Happy Easter from my favorite chick!
Wednesday morning, I drove over to Watkinsville for a meeting…that had been canceled. No one thought to tell me. Oh well. I was in such a good mood that there was no frustrating me with inconveniences. When you find yourself in Watkinsville early in the morning and you haven’t eaten breakfast yet and you have a little time on your hands, what do you do? This girl pops in to Waffle House for a Cheese and Eggs platter with grits, wheat toast, and sausage. Aw, yeah!
I sat at the low counter because all the spinny seats at the high counter were taken. On one perched a retired man in a cowboy hat with a peacock feather bobbing from the band. The seat by the register held a prosperous looking fellow in an emerald green golf shirt who held up a full-page newspaper ad and told the waitress, “THAT is NOT Kim Kardashian.” Obvious Photoshopping on the waistline. In the center, a couple deep in their phones.
Ms V. took my order–she’s my favorite because one time Vivi and I went in there and they talked about sharing V names. While the cooks did their thing, one of the younger girls started singing a pop song. She wasn’t as entertaining as she thought she was. Ms. V must not have approved because after she dropped off my plate, she walked over to the jukebox, pressed some magic button and started up something far better: Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch singing “I’ll Fly Away” from the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.
I couldn’t help it. Quietly, under my breath. Just loud enough to hear myself…I started singing.
I’ll fly away oh glory
I’ll fly away in the morning
When I die hallelujah by and by
I’ll fly away
The Cheese and Eggs platter reminds me of my Grandmama Eunice. In the summers when I was young, I spent the days with her while my parents and siblings worked. Some days, she would fix me a big breakfast–eggs, sausage, grits and toast. I liked to use the toast as a base, pile on a little dab of grits for mortar, then a little bit of egg, then a bite of sausage and eat it all together. I still eat it that way at the Waffle House. I was thinking of Grandmama Eunice and those breakfasts, singing “When the shadows of this life have gone, I’ll fly away,” when I realized that the woman beside me was singing too. And the man with the newspaper was whistling along. The peacock feather kept the beat. Ms. V joined in on the chorus.
A few hours earlier, my friend, Hannah, had shared this quote from J. B. Priestley: “I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” Amen. I found my bit of magic at the Waffle House in Watkinsville, singing an old song with strangers. My bill was $8 and I left a $20 for Ms. V.
Here’s to a new day, a fresh try, one more start!
I remember one Easter when my nephews were small–they grabbed handfuls of cherry blossoms that had fallen from the trees in Nana and Papa’s yard. Jackson and Grant flung the pale pink petals in the air so they floated down to dust baby Jake’s head. We all laughed as the boys sang, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” while Jake squealed with joy. That’s been a dozen years ago and I still remember the sound of their laughter and the astonishment I felt at loving these small, new people so keenly.
Isn’t it holy to live in a moment and know that you will remember it for the rest of your life? Cherry blossoms remind me to look up. We are alive, beneath the cherry blossoms.
After Edith Wharton (author of novels The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome) began publishing her work in her middle years, she struck up a correspondence with the already respected author, Henry James. She admired him greatly. (Insert yawn here because Henry James has that effect on me.) The two writers communicated by letter for three years before they ever met in person. When they finally did meet, they became good friends. (Insert image of Daniel Day-Lewis in a frock coat having a fraught with meaning but sexually repressed and whispered conversation with Michelle Pfeiffer in a fussy bonnet.)
My joking aside–here’s my point. Like so many people who create, Edith Wharton went through a period when she struggled to find her voice. She wandered uncommon paths for a woman of her position. Wharton had been born into an old New York high society family, and was thus expected to marry well and live a presentable life. Instead, she found herself stuck in a miserable marriage and yearning for her freedom. (Ahem…Fartbuster, with a far superior dowry.) She questioned whether anyone would care about the inner workings of the privileged world she knew.
Henry James encouraged Edith Wharton to stick with writing about the New York City she knew so well–even though she disliked it. He said, “Don’t pass it by — the immediate, the real, the only, the yours.”
This life, the one we spend every day slogging through, is the straw we spin into gold. We pass by so much in the search for something “important” or “meaningful.” We climb over mountains of straw in the search for gold, not realizing that it’s lying all around us, waiting for us to work our magic!
I hope you’ll take a look today at the immediate, the real. What’s around you that’s beautiful or interesting? What’s inside you that’s beautiful or interesting?
