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Posts Tagged ‘Granny’

Putting my face on

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 16, 2013 | 2 Comments »

I need to put my face on.

That’s what Granny called putting on her makeup — putting her face on. When I was little and we lived with Granny and Baw, I would lie on her bed and watch her while she stood in front of her bedroom window and put on her face. Now Granny didn’t wear a lot of “paint,” but she did wear powder, a little rouge, and lipstick.

I remember watching Mama do the same thing, in front of a day-home-office magnifying mirror that she still uses. As a child pretending to put on makeup in front of Mama’s mirror, I always preferred the rosy glow of the home light as opposed to the harsh fluorescence of office. I still do. A pink light bulb is always your friend.

Like Granny and like Mama, I put my face on every day. Without fail. Unless I’m throwing up my feet. I just do.

Three months of bathroom and bedroom renovations has, however, put a hitch in my gitalong. I’ve had to move my dressing table into the dining room along with all the rest of my bedroom furniture and put on my make-up in the guest bathroom, which I share…with a teenage boy. I have to stand. There’s no rosy glow.

I know, I know. What a hardship. Oh, poor pitiful me.

Husband keeps making reference to bootstraps. I roll my eyes. He doesn’t understand.

You see, putting my face on every day is much more to me than slapping on some eyeliner and blush and heading out the door.

Every morning, I sit at my dressing table. I drink a cup of coffee. I spend a few minutes just staring into my own eyes. While I go through my little beauty routine, I think about the day coming up — what I have to do, where I’ll go, how I’ll handle different situations. I have a couple of Bible verses that I stuck in the mirror during a particularly dark time. I still read them every day. I’ve gotten some of my best ideas while contemplating a stray eyebrow hair magnified 10 times its normal size.

It’s my quiet time to get my mind right. To put my face on — my made up face and my public face. To put on the face the world will see and the face that can cope with what the world sends my way.

At least for that one day.

You can’t put your face on while you drink a diet Coke, apply mascara, talk on the phone, and drive through morning traffic. You can’t put your face on in the ladies room at the office. And you can’t put your face on standing in a guest bathroom surrounded by a cloud of Axe fighting for mirror time with a teenager.

I am seven hard wood steps and a few feet of quarter round away from being able to put my face on again.

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Southern Living makes me sad

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2012 | 10 Comments »

Because of Southern Living I contemplate the purchase of Christmas topiary.

Because of Southern Living I recognize beachy pastels as possible holiday colors.

Because of Southern Living I find my self uttering words like “table-scape” and “disco-ball-esque.”

Because of Southern Living I am sad.

This year’s Christmas issue, a “special double issue,” found its way to my mailbox in November to taunt me, to mock me, to make me feel vaguely inferior and sort of shabby. Page after glossy page featured showplace rooms with every imaginable bit of color-coordinated holiday finery. The coral drapes match the coral and teal tree that match the coral and teal gifts that match the stockings hung by the chimney with more than just a teensy bit of care. Everything is “punchy.” It all must “pop.”

Editor M. Lindsay Bierman must have had me in mind as he watched this issue come together. In what appears to be an attempt to empathize with the common reader, he shares a dark secret with us — that his own Christmas won’t look like the pages of the magazine either, that his kitchen will be messy, that his presents will not be works of wrapping art. The magazine is to inspire, he writes, to bring out the “dreamer,” the “doer.”

I don’t buy it. My suburban ranch-style home, a product of the late 60s just like me, is not now and never will be a decorator show home — no matter how much I dream or do. It’s just not, well, it’s just not…Audrey. My decorating style can only be characterized as eclectic (read inherited, free, antique and/or thrift combined with a variety of local art work and sundry little collections of things that please me).

And you know what? I like it that way.

A couple of weeks ago, I put down the Southern Living and set about my own Christmas decorating as I do every year. My holiday style, much like my decorating style, can only be described as eclectic (read not matching, inherited, free, antique, gifts). I don’t have a snowy white tree. None of my decorations necessarily match, or mismatch. And I could not care less about seasonal napkin rings.

But here’s what I do have.

Elves in a Styrofoam and glitter hot-air balloon

Elves in a Styrofoam and glitter hot-air balloon

I have elves in a Styrofoam and glitter hot-air balloon. Every year, me and Sarah, Granny’s housekeeper and my constant companion, would unpack Granny’s Christmas ornaments, every one carefully wrapped in tissue paper from the year before. This was my favorite. Where were the little elves going? Are they going home to the North Pole? Running away? Were they like the Jumblies, which my mother read to me over and over at my behest, off in search of adventure and Chankly Bore? The elves are hanging on my tree right now, and every time I see them, the same thoughts still run through my mind.

Wax Christmas balls

Wax Christmas balls

I also have Granny’s wax Christmas balls which, after many, many years of hot Southern attic summers, have melted into the very tissue paper that was supposed to protect them. Even though they can no longer be used, I still keep them, and admire their misshapen beauty every year. I guess the Alabama heat eventually gets the best of all of us.

Paper chains

Paper chains

I have the paper chains Sonny and I made with dime store construction paper and Scotch tape. They’re a little faded, but the memory of the afternoon we spent making them has not.

boot

Ceramic Santa boot

I have a ceramic Santa boot given to me by my third grade Sunday School teacher, Miss Bobbi. It has my first and middle name painted on it in gold. It came filled with candy. I’ve had it for thirty-five Christmases now.

Baby's First Christmas

Baby’s First Christmas

I have a Baby’s First Christmas ornament given by Daddy to Sonny for just that. I have thirteen more ornaments, each one different and special, that Daddy has given Sonny every year since the first. One day Sonny will have them on his own tree.

Santa and Mrs. Claus

Santa and Mrs. Claus

Did you know that Santa and Mrs. Claus lead secret, double lives? In addition to all that toy making business, the also serve up salt and pepper every year on my dining table. I can’t remember a Christmas without them.

Grapevine wreaths

Grapevine wreaths

I have grapevine wreaths made from grapevines I grew. Sometimes I put ribbons on them. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I leave them up all year ’round. Wish I could do the same thing with my Christmas lights, but the neighbors would talk.

My Christmas extravaganza

My Christmas extravaganza

Speaking of lights, here are mine! White lights are elegant and all that, but I like the colored ones better and lots of them. I wish I had more lights this year. I also wish I had an extension ladder. And a staple gun. And the courage to climb up on the roof.

Here’s what I have.

Real Southern living. And that doesn’t make me sad at all. In fact, it makes me rather happy.

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Oh, fudge!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2012 | 6 Comments »

My Granny was not a good cook. There, I’ve said it. She just wasn’t. Granny had many talents, but they were all put into practice far, far away from the kitchen. Unless you count arranging flowers on the kitchen table, but that had nothing to do with food.

I remember one time when I was spending the night and Granny tried to make spaghetti for supper. Upon realizing that she was out of Ragu, she proceeded to pour a bottle of ketchup over the hot pasta. After all, tomato sauce is tomato sauce, right?

In theory, yes. In practice, no.

But there was one thing that Granny could make — fudge. And Granny didn’t make any old cop-out fudge. She made the hard kind on the Hershey’s Cocoa can (recipe below). The kind that requires one to intuit things like “soft ball stage.” The kind that, if you don’t hold your mouth just right, well, it winds up being nothing more than grainy ice cream topping.

Granny could make it every time! She never failed. IMG_0892

And it was Granny’s fudge that I looked forward to every Christmas. I would watch her slowly, constantly stirring stirring stirring the mixture. I would watch her let one drop slip off the end of the spoon into a glass of water. And I would watch her examine that drop to see if it sent the proper message of doneness.

If it was time, she would take the pot off the stove, add some butter and vanilla, and beat beat beat it with a wooden spoon until it started to look right. Into a buttered pan it would go, and a little while later it was a perfect square of fudge. Yum yum.

I still make fudge every Christmas because it reminds me of Granny. Unlike Granny, though, I cannot make the Hershey’s Cocoa recipe set up to save my life. I have problems with foods that must “set” — any sort of Jello dish usually defeats me.

I use the Carnation Classic Five-Minute Fudge recipe (also below). It’s a cop-out because it uses marshmallows and there are no ball stages or anything terribly complicated involved. I don’t care. It has never failed.

Now just about every year it winds up that I only have one weekend with Sonny between Thanksgiving and Christmas because of a custody arrangement, bad luck, fate, and the alignment of the stars and planets. One piddlin’ weekend for us to pack in all the fun holiday things we want to do. One weekend. Two days.

In past years, when he was smaller, we’d go to The Birmingham Zoo‘s Zoolight Safari, we’d go visit Santa Claus, and we might go see a Christmas movie if one was playing. But this year, now that he’s a teenager, he didn’t want to do any of those things. “Well, what do you want to do this year?” I asked him. “What is the one special Christmas thing that you’d really like to do?”

“Can we make fudge?” he asked.IMG_0907

So make fudge we did. Since we are products of too much Food Network, we started Saturday morning planning what flavors we would make, as if plain fudge isn’t perfection. We dispensed with bacon (it’s been overdone) and margarita (couldn’t find lime flavoring), and we decided to try plain chocolate, chocolate jalapeño, peanut butter, dark chocolate cherry, white chocolate peppermint, chocolate chili, and s’more.

We made fudge all day long and into the evening. We made fudge until we were so tired and sticky we could hardly stand it. Some of the batches turned out great (you’d be surprised what a shot of Sriracha does to a recipe of fudge). Some not so great (apparently fudge flavored with maraschino cherry juice will never really set up, even if marshmallows are involved).  And there were some couldn’t help but be good (did I mention plain is always the best).

Sonny and I spent the day cooking and tasting. Measuring and stirring. Laughing and joking. We wound up covered in chocolate. We washed a mountain of dishes. We had to mop the floor. We ate fudge until we were nearly sick.

We spent the day — our day — making so much more than just fudge.

Hershey’s Cocoa Fudge

(from http://www.hersheys.com)

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups sugar
  • 2/3 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa or HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1-1/2 cups milk
  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
 Directions:
  1. Line 8-or 9-inch square pan with foil, extending foil over edges of pan. Butter foil.
  2. Mix sugar, cocoa and salt in heavy 4-quart saucepan; stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to full rolling boil. Boil, without stirring, until mixture reaches 234°F on candy thermometer or until small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water, forms a soft ball which flattens when removed from water. (Bulb of candy thermometer should not rest on bottom of saucepan.)
  3. Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. DO NOT STIR. Cool at room temperature to 110°F (lukewarm). Beat with wooden spoon until fudge thickens and just begins to lose some of its gloss. Quickly spread into prepared pan; cool completely. Cut into squares. Store in tightly covered container at room temperature. About 36 pieces or 1-3/4 pounds.NOTE: For best results, do not double this recipe. This is one of Hershey’s most requested recipes, but also one of the most difficult. The directions must be followed exactly. Beat too little and the fudge is too soft. Beat too long and it becomes hard and sugary.

Carnation Classic Five-Minute Fudge

(from http://www.carnationmilk.ca)

Ingredients:

  • 2 Tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 2/3 cup evaporated milk
  • 1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups (4 ounces) miniature marshmallows
  • 1-1/2 cups (9 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, optional
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Combine butter or margarine, evaporated milk, sugar, and salt in a medium, heavy-duty saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil stirring constantly for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
  2. Stir in marshmallows, chocolate chips, nuts, and vanilla. Stir vigorously for 1 minute or until marshmallows are melted. Pour into a foiled-lined 8-inch square baking pan. Chill until firm.

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Have you got game?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2012 | 3 Comments »

“Taste this and guess what it is!” Aunt Lois* says to me one Thanksgiving morning while jabbing at me with a carving fork, a piece of grayish meat dangling from the tines.

“Go on; taste it!”

Now I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to readily identify my food. Even at a  young age, I didn’t think I should have to guess what exactly it was that I ingested. Plus, Aunt Lois had a history of cooking things that were, uh, a little too “organic” for my taste.

For instance, I was at her house one day near lunchtime and naturally the talk turned to what we should fix to eat. Unable to decide, we did what every self-respecting Southerner might do when on the horns of such a dilemma — we went out to the garage to plunder through the deep freeze, that enormous coffin-like receptacle for all things blanched and frozen, fishy or gamey, or just plain too unwieldy for your normal Frigidaire.

Aunt Lois dug past the fish filets, the venison steaks, and even some frog legs and pulled out a freezer bag. “Let’s eat this!” she said holding the bag up with something near glee in her eyes. Before me dangled two little carcasses pressed flat in the plastic, nekkid, arms and legs akimbo almost like they were shocked to death and flash frozen in their surprise. “Squirrel!” And off she went in search of the chicken fryer. Squirrel. Oh my. Couldn’t we just have a tomato sandwich?

Flash forward to Thanksgiving. Aunt Lois shows up at Mama’s house with a huge roasting pan containing an unnaturally large roast smiggling around in some sort of au jus with a few onions and mushrooms. Once in the kitchen, she sets upon it with a vengeance, wildly hacking at it with a carving fork and a large blade akin to a machete.

“Taste it! Guess!”

I thought it better to guess before eating. Just in case. You never know with Aunt Lois. Hmmm, I thought to myself, what lives around here?

Goat? “No.”

Wild hog? “No.”

Deer? Please let it be deer. I’m running out of options. “No.”

I’d seen what I thought was a bear track once. Lord, I hope not. Bear? “No.”

“It’s MOOSE!” she finally exclaimed. “A gift from a friend of mine who went hunting out West!”

Moose. Have mercy. No wonder it was so dang big!

For the record, if any of you, my dear readers, perchance to go out West and think to bring me a gift, I’d much prefer something that either makes me look good (like jewelry) or smell good (like perfume). I would just as soon not be remembered with a hunk of dead animal flesh, thank you very much.

But the same can’t be said for Aunt Lois, once an ace hunter her ownself. Aunt Lois, who has a room full of mounted heads from deer she felled. Aunt Lois, sweet, flirty, mischievous. Aunt Lois, who can gut a fish or a squirrel or a deer without ever so much as chipping her frosty pink nail polish. Aunt Lois, who doesn’t take “no” for an answer.

So taste I did. Gray, dense, gamey, a little too chewy. But if you slog it through some gravy, like most not-quite-palatable things, it wasn’t half bad. In “The Maine Woods,” Henry David Thoreau likened moose to “tender beef, with perhaps more flavour; sometimes like veal.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but after a good deal of mastication it did, ultimately, go down.

Thanks to Aunt Lois, I have had to be game (pun intended) to try any number of things that I probably would not have without her insistence. Among other things, I have picked shot off my plate, learned to ignore the fact that supper looked like Kermit from the waist down, and been educated as to the best way to pull the skin off a catfish. And I am a better person for it.

So here’s to mystery. Here’s to culinary adventure. And here’s to knowing what’s on your plate before the blessing is said. Happy Thanksgiving!

*Aunt Lois is actually my great aunt, Granny’s youngest sister.

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Come play in the deep end

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 7, 2012 | 12 Comments »

“Do you remember being the only little White girl who would swim in the public pool?”

Three times in as many months I have been asked this question by as many hometown African American lady friends.

The answer? Honestly? No.

“Do you remember teaching the Black kids how to swim?”

Sort of. I remember that if you couldn’t swim, you couldn’t play in the deep end. You couldn’t play with me. I remember that I was lucky enough to get swimming lessons. I remember that everybody’s Mama and Daddy couldn’t afford to give them lessons every summer.

Here’s what else I remember. I remember that I lived right across the street from the swimming pool – the cat bird seat, if you will. I remember that it was a sparkling oasis of ice cold, blue chlorination in an otherwise miserably hot, dry South Alabama town. I remember that I had a lot of friends and we played Marco Polo, and raced, and did crazy dives off the diving board.

I remember that if my grandfather took me to the creek, there were no other children to play with. It was just me. And Baw. And the river.

Now that you mention it, though, most of those pool friends were, indeed, Black. Now that you mention it, I do remember getting called nasty names, names that I will not repeat, because of who my friends were. Now that you mention it, I didn’t care what those hateful people said then — and I don’t care now. They weren’t going to change me. They weren’t going to stop me from playing with my friends. They weren’t going to stop me from going to the pool.

I remember thinking, how sad for them that they feel that way. How sad that they would deny themselves the fun of the public pool because of their prejudice. How sad that they would give up a whole afternoon of playing with some of the most fun people I knew just because of the color of their skin.

Back then, back in the early 70s, a few people felt compelled to say hateful, ugly things, but they had to approach me, look me in the eye, and speak their awful words out loud. They had to risk the possibility of a swift kick in the shins. Now though, thanks to social media, people are able to spew their vitriol right out in public for all the world to see — a glowing screen separating them from the real world and the black and blue consequences. And spew they do. Freely. Recklessly. Thoughtlessly.

Freedom of Speech is a right that we all have. It is a right I am thankful for, just like I am thankful for all of the freedoms we are granted by virtue of the fact that we are Americans. Freedoms that are unique to us, to the United States. Freedoms that many, many other people would give anything for. But just because you have this right, doesn’t mean you have to exercise it. As Granny used to say, sometimes it is better to be quiet and thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.

This election season, played out on Facebook, has shown me an unprecedented amount of ignorance, selfishness, and hate. I have seen some of the most disgusting displays of prejudice — racial, gender, economical, sexual orientation — you name it. Forget about the least of these! Forget about loving thy neighbor as thyself! To hell with you, Samaritan!

Well I wasn’t raised that way. I was raised by a Mother who took groceries to shut-ins no matter what side of the tracks they lived on. I was raised by a Father who taught English at a historically Black community college during the Civil Rights era. They instilled in me that you should help those who could not help themselves without question, without judgment. I was raised to stand up for what I thought was right and to defend those weaker than me. I was raised to treat everyone – old, young, Black, White, rich, poor – with courtesy and with respect. I was raised at the pool.

Don’t be alone at the river. Alone with hate, greed, and prejudice. Why don’t you come to the pool and play in the deep end with me?

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The Arbor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2012 | 9 Comments »

I have an arbor. I flat love it. Husband hates it – bugs, mess, blah blah blah. I don’t care.

This year’s crop

I have an arbor because Granny had an arbor. I flat loved it.

It was covered with muscadine vines growing down to the ground and high up into the trees. I would drag whatever lawn furniture and discarded household items I could scavenge or spirit away under the arbor’s dark cover to create a playhouse, my own secret refuge hidden from the outside world. It was always shady and cool. Quiet except for the hum of the bees and the occasional bark of a far-off dog.

I would mark off rooms with rows of pine straw and arrange old pots, pans and broken plates in the kitchen. A rusty, metal chaise lounge was my living room sofa. A bed of straw covered with an old horse blanket made a bed.

In my playhouse, I ate the muscadines growing at my fingertips and sand pears from a nearby tree, both sticky, sweet late summer treats. I watched birds nesting among the twisted branches. Sometimes I would get the ladder and climb on top, the old vines supporting my weight so I could lie down and watch the clouds blow over head or feel the sun shining down on my face. I once entertained old Mr. No-shoulders, long, shiny and black, until he decided to carry on about his business.

Under my arbor looking out

That is why I have an arbor. I built it about seven years ago, and planted three muscadine and three scuppernong vines. They have since grown to cover the wooden frame and drape down the sides like long curtains. The vines have even ventured over into the fig tree and seem to be trying to touch the sky. The last few weeks, however, the vines have been heavy and droopy with fruit.

Sometimes, when Brother comes to visit, we go to the arbor and visit while we pick the muscadines and scuppernongs. As we talk, sometimes I will sneak one of the fruits into my mouth, pop the skin with my teeth releasing the sweet nectar, and then spit the mucous-like center at Brother when he least expects it. I especially like it when I hit him on the neck or upside the head. It is one of my greatest joys as a big sister.

Mostly though, I find myself out under my arbor all by myself, lost in the task of picking the seemingly endless supply of grapes – only the low ones for me though, the high ones are left for the birds. I wonder why I haven’t put a chair under my arbor where it is always shady and cool. I will next year, I always tell myself. I plot out rooms in my mind. I arrange imaginary furniture. I always keep an eye out just in case old Mr. No-shoulders decides to drop by.

Granted, I no longer have a need to play house. I can always go into my brick and mortar house where I have real rooms and air conditioning. But as the setting sun shines through the leaves, luminescent like stained glass windows, and I am serenaded by the buzzing of the bees and the occasional bark of a faraway dog, I am always loathe to leave my reverie.

I have an arbor. I flat love it.

 

(For Technorati 4M68U4SYM5FN)

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Manure and a Models Coat

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2012 | 3 Comments »

This morning I found myself in the backyard clad in my housecoat and sturdy moccasin slippers. This morning, my left elbow resting on my left knee, my right hand searched down through damp monkey grass for the base of an offending weed. This morning I pulled that weed and a handful more and cast them over the fence. This morning I realized that I have turned into my grandmother.

It all started with a cup of coffee with Husband on the deck, the morning unnaturally cool for an Alabama August. As we chatted, our attention turned to what we have come to refer to as “the backyard reclamation project.” Our sloping, rocky backyard had become weedy and overgrown, and we have been vigilantly trying to fight back Mother Nature one little section at a time with mulch, gravel, pavers, and the carefully-placed, hearty shrub. We think we’re winning, but it’s a daily battle.

Granny with one of her many prize-winning bouquets

That’s how I came to be in the yard, in my housecoat. There was a weed, audacious and mocking, peeking out in one of my carefully manicured flower beds. I could not sit still. A force greater than I compelled me to go down to the bed, stoop over, and pluck the offending interloper, and all of his insidious little friends, up by the very roots. Rear end in the air, head down, the realization hit me. I am Granny.

Now Granny was an avid horticulturist, and I, admittedly, have a black thumb when it comes to cultivating anything more than weeds. Granny would head out into the yard early every morning in her Models Coat and Baw’s old loafer-looking man slippers. She and Leroy would water, plant, haul, edge, mulch and prune until the sun was high. Then, around 11 or so, Granny would head inside to clean up and get dressed for the day.

Every day, you would find Granny and Leroy, shoulder to shoulder, amongst the daylilies, camellias, zinnias, snapdragons, water lilies. Lantana, amaryllis, pansies, johnny jump-ups, azaleas, iris. Roses, princess feathers, crinum, spider lilies, geraniums, impatiens. Granny in her housecoat, with a truckload of manure and a trowel, could grow anything.

And she won prizes!

Not only did she coax beautiful blooms from all manner of seedlings, cuttings, and bulbs, she fashioned the blossoms into glorious arrangements. She entered every flower show the Citronelle Garden Club hosted and brought home ribbon after blue ribbon. She had a true talent for taking a dry block of green oasis and studding it with the best, hand-picked blooms from her yard until it was miraculously converted into a piece of living artwork.

But try as I might, with my garden clogs, Smith & Hawken garden kneeler, flowered garden gloves, and wide-brimmed sunhat, about the best I can do is not kill the heartiest of hearty plants. I over-water and under-water. I prune and transplant at all the wrong times. My Virginia creeper and poison ivy thrive, while my expensive store-bought plants shed leaves, turn brown, shrivel and die.

But maybe I’ve been going about it all wrong. Maybe today was a revelation of a different sort. Maybe it doesn’t take expensive tools and gear to turn my backyard jungle into a lush Garden of Eden.

Maybe all it takes is a little daily attention, a truckload of manure, and a sweaty, dirty Models Coat.

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Beauty for a day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2012 | 1 Comment »

There may come a time when you find yourself winding down a two-lane country road. And along that road you may see a field. And in that field you may see an odd grouping of bright flame-colored flowers.

Photo courtesy of Ulf Eliasson via Wikipedia.

Meet Hemerocallis fulva, otherwise known as the common orange daylily or roadside daylily. This tangerine titan of perennials is considered by some to be a weed, an invasive species. But weeds don’t grow in perfectly straight lines. And weeds don’t grow in the shape of corners.

You see, these daylilies mark the foundations where front porches once stood, where families lived, where generations were born and died. These rows are an attempt to bring beauty to a life that was probably not always beautiful and was more likely harder than the ground from which these blossoms erupt. The hearty nature of the daylily mirrors the hearty souls of county folk willing to scratch out a living on their own ground rather than become beholden to another.

Granny loved the daylily and planted hundreds of different varieties around her home.  Along with the common orange there were lilies with single, double, and spider petals, some with ruffles, some with “eyes.” Lilies in every color of the rainbow from the palest peach to purples so dark they were very nearly black. Lilies bearing names like  “Daring Deception,” “Chicago Blackout,” and “Emerald Dew.”

Opie, me, and the lilies

There were dayliles that had been divided and traded for other varieties. Some were store bought – ordered from catalogs and anxiously awaited. One was even a special hybrid cultivated by another local lily enthusiast as a gift to commemorate the birth of a granddaughter.

We watched for buds to blossom not wanting to miss a special showing which, twenty-four hours later, would become a soggy, wilted shadow of its former glory. We went out early to pick them for a special Sunday bouquet or to show off in the annual flower show.

Granny has been gone from us for ten years now, but I’m sure that the lilies she cultivated so carefully continue to bloom with veracity, even in the face of South Alabama’s sun and heat, hurricane and drought. I’m sure their myriad colors still bring joy to those who gaze upon them. And I know that their blossoms will ever greet the morning sun long after we have joined Granny.

Although it’s name means “beauty for a day,” there are countless years of history lost to books, lost to us, that are commemorated only by lilies in fields. That is why this plain Jane perennial is no more a weed than the mighty oak. For even though its blooms may be fleeting, its rows will ever endure to mark a time in history that wood, stone, and mortar could not.

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The power of precipitation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2012 | 11 Comments »

She was almost 99 when she died. Almost.

She attributed her longevity to rain. Not watching it. Getting wet in it.

As May approaches, I always start thinking of Granny. Her birthday is May 5. She would have been 109 this year.

I thought she would live forever. I think she did too, asking me once “How old was Methuselah really?”

Granny

You see, Granny firmly believed that if you got wet in the first May rain, you would not be sick for the rest of the year. It seems to be true.

Granny did not diet; dessert was mandatory. Granny did not exercise although she worked in her yard daily. She did not take medicine, not an aspirin, not a spoonful of Creomulsion.

There was no Tai Chi, Tae Bo, Kwan Do, Cross fit, or Karate. No Zumba, Yoga, Troga, or Sweatin’ with the Oldies. No treadmill, no recumbent, no elliptical. Certainly no running. Why run somewhere when you can get in your big long Chrysler car and drive?

She didn’t need it. For every year, as the fifth month began, we would perch at the ready waiting for a gray cloud to darken the blue South Alabama sky, listening for a distant rumble of thunder. Is the breeze picking up? Does it feel more humid?

Then as soon as the first drops began to fall, we would race outside and get wet in the first magical, mystical, healing May rain.

Now to be sure, Granny was no hard-bodied hottie. Not in her youth; not in her so-called golden years. If you subscribe to her notion of the power of precipitation, you must be well aware of the consequences and willing to accept them.

Your might see a slight jiggle when you lift your arm. [Gasp!] There might be a dimple or two in your thigh area. [Egads!]  You might not have pecs. [Ladies, not really the most attractive look anyway.]

And you just might have to come to terms with looking just how you look, and being just fine with it. [Oh, the horror!]

Make no mistake. Granny prided herself on being well-dressed, neat, proper.  But Granny didn’t sweat a wrinkle. She didn’t paint her face all up, although a little powder and lipstick were de riguer. She didn’t dye her snowy hair, white since her late 30s.

And she did exercise. She exercised her mind. She read a great deal, but the Press-Register and the Bible she read every day. She was a cut-throat bridge player. Strategy. Subtlety. She worked crosswords and find-a-words. She conversed. She questioned. She believed.

So maybe the secret to longevity is not in a few drops of water from the sky, but in the contentment that comes with believing those drops will make everything alright – at least for one more year.

Either way, this year, as I do every year, when I hear the first distant clap of thunder, I will go stand outside and wait. Wait for the rain. Wait for contentment.

Thank you, Granny.

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Happy Easter…now go stand by that bush

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

As I look back through the photographic record of my childhood, I see a distinct pattern.

To commemorate most every special occasion, I was hauled out in the yard, strategically placed in front of something blooming with seasonal flowers, and commanded to stare into the sun until my retinas burned away, all while trying to smile and not look too sweaty and miserable.

Me and the azaleas

Easter was an especially good holiday for playing fauna to so much spring flora as the azaleas, daffodils, sweetheart roses, and all manner of other gaudy horticulture would be in full bloom. Which makes me wonder sometimes – was the picture really about me as the cute, blonde and all-around irresistibly adorable and charming first granddaughter or was it about the damn azaleas?

Brother maintains that because flash bulbs were so expensive, there was really no other option if one wanted to capture the moment we all got dressed up in our Sunday best to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. You had to leave the dark recesses of your dwelling and venture out into the harsh light of day in order to even get a clear picture. I counter that high holidays are just an excuse to immortalize the yard of the month on Kodachrome.

Looking back through even older photos as well, the subjects often do not look terribly happy to be in the picture

Baw and the azaleas

and seem almost secondary to a more important subject, say a horseless wagon. Their squinty demeanors tell me that they too seem to have been commanded to stare directly into the sun in order to properly accentuate the real subject of interest.

In these days of camera phones, Facebook, Instagram and the overwhelming compulsion to share every mundane event, like what I ate for lunch, in all it’s photographic, plastic fork glory, are photographs even special anymore? In fact, once I am gratified by the image on the screen, I find I am hard pressed to ever get prints made.

I have fabulous images of my life…on my phone…on my computer. But what will Sonny have? A box full of yellowed, wonderfully smelly prints of him standing by random bushes? Unfortunately, I doubt it. His childhood will be immortalized in cyberspace or on an obsolete hard drive. It will be password protected.

Granny, me, and a flowering bush

It’s hard to get above your raisin’s though. That’s why every Easter (and first day of school, and Halloween, and 4th of July…) I too drag my child out into the yard, strategically place him on the front steps, and command him to look dapper and happy while staring directly into a ball of fire and trying not to perspire. “Smile,” I bark in the true spirit of Christian charity and motherly devotion, “For the love of Pete, stop squinting and smile!”

After all, nothing says Happy Easter like standing in the yard by a bush and wondering if you’ll be seeing spots all the way to church.

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