Family Christmas in San Antonio

At the airport--meeting the Learys arriving from Virginia

Kissing the Penguin at Market Square with Jackson and Marcus

Market Square: December 28th, 2013


And now, here I am in Georgia, at Carlene's house, having flown here yesterday.  We're heading into the mountains of North Georgia this afternoon to see the new year's arrival.  Happy New Year, Everyone!

No, Virginia, Not really....

Remember that letter that got passed around everywhere when we were kids?

An 8-year-old girl wrote a letter in 1897 to the editor of The New York Sun newspaper.  "Is there a Santa Claus?  Papa said to write to you and you'd tell me the truth."

But he doesn't.   He says, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...."  Without Santa, the world, he said, would be a "very dreary place."  Without Santa Claus, there would be no childlike faith, no poetry, he claims. ("Why you might as well not believe in fairies!")

As one who does not believe in fairies, I think that when a child is old enough to ask, it's time to tell the truth--that her presents came, after all, from the people who love her, not from a man in a red suit and beard.  So "childlike faith" takes a hit.  Is it not worth it if she knows--along with the winking adults who know--that there's no man watching her every move and tallying up her naughties and nices?

Since I stopped believing, the world has not been dreary--quite the contrary.   Mr. Editor cautions Virginia not to listen to the skeptics.  Our teachers reinforced that when they kept reading Mr. Editor's letter to us long after we knew the source of Christmas-morning gifts. What if, instead, they had encouraged us to give credit where credit is due, to our parents?  What if they had acknowledged that not all children were so fortunate, that those who didn't receive dolls and trains and cowboy suits from Santa were not naughty?

Do we really need an imaginary benefactor to give us "childlike faith"? Isn't the mystery of life enough its own self, not to mention the good fortune of having parents and grandparents and friends whose gifts add to our happiness?

Janet and I on the Riverwalk

Sometimes we take for granted what a beautiful city San Antonio is!

Janet and I enjoyed Boudrou's tonight--delicious seafood and chunky guacamole--then walked down the River Walk and asked a stranger to take our picture.

While we wished that the city had never swapped out the incandescent lights for LED lights, there's still a real magic to the sparkly lights at Christmas.

What a fun night this was!  Janet always asks good questions.  She asked tonight: "What was the best thing that happened to you this year?  What was the hardest?"

What were yours?

Nellie's Bird

Artist and Friend, Nellie Brannan, sent this Christmas card in the mail--a handmade, hand-painted Nellie-Bird!  

I'm framing it!

Going All The Way

After making sporadic stabs at food celibacy, I went all the way tonight.  I drove, solo, to Cappy's-- my favorite restaurant in San Antonio--and didn't hold back.

While I love dining out with other people, tonight I just wanted to just sit in that candlelit room, phone off, and savor the flavors of crab cake, field green salad with pecans and Gorgonzola and a creamy dressing.  And a basket of my favorite bread, full of gluten and smeared with soft butter.  But I didn't stop there. I had creme brulle with raspberries and another glass of iced tea, caffeine and limes included free of charge.

Sometimes you just have to go for pleasure--and Cappy's, alone or with others, is a place of palette pleasure.

I'm a lot happier indulging in forbidden pleasures than following rules.  Coming home from Cappy's and having a smoke, American Spirit Menthol Light, is a smorgasbord of pleasure.  I heard someone on my trial Sirius Radio saying: "We need to accept ourselves for who we are--even ourselves when we had a hell of a good time doing something we had no business doing." I'd drink to that--if I drank.

Yesterday Sandy and I--in her  colorful downtown apartment--watched six episodes of Masters of Sex on her Showtime channel.  It tells the story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, sex researchers in the Sixties, the decade in which Sandy and I came of age.  What fascinated us both were the attitudes toward sex and marriage in the era that grew us up: we didn't even talk about sex with the people we were having it with, for one thing.

The only words I ever heard spoken about sex, per se, were words from my groom's uncle at our wedding:  "If you put a penny in the jar every time you do it your first year, then take a penny out every time you do it from then on, you'll never empty the jar."  Like all curious girls of the mid-Sixties, I found out about "it" from books and movies, and in college we all passed around Masters and Johnson's book in the dorm.

"Going all the way" was our Sixties euphemism for sex.  Only after promising "til death do us part" could we know if the plum was worth the decades we were signing up for.

Thinking that sex was "going all the way" (with so far yet to go that we'd not even imagined) was a bit like claiming that the candied pecans on the salad made the whole meal at Cappy's.  They were great candied pecans, worthy of praise.

But still, I'm glad I didn't have to sign up for a lifetime of meals at any restaurant based on a handful of nuts.

If you've ever been to a garage sale, you've seen tables filled with unwanted gifts; battery-operated thingies still in their original wrappers, scented candles in jars with lids  stored in garages for so long that the wax is gooey, blank journals still blank.

If you've ever had a garage sale of your own, you know that there's always a twinge of bad feeling, letting go of something someone bought for you once upon a time, a thing that doesn't go with your decor or doesn't fit.

And yet, someone usually chooses it.  I have chosen such things from tables in neighbors' yards, and taken them home as treasures.  It's a good way to recycle, after all, selling what we no longer want or need for pennies on the original dollar.

There's a certain poetry to garage sales:  tables  with odd objects and books, unused workout tapes and machines,  baby clothes, toys, crutches and silverware.  Looking through someone else's stuff tells a  story of the life of the sellers. When I walk through yards and garages, and even more so in estate sales after the dweller has died, I feel like I'm peeping into the most personal spaces of a life.  It feels somehow too private, yet I can't help myself.

I read the words written in crumbling high school yearbooks and look at the smiling faces on the pages, knowing  that few of those athletes and scholars and musicians are even alive anymore.  I see the yarn never knitted, the antique Christmas wrapping paper and ornaments, the postcards from Disneyland, the dusty toppers on long-gone wedding cakes, and my mind weaves stories.

Antique dealers are usually the first to arrive, having an eye for potential re-sale value of things.  Then the neighbors come, then the bargain-hunters who wait for the late afternoon mark-downs.  By the end of the day, the festive tables of stuff are emptied, and their contents now in the homes of other people.  If anything remains, it goes to the curb.

The three-gifts-from-home activity we did in salon on Wednesday night (that I wrote about earlier) made me think a great deal about the meaning of gifts.  Take any one thing, however disliked, and wrap it up and put a bow on it, and it has a whole different meaning than it may have had in its first or second or third incarnation.  Pass it around and everyone looks at it in a new light--because now it's not just a thing, it's a present, one-of-a-kind.

While it may have once been just one more of a whole rack of similar models, lost in the crowd of merchandise, now it's all alone, unique, and worthy of a second look.  Often, it's dated.  Sometimes, it's faded.  Parts of it may be missing.  But it now has its fifteen seconds of fame, shining in a new way, a thing with potential.  At the very least, it's a memory jogger.

Think: fondue pot.
In the sixties they were all the rage.  You had to have a fondue pot with all those skinny little forks of different colors.  And yet--I can recall only one time when a hostess actually used the fondue pot for a party and we all sat around dipping chunks of bread in a strong-flavored cheese warm in the blue pot. How many times have I reached for a fondue pot at a garage sale or thrift shop, thinking: maybe I'd actually do it, then remember how messy and slow it is to fondue?  "It's fun to fondue with you" was the phrase that sold all those now-discarded pots, some still in their original boxes.

At salon, someone opened a gift that was an odd-shaped wooden bowl--not exactly ugly, but not the kind of bowl most of us would choose to buy today.  It looked like a 1970s  wedding present.  I loved what she said when she opened it: "This bowl is not me now, but it's the me I was about fifteen years ago."

I was tempted once to buy a set of the dishes I had once upon a time had.  They were on the gift registry of my wedding: a set called Vineyard, with yellow and blue and green grapes around the border of every plate and cup and sugar bowl.  These plates are not at all my taste any more, but once upon a time they were.  I decided against them.  I decided that I could live happily ever afterward without them.  Once upon a time is too long ago to try to revive.

A sparrow and a parrot, two deer, a big dog and a squirrel

Yesterday Will invited me to meet him and Elena for lunch.  We went to Sarika's on Huebner Road for delicious Thai food.

The owner's husband was the manager.  He came over to our table to talk and the talk soon turned to animals.  Turns out this man has a sparrow and a parrot as pets!

He has trained the sparrow! and the parrot--so that they fly freely and return home to him, sleep on his pillow, and go with him to take the trash to the curb on a red wagon.  I wouldn't have believed it but he showed us a notebook filled with pictures of him and all his pets.

The birds were shown perched on the back of his great big dog--as the man was feeding deer out of his hands.  On top of the trash bags in the red wagon perched a sparrow beside a beautiful exotic parrot.  And in the middle of all that was a squirrel sitting peacefully beside his large dog.  I've never seen anything like it!

If you ever get a yen for Thai food, and if you want to try the delicious curry at Sarika's, be sure to ask the owner to show you his pet pictures.  It's incredible.

GIving and Receiving Gifts

I am a member of a conversation salon, led by someone who has a real talent for engaging conversations in unique ways.

We meet once a month, not knowing until we arrive what we'll be talking about.  Tonight, we were asked to bring three wrapped gifts, but we weren't told ahead of time what we'd be doing with them. The stipulation was that we weren't allowed to buy anything; we were to choose something from our houses.

First, we talked about gifts and the five love languages: Did we prefer touching, material gifts, words, service, or quality time?  And what kind of messages did we get from our family of origin about gifts?  

Then, we each picked our first gift from under a sparkling white tree.  One by one, we opened our gifts, just as you'd do at a Christmas party.  My gift was a goddess statue. Through the package it felt like a corkscrew, just the right size and hardness.  Others got socks, perfume, jewelry, tea pots….

Then, we picked our second gift and were told to respond honestly.  This turned out to be hilarious!  If you didn't like the gift or if you couldn't imagine what you'd do with it, that's exactly what you said. (While strangely liberating, this round made me a bit nervous--touching on the universal fear that what we give or receive won't be acceptable.) 

Then, we were given a guide to responding to gifts: talk about all the things you like about it (and sometimes, for some, that was a stretch); talk about how you'd use or enjoy it; showcase it or pass it around, etc.  Some could genuinely say they liked Gift #3--but even if you didn't love it, you had to respond with enthusiastic gratitude.  

Some of the gifts were keepers; some were not.  But the process of giving and opening and responding was hilarious, breaking through the conventions of traditional gift giving.  For me, the real gift was the laughter of it all! 

On the first round, we noticed that we all picked the prettier packages, the ones wrapped with bows. Un-bowed packages and bags were the last to be chosen.  From that, we concluded that there's something special about knowing that the person took the time to think about presentation of the gift.

In the end, if we'd gotten something we didn't really want, we put it on a bench and anyone who wanted it could take it.

If you're looking for a way to enliven the Christmas traditions, I highly recommend this.

I'm thinking now of the gifts I want to give my grandchildren.  Do I go with the money option--since at a certain age most kids prefer to have money to choose what they want?  Do I give them things from my house?  Do I give them handcrafted special things or books that I love? 

Whatever I decide, I'm going to put it in a box and wrap it with pretty paper and put a bow on it--that's all I know right now.  Even socks are rather special if wrapped in shiny paper with a big sparkly bow on it. 

Curiosity and Asking Questions

Christmas was coming, and I thought I might knit a sweater for my boyfriend.  I'd never knitted a sweater before (and haven't attempted one since)  but I'd seen directions for one in Seventeen or somewhere--and such an enterprise was touted as an excellent one for a girl to endeavor for the man she loved.

"My favorite color is blue," I said.  "What's yours?"

"That's a ridiculous question," he responded.  "Do you like blue food?"

Point taken.  No, I didn't (and still don't) like blue food.  I actually couldn't think of any food that came in blue.

But the takeaway was that I--a mere high school girl talking to a graduate student, a supposed expert in art--was no good at asking questions.  We dropped the subject, then I proceeded to knit him a sweater, red I think.

The sweater turned out large enough for a giant and I never gave it to him, but I did marry him shortly thereafter, believing for many years that I had married a genius and that in time I'd be worthy of such a brilliant man.  If.  If I got a college education.  If I kept my stupid questions to myself.  If, if, if….

Our conversations continued along this pattern for years, and I was the eternal acolyte.  Until.  Until I went to graduate school and partook of my own question-asking outside the house.

"You ask great questions," a professor told me one day. At long last, I regained my passion for asking questions, little and big, smart and otherwise.  Curiosity, I think, is a motivator for the kind of travel you can do anywhere.

Staying in the moment

Remember when we were young and we walked through antique shops admiring the patina and beauty of old things?  The older a thing, the more soulful and beautiful.

For the past few years, I've begun to wonder what it means to be old.  I'm not ready to call myself old, just noticing that it's creeping up a bit.

Remember when we were young and heard that Beatles song: "Will you still love me/When I'm sixty four?" and  we smiled to ourselves, thinking probably "Sixty four is so far away I can't even project my imagination out that far."

Having recently passed that iconic Number Sixty Four, and being referred to at the chiropractor's office as a "Medicare patient," I can hardly believe that I'm here already.

Mimi, my grandmother, who lived a healthy life until she was 96 and who called herself "middle aged" in her eighties, never considered herself old. Neither does her daughter, Carlene, my mother.  When Carlene left Texas, she went home and made herself a "flouncy" skirt and texted me today on her iPad that she felt "prissy" in it when she dressed for church.  I'm lucky to have come from a lineage of women like Mildred and Carlene--and I hope to follow their lead!

But still:

Some doctors and their receptionists call me "Sweetheart" and "Sweetie."  Nobody called me that when I was forty, even fifty.  What's up with that?

Some clerks at the drive-through windows speak a bit too loud--as if I (ordering the senior drink) am hearing-impaired.

Some of the things that fascinated me at fifty no longer do--especially things in stores.

Some days there are aches and pains (my own and those reported by friends) that seem to have come out of nowhere, and descended into our bones and joints, unwelcome guests.

And I can't read the small print--even with glasses--on much of anything!

Hardly a day passes that I don't notice age.  I am amazed by those who seem to have kept it at bay; I am sad that some among us have left already, and I'm hoping for the courage to accept my own aging with something akin to grace.

Hardly a day passes that I don't catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and feel astonished: That's me?

Being old (or close to old) still feels new to me.  I remember how being a teenager once felt new--how self-consciously I walked about in my new blooming body.  I remember how being pregnant felt new at first, then began to feel natural, then was over.  There wasn't one single day when everything changed--just a cluster of days when I was aware of being in a new body and had to figure out how to move it along on the unfamiliar road without falling all over myself.

The mounds of leaves in my yard are slippery; I walk gingerly over them to avoid "falling and breaking my neck"--as my daddy used to say.  A jar is hard to open, and I ask a stranger to please open it for me.  I can't squat all the way the way I could for the first fifty years without even thinking about it.

But I'm not complaining; I'm staying right here, for as long as I can, doing all the things I love to do.
My teachers are Mimi and Nana.

And Elena, too.
At almost two, she has it all figured out.

After a full hour in the tub at my house, after pouring hundreds of cups of "tea" from the tea pot to the cups in her new tea set, she was totally absorbed in pouring.  Half of the hundreds of cups had landed on the floor.

"It's time to get out now," I said.

"No, Yenna," she said. "I staying."

"Okay," I always say.

What did I miss?

So I'm reading this novel, set in California, on a cold Sunday afternoon in Texas.  It's not my favorite novel, but it's interesting, primarily because it tells about a time and place I know little about: California from the late 1800s to just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Jane Smiley's representation of that time is brilliantly done.  

Since I was recently there, I feel that thrill of recognition when she writes about San Francisco, and I regret spending my only day in the city in such a touristy way: riding the cable car, walking around the now very commercialized fisherman's wharf.  I regret not going to Chinatown and I regret not doing more research before I went there.  As I read, however, I'm hovering around the parts of the city I did see, and Marin County, and the Bay Area.  The drive over the Golden Gate Bridge was glorious--as were the scenes of the city from the bay and bridges and overlooks in Marin.

I'm wondering today, as I always wonder after a trip: What did I miss? Where should I have lingered longer?

I've always liked this quotation from the Zen tradition: "The way you do anything is the way you do everything."  It may or may not be true, but it intrigues me.

The way I "do everything" is looking at particulars.  I have a scrappy grasp of history and geography.
The way I travel is looking for whatever my eyes are drawn to,  the way scenes are framed and lighted from a particular vantage point.  I take snapshots, actual and metaphorical.

Some travelers set out with a sense of the bigger picture, having done the research ahead of time.  These are good people to have as traveling companions.  Jane Smiley would be a great traveling companion, pointing out how the little things fit into the bigger picture, shedding light on how one thing affected other things.  Earthquakes and influenza and war.  Marriage and divorce.  Dislocations and immigration. Ferries, horse-drawn carriages and the inventions of automobiles.

In life and travel, however, I'm not one of those people.  Over-planning can diminish the magic of surprises, back roads, small forgotten towns in the middle of nowhere.

And yet: Next time, I'm going to try really hard to explore the maps and guidebooks--so I won't miss a single thing.

I would like to be a perpetual traveler, doing it one way one trip, another way the next time.  I'm going to need more than just this one lifetime!

Private Life by Jane Smiley

I bought a novel at the Steinbeck Center by Jane Smiley, though I wondered at the time why it was for sale there.  Most of the books were by and about Steinbeck.

As it turns out, the book (the section I'm reading today) is set in Vallejo, California--not far from where I stayed in El Cerrito, and only 31 miles from San Francisco.

It made me wish I had read the novel before my trip--as it's always a thrill to see a place you've read about, to see it through both my own eyes and the eyes of the writer.

I so often return to those days on the road, remembering the beautiful landscapes of the west coast, the ocean, the vineyards, the mountains.  The days had a magical quality to them, as I meandered roads in the Mini and stopped in little towns and shops and bakeries and book stores.

Happy holidays to all my new California friends who are--by all accounts--experiencing the same winter weather we're having here in San Antonio!

Looking for Reds

From West Texas, through New Mexico and Arizona, and into California, I did a photo scavenger hunt for reds.

A memorable assignment I was given in a photography class taught by Trish Simonite many years ago: shoot a whole roll of 35mm  film in which you focus on one particular color.  I chose blue.

Looking for blues made me more attentive to the varieties of blue.  I wrote about Trish's assignment earlier in this blog: the way that choosing one thing to look for makes me look at everything more closely.

Today my yoga teacher said, "What we do on the mat is practice for what we do off the mat."  Same with writing. Writing--like photography and painting--is an exercise in looking.

Happy Thanksgiving, All!

I love the sound of wind and rain, novelties to us Texans.  We sometimes wear jackets on Thanksgiving, but we just as often wear none.  This year promises to be a jacket-wearing day, and we'll be spending it in Helotes, not far from where Will and Day grew up. My small city yard is carpeted with brown pecan tree leaves.

Carlene wakes up and tells me her dream at the same moment I am telling her mine from the room next door.  She woke up laughing this morning, as she had attempted to do some fraud selling cars in the night.

Yesterday I read the first half of Janet Penley's book to her, Goodnight, Irene, and she loved it!  We are about to read the second half, then I'm going to yoga class.

We've watched all but one of series 2 of Call the Midwife to get ready for Season 3 in January--it's wonderful series.   We saw About Time at the Kate-Sandy-Linda triple play birthday party; and we've spent time with Will and Veronica and Elena.  Tomorrow Nathan comes home. When guests come to the Pritchett house, Elena looks out the window and says who it is, then "Hold me"--because she knows that whoever it is will want to hold her!

I am thankful for all my friends and family close and faraway--wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Elena likes this car as much as the Mini….

We got the windows tinted today--with some tint that's supposed to block ultraviolet rays.

Elena liked the car, she told me so.  "Pretty!" she said.

But Elena's first love (materially speaking) is shoes.  Shiny boots, Mary Janes, walking shoes--she had quite a collection lined up at Ross Dress for Less this morning. 

Bras and Shoes

A few years ago, I said to a friend, "I hate wearing bras!"

"Maybe you're wearing the wrong size," she said.

For decades, I'd been wearing the same 34B bras and six-and-a-half-sized shoes.  It hadn't occurred to me that those sizes might have changed.  Instead of moving up to a  larger size (duh!)  I had graduated to those stretchy bras you pull over your head and leave red marks when you pull them back off.

"Thirty-eight double what???" I asked, with genuine shock, when the bra fitter announced a new number. No wonder I'd had such an aversion to bras. "Here, let me see that measuring tape!"

Alas, she was right.

I remembered that day at the lingerie store today because I visited a shoe store called Fleet Feet.  I'd just taken a walk with Freda and had grimaced all the way home. I've complained for years that walking shoes are pinchy.  My feet are claustrophobic and very unhappy in lace up shoes.  I thought everyone's were.

The nice man at Fleet Feet didn't x-ray my feet the way shoe store clerks did when I was ten,  but he measured them on a metal thing, toe to heel,  side to side. "You need an 8 1/2 in walking shoes," he said.  Who knew?  (Did you all know that and just forgot to tell me?)

When my feet entered those shoes, however, they felt something akin to euphoria. I think I may be right on the verge of becoming a walker!  (This is a good thing because I have to keep up with Carlene next week….)

Cotton socks are passé. The socks real walkers wear are $12 a pair (I bought a pair to check them out.) And if you need arch supports, you just slide them into the shoe, easy as pie.

If it's true of bras and shoes, maybe there are other ways I am trying to fit who I am now into who I used to be?

A first "I love you!"

Will just called to arrange to pick me up at Gunn Honda tomorrow at 8:30--and from there, I'll be going to Helotes to spend the day with Elena while he does house and yard chores.

I could hear Elena in the background asking, "Yenna?  Daddy!  Yenna?"

Then she got on the phone and told me what I'm sure was a very funny story--though I couldn't decipher all the words, only the giggles.

"I love you," I said.

"I yuv you," she said!

What a happy day!

I'm loving my new wheels--all four of them and the spare--AND the car atop the wheels.  No more midnight towing adventures to tell you about!

Carlene is coming on Friday for twelve good days, and we'll be spending the first part of Thanksgiving with Will and Veronica and family, then going to Kate's for dessert.

Day and Tom and family are arriving on December 26th, then I'm flying to Atlanta to spend a few days with family and friends there to bring in the New Year. Knowing me, I'll blog about that too.  I love blogging almost as much as driving.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving!

I chose a Honda CRV--turquoise!

New car day is fun!

This car, this color--just exactly right for me!  When I took my things out of the Mini, there was the hint of a tear, I must admit--only because it holds so many happy memories and because it's the end of what Jerri calls my "Mini Fling."  It's always like that at the end of a fling, isn't it?  You know it's time to move on, but you take with you all the memories.

By the time, Mike had put my license plate cover on the CRV, however, the one Carlene bought for me in Ruidoso last year when we did our road trip, the hint of tears had passed and I installed angels on the bumpers for the new driver of the Mini and said farewell. 

The Honda is great, and the Gunn Honda dealership is the one I'll use if and when I ever trade.  The people are low-key and friendly and they offer free chair massages while you get service.  How good can it get?

It takes a village for some people (me) to buy a car.  A great big thank you to all of you who offered suggestions!  

Cars and Me

Cars used to be just cars, a way to get from one place to another.
By now, some of those just-cars have turned vintage, like me.

For the past decade, as close as I could to a vintage car was the retro-looking Mini Cooper, scoring off the charts on the Cuteness Factor. I didn't do a minute of research, I just interviewed every Mini driver I could find: "Do you like your car?" I asked.  "I love it!" they all said.

And so did I.  Three times.

The first Mini was like any first love, unforgettable and sweet.  Decorated with a border of flags, Mini #1 introduced me to people I'd never have met in a less-cute car.

"Sweet ride!" a teenager once said.
"What is that some kind of foreign car or what?" a man in Alabama once asked.
"I bet I could put your car in the back of my truck," teased a man at McDonalds.

Six years ago, stuck in a ditch in Pennsylvania, I heard two teenagers (who appeared out of nowhere) say, "Don't worry, Lady, we'll pick up your little car and get you going again."

One day, another customer at the Mini Center crashed into Little Mini #1's boot and….well, I was fickle enough to trade for a new one, the prettiest one ever, turquoise.

Kate says the turquoise one had a target on her.  Three different drivers collided into her while I was sitting still.  Each time, we patched her up and moved on.  But when I got the news that Elena was coming into the world, I worried about the car, the baby, and the target, and traded her in on a larger one, the white Countryman.

I have now decided (Gulp!)  to trade Big Minnie for a Newbie.  It's been a hard decision to leave the club of Mini drivers who wave at each other when we meet, but the time is right.

The Cuteness Factor is not one of  Consumer Reports' rating categories.  They talk about maneuverability, reliability, cost to maintain, and engine performance.

"Do you want to look under the hood?" salesmen ask.
"No," I say. "Why?  What for?  Let me see how the doors open, how quiet the ride is.  I'm interested in color, body design, safety, and comfort." I feel like I'm placing ads in a dating service.

My first car-of-my-own was a 1990 Acura Integra--turquoise. I loved that car!  But now--what with the cookie cutter mentality of car designers--I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between an Acura and any other car.

A decade later, that adorable little Integra started having cooling problems. So in 1999, I bought a reliable and comfortable Camry, a sedan that was trouble free except for being dinged by several errant shopping carts.

I am now, for the first time, doing serious research--unlike former purchases that were totally love-driven.  I am learning to consider responsiveness, agility, and sensitivity--qualities some of us might have done well to consider when we once upon a time promised "til death to us part" with actual people.

I wonder: would any of us ever have married if we'd had the Internet to tally up the points of attractiveness of our potential partners--or ourselves?  Would any of us have picked a person for a friend whose likability score was only 60? At my age, I won't even talk about the depressing depreciation factor!

Angels on bumpers, angels angels everywhere

By Joy Hein

Yesterday, my birthday continued--with this beautiful angel by Joy!

Makes me want to write another book, so this can be the cover art!

Yesterday was a spontaneous party all day.  Joy brought crustless quiche and almond bread to go with my carrot soup.  Yummy day, yummy food!  Will brought Elena and she joined us for lunch and visiting with the "nice" (Elena said) dogs across the street who bark at her, bark at everybody.  Fortunately they are behind a fence, but she likes dogs, all dogs, and could probably stare down the meanest of them.

Sandy came and brought a smoothie and some delicious gluten-free bars, and I just had me a "cashew cookie" that's going to be my new Reese's replacement. 

And the Winner Is….

Just about anything we can think of is rated or starred or "Liked" on Facebook.  Anybody can laud or rip apart a book on Amazon with a few clicks on their keyboard. Polls measure and report every dip and rise of approval ratings.

The minute results are in on election night, we start strategizing about the four-years-from-now election.  If this guy wins the governor's race, it bodes well for his party down the road. If this one loses, his or her whole party is in mortal danger. The whole country is constantly in contest mode.

Sometimes I have this fantasy: Right in the middle of a political debate, the man on the left "likes" something said by the woman on the right--or vice versa.  "Hey, that's a good idea!" she says--to the stunned amazement of everyone on the stage and out there in TV Land. Surely, sometimes, even a crusty politician hears a phrase from the other side that he could like, just a little?  Enough to start a conversation?

Or what if the camera turned away from the mud-slinging and zoomed in on a big blue bear in the audience, a bear wearing an expression of Zen-like amusement at the whole thing, a joy so big, so infectious, so untouched by Super-Anythings, that in the wink of a flashbulb, the whole assembly would instantly know: we've found our winner.  I'm going to write in Big Blue Bear on my next ballot.

Where is Home?

Nathan and Elena

Will and Veronica dated in high school and for a while in college.  I still have the pictures of us all at their high school graduation in 1997.

Thirteen years later, when they found each other again, she was single again and so was Will.  When we met Nathan, her then-three-year-old son, we all fell in love with him, too.

When Will, Elena and I picked up Nathan from first grade yesterday, he told us proudly that he'd had a "green day."  A Green Day is a day when you get no bad marks for behavior, when you don't "mess around,"  and when you don't talk to your neighbors.  "And," he said, "I have about a hundred best friends."

It's hard to get a Green Day when you have a hundred best friends.

Nathan introduced me to the bus monitor: "This is Elena's best friend," he said. "And she's my….my step….my daddy's…I mean, my stepfather's…my Will's…mother."

When we got home, we played Run From the Monster.  The Monster--according to Nathan--has five heads, an eye in each head, and snakes for hair.  Elena was the farmer, Nathan was the helicopter pilot, and I was the rescue person.  (Nathan was in charge of casting.)

I didn't rescue anybody.  But if I ever run into the particular monster, I'll be heroic, I'm sure, and rescue the helicopter pilot and the farmer.

I meet memorable men everywhere I go!

The Journey West

Began in 1967, when I left home in Georgia and moved to San Antonio.  I was an eighteen-year-old bride and had no clue what Texas would be like; I pictured cowboys and hitching posts and saloons.

In the first two years, we lived on three tree-named streets: Magnolia, Mistletoe, and Huisache.  What I remember most about those years is going to college, learning to cook and walking to the phone booths to call home, collect.  We had no phone, no TV.

Because of a terrible crime spree in the city, we moved to Helotes: a small town on the outskirts of San Antonio.  We rented a stone house on a 64-acre piece of land, complete with a motorcycle track and a creek.   Both my children, Day and Will, were born when we lived in that house, and we could hear Willie Nelson singing (before he was famous) from our porch.  We'd traded all our wedding silver for a dog, Tony, a forever playful German Shepherd.

After 28 years of marriage, I divorced and moved back into San Antonio--to what was then a rent house, and is now--thanks to my parents--my permanent home. It's not far from those three tree-named streets.  Just today, I got a haircut a few houses from the house we lived in on Huisache--the house we left to avoid the crime spree of 1969.  Our friends across the alley were not as lucky.  When I walk or drive past those houses, I can almost see younger versions of ourselves through the windows.

The plan was to move back to Georgia.  The plan was to build a cabin in the mountains of North Georgia.  The plan was to be near family and friends.  But those things never happened.  Every time we left Georgia and headed west, I'd cry for miles.  Finally, one day, Carlene said, "You're not going to move back here; you might as well make Texas your home."

As I drive around this city, and as I meet with friends--as I did tonight, going with Kate to see Twelve Years a Slave after eating at Tip Tops--I encounter memories on almost every street.  The old Woodlawn Theater, we passed tonight, was where we went to see "art films" in the Sixties.  The Bijou--where Kate and I saw the movie--is in the mall that used to be called Wonderland (where I went on the day I learned I was pregnant, 1971, to buy a yellow musical elephant that played "You Are My Sunshine." It's also where we sold silver spoons to buy a dog.)

When you "might as well" make a place your home, when you shift your energy from an original dream to a new one, you absorb the new place into your cells, your memories.  You know your way around.  It talks to you.

The Two Grandmother Witches on Ogden Lane

This has been a fun week--with Halloween, a birthday party, a porch wine party at Jan's,  and an All Souls' Day Art Show.  And watching The Paradise on Masterpiece.  Here we are, Jan and I, trick or treating with all the other kids on our street. 

The witches' brew has renewed my energy and I'm ready to fly! 

Yenna and Elena

Before she put on her chick costume.  This girl strutted around the neighborhood like she'd been trick-or-treating for years!

Candy's good.  Cookies are good.  But what's REALLY good are puppies.  Any puppies, any size, any disposition.  This girl loves dogs!  

Has anybody seen my broomstick?

Here I'm going for the intimidating look.  How'd I do?

This is me admiring my blind turkeys!

Okay. I did it!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO YOU ALL--Nellie especially for giving me this recipe for turkeys!  Mine, you will notice, if you compare the five I made to the ones on the website, are messy, crooked nosed, and eyeless every one.

But I wanted to be a good grandmother and so there you have it--my feeble efforts to make turkeys for Elena's second Halloween.  In a few minutes, my tiny house will be filled with chickens and superheroes and famous people, all little, all about to get a sugar high on Oreos and Bodega Bay taffy and jelly beans. 

You know they do studies on everything.  I heard on NPR this morning that "studies show" that kids who get only one piece of candy are happier than kids who get a lot at each house.  A Baby Ruth and a piece of bubble gum only dashes the joy--stick to the Baby Ruth, they say.

I am about to place this witch's hat upon my head and start growling.  Happy Halloween, Everybody!

What's Your Chatty Cathy?

I got an email from Linda Kot--she finally traded in her flip phone for an iPhone!
She wrote about how over-the-top excited she was to finally have a phone like her friends, a phone to double as a camera and share pictures.  But why had she resisted so long?

She wrote about Chatty Cathy--how she yearned for one with all her heart as a child, yet never got one.  In time, Chatty Cathy became symbolic of the lessons ingrained in her by her family: Only buy what you absolutely need; avoid name brands; be thrifty.  Linda was euphoric that she had stepped over that line and bought her own iPhone.  Already she's sending me pictures of her new grand-puppy Josie on it!

Whether it's money or ingrained beliefs, don't we all have Stop Signs that keep us from doing even little things we want to do?  Not just material things--but experiences?  Doesn't everybody have a "Chatty Cathy"?

There was a flag in a shop in Bodega Bay.  Multi-colored.  Twenty-five dollars.  What did I need with a multi-colored flag?  I must have seen it on a day when I was thinking, "I've already spent too much!"

But, later, when I saw a flag like that flying at an art gallery, I thought: I gotta have that flag!

And so I called Second Wind shop of flags and whirligigs and ordered one.  I could probably have ordered one from the Internet, but I wanted it to come from Elaine and Second Wind, a reminder of a conversation we had one afternoon before she directed me to the best bowl of clam chowder ever.

Today the flag arrived.  Elaine, the owner, had packed the box full of Jelly Bellies and salt water taffy, all colors, like the ones I used to bring back from Cape Cod.  The flag is great and I'm going to hang it in a window as a reminder of a special afternoon at Bodega Bay. But what really touched me was a beautiful Bodega Bay postcard from Elaine:

"Welcome home!  Hope this package and the little surprises tucked inside bring a smile to your face and  that warm memories of your trip to Bodega Bay fill your heart!  It was great meeting you!"

Her note made me even happier than the flag.
Those are the kinds of things that keep a journey going long after you've been towed your last mile on the actual road.  It's all about the people, the gifts of kindness.

Sometimes being generous with ourselves connects us to all kinds of surprises from other people. I suggest we all pick a Chatty Cathy and go for it.

Bones

Would anyone like to take a guess

 (without peeking on Google) 

how many bones there are in each of your feet?

                           Okay:  good guesses all 'round!

The human foot has 26 bones, each foot!

When you put both feet side by side, you are looking at (or would be if you had x-ray vision) 52 tiny little bones.  And that (which I just learned five seconds ago) is 25% of all the bones in your entire body!

When I was a little kid in Georgia, we used to put our fast-growing little feet in X-ray machines at the shoe store to determine our shoe sizes, even when all we were buying were $2.00 Keds.  Today we'd probably cock our heads in disbelief if someone suggested getting an MRI to figure out what size hat we wore, but back then, in the Fifties, nobody thought it strange at all.  

The Internet further informs me that each foot has 33 joints and 19 muscles and tendons.  I wish they had taught us this kind of stuff in school instead of, say, the population of the Netherlands. The number of bones in the foot is, best I can tell, a constant.

There's a track to follow somewhere, you're thinking?

So this morning, when I finally pulled the plug to let out the water from my long soak bath, that same water somehow came surging out from under the toilet, seven towels worth.  I made a few phone calls and was told that today was not the best day to have a plumbing emergency, as they seem to be all the rage today in San Antonio.

But finally--thanks to Kate--I got the number of a plumber who is even now doing noisy enough things in my bathroom that I'm pretty sure it will lead to a costly and semi-permanent solution. 

But back to the feet:

Several of us have, on various occasions, discussed the fact that it takes as long to recover from a trip as it does to take said trip--a factoid that would mean I still have thirty-something days to go before being "back to normal"--physically speaking. 

However, during the limbo hours between plumbing disaster and repair, I decided to do what maybe everyone decides to do when a problem is out of one's hands: I got a pedicure.

This was not an ordinary "paint your nails" deal; it was a recovery-accelerating treatment extraordinaire!

Complete with paraffin and green tea lotion, finished off by someone you don't even know massaging the 19 muscles and 26 bones in each foot, this procedure is exactly what you need for re-entry after any journey.  I'm just saying…. 

Monday Morning

I can't help myself!
I'm home, yet I still want to write blog posts!
Writing makes me feel like the journey is ongoing, even at home, and I like that.

Today I have spent the entire morning re-reading Stoneflower Journey, and making minor changes.

Nellie sent me a pattern for cute little cookie and candy turkeys--which, of course, I want to make for Elena's second Halloween.  That means a quick trip to the grocery store: double stuffed Oreos, candy corn, Whoppers, and icing.  (We always have plenty of Reeses in this house!)

http://smashingcakedesigns.blogspot.com/2010/10/oreo-cookie-turkeys-tutorial.html

I heard from California Linda that my "travel advisors" are off the clock!  I'm missing my travel advisors!  (I showed Linda and her roadster to Kyle, the tow-truck driver, and he said, "Awesome!")

I also got a call from Jocelyn, my sister-in-law, this morning, who's originally from California--and she just told me about enough places I still need to see that I'm almost ready to head back.  Almost!

Sometime…..

What an amazing finale! This from Janet Penley!

Those of you who have seen Janet's beautiful handmade pillows can imagine how thrilled I was just now when she brought me a pillow she'd made to represent this trip!  This is a treasure too big to lie upon so I'm going to hang it on the wall and just love looking at it forever!

I also got to see an inspiring book she'd made for Jane, her daughter, for her 30th birthday: Thirty Years of Loving Jane.  What a creative book full of memories of 30 years!

Here's to you, Janet, a creative spirit who always inspires me!

Thank  you so much for this symbolic and colorful and playful pillow!

Driving Still

During the night, dreaming, I'm still driving.
Last night I dreamed I was in Seattle and  my daddy was there wearing red gloves.  It was cold, and he was giving me some driving advice--which I can't recall this morning.

When I woke up, I noticed that there was no toilet paper.  "Where do these people keep their toilet paper?" I wondered--only to realize that I was "these people."

I haven't calculated the exact mileage, but it's somewhere around 7000 miles--of pure joy!  (I'm not counting the last 309 miles of terror piggybacking on the tow truck--though even that had one moment of happiness: "You can't be sixty five!" Kyle said, "I'd have thought maybe 50."  NObody ever says that; the trauma of a flat tire must have temporarily erased 15 years.)

I wrote earlier that if I trip doesn't change or stretch you, it's just a vacation.
Just?  I need a vacation today!  A time to just loll in the bed and rest--which is what I'm doing.

But how did this trip change or stretch me?

For one, it gave me such special times with old friends, Rone and Barbel--reminding me of the gifts of hospitality!  Dinner on Barbel's purple table and dinner with Rone's family and Linda in a room with twinkling white lights--those were by far the best meals of this trip.

For another, it gave me new friends along the way and what could be better than that?

For another, several of you have kept up with this blog and written me the dearest letters and "Glimpses" from Carlene that I am printing and keeping always.  I feel so stretched by the circle of people who have taken the time to follow along and be so present with me from the beginning to the end!

For another, it reminded me of the spaciousness and beauty in this country.  If I were to watch the news (which I rarely do) I would think that this country is all about politics and discord; getting away from the news allowed me to remember how much breathtaking beauty there is, what's worthy of admiration and protection.

Finally, I had the space to reflect: to engage primarily with the adventure of silence and solitude.  Sometimes we get so busy we forget to give ourselves solitude.  Sometimes we need time apart from house and work and everything--so that when we come back to it, we feel filled up again, ready to re-engage.

The Pritchetts and their new car today

This is Veronica's new Toyota--a pearl white Four-Runner--and as you can see, they are thrilled with it.  I got the Mini back (with is fifth free run flat tire) just in time to join them for the last moments of their shopping day and then we went to Chuy's for some good Mexican food.  In the parking lot, a balloon flying free was caught on the fly--by me.  I think that means something maybe?   It popped soon thereafter, to Elena's dismay, but it was a good thing while it lasted.

It was so wonderful to be with my Texas Pritchetts tonight!  "Angels on those new bumpers," Veronica! 

Home At Last!

I wasn't afraid driving the curvy Big Sur.
I wasn't afraid of going to a clothing optional hot springs.
I wasn't afraid talking to strangers anywhere.
But I was a little afraid last night in the cab of the tow truck, racing down I 10 in the dark, my poor Mini on the back, the driver with his eyes on the phone attached to his windshield, receiving (then telling me about) the texts from the girl he's in love with (with whom he's had only one date.)

We talked all the way to the roar of the tow truck and the sound of metallic music on his phone.  "She thinks I have a great playlist!" he said.

But look: we got here after all, safe and sound!
"I have the Ugly Duckling syndrome," Kyle told me.  "The kids and everybody always told me I was ugly, that I'd never have a girlfriend, that I was a nerd."

And now look: this girl likes him!  She really really likes him!  She thinks he's handsome, funny, and smart--all of which he is, actually.

By the time we got to San Antonio, I wanted to adopt the boy.  His father never calls him; he sends a card on his birthday.  His mother moved far away (to Kerrville--that's an hour away) and he hasn't seen her since two birthdays ago.

Today, my suitcases are strewn all over the living room.  The Mini is at the Mini Center getting a new tire.  The mail is a foot high.  My body is stiff from trying to "help" Kyle drive by leaning this way and that way for five hours.  I'm just about to soak in my very own bathtub and start slowly plowing through the stacks of things--after I eat more of the goodies Sweet Jan and Kate left in my refrigerator for me to come home to!

It was wonderful going, and it's wonderful being home!

Thanks so much to those of you who have followed along from Day One, and thanks to all of you who have given me such amazing hospitality and beds and food along the way!

Leaving Ft Stockton in style

Now what?

It's going to be a pleasant day in the Day's Inn: finishing Arcadia and finishing Rone's book, The Holy Man--both excellent books for days such as this, waiting for a tow truck driver from San Antonio.

I'm actually looking forward to a little nap, too, a day to transition, a day to wait for my tow-man.  What will be be like, I wonder?  Linda Jordon suggested that it could very well be a poet who's moonlighting as a tow truck driver.  Kathi said it could be a woman--which would probably make for better conversation for 300 miles.  But whoever it is, I'm ready for one last run at Operation Haul-Ass.  He/she won't arrive until at least 7:00 tonight, so I'll probably arrive wilted and bedraggled, well past my own curfew.  But the Mini will be parked safely at the Mini Center, and they will get me a loaner tomorrow.

What lessons does the "Universe have to offer" in times like these--as Becky suggested there must be one?

First, after three such long haul tows (due to the fact that Mini Coopers only have run-flat tires and no one stocks them but Mini dealers): Maybe it's time to say "I've had my trip" again--in the spirit of the line I mentioned miles ago from Trip To Bountiful.  Maybe it's time to consider a new car, one that uses the kinds of tires everybody stocks.  It will feel a bit like a divorce, trading in the Mini, but I'm not up for many more tows.

Second, maybe I should have had a flat tire in California, where Mini Centers are everywhere.  Can I ask for a re-do on a flat tire?

Third, maybe like Carlene says, I should just get home and figure that out later!

I've been listening to the voices of wisdom all along the trip: all of your voices and those I stumble upon on Wise People radio.  One of them said that to reach the frontiers of our lives we have to be willing "to hazard ourselves"--by which I think the speaker meant to risk taking risks.  I didn't know he meant flat tires, but that's way better than some that could have come my way.  Carlene always thinks of the things that could have been way worse, and she's right: It's not a wreck, for Pete's sake, it's just a big old warped tire on an otherwise sweet  little car.

My loyalty to Mini Coopers is frayed a little today, but I must admit when I look out at her, still, in the parking lot of the Days Inn, I have to smile.  We've had some great adventures together!

Cleaning House in Ft. Stockton

I remember when Mimi and Papa were my age.  They suddenly up and sold all their furniture and bought new everything!  This was not what grandparents do.  They keep everything just as it is so that their children and grandchildren will have their memories intact.

But no: my sweet grandmother, as it turned out, was a radical.  She changed, to our collective dismay, everything!

It wasn't in our culture to change things.  Once you got everything all fixed like you liked it, you kept it that way.  Post war, post Depression, it was all you could do to build and fill the house you'd dreamed of and you were so proud of it. You had a story for each piece of furniture, when you got it, how much it cost.  You then made memories around the house; your children could come back and it would still be just as they remembered it.  Your grandchildren, too.

But as it turned out, Mimi planted a seed in me that I think about any time a friend says, "Your house is always changing!" It's in my genes.

Mimi and Papa always lived in small houses, two bedrooms, one bath, so it wasn't like they were spending a fortune on these changes.  Even when they moved (three times in my lifetime), they took their old stuff with them--until The Change!  Everything was strangely new, unfamiliar.

When I got to this Day's Inn last night looking for the pony in the barn of shit (you all know that story, don't you?  the two brothers go into the barn on Christmas morning and see it's filled with excrement and the pessimist brother gets all sad and the optimist brother says, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!")  I decided to clean house.  On my computer and phone.

My music library has been in place since I got my first iPod many years ago.  As I've moved up to newer iPods and now an iPhone, the music has moved with me.  Listening to that music yesterday, I kept clicking past songs I know.  Very few still speak to me.

I kept only what I  want to hear when I plug the phone into the speakers.  To hear the same song over and over is like re-reading the same book, when there are so many books out there to discover.

Now, with Pandora, you can create a station that sends you songs along the way in the vein of whatever musician you want.  With Podcasts, you can hear new conversations.

And so just like that, just like Mimi and her familiar furniture, I deleted hundreds of songs, shrinking my music library down to the essentials: Leonard Cohen, Jim Reeves (who sounds as close to my daddy singing as any one could sound), some actual voice mails my daddy left for Micah who saved them and made copies for us all, some poetry, a few audio books, a few others.

Before purging my library,  each time I heard a particular song, I could tell you exactly where I was when I first heard it.  The songs have become soundtracks of former trips.

It's not exactly the same as "outgrowing" the old; it's more like "overgrowing" them. The old familiar tunes are so absorbed in who we are that we don't actually need them anymore--except maybe when we want to travel back in time.

Good-bye Doo-Wop and all those Fifties songs I downloaded for Mike.
Good-bye Elvis, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel.
Good-bye Bob Dylan, Carly, Barbra.
Thanks for the memories, all of you.  If I ever need to wallow in former loves, I'll know where to find you.

Thursday in Ft. Stockton

But not for its scenic views:

I was traveling merrily along, singing to the radio, happy to be in Central zone, mentally unpacking, when WHAM!  The tire went flat just 10 miles or so east of Ft. Stockton.

Because they are run-flat tires, I was able to drive back to Ft. Stockton on them and do all the phone calls.

That's the good part.

The bad part of run-flat tires is that nobody stocks them but Mini dealers.

My warranty requires that they tow me to the NEAREST Mini dealer--which happens to be in El Paso, not San Antonio.  I'm going to call Mini America at 8:00 in the morning and see if I can whine loudly enough to convince them that I need to go home, not El Paso.  If I succeed, I'll be riding with a tow truck driver 300 miles.  If I don't succeed, I'll be towed to El Paso and start back from there driving home, hopefully by noon.

I'm now in a Day's Inn in Ft. Stockton, where--if you've ever been here you know--there is nothing pretty to look at, no matter how I spin it.  It's a drab little town with a bunch of motels and I just ate the worst meal of the trip at K-Bobs.

When my children were little, we used to look forward to dinner in an east Texas K-Bob.  Either they have changed drastically or I have: it is not a place I will like on Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter.  But the airy rolls were pretty tasty.

Stoneflower Journey

When I was "living in" Georgia six years ago, I got lonely for a friend who was a writer--so I went up to Asheville and found me one.  Jerri is a book designer and independent publisher.  All these years, Jerri has been a dear friend, to me and to my writing. (Sometimes writing needs a tough-love friend, and Jerri was able to be that.)

When I finished my book a year ago, Jerri  offered to publish it with LifeStories.  It's been a year of hard work, between and among her other book projects: editing, arranging, formatting, designing a cover with the beads that I wrote about in the book.  Writing a book is its own pleasure, but making one for other people to read involves more than I realized.  I have learned so much in our many phone conversations from Texas to Asheville.

The proof for the book will be waiting for me when I get home late tomorrow night, and I'm excited to read it and say, "Go!"

Stoneflower Journey is a book about my six-years-ago journey: a trip that started out in Texas, continued to New England, included a romance with a Georgia man that looked at first like it might be my ticket to that young dream of living in Georgia again, then wound up back exactly where I wanted to be--at 609 Ogden Lane.

The title comes from a legend I learned in college--though I've mangled it beyond recognition.  When I Googled the term, I discovered that my version is nothing like the original, but because it's been such a meaningful word for me all these years, I chose to take poetic license and use the story not  in its original form, but in the way I remembered it.

In short, a stoneflower is a "flower" you see when you're walking a path but too much in a hurry to really see up close.  You vow to "pick it" or "look at it" or take a picture of it even--when you come back.

But in the legend (as I'm co-opting it) the flower has turned into a stone.  Alas, in life and legends, it often happens that way: we plan to go back for the perfect shot but the light has changed.  We plan to go back later to pick up a treasure we glimpsed as we were hurrying by, only to discover that it's long gone.

As the story was told to me then (at eighteen, newly married, newly transplanted to Texas) a stoneflower is anything you pass up and later regret.  I was so haunted then by the prospect of regret that I tucked that story away as a cautionary tale.  I shared it with hundreds of classes of  college students, even had a literary magazine dedicated to me with that title--all the while blissfully unaware that my version of the story had taken on a life of its own, the version as I had misremembered it.

What matters is the way we deal with unrealized dreams.

In writing my book, I discovered that some old dreams are better left untouched or unclaimed.  Their time has passed; we've outgrown the need for them.  They are stones we carry around in our pocket maybe, but they don't need watering.

Other things, however, can return--and the years of waiting for them have made them all the more valuable.  The journey is not about getting everything you ever wanted, but it's often about deciding what you want now, today.

Both the trip of six years ago and the one I'm taking now have given me opportunities to search for things I may have passed up, earlier.  And the refrain I often hear myself singing is this: "Even now, you can't do, be, see everything."  No matter what, you're always making new choices based on who you are at the moment of choosing.

I want to put this in writing:

Thank you, Jerri, for believing in this book and for putting up with my indecisiveness from time to time.  You are an excellent editor!

And, thank you, Janet Penley, for telling me a  year ago that you wanted a finished book for your birthday!  I am not, by nature, a finisher.  I needed someone to need me to finish that book--and you did that for me!

It takes a village...just the right village....to write a book.

One of the things I've learned--blogging vs. book writing--is that the former is easier.  Once you call something a book, it has to have a narrative arc and a shape to it.  It usually takes a second (and a third, and a fourth) set of eyes to help the writer find the threads and weave them together into a whole piece.

After what turned out to be a nine-month adventure six years ago, I discovered that the flowers that were right for me were blooming in Texas, home.  Just like the treasure that the traveler in the tale searches the world for, then finds right in his own back yard.  One of my best treasures is literally in my own back yard, the house of writers.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

I had hoped to make it past El Paso, but I took a break and visited the Tuscon Art Museum--thus, I only got as far as Las Cruces.

I have been trying all day to think of something illuminating and inspiring to say about the I 10 drive, but there wasn't much.  The road is long, and as you drive it, it gets longer.  I passed the hours listening to an interview with Pat Conroy on the Diane Rehm show--a riveting interview about his latest book, The Death of Santini.  Then I listened to some entertaining podcasts Rone had given me: The Moth.

At the end of the interview with Pat Conroy, Diane Rehm said, "I hope you will keep writing.  Let your glory shine."  I have heard Diane Rehm interview hundreds of writers over the years, but I've never heard her express quite such transparent affection for a writer as she did in this interview.

Except for good listening and a tranquil view of mountains and desert, I kept thinking: this is one boring road!  Nothing edible grows beside the road, only grasses and more grasses, a few patches of Joshua trees, saguaro, some scrubby trees.  When I passed Highway 17 leading north to Sedona, it was all I could do to keep the car in the groove and keep heading for home.  But all good things must end--or so I've heard.

I became acquainted with a song I've never noticed in my iPod library before: "Let Me Fall" by Josh Groban.


Let me fall
Let me climb
There's a moment when fear
And dreams must collide

Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

Just as it was playing the third time (I was trying to memorize the lyrics) the parched earth of Arizona and New Mexico alongside the road began to soften.  The sky in my rearview mirror was a brilliant red.  I had to stop--right there on the side of the highway--to take a picture of that western sky.

I love that image: "Someone I am is waiting for courage/The one I will become will catch me...."

I wondered, too, if the same landscape would have been so "boring" if I were setting out instead of ending this adventure.  At the end of a journey, fatigue sets in, the vision dims a bit.  We think we know what's out there in familiar territory, and our looker gets lazy.  How do we keep the freshness of vision in our everyday lives, in places we know so well?  How do we meet the familiar with the eyes of a fascinated stranger?

Before I fall asleep (tomorrow is going to be a LONG day of driving), I'm reading The Holy Man by Susan Trott, a simple and fascinating book that Roné took off her book shelf for me to read on the way home.  All kinds of people approach the "holy" man to solve their problems, and--as we see--the approach has the solution built in, not what the holy man tells them to do.

I read the first half of the book last night and thought about it throughout the day.  Whether the word is "holy" or "enlightened" or whatever, the message is the same: It's not what someone else tells us that transforms us; it's our intention to keep changing from the beginning of any journey to the end.  A journey that doesn't change us or make us bigger is just a vacation.

Heading East

The title of this tab is now inaccurate--as I'm traveling east.
Heading out soon from this motel in Phoenix toward San Antonio.

My thoughts are all over the map--as you can tell from my four Phoenix posts.

Tennyson said, "I am a part of all that I have met."
And all the people we've ever met become parts of us.

We don't just leave our hearts in San Francisco; we leave parts of it everywhere we go.
And every little pencil point dot on the map that we've ever been moves right into our hearts, stretching the map of what we know and love.

Heading east, I'm thinking of Georgia, too, my homeland: a place of kudzu and biscuits and gravy and church music and peaches and pies and shelling peas on the back porch.   A time when you met your incoming guests at the airplane door, no security checks.

Heading east, I'm thinking of my writing groups and San Antonio friends.  I'm thinking of Halloween  and wondering where I put my witch's hat from last year.

It's time to go home.  I've had a gracious plenty of everything!

A Gracious Plenty

Mimi married when she was very young--maybe 19 or 20.
When Papa died, they had been married for 70 years!

She had Carlene when she was 23; Carlene had me when she was 23; and I had Day when I was 23.

At 20, Carlene married my daddy, Lloyd.  When he died at 80, they had been married for 57 good years.  I wondered if she would ever be the same again, and for a while, she was sadly changed.  But now (and he would be proud of this) she is her vibrant self.

Here is the picture of Mimi as a young mother.  She had five children, but the oldest  died when he was ten.  The remaining four are still living, though the two sons are not as healthy as their sisters.

Far left: Carlene (the oldest of the four, born in 1925)

Next to her: Dot (six years younger)

The little one is David; the taller son is Richard.

Papa is at the top of the photo, and Mimi is far right.

Mimi was an orphan and she lived in an orphanage until she was adopted and moved to Georgia.

Toward the end of her life, after Papa died, she used to take us out to Cracker Barrel when we visited her in Georgia.  Here she is with Will, my son, when he was a teenager:

When it was time to leave Cracker Barrel and we offered to pay, she'd say, "It will be my pleasure."

(Until Papa died, she'd always cooked full meals for us at their house: fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and butter beans and corn.)

She was one of those grandmothers who wanted you to have at least two servings of everything.  "Oh have some more!" she'd say--when you were too stuffed to move.

But when she'd had enough, she always said, "Thank you, but I've had a gracious plenty."

Eighty what???

Yesterday, Carlene drove down to Dot's (her sister) to spend the week. It's a three-hour drive.

Dot and I have a competition: who's the better host when Carlene visits?
If I don't do something like Dot does it, Carlene will teasingly say, "Well, Dot does it!"

When those two get together, they laugh so hard it's hard to tell what they are saying when they call.
One talks and the other says, "Tell her so-and-so" and then they both are talking at once.

Yesterday when they called, they told me they were doing a puzzle, then they were going to visit their brother Richard, then they were going out to eat.

"What's the puzzle a picture of?" I asked.

"Jesus and a little sheep," I think is what they said.  "And the words LOST NO MORE."

"They make puzzles of Jesus?" I asked....

But they didn't hear me because they were both laughing by then at something else.

If you could hear those two laughing or talking or singing, you'd think they were forty-something, not eighty-something.  I've been puzzling about why they stay so forever young:

They don't smoke, drink, or eat junk food--at least not that I know of.
They walk.  Carlene walks three miles a day.
They grew up on a farm eating organic before there was a difference.
They are Mimi's daughters--and Mimi lived a healthy life until she died at 96.

But they also like to show off!
I was telling them one day that I could no longer squat.  Both of them at once got into a full squat, and Dot said, "Like this?"

I have a picture of them squatting--a skill I've been trying to bring back into my repertoire of movement for the past four years--but I can't find it.

Here's Carlene doing one at my house--just to show you what I mean.

And here's a picture I took of Carlene holding a little toy school bus I gave her.  She likes to say that "every day we get on the little yellow school bus"--meaning that every day we learn something new.

I may not have the squatting down pat yet, but I do have the legacy of the little yellow school bus.
Whenever something happens that is "bad," Carlene says, "It's just tuition."
It's just the cost of learning.  Or--as Kevin Kling said yesterday, "Wisdom is not free.  You have to pay for it."

Dot and Carlene are two wise women.  They make me laugh.  I will try to stop being jealous that they can squat!