I've moved!!!

My actual home is far too small these days, and there isn't much I can do about that, so I have been blogsphere shopping.

I've found a new home - please add to you address book.  Stop by and visit me, often.
http://bht826.wordpress.com/

XOXO,
BT

Joe

I lived downtown for most of my adult life.  We laughingly referred to it as the historical ghetto - yes, it was in the historical district, but it was surrounded by examples of white flight.  Our three little avenues were a cocoon of homes always needing repair and requiring more maintenance than a single woman who teaches school could deal with.  I sold my house several years ago and now live in a smaller and more manageable abode.

I loved my neighbors, my sidewalks, and my hundred year old oaks and pecans.  I also loved Joe.

Joe Hope took care of my lawn and most of the others in the district.  He was of no discernible age - could have been 40 or could have been 60.  He wore the years well and no job was too much for him, unless you asked him to plant any white flower or shrub, or a nandina.  He hated them as much as I do and quit one family when they insisted he plant the things.

The first year he worked for me I told him I wanted five white azaleas to mix in with the pink and red.  I might as well have asked him for a kidney.  When I insisted he said he'd do it, but they 'wouldn't do.'  Asked me why I wanted a flower that would just look 'rusty' when they turned. 

He was right - the next Spring was a banner year for dogwood and azaleas, except for those five white ones.  I'm sure he poisoned them.

He was also a master garden designer.  I might look out one day and have monkey grass around a camellia bed, or the crepe myrtle might have changed places with a Japanese maple. 

He didn't mind 'borrowing' plants from other people in the neighborhood.  When I mentioned my new monkey grass to a friend up the street she told me that he had thinned hers the day before.  Mystery solved.

Joe had other quirks besides white flowers and nandinas.  He always came to my house first because he liked my coffee.  He and I spent many mornings on my front porch, drinking coffee and talking about everything.  He had several children - I'm still not sure how many - and all of them had children.  If  you ever needed to call Joe you had to go through five or six people to get him to the phone.  I think they all lived with him.

He wouldn't use a weedeater.  He spoiled me by using an old-fashioned edger on wheels.  He took great pride in his sharp edges and told me he sharpened his tool every day to make sure his lines were clean.

He was also sensitive.  A mention that maybe the grass needed to be cut shorter was enough to make him quit you.  It took many phone calls and promises that the offender would never question him again about grass height before he would come back, and an even longer time for him to stop sulking.

I never questioned him about anything after the azalea incident.

I'm not sure how much he charged.  It varied.  Sometimes he'd knock on the door and say "I had to charge you more today - I fertilized (or cleaned gutters, or poisoned)."  If he wasn't in a pout he did some of those things for free; if not, you could spend your grocery money paying him.

Joe got mad at me when I started work.  He was used to starting his day in my neighborhood at my house - he said Mrs. So-and-So's coffee wasn't fit to drink and it got his day started on a bad note.  He got over it and worked for me as long as I lived downtown.

When I sold my house I told him where I was moving.  He looked disgusted and said, "Mrs. T, you know I'm a townie just like you.  I ain't gonna go down that Drive.  You gotta find you somebody else."

I miss my friends and the camaraderie you find downtown.  Front porches really are the best places to visit.  I miss the convenience to church and the post office and the library.

But I really miss Joe and our early morning conversations on my porch, me in the swing, Joe propped up with one leg on the stoop.  Both of us content just to be in the world.

Michelle Duggar Saps My Brain

Admittedly, I'm no expert in large families.  I have a sister and two brothers, a fairly normal sized group for my era.  I personally birthed three of my own.   So the number of children I consider acceptable is vastly different from the Queen of All Things Uterine and Fallopian,  Michelle Duggar.

I bow to her reproductive system.  And scoff and sneer and rage against the machine.

Why?  Simply, why?  I get the whole 'we have the children God sends us' litany - I don't buy it because I know where babies come from.  And how to prevent them from coming.

God also sent you a damned brain.  Come out of that Stepford bubble for a minute and face facts: 

You. Have. Nineteen. Kids. 

You and that shellac-headed moron you married.  And you gave them stupid names for the most part.  Ginger with a 'J' just to continue your prejudice against the other 25 letters of the alphabet?  C'mon.

I watch this show - actually I stop while surfing when I see it on - just as I watch boxing while flipping channels - amazed that anyone would do either.  I think I'd get into a ring with Joe Frazier before I would become a baby-making menace.

You can't parent nineteen children.  It is emotionally and physically impossible.  One episode had TQATUF sharing her parenting tips.  Each child is evidently given a 'buddy.'  (Translated - one of the older children is given a toddler as soon as it's weaned so that Michelle can continue her ongoing mission to birth a nation.)  She did say that each new baby was her buddy at first.

Wow - you mean each new baby gets your undivided attention for awhile?  Sorry, don't believe it.  Having three kids divides your attention - a passel just sends it off the charts.

I realize that the Duggars were doing their imitation of rabbits long before they began whoring their family out for television.  I do wonder how many more they would have had if TLC hadn't knocked on their door.

Their last baby was born monstrously premature.  This poor child faces a lifetime of physical problems.  And why?  'Cause Mommy and Daddy are irresponsible.  They sold out, and honestly, who can blame them - somebody's got to feed all their little 'buddies.' 

I could understand this disaster easier if I thought they were doing all the birthing for religious reasons.  If Dumbass Dad was a minister of some weird sect and saw this as a way to truth and enlightenment.

But they're used car salesmen.  Does that species really need advanced?

I know that the number of children other people feel they can have is not my business.  The children seem very well-adjusted and happy.  They aren't asking that I help support them and they're home schooled so tax dollars aren't even going to educate them.  The Duggars evidently pull their own weight.

My hope is that each of the nineteen children lead purposeful and meaningful lives. 

And that one day Michelle wipes the adoring, blank gaze off her face, gets a prescription for birth control, and tells Jim Bob to blow beets.

Amen.

Prissy

Five days a week, 187 days a year I dress and leave the house.  Semi put together, with make-up and jewelry anyway, ready to face adolescents.  I think I'm known for my unique style, one that I suppose has evolved over almost 57 years.  I give my morning routine no more thought than just another way to prepare for the day.

I go native in the summer.  Shorts, tee, flops.  Toilette consists of showering and washing my hair.  Period.

Except.

After being au natural for several days I feel the urge, nay, the compulsion to be me again.  I actually don real clothes, makeup, and jewelry.  And perfume.

The natural look is great most days. The hummingbirds, Harper Lee, and hydrangeas don't seem to notice that I have on the same pair of khaki shorts I've worn three times this week. They all eat and drink what I offer whether I'm wearing eighty-three bracelets or not.


Right now I'm nursing the infirm and the Tabgaze doesn't register whether I'm all gussied up or wearing burlap.  The lunch I pack for JT still tastes like a turkey, mustard, and cheese sandwich whether I've rosied my cheekbones with blush or not.  Facebook friends don't know when I'm sitting at the computer with a WE tshirt from 1997.

But I don't do it for other people.  I do it for me. 

Why?  Because I feel more like myself with eyeliner, subtle though it is.  (Ink by Bare Escentuals in case you were wondering.)  And after awhile I need to be reminded that I'm grown now, and grownups are expected to do certain things.

Like get dressed.

"Now is the winter of our discontent...

...Made glorious summer..."

Really?  I'm waiting, Willie.

So far this summer I've been part of far more doctor's appointments, surgeries, tests, x-rays, and ongoing recoveries than I would normally choose. And before anyone points it out, I realize that the patient is much more involved than I, but honestly?  Sometimes I think I'd like to change places.

Back story:  This was supposed to be a summer of nothingness.  I had no beach house rented - the oil spill scared me from spending that kind of money for black tar tracking.  I planned to spend the summer in the yard, digging, moving plants, watering, weeding.  My idea of heaven on earth.

Plans changed.  My youngest, who was originally staying at school working, got a better job offer locally.  Added to the free room and board it was an offer he couldn't pass up.

I might have mentioned that his doppelganger is Pig Pen of Charlie Brown fame.  And no shower is complete without using every damned towel he can get his hands on.  And he eats like a mountain man.

My former husband had bypass surgery.  He is alone and there is nowhere else to recover but at my house.  A house I moved to after selling my HUGE house several years ago.  Present house?  Lilliputian in design.  You can cover it from one end to the other in fourteen steps, and yes, I know this from experience.

People who live alone do strange things.

A hoped for change in employment looks bleak.  New administrator + old relationship = massive fail.

Stress has made a deposit in my soul account and interest is compounding daily.

Whine over, August looms. 

I only wish I weren't already looking forward to it.

Decorum

I'm old.  I've seen it all.  And those truths still allow me to be shocked at much of what I witness daily.

As a culture (great way to start a rant) we lack decorum.  A group of people with every opportunity to get it right, and we fail miserably.  We don't get that just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should.

Can a Hollywood star(?) dress her three-year-old in heels?  Sure.  Should she?  I think not.  She's three.  What's wrong with Mary Janes? 

If I see one more muffin top on otherwise perfectly normal teenage girls - normal meaning you aren't genetically shaped like Barbie - I will  hurl.  Buy a damned pair of pants that fit you.  And please do NOT wear a skin-tight tee with the offending jeans - one view is enough.  Your midriff doesn't warrant a closer look.  You would be just as fashionable in clothes that fit.

Speaking on a personal note - once you hit 50?  Start dressing as you should.  Those oh-so-perfect ripped jeans with the boho top?  My daughter is right: the ensemble just looks kind of desperate.  And the camo pants for someone who has never seen a gun any closer than our SRO's holster?  Not really.

Guys are just as bad.  Please, don't ever, wear a tank top unless you're gay and out and live in New York City.  They do not flatter straight men, regardless of your natural or steroid-enhanced biceps.  We get it - you're a gym rat and you're proud. 

You're also rather silly looking.

And on the subject of Facebook, a topic I waffle on daily, please please PLEASE do not describe every aspect of your significant other's perfection to us.  We don't care - we've heard you before about a different bundle of wonderfulness.

The pictures of you at the beach, one of the 148 that you posted, with your tongue stuck out and throwing the deuces? So trite. So sad. So stupid.


Girls who are 19-21, married or not, who say "I don't feel well today?"  Yeah, in just a few more posts we will discover that Eureka! They are having a baby!

Forgive me if I don't jump for joy at yet another example of lack of decorum. 

Really?  You want me to be excited that you are adding to the already intellectually-depleted stock that I teach every day?  Not to mention the bursting-at-the-seams social programs that I help fund.  I want  you to have a healthy baby, but I don't necessarily want to throw you a shower.  Or attend.  Thank you.

Just say no.  And practice a little decorum.

Day is done, gone the sun...

I grew up on Army posts.  I swam in the pools and attended the Fourth of July picnics and watched twenty-five cent movies in the Post theaters and ate grilled pimento cheese sandwiches at the PX grills.  I knew no sense of permanence; that was found in a farmhouse in Ivalee.  We moved every other year for most of my childhood, settling in Atlanta in the 60s and allowing me the first taste of staying put. 

There was one constant - every day at sundown, on many different parade grounds, the flag was lowered and the mournful sound of 'Taps' signaled that the day was finished.  People stopped what they were doing, and pulled to the side of the road if they were driving, and turned to face the flag.  Paying respect to the symbol of what our parents had devoted their lives to, or what a new recruit hoped would help him find his place, or what silly teen aged girls found droll and bourgeois but meant that the Varsity would soon be packed with Georgia Tech boys we were all too young to date but certainly not too young to flirt with. 

Day was ending, night was upon us, and we were 16.

As I've grown - I hope - (at least I'm not still hanging at the Varsity hoping a 19 year old will smile at me) I miss that ritual.  The sameness, the poignant sound of the trumpet, the minute during the day where everyone could take comfort in knowing regardless of what was happening in the rest of the world our military was at the ready. 

They played 'Taps' at my daddy's funeral five years ago on the coldest day of the year.  It brought home all those sundowns, some of them without Daddy there because of conflicts far away from the life a boy from Sand Mountain ever thought he'd have.  The song takes on a totally different meaning at times like that.

Every day I still do my own version of 'Taps.'  Sitting down somewhere, with a latte or wine, and thinking about the day.  Summing up.

And thankful that I live the life I do because of those who serve their country, in whatever capacity, and make it possible for me to enjoy their efforts in whatever way I choose.

'Day is done, gone the sun,

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.'

Professionals

They are in every hospital waiting room - the people who seem to delight in the spontaneous heart transplant, or emergency appendectomy, or spinal fusion.  They hover around ER entrances, just hoping someone that their cousin's husband's mother knew might have a kidney stone she can't pass so they can get their greedy claws into that brand new audience - worried family members.

They have no other recreational outlets.  Their churches uninvited them long ago to serve on any committee and the few friends they have are their clones in make-believe concern.  They probably have a meeting place, dark, where they congregate to share possible traumas they might descend upon.

You all know them.  They appear halfway through a surgery, just as the family is getting settled in, to dispense advise and compare procedures.  Someone's uncle had the same heart surgery, but he needed 8 bypasses and coded 5 times on the table.  A lady at church nearly died from neglect at the same hospital, having the same procedure your loved one is having.  A nephew of their postman used to work at said hospital and the stories he tells....

I could go on but you know the creature being described.

The females always wear way too much perfume - usually Estee Lauder "Youth Dew," and they aren't afraid to reapply after an hour or so.  Just as your nasal passages and sinus cavities are adjusting to the last squirt of evil.  The males inevitably have slicked back hair and Chester the Molester eyeglasses and use their handkerchief, often.

I think, if hospitals were smart and all about teachable moments, there should be some criteria necessary for admittance into surgical waiting rooms.  Tenuous connections to someone one of the family members knew forty years ago really doesn't grant you a seat in an overcrowded waiting area of a business, and that's what a hospital is.

And please?  Leave the Rook cards at home.

JT ...

• is very tall
• is very thin
• loves Miles Davis
• loves steak so rare that it moos when it's turned on the grill
• is a connoisseur
• thinks almost exactly as I do on most subjects, except for those I'm not smart enough to think about
• is a great songwriter
• is much like Pigpen from Charlie Brown
• cares too much sometimes
• is accident prone - brick walls fall on him
• has a great laugh and uses it often
• would eat sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits every day, but only if they come from Jack's
• was/is a surprise
• takes thank-you notes to a new level
• once told  his godfather, when asked what Santa was going to bring him, "beats the  hell out of me."  He was 4.  We had a talk.
• sees the good in everyone and is sometimes disappointed
• wants to save the world
• trying to save himself
• is my heart
• is very fair, in every way
• studies Latin and Greek
• loves his family
• loves his dog
• working on loving himself
• has a birthday tomorrow.

Another JT said it best - "Don't assume that the life you left is the life you have to lead."

Happy Birthday.  And welcome to your future.

aut viam inveniam aut faciam

My little girl

Children grow up way too fast.  This is a proven fact and no one who has them would try to argue.  One minute they are crying to be fed and the next we're crying because they're leaving.

My daughter did that to me - grew up and away far faster than the speed of sound.  Yesterday she was refusing to eat any Flintstone vitamin other than Wilmas and today she is an accomplished writer and editor for a major magazine. 

What happened to the tow-head who replied "nine" every time she heard Peter Piper?  Only she could be that emphatic and positive.  She, who stole my heart the second she was born has spent close to thirty years being the most direct, definite, intense child I have. 

When she was three she told me that it was time we started looking for her castle. 

She always read and absorbed everything going on around her - that's what makes her good at her job.  And she is.  The best.  Her managing editor, a hard-boiled New Yorker, tells her that often.  She won every award in her journalism class and underclassmen, I'm told, still speak of her with awe.  She is special.

She's at a turning point in her career.  They closed her bureau in November so she has been free-lancing since.  Print journalism, folks, really is going the way of the dinosaur.  But she makes enough to support herself and she's getting to write about things that she enjoys. 

Essentials like insurance packages and retirement plans are not part of her life anymore, and she's beginning to think about things like this.  Free-lancing is great and pays the bills, but she's looking ahead and realizes that she won't always be twenty-eight and needs a plan.

She has two interviews next week.  Managing editor of a very large health magazine, with accompanying perks, and as a reporter for the largest newsgroup in the US.  She would be terrific at both.

The realist in me wants to encourage her to take the managing editor position.  It's safe, been around for years, and she would bring youth and enthusiasm to a lucrative subscription group - Baby Boomers.

The dreamer in me wants her to grab her trench coat and laptop and take the reporting job.  She would travel and be engaged in reality like she would otherwise not know first-hand.  She's single and doesn't even have a goldfish - there's nothing to tie her down.

She won't ask for advice; she gave that up in 1985.  But she will want to hear me pro and con both should they be offered.  I don't know what I'll say.

One of my girlhood dreams was to be Margaret Mead.  Travel in hot climates studying people and writing about an existence so far removed from my own that I really couldn't even imagine it.

Instead, I met someone when I was way too young and married him.  He was way too young too, and the fact that he looked like Richard Gere and drove a GTO couldn't make two totally different people learn how to be a couple.  We divorced, I met my second husband and when we married two years later I started living the life so many others have.

What kind of anthropologist would I have been?  I can't say that what I have done instead is somehow less important.  My life has merit and my children are people I like as well as love.  My career has fulfilled me, usually.  I have great friends.  I have no trouble living with the me I became.

But I will always wonder.

Robert J. Elisberg on Huffington Post is a man of genius. In response to Palin's latest attempt to appear as something more than a failed governor of a state whose population would rank it as only the 18th most populous city in the United States:

"It is egregious and irresponsible that there are still people who ask Sarah Palin what she thinks. And people who listen. Thankfully, the more she speaks, the smaller she appears. Thank God."

He was responding to her solution for the oilspill.  It was a beautiful thing.

Why do the arms of Morpheus elude?

Okay, I've never been a great sleeper - well, maybe when I was a baby.  I can't remember, and oddly that's the one topic my mother doesn't yammer on about incessantly.  (Just don't ask her about when I started to read.  My former husband and great friend once said that if she told the story one more time she would have me coming out of the womb with a newspaper in my hands.)

As a teenager my friends refused to spend the night at my house - I got up too early.  I was fine at their house.  I'd get up and talk to their parents: why are other parents so much cooler/smarter/better cookers than our own?  A query to be addressed at a later date.  Ad nauseum, as usual.

When I had children I slept because my body said to.  Middle of the night feedings for 20+ years, or so it seemed, tended to send out those warning signals that the ol' temple had to be replenished, so I complied.  And who doesn't remember the dulcet tones of a screaming baby waking us from our slumber?  Those days I could have slept years.  Or at least months.

The last fifteen years or so have not been kind, sleep-wise.  I cannot do it.  I seem to merely nod off for a couple of hours and then, cue the band, I'm awake.  And not just up - I'm ready to dig ditches, top trees, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Do I?  Of course not - it's dark outside.

My problem?  My mind doesn't realize it can stop working for a couple of hours.  I think too much.  About everything.  The Middle East.  The USA.  My children.  Why Bud couldn't wait for Deanie to get well in the mental hospital in Splendor in the Grass. 

And sometimes really random things.

People who go to bed and sleep for seven or eight hours have my admiration and envy.  I want to be you.  I want to turn it off for awhile and just rest.  My skin would look better and I could focus.  On what's important and what's not.

So as I sit here blogging (please help me come up with another name for this - I really hate "blogging") I wonder:  Can you really survive on as little sleep as I do?  Am I really walking around in a fog, recognizing little that is actually going on and seeing everything through a sleep-deprived haze?

I think I am.  And I think Morpheus does hate me.

Soul sistas

Reading another blog (and we MUST change the name, thank you) and the writer, someone twenty plus years younger than I, spoke of her lack of female friends.  And it made me think....

I would not be who I am without my girlfriends.  They have shaped my personality and my garden and have made this journey so much damned fun.  Most of us are middle-aged.   And the arrival at said juncture has surprised us all.  When did we stop being thirty?  And why do the faces that peer at us from our mirrors look so much older than the ones we see in our minds-eye?

My group includes five core members with several hovering on the periphery.  We have seen so much - births, deaths, and tennis championships.  We've spent holidays and Tuesdays in ordinary time together and we still like each other.  We hosted wedding and baby showers for each other, and then each other's children, and somehow remain separate but together - I might go weeks without speaking to one or more of them and when I do we pick up where we left off - with whatever silliness or  seriousness we spoke of last. 

You need girlfriends.  The ability to pick up the phone or meet for lunch to discuss whatever is on your mind is inestimable.  Husbands get tired of hearing about bad haircuts and the merits of one night cream over another.  And don't bother trying to explain the craziness created from one phone call from your mother - you're tuned out.

Girlfriends listen.  And commiserate.  And have opinions.  And aren't afraid to voice them.  Growth in spirit comes from hearing words you need but don't necessarily want.

And girlfriends understand that cheesecake is a perfectly fine dinner when you're at the beach, and knew your thighs before they went south, and will bring you soup when you're sick, and lift you up in their prayers nightly without being asked, and laugh at your bad jokes, and cry when you hurt and rejoice when you're happy.

They are your conscience and your barometer.  They provide ballast.  They see you at your best and your worst and still love you.  In spite of yourself sometimes. 

I can't imagine my life without these people. 

So my advice to young women, struggling with toddlers or teens or men, is to find simpatico souls to join you on your way.  Your life will be richer and brighter if you can share it with these fabulous creatures called girlfriends. 

Just expect them to tell you when you have a hideous haircut.

You are what you eat.....

My current roommate and one time love of my life, okay, still the love of my life, and I went to the Big City yesterday and shopped at my favorite market.  It's Mediterranean and the smells when the door opens speak to me - saying, "you're home."

Couldn't tell you why, unless you accept that I think I was Egyptian in a past life.  Probably during Cleo's days, but that's another post.

I bought all the food I love - tabbouleh and the like - and he said, "Do you realize you eat like a cow?  You graze on green stuff.  Even the bread you inhale is wheat."  And he's right.  Dammit.  I hate when he's right.

I haven't always had the luxury of eating only what I like.  Meat and three were put in front of me during my youth and I ate it or didn't get dessert.  Most nights I got to watch my younger brothers eat their pudding or pie while I pouted.  I was a great pouter and still am.  It's one of my talents.

I didn't then, nor do I now, eat meat and three.  Gimme the three and I'm happy.  I also don't eat food with faces.  (Chicken and fish don't count - beaks and gills cancel out the face part.  Or at least in my own little world.) 

My parents weren't happy when I refused to eat what was served; they were Depression children so they were glad to get any food and did not appreciate my evolved palate, at all.  Many tears were spilled into meatloaf or fried porkchops that I couldn't get down.  Mine, not theirs.  In my house you ate what was cooked and there were no arguments.

When I had children I resolved to never make the same mistake.  My children would eat what they liked and dinnertime would not become a battlefield.  Ever heard the expression "Paying for your raising?"  Yeah, I have.

I have the three pickiest eaters ever, and their choices don't overlap much.  Oldest son - meat and potatoes.  No chicken, or broccoli, or asparagus, or anything more exotic than steak and baked potato.  Thanksgiving?  I cook him a rib-eye and he will eat the mashed potatoes, but nothing else.  Except damned red velvet cake, his favorite and something I make once a year and hate.

My daughter flirts with veganism.  No butter, cheese, or dairy of any kind.  Flirts being the operative word.  She went two years looking with disdain at the rest of us enjoying shrimp or grilled fish but the last time she was home she wanted to get Burger King.  She is a little bipolar.

My youngest son?  My gourmet.  No green veggies except broccoli, asparagus, or artichokes.  No chicken except fried.  Hold the mayo.  Forever.  Loves a strip steak, baked potato, and salad with Greek dressing.  And lobster if you have it, with lots of drawn butter.  And trifle.  With raspberries, please.

Bottom line, in an attempt to repudiate my own experience I became a short-order cook for years.  I didn't enjoy it, but what great dinnertime conversations occurred because my family was not engaged in tug-o-wars that no one won.  Only one problem, I wasn't in there engaging in said convo - I was still cooking.

I maintain that my way was the best, however.  Not one of my kids ever left the table hungry and in tears.  And they got dessert if I had had time to make it. 

Today?  I never cook except major holidays - Thanksgiving lunch, Christmas Eve jambalaya and Christmas morning brunch, and Easter Low Country Boil.

And if they don't like what I serve?  Let them eat cake.  Before I finish it off.

Words

I commented earlier today that I was a "wordy damn person" and it's true.  I love words.  I love spelling them and using them in the right context and knowing their origin.

My word-love was nurtured by my parents.  They were linguists; lazy words, like "stupid" and "shut up" were never uttered in my house growing up.  Those were considered low class and vulgar.  Calling someone a "fool" was tantamount to a good strong lecture on the difference in intellectual discourse and allowing raw emotion to speak for you.  One was valued, the other forbidden.

Words have been my guiding star, my compass.  People who have great command of our language immediately earn my respect, even when I disagree with what they're saying.  Having a literal base has been the cornerstone of my everyday, sometimes mundane existence.

Reading at an early age fostered my love for words, of course.  I read books with words like "titian" and "blancmange" and "fortnight."  A treasured Christmas present was on my nightstand and I loved to find words I didn't know just so I could open the blue cover of my Webster's to discover what they meant.  I still remember the inscription on my dictionary:  "Brenda Houk   227 Lincoln Drive  Biloxi, Mississippi."  Under this I wrote "Mrs. Ricky Nelson" because I just knew that I would grow up and marry him.  I did not.

I married someone who loves words as much as I do.  And of course our children learned at an early age that we didn't tolerate lazy ways of speaking, either.  It might have been disconcerting to a friend at a baseball game to hear my 8 year old son tell him that he felt Paul Tsongas would not be a good president because he lacked stamina due to health issues, but as he laughed at my son's political statement,  I beamed with pride.  Another word-nerd in the making.

{The same son told me the other day, "I used to think everybody's family was like ours, but they weren't.  Good friends of mine didn't watch the Clarence Thomas hearings or presidential debates or Crossfire with the Dad.  They don't know what they missed."  Wait - we did something right???}

I  have words that I use constantly - fabulous, glorious, clarity, effusive - are but a few.  And words that I admire: honor, fortitude, calm.  Some words have become mine and I feel duty-bound to see that they are put out there. 

We don't use good descriptive words anymore.  We have become lazy, a venial sin in my household, and use words that are in vogue: awesome, cool, whatever the word of the month is.  Nothing wrong with either of those until you hear/read them 432 a day.  They lose something.

And "conversate" used as a verb?  Please don't.  Nothing wrong with the word converse.  Just another example of laziness/trendiness. 

Snobbish?  Probably.  I don't care how many degrees you have, or how many zeroes you can write behind a whole number on a check, if you don't express yourself well you are a loser in my book.  

The easiest way in the world to make a good impression?  Learn your language.

Almost

Had the divorce decree said October instead of August I would have been married 25 years.  If this were August instead of June I would have been divorced for 10 years now.

Those are milestone years, 25 and 10, or at least numbers that mean something.  Twenty four and nine?  Just numbers.  Not significant.  Not a quarter of a century or a decade.  Just numbers.  I seem to always stop short of committing to something solid.  Numbers or relationships.

The person I was married to, and had children with, and shared my youth, is staying with me for awhile.  He's had health problems for several years and they've gotten worse.  Carotid tests and lung capacity checks and bypasses are what we face in the next couple of days.  All of us. 

Last night, after the heart cath showed that a stent wasn't what he needed, we came in from the hospital and had a quick dinner and talked.  About mortality and money and arrangements and requests.  Topics that are necessary during times like this.

Then we went to the deck and had a glass of wine and talked about inconsequentials - elections and children and the oil spill.  And Al and Tipper Gore.  This staunch conservative I was married to for almost twenty-five years expressed regret that they were separating.  And said, "It's just a shame.  After all they experienced - near death of a child, campaigns, kids marrying - for something to end after 40 years."

I'm sure that the Gores are telling themselves the same thing.  They almost made it to that golden anniversary.  They almost had the happily ever after. 

I know what they are going through, though.  You really can grow in different directions.  You actually can look at someone who was your true north and wonder why that was the case.  You can look at a person one more time across the dinner table and see a stranger.  You can stop being excited that they are due in from work, or from a trip, and you can start resenting them for cutting into your time.  You start envisioning your life without them.  And it becomes your reality.

Almost.

Rattling Tiles

I'm playing Mah Jongg today, subbing in a Monday game that's been going strong for 40+ years with few interruptions or replacements.  These ladies play for keeps, no nonsense and purposeful - they want to win.  Stakes are high; everyone starts with five dollars and if you're having a good day you can walk away with eight or ten dollars at the end of three hours.

I started playing the game thirty years ago.  I was 26, married with one child and in between miscarriages.  A group of us, roughly the same age and circumstances, begged one of our older friends - she was 45 maybe? - to teach us.  Her mother had played and taught her.

She agreed and we met at her house one rainy Saturday in February - don't ask how I remember this so vividly since I can't remember my phone number most days.  It was cold and bleak, but the four of us who came to learn didn't care.  It was almost as if we were bewitched by tiles we learned were craks and bams and flowers and big jokers.

Once we mastered the basics we began playing in earnest.  Three times a week, sometimes, and at night when all husbands were occupied with Quarterback Club or Monday Night Football.  Or Wednesday night poker. 

Our routines were simple.  Housekeeping chores and children out the doors by 8: tennis from 9:00-11:00, then lunch, brought to us by smiling waitresses who loved our shenanigans - we were known as the "fun" group.  We would rack the tiles and have the first game underway when the food came, but we never stopped to eat before someone had won.

We played until 2:30.  Carpools waiting and dinner to prepare.  We all left at the same time because we all lived the same life.  Good ones, predictable and calm.  We might complain of husbands who forgot the trash or to lower the toilet seat, but our landscapes were so perfect we couldn't imagine anything ever changing.  We got home in time to help with homework, prepare pitchers of martinis and dinner and ask our husbands about their days.

We have remained close friends for all these years, and now we laugh at how naive we were then.  And how lucky.

We played through my pregnancies, first teeth, last graduations, divorces, marriages, birth of grandchildren, death of parents and children, illness, great fortune and devastating news.  We were dinosaurs, the last group of women who would collectively stay at home and wonder at the others, those who didn't have a road map that included housekeepers and yardmen and supper clubs and groceries delivered because food shopping cut into our playtime.

We were delusional.   Young women of a certain age and lifestyle who still believe in happily ever after are the smuggest of smug.  Fate rears its head and says "gotcha" and suddenly the life you thought you'd always lead is nothing like your reality. 

So when I rack the tiles today I'll think about the person I was when I first learned the game, in the very room I'm playing today, and miss her for a millisecond.  I liked her.  She was so young and thought she knew everything. 

She wouldn't even understand the Cliff Notes of the life she would lead.

Where did God get iceberg lettuce and why hasn't it evolved?

My baby boy and I just ate an early dinner/late lunch at a decent seafood restaurant in town.  He chose a shrimp po'boy and I had a shrimp and crab salad.  We've both ordered these before and haven't been disappointed.

His sandwich was great - they held the mayo and added cocktail sauce.  JT doesn't do mayo.  My salad was a mound of terrific steamed shrimp and lump crabmeat in a better than average Greek dressing, with tomatoes, green peppers, and spring onions.  So far, what's not to love?

The damned salad was served over iceberg lettuce. 

Really?  None of your suppliers offer anything other than this passe green that pretends to be lettuce?  No leaf lettuce, or romaine, or curly endive - all they have is something that could be mistaken for a head of cabbage?

Growing up I ate the monstrosity of epicurean hell with abandon - it's the only kind we ever had at  home.  Quartered and served with Roquefort - my dad's favorite dressing.  Topped with bacon for everyone else - my hatred of pig flesh extends to my early years.

I loved Sunday lunch that included this rarity - it was a fine break from the pot roast we usually had because the salad was always served with baked chicken - I think there was a rule about it.  Along with the cluck and salad was my favorite - mashed potatoes.  And dessert was usually a trip to the local ice cream store. 

My mother is not a cook.  A wonderful woman, but her abilities and imagination in the kitchen are both limited.  So when she stepped out of the meatloaf/pork chop box her last resort was always the above described meal.

I prayed for these Sundays.

Fast forward twenty years, with varied lettuce selections in the grocery stores, and I reached salad heaven.  Never did I purchase iceberg again.  My life has been richer because of it.

I am a food snob.   I do not eat pigs in the blanket, nor do I partake of cocktail weiners in grape jelly/barbeque sauce.  My palate is particular - food of this ilk would not get past my molars.  There is nothing wrong with the people who do enjoy these staples, but it's not for me.  Too many good things to eat to waste time on Grovian horribleness.

And iceberg lettuce?  I wish I could send every head to those starving Chinese children I heard about at every meal I refused to eat growing up.  Along with the milk I refused to drink.

Please, by all that is good and holy, boycott the iceberg.  Your taste buds will thank you.

And don't get me started on boxed mac and cheese.

June

I don't know why I love June so much - she can be difficult.  Some Junes come to us green and vibrant, tied up in a blooming bow of such grandeur that it almost assaults our senses.  Everything is alive and happy to be part of the general scheme. 

Others arrive blustery and blowing hot rain down on newly planted wonderfulness and stay around for weeks, almost as if to say March didn't do its job and I'm here to make up for it.  I've seen and loved both versions of June.

What fool doesn't love the first June?  We work together in tandem, training vines and dead-heading daylilies, cutting hydrangea for drying and lopping off petunias to encourage new growth.  We start the day with coffee and hummingbirds and end it with a good glass of wine and an old dogfriend.  We are happy in our unity.

But I love the fierce June, too.  Even I recognized long ago that I have no control over weather and gave up trying.  On the days that June is being contrary I merely find books and a light quilt and repair to my chair.  June clamors on around me as I read and doze and glance at All My Children - did Susan Lucci make a deal with the devil?  At the end of the day, June and I have both been true to ourselves and we're both happy.

One year when my children were young it rained every day in June.  Every day.  Young children don't do well when they can't go outside - they need the freedom to be foolish and run and rip and tear up turf and toys.

This year our annual HUGE Fourth of July party was in danger of being a wash, literally.  My daughter got up the day before the Fourth and proclaimed, in the serious manner that she perfected at 2, that she had just done a Sun dance, and the weather would be fine for the holiday and could we please have corn?

The next day broke and so did the weather.  The sun blazed down on our horseshoe and badminton games, ice cream was ready to make and burgers and hotdogs sizzled on the grill, along with my youngest son.  (Sunscreen wouldn't stay on him.)  Friends and family sat on the patio and picnic table and were amazed that the weather was perfect after such a rainy month.

My daughter looked up from  her third ear of corn and said, "I told you I did a Sun dance."  That was enough for her, and she was the only one in attendance not at all surprised at the perfect weather. 

At the end of a tumultuous May I'm not sure what to expect of this June.  It stormed in the Grove for hours yesterday, and when I got home it had barely sprinkled.  That's another thing about the month - it's unpredictable.  Whatever this June is meant to be, I'm ready.

It's been a long year, and she has arrived exactly when she was needed.

Alpha and Omega

The end of another school year is always a time of reflection - the good, the bad, the ugly.  This year had an abundance of all, but also had many laughs, good new friends made, personal accomplishments and setbacks.  In general, another year in the life.

I end this year with a mostly positive mindset.  Some changes in the workplace are very promising but others bring sadness.  Good friends leaving for greener pastures and former students leaving because they were asked to. 

There's the rub.   We all want to go out encircled by friends and co-workers wishing us well and proclaiming sadness at our leave-taking.

A colleague who is exiting this way will be missed.  She and I have taught together for 15 years.  I taught her children, and counseled them, and remain close to them all.  We saw each other through divorces and teenaged problems and raged against the machine.  We are compadres, partners in a common fight to end ignorance.

Another friend is retiring.  She is planning to move her 94 year old, blind mother in with her.  That tells you all you need to know about this kind, slightly scatty woman whom I've wept with when her husband died, and laughed uncontrollably over foibles of youth. 

Our assistant principal, a woman I thought I had NOTHING in common with when she came, became a wonderful confidante.  We shared a two minute meeting of the minds most mornings and I discovered early on that we share a love of literature and good theater, as well as travel.  I will miss those daily affirmations of the spirit.

A former student didn't fare as well in her mode of departure.  She was pink-slipped, non-renewed, fired anyway you look at it.  She's bitter, sad, upset, blindsided - all the emotions you would feel if this happened.  She's young and will recover;  I wish her only the best.  She will be a better person because of what happened, I think, and I pray she finds a job soon.

Every person who travels the road alongside you leaves a mark.  I was lucky that I learned at an early age that you don't have to be friends with everyone, only those you choose.

I've chosen well.

Eulogia

I walked down the hall for the 432nd time today and a long, gangly boy ran up to me.  He's someone I've seen in the halls, but I don't know his name.  Always smiling, always says hello.  A most pleasant young man.

"Mrs. Thurman, I'm so glad I have you first semester next year."  Enthusiasm seeped from his Clearasil.  I replied that I knew it would be a great semester, blah blah blah.  Typical flotsam thrown out to a student you don't know but who seems eager to learn.

He said, "After Beta Club induction I went home and told my mother that I had just met my favorite teacher.  I love history and you are funny."

Great relationships have been built on less.  And if I tell you that it made my day, you'll understand why.

I love teaching.  And I love these goofy, bright, energetic, maddening, contradictory, beautiful, awful, kind, feral, righteous, demonic, adult-children I have the honor of spending my days with.

It's just the shit that goes along with it I hate. 

Summer is:

• sleeping til 5
• shorts, tee, flops EVERY DAY
• Mah Jongg at will
• fireflies
• geraniums that look beautiful slightly past their prime (so am I)
• hydrangeas
• listening to only sounds I love
• no lesson plans, morning duty, pizza/corn/fries Mondays
• no one asking me to buy a Boston Butt, or cookie dough, or wrapping paper
• fresh cut grass
• dinner outside with my baby boy
• dinner outside with my favorite ex-husband
• more angst from Elizabeth (genetically programmed I think)
• new love for Alan
• daylight til 9
• honeysuckle
• magnolias
• gardenias
• neighborhood kids playing in the sprinkler
• visiting with their parents while wishing we could do it
• lunch with great friends
• all beaches
• too many talks with my MR yard man
• daylilies!!!!
• farmers market veggies
• grilled fish
• gym when I want, if I want
• books
• coffee on the deck with the hummers
• chasing Harper Lee around the hood
• tomato sandwiches
• sun and shade
• reflection
• rest
• rejuvenation

Thank you. And Amen.

Memories

Last night I attended a party to welcome home a Favorite Daughter.  Her family and friends (and even one lucky teacher) all gathered around to hug and kiss her and tell her how much we've missed her.  She was gracious and allowed us to baby her and listened to our stories about what all has happened since we saw her at Christmas, and then headed to get a beer.  She's 21, after all, and can only stand so many niceties.

As I enjoyed the wonderful meal her family had prepared - her Dad fried fish outside and her Mom made amazing homemade wonderfulnesses - and then went to their backyard to watch a bonfire and roast marshmallows and catch up with many good friends I remembered why I've been so willing to drive fifty miles every day to teach.

These people.  These solid, true Christians who would do anything in the world they could if you asked.  These fabulous creatures of clay and dreams who grew up with one and had an abundance of the other.   These mothers and fathers who had it better than their own parents and were determined that their children would surpass them.

They worked and went to church and made sure their bills got paid and made lives to be envied.  These are the people who've sent their children to us to teach what they need to know to take them away from the life their parents have led.  They sent them knowing this, and wanting nothing more. 

She will take the MCAT this summer and is hoping to enter medical school after graduation.  It's gonna be tough for her.  Small college degree, so much competition for slots in med schools.  I pray she scores high enough to realize her goals;  it's all she's ever wanted to do.  She's smart - she has a back-up plan in case she doesn't get in.

And that's what I'll miss when I no longer traverse the Highway of Broken Dreams - the bright kids and great parents who have made it a joy, at times, to be a part of a small community of good people. I spoke with many former students who were there to welcome home a bright star in the terra firma that is the Grove.  Every one of them college educated and employed, and all part of my life. 

It was a fitting benediction.

My hair and I...

...have had a love/hate relationship for almost 57 years.  My hair doesn't exactly love or hate me - inanimate objects don't have feelings - but the role it's played along my spiritual journey speaks volumes about my disdain or pleasure with my crowning glory.

I was born with no hair - an omen.  When it came in, judging from baby pictures, it was just peachy.  Blonde, wispy, and impossible to manage.  So my mother started trying to tame the beast.

The growing years - 3-12 - show the same look in every photo.  Long and curling on the ends.  Not because the hair wanted to curl - it came in stick-straight and has remained thus lo, these many years. 

No, Mom made me spend my youth in a torturous way, sleeping in curlers every night so that when I awoke she could brush my hair and the smallest of small waves would remain on the ends of my hair until I reached school.  Then: massive fail.

Washing my child-hair was also treacherous.  Leaning over a cold sink - topless because I hated water running down my clothes worse than I hated water running down my skinny back - I suffered through as my mother scrubbed my hair with Prell until there was no speck of any mere hint of dirt.  The woman loved clean.

After that came the real torture - combing through the wet, tangled morass that was my head covering.  Tears?  Every damned time.  Finally making it through the pain, I looked forward to the damned pink-sponge-roller-sleep I had to endure - anything was better than the combing out.

As I grew so did my opinions about my hair.  When I was twelve I declared hair independence - Mom would no longer be allowed to touch my hair, and I wanted it cut.  I got my wish and for a couple of years my bob and I were happy.  I washed it at night and slept, curler free, and awoke to straight hair that I pushed behind my ears.

Then the teens hit.  Suddenly, I wasn't as blonde as I had been.  Enter my new best friend, Sun-In.  Spray that on, sit in the sun, and instant highlights.  I loved, and I miss, Sun-In.  And those years.

The 60s hit in a big way my last couple of years in high school and the hair grew.  Long and straight.  Everyone wanted my hair.  Still blonde, thanks to my best friend, and straight?  Horse tails had nothing on my hair.  As my friends set their hair using orange juice cans or lay their hair across an ironing board and used an iron to try to achieve straight locks, mine was natural.  I did nothing to it but wash it and let it air dry.  I was envied and vilified for having perfect hair.

The summer before my senior year was traumatic - break up with boyfriend, falling out with best friend, basic high school drama.  So I did what any other normal 16 year old does, I cut my hair.  In all honesty, I missed the bob.  Easy?   Nothing to it.  I've kept the same hair since, with few alterations to style.

I think this screams something loudly about me.  What, I'm not sure, but I have to think my hair style remaining fixed speaks to my dislike for change, and the style itself says that I really am a no-nonsense type.  The upkeep involved in staying blonde?  My appreciation of all things past.  And the constantly pushing the hair behind my ears.  Don't mess with me.

Or maybe it's just hair.

Life's not fair...

...and life's not funny.

When I was five or six I proclaimed loudly to my father about the unfairness of something; what it was is lost, but at the time I felt deeply some slight, I'm sure.  He told me, as all parents do, that life isn't fair.  He must have been amused by my overly dramatic response and laughed.  I cried, "It's not funny!"  He said, deadpan, "So life's not fair and life's not funny."  It stuck.

This week has brought home the sentiment.  It's pink-slip time in the world of education and someone I teach with got one.  It can't  have been a total surprise - there have been warning signs - but no one enjoys being told they aren't good enough, and that's what pink-slips do.  They proclaim to the world that you have had a major "Fail."  Circumstances, nuances, and behind-the-scenes goings-on don't enter into it - you've been fired.

I hope the young teacher finds a job soon.  She has a small child and like all of us, needs to work.  But the work environment hasn't been good for her for awhile, and just knowing she doesn't have to go back there should mean something.  Once she's had a chance to regroup I think she'll see this. 

Another non-tenured teacher, who is abysmally dreadful in almost every aspect of her work performance, did not get a pink-slip.  I'm sure she's gloating and all self-congratulatory, but she needs to watch her ample ass.  The winds of change will blow this year at good ol'  Hick High - people are being watched by someone other than the God they all claim to worship.  A new assistant principal who won't take any shit, from anybody, but certainly not someone like the admin in charge right now.  The teacher union and a new superintendent are aware of problems in our happy little home.

Things are about to get interesting, and my Daddy's old saying is about to be made relevant, again.

What's in a name?

Everything. 

Parents-to-be spend eight or nine months picking out the perfect name for their baby.  Don't you wonder at their mental capabilities when you see a birth announcement for yet another Dakota or Madison? 

Really?  Out of all the names in the world you chose one that scores of other new parents have just named their blessed bundle? 

I had a small class one year in which four of the seven girls were named Ashley.  All spelled differently.  Misspelling a name doesn't make it any more palatable.  In the same class were three Brandons.  At least they were identical in spelling.  Probably because they were all incredibly stupid and needed to be able to copy their name from some other Brandon - who knows what the birth certificates said.

When my oldest son played baseball he had three Shanes and two Jasons as teammates.  It got confusing. 

And the trend to make up names?  How many Jadens and Cadens (or Kadens) can one teacher take?  And if it isn't Madison it's Addison.  Dropping the "M" and doubling up the "d" is a small derivation that makes absolutely no difference.  It's cutesy and imitative.

Maybe I'm radical about name choice because I've always hated mine.  My birth name was what I'm called today with a consonant at the end. (I was supposed to be a boy.)  At 12 I begged and begged until my parents changed my birth certificate - I now have a female name.  Not one I like, but at least no one thinks I'm male.  My children were all given family names - strong and no-nonsense monikers. 

Children should have names that will grow with them.  I'm not advocating a return to the Mabels and Earnests - God forfend - but honestly?  Do you think that we will ever see the CEO of a Fortune 500 company named Jaren?  Or Jarin - I've seen both.  Luckily it seems that Savannah is waning, along with Kaley and Haley and even Jaelie. 

Did that mother hate her newborn on sight?

If your fondest dream is for your daughter to grow up and perform on a pole, name her Brittany or Tiffany or Destiny.  You've sealed her fate.  And make sure she marries/reproduces with a Dakota.  Ignorant bliss will be theirs, along with pitifully named children in perpetuity.

Mornings

Five AM is obviously my prime time.  I feel better physically, rested, ready to start a new day.  My most productive time, by far.

Unfortunately the rest of the world isn't on the same circadian rhythm.

If you get up at this time you are almost like a pioneer shoving west, or a member of Magellan's crew, or some sad little hunter and gatherer in search of breakfast.  Why is this the time I love?  Normal people don't.

When you get up so early you can hear your own thoughts more clearly.  Telling you what you should do, and what you should have sawn off your arms before doing.

And you get to see this:

And this:

 

And listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpyhl85MYmU

Started my day off right.  We all worship in different ways.  And my baby is on the same circadian rhythm as I.

Quilts

My grandmother was a quilter.  A wooden frame hanging from the ceiling in her back downstairs bedroom was testament to her craft.  It was lowered by wire attached at each corner, and could be rotated the same way.  My grandfather built it for her years before I was born, and as far back as anyone can remember it was there. 

My mother and aunts grew up in that bedroom.  They dreamed little girl dreams, I suppose, and played elaborate games of make-believe.  They are close today, in their seventies and eighties, but sometimes still bicker as though they were six. 

My grandmother spent evenings in their room.  Picking apart seams she wasn't happy with and laying out tapestries.  But talking with her girls, listening to their arguments.  She was an artist - painted well into her 80s - and her quilts show her incredible eye for all things beautiful.  Especially my granddaddy.  That man was something.

As a child I spent summers in that back bedroom.  My brothers were relegated to the upstairs to be watched with a jaundiced eye -  those boys could tear up a steel ball.  I, it was assumed, would read myself to sleep, quietly and somberly.  Absorbing whatever book I was reading, becoming Jo March, or Lou Gehrig, or General Lee.  I've always done that - lost myself so in someone else's words that it almost comes as a shock to realize I'm me when I reach the last page. 

My grandmother always came to tuck me in before she went upstairs, Granddaddy long gone to read and listen to the radio.  She would ask if I needed water and pull the cover up to my chin and fold it back.  The fan would be on, droning the hot air around so that it was almost cool.   Open windows and night sounds in the country comforting to a little city girl. 

In the morning, very early, the smell of breakfast was a delicious alarm clock.  Bacon, biscuits, sharp cheese, eggs, and always "coffee."  A large cup of warm milk and sugar with a dollop of coffee.  Late summer breakfast would be peaches and cream.  Sliced perfectly and arranged on my favorite plate, transparent blue glass with an etched rim.  My grandparents tended to make much of us, the grandchildren who never lived close enough for regular visits.

My grandmother never quilted in my bedroom those years I became me under the roof of an old farmhouse that will always look like home to me.  She cooked, and cleaned, and shooed pesky little boys outside, and rubbed leftover biscuit halves on my patent-leather shoes to make them shine for church, and taught me to love growing things in dirt, but she never lowered the quilt frame and spun stories for me as she had her girls.  Did she recognize my ingrained sense of apartness?  Or was it simply that quilting was something she only did in the dreary winter months, fireplace blazing, sitting in a back bedroom of a big house, alone with her scraps and quilt frame?  I'll never know, another question I never got around to asking. 

She died under one of her own quilts, older than me, and thinking that her Jim, dead thirty years, was on his way home from work. 

I have two of her masterpieces and to say that I treasure them doesn't begin to describe what they mean to me.  One is made from corduroy, weighing far too much to use except in the most bitter weather.  She made skirts and dresses for her five daughters from the fabric and she was never one to waste a thing.  The other one is shabby and threadbare, faded blues and yellows.  It's the one I still read under in the winter.

I think of her often, and my granddaddy, and those days in that bedroom, safe, happy to be with family and my books.  No one telling me to go outside to play because it was a beautiful day, or asking that I help with laundry, or requiring much of anything of me except to be me.  Not like the Alabama cousins, all freckle-faced and open, running and jumping and constantly leaving havoc in their wake - my brothers assumed that role the minute we crossed the state line.  I was the changeling, the different, the quiet. 

Under a frayed blue quilt I still am.

Different

I have three children.  And they are as different as night, day, and whatever the third option is.  They love each other, and are way too much fun as a group - I laugh as childhood roles manifest in these very tall people.

My oldest would have made a great Stoic.  Nothing fazes him.  Solemn from birth, and easy.  I thought all babies slept all night at four weeks.  Hated school, hated books and reading.  Would ride his bike for hours, or dig in the back yard until dark.   His career choice doesn't speak to his personality - postal service employee - and he reads everything now.  My most inscrutable child, and the one I share the least common ground with.  But my soul.

My daughter was a miracle baby.  Three miscarriages between she and her brother and no child has ever been worshipped more.  Looks just like her daddy but is my clone in disposition.  Her grandfather used to say she was me, cubed.  All things being equal, she might have been better off if it were reversed.  She feels everything, deeply, and frets.  She's always fretted.  From socks that didn't feel right to my lack of concern over hair-ribbon placement before school.  With two other children clamoring for attention.  Reads, thinks, writes.  And is my breath.

Then my last.  My heart.  My sweet child.  Who battles demons.  Addictions.  Brilliant.  Beautiful.  Driven.  And in recovery.  I pray, constantly, for my baby, my sweet boy, my angel on earth.  Loves Sinatra and Miles Davis, and has probably read every book of any worth.  Speaks Latin and Greek.  And can't be kind to himself.  He will mend, I know.  I have faith.  And my baptismal name was Monica.  Her heart broke for her son, too.

They can't even agree on what to call me, the woman who suffered so to give them life.  (A family joke; they were all C-section.) To my oldest I'm "Mother."  My daughter, almost 29, calls me "Mommy."  And to my baby boy I'm "Darlin'." 

I like it that way.