Soaked in cold spring water
engulfed in it
I want to paddle against the current again
River rocks
you helped me walk over their slippery path
A mountain’s bald peak
grass as soft as cotton
No stress there
Can we go back
on days like these
where life has sucked out
all the marrow of zen
and time is on fast-forward
The summer of 12
the best in my life
You 12, me 42
But among those swaying pines
and silly laughter
I was the same as you
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
One of my favorite holiday movies of all time is Love Actually, an early 2000 British classic among Gen X-ers and the like. Throughout this humorous, heart-felt, quirky, kitschy film they use the line, “Because it’s Christmas….” to rebuild friendships, confess love, and just downright be real.
I’ve been using this line for weeks now. And it’s liberating.
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to give candy to the kids at school.”
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to have a piece of chocolate at breakfast.”
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to stifle the angry urge to curse out the person who just stole my parking space and instead give them a nod and a smile.”
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to spend more money than I should on gifts for my loved ones because it just feels good.”
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to wear ridiculous holiday-themed hats and slippers and shirts.”
“Because it’s Christmas… I’m going to drink more tea and coffee than I have in over a decade.”
You get the point. Call it an excuse. Call it an opportunity. Whatever the case, Christmas gives me reason to be a little nicer and a less frustrated perfectionist.
Some people hate the holidays. It’s too commercialized. Too much pressure. Too many sad memories. I get it. I’ve been there.
But not this year.
Because it’s Christmas I’m doing everything I normally do but with even greater purpose and zen. And I’m doing it in fuzzy elf slippers and a t-shirt that reads “Santa is my Sugar Daddy.”
Filed under Movies I Like
It’s been over 2 months since I’ve written. I’ve sat down at my computer multiple times since then and just stared at the blank, white screen. But nothing. I can’t type a word. I’ll think of a dozen ideas and lines when I’m biking, driving, scouring the aisles at the grocery store, walking up the gravel drive toward the classroom to work. But at the computer, NOTHING.
I don’t like writing about not being able to write. I’ve done it several times on this blog. But what’s a writer’s blocked mind to do?
I’m hoping at least this will unclog the faucet and let something flow again.
It’s been one crazy 2+ months. So much so that I can’t even divulge it all. Let’s just say I’ve dealt with death, loss, sickness, physical pain, emotional pain, disappointment, anger, sadness, despair, sometimes all those negatives at once. Most of it being out of my control, which makes it that much worse.
However, among all that imperfection and just plain suckiness a warm blanket covers me with children’s hugs that squeeze me from the core, family support I forgot I had, the kind ear of friends, a rogue, sweet birdsong in the middle of a dark silence.
I told one of my dear friends if we don’t have Hope, we have nothing. There is always hope here, even in somber moments when the only faucet flowing are the salty tears plopping down my neck.
I’m grateful for so many things. There is light and laughter and happiness. And that’s what keeps me, all of us, afloat.
Filed under A Writer's Mind
A photograph of you welcomes
anyone entering my door
It was taken years ago
The scent of tobacco leaves fill my
olfactory memory
Chats by the kitchen table
Home-grown tomatoes and buttermilk
biscuits
Scribbled artwork on the fridge
Crumpled tissue next to the snuff cup
We have the same middle name
Decades of holidays and summer visits
tree climbing
autumn leaf pile jumping
Tag in the backyard
Old toys smelling of age
Walks in the cemetery
You always bought me pajamas and
kitchen towels for Christmas
Now shredded and worn thin
Your birthday card consistently the first
in my mailbox
But this year it never arrived
You always stood at your front door
to watch me drive away
And this is how I will remember you
Furiously waving as if never wanting to say
good-bye.
Rest in Peace, Emma Marie. Granny. You will be greatly missed.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet, Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
These are the apricot fried pies my mom used to make when I was a kid. I’ve mentioned them here before.
This is a photo taken a couple years back when she revisited the recipe in response to my nagging about wanting some. Forgive my crappy food photography.
But can’t you just taste them? The golden, buttery crust. The sweet, sticky apricot. Why have I now tortured myself so? My mom is out of town, taking care of my ailing grandmother. There is no way I’m getting a bite of these. I’ve tried recreating some of her recipes to no avail.
There are other tastes from my childhood which linger on my tongue. Granny’s backyard garden tomatoes, crimson, bursting with robust nectar. Nana’s pancake corn bread, the edges crispy and the middle a fluffy intoxication of milled corn. Nanny’s sweet rice, solidly puffed, dewy with cream and sugar, peppered with a hint of nutmeg.
Can you get I was raised in the South?
Now I’m one of those gluten-free, non-mammal eaters. Don’t hate me. My digestive system, conscience, and waist line appreciates it.
I’m grateful to have these culinary memories. I hope to provide the same. I do make a pretty mean grilled cheese for little man. And this Moroccan chicken stew. And coconut rice that tastes almost as good as Nanny’s.
What sumptuous dishes do you remember from your childhood? Have you ever tried recreating them?
When we clothe ourselves in the past
we are suffocating our future
like a wool scarf wrapped around the neck
during a long, stifling summer
These photographs on the wall
a reminder of all we have worked for
all we have accomplished
the adventures and the love
I could cry like I did yesterday
and long for the good times
the beginning of a journey
that would indefinitely change its course
I could enshroud myself in regret
and guilt and longing
like I have many times
looking through the cracked mirror
But then I am not breathing
am not truly living
So I must inhale the air of the present
nod to those smiling photographs
Know I have done good in this life
and there is much more to do
unravel the woolen suppression
unbound by the virtue of today’s truth.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
I have been thinking a lot about my grandmother lately. The one who is deceased, not the one who is alive. Granny is still dipping snuff and listening to country music in her ranch-style home. Nana is somewhere with that great spirit in the sky, perhaps noshing on walnuts and dancing to Glenn Miller.
But I have felt her presence lately. I’m not sure why she has decided to visit but I will welcome it nevertheless.
The other day I was sitting at the dining room table, a worn 1920’s set I inherited from Nana’s mother. For a moment I was ten again, or rather wished I was. I could hear echoes of my cousin’s laughter and smell the buttered toast Nana would broil for us every morning. I could see her spinning in the front room to the sound of the jazz album. I could feel the spongy firmness of the big eraser I used to delete scattered lines from my latest Spirograph design.
There was always something to do at Nana and Papa’s. Whether it was trudging and scavenging and playing among Papa’s junk yard or dancing to the music from the turn table and playing “Office” in the living room or being a guinea pig in one of my older cousin’s traps or home-made haunted houses in the basement.
Sometimes it feels like those times were a hundred years ago. But thank god I have those memories at least.
I love that my own son now plays around that worn antique set. Does his homework there. Builds Legos. Has chatty weeknight dinners with me there. I bought him a Spirograph set a while back. He didn’t quite take to it like I thought he would.
I think my Nana would be proud of me for the most part. Maybe that’s why she visits from time to time. Just to let me know.
And to remind me to keep dancing.
Filed under Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
I’ve always been a proponent of vacations. Every vacation I ever took left me with a newfound sense of zen, an inspiration to tweak things in my life, and an altered way of looking at my surroundings.
I just got back from a three week road trip (tour de South) with the boy, who is twelve years old- that splendid minute between childhood and adolescence. He still sleeps with his stuffed animal Snuggles yet he forgot I existed once on our trip when a fellow 21 Pilots fan with long dark hair and a braided choker necklace entered his world.
Besides my glorious trips overseas in my teens and twenties I have not been away from home for this length of time. I can be a cave-dweller. When not at work or grocery shopping at Walmart I stick to my minute radius, often ignoring the slight nag to interact with humanity on a physical level.
Vacations pluck you out of your comfort zone, plop you into the unknown, and enlighten your sense of self. I learned I can keep up with preteens on a floating obstacle course (although I could barely lift my arms the next day). I realized I am pretty good at being a chameleon when it comes to cohabitating with various families and groups of people (although I had to slink away at small intervals to get away from the tiresome chatter I’d rather replace with a good book or staring at the tops of the trees).
I urinated in several outdoor locations without soaking my feet. I got lost in the banjo-echoed boonies without becoming completely inconsolable. I drove through thunderstorms and along winding mountain roads and alongside Live Oaks draped in Spanish moss.
I sang aloud to Boz Scaggs and Jimmy Hendrix and Weezer. I sipped coffee with my brother. I read fairy tales to my nephew. I poured my grandmother a glass of milk. I floated down rivers with friends I hope I have forever.
And all this with my son.
When we pulled into our driveway I was a bit dejected. Reality. Chores. Bills. Work. Homework. But if I can tackle these things with the zen I felt on the mountain, the freedom I felt on the open road, the happiness I felt surrounded by friends and family, then maybe these mundane tasks won’t be so stressful.
“I feel strongly about Saturn” was written in marker on a wooden bed in a cabin in the north Florida woods. It made me think of all the travelers who came there before me. And the dreams of stellar travels to come.
Filed under Observations
This photograph encapsulates so much of what I remember-and miss- about the ’80s. This is a real photograph (as if you couldn’t tell from the faded color and hideous retro wallpaper) of me, my bro, and some neighbor kids in the kitchen where I ate many of my meals from 1979 to 1995.
This kitchen went through several make-overs over the decades but this is what it looked like for many of my young childhood years. That damn telephone cord ticked me off more than a few times as it either coiled up in a way even Houdini would have a difficult time unraveling the thing or it choked me or my brother as my mom methodically raced around the kitchen prepping hobo dinners and fried apricot pies.
But there was always a surprise to who may be on the other end of the line when it loudly rang until you picked it up. And during phone conversations there was not really anywhere to go but stretch the cord beyond its limits into the dining room to have a “private” conversation.
And that Tupperware. I don’t know how but I have that olive-green bowl I’m eating from in the photograph resting on a shelf in my own kitchen now. Don’t know what happened to the others. I suppose they are in Tupperware heaven, reuniting with their lids. I take my Greek yogurt to school in mine and the kids look at it as if it’s a relic from an ancient civilization. God knows how many PBAs have mutated inside. But I love it because it reminds me of this time. The ’80s. A time I will forever be nostalgic about.
Look how happy we are eating our ice cream. At first glance I thought it might be cottage cheese because we did eat that with canned pineapple at times but what kids would be that excited about curdled cheese?
My brother was always goofy. I was the overachiever who loved him making me laugh. Though now he is 700 miles away from me I can hear a line from a movie or song from our childhood and burst out in laughter thinking how he would mimic it.
There are hundreds more nostalgic memories I have from those years but right now I’ll just leave it at this one photograph.
Even though most everything in that kitchen is now in a landfill (except the rustic fall scene painting- my Granny has it) that is how the kitchen always looks in my dreams.
What did your childhood kitchen look like? Is there anything you wish you still had from it?
Filed under Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
We bought a new float yesterday. It’s a blow-up surf board with a tiki image in aqua blue, coral, sunshine yellow, and grass green. It smells like fresh plastic-coated fun. It smells like summer vacation.
There’s a slight tug at my stomach, a nagging to make sure to fit everything one can possibly fit in this time off. My boy is 12. Is this his last childhood summer before he starts getting all teen-agy?
I want to relish in every freckled smile. Every swish of a hand in pool water. Every lazy snuggle. Every moment spent lingering over breakfast when during the school year it’s rush rush rush.
I took an assistant teaching job for many reasons, number one being so I could be on my son’s schedule and enjoy some of his days off with him just like my mother and father did with me.
This time is more precious than gold. More fleeting than the speed of a hummingbird’s wing.
I hear the snap of Nerf guns coming from his bedroom and the goofy chatter between him and his good friend. We will take the new float out again today. The five bucks spent on it will more than pay for itself in laughter and memories.
I like looking around the house and seeing the float, the beach towels, the pizza box from last night’s sleepover feast. A myriad of colors representing all that summer has and should stand for.
What do your summer colors look like? If you could accomplish one thing this summer, what would it be?
Filed under Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
Busted Flip Flops 