Scottish Shandy

Just as you're driving into Blanco, Texas, you might spot an antique shop on your left.  You might do a U-Turn, even though Carousel Antiques and Collectibles doesn't look impressive.  It probably doesn't have a coffee table, but you decide to look anyway.

Last night, maybe you looked at all the coffee tables on all the sites and you kept reading "manufactured wood"  and you want real wood.

When you walk in, you see a dozen model airplanes hanging from the ceiling.  You can buy them with remote controls and actually fly them, or he can 'de-commission" them and sell them to you for decor.  They are meticulously built with balsa wood kits then fabric is stretched over the wings of some.  This is Scottish Sandy's absorbing errand at 79.

He's adorable.  You tell him he should grow out his beard and play Santa Clause. "People tell me that all the time," he says.  He has a beautiful smile and clear blue eyes.  "I smile so people will wonder what I'm up to," he says.

"I made knives for forty years," he says.  "Then I switched to tuning instruments.  Now it's these airplanes."

You might ask him to play his mandolin for you.  He plays every Sunday in a local jam.

'Have you ever heard of Homer and Jethro?" he asks.  "Here I'll sing you one of their tunes.  They are all parodies of forties songs.  I have them all on CDs.  A friend put all my records on CDs, but you can probably hear them on the internet."

He tunes up his mandolin.  "I used to play a twelve-string guitar but now that my fingers are all crooked with arthritis, I play this instead."

How much is that hound dog in the window?
The one with the long mangey tail?
How much is that doggie in the window?
I do hope that hound dog's for sale.

You might want to stay an hour--as I did.  He tells you, "I'm happy cause I'm rich.  Not in money but in everything else that matters."

"Be careful now, getting out on the highway.  Go back the way you came and take a U-Turn, don't try to turn right, it's too dangerous."

An Absorbing Errand

I've thought a lot about this phrase throughout my current decorating project--a phrase I borrowed from Janna Malamud's book by the same title (2012).

Anything can be an absorbing errand--building a shed, restoring a rusty old thing to its former glory, gardening, painting a house, writing, making art, dancing, cooking, conversation, anything that "takes you out of yourself."

When you're thirty, child-rearing may be your absorbing errand, or moving up a career ladder; when you've already done that (or whatever you did when you were thirty), you need something else, something engaging and befitting the life you're living at the moment.

For me, right now, it's transforming a room in my house.  I drive all over the city and the Hill Country looking at fabrics and tables and rugs.  I try something in one spot, then move it, then move it again until it says, "Okay, this is it; this is where I want to be."  

I start with hunches.  I try this, try that, and wait for the click that tells me it's shaping up like I want it to.  It is exactly like writing a story--some characters (much as you love 'em) have to go.  The plot takes a turn you didn't expect and you have to follow it.

When you're absorbed in a project, you are so fully present that you don't obsess over someone not liking you--or anything else that you might obsess about when you have nothing better to do.  You lose track of time; you focus entirely on what you're doing wholeheartedly.

David Whyte once quoted a wise friend of his:  "The antidote to exhaustion is not rest; the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness."

Janna Malamud Smith (daughter of Bernard Malamud, whose writing I love), says this:

"...Life is better when you possess a stimulating practice that holds your desire, demands your attention, and requires effort; a plot of ground that gratifies the wish to labor and create--and by so doing, to rule over an imagined world of your own."

"Lots of moments in any week, many of them random and hilarious, please me--especially when people dear to me are present.  Yet, when they go well, each of the crafts I have attempted to master--writing, photography, and also psychotherapy--leaves me with a deep private sense of satisfaction.  I feel stimulated, warm, slighted elated, or otherwise moved; content; purposeful.  Though I don't think about it consciously, I sense I'm comfortably aligned with my ideal of myself...."

What is your absorbing errand on this day in late June, 2017?

A handwritten letter in a red box

My inbox today is filled mostly with requests to evaluate services and products, along with reminders of things I put in my carts at Wayfair and Amazon and never bought.  I click all of those off and look for personal notes. I always enjoy letters by any means--but there's nothing like a handwritten card or letter to bring my heart up to my throat.

There was a red box in the closet that must have been there for twenty years.  In that box were old yellowed letters, cards, and even scribbles from my kids when they were babies.  These are the things I grabbed when I packed to leave to start life on my own.

Most treasured of all were the letters from my daddy. He rarely wrote letters and he's not here now to write them, so I read every word of them with tears in my eyes, reading the lines and between the lines more carefully, I'm sure, than I did when I got them, back when I thought we had forever.

On August 31, 1995, he tells me he's planted "8 hills of squash."  He tells me how proud he is that I was accepted into Breadloaf (they sent a check for me to go there) and about how much he loves Day and Will.  He says he can hardly believe that I drove 8200 miles and even drove "through New York City" all by myself!

On page four of the yellow-pad letter, he writes, "Looks like I need to get busy and help Carlene with supper.  Wish you could just drop in and break bread with us.  I'll close for now.  How about that--with more space below and the pen is not dry yet--Just like the love we have for you--it will never run dry.  Let me know if you need anything.  Love, Lloyd"

I'm almost the age now that he was when he wrote that letter.  I treasure it so!

The last letter he wrote to me was actually a seven-word request: "Pencil.  I want to write you a note."  He was in ICU, confused--writing me a request for a pencil with a pencil. It was his last week of life and he was in and out of consciousness.  I've wondered for fifteen years what it was he wanted to write.

The ink will never run dry either way--though I had to be careful on this particular letter not to smudge the ink with tears.

Feeling Good Again....from Robert Earl Keene

Having spent the weekend with the Pearsons (the family in "This is Us"), and having drunk up on water, I woke up to a text yesterday that my newly upholstered sofa is almost ready.  I went for a look-see and it's SO much better.

The former upholstery is only a few months old, but it had to go.  ("Tuition," Carlene says.)

Sometimes a not-quite-right piece in a room has to go--like some relationships and jobs and other problematic things in life.  First, I struggle for a while to make things right (after all, they all have their good qualities)  but, really, I "knew" before I knew that it was only a matter of time until I'd say adios. Time to fold and walk away.  It was too noisy, too slippery, too hard to get along with.

Tuition can be expensive, and not just financially.  I trust people until I have solid evidence not to--which led me to a few stunning tuition bills this past year, including a robbery by someone I'd trusted.  While I don't agree that "everything happens for a reason,"  I do know from many experiences that we can get some decent life lessons when things go awry, making us wiser in the future.

This new sofa is emblematic of change, "blessing and releasing" whatever isn't working and "loving yourself enough" (both quotes borrowed from Pam) to choose again.

Yesterday, Kate sent me home with kombucha and a yummy squash casserole.

Then Day called and said, "Say it with me 1-2-3: SCHOOL IS OUT!"  So we did that as they are packing for their anniversary trip to Chicago.  Twenty years--I can hardly believe it!

Then I followed a lead from Janet and went looking at rugs at a great store out on 1604--Heirloom Beds. (They didn't have rugs, after all, but it was still worth the drive and I bought some new pillows).  While chatting with Lorraine about an upcoming visit in Connecticut, I had dinner at El Bucanero's on Blanco Road--fresh and delicious ceviche.

After yoga and water-therapy today, I'm humming Robert Earl Keene's song, "Feels so good feeling good again!"

Water

Mimi, my grandmother (who lived to be 97) didn't drink water, said she didn't like the taste of it.  I never saw her drink a glass of water straight up.

Iced tea was served at every meal at her house, ours too, sweet tea with lemon, lots of ice.

Cokes were rare--mostly a treat at the movies with popcorn or a bottle from a filling station on road trips.  I always stirred Nestle's QUIK in my milk when I drank it--but I didn't care for milk all that much.

Nobody drank beer or wine.  My daddy started his day with a couple of glasses at the sink.  He and Carlene enjoyed coffee, but (thanks to some memorably yucky coffee-flavored candy I tasted as a child), I never developed a taste for coffee.

After four days of fatigue and foggy-brain, diagnosed by Will as dehydration (again), I'm drinking water, water, water.  I found some fruit-flavored electrolyte tablets at Central Market that taste good in water and have contributed to starting to feel good again.

It's hard to remember to drink water when you're in the pool--you feel fine while you're there.  But what I re-learned this week is that you not only have to hydrate after you've been in the sun for a long time; you have to pre-hydrate before you go out there.  (Will told me this and I believe it.)

Sometimes it takes a crash to remember what to so many people is obvious.  If you live in South Texas in the summertime (the heat factor last week averaged about 104), and especially if you are older, dehydration is a serious risk.  So here's to drinking water, lots more than you feel you need.

Inspiration for Artists and Writers and All Creative People

From the excellent blog, "The Improvised Life," here's a story of artist Carmen Herrera at 101 years of age.  She sold her first painting at 89!

http://www.improvisedlife.com/2014/10/27/aging-creating-constant-continual-process/

My favorite line is her response to the question, "When did you start to have confidence in your work?"

She says:

It all began in Paris in the late ’40s. I was then involved with the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. I recall its director, Fredo Sidès, saying to me, ‘‘Madame, you have many beautiful paintings in this one work.’’ I thought about it and decided that he was right! So I started taking things out. And I have never stopped doing that.

Memories and Muffin Tops

The first sound of the morning was the tune, "Memories"--the one Barbra Streisand sang.   I didn't know when I ordered my first ever doorbell from Amazon that it played music at all.

Standing at my front door were two adorable boys, Sebastien and Makken, holding a paper plate with a blueberry muffin top and a plum.  "It looks like a cookie," Sebastien said, "But it's really a muffin top."

What a beautiful way to be awakened on a Sunday morning!

This Is Us

At the end of episode six, one of three  36-year-old siblings speaks the words from which the title comes.  He's showing his two nieces a painting he made and talking about how the interconnected squiggles on the page represent the whole big messy family of humans, all connected to each other, including those who have died and those never met who immigrated here and started the family tree. "This is us, this is all of us," he says.

This is one of the best series about family I've seen, an artfully-written screenplay, well-acted.  The young mother reminds me of  Joy back when we were twenty-something friends.

In the first episode, she's pregnant with triplets.  The first two survive; the third one is stillborn.  Since they were expecting three, they follow fate in a way and adopt the only other baby in the hospital nursery--a black baby (back before the term African American) who'd been left at a fire station by his biological father on the day of his birth.

So the series involves the relationships between siblings, one of whom is a brilliant business man (nobody can understand exactly what he does but it has to do with commodities), one of whom is a struggling actor, one of whom struggles daily with obesity.  "It's what my life is about," she says, "What it's always been about."

We follow the parents and the children (later grandparents, children and grandchildren) through the paths of what each wants and doesn't want and we see the seeds of their desires as they unfold.  It's poignant, well-woven, and a must-see series.  If you don't want to subscribe to Hulu, I believe you can see it on the series' website.

Or maybe--unlike me--you have cable TV and have been watching it a week at a time long before I heard of it and discovered it's an excellent binge-watch.

Little Kids

When little kids meet, they don't size each other up--at least not the way bigger kids and grownups do.  They don't ask questions.

"Hey," Madeline shouts to Elena.  "We're horses.  You can ride us."

"I have a horse," Elena says. "A real horse."  They are neither interested in that fact or impressed.  She is not offended.  She morphs into a horse in a stable of three.

They romp like horses, climbing on each other's backs.  Then they come and tell me their names because I'm a grandmother and grandmothers care about names.  They want me to read the book that came with Elena's kids meal.  They tell me they can't get one because Mama is just here to study today and she already told them they can't buy food, and you have to buy food to get the "I Spy" book.

"I'm going to hide," Elena says.  "You can't find me." She climbs into the playground thing and peeps out from the wheel of a suspended car.

"Take a picture of me coming down the slide!" Madeline says.

"Take a picture of me shaking my butt," Ben says.

Mama (they tell me I can call her Miss Carley)  is studying while her baby (Ben tells me her name is Kennedy)  is toddling around. The big kids and horses keep sliding from invisible into visible through a golden canal.

"You're a nice grandma!" Ben says.  "Can we call you Miss Grandma?" 

House

Wednesday, Elena and I spent four hours in the pool and enjoyed every splashing minute of it--thanks to Freda who invited us as her guests at the beautiful Alamo Heights pool.  Elena is a little fish like her daddy was, and it's hard to entice her out of the pool.

Thursday, however, I realized that I'd overdone it.  Joy took me to lunch at the Italian place we like on San Pedro--I was craving salmon-- and it was delicious.  I was not scintillating company.  I had chills and overwhelming fatigue and she brought me home right after lunch to sleep.  Today it's morphed into fibro aches and pains and I'm spending Friday in bed, watching "This Is Us" on Hulu, phone off, napping sign up.

Joy made me a beautiful pin of a house--the color of the casita--a favorite symbol of mine, which she knows so well.  She also brought some beautiful purple flowers that add wonderful fragrance and color to my house.

I woke up this morning to a house-related text from Linda Kot, wishing me well on this house project and including a picture of a plaque she'd seen with the words of Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: "The house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace."

Today is the kind of day one wants most when fatigue and aches visit--a place to just be quiet in, a place to daydream and rest.  Having a house is such prosperity, such peace, and--as Emerson said-- the "best ornaments of any house are the friends who frequent it."

Desire

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
Joan Didion.

Dinty Moore, in The Story Cure (A Book Doctor's Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir: one reason many stories don't succeed is that the main character (or yourself if it's memoir) doesn't want anything.  In a good story, somebody has to want something--to find the murderer, to end an imprisoning relationship, to understand, to resolve conflict, to marry a certain person, to get revenge, whatever.

A good story taps into the vein, he says, of all human desire--and the crooked journey to seek what we want. We might not want exactly what the protagonist wants, but we know what it's like to travel and struggle and meander in search of something.

But what's deeper than the desire for a particular thing or person?  And what if we never find it?  And what if we think we've found it and it turns out not to satisfy the deeper yearning?

The most riveting stories tap into a universal desire for meaning, or truth, or fulfillment, or love, or even for something we don't know how to name until we find it.  We sense desire on page one and continue reading to understand the dynamics of searching, finding, not finding, and to vicariously experience the journey of looking for something.

A story that just tells "what happens"--he was born this year, he tried this, he met her, he failed--is unsatisfying because we want to know the underlying "River" (as Moore calls it) in which all these details add up to the Hero's or Heroine's Journey.

A sequence of events is not inherently a story.  What makes it a story is the way every word, every page, taps into the River.  I recommend this book for all writers and readers.

Monday

Dropped car at body shop for new bumper,
got a Malibu for a week.

Picked up sweet Nora to clean my house,
who doesn't drive
and speaks more English than I do Spanish,
not much

She doesn't bring bottles and rags, mop or spray cans,
so I show her what I have and what needs doing
and she sends me to buy a duster and Pledge.
When I get back, the porch is cleaner than
it 's ever been.

Then comes Edward, who speaks Spanish, and is all set
to install the medicine cabinet with the mirror doors,
after he paints another wall,  mows the grass and translates
back and forth from Nora to me.

All is well, so I go to yoga.

When I come back, Edward is cussing,
which he does when he can't figure out directions.

I read the pages to him and he tries, really tries,
for three blessed hours.  I stand in the bathroom
and encourage him, reading what to do,
and he says, "This is a piece of shit."

It's not.  It's what men say when they are confused.
He's frustrated because he can't get the cement walls to hold
the screws and because he's broken his fingers so many times
they don't work right.

So I go to Home Depot and get a smaller butterfly screw.

"I'm just a f******* g****** ignorant crack head!" he said. (He's neither)
When Edward starts cussing, which he does impressively when things
don't work, I know he's hit the wall.

He's a good man, funny.  Would have been a natural
stand-up comedian or actor with a different start in life.
He has the timing.  He posts his imaginary characters
at a certain spot in the room and talks to them,
keeping them where he wants them,
and they talk back, but he only has an audience of one, me

"You can do it," I say--but I'm late to dinner at Freda's
so I leave.  He calls me there an hour later: "I'm sorry, I can't do it.
My fingers are too messed up."

We go outside and talk while he smokes.

"When I get frustrated, I dread going home
being with my two deadbeat brothers who don't do a G******thing but
park their asses in the chair and watch TV.  If only my mama
hadn't made me promise not to throw their sorry asses out."

We come inside for water, and he picks up a photograph of my daddy fishing--
the third time in three days.  "I love that picture," he says, again.
"You should blow it up bigger."

I give him a bag of charcoal I'm never going to use
and some other things and we stand in the grass and talk about drugs.
"I've used every one in the book," he said. "Coke and meth, all of it.
But no more, They put all kind of shit in drugs anyway and they
can kill you.

He tells me about hydroponics in Colorado, how thugs break into
legit marijuana farms at just the right minute and kill people and steal
all that weed, about how you have to keep the male and female
plants apart after they've pollenated or it will all turn to seed,
and how if they see one tiny bug or mite, the crop is done for."

"If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to Denmark.
I would like to, just once, stand right beside and cop
and smoke me a joint."

"So what are you going to do when you leave?" I ask him.

"I'm going to do what I always do.  Go home and take a shower,
then thank God for this day
and ask Him to take care of people
and forgive me for  being
such a F******* stupid crack head....and then I go to sleep
and tomorrow is another day, working my ass off, just like every day."

Today is Tuesday, my house is clean, and I'm going to rest up until Elena comes
to help me mess it up again making a cake or something.  But first, I'm going
over to CVS and blow up a picture and frame it.

Father's Day 2017

The first man I ever met showed me what a man could be.  This is the pattern he implanted:

I like men with capable hands, strong arms, and smart minds.  When I think of my daddy's hands--which mine are resembling more and more as I grow older--they are holding a shovel, planting a tree, or baiting a fishing line.

I like men who hug with their whole hearts, bear hugs with both arms, not sideways and half-hearted.

I like men who are not afraid of what I'm afraid of.

They pick up dead animals and bury them.  If something's broken under the house, they crawl under there and stay a long time and come out and tell you it's okay now. If there's a noise outside the window that scares you, they walk right out there in the dark and look for it.  They aren't scared of rats and possums.  They will say, "They are more afraid of you than you are of them."

They know which snakes are the good ones and which are the bad ones and they kill the bad ones with a hoe or something.  But they carry a snake-bite kit just in case.

I like hairy arms, clean-shaven faces, and a sense of humor.  Men who love the woman they picked, not always looking around for someone else. Men who love their children even when they are stinky, messy, acting out, or throwing up.

I like men who can cry.  My friend Gary could cry better than I can--which was always surprising and comforting.  His heart was so wide open that it spilled over when he read a line of good writing or heard a story that moved him. His heart with no doors on it made my heart feel bigger.

Every time we said good-bye, my daddy and I, we cried.

I like men who can take the blame when it's theirs to take and who can say, "I'm sorry."

I like men who don't go on and on about "fake" and "lying"--because they are by nature and character tellers of truth.  Honesty is so natural to them that they don't have to shout it or use all caps.

I admire men who would jump off the nearest water tower before they'd hit, insult, betray, or bully. Men who know what to do if you're sick or sad, who are always on your side if somebody hurts you, even the teacher or some bloke who broke your heart.

Even though it doesn't align with my feminist ideology (some would say it's wanting my cake and eating it too),  I like a man who picks up the dinner check and opens doors for me.  I'm capable of doing both, but it's the way my daddy did it, so I'm keeping that on the list.

My daddy never wanted much for himself.  When he died, his personal possessions could have all fit into one small room, but the church was full at his funeral, full of people who felt loved by him and had  stories to tell about what he'd done for them.  Most could remember his sayings--like "let the raw side drag" or "keep the main thing the main thing." Many could remember how he made  that chirpy whistle in the grocery store or elevators and have everyone looking for the chicken.

Father's Day stories on "The Moth"

A Father's Day edition of The Moth:

https://themoth.org/radio-hour/fathers-day-special-2017-fathers-daddy-dad-paw-paw-pops

If you go here, you will see that you can watch a video of the program I mentioned yesterday--but it won't be posted until June 20th.

Or you can go to this site and get a link to their audio library--or listen via podcast in your car.

The Moth as a speed control device

A few weeks ago, I got a rather substantial speeding ticket--for driving 39 in a 25.  It was a Saturday just like today, and I was listening to NPR's World Music, dancing along, as it were, happy and oblivious to flashing lights.

Music and my feet are connected.  It is impossible to listen to music without tapping.  But I have learned my lesson.

The tapping foot is also the accelerator foot, ergo the speeding ticket.

On this Saturday afternoon, only a fool would go out on purpose.  It's 103 degrees.  But I needed something from Jo Ann's, so I ventured out, before the music programming started.

This is Part 2 of my driving lesson:

If you go at 5:00, instead of 6:00, what's on is The Moth Radio Hour--wonderfully told stories by real people about their lives.  Today's stories featured fathers, telling stories about fatherhood and their own fathers.  If you're a weepy sort of person, it's best to listen at home, not driving, else you might drive right through a red light.

I drove so-o-o slowly listening to these stories.  I laughed out loud at the man who fell to his knees in Whole Foods just hours after his baby daughter had been born.  There he was in aisle seven, weeping--because the song on the radio was "Isn't she lovely?"  The PA system reported an "incident in aisle seven" and out came a manager who "looked like Rush Limbaud's angry brother," and this new father just stayed right there on the floor weeping and blubbering to the manager that his wife had just given birth to his little girl.

Then another storyteller told about the two weeks when his "ugly baby boy" turned blue--and his life was at risk for two weeks.  I won't divulge the rest of the story (because I want you to hear it yourselves online). Suffice it to say, other drivers were honking at me to get a move on.

These stories are what NPR calls "driveway moment" stories.  You cannot possibly get out of the car until the story ends, even if it is 103 degrees.  If you miss Jo Ann's before it closes, so be it.

Thursday Night

Thursday was a sweet day all around--starting with Elena's early morning pedicure in my bathroom.  We cleaned the dish pan, filled it with soapy water and essential oils, and painted her toes purple for her daddy's special day.

After Will's promotion, Kate invited me over for one of my all-time favorite meals--butterbeans and jalapeno cornbread in a cast iron skillet.  Then we walked around her garden of figs, tomatoes, ginger, sweet potatoes, and all kinds of plants.

Kate wouldn't care, she said, if her sofa were the wrong color; she'd keep it. Likewise, I don't know a thing about growing plants and I've forgotten most of what I once knew about cooking.

Kate loves to sit on her porch and take callers, and I like being one of her callers. I, on the other hand, tend to be more frenetic when I get involved in a project, as I am now, riding around looking for fabric to recover my sofa (which I found), trying different lamps, taking them back, then finally seeing a pair that works just right with some goat-skin shades I found at the thrift shop.

One of the things that make friendships thrive are the differences.  But we share many things, too--like wanting to just be more, do less, live in the moment like Buddhists do.  To learn to just sit and be calm, not always measuring our days by what we accomplish or checking things off to-do lists.

We watched a beautiful episode of The Chef's Table featuring a Korean Buddhist monk, a simple ego-less woman whose cooking has been compared to that of the best chefs in the world.  She said something to this effect: to be a slave to the ego is to block creative flow.  I have to think about that one!

But watching her prepare and arrange "Temple Food" like art on the table, watching her reflection in  water in a serene landscape, we both felt calm,  quite the opposite of the agitation engendered by watching political news.

I came home with a bottle of kombucha, yummy butterbeans, fresh tomatoes from Kate's garden, and gratitude for friendship, family, and food.

Will promoted to chief

Yesterday, I attended the SAFD promotion ceremony--ten engineers, five lieutenants, two captains, and two chiefs.

Will was introduced by a chief who had been his lieutant back in rookie days.  "This is a man who, when you first meet him, you know he has what it takes to do anything," he said.  "He's the best we have."

His mama is teary at this point!

Then many of his fellow firefighters who'd taken off the day to attend the ceremony, men whose officer he'd been in two stations, came up for their own "family picture" with Will, cheering and slapping him on the back, even presenting him with a boot--one more practical joke, which firemen play on each other every chance they get.  There was hearty laughter--even though those of us in the audience of families didn't know the back story.

I've been to Will's baseball games, his college and fire academy graduations, his outdoor wedding, and every track event in high school. Having three grandsons already,  I jumped up and screeched when he walked out of the delivery room 5 and a half years ago and said, "It's a girl!"  She was a tiny premie in neonatal ICU, and I watched him watching her intently those early days,  hanging on to the words of the nurses, "She's a strong one."

We parents remember our children as babies, children, and teenagers; this little guy I watched coming into the world and have loved him for 39 years.  When our little boys are men, we rarely see them doing the work they've chosen.  We don't know all their friends and co-workers.  Yesterday was a day to meet Will's other family--his family of firefighters.

After the ceremony, the chief who had introduced him told me, "That guy has the biggest heart and he's an amazing leader."

Will was a shy little boy, but he became the quintessential extrovert. When he was in high school, I remember shopping with him and watching him strike up conversations with strangers and running into people he knew everywhere we went.

His role model was always Granddaddy--and we both wished he could have been there yesterday.  He reminded me so much of my daddy as he walked around the room talking to and shaking hands with  everyone, smiling in that granddaddy way.

Chief Hood, chief of the entire department said, "I love Will! I just love Will!"

Will's family and Chief Hood

Nathan and Elena pinning the bugles on their dad's collar

I love you, Chief! 

Rabbit Holes

Decorating a room for me is like falling full-speed down a rabbit hole.  I needed Janet to advise on color and then everything in the room took on a life of its own, telling me what needs to be done to make them happy together.

(With MSNBC on in the background), I stay up late each night studying  coffee tables, chairs and rugs on Wayfair, Overstock and other sites Janet told me about.  During the day I look at fabrics and move things around, try different combinations.  This is my happy place.  One thing leads to another ad infinitum. 

For anyone looking for great deals in upholstery fabric, go to Memories By the Yard this week.  They are selling all their upholstery material for $8.95 a yard.  I bought a quarter of a yard, brought it home, and it's perfect, so I was there when the store opened to buy the whole nine yards.

Behind the store are four metal buildings filled with fabric, all on sale.  Hot airless containers--so go before the temperature reaches 101.  Mainland is a street off Bandera. Lee, my English upholsterer, does great work at European Upholstery, corner of McCollough and St. Mary's.

Other rabbit holes for decorating frenzies are ETSY (vintage and handmade everything) and Pinterest.  You look at one thing, which takes you to more.   A far cry from the day when you went to the local furniture store, the local lamp store, the local fabric store.  You can now purchase whatever you want and survey ideas from all over the world with a tap of your finger.

Flash Fiction by Trina

Last night at writing group, we made a bowl of words.  Each person drew six or seven words and used them in a seven-minute writing.

Trina wrote an excellent piece in the genre of Flash Fiction--a short story with all the elements of longer fiction compressed into one paragraph, a beginning, a middle and an end, along with great descriptions.  I asked her if I could share it here and she said yes:

         She hobbled to the bathroom and groggily peered into the mirror above the porcelain sink.  Her face was a bloom of spectacular bruises.  Black faded to purple faded to green and finally yellow.  Her right eye was swollen shut.  Her busted lip puffed out and she touched it gingerly, wincing as she did.  The blood from this injury was a smear on her nightgown, its lacey ruffle torn and hanging from the hem.  She turned from the sink and looked back into the bedroom.  The aftermath of their argument had reached a new level.  The room looked as bad as her face.  Broken furniture, carpet blotted with blood, clothes strewn everywhere.  And he was sleeping like a baby in a bed with no sheets.  God only knew where they were.  Limping to the nightstand on his side of the bed, she decided she was going to end this chaotic life.  She pulled the gun from the drawer.  The exhilaration was still coursing through her body when she called the police to confess.

One little doll.

Here's my story for the day:

I drove to Lowe's this morning to buy a medicine cabinet for my bathroom.  The back of the car had a  lamp and a box of things to donate to Boysville.

When the young man came outside to put the cabinet in the car for me, he said, "That's a nice doll you have there."

It was a little Madame Alexander doll I'd bought somewhere for about ten dollars, a pretty doll dressed in green with a cape.

"Do you have anyone you'd like to give it to?" I asked.

"My mama," he said.  "I gave her a little doll once and she was so happy she cried.  I took a picture.  She was one of sixteen children and she grew up in Appalachia and it was her first doll."

When I drove away, he was cradling that doll like a treasure and snapping on the cape.

Fibro and a New Chief's Helmet

This "fibro thing" (which is shorthand for whatever aspect of CREST I have that causes all-over body pain) stays in hiding most of the time, thank goodness.  Then suddenly and without prior announcement is comes back for a day or two or three.  Yesterday, gone.  Today, back.

I always wonder: is it something I've eaten?  Was it the sugar in blackberry cobbler? Did I forget to take Vitamin D or B or probiotics or what?  I have a chest-full of remedies: Massage and physical therapy help.  A hot bath and yoga seem to help--though today I didn't feel like doing yoga.  Sleep is the best immediate remedy of all--along with ibuprofen.

I took a long nap this afternoon so that I can lead writing group tonight.  Woke up to texted photographs of Will's new chief's helmet.  His official promotion ceremony is Thursday, and I'm so proud of him!

Gruene, Austin and Blanco

When I met Deb sixteen years ago, she was a student in a night class I was teaching at Concordia.  It was her first year of college, and she was just beginning to fulfill her dream of getting a college education and being a writer.

As we introduced ourselves that first night, Deb and I had an instant connection.  She had grown up in Georgia and we had the same accent.  It's rare that you meet a student from Georgia in Texas, but we both remember a series of coincidences that let us know we were kindred spirits in that first-year college class.  (We used to say "freshmen" but that's changed--as only about half of first year students are men!)

For one thing, we wore similar jewelry and shoes and carried almost identical pocket books.  Georgia women don't have "purses" and "handbags."  Anything we carry with our stuff in it is called a pocket book.

Deb is 14 years younger than I am.  Since we met, she has not only completed her bachelor's degree (another antiquated term for a four-year degree), but she has completed her Masters (But Mistress doesn't work!)  and Doctorate and is now teaching at UTSA.  Her rigorous graduate studies kept her busy the last few years and we'd not seen each other for way too long until she recently signed up for my newest writing group.

We had a wonderful day yesterday, browsing and eating in Gruene, on South Congress in Austin, and Blanco for the last five minutes of the Lavender Festival.  Enoteca was closed for lemon panna cotta at three, so we missed that heavenly concoction.  We had blackberry cobbler instead.

She looked at me on the first bite and said, "Don't call this cobbler!  It has a cake batter poured over it and that's not how we do it in Georgia.  We do it with pastry and it tastes sort of like dumplings."

Some of our Southernness is baked in too deep to change at this late date!

For those wishing to browse South Congress, we both recommend going on a weekday.  Both Austin and Gruene are packed with traffic on the weekends.

Sunday morning

Sometimes, it's the little things.  My car accident was a little thing, easily fixable, but it threw me.  Wrecks always do.  Impacts of foreign objects--like big trucks--always do.

Except for a little puttering on the house, I've done little to nothing (but one yoga class) since.  Probably putting all my weight on the horn or bracing myself for the oncoming impact of said brown truck threw me into a couple of days of the fibro thing, but it seems to have vanished this morning. I watched a good three-episode series on Netflix last night: The Day Will Come.

Today, however, I'm running away.  Deb and I are taking a road trip to Austin.   Getting back on the horse again, I'm driving.  Then we'll take a stroll down South Congress and have lunch at the Italian place we love that serves lemon panna cotta.

Barbel sent me this picture of our dear friend Mary Frances:

She had a glow about her, always smiling, and all of us who knew and loved her miss her special radiance and friendship.

June 9th

At the stroke of midnight, as it were (there being no strokes, just a digital flash that says 12:00), I can't help thinking that June 9th would be my fiftieth wedding anniversary if I were still married.

That leads me to think about the person who walked down that aisle, clueless really, about anything beyond the wedding.

It was the way of the world back then and many of us bought it--giving away our names before we knew who we were, the carriers of our own names.  So many of us 18-year-old girls glowed our hearts out at the prospect of being married, the sooner the better!

Eighteen year olds (I now know, having taught so many of them in college) do not have strong chooser muscles. They are just beginning to imagine themselves as separate people with their own dreams and desires. Yet the girls in all the wedding pictures of the late Sixties were willing to "obey" some guy one or two or seven years older than they were?  "To love, honor and obey...." I thought those were the words that made the marriage legal!

We believed that a man would complete us.  The music of the Sixties told us so.  We may have sung "Climb Every Mountain..." at our graduations, but the songs that had us flipping through Brides Magazine were songs like "Cherish" and "Unchained Melody."  Really, there was only one mountain, the big rock candy mountain of Marriage.

The girl in this picture doesn't look like a glowing bride.  She looks pensive and dazed, like an actor who only knows a few lines and isn't sure how she wound up in this play.

Thursday

I'm spending the day in bed watching the Comey testimony.  More shaken than I realized, I didn't sleep last night, took a xanax at 3, and am about half-awake still.  Charlotte came and got me this morning for eggs rancheros with her and Charlotte, so I'm all set for a lazy day.

Not hurt, just shaky.

Fender Bender

In a quiet residential neighborhood on my way to drop off stuff at Goodwill, a big brown truck was ahead of me, not moving.  When I saw him backing up, I pressed the horn hard, but he didn't see me or hear me.  Wham!

He was very nice--unlike my August hitter, and he got right out of the truck and hugged me and said he was so sorry.  We talked to his insurance together and it's all settled.  I'll take my car in for a new bumper later this month.

At the end, he hugged me again and gave me a pen and his card.  Nobody was hurt, I'm just shaken a bit by the impact.  I celebrated not being hurt by having myself some ribs at Big Bibs.

New Canvas

Sometimes when you're writing a story or an essay, the time comes to start with a fresh sheet of paper.  Maybe all the paragraphs are good, and you don't want to part with them.

Someone once advised writers to "kill your darlings"--meaning you have to banish even the good parts for a better whole.

My flowery sofa is about to be recovered in a beautiful white.  The walls are white.  The Jane Bishop art chairs show up for the first time, not being shouted over by noisy flowers.  The mission chair is on the screened in porch where it resides happily with other flowers.  Otherwise, at the moment, the living room is bare.  But when a room or a page is bare, you can imagine other possibilities, not trying to force friendships in pieces that don't like each other.

The size of my house dictates what can stay, what can be moved to another room, what has to go.  Or as Pam says, "blessed and released."

I'm happy with my blank canvas and shopping for coffee tables, lamps, and end tables online every day.  One customer review of a little table said, "I love this piece.  It's one of a kind.  I'm ordering two."

Worry and Weight-gain

Is there a correlation between the current political chaos and weight-gain?

Okay--before I get accused of spreading fake news: I just heard on NPR (careful to say that this is anecdotal evidence, a scientific study) that many people are overeating to assuage their worry over the state of the country.  They are calling it "the Trump Ten."  Barbra Streisand and others are reporting weight gain and eating more sugar to their panic over Trump.

I was buying a donut (which I rarely do) at the exact moment I was hearing that story!

As usual, against my own better judgment, I ended my day catching up with Rachel's stories of the week regarding Trump.  Rachel is my go-to person for interviews with journalists and her analysis of what's happening.  Then I watch a snippet of Trevor Noah or John Oliver.

I woke up at four needing to get a chocolate-glazed donut.

Besides news of the world, however, I was worried about Elena.  Before bedtime, I got a text that she has a temperature of 103 and won't be able to come over today and spend the night as we'd planned.

So while I'm waiting to hear how our precious girl is feeling, I'm not going to watch anything political; I'm going to read a chapter of Sin and Syntax, a book about language and grammar, either that or a novel, something that Calgon-Take-Me-Away, will provide escape until daylight.

Making the planet great again

"Let's make the planet great again!" said France's President Macron.

While our bully president pushes people away to get to the head of the line, blunders in the international community every day, and refuses to acknowledge climate change and the catastrophes scientists predict it will bring, it's heartening to hear a sane voice from France.

Trump hates to be "laughed at," yet that is just what's happening worldwide. Thumbing his nose at countries that have been our friends for decades, he says (extricating us from the Paris agreement),  "They won't laugh at us anymore."

The vast majority of people and leaders in the world who care about the health of the earth more than money, towers, and walls are shaking their heads in disbelief when they hear utterances and read Tweets that reveal Trump's ignorance of history, geography, science, women, manners--just about everything .  They have been laughing for months--not at our choice to pull out of the Paris agreement but at the language and behavior of Trump.

In some states, like Wisconsin, there are gag orders in place--not to even talk about climate change, not to even use the term.

Many states and cities, like California under Jerry Brown's leadership, are vowing to continue working on green energy despite Trump's half-baked opinions, decrees, isolationism,  and lack of knowledge about science.

America, known for years as the leader of the free world, is quickly losing that moniker, and the world is appalled at one misstep after another.

Just as a bunch of mostly-white men are opining and making decisions about women's reproductive rights, they are ignoring Mother Earth's fertility and clean air.  What about all the babies already born and yet to be born?  Do they not care if the planet will support them into old age?

Martin Luther King said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

When climate change ravages the world with famines and droughts and death of animals, trees, and ecosystems, it won't follow political or geographical boundaries.  It will affect us all.

Recipe for Marjorie's Sheet Cake

Today has been a beautiful Saturday.  I went to gentle yoga at Two Hearts, then got this call from Will: He's being officially promoted to chief on June 15th and I am invited to the ceremony.

The other night--after I picked up Nathan from his last day of school (All A's and E's and perfect attendance)--he told Will, "I"m actually glad my parents got a divorce.  If they hadn't I wouldn't have ever met this amazing man named Will and I never would have had my two terrific grandmothers, Nana and Yenna, or my brilliant cousins Jackson and Marcus."  Talk about putting one's ten-year-old life in perspective!

Now I'm making Will a belated birthday cake which I will deliver to his station when it's ready.

Speaking of this cake: it's called Marjorie's sheet cake and I have the recipe on a yellowed and splattered 30-year-old card.  Elena says, "I love that cake so much.  I hate every cake but it."

So with that high compliment, I will copy the recipe here if anyone wants the only not-hated cake!  I sprinkle crushed pecans on top for Will, leave them off half the cake for the kiddos.

Bring to a boil:

1 cup water
2 sticks margarine
3 T. cocoa

Mix:

2 cups flour
2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. soda
1 t. salt
1 t. vanilla

Add 1/2 pint of sour cream to the wet ingredients, then mis with the dry.  It will be soupy.

Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes in a 13 x 9 pan.

Frosting:

5 T. water
2 T. cocoa
1 stick margarine
1 pound powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla

Bring to a boil and pour on cake when cool.

Friday, June 2

Kate and I took a drive to Dripping Springs on this beautiful day to look at fabrics.  We stopped in Blanco and had a delicious lunch at the Red Bird Cafe.

Just got this picture from Day and Tom--who are about to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary:

Podcasts for Story Lovers

If you love stories, and maybe want to write them, I recommend some excellent podcasts to which you can subscribe for free at the iTunes Store:

Modern Love (readings and discussions of essays featured in "Modern Love" NY Times)

The Moth (short personal stories)

Strangers (Lea Thau's interviews with strangers)

Writing Class Radio (Thirty episodes of writing classes, prompts, and lessons on storytelling)