Good Things and Bad Things

One of my best friends has some great news--though I'm not yet at liberty to advertise it.  I'll just say it falls into the category of "When Really Good Things Happen to Really Good People."  And I'll also say that it falls into the category of knowing what you want, holding fast to it even when your friends are advising otherwise, and then watching it all happen.

Sometimes Bad Things happen to Good People, too--as the Rabbi Kushner book told us decades ago. And sometimes Bad Things turn into Good Things--for people of all stripes.

I was talking to Diana on the phone this morning and it seems that her good thing (her new puppy, Roz) is contributing to bad things (like falling and bruising herself on two morning walks).

After talking about the mix of things that have happened since we saw each other last, she told me about taking a walk, losing her glasses, looking everywhere, then finding them, unharmed in the driveway.  I told her about the time, recently, that I lost my glasses in North Georgia and they later turned up.  And the time I left a parking lot with only one lens in those same bifocals (without which I cannot read) and returned an hour later to find that lens in the parking lot, uncrushed by all the cars that had been there since I left.

At Carlene's I dropped my iPhone on the tile and it appeared to shatter beyond repair.  Thankfully, I had bought one of those plastic screen covers, and it absorbed the shock, not the phone.

I have an old tape of Will talking when he was two.  Apparently, we were looking at butterflies--after he'd just learned about snakes.  "Is that a good butterfly or a bad butterfly?" he asked.

Tricks and treats are all around us on this Halloween day--but the best thing is that the weather is perfect for our party tonight.  Will walked out on the porch this morning and captured this happy moment, unposed:

Elena holding Halloweena

The two little boys next door have had pneumonia and strep throat this week--a bad thing.  But here they are all well--a very good thing:

Sebastien and Makken

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYBODY!

Rules

Mike says that when he hears a rule, he parks it by the back door of his brain--and when a breeze blows through, out it goes.

He reminds me how often I consult my rule book.  Until I met Mike, I thought I was a free spirit, but I'm realizing I have quite a few rules installed in my hard-wiring.

I obey speed limits, precisely.  I pay my bills online the minute they arrive.  I am, as my kids once told me, "disgustingly punctual."  Library books are never over-due.  I stick to dates on the calendar and follow through with what I've promised to do.  I ask for permission and approval--for way too many things.  I check things off my list at the end of the day, giving myself a gold star for getting stuff done.

Writing group was scheduled for tomorrow and I was all set to obey the rule I made last month: First Sunday every month.  Then the rains came and two of us were hit by driveway-ripping waters. Other unexpected snags came up.  We wound up--after lots of emails and phone calls--changing the date to next week.

As I told my good friends in the Sunday writing group, I always feel like when I try to make a rule, the Universe laughs at me and messes with my plans!  Somewhere in my psyche is a schoolteacher (probably my third or first grade teacher) who tries really hard to Stick to the Plan and not upset anyone's apple cart or calendar.

But in reality, nobody cares all that much if you have to change the plan--or if they do, they are all flexible enough to say otherwise and roll with it.

I need to lighten up!  I need to haul a few things to the back door of my brain!  Because--really--when you get right down to it, a lot of rules and expectations need a breath of fresh air.  

Age

Almost 20 years ago, back when I was a mere forty-something, I remember listening to William Maxwell (a writer way older) and Terry Tempest Williams (a writer a bit younger than I) talking about the power of being an elder in the world.

I was at the Broad Loaf Writing Conference in Vermont at the time, feeling old and young, alternately, just as I do today.  I admired, still do, true elders--the wise people, the ones with a broader perspective.  I loved hearing these writers talk about eldership, as they called it, in such a positive light.

On the other hand, there are daily reminders that our American culture as a whole does not regard "old" in that light.  There's a vast difference between "elder" and "elderly."  I bristle when I hear a young newscaster say, "An elderly woman of sixty died in the crash...."

Elderly suggests frailty; Elder suggests strength and wisdom.  The idea that we who are past a certain age are Has-Beens floats its own boat--and those of us over fifty (or is it sixty now?)  contribute to that point of view by passing on jokey emails about the woes of aging.  We make fun of ourselves, we add fuel to the notion that age is a chronological embarrassment.

Yesterday I was talking to a vivacious young woman whose parents are younger than I am.  She had changed careers, from a fairly lucrative one to something she loved--and her parents are not happy about it.  They want her to be secure; she wants to follow her heart.  They want her to live a certain kind of life and she wants something else entirely.  "I'm worried that when they come to Texas they aren't going to like my new apartment," she said, "But I'm also excited that they are going to get to see me as I am now, a grown up."

I told her about a brilliant article I read in this month's Sun Magazine by Natalia Ginzburg, "The Little Virtues."   It's all about the dance between parents and children that every generation knows so well.  The push and pull.  The wanting approval, the rebellion, the conflicting agendas....

Ginzburg says:

"I think [children] should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones.  Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know."

She goes on to say that parents should stand by and encourage their children, but not to over-value their successes in school.  After all, scholastic success is one of the "little virtues," not one of the great ones.

If you like, you can read the entire article next month online: http://thesunmagazine.org

As I talked to this young woman whose parents are younger than I am, I felt like an elder passing on the wisdom of another elder.  I felt, well, grandmotherly toward her.

For the rest of the day, I kept hearing echoes of her words: "I just want them to see me as I am."  Isn't that what we all want--to be seen and known, as we are, and not clumped into a category based on the number of years we've lived?

Parade of Dragons, Firetrucks, and Princesses

I woke up to a hard rain this morning, then got a call that the Pritchetts' road was underwater.  For a while, it looked like our little dragon might not make the preschool parade, but she arrived just in the nick of time to don her green suit on the staircase.

I'd have called it a dinosaur, but she's calling herself a green dragon--so I'll go with that.  The little princess in pink wearing a crown is her "best friend," Gianna.

It was my first Halloween parade--and thankfully, it was indoors--so there was no rain on this parade of three and four year olds.

My favorite costume of the day was that of a little boy who was dressed as a firetruck--his mom had painted a cardboard box red and attached paper plate wheels and the boy wore the box and a fire chief helmet.

One of the moms told me how to make Rice Krispie pumpkins--which is my after-nap project:

You shape the treats into balls with a little orange food coloring, use little Tootsie Rolls for the stem, and then attach little candy eyes.

Such Sweetness!

Yesterday, after driving to Helotes then up the mile-long bumpy road to the Pritchett house, the first thing I saw was a blur of pink--Elena running to meet me, arms outstretched.  She flew into my arms and held on tight--as if we'd not seen each other in years.  Then Nathan took a break from painting tombstones and did the same.  If only we could all hold on to that magical childhood way of greeting the people we love!

"I have a surprise!" Elena shouted--and introduced me to her new kitty, Halloweena.  She'd been wanting a kitty ever since the last one disappeared, and her daddy's crew found her one:

The firefighters were called to a rescue.  A man had fallen into a man hole trying to rescue the kitty he heard.  After reviving the unconscious man, the firefighters could still hear a mew from down below.  One of those macho firefighters--an animal lover--found some recorded cat sounds on his phone, played them, and lured the kitty out.  That's Elena's and Nathan's all-black Halloweena!  Skippy, the rat terrier, carries her around by the scruff of her neck like his very own baby.

Bonnie made a delicious dinner and the kids had decorated cupcakes.  All four of them sang Happy Birthday to me as the kids brought me a gift and a candle-lit cupcake.

"How old are you, Yenna?" Nathan asked.

"How old do you think?" I asked.

"Fifty-eight," he said.  (I'll take that!)

One of my presents was a necklace of multi-colored beads, made by Elena.  "I love it," I said.

"Are you going to wear it till you die?" Nathan asked--quickly adding, "A long long time away?"

Nathan will be at his other dad's house on Halloween, so last night was our family Halloween-birthday celebration.   "I wish I could be there at your house for the Halloween party," he said.

I'll be going to Elena's parade at pre-school this morning.  "Be sure and wear a very beautiful dress," Elena said.

She will be dressed as a dragon.  A very sweet little green dragon, probably with more chocolate frosting on her face.

Bob, the cab driver

I just landed in San Antonio--after an extraordinary fifteen days in Georgia!

It was raining hard when Mike and I left Hartwell at three this morning for the Greenville airport, and he stood and watched through the glass as I passed through security.  I used my flight time to enjoy Oprah and Happinez magazines--gifts from Joy and Day.

The cab driver was a man named Bob from the Sudan.  "Welcome to San Antonio!" he said.  We talked all the way to my house.  Does he like his job?  No way.  "I was an aviation mechanic in Atlanta," he said, "moving to Phoenix, when I had a terrible accident in San Antonio.  A truck lost control and slammed me into a wall.  I was in San Antonio hospital for five months, lucky to be alive, thank God, but I can't pass the physical anymore to do my former work."

How did he come to San Antonio from Sudan? I wondered.  "Long story," he said.  He was a furniture maker in Sudan with 77 employees.  When he wrote negative stories about his government, he received a tax bill in the millions and was forced to leave.  He went to Libya and Egypt, but was followed and forced to get out of the region entirely--so he moved to the United States.

Here he was, physically compromised from a car accident, banished from his country and family, trying to make a life in San Antonio--and I wanted to ask him to be my friend.  I didn't ask, but I wanted to somehow make him feel as welcome here as he'd made me feel when I landed.

When we drove into my driveway, he was still cheerful.  "I love your beauty-full house and decorations!" he said.  "I love all your happy colors."

A rainy Tuesday in Georgia

Two beautiful rainy days in a row--looking at leaves, gold and orange and red, picking up pine cones and acorns. Tomorrow I fly back to Texas.

Here's my parting valentine to Mike:

And here's who's waiting for me to come home for Halloween:

Life is good!

Mama and Them

We just had a visitor--a man who's selling Mike a small house in the woods and moving to be closer to "Mama and them."

Just yesterday, I heard Mike's friend Donna use that expression: "Mama and them used to live across the street from us."

"Mama and them" can be plural or singular.  It can either mean Just Mama, Mama and Daddy, or even the house where mama lives.

Carlene and I--when we ham it up in the car,  often say, "I wonder how Mama and them is doing" or "I'm sure when we get there Mama and them will have supper ready."

In the case of our recent visitor: we learned that "Mama and them's got a whole lot of money and live up 'ar in the mountains.  Mama's done got stubborn"  and she won't come back home where she belongs, he tells us, just comes home when she's got to go to the doctor or something.

"Who lives with her?" I asked--wondering about the specifics of "them."

"Ain't nobody lives with her rat now," he said.  "She lives up 'ar all by herself."

We are now going over to see the house Mike's bought from them--before they leave in the morning to be with Mama and Them.

The Dawsonville Moonshine Festival.

Here's what you do at a moonshine festival.

You walk around and look at hundreds of classic cars. You check out every detail--chrome, engines, interiors, fenders, and wheels.You know a '48 Cadillac, a '56 Chevy, a '76 Mustang (or any other car) from a distance, and you know the history and performance potential of each one.

When you see a shiny pink Cadillac exactly like Elvis bought for his mama, you talk for a long time to the owner (if you're Mike) and tell him about how your own mama had a part in the selling of Graceland to Elvis back when you were in high school in Memphis.

Here are the kinds of things you will hear people say:

(Fondly, like recognizing an old friend): "That's exactly the car I had in 1959 except mine was...."

(Standing back, admiring a  particular body from bumper to hood ornament): "What a beautiful piece!" You compare notes with other guys, tell stories, and can travel miles on a memory of particular steering wheel.

"Every-so-once-in-a-while," you dance in a parking lot or on a street corner, as Fifties music plays from one end of town to the other. You eat funnel cakes, popcorn,  boiled peanuts.

You remember how, years ago, when this festival started, people could buy moonshine in Mason Jars made in these-here mountain stills.  Everyone knows Popcorn Sutton, the icon moonshiner, whose wiry little cardboard self stands proudly in downtown D'ville. The history of this place is soaked in legends of hauling corn liquor down Highway 9.

Signs are displayed in some of the cars: "Please don't touch me.  I'm not that kind of car."

Thousands of people, young and old, liberal and conservative, show up every year to look at cars, listen to music, and buy mountain crafts. You can buy a slimming body wrap--from a woman nowhere near slim--or ointment to cure everything from eczema to arthritis.  Children climb onto cars, cameras click, and old men and young men talk about memories and the craft of car building.  The Sons of the Confederacy stand in booths selling books, Rebel flags, and t-shirts.

If you're me, you take pictures of round things: headlights, wheels, pumpkins, and doll faces--because you know nothing about cars. You have your picture taken beside a '48 Cadillac because it's the same vintage as yourself and you have a similar patina.

You talk for a while to the Georgia Author of the Year, Jameson Gregg--and Mike buys his book, Luck Be A Chicken. You buy three letters, D-A-Y, from a photographer who takes photographs of objects and architectural details that look like letters of the alphabet, and though you've seen this kind of project before, it puts you in the mind of looking for objects that look like letters.  Many things at a car show look like Os.

Lawrenceville, Dahlonega, Athens, and Hartwell

After our birthday retreat, I spent a relaxing week in Lawrenceville at Carlene's.

Here's a picture of Bob and Jocelyn, Carlene and me, celebrating three October birthdays.

I don't have a picture to show of Betty because she doesn't care for photo-ops.  She came on Wednesday and we drove to Dawsonville and Dahlonega.  To make up for not having a picture of Betty and me together, I snapped the coconut cake I had for lunch in Dahlonega.  Betty doesn't like coconut cake, so the entire slice is on me, literally.

Betty and I don't have nearly as much time together as we'd like to have, but we make the most of it.  She's getting Claire (the talented granddaughter she's been mother to for her entire 16 years) ready for college, including two recent trips to New York to see Broadway plays and investigate colleges.

Betty recommended Home Fires on PBS, and Carlene and I watched and loved the first three episodes.

Here's a picture of Mary Elizabeth, my kindred-spirit niece, who spent Thursday night with us.  She's working on her massage therapy program in Denver, and happened to have a trip home that coincided with mine.

She loves walking around Carlene's house and looking at her pictures and treasures, including a kaleidoscope that Carlene made back in her stained-glass-making days.

"I wish you wouldn't move things around all the time," Will once said to me about my ever-changing house.   "I like how it is at Nana's.  Everything is always right where it was the last time."  I think all six grandchildren share that sentiment.

When Mike picked me up, we discovered Philanthropie, a great shop in Athens--a beautifully decorated artsy shop filled with beautiful architectural details, windows and barn wood.  He picked out and bought me a dress, sweater vest, and hat--and I walked out happy!

My daddy got his degree in Athens, 1948--the year I was born.  We lived in Married Housing and my mother typed dissertations for income.  Who'd have thought I'd wind up back there sixty-seven years later with this man in a Texas hat?

It's been a fabulous birthday!  The drive to and through Hartwell was beautiful--and today we're heading to Dawsonville for a car show and whatever else shows up.

Daisy

We call her Daisy--my daughter, Day Leary.  She's now been married to Tom for as many years as she was my little girl, and she's a teacher of English at Falls Church High School.  On the days during our birthday retreat, she entertained us with many stories (acted out in grand style as she does so well) about her students and faculty members at her school.

Listening to her, I learned a lot about teaching, too--as education has changed a lot since the days when I was a public school and college teachers.  For one, they work in teams now.  I was, as a teacher, what Day calls a "solo practitioner"--teaching my classes in my own way.  Her team comes up with a cohesive philosophy for their department instead of everyone flying solo as we did in my teaching years, working now on something called "vertical articulation"--making sure that each grade teaches what will be followed up on in the next grade.

She's also an avid quilter and she takes one of her own beautiful quilts with her wherever she goes to wrap herself in as we sit on the bed talking.  She calls it her "security blanket."

She's artsy, dramatic, funny, and passionate about teaching.  Here is the bird house she chose at the fair:

And here's mine:

This email-poem from her friend and colleague Rachel, describes Daisy so well:

Happy belated from me, too,
my sweet, strong, wonderful,
creative, beautiful,
transformative quilting genius
who takes
the odd pieces of life
and makes them a better whole.


My artistic, red-loving, dot-drawing, swirl making,
doodling, drawing, journaling,
organic planning partner extraordinaire,
with her crazy, curly hair.


A Big Texas-hearted sweetheart teacher-
English Preacher-
relentless defender,
coccoa-sipping, rainy bleacher seater,
google doccer, blanket-wrapped friend.


I am so glad you are in my life.
And I don't know how it is that you can't stand the
cold, when you have such a big, warm heart!


Thanks for being my friend!

Sunday Morning at Carlene's House

The Apple Festival in Ellijay is one of the many Georgia mountain fairs featuring apples, crafts, and music.  We spent Saturday afternoon, our last full day together, looking at local crafts, watching cloggers, eating funnel cakes, and watching children riding on the backs of camels.

Our favorite booth sold bird houses made of barn wood, kettles, lunch boxes, coffee cans, graters, and other vintage metal things.  As I was choosing mine and Day choosing hers, I noticed that the artist was a school-mate of mine from high school in Cochran I hadn't seen for fifty years!

We recognized each other immediately--and he remembered my parents all those years ago.  "He was a prince of a man," he told Carlene about Lloyd--"And you two were always such a beautiful couple."

Algie Jones is now a retired school principal who makes these funky little bird houses and sells them at crafts fairs.  It was fun to meet someone from that other life so long ago!  (We moved from Cochran to Lawrenceville my junior year of high school.)

After Carlene bought a red and green kettle bird house for me and a barn wood one for Day (covered with keys and cookie cutters and other odds and ends), I spotted my other favorite thing--a great bit metal sun face.  Here we are with our finds:

Carlene, Algie, and I

Day and Algie

With Our Treasures

It has been an unforgettable time with Day and Carlene.  We ended our retreat this morning by taking Day to Marta (she's now in flight between Atlanta and Virginia) and deciding that this should be an annual affair.

Fall Color

North Georgia in mid-to-late-October is one of my favorite places in the world.  It's nippy in the mornings and I'm loving the colors.

The leaves are not at their peak, but the leaves are changing.  Day loves boiled peanuts so we stopped by a peanut and apple stand (they are dotted along every road) and bought a bag and tasted cinnamon apple cider.  We drove to Jasper on Day's birthday Thursday to look at bolts of colorful fabric in a quilt shop, then ate at an excellent farm-to-table restaurant next door.

Yesterday we went to Clayton and drove a beautiful curvy mountain road to Highlands, North Carolina.  Between Clayton and Highlands, we spent about an hour at a roadside gourd sale--we love gourds!  Carlene got a purple painted gourd and we bought unpainted and painted gourd bird houses  for gifts.   Then we shopped for another hour at a crafts shop.   These are my favorite kinds of days--good meals and conversations, poking around!

Birthday Retreat

How many girls get to spend their 67th birthday on a retreat with their 90-year-old mother and 44-year-old daughter in the mountains of North Georgia in autumn?

I feel so lucky!

I'm sitting on a deck overlooking the beautiful Lake Chatuge surrounded by mountains.

We had lunch in Cleveland, stopped at a roadside cider and boiled peanut stand in Helen, and dinner last night at a nearby resort lodge to celebrate our three birthdays.  (Carlene's was in August, but she's made it last all year.)

Thanks so much for your birthday texts and e-mails and phone calls!  It was a wonderful day!

Sunday Night San Antonio

It's just about 7:30 on a beautiful October night.  Mike and I have the trucks all packed and every single thing on our list completed--finally.  We'd planned to leave for Georgia this morning, but he insisted that we hang the things I wanted hung, fertilize the yard, paint a beverage cart on the deck, and get everything ready for Halloween for the kids.

A time or two, in sheer exhaustion, we've snapped at each other--mostly me snapping at him.  "I didn't get a nap today!" I might say, as if it's his fault.  "I can't eat another bowl of that chili!" I said last night--because he was too tired to go out to eat.  Of course, he's tired; he works like nobody I've ever seen.

I have a window curtain made of ribbons and beads.  I wanted to hang it in the kitchen, so of course, we weren't going to leave before they got hung.  In the process of moving them around, they'd gotten hopelessly tangled.  I spent two hours untangling ribbon and beads.  It was tedious and it was fun. They sparkle in the window now; the house is clean; he's taking a nap--and then we're going to head out later tonight and get through Houston before morning traffic.

I was teasing him about taking a cruise.  "You'd be meeting the captain to see if anything needed fixing," I said.  "You'd be taking food back to your room for tomorrow, not wanting to waste anything."

"You're right," he said.  "That's exactly what I'd do."

I don't see a cruise in our shared future.  What I see tonight is a generous and exhausted man sleeping in a newly painted bedroom and a house and casita that look exactly like I hoped they would.

A brightly painted birdhouse is filled with sunflower seeds--my birthday present from Georgia.  Ribbons and beads sparkle in the kitchen window.  Mirrors are hung.  Electrical work is done.  Windows are glazed.  A storage shed for my yard tools is built. The truck is packed to the gills--including about ten shirts he never took out of his cleaners' bag and two pair of boots to wear dancing.  The only dancing we did was the dance of the drill and hammer and paint brush.

Albuquerque Balloon Fest

Barbel sent me pictures this morning of the annual balloon fest in Albuquerque:

Imagine one pilot steering a big blue bird in the sky--the same color we are painting one wall of the bedroom this morning:

Mike and I are busy finishing projects this morning for our Sunday departure to Georgia--where I'll do a birthday retreat with Carlene and Day in the North Georgia mountains!

Day's 44th birthday is Thursday; my 67th is Wednesday; Jackson's 14th is Tuesday--so we have a lot to celebrate in the colorful fall mountains.

First Cars

I was asking Mike the other night about his favorite memories, and most of them had to do with cars.

It got me thinking about cars and the fact that my mother bought her own first car in 1945--a Chevrolet coupe, beige.  It was a 1940 model and cost her a thousand dollars, which she paid off in monthly payments of $75.  Her monthly wages were $125.

When she got it home, she discovered that the tires were bad.  Papa put it up on blocks until they could get rationing coupons for new tires.

What she remembers most is that her daddy--Papa--never did say, "I told you so."

Cars stopped being manufactured in 1941 and factories turned to war tanks and machines.  Nobody got a new car until car building resumed in the late 40s.  Carlene teases that she married my daddy shortly after that so he could help her pay off her car!  "But really, I never doubted I could do it."

I got my first car-of-my-own in 1990--a turquoise Acura Integra, brand new.  Before that, it had never occurred to me that I could actually own a car.

Watering the Boys

Just as Mike was watering the lawn tonight, Kate, Sebastien, and Makkin were setting out on their nightly walk.   What boys can resist a water hose?

When they came back after their walk, Makkin called out to Mike, "Thanks for the bath!" and his mom said,   "Tomorrow we'll bring shampoo."

Sebastien is a second grader in the Cambridge Elementary bilingual program.  Makkin is a three-year-old student at the Zoo School.

The Flower Girl

I got a text today from my friend Linda--in Cape Cod--whose son's wedding was last week.

Here's a picture of the flower girl at Dan and Eilean's wedding, their dog Josie--who ironically is an adoptee from Perry, Georgia, my mother's hometown.

The flower girl barked right on cue when they announced Dan and Eilean Mr. and Mrs.

Round Top and Warrenton

If you drive toward Houston and take the La Grange exit, then continue on past La Grange, you'll find (twice a year) miles of garage sales and antique dealers, huge tents of them.

Mike and I drove there in the Mini, which limited what we could buy, but we had a great time talking to the venders there, buying a few small things, and (for me) taking pictures.  I love old dolls and bears and took lots of pictures of their antique faces.

What stories these girls could tell!

We also met a couple of twins from Missouri who'd driven to Texas to sell their bird houses.  Born in 1964, they are identical--traveling with "big sister" and a husband.

"I'll bet you two have stories to tell," I said--always fascinated by twinship.  They insisted otherwise: "Not really--just stories about when we bite each other's head off," one said.

Mike pretended to be arrested by the festival horseback police. We found terrific food at a Maine Lobster food truck in Round Top, where we sat and visited for a couple of hours with a couple who restores old campers (painting each a different color)--she's a self proclaimed gypsy from Longview and he's a traveling gospel singer.