Tag: family (Page 3 of 7)

they helped make me who i am in ways i may never know

GeneCrawfordSrMontieresized

we’ll never know if granddaddy died on 12/19 or 12/20. he simply went to bed on the 19th and never woke up. the death certificate says 12/19, though, on account of that’s the date his son – my uncle gene – was killed years before. the town’s doctor (the small town wasn’t big enough to have a coroner – shoot, we were glad to have a doctor there) thought it fitting that father and son died on the same date.

GeneOnTractorPortrait001 copy

GeneDogsTruck1

i still ache for them – all of them, even though uncle gene died before i was even an idea. i’m named after him, you know. there are still people around who actually knew him, and when i say “tell me about him,” the first thing they all say is “he was funny.” i have two lamps he made from turned wood, i have his wallet (complete with the photo of his girlfriend), and i have photos of him on a tractor – probably not the tractor he was using to pull up stumps when it flipped over on him, killing him. but maybe. i don’t know. granddaddy reportedly found him, shoved the tractor aside, then my wiry little granddaddy picked up my rotund 18 year-old uncle and carried him all the way back to the house. the next day, in a fit of grief, granddaddy drove a silver stake into the ground to mark the spot.

HCHSrFeedsChickens001

CrawfordSr001

when i ask people what they remember about my granddaddy, they all – every one of them – say there wasn’t a dishonest bone in his body. that he was a good man. some even tell me about a time when he (the town’s banker) loaned them grocery money cause they left their checkbook at home. i have the clock that sat on his mantle; the tag he kept on his key chain asking finders, should he lose his keys, to return them to brooks bank; and i write sitting in the chair he sat in at the bank. it still has the original green leather.

nobody seems to know my grandmother very well. they tell me she was quiet. i remember her arriving home from a vacation, getting out of the car and walking straight across the street to see me – even before she went in her own house. later memories are of her being still, quiet, and lethargic, which i now know was a condition resulting from a series of strokes, but back then i didn’t know what was wrong until the day i was converting the pump house into a studio and got stung by wasps several times on each hand. by the time i got to the front door of our house, my hands had swelled up so much i couldn’t bend my fingers, and hurt – oh my goodness how they did hurt. then just like that, my little girl brain knew why grandmother sat quietly in the chair with a washcloth over her hands that were always idling in her lap. i spent three days like that, but the swelling went down, the pain subsided, and i was back out turning over bushel baskets upside down to become stools. grandmother never saw the results of my labor.

granddaddy and grandmother . . . well, if i ever walked as one who was once cherished, it’s because of them. they adored me, their first grandchild, and the feeling was mutual. they clothed me in ruffles and lace (i could seat 6 on the petticoats they bought me to wear under the dresses they bought me); shoes in every color; frilly fold-down socks; dozens of pairs of gloves. i even remember one dress – brown plaid. white collar with piping to match the dress fabric. sash. one of daddy’s favorite stories is of little me driving nails into the floor at granddaddy’s feet as he (granddaddy) sat in his rocker watching the news on tv. “JEANNE,” daddy said loudly, startling me out of my reverie. “junior,” granddaddy told him firmly, (daddy was named after granddaddy, and he hated being called junior, probably because he spent a goodly part of his life working to distinguish himself from his dad) “jeanne is in my room now. she can hammer wherever she wants to.” i rest my case.

i have lots of stories starring grandmother and granddaddy stored in my memory bank, but there are still stories i long to hear, questions i’d love to ask – questions and stories i didn’t know to ask back then.

i’m told that the internal voice that scolds me, saying i should not be living in the past or grieving because these people died long ago and besides, they weren’t my spouse or my parents or my children, they were only my grandparents. i’m told this is actually a caring voice, a voice that just wants to keep me safe. i’m told i should love this voice, thank it for protecting me, for caring so much about me . . . but i’m feeling more like thanking it through clenched teeth (by way of suggesting, you understand) to shut up and leave me to my grief and remembrances. i don’t care how long it’s been, i still miss them something fierce. and i don’t care about any alleged hierarchy of appropriate grief, they were my grandparents and we adored each other. and i don’t care that i never met my uncle, i can and do still love him and mourn him sight unseen.

maybe it makes sense on paper that i should be over this grief all these decades later . . . but on my heart, this grief will not be denied.

[ ::: ]

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers has spent most of her life collecting photos, stories, and information about the day in May 1933 when bandits knocked on her grandparents door and held the family (grandparents, midwife, newborn gene, and 5 year-old crawford) hostage overnight until the bank opened the following morning. next year she intends to pull it all together, and she’s very excited about that because she knows that event somehow impacted her life, shaping her into the women she is today even though her daddy was only five years old at the time and not even thinking about girls and raising a family.

Here’s the Church and Here’s the Steeple, Open the Doors and . . .

The Short Version:

  • New York is fun.
  • And beautiful.
  • And a bit wacky.

The Longer (Illustrated) Version:
I am in New York City visiting my cousin Stacy and my other cousin (and his wife), Ginger. Being here in their beautiful 3-bedroom apartment on the Episcopal compound (don’t know the official name since I’m not exactly fluent in Episcopal) is like being in the magical world of Hogwart’s . . .

Gothic2

Gothic3

Gothic4

Gothic5

Yesterday I spent some time roaming the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where I saw some pretty magnificent things . . . like stained glass:

Stainedglass3

Stainedglass2

Stainedglass

and likenesses carved into pews:

Man1

and floors that sure look like quilts to me (quilts that were much more captivating when I stood right there on them than when I climbed up high and tried to get a picture of the “quilt” in its entirety):

Quiltedfloor5

Quiltedfloor6

On the way back to their apartment, I looked at the cracks in the sidewalks and saw churches and steeples, some caught in the act of being struck by lightning:

Crack2

Crack6

Crack10

Fortunately the lightning only took half the steeple each time:

Crack4

Crack7

Sometimes lightning only sheered off the point at the top:

Crack9

I saw a high rise church built on a mountain (or half a high rise church built on half a mountain for those of you who are more factually inclined:

Crack11

And best I can tell, this is 5.25 of the Ten Commandments, undoubtedly put on legs to save them from The Flood:

Crack12

Oh, and we rode the subway last night (a first for me on my fourth visit to The Big Apple) to Little Italy for supper, and I want you to know: I hadn’t been on the train a nanosecond when a fella in a red jacket hopped up and offered me his seat. He’s in construction, and I’m a little offended that he didn’t whistle at me as he offered me his seat. I broke all the rules, though, and not only made eye contact with him, but enjoyed talking to him. (Something that would’ve been much easier had he come with subtitles.)

A Perennial Special Day

KippAugust2013

Today is my son’s birthday. If you’re lucky enough to know Kipp, you might celebrate different things about him – not because he transforms himself into someone different with everyone he meets in hopes of gaining some invisible stamp of approval, but because he is such a delightfully complex and multi-faceted person who is interested in and excels at so many different things.

I celebrate his willingness to take risks – not stupid risks, but educated risks. He digs in, researches, asks questions, and learns before he leaps. Most of the time, anyway. There was the StartUp Weekend in Boulder when he’d gone to scope it out in preparation for presenting one of his three good ideas the following year. But at the last minute – and I do mean very last minute – he stood up, presented one of his ideas, formed his team, developed the prototype company over the weekend, and 48 hours later, he’d won the big prize. (So it all worked out.) There’s also the fact that while he was still sleeping on the floor of some friend’s uncle, he learned his way around Los Angeles by delivering food. And there’s the skydiving, which is pretty daring, if you ask me. (He’s also a certified skydiving instructor, too, if you’re interested.)

Speaking of skydiving, I’d like to take this opportunity to say how much I celebrate the caring and consideration he shows by calling me on the way to any jump then calling me again on his way home from the jump.

I celebrate his willingness to say “I don’t know” right out loud.

I celebrate his knowing that you can learn more about humans and their relationships from poetry, music, art, and literature than from any psychology class or textbook.

I celebrate his creativity that erupts in the poetry, songs, and essays he writes; in the acting he does on film and on stage; in the open mic events I hope he’ll find his way back to.

I celebrate that he is a wildly creative young man who also balances his checkbook.

I celebrate his dependability – if Kipp tells you he’ll do something, you can move on to something else knowing he will do what he promised. And he holds himself accountable, never accepting the blame for others but not shoving blame on others, either.

I celebrate his unwillingness to take a bunch of crap (which is to say his willingness to stand up for himself). On his first day at the new, private middle school, a big fat kid looked at the short, small Kipp, got right up in Kipp’s personal space, starred down into Kipp’s retinas, and barked “You ought to go back to kindergarten” to which Kipp said without missing a beat, “And you ought to go back to Weight Watchers.”

I celebrate his whipsmart and varied intelligences that spring from all parts of his brain.

Alkipp

I celebrate his gentleness and his love of traditions. Kipp got his first stitches when he was in first grade, and we went for ice cream afterwards to make this a celebratory Milestone Life Event. Years later when Alison got her first stitches, Kipp called me in the ER to say that he wanted to pay for her celebratory ice cream.

I celebrate his sense of place . . . when the last box left the house he’d grown up in, Kipp and I spent a few minutes sitting on the front stoop, laughing and crying as we told stories as our way of thanking the house for sheltering us while transitioning into new shelter. It was a tender moment that I’ll remember long after I’ve forgotten his name.

I celebrate his thoughtfulness, his empathetic nature, his bend towards self-reliance.

I celebrate his self-awareness . . . Though he was slow to warm to swimming lessons (I don’t mean swimming lessons in general, but slow to warm to each and every weekly swimming lesson), afterwards he sat in the backseat shivering partly from the chill of a wearing a wet swimsuit in an air conditioned car and partly from the excitement of going straight to his grandmother’s swimming pool for more swimming. The day he went off the diving board at swimming lessons, he went straight to YeaYea’s diving board, walked resolutely to the end of the board, and stood there shivering, his little hands clasped in front of him as he looked down at the water, eventually turning to me and saying, “Mom, I guess you’re just gonna’ have to push me.”

I celebrate his attention to detail and his strive for the remarkable, though he is overly hard on himself sometimes . . . like the time he was learning to ride his bike. He got to the end of the driveway, and as he attempted to turn onto the road, he fell. He took a minute to look at his scraped knee, then picked himself and the bike up, walked it back up to the top of the driveway, and started over, falling again. This time he boo-hooed (and I mean loudly). “Are you okay?” his dad asked rushing over to check on him. “Yeah,” Kipp said, “I’m fine, but I FELL IN THE SAME SPOT.”

I celebrate Kipp’s sense of hospitality, his sense of humor, his precociousness. When I asked our pediatrician why baby Kipp wouldn’t stop crying, she said it’s because he was a 40 years old man trapped in a baby’s body. This woman of science told me that, and she was absolutely right.

I celebrate Kipp’s willingness to be vulnerable and his ability to let other people be vulnerable without rushing to make it better or fix anything. I celebrate his sensitivity, his desire to be his ow man, and how he lives with diabetes, taking good care of himself without whining and complaining of all the extra steps that involves for him.

I celebrate my lucky stars and swimmers and eggs that all came together to place Kipp in my arms, in my heart, in my life. As he said that one Christmas, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he looked down on what Santa had left under the tree: “I didn’t know I be’ed this good.” Whatever I did i a former life, it had to be pretty darn special.

I call him Slug because he is the hottest coal that keeps my fires burning. Happy birthday, Kipp. I love you more than my pocketbooks.

Goodhugger

A Different Way to Look at the Heavens

Pari7

Today was a play day with Stacy, a cousin who I love more like a brother, if you want to know the truth. We went to PARI (Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute), a delightfully marvelous, accessible, educational facility tucked away in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. We ran our hands along a tire that once stood between the earth and one of the space shuttles, and when we saw the ridiculously thin tread, Stace said “No wonder the shuttle needed a parachute to stop it.” We looked at satellites, one adorned with a smiley face painted on during the mid 1960s just to say to the Russians “We see you.” (The Russians, we were told, stamped out dirty words in the snow by way of response.) We marveled at the variety of meteorites on display and laughed out loud at the hallway lined with spectacular photos of the moon, an event our granddaddy died believing was television hoakery.

John the Tour Guide showed us all sorts of computers, one of which that’s tracking the earth’s drifting and shifting magnetic something-or-other. It kinda’ alarmed me, really, so I asked him about the implications of that change, and I don’t know if he understood my question or not, but I know for certain that I didn’t understand his answer. John in the Control Booth told us about watching quasars and blips and sounds that are so far away, it makes my head hurt to think about it. (Next time I’m going to ask him if he’s looking into our past or into our future.)

Then they gave us a map, circled some spots they thought we might enjoy, and bid us farewell. We went straightaway to the new Observation Deck where the view was quieting and the quiet was deafening. “Though I don’t know exactly how,” Stacy said as we were leaving, “my life will be better for having been here.”

To which I said simply: Amen.

Pari1

Pari2

Pari5

Pari3

patterns of being

IMG 2574

IMG 2582

As a little girl, I’d spend the occasional Friday night with my grandparents. On Saturday morning, my grandmother would shake me awake: “Jeanne, are you awake?” she’d ask over and over with increasing volume. “Yes ma’am,” I’d eventually say. Upon her order, I’d sit up and look at her only to hear her say: “I just wanted to tell you to sleep as long as you want to.”

My granddaddy would feed me cornflakes then load me into his faded red-and-white Ford Fairlane and drive me around the county, pointing out every family’s homeplace. Back then, folks around town gave directions using family homeplaces as markers for turns or mileage. I still do.

Aunt Rene came into possession of the house when the elderly man she cared for died. Though she lived somewhere else for a period of time so Uncle Bill could be near his work, that white board house in the middle of town was Aunt Rene’s house for as long as I can remember. Forgetting to turn the stove off was bad enough, but when she began to dose them (her sister, Lucy, had come to live with her by then) their tablets several times a day because she couldn’t tell the difference between waking from a nap and waking from a night’s sleep, moving The Girls to an assisted living home became an undeniable, unavoidable necessity. Though she was less than thrilled with her change of address, Aunt Rene eventually settled in, flirting with the single men and finding a bigger pocketbook to hold her frequent Bingo winnings. She was quite the social butterfly, that one.

Shortly after the move, Aunt Rene began to collect napkins. We’d go out to eat at a restaurant, and while we paid the bill, she’d open that big ole’ pocketbook of hers and empty the napkin holder into it, never taking the holder itself, mind you, only its contents. I gave her packages of napkins purchased at restaurant supply stores in hopes of quelling her sticky fingers, but it simply was not the same.

She also became an avid collector of cardboard boxes – empty cardboard boxes, thank goodness – availability taking precedence over size. “You just never know when you might need a good empty box,” she’d tell me in what I declare was a tone of pride in her voice when I asked about the growing mountain of boxes in the corner of her room beside the bed. About once a week (sometimes twice, depending), Mother and/or I would go by rid her room of most of her stash, always respectfully leaving a few behind.

It was actually a rather endearing (if frustrating at times) behavior. Though she never gave us more of an answer than the standard you-just-never-know answer, I ‘spect those boxes were a throwback to times in her past when, from what I hear, she could fit everything she owned into a small cardboard box and still have room left over. And I ‘spect they represented the future. Though she quit talking to us about it, I’m quite sure the hope of one day filling those boxes with her earthly belongings and moving back to her home never completely left her. And every now and then when I think about Aunt Rene and her boxes, I imagine that maybe those boxes made her feel in control of her life somehow, if for no other reason than she and she alone would decide what to put inside them.

I think about Aunt Rene when I remember how as an undergraduate student, I transformed empty boxes into nightstands and coffee tables through the magic of paint, tape, glue, and old magazines. I think about her when I fill boxes with things I just can’t yet let go of, telling myself “The children will want this one day.” I think about her as I poke around in search of boxes to hold my various projects, boxes as creative containers that will keep visual clutter to a minimum while making it easy to start and stop without having to pull everything out or put everything up. It is a throwback to the days when to save time and conserve mental capacity, I had a tote bag for every organization I was affiliated with, filled with what I needed for that particular group, a way to grab and go. “What in the sam hill are you going to do with that?” my husband asks as I pick up an old hat box at the thrift shop. “Well,” I tell him as I continue to survey and assess, “you just never know when you might need a good empty box.”

Let’s Talk Eyeball to Eyeball, part 1

Web

Now listen, let’s cut right to the chase: difficult people are one thing, stupid people are one thing, but abusive, controlling, manipulative people are quite another, and you need only stay in relationship with them long enough to be able to get out safely.

Period.

You deserve better.

Period.

You’ve heard the old saying “You made your bed and now you have to lay in it?”

Forget it. Forget you ever heard it. Erase it. Obliterate it.

Think you have to be miserable and in danger because you are obligated to live with the consequences of your choices?

Bunk.

Sometimes you can get so settled in a relationship, so comfortable with its predictable dynamics that you can’t see it clearly. You get lost in the familiarity, losing sight of the harm that’s being perpetrated on you and your partner. (But I don’t care about your partner right now, I care about YOU.)

Let’s be real clear about this:

Healthy love doesn’t manipulate, control, isolate, or harm another. Healthy love doesn’t issue ultimatums or demand you buy them things in return for their affection. Healthy love can’t be bought or sold. Healthy love doesn’t isolate you from friends sand family. Healthy love doesn’t pummel you incessantly with junky words designed to keep you down and them up. Healthy love doesn’t want you to be a slave or a doormat or a punching bag.

People, listen to me.

Healthy love wants you to shine. Healthy love brings out the best in you and the best in them. Healthy love makes you walk differently, with the grace of someone who is cherished and supported and loved through and through.

If your partner professes to be jealous of your friends, envious of the attention you give your family, if your partner demands that you forsake your friends and family spending time only with their friends and family, do not confuse this for love. This is not jealousy and this is not ardent love, my friends, this is controlling, isolating behavior, a tool in the abuser’s arsenal. Bullies are sniveling cowards, really. Knowing that other people just might see them more clearly than you, well, they want none of that.

Recognize it for the controlling, manipulative, isolating behavior it is.

If your partner tells you lies about your family and lies about your friends, see this for what it is: deceit. an erosion of trust. And really, if you don’t have trust as the foundation of a relationship, what kind of relationship do you have? Said another way, without trust, do you really have a relationship?

Trust is everything.

If your partner gets what they want by plying you with affection or pitching hissy fits and allowing you to makeup with them by buying them what they want, taking them where they want to go, doing for them what they wanted you to do in the first place, see this for what it is: immaturity and manipulation.

You are not a game piece they move to win the game.

If you earn money and your partner demands that you turn it over to them then refuses to share it with you – say it with me: this is controlling behavior and is not to be tolerated. I don’t care how you feel about capitalism, you need to have your own money.

Period.

If, after pitching a hissy fit, your partner says anything akin to “If you hadn’t done or said so-and-so, I wouldn’t have had to get mad, hit you, pitch such a fit (insert your behavior of choice),” see this for what it is: shifting the blame and trying to make you responsible for their unacceptable behavior. Unacceptable.

If your partner does any or all of these things, see it for what it is: thuggish, bullying behavior – abuse. Abuse doesn’t just mean physical contact, people. Abuse can leave bruises that are never visible to the naked eye. Bruises that can be healed, though it might take a few eons or so.

If your partner scares you,
If your partner tries in any way to make and keep you small,
If your partner blames you for their bad behavior
LEAVE.
Exit the relationship.
This is not a healthy relationship, and this is not healthy love.

You never did anything to deserve this. Ever. You may not be able to see it right now under all the years of words and deeds to the contrary, but you ARE worthy and you ARE lovable and you DESERVE to be with someone who cherishes you.

If you’re in an abusive relationship, you can’t be stupid about your leaving. You have to be safe and consider the safety of yourself and your family, but that doesn’t lock you into staying in an unhealthy relationship for the rest of your life. Shake your body like a dog fresh out of the bathtub. Do it again. And one more time. Scream YES as loud as you can (even if it has to be on the inside). Now square your shoulders, exhale, and start planning. I know it’s not as easy as me writing these words. Of course it isn’t. Your exit might be quick and easy or it might be a long, arduous journey. Either way, you will get tired – changing the way you see yourself is invigorating, trying, challenging, exhausting, and liberating. It takes practice to see yourself in a new way, it takes patience to let your bones convince yourself that you are worthy. But it’s doable. And we are here cheering you on. We want you to succeed. We want you to see yourself the way we see you. The world needs you to live into your own bigness, and you cannot do that while under the thumb and under the control of a monster.

It Was A Dark and Stupendous Night

TheHat.jpg

38 years ago today, I walked into the bar in search of a drink and out of the bar with the bartender . . . my future husband. I went there with a friend from high school, and we’d pooled and spent our money on gas to get us there. Having not thought things through all that much, my friend came to the rescue assuring me that she knew a bartender in a bar called Muhlenbrink’s. He’d be wearing a brown leather floppy-brimmed hat, she said. We made our way through the hugely crowded bar, and low and behold, there was, in fact, a bartender in a brown leather floppy-brimmed hat.

And he was adorable. Absolutely, undeniably adorable.

She shoved and I flirted to make the seas part so we could land ourselves directly in front of Him. She thumped her fist down on the bar and proclaimed, “I know you.”

He looked up. “No you don’t,” he said and went immediately back to drawing beer.

I was mortified. Mortified, I tell you.

As I silently begged the floor to open up and swallow me whole, she persisted with her insistence. It seems she knew the HAT, not the MAN. You see, for reasons he can’t remember, Andy was wearing Billy’s hat that night.

At this point, I don’t suppose he’ll get fired if I tell you that he did eventually slip us one (note the singular) tom collins, and when the bar closed (we stayed to listen to the band – wink, wink), we were invited to a part at the bouncer’s apartment.

We accepted.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

And herstory.

We met on January 27; became engaged on April 1; and married on July 31.

Of that same year.

He says I’m the most expensive date he ever had.

I say he’s the best date I could get with the boobs I had at the time.

Ah, love.

blink, snap, beat

Funny thing, complacency.
There she was: scooting along through life,
whittling down her to do list,
wondering how it ever got this overgrown in the first place,
thinking of all the things she’s gonna’ do
One Day
and how marvelous life will be then,
even though she readily admits that it’s
pretty awesome right now.
But still.

Then the phone rings
and her husband says
“I’ve just been hit by a guy
doing about 50 mph.”
“Are you all right?” she asks,
and he assures her that he’s fine,
especially since he saw the guy coming,
swerving off the road then
back onto the road,
headed right for him
but he was able to move over just a little bit
so the fella didn’t hit him head-on after all
but just in front of the driver’s side.

Her car is in the shop,
so she calls her daughter and asks her
to go over
and once daughter says “I’m on my way,”
she breathes easier because
she knows her husband is okay
and she knows her daughter can handle anything.
Her son is in Colorado, but she calls him anyway
because emotional support doesn’t know geography.

Her husband and daughter get home
and they all spend the rest of the afternoon
quietly watching television
and refreshing the ice they hope will
contain the rise of the mountain
that’s grown on his left knee.

She sleeps good
(considering)
and the next day she sees the
big, ugly bruise across his chest –
the seatbelt’s legacy –
and even though the soreness settles in,
and they snuggle and touch even more than usual
as the sobering possibilities of what might have happened
drape over them like a heavy, heavy, heavy veil.

She writes as though it happened
to someone else
because that’s as close as she can get
to it right now,
and she wonders
why it takes a near-negative event
to shift her into
renewed, committed
positivity.

Truck1.JPGTruck2.JPG

and no needles

our first christmas tree followed us from the room
so we started anchoring them
to the ceiling.

then there were the times
when we tromped out as a family
in search of
the perfect tree.
even though the trees
were always resplended,
their branches fully laden
with handmade ornaments
crafted from glue
and popsicle sticks
and fuzzy red pom-pom balls,
the actual shopping
excursion was never
our finest moment.

the shortest tree-shopping trip ever
was the year we found the coveted
two-headed tree.
but because it started to rain on our way home
didn’t stop raining till mid-january,
that famous tree never made it inside.

four full-to-the-brim calendars
ushered in the
color-coded tree-in-a-box.

the december daddy died,
hubby went out by himself
and fetched a $5 tree.
we leaned it up in the courtyard.
and for the first time ever,
we were totally unconcerned about
turning its bad side to the corner.
foregoing the ornaments and even the
dreaded tree stand,
we threw some lights at it
and enjoyed looking at it
through the glass
where it became a metaphor
for my life.

there was the year
we wanted to buy
a tree from the
local filling station.
they had two left,
and while the girls
were prepared and willing
(eager, even)
to take both home,
the guys said an emphatic and convincing “no”
so we drove on,
unwilling to separate
the two trees one from the other.
(we didn’t go treeless, though,
eventually paying somebody $25
when they agreed to let us chop down
a tree from their front yard.)

there were the christmas cruises
when we left the decorating
(and the consequent clean-up)
to them.

a friend’s accidental death
this week
caused my son to get home
just yesterday,
on christmas eve afternoon,
which effectively eliminated
any time for the annual
tree-shopping excursion.

scanning the roadside
on the way home from the
asheville airport,
and finding absolutely nothing
suitable,
i’d just begun to mourn
when the idea fairy screeched in to visit
just as we entered the
last curve before home.

we were just too tired
to deal with it last night,
and it would’ve been easy
to skip on past it this morning.
in fact, the kids voted nay,
but my adorable husband
sensing how much it meant to me,
spent the
12 minutes required
(and that’s from fetch to finish, folks)
decorating this year’s tree.

well, it’s not actually a TREE,
mind you.
you see, this year
we strung lights around
the green TRUNK
that’s been in my daddy’s family
for forever
and a day.

looking at that festive trunk,
i see roots that run deep.
i see dints and dings that bear witness to storms weathered successfully.
i see gifts being tenderly cradled on the inside,
till they’re ready to be
shared and laughed and sung right out loud.
i see locks and latches that are easily undone,
but effectively protective when needbe.
i see where the lights are plugged into the nearby outlet
because let’s face it: everybody needs help generating energy every now ‘n then.

what else do i see?
i see stories
and smiles
and laughter.
i see hugs
and tears
and togetherness.
i see resolve
and grief
and love.
long-standing, deep-running love.
and perhaps best of all,
i see a brand new tradition
conjured from the oldest of old traditions: resourcefulness,
or as we might call it just this once: inJeanneuity.

o christmas trunk, o christmas trunk . . .

thechristmastrunk.jpg

~~~
this post is my response to today’s reverb10 prompt from tracey clark: Photo – a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Where in the world is The 70273 Project? Please add a pin to show us where you are in the world. (1) Click the + sign in upper righthand corner of map. (2) Enter your first name only. (3) Enter your city/state. (4) Using the pins at the bottom of the map, select a marker based on how you are involved. (5) Select preview to see before posting. (6) Select submit to post. Please add a marker for each role you serve in The 70273 Project.

Support The 70273 Project

Allow me to introduce myself . . .

Hey, Sugar! I'm Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: writer ~ stitcher ~ storyteller ~ one-woman performer ~ creator & founder of The 70273 Project, and I'm mighty glad you're here. Make yourself at home, and if you have any questions, just holler.

special delivery: get blog posts hot off the press

categories

© 2024 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers’ Barefoot Heart

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑