Tag Archives: Daddy

An Orange in the Toe of Your Stocking

This morning, when I tied the last few bows around the last few presents for my kids, I remembered a similar feeling from when I was a teenager, many Christmases ago. I loved wrapping presents. Loved it loved it loved it. I wrapped all the gifts my mom had bought. Then I went up the road and wrapped presents for my Aunt Dixie. Then Mom drove me into town and dropped me off at Pop and Grandmama Irene’s house for an afternoon so I could wrap presents for them, too.

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Grandmama pulled everything out of the hall closets and made sure each box was labeled on the outside (so I wouldn’t have to peek inside to see what was what). I laid out the tubes of wrapping paper, the scissors and the tape on the braided rug in their bedroom, right in front of the warm gas logs. I worked along steadily in my own happy place. After a while, Grandmama came in to check on me. When she saw that I had it under control and there was nothing she needed to do, she stretched out across the white coverlet on the four-poster bed.

Like so many things in Grandmama’s house, we kids walked carefully around that bed. And woe be unto you if you so much as laid a hand on or god forbid leaned against the spindle that ran between the footposts. That bed was so old that it had been made by slaves owned by Pop’s side of the family. I had seen Grandmama lie down for a nap before, but never across the bed to chat. She stretched out on her side to watch me with one hand propped under her head. Her feet hung off the side of the bed like a teenager at a slumber party, with her shoes clear of the perfect white chenille spread.

“I sure am glad you like to wrap packages because I surely don’t.” She grinned and bounced her foot. I remember feeling that I needed to be careful, to not break this gentle magic. Grandmama was almost always busy and not much of a chatter. Most every action and word in her world had a POINT. I wanted to keep the conversation going, so I asked, “Did you like to wrap packages when you were my age?”

“Oh, we didn’t have any such as that when I was your age.” (I want to type that as “yo age” because that’s how she talks, not a terminal -r to be found) “For Christmas, we might get a piece of candy and an orange but that was it. Daddy always got us an orange.”

Grandmama was born in 1918, so her teenage years were the dark years of the Depression. Aunt Eula, Grandmama’s older sister by a few years, had come to stand in the doorway. “Irene, remember that year we got an apple AND an orange?” They went on to tell me about life on the farm down along the river, how they each had two dresses–one to wear and one to wash–while I sat there wrapping gifts in shiny paper and tying ribbons.

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Twenty years later, I told that story to Richard and my dad one morning while we were sitting out on the deck in the sunshine. Daddy was born in 1942, but his brothers were 10 and 13 years older, so they were young in the Depression. Their father made a living cutting lumber for furniture makers in Atlanta and business had just about dried up. Nobody had money for furniture. Daddy told us how things got so bad one winter that his father had to leave a guard with the team of mules in the woods so that no one stole the animals for meat. That winter, my Grandfather Joe didn’t know how he was going to pay his hands, much less have anything left to make a little Christmas for Uncle Kenneth and Uncle Charles. Then just a few days before Christmas, he got an order for lumber, and it was enough to, in Daddy’s memory of hearing the story when he was a boy, “pay the hands, buy a little wooden train for Kenneth and Charles, and surprise the family with a bag of oranges.”

These two stories explain why Santa puts an orange in the toe of my kids’ stockings every year. This year, slogging through my own cold Depression, I keep hearing my grandmother saying “Daddy always got us an orange.” I think about how this might be the saddest Christmas of my life because I won’t hear any stories from my dad. He won’t be baking pies or slicing tenderloin for Christmas Eve dinner. He won’t be wearing a red and green tartan buttondown shirt under his flour-covered apron. He won’t make us a bag of oranges to take home from the box Uncle Kenneth sends up from Florida.

Those oranges in my kids’ stockings remind me that our family has had it worse. We’ve lived through some lean times and mean times. Some years are so bad you gotta worry about hungry folks boiling the mule. And some years you get an apple AND an orange.

I am the product of many generations of people who found a way to hold some sweetness, even in the darkest time of the year.

And that is why there will always be an orange in the toe of your stocking, kids.

Make Us Thankful

A Thanksgiving memory: Little Gay, Me, Joe, Beth, Jake...and that's Grant in the front. Mr. Enthusiasm!

Thanksgiving many years ago: Little Gay, Me, Joe, Beth, Jake…and that’s Grant in the front. Mr. Enthusiasm!

My dad had a theory that you could measure how Baptist a person was by counting the number of times they said “Just” while asking the blessing before a big meal. Like this would score pretty high on the Baptist-o-meter:

(with every head bowed and every eye closed)

Lord, we just ask that you just look down on us Lord and just bless this food that is just such a blessing. Just help us remember, Lord, just how very blessed we are to just have what we need. We just praise you Lord….(continue for 12 minutes)

Now, now…to all my Baptist leaning friends, please don’t get your noses out of joint. In our family, we make fun of all peoples, of all faiths, in equal measure. We even did it a little when Grandmama Eunice was alive. But not when she was in earshot.

Speaking of Grandmama Eunice, I think she was the source of the standard blessing that Daddy used: “Lord make us thankful for these and all our many blessings. Bless this food to our bodies and us to your service, Amen.” No matter how much extemporizing the blesser did, they always brought the blessing to a close with these lines.

Over the years, asking the blessing got to be more and more special to Daddy. We all gather up in the kitchen or around the dining room table. Sometimes we hold hands and sometimes we just try to keep the kids in line. (See that just sneaking in there? Raised Baptist!) Daddy would say a few words about how lucky we were to be comfortable in life and the duty we owed to those who weren’t as lucky. His blessings always celebrated our family and the deep love we shared for each other. If it had been an especially tough year for one of us, he would say thanks that it was over and we were all still together. There was the blessing that remembered Richard when he was in the hospital. The blessing that welcomed Brett back home after she got her life straight. Last year, he said a blessing of thanks that he had made it through a bad health scare.

About fifty percent of the time, he’d get choked up. And that led to one of the most enduring stories in our family lore and it’s the thing I’m thinking about as we head towards this first Thanksgiving without Daddy saying the blessing before dinner.

Mr. Enthusiasm strikes again! Grant and Jackson at Callaway Gardens.

Mr. Enthusiasm strikes again! Grant and Jackson at Callaway Gardens.

For a few good years, when the nephews were small, we set aside one autumn weekend to take the whole fam-damn-ily to Callaway Gardens. Piled in together in one big villa, we’d cook and tell stories and laugh and jump in the leaves and let the kids stay up late.

The villa had a long dining table, big enough to hold all of us. Before we sat down to feast on tenderloin from the grill, Daddy asked the blessing. Halfway through, he started to get emotional and took a second to compose himself. All of the adults stayed quiet, but tiny little Grant, who was about three, piped up in a very loud whisper, “Papa’s cryin’ like a BABY!” 

Daddy loved that story. We had a reason to tell it again quite often, pretty much every time we got together.

I don’t know who will ask the blessing this year. Probably Joe, or Brett, maybe even Grant, who is tall and gracious and clever (still). I know we’ll all cry like babies. That’s just the way it’s going to be.

But in the midst of sorrow, may we be thankful for these and all our many blessings. Grief is the price of love.

This picture has nothing to do with the story, but it's my favorite picture of Grant.

This picture has nothing to do with the story, but it’s my favorite picture of Grant.

 

 

Doors and Windows and Corners

You know that old saying, “When one door closes, a window opens?” I feel like that tonight, here at the end of the Dia de los Muertos when the door to the other world is shut and our beloved spirits draw their visit to a close. Well, the door may have closed, but a window opened for me tonight.

Right around dinner time, just as the noodle water was starting to boil, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number or the strange area code. I could have ignored it but I was kind of in the mood to snap at a telemarketer.

“Is this Ashley?”

“Yes, this is she.” In my most imperious tone, reserved for strangers who call at 7 p.m.

“Well, it’s your old Uncle Kenneth here. How are you doing, honey?” My dad’s middle brother. Joe and Eunice Garrett’s boys: Charles, Kenneth, and Sammy. I haven’t seen Uncle Kenneth in at least 10 years and I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him on the phone. He and Aunt Margaret have lived in southern Florida my whole life, so visits were once a year usually, mostly back when Grandmama Eunice was alive. Every summer, Charles and Kenneth drove their long American sedans up the interstate to Gay. And as soon as they pulled up in Grandmama’s front yard, they’d jump out of their cars and start talking about what kind of time they’d made on the drive.

Kenneth was calling to say we had been on his mind. We talked about his health, and the weather in Miami, and the ages of my children. He corrected me for thinking he was thirteen years older than Daddy–that was Charles, who died back in the 1980s. He told me his birthday, and Daddy’s birthday, then did the math.

And my window opened.

“What was your daddy’s birthday?” I asked. I never met my Grandaddy Joe. He was killed in a car accident a few days before Little Gay was born, almost four years before I came along.

“January 30. He used to tell everyone that he and FDR–Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was the president then–Daddy told everybody that all the smartest people were born on January 30.”

I get my story-telling from these people. My dad’s death has left a blank yawning abyss between me and all the stories that he never got to tell me about his side of the family. That tiny fact–that my grandfather’s birthday was January 30–completed a story that I’ve been carrying around for almost forty years.

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One cold winter morning when I was about nine or ten, I was already dressed for school and waiting on the living room couch. Once Gay and Joe were ready, Daddy would drive us up the dirt road to the bus stop and we would wait in the warmth of the truck cab instead of out by the highway. Daddy was sitting in his orange chair, putting his boots on. He had paused to stare out the window over my head, into the hard white winter light.

“Today was my Daddy’s birthday. He would have been…” I can’t remember the age Daddy said because at that point in the sentence, he choked up and started to cry. It was the first time I ever remember seeing my dad cry. And now I know it was on January 30.

Uncle Kenneth told me stories about Daddy’s first haircut when he lost his princely curls. He told me about when he and Charles were filling out a Social Security form for J.P., the hired man who stayed with our family for 50 years. J.P. didn’t know what his initials stood for, so Uncle Charles declared him “James Pierpont Strozier.” And J.P. chose his own birthday–the second Sunday in August, because that was when his church had Homecoming. He told me about when their father died and my father wanted to drop out of vet school but his brothers wouldn’t let him. When we were talking about who was a blond and who was a brunette, Uncle Kenneth mentioned his own son, who has passed. We got quiet.

Then he took an old man’s deep breath and said, “Well, Mama always said ‘God won’t let you see around corners.’ And Daddy said, ‘Play the hand you’re dealt.'”

I’m so glad I answered the phone tonight. I saved that strange Florida number under “Uncle Kenneth” in my phone. The door may be closed for the next year, and we can’t see around corners, but he opened a window for me.

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Mi Dia de los Muertos

Back in ninth grade Spanish class with Senora Lee, I was assigned “The Day of the Dead” for my bulletin board project. We didn’t have Google or even Wikipedia back then, so I went to the World Book (you kids can Google that if you don’t understand) and looked up Day of the Dead. After that ahem exhaustive research, I stapled yellow poster paper to the bulletin board, trimmed it with orange rick-rack, and pinned a Dollar Store dancing skeleton to the center. I carefully traced the title of my project across the top of the display and taped pieces of candy in the empty spaces.

My report, in Spanish, roughly translated to, “The Day of the Dead is a lot like our Halloween. The people of Mexico visit the graves of their ancestors and give candy to the children.” Thanks, World Book. So much for experiencing other cultures. I learned more about Dia de los Muertos from the Google doodle today. From Halloween to November 2 is the narrow sliver of the year when the door is opened, when our departed can return for a visit.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, by Jose Luis Silva.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, by Jose Luis Silva.

Yesterday, my friend Luis shared a photo of the altar (ofrenda) that he and Brantley created for their home. My heart cracked open to see Spencer there, right beside Lola, Brantley’s beloved dog that he found on the streets of Taiwan. Spencer did so love a pup.

The top level of the altar holds pictures of the souls that you are inviting back into your home. The lower levels offer an array of treats to welcome them–a shot of tequila, a sweet loaf of pan de muerto, a toy for a child. On the lowest level, cool water and maybe soap so they can feel fresh after the journey. All around, candles and bright flowers, sugar skulls.

My own spirit craves a ritual like this. Driving home today in the rain, I cried through three turns of a long red light. It’s easy to cry in the rain because no one’s looking. I thought of who would be on my altar. Daddy, of course, then I realized I don’t have a framed picture of him because I always had him. I would put Richard on there, that picture I took of him at sunset on Santorini, with the big moon hanging in the sky behind him. Grandmama Eunice all dressed up for church. Pop sitting in his recliner with his soft fingers steepled together as he listened to the Braves game on the radio. I’d have Spencer in there too. And Flynt. I’d love to think of Flynt again after so many years. G could bring his people, too–the grandfather who gave Carlos his name.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, Jose Luis Silva

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, Jose Luis Silva

I’d have a bourbon and branch water for my dad. Sweet tea for the grandparents. A couple of really hot chilis for Pop. A small plate of fruitcake cookies–Daddy and Richard were the only ones who liked them so he made a batch every Christmas. The last of the yellow and orange marigolds from the flower boxes on the deck. The candles that I hid away when Vivi was born. They’re thick with dust but they would remember how to burn.

As evocative as Luis’ altar is, I felt like a fraud at the idea of making my own. The ofrenda isn’t part of my culture. Would I be play-acting? Still, my heart hurt for some ritual, some way to invite the spirits back into my home, even for a few rainy days.

Paige, a college sister, is a Unitarian minister. This weekend, she shared a photo of the candle-covered altar at her church and explained it with these words: “In our annual remembrance service, we honor our precious, imperfect loved ones. And we let our children see our tears.”

Remembrance Service at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland

Remembrance Service at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland

Yes. That was what I was looking for–a place to honor the precious imperfect, a ritual to bring the tears into the light (instead of hiding them away in my car at a red light).

But what?

The answer came to me in the quiet of my own living room. I walked through there on the way to change clothes after work and my eye lit on the grandfather clock that Daddy made us for Christmas a few years back. How many kids have a grandfather clock made by their grandfather? He made four that fall, all alike, for the four of us and our families. On Christmas Eve, they were lined up near the tree, each with a wide red bow.

It’s the clock we check from the dining room table to say how many minutes before bedtime. It’s the clock that softly chimes the hours while we sleep. It’s been silent for a few months now because the battery ran out on the mechanism and I’ve been too busy to get to the store and buy the right size.

Tonight, I let the kids eat leftover pot roast while I made a special trip to the store. I got the battery, then I sat in the rain in my car and cried a little.

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“What you get, Mama?” Carlos asked as I tried to cut the battery out of its packaging. “It’s a battery for the big clock.”

He followed me into the living room and watched silently while I turned the key and opened the narrow door. The pendulum hung still and quiet. Carlos stretched out his hand and waved it along the brass weights and their chains to make them sing. I opened my mouth to correct him…but didn’t. It’s as much his clock as it is mine.

I replaced the battery. I checked the pendulum motor and set it back in motion. I slid the clock back against the wall and the brass sang all in a clatter. Then the pieces settled into the steady work of being a clock. Tick tock. With one gentle finger, I spun the delicate minute hand around until the clock read 7:40.

That’s when I saw it–a precious imperfection. Inside the cabinet of the clock, where the oak face meets the side of the case, a misfired screw poked through. It’s practically invisible, only revealed when the door is open. The instant I saw it, I heard my dad’s exasperated voice bark, “AhhhDAMMIT!” the way he did when he was really angry but already resigned to the fact that whatever was screwed up probably couldn’t be fixed. When the horse was out of the barn, so to speak.

The perfect curves of the clock didn’t move me, the shining brass and the smooth sway of the pendulum, but that tiny screw just 1/16″ out of place brought my dad right into the house again.

Maybe this is the beginning of my own ritual. Every year when daylight saving time ends–right around the Dia de los Muertos–I’ll open up the clock to spin the hour away and I’ll see that precious imperfection and I’ll remember and be glad.

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The Day I Learned Why Dogs Howl

Today I remembered one rainy Saturday a few years ago when I was heading to a funeral but needed to bury Richard M. Nixon in my backyard before my toddler found out she was dead.

That’s a lot in one sentence. Let me explain.

My late husband, Richard, left me many things, but the most precious was a long-haired tortoise shell kitty cat. Her name was Nixon. Richard Milhouse Nixon, to be precise.

For a long while after he first adopted her from the shelter, he never really gave her a name–just called her Cat. He was going out of town and his neighbor agreed to keep an eye on Cat. When she asked the cat’s name, she was disappointed to hear that the cat didn’t have one. She picked at Richard about it. Because his friend was super liberal, and he was a smart ass, he said, “Fine. The cat’s name is Richard Milhouse Nixon. Please be sure to say, “I love you, Nixon” every time you snuggle her.”

He adored that cat. She helped him get “in” with my family because you know how some families ask, “Do you go to church?” or “How do you vote?”…my family asks, “Do you have any pets?” You can’t hang with the Garretts if you don’t have some shedders in the house.

This is Nixon giving my dog Katie the stink eye for being on the dog bed.

This is Nixon giving my dog Katie the stink eye for being on the dog bed.

Nixon lived for several years after Richard died, but eventually she got narrow in the hips and her gums didn’t look so healthy and her bags of groceries disappeared (that’s what Daddy called those sags of flab under a fat kitty’s belly). Nixon declined quickly. She died in her sleep and I found her one rainy Saturday morning curled up near the fireplace.

I was already feeling blue that morning because it was the day Athens would say goodbye to Randy Bewley, a musician, artist, father to two boys, and beloved of my friend, Robin. Randy had died very suddenly and it had been a sad sad week. And now Nixon was dead on my hearth and Vivi was due to wake up any minute. Crap.

I wrapped Nixon in one of Richard’s old bath towels, one that still had his name tag sewn on it from summer camp, then hid her in our bedroom. I whispered to G that I needed him to get Vivi out of the house so I could bury the cat without having to explain it all to her. He bundled her into some warm clothes and they headed out for pancakes.

It was pouring cold rain. I put on the purple raincoat that I had worn on all of those European adventures with Richard then I clutched his poor dead cat to my chest. After a quick stop in the tool shed for a shovel, I made my way down the hill to the beech tree beside the river–site of our pet cemetery. Huckleberry Finn, my big white Greater Pike Hound, walked at my side. I couldn’t keep an eye on him and focus on digging a cat grave, so I locked Huck inside the fence. He sat on his haunches to watch what I was doing.

Huck o' my Heart

Huck o’ my Heart

Well. I started digging a hole and the deeper I dug, the sadder I got. Nixon had Richard’s heart, just like I had once. She was the something he had loved and I had loved. She was part of our little family and now that last link with him was gone. I settled her light body into the earth. I ripped up a few pieces of English ivy from the riverbank and wove them into a heart shape that I placed in the grave with her.

It was time to say a few words. There in the streaming rain, I thanked her for being a sweet and faithful kitty. I told her how much he had loved her and how when he had to be away from her those last few months, I recorded five minutes of her purring and he would lie in his hospital bed and listen to it when he felt afraid. I told her that I was sorry she didn’t get more time with him.

And then I sat in the rain on my haunches and I sobbed. I wailed. I keened. I didn’t worry about any of the neighbors hearing me. I didn’t worry about whether I looked crazy or not. I didn’t care. I cried as hard as I could. For Nixon, for Richard, for Randy, for Robin, for myself. For the whole damn sad world that seemed to be crying along with me.

Then from behind me, I heard a plaintive sound I had never heard before, like a harmony to my grief. It was Huck, still waiting for me in the rain. He threw his head back and howled at the gray sky. Three long slow howls, like a wolf under a full moon. I had never heard him make such a sound and he’s never done it since.

His howling startled me out of my own fit. Our eyes met through the fence. He stood up and wagged his tail slowly at me with a look on his face that seemed to say, “Are we done? Or once more?” I couldn’t help but laugh and something in my tired heart cracked open with the wonder of his howl. Such a wild animal thing, such a mystery, right here in my backyard. I told Nixon goodbye one more time, filled in the grave, then walked back up the hill with my dog right by my side.

So why do dogs howl? I looked it up. It’s not because they are sad. According to Cesar Milan, dogs–and wolves–howl to tell a lost member of the pack where they are. A wolf who has wandered too far will howl to say, “Ummm…you guys? I’m out here alone” and another wolf howls in response to say, “You’re OK. Come over this way.”

I think that’s exactly what Huck was telling me that day. He heard a member of his pack howl because she was afraid and feeling lost, so he howled to say, “Over here. You’re not alone.”

My dad died yesterday. He spent his life tending to the little creatures of this world, the raggedy abandoned dogs like Huck and the pampered kitties like Nixon. One of my friends reminded me that all dogs go to heaven, and I laughed to think about how busy Dr. Garrett will be saying hello to thousands of old friends.

The Excruciating In Between

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

That’s what Daddy and I said to each other last Sunday, when we had our last good visit. As I crossed the parking lot to my car, I realized that he hadn’t ended our conversation with what he always says when one of us is leaving–“Be careful. I don’t have any extra children.”

He had said it to me and my sister two weeks before when we visited. I remember it clearly because Little Gay chuckled, “Now THAT sounds like Daddy!”

I sat there in my car with the nagging fear that I wouldn’t ever hear it again.

I was right.

The Lion of Lucerne Switzerland.

The Lion of Lucerne Switzerland.

I’ve talked to him since then, but he hasn’t been able to talk to me. Now we are caught in the exruciating in-between.

My dad has been sick for a long time. My Daddy has been gone for a while now. The strong arms with their topography of scars from angry cats and terrified dogs. The voice that called me Shug. The finger that pointed up at the ceiling when he was about to say something funny. That kissing sound he made to call a dog in for some scratching behind the ears. Even the terrible cheese dip that he made in the microwave and brought out to the little metal table by the pool. All gone.

But his body is still here. He is in between worlds and we are too. Kind people say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and I think “but he’s still alive.” Then there are the people who say, “I hope he gets better” and I can’t find words to say, “That is impossible.”

For a week, we’ve all hovered somewhere in this excruciating in-between. Alone in their house, I cannot bring myself to sit in his chair in the library because it’s Daddy’s Chair. I had no problem sitting in it before, but now I am caught between that comforting memory and the idea that he won’t ever sit there either. In his room at the hospice, I sit nearby on the narrow loveseat but not next to him. That’s my father, right there…but my daddy doesn’t seem anywhere nearby. In-between.

So I go to Griffin for my turn to sit on watch but I can’t do it. And there is nothing but “it” to do. So I go to work to stay busy and it helps some, but every time my phone rings my heart stops. We run out of milk, even in this strange fatherless world, so I go to the grocery store and I buy things that G can cook in case I need to go. I take my kids out shopping for school clothes and I surreptitiously make sure they have something somber to wear for the day that I will soon have to explain to them. But I don’t tell them yet because we are caught in-between.

This isn’t my first time walking down this path. My late husband died at home and I was his caregiver. Richard never gave in to the idea of dying; even as his body disintegrated around his brave heart, he fought. In the small hours of his last night, while he stumbled around our bedroom barely able to speak, he drew together a moment of lucidity and said, “This is a rough patch.” I sat on the edge of the bed in the half-dark and tried to believe him.

He was in hospice care for about nine hours total between me signing the paperwork and his last breath. There wasn’t a lot of room for in-between. There wasn’t much time for “the forethought of grief” as Wendell Berry calls it. There was busy-ness and then there was grief.

None of this excruciating in-between.

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Life and Death Decisions in Jackson Georgia

That visit I had with my dad on Sunday? That was a good trip to Jackson. When I got there, his room was crowded with three visitors–a family who had been bringing their cats to him for 15 years. We told some cat stories. Daddy told about the little kitten who chewed a hole in the sofa cushion so she could sit under the sofa in peace and stick her head out if anything interesting happened. I told the one about when we were picking on Little Gay about being a bad driver and she got so mad that she stomped outside…and ran over the cat’s tail. He told about Rufus, the last kitty he talked me into and how a few days after I brought him home he ended up covered in ringworm and Vivi lost a hank of hair right before picture day. Annie, Baby, Slick, Nashville, Puff, Mama Kitty, Mouse, Janie, Mr. Kitty, Mr. A Hole, Rufus and Jinx. So many cats.

When his visitors left, I noticed that the mom walked with a limp and hadn’t said anything. I asked him, “Was that the lady who wrote the letter?” He nodded. One of his favorite clients. She has cerebral palsy and a lot of people only see her differences. She wrote him a letter once to thank him for always being kind to her and treating her with respect, even if she can’t speak. He cherishes that letter.

I told him the good news about Carlos, and what books Vivi’s reading this week. He asked me about my writing. We talked and talked. He scooted his wheelchair over to the drawer and pulled out a pack of gum. Offered me a piece and I declined. He chewed four pieces then complained about the bitterness of the peppermint. He asked me what I thought of the cheap paintings on the wall opposite his bed. We agreed–every time I visited–that they looked like wet cardboard and had probably been purchased at a gas station.

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That was Sunday.

Now he’s in hospice.

He crashed on Monday and had to go to the hospital. By midnight, he was in hospice care. I drove down on Tuesday in the rain.

My brother had been there overnight. He and Big Gay and I were coordinating what needed to happen. One of the jobs was to retrieve Daddy’s things from the rehab place in Jackson. I volunteered since it was right on my way.

On that long drive, I was listening to NPR and the news turned to the story of Kelly Gissendaner, the only Georgia woman on death row. She was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. That night. In Jackson, Georgia.

I listened to person after person talk about how their own lives had been changed for having met Kelly in prison. How she told them they had value and they could redeem themselves. That very day, her own children had to make the choice between seeing their mother one last time and going before the appeals board to beg for clemency. They begged for her life.

The text from Joe said, “Get the cards and the poster and bring them here. Don’t forget the vase.”

I took a few grocery bags out of the back of my car and walked through the rain to the entrance. Definitely not the baby anymore. Not today. As I made my way down the long hallway, I tried not to make eye contact with the nurse who had been so kind to him on Sunday. I just couldn’t do it.

The top of every surface was covered in cards. Every one of them had a cat or a dog on it. I couldn’t look at the names and addresses. Just made a neat stack and put them in a bag along with the poster from the people at the clinic he built. I took the tired oranges and apples out of a hand-turned bowl he made on his lathe. I tucked the slender glass vase with the giant red rose that Big Gay had cut for him in between the cards. As I bumped the petals, they released a sweet fragrance. She grows antique roses that still smell like roses instead of those new varieties that smell like refrigerators.

Rose in the Rain. Courtesy Pixabay.

Rose in the Rain. Courtesy Pixabay.

I left most of the toiletries, but I took the half bottle of Canoe and the black plastic comb. When we were kids, Daddy relaxed every night by sitting in his chair with a book and combing his hair mindlessly. I still remember how we laughed the time he combed it all straight up and looked like an onion.

I got the suitcase out of the closet and filled it with books. Spy thrillers, history sagas, right wing politics…and Geraldine Brooks’ “People of the Book.” I liked that one, too.

I opened the drawer and put the half-open pack of gum in my purse.

Just like Big Gay had told me to, I left a note on top of the dresser that said, “Please share his clothes with anyone who needs them. Thank you–The Garretts”

He’s always been the kind of man that would give you the shirt off his back.

Two visits ago, he told me that he was anxious about dying. He worried “that he hadn’t been a good enough Christian.” I was so horrified at the thought that I couldn’t respond. I’ve told him many times what I think–It’s this life that’s heaven or hell, and we make it so for each other.

Clemency. Forgiveness for what we have done. Mercy. The gift of life when we have been handed a death sentence. Standing in the rain and holding out hope, even when you know it’s running out. We all hope for mercy, right there in Jackson, Georgia.

Let Me Be the Baby For a Little While Longer

I told a little lie to my baby Sunday morning as I got ready to leave for the day.

“Where you goin’ Mama?” I didn’t want to tell him that I was going to see Papa and Nana. To him, “Nana and Papa’s house” means cousins in the swimming pool, four doggies, popsicles, searching for eggs in the chicken coop, and that drawer full of Jackson’s old Transformers and race cars. But this summer hasn’t been like that.

“I’m going to get gas…” then under my breath I mumbled, “first.” I’m going to get gas first then I’m going to see Papa in the Rehab hospital.

After a long drive and a little bit of crying after listening to Dan Savage tell a story on “This American Life” about when his mom died, I got there. But I sat in the parking lot and checked my phone. I finished my glass of tea. I cleaned a couple of receipts out of my purse. I checked my phone again. Played a game of Scrabble. The parking lot was busier than I’d seen before. Lots of people still in church clothes headed for the entrance doors. I sat there as the minutes ticked by.

I’m 46 years old, but I wanted to be the baby for a little while longer. I just couldn’t summon enough adult to walk through the doors and see how my dad is doing. I don’t want to deal with this.

Image courtesy Pixabay

Image courtesy Pixabay

Last time I visited, my sister was in town, so I got to walk beside her like I’ve done for so much of my life. I feel safer when I’m with her–she takes care of things. She’s got no qualms about the smell of Purell or the inelegant details of illness. She’s used to being in charge and I am used to letting her be in charge. But she’s in Bolivia on a surgical mission. And I’m sitting in the parking lot acting like a baby.

Twenty one years ago, my Grandmama Eunice was in this same building. We called it “the nursing home” then. I had gone over to visit Daddy and Big Gay one Sunday in February and Daddy said, “Come on and ride over with me. Mama would love to see you.” So we went, and I walked through the entrance doors next to him and let him handle things. I remember that day so vividly, because it was the last time I saw her. She lay in bed wearing that surprised look she had in her last few months. I knew she had given up on living that day because it was the first time in my life I ever saw her without lipstick and with some gray roots showing in her hair. I remember picking up a photo of one of my Florida cousins that was propped in her window sill. “What’s Jeff’s baby’s name?” I asked her. She couldn’t recall.

Just as Daddy and I were getting ready to leave that day, Grandmama Eunice reached out her thin hand and held on to Daddy’s arm. “I haven’t had a letter from your father and I’m starting to worry.” Daddy’s face got that surprised look on it that we all seemed to be wearing as we figured out this part of life.

“Mama, Daddy died back in 1965. Remember, he was in a car wreck with Mr….” Her hand fluttered up to the side of her face before he finished and she shook her head like she was being silly. She even smiled a little with embarrassment.

I kissed her on the cheek. We said our goodbyes. As we were walking down the hall, I told Daddy, “I didn’t know she was losing her memory.” He said, “Yeah, it comes and goes more lately. A couple of days ago, she told me that when she gets out of here, we need to find a house closer to town because Evelyn can’t be walking that far to school.” Grandmama Eunice was the oldest, and Evelyn was her baby sister. Even though Evelyn was in her 80s at the time, something fluid in Grandmama’s mind had her talking to her grown-up baby boy about her baby sister.

On the drive back to the house that day, Daddy and I were riding along in silence down a long straight stretch of piney highway. It was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny cold day. Before I even noticed anything moving, Daddy pointed at the windshield and barked, “DEER!” A good-sized doe bounded out of the pine woods and slammed into the truck in front of us.

She limped across the highway and collapsed into the ditch on the other side of the road, still trying to run. The black truck pulled over and we pulled over in front of him. Daddy reached under the seat for his pistol. I sat there stunned at how quickly this man who had spent most of his life tending to animals knew that there was no fixing this. He stepped out of the truck and called to the driver who had hit the deer. “You need any help?” He held up the gun so the man could see it.

“Naw, I got it. Thank you.” The man lifted a deer rifle from the rack in the back of his pickup as a teenage boy climbed out the passenger side. This was rural Georgia after all. Most of the venison we ate when I was a kid was killed with my dad’s truck on the back roads he traveled to make veterinary calls. He once got two in one season without ever firing a bullet.

Daddy got back in his truck and we went on our way. “It’s not normal for deer to be running this time of day. Something must have been chasing her.” I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

That story was going through my mind today as I sat in the parking lot. I needed to summon up the courage to be an adult, to know what needs doing and do it. But I sat there wishing I could be that baby for a little while longer. My daddy’s baby. He was Grandmama Eunice’s baby, I’m his baby, Carlos is my baby.

I went inside and we had a great visit. Told stories and made jokes. When his nurse came in for vitals, he introduced me and said, “She’s gonna be an author. I’m really proud of her.”

It was a long day, but a good one. When I got home after dark, G had the Littles in the tub with suds piled up on their heads.

As I put on my pajamas, Carlos, wrapped in a red striped towel, climbed up on the big bed. “Let’s have a pillow fight, Mama.” So we did. “Tickle me firty times, Mama.” And I did. “What’s dis spell, Mama?” He pointed to the cover of Jenny Lawson’s new book. “H-A-P-P-Y…that spells Happy.”

In that moment my little baby, I accepted that this is the way it has to work. Babies have to grow up but they always stay the baby. She loved him, he loves me, I love mine. And that will never change.

Dharwadia India

Image courtesy Pixabay

Perfect Pointless Mornings

The dogs are back on the beach at St. Simon’s. They’re only allowed on the public beaches between Labor Day and Memorial Day. As I took my stroll from the Coast Guard Station towards Gould’s Inlet Sunday morning, tennis balls and frisbees flew through the air with suburban bird dogs hot on their tails.

Sunday Morning on St. Simon's Island

Sunday Morning on St. Simon’s Island

“Katie, get up here!” one woman hollered to a sopping wet spaniel when she wandered off to a tide pool. “Amber! Amber! Amber!” a man chanted to a Corgi with better things to do than listen. “Bella! Bella! Good girl!” and the chocolate lab got a treat for coming back from the sand dunes when she was called. “Archie! Get the ball! Archie!” The beach sounded like a playground 10 minutes before nap time when everyone gets worked up and worn out.

I wandered along the edge of the water, my eyes down looking for shells to put in the plastic cup I had brought along. It was already an hour later than I had planned to leave for home. But I couldn’t live with myself if I drove 700 miles to the seashore for a board retreat and didn’t at least get my feet wet. In a word, I was lolly-gagging.

The tide was almost at its low, so there were plenty of shells to be had, mostly plain old oysters and clams. I’d pick up a promising one and hold it up to the sun as it rose over the low brown ocean. I’m looking for shells with natural holes worn in them for a project I’m working on back home. If the sun shone through, I put the shell in my cup. I love the ones that have grown smooth and pocked with time as they’ve rolled back and forth along the bottom of the sea. I want to string them together and make a windchime for the screened porch.

On one side of me, the sandy expanse of beach rollicking with dogs. On the other side, the quiet brown ocean teeming with life and mystery and danger. Pelicans and power walkers and crabs and investment bankers all out to get what they needed from the morning. And me shuffling along the narrow line where all that activity comes together.

Where this meets that

Where this meets that

Story-telling is like that. While the whole wide world goes on around me, I’m sifting through the little broken leftover things. Picking up a gray one and tossing it back into the water. Holding another one up to the sun to see if a little light peeks through. Putting it in my pocket if it shows promise. I’ll take these home and mix them in with all the shells I’ve picked up this summer and last summer and the summers before that. I’ll rinse them off with a little water and leave them in the sun to bleach. Shells, like stories, reveal hidden colors and crannies, after you show them a little attention and let them sit for a while.

After an hour at the beach, I got back in the car with the sand still on my feet and pointed the car towards Griffin. My dad isn’t doing well and I wanted to go by and see him. His precarious health is the ocean-sized story I haven’t been writing about for a couple of months. The idea of life without a parent is dark and mysterious and dangerous and eternal like that quiet brown ocean I walked beside this morning. So I’ve been looking at the shells instead of at the sea.

Crabby on SSI

Crabby on SSI

With shells and stories rattling around in the car, I played The Cowboy Junkies “Open” CD on that first stretch of I-95 outside of Brunswick.

I don’t sleep most nights,
Just lie awake and count my blessings.

I’ll take this endless life
Of perfect pointless mornings.

I’ll hold you till the morning comes
’cause it’s all that I can do.

I’m so open. I’m so open.

I don’t like these last goodbyes.
I don’t like goodbyes.

I’ll take this endless life of perfect pointless mornings. It’s all that I can do.

Have a listen.

Last Day of the Season

A few days of this beautiful weather and I’m already thinking about loading up the kids and Huck and heading for the woods this weekend! Our family has a hunting camp near the old home place–a spot where we can gather to holler and get dirty and shoot at stuff. (Remember last year when Huck got to be “a real dog, all day?”)

DSCN5636I steer clear of Cowtail when it’s hot, buggy, dry, or when people are shooting at stuff. Even though our 100 acre tract is posted, there ain’t enough orange in the world for me to take my babies into the woods during deer season. I’d even worry about Huck–someone might think they had drawn a bead on the fabled white buck that roams the forest.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with hunting anything we can eat. Shoot a rhino or a hawk or a mockingbird and we have a problem, but if we can grill it or roast it and it’s within the season and the limit, etcetera etcetera…have at it. I don’t shoot guns, but I take my bow and arrows to see if I can hit a balloon off a piece of plywood. I’ve never been one for the noisy kind of hunting.

At Thanksgiving, the nephews were talking about deer hunting and a friend of the family asked Daddy if he was ever much of a deer hunter. Daddy laughed and said, “I hit so many with my truck we didn’t have any space in the freezer for me to hunt.”

Then Daddy told a story that I really get now that I have kids of my own. He said that one year, Joe had finally gotten old enough to go deer hunting and he was beside himself with excitement. He kept asking Daddy to take him, but Daddy put him off time after time because he was too busy. If you don’t know much about deer hunting, it happens in the EARLY morning hours when it’s nice a cold and most people are asleep. It requires hours–to get out to the right spot, settle yourself, and wait. Our dad worked six days a week as a country veterinarian, so it was hard to find the time that hunting required.

Finally, on the last weekend of deer season, Daddy promised Joe that he would take him hunting. Joe could hardly sleep. Next morning, they woke up before dawn and as Daddy was getting his rifle ready, he realized that he was out of bullets. How was he supposed to tell Joe that they couldn’t go after all that waiting?

So they went anyway. He didn’t say a word to Joe about the bullets. They tromped through the woods and climbed up in the stand and waited and waited. Daddy let Joe hold the rifle the whole time. They didn’t spot a single deer, so Joe never had to take a shot.

As Daddy told the story, forty years later, Joe heard the truth for the first time. And judging by the way he laughed, he didn’t mind one bit that the gun was never loaded. He got to go hunting with his dad, just like he had been promised.

Hunting-Season-Is-Over-in-CT

We only have so many mornings to fulfill our promises to our kids. Even when it’s cold and dark and way too early.