Pictures and Words

The first blog post I ever wrote was two years ago today and I talked about how dry it was, how unseasonably cool. The weather. Good place to start, right? I didn't post a picture with my words. I didn't know how yet.
A week later I wrote about being a hippie and about how my children were born.
And it went from there.

A year ago today I wrote a blog birthday piece here.
I love the picture I used there. In fact, I love it so much I'm going to post it again.


It's funny how quickly after I started posting that I learned to love the process of finding a picture to use with my words. I started off searching for appropriate ones in google images. And then slowly, I began using pictures I'd taken or ones my daughter had taken. She's got a natural eye and I do not. But still- it seemed more downhome and genuine to use images of my real world, a true reflection of what I was writing about. They may not be good pictures in the technical sense, but they are mine.
Just like my words. They are mine.
Here's a picture taken from a strip of four that lives on my refrigerator:



Mr. Moon and I had been dating for all of one month when we posed for it. We'd wrangled a way to get to go off together to New Orleans. He had a ticket to see Auburn play at the Sugar Bowl. And we, being in the newly-falling-in-love portion of life hopped in my car and drove to Louisiana where they were having the worst freeze in their history and there was no running water in the city and we had no place to stay and Mr. Moon never made it to the game and we ended up having the very best time of our lives.

Well, you know.

The picture was taken in a photo booth at Tipitina's. Honest to god, I think the Neville Brothers were playing but that's not what I remember. I remember being so tired and not really sure about why I was there or more specifically why I was there with this man who was six feet, ten inches tall, who I could already tell was going to ask me to marry him.
I remember walking into the bathroom and a woman was laying out lines on a mirror. She looked up at me and said, "You're not a cop, are you?"
"Oh hell no," I said, and went on into a stall.

Oh, my Voodoo Chillens- The stories I could tell about that trip. In fact, I've been trying for twenty-six years to figure out how to write the story of just one of the experiences we had and I simply cannot do it justice with my words. Suffice it to say that it involved marijuana, a deranged drug dealer, a giant dog, a true vision of future events, sheer terror, and professional wrestling. Also guns and a rug.
It was, as they say, a bonding experience for Mr. Moon and me. And could only have happened in New Orleans and I'm sure led to me sitting here today where I am.

So many stories.
Stories of how we got where we are today. Stories that put in a line make up a book that tells the story of a life or of lives together, like the pictures taken in a photo-booth strip tell the story of a moment in time.

When that picture was taken back on the last day of 1983, I was still the single mother of two children. I had no idea where the adventure I was on in New Orleans that night was going to lead me. To a life here in Lloyd where I live with that same man who gave me two more babies.
Four children in total, all grown up and one of them about to make me a grandmother.

The other night Mr. Moon and I were on the porch and we were talking about what it's going to be like to see our daughter Lily holding her own child in her arms that first time and we both wept. It seems like a few minutes since that picture above was taken. A few minutes and a thousand years ago. A few seconds since Lily was born and an eon ago.

It seems like yesterday that I started up telling my stories on this blog. I was so timid to begin with. I didn't put my picture on the blog. I didn't say I lived in Lloyd. I didn't know where I was going to go. I wrote about the weather, testing the waters, as it were, and then I plunged on in. That's what life is all about. I looked at that gorgeous man with that huge grin and he opened his arms and I snuggled on in. I had no idea what would happen. We never do, whether it's to get in the car and drive to the grocery store or accept a date with some guy who is way too tall. Whether it's to step out the front door for a walk or to read the homes-for-sale classifieds and then take a late-night drive down the interstate with the Beatles blasting on the stereo to drive slowly past one of the houses you've seen listed.

Whether it's to kiss a boy or to end up giving him your heart, your soul and your DNA to mix with his.

One thing will lead to another.
One word will do the same.
Since that day two years ago I have written five hundred and eighty seven posts, including this one.
How many words is that?
Too many, I'm sure.
But not enough, because I'm not done.
There is always another story.

We may start out timidly, discussing the drought but we might end up jumping in stark naked and swimming around in the starlit warm waters.

I feel as if I have done that.

In the past year I have definitely written about the weather. I've also written about the children, the coming-grandchild, the new president, the old president, going insane and trying to come back, the story of being sexually abused, flowers and chickens and tomatoes. I've written about stove repairmen, turtle feet and dogs and death. Again, always with death. And birth!

Music and friends and friends who play music.
Food and how to grow it, cook it, love it and hate it.
Aging and acting and birds and begonias and Christ and Crist and Cher and dates and daring to do new things and on through the alphabet to zinnias and then back again to aging.
I've abandoned all attempts at anonymity and ended up posting names, dates, locations and every damn thing except pictures of my own bare body.

Don't hold your breath for that one.

I've said all the bad words, I've lambasted religion, I've talked about sexual abuse, discussed politics until I was blue in the face. I've had the gall to post poems. I've not broken any rules because what rules are there to break? I have no paycheck and no editor. No one to answer to but myself.

And here's the amazing thing- people read this drivel, this dramatized doodlings of my brain. They've hung in here through it all and commented and by now, the blog is me and I am the blog and I've made friends from here to Ireland to the Netherlands to England.
I've got friends in Denver and Kentucky, California and oh hell. I have no idea where.
And you know what I wish? I wish I could meet every one of you. I wish I could see your real faces, hear your real voices, see how your legs work as you walk, feel how your body feels as I hug it to me, see how your heart reflects in your eyes, see your babies, your spouses, your dogs and your tomato plants.

But I can't. Not now. Maybe one day I'll have met some of you. I hope so.

And in the meantime, here we are, sharing all these things one word at a time. One blog post at a time.
They add up, don't they?
I know what you think or least what you tell me you think and I believe you know what I think.

Here's a picture from that same strip taken at Tipitina's.


In it, Mr. Moon is grinning that grin. What is he thinking? Is he thinking he has the world by the tail with this pretty woman he has in his arms? Is he seeing a future with her and does that future look like it's going to be all jumping for joy and adventures in magical places? I think he was.
And what was I thinking? Probably something like yes, there will be jumping for joy and adventures in magical places but there will no doubt be sorrow and death and hard, hard work and disappointment and redemption. But that maybe, just maybe, if we stuck together, it would be worth the jumping-in together.

And it has been.
Sometimes you just know.
Not everything but something.
And I am just so grateful (and rather amazed) there I have a physical snapshot of that evening, that night at the beginning of Mr. Moon's and my journey together.

I'm not happy with this post, this five hundred and eighty-seventh post. It's surely not my best one and I don't even know what that one would be but this one ain't it.
But it's the one I've got today.
The rain is still coming down for the fourth or fifth day in a row. Everything is SO green and the frogs are everywhere, so many that when we went out last night to look at the garden and check the chickens, we probably inadvertently mashed some babies who couldn't hop out of the way of our big, clumsy human feet fast enough.

I'm still in love with that man in the pictures. I don't know if he still thinks he has the world by the tail but he has me in his arms. I may not be the beauty I was then but I'm the beauty I am now.
I may not always get the words down I mean to say, but I get down the words.

Here I am. Today. Right now. No make-up, no jewelry. My hair hasn't even been brushed.

I still don't know what the future holds but I know I'll be writing about it, whatever it is.

And maybe I'll meet up with a few of you this afternoon at the Black Dog.

And look- I hate the word lurker. It sounds as if there was evil intent involved and I don't think that's the case here. But if you read and do not comment usually, I'd really love it if you left a word today. Think of it as a blogbirthday gift. The prodigal readers, as it were.
I'd slay the fatted calf for you. I promise. If I had one.
But since I don't, I'll just say thank-you to everyone who comes on this journey with me and who shares their journeys too.

Bless our hearts, babies. Bless our precious hearts as we string together words, as we pose for pictures, as we deliver them to the world to be weighed and measured.

Bless our hearts, our words, our dreams, our hopes, our sorrows, our fears, our comings and goings and our beings.

I'll raise a cup or a glass or a bottle to you tonight.
And then tomorrow I'll tell you about it.
And maybe there will be pictures.