IN A PICKLE

Is where we are today---the great line of rainstorms which has covered us intermittently for DAYS, with deluges and torrents and bursts---well, we can attest to many, many gallons of that, because we have been wading through and walking on it for days on end.

This happens perhaps once every several years, and WOW this WAS the year.  AND THE RAINS CAME TUMBLIN' DOWN!

 

So, with the yet-to-be-put away lugs and containers of STUFF taken out of the storeroom to arrange all the leftover kitchen stuff I’ve culled out, and all the lugs and containers of STUFF that Chris packed, took to the coast for a week, and brought back, all lifted high and dry from the sodden carpet, or slid onto the slate in the kitchen, we’re still in absolute chaos.

The kitchen is gorgeous, but like a beautiful child, dressed in an unimaginable assortment of shoddy clothes and unseemly gewgaws, with wet feet and a muddy face to boot---well, it’s not yet for showing in polite company.

Towels all over the floor, for stepping from this wet carpet onto the slick slate will catch you unaware and send you flying if you don’t step directly onto a towel to dry your shoes.   And stepping around all those cluttery lumps, in fear of falling and tripping, is not conducive to much cooking either.   Miss Frankie is still shining, with her pretty red earbobs and big gleaming smile, and all the counters and PINK are simply lovely; they’re just taking backseat (rumbleseat, back of the bus, wait for the wagon) to all the other necessaries we’re coping with.

Right now, there are five fans, two air-cleaner machines and uncountable unsheathed Air Freshener clots of gaudy waxen fragrance  scattered about this room, with a roar and a whoosh to addle anyone’s brain, let alone my not-yet-recovered befuddlement from living in the Land of Misrule since March.

Y’all, the humidity in here has been so bad, it SNOWED in my new freezer!!!

But what the heck!!  Yesterday was National French Fry Day!

I made the Fries, by Maw's crunchy-crispins recipe, and four dipping sauces:  tarragon mayo, BBQ, grainy-mustard-mayo, and bleu cheese.  We ate up at Caro's house, where she'd cooked us a wonderful dinner of pork chops, smothered squash and onions, kidney bean salad, and Unky Kim’s splendiferous scalloped tomatoes, right down to the little buttered toast points on top.  

 

 

That and good company and laughing to complete the evening, and those pickles are looking mighty good right now.

Moiré non, soon as that dove gets back.

A LETTER FROM MAGGIE

Hello dearest,

I was just writing to you when I saw you e-mail.  I absolutely LOVE getting mail from you.  Even though we haven’t seen each other in years and years, I feel like you are the sweetest, most adorable kindred spirit and I want to steal you from  your Sis and have you as my very own sister.  I do so wish you lived close by.  PLEASE, if you ever get near Birmingham, come and sit a spell and, as Your Daddy always said to me, let’s go out on the porch and tell lies (ha).

Hooray for the kitchen project almost done.  Know you are going to love it. 

Are you ever at a loss for words?  I absolutely love your writing.   Thought about you this afternoon when I ordered a couple of Gladys Turnbull’s books and planned on sending a note as soon as I sat down.  Was thinking how much I would love to be able to write like you.  I’m totally at a loss for words lately and can’t seem to think of a thing to write about.  When I first retired, I started writing little “ morning papers” and the words just seem to flow.  But lately, NOTHING.     I started re-reading the journal from last year and wondered where all those words came from.  It’s like prayers for me.  Sometimes I say a prayer and know for sure that it didn’t come from me but from Him who is always nearer than my very breath. 

Let’s do stay in touch.  I love you so.

Sweet dreams 

maggie

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And from me to Maggie, just now, pouring out random thoughts like a burst dam:

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.  

So I'm divesting.   Giving away with abandon, pressing goodies upon unsuspecting guests, survey-takers, delivery people who go their way with arms heaped and stunned expressions.  

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.  

Last night two lovely men came to install the last cabinet---we had passed on having the store do the demolition, and a friend of Caro's offered to take down all the cabinets just for taking them off our hands.    Great joy and delight, and the day they demolished, we did them a lovely brunch.    Last night, with all done but that one big heavy shelf, they came back to attach it to the wall; we'd invited wife-and-mother, and the little grandson came as well.    It was a lively, raucous table of almost- strangers, eating and talking like old friends on the same tracks and interests and thoughts.   Great fun, and Caro did a fabulous good old southern supper for us.    But I found myself blurting out the RIGHT words, the witty and the smart puns and anecdotes and answers, and it was a joyous revelation and relief.    These past few days of an immaculate counter (though much doing on my part left to be done) and days of quiet and slow accomplishment of tasks, with only Jack Reacher as my spoken companion---I'm regaining some of my brain cells, I think.

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.  

Heading now for a bite of those GOOD snap beans from last night, over a bit of crisp cold head-lettuce with little cucumber slices and some homemade bleu cheese dressing.   Chris is in AL (I swear if I'd come along, I'd have called and asked to take refuge with YOU while he went down to visit.   He's been cooking for 27 this week, and I'd have been right there in the kitchen day and night with him, as is usual when we visit.   Everybody "comes to see us" and stays for every meal.  Just couldn't bear the idea of such a crowded, busy, hectic place, in this clutter-mind I've lived with since March, anyway, even though three of our dearest GRANDS were there for the weekend).   He'll be coming back through GA to visit three of the other chillum and the GRANDS, and be home tomorrow. 

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.

Love and,

me

FROM THE DREAM . . .

of sixty-five years ago, when I painted my dollhouse kitchen pink with my Mother’s nail polish in the dead of night. . .

To the NOW, this week, about ten minutes after four plumbers and a supervisor walked out my door, leaving me with my real Dream Kitchen.

Moire non, when I can organize pictures, find the words, and remember my name.

Thank you for your patience.

SOME DAYS . . .

You need all the CUTE you can get.

Baby Seal in a Tutu---she’s less than an inch, and the tutu would wrap around my finger.

And a Boom Compenion by your side, come what may.

I'D LIKE TO BE A NAMER

I’d like to be a Namer. If talents and charms were given out, you’d choose you one that’s important and would be rewarding to you (but maybe one that hasn’t been thought of yet, or is an esoteric gift, like the lady in Paxton who undoes knots in anything---string and shoelaces and yarn and necklace chains and those beautiful beaded hangings on Great-Aunt Ursula’s tiny bedroom chandelier which you loved and coveted, but which has been in a box in your attic since she passed it on). 

And I just thought a minute ago, “I’d like to be a NAMER!”  Sis and I put names to every face and body we can find in the old boxes and albums of photos, and wish we had asked the olders of the family who was who, standing next to Aunt Lo, or in the goat cart in the feathered hat.  And who IS that handsome man standing beside our parents at some body of water, as if their Sunday clothes were perfect wear for the beach, and they’re twenty and fresh-married and isn’t it a glorious day?  

Or my darling, beloved Aunt Cilla in a rakish teenage pose in the thirties, her ensemble and hair as straight out of a movie as the seams in her hose.

What about those children clustered around in little chairs in the old family pictures, in white gauzy dresses and all-just-alike overalls, or in such buttoned-up intricate outfits and boots that they look as if they should be in a doll-shop window--are they ancestors, or great-cousins with all those firsts and seconds and once-removeds attached, and we’ll never know their names, save for a long list of Born-Tos in a dusty Bible or in a great list of poetic-sounding names in an impersonal Internet Family Tree.    And who’s to put which name with which little face gazing, if not into the future, at least out at us OF IT, who gaze back and wonder who they are.   We can’t just lose those people of our pasts as if they just whispered away with that last breath---they were important.

So.  Of all the gifts of magical hue---the healing and the knowing and the telling of time to come---I’d like to be able to look at a face and tell you the name.  Those folks who live on in Sepia, the withered, creased memories pressed between dark album pages for more years than they lived, and whose names and deeds died with those who loved them---they deserve a memory.

 I’d love to come to your house and look at your old pictures, pointing out the little boy who ran away at nine and became a part of a War not his own.  And the black-clad young man standing quietly removed from the others in the shade of the porch, having been sent to live with the elderly Aunt and Uncle when his folks died in The Flu; now that THEY are gone, who are the WE of him?   There’s surely a staid, unsmiling couple sitting before an urn of flowers, their wedding day commemorated only through this one graying image, and their faces set in the grim lines befitting a momentous event.  

 But every now and then, there’d be a smooth-faced young girl, curls to her shoulders and the slightest hint of a smile as she gazes serenely into the left-distance---I hope that her wish or wonderful secret came true.

I’d know their names, every one, their times and places and what made them laugh, and remember the time your Mama told you about her three cousins who came for the Summer and never left for four years?  Or what about all those aunts and Uncles that nobody in the family knows which was who, though two of the brothers married twin sisters, making a whole gaggle of children double-first-cousins.  I could sort ‘em out for you, like naming off the cast of Cheers. 

That’s who I’d like to be, that Namer, that straightener-out of family ties, that rememberer of relationships, that helper-to-know.

And we’d write them all on the back; for complicated pictures, we’d trace off the shoulders on paper and put numbers in little circles for faces, and we’d make a neat chart below with names to match, tucking it into the frame or album for searchers of the future. 

If I could.   If only I could.  Wouldn’t that be a FINE THING?