SAYING GOODBYE TO GOLD CASTLE

Memoryland. 

As far as my eye can see, spread out on tables under the dappled shadows of a finally sunny day. Inside the house, the chairs and sofas and cabinets of my lifetime, much of them purchased by my parents at an estate sale after they moved back from Morocco. I accidentally kicked something. I looked down. My mouth dropped open. 

Seeing the flat metal knife and fork are an instant pricking of recall. I'm standing at a concrete picnic table. The water is boiling in the big bucket, dinner dishes waiting for the spot of dishsoap which sweetens the air. Or the removable pot clamp clinched to the side of a skillet bubbling with goulash. Or white plastic coffee cups, unnested, filled with milk, waiting, placed beside four plates resting on the red gingham oilcloth, each sided by a paper napkin and a flat green fork on the left and a blue knife on the right. Bread and butter centering the table. The tiny goulash potatoes finally soft. The next day, every implement is packed up inside the big water pot, sealed shut. Daddy is loading up the trunk, a puzzle he re-creates every day, following a map down a road my Mama has picked out in February in Dallas during a cold spell. 

To Colorado. Nevada. Oklahoma. Fort Pickens State Park and a waterspout. Leaving beautiful Biloxi Beach the day before Camille.  Warm Springs, Georgia. The laurels of Highlands. The dunes of Kitty Hawk. Grand Canyon. Rocky Mountain August. Our family of four breathes vacation two weeks every summer.

Wow. There is our camping gear opened to show the offerings. I didn't catch this one. I am standing in my Mama's front yard. The lucky, appointed family member to watch as the world comes in and swoops up the leftovers of our life. My mother owes me a million bucks but I don't want her to be here. All of these items were of great value to us but to others, great captured bids and deals. The woman who bought my great-grandmother's china, Gold Castle, said she was eager to take it home. My Mimi had purchased the china, piece by piece at Kress Five and Dime a very long time ago. The new owner should make me happy. At least, I didn't cry.

Thursday was the day for tears. And it was raining and storming but we drove down anyway. My parents lived in their home for thirty years. I had just become a new mother when they re-located to the southern part of the state. My sister and I were thrilled to have them only an hour away. The lack of distance had saved all of us, many a time.

Mama and I and Glory, my new pup, walked through every room. Many of the sale items were in boxes, on the floor or on the furniture. The electricity was still on but not every room had lamps. The draped and shuttered windows squelched out even the dismal day.

Every room, every drawer, every closet. We weren't looking for things missed in our packing. Just go in your favorite room and imagine the leavings, the items you couldn't squeeze into storage or stuff into another box or pawn off onto a millennial child. Even the gleanings could hold the best. The best of things.We had had the best of things. 

The fifteen color designer wall paper in the computer room. A week of chickenpox. Two heads leaning in, looking at their first computer.  

The guestroom of a million guests - family and friends feted and dined in style. A room of relaxation with a sticking door. A retreat from the holiday festivities or funeral visitors.

The hall bath, with a huge mirror and vanity lighting, had been in its prime thirty years ago. Two families could lay out makeup bags and toiletries. The world's best shower head that we had "argued" over, who would get it in the will.  But no will in this departure. She wouldn't let us take it out and replace it with a newer, weaker version. Maybe the new owner didn't even know his shower of luck. 

Now my mother was leaving behind the best shower ever. And a yard full of tall trees and sticks and more sticks. Must not have sticks in the yard. The exercise of bending over and over and cracking the bigger ones with her foot. A full garbage can of stuck up sticks dragged to the curb. The forlorn piece of ground ringed with brick where dozens of  Apricot Beauty tulips had slowed traffic in annual around town spring sights.

She was emphatic she was not leaving a place. Her house was still her home, she still had friends to call on and she could still be sitting on the front row of FBC even though she did not agree with the SBC. She has always been fearless even when awakened by the City's Best at 3 a.m. on her front stoop. Wrong house. She was not leaving in fear. I believe her because I know her. 

Just like her mother, she has always been business minded. And fiercely independent. But much more pragmatic. She has chosen to move on her timeline. She will tell people her children "made" her move. That is a popular sentiment in the retirement community. But in her heart, she knows it was a decision she made and for good reasons. Primarily, for her eye. And also because she secretly knows a steady diet of Cheetos and walnuts washed down with Coca Cola and followed by a Magnum Chocolate Bar is not healthy. Maybe it helps that I am now ten minutes down the road but do not think for one minute she has not already driven to Walmart and Best Buy. I love this about her.

The living room was dark, no lamp or overhead light. Thankgoodness. I lost my mascara just sitting in one of the Ethan Allen wing chairs my parents purchased when I was seven. I was proud of those two chairs, even then. I hated not having a place for them in my house. Of course, does anyone really want to part with all of these things. But not things. My tears flooded my face. Glory looked up at me. I cried to say goodbye to every person I had loved since seven. Every word, some good, some bad. Every book. Every picture. Every nap. Every kiss. Every prayer. The room was full. The chair was full.

I was determined to eat one last meal on my beloved mahogany dining table with eight chairs plus leaves. I always dreamed of having it in my own dining room, designed by my architect husband just like Architectural Digest.  If I could offer my Mama a bribe. I would imagine it set with my china and the new fabric I would use to cover the seats. Most of all, the simple, elegant family dinners - just like Mama's. I would never forget the dinner my parents gave for our pastor and his wife, when I was little. While Dr. Howard stood very tall in the pulpit, Jesus towered over him in stained glass. It was almost like having Jesus at the table. My last supper was Popeye's Chicken. I don't imagine that table had ever had a chicken breast and a biscuit. My Mama doesn't fry chicken.

Despite all of Daddy's scrambled eggs and buttermilk fudge, Mama's Pot Roast and summer vegetables and chocolate pies and Billie's unforgettable, exquisite ham, the kitchen was unmovable. It did have one of the three house windows not painted shut which made it an exit, onto an ancient sofa about eight feet down from the sill. If you made it to the kitchen.

The laundry room smelled of Tide which we are still wrapped up in with every step in life. The back of the laundry room door marked up with pencil. The lines and dates of three grandchildren and the running race of heights in a competition dependent on spurts and calcium.

Much of Mama's bedroom furniture was a part of the auction. The room didn't look empty. She took her favorites to furnish her new apartment. I don't feel sorry for her and her balcony overlooking a park. I am concerned about the cat but that issue depends on how high is too high.

The master bath's only claim to fame is the other window which is not painted shut. The exit in case of emergency. The third and last exit is in the bedroom. But in fairness, it is a cheap security system. No fancy screens or storm windows. Just break the glass in case of emergency.  

The closets aren't big but are lighted when the door opens. Louvered doors. A very high end part of the house built by a builder known for solid, comfortable homes. I stepped inside Daddy's closet, remembering all of the crisp cotton shirts, fine wool suits and natty ties which made up his work uniform, always the best advertisement for the quality of The Store. Nothing in excess but everything the best. He would be lecturing me right now about the state of my excess.

At night, when the doors are bumped, the light comes on. My mother asked him what was going on. Daddy said he'd fallen and wondered what time it was. She asked him curtly, why do old people always want to know what time it is in the middle of the night? She got out of bed and sat down next to him. Nothing was hurting him but they agreed the two of them could not stand up and get him into the bed. She made a call. Help was on the way. Waiting on the floor, I imagine they were talking about sticks in the yard or his next dialysis. Since second grade, a never-ending conversation more breathing than words. Then the flurried arrival of the paramedics who could see a situation going south. Mama said "Darling, I'm calling Amy." The next couple of minutes he lay breathing quietly on a gurney, covered by a blanket. She looked in his eyes and told him, Jesus is coming for you. He believed.

It is not the things we can't stand to let go, although at some point in my auction I wanted to start grabbing things and run people out of my house so I could just sit in the wing chair and lose every tear in my body. We can hold a thing or nail it to the wall or bring it out of a pretty box for the holiday. But it's the place, the where, the first, the last. The air and the slant of the sun or lighted stripes falling out on the rug at 3 o'clock in the morning - I want to grab. The sacred minute which is not mine to hold but will always be there a few feet from the closet. The life experiences which take our breath away. The wonder of a well-loved home.

WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN

Martin Luther King, Jr., radical prophet and preacher, is one of the first people I want to meet. I will probably have to stand in line. He dared to have a dream for change in a never-ending storm. His God-given hope and direction called people to stand for right. 

In my earliest years, I do remember watching riots on the television and seeing dogs attacking people and water being used to subdue and disperse crowds.  These images were disturbing for a child.  One of the best gifts my parents gave me was a love for all people and a living example of The Golden Rule.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, I asked my mother what a negro was.  She told me that M. was a negro.  M. worked for my grandparents and I had known her all of my life.  “Oh, her skin is just  a different color.”  I was already being raised to judge a person by the content of their character.

Although it was not for good, I have been judged by the color of my skin.  Neither were pleasant experiences and both were desperate attempts to gain power.  One was to make sure I was white and the other was because I wasn’t black.  This was at a time of great racial tension in the education system, when integration and busing were struggles in every community.  I was living in a different state each time.

In this day and time, I think most people have been judged by the color of their skin.  Our country has a rainbow of colors.  A few years ago, my family toured The King Center in Atlanta.  For me, it was a reverent time, reminding me again of the importance of Dr. King’s message. 

I stood in line that day in Atlanta, waiting to sign a book of reflection.  A young African-American woman was in front of me, writing a few sentences.  She stepped away from the book. Imagine my shock when I looked down and read her racist comments.  I wrote a few words and came away, amazed that she didn’t get the message which was all around her.

But now, thinking about it, I should not be surprised.  So many things have not changed, especially in the South. 

Every Sunday morning, good Christian men tuck their shirts into their pants, held up by the Bible Belt of the South.  I have heard their ugly whisperings, directing their hate at an image on the television, judging a man by the color of his skin.  However, their judgments are made impotent by the lack of content in their character.  These same men and women lifting their praises to God on Sunday and  whispering their racist bitterness at lunch the next day.

Many years ago, a senator from Illinois came to town, stumping for a fellow politician.  My Daddy had been following the politics of this young man.  We sat on the steps of the Capital, at the foot of the casual podium, listening to this brief speech.  When you are close enough to hold eye contact with a man, in that brief second there is a bond of relationship.  My Daddy began the last year of his life watching this Barack Hussein Obama take the oath of office as President of the United States.  My father cried tears of joy.  He carried a New Testament in his briefcase and The Prayer of St. Francis in his wallet.  And Jesus in his heart.

Despite the progress made, the sky has never cleared completely, clouds linger low on the horizon. But hope is born everyday. The children are the answer. They do not describe or define a friend, teacher or a man walking down the street as black, white, Mexican. 

Love is the answer today just as it was fifty years ago.   And every day is an opportunity to act on the dream where all are created equal.

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

CHRISTMAS BREAK: MEMORY OF A DAN FAN

Daniel Grayling Fogelberg    August 13, 1951 - December 16, 2007

After taking off from ATL, I waited until the okay was issued for electronic devices. I have my doubts as to why an IPOD would be detrimental to the computers flying the plane, but since my flying faith rests in the computer systems and the hands of the pilots, I would stand on my head the entire flight if such a request were made to ensure safety 37,000 feet up into the heavens. And I do get by with a little help from my flying angels.

Adjusting my ear buds, I pulled the shade down and settled off to sleep listening to a classical piano track. When I pulled up the shade, I found I had dozed all the way to NYC. I am simple. Seeing the city always excites me. Or just seeing a sign on the highway pointing to the city. I've only visited once, too long ago, but it was love at first sight. 

The autumn sun was shining on Manhattan and Central Park.  I smiled to think of all the lives being lived as I flew over, reminding me of my post. The plane's route hugged the eastern seaboard until about Boston. It looked as if a narrow white pencil had been used to outline where the sea touched the land. We were still too high to distinguish more than what was already perceived as a building or small blips in the water that had to be ships. 

The plane edged out over the Atlantic, heading towards Maine but still in easy sight of the coastline. As the plane descended, the faint white lines begin to show movement. A few scattered islands begin to appear out from the land as if rocks had been skipped out from the beach, glancing the water eight or nine times before sinking into the water, done over and over by a meticulous hand in another time  In descent, lighthouses began to be visible on top of the tiny islands and the white wash of waves grew broader against the gray stones.

Sun on the water revealed the rhythm of uncapped waves floating at the surface, rolling slowly towards the land like a blue lined page of paper but with broken places. A darker, silvery blue color of water, currents, skimmed below in a second layer, in various widths like veins traveling across the first legs of the seafaring journey, rivulets of rain following a random path down a cobalt mirror or tatted threads being pulled out to sea while the currents shuttle weave in pattern.
The gold of the sun.  The silvery blue.  The shimmer of the shine.   

My music man had already captured the moment. The line came to mind. From the air or from his sailboat, he had seen the magic in this water. Now the wonder of those same Maine waters had caught my breath and my vision blurred. For a few seconds, everything in my being rejoiced and worshipped, perfectly.

"On a high and windy island I was gazing out to sea
When a long forgotten feeling came and took control of me
It was then the clouds burst open and the sun came pouring through
When it hit those dancing waters in an instant all eternity I knew ."
Dan Fogelberg, Magic Every Moment from River of Souls  1993
****
All those years ago, the very first notes of his music captured my heart.  For something different, check out his Christmas Album on YouTube, The First Christmas Morning. 
          

This is my Dan Fogelberg homage on the bulletin board by my desk.  That is me on a long ago Christmas morning, holding my first album, his second release, Souvenirs.  I'm listening on my new Sony headphones.

TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY

A highchair. Boxes for wrapping. Marshmallows and crushed pineapple. Wheat, rice, corn cereal. A special Santa box for someone special. Cranberries. Tylenol. Chocolate bark. Just a sample of the beginning of our Christmas shopping.

The neighborhood was quiet at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday night eleven days before Christmas. Where was the party traffic? I guess everyone was home wrapping presents and making Chex Mix.

The trees are standing, rounded in lights, ornaments caught up on tips and needles. Big, fluffed bows decorate papered boxes and tissue spills from glittered bags. Christmas movies make merry mirth and highlight the happy family faces. A tiny bell jingles.

In another home, a woman stares at the television and wonders if that medicine could help. Even thinking about preparing a box of stuffing is beyond the fog of her depression. She struggles to stay awake during Wheel of Fortune and then says goodnight, feeling guilty for absence. She settles to sleep with wordless prayers. Hoping the morning will look different.

An institution surrounded by tall, steel fences, sits quietly beneath security cameras and lights. People abandoned by families. Hopeless illness resistant to medicine or therapy. Another department full of patients deserted in twisted minds and insane crimes. Christmas cards will be handed out tomorrow and new socks. Five dollars for chips and cokes. For a few minutes, each will have a reason to reach out in hope.

A flood of memories in the middle of a busy day. Weighted shoulders. Cloudy day. The best dog died two years ago three days before Christmas. Years ago just before Christmas, an afternoon spent with my Daddy, heavy hearted with the depression of crippling illness, trying to coax a smile and settle a brow with words of encouragement and hope. A realization of  his outlook. But his everholding hope.

Returning home to the news of the death of my lifelong Music Man - never known but always loved. Playing his music through tears for both my loves.  Two years later, losing my father barely into the new year.

Everyone wants a table full of games and sledding down the hill with laughing children. Fighting over dinner rolls and soft candles on the mantel. Who can understand the lack of energy to enjoy friends or the debilitating physical pain living in the shame of depression. This is the best, happiest time of the year.

Lean in and whisper hope. We are Jesus to the hurting. Shine glory. Proclaim hope.

A STONE PUZZLE

The tie rack fell from the sky this morning. Evidently, a bolt popped after a million trips around the track of tie fashion, the cogwheel of morning preparation which delivered a silk display of the top note to the best-dressed man living in this house. With a back and forth switch, decisions could be changed in an instant.

I promise you trouble is getting ready to walk through the back door and into the room where the ties are draped in groupings. He loves his ties. True to form, his reaction will be instant. The garage door has gone up. And I hear him, now on the back stairs, opening the door.

No, he has changed his mind and is surveying the opened garage flooded with sunlight which is falling on the six bags of cement he intends to use up this weekend. The five hundred pounds of flagstone, which he transported last weekend in the back of my car, are neatly stacked in the backyard. Even a sheet couldn't protect my black trunk from tiny pieces of rock and dirt scuffs. I will say this. When he arrived home that afternoon, he didn't stop lifting rocks out of the car and into his blue wheelbarrow, rock by rock, pushing the heavy load around the corner and down the steep side of the house until the car was emptied. This is the point where I try not to hover but ask him, gently, "Does your heart hurt?" It is a smiling joke with us now. But there was one time when a similar stack of stone literally saved his life, most likely.

The older they get the less they want to take anyone's good advice. If I meekly tried to suggest that maybe building a rock wall with an accompanying flagstone walk, while a lovely gesture he could surely accomplish, was possibly out of his changed skill set, he would have to prove me wrong and right to himself. And he did, in less than a year because of winter. And his heart didn't hurt. He's known blessings in the middle of rock hard. As his fortune cookie said, many years ago, You have a strong will and iron constitution.

He has mixed concrete in the blazing sun until he announced he would wait until the sun had headed on the west side of the pine trees. That just gave him more time, while hunched over in the driveway, still in the blazing sun, to fashion the pieces from Sharpie marked stone as his leather gloved hands danced around the electric saw rattling the wife's nerves. In the summer heat. He had plenty of time to play with the idea of a purposeful, beautiful walk leading guests to the front door, leaving behind the scorn of rainy days and ice on a slip of land that wouldn't grow dirt.

When begged numerous times, he would finally sit in a metal chair and agree to water and Coca Cola. But he wouldn't let me turn the hose on him. That made too much sense. But I came out regularly with water and cold bandanas. I begged him to eat and asked the question, occasionally.

The week of college graduation of one and only and one month before the wedding of same. I have kept but have not found the ticket from the stone shop we had visited a couple of days earlier. We picked a pallet and the rocks were loaded into the car. The pinch, the discomfort. Not much mention. Really. Just rocks to place a path I wanted for the backyard going to the playhouse.

Is it a miracle when something which could have killed you saves you? Before moving the stone, only excitement over the upcoming occasions. But no clue of the terrible secret sneaking up on you. Until you move the stone.

And that is why I ask the question all of these years later, after an eventful few days of the miracle of modern medicine and a stainless steel piece of art tying it all back together and the best color in his cheeks beaming as he dances with his beloved wedded daughter.

He goes back to what he likes best. Building. Even with cement and heavy stones. Can't stop him.  He will walk into Home Depot with the disintegrating straw hat held together with sweat and powdered stone, dirt covered baggy shorts, his favorite tie-dyed tee, the bandana and his knee pads and ground down topsiders along with a friend just stepped out of the garden in his overhauls bringing me the best tomato of the summer. Purchase to make.

Now he is home from work. Yellows and blues and paisley greens and dots and stripes are laid out - too short, too narrow, too wide, spots and picks. When the tie spinner fails it's a good time to check inventory. The reaction was almost as I expected. But glory, the tie turner has been saved. Alas, not all of the ties will spin again.

He is more lost in his thoughts of what work he can get done by sundown of this late autumn afternoon. The time change has tinkered with his inner clock. He knows every rock by number, mapped out in his head, the beginning of a patio. And because it has already snowed once this month, winter will break in and halt the production. By spring, after rain, he will be leveling the land, planting stones and stirring cement with his hoe. Breaking in new Christmas leather gloves, hunched in the driveway cutting rocks into the shape he needs. Always figuring out the puzzle to work the best fit.

I'M REALLY NOT TROUBLE

A teaspoon of whiskey from every bar in town.  

That’s not what I said, although the reaction has been the same as if…What I said was “I want to eat my way down the Midway.” I do not want to toss corny dog trailers and fried butter vendors into the air. I do not care to spin all the cotton candy, green, pink, and blue, into one sugary ball and roll it past a goldfish in a bowl that will be won and carried home, named Elvis and live for one year. I wouldn’t dare throw up smoked turkey legs pretending to juggle- though be advised, if you decide to ride, their greasy effect is not subtle. I do feel crazy when diners are too lazy, squirting mustard and ketchup from big jars of condiments all over fries and corny dogs, letting it drip and mix,  – just too icky. Please clean it up quickly. 

Don’t blame the hot dog rolling on a stainless log or the “fresh” corn bobbing in a watery bog. Shirts and shoes required for service. I won’t pull the plug at Steak on a Stick but at another fair it made me sick.   It’s just a Middle- Eastern kabob grilled for the mobs. Fresh kettle corn!? I’ll fight for the first bunch of that buttery, warm, sugary, salty, crunch. Fried twinkies and snicker bars won’t earn my attention. 

But I’m headed for detention when I unhook the little cart frying funnel cakes. Will I make it through the gates? I did not plan for this sudden escape. And someone thought I would be trouble. All I wanted was to take a walk down the Midway, have a bite of this and that and watch other people do the same. Could it be the powdered sugar on my hands and face? Funnel cake larceny has gotten the best of me. I won’t give them my real name. What will a respectable woman do?

signed,

a woman who is not trouble as long as she gets a funnel cake and a Corny Dog

RAPSCALLION SQUIRRELS FLINGING ACORNS

 I was sitting in my neighbor's driveway, putting together a surprise goody box for her 94th birthday. Big crash. Like glass crash. I grabbed the goods and jumped out of my new car expecting to see a huge crack in my windshield. Two chunks of a huge split hickory shell were lying in the wipers grill. I couldn't see the guilty party but I did feel the force behind the pitch was aimed at my car.

That time of year again.  I woke up this morning and realized today was the day, the primary day of acorn flinging, Drop Day. Elephants running across our roof.

We do not have tickets to the World Series.  At this late date, all the baseball uniforms of every team are at the cleaners.  So who is running bases on my roof?

It is that time of year again, the Squirrel World Series.  Day barely breaks before they are playing with acorns as big as crabapples.  And they can’t catch!  If I sneak out on the deck, I can hear the fans singing “Take Me Out to the Taylor Tree,” smell the popacorn and hear little bitty cans of Nut Beer popping open, all before 7 a.m.! Bases are loaded.

Drop Day is a big deal at my house.  We have oak and hickory trees circling the house.  But this year we are experiencing Drop Week.  The acorns are so big everyone knows someone who has either been hit in the head or broken a bone falling over an acrimonious nut.  The dog has had his legs crossed for days. 

What is the purpose of the squirrel?  Maybe their purpose is to drive the meek mad. Friend or foe, ask a person not what they hate or love, but what drives them crazy.  A whole industry has developed to thwart the endeavors of these birdseed thieves.  My father had a little chair for the squirrel to sit on and eat corn, thinking it would distract the cute rodent.  They just got fatter. 

They keep their teeth sharp by chiseling deck rails.  We have especially talented squirrels that leaned out over the roof edge, devouring a shoebox size piece of soffit.  We covered the opening with mesh wire stuffed with steel wool pads, about the only thing they can’t get their teeth into!

 The antics of the squirrel are so amusing we forget they are just rodents in the tree of life.  Recently, we watched a squirrel climb into the BBQ grill.  He thought he had found a secret paradise, his twitchy tail still hung out the back.  Later, we looked in the grill and found a half-eaten acorn.  I left two fat ones as a gift.

 Do you know why you never see a squirrel kid?  They can’t run with nuts in their mouth and aren’t long or fast enough to keep up with Mama.  What makes a squirrel change direction in the middle of the street?  Count the times you’ve zigged for his zag.  Come to think of it, have you ever seen a squirrel lying dead from an inaccurate leap?  No.  A Secret Squirrel Society gathers up the errant Wallenda to perpetuate the myth of the flying squirrel. 

 Despite the negative, there are good things about Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel.  They are thorough and tireless when building a nest high in the treetops.  Think of the courage required to jump out a distance five times your length or the confidence required to zip along branches and electrical wires.  Despite my frustration with them, I am drawn to their secret treetop world, only imagining the thrill of flying through the air and maneuvering their hickory mazes and oak bowers. 




A yearly reminder of the revival of the love affair with Fall. One of my most requested posts for reading at Fall Festivals such as The Really Good Cornbread Festival and The Strangest Pumpkin Pie Spice Soups and Sauces Carnival.