The Vows

Lily sighs and holds out her hand. Her handsome groom takes it. They walk among their friends and her new family. Smiling well wishers throw birdseed. Gay Pigeons flutter around. Dodging the barrage, Lily turns spotting her lawful husband in the crowd.

Anticipation

Pretty
she sits and waits
eyes cast about longing
pink tip of tongue traces her lips
eager

Behind
my back I hold the prize she seeks
Is it bacon or beef
What’s my secret
Good Dog

My first try at a mirror cinquain or any cinquain for that matter. It may stink, but it was fun. The idea was born out of this week’s prompt and the coffee-house espresso shot. I’m not sure it really fits Nate’s idea at all, just what came to me.

Letting Go

Purging of things, people, food, and words is hard for me. I am a keeper. I have letters from the 1960’s and 70’s. My favorite pair of jeans from high school resides in a box alongside other mementos from the longest four years of my life. I still cherish people that only reach out at Christmas time. I have been known to search for long lost friends on facebook late at night while drinking a glass of wine. My refrigerator would make the witch-hunting, date-checkers orgasm. Books are the most popular thing in my house. Long story short is always my goal, I often fail. Even now I ramble as I get to the point. Downsizing from a 1600 square foot home with a garage and an attic to a not quite 300 square foot travel trailer is the reason for my current conflict. I, borderline hoarder, am embarking on a three year voyage as a full-time RV’er. I must lesson the load.

I am reminded of my luck at being the mother to three beautiful daughters as I begin sorting my things. Many of my collections of stuff find their origins in those three girls. Special baby clothes, pottery art projects, school papers, baseball cards, stuffed animals, have all found their way into my attic. Awesome! These items will find their way back to their rightful owners. Now that I think of it, they may be grateful to not have to wait for my demise in order to be beneficiary of some of my treasures. I am so blessed to have three girls with homes of their own to assist me with this downsizing. Phew! I have escaped the true ridding of things by the “things relocation program.”

The amount of square footage should not require the removal of people in my life as I only live with my husband and he gets to stay. Alas, homeostasis in the current friend category can not be totally achieved. We have two friends who are occasional house guests. They stay with us when they want to stay near the beach on the cheap. We may have to loose them though. They do not seem to know that toilets flush. Okayish in a home with bathrooms removed from living areas, not okay in a tiny camper. I am happy to have friends that still want to stay with us and have good hygiene and manners.

Fortunately, our new refrigerator will be self limiting. It is only 8.2 cubic feet. As I am not fond of jars of old olives falling out of the refrigerator onto my toe upon opening the door, I think I can keep up with this task. (wow, what a sentence!) Which leads me to my final problem.

Words! I own more than 1000 books. Not bragging, I love books. Many people will no doubt sympathize with my plight. I have managed to sort the books into four piles: donate, keep, keep at daughter’s houses, keep at mom’s house. Again, those daughters sure do come in handy. Not only can I pass on some of my favorite collected authors, I can also visit them and borrow them anytime I want. Plus, my overlarge bookcases will look fantastic in their living rooms! My love of books was encouraged by my mom at an early age. It is to her that I owe my love affair with historical fiction and modern poetry. When I remind her of this, how can she refuse the storage of a few books at her house, right? (more on my collection of journals in another post.)

I think I may have this problem licked. My husband says our new home can bear a load of about 4000 lbs. I must go now to make sure he knows what he is talking about and then figure how to go about weighing my remaining stuff.

Walter Greek Daniel

Walter Greek Daniel, my grandfather. He died the year before I was born. My only memories are other people’s memories of him. Once he was young and innocent, wanting what every other young man wanted. Honest work, a little fun, the love of a good woman, and enough food to fill his belly.
He came of age during the Great Depression, so honest work was hard to come by in rural Virginia. He had enough education to become a school teacher in nearby Tennessee. I never knew how it was that he was educated and no one is around who seems to remember. I do know that he taught school and married my grandmother, Rowena Ethel Conkin. There are some photos of the young couple, they were a handsome pair. Both tall and somewhat stoic looking. The stoic face of my grandmother staring out from those early years belies the laughing good natured person I knew her to be.
They began to have their family in 1938 with the birth of my Father, Walter Benjamin Daniel. He was followed a few years later by a sister, Sandra. My dad and his sister were 10 and 8 years older than two little brothers that came later a few years apart,James and William Joseph. During this time Greek as he was called began to drink heavily. What dreams had been dashed? What pains and memories were haunting him? No one talks about this. I do know that he physically abused my grandmother. He was cruelly ruthless to his older children. My father tried to protect his younger siblings and mother. When my dad was 16 years old he raised his hand against his father in order to protect his mother. His mother, my grandmother, seem like two different people to me. His mother took up defense of his father. Young Walter left the house that day and enlisted in the United States Army.
Four years later, Greek is found unconscious in a stairwell in a local watering hole. He died a few hours later in a hospital. The speculation was a drunken brawl ending in Greek being pushed down the stairs. Tragic end to a life gone wrong somewhere between the dreams and the reality.
I often wonder if a great burden was lifted from my grandmother’s shoulders the day Greek died. Did she make some agreement with herself to atone for the abandonment of her son? Did she ever think of it? I knew my grandmother until her death when I was in my thirties. She was loving, funny, pious, and mostly a terrible cook.

Change What You Are Looking For

I am a devotee of signs. Sometimes the sign is revealed in the typical fashion of letters and words on a placard. Cosmic signs are mostly what I subscribe to. I have been lucky enough to see them at various crossroads pointing me in the way I should go. On occasion the signs appear as confirmation of decisions already made. Largely, the signs bring with them simple comfort and nothing more. I confess to looking for endorsement signs only. If there is no yay sign, I pursue the hunt.

I have felt suspended in my life of late. I am neither moving forward nor backward. My signs have abandoned me for the moment I think. I am a grandmother who is just now trying to cut the mothering apron strings. The grandmother role came easily to me, but the mother role to grown women is confounding. To offer advice or not to offer advice is indeed the question. I am damned either way. My post raising children life is self interrupted by poor judgement on the phone and by proximity to my children. I want to have my life while maintaining a healthy connection to my children. They wobble between needing my help and blessed independence. We have had a delayed mother child fly be free I will give you roots stage in our relationship. Limbo is not limited to this changing tide however.

My husband of 34 years is unwell. Forced into early retirement.  We have sold our home and are living in an RV. The last eight months have seemed like some long Salvador Dali vacation. Guilt creeps quietly through our devotion to health. Dreams of retirement and traveling have become reality too soon. This new freedom should be enjoyed, but our time together is shadowed by mortality. I have some traitorous thoughts, I’m not sick; I could be working; I want my house back. Yet I know we are a unit, he needs me and I need him. Nothing is as it seems and nothing is rightly placed. I feel I am on a path with no end because I don’t know where I am going.

Could I have a sign please? Nothing echoes from my beloved elements. Is that my answer? No peace for this season of life.

Yesterday, I heard the tide and the moon phase were just right for finding the coveted large whelk and conch shells gifted by the sea. I have combed the beaches for these prizes since we began our camping odyssey. Frustrations mounted each time I saw another striding back from the beach, buckets laden with fossilized beauties. My husband went with me on my trek this time. We walked for more than an hour; we were empty-handed. And then…my husband said, “Maybe we should change what we are looking for.” A moment later he held up a lovely bit of sea glass.

A mere day has passed since our sea glass moment. I cannot get his simple statement out of my overworked mind. I recognize it and embrace it fully as only a sign dogmatist can! Looking for a thing to happen in a prescribed finite way has kept me pinned down; stalled by my own seeking. How many signs have I walked right by while looking for something else? Looking for, is out. Looking at, is in. I hope. Maybe. Could I have just one small sign?

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Crack the Winda and Cut the Lights

We owned a prescription for the languid days and close nights of summer in 1960’s rural Georgia. I dare say you may still find people filling it up and down red clay byroads and sandy lanes even now. We lived our days with iced tea, porch sitting and cold dinners. Nothing exceptional about this really, except the tea was sweet, the porches were shaded by ancient oaks and dinner was served midday.

Early evening found the folks gathering on the porch. The young’uns less tractable to muggy ran through the cooling damp grass. We caught lightning bugs or played statue tag, (no freeze tag in Georgia, no siree). One or two of the grown folks always had a banjo or guitar handy. Twanging beats and acoustic melodies joined the drone and clicks of night bugs. My grandmomma had a reedy voice common to mountain women. She was neither from the mountains nor with perfect pitch. She listened to a lot of radio and we thought her voice rivaled the likes of Loretta Lynn or June Carter Cash. Her lyrics were mostly sad if taken alone. It was the lilt in her voice rising out of the strumming that put the tap in our toes. Those verdant days were fragranced with warm honeysuckle born on the shimmer of heat waves. I need only a whiff of green or floral hot to transport back. It is the night I remember best.

Not long after everyone packed it in for their own nearby homes, grandmomma would line us children up to clean our feet. Running barefoot made for filthy feet. No one tolerated sand and dirt on the sun bleached cotton sheets carefully tightened over soft mattresses. There was no better remedy for tired as found in clean feet slipping into cool smooth sheets. The tucking in accomplished, my momma and grandmomma would sit idly for a while. Their faint whispers trailed into our almost asleep ears, our lullaby. The last dose readied. This remaining bit was heard before being enveloped in a cooling breeze of sleep. Over the hum of a large attic fan, grandmomma called softly to momma, “crack the windas and cut the lights.”

The Colloquialisms

Cut the Lights: Several sources seem to agree that the origin of this phrase may lie in the early use of electricity before main power switches. A disconnect or break in the power between source and recipient was manual. You can get the idea of this break in power being referred to as a “cut.” The continued usage into modern times has grown primarily in the south and some rural areas in the north. It is interesting because not only can it be used to tell someone to turn on the light-cut on the light but also to convey turn off the light-cut the light. This does not sound at all strange to my ears having grown up in the deep south. However after a 30 year stint in the north it does take me by surprise when I see it in print. I recently returned to the south and have noticed road signs warning drivers to cut on your headlights when raining. I have also witnessed road signs urging drivers to burn headlights when raining.

Crack the Window: Meaning to open the window to a small sliver of an opening. It is descriptive in its intention. It does not refer to any previous cracking of glass that may or may not have been done to let air in. Southerners use the term to distinguish between opening the window just a little or a lot. A wide open window is accomplished by throwing open the window. Again, this term sounds most familiar to me. I am hard pressed to think of asking if I should roll the car window down just a tad. I without fail ask, “Want me to crack the window?”

The Girl With The Trashy Tattoo

I am the mother of a daughter with tattoos. Currently, her body is the canvas for eleven inked masterpieces. Not one of them is a dragon. If only she had chosen a dragon, I might have been inspired to write a wildly popular trilogy. Sadly, that book ship has sailed.  An innocent, purple and yellow swallowtail resting gently on a delicate green vine artfully stained on my daughter’s sixteen year old shoulder is where this story begins.

I belonged to a close knit small community and a sister-hood of other mothers. They began to rally around me as news of my daughter’s tattoo spread. They wanted to comfort me in my time of certain disappointment and I dare say, “Shame.” In an effort to halt  the embarrassing judgments dripping out of their busy mouths, I interrupted with my humble explanation.

The girl had presented me with a fully researched argument essay. The essay, complete with citations, provided me with a rare insight not only into this middle daughter but adolescence in general. Fuzzy flashes of memory flickered of my own unoriginal, self- esteem struggling, pre -formed self. I took her to get the tattoo. Some of my friends got it, most did not. Word spread around our small town, prayer chains were alerted.

I believe most thought the tattoo epidemic was on its way to our small town. It begins with one. Soon other’s will be joining the line at “Miss Woo’s Tattoos.” My popularity slipped a bit. I walked as tall as my short frame allowed and carried on.

From my seat in the bleachers I watched my two oldest girls cheering on the high school football team. Frowning as I considered how cold their little legs must be. I blame the frown for what happened next. An unknown woman next to me asked if I was looking at the girl with the trashy tattoo. No way! No way could she see the tattoo hidden under the varsity sweater. When she saw my quizzical look, she pointed to the track below. I glanced sideways at her; she then proceeded to tell me that while you couldn’t see the girl’s tattoo you could probably tell which one she was just by the look of her and that she noticed I had been watching her. She interpreted my stunned silence as permission to carry on. It seemed that her daughter had pointed my daughter out in an effort to convince her that even good, popular, smart, cheerleading type of girls got tattoos at sixteen. Finally, I found my voice, extended my hand which she took and shook.

My introduction included my name and my relationship to the girl with the tattoo as well as another of the cheerleaders. It turned out that she knew my other daughter. Shutting up was not in this woman’s bag of tricks. She relayed that she knew my other daughter. And continued with some madness comparing-blah blah…so differ… best of paren…hope for…blah blah.

Epilogue: Our daughters are now grown women. The daughter with the trashy tattoo, is now a mother to one adorable little son. She is overworked, cranky, a little too sarcastic and swears like sailor. She is also beautiful, smart, thoughtful, and confident. The parent approved tattoo probably had very little to do with her confidence as she grew, but in my heart I know it helped just a little. To my knowledge there never was a tattoo epidemic among sixteen year olds in our small town.

Moral of the story: Rules may not apply.

Facially Gifted

She was facially gifted that much was clear instantly. She flipped long blonde hair over her shoulder and introduced herself to me; Channa was her name. Channa, pronounced Shayna not Chaina. Perfect, a new twist on Ashleigh, Tiphany, Merrie, and my favorite Quetlynne (Caitlyn in case you can’t recognize it.) Petite, cute in the extreme and she looked years younger than I knew her to be. How was I going to share my granddaughter with this woman?
Since my granddaughter, Janie, was little she always wanted to marry a NASCAR driver, so when she actually married a rock star no one was too surprised. The Rock Star happened to be the grandson of Channa.
Janie and Rock Star met at one of his concerts… She went only because it was at the speedway and she hoped to see some of her favorite drivers in town for Saturday night’s race. Thick dark lashes shading warm brown eyes in the front row of Rock Star’s concert at the speedway took him down, down into the humble world of love and my Janie. I know this, because Rock Star of course wrote a song. The concert came to an end with one last encore. Before Janie and her friends could leave, a man wearing a “with the band” t-shirt approached extending an invitation to the after party. After several text messages to her mama, Janie and her friends went to the party. The rest is as they say “history.” Janie and Rock Star were soon married.
It was a more than beautiful day. Ordered by angels, the day was full of sunshine. Rock Star’s grandmother, Channa arrived. She extended her manicured hand to me, I had no choice but to offer my less than manicured hand in return. My hand only moments earlier had been fully involved with chicken, onions, oysters, and bleu cheese – it smelled super good compared to her white orchid gently wafting towards me. She was lovely, my back fat was hanging over the top of my spanxs, a fact I did not know until the unofficial photos hit the checkout tabloids in my very own grocery store. Still she was gracious. She complimented me on the food, and my dress. I eyed her with disdain, smugly thinking of the hours she spent at the spa in order to achieve the perfection standing before me. We sat together. Turns out we had a few things in common. I love pinot grigio, she owns a winery. I like Kid Rock, she slept with Kid Rock. I was born in Kansas, she flew over Kansas once. I fry chicken every Sunday, she saw a chicken at Clint Eastwood’s ranch. On the dance floor I taught her the “two step” and she taught me to “drop it like it’s hot.” We rocked the dance floor.
The official photos came in the mail today. I spent several hours with Janie looking at them. The first run through was for the “ooo” and “aww.” The second run through was for detail. Details like some unruly eyebrows sported by an Uncle featured in several pictures; unruly, like worse than Andy Rooney, God rest his soul. Also, I confirmed my back fat (I should have gotten the whole body sucker inner). The third viewing was the best. It was then we saw the feelings. Happiness and love attended. The joining of two unlikely families and new friendships sealed were delightfully captured in each photo. I had many favorite photographs, but one stood out. The phot of two grandmothers, Channa and me. Channa laughing so hard that she has several chins, only one eye is open and her nose holes look really big. I, on the other hand, have a too shiny face and lipstick on my teeth. We both look fantastic. I might be facially gifted too.

Mama Ciele

Lillian Lucille Adams Lee, my maternal grandmother. I called her Mama Ciele as did all of my cousins except the four children of my oldest* uncle. They called her grandmother. I never knew why and now it seems strange to ask.
* Until I was 24 years old I thought Uncle Bill was the eldest child of my grandmother. In the spring of 1985 I learned that my grandmother had a child at the age of 13. She gave birth to a boy as a result of being raped by an adult neighbor. Family lore recounts the story of a young girl molested by the adult married neighbor. When the girl’s father and brothers found out, the girl was beaten by the father for failing to tell them as soon as it happened. And the neighbor was run out of town by the brothers never to be seen again in those parts. It was decided that the baby would be put up for adoption soon after the birth. In December of 1924 a baby boy was born to my grandmother. A family known to my great grandfather took the child in and raised him as their own.

Mama Ciele wanted to be loved. She had low self esteem but worked hard to better herself all of her life. She thrived on attention and the smallest of affections made her happy. She was sentimental, saving all kinds of mementos in scrap books. By the time I knew her, (I was the ninth of her thirteen grandchildren), she was loving, kind, funny, sassy and full of life. She lived to see the birth of six great grandchildren. She also lived long enough to be reunited with her first born son. I believe she left this world happy if perhaps wishing for a little more time. I know she looked forward to being reunited with her mother who left her much too soon. My grandmother is buried in a very small cemetery in rural Georgia very near her mother and father. And near her own beloved grandparents.

I miss her very much. We were very close. It has been nearly 30 years since she died and yet I think of talking to her every day. I long for her voice, for her laugh and for her unending gentle understanding. I love that Mama Ciele even now and I have grandchildren of my own.

Non Rum Drinking Liberal?

I find myself sitting at a VIP table in a strip club. A nagging flicker of a headline jabs my mind. Liberal Church Lady Attends Strip Club Premiere Show. I am outwardly cool. Secretly, I am certain we are all going straight to hell. I blame the government, naturally.

Our economy was on the brink of disaster, again. My husband’s 25 year career was interrupted due to the industry’s demise in the United States. I went back to school. We would have a fall back income, mine. Upon graduation I was offered a job in a sunny, warm, touristy kind of place.

We made the move. I loved my job. My husband had the promise of a new job in the career he loves. There was a downside though. His job would not start for 14 months. He has worked since the age of 14. No reason to rest now. So he took a temporary job in a shoe store. I called him “Al.” (Some readers of this story will get this. Some won’t. It’s OK.)

My husband is very tall, well-built and wears his hair very close to his head. People often ask if he is a policeman. This strokes his ego. I bring him back to reality, commenting, “you look like a guy who enjoys a good doughnut now and then.” I mention all of this now because a frequent shoe customer offered my husband a job as a bouncer in a strip club. Since there was no application or interview, we came to the conclusion the only qualifications had to do with appearance. This was fine because it seemed my husband’s only qualification for a new temporary job was money. The frequent shoe customer promised a weekly take home three times the rate of the shoe store.

So here I sit. I am drinking rum and coke waiting for the main attraction. The riches in pay have been fulfilled. I am sporting a new diamond ring celebrating our 25 years together, paid for by strip club gold. I am about to pat myself on the back because I am so open-minded. I find myself admiring the beautiful lithe bodies. I imagine them all to be here because they want to be. That they too have found a job they love while paying the rent.   A slow trickle of thought begins to erode my pride; I might be a strip club snob. Pride is dashed, snobbery and judgement arrive when the main attraction steps onto the stage. She is well-known in the strip club world, so I think it’s OK to mention her name, but then again maybe not. I will say that she is very short, a little person. She is also very pregnant. My mind threatens to blow. I have never been back to a strip club and I no longer drink rum. I confine myself to wine and armchair liberalism.

*This is a mostly true story. All events did happen but I may or may not confine myself to wine and my armchair.