THE POINT OF GRACE AND THE MOMENT

 

ONE OF MY LAST LETTERS TO MY DEAREST COUSIN SANDRA:

Oh, Sweetpea!   What a wonderful message from you!  You just say the dearest things, and have the sweetest, purest spirit of any adult I've ever known.   There's a wonderful innocence to your brilliant mind, a childlike faith and wonder at the simplest things---I remember your words about bread, about lavender, a Summer breeze, kneeling to receive The Cup, the little creek as it flows---plums and a fresh-ironed cloth whisked onto a table for supper, the gathering of your Loves around that table, growing young together.

Indeed, you DO have words---absolutely reams and scores of them, speaking of only the best of things, the sweetest parts, the simplest, deepest gentle murmurs of the way things should be, as you see them.   You have a way of portraying life as we'd all like to live it, in a simple, slow grace of BEING that we forget could be, or that we've never given a thought in our busy, moving, on-call, duty-filled, get-it-done lives.   You MAKE us think about those things---those better ways, those spirit-filled moments, those days of Grace lived in shade and sun, walking gently where we're impelled to run, to get things over with, to get on with it, instead of enjoying the simple charm of the NOW.

SO love to hear from you---would that it were every day, every hour.   I could read and read your words, drinking in those slaking words, filling up entire with the feeling of beautiful and pure. 

 Remember we loved that "simple" book several years ago---Beth Breathnach, was it?   We all seized upon it as a mantra of sorts, a missal for the Church of the Everyday Stuff---likening a dull morning to a garden ripe with delights, or a chore to a gift to our nearies and selves.  It was a wonderful, fulfilling read, propped in the arbor in the Summer shade.   We thought we could be JUST LIKE THAT, accepting the goods and the simples and the smalls.   Just NOTICING them was a great blessing; having them pointed out was a lovely gift, and would that it had lasted forever, for we drift, we allow, we succumb to the leaving off of things, the dusts of the days, the pilings of THINGS and STUFF and debris of shoppings and hoardings and receivings, stored up in their outlived, useless selves, merely on the possibility of their later use.  

 Oh.  My.   I have to get OUT of that track.   We were Yard Salers, Goodwillers, Thrift Store browsers, picking up a plate here, a set of dishes there, two cloths and an abandoned craft-basket filled with ninety-nine kinds of ribbon and wire, channeling Martha Stewart because we saw exactly THAT PLATTER in the magazine and who knows what entertaining marvels would ensue if I had one of my own??

Mine's all geared to nesting, I've found---home stuff and kitchen stuff and house things---and except for two china cabinets, our La-Z-Boys, and the computer and TV, every single thing we own came from Goodwill.   Piles and drawers of tablecloths and coverlets and curtains for windows I'll never own, with so few things costing more than a dollar or two---can't pass up that twenty-foot Battenburg banquet set, even though our biggest table is eight feet.  

DAYUM.

I'm verging away to the silly now, but life has been such ridiculous DEPTHS lately, of such a surfeit of things to walk over and trip over, that my mind is dropping to the level of those maze-rats---you can change course around blind ends and blank walls just SO MANY TIMES before you forget where and who and WHY you are.   I've lost my words into the ether so much lately, but now that the actual building is completed,  I don't weep so much for the losing of the words as I have of late in my usual self.  

So YES.   I Have lost my words,   And that's just what I've called it.   I can pretty well type anything, as the stream comes from my brain, but sometimes I have to stop and think "Now what is that A-word that I'm looking for?"   or "Do I really mean Accumulation or Assimilation?"   Or I've even gone so far as to offer a guest a cup of cigarette without missing a beat, though not a soul in the room smokes.  

I love you, faraway Sister-Girl.   Sisters of the Spirit---yours "rubs off" in the most lovely sense on me, and I just hope to send you some of the reassurance of your worth and kindness and so-enviable way of living life that I try to pattern and live.   I lived Serene for a long, long time, and the past few years have been beyond NOT.   You're keeping me centered on that sweet focusing-point of Grace and The Moment.

ONE OF OUR OWN

 

Yes, I'm wearing the Green today, in honor of my ancestors with long-ago roots in Ireland. They left the known for the unknown in 1730, when this country was still great stretches of unbroken green, wild and untrod, and those steps were taken on Faith and pure Grit. I'd rather claim those hard-working, hardscrabble farmers, leaving those smoky, humble crofts and taking only their hope and their callused hands to a new land, than anyone's born-to-the-manor family line.


In Keats' A Thing Of Beauty, the first line is widely quoted, often used, and most likely the only part remembered by most folks. But the last---Ahhh, the Last. It stands beautiful head and shoulders above any lines which come before:





I send my herald thought into a wilderness:



There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress



My  uncertain path with green, that I may speed

Easily onward, through flowers and weed. 

And to SWEETPEA, standing in Dublin this minute in her band uniform, ready to step out into the parade:   We're SO proud of you!!!    Happy St. Patrick's Day, with Godspeed and Traveling Grace to guide you back home.

ps   The parade was FABULOUS!!   We're sitting down to warm Bread Pudding and crisp bacon and several fabulous cheeses at 11:20.   May all your DAY be sweet!

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

CONTINUING YESTERDAY'S DISCUSSION OF OLD LINENS AND OTHER TREASURES:

REPLY TO MISS MERRY, OF THE CEDAR CHESTS AND HOPEFUL SWEETHEARTS WHO FILLED THEM:

Yes, those rough-handed guys who took SHOP while we took Home Ec---they made those lovely shining cedar chests----some from a tree they'd cut themselves on the PLACE, taken to the sawmill right there down the bayou, and cured before the making of those Hope Chests for a special Girl. They were the men who married that One Girl for whom they'd cleaned up nice on Saturday nights to take to the Picture Show, driving up and knocking on her front door to escort her to the car, and home safely after a Doris Day/Rock Hudson and Frozen Root Beer at the Dairy Bar. They walked in the sweet aroma from the one bottle of Old Spice shared amongst the brothers, but their own VITALIS, and then sat up in the Church Balcony with their girl on Sunday mornings.

And SHE---that beloved sweetheart from sixth grade on, probably filled that chest with help of Mama and Aunts and two talented Grandmas, and used those precious items long as they lived. I look back at my Decade, knowing my own MOTHER did all her stitching and crochet and sewing and homework by Coal Oil Lamps until she was a Senior, and current came to the county.

REPLY TO VIRGINIA, OF HER OWN LOVE AND PRESERVATION OF THE LOVELY ARTIFACTS:

An ad for Estee Lauder popped up several months ago, as everything-and-your-lunch seems to do nowadays, and I ordered a bottle, just because. Chris and I were very fortunate that all four of our parents spent the last days and moments at home, after fifty-plus years of living in the family home. And the house of my Raisin' was a three-roof house, with another two rooms added on twice at about fifteen-year intervals over their marriage.

The final hump across the silhouette spanned from their bedroom down into a step-down DEN, with an eight-foot little corridor whose sides were made of Mother's closets on one side, and a marble dressing table and mirrors on the other. And they were of the age of The Deeper the Carpet . . . so I just mentioned to Leah the other day that stepping onto her own cushy bathroom rugs, all warm from the furnace, and smelling the scent of that Estee Lauder on my sweater---deja vu to many a comfortable stroll in my socks in that warm, fragrant house of my childhood.

I LOVE that you honor your STUFF---those one-of-a-kind creations from hands long stilled, and that you've passed on that love of our past artistes' talents to your next generation. Chris teased me that he knew I don't wear jewelry and haven't a care for fashion, so he knew every time he presented me with a necklace or pretty brooch he'd found a Goodwill or a pawn shop, he'd say, "Will this go on a lampshade or a curtain valance?" I like my sparkles out there where I can see them, not on me.

And I believe in USE THAT GOOD STUFF!! (says I who made both parents JUMP at breakfast on one of my last visits, by bringing that suede-lined drawer of gorgeous Michelangelo flatware from the dining room and dumping it headlong into the one I'd just emptied of all the old stray forks and spoons that had limped along for decades, and saying "What are you saving this FOR?")

AND A REPLY TO NANA DIANA, WHOSE IMPISH AND SWEET HUMOR IS A MIRROR IMAGE OF MY OWN, AND SHE WISHED ME WELL ON FRIDAY THE 13TH:

I KNOW you do, Sweetpea!!! How can we not, with snarky imaginations like ours?? A couple come into IHop and sit shoulder-to-shoulder on one side of the booth---You KNOW they came in separate cars, and live WAY on the other side of town.

We were Lady Pepperell Percale only, all my life----pronounced in our area Per-CAL like California. I ironed all the pillowslips, so careful of the inches of crochet (variegated usually, to match the little fancy stitching of little arrowheads-in-a-line or ovals or that tulip shape that kids draw for flowers---that was done a few inches from the hem by a smart little doohickey attached to the presser-foot on the Singer). OH, were THOSE fancy, and a bride who got a pair of THOSE from Mrs. B---they were forever.

Just by chance, we lived for a year in the Home of Pepperell---over in Alabama on the Georgia line at the Chattahoochee, and sale weekends at the Mill Outlet Stores brought in Crowds like the Ole Miss-State game. They'd crowd all the fast food places in town, sometimes parking all the way over on our little street, and line up outside stores EARLY, those two-or-four-ladies-to-a-car, sometimes from states away for a shopping weekend with all those values. They'd search the wares in the "Seconds" store with little magnifying lenses in one eye like a diamond merchant, and haul out stacks and stacks enough of bedlinens to befit the Princess with the Pea.

Thank you!!! Friday 13th was a GORGEOUS DAY---clouds at wakeup, then bright sun and a Lion Pride's worth of WIND as I went into the store, and threatened to blow my immense pack of Bounty towels off the buggy and across the parking lot when I came out. Two of those fabulous rotisserie chickens (Better even than Sam's)---some for lunch with leftover pea salad and Watergate , and for Leah to debone for the freezer. Lunch on trays in the sunny-washed sitting room, and new episodes of Matlock and Elspeth, lots of texts and pictures from our girls touring Ireland, and some put-aways and til-next-years of decor, then the day ended perfumed with the three hours bone-broth simmering til bedtime. If I'd had a hat, the wind would have done the "turning around" for Luck. Lovely March Day.

ETSY SELLS EDGING

Yes, they do!   In a circumscribed, roundabout way I discovered this today, whilst hunting a photo for responding to a comment from two friends' comments yesterday that THEY, TOO, make up little stories and vignettes about folks they see out and about, or sitting in the dentist's office, or across the room in line at Panera.    They see more than that lady in the ill-kempt wig, or the stylish trench-coat, and travel light-years with a couple merely dipping their fries at Wendy's---we go right to where that person might be going, or what they're going home to.   It's a bit of a curse with me, I guess, for I get so carried away with my mental note-making and phone-fumbling to tap out a few hints for later (NEVER A PICTURE), I miss hearing my number called or how I should be pushing my buggy forward to close up the line.   

I expressed happy satisfaction that there were TWO like-minded souls admitting that quirk of the imagination, and the propensity for silent, never-uttered gossip about innocent strangers just awaiting some caffeine or the next bus.  (Thank you, Merry and Jeanie)  (Hearing an imaginary organ chord here, from my childhood radio "stories," when the SHADOW KNOWS ...).  

And in my silly way, I likened our common trait to having the same hobbies or crafts that created a shared kinship of mind.   I confessed my own lack of any hand-held skills or crafts, and my stumbly child-and-teen attempts at embroidery and crochet, to the dismay of my Mother and Mammaw Jessie---both whiz-bang at anything regarding thread, and their hardy efforts to help me learn.   No such luck--I'd even set my dusty-butt shorts onto a small chair, take up thread and needle and tee-ninecy stork scissors, hold my knees together beneath my Imaginary Jane Austen skirt, and  scratch away at the blue edges of ironed-on pattern ---I used the proper color Coats & Clarks, but only yielded a first-graders' swoops and swirls of their initial encounter with paper and crayolas.  

Mammaw would gently and valiantly take up my tatty mess and in an hour, have a queen-worthy inch of exquisite border trim all around the dresser-scarf/pillowslip edge, shaming its shambles from my needle.   I was not worthy.   But my Hope Chest (a handsome cedar trunk-on-bun-feet crafted by my high-school sweetheart-husband-to-be in SHOP) was repository of all those efforts-at-style, along with elaborate lacy trim around every one of the several dozen pairs of pillowslips from our wedding shower.    

The successive decades have occasioned many a careful removal and re-stitchal of almost every one of the beautiful skeins to countless new pairs of pillow cases from when we briefly lived in Shawmut, AL, home of West Point Pepperell, and known far and wide for "lady weekends" to shop at all the local outlet malls.    I can at least match the color and stitch wee, almost invisible stitches to reattach the lovely old laces.   I hope some of the five Grand-Daughters will like some of these---two are avid knitters, with one a genius at drawing with thread.    

And I can still smell the scent of my Mother's Estee Lauder and Coty on those long-ago linens when I open that cedar chest.  Funny turns a story can take, but that's what Wednesdays were made for.  

IMAGINE THAT

 

As we rode through the long olive hills of Kentucky a while back, I glimpsed a lady at the mailbox, comfortable in a yellow sleeveless blouse and jeans, putting in a handful of envelopes and swinging the small red flag to Attention.

So insignificant and so everyday was that small, familiar gesture, that I imagined her day there in that green spot, that immaculate yard with its baskets of petunias swinging on the porch, as she went back into the house, into the orderly rooms smelling of breakfast.   The Dawn bubbles in the empty sink are long-gone, along with their kin from the Purexed single wash-load, gurgled out and down into the faraway ditch in the field.  The almost-done clothes are now perfuming the hall with warm Downy air from the dryer.

She’d washed up the the few dishes “real quick,” except for the black skillet where she’d fried the bacon.   It’s sitting still on the stove, gleaming with bacon grease, for the supper cornbread she’ll bake later.   She’d written a few checks with her first cup of coffee, sitting there at the table in her duster and slides, and soon as she was showered and dressed, she’d run out to the mailbox to get all the bills in before the carrier comes by. 

She’s completed all her little morning rightenings---beds made, yesterday’s Bluegrass Press, well read before supper and folded in the can, and her long shelves of African Violets given their weekly feed of Miracle Gro beneath their blue-light awnings.   Her husband rode off early after his third cup of Folger’s, away to the Co-op to check out those new butterbeans that cook up like speckled ones, into a big pot of purple-brown pot liquor and soft, rich old-fashioned beans.   He’ll be back with the seeds, and probably a lot more, and put the hills in before suppertime, coming in smiling and muddy-handed, pants-legs wet up the shins, from giving the rows a good drenching with the hose. 

Marlee has done all the chores with the TV on louder than usual, for she’s been following along with that awful trial way out there in the West.   She’s followed it all the way through, missing in only a few places when she had to go out to help with the Missionary Luncheon, or the days she takes her Mama to the doctor, and she’d give anything to haul off and slap the smug smirk off that murdering hussy’s face.  Her and her "apostle" boyfriend and their unforgivable spree of mayhem---Marlee's just had about enough of the primping and smiling and lying, and she broke down completely yesterday when the family spoke about their lost brother and friend.  

Marlee is a good Christian woman, and does right by everybody, but she knows, sure as she knows her shoe size and all the grandchildren’s birthdays, that SOME FOLKS just Pure-D need killin’.