Sunday in the Great Smoky Mountains

"Traveling with you is like traveling solo," I said to Mike yesterday.  He knew what I meant.

He's the only man I know who loves to take detours for pictures, or just to look up close at something, or who will stop any time I have a yen to.  Picture taking is actually just an excuse to see something beyond a cursory glance, I think.

Driving through the Smokies yesterday, I saw my first-ever eagle and scores of wild turkeys.  Mike fed a crow with crumbs in his hand.  I told him about the time--some forty years ago--camping in Vermont, that a crow brought me a ballpoint pen, then rode a piece on my bicycle handlebars.

We stopped in Cherokee and talked for a long time to a woman who taught me a lot about Cherokee culture.  They now have a school, preschool through 12, in which all courses are taught in Cherokee.  She was proud that the culture is being maintained through language and regrets that her own mother didn't teach her Cherokee.  She told us proudly about the new hospital and educational grants, thanks to the casino business.   Before leaving Cherokee, we had an Indian taco--meat and vegetables on fry bread.

After all the bright lights of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville that overstimulate and make me tired, it was wonderful to drive through the Smokies.  We both remembered, riding through those tunnels, how we used to say, "Blow the horn, Daddy" --and he did, mine and Mike's.

Mike woke me up at sunrise yesterday to take pictures of the Rock City barns.  When we were growing up they punctuated every road trip, as did the Burma Shave signs all along the roadsides--little riddles a phrase at a time.

Orange Everywhere

I haven't seen  a football game in probably fifty years, and understand about 13 percent of what is happening on the field.

Yesterday we spent the day in Knoxville--first scouting for tickets, then walking around the campus Mike loves, then watching the actual game.

Always the observer and note taker, I felt like an anthropologist studying a tribe unknown to her.

I had planned to dress up.  I thought that's what one did.  But as it turns out, Mike had orange jerseys for us both.   The stadium was a sea of orange, the maple leaves all over the campus grounds were orange, and the band wore black and orange.

While I didn't turn into a die-hard fan of football, I had fun watching those who are and now I know all the words to "Rocky Top" by heart.

Tennessee won handily enough over Vanderbilt that we left after the third quarter to join the hundred thousand fans leaving Knoxville.  We drove to Sevierville/Pigeon Forge--the Disneyland of Tennessee.

Our drive today through the Smoky Mountains was beautiful--the same drive in reverse we took eight years ago on the Harley.  We photographed barns and rusty cars all morning, then visited with a woman named Shirley in a Cherokee gallery where I felt a kinship to my Cherokee ancestors. We bought a shaking gourd as a souvenir of our trip, even though in actual native dances, women are not allowed to touch these gourds.

It's been a wonderful weekend--great food, beautiful places to stay, and lots of photo ops!

Choking--P.S.

When Day was about three, her Sunday School teacher told her Jesus was "in her heart."  She took it quite literally one day when a piece of roast beef got lodged in her throat.

I picked her up, pounded on her back, and up came the meat.

"Something was stuck in my throak," she said.  "Must-a been Jesus."

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

Mike and I had Thanksgiving on the road—breakfast at Cracker Barrel, lunch at Arby’s—the only two places open for business on turkey day.  We arrived at Mike’s barn late afternoon and emptied the truck for our trip to Knoxville tomorrow.

Last night, I had a yen for steak, so we found a great steak house in Vicksburg.  It was a juicy ribeye with a delicious wedge salad and sides, and I must have been eating with gusto.  Suddenly, I realized that the bite I'd just taken was stuck.  I stood up to see if moving would dislodge it, but nothing happened.

"Can you breathe?" Mike asked--and I shook my head, no.

Mike quickly and deftly did the Heimlich maneuver--the first time I've been on the receiving end of such a pounding.  After a couple of firm upward thrusts and two pounds on the back, the steak became a welcome projectile.  It was, I have to say, a bit embarrassing, but I felt instant relief as I was able to take a deep breath.  

Kate reminded me that choking on food was Mama Cass’ exit route—so I’m just glad to be among the living on this Thanksgiving day!

Tuesday Morning

I heard Mike hammering outside before light--he's determined to get an awning up over the back door before we leave, so we can get to a leather shop in Tool, Texas, before the end of the day--then head east.  He's used his present wallet for 25 years, and we're returning to the maker for a touch of repair!

Elena's coming over at nine while her mom goes for a run, and Mike will be working on this project and loading the truck, hoping for a noon departure.  I just couldn't leave without one more visit with Elena.

A House of My Own, by Sandra Cisneros, is a terrific book of essays and talks given over a period of many years. She writes about how she always felt like an "other"--the only girl in a family of six boys, the new girl at school with their frequent moves, etc.

At one time or other, we've all been made to feel like the other. When I teach writing, I always tell the story of a moment of discovering  and naming my otherness. It's not enough simply to sense it, it has to be named, and then written about from there.  Once I could name it, I wasn't ashamed or silent.  I could speak up and celebrate my otherness as a woman, a working class person, an American of Mexican descent. When I recognized the places where I departed from my neighbors, my classmates, my family, my town, my brothers, when I discovered what I knew that no one else in the class knew, and spoke it in a voice that was my voice, the voice I used when I was sitting in the kitchen, dressed in my pajamas, talking over a table littered with cups and dishes, when I could give myself permission to speak in that intimate space, then I could talk and sound like myself, not like me trying to sound like someone I wasn't.  Then I could speak, shout, laugh from a place that was uniquely mine, that was no one else's in the history of the universe, that would never be anyone else's ever. 

Regarding Writing and Memories....an early-morning email from Carlene

Often after I check first thing to see if you have new blog entries, I read some of Beuchner's "Beyond Words"' and today his word is "Diary" and it corresponded (in my mind, at least) to your wonder about the "life in a box" you wrote about:

Even the most cursory of diaries can be of incalculable value.   What the weather was doing. Who we ran into on the street.   The movie we saw.  The small boy at the dentist's office.   The dream.

Just a handful of the barest facts can be enough to rescue an entire day from oblivion - not just what happened in it, but who we were when it happened.  Who the others were.   What it felt like back then to be us.

"Our years come to an end like a sigh...." says Psalm 90, "so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

It is a mark of wisdom how precious our days are, even the most uneventful of them.  If we can keep them alive by only a line or so about each, at least we will know what we are sighing about when the last of them comes.

A bed and toilet seats

Mike may not qualify for sainthood, but close.  When he left last trip, I gave him my adjustable bed frame--thinking that it would be too high for my antique bed.  Within days, I regretted it--so he brought it back this trip and spent today redesigning it to fit the double bed.  I can hardly wait to go to bed with a good book: Syllabus, by Lynda Barry, the cartoonist.   I feel like Little Red Riding Hood: now my bed is "just right."

On our way to dinner, we stopped at the Toilet Seat Museum around the corner--one of the quirkiest places in town.  Barney Smith, a retired 94-year-old plumber has been working on his project for fifty years and has a story for every one of his painted/collaged toilet seats.   Mike, lover of stories and quirky things, enjoyed every minute of it.

I asked Barney if he had a favorite and he went straight to "When Earth's Last Picture is Painted"--a poem he recited in church as a child.  He recited the Rudyard Kipling poem to us in full:

When Earth's last picture is painted
And the tubes are twisted and dried
When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it
Lie down for an aeon or two
'Till the Master of all good workmen
Shall put us to work anew
And those that were good shall be happy
They'll sit in a golden chair
They'll splash at a ten league canvas
With brushes of comet's hair
They'll find real saints to draw from
Magdalene, Peter, and Paul
They'll work for an age at a sitting
And never be tired at all.
And only the Master shall praise us.
And only the Master shall blame.
And no one will work for the money.
No one will work for the fame.
But each for the joy of the working,
And each, in his separate star,
Will draw the thing as he sees it.
For the God of things as they are!

Lists, Letters, and Studio Pictures

In a box of random memorabilia at Ye Ye's, I found grocery lists, handwritten letters, and pictures of people posed and framed in gray cardboard frames.  Since the owner was in the mood to give me lots of things for free (given what Mike was spending) I came home with a few.

As it turned out, he'd bought the whole box from a man at a garage sale--the belongings of the seller's grandfather.

"Hey, don't sell these to me, Man!" the buyer said.  "Your children might want them."

But the seller insisted and there they all are, a stranger's family history in a box waiting for people like me to shuffle though them and wonder: Who are these people?  Why would a man part with his grandmother's grocery list, his grandfather's serious studio portrait, and letters that had once circulated from one to the other?

Countless stories are embedded in lists and pictures--and I pore over them for about an hour.  Who are these seven children sitting on laps and flanking their parents, waiting for the flash  bulb to pop?
Why does this young bride look so grim? Who made her elaborate wedding gown?  What became of this couple?

A price list probably posted beside a cash register:

In their letters, women draw their house plans, report on the health of their family members, describe the weather, and tell who came calling and what they brought.

Speaking of Home....

A few years ago, I wrote a book and called it A Road Of My Own.

An independent book publisher said that the book resonated with her and she wanted to publish it. She loved it, she said. But then came the sticking point--the title. "Nobody will buy a book with that title," she said.

But look!  Sandra Cisneros' book is called A House of My Own!

An Anything "of my own" resonates with women of my generation. We borrowed it from a writer from the previous generation, Virginia Wolfe--who wrote that a woman "should have money and a room of her own."  Today, that sounds so obvious you might wonder (if you're younger) why that set off sparks in the collective imagination of us Baby Boomers, but it did.

The zeitgeist of the Sixties was protests and rebellion, Hippies and rock music, MS Magazine, birth control, and women breaking out of molds of all kinds.  Unknown women were writing memoirs and women were reading them with great interest, starting--for me--with Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift From the Sea, May Sarton's  Journal of Solitude.   The genre of memoir flowered like the zinnias and pansies painted on vans, cars and buildings.

I like to imagine the unlikely possibility that Sandra Cisneros was in the same college classroom I was in when a professor read the words of Virginia Wolfe: "Every woman writer should have money and a room of her own."  I like to imagine that Sandra was one of the many female English majors in that room who reached into their book bags and pulled out cigarettes in unison, wanting to inhale those words with smoke and menthol.

I was already married.  The prospect of having a place of my own had passed its expiration date, at least in that decade.  But I was intrigued the idea of independence and not having to run every decision by the man.

"The man" could be a husband, a belief, a job, or even other women--anything or anybody that dictated what we could do.  When we're not being who we are, when we're consenting to changes we don't really want (in our book titles or anything else) we feel homesick.

Even though it took me 28 years to act on my rebellion full force, a part of me began leaving the wrong house at that moment, in that college classroom at St. Mary's.   I knew that someday I'd have a house that would feel like home, and I began building a small house of many colors long before I had it in real life.

Working and playing

Suggesting to Mike that we not work this visit is like suggesting to Elena we don't play!

We mowed and blew the yard, then went to Harbor Freight to buy a Christmas present for Nathan--tools for his hot rod of course!--and then had my favorite Friday special at El Mirador, potato enchiladas, then spent a couple of hours poking around at YeYe's, Mike's favorite place in San Antonio.

I always think of Ryan and Suzanne's wedding at YeYe's--me the flower girl and photographer.

It's a treasure trove for people who like to explore finds from demolished buildings.  Mike bought me a red valentine ring and a part from an old airplane out of which I'm going to try my hand at making a totem pole for the yard.  He found some treasures for himself, too--and it was a fun day all around.

Thanksgiving Girl and What She's Thankful For

Elena at the preschool Thanksgiving Feast

Boyfriends and Brothers

Last night at rodeo practice, Elena saw me hugging Mike.

"Is he your daddy, Yenna?" she asked.  (Not an age-related question but a question that suggests that a daddy is the man we love.)

"No, he's my sweetheart and boyfriend," I said.

"Like you and me," Nathan explained.  "I'm your boyfriend and I always will be because I love you most."

"Yeah, that's right," Elena said.

Mike showing Nathan and Elena his car magazines

Home

It is nearly 2 a.m, and I'm awake, expecting Mike to arrive in the next hour or two!

What do you do when you're waiting?

Me, I read some in my photography book, check on cool things to make on Pinterest, maybe Etsy, listen to some a cappella music on Pandora, and follow the links my friend sends me to art-related sites.  I order a book called The Syllabus by Lynda Barry because my friend (who likes the same kind of books I do) strongly recommended it. Then I pick up a book on my bedside table, thinking surely that will put me to sleep--but no.  It makes me think.

I'm reading Sandra Cisneros' memoir, A House of My Own, Stories from My Life.   In chapter 2 ("No place like Home") she writes:

We find ourselves at home, or homing, in books that allow us to become more ourselves.  Home "is not just the place where you were born," as the travel writer Pico Iyer once noted.  "It's the place where you become yourself."

Where is the place where you have become who you are?  Where is your home?

When Thomas Wolfe was already a successful author someone asked him if he would consider moving back to North Carolina.  He said, "My writing is my home now." 

"Diary of the Soul"

Tierney Gearon's photography is remarkable. She calls her body of work a "diary of the soul."

Her images are beautiful.  As an aspiring photographer, I am fascinated by the way she plays with light and captures faces and emotions.  I love her pictures.

In the documentary, The Mother Project, videographers take pictures of a woman taking pictures. The photographer sees her world through camera lenses, constantly posing her children, her mother, and herself.  They are all accustomed to being Tierney's subjects.

Her work is also controversial. Sometimes, they are naked, sometimes clothed, sometimes wearing masks. In one scene, she is talking about her mother's childhood and how her mother "saw things a child shouldn't see"--while she and her mother are naked in the room with the children, her mother standing on the bed.

Her mother (in her sixties) suffers schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  In some ways, the daughter seems to be her mother's mother; in other ways, she's an obsessive observer of her mother and of herself as mother.  Her subjects are always--at least in this film--her mother and her two, then three, children.

Watching this, I felt like a voyeur.  Without any editorializing on the part of the film makers, the photographer and her family speak for themselves. While the mental illness of the mother is obvious in every scene of the documentary, her daughter's photographs are beautiful portraits of a normal-seeming woman.

And yet--Tierney is criticized for the nudity, especially of the children. Some call her work pornographic. She un-self-consciously bares it all.  In more ways than bodily, the players in the photographer's soul stories are naked.

This is an intriguing portrait of an artist making portraits. She crosses lines that many viewers consider going too far.  She is posed on the thin line that separates normal and strange--a line she knows well.  She grew up on that fragile thread.

"A geriatric starlet"

I just watched IRIS on Netflix--a documentary about a ninety-year-old fashion icon, still working, still dressing in her wonderfully outlandish attire.  She calls herself a "geriatric starlet."

"I'm not pretty, never was," she says.  "I don't like pretty."  But she has a unique sense of her own style--and inspires fashionistas, museum curators and people on the streets of New York.  She wears big round glasses and thick layers of large, chunky costume jewelry.  "Everything is so homogenized now," she says.  "I can't stand to be conventional."

Conventional she is not. Every time she leaves home, she's dressed, a walking painting or sculpture. Her 100-year-old husband, Carl, adores her and says, "Anything for my baby."  He has a twinkle in his eye as he watches her trying on clothes.  "She's never boring, that's for sure."

What she values most in herself and her friends--curiosity and a sense of humor.  Her advice: whatever your art form, you should "follow your curiosity."

Tomorrow, I will do the second photo-shoot for Bonnie and Deb's book: interviews with women over 80.   I look forward to meeting these women and doing my best to capture something of their essences in black and white.

I'm glad to be a small part of a project that celebrates the star qualities of aging--a wider perspective, wisdom, and life experience that gives warmth and shadows to the face.

***

Carl died this past August--just three days shy of his 101st birthday.  Iris Apfel, born August 29, 1921, still lives and works in New York.

Clever Boy!

My daughter-in-law Veronica (aka Bonnie) does roping events in rodeos.  To practice roping, she has a plastic bull.

Nathan came up with an idea to practice roping more realistically--he'd pull it along with the hot rod Mike built for him!  There she goes, roping the orange bull.  Even Scratchy, the goat, got into the action.

Staying at Home All Day

I have a bad cold.  Wah wah wah!

Okay, done with the whining.

Except for the congestion and croaky voice, I'm having a rather delicious day, as I did yesterday.  I watch Masterpiece on the laptop in bed; I read a little; I fall asleep.  Then I wake up and do it all over again.  I drink tomato soup in a cup and melt cheese on this and that and take the zinc and probiotics my mama called to tell me to take.  She heard it on Good Morning America: zinc and probiotics and seven hours of sleep, minimum, per night.  I'm also taking Mucinex DM, which is what the doc prescribed last time.

As I've mentioned before, my cousin Beth's daughter Missy has been foster mom to Lola Beth for her entire life.  At one point, Lola Beth's uncle said he wanted her, but he seems to have lost interest.  So it looks like, Missy may get to adopt her daughter!

Here's a picture of Lola Beth with her great-grandmother, Dottie, Carlene's sister:

Coming Home

"Stray Dog" on the PBS series, Independent Lens, features one seventy-ish Vietnam veteran named Ron Hall.

To make this 90-minute documentary, the filmmaker spent months getting to know this good man;  I spent ninety minutes engrossed in Ron's story.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365587235/

Vietnam veterans (and casualties of that war) were my classmates in this life school--most of them three or four years ahead in actual school.  The boys fought a war they didn't choose, and it will never be over for the survivors like Ron Hall and his friends. For many, the only families left are their brother veterans.

Most of them came from homes like all of our homes--with families and roast beef dinners, drive-in movies and music. They fell in love, went steady and got cars.  They were lifeguards and athletes and drummers, mechanics and college students.  They listened to rock 'n roll music and danced.

Middle and lower-class boys of the Sixties usually went into the infantry because they had to--or they signed up for other branches of service to avoid the draft.  Their dreams for their futures were probably sketchy--just as the dreams of their girlfriends and sisters were--but they were ended with that war or put on hold.  I dare say their dreams rarely included being soldiers in a faraway war.

Ron Hall is one of those men.  He runs a small trailer park in Missouri where he lives with his dogs and his Mexican wife.  We see him sitting in a bare-bones trailer practicing his Spanish on an old computer. A warm-hearted biker, he still wakes up, as so many do, fifty years after combat, with nightmares.

"I was eighteen when I went over there," Ron said.  "I had no business making those kinds of decisions at that age....Old men make up the wars and young men go die in them."

What strikes me about this close-up of Ron and his biker/veteran friends is how often they talk about home. When they memorialize a fellow soldier who died, they say, "He didn't get to come home."

They support each other as only people who've been in the same wars can do.  They remember what it was like over there; they talk about what it was like when they first came home.  

Those young soldiers, now old men, didn't come home to flag-waving, cheers and patriotic music. Their homecomings were more muted than the homecomings after World War II, and the soldiers were scorned for a war they hadn't created.

Today, so many Vietnam veterans live on the street or in homeless shelters or--as the film depicts--they barely scrape by, living in poverty.  One of the men in the film had to pull his own teeth because he couldn't afford dental care.  Many suffer psychological damage or have died of suicide. How does this happen?  How is that so many of these young men, our classmates, gave their youths to a terrible war, then came home wind up homeless or living in poverty?

O'Malley made an excellent point in the Democratic debate Saturday night:  Let's stop calling these men "boots on the ground."  He quotes a mother of a veteran of Afghanistan: "My son was not a pair of boots."

The Brain

PBS is airing a series of talks by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, who studies various aspects of the brain.  For a limited time, the entire series can be watched online at PBS.org.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365564819/

Ted Radio Hour

One of the best programs on NPR, Ted Radio Hour builds on Ted Talks, with interviews spliced with excerpts from the talks of the interviewees.

Today's program was on silence--very interesting!

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2015-11-13

This old man....

Roger Angell has received awards for his writing and is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Now, at the age of 95, he's written a book about his life and experiences called This Old Man/A Life in Pieces.

Here's the link to his interview with Scott Simon, my favorite radio guy:
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/14/455920045/this-old-man-looks-back-on-a-full-life

The eyes of children

The screen on my iPhone is a picture of ten-year-old Marcus' eyes--bright blue eyes behind pretend glasses.

Children's eyes are always changing, from moment to moment, as they take in the world around them.  In a perfect world, every child would know only love and kindness and feel secure to explore and make their mark.

I woke up this morning to see a miniature donkey and tiger side by side on my dining table, a little black cat beside a big burly bear.  While there are skirmishes and power struggles in the animal kingdom, and while some animals fight to the death; while certain species may have their own chest-thumping Trumps, most animals play nice with others.  Children instinctively love animals and fill their rooms with toy bears and kitties and horses.

Children don't see boundaries the same ways adults do. In their world, all the animals are their friends, and all are friends to each other.  Maybe their first lessons in geography come from trips to the zoo where they learn about the native lands of animals from other regions of the planet.

Animals don't watch murder and mayhem on big screens.  They don't shoot "bad guys" in video games.  They probably wake up like human children in all countries do, just looking out at a new day of adventure.

It's distressing to watch Syrian refugees on boats searching for a peaceful life.  Children on those ragged boats have seen the fright of war.  Those eyes know too much pain.  Sometimes they don't make it to safety, sometimes they do.

Hearing this morning about "soft targets" in France, I can't help thinking about the softest targets in the world, the children and young people who are out on a Friday night enjoying sports events and concerts.  Soft targets are the skin and lives of innocent people, like children, who don't have a fight with anyone over their gods and oil and money.

Every victim--and every perpetrator of violence--was once someone's little girl or boy.  In a perfect world, all these children would grow up to know a peaceable kingdom without walls and hatred.

Friday, November 13th

My day started with a two-hour phone call with Day who took the day off to deal with the sadness of taking Maisy back. The whole family made the decision together, but still it's very hard, especially for Jackson.

"What would we do without Nana's lesson about tuition?" she asked.  Whenever we think we've made a mistake, or when things don't go as planned, our conversation almost always works its way back to Carlene's words:  "Everything is tuition."

Day said the Leary course was called "Should the Learys get a dog?"  The tuition was about $300, a lot of love, and now a lot of tears.  "But now we know," she said in her brave Day voice.

Then I got a phone call from Will and a text from Veronica telling me that Elena insisted on taking her sewing projects to school. She strutted right into her class and announced that she'd had a sewing day with her grandmother and showed her teacher and classmates what she'd made.

I ran errands all day, including buying Christmas presents for the grandchildren. After four hours of shopping, I stopped at Cappy's for a solo dinner of shrimp nachos.

My favorite purchase was an assortment of beautiful German-made animal figures (Schleich) for Elena--dogs, cats, a horses, sheep and chickens, all the animals that live at their house, with a few African animals in the mix.

Tonight, however, after a personally-good day, I'm watching in shock the tragedy of the terrorist attacks in Paris.  The World Trade Center is lit in red, white, and blue.  The connectedness to all humans tonight reminds me of the solidarity we felt right after September 11th.

Every day the news is filled with tragedy and meanness--school shootings, terrorist attacks, and politicians vociferously insulting each other.  I wonder when and if the madness will end and we'll find ways to build bridges on which our children and grandchildren can live.

Where is the light?

I don't believe I have ever read an owner's manual.  But having been asked to do the photography for a book two friends are writing, I felt compelled to learn what the buttons and dials on my Nikon can do.

Nikon 550 for Dummies was a bit over my head, but I've found a terrific book: Stunning Digital Photography by Tony Northrup.

This book is readable and interesting, each of his points supported with photographs to illustrate.  Throughout the book, there are links to short videos, adding up to over 12 hours of videos.  (You can also find his videos on You Tube.)

I've taken several photography classes over the years, but I'm usually so overwhelmed that I wind up returning to Auto mode.  This class-in-a-book is the book for a novice like me.

Chapter 3 teaches about light sources and the different effects that can be achieved by making pictures in different lighting situations:

Light is usually the most beautiful an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset.  

Photographers call these times the golden hours.  The golden hours are special for several reasons:

* The rising or setting sun casts a warm light across your surroundings, giving everything a golden glow.

* The sky, and shadows the sky illuminates, take on a deep blue color that complements the warm sunlight.

* The sun is low on the horizon, providing side lighting that adds depth.

* Light is softer than in the middle of the day, so the shadows are not as harsh.

Learning to sew

Ever since Elena found my basket of fabric, she's wanted me to "teach her sewing," so tonight was Lesson #1.

Before she arrived, I filled one of my old sewing baskets with needles, thread, fabric, buttons and measuring tape.  She was so excited we had to take the sewing basket with us to dinner.

We made a yellow cat and a red felt heart, stuffed them, and glued on sequins and eyes and bows.  Then she wanted to use the "sewer" so she sat in my lap, intent on watching, as we made a bag for carrying her animals around. "Don't let your finger get stuck in the pokey thing," she cautioned.

By night's end, she had a bag full of things she'd made and wanted to stay a little longer to "make a computer out of fabric with little buttons on it," but I was saved by the bell--her parents' arrival.  I'm thinking I may need to acquire more sewing skills to accomplish that ambitious a project.

I love this "country"

Elena still doesn't quite know the difference between a country and a neighborhood--and she calls my neighborhood "Yenna's country."

As I was driving to get my morning drink, the school-children at Cambridge were filing in and their parents and little sisters and brothers and dogs were heading back home.   I love watching little kids playing, the older ones sprinting away from their parents to meet their friends on the playground.  My grandchildren call the Cambridge playground the park--because it's where we walk to play when they visit.

Tuesday, when Elena was here, we visited Jan and Kate and the boys next door.  Sebastien and Makkin were playing with their friend Rory.  As we were leaving, a young neighbor walked by with her dog, Chloe, and all four children ran out of the house to pet the puppy.

Later, Charlotte and Kate came over and included her in every conversation--much to Elena's pleasure.

As they were leaving, Will said, "All of Yenna's friends are so nice, right?"  Elena said, "Yes, everyone in this country is nice!"

Claire, Chole, Rory, Elena, Sebastien and Makkin

Sebastien and Makkin

I love living in a country of children and puppies--where instant friendships are formed every day.

While Marcus in Virginia continues to have occasional allergic reactions to Maisy, the good days seem to be outnumbering the allergy days.  It's looking like Maisy is a keeper in their country!

La Casita

Just as on road trips, when I sometimes start out toward one destination and end up somewhere else, the trip of remodeling has taken me to a different place than I'd planned.

The process has been so much fun, and the final product is exactly what I wanted!  I feel happy every time I walk in the doors or look at it from the outside.

When I started the La Casita remodeling project, I intended to advertise on the Air BnB website--because I thought I'd like making money on a place that's not used every day.  I thought I'd enjoy meeting travelers and doing for them what Air BnB has done for me on the road.

But now that it's all done, La Casita is telling me it wants a different road.  It wants to host friends and families of friends instead of strangers. Already, it's working out--not to the extent it might have had I gone the Air BnB route, but it's already booked in advance for several extended stays.

When Paula decided to rent it on writing group nights instead of driving back to Austin, the road changed, and it feels just right.

Here it is:

The kitchen and bathroom are now bright green, the refrigerator yellow.

A big blue chicken sits atop the cover we made for the air conditioner--which we made out of my old bed.

Mike put a half-moon on the sliding door to the bathroom and built a very comfy Murphy bed.

The fire place and books are ready for winter reading and writing groups.

Here's the Murphy bed--our summer project--in the down position, ready for a quiet night of snoozing.

We painted the casita orange peel yellow and the door turquoise, and Mike built a  Saltillo tile patio with plants on it beside the front door.

Then we decided to paint the house white, with a door to match the casita and blue blinds and trim.

La Casita is home for my writing groups, but when it's vacant, it's now available for out of towners to stay and enjoy San Antonio.  The private back yard (with a new deck)  has twinkle lights and is a quiet place to sit and drink coffee or wine.

If you know of anyone traveling to San Antonio who'd like to stay here for a night or a week, please pass the word that the orange peel casita is ready for guests.



j

My Saturday Night Date

       On the morning after my Saturday night date, my house looks like it's been stirred by a giant spoon.  The floor is covered with straws, buttons, scraps of fabric, and paint.  The bathtub is filled with plastic toys.  Tootsie Roll wrappers are stuffed between the sofa cushions.

       But being Elena's grandmother is well worth the mess. She teaches me so much!

1. Wake up from every sleep with a smile and a stretch--as if this morning or this post-nap afternoon is the best day ever.

2. Hug with your whole heart.

3. Disagree with big people when they are wrong.

4. Look at all the crafts supplies and say, "I have a great idea!  Let's write a book!"  Be proud of your ideas.

5. Notice everything and remember it.  "Remember when Kate told us about the tarantulas?"

6. Don't bother cleaning up if you're in the middle of a creative project.

7. Be happy and optimistic.  "I'm not going to die for a really long time because I'm just a little kid."

8. Pick out and wear clothes and boots you like.


        Before her parents left on their dinner date, I told her, "I like your pink boots and leggings."

        Will said,  "Just before we left home she told me, 'Yenna is going to love my boots and leggings.'"

        We know each other well.  We love the same things--like bright colors and making things.  Last night we wrote a book together on little tiny pieces of paper, then bound it with tape.  She designed the layout and told me what words to write--it was all about cats and dogs.

        Being Elena's grandmother makes my heart overflow.  She told her parents last night, "Yenna is my favorite person in the whole wide world."

        This may not be true forever, but it's enough, more than enough, that it's true from time to time.  



       

   

Daisy and Maisy

Marcus seems to have acclimated to Maisy--and the whole family is in love with this smart little mutt.

Already, at three months of age, she sits on command!

Bringing Santa Claus back

In Hartwell, Georgia, there is one upscale men's clothing store.  To let me know how upscale it is, Mike told me he'd once spent $45 on a bow tie there.

Ever since Pudge (yes, that's her name) inherited this store, thirty years ago, there's been a sleeping Santa in the window. It's a vintage Santa--probably built fifty years ago--and everyone in Hartwell knows him.  When he's turned on, he sleeps.  His chest rises and falls.  Maybe he snores....

Whenever anything breaks in Hartwell, people call Mike.  So he got a call to fix the broken Santa Claus.

"We've had two other people try to fix it," Pudge said.  "But nobody can."

That's all it takes to challenge Mike to bring the old Santa back to life.  He noticed that it had been patched and taped and poked on, but to no avail.

Pudge said, "He means a lot to us.  We had it when our kids were growing up and we'll pay whatever it takes to get him back in working order."

After searching for a few weeks, Mike finally found a rotisserie motor on the internet and another one in his friend's garage.  Today, he is applying his skill to the project of making Santa sleep as any Santa worth his salt should do.

He's attaching the extra motor in case Santa breaks again.  "Soon nobody's going to know how to spell motor," he said.

Mike can not only spell motor; he's willing to search high and low for just the right one to do the job--especially if it means putting a smile back on the faces of the kids who love Santa Claus.

"That's what Christmas is all about," he said.

Betty, the Fifties, and the Colored Dolls

One of the reasons I like sleeping so much is getting the dreams that come down the pike--and this morning's dream was worth going back to bed to finish (if I could) because it was so much fun!

The setting: Tong's Thai restaurant on Austin Highway--except it had a huge, beautiful, Fifties-style dining room that it really doesn't have.  "Has this dining room been here all the time?" I asked--and was told yes, it had been there, I'd just not noticed it before.

I was seated before Betty arrived for our lunch date.  She walked in shortly afterwards, dressed to the nines and carrying two life-sized rag dolls she had made for me.  They were dressed glamorously and wore beautiful red silk shoes.  Their skin was not "flesh"--the color in the crayon box assigned to white people--but was made out of brown fabric.  They were--as we said in the Fifties--"colored." (Excuse my political incorrectness for a moment and know I'm going with dream truth here.)

She also had a baby with her--one she'd agreed to raise: a precocious little baby who could walk.

After lunch, we got into her SUV (which she doesn't have in real life, never has) and drove around, talking about how we could make some more of these dolls.  When the phone rang and woke me up, we were in a fabric store asking for that exact color of fabric.

I have no idea what that dream means, but it was a delightful one and I want to go back and see what becomes of our doll-making project!

This week I've watched Breathless and Bridge of Spies--both of which take place in the Fifties.  Watching those, I'd been having a hankering for tuna casserole, chocolate fudge and salmon croquettes--foods of the Fifties.

My dream writer did what she does so well--mixed up a recipe for visiting the Fifties with Betty--who was my constant companion back then. When I called Betty to tell her this implausible tale, she reminded me that she sews nothing, let alone rag dolls.  But she does make fantastic chocolate fudge!

Silly Kids!

This is the text Will sent me yesterday--a picture that captures the personalities of these two, precisely.

Their parents have a date night tomorrow night, so I get to keep the sillier one.   (Nathan will be at his dad's.)

Congratulations, Kate!

This is Kate.
Here she is, at my house on Halloween, dressed up this year as Herself!

Back when we were young, we didn't know each other, Kate and I--but when we met at a mutual friend's 50th birthday party, we couldn't stop talking.  It happens that way sometimes: you meet someone and all the things you have in common bubble right up to the surface--especially if one of you is an extrovert (like Kate is) and the other one is not a party-lover but sitting at a table by herself, knowing no one but the honoree of the party.

For almost three decades, Kate owned Specht's Store in Bulverde, a real, old Texas roadhouse serving chicken-fried steak and pies and music on the patio.  Bikers and soccer players and people of all ages enjoyed Specht's--the good food and bands and big-sky sunsets.

Today--after waiting a long time for just the right buyer who will resurrect Specht's--she's passing the torch to its new owner!

This is a big drumroll day for Kate and her friends who have been waiting along with her for the sale of the restaurant she made so special.  Today is a very happy day!

Down the Line

First--it looks as if Marcus may be tolerating the dog, Day texted hopefully last night.  So far, when we talked, puppy didn't have a name, but they are considering Maisy (to rhyme with Daisy) or Indie--after some dog reference in Indiana Jones.

Second, San Antonio is covered with fog--which means I have to get out right away and take pictures.  I caught up with all the Masterpiece episodes I'd missed last night after dinner at Freda's: The Guilty, Indian Summers, HomeLand.  What would we do without Masterpiece?

Freda highly recommends The Spy on The Bridge--which I may try to squeeze into my day.  But first, I need to run over to the doctor's office--as my mump (singular, yes) has returned, an inflamed salivary gland.  (Parotid is the name of that gland, actually)

Mike is restoring an old trunk he bought fifty years ago.  He put new handles on it and will put the story of the trunk inside, along with some collage elements, so that "whoever gets it down the line will know its story."  

This is Mike's passion--saving and restoring beautiful things to pass down the line.  He wants to keep antiques beautiful, to know their history, and to bequeath them to people who will appreciate their stories.

It's what we humans do when we reach a certain age: we think of "the line" continuing, someone valuing the things and ideas we find beautiful, hoping someone else will love what we love. 

My computer is on its last lap--so I spent an hour or so at the Mac store yesterday being dazzled by all the changes in computer technology since I bought my last machine: laptops with retina displays, laptops that weigh practically nothing, and a new super large iPad Pro that seems to have it all.  

There's a certain quaint charm to old antique typewriters--but I'm glad that we're this far down the line.  To be able to research any topic, edit photographs, watch movies, observe dimensional maps and find directions, listen to music, check the weather and e-mails all on a handheld device--it's amazing all the places we can go with feather-light strokes of the finger.

Puppy Love

Yesterday, Kate and I went to see the movie,  Truth.  During the movie, I got a call from Day that they had adopted this little three-month-old rescue puppy.  

Due to Marcus' allergies to dogs, they've not had one for years--but recently decided to try again.  When Day called, I could hear shrieks of joy as Marcus ran around the kitchen with the puppy, and Jackson (non-allergic) was over-the-moon happy.

Hearing their excitement, I remembered a lifetime of beloved dogs: Tony, Pollo, Ivan, Black, Sasha, and Cookie... I can't actually remember a time when we didn't have a dog, often two.

Tony was our first and (except for Ivan who lived 17 years) our longest-living dog.

In 1967, we sold wedding silver to get the $65 we needed to buy that five-week-old Shepherd puppy! When Day was born in '71, Tony took on the mantle of her protector. He'd sit beside her stroller and watch her while we circled on motorcycles, guarding her from flies, bees and anything else that might threaten to bother her.  Tony was my constant companion in the car, on the porch, everywhere.

We had Tony for eleven years until one awful day when we found him dead on Scenic Loop, hit by a car or truck, and covered with a blanket by a stranger.  Everyone loved Tony. He was a funny, wonderful, legendary dog.

"You know what I want to be when I grow up?" three-year-old Day asked that terrible day.... "One of them angels what takes dead dogs up to God."

The Learys have wanted a dog for years--ever since their only one, Sampson, died.  They've been researching breeds, exposing Marcus to puppies in pet shops, and hoping to find one that wouldn't set off his allergies. For a few hours, it seemed that this little female rescue dog was going to be the one.

But late last night, I got this heartbreaking picture of Marcus, his eyes inflamed with tears and allergy-redness.

I'll be waiting all day to hear what happens--whether they figure out a way to keep the puppy they've already fallen in love with or have to return her to the shelter for somebody else to find.