Going Away and Coming Back

So we're back from Chattanooga and it was a good trip. I think I may have enjoyed the drive up and back as much as the actual trip, but that's because (a) I didn't do any of the driving, and (b) I got to read out loud from one of my favorite books the whole journey. The book I was reading was Handling Sin by Michael Malone and if you haven't read it, I suggest you do because it's five hundred and something pages of pure, unadulterated rollicking good times. It's about a middle-aged man, stuck in a deeper rut than I'll ever be who is handed a mission by his crazy father and who, because his inheritance is involved, is forced to accept it and of course his life is changed in countless and terrific ways.
Good reading for a woman afraid of being a prisoner of her own sweet life.
I've probably read the book at least three times over the years but it's nice to be reminded that life is infinitely interesting if chances are taken and roads are explored. And so forth.
I love to read out loud. I miss reading to my children and thankfully, my husband doesn't mind at all if I read to him while he drives. I get to do all the voices and Handling Sin has a rich plethora of voices to read. Reading out loud satisfies a few of my loves- reading, of course, and the joy I feel when I "perform", which is what reading out loud is, if you do it right.
So the drives were fine and our room was lovely. Everyone we met in Chattanooga just could not have been nicer, from the guy who helped us with our luggage to the hotel manager that I shared the elevator with on the day we left. When he asked me if everything had been good during our stay, I told him that mainly, yes, everything had been terrific, except for one major problem, which was that the bed sheets would NOT stay on the bed, although I had to say the bed was one of the most comfortable I'd ever slept on and it was. He sighed and said he was truly sorry and that hopefully, by the time we came back, this would not be a problem.
We were tourists, my husband and I, although my folks come from the Lookout Mountain/Chattanooga area. I actually lived there when I was a small child and my memories are vague and misty and some of them are not so good. I went back when I was thirty, on a combined honeymoon-meeting-my-father-for-the-first-time-since-I-was-five trip. Nothing like starting a marriage with a little baggage, eh? We went up there again when my old daddy died and so you'd think I would avoid Chattanooga like the plague, but honestly, my feelings about the place are pretty darn positive, so it must be a nice little city.
And it is a little city. There are big buildings and many of them are old and beautiful, but it's a small enough place that even without the slightest idea of how to find our hotel, we did, just by sight. It's a charming big-little city. Or little-big city. Whichever.
We didn't get to nearly all of the cool places I hear they have there now. We did go to the aquariums and that was a good day. And one day we drove up to Lookout Mountain and visited Rock City, which is still there, still going strong, and still as hokie and cool as it was when I was a child. You just can't beat the combination of mountain vistas, enchanting rock formations and gnomes painted in phosphorescent colors and lit with black lights.
Well, it works for me.
We also went to Ruby Falls, which I had never visited before and quite frankly, will never visit again. You take an elevator 260 feet down into the heart of Lookout Mountain (with a great many strangers) and when the doors open, you find yourself in a rather dark cave where someone is waiting to take your picture so that you can preserve the memory. We decided not to pose. I think we were feeling a bit claustrophobic and in fact, as I told my husband, I could feel the entire weight of the mountain on top of me. This made it a bit difficult to breathe, but I managed to get things under control and along with all the others in our group, we made our way down rocky paths carved into the rock and cave formations until we got to the falls themselves, which were a bit disappointing, even with the laser lights and Hollywood-style movie soundtrack, due to the drought.
Damn global warming.
But still, we saw the falls and then we all treked up the path to the elevator and blessedly, ascended safely back onto the face of the earth.
Phew. Disaster averted, once again.
So it was a good trip and we ate some good meals and had some good drinks and nothing bad happened (you just can't count sheets not staying on the bed as something bad, really) and now we're home and I have to say that I'm glad we went and I'm glad we're back. I had missed my own bed and the roosters next door that wake me up in the morning and I'm glad to be eating sane foods again and I'm glad to be back in my office, typing away.
I have, as I had before the trip, mixed feelings about travel. It was fun, and as they say, we have memories that'll last a lifetime (of Ruby Falls, at least) and that's all good.
But I have an awful lot to do here, what with the garden and the house and writing and maybe making a few Christmas presents and seeing all my children and a few friends and I hear we're going to have a Casablanca cast and crew get-together soon and boy, I am surely looking forward to that.
And I suppose I should just accept that this is the way I am- a woman who does indeed love her life, even with its narrow vistas, and who is happy to keep both feet on the ground and whose idea of a good time is to make a really nice soup.
My God. I am boring.
Well, you read it here first.

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.

What's For Dinner?

In the book Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns, there is a discussion of how pious a character is. It goes something like this:
“She’s so religious she asks God what to cook for supper.”
“Honey, every woman on earth asks God what to cook for supper now and then.”

I remember this exchange every time I stand in the produce section of the grocery store, wondering what to fix for dinner. I would probably ask for divine inspiration if I thought it would do any good because although I do really like to cook, I just flat get tired of trying to think of what to cook. I'm so desperate for ideas that I ask my husband what he'd like for dinner at least once or twice a week.

I say desperate because every time I ask the man what he'd like to eat, he says one of two things. Either white bean chili or clam spaghetti.

It’s like those are the only two dishes he can ever remember that I cook. Either that, or those are the only two things I cook that he likes, which I find hard to believe.

I’m a decent cook. I can cook full-on Southern and I can do crunchy-granola hippie. (I actually used to make my own granola, but that was another lifetime ago.) I can do low fat, vegan, vegetarian, carnivorous, and child-friendly. I’m versant with what I call Florida cracker cooking, which involves a lot of fish and game as well as your breads made of corn, and I can do a few passable ethnic things as well.

So I can and do cook a lot more than white bean chili and clam spaghetti.

So why can’t the Man come up with more than two suggestions for a night’s menu?

I’m not sure. If pressed, he will offer to grill something. This always cracks me up because he presents the offer as if it would take the entire responsibility of the meal off of me. As if grilling some sort of protein over a fire means we don’t need a salad, some vegetables and some sort of grain or bread to go with it. Since we don’t eat much meat these days, there’s not a whole lot he can grill anyway and don’t tell me that grilled eggplant is something he could do- I’m sure he could, but for some reason, my fellow just doesn’t get excited about grilling vegetables. He’ll do some on the side, but it’s encoded in his DNA that the real reason for cranking up the coals is to sear a piece of meat, and he does a good job of that, whether it’s the occasional chicken breast, pork chop or a tuna steak. I always enjoy what he grills, especially since I’ve usually marinated it beforehand.

I’m into marinade, which I even use for tofu. And no, he does not grill tofu. He’ll eat it and if I begged, he’d grill it, but he’d never in his whole life suggest it.

I have observed that when men grill there are rituals involved. Of course building the fire or starting the coals or gas is important. Having plenty of condiments and seasoning at hand is necessary, too. In my husband’s case, these are garlic salt and pepper, which is why I marinate, I suppose.

But I believe that after the actual piece of protein to be grilled, the most important factor in successful male outdoor cookery is the beer. Or manly cocktail.
This is what I have observed, anyway.

I discovered about a dozen years ago that I, too, could grill food. Not only could I grill food, but I could cook the rest of the kitchen-prepared meal at the same time. I could grill, make a salad, steam some broccoli, make some bread and set the table too. I could not only do all of this, I could drink beer at the same time! If necessary, I could watch the children and run a load of laundry too, but I'm not here to brag.

This discovery so disconcerted my husband that I had to quit doing it. It was if I had cracked some male code and had become a freak of nature, not unlike a poodle who was suddenly able to speak in perfect Latin.

So I leave the grilling to him these days.

And he leaves the menu planning to me.

“Honey, whatchu want for supper?” I ask him. There’s always a long pause, as if he’s thinking about it and ever hopeful, I can almost believe he’s going through all the many meals in his head that I have presented him with over the years, trying to decide which one he might be in the mood for. A lovely bean and vegetable soup with home-made sourdough bread? Spicy mustard shrimp with brown rice and vegetables? A healthy, delicious, colorful stirfry? My amazing salmon with spinach and edamame beans? Black beans with rice? Veggie burgers and oven-baked French fries?
What? Just tell me what you want. I’ll cook it!

And then he speaks.

“Clam spaghetti?” he suggests. “White bean chili? I don’t know. You pick.”

I sigh and wish I had a personal relationship with Jesus so that I could ask him for a little inspiration.

But then again, Jesus was, by all accounts, a man, and one prone to fasting at that, so I doubt he’d be much help either.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll think of something.”

And I always do. It’s almost a miracle, how I come up with something healthy and tasty to cook every night of the week.

Tonight we’re having clam spaghetti, which, when you think about it, has a lot in common with loaves and fishes.

So thanks, fellows.
I appreciate your help.

Rest In Peace

Got a call just a few minutes ago from the brother of the woman I wrote about on September 3. She passed away last night at home with her loved ones around her.
I'm so sorry she's gone, but I'm so happy she didn't have a lot of time to suffer. She'd been in the hospital until last Sunday but she wanted to go home and they called in hospice and she got to go home and finish up the hard job of dying there.
I don't know what happens to us when we die and I don't think anyone does, no matter what they say. We all want to believe that something happens. That we just don't disappear. And isn't that what a lot of religion is all about? The reassurance that we don't just disappear when we die. That our life will still have meaning and that somehow, somewhere, we're still around.
I don't know. But what I do know is that this woman is not hurting or in despair any more. And that her life will not go unmourned and that it did have meaning. She touched my life and my family's life and I'm sure many, many others.
And I'd like to say here that I think hospice is one of the blessings of our community. They are not afraid to face what we will all experience but which we all fear, which is death, and they come in like angels and help the dying and the family members face death with dignity and compassion and comfort. And if that's not a holy task, what is?
I surely hope that my friend got to a place of peace before she took that last breath. I bet she did.
Time to light another candle, and my prayer for this one is a prayer of gratefulness that my friend was able to take off to parts unknown (to us, anyway) and is now a part of the light. That's how I think of her, anyway. As part of the beautiful October light that is shining on us all.
And she is resting in peace.

A Tiny Blogette

I'd just like to say that there are three things in this world that make me really happy to pat. They are:

Babies' behinds.
Bread dough.
Garden dirt after I've planted seeds.

The amazing thing to me is that all of these feel very similar when given a little pat. A bit bouncy- giving and yet firm, pleasing to the touch and totally alive.

That's all.

Some Things Never Change

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-belzer/a-letter-and-a-prayer_b_67390.html

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Glamourous

For all of you wondering what life will be like when the chickabidees leave the nest and there are no more soccer games/softball games/t-ball games/fall festivals/youthorchestra/volunteer-at-the-school-planting-bushes days to take up your weekend- let me give you a little peek into what lies ahead of you.
The husband and I got up this morning and drank a few cups of coffee, read part of the paper and he unloaded a bunch of pecan wood off the back of his little truck. I made up to-go mugs of coffee, grabbed the parts of the paper I hadn't read, my purse, my phone, and a bottle of water and we jumped in the truck and headed east.
First stop was the Huddle House by the Monticello, I-10 exit. Now my usual breakfast is a bowl of flakes, fiber and fruit, but on this day (which I proudly proclaimed to be sin day) I ate a startlingly cholesterol-laden plate of eggs, grits, toast, and bacon. God bless the pig.
We drank more coffee and read the parts of the paper that interested us and people-watched at the Huddle House, which is an-almost successful imitator of the Waffle House. The food is good but they don't even have a juke box with songs about grits! Come on! Nor do they have salsa bottled under anything clever like Casa de Waffle. And they take credit cards! The Waffle House takes nothing but cash, which makes me wonder about a lot of things, not least of which is how do they get away with that?
Anyway, it was a fine breakfast and then we got back in the truck and headed down to Highway 27 to get to Perry which was our destination. We were on a mission to collect a truckload of chicken shit to put on our garden. A friend of ours had made a connection for the stuff and turned us on to it. We didn't really have the actual directions, but since we all have cell phones these days, even chicken farmers, we knew we'd find the place.
We got to Perry in good time. The little truck, despite having not been driven for months, ran like a merry little old Singer sewing machine, although something seems to have died in the engine, causing a bit of a nasty odor, but it disappeared as soon as we got up to highway speed. While we waited for the chicken farmer to return our call and give us directions, we drove around downtown Perry, Florida for a while and let me just say that Perry does not appear to be booming. The downtown part, anyway. But we saw some lovely houses and an impressive number of old train depots and then the chicken farmer called us and we drove east on Green street and took the turns off of that that were required and we found the chicken farm. Chicken ranch? Poultry farm?
Whatever.
It was a small operation and I have to say that it did not smell as evil as most chicken farms I have known. It was an overcast morning and there was a good breeze, so things were not so bad. We got there before the farmer and had to wait a bit and I did have a fairly bad moment when I got a hot flash, all the bad smells overcame me, and the flies were attacking like something out of a National Geographic article on Australia. But then the farmer showed up with his small and frisky Jack Russell boy-dog and things got moving along. He got on his green John Deere front-loader and proceeded to load up the truck bed with composted chicken shit. It really does not smell that bad although as the farmer warned us, there are a few chicken wings embedded in the shit, here and there. What would you expect?
I walked around a little while the loading was going on, more than grateful that the John Deere was doing all the work and not me and the husband with shovels. It was a beautiful piece of land with oak trees and an old barn that I spied an antique juke box in (did it come from a Waffle House?) and the little man-dog amused me.
The loading came to an end and we chatted a few moments with the farmer who is a very interesting man. He not only owns over five hundred acres of land, the chicken operation, and eighty head of cattle, but also two Dollar General Stores and some mini-storage operations. "Those things are a license to steal!" he proclaimed. "I'm sixty-two years old and I'm ready to relax a little. I'm trying to sell the Dollar General stores. I don't want to deal with anything but the mini-storages and the land, which is my real love."
I could tell he was a fulfilled individual and I liked him a lot. He told us to spread the word about his chicken shit and is thinking about selling it bagged up, as organic. He's an honest guy and would have the University of Florida certify it as organic before he does that, so if you're interested in getting any of it now, before it goes high dollar, let me know.
We got back in the truck after telling him and the little doggie good-bye and headed back out to Highway 27. I wanted to stop for something to drink, which we did at a convenience store. I bought some iced tea and a bag of Cracker Jack and my husband got some tea and a...fried chicken wing.
I could not believe he did that, but he did, and he enjoyed eating it and then he shared my Cracker Jack with me on the drive home.
We have not unloaded the chicken shit yet (and this will involve me and a shovel and I just can't wait) and have had a nice, slow afternoon and are now cooking some protein on the grill and I have a loaf of bread in the oven as well as some asparagus, red peppers and onions in foil.
We've listened to Prairie Home Companion and we'll probably fall asleep as soon as we eat our supper.
And it's been a good day as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure we'll grow collard greens and mustard greens and cabbages that would win blue ribbons at the fair in the chicken shit we brought home.
So that's what life is like when the kids grow up and move away and you have the leisure and ability to do whatever you want with your weekends.
I'm sure you can't wait.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A tiny wren flew into my back porch this afternoon via the dog door. It took a few dips and spins around the porch, danced a little on the ceiling fan and hopped around on the old glider. It didn't seem to mind me or the dogs at all and seemed so comfortable that I have to wonder if it isn't one of the little birds that was hatched on the porch this spring, just come back to take a quick peek a the old birthplace.

Working For Your Love

Went to see my old friend Lynn today.
She's not old, it's just our friendship that is. We met and became fast friends thirty-two years ago this month. We were both young, blonde hippie girls then. She was in school and I was barely pregnant with my first child. I was twenty-one, she was twenty-five and we've been sisters-of-the-heart ever since. She's been a major part of my kids' lives since before they ever took their first breaths. She's been Aunt Lynn to all of them.

When I met Lynn she was just the dancin'-est woman you ever saw. Music was what she loved best and she loved a lot of things- the sea, rum and coke, cute fellas, children, her friends. She was about the most joyful woman I ever met, too, and not afraid to work as hard as any man ever born to get what she needed.

She met a man and married him. He had two kids and she took them in like they were born to her. She couldn't have loved them more if they were. It wasn't an easy marriage, it wasn't an easy family, but she loved them with a powerful love. She worked hard at loving them.

She understood that sometimes you have to work hard for love. She knew that.
We went through so much together. Marriages, divorces, birth, death, good times and bad. She moved to Houston for awhile, but we were never really apart. We were that kind of friends.

And then about seven years ago she was diagnosed with a horrible degenerative neurological disease. She knew something was bad wrong. She kept dropping things and her hands didn't work right. Lynn's hands had known how to type a hundred words a minute; they could cut fabric and sew, they could spread themselves in the air as she danced like strong, quick birds. They could cook, and tend her son, they could carry and tote and now, all of a sudden, things were dropping out of them and they wouldn't work to put in her earrings or fill out a form. And her mind wasn't quite right. And she started forgetting how to do things like talk, go to the bathroom, open a door, turn on the CD player, zip a dress, button a coat, peel an orange.

So they told her she had this disease and that she would die eventually, a slow, painful death.

She's in that process now. Her words are mostly gone, although once in a while she'll tear my heart out by saying quite clearly, "I love you," or "Thanks for coming" when I've gone to visit her in the nursing home where she lives.

In the last week, she's forgotten mostly how to walk and has had several falls. She had to go to the hospital twice yesterday after she fell out of her bed and did a faceplant. She has stitches in her chin, a busted lip, a swollen eye, a cracked jaw. I can't imagine the trauma she went through, having to go to the hospital in an ambulance, the pain, the blood, the strangers. She was withdrawn today, she seemed scared.

I got in the bed with her and she beamed at me when I said, "Do you know I love you?" It was like the sun came up in her eyes. She knows.

I've loved her for so long. And it was so easy to love her when we were young and the path before us looked like a flower-strewn road of soft, white sand we could dance down forever, maybe ending up at the beach where the sun sparkled diamonds to jump and jitter on the waves.

It's harder now, that love. It's mighty hard to go see her in a nursing home where she lies in a bed and stares out of the window and waits for someone to come along to feed her, give her water, give her pain medication, turn on the Beatles for her to listen to. It's painfully hard to love someone and see them like this- caught in a nightmare where the only path is a hard rocky one that can only lead to a hoped-for light that will offer relief and release.

I fed her some lunch although she didn't seem to want much and who would with all that injury to her mouth? Her sister and mother were there. They visit her all the time and her sister brings cookies she bakes and quilts she makes and flowers she grows for the nurses and the aides and in that way she is making them pay attention to Lynn. She's put pictures up all over the room of Lynn at various points in her life and also pictures of things Lynn loves the most- Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Statue of Liberty, her friends. Mostly of Lynn's son, the boy born to her late in life, the child she never thought she'd have.

I don't even know if Lynn can see those things any more. She doesn't seem to. But she knows me and she knows I love her.

Bruce Springsteen came out with a new CD today and one of the songs is titled I'll Work For Your Love and I listened to that song after I left the nursing home.

I think we forget that sometimes we do have to work for love. For the love of our spouses, our children, our friends, and all the people who have tucked themselves up into our hearts. It's easy to dance down the soft road with someone with the lure of the sparkling water before us. It's a lot harder to trudge down the dark road with them where the rocks cut our feet and the destination is so final.

Hard work. But in the end, it's the work that matters most.

And work that we constantly need to remember is one we must be most grateful for, because that means we're human, that our ragged hearts are still working, working for love.

A Blooming Sort of Life

My favorite flowers are zinnias. Today, they are, anyway. Tomorrow they might be camellias. Or magnolia blossoms. Can't really say.
But today, like I said, it's the zinnias which are still blooming in my garden- the only thing left from summer's planting. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, cucumbers and squash are all gone. The volunteer watermelon that made the sweetest, reddest fruit I ever ate is history but you can bet I saved some seeds. A few weeks ago, my husband and I spent a good two days, pulling up weeds and dead plants and hauling them all next door to throw over the fence to the neighbor's grateful goats, but we left the zinnias because they were still blooming.
I like these flowers because they come in what I call crayon colors. Bright reds, yellows, oranges, purples, lavenders, pinks. And they cut well and look right joyful in a vase. They're a hardy plant to grow and the butterflies love them, which is a beautiful thing to see- the colorful winged flowers that butterflies remind me of, drifting and settling on the stationary ones. A tiny bit of paradise right here for my own eyes.
My life has recently been a little bit like a bouquet of zinnias. Quite colorful and profusely blooming. In the last week I've been in four performances of Casablanca, had two sets of overnight guests and last night I threw a little family birthday party for my 22-year old daughter. Her birthday is today and I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. Of course.
It was one of those suddenly-chilly late September days, with that blue sky that makes all the other skies jealous. I had a score of friends in the house to help me birth her and although it was my shortest labor- a mere 15 hours or so, it was the hardest. She weighed over ten pounds and had her little hand up by her head. After a very long period of pushing, I managed to get her head out and then her shoulders got stuck. This is a life-threatening situation called shoulder dystocia but my midwife kept her head and turned me over to my hands and knees (try doing that with a baby sticking out of you) and out she came.
Yeah. That was a hard, wonderful day.
Anyway, we celebrated her birth and life last night with chicken flautas and chocolate cake. All her siblings were here and her daddy and grandma and fiance and best friend, too. Today I'm going to take her out to buy a wedding dress and have some lunch. It's going to be a big year for that girl and the whole family as well.
So between company and play performances and birthday celebrations, I haven't had much time to myself which is something I seem to need a great deal of. I'm not suffering or anything- it's been a beautiful week made up of many bright colors and lots of love- but I'm about ready to settle back into real life.
We finish up the play's run this weekend with a rehearsal tonight, and performances on Friday and Saturday and then we tear-down and have a little cast party on Sunday. I sure am going to miss it, that rush of nerves and magic that happens when the lights go down; the velvet, the jewels, the sparkle and shine. Mostly, though, the people. I don't really socialize very much, so it's a real novelty for me to have lots of different people to talk to, to interact with, to act with, to play with and I have enjoyed it tremendously.
But I'm looking forward to being able to write daily again, to exercise more regularly, to spend more time with my husband, to get the fall garden in.
I guess my usual life is less like a bouquet of zinnias and more like a bouquet of lovely, dusty pink roses- less spectacular, more consistent as to color, but sweet and mighty nice.
It's good to change things up now and then. Lord knows that things are going to change, for good and for bad, no matter what we do, but it's nice to think that we can make the choices for ourselves sometimes.
And for now, I'm still enjoying the zinnias. Me and the butterflies. There's plenty to share.

Playing and Pretending

When I was in high school, I loved being in Drama Club. We did a few typical high school productions and I was also in a community theater production of Our Town. I played Emily and it was, quite literally, a high point of my life when a tough guy I knew came to see the play and told me afterwards I'd made him cry. I felt like I'd won an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award, all in one night.
I never had any delusions of grandeur about acting, but I always planned to do maybe a little community production here and there.
But as things turned out, I got busy with life and didn't even test the waters until last year when my youngest daughter and I, just for giggles, decided to audition for a play in Monticello. We both got roles (everyone who auditions for plays in Monticello gets roles) and we had a grand time with the play. We had rehearsals three nights a week for 2 months and I thought I'd end up being sick and tired of the whole thing by the time it was over, but I wasn't. I enjoyed every minute of it.
And so this year, when I read they were doing a production of Casablanca at the Monticello Opera House, I went and read and again, got a part. My daughter was too busy and has just started college, so it's just been me making that three-times a week trek to Monticello and I miss her company and her humor and our little gossip sessions but I've had a lot of fun.
Anyone who's seen the movie of Casablanca surely knows there are not a whole lot of roles for women in the play. There's Ilsa, the Ingrid Bergman role, and Monticello's resident "real" actress quite reasonably scored that one. There's the part of Annina, who is a Bulgarian girl who goes to Rick for advice on how to avoid having to sleep with the Prefect of Police in order to get exit visas for her and her new husband, and there are a few random cafe-goers who are women and then there's Yvonne, a French woman who has the hots for Rick but who is terribly misused by him in the most callous way.
Can you tell from my complete empathy for the woman that this is the role I got?
I have all of nine lines and when I say "lines" I mean perhaps one-or two word lines. And that's it. I sit at the bar a lot and I have to sing the Marseillaise and that's about it.
But goodness gracious, I am enjoying it so much.
It's quite odd to be in a play with so many men. Community theater is usually at least eighty-percent women to men, but in this production, the ratio is reversed. And I have to say that being in a production with so many guys is just a real hoot. They're like...little boys.
And of course, that's the great, great thing about being in a play. We're pretending. Do you remember pretending? That's what we did as children. "Let's pretend you're Tarzan and I'm Jane." Or, "Let's pretend we got caught in a snowstorm." Or "You pretend you fell off a cliff and broke your leg, and..."
We went from there. It was great. But then, around the age of eleven or so, we quit pretending. Well, at least on that so-literal and honest level. I think we all pretend, every day. We pretend we know what we're doing. We pretend we know what we're talking about. We pretend we're not afraid. Basically, I think we pretend we're all grown-ups.
Which is why it's so much fun to have the opportunity to pretend again so openly and whole-heartedly as an adult. We're dressing up and pretending to be someone quite different from the people we truly are. For example- I get to pretend I'm someone who would wear a black, beaded dress and who would tell a bartender to "shut-up" when he tells her he loves her. How fun is that for a usually polite woman who's been married to the same man for over twenty years and who mostly lives in cargo shorts?
A lot of fun, is what I say.
And the opportunity to hang out in the old opera house is just a joy. It was built in 1890, and has been a part of this community for so many years and I can't help but think of all the performers who have literally trod its boards. The dressing room where we tug our costumes on and off, share make-up and zip each other up- how many people have done the same in that small space? There may or may not be ghosts in the Opera House but there surely are spirits.
We open on Friday night, but there's a preview performance on Thursday. I like performing just fine, but what I really love the most is the creation of the whole thing. The part of the process where the pretending starts and proceeds to the point where we can slip out of our real selves for just a few hours, as easily as we slip into our uniforms and beaded gowns. The part where we're doing it for ourselves and for the joy of it.
For the joy of pretending. We're grown-ups but for these few hours, we get to play.
And the play is the thing.

All That Is Holy and Miraculous

St. Clement's Chapel as it stood in my yard in the olden days...


Sometimes, for no reason, I feel bad. I wake up and just feel bad. Physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. Bad. Everything I think about makes me sad. I consider the human race and it all looks like one big organism, determined to fuck up everything we have here on this amazing watery orb spinning through space.

Then there are other days, which for reasons just as random and unpredictable, I wake up and feel good. In every way. And when I think of the human race, I feel a tender empathy for it. Sure, we're trying to destroy everything good and true, we have some really bad traits that probably evolved back when we were learning to walk on two legs (or maybe before) but golly! some of us really are trying.

Too bad it's not those particular humans running the country, but that's another story.

Today's one of the good days for sure. My walk reminded me of how glorious nature can be. I didn't see any deer as I do some days, or even a hawk or a luna moth (saw one of those yesterday) but I did see lots of butterflies, flitting about in that crazy way of theirs, landing on this flower and then another, juicing up perhaps for that long flight to Mexico. Wish I could go with them.

The sky was blue, the air temperature was reasonable and the tiny cenote I pass had more water in it. We had some good rain yesterday.

Even passing the area behind the defunct gas station about a mile from my house where they have decontamination crews trying to clean up the mess that was left behind didn't ruin my day or cause me to hate mankind.

One thing did cause me to pause and think about things, though. There's a church nearby and they've brought in construction equipment and trucks and lots of steel and guys that know what to do with all this stuff, and they appear to be adding on to the church.

I have to say that I've never in my life lived in a place surrounded by so many churches. There are, and I am not kidding you, at least fifteen different churches within a ten mile radius of my house. Some of them are small, quaint, and not very prosperous looking. Well, most of them in fact. There's even a church right next door to me that meets for exactly one hour on Sunday mornings. I hear that the tiny Episcopalian chapel on Piedmont Dr. in Tallahassee used to sit in my yard where my driveway is now. It was built by the Episcopalians of Lloyd in 1890 and when their numbers dwindled to less than two, the diocese had it moved to its present location in 1959. There are still some older Lloyd residents who are NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS.

So anyway, when I saw the steel going up for the new addition on the church down the road, it made me wonder what the deal is about the human need to get together on prescribed days at set times to "worship."

I think you either have the gene to understand or you don't. I do not. I also do not have the sports gene or the patriotism gene. Whenever I hear anyone say, "This is the greatest country on earth!" I want to say, "Yeah? You ever been to oh, say, France?" Or even Norway for that matter. New Zealand's probably pretty darn great, too.
But that's neither here nor there.

On my "bad" days, just thinking about things like people sitting in churches listening to sermons being preached by someone who claims he or she knows who God is and what God wants while they could be outside watching butterflies and trying to figure out how to save the planet so that the butterflies can keep on doing the amazing things they do, not to mention the whales and gorillas and the giant redwoods and tiny frogs and oh yes, us humans, too, makes me want to scream. Not that I'm tearing it up to prevent global warming, I have to say in order to prevent being labeled as the hypocrite I am.

On my good days, though, I just scratch my head and realize that some people need church for some reason and I shouldn't criticize those who do. Some people like to sing hymns and some people like to listen to what they consider to be the word of God and some people like the way they feel when they put money in the collection plate.
I guess.

And really, I think it would be pretty cool to have a chapel in my driveway. Maybe they'd bring it back if we got up a petition. We could have services there. I could be the pastor and preach sermons that would go like this:
"Love one another. Okay. That's it for this week. Who brought the potato salad?"
And then we could all go outside and sit on a blanket under an oak tree and watch the birds and talk about Miracles We Have Witnessed, such as Keith Richards and so forth, while eating yummy foods that we all brought to share and maybe drinking a sacramental beer or two.

Sounds like a religious experience to me.

But I'm having a good day and tomorrow I might change my mind about all of this.

I'd just like to make a public apology to my husband (and why, I'm not sure- the man has only the haziest idea of what a blog is, due to the fact that he actually LIVES his life) and say that he has been working like a dog all weekend at the island. This work involves chopping hundreds of roots out of a septic tank.

This does not sound like fun at all and once again I have to say- Honey! you the man!

One Week's Life Lessons

This is what I've learned this week so far ( and it's only Saturday!):

I love the empty nest so much it's almost embarrassing. Why did it take me so long to raise these young'uns up?

Places that sell wedding dresses are a world unto themselves and they all have a riser for the bride-to-be to stand on with mirrors all around them to that they will feel like a queen when they are trying on the dresses AND that when they put that veil on the magic is complete. Also, that for some reason, the veil can cost almost as much as the dress. Throw in a tiara, and it does. Let us not discuss shoes, jewelry and so forth.

Even the daughters of old hippie mothers sometimes want to have Cinderella weddings, which completely confuses and baffles the old hippie mothers who may have gotten married in a skirt made of a pair of men's Levis back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

They aren't kidding when they tell you it works best if you write every day.

For some reason it is more important that the septic drains be cleared at the house on Dog Island than it is for the roof to be fixed on the house where I live. This fact was proven to me when the husband took off for the island this morning dragging the boat behind him, leaving me here with a leaky roof. And what's the deal with those fishing poles, honey?

The combination of exhaustion from watching a daughter try on wedding dresses and too much to drink does not lead to gourmet cooking.

Friends who really love you will not complain or criticize you when you do not present them with gourmet cooking after having too much to drink while being exhausted.

Husbands who really love you will wash the dishes after you overcooked the beautiful flounder they caught, due to exhaustion and having too much to drink.

I can make really good sourdough bread, even if I'm exhausted and have had too much to drink.

I love life the most when I eat right, exercise regularly, write every day, don't have too much to drink, and don't leave Jefferson County.

It is possible for a child to be too honest with her mother. For example, telling her mother that yes, she IS too old to be playing the part of Yvonne in the upcoming production of Casablanca, and that's just the truth.

The Marseillaise is a song that will stick in your head like peanut butter to the roof of a dog's mouth.

It is a glorious thing when the oppressively hot days of August give way to the cooler days of September and you can feel the breath of fall all the way from Canada where it is waiting for its cue to start moving down.

When you somehow manage to cram a chest of drawers into the back of a Mini Cooper and it leaves just a few tiny brown marks on the car's interior, your husband may not congratulate you on your ingenuity.

Magic eraser really IS magic!

Sometimes when a teenager doesn't talk to her mother for almost an entire year, it is not because she doesn't love her mother. It is because she has gotten her tongue pierced and doesn't want her mother to notice this.

When those teenagers grow up, they sometimes tell you things like this when you take them shopping for wedding dresses.

Somehow it looks better to wear a wedding dress that displays your tattoos prominently that to wear one that sort-of but not really hides them.

Girls who get tattoos still sometimes want wedding dresses that look like something from a Disney movie.

Same as above for girls who get their tongues pierced.

Sleeping with two dogs on the bed is not as much fun as you might think.

I would rather be at home on my porch watching the bird feeder than almost anywhere else on earth.

There are some mighty fine people out there in the Tallahassee blogger's world.

And one more thing I've just learned:

Don't do a google-image search for "tattooed bride" with safe search off before your first cup of coffee.

Life and Light, and That Other Stuff, Too

Ya know, just when you think you have a handle on the situation, just when you're sure the light is really shining, just when you think you've figured out a little tiny microscopic part of the universe that you live in...
You find out you know nothing.
NOTHING, I tell you!
At least that's true for me.
As I said in my last blog, the nest is well and truly empty. Child number four took her wings, packed them up in her Honda and unpacked them in her dorm room at FSU.
I cried some. I mourned some. I grieved some.
Then she and I went to see good friends in St. Augustine for the weekend and I realized that she's mighty happy with her new life and that she'll always want to do things with me and she still loves home too. So if I'm worried about her, I'm seriously crazy and it is really and truly time for me to enjoy the fruits of my labor and understand that my life can go on, can get bigger and that good times are to be had. Hell, GREAT times are to be had.
The husband and I are enjoying the new freedom of home. So far this has meant nothing very wild. Mostly that if he needs to go see why the dog is barking in the middle of the night, he doesn't have to put his pants on.
But still, you know what I mean.
And he's been gone today and will be gone until tomorrow and so I've had the house all to myself. I fought the urge to scrub toilets or do something crazy like that and instead, sat myself down and wrote some pages on a could-be novel that I'm enjoying a lot. Sure, I did the laundry and I went to the store and I went to yoga, but I didn't even sweep! There's a poor little dead green frog on the porch as we speak and I haven't removed it yet. This takes more will power from me than you can possibly imagine.
And I'm thinking, "Yeah, I can do this. I can use my time to do what I've been wanting to do my entire life. I can sit down and write and not feel overly guilty. I am allowed to enjoy this sweet life I have the privilege to call my own."
It was bliss.
Then the phone rang.
Now I'm not the kind of person who can ignore a ringing phone and I haven't figured out how to turn these modern phones' ringers off. I will let it go if it's some 800 number but when it rang today the caller ID was someone I didn't recognize and it was a local call so I answered it.
The woman on the other end was looking for someone with my name. Turns out it was me she was, in fact, looking for. She's a woman whom we rented an apartment to years and years ago and she wasn't sure I'd remember her, but I did indeed.
When she showed up on my doorstep in answer to the apartment for rent ad we'd put in the paper, she was a shy woman, obviously gay, and I could tell right away that she wasn't exactly proud of that. Her entire demeanor seemed to be set in apology mode but when she saw the bumper sticker on my car which said, "I'm straight but not narrow" she visibly relaxed some. She felt it important to tell me that she was indeed gay because she didn't think it fair for me to rent someone an apartment (it was in our basement) without knowing.
I laughed and told her that was fine with me. Gay, straight- it didn't matter if I liked her and thought she'd be a good tenant and I liked her and I knew she'd be a good tenant. And she was.
She lived downstairs from our family for a while. I can't remember exactly how long but I was sorry when she moved on. She'd come from some very small town to Tallahassee, the "big city", to make a new life as a gay woman and she did. She outgrew the little apartment downstairs when she met someone she wanted to partner up with and moved on and we lost touch but I've thought about her many, many times over the years.
So when she called, I was surprised, but glad to hear from her, although I could tell immediately from her voice that something was very wrong.
And it was.
"I've been diagnosed with terminal cancer," she said, just as quickly and just as honestly as she'd told me she was a lesbian all those years ago.
My heart sank and I wished I could reach out and grab her and hug her up through the phone because I didn't know what in the world to say.
She said she'd been thinking of me a lot and something told her to call me. I was glad she did, but I didn't know what I might have to offer her other than to tell her I have always thought highly of her and wish that this horrible bad thing hadn't happened to her. She asked me if I knew of any churches that might have a support group so that she could talk with someone about this whole thing. Cancer, death, I guess.
She mentioned that her family has been asking her if she's talked to a preacher. She mentioned getting "saved" a few times.
Saved.
Huh.
I told her that in my opinion she was saved and it made my heart so sad when she said she knew she'd been a sinner.
"Jesus," I wanted to tell her. "Sin's just a damn word that religions have cooked up to keep people in control." I sort of did say that, but perhaps in more diplomatic terms.
"I know your heart," I told her. "It's as good as any heart on earth." And I meant it.
"Well," she said. "Maybe."
I promised to see what I could find out about any sort of spiritual support that might be more open to alternative life-styles. I know there must be some out there. I've already e-mailed one friend who might know something.
And I so wish I could help her to feel more at peace but how in the world can I do that? Her world is crumbling. Her life may be ending. What can I do?
I can call and check on her. I can do a little research. She has so many questions about what's going to happen when she dies. I told her we all do and that no one truly knows, no matter what they say.
When we hung up, I knew I hadn't made her feel better. But maybe calling me was one of the things on her list that she could cross off. Just to call me and tell me what was going on, to hear that I'd be sending her love, that I do love her- maybe that was important in some little way.
And here I am, at the tail end of this day that started out with me so full of light and joy at the prospect of a new life in front of me, a good life already behind me.
And I guess what I have to say is that now I feel darker, of course. Death is going to find us all and it truly sucks when it's someone relatively young and who is, no matter how a church may define sin, a good, good person.
Every time we rub up against death, it darkens us because it reminds us that it's going to happen to us and to the people we love, too. Eventually it will.
So I'm trying to just send her positive thoughts. I'm trying to remember that she's someone I used to know, and that my life hasn't changed one bit since I found out that she's not well.
But is has, hasn't it?
I know in my heart that when we die the light that we are made of does not go anywhere. It's here forever, just as it was here before we made our arrival on the planet. I don't understand how this works, but I'm pretty sure that it's mainly about light and it's about love and that those two just somehow have to be at least microscopically stronger than evil or darkness.
Even if I could explain that theory to the woman who called me today, I doubt it would make her feel any better. But I'm trying at this moment to make myself feel better.
I'm going to go light her a candle.
That may be all I can do at this moment, and it's probably not going to make much of a difference in her life, but it'll remind me of something I seem to need, which is that we need to dance in the light and in the love as long as we can so that when darkness surrounds us, we have something to call up to fight the darkness with.
At least that's my theory and what I hope is true.
So if anybody out there knows of any resources for this woman who might be able to give her some comfort, to let her ask the spiritual questions without judging her on being what God (and I use that term loosely) made her, please let me know.
Or at least just try to find that place in your heart that is as pure as the place in hers and send her a good thought. Send her a little light.
Then dance some, maybe. Do a little dance and celebrate your own light.
That'll make me happy and it sure can't hurt my friend.

Getting What You Wish For

So, after a lifetime of wishing, yearning, praying, scheming, planning for, and hardly ever getting some time to myself, I suddenly have it and in spades.
The baby is off to college. The husband is at work. I have no "real" job as my resume has read "housewife" for many years now. I am trained and licensed as a nurse, but it's been so long since I worked at anything remotely involved in nursing that only a desperate fool would hire me to do anything that involved a "patient". Except to perhaps make a bed or bring in a tray of food. Something like that.
Something, in fact, a housewife might do.
Back in the olden days, when I had assorted children around, some of them still hanging like monkeys on my hip, some of them needing transportation to various lessons, all of them needing breakfast, lunch, dinner and clean clothes, I somehow managed to write a novel. I thought it was a decent novel and I still do. I sent it around and got an actual agent. She thought it was good. She tried to sell it. She didn't. I haven't heard from her in several years now.
This is so depressing that I don't even want to talk about it.
But now I have time to write, right? I have at least four other novels on various back burners, some of them with hundreds of pages in them, a few with actual plots.
So now it's time to get off my ass (or, more accurately, it's time to get ON my ass) and do some real writing. The problem is...
Oh Lord. The problems are so vast as to render me in full writer's block.
My main problem is that even though the children are gone, I am still a housewife. The good, old fashioned kind of a housewife that hangs clothes on the line and sweeps daily and washes dogs and works in the garden and the yard and cooks from scratch and has no dishwasher. And even though I could and SHOULD let some of this go, I have over three decades of conditioning and training in the field and it just feels so wrong to sit down to write when there are dirty dishes in the sink or if the beans haven't been soaked or if the dog hair in the hallway is thick enough to knit a nice peasant-y sweater out of if I'd just collect it, clean it, card it, dye it and spin it into yarn.
Okay. I'm not that crazy. But almost.
And I think I'm afraid. What if, after all that whining about not having the time to write that I needed to do it RIGHT- what if I get the time, use the time, and find out I SUCK?! Huh? What then? Because if that happens, my dearest, deepest non-family related, completely selfish and life-sustaining dream will have been a lie. A pretty little lie I told myself for all those years when I should have been working part time as a nurse so I could make good use of my time now that the children are grown.

Ah me. Ah dear me.

I suppose, since the baby has been gone for less than a week, I need to give myself a little time to settle into this new reality. I need to realize that it's not wasting time to sit out here in my office, dogs scattered around under my feet and in front of the fan, to try and spin words into worlds.

And besides, it's only two thirty in the afternoon and I've already done the laundry, put it away, made up the bed with clean sheets, washed the dogs, done a little sweeping, a little yard work, got the beans and collard greens half-cooked for tonight's supper and taken a walk.
So. It's time.

Wish me luck.

Haul Water, Chop Wood, Breathe Deeply

The moon must be in the house of Deep Emotion right now. Either that or...

Oh yeah, many life changes are happening here at home.

The last baby left the nest yesterday. After thirty-one years of being a mother with children in the house, my youngest took off to move into a dorm at FSU where she'll be starting school next Monday. Okay. It's not like she's moved to California; she's only a few miles down the road and honestly, she packed like she was going to camp. There must be at least six pairs of her shoes on the back porch alone. And the library is filled with her school papers from last year, her sheet music and I don't know what all. Hell, she still has laundry in the laundry room. She'll be back.
But even if her move is as much symbolic as real, it's still a symbol of the fact that all of my children have, in fact, grown up.

Mostly.

And here I was, thinking that if they really loved me, they'd stick around the house forever.

That's a joke. Sort of. I have a feeling that at least half of them would indeed move back if I gave them the nod. And I'm having a little struggle with myself not to because darn it! I spent all these years learning how to be a mother and then all of a sudden (all of a SUDDEN I tell you!), they don't need me anymore.
Well, they still need me, but not like they used to.

And it's been ever thus. I can change diapers (the real cloth kind with duckie diaper pins) in my sleep in the dark. Literally. And they've all been potty trained for quite some time now. Breastfeeding? I am the Queen of Lactation and yet, not a one of them cares to nurse anymore, the ungrateful wretches.

I can sew cute little dresses, make baby quilts, teach children to tie their shoes, read stories with all the funny voices, answer questions on everything from "why is the sky blue" to "where do babies come from" in a professional manner appropriate to whatever age child has asked the question. I can make casseroles to fit four different types of dietary needs that will feed six with enough leftovers for lunches the next day. I can help with homework, accompany classes on field trips (how many times have YOU been to the Jr. Museum?), teach a child how to bake, make cupcakes for a class of thirty in an hour or less, know just what to do for many various childhood illness, and can charm a toddler into letting me wash her hair.

And all of that stuff I know and can do is rendered completely useless in the life it would appear I'm about to lead now.

When my husband met me, I already had two children so never in our lives have we been at home, alone, for any extended period of time. We've taken some great second, third, and so forth honeymoons but this is completely different. You can't stay drunk all the time, my friends! Well, you could, but I'm thinking it would not be prudent.
The only activity we've really come across that we can do together as a couple together for this new stage of life is....uh, cleaning behind the refrigerator.
We may be in trouble.

But the bottom line on all of this is... if I'm not a mother, then who am I? Oh sure, I'll always be a mother, but let's face it- when they've all moved out, it's just not the same. Should I now go get a job? Who would have me? I have a nursing degree but haven't practiced in about twenty years. I can garden, bake, cook, sew, clean, and just generally tend to the needs of others in many different situations but I don't want to be a nanny, waitress, or cook. I've done all that. And I'm too old.

I guess I have to figure this out. And I'm trying. I'm in a play, I'm taking yoga, I plan on spending all the time writing that I've never had before. Perhaps I can make my lifelong dream of being a "real" writer a reality now. I can be a better wife. I can spend more time doing whatever it is that I really want to do.
I just have to figure out what that is.

And I am so grateful to have this time, really, even though I wasn't quite ready to let that last one go. She never went through the mean, awful years that teens are famous for. In fact, she's too damn sweet by half, and funny, and fun to be with to want her to leave at all. I feel like I've been ripped in half, which doesn't say much for my parenting in this instance. A parent's job is to raise children to the point where they're ready to go out into the world without us. I know that, and I think she's ready. It's me I'm having the big doubts about.

But when I get weepy or worried about what I should be doing, or where I should be headed, or who I should be now I need to remember the lesson I've learned from yoga, which is that when a new position seems impossible and it doesn't seem as if I can stretch into it ever, ever, ever, all I have to do is breathe, and let my body do what it needs to do and before I know it, I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

I'm going to try to stretch my heart and my soul and my life now. It's probably going to feel awkward and strange and hard. But here I am, with breath and with will and a wonderful and loving man and with friends and yes, even with children who live right down the road, and I'm going to do this.
Whatever it is, I'm going to do it.

There may be a little down time. I honestly don't know right this second whether to sign up for an AARP tour of the world, have a drink, take one of those strip fitness classes, or just crawl under the covers for a few days. I swing from wanting to sob my guts out to having small sparks of excitement about what the future holds for me and my husband.

I guess right now I'll go put some brown rice on to cook. A small amount of brown rice. Just enough for two. I can tell you right now I need some smaller pots.

Which doesn't mean a smaller life, does it?
Not unless I make it that way. And I surely don't intend to.

Weeki Wachee- Real Florida Magic

Back when I was a child, back before the Rat ate my state, there were amazing places to visit in Florida and amazing things to see and do at those places. You could hardly throw a coconut patty without hitting a bird riding a bicycle on a tightrope, a bevy of beauties (as they were always advertised) being towed around a lake on water-skis, a monkey riding a unicycle, a Seminole rasstlin' a 'gator, or an orchid blooming fuchsia under a clear blue sky with hundreds of wide-eyed tourists looking on, eager to pay for the pleasure of seeing the unusual, the tropical, the exotic.

There were Stuckey's placed every fifty miles or so on all the main highways. Stuckey's had cool roofs and were great places to stop and pee, get a hamburger and an ice cream cone, buy a rubber alligator and stock up on pecan logs and saltwater taffy to tide you over until the next teal blue roof appeared on the horizon.


These were simpler times and we simple folk were satisfied and even amazed at simpler attractions than people are today. We didn't require monster roller coasters or animatronics. Palm trees and blue water and all the really cool things you could find around them were enough for us. Hell, for most Yankees, the sight of an orange grove was enough to inspire a spate of postcard-writing.

Ah. Good times.

My favorite attraction, far and above all the rest, was Weeki Wachee Springs. My mother, little brother and I went there in the early sixties and that trip remains as one of the best times of my childhood. We stayed at the little mom-and-pop motel across the highway from the attraction and just staying in a motel was pretty exciting. They had air-conditioning!

But the park was amazing. There were gardens and an animal show and even an "authentic" Seminole Indian village with chickees and a little train that transported the tourists through the swamp to look at the village.

There was a terrific gift shop where my mother bought me one of those great necklaces that spelled out my name in golden wire and had a tiny diamond (and I'm sure it was real) dangling from it. Also, a 45-RPM record that played the Weeki Wachee song. "Weeki Wachee is the place to be..." went the tune, and I sang and danced along with that record for years.

But the best, the whole deal, the reason for the very existence of the Weeki Wachee attraction, were the mermaids. There was an underwater theater where the audience was seated and when the curtain was rolled up over the glass wall in front of us, the spring was revealed and in the spring, as the sun dappled the gently waving eel grass growing in the deep bowl of white sand, three unimaginably beautiful mermaids were suspended in the air-clear water, smiling and blowing gentle bubbles. They began to dance and twirl in the water, doing slow-motion, no-gravity ballet and my life was transformed. A lifelong obsession with mermaids began right there that day and I knew that not only were mermaids real, but that there was indeed real magic on this earth and that it all happened underwater. I yearned with all my heart to be a mermaid too, and practiced holding my breath and twirling underwater whenever I found myself in a pool.

I grew up and realized, finally, that I was never to be a mermaid myself. I became a mother instead, and there was magic in that, too. Part of the magic was knowing that I could take my own kids to Weeki Wachee Springs and I did. We must have made at least three pilgrimages over the years to the springs to worship the mermaids and enjoy the animal shows and the Dippin' Dots (The Ice Cream of the Future!). The Seminole village disappeared, as did the little train, but a water park sprang up right next to the theater and the kids loved that. It was always a terrific little vacation and every one of my children fell in love with mermaids and was as enchanted by them as I was when I was a kid.

Last weekend we all went down there together. All four kids, a soon-to-be-son-in-law, and my husband, too, who somehow had never been. We were meeting up with my old friends from nursing school with their kids and we were staying at the motel across Highway 19 from the attraction. The old mom-and-pop where I stayed is long gone. I think it was replaced by a Holiday Inn, which became a Best Western, and now is undergoing renovation by what appears to be an Indian family and I find that a nice, tidy little circle of goodness.

My kids (ages 31, 29, 21, and 18) were all terrifically excited to be going and I was too, although I was worried at what I'd find at the park. The last time I went, back about six years ago, I could see that things had definitely slid downhill and the fate of the park was then in question. It still is. NPR just ran a program about it and who owns it and how uncertain its future is.

It seemed to be holding its own. The gardens were nice, there were still Dippin' Dots (is it the future yet?) and there's a little river-boat cruise and an animal show and the water park seemed very popular.

But the best, as always, was the mermaid show. The magic of that has never faded for me. When the curtain (looking a bit worse for wear, I have to say) is rolled up over the glass and the mermaids are revealed, tears come to my eyes. In this world of high-tech everything, there is something so unbelievably and indescribably beautiful about seeing gorgeous young women, swimming and floating and dancing in the pure, sweet water, connected to life on earth only by an air hose that they sip from to stay alive, to stay breathing in that other world just a few feet away from us as we watch, enchanted. There are few cynics at the Weeki Wachee mermaid show. What is there to be cynical about? No one is trying to trick anyone. No one is making false claims. These women are indeed mermaids. Magical, mythical, beautiful, athletic, graceful, smiling mermaids who dance and twirl and even drink coca cola out of small glass bottles, just like they did when I was a kid.

It was a great weekend. I loved seeing my old friends and getting to know their children and husbands a bit better. It was awesomely wonderful to go on a family vacation with all four of my babies and the man, as well. We visited, we ate, we drank, we swam, we laughed.

But the best, the very, very best, was the moment when we were all sitting, front and center in the underground theater when the curtain was pulled and once again we were able to all be children again, to gasp in wonder at the cold, clear water where three women floated as if by magic, while friendly turtles swam about, and the sun dappled their faces and the white sand, and the bubbles rose to the surface, and one of the mermaids dove deep into the bottomless cave below and we all held our breaths with her as she disappeared from view for what seemed like way too long, and then, like a childhood dream returned, swam back into our sight, alive and well, a smile on her face as her mermaid hair floated around her.

Grace. Grace-full.
You don't find much of that at Disney now do you?

No, for me, Weeki Wachee is the place to be.

Always and forever.
I sure hope we have that option.
What kind of a world would it be for my grandchildren-to-be if I can't take them there when they are old enough?
A very sad world. For me, anyway.
Go. Visit. See the City of Live Mermaids. It's straight down the road. Take a left at the Capitol and keep on going 'til you get there. You can't miss it.
You really can't miss it.

P.S.
I'm reading a terrific book about Weeki Wachee by Lu Vickers and Sara Dionne. It has the whole wonderful, wild history of Weeki Wachee and I am discovering that the inception of that attraction has quite a few ties with our own beloved Wakulla Springs. And Johnny Weissmuller, too, my own first, best, and always crush.
See? Magic.

Terror In Our Times

I want to talk about terrorism. It's a word that our president certainly bandies about with great abandon on every occasion possible.

"It's a war," he says, with that slurry condescending voice of his, "You don't understand. It's a war on TERRORISM."

Yeah. We do understand, Pres. We remember when the towers came down and when the Pentagon was hit and we also remember you reading the My Pet Goat book looking confused, unsure and as idiotic as anyone on the planet. But hey! We were all confused, unsure and felt like big idiots- wondering what in the world we should be doing about this completely unimaginable event as we watched planes fly into the World Trade Center on live TV.

But oh yeah- we had the sense to stop what we were doing and watch the TV. Right?
But let's get past that.

Ever since that morning on 9/11, our president has used the term "terrorism" every time he wants to push any part of his right-wing, take-away-our-constitutional-freedoms agenda.

"Americans were killed," he says, and I know you can hear that voice of his, even as you read the words. "A-mar-i-kans." "So we need to be able to listen to your phone calls, read your e-mails, peer into your hearts to see if you are one of the evil-doers. To prevent more A-mar-i-kans from bein' killed by the terrorists."

Excuse me?

As if men from middle eastern countries with enough evil in their hearts to suicide bomb American targets with airplanes represented all the terror in the world.

How many Americans were killed in that attack?

Approximately 3,000.

And it was startling and it was unthinkable and I pray we never witness anything like that again.

But how many people have died since then in the so-called war against terrorism in Iraq? If you just count the Americans, that number would be a little over 3,700.
Iraqi casualty numbers are debated. One study showed that as many as 650,000 Iraqis have been killed as a result of the American led military intervention in Iraq. This number is highly disputed and could be as low as a tenth of that.

Still- at least 65,000 people are dead. We'll probably never know the true number. Our government refuses to keep track of Iraqi mortalities. Why?
Can I get a big ol' racist, jingoistic shrug here?

And that doesn't begin to list the numbers of all the other people killed, both Americans and other nationalities, since this whole war on so-called terror was begun. There are the coalition troops, the whole other war in Afganistan, the non-military "advisors" and suppliers and workers "over there" fighting this war on terror. So, just taken as pure numbers, I'd say that since we're the ones over there and we're the ones picking the fight, we're the terrorists.

But that's not really what I wanted to discuss. I wanted to discuss what terror really is. Okay, sure, it's terrifying when giant buildings are felled by planes. We all get that.

But it's also terrifying to get a bad medical diagnosis. Can there be any four more terrifying words than "the lump is malignant"? Or how about "your child has leukemia"? And what if the person hearing those words has no health insurance?

And there's the sort of terror that no one but a homeless woman with children can know. There's the terror a woman feels who is being beaten secretly and consistently by her spouse. Or the terror of a child who is being sexually abused by a family member. Or how about the terror someone might feel when they're driving over a bridge and it collapses? There's the terror of being raped, the terror of getting a phone call that tells you your child has been in a car wreck.

Terror. It doesn't just come dressed in a turban, armed with a box cutter. No, to be human is to know terror at some point in our lives.

And some of it is preventable and some of it just is not.

And I don't care what our president says, you can't possibly hunt out terror and destroy it. Even if you spend over 450,000,000 (that's just so far, folks!) dollars on one little war in one little country and we're not even going to discuss that fact that that country had nothing to do with the terror Americans experienced on 9/11.

But that amount of money would go a long way towards ensuring that every American has health care so that if they do get that terrible diagnosis, they are not left with nowhere to turn for treatment.

It would go quite a ways towards dealing with the aging infrastructure in this country. It would certainly help out with making sure that all our kids get a decent education and so have a way to support themselves, a way to get out of poverty and to avoid all the different ways poverty can be terrible.

That money could go for programs to help children and women who have been abused. It could go for research to help find cures for the diseases that create terror in those who have them. It could help feed the hungry, it could help find solutions for this vast problem of global warming that if we don't deal with RIGHT NOW could very well result in the end of life as we know it.

How's that for a terrifying prospect?

Frankly, the thought that evil-doers are going to bomb us doesn't strike nearly as much fear in my heart as does the worry that one of my children or my husband will fall ill and we won't have the funds to pay for the very best health care we can find. Nor do these evil-doers make me nearly as frightened as is a friend of mine whose son is about to go over to Iraq as a Marine.

"We must fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." So says GW. I keep wondering if the terrorists are going to stow away in our (inadequately armored) humvees when we bring them home, planning to spring out with (stolen from us) weapons in their hands, spraying death and destruction.

I think that our president has led such a sheltered, protected life that he doesn't truly know a damn thing about terror. He thinks it's all about box cutters and planes and evil-doers.

We here in the real world know a lot more. And by God, why in the world we and our congress keep letting this man spend our money and chip away at our freedoms, and sacrifice our children's lives and the lives of countless others, is so vastly beyond me that I can't even begin to verbalize it.

All I can say is that having that man in charge of the free world feels a lot like...terror.

Sour Lass

So I went to get new glasses today. I have been wearing corrective lenses since the Lion's Club came to my school when I was in the third grade to test our vision and it was discovered that I could not see the largest E on the chart.
"Which way is the biggest E pointing?" asked the Lions Club Guy.
"What E?" I asked.
"Oh my," they said. "You might need glasses."
Well, in the third grade, I thought glasses were the coolest things in the world. Especially when I got some (blue plastic frames, quite stylish in 1963) and could see the individual leaves on the trees! Wowzer!
Of course in high school I got contact lenses, the better to be beautiful, and I put up with all that saline solution shit for many years, but eventually decided that I was lazier than I was vain, and went back to glasses. Having children had a lot to do with that decision. Mainly the fact that when the opportunity for a quick nap arose, I did not want to have to get up and go take my contacts out, wash them and put them in saline in their clever little holder. Etc.
So anyway, today's new glasses were the latest in a long, long line of new glasses experience for me and I think they're going to work out. It's not a new prescription. I didn't think I was going to get new glasses, just my old ones fixed, but when I went to the optical place (which I shall not name), they said that I could just get a whole new pair! Again- Wowzer! I could have fixed the glasses myself with a spot of super glue, but offered brand new ones, I felt I should take them. I never liked the broken ones that much anyway. And getting them had been a major hassle. Between doctor prescription mistakes and optical technician mistakes, it took me about three weeks and over half a dozen visits to get things straighted out to where I could actually see.
Now, my eyes are old. I have nearsightedness I have farsightedness and I have an astigmatism. So I can see why things might go awry in the glasses-making process. And go awry they did. Over and over and over.
Which would have been fine if the people at the optical place had apologized or taken responsibility for their mistakes.
But no. They did not.
I kept having to deal with this one chick. And maybe it's just our chemistry or something, but she and I were like oil and water. No, that's way too tame. We were like fire and gasoline. Yeah, that's more like it. She evoked an anger in me that was more powerful than the burning surface of the sun. She kept insinuating that there was nothing at all wrong with the way the lenses were being made, but that it was my particularly picky attitude about my vision that was at fault.
"It's hard to get used to progressive lenses," she kept saying. "You have to give it time."
"But it's been a week," I said, "And besides, this is like my third pair of glasses with progressive lenses."
"Hmmph," she'd say, flicking her blonde hair over her skeletal shoulder. This is a chick who (and there is no doubt about this) aspires to be Paris Hilton's twin. She does pretty well at that, too. Except she is about half as fat as Paris and does not have Paris's winning smile or so obvious charm.
And it goes without saying that I got my first pair of bifocals when Paris Lite was still learning that pee goes in the potty.
Anyway, after much struggle and a whole lot of restraint on my part, I got glasses that finally were okay. Not great, but I just could not face going back in that place again. I got used to them.
And I had remembered the difficulties that I went through, getting those glasses, but I had completely forgotten (blocked?) all about the girl who had raised my ire to the point of spontaneous combustion.
Until I went back in today and dealt with her again for about forty seconds.
This optical place has more than one branch and the one I'd gone into for the repair has nice people. Very nice people. And they were the ones who looked up my records and told me I could just pick out a new pair of frames if I wanted and get a whole new pair of glasses. For free! Now they didn't have any frames in the brand that I needed that I liked, so I went to the other branch. Which is where the Sour Lass works. And of course, she was the one who waited on me.
"Name?" she asked, sitting at the computer. I gave her the pertinent information and told her what they'd said at the nice location and she said, "Hmmph," and flipped her blond hair over her skeletal shoulder. "Let me call my manager."
Which she did. And kept saying "Well, she's here wanting a brand new pair of glasses." As if I had come in and demanded a brand new pair of glasses when all I thought I was asking for originally was a spot of glue or something. I mean, those people at the other location were the ones who offered the glasses to me! I kept trying to tell Paris Lite this while she was talking to her manager and she kept giving me the "Hmmph" look.
The manager okayed the new glasses, which I personally think pissed off P.L. "If you take them," she said, "You will be forfeiting any more repairs on this contract."
"When does the contract end?" I asked.
"September," she said.
Since it's August, I didn't think that was such a bad thing. What the hell?
So I picked out new frames and she kept asking if I was sure I liked them and reminded me that it's hard to get used to progressives and just generally annoyed me so damn much that I wanted to pop her head off. This is exactly what I was seeing in my mind's eye. Me popping her head off.
I also wanted to say to her, "Why in God's name would I listen to what you're saying about my vision when you obviously are so dense that you think people can't see where your real lip line is?"
But I didn't say this and I didn't pop her head off. I swear though, I came way too close for comfort. I had two of my daughters with me and by the time our exchange was over, they were cringing and people were starting to stare. And I'm not usually like this. I don't send food back in restaurants, I don't take things back to stores for ridiculous reasons, and I generally try to be as polite and gracious a human being as is possible.
But this girl...
Well.
It's weird to feel that sort of self-righteous indignation to the point where it's almost enjoyable. It makes me feel powerful in a twisted sort of way. I can feel myself getting to the point where I am going to start screaming. Doing what I've never done in my life- creating a real scene.
I really didn't know I had it in me until I met this one girl with very blond hair wearing a black pantsuit and pink lipstick that went way past her lips.
And I don't really have a point here. Just...wowzer.
And I'd say "Bless her heart," but frankly, for once, I just don't have it in me.