Tag Archives: memory

A Moment in the Sun

My friend Jo said she wanted to hear a story about my grandmother, so I’m going to share a little jewel of a story from my childhood that is so precious, I wish I could remember it myself.  My dad tells it to me about once a year and I am glad that he never thinks I tire of hearing it.  I don’t.

I was the youngest child of the youngest child, so at Grandmama Eunice’s house, I was The Baby.  She lived right off the highway about halfway between Gay and Greenville in a rambling white house that burned in 1985.  We had already said goodbye to the house a few years earlier, when she had sold the farm and moved into an apartment near Daddy.  There’s nothing atop that hill now, but I still pull into what’s left of the driveway whenever I drive by.  It’s a strange emptiness for a place that held so many memories.  The emptiness of the now compared to the fullness of then.

If I start from the driveway and that patch of front yard where my parents left the car, I can walk my memory up the cement steps, painted barn red and faced in stone.  It’s probably only two steps across the flat expanse of the cement front porch to the screen door but it seemed like such a way to go back then.  In summer, the door would be flanked by begonias or ferns set on upended fruit crates.  Metal patio chairs in yellow or green waited for the cool hours after sundown when the grownups went out there for a breeze and some story telling.  If my tiny then self walks over to the left edge of the porch–no railing–and looks down, I see deep purple morning glories.  Purple was my Grandmama Eunice’s favorite color.

The flap and creak of the screen door then the rattle of the wide thin glass that took up the top half of her front door.  I step into the warmth of the living room with just one fan moving summer air near the green chenille sofa.  To my right would be a delicate plant stand with last Christmas’ cactus blooming in the light from the window.  A framed picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, his robe the same deep purple as the morning glories.

The hall tree with its beveled mirrors and thick laquer, turned black with years, covered in a pile of my aunts’ purses.  A spindly modern coffee table that held a giant book of Currier and Ives prints and two glass paper weights–one a photo of my father as a curly-headed toddler and one a quiet photo of his father in a Stetson hat, the grandfather none of us had the privilege of knowing.  A brown platform rocker, a basket of Guideposts  and Readers Digests, some bamboo furniture covered in hibiscus fabric left over from the days in Florida.

My memory goes around the room, touching each place, smelling the warm dust in the air. I can’t remember the specific color of the walls–maybe pale blue. But just by writing that, I am overwhelmed by the memory of the light fixture, something I haven’t thought of in years.  It hung on a brown cord from the high ceiling.  There was no switch.  Someone tall had to reach up and over the milky glass globe and pull the chain to turn the bulb on.  Then after they let it go, the light on its long cord would swing back and forth, casting shadows along the length of the room, until enough seconds passed and the pendulum came to rest.

That corner of the living room–the path from the front door to the dining room and kitchen beyond it–that was the high traffic spot in Grandmama Eunice’s house.  To and fro, back and forth, coming and going.  One summer afternoon, we were all at the house for Sunday dinner.  It was a crowd of folks, so maybe my Uncle Charles and Uncle Kenneth had brought their families up from Florida.  That seemed to happen most summers and I loved it.  They were glamorous people with tans and big sedans and they almost always arrived with giant lollipops from Stuckeys.

In the afternoon, the grownups headed for the porch with their bellies full of fried chicken, green beans, sliced tomatoes, sweet tea and started swapping stories as blue Marlboro smoke hung above their heads in the still air.  I remember the way my Aunt Betty’s sandal would tap tap tap against the concrete as she rocked in her chair.  While the other kids were off running and playing, I preferred to sit just inside the screen door, where I could listen to the adults talk.

And that’s the story that Daddy tells.  I was about four.  In the midst of that busy, loud afternoon, I was sitting there cross-legged on the dusky brown carpet, under the watchful eye of a Jesus with plenty on his mind already.  I had found the perfect spot:  a square of sunshine from the screen door, within earshot of the talkers but in front of the fan.

Grandmama walked past me once and said, “Baby?  Don’t you want to go play?”

I shook my head.  She went on her way.

A few minutes later, she came through heading the other direction.  “You OK?”

I nodded.

She came by again, probably with a pitcher of tea.  She stopped in front of me and asked, “Ashley?  What are you DOING?”

I looked up at her and said, “I’m just sitting here being happy.”

And she let me be.

_____________________________

That place is gone.  My Grandmama died twenty years ago and I still think of her every day.  But while writing this and walking through that ghost of a living room, I remembered that I actually received those paper weights from her coffee table after she died.  I’ve had them carefully wrapped up in paper for all these years, waiting to have just the right safe place to put them.  Now I have my writing room and I took them out tonight and gave them a shady place of honor by my reading chair.  My father as a boy with Carlos’ hair, and my grandfather’s quiet eyes, keeping watch over me when I sit in the brown platform rocker from that living room and think my thoughts.

We don’t get to take everyone or every thing from our past, but we get enough.  Enough to be happy, just sitting here.

Samuel Fuller Garrett and Milton Joseph Garrett

Samuel Fuller Garrett and Milton Joseph Garrett

 

I wish I could find a better picture of Grandmama Eunice, but she sure did like purple!

I wish I could find a more dignified picture of Grandmama Eunice, but she sure did like purple!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Convertibles, Some Azaleas, and a $3 Tiller

Friday morning, the strangest thing happened–I was early for work.  Significantly early.  I’m so used to chasing my tail in a rush that I decided to enjoy the 20 minutes of peace and sit in my car.  That lasted about three minutes.  As I stepped out of my SUV then paused to pick up the Diet Coke cans, peanut shells, unsigned permission slips, and My Little Ponys that came rolling out onto the pavement, Cindy pulled up in a white BMW convertible.

Y’all.  Her car is so CLEAN.  I peaked inside and the only thing on the passenger’s side was a little net with a nicely folded shopping bag tucked into it.  Of course, the car is also so small that she had to pop the trunk to get her book out.

I blurted, “I can’t wait to have a tiny car that only has room for ME!”

She said, “Well, when my son turned 16, I gave HIM the minivan and bought myself a convertible.”  Awesome.  And so much easier on the insurance budget.

Drooling over Cindy’s tiny white convertible took me back to a hot Saturday afternoon in April, 2004.  Richard had found an old rotor tiller at the dumpster that only needed a $3 spark plug.  He would have torn up every inch of lawn and put in tomatoes if I had let him.  On Friday night, he had tilled up a space for a vegetable garden and an herb garden.  He was thinking about putting in CORN, but ran out of daylight, thank goodness.

So there we were on a muggy Saturday morning in the bugs and the heat, ripping out the flower beds that run allllllll the way across the front of this house.  Monkey grass and ivy snarled every inch that wasn’t covered in old snaggly holly bushes.  All of it was coming out.  Every blade.  Every prickly leaf.

The $3 tiller lasted about another hour.  Pretty good for our investment, but it left us with hours of work left to do.  We each got a spade and started digging up monkey grass and cussing.  Four, five, six hours later and we finally had the beds cleared down to red dirt.  Then came the cow manure–15 bags to stir into the red clay.   Hoeing, raking, shoveling, stinking.  Ah, homeownership.  And it was HOT.  H-dammit-O-dammit-T.

Richard was never one to quit halfway through a job or to say, “This can wait until tomorrow.”  So as soon as we had the cow manure mixed in, it was time to plant azaleas.  We toodled on over to Cofer’s and dropped a bunch of money on deciduous azaleas, native azaleas, and two little variegated specimens that he bought because they were called “Ashley Marie.”  Sweet.

By dusk, we had it all done.  You know how gardening is in the early stages–dinky and spindly.  I was left underwhelmed after all our efforts.  Neither of us could move.  As we lay there, prostrate on the reawakening spring lawn, one of our neighbors drove by in a tiny white Miata with the top down.  Her strawberry blonde hair sparkled in the last light of day.  She was smiling, and as she drove past, slowly, she checked to make sure we weren’t laying dead in the front yard.  Richard and I each raised a hand in a weak wave and she waved in return before cruising down the hill in her convertible, into the sunset.

In that moment, I so envied her car and her freedom and the energy she had to be kind.  I rolled my head over towards him and said, “I bet her azaleas are already established.  Pfffffft.”  I felt myself looking forward, into the spring days ahead that wouldn’t require all that back breaking work.  The days where I would awaken to a yard filled with flowers and a tiny white convertible all my own.

I still don’t have the silly car, but I do have the flowers.  Every spring, they make me smile, remembering all that sweat and toil.  Working on something together.  I think he would have loved how they turned out.

1965533_10202736921417182_988160247059854365_o

10256779_10202736920977171_2852590615960310637_o

1978471_10202736920177151_5283767278873264285_o

 

Cherry Blossoms

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.

 

cherry-blossom-6418_1920

Let’s Go Krug-ering

I blame Jay-Z and my childhood friend Mollie Battenhouse for this story…

This afternoon, I stood in a daze before the fancy champagne case at Kroger.  The wine guy walked past me and asked, “Are you finding what you’re looking for?”  I, pushing a cart filled with sugar cookie mix, green sprinkles, macaroni, ground beef and–gasp–watermelon flavored toothpaste, felt like a total fraud.

“Oh,” I giggled, “I’m just daydreaming.”  He must have been bored because he came over to stand beside me even though I couldn’t have been putting out the “I’m looking for a $300 bottle of champagne” vibe.  He nodded toward the carefully locked case and asked, “Which one are you thinking about?”

I pointed to the bright gold label on the Veuve-Clicquot.  “My sister and I drank several bottles of that in Chicago a few years back.  I didn’t know I was pregnant with my daughter.”  He laughed.  “When she was born, I bought that one–I pointed to the Billecart-Salmon rose with the subtle pink label–to celebrate the day we brought her home from the hospital.”   Next I waved to the elegant dark blue Pommery.  “I drank a bottle of that one year on New Year’s Eve, in Paris–all by myself.”  His eyebrows climbed higher and he laughed, “That sounds like a good night!”  It wasn’t, but that had nothing to do with the champagne.  I didn’t tell him how sad I had been that night, how I had cried at a table for one.  Instead, I asked–

krugomot“Do you carry Krug?”

He started with a little flutter, “A vintage?  I, uh, I can get that for you.”

It was my turn to flutter.  “Oh, I probably won’t do it, but having a bottle of champagne like that is on my bucket list.”  And thanks to Mollie and Jay-Z, I had woken up that Saturday dreaming about fine champagne.  Mollie is a wine expert in New York and her birthday was this week.  She mentioned on Facebook that she enjoyed Krug champagne with her birthday lunch.  Ahhhhhh.  And my friend, Saralyn has tickets to see Jay-Z coming up.  All that–plus the Nyquil and humidifier–cooked in my brain last night and morphed into a dream.

In the dream I was at a small venue Jay-Z concert, like a hotel ballroom.  I was wandering around before the show started when Jay-Z pulled up his gunmetal gray pickup truck right in front of me and parked it by the stage.  Pickup truck, you ask?  Well, OF COURSE–he had amps and stuff in the back.  I helped him tote a couple of cables and told him that I was looking forward to the show.  He said, “Hey, thanks for helping–drink Kansas City Royals v New York Yankeessome of this with me.”  He took out a giant bottle of Krug and poured me a plastic cup full to the rim.  Delightful! I remember looking down at the golden glow and watching the small bubbles dance.  I remember the cool feel of the cup in my hand, just the right temperature.  I took a sip and it was the best thing I had ever tasted.  I thanked Jay and made my way back to my seat.  I remember thinking in the dream how lucky I was to have something so rare, right there in my hand.  Just another Friday night in my head.

So….what WAS I doing looking for Krug in Kroger?

I really do want to plop down hard-earned money on a world class bottle of champagne one day.  It won’t become a habit, but it’s just something I’d like to experience.  Some people dream of blowing money on a Chanel bag or taking a cruise–I’d rather sit down in a pleasant spot with a pleasant friend and treat ourselves to a bottle of something magical.  Like a 1928 Krug.

In the year between Richard’s passing and when I started to date again, I discovered the mystery of fine wine.  My sister took me to dinner at Gramercy Tavern in New York about a month after Richard died.  The restaurant and the people in it were all so beautiful that I fought feelings of guilt when we were first seated.  It felt odd to be so carefree, on a lark.  I’ll never forget the first dish–pate de foie gras on toast points with a side of ramps soaked in vinegar, paired with a chilly Sauternes.  I didn’t even know what a ramp was then, and I thought Sauternes was supposed to be for dessert, but I dove in.  The combination proved sublime.  I almost cried at the table because I felt such sudden joy–that some chef decided to make this, that my sister had brought me here, that I was alive to enjoy it.  Goose liver and bread and tiny spring onions, vinegar and sugar twirled together on my palate to remind me just how much fun it is to experience the world through my senses.

Inspired by that meal, I spent a few Tuesday nights at the local wine shop for tastings.  Wine excited me because there was so much to know about it that I could never learn it all and it was a relief to me–at that late sad point in my life–to discover that there was something so new out there to explore.

alvear-pedro-ximenez-1927-e1367699508617I once invested in a half case of Pedro Ximenes Alvear Solera 1927 because I was so intrigued by the vintage.  This dessert wine is created by blending a little bit of each vintage–all the way back to 1927.  The blending gives the wine a richness and depth that you can’t get from just one year.  When the first grapes for that Solera were picked, my grandfather was 25 years old.  No one knew about World War II.

My grandfather died that spring, a year after Richard did.  He lived to be 103.  Richard made it to 38.  When I sipped that sweet wine in 2006, I was tasting the sunlight and the rain from all those years, all swirling together into this moment, this day.  The beauty of wine for me is that every bottle captures a moment and in that moment, a world.

I guess that’s what I was daydreaming about, there in the Kroger wine aisle.  I haven’t had much time or money to explore wine since the kids came along, but I still like the idea of it.  Those days will come again and one day, maybe Gay and I will take Vivi to France.  It’s all one life.  The macaroni days and the champagne days.

Oda a la Alegría

Oh, this.  This makes my heart thankful.  

It’s a good thing I was the only one in the office Wednesday afternoon, because I clicked this link and within two minutes I was sobbing into a wad of tissues.

Yes, I know it’s an ad for a bank.  Yes, I know it’s a year old.  Yes, I know it’s all staged.  But that doesn’t make it not beautiful.

Take five minutes away from the bustle of today and let yourself travel to this bright town square in Spain.  Let the Ode to Joy start small and let it grow in your chest, let it leak out of your eyes and make your shoulders shake.  It’s joy.  That’s the path joy takes.  Joy doesn’t start with the crescendo.  It begins with a single note.  That’s why it’s hard to spot sometimes in its early stages.

Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, is my favorite piece of music, #1, hands down, not even close.  That’s why I chose it for the recessional music when Fartbuster and I got married.  And why I chose it as the recessional music when Richard and I got married.

Then a short while later, his parents and I were planning his memorial service with the priest and there in the list of suggested music for the recessional was “Ode to Joy.” Joy?  At a funeral?

I chose it.  (wait…gotta do some more crying…)

I don’t remember everything from that service, but I do remember the way that music swelled from the organ after all the words had been said.  I remember the soaring sound made by hundreds of our friends and family as they sang the modern English lyrics:  “Ever singing march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife; Joyful music lifts us sunward in the triumph song of life!” I felt a great sense of relief that the service had been perfectly fitting for Richard.  I felt…joy.  Joy at having had that one thing go right.  The music carried me out of the sanctuary and on to the next part of life.

I wish you joy today.  Among all the leftovers and hangovers and overdrafts and overpasses–STOP.  Like those people in the square in Spain, all they had to do was stop and listen to joy.

Now cut me some white meat and pass the cranberry sauce!  

Boots

 

 

We're a little out of focus but our boots look cute!

We’re a little out of focus but our boots look cute!

Yesterday I wrote about Dora; today I’m thinking about Boots.  But not Dora’s blue monkey with the red boots.

One night last week, we limped back to the apartment after walking around New York all day.  My sister flopped down on the couch.  She propped her elegant black leather boots up on the Ikea coffee table.  “Hey, Vivi–come over here for a second.”

Vivi looked up at her from the plastic safari animals that she was arranging on the carpet.  “Why?”

Gay laughed.  “I need you to do me a favor.  Help me get these boots off.”  Vivi gave her a quizzical look and went back to the safari.

My sister managed to tug one boot but it was a struggle.  I stepped up.  I cupped one hand around the heel, braced my other hand across the arch then gave a gentle tug.  The boot slipped right off.  It’s been 35 years since I helped someone take off a boot, but I didn’t have to think.  It’s all about coming at it from the right angle.

I told Vivi, “You have to learn how to pull boots off if you’re the shortest person in the family.  I used to help Papa pull off his boots when he came home from working all day.”

My dad wore real cowboy boots, boots for working around actual cows.  Heavy cows, skittish cows, cows with sharp hooves, cows that manufacture manure.   Boots that spent some nights out on the porch, airing out.  About once a year, he’d bring home a new pair of boots in a sharp-sided square box with the Dingo label on the outside.  Or Justin.  Not Luchesse or Tony Lama, no ostrich skin or Lone Star cutouts.  Brown leather with a squarish heel.  These were boots you could pick up at the feed store.

That reminds me of a joke:  How can you tell the difference between a real cowboy and a fake cowboy?  With a real cowboy, the shit’s on the outside of his boots.

Hey, that reminds me of another joke:  He’s so stupid he couldn’t pour shit out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

That goes to show you:  I associate boots with manure.  Cow shit is just part of growing up around cows.  No big deal.  Nothing personal.  But here’s the funny part.  A little whiff of cow manure, mixed with some hay and sunshine–that’s one of my favorite smells.  It takes me back to hanging on the side of a cow pen fence or climbing out of the truck to open a gate.  

Helping my sister with her boots made me happy.  It took me back to a time when I was small but useful.  I had a job to do in our family and it gave my dad some relief at the end of a long day.  

What’s the smell that takes your right back to being a kid?  

Daddy Went to the Store

daddy storeThe baby has been sick for a couple of days so I’m behind on the grocery shopping.  G came home tonight and we decided that he would run to Kroger for some sandwiches and essentials.  I requested much-needed Diet Coke and an Italian sandwich.  He wrote those in a list and added milk, fruit and something for breakfast.  Vivi requested a treat, “something Halloween but not pumpkin flavor.”  (That’s my girl!)

Here’s what he brought home an hour later:

12 pack of Diet Coke
bottle of wine (for Mama, because the man is no fool)
2 bags of yogurt berry rice cakes
2 jars of peanut butter
NutriGrain bars
cornichons
stuffed grape leaves
Dalmatian fig preserves
brie
pepper crackers
gallon of milk
one Boar’s Head Authentic Italian hoagie
2 quarts of strawberries
1 pint of blackberries
8 green bananas
3 cans of Axe body spray
2 tubes of Old Spice deodorant
razor blades
dozen chocolate chip cookies
dozen glow in the dark cupcakes with 100% unnatural ingredients
 
TOTAL:  $124.75 (For dinner, he and I had to split the sandwich and feed Vivi an old can of chicken noodle soup.  But we did discover that she likes cornichons.)

Hey, it’s his money–he can blow it on blackberries in October if he chooses to.  He did a kind thing, bringing treats for all of us.  

And the whole episode reminded me of the utter delight I felt as a kid when Daddy went to the grocery store.  Back then, my dad worked six days a week as a country veterinarian.  Sometimes on Saturday, he’d swing by O’Neal’s Grocery on the way home at lunch.  He came in the yellow front door with a wooden case of RC Colas clinking against each other.  A plump loaf of Sunbeam bread and a stack of fresh-sliced baloney (not bologna, BALONEY) to fry up for sandwiches with bright yellow mustard.  Bags of salty potato chips and some Mayfield chocolate almond ice cream getting soft on the top from the 7 mile drive.  


Best of all in my young eyes, he’d even bring a People magazine with Three’s Company or Mork and Mindy on the cover.  Oh, bliss on a Saturday afternoon.   A cold RC.  A belly full of fried baloney sandwiches.  Greasy potato chip fingertips rubbing the ink off the corner of shiny magazine pages as I read and read and read.  We didn’t live on this kind of food and we didn’t live for this kind of food, but it sure did perk up a same old Saturday back in the day.  


So I’ll be the one who goes to the grocery store and buys things in season and whole grains and fresh fresh fresh.  G can be the one who brings home the glow in the dark cupcakes.  That’s what daddies do.