For Lily And Jason

When Jason and Lily left yesterday I said to Mr. Moon, "They are the sweetest little family," and they are. There they went, Jason in the back seat between his two buckled-in sons, giving Gibson a little bottle and Owen yelling out the window, "I love you!" and Lily driving them all home, their groceries in the car.

The sweetest little family.

You know what today is? Their fourth anniversary. Yep. Four years ago Lily and Jason stood together on a beautiful spring day and Hank said the words and they were married.

And in the ensuing four years they have taken that bond they made and done beautiful things with it.
They've worked so hard. They've been so responsible. They are so loving.
And really, they are so young.
But here they are with their own little house with their own yard and garden and a sleepy, mellow cat and two fine boys. And they're such naturals at being parents that it knocks me out.

I'm going to tell you something: Lily and Jason both had a LOT of ya-ya's to get out before they settled down. Uh-huh. They did. Both before they met each other and after.
There were some, uh, rough patches in their beginnings. There were some, uh, difficulties. But they found their way.

And here they are.

When I talked yesterday about how well Owen is adapting to being a big brother I should have said more about that. About how it's going so well because Owen has no doubt that he is loved and cherished and part of a loving family. Because that's what makes it so much easier for him to accept a new brother. He has a mama and a daddy who take such good care of him and who love him and consider his well-being with every breath they take. And it shows.

Four years. But they've been together a lot longer than that. Since they were kids, really. And now they have kids and in that, they have given me more joy than they'll ever know until those kids grow up and give them some grandchildren. But it's not just the grandsons they've given me. It's the incredible peace of mind I have about them and their future. I know that Lily and Jason's love and bond and their shared sense of responsibility are all so strong that I don't have to lay awake at night and worry.

You can't buy that for a million dollars.
Or even a billion.

It's luck and it's love and it's what it's all about.

Did I post this already?

If I did, it bears repeating.

That was three weeks and three days ago.

And that? Four years ago.

Happy anniversary, Lily and Jason.

We are so proud of you. We love you so much.

Thank-you for loving each other and thank-you for letting us all be a part of your life and your love. Life isn't always easy and marriage sure as hell isn't either. Neither is being parents. But you two have proven that taking the love and the luck and doing the work to keep it all rolling and make it all multiply is what it's all about.

Keep loving. Keep working. Keep dancing. Keep laughing.


Always...Mama

Poop, Kissing, And Marriage Advice

This is what I see from my back porch.
Doesn't suck, does it?

No. It does not.

Just a slow regular day here in Lloyd. Got sheets in the washing machine and the chickens are out pecking around. I need to clean out the hen house. I'll tell you one thing I know: nine chickens poop a lot more than four chickens do.
Which is fine. I use their poop in the garden.

Speaking of poop, Lily just called to tell me that Owen pooped on the potty today all by himself. She and Jason were lazing around and Owen came in and demanded a lolly-pop and they said, "No," but then they discovered that he'd pooped and that's his reward so did he poop on the potty and then remember that he was qualified to get a lolly-pop or did he want a lolly-pop and so pooped on the potty in order to get one?

Who knows? Not me.

I hope he got a lolly-pop though.

It's my anniversary and I am discussing poop. Well, that's the way it goes. I remember the day we got married, Mr. Moon and I. It was a day as beautiful as this one. I wore dotted swiss, he wore a tux and brand new Nikes. I think they were Nikes.

We kissed before the notary said we could.

Then we kissed again when she gave us permission.

Been a whole lot of kissing going on ever since.

Life is all about kissing and poop, too. Funny how they don't really mention poop in the wedding ceremony. They probably should.
There's a lot they don't mention in the ceremony that they probably should but it would last too long and you'd never get to the kissing part.

Well. Here we are. I'm going to go out into this beautiful day and hang the sheets on the line, take a walk, start some venison in the crock pot, go to town and maybe find a little something to give to my husband of twenty-seven years.

Twenty-seven years.

I wish I had some advice on how to make a marriage last but I really don't. I guess if I did it would be something like treat the other person the way you want to be treated, pride doesn't have much place in a marriage and ego doesn't either. Also, remember that there's going to be some poop and don't forget to kiss.

Love...Ms. Moon

In Which Owen Gargles, Sticks His Fingers Up His Nose And I Proclaim My Love

Owen was especially delightful today. I am not sure why but he was. He let me hug him and hold him a bit more than usual for one thing. Two-year-olds don't have all the time in the world to indulge their grandmothers' needs for constant kissing and it is with great patience and forbearance that he usually tolerates such silliness but today, he was more open to the idea of it all.

We took a walk which we haven't done lately. The idea of the stroller hasn't appealed to him as much but today he got in it and told me that he wished to go to the post office. So we did. He told Miss Joanne, the postmistress that he was going to be a cowboy for Halloween but he pronounces it "toe-boy" and he also pronounces football as "butt ball" and so lately, his Bop and I have taken to calling him the Toeboy Who Plays Butt Ball.
I am sure he will not appreciate this when he is older but he does not seem to mind now.

After we stopped in at the post office, he said he would like to walk up the road a bit and so we did but I noticed that he was being so very still and I checked, and yes, he was falling asleep so I hot-footed it on home and kept him awake and when we got in the door he said, "Bed," and so we made our way back to the bedroom and got out Big Bear and he picked Mother Goose from the stack of books on my vanity and before we had gotten through the entire book, he was asleep.

He took a good nap and when he woke up he ate some yogurt and some Chex Mix and some popcorn and then we went out and sat on the steps and fed the rest of the popcorn to the chickens who love popcorn as much as any movie junkie and I had another one of those perfect moments of peace and awareness in the golden sunlit fall air and why these always occur with Owen and the chickens I do not know but I have a feeling that it's at these moments that I am living my destiny most profoundly, my DNA completely satisfied with the clucking hens and the rooster and my grandchild by my side.

I thought about how I have been tending children since I was twelve years old and how I don't really think of myself as someone who likes children that much and it came as sort of a shock to me to realize how much of my life has been taken up with them. And how it has been, of course, the most satisfying aspect of my life.
Something to think about as I sat there, Toeboy Owen beside me in his jeans and flannel shirt. He pulled at the strap of my overalls and said, "Overalls," and when Ozzie got too close for Owen's liking, he jumped into my lap and said, "Scary!" the way he does but like I said, he isn't really scared. Or maybe he is, just a little.

I know that one of the reasons Mr. Moon fell in love with me is that he was ready to be a daddy when he met me and I was proven breeding stock and was obviously a loving mother, albeit a crazy one. He'll deny all of that, or maybe he won't, but it's true. It was the mother-thing and the way I shoveled chicken shit off the back of a truck for the garden AND the biscuits AND a few other things too which caught his attention. But come on- it's not just women who have biological clocks ticking away and he was twenty-nine and ready to settle down and make a family and there I was and before I knew it (like in two days) he'd essentially moved in and we were married less than a year later and had Lily a year from that. Well, eleven months from that.

And tomorrow will be our twenty-seventh anniversary.

Twenty-seven years.

We will have been married for twenty-seven years tomorrow and I can't even imagine how that has happened any more than I can imagine how I have achieved the age of grandmotherhood but it would appear that both are true.

And you know me- I completely believe that lust is nothing more at the beginning than womb calling to sperm and vice-versa and so he and I have done our part in fulfilling the role which nature provided for us but at this point- when we are not apt at all to conceive another child- we are still married and still, quite frankly, in love and speaking for myself, I would wish nothing more than twenty-seven more years with this man.

He's gone tonight to hopefully buy a car at auction tomorrow for a customer and so we'll wake up on our twenty-seventh anniversary in separate beds, separate towns, but that's okay. We have a broad perspective at this point and we know a little about life and love and anniversaries. We know we're going to be celebrating all of it when we go to Cozumel in December and we know that we celebrate it all every day. We never end a conversation on the phone without saying, "I love you," and we often cry when we talk about our life together. There's a whole lot of glue that binds us and Owen is the newest part of that and this new baby coming will be even more. We look at each other frequently and say, "Can you believe....?" and we know we're talking about this next one.

Ah-lah.

Twenty-seven years of marriage and we met because a friend of mine wanted some pot and he knew I had some in a bag up in the closet with cat hair and pine needles in it and he brought over the guy he was painting houses with and that guy was so ridiculously tall that I didn't give him a second thought as to a possible love-interest and besides, the tall guy was dating another woman.

But one thing led to another and one night he saw me in a bar and I was wearing my friend Sue's blue angora sweater that kept slipping off my shoulder and within a week from that, I knew he was going to ask me to marry him.

And he did.

And here we are.

Kids and grandkids and chickens and a thousand biscuits later.

Here we are. And I always keep buttermilk in the refrigerator for emergency biscuit-making.

And I love that man and I am still, STILL amazed at how tall he is but mostly, amazed at the fact that he still loves me.
And he still surprises me all of the time.

Well, that's that. I'm going to go pick some tiny salad greens for my own tiny salad for tonight's supper. And tomorrow night, for our anniversary, I am going to cook some venison tenderloin with heirloom potatoes and garlic and onions. And biscuits.

We may not wake up together tomorrow, but we'll go to bed together and I will sleep under the quilt of the years of our love together and I will remember so many things and I will hope for so many more even though that is selfish, selfish, selfish.

How much can one girl ask for? How many gifts can one old woman receive?

So far, too many to count and no one knows how many to come.

I am the luckiest woman in the world. I have tended children, I have loved and I do love and I have been loved and I am loved.

There you go and there you are and honey-darling, Mr. Honey Moon, if you are reading this, please know...I love you. And isn't our Toeboy Who Plays Buttball gorgeous?
Yes. Yes he is.

Yours truly forever...Mrs. Moon

If You Follow All The Links You Could Be Here All Day

Good morning. Here are my chickens, waiting to come outside. Every one of my tiny flock. Here- let me tell you their names. From the left: Daffodil, Miss Bob, Shalayla, Elvis, Miss Dolly, Miss Mable. I have no idea why some of the chickens have a "Miss" before their names but they do. This is the south. We are weird. I haven't got much to say this morning. If I said anything, it would be all blah-blah-blah. Stuff you've heard before a million times.

I walk to the kitchen and my flip-flops say slap, slap, slap.
See what I'm saying?

And pictures- you've seen pictures of everything in and around my house. Almost. But here you go- here's a picture of my side porch where Owen used to let me rock him to sleep.


Not any more. He refuses to nap at my house. If I hold him on the porch swing, he pushes off and gets down and runs around and rearranges the shells and pretends to water the plants and brings me fistfuls of spider webs.
Then I have to give him a bath.
Which isn't so bad, really. In fact, it's fun. Why nap when you can get really dirty and then take a bath in Grandmother's big tub?

I have cuter pictures but this is the only one that doesn't show his pee-pee. I am a respectful Grandmother! I don't want him to hate me when he is fourteen and the idea that his pee-pee was on the internet when he was a baby makes him cringe.
(It's a really cute pee-pee.)

It was almost twenty-six years ago today that Mr. Moon and I decided to get married. Not quite. Our anniversary is a week from today and four days before the day we got married, we were on our way to the plumbing supply store and I was drunk on ovulation hormones, DRUNK, I tell you, and he was building me a bathroom! and we were going to go buy plumbing supplies and I said, "Let's get married!"
We were already engaged.
"When?" he asked me. I wonder what he was wearing. Maybe jeans and that flannel shirt.
"Thursday!" I said. We were leaving on Thursday afternoon to go to Chattanooga, Tennessee for some business and also, perhaps for me to meet my old drunk daddy (who was not yet dead then) for the first time since I was five years old. That would make a perfect honeymoon, right?
And so it was.
In four days we planned a tiny wedding and it was perfect and we left that evening to go to Tennessee and we met my daddy and his crazy wife and we stayed in a beautiful place on Lookout Mountain called the Chanticleer Inn and I had great dizzying moments of awareness that I had made the right decision in marrying Mr. Moon.
A week from today he and I will be in Roseland to celebrate that event and I am looking forward to that with all my heart. We will watch the sunset every night from a dock that flows over the river that I loved as a child and love still.
It will look just like this:

We will have adventures! I am excited.

But before then, it's going to be a week. Kathleen is getting tests and scans to see what the chemo and radiation have done and on Wednesday she and Judy and I will go sit in the doctor's depressing-ass office and hear what he has to say.
And Friday is Kathleen's birthday and we are having a party here to celebrate her.
I need to run errands in town to get ready. I need to do all the things I do here which you have all heard about a million times.
Blah-blah-blah.
Slap, slap, slap.

Well, here's a picture of my kitchen porch. With Mermaid. The kitchen door is the door everyone comes in. Of course. Well, politicians knock on the front door. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses know to come in the kitchen door. Not that I let them in.


That's for the best because if I did let them in and made them sit down in my kitchen and told them what I thought they would not like it one bit. Not one.
So.
Blah-blah-blah.
Slap, slap, slap.

All right. One more picture.

That is the place where I dump my weeds that I've pulled up. They have taken root without so much as a kind thought from me and tower over my head now.
This could be a metaphor.
Or not.

Happy Monday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon

Special Day

We are up early, early here today at Casa Luna. Little Man came to us at seven and right now he is in the pack-n-play, playing with various toys and I can hear him begin to get a bit tired of that- it's been three or four minutes already, Grandmother- and really. Can't we do something FUN?

Mr. Moon has already left to go to town to get plumbing supplies because he is off to the island again to replace all the pipes in the house down there because they are all corroding and nasty and well, who puts metal pipes in on a barrier island? But before he left, he played some with the boy and I got their picture, these two men I adore so much. Since I started writing this, I did go pick up Owen from his pack-n-play (torture chamber) and now he is back in it, asleep. I took him out to the porch where the day is blooming in such a riot of color and clean air and we rocked and I sang him a Grandmother-Owen song and he fell asleep against me, wrapped in that little blanket his great-great Aunt made out of pieces of flannel that were leftover from shirts she'd made Mr. Moon's sweet father over the years.

Aunt Elizabeth.

He's been gone now for a long time, Mr. Moon's daddy, but it gives me so much pleasure to see this new little guy being made cozy in that family flannel.

And this is it- this is what it's all about. This family gathered in from that place and this place, joined by chance meeting and subsequent love. Joined by work and play and here we are, wrapped up together in scraps made whole again.

Today is Lily and Jason's second anniversary. Can you believe that? Two years those two have been married. What a beautiful spring day that was.



Two years ago and so much has changed. When Jason brought Owen this morning and it was still dark outside and he was wearing his work uniform and carrying that son of his I said, "Happy anniversary," and he smiled at me. He smiled and I feel more sure than ever that Lily made the good choice. I tell Jason all the time what a great daddy he is and I mean it every time. He is sure and he is steady and he is loving to his son and his wife. Oh- if only Jason's mama and I had known back when our Jason and Lily were wild-childs how sweetly they would slip into adulthood. Wed two years and here they are, the most responsible adults I know of their age. They own a house, they go to work, they take the best care of their son you can imagine.

They are going out tonight, Lily and Jason, to celebrate and Uncle Hank and Aunt May are going to come and babysit that son. It will be good for all of them, I know. Lily and Jason will get to be, for a few hours at least, just Lily and Jason, two people who fell in love, and Hank and May will get to be the Uncle and Aunt and play with that boy whom we all love so much. And Owen? Well, Owen is adored every second of his life and he doesn't even have a clue how precious that is, how lucky he is to be part of this family.

And Mr. Moon will be on the island and I will be here and we'll all be tied up with some sweet silk string, Jessie too, wherever she will be- probably studying- we're all bound together and because we have eyes and ears, because we see what goes on in this world and the crazy things that happen to families, we know how lucky we are. Every one of us knows.
And Owen will know that too, some day.

He'll know that he was loved from the very beginning. I hope. I hope he knows this as he grows up. That his grandfather held him wrapped in a blanket made of a great-grandfather's shirt-scraps and kept him warm. That his grandmother rocked him on the front porch and he fell asleep against her chest, his eyes full of azaleas and the newborn day. That his mama and his daddy love him more passionately than he will ever know until he has his own child. That his aunts and his uncles adore him too. And that all of these people love each other with ridiculous richness.

Isn't it funny how this is where lust leads sometimes if we're lucky? We see someone across a room and something whispers inside of us. The whisper says, "Yes." The body says, "I want." And then something magical happens and the heart joins in and souls somehow meet and they, too agree that the answer is yes and next thing you know there is a wedding or at least a promise and then, well, the story never ends and it never really begins because the lines go back for thousands and thousands of years and the sweet invisible powers become visible and made flesh and the love just grows and it grows and there is always enough for all.

And if we're really lucky (and oh, I am) it leads to more and more of it, so much the heart can barely contain it and we're all wrapped up together.

Happy anniversary, Lily and Jason. May your love be what it is now forever. Only better. Only more.
Imagine that!

I wish for you what I have. A long-time best love. A hand to hold, a chest to lean on. A baby to cradle that came directly and indirectly, most assuredly from your love.

So that even when your hair is gray and your joints are stiff and your clothes are funny, you will have what Mr. Moon and I have, which is this, all of this, and each other as well.

Funny how emotional I can get at nine o'clock in the morning. Well. It is spring. That boy is here. It is an anniversary day. A special day, just like every other.

A miracle, just like every moment.

A moment, just like this one that I have tried so clumsily to put into words to keep.

The boy sleeps, the day brightens and opens. My heart does too. It overflows.

I am blessed.

A Celebration Weekend

Apalachicola is one of those places just eat up with charm. I mean EAT UP with it. Old houses both stately and funky, palm trees, a beautiful bay, a gorgeous winding river, great shopping, great eating, fishermen, tourists, artists- hell, it even has its own homosexuals. It could be Key West but thank god it's not.

You can sit down in a bar and have the owner of some company sitting on one side of you wearing madras pants and an oyster-shucker wearing jeans and a ripped T-shirt on the other side.

And that's where Mr. Moon and I are headed tomorrow for our anniversary weekend.

Twenty five years we'll have been married on Sunday and no, I can't believe it either.

This is not going to be one of those sappy posts. I already wrote one of those today.
No, it's just a post about how nice it's going to be to get in a car (maybe the Cutlass!) and drive that beautiful road down to the coast and then crossing a bridge that looks like the back of some prehistoric reptile



which ends right in front of the Gibson. We've booked a room at the Gibson and some of you might look at it and say, "But Ms. Moon, your own house is older than that, and a lot more private and just as charming," and I'd say, "You're right!" but they have restaurants in Apalachicola and one of my favorite shops in the world, River Lily, where I can buy some of my favorite perfume and drool over the jewelry, lamps, clothing and great fun stuff I've never seen anywhere else. There are also antique stores, a fabulous book store, and the best oysters in the world, not to mention a lot on the bay that Mr. Moon and I own and which we hope to build on some day. Plus, someone else will be washing my towels and sheets and you can't beat that with a stick and it certainly doesn't happen here in Lloyd, plus, if a dog shits on the floor, I won't be expected to clean it up.

We've stayed in Aplachicola many times before and I wrote a novel based there and it's just the kind of place that grabs your heart and makes you think, "I could live here," and next thing you know you're calling a realtor and going around looking at houses. It's changed a lot since we first started visiting back in the eighties but not so much that it doesn't still smell like salt and fish and primeval funk. Makes me feel right at home, having grown up by a river in a fishing village. And the people at the Gibson will welcome us with open arms, or at least a friendly smile and we'll sit on the big wide porch and have a drink and watch the traffic, of which there is not much, and we'll walk down to the water and sit on a dock and ask people what they're catching and we'll go out for supper and we'll celebrate twenty-five years of marriage, which in this day and time is pretty remarkable.
We'll toast to each other and the kids and the grandkid and we'll look at each other and say, "How did this happen? Where did the time go?"
And we'll climb the creaky flights of stairs to our room where we'll sleep together under clean sheets and it will be fine and we'll feel at home in the little town where one day we might have a home.

And on Sunday we'll drive home and get out of the car and look around and if I know us, we'll be glad to be home in Lloyd and really, wherever Mr. Moon is, that is my home, and this life- this life of ours- this twenty-five years together of a life is worth celebrating both there and here and we shall do that.

Twenty-Four Years Of Marriage

We had more fun than the damn law allows.

Tiny Steps In A Great Big World

I've been thinking about aging a lot lately. Maybe it's the weather or maybe it's what I see when I look in the mirror or maybe it's how I feel when I get up in the morning or maybe it's how I can't remember what the hell I did yesterday. But mostly, I think it's how I seem to have lost my sense of adventure. Perhaps I've only misplaced it, but for the life of me, I can't find it.
I've always understood that age is just a number. This fact has been illustrated to me by knowing people who are old at thirty and others who are still young and eager for whatever adventures life has to offer at eighty. My own mother just got back from Egypt and she had a great time. And yes, she's eighty years old.
Me? I'm about to go all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee for four days and I'm stressed as hell, worrying about what to pack and how much my diet will go to shit in four days, eating in restaurants.
Who's the old person here?
I know it. I claim it. I hate it.
Is it my DNA that makes me this way? Is it a natural born tendency to want to stay close at home where my own bed is, my own kitchen? What in the world am I afraid of?
In theory, I want to travel the globe. I want to experience what this world has to offer before I die. I want to eat foods that I've never eaten, hear languages I've never heard, see trees that I can't imagine as well as paintings and pyramids, rivers and the sun-baked white buildings of Greece against a sea and sky so blue I can't imagine it.
But I'll never do any of these things if I can't get off my own porch and decide what goes in a suitcase.
I'm thinking about this a lot and I'm trying to figure it out. I'm hoping that our little trip to Chattanooga will give me a boost. It's my husband's and my 23rd anniversary and I want to be able to go everywhere with him for all the rest of the years we have together. To be an adventuresome and daring woman who says YES to life and means it with all her heart and all her soul.
My husband deserves that but even more importantly, I do too.
I'm going to go pack now and I'm going to try not worry so much about what all I need to take.
Because really, all I really need is what I have- my man, our love, and the ability to jump right in to the big clear waters of life, dive down deep and come up smiling. I know I have that somewhere. I just have to find it.