Someone Got Married

I think this picture was taken on Friday night. Lis was getting the wedding cake ready for its crumb coat or whatever you call it. It's quite a process. The cake layer must be sliced, which she does fearlessly and accurately, and then frosted smoothly to prepare it for its final frosting and decoration. I had not seen her sit down from the time I got there Friday afternoon until she may have sat down around ten at night to eat a bowl of soup. Honestly.

I can't begin to tell you how hard Lon and Lis worked to pull off this wedding. And here's the funny thing- they did the wedding for love.
They prepared their yard for the ceremony, for parking, for music playing. They prepared their house, cleaning it to within inch of its life. They made a place for the bride to get ready. Lis's kitchen, which is not the biggest kitchen in the world by any means, was filled and busy and used for days and days and days getting the food ready, the cake baked. They arranged for the tent rental and chair rental and dish and glass and cutlery rental.
They did all of this and so much more.
And it was a beautiful wedding.

Well, I didn't attend the actual ceremony. I was baking biscuits. The ceremony was so quick that I had a batch of biscuits in the oven when the bride left to go get married and they weren't done by the time the bride came back to the house.
"Are you already married?" I asked her in astonishment, holding open the door. Not quite the words I would have used if I had thought about it for more than one-hundredth of a second.
"Yes," she said, and I said, "Well! Congratulations!"

Honeys, it was hot.
And although the wedding party was not the most formally dressed in the world, there were ties and jackets and long pants and pretty dresses and of course underwear had to be worn under all of that and a lot of these people were from up north and I doubt they'd ever experienced quite this level of heat combined with humidity outside of a sauna. I mean, WE were wilting and bitching.

The groom is from a family of ten siblings. TEN. And they were all there. Plus others. This family has adopted (or more accurately, BEEN adopted by) Lon and Lis who are obviously crazy. I mean, if I'm going to adopt a family, I think there's a two-sibling limit. Lon and Lis first met their older brother whose name, if I named it, many would recognize as a founding member of a band that all of you would recognize but which I will not be naming because I am NOT a name dropper nor a celebrity hound (unless you count my shameless name-dropping of Lon and Lis Williamson who are HUGE celebrities in my book and who should be in everyone's but that's another story) and so he will remain nameless, this former famous band member dude. Besides, I doubt he could pick me out of a line-up of two and so I can hardly claim to know him.

So it was an interesting event. I believe that most of the people there thought I was hired help, the woman who made the biscuits and I did get a lot of compliments on those.



At one point, a woman came into the kitchen and said something like, "Oh my. You do not overwork the gluten on your biscuits, do you?"
And I could really think of nothing to say to that although I wish I'd said what Lon told me later I should have said which was, "Oh, hell no. Last time I overworked my gluten it came back to bite me in the ASS!" in my best fake southern accent. Sometimes the real one just isn't enough. Know what I'm saying?

But overall, it was a stunning achievement. We fed the masses.



Another friend of Lon and Lis's had caught the most delicious fishes and he and another friend fried it up, true southern-style, and that was the most amazing fried seafood I'd ever eaten in my life. Those people had no idea the delicacy they were being offered in that fish and shrimp and conch. The conch was caught in the Bahamas and as the man who'd caught it pounded it into tenderness with a wooden mallet, he told me the story of the unexpected and sudden death of his son who had been diving with him in the Bahamas. I stood there in my floured apron, listening to this dear man telling me of his son's last moments, of the blessings their family has received since his death, the blessings of having had the son for the years of his life, as he pounded the meat with that wooden mallet, gently, almost more of a tapping than a pounding and I listened, tears in my eyes, my heart filling over. And when I ate some of that conch later, it was the sweetest sea-meat I have ever tasted, as if it had never been near salt at all, sweeter than lobster or crab. Sweeter than anything but life.

I got to hold and talk to a baby who is three months old and I thought so much about Owen and how much he is going to change in the next three months. I watched that baby in his grandfather's arms, I watched him and was so grateful for the joy he's brought to his family, his community. Later, I watched the newly-made bridegroom hold that baby and I could see in his eyes what he wants and I hope the adventure begun for him and his new wife yesterday lead to that desire's fruition.

It was a wonderful trip for me. I don't know if I've ever had any more fun with Lon and Lis, despite all the work, despite the heat, despite the worry and tiny crises that popped up. I planted plants and I cut up fruit and I made biscuits and I washed dishes and really, I could not have been happier. I was with two people I loved, and then I got to be with other people I loved, and I got to hold a baby and feed people and I got to sleep in Lon and Lis's guest room which is like sleeping in the best bed and breakfast in the world, only when you wake up, there's Lis standing there with a cup of coffee and a kiss saying, "How did you sleep, my love? What can I do for you?"
I mean, seriously. There's even a stained glass window over the bed and a cunning little pocket door and the room is so small and cozy and the sheets are so soft and the bed is so welcoming and well, I doubt I've ever slept better in my life.

And I got to do work that I love. With people that I love. There was no worry about whether or not anyone was having fun or being entertained. We had a purpose, we had jobs, we had problems, we solved them. AND we got to drink beer and rum while we did all of this!

And then last night, when everyone was gone and we'd stacked all the chairs and cleaned up all the food and the bottles and cans and all we could say was, "Oh god, oh god, oh god," because we were so hot and so tired, we sat down to eat our leftovers and Lon popped in a copy of this:

Which I had never seen.
And suddenly the power of the blues was upon us and we ate and we sipped our drinks and we arranged ourselves in the living room in front of the TV with the giant, gentle black labs, Buck and Daisy, and we watched and listened to the spirit of a very different sort of music than the kind that Lon and Lis play, but for which they have a great respect and I saw people play that I've seen in concert, people who have literally saved my life in small dark smoky clubs back when I used to go out to hear music and then, my daddy, Mr. B.B. King finished it all up for us and it was the perfect ending to the perfect day.
And no, Mr. King is not my biological daddy but because I didn't really have a daddy, I have chosen him to represent what a daddy would be for me.

And then I slept for about eleven hours and got up and we had coffee and I packed up and Lis kept putting things in an ice chest for me and saying, "What can I do for you?" and Lon kept saying, "Thank-you, thank-you," and I kept saying, "Thank-YOU, thank-YOU!" and I left and drove home on the back roads.

I got home and unpacked, greeted my dogs, went out to see my chickens and feed them some grapes, called every one of my children, heard about Owen's two-week check-up (he is growing tremendously and is PERFECT!), had a lovely few moments with Mr. Moon before he left to go to auction, and I have watered my plants and it is evening and I am already missing Lon and Lis and their beautiful home in Gator Bone where they made me feel so welcome, so safe, so needed, so appreciated.

I just feel so fucking rich. I have these friends. I have talents (okay, one talent- for biscuit baking) which people appreciate and which I got to use, I have this place, these babies of mine, this grandson of mine. Mr. Moon shot a deer this morning and we will have more meat in the freezer, my garden's greens are big enough to start eating, my chickens are laying two dozen eggs a week, and I am sitting here on the porch of my dream house, a house which is 150 years old and the sky is streaked with pink as the sun is setting and although it is still hot, it will start to cool down by the end of the week and I am going to go see Owen tomorrow.
The ceiling fan is whirring. There are delicious leftovers in the refrigerator including a piece of lemon-buttermilk wedding cake with white-chocolate frosting, and honestly, there is nothing on earth I could want for.

And there you have it- the report of a trip from one little piece of Florida paradise to another and then back again.

I keep thinking about how one of the wedding party people asked Lon yesterday as he was doing something to clean up if this was the hardest work he had ever done.
I have no idea what he said to her in reply. But if she really knew Lon, if she really knew Lis, she would never have asked this question. Because Lon and Lis make their living from the very sweat of their brow. The house they live in which people find so charming they almost pee themselves being in has been restored and perfected by thousands of hours of hands-on work. They make their living with their musical talents and abilities, recording and playing and the gigs they do in hundred-degree heat, and the love they shower on the people they love- these things are all the hardest work that anyone could ever do. Throwing a wedding for close to a hundred people is just one more tiny link in a chain of the work of art which is the beauty and sustenance of their lives.

I feel so honored to be a part of this. I feel so honored to be able to have woken up in that room and to have Lis hand me a cup of coffee.

There are so many things I do not believe in, do not care one damn thing about. But there are so many things I DO believe in and this weekend I got to experience so many of them. They all seem to begin and end with food, with laughter, with music, with family, and with friends who are family.

And so I feel as if I was on a holy mission. Not to convert people to a religion, but to revel in my own religion- the Church Of The Batshit Crazy where love reigns, where biscuits are the holy flesh, not of god, but of life, and where I could sleep under a stained glass window with the moon shining in, blessing me in goodness, in light and in love. Where I could come home to that which sustains me.

Those people better stay married forever. And if they don't- it ain't our fault. We did our job and I am hoping that Lon and Lis are at home tonight, stretched out together and looking into each others eyes and saying, "Oh god, oh god, oh god."

Whatever that means and however they may be saying it.

Amen, y'all. Amen.

I'm Home

And happy all the way around. To have gone, to come back.
Report to follow.

Love...Ms. Moon

Pictures, But Only In My Mind

Oh, how I wish I had pictures but please! This is not my computer, it's not a Mac and my camera is in South Georgia somewhere.

Which means....

Well, if I had a picture it would be of me and Lis scratching our heads and trying to figure out how much coffee to put in a coffee urn that holds fifty-five cups of coffee. Even with the help of the internet and our superior brains, it took a while.

Another picture I would love to post is of the wedding cake which is waiting in regal readiness. It is white or ivory (how do you tell?) with dusty rose flowers and green leaves and I told Lis it looks like a chenille bedspread which pleased her no end.

There should, of course, be a picture of Lon, running around doing all the "man" things which means anything requiring a beast of burden and at this point if I were he, I would turn around and bare my teeth and snarl at anyone who so much as dared to ask me a question.

There would also be a picture of the arch Lon and Rodney made for the wedding couple to stand under to say their vows and of the lake behind. There would be pictures of the tent and its tulle decoration and there would be pictures of vats of fruit salad and one huge vat of biscuit dough.

My favorite picture would probably be of the mental one I have from yesterday morning when I got up in complete dishevelment to find Lon and Lis up, having accomplished who-knows-what and all dressed and groomed for a noontime gig an hour away. They played two sets in the broiling, brutal sun (it is in the nineties here and I'm not kidding you) after being up half the night preparing for the wedding and yes, beverages were of course involved. But here they were, coffee-fueled, teeth-gritted, vehicle loaded with instrument and amps and ready to go.

I stayed behind and cut up cartons of melons and strawberries for the fruit salad and fried two pounds of bacon (Yes!) for the quiches. When I got here on Friday, Lis's friend Angie was cutting up massive amounts of peppers and onions and mushrooms, also for the quiches.

Look- the fun has never ended.

I have seen the groom and the bride exactly once. They came by to do a quick run-through rehearsal yesterday. I keep asking Lis what the bride wants about this or that. She shrugs her shoulders and says, "I have no idea."

Here's the funny thing about this picture:

The bride and groom asked Lon and Lis to let them have their wedding here and then let Lon and Lis do everything, pretty much without imput. Type of cake, menu, tent....all up to Lon and Lis.

Is there an opposite to Bridezilla? Because if there is, this bride is she. As far as I know she hasn't even made a request, much less an unreasonable demand.

But I have to say that if anyone in the world can produce a wedding which you know is going to be the most fabulous day of your life, the day that will give you something to look back on with smiles and joy for the very rest of your life, it would be Lon and Lis.

Okay. That's the picture.

See before you three batshit crazy people, trying to decide when to start the fire to start cooking sausages, when to start rolling out dough, how to make coffee in an urn, where to put the trash cans, when to set up the chairs, and how to get in touch with the gal who's bringing the tablecloths because if they don't show up we are shit out of luck.

Oh well.

Picture a beautiful wedding. Because I think it's going to be one.

Hot, sunny, Sunday at noon.

Perfect planning for a picture perfect wedding. (I'm being the teeniest bit sarcastic here but you know me). I think it's going to be beautiful.

Picture me smiling because I am having some damn fun.

Imagine

Do you see that tiny blossom there? That's the tea olive, or as they call it in New Orleans, the sweet olive. That small flower must be packed with more densely with smell-molecules than anything else in existence besides maybe a skunk's butt.
But the tea olive's scent is heavenly.
It's so small that you don't realize it's blooming until you walk by it and smell it and then you check and yes, it's blooming. I can't really describe the way it smells- sweet, yes, for sure. A bit of citrus, maybe. It's just...heaven.

The butterfly ginger lily is also blooming and it not only has a heavenly scent but it is beautiful, too. The flowers are purest white and so delicate that they look as if they might fly off from the plant into the fall air. They are named rightly, I believe.



After both Mr. Moon and I have been stressing out for days about our two weekend trips- mine to Gator Bone and his to a hunting camp in Georgia, we are both acting extremely laid back this morning. We have much to do and yet, here we sit on the back porch, talking about the chickens and reading the paper and me checking the blogs and seeing that our president has been awarded a Nobel Peace prize.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," said Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee.

And there you go- even if he is vilified by some right here in his own country, threatened and questioned even as to where he was "truly" born, the world recognizes the hope he represents not only to us here in the United States, but to everyone, everywhere.

He sure represents hope to me, I'll tell you that. His inauguration will always be remembered by me as the day I learned that Lily was pregnant with my first grandchild and that, like the naming of the butterfly lily, is fitting. Presidents get elected every four years and every minute of every day someone finds out that they are going to become a grandparent but this president represented something very special and made me very proud and this grandchild is mine.

I went to see him yesterday and after he'd eaten I took him outside and patted his butt the way babies like their butts patted and sang silly songs to him with the main lyric being, "Owen, Owen, Owen. I love you, Owen," and he looked at me with his dark wondering eyes and the sun made him blink and I felt like I was standing on the mountain with a clear view of where I'd come from and where I was and what the future looked like, the whole world in my hands.
When I left him with his mama and papa, I cried because I wasn't going to see him for at least four days. I have to physically force myself to leave him. I could sit and watch him nurse all day, he and his beautiful mama. He's such a tiny thing- like the tea olive- but he changes the very air around him with this newness, his life-force.

He'll be here when I get back, as will the butterfly lily, as will the tea olive. Mr. Moon will be back from Georgia and will be going to Orlando and I may or may not see him before he leaves.
Four days without seeing him, too.

And so it's Friday and I need to get up off this chair and get ready to go. Kathleen is going to come stay with my animals and I love the idea of her sleeping in the Panther Room with all the dogs on the bed with her. She needs rest, that girl, and I hope she gets some here.

And it's John Lennon's birthday. He would have been sixty-nine years old today. Is that possible? I still do not find it possible that he was killed twenty-nine years ago. As his wife said, "With your mind you changed the world." He wasn't a politician, he wasn't a king, he was a musician. And he changed the world.

Obama is changing the world. Owen is changing my world. The tea olive blooms and changes the air around it. I am going away, I will be back. My children live here, my husband lives here, in sixteen days we will have been married twenty-five years. Here we are, growing old together, our grandson born, living in this place where the tea olive blooms, in a country where our president offers us such hope.

Who could have known that all these things would be made manifest when we met?

Not me.

Imagine.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obama-wins-nobel-peace-pr_n_314907.html

Not Traumatized But A Little Heartbroken (Or...Things Are Quieter In Lloyd Tonight)

Well, Barb and Jim came out just now and got my roosters. It was hard. I tell you, it was hard. When you raise something up from the puffball stage to full-blown manly roosterness, it's just hard to see 'em go.
The things a mother goes through. I swear. I swanny.

I liked Barb and Jim. They seem like true animal lovers to me. They have all sorts of animals they love and all sorts of tales of steers whom they have known and loved and a wild hog that adopted their son and and a bull who will let them pet him. They swear they can't eat their own chickens, just like me.

Still. One never knows. They could be good-ol-country grifters, faking out the soft-of-heart to get their male chickens for their own devious purposes. Like I said- chicken and dumplings or maybe they sell them to Santeria Priestess for sacrificial ceremonies. Priestesses have to get those chickens somewhere.

But somehow, I didn't feel that vibe coming off of Barb and Jim.
They admired the coop and the hen house and my birds and Jim said, "You have five roosters here," and I said, "Oh Lord, don't tell me that."
I have been trying like hell to convince myself that Elmira is not a boy but I haven't really been believing it myself. I haven't see her crow but I have seen the way her tail-feathers are growing, straight up (see picture above) and out and Jim made no bones about it. "Yep, that's a rooster."

Well shit.

I don't know if you remember the story of Elmira but if you don't, here it is.
I knew I couldn't give away Elmira without consulting Mr. Moon so I called him and gave him the bad news.
"I can't give away Elmira," he said just like I knew he'd say. "That's my chicken."
"Well what should we do?" I asked. I was planning on keeping Sam, the main rooster and Henry, the second in command.
"Give 'em Henry," Mr. Moon said.
"Henry? Give them Henry?" I love Henry. He's red and he's been so manly right from the beginning, so studly and crowy and showy and friendly.
"Why is okay to give them my chicken but not yours?" Mr. Moon asked, quite reasonably.

Let me just say that Mr. Moon has had a very, very hard and discouraging day. I knew he had a point and I knew that I could not be the cause of the straw that broke that dear man's back and so I said, "Okay. They can have Henry."

I went back outside and told Barb and Jim that they were not only getting Helen and Lucille, but Henry as well. That was fine with them.
I asked Jim if he could catch my birds because I just didn't have the heart and he said he would. But then I had a change of heart. It would be less cruel and disturbing to the whole flock, not to mention Henry, Helen and Lucille, if I caught them myself. I brought them some corn tortillas and got them all happy and munchy, eating out of my hands and then I caught my three roosters, easy as pie, and handed them over. Do I feel like a traitor?

Not really. They're going to go live with a bunch of beautiful ladies and their only job is going to be to impregnate them. Or, well, actually to fertilize their eggs.

Jim took the roosters from me and put them in the cage he'd brought and we stood around and told a few more animal stories and then they got in their truck and we all said, "Nice to meet you," and they thanked me and then Jim said, "Lord bless you," and I said, "Thank-you," and I meant it.

I went back out to the coop to visit with my eleven remaining chickens- nine hens and two roosters and it's so quiet in there. I suppose they're wondering what the hell just happened. Even Sam seems somewhat thoughtful although he could just be having a post-coital moment. I saw him get some off of Red while we were still loading the other roosters up.
But it's funny how much less space eleven chickens take up than fourteen, especially when three of those chickens were big old bustling roosters, full of vim and vigor and manjuice.

So. There you go.
Good-bye Helen and Lucille. And good-bye, Henry.
I'll miss you.
Have fun in your new home. Try not to hate me. Try to remember all the love and grapes and watermelon I fed you by hand.
By hand. I fed them by hand since they were babies. (Little tear slips down my cheek.)



Oh well.
And Elmira shall now be called Elmo, I suppose. Or Elton. Or Elvis.
Elvis?
Hmmmmm.....

Whole lotta shaking going be going on when he grows up. Unless Sam kills him first.

Stay tuned. The Chicken Story never ends.

How's The Weather?

This weather is enough to drive you insane. A few days of sweet, dry, cool air and then it's back to mug and heat and you wake up and step out of the air conditioning and feel like you're walking through molasses, you check yourself for gills.

But that's why we have these trees, these ten thousand shades of green where we live. So who can complain? It's been a quiet, quiet hurricane season (thanks, El Nino!) although the past few mornings, when I've gotten up, the sky has had that look, the air has had that feeling of hurricane season. Of a storm hundreds of miles off, but THERE, somewhere, waiting and driving us crazy trying to figure out where it is going, who is going to receive the torment of its winds and rains. I even dreamed last night there was a storm and in one scene of the dream, I was on a street corner and the wind and water came up so high that I thought to myself, "Well, this is it then. Death."
But I didn't die. And there are no storms lurking in the Gulf as far as I know. It is the Pacific's turn to receive that terrible storms this year and it was a tsunami I dreamed of, I think, my dream informed by the news, by the knowledge that somewhere else on the planet, others have the dread and terror of weather unleashed, too powerful to do anything but flee, but pray, but watch with anxious eyes. We may consider ourselves living in a modern world but believe me- there are still plenty of things that can knock us back to clinging to life white-knuckled, trembling and fearful.

I don't live where there are tsunamis and even with video to show me what they can do, I don't really know what seeing the water rise so fast you can't run from it is like. But I know the hurricanes and so I can imagine.

I've been thinking a lot about my words here. Because I have gotten to "know" some of the people who come here and read these words and because I read what they write, too, I realize that many of us have vast differences in beliefs and we live very different lives. And there is part of me that worries that what I write will offend someone whom I really do have a deep affection for. It is a mystery to me how we form these affections with people whom we may never meet, but whom we know in some deep way through their words, their stories, their pictures.
But you know what? If I start writing in such a way as not to offend, I won't be writing my own story. I won't be telling about this place I am with its hot, muggy heat in October, its wet air, its joy and anxiety (my joy and anxiety), its dreams (my dreams), its prejudices and its redemptions.

Look- my life is not all biscuits with honey, not all sweetness and light. Some days I am cast in the deepest despair and I need to write about that as well as I need to write about the days the light shines like gold spun so thin it can cover everything, everything, every thing.
And I have to write what I need to write. Some days I am just so grateful for it all that I need to write about that and some days I am so PISSED about something that I need to write about that. Gay rights, religion, hypocrisy, racial prejudice, sexual abuse, whatever.
And I have to write it the way it is in my mind. There are things I will not write about because they are the stories of others who might be hurt by what I write or whose privacy I might intrude on by what I write. I don't know exactly what my guidelines are for these things, but I have them internally and I go by them. I set myself inside these guidelines and I don't budge from them.

But if it's MY opinion and what I see from MY corner of the world, I will damn well write about it.

And that's all I have to say today. I do not feel heated up about much. I did watch Outrage the other night and I am fairly sure that our Governor, Charlie Crist, is going to hell on a boat made of hypocrisy and political ambition and whatever use and respect for him I may have had at one time is completely gone. But I don't feel the need to blast him. If he is, indeed, living such a huge lie it will come back to him. Besides, he has to live with himself, not me.

And I have so much to do today to get ready to go to Gatorbone. I'm behind already, having sat down to write this. I have fed my chickens and tonight the lady is coming to get Helen and Lucille and I feel better about her. She told me she'd spent sixty hours up with a calf who finally had to be put down and she said it made her so sick she'd had diarrhea. I don't think she's going to boil my roosters. I think she's going to set them down in the midst of lots and lots of nice plump hens to fuck. Really. I do.

And I have to get everything I need to get done in town before she comes out take my birds to paradise and I have to spend enough time with Owen that I don't go into complete shock being away from him for a few days. I have to make up three batches of angel biscuit dough. I have to go do data entry for Mr. Moon. I have to decide what to pack for Gator Bone and at this point, all I know I'm taking is an apron and I'm so damn crazy that packing for three days is the normal human's equivalent to packing for a round-the-world voyage.

And here are some pictures taken this morning.
The Confederate Rose still blooming, the lady spider still spinning, the porch still waiting for another cool evening and a frosty martini with Mr. Moon.




This is where I live. This is where I think about god and God and gardens and insanity and chickens and politics and culture and books and love and its joys and its pitfalls, its satisfactions and its difficulties and write about it all from my own perspective. Because it is the only perspective I have, although perspectives change, like the weather does.

Hearts can burst open with new love unimagined. New dreams can make you set different goals which change your life. You can hear something on NPR that makes you realize how small your world is, how big it could be. You can simply read something that makes you see a subject from a different angle- a book, a news article, a blog.

And this is my blog. Sometimes I write about the weather here, sometimes I write about the man at the dump who uses the word n****r unashamedly. Sometimes I write about how Christians try to save my soul. Sometimes I write about how chickens save my soul.
I doubt I'm changing any lives but my life is changing, as is every one's.

Let's not be afraid to write about the weather from our own front porches, our own back porches.
The weather is what it is. Different for you than for me.
Tell me about your weather.
I'll tell you about mine.

I can learn from you. The window to my life gets bigger and clearer. I can see your weather from here that way.

Can you see mine?

Routine Ramblings

I am going through one of those periods when it is hard for me to get out and do anything. The sweetness of Owen calls me though- that's for sure- and I get in the car and turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, turn right- I am there again to see him. Can I tell you how beautiful he is? How beautiful Lily is, holding him to her? Yesterday when I got there, they had gone to meet Jason's mother for lunch and Owen had fallen asleep in his car seat and so they had brought him in it and he was still asleep when I got there. I took his picture in his little hoodie, his hands looking like he was gripping a steering wheel. Was he already dreaming of driving, going away?

Oh baby, baby, your perfect head. I watched Lily nursing him when he'd woken up and I said, "It would be so much easier to leave him if his head wasn't so perfectly round." That soft black hair, whirled around the crown of his head as he nurses. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Owen.
The way Lily bends her mouth to his when he searching for her nipple, using his rooting for a way to get a kiss.
This is worth leaving home for. This is home.

Then to the library, quick, quick, another safe place, and then to Publix, buy the food. Every second there is something inside of me saying, "Go home, go home, go home to the dogs and the chickens and the trees and the yard and the safety." The voice tells me that I need to get home to all of that to keep it safe, as if while I was gone it would all fall apart.

I drive home, I pull into Lloyd, and my heart slows down, I am safe again, pull into the yard, the dogs are barking, I unload the car, I unload the groceries, I wait for a visit from Kathleen. We have tea, she talks, we talk. She is beautiful on my porch. She leaves, I make dinner. Mr. Moon comes home, this makes home more home. I make a small feast of venison cube steak with mushrooms and onions and gravy and I make mashed potatoes and broccoli and a rare treat- biscuits- five of them, buttermilk and self-rising flour, not rolled but patted out by hand with flour and made into nice round shapes, baked in the oven with the cube steak.

This is all safeness, this is all home.

What if- what if I had a job and had to leave every day? Could I?
Of course I could. But...but...but.

I have arranged it all so that everything is here. So much life here, I tell myself. My garden, my flowers, my plants, my chickens, the dogs. Even as they drive me crazy, they need me somehow. Mr. Moon comes home and I feed him. Last night I complained of my foot and he took it and rubbed it in his big hands. I sighed with pleasure, I moaned with relief. His touch is everything to me.

Have I created this foot problem so that I will not have to leave? Have I hobbled myself on a chain of pain? Today it throbs, that tendon is red in me. I can see it in my mind. I ice it in between laundry and chickens who are making a raucous racket, there is egg laying going on. I have fed them their grapes and they took them greedily. I spread corn and put more feed and water out for them. They sip, sip the cool clean water. They are life, they bring me life every day in the form of perfect ovals. I tell Lis we should put a bowl of those eggs on the table at the wedding because they are so beautiful.

And I'm going to go help Lis with that wedding and I know she's worried she's asked me to do something that is more than I want to do but she is wrong.
I want (no, I need so much) to drive over there to help her. I want to spend time with her and Lon and if I have a job to do (rolling biscuits, cutting them out, baking them on great metal sheets) I will be fine. I like having a job to do, especially if it is one I feel good at. Such joy to be able to do something I love in Lis's kitchen for people who are celebrating a marriage! What a gift Lis is giving me, asking me for help. People love biscuits, they make them want to kiss the cook. How could that be anything but wonderful?

Yes. I have so much life right here in this place where I live. But it can go on without me for a few days. Mr. Moon will go to the hunting camp in Georgia and so I need someone to come and house sit- children? Do any of you want to come take care of this place, these animals for a few days? I'll wash the sheets, I promise.
And I can off to another place where there is life, too. The life Lis and Lon have nurtured into a nest of their own, where they get sustenance and joy. They share it with me and I love them for it and I am excited to go.

But I can't be gone for long. Not because of my foot or my chickens or children or even my man. Because of that boy in that picture. He changes every day and he needs to hear my voice telling him that he is the most beautiful boy in the world, the most glorious and wonderful. His mother needs to hear me tell her how beautiful she is, taking care of that child she created. This is non-negotiable.

And this is perhaps one of the most rambling things I've ever written and if I had an editor, he or she would wear out a red pen on it. I know. I am indulging myself with my foot on ice, my words spilling out, saying here, here, here, this is what it's like in my soul today, my world today, my heart.

For Kori

I would never want my words to wound a woman whose faith has saved her life
And I would never want my theories to cause a strong woman's doubt in her belief in the possibility of change
And I would never want her not to pray for me
Because I understand she believes where I can not
And I would never want anything I say to scrape the soul of a friend who loves and whose soul
Has been scraped too much, left to bleed when merely touched
I would rather reach out to her gently (so as not to hurt) and say
Thank-you for everything you say and do
For your beautiful strength
And these, these flowers are for you.
Do you see the caterpillars, feeding for their time of change
In the woods where I walked today?

Talk About Your Predestination

I am behind today and what does that mean when you don't have a job or any real commitments for the day?

I need to:
Take a walk
Go see Lily and Owen
Feed my chickens
Go to the store.

Big deal, right? So where does this sense that the day has gotten away from me come from? What is it in our internal selves that dictates a schedule, that creates anxiety if that perceived schedule is not being followed, that mysteriously ordained time-frames are not being kept?

I swear, I am beginning to think that everything and I do mean EVERYTHING is just part of our DNA, RNA, chemical make-up, brain chemistry, hormones, etc.
And that any attempt to change any of this stuff whether with drugs or meditation or exercise or knitting or praying is just an attempt at trying to control these internal, set factors. The more scientists learn about the brain, the more we know this is true. Buddhist monks can, with chanting, change the way their brains work over the years.
A person set to small, crafty tasks creates as much serotonin as certain antidepressants.

I have always said that I do not have the god gene, the religion gene. And I swear, I do not. As much as I wanted to believe in a comforting, all-knowing god when I was a child, I just could not bring myself to do it. I prayed. I read the Bible. The whole Bible. And none of it turned out to change the way I felt about god at all. The whole concept, no matter how god was framed, seemed anything but absurd to me.
And now science seems to be finding that yes, some of us accept as complete and utter fact that there is a god, while some of us just can't.
Ms. Fleur sent me a link to an article about this the other day. It is here if you care to read it. She also sent me the abstract to download of the study and it's too long for me to read through and too scientific and too filled with frontal lobes and MRI's and so forth but I don't need to muddle my way through the whole thing.
I know it's true.
Some of us are chemically inclined, from birth, to accept and need religion in our lives and some of us are not.
Phew!
I'll be glad when they can just do a test so that when someone tries to convert you you can just say, "Nope. Sorry. Don't have the gene," and be done with it. Of course, according to the study, the religious person will not be able to conceive of the truth of that matter, just as the non-believer cannot conceive of the idea of Jesus coming back to earth and there will be no more agreement or understanding than before.

So there you go.

In related but not as earth-shaking beliefs that I have, I don't believe I have the Patriotism gene, the fly-a-flag-with-colorful-symbols-of-the-season-from-your-front-porch gene, the need-to-control-my-children's-lives gene, or the club-joining gene.

I do have the writing gene, the chicken-raising-gene, the desire-to-love-and-be-loved gene and the gene which causes me to tremble with a bit of joy every time I walk into a library.
I also have the gene which causes me to get really angry about things which I perceive as intolerance and injustice and prejudice and feel I must do something about it.
And then there's the I-hate-housework gene, the I-love-to-cook gene, and the timidity-and-intimidated-in-the-presence-of-anyone-wearing-a-white-coat-even-if-she's-standing-behind-the-cosmetics-counter-at-the-mall gene. Let us not forget the old-southern-lady-yardworking gene.

Yep. I'm blaming it all on my genes. And when some of these genes get in the way of my life, I suppose I need to do something about it and the easiest thing seems, at this point, to take a pill, which helps but does not cure. Believe me.

And I need to go take a walk now because that helps too.
I am trying, timidly and with great reservation, some meditation.
I don't have a lot of faith in that one, but why not try?

Just please don't ask me to pray about it, okay?

I don't have the gene.

And Sometimes Love Is Pure And Joyful

No Answers At All

I keep thinking about something I was told the other day about an adopted child. I do not know the child nor the adoptive father but I know the mother, casually. I didn't even know she had an adopted child but I knew she had other children and that she appears to be a very, very dedicated mother and she homeschools her children (a viable option here in the very poor county I live in where the schools are abysmal, to say the least), that she is very Catholic and that her vehicle has a "Choose Life" license tag and a Christian rock music station bumper sticker.

I had, of course, made my assumptions about her. I hate that "Choose Life" license tag, believing as I do that we all choose life, even if we believe in a woman's right to abortion. I don't even want to discuss Christian rock music, because I agree with Roseanne who said, "Christian Rock? Give me a break. What's next, Christian Porn?"

So anyway, be they true or not, I had made my assumptions about this woman and our short interactions were polite and she has always been kind to me and despite her fervid assurances that she was praying for Lily and the baby (and what are you supposed to say to that? Please don't?), I had no reason to overly like or dislike her.

And then I found out about the adopted baby and the person who was telling me this story said, "It's common knowledge so I don't feel as if I am talking out of school," and then proceeded to tell me that this woman and her husband had adopted this child because his mother had been raped and gotten pregnant through that rape and although she could not bring herself to raise the child herself, she did not believe in abortion.

Well, If you're going to drive around with a Choose Life license tag, it is a good thing to put your money and your heart where your mouth is. Right? I respect that.
And the couple was with the mother when she gave birth and the woman I know, the adoptive mother, even took hormones in order to breast feed the baby and well, if I adopted a baby I would want to do that too, and I commend her for it. And they have raised this child in a loving and Christian home and they have taken a life which began in such tragedy and horror and violence and have turned things around with love and stability.

And this is all wonderful but I can't stop thinking about it because if it is common knowledge, this story, then that little child, who is now four years old, is going to know some day. He is going to know that he was adopted because his birth mother was raped.

And what does "common knowledge" mean? Does it mean that the facts of this child's beginnings are discussed at church? At parties? At home school gatherings? Why should this fact even be discussed at all? It seems almost...prurient...to me that it is.
I don't know. It doesn't seem fair at all to me that everyone knows about this except, for the time being at least, the child. He, of course, is an innocent being as all children are. But as all children eventually find out, the sins of the father persist yea, until the seventh generation, or whatever that quote is, and I think that means literally. What your great grandfather did or did not do will affect you in some way.

And this child's father raped his mother and one day, this child will find that information out and hopefully, not from another kid on a playground.

I know a man who knew he had been adopted but what he didn't know was that the woman he thought of as his adopted sister was, in fact, his mother. She had gotten pregnant as a teenager in the late forties and the shame then of such an act was unimaginable. She went to live "with an aunt" up north, had the baby and then her parents adopted the baby, telling everyone that he was just a normal orphan, no relation to them, certainly! and that oh yes, the daughter had just decided to go live in Boston for awhile but isn't it nice she's home now?
Hey. These things happened back in the dark ages and people just pretended to go along.
But the point is, this man who had been adopted grew up thinking that people were talking about him. He would enter a room and everyone would shut up and look at him with bright, false smiles. He had mental issues. He went to counselors. They diagnosed him with paranoia.
And then, in his twenties, he found out the truth.
In this case, the truth did not set him free. He has suffered an entire lifetime of mental illness with every sort of therapy and treatments imaginable and nothing really seems to ease his mind to a point of acceptance and peacefulness.

As I have often said, I think it is the secrets that make us crazy. Children are not stupid at all. They know when they are not being told the truth and all hell hits the fan when they find out what the truth is when if the truth had been presented early on, it would have been easier to deal with- yes, this is what happened, we love you, this is what we thought best, and what would you like for lunch?

But in the case of this little boy, how will he be given the truth and is there any way on earth to present it to him that will make it all be okay? Why does everyone already know?

I don't know. I think it is a very loving thing anyone does who adopts a child with the idea and desire and goal to give that child the best possible life he or she could have if the birth parents cannot provide that.

But in cases like this- where the mother could not, because of the horror of the trauma of the baby's conception, raise the child on her own, does the truth of the matter do the child any good?
Or is this no different than any other adoption where it is explained to the child that because of one reason or another, the mother could not give him the home she knew he deserved and so, as a great and loving sacrifice (the greatest, as far as I can see) she gave him up so that he could have the home he deserved? And how is she, that birth mother, four years later? Is she at peace with her decision? Is she okay? Has she been able to move on, knowing she did what, in her belief, was the best thing to do? The hardest thing to do?

God. I don't know. You'd have to be Solomon to figure this one out. I wonder if the parents will tell the child the truth of the situation wrapped in all sorts of Christian terms- angels and God and the Holy Ghost and Jesus Loves The Little Children- and if that will make it somehow better.

I just don't know. And none of this is any of my business at all but I can't quit thinking about it.
Perhaps it is just that term- common knowledge- common knowledge of such a violent truth which upsets me. Hopefully, by the time the little boy finds out the truth which everyone else already knows, including his siblings, he will be so secure in the love of his parents and his family that it will not matter how he came to live with them.

That's what I hope.

And once again it has been shown to me that making assumptions about people is not very wise. Everyone, as Yoko Ono said, has a story. And bumper stickers and license plates don't tell the whole story of a person, a family, a history, a hope.

I hope this family's story comes out well with all my heart. I hope when he grows up, the common knowledge is that he is a good man who, with the help of a good family who believed in their truths so strongly that they allowed him to be, with full knowledge and belief in his own worth, the very best representation of a human life he could be.
Or at least a reasonably sane and content good man, which is all we can ever hope for, really.

I just don't know. What do you think?

Owen Comes To Grandma's House

A few years ago I figured out that I had given my children approximately ninety or so birthday dinners and I said, "This is it! I am done! You're all grown-up now and don't expect me to throw a big ol' party every time you have a birthday!"

All the children fell on the floor laughing and nothing changed at all.

So last night we had approximately the one hundreth or so birthday celebration at Mama's house and it was a good one and different in every way because Owen was here. He arrived in his car seat, fast asleep, and continued to sleep on the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen for several hours, sleeping through the chopping, the pans banging, the dogs barking, the neighbors coming over to admire him and people saying, "Owen, wake up!"

He sleeps fiercely. As you can see. Even as he slept we admired his long fingers, his cute little pumpkin head, his fuzzy, soft hair.

Finally dinner was ready and everyone was here.



All the kids and Tay-Tay and Grandpa and Grandma and we gathered on the back porch to eat and then, that button on Lily's butt which wakes up the baby when she sits down to eat was activated and Owen woke up and wanted to nurse, which he did, all through supper, all through the trip outside to see the chickens and the fire Granddaddy had built and then through dessert and when they left, he was still crying for more.

This young man does nothing by half-measures. When he sleeps, he sleeps, when he wants the nursies, he WANTS THE NURSIES!!!!
Lily says she's getting a little tired of having her boobies online so I won't post any nursie pictures. Too bad. I have a great one of her blowing out the candles on her key lime pie with Owen at her breast.

Uncle Hank did get a few moments of time holding him and that was pretty sweet. When Owen cries, Uncle Hank says something like, "Ffff, ffff, ffff," and Owen seems to like that. I believe Hank was giving him instructions on some important life lesson when I took this picture:

I barely got to hold him because every time I did, he cried and tried to find the ninny on my arm and when there wasn't one, he became inconsolable and I had to give him back to his mama. Oh well. I did get to change his diaper.

It was a lovely evening, a birthday and birth-day celebration and we all felt as if we had a royal guest in our midst and it was our honor to do his bidding, although of course it was mostly Lily who did his bidding and she is a most gracious mother, a queen of lactation and comfort, a patient and loving mother. She is also beautiful.

I would show you how beautiful but her boobies are exposed in every picture and I'm trying to be respectful. And Jason is her royal consort and Lily admits he's changed more diapers than she has and it seems to me they have the whole thing covered.

Owen's a lucky boy and he has made us a lucky family. Or a luckier family, I suppose I should say.

And one more reason to gather together to eat and laugh and celebrate.

When Jason and Lily and Owen left I told them that perhaps I would come over today to see them to take a nap with Owen.

I think I might need one.

It LOOKS Like Country But It Ain't Really

My phone rang at eight a.m. this morning, a Sunday morning, and I leapt to get it from my bed where I was still unashamedly and unabashedly asleep, thinking surely it must be Lily and there must be some problem with Owen.

"Hello?" I answered and instead of hearing the teary voice of my daughter, I heard a voice asking me about roosters, absolutely no apology for calling me up on a Sunday morning at the crackish of dawn.

Listen- I could muck out my chicken coop five times a day and I will still never be that country.

In real country life, eight a.m. on a Sunday morning is plenty of time to have gotten up, made a hearty breakfast and done the chores and then settled down to answer all the phone messages.
Because I had left a message on this woman's phone on Friday night. She and her husband raise chickens and they took some of Kathleen's roosters when it became all too apparent that she had more roosters than was needed and that the roosters were keeping the hens all agitato and needed to find other homes. And I had called to ask if they'd like two more.

Now. If we were REAL country people, those roosters would have made a fine chicken pot pie but we are not. We have chickens because we love them. They are our pets with benefits. But even crazy chicken people like us know that too many roosters spoils the coop. That's just a fact. We supposedly are raising these birds for eggs and roosters do not lay eggs and can keep the hens in such a state that they can't either, plus it's inevitable that the excess of roosters will begin to use their excess of testosterone for fighting each other and cock fighting is another aspect of chicken-raising we don't intend to get involved with.

So. That is why I'd made the call to these people who supposedly are breeding chickens to sell who can use the extra roosters. Although of course it could be a scam and they are simply looking for free meat.

I had wondered if after Owen was born I would lose some of my interest in my birds. It's not just a metaphor for refilling the empty nest that I have gotten so enamored of these feathered babies of mine. They amuse me, they fulfill something inside of me that I didn't know was there and they give me eggs. Mr. Moon and I have raised these chickens from little puff balls of birds and I was a bit worried that my devotion to them would flag a bit after I got a real grandson but so far, that is not so much true. I still love them and look forward to going out and feeding them some fruit and finding eggs and when this woman called about taking Lucille and Helen my heart did a little sinking thing because yes, I have raised them from babies and they are beautiful chickens but it can hardly be denied that they are roosters with their gaudy tail feathers, their thick tree-like legs and oh yes, their crowing.

"Would this afternoon be a good time to come get them?" the woman asked.
I grabbed what seemed like a temporary life raft in my sleepy disorientation and said, "Oh. No. I'm sorry but my children are coming out this afternoon. We're having a little party. That wouldn't be a good time."
"Well how about tomorrow?" she asked and I wondered if they already had the pot on the fire, the potatoes and carrots cut up and waiting, or perhaps the dumplings rolled out.

"Uh. Okay," I said. "Why don't you call me then and I'll tell you how to get here."

It's going to be hard, I think, watching those two birds go. I know it's stupid. They are just chickens, after all, and I EAT chicken. I'm going to cook chicken flautas this very afternoon. And, like I said, if I were really a country woman, I'd be cooking Helen and Lucille but I am not a real country woman, no matter how dirty my feet get, and I will be cooking anonymous chicken breasts from Publix.

But I remember when they were tiny, just big enough to peck at a piece of watermelon, and I cannot eat them. I am not quite Marie Antoinette, playing at being a shepherdess, but in reality, I'm closer to her than I am to a real country woman who can wring two birds' necks at the same time and then prepare them for Sunday dinner.

And la-di-dah. So what? I am who I am and I know I have to give these extra roosters up and cowboy up, cupcake and get on with my blessed life and I will. But it will be with a pang of sadness, I know that for sure.

And now I need to get busy around here. My kids and my grandchild are coming out today and there are beans to boil and flautas to make and tables to clean off. I would kill the fatted calf if I had one.

Well, probably not. If I had a fatted calf I would have named him something like Babycakes and how in the world can you kill something called Babycakes?

Or Helen and Lucille, for that matter.

And there you have today's sermon from the Church of The Batshit Crazy where we are faced with all sorts of conundrums and quandaries, joys and small sadnesses.

I hope you're having a lovely Sunday and that no one called you at eight a.m., awakening you from your well-deserved slumber, pulling you out of your soft cotton sheets, your puppy dog lying at your feet.

And now I must go feed the chickens. And boil the chicken.
Because I am a hypocrite and so it goes.

Biscuits And Other Southern Things

Miss Lizzie is so funny. She just cracks me up. She called me this morning to discuss next weekend. There is going to be a wedding at Gator Bone and she is providing the grounds, the food, and I have no idea what all else. Months ago she asked if I'd come to help and I said I would if the baby was born and all was well.

And so I shall.

Lis said she'd started cleaning and we all know where it can lead when you suddenly look at your house with the eyes of someone who is expecting eighty people to suddenly appear on your doorstep. She'd begun with the china cabinet and then she'd gone on to take everything OUT of the china cabinet and I think that's probably already a good day's work, just going through all her beautiful treasures in there and cleaning things up and setting them right.

"I just want it to be clean!" she said to me. "It's a matter of southern pride. These people are Yankees!"
"Oh Lord, honey," I said. "Just don't clean and let them believe what all Yankees believe which is that we live down here sobbing into our heritage which is covered in cobwebs and dust. Forget southern pride. Let them see southern insanity."
"Yeah," she said. "They whipped our asses and we've never recovered. It's all their fault."
"Exactly," I said.

Well, of course we are crazy down here and as you know by now, things do tend to get covered in spider webs. I think we should present ourselves as we are- hospitable and crazy, funny and tending towards talking slowly. Hell, we're making angel biscuits (in fact, I believe my main job is going to be that of angel biscuit chef) and if I know Yankees (and I am not ashamed to say I do), they will be so overwhelmed with the hot light goodness of those biscuits that they won't give a damn about cobwebs or dust.

"More biscuits," they will moan, and they will reach for the Bradley's Country sausage and the cheese grits casserole and when they leave to go back up North, their tummies will be full of plain southern goodness and their hearts will have a memory that will last a lifetime. Of this I feel sure.

I hear that not only are these wedding guests going to be Yankees but they are NEW YORK Yankees, which is the Yankee-est Yankees of all. Well, maybe Yankees from Maine are more Yankee than NY Yankees. I don't know. I don't understand how this stuff works.

Just like I don't really understand what it means to be southern. I certainly don't have a Confederate flag in my possession but I am proud of my biscuits and I have been known to get drunk on moonlight and fireflies and Confederate jasmine. I've never had a mint julep in my life and I don't like bourbon but I grow mint in my yard and okra, too. I will never in my entire life vote for a Republican but I did muck out my hen house today and I've got meringues in my oven that I made from my own chicken's egg whites and a key-lime pie made from the yolks. I have absolutely nothing in common with the Beverly Hillbillies but I might as well live in Mayberry. I make pickles like Aunt Bee and I love nothing more than music being played on my porch like Andy did.

I don't wear petticoats but Lis does.

And we'll be doing our best to make this wedding a big ol' wing-ding. She assured me that there will not be SO much to do- only a dozen or so quiches and a fruit salad and yes, the biscuits and there will be a fish fry and Lon will be grilling the sausages and she'll make the wedding cake and there will be the cheese grits casserole.

"Are you freaked out?" she asked me as she told me all of this.
"Not yet," I said.

She knows me too well.

But here's what I know- when all the Yankees are gone and Gator Bone is empty but for the few of us southerners we'll have a martini and eat some of whatever is left and we'll put our bare feet up and we'll laugh like hell and we'll be glad it all went so well.
Someone will have gotten married and maybe the sandhill cranes will be calling or the owls and I will be with people whom I love with all my heart and I'll go to bed in their tiny guest room, exhausted and happy and feeling cherished.

And incredibly southern. I'll feel that too.

Because we are.

And no matter how well Lis cleans, there will be cobwebs and that's all there is to it.

And I'll sleep better knowing that there are, and I hope to be filled with southern pride and contentment on having spent a day feeding people well as a couple whom I do not even know pledge their vows in the beautiful land of Gator Bone.

They have chosen their marriage's beginning well and I feel honored to be a part of that.
Now wish me luck that my biscuits rise as light and high as love can, that our quiches and grits and fish and sausage fill bellies as happily as love fills hearts.

That we will show New York Yankees what the south is all about. And although they will not realize it, they will have been in the Church of the Batshit Crazy and blessings will have abounded. Southern and otherwise. Holy and delicious. Serious and as lighthearted as an angel biscuit, split and ready to receive its butter, ready to receive its pure cane syrup, its sweet golden honey.

This Boy Is One Week Old Today

Ah. How can that be?

I told Lily after Owen was born that in a perfect world, the mother would give birth at HER mother's house and then the new grandmother would take care of the new little family. You know, feeding them, doing laundry, bringing them beverages, and oh yes, maybe holding the baby once in a while.

Well. That is not the way it is so I have to schlep all the way to town to see this little guy. I remember when Mr. Moon and I were talking about retiring in Costa Rica. Haha! Suddenly Lloyd is too far away.

Maybe the novelty will wear off soon. Do you think?

It's a beautiful morning here in Lloyd and the crows are busy doing whatever crows do and talking about it and my roosters are crowing. Why do crows caw while roosters crow? I tried to get Mr. Moon to take the two extra roosters to Dog Island to set them free. I love the idea of two feral roosters on the island, the bewilderment of people when they sighted them, scratching in the deer moss beside the road, roosting in a pine tree at night.
Probably not a great idea. I'm sure an eagle would get them but before that happened, they'd have plenty of tasty bugs to eat. A short life, but a sweet one.

And now I need to attend to my own sweet life. I am feeling somewhat better today and might even make it to the flea market to buy produce after I go kiss Owen and I need to go to the store. Lily wants chicken flautas for her belated birthday celebration tomorrow. I will be so happy to have all the children here at once and Owen, the King Of It All, to pass around and love on.

Again I have to ask- how can this be? A week ago right now, Lily had been in labor for forever and was discouraged, to say the least, and we were all so tired and the idea of a baby, a real live baby was nothing but a hypothetical dream and yet, here he is now, in all his baby glory, the labor done, the sweet work of raising him begun.

Lily and Jason have gone forth and multiplied and I can't even begin to do the math on how much more love that equals. But I'll see it in real life tomorrow, all of us together, all of us shining in that reflected glory. All of us riding this pink cloud of Owen and smiling and saying, "Please pass the baby....Uh, I mean the guacamole."

Let us hope that no one eats Owen by mistake.

What More Can Be Said?

Kathleen just called and we chatted for awhile. As is Kathleen's wont, she did not mention my anxiety, she did not bring up my craziness. We talked about chickens and Opera House gossip and dogs and food and so forth. And she soothed me as she always does. That picture was taken a while back and her hair is longer now but it is a picture I have of her.

It's been a day.

I've tried very hard to just get on with things, not let this bullshit craziness tie it's knot in my tail. I weeded the mesclun, I worked on a card. I watched Ms. Lost In Translation's video which she had posted on meditation. I read all my comments, I e-mailed back and forth with another woman who has the damn anxiety disease, I took heart at the sharing of her and my commentors. I talked to Lizzie and Jessie and Lily. I wrote a little on my recipe/memoir book. I sent Mr. Moon off to the island. I even took a small nap, hoping that as sometimes happens, the computer would be rebooted, I would wake feeling all fine and well.

The sky to the west is pink-streaked and glorious. I wonder what sort of sunset Mr. Moon is getting on the island. It's very quiet in Lloyd. The animals have all gone to bed and the traffic is far away like a distant-flowing river.

My table here on the back porch is in full card-making mode. Glitter and pictures and glue and card stock. I bemoan the fact that I cannot make a card that represents what I feel. My daughter May makes cards that are three-by-five perfections and me? Oh. Shit. Every time I go to make a card I have to remember all over again that more glitter does not mean more goodness. I do my best. In my next lifetime, I am going to be like Joni Mitchell- able to sing and make music and paint the images that my music brings me. But in this lifetime, I am a mutt of an artist, I can carry a tune but I cannot play a thing. I can dance but I cannot draw. I can cook but I cannot quilt. I can rhyme but I cannot make a vision palpable.

I am in awe of those who can.

Kathleen and May and Lis and Liz can do it. And I know that everything I do which is creative and which lets my mind out of my way is something which rests my soul. I spent almost an entire year taking Dollar Store Virgin night lights and beading and glittering and painting them into something crazy and it helped me. After Sue died, I took a tiny crochet needle and made the smallest crocheted bags imaginable. So small they would hold nothing but a prayer, a wish.

Yes. Antidepressants help. But this keyboard, that glue, that glitter, that flannel, that wool, those red peppers, that flour and flowers and rows of arugala, those chickens, these friends from all over the world who take the time to write me back- they save my life.

Thank-you.
That's what I have to say tonight, this Friday night in Lloyd, Florida.

Amen and love...Ms. Moon

After Birth

Is it the fall-feeling weather? Is it the huge new perceived responsibility? Is it some sort of grandmother hormones kicking in and not behaving themselves? Is it that Mr. Moon is going to the island this weekend to make plans to re-roof the shack?
I don't know, but the anxiety which has been at bay mostly, is back.
And I hate this. I hate it, hate it, hate it.
It takes my life and makes it nothing but a space to get through before I can go back to bed and sleep again.
And I should be nothing but joyful, joyful. And happy. And pleased.
I should be relaxed and empty of everything but the pleasure and relief of knowing that Owen is here and safe and gaining weight and that Lily is well.
And here I am, praying for this feeling to pass, knowing that a feeling is nothing but a feeling, knowing also that a sword in the side would be nothing but a sword in the side, so what?
It doesn't help so much when it's happening.

The world is going on as it should. Mr. Moon is getting the boat ready for the crossing. Yoga was pleasant. Miss Mabel is sitting on the nest. We got five eggs yesterday. I got my prescription refilled yesterday and have no worries about running out of that. The garden needs weeding, as it always does. The laundry needs doing. No big deal.

So why is this retarded, evil voice whispering in my ear, making my stomach clench into an unrelenting fist, why is my heart pulling up the covers around its head?

And why do I expect there to be any logic to mental illness? There is none. Let me just tell you that- there is none. So don't fucking expect it.

Haul water, chop wood, feed the chickens, wash the dishes, make a card, plan a menu, sweep the floors, get in the office, write a page, write a chapter, bleed on the page, weep through the chapter. Let it go, let it flow, keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle, objects in mirror are closer than they appear, get in the dirt, wash it off, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid.

I Am A Grandmother

Please. Stop the blessings. Lis sent me the Marlene Dietrich brooch which I found in my mail box this morning. I decided it went quite well with my great grandmother's pearls.
I fit into my jeans and could breathe.
I put on make-up- have you noticed I wear make-up to see my grandson? I want him to think I am beautiful- and went to see him. He is growing ever more beautiful. I took another nap with him. Lily put him to sleep with the tit and I gathered him into me and we slept.
As I was about to leave, the doorbell rang. It was Mr. Moon. He just wanted to lay eyes on the lad before the day was over.
And so it goes.
My hair is getting longer. I am going to have to start braiding it into two tails for that boy to hold onto when we sleep. He has a fierce grip.

Amen.

Suddenly, It Is Fall

It's October the First and it's chilly here in North Florida. I had to put on a pair of socks this morning. It's not unusual to get these cool mornings in early fall but it's always a bit of a shock to the system after an entire summer of sweat and mosquitoes and poison ivy and itching and did I mention sweat?

The chickens tuck themselves up earlier at night and come out later in the morning. I suppose we'll have to figure out how to get some heat in that hen house when the temperatures really drop. As with everything involving the chickens, we fly by the seat of our pants and figure it out as we go along.

My old dog Pearl is getting skinnier and skinnier. She's about to turn fourteen, which is old for a boxer.


I can't seem to get a good shot of her today. She's deaf and can't listen to instruction. Nor to reason, either, it would seem. She spends half her day pawing at her food bowl to get me to add a few more kibbles, no matter how full it is. When I go insane and just put the bowl away she looks at me so sorrowfully, as if the once again, I have failed to understand her when it is so obvious what she wants. She wanders back into the house and curls up somewhere and takes another nap. We're hoping to have Lily and Jason and Owen and all the children out to the house on Sunday for a celebration of birthdays and birth-days. We plan to let Pearl lick Owen's head which will be a lifetime dream for Pearl. She loves babies with a passion and when one enters the house, she whimpers with joy and the need to get near enough to lick that baby's head.

Once, Miss Maybelle shaved her head and Pearl spent an ecstatic twenty minutes, just licking May's scalp and May, being the sweet thing she is, let her. We are sure that licking Owen's head will be of benefit to both Pearl and the baby. We have no idea why we think this, but we do.

Another plan we have for Pearl's health is to give her a raw deer liver. Once we had an old cat named Bob. Bob had one of the biggest personalities of anyone I've ever met, human, canine, feline, what-have-you. It wasn't a particularly pleasant personality but it was huge. He spent his days patrolling the perimeter of whatever house we lived in, protecting us and our property. When he got old, he got very ill. The vet said it was either Feline AIDS or a stroke or a tumor but whatever it was, the cat was going to die. His eyeball was popping out of his head and he looked like something from Pet Cemetery but before we decided what to do with him Mr. Moon shot a deer and gave the liver to Bob. Bob ate massive quantities of that liver and then he recovered, his eyeball went back into his head and he lived to patrol more perimeters and to express his bitchy opinion about the world in general for quite a few more years.
So Mr. Moon wants to get a deer liver for Pearl to see if that will help her. It's hunting season and my laundry is filled with camo-this and camo-that and I have to use non-scented soap on everything and Mr. Moon gets up way before dawn and goes out into the woods and sits, watching the deer come in and feed and hoping for a good shot which rarely happens.

Here he is, coming in this morning:


I know. You can barely see him because of that camo.

And so it's fall. The pinecone lillies are turning red and the betony is springing up again, taunting me from all the beds where I spent hours last fall, pulling it up by the root, carefully, carefully, trying to get it all. I will never get rid of all the betony and have a great, grudging respect for its tenacity and life force.


The Confederate Rose is blooming, great tissue-paper flowers of pink ruffles, somehow jarring at this time of year.


Really- does that look like a fall flower? Well, to everything there is a season and it is the season for these gaudy confections of blooms. The sasanqua are starting to bloom next door at Ms. Petit Fleur's and all the camellias are full of tight buds which will open when winter is at its weary end. I look forward to that. The camellias are my favorites and I have planted quite a few here and finally, after five long years, they are really starting to grow.

The sky is that deep blue of fall, the light is that sharp crisp cut of beams shafting its way through the trees and making the tops of the oaks look like perhaps heaven is slowly moving downward towards earth. It is fall.

And I am feeling a bit melancholy today, even with all of this beauty, even with my grandson eighteen miles down the road. I think back to one week ago today and it is impossible to think that Lily and Hank and I ate lunch and then went to Goodwill and had silly times, Lily about to start her journey to bring us Owen. Impossible. One week? No way.

It was Lis's grandson's second birthday yesterday and as she said, "Well, that took about fifteen minutes," when we were talking about how quickly that time has flown.

The seasons change and everything else does too but instead of the slow, dignified turns the earth used to take around the sun, now it seems as if it is all a mad whirling. I lie in bed in the morning and wish to go back to sleep to make it all slow down. But of course, it won't. I get up and drink my coffee and the Confederate Rose blooms and my grandson is five days old and I will go to see him today because I can't wait many more moments. Pearl gets skinnier and Mr. Moon and I get grayer and I suppose I am melancholy because it is all so beautiful and I can't make it slow down. I can't hold it in my hand long enough to study down into the molecules of joy that it all presents because it is whirling, it is hurtling, it is changing even as I look at it all, even as I close my eyes to take it all in with my heart, even as I cry at the beauty of it, the glory of it, the swift transcendence of it all.

And isn't that the human condition? To weep at what we have because it will not last?

Or perhaps it is just me.

Be here now, that crazy Ram Dass said and if he said nothing else, that would be enough. I try. I try to be here now but maybe, like Emily in Our Town, I can't because it's too beautiful to bear. I feel like my chest is split wide open. I think of Eliot with his patient etherized upon a table and I think of Frida Kahlo with her staring eyes and pumping red heart and I think of how I am not strong enough to hold all of this I have right now, I feel it dropping from my hands, my arms, even as I try to keep it close to me, even as I try to open myself to more, even as fall's light so helpfully illuminates what it is I have, covering it all with gold.