Category: writings (Page 32 of 66)

Lives Touching Lives, A Thread

November 30, 2012 / jeanne / 6 Comments

“I’d like to do something meaningful with what’s left of my life,” Mother says after telling me about the book she’s just finished reading about the work author Danielle Steele does with homeless people.

“What would you like to do?” I ask her.

“Well, I know a lot of women who are lonely,” she says, “and I was thinking that if I could take them to lunch that might be something.”

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

For twelve and a half hours beginning at 3:30 a.m. today, Thursday 11/29/12, we are either sitting still in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or cutting doughnuts, going around and around the area where a passenger is believed to have gone overboard.

The U.S. Coast Guard joins in the search with two cutters, a helicopter, and a fixed-wing plane, and passengers watching from aboard the ship do what people do: they make up stories about the man gone overboard. Some say he was traveling with his wife and a child, others say he was traveling only with his wife. Some say he and his wife were in marriage counseling. Some say he was extremely drunk, others say they were with him and he was upbeat. Some wonder how long he could survive, factoring in such factors as water temperature, where he entered the water in relation to the ship’s engines, and the proximity of sea life. Some are frustrated at missing the beach stop – the last chance to get their toes in the sand – originally scheduled for tomorrow; some pray for his family. A sketch of his face remains on our tv screens throughout the day while he captain comes on the intercom periodically, pleading for anybody with any information to come forward, especially the person who first reported the incident in the dark thirty hours of the morning. People spend the day glued to one side of the ship or another – some with binoculars – hoping to be the one to call out “There he is! I see him!” It’s a call nobody gets to make.

My daughter and I go see a movie late tonight – we’ve seen this movie several times, but we need the quiet and distraction. My husband fetches us cookies while we are gone.

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

He asks to join a trivia game team, and she asks me about my stitching, where did my ideas come from, how long will it take me to finish – that kind of thing. He walks more slowly now, his back rather bent, and she gets around via a motorized scooter. Stanley Gray had just come out of the service in 1945, and when he went to a resort in New York to celebrate July 4, he asked the pretty young woman named Judith to dance.

The following year, he asked her to marry him, and she said “Yes” – just what he was hoping she’d say. “Yesterday was our 66th wedding anniversary,” he said, standing a little bit straighter in the telling. “We’ve still got each other, and we still have fun. You can’t ask for more than that.”

(Today I’m posting this here and over at Gone With The Thread. I don’t ever double-post, but today, well today I just had to.)

lives touching lives, a thread

November 29, 2012 / jeanne / 1 Comment

“What would you like to do?” I ask her.

“Well, I know a lot of women who are lonely,” she says, “and I was thinking that if I could take them to lunch that might be something.”

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

My daughter and I go see a movie late tonight – we’ve seen this movie several times, but we need the quiet and distraction. My husband fetches us cookies while we are gone.

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

DSC08282a

These threads, these rows of quilting – they’re us, walking our different paths. Some paths are long, some are short. Paths touching, paths overlapping. You just never know.

What’s On My Platter Today

November 22, 2012 / jeanne / 14 Comments

Waves2

I don’t mean to sound prissy or anything, but when you make gratitude an inherent part of your life, it’s almost hard to make a list of what you’re grateful for on this day that comes around once a year bearing the word “thanks.” I started writing, saying, living expressed gratitude several years ago – maybe initially from a tinge of conditioned guilt (“Think about those poor starving children in China” and “Who do you think you are, Missy?” – that kind of thing), then after a while the conditioning fell away and goodness took its place, and next thing I knew, I’m just sending thank you notes and not even remembering that I did. Oh, I remember the people and the acts and attributes I’m grateful for, I just don’t always remember sending the actual note. And I’m not sure how to take that, but I don’t fret so much about it any more, trusting that it’s enough knowing I send the notes from a sincere place of deep thanking and let it go without any strings.

[ :: ]

I miss my son today. Which is not to say that I’m not absolutely delighted to be with my husband, daughter, and mother – it’s not as simple as the glass being half-full or half-empty – it’s only to say that I miss my son. We’ve come to that point in our lives when I see him about once a year on every-other big holiday. Me, the Penultimate Queen of Preparedness, the only fourth grader in town to have built a full-equipped bomb shelter for her family . . . I never prepared for this. It’s not the turkey we eat, you understand, it’s the turkey in the stories we share that Kipp and I love about Thanksgiving. I miss him, and my brain can hiss all sorts of words at me about being unattached and letting go and how he’s not really my son, and in response I say simply I’ve never aspired to be Enlightened.

I miss my daddy, too. The last Thanksgiving we “had him” as we say around here, he was a bit removed from the hilarity, and I sensed on that day that he might be leaving us.

I miss my nephew, TJ, too, and his artful eye and surprising insightfulness. He usually travels with us, but he’s a college freshman now, and exams loom large so he can’t take the time away from study hall.

And I miss my dog Phoebe. She’s still alive, thank goodness, but I am not with her, and I miss those soulful eyes that peer deep into my soul and end every one one of those conversations-without-words with an unspoken “I love you anyway.”

[ :: ]

We’ve been hearing a lot of Christmas carols the past couple of days, and a few of them can pep me up, but most of them tap into my deep sorrow, and I don’t really know why, but this whole season is rather sad to me. (Sometimes I sense it has to do with what amounts to Great Big Lies we’re told before our critical thinking skills have taken hold.) (And when I say “lies” I’m not just talking about Santa, it’s bigger than that – like how if we’re good, we’ll get what we want and how happy is the only game in town – those kinds of lies.) Oh, if we happen to be together during this time of year, I won’t burden you with my sorrow – that’s what my journal is for – but it’s there, and this year I will not wag a finger at myself, spouting all the scoldings about how it’s the happ-happiest time of the year, the most wonderful season of all, and all that. Just so you know: I do wish I could be the posterchild for happiness and gaiety – I really do – because it makes it so much easier for everybody else, but it’s just time to lay down some of those I-do-this-for-you obligatory burdeny kinds of things.

I don’t know about what I just wrote. Seems I need a wee little bit of clarity here . . . I am not morose, not moping my way through the day with a sad face that begs folks to tell me to turn upside down. I simply choose to not muster the energy it takes to cover the sadness. I am sad AND I am not sad. All at once, all in the space of a day. On any given moment of any given day, I am polarities. Now I’ve muddied it more than ever, I suppose.

Well, Pfffft. I think I’ll go laugh and love that incredibly patient and loving husband of mine, who travels with three generations of Hewell women, never uttering the first complaint (I guess he carries that around in the same pocket I carry my sorrow in); with my Mother, who I’m enjoying like never before (perhaps because we’re both being honest like never before?); and my daughter, who is so much fun (we pretty much wrote a play on the way down last Tuesday, and laughed – oh my goodness, how we have laughed). I will go sit and let the unending sound, the unimaginable enormity, and the undemanding horizon of the ocean wrap itself around me. I’ll ask the waves to help me roll this into something presentable, then we’ll go fetch Nancy and take her for an early Thanksgiving dinner, and all along the way, I’ll honor and love and be grateful for those I love from afar as well as those I love from a chair away.

that woman is me

November 5, 2012 / jeanne / 20 Comments

You know, years ago I drove down a two-lane country road and as I looked at the clapboard look-alike houses all lined up one beside the other in what looked for all the world like a cow pasture, with short, straight driveways connecting each house to the road leading out of town, I said “I want to go knock on the front door of each of those houses and ask the woman who answers, ‘Did your life turn out the way you wanted it to? If not, what are you going to do about it?'” Today I stand before you as that woman. And as that woman, too. I am the woman knocking, and I am the woman answering. I am the woman on both sides of the door.

It’s not my biological clock I hear ticking – at least not THAT biological clock, but the biological clock that leads tick by tock to my demise. To the end of this life as I know it. Has my life turned out the way I’d hoped it would? Well, let me answer this way: there are things I’d like to be different about my life, and if I’ve learned anything in all these decades, it’s that if I want things to be different, I am the go-to girl to make it happen.

Let’s start with the things I like about my life, the things that just need regular expressed appreciation . . .

My husband, my daughter, my son, my dog. They stay. Period. (Though I am taking my maiden name back.) (I kinda’ wanted to keep it all along cause it’s always wrinkled me being treated like I’m some object, some knapsack to be flung from one family to another.) (But you’re right: that’s another post entirely.)

And I love living here on the waterfall, so I’m not moving. Well, not like that anyway. See one thing in the Dissatisfaction Column is my size, my weight. And I could go on a gluten-free diet, I could purge my plate of everything I love to eat, but the thing is: I’m a picky, picky, picky eater, and I adore Southern food. And if the clock is ticking, I see no reason to make myself miserable. Maybe when I start moving more I’ll feel so much better that I’ll want to do something drastic and so thoroughly unlike me, but to start, I’ll just take more walks and count the days till January when the new community fitness center opens in town.

Besides that, I want . . .

to unshackle my tongue so I never have to feel validated (or annoyed) by seeing other people say what I wanted to say but was too afraid to.
to retire the parade of qualifiers and disclaimers I usually tack onto every sentence and to be bold enough to stop you if you start that nonsense.
to be the kind of person you can feel comfortable and safe with.
to turn the tear ducts loose.
to create with abandon and glee.
to forego the practice of apologizing for myself.
to get reacquainted with the earth, maybe sometimes through my bare feet.
to unlearn worrying about whether you’ll like me or not.
to forget how to justify and explain everything I think, feel, and do.
to regain personal space, emotionally, mentally, and physically.
to get by with less stuff and more space.
to laugh and enkindle laughter.
to live poetically.
to make everybody I come in contact with, including the woman in the mirror, feel like the rare and special and extraordinary person they . . . we . . . are.

Or, as I said to my friend Angela just a few days ago: I want to fling-it from the f##k-it line.

How’s that for starters?

A Tale of Two Kitties

October 22, 2012 / jeanne / 14 Comments

Falls5

Once upon a time
there was A Wee Small Palace
(because Palaces come in all sizes, you know)
perched at the tiptop of a mountain.
Though nice enough by certain standards,
it was considered A Palace
because of the waterfall on which it sat.
A waterfall that went down

Falls4

and down

Falls1

and down

Falls3

all the way into a magical lake.

Inside The Wee Small Palace,
two kitties lived side by side.

Both2

Though he could fool you because he primped a lot,
obviously concerned with his appearance,

Godprimps

the one named God
(which is dog spelled backwards, you know)
could be a bit of a bully.

Godthebully

Even in her beautiful coat of many colors,
our girl Pipp
was skittish of anything that breathed
(which often made her the perfect target for God.)

Pippinthebox

Despite her generalized and pervasive cautiousness,
Miss Pipp did love and trust one person:
the woman called Jeanne,

often showing her affection
by running figure 8’s around Jeanne’s feet,
something that caused Jeanne to stumble
and trip
and cuss.
Though annoyed at not being able to walk
through her own house without incident,
Jeanne knew that as a baby,
Miss Pipp was attacked by a predator,
and she just always assumed
that the memory of that
rendered Miss Pipp unable to play
or love
or be loved
in the usual sense.

One gloriously temperate fall day,
our Miss Pipp was so besotted
that her figure 8’s took her right ouside with Jeanne,
an act that surprised everybody,
including Miss Pipp.

Pipp1

As Miss Pipp walked around,
trying to get her bearings,
it became increasingly obvious that God was not just surprised,
God was annoyed.
God was upset.
God was quite possibly even concerned.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,
but MISS PIPP IS OUTSIDE.
This is not good.
This is not right.
DO SOMETHING,”
God begged Jeanne repeatedly.

Godwatches7

Jeanne,
whom God now considered an Absolute Fool,
simply went to fetch her camera.
God paced

Godwatches4

and he perched

Godwatches1

and finally he just stopped and stared.

Godwatches2

Once over her initial shock of being outside,
and realizing that God couldn’t get to her now,
Miss Pipp decided maybe it wasn’t so bad being outside and on her own.
She explored a bit

Pipp3

then she just laid down to enjoy catching a few rays
in her newfound peace.

Pipp2

Understanding how a girl often needs to be outside by herself,
Jeanne went back inside and set about doing the laundry.
Or something.
Eventually Miss Pipp knocked on the door
saying she was ready to come in now, please
and after an initial rumble
that sounded for all the world like God was saying
“WHAT ON EARTH POSSESSED YOU TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?”
though it could have been that he was actually saying
“What was it like out there, Miss Pipp? Tell me everything”
sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference
between scolding and relief, you know,
the two kitties are back together again.

Pippisbackintown

And while Miss Pipp
settles down by the warm breeze
from the ice maker
and dreams of being a jungle kitty,

PippSleeps

God sleeps the sweet restorative sleep of knowing
that disaster was avoided
and all’s right in his world again.

The End.

Though maybe it’s really The Beginning . . .

a special delivery, homemade birthday card with wings and kisses for my friend Angela

October 17, 2012 / jeanne / 4 Comments

Sugar, today (and everyday, for that matter) (but especially today), I wish you . . .

Wisdom

wisdom

capriccioso,

Latches

and solitude.

I wish you . . .

asylum and refuge

cerulean, zephyrs, and lullabies

talismans, bibelots, aubades, and amulets of beauty.

I wish you . . .

Weathereddoor

tapestries of rhapsodies, epiphanies, and tranquility

Clouds2

silver linings, caresses, and champagne

Flower

and all the colorful, textured felicity you can stand.

5 97 1 erased

I wish you sojourns
that as as meaningful as they are memorable
and I send the wishes all
wrapped up in a gossamer bow called love.

Looking Back Over the Day (and Beyond)

October 6, 2012 / jeanne / 0 Comments

Insidetent2

Despite the cold and rain that we didn’t plan on (or pack for), it was another especially fine day at the storytelling festival, a day that kicked off with a car pulling into the parking space next to us and the driver calling out “Hey, didn’t we park next to y’all yesterday?” I wasn’t sure till I saw how long it took the woman in the backseat to get out, and then I knew yes, yes they did park next to us yesterday – how’s that for a needle-in-the-haystack moment?

108collage1

It was also a stellar day for found objects, as you can see here and read about here.

Retrolinoleum

The Buddhists say we’re supposed to stay in the present and the Baptists keep us focusing on the future, but to tell you the truth, my natural leaning is towards times past, and today it wasn’t just the storytellers that carried me back in time . . . Who can forget this linoleum pattern from days gone by? We didn’t have it on our kitchen floor, but every one of my friends did.

Sons1

Not only were these fellas a lot of fun to cut up with, but they offered to help me nudge my son into joining the Sons of the Confederacy. Now seems as fine a time as any to tell you that I belong to the UDC (United Daughters of the Confederacy), the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), and the Colonial Dames XVII . . . AND . . . I’m working on my papers to join other lineage societies cause while I may not approve of everything that was done in the past, I’m proud to be a Southerner, and I’m proud to be an American. Even though it’s not politically correct. Which is probably why I”m coming clean here ’cause yesterday a woman sat down next to me, and at one point in our brief little chitchat, she said “You are politically correct,” and I was insulted. Insulted, I tell you. I’m just tired of covering up who I am at my deep, essential core to keep other people feeling all comfortable. What I’m saying is: I guess I felt insulted ’cause I realized she was telling the truth. Doesn’t mean I won’t continue to be polite, but political correctness is a whole different thing that leaps right on into dangerous territory, if you ask me.

So there.

Glad we got that cleared up.

Chopperhopper

My granddaddy used to take his dentures out every night and put them on the sideboard in a saucer of water. Right up there with other important and often-used things. Grossed me out and scared me more than once when I happened upon those teeth. So one year I saved my money to order him a ceramic AND LIDDED chopper hopper that I spied in one of Mother’s catalogues. It was just like this one I saw in an antique store on Main Street today, except I splurged, spent an extra 10-cents, and had “William’s Chopper Hopper” printed on the front of the one I ordered. Nothing but the best for my Granddaddy.

Tractor

Don’t you wish this beauty could talk? Don’t you know she has some stories to tell? Oh my goodness gracious, if tractors could talk . . .

And now I’m going to tuck my cold, damp feet under the cover, (pretend to) watch a football game with my husband, and stitch a bit.

stories, stories, everywhere and not a need for drink

October 5, 2012 / jeanne / 2 Comments

Tentop1

Their father was strict – oh my goodness gracious, he was strict. He worked in a garage, and that’s probably why he wouldn’t let them wear shorts outside the house. Fortunately for the older sister, you could set a clock by her father, so in the summer she could lay out in the sun in her swimsuit and still make it inside, change, and be presentable and ready for supper when her daddy got home. They had an aunt named Mary (but everybody called her Aunt Mert cause they all had nicknames. Their Uncle Howard was called Paps. See, I told you: everybody had nicknames.) Aunt Mert was a mess. I mean that woman was a mischief maker. Once, when she was a teenager, Mert’s mother and grandmother dropped her off at church, and as soon as their car rounded the corner, Aunt Mert hopped in her friend’s car and off they went. But tragedy struck: the car wrecked. Flipped over, I’m telling you, and without even slowing down to check on anybody, Aunt Mert scooted on back up to the house where she was when her Mother and Grandmother got in from church. “Goodness gracious,” the grandmother said, “such a wreck you’ve never seen. Those poor young people flipped their new car. What a mess they left all over the road.” “Well, I hope none of them got hurt too bad,” Aunt Mert said. And I want you to know that the mother and grandmother never found out Mert was a passenger in that car.

Door1

Her first house cost $1600. Didn’t have an indoor bathroom, so they saved their money and took up part of the kitchen to build a bathroom. It was her mother’s idea. Her mother was real stupid until this woman got married, then her mother turned smart again.

Clock1

They came down umpteen years ago – 27 or 28 as they recollect – with a couple who they were friends with at that time. The couple moved from Connecticut to Charlotte, NC. After settling into their new home in Charlotte, the friends called one day. “Y’all want to come down and go to the storytelling festival with us?” The husband thought that was the most ridiculous thing he ever heard, so they declined. The next year, the friends called again: “Y’all want to go with us to the storytelling festival?” and this time the couple couldn’t think of a good excuse, so down they trotted from Connecticut to Charlotte where they loaded into one car and came over to the festival. That was either 27 or 28 years ago. Neither one can really remember. (This year the Charlotte couple is in Croatia and are appalled that the folks from Connecticut came to the storytelling festival without them.)

Corn

“Can you hear from back here?” she asked as she sat down next to me. “If they’ll be quiet,” I said, nodding to the two men sitting behind us. “If they make too much noise, we’ll just slap ’em,” a solution that seemed to tickle her. Turns out she’s the wife and grandmother of the men sitting behind us, so you might say that we hit it off right from the start. Her husband is named Brick, named after his Uncle Brick who grew up in Mississippi, two houses down from Tennessee Williams. By all accounts, Tennessee Williams was rather effeminate, and it doesn’t take a great store of imagination to know that made Tennessee a likely target for a fella named Brick. But then Tennessee grew up and wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. With a character named and modeled after, you guessed it: Brick. That very childhood nemesis.

Steeple

Musicians accompany themselves and sing on the sidewalks. Streets are closed. Schools declare today a holiday and rent out their lots and buses. Churches open their doors and sell you soup, sandwich, desserts, beverage, cornbread, and crackers – all you can eat – for $7/person. For three full (and I do mean FULL) days, stories are told under big tents set up all over Jonesborough, Tennessee. The air is filled with stories, and not all of ’em are told on stage . . .

Pumpkin2

water under the bridge

September 19, 2012 / jeanne / 1 Comment

the sun peeked out from the clouds
just enough to lure us out
for a walk this morning.

i chose this hill,

Uphill

which looks enticingly meandering
from the bottom
and a bit more formidable from the top

Downhill

husband went another way.
he has his own hills to climb.

——-

yesterday the water raged,

Falls1

fierce and muddied in its flowing.
agitated, to say the least.

today, such a difference.

Falls1

there’s still a lot of water flowing,
but much has settled
making things clearer.

——-

on one side of the bridge,
the water is calm,
smooth,
like an oddly-shaped mirror
reflecting all around it.
deceptively placid.

but when it flows under the bridge
it transforms noticeably.
letting no boulder
or branch
stand in its way.
moss growing
only around the far edges.

Fine Lines

September 18, 2012 / jeanne / 6 Comments

It rained all night, giving us this view from here this morning:

Falls1

and this:

Falls2

Note: The preceding photos may or may not be visual metaphors . . .

_______

I got up, showered, washed my hair. Would’ve gone to walk except it continued to rain hard all day long. I stitched my way through the day, preparing five more Envoy packets to go out. (Thank y’all.) The up and down, back and forth of the needle soothes me, assures me.

I am not holed up in a small room with the blackout curtains pulled closed. I am not wallowing. I am not whining. On the outside, I look the same. If we talked, I would make you laugh, and I would laugh alongside you. “If my cat would knead my back and shoulders like he kneads my thighs and chest,” I posted on Facebook, “I would buy him the good food.” I am the same save for one important detail: I laid something down yesterday, and you held me. Your comments and your emails, they swaddled me in gentle support. I don’t know when I’ve felt so seen, so held. Thank you.

——-

Renae used the word “sorrow,” and that resonated deeply with my bones. I may laugh, but I still carry this sorrow. There is such substance in sorrow, in this deep, long, unnamed sorrow.

——-

Fine lines separate a pity party from authenticity, distinguish whining from honesty, keep sharing from becoming a stage. While my brain screams “You get over yourself and stop this right now, Missy,” my bones whisper “You’re okay, Sugar.”

_______

Happy feels like an obligation, something manufactured, something I do for others, something I am obligated to do for others, to make them comfortable, to make and keep friends.

Glee feels natural, organic, spontaneous. I can’t stop glee, and I don’t want to. It’s not heavy, not one thing I have to drag round. Its not scratchy or tiresome.

Sorrow feels, well, comfortable in a way. Like I’ve landed right where I’m supposed to be. And sorrow doesn’t exclude other emotions or other situations or other people. It’s inclusive, though not in the misery-loves-company-kind-of-way because I’m not actually miserable. Sorrow doesn’t assign blame but invites reflection and pondering.

——-

My brain is my aggregator, my protector, my assimilator. I need my brain for so many reasons, but somewhere along the way, it got the big head, my brain did. Thinks thinking is The Only Thing That Matters.

My heart is the home of my spirit. Childlike, playful, spontaneous. Heart is home to glee.

My bones are home to my soul. They connect me with my ancestors, with something ancient and unspoken. I am finally learning to trust them enough to let them speak. Bones are the voice of wisdom.

_______

My body is a cache of Knowing.

And of memory. All these voices, all these proverbial fingers wagging at me, they are remembered real. I have read them, heard them, interpreted them before. I have been baptized in them. Some come from well-meaning sources concerned with my well-being and safety. Others come from sources who don’t know me but speak with great authority. All promise a life of shame if I perform in a way that is disruptive, inconsiderate, inconvenient for others. Sadful is at the top of The List of Inconsiderate Inconveniences.

This avoidance of shame has guided me for so many years. For too many years.