Taking-A-Break-Tuesday

Three years ago, Joy started me a subscription to Oprah magazine--and tonight I'm having a delicious evening, home alone, perusing and cutting out recipes and book reviews, quotation and pictures,  from the past four months' of magazines.

I had two long phone conversations this afternoon--partly in a chair at Off My Rocker (a consignment store where I was weighing the pros and cons of purchasing a particular yellow enamel table for my kitchen.)  I've been thinking about it for a few days--as it takes me a while to make purchasing decisions.  Just as I was looking at it, Carlene called and I texted her a picture of it.  "Do you remember we had one of those when we lived in the sawmill house?" she asked.

As it turns out, I don't consciously remember it--I was about five at the time--but maybe on some level, I did remember it because its bright yellow enamel surface gave me such a strong sense of home.  I could imagine dunking graham crackers in milk on such a table--which we did do in the sawmill house!  It was a red house and we drove a blue '55 Pontiac.  I remember learning to ride my bike on the road that led to the Faulk Sawmill, the exhilaration every kid feels when she realizes, training wheels off, that she's pedaling on her own.

We lived on the sawmill property until our brick house was built on Ann Street, and my mother kept books for the sawmill.  I remember nice men coming in in overalls and  lying on a green leatherette couch and watching the long strips of papers cascading onto the floor from Carlene's adding machine.  (I didn't call her Carlene in those days; I called her Mother.) I remember Mr. Jones from the grocery store bringing Bob and me little brown bags of penny candy every Friday--Mary Janes, peppermint, and little wax bottles filled with something wet and sweet.  I loved those little strips of paper with candy buttons in all colors. I loved bubble gum and chocolate balls.

Memories reside in objects and flavors.  Otherwise, why would we hear over and over in antique shops, "My grandmother had one of those"?  Or--"My mother made biscuits in a bowl just like that"? I will probably be at Off My Rocker when it opens in the morning, and I'll likely bring home a yellow enamel table.

But for tonight, I'm clipping words and pictures from four Oprah magazines and feeling lucky to have such a night.

Inside the magazine are little tear-out quotations.  Carlene always typed quotations and taped them onto the inside doors of the kitchen cabinets.  We share a love of words and inspiring sentences.  Here's one from last month's Oprah:

"As long as I'm alive, I will continue to try to understand more because the work of the heart is never done."

Muhammad Ali