Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Yes, we can.

Today I woke up feeling like anything is possible. If we can overcome all our long-held prejudices and elect this man to be President of the United States, anything is possible.


We can get past the recurring stumbling blocks at work, and find new ways of working together.


The kids can remember to do their chores without my prompting.


Maybe I can even finish this book I've been working on for so long.


Change is possible.


Yes, we can.


Friday, August 08, 2008

something new

I have a new blog. The link is over there to the left.

My thoughts seem to be drifting more in that direction lately, so I decided to create a space for them.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Celebrations & Concerns

Today I stood up
in church
and asked everybody
to celebrate my mother.


Forty-two years ago
she was a few days away
from giving birth to me.
She's lived a good life,
and now she feels like she's done.

I asked everybody
to pray
with Mom, for Mom
for all the days she has left.
There are so many,
stretching out ahead.

When I sat down,
she leaned over to me.

"Now that I've lost my brain," she said,
"I can't think."

"But I still have a heart,
and I can still feel.
And I love you."

I love you, too, my Mama.
For nearly forty-two years.

And counting.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

this day

I started this day with three dreams still tumbling around in my head. Fiery attacks, deaths of loved ones, emotional turmoil. My morning pages helped calm the storm.

After the redheads left for their normal destinations, I visited Mom. It didn't take her long to figure out exactly who I was, even though I arrived unannounced. We played Scrabble. My one seven letter word (which earned me 74 points) was RELATED. It felt appropriate. We're still related. We still relate, though differently.

From there I went out into the misty, moisty morning to walk a nearby labyrinth. It always centers my spirit, calms my soul. I breathed in the early spring air, walked carefully on the mossy paths, greeted the rocks as I came to them, again and again. In the center I sat. And listened. To the woods. To myself.

This afternoon I plunged deeply into the 1972 brain of my father. I examined his week-at-a-glance calendar, page by page. There was no glancing about it--at some points I needed a magnifying glass to decode his cryptic astrological notes.

Coming down to the kitchen, where my cheerful beloved was putting the final touches on supper, felt like swimming up from the bottom of a deep, murky pool. 1972 was so real--Dad hitchhiking back and forth, his fasting, his larger-than-life new age ideas. Could it really be that I actually live in 2008, under a roof, with a television and white rice, and a husband who earns a regular paycheck and comes home when we expect him?

Have I really managed to fool the gods and end up with a mainstream, sane, safe, happy life?

Labyrinth indeed.

Gratitude abounds.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Spring fever

I've got
daffodils
on my kitchen table,
wanderlust
in my heart.



Sunday, March 02, 2008

fire next time

Our fireplace burns gas. And yet I split wood.

My 11-year old son got in trouble at church for lighting matches in the Sunday school room when no adults were around. A match was smoldering on the couch, the other kids pointed the finger at him, and he was holding the book of matches when the adult walked in. And yet he claims innocence . . .

During the service we learned that a dear member of our congregation, a white-haired blues-playing saxophone player with twinkling eyes, has been diagnosed with acute leukemia. Another seemingly healthy member of our church faced this same diagnosis a couple of years ago, and lived a matter of days.

And then I spent a couple of hours with my mom--playing Scrabble, walking in a sun-filled field of hummocky almost-springtime grass. This time, for some reason, she didn't mention the fact that she prays every night for God to take her as she sleeps. But it's always in the air around her. I know she's ready to go. Why can't it be her turn instead? She's ready.

Our fireplace burns gas.

And yet I split wood.

It's all I can do.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Finding Frances

On my quest, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I've been able to find just about everybody I've looked for.

I found Bill, my dad's boss from when he was an ambulance attendant in Atlanta, even though all the other family friends from that time told me that Bill seemed to have fallen off the planet.

I found Neb, Jr., the now 80-year-old man who was the mythical child who called to my mother's sister Sunny from across the street, so that she dashed in front of an oncoming car. The whole family witnessed her death, as did Neb. He still remembers that day, nearly 75 years ago.

I found Pilgrim Congregational Church, with the striking blue roof, where my dad was minister for a year and a half while Birmingham was coming apart, and so was the church. That church was torn down this week, sold to a developer to become a new housing development (see the story here: http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-34/120284634741750.xml&storylist=alabamanews).

Really the only people I haven't been able to find are the ones who have passed on. Those are the true heartbreaks--the people I would love to talk to, ask them to share their stories, hear what they have to laugh about, see the twinkle in their eyes. But they're gone.

One of those is Frances Pauley. She was an amazing woman--a tireless worker for civil rights in Georgia. Spunky, fearless, determined. Julian Bond was quoted as calling her "everybody's grandmother and nobody's fool." She also happened to be my daddy's boss at the Georgia Council on Human Relations in 1967. It's part of the next chapter of my book.

Frances died before I set out on this quest, so I've done what I could to find other ways to get to know her. My cousin gave me a book about her, written by folks at the Open Door Community in Atlanta, where she was active in her later years. I read that. Her papers are housed in special collections at the Emory University library, and I went down to check it out. I got more of a behind-the-scenes sense of her there, and began to form some hunches about what happened when Dad worked with her, which was her last fiery year at the Georgia Council. I recently had breakfast with a friend of mine who knew her, but my friend couldn't remember much.

All of this left me wanting more. If only I could talk to her, ask her my questions, follow up on my hunches, hear her voice! I wanted to get to know her personally, have more connection than the words on a page.

And yesterday it happened.

I was dinking around on the internet, yet again, when I landed on the Southern Oral History Project at UNC, my own alma mater. On a whim I typed "Pauley" in the search place. And what do you think I found?! An interview that Jacquelyn Hall had conducted with Frances Pauley in the Pauleys' living room on July 18, 1974. The transcript and the recorded interview itself! I could download it! I could listen to her voice! As I sat on the floor of my study, headphones on, enrapt, I marvelled that Dr. Hall asked most of the same questions I had been aching to ask Mrs. Pauley myself. I felt like I had time-traveled, and my wish was granted.

One part sticktuitiveness, two parts luck.

Ask and it shall be given unto you.








If you have some time and want to make a great new friend, follow this link: http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0046/menu.html.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Sandwich

Making a sandwich
is a constructive proposition.

Gracefully spreading the condiments,
lovingly placing
the meat,
the cheese,
the fluffy green leaves of lettuce.

Finally the two sides meet.
An arranged carbo marriage.

My mother,
who no longer makes sandwiches,
still relishes them.
Her favorite
is peanut butter and jelly.
She has its name written
on a small piece of paper
by her bed
in the rest home
so she won't forget.
Again.

My daughter prefers jam
with her peanut butter.
Or pasta, and no sandwich at all.

The "sandwich generation" is a misnomer.

I'm not a symmetrical union
of bread and whatever.

I'm torn in two.

Leavin'

When I was in elementary school, my sister Janet was a huge John Denver fan. She'd go in her room, shut the door, put him on her little blue record player, and turn it way up.

I'm leavin' on a jet plane . . .

Janet wished she could be the one flying far, far away.

During my toddler years (the chapter of my book I'm working on now), my dad was the one thinking of leaving. He would talk for hours to his friend Dave about how the Bible says we should "leave all to follow Jesus." Both Matthew and Mark tell the story, when Jesus said to his disciples, "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life." Dad was convinced, as early as my own bubbly toddler years, that this was his calling. Leave it all for Jesus.

When I try to divorce this idea from my emotion--when I banish thoughts of my curly yellow head and chubby baby hands, when I try not to think about how hard Mom was working to hold our family together in those troubling times, when I don't think about all that my sisters endured for the sake of Dad's callings--the irony remains.

This is The Book of Family Values? Have those people who wield the Bible Belt even read this book?

Leave All.

Love All.

Just the difference of a couple of vowels. Jesus was somehow preaching both. But as the one left behind, it sure didn't feel that way.

Jesus' next line, in both Mark and Mathew's versions of the story, was "the first will be last and the last will be first."

So those of us left behind--are we the first or the last?

But either way, though there was no question that I felt abandoned when my daddy finally left for good, in retrospect it is pretty clear that we were better off. Safer. Saner. Happier.

So . . . last-first, first-last, irony or no, I guess it's possible.

Love all.

Leave all.

But I like it better when I can have the loving without the leaving.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Resolution

Happy New Year!

I used to have the same resolution every year: No Resolutions. I didn't like setting myself up to fail. But last year I tried a new tactic. My resolution was:

More cussing in 2007.

It worked out pretty well. I definitely did better in the first part of the year, rediscovering the days of my youth by letting it fly on a pretty regular basis. My children were agog. By the end of the year, the joy of the four letter word was wearing off, so I sort of fell off the wagon. So this year I have a new one:

More rhinestones in 2008.

I started early, actually, buying myself a lovely rhinestone souvenir while we were in Texas over the holidays. It brightens my world. And I feel confident that my sparkly keychain is only the beginning.

In addition to my resolution, there are changes I'm making in my life. They're not resolutions. They're changes. Course adjustments, perhaps. Like f'rinstance, I've cut back on my paid work time so that I can get back to focusing on my writing. I have a book to finish, so I'm clearing space for it. First I need to make room, I figure, and then maybe I can begin to remember how to be creative, be open, tell the story.

But as I sat quietly today (something I almost never do--this is all part of making space), I remembered about the knowing part of myself. The part of me that already knows what I should be doing, how to open myself to the story, how to get to where I'm heading. That quiet little part deep down in there that never gives advice, but gives an encouraging nod and a twinkle when I'm on the right path. The part of me that just feels right when I land on what I've known all along.

Resolution doesn't just mean deciding, after all. It's not only about our grandiose plans--to lose weight, quit smoking, sparkle more, or whatever. Resolution is also about clarity. We change the resolution on our computer screens when things don't look right. We change the resolution of our digital images to make them less pixellated, clearer. Resolution is about seeing things more clearly.

Maybe my own resolution is simply that "this is it" feeling of heading the direction that I knew was right all along.

Listening for that quiet voice that never speaks, but just nods, and gives a little twinkle.

Like a rhinestone.