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Posts Tagged ‘Mama’

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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Merry and Bright

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Dear Readers,

I’d like to share with you a story I wrote that was published today on Bourbon & Boots, a website that specializes in all things Southern. It’s called Merry and Bright: Why We Love to Bake With Booze, and you can find it right here: www.bourbonandboots.com/merry-and-bright.

Thank you all for reading this year and for your kind words, encouragement, and the stories that you have shared with me. I hope each and every one of you have a very safe, happy, and peaceful holiday.

Love and hugs,

Audrey

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From gravy to grace

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2012 | 4 Comments »

In honor of Mother’s Day, I present you with

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM MY MAMA

  1. If you can make a white sauce (bechamel  to the hoity toity), you can make anything. Cheese sauce, gravy, cream soups – all variations on the lowly white sauce. Master the basics, and you’ll look like a gourmet.

    Mama and me

  2. Use eye cream every day and every night. Religiously. As if your life depended on it. You might be 18 now and think you don’t need it, but you would be wrong. Mama is…well, she’s not 18 anymore, but she’s as beautiful as any woman half her age. Of course, a lot has to do with inner beauty, but eye cream has played a big part in the outer beauty.
  3. Sometimes you just have to buck up. Mama has always been very sympathetic to my whining and pouting and gnashing of teeth – to a point. I know, however, that I have exhausted her patience and made an utter fool of myself when she finally says, “You just need to buck up.” She’s right. I do. And it has always served me well.
  4. There is no wrong time to eat ice cream.
  5. Often it is better to just keep your mouth shut. These days we feel compelled to “express ourselves” and have “talks” ad nauseum about every little emotion, thought, or perceived injustice that flits through our vapid little minds. There are, however, things that, once said, can never be unsaid. Don’t say them. You will save yourself a lot of grief and drama. If you must say them or fall over dead, run out in the woods where no one can hear you and holler them out.
  6. If you have a tummy ache, it can be cured by lying down in a dark room with a pillow on your stomach. Or eat a bread pill.
  7. Hens lay, people lie. (Ref. #6 above.) Proper grammar and usage is invaluable.
  8. Children should be seen and not heard. “Oh, but little Sally Mae is an interesting and valuable member of our family and society in general, even if she is only five.” I’m sure she is, but little Sally Mae will learn infinitely more in her lifetime if she will first learn to shut up and listen.
  9. Lipstick is essential.
  10. Pay attention to details. The devil is in them to be sure, but something worth doing is worth doing right.
  11. There is a lot to be learned from The Psalms. Take the time to read them when you need to find a little extra grace or the courage to buck up.
  12. Being a mother is not always easy or fun. But if you raise your children with the singular goal of molding them into the sort adults you would like to have as companions – as friends – everything will turn out alright in the end.

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Standing on the promises

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 18, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Nowadays, when the work day nears an end and there’s not enough time left to start another project but too much time to call it church and head to the house, we automatically turn to the computer to fill that void. We stare until our eyes burn at the glare of news, friend updates, celebrity gossip, sales. With aching heads and dulled minds we creep toward the magic hour of freedom.

How did people fill the lull of the afternoon before computers and internet and smart phones? Well, I’ll tell you what my people did.

They played music.

At Mama’s office, along about three o’clock in the afternoon when the last customer had gone, the mail had been taken to the post office, and the phone quit ringing, she and Barbara, her secretary, would pull out their instruments – Mama, the fiddle, and Barbara, the accordion – and commence to playing all the good, old hymns that make you happy to be a child of God.

The old, brown weathered hymnal they played from had dispatched a message of hope to generations of world-weary souls for whom the prospect of cities of gold far outweighed the prospect of another day hauling logs out of the woods and to the mill.

♫ I will meet you in the morning by the bright river side, when all sorrow has drifted away… ♪

Barbara could play anything on the piano or the accordion, you only had to hum a few bars and her long fingers would fly over the keys and fill in your off-key gaps with all the right notes, plus a few embellishments to get you in the spirit.

♫ Precious memories, unseen angels, sent from somewhere to my soul… ♪

Mama, fiddle tucked under her chin and toe tapping time, would draw the bow over the strings releasing the melodies she’d known by heart since childhood. Mama knows every word to every song ever written, no matter how obscure.

♫ As I travel through this pilgrim land, there is a friend who walks with me. Leads me safely through the sinking sand… ♪

"Fiddler" by Audrey

Sometimes Old Man Snookum Wally, a shade-tree mechanic from Okwaukee, would drop by with his guitar or fiddle to play a few songs with them. Once he brought me an old guitar he’d found at a flea market and showed me how to play a few chords. I still have it.

♫ I once was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in, and then a little light from heaven filled my soul… ♪

Claude Platt lived about a block away. Every day, he’d drive over and park in front of the office, go across the street to see what was happening at the police station and then come over to catch up on the latest news, shadowed every step of the way by his big old redbone hound, Skafer. He didn’t play, but he’d clap his gnarled, prize-fighter hands and chime in on the low parts.

♫ Love lifted me (even me), love lifted me (even me). When nothing else could help, love lifted me… ♪

When five o’clock rolled around, the instruments went back into their cases, the lights were turned off, the door locked against the night. And we all headed to our homes, the lingering refrains of faith guiding our way.

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