Minis Take the States

Starting on July 26th and continuing through today's finale, thousands of Minis have been on the road in a motoring adventure--from San Francisco to Boston.  It's called Mini Takes the States.

I wonder what it would be like to drive those thousands of miles with all these Mini Cooper fanatics,   but I hope to find out next summer, for all or part of the trip.

Check out their great mosaic map: http://www.minitakesthestates.com/visuals/mosaic

Day just texted me from Boston--where they are spending their vacation--that the Minis are about to cross the finish line of this event and arrive in Boston any minute.   I'd love to be there!

I love this photograph!

My friend Suzanne Ohlmann has a blog called The Daily Chalupa. (Check it out: thedailychalupa.com)

She posted this photograph of Fu last week and I asked if I could snag and share it on this blog.

Here's what she wrote under his picture:

"I want to see the world the way Fu does in this picture.  Though his likeness reaches out to him through the window, he looks past himself to the world outside."

Today and Yesterday

Today I painted Elena's fingernails and toenails with the only nail polish in the house--Sinful Blue.  For her tiny fingers and toes, I probably could have done a better job with a toothpick.

Today, when I put on my swim suit (or as Elena calls it, a "swim soup"), Nathan told me my arms were jiggly at the top.  He was right.

After our swim, Nathan asked me, "Do you know how to make chocolate milk really good?" and I said I'd give it a try.  I mixed cocoa and sugar and hot water, then poured in what little milk was left, then added ice and put it in the blender to make enough to fill the glass. He drank it politely but said it was a little too puffy.

Today Elena was playing with letter stickers and found a "W."  "Hey, Yenna, Will Pritchett!" she said.  "This says Will Pritchett!"

Today Nathan said he didn't want to go to the pool, but I told him we'd already promised Elena and she was all dressed in her suit.  "I guess I'll take my swim suit in case I change my mind," he said, emptying the swim bag on the floor to find his googles and his water toys. "But the only condition is I'm not wearing sun screen and we can only stay 39 minutes."

Not only did he change his mind, it was as hard to get him out of the pool (after two hours) as it had been to convince him to go.

Today, Elena wanted to punch holes with my hole punchers--fancy ones I bought years ago when I was making collages.  Some of them were hard to press into the paper, even for me.  "They aren't hard for me!" she insisted.  "I will show you, Yenna."

As she put her whole body weight on the fancy hole punchers, I heard echoes of yesterday:  a day 34 years ago when her daddy was the age she is now, playing under the bed:

"Come under here, Mommy!" he said.

"I can't," I said.  "I'm too big."

"I will show you, Mommy," he said.

The Circle of Life

In 1988, my family was camping at Molas Lake in Colorado--between Durango and Silverton.  This is still one of my favorite spots on earth--a beautiful mountain lake where we parked our pop up camper and ate fried fish for dinner right out of the lake.

Up came another camper and parked right next to us--and it was Linda and Steve Kot and their children Lauren and Dan, traveling cross-country from Cape Cod.

One day it rained and I had a sprained ankle and stayed in the pop up while Linda and Steve took all the kids on a hike.  Will had a little puppy named Spike that year and he wiggled out of the pop up during the night and trotted over to the Kot's pop up where any dog would be sure to find love.

The first year after we met, Linda flew to Texas (Day's senior year of high school) and went with me to the Miss Helotes pageant where Day got first or second runner up.

Ten years later, Day and Tom married in Washington, D.C., and the Kots came to their wedding.  Several times I have visited them on the Cape and "got the sand in my shoes."

Day and Tom honeymooned in Cape Cod 17 years ago, and here they all are this week on their vacation in Cape Cod: Steve, Linda, Jackson, Tom, Day, and Marcus in front in yellow and orange.

This picture makes me smile--thinking what a serendipitous thing it is to meet friends at a campsite and stay friends all these years; thinking about how they introduced Day to Cape Cod and what a special place it now is for her whole family.

The summer we met, our children (all but Day) were younger than my grandsons are now.  On the way to Molas Lake, Linda was reading a book called RIBSY to her children--which is exactly the book I had just read to Will the night before.

As we shared a fish dinner at the picnic table one night, Linda and I both had paperback books we were reading.  Turned out we were both reading Prince of Tides!  Not only that--we were both on the same page!

Traveling Light and Heavy

"Traveling solo" is a misnomer for this blog/open diary/letter to friends.  Every trip is a mix of solitude and conversation with other people.

When I need time alone, it's usually when I sense a crossroad coming up and need time to discover which way to go.  Or after a time of Too-Much, when I need to just be with a fresh, quiet new canvas. I call that kind of travel a journey.

Other times, like this last trip, I prefer being with a great road trip companion so that we can share the scenic views and sleep in the same room and make happy memories together.

Nothing is more refreshing than travel--even though it takes a while to settle back in after a trip.  The first night after air travel,  I feel wilted, weary from a day of lugging baggage through trains and terminals, saying good-byes, being careful not to lose balance on escalators.

It would be a good idea to keep a small suitcase packed at all times, just in case a journey calls.  If flying, the suitcase should be large enough to hold the minimum needs for being away from home and battered enough that you don't mind checking it.  I always have this fantasy of walking around the airport unencumbered and free--though in reality I feel more like a carrier of stuff, intent on getting to my destination.

Carlene drove me to the Chamblee  Marta station yesterday morning--the easiest way to get to the Atlanta airport.  While waiting for the train, I stood with dozens of people dressed up, all wearing badges that announced in Spanish that they were Jehova's Witnesses attending a conference:  Testigos de Jehová.

Even the smallest boys of two and three were wearing suits, as were the men and older boys. The women and girls were dressed up in their church clothes, lacy skirts and shiny shoes, the girls with bright bows in their hair.  As we traveled south, others got on at every stop, all wearing the same badges, and I enjoyed watching them--gentle, friendly people--all the way to mid-town where they all got off the train. I took a seat and balanced my three bags, feeling frumpy among these fresh-faced and cheerful people.

When I got on the plane, I made a list of things to take Next Time I Fly--including advice to myself to mail home anything heavier than a post card should I be tempted to buy souvenirs.  I reminded my future traveling self to take minimum toiletries and no real books, to leave the laptop and extra camera at home and take the iPad and E-books instead.  "Travel lighter next time!" I wrote in my new sketch book.

When the hundreds of convention-goers got off at mid-town,  I missed them. I sat beside a young African-American boy jamming to the rap from his earphones and across from a young girl with braids and swollen eyes who made eye contact with no one.

At the airport, starting on the escalator and continuing on the train to the terminals, I talked to a young man who's just finished a nine-month tour in Afghanistan.  He started the conversation by telling me he'd missed the plane he was supposed to be on because he'd left his debit card in the car and was having to take a later flight.

"Do you have family here?" I asked.  "Or are you on your way home?"

Between Terminals A and D, he told me his whole life story, details in rapid fire succession, without emotion.

"I ain't got no family," he said. "They all deceased."

His mother died when he was in high school, then his grandparents and two uncles.  After his step-father abused his sister, she committed suicide.  One brother died "over there," and another from a drug overdose.

I can't stop thinking about that boy with large eyes who'd seen more tragedies and deaths in his twenty years than I'd ever known anyone to have in my whole long life. Talk about a different kind of baggage! I got the feeling he'd told the facts so often that he'd memorized them, almost as if they  belonged to somebody else.

When we parted, he said, "Talking to you made my day, Mam"--though I'd barely said ten words. Maybe all it takes is asking one right question of each other to lighten our loads--if only for one day.

Back in San Antonio

Arrived home today--and Kate picked me up from the airport
and visited on my bed while I unpacked

North Georgia Mountains near Clayton.
I'll be going back in October to see the fall foliage at its peak.

At a Scenic overlook, I snapped this picture of Betty.
"I love you, Betty!" I said to my friend who hates picture-taking.
"At the moment, that feeling is not reciprocal," she said. 

Marcus, like his mom, is always making things.
Here he is painting his cap.

Here it is all finished!

Jackson looking spooky 

Day making headbands

Carlene--back home in Georgia--trying on her new earrings
and liking them

Blue Berry Pie

In my Daddy's handwriting. 1998

My Georgia family

Bob and Jocelyn Harris

Jocelyn and Bob and Carlene

Jocelyn, Bob and Me
In Carlene's Yard

Our road trip to Highlands, North Carolina

       From the time we first met in kindergarten, Betty and I were almost always together--except for a few grades in elementary school when we got different teachers.

       We lived in Cochran, a town of five thousand with a college at one end and a string of stores at the other.

       We went to the First Baptist Church and we were both in G.A.s  (Girls Auxiliary, for those of you who didn't grow up Baptist).  Depending on how many Bible verses a girl learned in G.A.s, she'd attain a certain royal ranking:  Maiden,  Lady-in-Waiting,  Princess,  Queen. On the only thing in which I ever bested Betty, I  made it all the way to Queen, and she stalled out at Lady in Waiting.

       By high school, she was the star solo twirler--and I was amazed watching her toss two flaming fire batons into the night air over the football field, dancing, twirling, never missing a beat. I never even made it to basic majorette.

       In the eyes of our piano teacher--Miss Marguerite--Betty was clearly the superior talent.  "Exquisite!" she used to say to Betty.  To me, she said, "You have a nice touch."

       Betty tells me that my IQ was two points higher than hers (we snuck a peak in the principal's files one day while he was away for the day), but it's Betty who has a steel-trap memory, not me.

       We have just spent three days together in the beautiful North Georgia mountains.  What a remarkable thing it is to have a friendship that has lasted for over 60 years! With Betty's memory, she can instantly transport us both back into the chalk-dusty classrooms of the 1950s and she can make me laugh harder than anyone, ever.

        When we were girls, we spent hours and hours sitting in my parents' car (Lloyd's and Carlene's) or in her parents' carport (Charlie's and Ethel's), talking.  We took off whenever we felt like it and walked through the woods or played at The Big Ditch or under the bridge by the college. Nothing much ever seemed to happen in Cochran, Georgia, but we had complete freedom to wander, unsupervised, all over our safe little Mayberry of a town.

         Once or twice, stirred by some revival preacher--we actually considered going to Africa as foreign missionaries, but that plan didn't last long. Another time, inspired by a movie, we fantasized about getting pink jeeps and round pink beds and matching pink poodles.

        Betty insists she can't write--she's ceded that to me.  I may be moderately humorous, but Betty is hilarious. Here's her memory of her fourth grade teacher:

       "Mrs. Garrett—here's the deal about her—she was the sort of person people liked.  It was a curious thing, Linda, that people loved her, and yet she was crazy.  And I knew both things at the same time.  I liked her and I feared her and I knew something wasn’t quite right.  I remember Kathy and I going to see her where she lived--you know those apartments up by the college? Mrs. Garrett told us about daddies who took their whole families up to the attic and chopped them to pieces and convicts coming and killing whole families.  And big birds at the center of the world who hatched babies that would destroy us all."

      As a 4th grade student who caught on fast, she was among the chosen few in Mrs. Garrett's class who were allowed to make papier mache ducks and candy houses while the slower students looked on longingly.

        "My cousin Frances Nell had had Mrs. Garrett the year before and Mother seemed real pleased that I got her.  I remember the conversation between Charles and Ethel about what a good teacher she was--based in part on the fact that Frances Nell had made As and B's all year.  Well, on my first report card I came home with three Bs--and Ethel was not pleased!  She marched right down to the schoolhouse and had a talk with Mrs. Garrett and all the B's but one got changed to As--and I never got another B."

       

Tomatoes, Testimony Cake, Jokes, and Zinnias

Here on Craig Drive, friends drop by to visit all the time--and each one brings something special.

Whenever the doorbell used to ring, my daddy's stock jokey thing to say was, "Hide the pie!"--and he said it in earshot of whoever was standing at the back door, always unlocked for them to walk right in.   Then he'd go to the door and hug whoever was there and they'd come in laughing as if looking around for the invisible pie.  He and Carlene are always happy to see people at the back door.  I'm not sure if the front door works or not--as nobody ever uses it.

Yesterday morning when Carlene and I got back from our tea run at the QT, we found a bag of tomatoes by the back door.  "Those are from Joe," she said.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Joe returned and we visited in the den. I loved hearing him tell stories about growing up and living his whole life in Lawrenceville and nearby Lilburn.  His daddy was head of the draft committee, and "that was before anybody wanted to avoid the draft."  But after young Joe had served his time and his daddy hoped he'd make a career of the military, Joe had to tell him the truth that was hard to say: that he "didn't like the military all that much."

The very next day, Joe's father died. All these sixty years later, Joe's eyes were teary telling the story (and ours were hearing it.) When he tells us that he got to kiss him on the forehead just before he died, you know that memory is as fresh as yesterday.

He told about all the years he and his late-wife Dottie (Nellie's beloved Sister-Mom) used to travel together. "One thing we learned," he said, "Is that if you see something you like, you better stop and see it because you might not get another chance."

I wondered how he's faring now that he's alone.  He starts every day at "the club," he said--"the club" being McDonalds where he meets with his buddies for a couple of hours to catch up on whatever's happening around town. What he didn't say--but what other people tell about him--is that he's quite a philanthropist.

In the afternoon, we had visits from three of Carlene's closest friends, Margaret, Mary and Marlene.

I knew Margaret would bring food.  She brought her chocolate "Testimony cake" and a bouquet of zinnias.  The Testimony cake is so named because she, a Southern Baptist, had to come up with a reason to be in the liquor store when she shops for vodka and Kahlua for her cake.  "If the preacher or somebody from church sees me coming out of the liquor store, I'll just have to tell them I'm in there to give my testimony!" she says with a grin.

Mary brings jokes.  She could have her own comedy show!

I love visiting with Mary and Marlene because they both knew my daddy.  Tomorrow will be the 12-year anniversary of his death, but he's still alive in the many friends who loved him.

Marlene always tells me I look just like him.

Mary likes to tell me about how he'd call her up and say, "Carlene's gone now, Mary, you can come on down!"

Betty is coming over today and we are going to the beautiful North Georgia mountains for a day or two.  I better get dressed so I can hide the pie before she gets here!