Sooey, Pig, Pig, Pig!

At the end of May I saw this Facebook conversation between my sister and an old family friend:

I wanted to get in on that conversation, but if I'd posted there, I'd have felt obligated to acknowledge forty-some-odd other posts by "liking" them, and I just didn't have the energy. I decided to put in my two cents here, where things are quieter.

I'm pretty sure the wild hog incident occurred in 1958, the second summer we lived in Texas and our second visit to Keith's parents' camp at Cow Creek. As former city girls, this was as close to roughing it as my sister and I had ever come, but nothing had prepared us for the wild hogs. I say "hogs," but they were pigs, really--big enough but not yet full-grown. And I say "wild" because they behaved wildly, even though it turned out they belonged to someone.

It was early summer, a month or two before my little brother was born. I was 15, my sister Judy was 11, and I believe Keith would have been about five. Here's a photo of Mother and me at the camp. Click on the picture and look how pretty she was, all happy and expectant. (She was 34. I was excited about the idea of a new baby in the family but embarrassed because people would know by Mother's obvious pregnancy that she'd been having sex at her advanced age.)

We didn't know that marauding pigs had invaded the camp while we swam and played all afternoon in cool, brown creek water. When we climbed up the bank at the campsite,  they greeted us, oinking loudly, racing here and there, rooting around in our overturned ice chests in search of one more morsel of food. They had already eaten everything we'd brought. (I think Judy was right about the number of pigs, but the way they were running around, it's easy to see why a little kid like Keith might have thought there were more of them.)

With dusk approaching and nothing left to eat for supper, the men talked each other into catching one of the pigs to roast. They found some rope and, through trial and error, eventually set up a respectable snare. They had plenty of time to work on it; the pigs didn't seem to be as afraid of us as we were of them and continued running around, making serpentine paths through the camp area. It didn't take too long before one pig stepped into the noose, and Judy or Keith or somebody pulled the rope and caught it, by one hind leg if I recall correctly. One of the men struck the trapped pig with an axe, and the other pigs went nuts.

You never heard such squealing.

That's when the men shooed us women and children away from all the unpleasantness. We didn't want to be there anyway while they finished killing the injured pig, then butchered it. I don't remember seeing the sheriff Keith mentioned, but I do recall encountering the old farmer as we walked down the narrow dirt road away from camp. He wore overalls, a long-sleeved shirt in spite of he heat, and a dirty, floppy hat. He had a shotgun propped over his right shoulder. He looked at us suspiciously as he passed by, striding quickly toward the camp, but he didn't say a word. Neither did we.

We didn't walk much farther after that, just stood around and toed the loose dirt while we speculated about what was happening between the men and the farmer. By the time one of the dads walked close enough to see us and shout for us to come back, the farmer was gone and so were the pigs, except for the one that was just being hoisted over the fire. Later that night I heard some talk about money that had changed hands: the agreed-upon market price of one half-grown pig minus the estimated cost of the groceries they'd consumed.

It would be another 14 years before Deliverance would come out in movie theaters, but I've seen that film half a dozen times since then, and the old man in it has always made me think of the scary-looking old farmer we met the day of our wild pig adventure. I've never forgotten the chaos or the squealing or the creepy feeling of waiting on that dirt road while the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. I remember that captured pig, too. I didn't intend to eat a bite of it, considering its unfortunate demise and the fact that I'd never before eaten meat that I'd met personally in its live form. It took a while for the pig to cook, though, and hunger, along with a sensational aroma, overcame my convictions. Best pork I ever ate!

******

If you can't see the Deliverance video below, click on Watch on YouTube. (And don't worry, this is the Dueling Banjos scene where the old man dances, not the horrible "pig" scene.)

Thanks to Floris Verschuren for posting the video on YouTube.

April Already?

This year is whizzing by! Allergy season has arrived and has brought with it a couple of intense bouts of vertigo, during which I could do nothing but lie flat on the bed and watch my dresser and chest of drawers pass by again and again. Fortunately, antihistamines and this exercise seem to have stopped the spinning for now.

The new thyroid medicine has kicked in, and I'm feeling much better than I did a couple of months ago. The sunshine and warmer temperatures helped, too, of course. My spirits would probably be even higher if my summer clothes still fit. Thank goodness for the lightweight, stretchy knits we call "activewear." What a misnomer that is!

The weather this week has been beautiful, warm enough that the little anole lizards are out and about, which makes Gimpy just about the happiest dog on the planet. Every time he steps out the door, he closely inspects the drain pipes, the patio furniture, the spaces between slats in the privacy fence--all the places where lizards hide. He almost never catches one (thank goodness!), but it isn't for lack of trying.

Kim hosted a small dinner party last weekend, and my Goldendoodle boys seemed to think they were the guests of honor. Levi placed his ball in front of each person in turn, allowing everyone a chance to throw it for him, eventually narrowing the players down to one or two people who could throw the farthest. Gimpy played ball, too, but his main objective for the evening seemed to be making sure he left no chin unlicked.

One of Kim's guests had a charming accent (Mississippi, I think). When he spoke of "one feller who had a 'dee-limmer,'" I chuckled to myself at the quaint pronunciation and listened more closely, trying to determine what the fellow's dilemma was. Turns out Kim's friend was talking about clearing trees off some property. What the guy actually had was a delimber, a machine that removes the limbs from cut-down trees. My bad. Who knew there was such a thing?

Speaking of words, the Life Writing class I've enjoyed so much has been canceled, along with all the other LSU-sponsored classes in this parish. Our last class was Monday. It seems that enrollment was so low that the classes weren't cost-effective for LSU. That disappoints me, though I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that continuing education and artistic or intellectual pursuits aren't high on the bucket lists of many people in this small-town community. What delights me is that the members of our Life Writing class have decided to continue meeting and writing together on our own. We've found a meeting place and will start next week. Yay, us!

I'm looking forward to Sunday, when I'll get to spend time with kids, grandkids and great-grandkids all at one time. Those get-togethers are precious to me, and I hope you get to share the holiday with those you love most, too. Happy Easter, y'all!

"...there is a season"

November is my favorite month, the month of my birthday, of Thanksgiving, of cooling temperatures and, for much of the nation, of colored leaves swirling through the air, sometimes followed days later by snowflakes. This year the colors of Louisiana's November have been bolder than ever--maybe no match for the vivid reds I remember from early years spent in Missouri, but quite pleasing nonetheless.

Kim and I spent Thanksgiving Day at Kelli's house, where the food was wonderful and the company even better. Before leaving Kelli's, I sat on a stool next to three-year-old Olivia. "I had fun with you today," I told her.

"Yes," she replied, with a smile on her face and a cookie in her hand. "We laughed."

Indeed we did. We laughed a lot, and I'm grateful that each of the children and grandchildren in our family was born with a sense of humor.

We left Kelli's late in the afternoon, needing to be home in time to give the dogs their supper. Kim drove, and I sat in the shotgun seat and aimed my camera through the windshield. The sun was in our eyes, and as it sank lower and lower during the course of our twenty-minute ride, it lit the trees from behind, causing the translucent leaves to grow brighter with each mile we traveled.

On that day I recognized how much I have to be thankful for. I still do. I always do, yet November, beautiful as it is, has been a hard month. Colder weather has made my knees hurt. My feet, having known the freedom of sandals for months now, are not happy about having to wear more substantial shoes. All the pants that fit me a month ago are too tight now. Comfort food is not my friend.

Even as I am grateful on a larger scale, I am frequently irritated on the small scale that weighs the success of individual days. My coping skills don't seem to be functioning as well as usual. Little tasks (such as calling the doctor to find out why two long-term prescriptions that expired were renewed for one month only) require more effort than I've been able to muster up, yet must be done before we get much deeper into holiday-related office closures. I'm comfortable with routine (set in my ways?), and holidays disrupt it.

I'm getting old. I've never been a high-energy person, and I find I'm getting tired more easily now than I used to. As much as I like November, its physical changes remind me that life is seasonal, that slowing down is a natural process, followed in the plant world by the process of shutting down, either temporarily or permanently and, if nature intends it to be so, followed then by a period of rebirth.

I am aware that a life span is finite, that burying myself between the pages of a book is a lovely way to spend a cold autumn afternoon but not the most productive way to use the remainder of the unknown number of days allotted to me. There are things I need to do.

These thoughts about mortality are caused partly by the changing of the seasons and partly by the notice I received yesterday that my online friend and fellow blogger, Patsy, has passed away following a long illness. Considering words Patsy herself has written about her suffering and her faith, perhaps she was ready to reach this final milestone. I will miss her wit and her wisdom.

I am not ready. Not yet. The splendid colors of the season remind me to take care of business while there's still time.

**********

The song is "Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)," written by Pete Seeger, performed by The Byrds.
Thanks to mhcaillesrn for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Preparing for the Inevitable

Life writing class has officially ended until February. I will miss those weekly get-togethers with strong, good-humored, thinking women. Our last assignment, just in time for Halloween, was to write our own obituaries. Wait...if you think you've already read this, you haven't; we did the same assignment last October, and I wrote about it then. There were a couple of new people in class this session, so the newbies wrote their obituaries for the first time, and the rest of us gussied up our old ones.

I rather liked the hippy-dippy "child of the universe" obit I'd done previously, so I didn't change too much about it. I did reduce my guesstimated age at death from 90 to 86, having read an actuarial table earlier in the week. But who knows? I may kill myself any day now if the phone doesn't stop ringing with political robocalls.

Anyway, in the spirit of the assignment, I wrote about somebody else's funeral that was the kind of informal send-off I want for myself, and I also wrote this little piece:

Notice of Death

(to be published in the event of my untimely demise

if I have correctly predicted the cause of it)

Linda (Last Name) died today.

She fell and hit her head, they say,

Tripped on Lucy, underfoot,

Alive one minute, then kaput!

Lucy

Teen Town, 'Tween Town

A couple of years ago my cousin Karen sent me a manila envelope full of letters I'd written to her between 1955 and 1957. Deep down I'd always known I was a geeky, awkward adolescent, not one of the cool kids, and any shred of doubt I might have had about that was erased when I read those letters nearly sixty years after I wrote them. This one, dated Jan. 15, 1957, is a good example:

At my current age I don't have the patience to turn that letter upside down and all around to read what I wrote back then, although the straightforward, left-to-right section in the bottom left-hand corner jumps out at me: "You bet I saw Elvis on T.V. the other night. I wouldn't have missed it for anything."

I was not alone in the geeky department. Karen wrote back to me in invisible ink, as evidenced by my next letter to her, dated January 24, 1957:

See how I oh-so-cleverly replaced all the punctuation marks with the spelled-out names of the punctuation marks? Gah!

Anyway, here's a translation of the second paragraph of the second letter: "I guess I haven't told you about Springfield's new Teen Town, have I? I really like it! We have dancing, ping pong, and bowling. There is also a television set. It is open on Friday and Saturday nights from seven to eleven o'clock. Most of the time we use the juke box for music, but once a month we will have a dance band. There is a snack bar where we can get hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, candy bars, ice cream, et cetera. We can also get almost any flavor of pop for a nickel. The first night of Teen Town they had free cokes and potato chips. Tommy [my ninth-grade boyfriend] drank nine cokes that night. It opened January fifth and I have gone one night each weekend since then. I sure do hope it succeeds."

The letters may be those of a silly little girl, but it was the budding young woman inside her who showed up regularly at Teen Town. What I've remembered all these years isn't the junk food or the ping pong or the bowling. On the rare occasions when Teen Town has crossed my mind since the last time I was there, what I've remembered is slow-dancing with Tommy to this song:

The song is "Gone," by Ferlin Husky.
Thanks to Michael Daigle for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

"That Window You Never Fixed"

Before I retired in 2009 I frequently took CDs to the office so John, my boss and good friend, and David, another attorney in the office, also a good friend, could listen to one song or another I thought they mght like. They did the same thing sometimes. Later, with the advent of YouTube, we graduated to music videos. John wasn't much into computers, but even before he learned how to send an email, he mastered accessing his favorite tunes on YouTube.

Sometime in the last few months of work I heard a bittersweet Ryan Adams song that strongly reminded me of John, but I never played that one for him. The "Dear John" of the song title was deceased. Even though I loved the poignancy of the lyrics, John was going through major health issues at the time, and putting the thoughts and feelings of a widow in his head wouldn't have been kind.

John had excellent skills as an attorney and as a sportsman but readily admitted that household repairs were beyond his capabilities. I'm not sure he could have hung a picture on the wall by himself if his life had depended on it. Like many of us, I imagine, he excelled at the things that interested him and chose not to bother with those that didn't. More even than the fact of his name in the title, it was this verse of the song that brought him instantly to mind:

"Ten years pass

And I ended up with a house full of cats,

But most of them went missing

Through that window you never fixed,

The door you never latched."

Some parts of the lyrics don't apply at all (is art ever perfect?), but isn't it interesting how our brains can override the non-applicable parts and focus like a laser on the words that matter to us?

After the sad events of this week, this one was destined to be today's Saturday Song Selection:

The song is "Dear John" by Ryan Adams.

Thanks to Macfae for posting the video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Best. Funeral. Ever.

John's funeral today was not a traditional one. There was a visitation service from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., followed by an hour-long celebration of life. By the time I arrived at the funeral home shortly after noon, the noise level of the visitors had reached a buzz that could be heard clear down the hall. There was a steady procession of people milling about, all talking at once, catching up with old friends, telling stories, hugging, shoulder-clapping. If there'd been drinks and hors d'oeuvres, you'd have sworn you were at a party.
I'm sure things would have been more subdued if there'd been a body there, but John had requested that he be cremated.

So many people: lawyers and judges in suits and ties and younger men, those whom John had taught to hunt and fish, wearing camouflage in his honor. His own hooded camouflage jacket was hung up and displayed with a handful of his duck calls, reminding me of the quacking noises that frequently emanated from his office when I least expected them. His life was well represented among the family and friends who loved him and who gathered in that large chapel.

There was no priest or pastor leading the service, using the opportunity to indulge in seemingly obligatory soul-saving amid a few brief remarks about the deceased. That's okay if you like that, if you want that, but it's always kind of bothered me. It's almost always seemed insincere--like a paid advertisement for Jesus at an event where people need healing, not to be reminded that their mortal souls are in jeopardy.  

Instead, John's son, Charlie, had written a beautifully moving tribute to him which was read aloud by a friend at the beginning of the memorial service. In it Charlie expressed what his dad had meant to him and why and recounted the life lessons John had taught him. Among those, reinforced by specific anecdotes, were the importance of living life honestly and honorably and the equal importance of living it to the fullest.

John's best friend, Ralph, gave the eulogy. He began by saying how honored he was to have been asked to do so. He said he'd started to write a speech, then thought, "Wait a minute! If I had died and John was going to give my eulogy, what would he do? He'd wing it." And so Ralph did. He spoke from his heart about John's love of his family, his passion for hunting and fishing, his forthrightness, his love of a good argument, his contrariness--all the facets of his personality that made him a unique human being. "He was a character," Ralph said. That he was.

For the first time ever I left a funeral feeling uplifted instead of mournful. I walked out of there with a keen awareness that I'm alive and that it's up to each of us to pay attention to all the possibilities that are open to us, to make the best of the time we have left. I feel energized and inspired.

What a gift!

I loved this celebration of life and love. I know John would have loved it. And I'm pretty sure God would give it an A+, too.

John

Yesterday I lost a good friend. His wife, also my friend, called early to tell me that he had died in the wee hours of the morning. As far as anyone knows so far, the cause of death was a heart attack. Ironically, it's been almost seven years to the day since the first and only time I wrote about his heart condition, and he's had his ups and downs since then. Lately, I'm told, he's had mostly ups.

He was a good man and a successful, well-liked lawyer. He cared about the clients who could pay him and the ones he knew probably never would. Unless he was scheduled for court, where a suit was required, he showed up for work in starched, neatly-ironed jeans. It was common to walk into his office and find him kicked back with his cowboy boots up on his desk, a big stack of law books on the floor beside him and another book open in his lap. He liked to listen to music while he worked, everything from opera to zydeco, and it makes me smile to remember how many times he cussed the CD player when he couldn't make it play what he wanted to hear.

On slow days we had time for long talks about hunting and fishing (he talked, I listened), dogs (his and mine), books, movies, and other people. We argued sometimes (which lawyers like to do and so do I) when we veered into discussions about various aspects of politics and religion. More than a few times we speculated about whether or not there is an afterlife. Today I find myself oddly envious of the fact that he now knows for sure.

He had called me Christmas morning. We spoke for only a few moments then (he said he still had his brothers and others to call). He asked about my family, I asked about his, and he laughed as he told me about the new love in his life, a Yorkshire Terrier that had recently joined his family. He sounded really good.

He's touched a lot of lives, and a lot of people are going to miss him. As sad as it is, I felt much better yesterday after going to his house and spending time with his family. The stories about him were already flowing there, stories about things he's said and done over the course of his lifetime, enough of those stories to keep everyone who knew him laughing for years. We'll shed tears every time it hits us anew that he's gone, but when we remember him, when we think about who he really was, it'll be impossible not to smile through the tears.

You were one of a kind, John. I hope the hereafter was ready for you.

When I Was "Little Susie"

While I was writing about the Everly Brothers the other day, I recalled an event that happened when I was 18 years old. It won't do any good to tell you about it unless you remember this portion of the lyrics to the Everly Brothers' song, "Wake Up Little Susie":

"Wake up little Susie, wake up

Wake up little susie, wake up

We both fell sound asleep

Wake up little Susie and weep

The movie's over, it's four o'clock

And we're in trouble deep"

It was the spring of 1961, three months after I'd broken up with a man I'd end up marrying later that same year. At the law office where I'd worked since the previous spring, we had a new girl, Jude, who became a good friend. Jude was determined I would not sit around and mope after the breakup. She'd gone to a different high school than I did and immediately set about introducing me to a few boys she knew from school. They were nice boys, and I enjoyed meeting them and spending time with them. Most of them were a little on the country side compared to my own classmates, not that that was a problem. Except for Sidney.

Sidney was a greaser. He was Danny Zuko from Grease and Fonzie from Happy Days long before I ever heard of those characters. He wore the jeans, the black leather jacket and the motorcycle boots, and he slicked his hair back in the same ducktail hairstyle. There were no gangs in our East Texas town; the only other person I ever saw there who dressed like Sidney was a recent transplant from the Bronx.

Jude assured me that Sidney was a nice guy in spite of his cool, tough guy image, and when he asked me to go with him to the drive-in movie one night, I agreed. Jude was right: Sidney was nice. He had good manners. He opened the car door for me, offered popcorn and a soft drink from the concession stand, and, when the movie started, he stayed on his side of the car.

I don't remember what movie was playing, but it wasn't interesting enough to keep me awake. I didn't get enough sleep in those days and had a habit of falling asleep as soon as I relaxed in a semi-dark place. Sidney must have had the same issues.

The next thing I knew, he was waking me up. It was two o'clock in the morning. We were the only car in the parking lot, and the only lights we could see came from the moon and the stars. I knew my mother would be angry and doubted seriously that she would believe my true story about what had happened. Sidney apologized and said he'd have me home in five minutes.

But his car wouldn't start. The battery was dead, and there was no one around to jump us off. I could have walked to my house--we could see the movie screen from our front yard--but I wasn't about to take a walk at that time of night. So, Sidney took off walking while I sat in his car alone in the drive-in parking lot. I don't know where he went, the hospital across the highway maybe, but he walked somewhere to make a phone call. He called his mother.

Poor Sidney. Something is wrong in the universe when a guy in a black leather jacket has to call his mother to jump off his ride in the middle of the night. Especially when he's on a date. That is not cool. He knew it, and I knew the embarrassment was killing him.

His mother came, and the two of them drove me home in her car. If I remember correctly, she did have enough compassion to let Sidney drive it. Sidney walked me to the door--his shoulders slumped all the way--apologized again, and politely said goodnight. I assume they went back to the drive-in after that and got his car started. (My mother slept through the whole thing--never had any idea how late I got home.)

Sidney never asked me out again. I didn't blame him. Once or twice in the months that followed before I married and moved away, Sidney and I would spot one another among the throngs of teenagers circling the parking lot at Zack's. We would acknowledge each other with a subtle wave and a sympathetic expression, then go our separate ways.

Those tough guys? Sometimes they're the tenderest inside.

Yesterday We All Died Laughing

Yesterday nine women--eight students and one instructor, all over the age of sixty--squeezed around an oval table in a pleasantly decorated room at the local center for senior citizens and took turns reading aloud to each other. It was the last class of our six-week session of Life Writing, and we were reading the homework that had been assigned at the end of the previous class: to write our own obituaries. Does that sound like fun?

You can't imagine how much fun it was. For one thing, we had snacks, brought from home to celebrate the completion of our writing course. We filled Halloween-themed paper plates with hummus and carrots, crackers and dip, caramel popcorn and fun-sized candy bars, then we chomped and chewed through eight recitations of death notices and the boiled-down biographies that accompanied them.

I think most, if not all, of us approached the assignment reluctantly, and, judging by the end results, we each approached it from a unique perspective. There were basic similarities, of course--names, dates, and lists of survivors--but there was so much more than that. The collection of readings ranged from poignant to humorous, from brief to expansive. There were burial instructions, last wishes, expressions of faith and love, and even some softly sung phrases from favorite funeral hymns. The experience we'd expected to be morbid turned out to be beautiful.

In between the readings, we talked. We talked about mortality, our own and that of loved ones, about special moments we'd personally experienced at funerals, about final gestures of love for the deceased. We spoke of the ridiculously high cost of publishing obituaries in the newspapers. We laughed about how squeamish our adult children are when it comes to discussing death and the decisions to be made in its aftermath. Somehow, in the years that have passed since we were their ages, we've begun to make peace with the inevitable. It was freeing to discuss end-of-life issues and ideas openly, to bat them around with no greater sentiment than if we were discussing plans for an upcoming ladies' luncheon.

The six-week Life Writing course that ended yesterday was the second session I've attended, the third for some, the first for others. Our instructor drives a long way to and from each class, but she keeps coming back, keeps urging us to dig deeper, write more, go into detail, tell our truths so that those who come after us can learn who we were and how we lived. And we do. We write about things that matter to us; in that way we get to know each other better and faster than we might if we were to meet under other circumstances. We write, we read, and along the way we build trust and friendship.

We're all different, the nine of us, and it's those differences that keep our stories fresh and interesting. What's most important about our stories, though, what makes us care about them and their writers, is that they remind us of the countless ways in which we're all the same.

Yesterday's class was reminiscent of the time just after a funeral's over, when family members and close friends gather at home, pull off their neckties or kick off their high-heeled shoes, eat comfort food from covered dishes delivered by thoughtful neighbors, and swap favorite anecdotes about the dear departed. They know there'll be plenty more crying in the days to come, but right at that moment it feels so darned good to laugh again.

A Concert for the Disconcerted

Dictionary.com describes it this way:

dis-con-cert-ed [dis-kuh n-sur-tid]

adjective

1. disturbed, as in one's composure or self-possession; perturbed; ruffled: She was disconcerted by the sudden attack on her integrity.
2. bewildered or confused, as by something unexpected: The class was disconcerted by the instructor's confusion.

I would describe it like this:  It's been a hell of a week.

Blogging is difficult when my head and my heart are occupied elsewhere. I sat here yesterday looking at a blank "compose" screen for a long time, giving up on it because my thoughts were too scattered to post even a simple Saturday Song Selection. 

This morning I awoke with more clarity, able to uncork my feelings and let them flow, understanding that I don't have to be strong every minute, that bending like a willow can keep someone from breaking. Also, in between writing the last sentence and this one, I've had phone calls from two of a few special people who are my rocks: I know I can always count on them. Furthermore, if I imagine myself standing in a circle with those people, I can look at them one by one and identify their rocks, too; they each have a supportive network of others to look out for them. That's how we roll when it's our turn to be rocks.

With that in mind, I'm giving myself permission to post a Saturday Song on Sunday this week, because I now know exactly the right song to fit the situation (even if you don't like country music). If you ever find yourself feeling as though someone has tossed a nestful of angry hornets into your lap and you don't know where to swat first, remember that the people who are your rocks want you to know this:

______________________________________

The song is "I Won't Let Go," by Rascal Flatts.

Thanks to DieHardCreations for posting the song and its lyrics on YouTube.

"All a Part of Me"

I know who I am:

I am Lola Fern's granddaughter ...

I have eyes shaped like my father's ...

and, to borrow a song lyric, 

"my mama's still my biggest fan."

Though I didn't know that part about my mother in her lifetime, I'm pretty sure of it now. Well, maybe she's not my biggest fan, but she's up there somewhere close to the top of the list. Otherwise, why would I sense her spirit--her happy spirit--around me so often now, more than thirteen years after her death? It's as if she knows how much I missed her support when I needed it most and is doing her best to make up for it. Doing a good job of it, too.

I feel very lucky to live near my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I often miss the members of my family who live so far away. When I hear from them, it's as if a missing piece of me has been plugged back into place. Within a 24-hour-period that began this past Thursday night, I was blessed with phone calls from my half-brother in California, my stepmother in another part of California, an aunt in Missouri, and my stepsister in Texas. It was as if electrical current flowed through all those wireless phone connections, twisting our loose ends together, soldering them in place, leaving me recharged with the essence and energy of each of those people who mean so much to me. 

I didn't always know who I was, but I do know now, and I know that the people who have touched my life in meaningful ways have made me better than I could have possibly been without them. Not that I'm anywhere near as good as I could be. I also know that we never stop learning and growing, that nothing nurtures personal growth more than the loving support of family and friends, and that we may not even realize how much we need that kind of nurturing until we get it.

I got plenty of it this week, and it sure feels good.

This week's Saturday Song Selection addresses the strength that comes from feeling connected to a group of people who know you, understand you, and love you anyway. God bless every one of 'em.

The song is "Who I Am," performed by Jessica Andrews.
Thanks to mackashina for posting this song and its lyrics on YouTube.

Off My Computer Screen and into the Real World

If you've visited here on a regular basis, you've probably seen comments left by Holly, who blogs as CreekHiker. And if you've also read Holly's blog, then you already know her longtime canine companion, Mabel. Yesterday Holly and Mabel traveled the road between the blogosphere and real life to spend a few hours at my house.

Holly lives in California but is presently staying in Baton Rouge to care for her mother, who's recovering from hip surgery. I enjoyed her visit very much, and, yes, we talked about a few of you.

As for Mabel, photos don't show how beautiful she is: slim, sleek, and shiny. With an animal's innocence and respectful curiosity, she moved gracefully on her long legs and explored every inch of my house. I loved that. Haven't you ever wished you could feel free enough in someone else's home to study everything in it close up, as if it were a museum? I would do it just the way Mabel did, not touching, just looking. Her ladylike behavior and sweet disposition reminded me of my Kadi, whose birthday it happened to be yesterday.

Mabel at my house yesterday.

I knew from reading Holly's blog that Mabel was good with other dogs, and I hoped my boys would be nice to her. They were. They were nice to Holly, too, though someone less dog friendly might not have perceived their insistence on sitting on her lap and licking her face as nice. 

Levi and Gimpy presented Holly with a tennis ball right off the bat, and she was kind enough to stand outside in the stifling heat and throw it for them. In fact, they had several sessions of outdoor ball yesterday, separated by indoor cooling-off periods.

Mabel chose not to participate in the early rounds of fetch. 

While the boys played with Holly, Mabel inspected the 

backyard as thoroughly as she had earlier checked out the house.

Later, she showed more interest in the game.

(That's Levi with the ball in his mouth.)

Now she's getting into the spirit.

The ball's in the air! Who'll get it?

Mabel, waiting patiently for the silly boys to get back to business.

Here's to new friendships!

(That's Gimpy with the ball in his mouth

and his ears blowing in the wind.)

I thought Levi and Gimpy had plenty of company in each other, but now that I've seen how much fun they had with Mabel, I think I'll have to arrange play dates for them more often in the future. I hope Holly and Mabel will be able to come again before they go back to California.

What I've Been Reading: Outside the Romance Genre

Though I've been reading mostly romances recently, there were also a few books that didn't fit that mold:

The first one is a mystery--with a little romance on the side. It's a book I've had for years, so many years, in fact, that I didn't remember a single thing about it. (Which says more about me than it does about the book.) Who knows what other completely forgotten novels wait on my bookshelves for a second reading?

Feather on the Moon
by Phyllis A. Whitney

**********

The next book would fall into the mystery category, too--unless thrillers have a genre of their own.

Shame
by Alan Russell

**********

If You Lived Here is different from anything I've ever read. It's the story of an important friendship that develops between two very different, mature women. Now that I think about it, there's a little bit of romance in this book, too, but in this case the romance is only a subplot.

If You Lived Here
by Dana Sachs

**********

The next book is a true story (or "based on a true story") written by a grandmother who, believing the court system had failed her abused granddaughter, took the child and left the country for several years. This book was especially interesting to me because in 1967-68--twenty-some-odd years before the incident that's the basis for this book--I worked for a district judge in that same Texas court system. I knew some of the people the author referenced by name and figured out the identities of certain other characters whose names she had changed.

In fact, I knew at the beginning of his career the now prominent attorney who represented the grandmother in the latter stages of her criminal proceedings after she was forcibly returned to the United States. I specifically remember a brief conversation with him once when a bunch of us from work went out for drinks at the end of a long day. He and I had approached the jukebox at the same time, and each of us was insisting that the other make a selection first. Neither of us would name the song we intended to play, joking that it would spoil the surprise. When the music started, we shared a good laugh. Both of us had played the same song: "Danny Boy."

Back to the book: the writing may not be the best from a technical standpoint, but it's a compelling story told by a quite capable storyteller, and it kept me turning pages late into the night.

Seashell Prisoners
by Frances Collins

**********

That brings us to what I'm reading now. This one is a memoir. I'm only about halfway through it, but I'm loving this book. In the early chapters it made me laugh long enough and loud enough that Levi and Gimpy both got out of bed to see what all the fuss was about. Since then I've laughed a lot more--and shed a few tears, too. I'm now in a quandary, because I want to read the rest of the book as fast as I can to see what happens next, but I also want to read it really slowly so it won't end too soon.

The Dog Lived (And So Will I)
by Teresa Rhyne

**********

To read a description and reviews of any of these books,

click on its image above.

"And If You Want to Talk About It Anymore . . ."

When I choose a Saturday Song Selection, I try to find a song that's relevant to a story, an event, or even just a mood. There's one song I love and have wanted to share here, but I've passed over it repeatedly because it didn't relate to anything I'd been writing about (a fact that makes me feel rather lucky now that I think about it). It's a song about friendship, about "being there" for one another through the rough times. It touches on the idea that circumstances change a person's role in a relationship, that the person who needs to be comforted in one situation can be the person providing the comfort in another. I imagine we've all seen ourselves in both roles too many times to count. The song taps into the emotions of those times and feels to me like a warm hug.

If you happened to read yesterday's post, you'll understand why I think the song finally ties in to the subject matter. I'll post it now, while it still fits, then we'll have it where we can find it next time we need to hear it.

The song is "Cry" by James Blunt.
Thanks to sweetLIKEpoison2 for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

On the Far Side of a Very Thin Curtain

On the phone one day with my friend Annette, I told her I would either send her a copy of my notes about this or, if the hastily scibbled notes weren't entirely legible, I would post about it here. This is that post. It's a long one. I won't hold it against you if you choose to skip it.

The events described in the following account are entirely fictional, although the human beings referenced exist in real life. Explanations of some portions of this story can be found in the footnotes.

**********

My adolescent daughters and I were on vacation and were staying at a cabin in the woods. The cabin was built of boards, not logs, and was basically a big square, laid out into two main areas: an L-shaped living room/kitchen combination and a single bedroom behind the sparsely furnished living area. The entire time we were there I never saw the inside of the bedroom.

Immediately after our arrival, we dropped our bags inside the cabin and headed outdoors to explore. There was a grassy, cleared space directly in front of the cabin, but beyond that in all directions we were surrounded by tall trees, mostly evergreens. A path at the edge of the cleared space led to a nearby lake, one that was within walking distance, or so we'd been told. We never made it to the lake, either.

While we explored that first afternoon, staying in sight of each other but not together, I was startled when my younger daughter, Kelli, came toward me with a strange-looking animal¹ held carefully in her outstretched hands. "Look what I found, Mom!" she hollered. I shouted for her to put it down, but she held on and brought it closer to give me a good look at it. It appeared to be some kind of reptile, either a short, fat snake or a legless lizard. It was about two feet long and shaped rather like a carrot, as thick as my calf at its head, tapering to a narrow, pointed tail. There were horizontal stripes around its body from head to tail, wide bands that shaded from light brown edges to a much darker center. The most distinctive feature of the animal was an image on its back, just behind its head. It was the image of a coiled snake, an image so sharp and detailed it almost appeared to have been tattooed there. The creature seemed to be neither frightened by the fact that Kelli was holding it nor threatening to her in any way, but it's ugliness--and its two rows of sharp teeth--suggested to me that it could be dangerous. At my insistence Kelli put it down.

We continued our exploration of the woods. Over the course of a couple more hours we saw at least another dozen of the strange creatures, all with the coiled-snake image on their backs. They were too short and fat to slither; instead they propelled themselves across the forest floor by flipping from one side to the other, fishlike. We stayed out of their way.

On our second day of vacation we ventured out again, occasionally encountering other people in the woods. At one point Kelli told me she had talked to a local man about the animal she'd picked up the day before and had learned that it was called a Melungeon.² That word was familiar to me but not in the context of an animal. I gave Kelli a questioning look and started to say something. "I know, Mom," she interrupted. "It's not the same thing. This one is spelled with two L's -- M-E-L-L-U-N-G-E-O-N."

As Kelli and I were having that conversation, Kim suddenly burst through the trees, her cupped hands spilling over with brilliantly colored jewels: necklaces, bracelets, and a variety of loose stones.³ Her eyes were huge, as was her excitement. "I found these in the hollow of a tree," she exclaimed. We held each lovely piece up to the diminishing sunlight, admiring their collective beauty while we debated what we should do about them. With darkness rapidly approaching, we took them back to the cabin to discuss the situation further.

Later, after dinner, we heard an unusual noise outside. I opened the front door and was stunned to see dozens of what I thought were insects gathered on the ground near the doorstep. They were every imaginable color and looked to me like large, wingless grasshoppers. They seemed to crouch close to the ground, then leap into the air, and as we watched, they made their way inside. They continued to leap, now leaping onto us and biting whatever body part they landed on. The bites, though painful, did no lasting damage, and after a few frightening moments, all of the insects left the same way they had come in, through the front door.

After a restless night, the girls and I went out the next day to check out the area where Kim had found the treasure. We looked in trees and under bushes, and we did find more of it. Frankly, it hadn't been hidden all that carefully. We had decided that we would take all the jewels to the local sheriff at the end of our stay; in the meantime, we'd look for more of them. Treasure hunting had become the unexpected highlight of our vacation.

That night was a repeat of the night before: the grasshoppers came back. This time we were ready for them. I had found a flyswatter in the kitchen, and I put it into action. As the grasshoppers leaped, I swung the flyswatter, succeeding in knocking several of them out of the air. A few of those crawled to the door, but one fell right in front of me. I bent down for a closer look and was shocked. These were not grasshoppers. They were tiny, four-inch people, dressed in tiny modern clothing. The one I was inspecting⁴ had the dark skin and features of an African-American. He was wearing khaki cargo pants, a red-plaid shirt, brown work boots, and a tan driving cap. I left him there on the floor and went in search of a jar to put him in, desperately wanting to show this specimen to someone knowledgeable. A couple minutes later, when I came back with the jar, he was gone. All of them were gone.

Somehow, during that second episode, I had begun to suspect that the grasshopper-people were there because of the jewels. I knew we were in for a great deal of trouble unless we could figure out what was the right thing to do. Should we just hand all the jewels over to the grasshopper-people, or should we take them to the sheriff first thing in the morning and tell him the whole story?

I sat down, my head in my hands, and tried to think. It occurred to me then to call someone who might be able to help me understand what I was dealing with. I called a highly intelligent friend, Scott.⁵ Scott knows a lot about a lot of things. I told him about  everything that had happened, including the Mellungeons and the tiny leaping people, and asked him if he knew anything at all about creatures like that. Scott was silent for a moment before he answered, then he said he did not know about them but didn't doubt their existence. He continued in a somber tone, "I've read enough Stephen King to know that there's a very thin curtain between our world and the others."

**********

That's it. I'm sure that if you've read this far, you've figured out that these fictional events happened in a dream, and Scott's statement about other worlds is where I woke up. The dream was entertaining enough that I tried my hardest to go back to sleep and continue the adventure, but I couldn't do it. Instead, I got up and wrote everything down while it was fresh. I began at the end, while I could still remember Scott's eerie declaration word for word. Those words struck me so funny that I did not want to forget them.

Now, the whole point of this post, the question I want to raise, is how weird are our sleeping brains to come up with this kind of stuff? I can put my finger immediately on what lies beneath certain parts of this dream, but it cracks me up that the sleeping brain--the "dreamweaver" if you will--can pull up random bits of information it has stored and weave them together into such a bizarre scenario. This is where the footnotes come in:

¹ The creature Kelli was holding looked very much like a reptile version of an Atlantic Wolffish (see the top one in this image), without the tail and the fins, but with the delightful addition of a coiled-snake "tattoo." I had a frightening personal encounter with a wolffish many years ago when we were surf-fishing near Miami. A three-foot-long one swam toward me in clear water, sharp teeth flashing, sending me high-stepping out of the knee-high surf at a speed that sent my husband and children into gales of laughter. Let's just say I now recognize a wolffish, even one wearing a disguise.

² Also many years ago, I read a long article about Melungeons, a mixed-ethnic group with only one L in its name. It was an interesting article, but not one I've thought about any time in recent memory. Still, even in a dream state I recognized that the animal Kelli was holding was not what I understood a Melungeon to be. There is apparently some logical part of the brain that monitors dreams and says, "Tsk-tsk!" when it catches an obvious error. In this case I have to give the dreamweaver credit for quick thinking in amending the story to cover up the mistake. How clever: add an extra L--and spell out the whole word for good measure.

³ These were not your typical jewels. Their intense colors and distinctive shapes were familiar to my wide-awake self. I see jewels like these several times a week when I take a break to listen to music and play Bejeweled 3. Kudos to the dreamweaver for mounting most of those blatantly artificial stones into wearable necklaces and bracelets. Nice touch.

⁴ In the dream I didn't know the tiny grasshopper-man whom I knocked out of the air with the flyswatter, but upon waking I recognized him instantly and was delighted that he'd made a guest appearance in my dream. He was Emilio, a favorite fashion designer from Project Runway All-Stars, which I watched faithfully. Apparently the dreamweaver did a little custom-designing of its own, creating a special "woodsy" outfit for Emilio to wear in the dream.

⁵ My friend Scott is the husband of my good friend, Annette, who blogs at Writing My Novel. He's a smart guy, and he does know a lot about a lot of things. I don't know if I would have called him in real life to consult about Mellungeons and piles of jewels and grasshopper-people, but I suppose it's possible. (Highly possible, now that I'm doing a quick mental run-through of all the people I know and eliminating those who for sure wouldn't know about such strange things.) Anyway, I can guaran-damn-tee you that if I had called Scott with questions about those things, he would not have referenced Stephen King as the reigning expert on factual other-worlds. Scott would have referred to a scientist. The dreamweaver clearly didn't know or consider Scott's reading habits (nor do I) but, knowing what a King fan I am, threw in what must have seemed like a deal-clencher. Unfortunately, hearing Scott make a statement that was at once so profound and so absurd tickled the non-dreaming part of my brain enough that I laughed out loud and woke myself up.

Most of the time I don't remember my dreams. Sometimes I do. Sometimes they're so much fun I'd buy tickets to see them again. What about you? Do you dissect your dreams to see what they're made of?

UPDATE - February 12, 2013
Well, I'm laughing again, because I just found the source of the coiled-snake "tattoo" on the Mellungeons. It's on an album cover, and it just now popped up on my computer screen when a certain iTunes song began to play. I listen to iTunes frequently while I'm at the computer but don't consciously look at what's playing. My subconscious apparently does pay attention--and takes notes.

Dreamweaver, you are SO funny!

2012: A Year of Ups and Downs

It took a while to decide on a title for this post. Yes, there were ups in 2012, and plenty of downs to balance them out. Except nothing felt balanced. The goods and bads weren't always separate and distinct, so it all felt jumbled. Sometimes the bad stuff bled into the good and tainted it, and sometimes the good stuff took the sting out of the bad.

The economy has improved slightly; that's an up, right? I guess it's a question of perspective. Acknowledging the improvement without acknowledging that the nation's finances are still stuck in the dumps is a little like being grateful when the surgeon announces he'll be amputating a shorter length of your leg than originally anticipated.

My candidate won the presidential election. I was happy about that. Even more than happy, I felt relief. Now, just remembering that election campaign season unsettles me,  because I've never before seen so much hatred and anger spewed out over the airwaves, the Internet, and printed media. It's hard to be happy when "we the people" are screaming at one another. But we won. That's an up, I think.

Assault weapons rose in prominence in 2012, primarily for the death and destruction they caused in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, just to name the worst of the year's mass murders. This all falls under downs; not a single thing up about it.

The year brought ups and downs on a personal level, too:

Early in the year I lost my beloved Butch to melanoma. As heartbreaking as it was, that loss was put into perspective two months later when my nearest neighbor lost his beautiful, young wife to a different type of cancer. I still grieved for Butch, but I considered myself lucky.

Gimpy joined our family in April, bringing with him a steady supply of ups and, only occasionally, when he has experienced a behavioral lapse for which he has always been very sorry, a well-chewed down. He's not only Levi's brother, he's his best bud. Together, they keep me grinning.

I've had wonderful visits this year from Texas relatives, visits that have reminded me that the ties that bind are indeed blessed, and I've been fortunate to share big and small moments with generations of my family here in Louisiana. I love these people, and any one of them can turn a down moment into an up one with nothing more than a quick word and the flash of a smile.

You know, the more that I write today, the more that I think about it, some years are better than others, but all of them have their ups and their downs. All of us humans have them, too. Sometimes the distinction between ups and downs is a matter of luck or circumstances, sometimes it's a matter of attitude or perspective. Viewing 2012 through a wide angle lens, I see a lot that went wrong. Zooming in, though, everything and everyone close to me at the end of the year looks as good as ever.

Stay safe through the end of your New Year's Eve celebration, and I'll give the year a temperate "thumbs up."

********** 

As I typed the next-to-last paragraph above, a little snatch of a song lyric flitted through my mind, and I had to Google the words to see if I could find where they came from. The song at the end of the search turned out to be one I'd completely forgotten about, though I had enjoyed it very much back around 1969. I don't usually include music videos in back-to-back posts, but this one fits too well to pass up:

_______________________________________________________________

The song is "Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs" by Charlie Rich.

Thanks to 2much4mymirror for posting this video on YouTube.

Click here for the lyrics.

Counting Our Blessings

Thanksgiving shifts our focus. For at least that one day of the year, unless someone is so deeply mired in desperation that he or she has hunkered down there for the duration, we accept the implied challenge of Thanksgiving and take a mental inventory of everything that's right in the world. We'd obviously be a happier lot if we'd consider those good things on a daily basis, but calling attention to them annually is better than nothing. Especially when you throw in a big serving of sweet-potato crunch.

Family and friends, of course, are always right at the top of my gratitude list, as are my beloved dogs. (In the interest of full disclosure, if I listed everyone by name instead of by category, the dogs might be a teensy bit higher on the list than most of my friends. The dogs, after all, are family.) Good health and a safe home are high on the list. In my working days, a good job and a living wage were on it; now I'm thankful for retirement and Social Security instead.

Maybe it's natural to become more reflective as one ages, but these days I find myself thinking about a lot of simple things that make me feel consciously happy. Sunny days and the percussive sound of thunder on the rainy ones. The way my bed feels when I crawl into it at night. Good books and good music. "Grey's Anatomy" and "The Amazing Race." The technology to fast-forward through commercials. "How-to" repair videos on YouTube. Diet soda in 12-packs. Rotisserie chickens and frozen vegetables in steamable bags. Being agile enough to close the damper in the chimney before the animal I heard in there fell into my den. Which reminds me: birds. And trees--every doggone one of 'em. The list goes on and on.

So much beauty. So much joy. So much to appreciate if we pay attention. So, yeah, Thanksgiving is a good idea.

I hope yours is wonderful.

_____________________________________________

The song is "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.

Thanks to RoadVideo404 for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Racing through the Month of May

I've been crazy-busy over the past ten or twelve days, but I think I've enjoyed every single minute of it. It's great to be able to say that, right?

In the interest of getting caught up, I'll post a brief recap today, then flesh out any blog-worthy topics over the next few days. Here goes:

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming:
I've missed two Sepia Saturday posts in a row. I would have managed to squeeze out the time to write those posts if I'd had any old photos that might conceivably have fit the prompts, but I came up empty.

While I was looking for suitable photos, though, I did manage to "sepia-ize" and otherwise doctor up a picture of my brother-in-law, who had a birthday earlier this month.

A belated Happy Birthday, David!  

Mother's Day

On the 13th we enjoyed our traditional Mother's Day crawfish boil at my daughter Kelli's home. This year the younger generation of males in the family took over the cooking under the watchful tutelage of my son-in-law, Troy. Mmm-mmm, good!

A Special Visitor
My stepsister, Donna, arrived for a couple of days that we crammed full of good stories, hearty laughter, good food, and tourist attractions. More than anything, I wanted her to experience the magic of Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, and we did that for the better part of a day:

We also visited the Cajun Village, not once, but three times in short spurts:

Genealogy Research (Bordering on Obsession)
A friend asked for my help in tracing relatives of a woman born in Poland in 1885 whose passport he recently found. He thinks they might like to have it. Turns out she came to this country as a schoolteacher, mostly in private girls' schools. I've learned quite a bit about her, including the fact that she apparently died without ever having married or given birth to children. I'm still looking for brothers or sisters who might have given her nieces or nephews, but I'm afraid the trail has grown cold.

I also did a little research on my stepsister's family on her mother's side. (My mother married Donna's father, so we already knew about his side of her family). Genealogy research is always fun for me, and I continued exploring Donna's family history after she left to go back home. Let me tell you that, after discovering that one of her multiple-times-great-grandfathers and his brother had both been killed by Indians--in separate incidents in different years--I was hooked. For most of this last week I've been glued to this computer from morning to night, digging up the stories of that family. What a fun journey it's been!

Here's a picture of one of Donna's great-great-grandfathers (not one of the scalped ones). She hasn't seen this yet, but it's included in the package I mailed to her today:

Clinton H. Ferguson

The Return of an Old Friend

A wonderful friend with whom I'd lost touch for nearly 15 years contacted me this week. What a pleasure it was to hear from him! He's had some hard times since we last talked, but he's in a really good place now. I hope to see him soon, and I'd love to meet the amazing lady who is his new bride.

The Double-Dogs Dare Me

Gimpy has been with us for nearly six weeks now, and things are going great! I look forward to writing an update about the special relationship he enjoys with his brother, Levi. To borrow an often disparaged phrase from Debbie Boone, they really do "light up my life." 

Levi (left) and Gimpy

Thanks!

If you're reading this, thanks for sticking around in spite of my infrequent posting. I'll try to make it up to you.