At a certain time of day
if the sun is shining and
you’re standing in
just the right place,
rainbows come out to play.
You or anybody else,
for that matter,
can stop the light and
vanish the rainbows,
if you’re not paying attention
to where you stand,
if you get in the way.
Seems a simple
yet significant
thing to know.
Weeds are pesky things. Maybe once upon a year you liked them, actually spent money acquiring them then spent time planting and tending them. But comes a day when you realize they are more invasive than pleasing, that they have spread and are now growing and blooming where you don’t want them to grow and bloom. They are taking up too much space on your path.
That’s when it’s time to pluck them out . . .
Borders had been installed at the very beginning, but the weeds had long ago ignored the boundaries, going over and under as they pleased, determinedly oblivious to my growing discontent, so yesterday was weed-pulling day. Many were not happy to leave. Their roots had spread deep and wide over time, taking strong hold to that part of my path. They were apparently quite comfortable and vehemently protested the change. Tools were required to assist in the removal of the most obstinate weeds, and quite often when the weed did finally let go, it came out with great clumps of dirt that went into my shoes, my shirt, my eyes, my hair. It was not a pretty sight.
It was tough, time-consuming work. Fingernails were blackened and broken. Before long, my back hurt and neck and legs ached so badly, I considered throwing in the towel and going to find something to do that was more fun and less arduous, just leaving them be. After all, I could still technically step around them.
Otto, my granddog, provided company and stood as witness – sometimes enjoying the sun,
sometimes standing right where I needed him not to stand,
sometimes doing a little digging himself. There was an important difference, though: Otto simply moved what he pulled up, burying it in a new spot in the yard.
What I pulled up went into the compost bin to be recycled into something new and useful and nourishing. I suppose you could say that it will eventually go into another spot in the yard, too, but you get my drift.
Yeah, I’ve had days that were more fun, but by bedtime, the path was cleared, and I could once again see the stepping stones and imagine where they might lead me. You know what I mean?
Saturday was World War 2 Heritage Days, an event in Peachtree City, GA honoring those who served in WW2. Veterans wear their uniforms or at least a hat to indicate their field of service.
My daughter travels around to various events, portraying Betty Grable, and let me tell you: she has the legs and the voice and the hair to pull it off. Years ago I bought a 1940s era dress just because I liked it. It’s hung in the closet since then, but on Saturday morning, I pulled it out and put it on, along with my black gloves, a 1940ish pocketbook, and the cutest hat you’ve ever seen, all topped off with shoes to die for (and by the end of the day, my feet almost had) (died, I mean). My hair is now too long to hold pin curls, and I didn’t know how to do victory rolls, so I decided I’d just tell the stitch nazis (women who delight in pointing out inadequacies and unauthenticies) to (a) bug off or (b) that I’d been out picking cotton that morning and simply hadn’t had time to do my hair. Thank goodness I didn’t hear from the stitch nazis, but I’ll have you know that three men asked me where I bought my dress. Not cross-dressers, mind you, just men who say they find shirtwaist dresses (accessorized with black gloves and a purse that snapped shut with an attitude) like mine sexier than today’s dresses. Here she is, my daughter, singing the national anthem.
Later when she sings The Armed Forces Medley, veterans stand when she gets to the theme song for their branch of service. These fellas were able to name the song Anchors Away in three notes.
This is my mother’s boyfriend, Walter, cheering as his song – Army Air Corps – ends. Loyalty runs deep.
Speaking of loyalty, this is Helen Denton telling some young girls what it was like to be General Eisenhower’s secretary. Though she joined in hopes of meeting a man, she had some pretty important jobs during her tour of duty . . . some things she couldn’t talk about for 50 years – not even to her husband – because she’d promised she wouldn’t.
Re-enactors don period attire and engage in immersion imagination as the veterans watch and remember, telling stories and shedding tears all along the day. The re-enactors spend an awful lot of time and money doing their research and trekking to these events. They take history seriously, and do not tolerate revisionists well. Their equipment and uniforms are authentically correct but they are not government-issued like the originals.
When they’re not in character, you see things like a German giving a ride to US military folk . . . and they are all smiling. This vehicle, by the way, was a gift from the driver’s wife one Christmas. Yes, really.
When they came home, the veterans were told they could wear their uniforms for 3 months until they found a job and got settled. They were given special pins to wear to indicate that they had served and were now discharged, reacclimatizing themselves into society. Though the pin had an official name, the veterans called it The Ruptured Duck. All veterans were given a Ruptured Duck pin Saturday morning. This is my 98 year old Uncle Joseph receiving his pin.
And this is Walter receiving his pin.
The hangar is filled with rows of tables filled with ribbons, pins, uniforms, photos, and other memorabilia on Saturday. In one corner of the hangar, young women have set up a 1940s kitchen, complete with the cutest stove I’ve ever seen, a ringer washing machine I’m glad I don’t have to use, a wooden ironing board that looks like it positively salivates at the thought of pinching fingers, a Hoosier cabinet that reminds me of the one in my Aunt Rene’s kitchen, and a small kitchen table from that era. I like that there was some attention shone on the domestic arts of the time.
There’s a camp show that is performed word-for-word from the transcripts of camp shows of the era. This is Thomas Eastin (the best of the good guys, if you ask me), a college student who’s been portraying Bob Hope for several years.
When the whistle sounds at 4 o’clock, tired volunteers find a second wind and leap into action, clearing the hangar of military paraphernalia and transforming it into a ballroom for The Swing Dance. The tired young re-enactors change into their dress uniforms, and just as they must have back in the 1940′s, line up to ask pretty young women to dance. I look at the young men in those WW2 uniforms and think about how the 93 and 94 year old men sitting across the table from me were about that age when they trotted off to war. How did their mothers ever stop crying?
When I interviewed him for the book I wrote about him, my father-in-law told me that he received his marching orders the same day he was to graduate from Georgia Tech. Said the school moved the graduation ceremony up, making it earlier in the day so graduates would have time to gather their belongings and take their leave into the wild blue yonder and beyond. He said he and the other graduates walked up on stage, received their lambskin, then stepped off the stage and immediately received their orders. In the space of the few hours separating graduation from shipping out, many of them – including my father-in-law – got married.
But it’s not just the young re-enactors who take to the dance floor. Here’s my mother dancing with Walter while Alison sings “Kiss me once and kiss me twice, and kiss me once again. It’s been a long, long time . . . ”
At one point during the evening, this 94 year old veteran was dancing with Jenny (left) when Alison went up and in the spirit of fun, staged a cat fight for his attention. Is it just me, or does this fella seem to enjoy all the commotion?
In the end, he chose Alison, I mean Betty Grable. His daughter cautioned Alison to hold on to him tightly, but there was magic in the air that night, magic that took his body back in time – maybe not to a foxhole, but he sure didn’t need any help finding his way around the dance floor.
Freddie hails from Long Island, New York and travels around the country making appearances as JFK. This is my mother being totally won over by his charming personality. Look out, Marilyn. You may be able to sing Happy birthday, Mr. President, but you can’t cook like my mother.
We can argue that memory is construct and fallible, and we might agree that we’d rather war be the last avenue taken rather than the first, but surely we all agree that there’s nothing like learning about history from the lips of those who lived it. You can’t learn history like this from books. You just can’t.
i love how the falls,
ordinarily so lacey and pristine,
go all muddy on us after a storm.
the sediment, once hidden in quiet repose underneath the surface,
comes rushing to the top,
debris once settled in another life faraway from here
gets added to the mix,
sometimes staying a while
as though waiting on the next big storm to come along.
As a little girl, I’d spend the occasional Friday night with my grandparents. On Saturday morning, my grandmother would shake me awake: “Jeanne, are you awake?” she’d ask over and over with increasing volume. “Yes ma’am,” I’d eventually say. Upon her order, I’d sit up and look at her only to hear her say: “I just wanted to tell you to sleep as long as you want to.”
My granddaddy would feed me cornflakes then load me into his faded red-and-white Ford Fairlane and drive me around the county, pointing out every family’s homeplace. Back then, folks around town gave directions using family homeplaces as markers for turns or mileage. I still do.
Aunt Rene came into possession of the house when the elderly man she cared for died. Though she lived somewhere else for a period of time so Uncle Bill could be near his work, that white board house in the middle of town was Aunt Rene’s house for as long as I can remember. Forgetting to turn the stove off was bad enough, but when she began to dose them (her sister, Lucy, had come to live with her by then) their tablets several times a day because she couldn’t tell the difference between waking from a nap and waking from a night’s sleep, moving The Girls to an assisted living home became an undeniable, unavoidable necessity. Though she was less than thrilled with her change of address, Aunt Rene eventually settled in, flirting with the single men and finding a bigger pocketbook to hold her frequent Bingo winnings. She was quite the social butterfly, that one.
Shortly after the move, Aunt Rene began to collect napkins. We’d go out to eat at a restaurant, and while we paid the bill, she’d open that big ole’ pocketbook of hers and empty the napkin holder into it, never taking the holder itself, mind you, only its contents. I gave her packages of napkins purchased at restaurant supply stores in hopes of quelling her sticky fingers, but it simply was not the same.
She also became an avid collector of cardboard boxes – empty cardboard boxes, thank goodness – availability taking precedence over size. “You just never know when you might need a good empty box,” she’d tell me in what I declare was a tone of pride in her voice when I asked about the growing mountain of boxes in the corner of her room beside the bed. About once a week (sometimes twice, depending), Mother and/or I would go by rid her room of most of her stash, always respectfully leaving a few behind.
It was actually a rather endearing (if frustrating at times) behavior. Though she never gave us more of an answer than the standard you-just-never-know answer, I ‘spect those boxes were a throwback to times in her past when, from what I hear, she could fit everything she owned into a small cardboard box and still have room left over. And I ‘spect they represented the future. Though she quit talking to us about it, I’m quite sure the hope of one day filling those boxes with her earthly belongings and moving back to her home never completely left her. And every now and then when I think about Aunt Rene and her boxes, I imagine that maybe those boxes made her feel in control of her life somehow, if for no other reason than she and she alone would decide what to put inside them.
I think about Aunt Rene when I remember how as an undergraduate student, I transformed empty boxes into nightstands and coffee tables through the magic of paint, tape, glue, and old magazines. I think about her when I fill boxes with things I just can’t yet let go of, telling myself “The children will want this one day.” I think about her as I poke around in search of boxes to hold my various projects, boxes as creative containers that will keep visual clutter to a minimum while making it easy to start and stop without having to pull everything out or put everything up. It is a throwback to the days when to save time and conserve mental capacity, I had a tote bag for every organization I was affiliated with, filled with what I needed for that particular group, a way to grab and go. “What in the sam hill are you going to do with that?” my husband asks as I pick up an old hat box at the thrift shop. “Well,” I tell him as I continue to survey and assess, “you just never know when you might need a good empty box.”
Whatever
the occupation
the age
the gender
Whatever
the sexual preference
the religion
the hair color
Whatever the size of
the bank book
the house
the appetite
Whether one likes
numbers
beakers
paint
words
proof
or
faith
best
Whatever
the handicap
the illness
the eye color
Whatever
the height
the dental records
the shoe size
Whatever
the favorite color
the preferred mode of transportation
or dress
or leisure activity
Whatever the differences . . .
We’re all Somebodies
Somewhere
in Some Way.
Unless you have problems with your short-term memory, you may recall that on the third day of Christmas the true love came bearing gifts of 3 – count them, three – French horns. One feller who talks like he knows, says the three French horns refer to faith, hope, and charity while another fella proclaims the third day of Christmas to honor the life of St. John, who has the distinction of being the only one of the twelve apostles to die a natural death.
Anyway, in likening my third yoga class to the third day of Christmas, I see some distinct similarities. Given that I am short and round and stiff, not tall and lanky and bendy like most yoga folks, just signing up for yoga shows that I have a heaping’ helping’ of faith and hope. Charity? April (the teacher) provides that.
I tend to hang out with yoga folks online, and I have a few questions – three, in keeping with the title – that came up as I spent time on the mat today . . .
First of all, am I the only one who sweats like a big ole’ glass of sweet tea on a hot summer afternoon? This isn’t Bikram yoga, folks. This is plain ole’ yoga in the Episcopal church.
And does anybody besides me worry about passing gas during yoga class? Or having bad breath? April came over to help me with something today, and when she asked me a question, I just gave her a closed-mouth smile in return for fear I have the post-water-drinking-dry-mouth-means-bad-breath-at-least-for-me-anyway thing going on.
I tell you what, there are parts of me that touched the floor today that haven’t met with the floor in an awful long time. The floor right by the door, where I always set up for reasons I don’t feel like explaining right now. The floor by the door where people tracked in the pollen which I inhaled as the clock ran out on my 12-hour Clairin-D during the Child pose . . . which I thought for a while was “china” pose . . . which set me to thinking about digging my way there and wondering if there are still a boatload of staving children there. Yeah, you could say my mind wanders during yoga. But oh my goodness, you should’ve seen the images that went floating through while we were laying on the floor meditating. I wish I had a camera on the inside of my eyelids.
(Confession: I think I snored there at the end of class.)
once upon a decade
i wanted him to leap onto his white steed
grab his longest sharpest sword
and gallop off
to lop off the
ugly heads of the man who raped me
and the man who abused me.
in another decade,
i wanted him to say something
anything,
though it had to be anger.
he had to show me
with his words and his tone
and his venom
that he understood
as best he could,
that he hurt for me,
with me.
and now
after 40 years of togetherness
i am content
to have him quietly by my side
saying “you better get started”
to every idea that comes through
my bones.
to have him gently kiss me every night
EVERY night, i tell you.
to have him say the words “i love you”
in more ways than i can count.
it’s not our anniversary.
i usually only write about him on the day we met
or the day we married.
then again
maybe it is an anniversary of sorts.
an anniversary of recognizing
of setting aside
without ever forgetting, mind you.
of publicly declaring
that this man called andy
is number one
and takes up more space in my life than the other despicable men
will claim ever again.
[ ::: ]
i can’t wish it all away for jane doe
it happened
period.
i can’t wish her to set it aside,
this will be with her every hour of every day
of her life.
the best i can do is wish her a husband who may
never be able to talk with her about it
because he can’t fathom how men could
commit these vile acts;
a husband who may squirm when she writes or talks about this,
something she simply must do every now ‘n then;
a husband who might cringe when she yells at the tv
because he can’t go to the store
and buy something to fix,
to repair
what happened to her.
i can
and do
however
wish for her a husband
who,
even after 40 years of togetherness,
takes the dog for a walk and
returns bearing
a lacy leaf
or a heart-shaped rock
or a piece of wood
he thought she would like.
[from my journal yesterday morning, 2/14/13,
on the occasion of day one of my big, milestone birthday]
Today I wake up
celebrating
a milestone birthday.
This is the birthday card I send myself.
I call it My Womanifesto.
I have no more time to waste
on conforming
or contorting
in hopes that you will find me pleasing or worthwhile.
If you are that focused on me,
if you are willing to devote so much time and energy
to keeping me small so you can feel late and powerful,
I give that back to you and call it what it is: your problem.
I will not sit still
Or be quiet
Or calm down
on command
ever again.
Don’t expect me to show my work
simply because you don’t understand.
I am out of apologies, justifications, and explanations-on-demand
and I am not restocking.
Never again will I diminish my light
or quiet my voice
or step aside
- especially when i know i am right -
for fear it will diminish you
or make you feel bad
or incur your wrath.
That is your problem to deal with.
You may label me
and make assumptions
about me
simply because I am
a Southerner
and a Woman,
because I call people I care about Sugar
am funny
carry too many pounds
don’t use phrases like
“for the common good”
or
“it’s not fair”.
Yes, you can surely do that . . .
and it will show
your ignorance
and small mindedness.
It will say much more about you
than you are trying to say
about me.
No longer will I sit in the
cold drab metal folding chair
in the dim corner of the room
waiting on somebody . . . anybody . . . to ask me to dance.
I don’t have to like you
And you don’t have to like me,
and even if we do like each other,
we don’t have to agree on everything.
But know this: I will not stand still
while you berate me
or insult me
or call me names
or stomp, kick, or otherwise malign me
because I think differently.
Don’t have to
and I won’t.
If I like you and believe in what you are doing,
I will be your number one cheerleader.
I will support you, encourage you, hold you.
I will help you any way I can but know this:
I will not be disrespected or taken advantage of ever again.
And I will not give you something simply because
I have it
and you want it.
That’s where the word earn comes into play.
I will ask you daily if you’ve thought for yourself
so be ready for it,
because it’s what I’m most passionate about:
self-expression,
thinking for yourself.
I will if you will.
I abhor bandwagon mentality,
despise it, I tell you,
and I will do everything within my power
to support you as you burn your bushel basket.
This political correctness stuff
has to stop.
We are different,
and we each shine in our own way.
I am ready to embrace my shine,
to turn it loose,
and I’m ready for you to do the same.
I am declaring to us both
how I will live my life from this point forward:
no excuses,
and no apologies.
This is a big, milestone birthday
and for the first time in my life,
I feel free to unzip, step out, speak up.
I have tenure, you see,
so I can take up as much space as I want
and I can make as much noise as I want
and I can speak and move and live
as raucously and as tenderly
as I want.
I . . . have . . . tenure.
[ ::: ]
I love this woman, and I love this post.
This is a photo of my beloved husband, Andy,
taken yesterday as he was buying me the bushel basket
that topped the list of
What I Want For My Big Milestone Birthday.
I have a plan, you see:
I will decorate this basket,
festoon it with ribbons
and words of wagging fingers,
most from long-forgotten,
unnamed voices,
words that nevertheless linger deep and long.
“Who do you think you are?”
“What gives you the right?”
“Well, you’re getting too big for your britches.”
I will write these words (and more) on the basket,
trim them with ribbons and glitter and sparkle,
then I will set fire to the basket,
while singing
“This Little Light of Mine”.
and dancing.
Oh good lord
how I will dance.
