Mistakes

When Taylor was cooking our fish last Sunday, she said, "I like my tuna rare and my salmon done well."
Me too.
I'm cooking salmon right now for Jessie's last night at home before she leaves tomorrow for the North Florida Folk Festival and then her journey back to her home in North Carolina. I'm not cooking it the way Taylor did because Taylor is a chef. But I am cooking it the way I cook it and as such, that's the way Mama makes it, which is what Jessie wanted.

I have been so busy lately. And so many things have been out of my comfort zone. Jesus. Going and hanging with my mother for one. But this softening of her brain has created this huge softening of her heart and I'm good with that. Today when I was there, she started to tell the story of when I was in her third grade classroom (yes, she was my teacher in the third grade) and how I'd been in a spelling bee and misspelled the word "soap." "S-O-P-E, soap," I said. Because I wasn't interested in the spelling bee. It was boring. And I was reading a book. And if I had a buck for every time my mother has told this story I could buy a nice piece of jewelry. So today she started to tell it and I said, "Mom. We know the story. S-O-P-E, soap."
And she said, "Well, I just felt so bad for you."
And I said, "And we never need to bring it up again."

Which I would never have said before. But today, while I was filling out paper work for her, I felt completely comfortable saying.

Done. Never tell that story again in my presence. What purpose does it possibly serve? I was eight fucking years old. I misspelled a word. Let it go.

And I need to let it go and so does she.
And by god, if I need to remind her to do so, I fucking well will.

Oh, bless her heart.
Bless mine too.

As Gradydoctor pointed out today, Oprah has said that we are not our mistakes. There's an Oprah lesson I am trying to learn. We aren't our mistakes. And misspelling a word in a third grade spelling bee does not define who I am. And I can tell my mother that.

I did a lot today. I got the dogs groomed, I did the paper work for Mother, I went to her doctor and made an appointment to get an exam for her which must be done before she can move. I went to the store. I came home.

I dug potatoes. I am making a dinner for me and Jessie of potatoes and green beans and salmon and spinach and onions and mushrooms. I let the chickens out today. They brought me great joy as they scratched about the yard and came up on the kitchen porch.

Tomorrow Owen will be here and then an entire weekend to myself. I am having Kathleen and Judy and Denise and Rich and Boone over on Sunday for Memorial Day food. I am making the potato salad and the beans and I will provide the watermelon and I will build a fire with my Girl Scout skills in the big kettle grill if someone wants to cook on a grill. I am looking forward to that.

I am listening to Keith Richards tell his story and babies, he made a lot of mistakes. But he doesn't define himself around them. He lives on in joy and his children love him and his grandchildren too and so does his wife, or so it would seem. He seems to say, "Bless his heart," or "Bless her heart," more than would seem normal for an English guy. Maybe I can listen to Keith Richards where I cannot listen to Oprah because my soul is more aligned with his. I don't know. I do know that we find our teachers where we find them and without a doubt, it was a mistake for me to go to third grade with my mother as my teacher and I am truly realizing that and also realizing that her mistakes were her own. Mine were mine.

And here I am, in this place where I am at home and where my mistakes do not have to define me and where I can realize, as I dig potatoes from the earth, my hands black with it, that I am who I am and that is okay and when I am eighty-four years old there is hope that I will not remind my children of spelling mistakes which they made at the age of eight. I think that's a good possibility in that I can't remember any and don't care if they did.

And I am getting to a place where when my mother brings these things up, I can just say, "Mama. You don't need to tell that story again. We've heard it."


That's a volunteer sunflower that has grown up in my kitchen garden. Yes. It was a mistake that it came up there, the seed strewn by some bird, I am sure. And the chickens didn't eat it and it there it grew, planting itself in the dirt. But despite the fact that it may have been a mistake that it got there, it is perfectly suited to where it is and it has bloomed.

I don't think I need to say any more about that.