheral vision – to see, the stage is set for the dentist.

A tooth has broken, a crown is called for. Because I’d never had a crown before – not this kind, anyway – I ask him to give me a rough outline of what he plans to do then give me 10 minutes to mentally prepare myself. Do that, I tell him, and I’ll be just fine.

“Why do you need to do that?” he asks, a question I took to mean that my request was new to him.

“Well, you see, I’m kind of afraid of dentists,” I tell him, “but I do fine as long as I know what’s coming and have a few minutes to draw a map for myself and envision me sitting here calmly through the entire procedure.”

“But WHY do you need to do that?” he asks again.

Even the second time it’s asked, the question catches me off guard, so I simply repeat my previous answer.

“I don’t understand,” he says, and my anxiety meter begins to make its way towards the red zone.

He throws one of the aforementioned sharp, shiny, (hopefully) sterilized instruments across the room. “I am so tired of being a dentist and having to deal with people who are afraid of dentists,” he says between perfectly straight, pearly white, tightly clenched teeth.

“This is not what I went through dental school for,” he continues. “I’ve done nothing to you.”

“That’s true,” I say calmly. “This is the first time I’ve seen you. It’s not you personally, it’s your professional generally.”

He begins pacing.

Now the chair that has the potential to become a carnival ride is facing the wall, leaving the door behind my head (which includes my face which includes my eyes). I begin planning an exit, but the ride has just started, and I’ve been effectively buckled in.

“How do you think it feels to get out of bed every morning, knowing you have to go and spend an entire day dealing with people who are afraid of you?” he asks.

He pauses, looking at me intently, which I take as an order to respond. “Maybe some of them aren’t afraid of you,” I offer, “and whether they’re afraid or not, they still pay you.” (If you think it sounds feeble here, Dear Reader, you should’ve heard it in my trembling voice.)

These are the last words that leave my untouched-by-dentist-hands mouth for 49.5 minutes. He rails and he roars. He paces and he pitches. He tantrums and he throws a few more of the sharp, shiny, (hopefully) sterilized instruments. Every now and then a chirpy assistant cracks the door open, sticks her smiling head in, and asks, “Is everything okay in here?”

“Fine,” he tells her gruffly, and hearing that, she does what any tenured assistant of his would probably do: she removes her smiling head and closes the door.

On and on the tirade goes . . . only it’s more of a pity party gone bad. This is not what he signed up for. Not what he imagined. Not how he wants to spend his days.

Eventually he runs out of steam, throws the door open, scattering the array of sharp, shiny, (hopefully) sterilized instruments that now cover the floor. Because he hasn’t told me what he is going to do and given me 10 minutes to mentally prepare myself, I don’t know what is coming next or what to do when it gets here. Had he forgotten about the readily-available white porcelain bowl with the hose attached and gone for a drink of water? Had he gone to fetch sharper, shinier, (forget the sterilized part) instruments from another room? Was he going to come back with an unhappy, disgruntled colleague and give them a turn? Was today the day for, and I the witness to, every single staff member’s meltdown?

He never comes back, but his chirpy assistant does, and she brings a couple of friends. “Where is he?” she asks, “and what’s been going on in here?”

“I think we can safely say he’s had a nervous breakdown,” I tell them.

“What?” they ask collectively. Now I know it’s not my articulation that causes their lack of comprehension, because none of the sharp, shiny, (hopefully) sterilized instruments – including the one with novocaine – ever entered my mouth . . . a mouth which I’m pretty sure had remained in the gaping-open position for the past 49.5 minutes. I am strangely relieved at the thought this isn’t normal, standard behavior for him.

“For the past 49.5 minutes, he held me hostage in this chair while he vented and spewed his job dissatisfaction, which, on a scale of 1 to 10, tallies in at about minus 153.” Because they seem incapable, I remove the paper towel from around my neck, raise the arm rest, get out of the chair, and leave the room. At the receptionist’s desk, I rummage through my purse for my keys.

And just when my jaws relax enough to let my mouth close again, she asks, “Would you like to reschedule?”

~~~~~~~

I ‘spect there are more teeth – not necessarily dentists, but teeth – in future stories. If you’d like to read them, avail yourself of the free subscription by mashing the “right this way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen and follow the directions. Now open wide . . .

I found myself yesterday, and I didn’t even know I’d been lost. I found myself in a book I’d forgotten existed. A book that, according to the back cover, was shelved under “inspiration”. A book that when new set me back $4.95 . . .

While tidying The Dissenter’s Chapel & Snug (my studio, for all you Muggles) in anticipation of a friend coming to visit, I decided it time to sift through the mountain range of books surrounding my reading chair. “Time to get real,” I told my self. “Time to get rid of the ones you’ll never read again . . . which probably means most of them. You’re behind on everything, and being on the finite side of infinity, you have to focus on what needs to get done, so you simply don’t have time to read anymore.”

Though I didn’t have time for this sorting process either, I picked up each book, one at a time, and let it tell me through my hands if it held something for me in its pages or if it was time to move on to some other library Out There. When I came to The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy, (Now over 500,000 copies in print! it boasts on the front cover) I paused, affording it special consideration not bestowed on the previous books . . . I opened it. It fell open to this passage:

“Here is another very popular method used in selling homes, land, or any kind of property. Affirm slowly, quietly, and feelingly as follows: ‘Infinite intelligence attracts to me the buyer for this home who wants it and who prospers in it. This buyer is being sent to me by the creative intelligence of my subconscious mind which makes no mistakes. This buyer may look at many other homes, but mine is the only one he wants and will buy, because he is guided by the infinite intelligence within him. I know the buyer is right, the time is right, and the price is right. Everything about it is right. The deeper currents of my subconscious mind are not in operation bringing both of us together in divine order. I know that it is so.'”

It was a Homecoming, y’all. There I was on page 128. Right here, in these 134 words. This is how I once went through the world – not at the mercy and direction of Others, but by the seat of my own Infinite and Creative Intelligence. I felt things . . . Knew things in my body, with my body.

I never quite figured out if I was foretelling events or if I caused events, but it never once occurred to me back then that I was powerless, incapable of causing or even sensing what was to come. I just Knew. I just Was. I just Did. It was me as sure and as much as my name is Jeanne. It was the way I went through the world.

I love that woman.

I loved astounding and confounding The Engineer.

I love imagining that he harbored hushed thoughts that he’d married a witch.

I love that I didn’t even think twice about Knowing things until I married him. If I could do it, everybody could, right?

How did I lose that Jeanne? Where did I put her?

I want her back.

When Uncle Love died, Aunt Lucy moved up from Pensacola to live with Aunt Irene, commanding half of Aunt Rene’s house as storage space for her clothes and furniture. No doubt about it, Aunt Lucy, an active Eastern Star member, was a clotheshorse. Aunt Rene and Aunt Lucy – the Girls, I call them – spent most of their time sitting in front of the space heater in the kitchen or sleeping in the big sleigh bed Aunt Rene and Uncle Bill slept in their entire married life.

We knew it was time to move The Girls to new accommodations when they began taking frequent naps throughout the day, and thinking it was morning every time they woke from a nap to see daylight through the window and going right into the kitchen to take their tablets. I found an assisted living facility, liked it, and arranged for a tour and lunch. I invited the entire family and told the staff at the facility that if they had a single man who was available to lunch with us, that would seal the deal for Aunt Rene and make our job much, much easier.

Aunt Rene, you see, was a lifelong flirt. She liked men, there’s just no other way to say it. The story goes that she went on a date with someone other than her fiancé the night before her wedding. “Darlin’,” she told me, “I know I’d said ‘Yes’, but to tell you the truth, I just couldn’t make up my mind.” Let my daughter Alison bring a date to a family gathering, and Aunt Rene would latch onto him before he got both feet through the door. She’d sidle up next to him, put her arm through his, look at him coquettishly and ask, “Sugar, do you have any younger brothers?”

Yes, Aunt Irene was a flirt. Absolutely.

Now she had her own boyfriend throughout her eighties, Aunt Rene did, and his name was Mr. Luther. They were an item, seeing each other daily, going to church together, going out to eat, walking around town. Sometimes Mr. Luther just spent the afternoon and evening – evening, not night – at Aunt Rene’s house, playing cards, eating supper, watching tv. But after years of comfortable togetherness, Mr. Luther broke up with Aunt Irene on her back door steps saying she spent more time with Aunt Lucy than she spent with him and he just couldn’t take it any longer.

We view the beautifully appointed assisted living facility, seeing several available apartments, the game room, the fitness room, the library, and the mailboxes. Our tour culminates in the private dining room, where who to our wondering eyes doth appear to be waiting to have lunch with us but . . . Mr. Luther.

~~~~~~~

I’m penning 100 stores in 100 days. If you’d like to read along, you can subscribe by mashing the “right-this-way” button in the orange strip at the top of the screen, and following the directions. It’s free, fast, easy, and muchly appreciated.

When I see the postage stamps from Australia, it becomes immediately obvious that the childhood stamp collector in me is alive and well. When I open the envelope and have a look inside, my current self dances and squeals with delight, and before you can say “Jack Rabbit”, the ideas and gratitude are flowing like melted chocolate.

There’s a blue party dress . . . and I imagine it was made for a spring dance with flowers and punch and petit fours and gawky boys awkwardly repeating the phrases their mothers taught them to use when asking blushing girls to dance.

There’s a green dress likely worn by the friend wearing the blue dress. They go to the dance together, their parents dropping them off at the curb, making sure they know to be back out at 10 when the dance ends. The blue and green girls giggle on the way in, adjusting the wrist corsages their fathers present them with before escorting them to the car, opening the back doors for them before getting in the front seat as all proper chauffeurs do for their princesses.

There’s a yellow dress . . perhaps worn by the shy girl who couldn’t afford a bona fide party dress. Her mother picks two roses from the bush at the front door – a third generation bush rooted from a cutting of the bush in her grandmother’s yard – using the butcher knife with the worn wooden handle to remove the thorns before tying the roses onto her daughter’s wrist with a piece of ribbon she cut off one of her better dresses. Being too young to be bothered with such things as household income and socio-economic status, not even knowing what any of the parents did for a living, the yellow dress bounds out of her mother’s pickup truck in time to catch up with her friends so they can enter together, gleefully talking over each other in anticipation of the magic that waits on them behind the closed doors. For the rest of their seventy-two years, the three friends smile when they pull these dresses from the cedar chest and relive that first dance.

There are two of the most adorable mother-and-son aprons with crocheted embellishment you’ve ever seen. Do you see that young woman in the kitchen, wiping her hands on her blue-and-white checked apron before offering the mixer beaters to her young son who’s standing on a stool beside her wearing his matching apron? “Do you want to lick the beaters?” she asks him. Her grandmother taught her how to crochet, and these embellishments were her first solo project.

And as if all that isn’t enough, there are shoes, too!

The goodie bag is from Faye Cook, a woman I got to know a couple of years ago when she reads about Nancy and writes me about her sister, Libby. We become friends, exchanging the occasional email to compare notes and talk with somebody who understands. Faye’s other sister, Jane (who obviously sees possibility everywhere), rescued these beauties from the trash bin at a local op shop (something we call a thrift store) and asked if Faye knew of anybody who would like them. Jane, let me tell you that as a woman who rescues Special Occasion Dresses, I don’t like them . . . I cherish them. I cherish them for their beauty, for their delicateness, for the happiness they brought somebody I’ll never know. I adore them for their imperfections, treating every stain and every tear as a story worth telling, and that they were pulled from the brink of oblivion is cause for celebration.

My daughter and I open the package together, pulling the items out one at a time, oohing and ahing over them. Holding them up to us. Imagining the women who once wore these dresses. thinking of how to best preserve them and their stories. It is the most I’ve heard Alison laugh since her surgery, and that’s a gift, too. An unintended gift, perhaps, but a gift nevertheless. And a “Thank you” to Faye and Jane hardly seems adequate, but for now, it’ll just have to do.