APRES LE DELIGHTFUL DELUGE

 

                             The Golden Light that seems to strike our lawn only during Halloween, with decor and candy courtesy of Leah, from a decade past.   (Looking back in after making lunch, and there appears an uncanny complete ME almost, with two sweater sleeves and a long black apron.   Several brooches (which I have several of, but Chris always knew I'd love them for the gift and the lovely of them, but they would reside on lampshades and curtain fringes).   Hold your eyes just right and there she IZZZ.

There's something about the light this morning---this crack-the-cusp and slide into November---that the door revealed as I opened it to the front lawn.   There were only leaves there---damply scattered though there'd been no rain.   Only leaves to remark the eager little hordes who graced our porch last night.   Something about those small beings---four hundred of them, usually, and surely that last night---they left absolutely nothing in their wake.

No abandoned beer cups, no wrappers or forlorn band-posters nor ticket stubs---yet-to-concert young 'uns assured the absence of emptied BICS and the limp exhaustion of light wands and necklaces---just the same grass with the same leaves.    The lawn was untrodden and smooth, with their wake pristine as water closing after a boat.  And there WAS a tide---in fact quite several, and perhaps a budding tsunami a time or two, but they honored the lawn, and scurried all the way to the driveway turn to get to me, between the two lanterns marking the walk-posts, and right to my lap with my feet dangling from the porch.   They had seen me in my gaudy glory, immense pink witch hat with veil, pink outfit from cardigan to slacks to clogs, with stripey witch stockings in between, as generations have seen me  and anybody else of the house, year-to-year, since we moved here in 1997. 

The schedule for the "town" is listed as 6 to 8, but a lot of Mamas have gotten the word about the rich pickin's in our little area, and a cavalcade of cars and SUVs begins before 5:30, when I'm usually out, in every weather but pouring, with handy carpet-panels aligned along the porch, for any sitting helpers who come along.   The firsts are some of the littlest---tee-ninecy ladybugs and small pirates and enough princesses to re-stock every Kingdom on Earth should there be a shortage.   One wee Buzz Lightyear so small as to be merely a happy lower-case "bz" strode his toddler steps up to me, grinning wide, and the plethora of comic and cartoon and HERO UNIVERSE and after-school TV and astronomically diverse little characters made their way into my heart. 

The tides DID ebb and flow, with little lapses when I just sat and rocked out to the EVERYTHING HALLOWEEK neighbor's soundtrack of Monster Music---I even stood up and danced to Time Warp one time when the lawn was not filled with Kiddos.  And Monster Mash---even the Next-Door Parents didn't believe I knew the words to Monster Mash and could approximate a bit of Boris's accent.

But when the surges came, they came BIG---twenty or thirty would come up the driveway, minding their manners, and a great colorful sway would be in front of me, almost every one with a Happy Halloween, or How You Doing? and absolute respect for the moment---nobody grabbing, nobody pushing---just a quick reach and drop into bags and pumpkins, and somehow the THERES were replaced with the Next In Lines, and it went so well, it was as if they'd practiced both approach and depart with precision.    The smiles and the happy faces at the shining silvery packs of sweets---and my waving up of all chaperones, caretakers and other grown-ups, with "Drivers always eat!"---what fun and shrill little thank yous, and over-shoulder shouts of thanks from that minimultitude---one of my high spots of the year.   I didn't hear a single protest or wail or loud voice all evening, save for the friendly greetings of the once-a-year recognitions.   

Shy teens-and teens-plus DID sort of shrink a bit til I always said, "You're NEVER TOO GROWN-UP" and then there were great smiles.  And some old familiars DID scan around the porch for Paxton, and inquire "Where's your TURTLE?" missing her presence from other years.   Every one brought a gentle pang, but the evening went on beautifully.    I stood up and carried the pan to the sidewalk entrance whenever I saw a visitor who might have trouble negotiating that small space, or toddler whose proud parent hung back and let them SHINE.  

And thus I met the COSTUME OF THE YEAR---I have at least one memorable one every year, and unless it's an absolutely Hollywood-perfect attire and makeup beyond the pale, it's almost always a thought-up or Homemade one that catches me.    The little family---two littles in charming costumes, and a Mom and Dad, with Dad trundling a full-size garbage bin, shiny with aluminum foil of its crafting on the dolly, and with a clever sign I cannot quite recall, with a tiny being inside who rose up on cue and waved his arms.   What a thought, and what a loving, albeit uncommon, piece of workmanship and deft navigating of all these crowded blocks, of that sweet Daddy for his child.

And so it went---not a whimper, not a scowl, not a blip---one more lovely Halloween in this little neighborhood.   We closed the doors and turned off the lanterns at about 8:15 and went in to have our dinner of two baked potatoes with fixin's awaiting in the oven.   Perfect evening, once again.  

    

                    From a Decade ago:   Sweetpea, grown too tall from her pumpkin of the years before, attended as a Jack-o'-Squash, and was astounded to meet Violet in our own front yard.

LOVE THAT RED

 

I've been simply mesmerized in a vast collection of photos lately---mostly old ones, for another blog subject to come in its time, and in re-reading a friend's blog this morning, I was so caught  up in his story of a staid English uncle so enamoured of a lady that he caught a train from London to Scotland in 1928, simply to have luncheon with her.   If anything came of their romance, my friend never knew, but Uncle DID buy a house near her, and lived out his long life in the Highlands, leaving behind an enormous English country house and great rooms of furniture, which his family inherited.

The atmosphere of that Perhaps Love Affair was palpable in his words, for he writes exquisitely of beautiful things and people and times, that I could see the haze of smoke in their air, the scent of Winter-long furs and Toujours Moi and dustings of face powder, with a little rim of unblotted lipstick on the unfiltered cigarette paper left in the ashtray.

 

It so reminded me of some of the women in my own family, whose great presences were punctuated by scents and colours---good perfume and wafts of Coty powder, and one Aunt whose lipstick fascinated me so as a child and teen, I could scarcely look her in the eyes, for staring at the odd configuration of her bright lips:

 

(from my own blog---a memory from a far time, published several years ago):   Her red nail polish matched her lipstick, which was put on with the oddest little down-strokes side-by-side in the middle, higher than her own lipline, then by doing a big old theater-mask-mouth which stretched her bottom lip TIGHT while she did a corner-to-corner Revlon swoop (Love That Red). That lip totally covered, she bit them tight together, transferring a coat to the top lip. The original two little pointy places right in the middle stood brightly high like the tops of angel-wings, their line of demarcation flowing into the flat dryness of a sifty layer of Coty powder which clung to the downy hairs of her upper lip.

She was the Aunt of the Purse Peke, a perfect canine armful of happy spun-gold and exuberant licks, and the longtime owner of a monkey which reached his demise by the Winter-time perch around a floor lamp which slowly decimated his tail and thus he went.   At eight, I wrote him a little epitaph for his grave out in her garden.  "HIS TAIL WAS COLD.  HIS TALE IS TOLD."   

She was also loving Sister-in-Law to her husband's two "afflicted" brothers---the term of those days to convey an unfortunate condition, usually from birth.  They were both handicapped, and she was a true, helpful, uplifting Sister.  And her "other" sideline which got her and her husband talked about and into the calaboose---perhaps moire non, when more mature subjects are discussed.   

THE STOCKIN' BAG

(Prelude Precaution:   I have no idea how all the search clicking was inserted into this post.  Pray do not click on them, for I know not where they go, nor do I endorse their presence here).

I’ve spoken so much of my Mammaw, of the garden and the swang and the Stow-ries, that I’ve seemed to pass over the three-months-a-year that we had my other Mammaw---Mammaw B., with us at our house.  Daddy was the only one of her children who chose to stay right where he was raised (a great swath of his teen years they lived way out in the country, but still near the same town).   Our house was built on the block where he was born, in the house catty-cornered back next to the railroad, and our lots contained the playground of all the neighborhood boys, with the remnants of their tree-house up the big oak in our front yard all my life.  

His four surviving siblings all moved to Memphis when they were grown (two older brothers died in the Flu Epidemic of 1918, ages five and seven), and sweet Aunt Maggie passed away when I was about fifteen.   So they settled it that Mammaw would rotate the year, with times at each house, and ours fell across the Summer months.   I was always of the opinion that Mother chose those months for her because we had an enormous garden right there on our yard, plus big pea and corn patches out at the country place, and since she didn’t fancy her Mother-in-Law’s company too much anyway, setting her down with a pan of peas or beans to shell every day  was a good way to keep her useful. 

And when she didn’t have her hands in the Pea-Pan, or in the cooler months, Mammaw would crochet---that woman could could use that needle like Stravinski with the baton---she could take a stick and a string and crochet a 3-D version of the Sistine Chapel, I thought. And she had my sly way of going up to the drugstore to sneak a look at the magazine and or comic-book counter, standing there running her eyes over the PICTURES---not the directions of all the stitches---and come home and get going on that pineapple or that pear blossom or star, just from seeing and counting those stitches.   It was the most magical thing I’d ever seen anybody do, and I still marvel at the gift.

And she made me one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever owned---a green silk “stocking bag” with tiny pastel flowers---I’d heard and read of silk---all those little worms working and making that magical thread, but this was the first I’d ever held in my hand.   And you COULD hold it---it was about a foot long, handle-tip to bottom, but with nothing in it, that ethereal stuff could be held entirely in my hand, not a stitch showing.  Those slim skeins of shimmery green looked like they could have been threaded onto the old Singer for sewing.

 She’d say, “Now this is for your Hankachiffs, for now, but it will be your Stockin’ Bag when you get grown, to keep them from getting runs.”

Little did she know of the dreams I’d dreamt of those slender boxes of Fifteen Denier, laid pressed and folded shimmery in the Specials Case at Lipson’s---that great treasure-house of scents and fabrics and shoes.  All of us little girls loved to peek into those mystical drawers of such ethereal wares, we were sure they were not of this earth, for what human could knit such fey cloth as to read through?  And a hint of something to come---something so femininely mysterious about tucking such secrets beneath your skirt---we all marveled and awaited our own turn at such secrecy. 

We mooned for those unreachable garments from the time we could tiptoe high enough to see the contents of those tempting boxes on Aunt Lucy’s shelves, as well, in there in the mysteries such as a box or two of Coty powder, fancy little combs and brushes, and little display of those odd small pull-tab nipples bought for a dime by poor Mamas to use on Co-Cola bottles for their babies’ milk. I can still smell the air from that treasure-cave when the door slid open---a mixture of my Sunday-School-Teacher’s cologne and a new doll’s skin. 

And lo, at about sixteen, we would be seen at church with leg-sheen like no other---having pulled on our our first pair of stockin’s and our ladylike manners with them. 

I’d never put any of my stockings in that lovely silk bag---I was too struck on practically IRONING the things to get them back to their pristine lay-down fold in that box---every single one in its own---I remembered perfectly which in which, where we bought them, or who all gave me each of those five pairs for graduation, and treated them accordingly.   That bag still had handkerchiefs and neck scarves and once a little secret ring for quite a while, and that was purpose enough.

 And not until the advent of mini-skirts and the time at Ole Miss beautiful Rose Clayton (later to become a Senator’s wife) accidentally flashed her racy garterbelt and stocking-tops to the entire audience at Fulton Chapel on Sorority Choir Contest night, did we slowly and unwillingly make the change over to Panty-Hose.    Pity.

 

 

TAAK, DECEMBER, 1946

 

Sometimes in an everyday day there comes along a bit of lagniappe, beyond the bright sun down the stairs and the call from a long-ago friend---a charming and beguiling thing which just causes your breath to slow and all the sounds around you to grow still. . .

This is one such, a lovely missive which has been somewhere in the world since I was four years old, and which, until now, had hovered unseen and unread, just beyond my vision, like a quiet sunbeam across the rug.    I’m not familiar with the writer, and I cannot wait to delve into her words---I’m afraid if I find her right this minute, I might just dive in like digging a spoon into a whole pie.

I just cannot tell you, so see for yourself.   A Thank You note for a Christmas gift from a friend, written by author Sylvia Townsend Warner to Alyse Gregory, in December, 1946.

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Dearest Alyse,

Usually one begins a thank-letter by some graceless comparison, by saying, I have never been given such a very scarlet muffler, or, This is the largest horse I have ever been sent for Christmas. But your matchbox is a nonpareil, for never in my life have I been given a matchbox. Stamps, yes, drawing-pins, yes, balls of string, yes, yes, menacingly too often; but never a matchbox. Now that it has happened I ask myself why it has never happened before. They are such charming things, neat as wrens, and what a deal of ingenuity and human artfulness has gone into their construction; for if they were like the ordinary box with a lid they would not be one half so convenient. This one though is especially neat, charming, and ingenious, and the tray slides in and out as though Chippendale had made it.

But what I like best of all about my matchbox is that it is an empty one. I have often thought how much I should enjoy being given an empty house in Norway, what pleasure it would be to walk into those bare wood-smelling chambers, walls, floor, ceiling, all wood, which is after all the natural shelter of man, or at any rate the most congenial. And when I opened your matchbox which is now my matchbox and saw that beautiful clean sweet-smelling empty rectangular expanse it was exactly as though my house in Norway had come true; with the added advantage of being just the right size to carry in my hand. I shut my imagination up in it instantly, and it is still sitting there, listening to the wind in the firwood outside. Sitting there in a couple of days time I shall hear the Lutheran bell calling me to go and sing Lutheran hymns while the pastor's wife gazes abstractedly at her husband in a bower of evergreen while she wonders if she remembered to put pepper in the goose-stuffing; but I shan't go, I shall be far too happy sitting in my house that Alyse gave me for Christmas.

Oh, I must tell you I have finished my book—begun in 1941 and a hundred times imperilled but finished at last. So I can give an undivided mind to enjoying my matchbox.

Sylvia

P.S. There is still so much to say...carried away by my delight in form and texture I forgot to praise the picture on the back. I have never seen such an agreeable likeness of a hedgehog, and the volcano in the background is magnificent.

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Present Day musings on that long-away and far-ago gift:    What a fabulous missive to receive for a present, beyond a mere THANK YOU---it carries all the charm of the small treasure and the imagination of a talented writer, and can you not smell the sawdust of those golden small plies of wood so intricately joined and mitered?  

I love to think that this small trinket has been passed down in that family, still treasured and kept perhaps behind glass, in memory of those two women of the past, and their friendship or kinship or fond regard of each other.  

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LAWN TEA, OCTOBER 20, 2025  POST #1400