sepia

Brooklynn lounges on the old stone steps, smiling at her collection of acorns and acorn bits. “Mama,” she says, “This one looks like a pear, but this one looks like an ice-cream cone.” She licks her lips as though she can taste the delicious ice-cream it resembles. My neighbor Cheryl, tired from a long afternoon of yard work, looks at my daughter with delight. “Oh, I love this girl.” she dreamily states.

Cheryl is a lover of nature, much like my little Brooklynn. With her home nestled amongst acres of Georgia pine trees and wild magnolia, Cheryl feels as though she is already in Heaven. Wild birds sing from the tree tops, squirrels skitter across her stony walk probably looking for the very acorns my daughter is now hoarding in the palms of her hands.

It is peaceful here in Cheryl’s yard. The gradual descent to her home on the long, meandering driveway with the gentle canopy of leaves overhead, feels protective. Miniature stone figurines of children and forest animals reflect a maternal touch, while long-rotten logs and mossy outcroppings suggest a respect for the natural order of things. Her home is suggestive of a carefree life, which of course is too simple an assessment to ever be true. Her yard is a little bit messy, and yet so very beautiful. In all likelihood, a good metaphor for her life.    

From the other side of the yard come the sounds of raucous laughter and the snapping of sticks and twigs underfoot. “Come here Tristan…,” taunts my son Blake.  My boys are having a sword fight, their royal blue school shoes crushing leaves and mushrooms while they chase each other through the underbrush. “No way, you dirty patootie!” Tristan retorts, barely escaping his brother’s blade. Giggles erupt.

My neighbor sits next to me with her hands on her knees, serenely watching my three children make themselves at home in her yard. Her eyes water a bit as she tells me about which trees her son used to climb, or which path a huge Snapping turtle once took back to the creek after laying a nest of eggs in her yard. Her husband, John, sweaty and tired from a day on the tractor, is ready to move from here. Maybe to a piece of land that is smaller or easier to manage, or possibly closer to family. But Cheryl will hear none of it. She grins and tells him to be sure to come and visit her.

We continue to perch on her front steps, the hour seeming to gently dissolve away. A dusty, old photo album now sits on my neighbor’s lap, filled with pictures of her once-little girl in her ballet leotard. My daughter is soaking it up:  the costumes, hair, and makeup, even the strong limbs stretched to impossible heights, puts her in awe of this young lady she has never met. Brooklynn has just begun taking ballet lessons herself, so when Cheryl insists that we buy her tickets to our first performance, my daughter spins her head in my direction.  A look of pride and excitement flashes across her face. Then just as quickly she softly resumes her study of her acorns.

Cheryl pauses for a moment, tilting her head toward my boys deep in her woodlands and then gently on my daughters bent form with quiet chitter-chatter heard barely above the sounds of the forest. “You will miss this one day, you know,” she states simply to me. I slowly nod, gazing at my surroundings. For a brief moment it seems the world is in sepia.

quintessentially my father

First, let me send out a sort of disclaimer. Some blogs have very clear target audiences. For example, If you want to read about couponing, this is not your blog. I spend way too much money buying really awesome food at Fresh Market, and I do not feel one ounce bad about it. Second, some blogs are more like twitter posts than personal essays. If you want to know what I ate for dinner last night, you won’t read it in my blog unless I am discussing hoeing, sowing or harvesting from my garden.

I think of my blog page as my professional portfolio. Full of Individual vignettes, reasonably well-written (we can only hope), about what moves me on any given day. I share experiences that have changed me in some way, or at least given me pause. Some of the moments I share are beautiful ones where I did something right, and others are extremely ugly moments where I seriously failed myself or the people I love. I put it all in there. Unless my husband edits it out. More on this in a future post.

Yes, I want an agent to find my blog page,  read It, and love it. So share it. Send it to your coworkers, your girlfriends, your neighbors. One of them might be an agent, or know an agent. Or a publisher. These are hopeful magazine articles, future chapters in my next book, and (admittedly) ramblings of a thirty-something woman who finds solace and inspiration from the act of writing.

Today I am going to share with you an essay featuring my father. He is my lifeline when I do not know who else to turn to, or when I feel too crazy and nuts to share my worries with anyone else. He listens when I need him to listen and he is brutally honest when I need that as well. He is flawed, but lovely. He is my hero. Enjoy the post, and may God bless all parents.

quintessentially my father

When I was fifteen, my parents decided to divorce. We had a yard sale.

Everything other than some necessities was sold: every Barbie I had ever played with, baby toys from deep in the attic, board games galore. In some way I think of it as my childhood having been sold. Twenty years later, my father has decided to move from his retirement state of Montana to my beautiful state of Georgia, in order to be closer to family. He is packing up his entire life on a small U-Haul trailer and moving into a place one mile from my home. Anything not deemed worthy to make the trip will be sold in a small-town auction next month, meaning that everything from my childhood that is quintessentially my father has a pretty good chance of winding up in a cardboard box being sold in a batch designated “man stuff”, for less than ten dollars.

Now, my dad is a collector. Of books mostly, but he also has many small knickknacks from various interests during his life. For example, he currently owns twelve different wrist watches. One is his father’s watch, having sentimental value. Another one he simply liked the blue color of the face, and added it to the pile. He changes which watch he wears on a daily basis, in the same way a woman changes her earrings. He hopes to add a deep sea diving watch to his collection, for no reason other than deep sea diving might be on his bucket list. I love this about him.

Back in his twenties my father was a navy man. He has saved several memorabilia from those fondly remembered years to include navy figurines, photos of ships, and various trinkets. He also collects things that move him. Some are garage sale finds that simply spoke to him, such as an old fashioned scale resembling his astrological sign Scorpio, or a statue of The Thinking Man that sat in his den for my entire childhood. These items are still in a box in his garage in Montana, from his move there ten years ago. The box is labeled “Dad’s Small Stuff”. These are the things that were not allowed to be on display in my childhood living room, but were allocated to his den, the bar, the garage. I can relate to this, as my husband’s Green Bay Packer stuff and bar paraphernalia is allowed shelf space in our guest room, but not in our living room. It is no wonder that men have man caves.

Thinking over this big life-changing move that my father is making is complex. My left brain books a one-way flight to Montana to help him drive the U-Haul. It calls the babysitter and sets up childcare seven weeks in advance. My right brain has a harder time with things. I am overjoyed at the prospect of having my father so close to us. I am picturing family dinners on Sundays, with Papa Roger in regular attendance. I envision him at the boys’ swim meets and I can picture him surprising my daughter at school for a lunch date. My right brain also has the ability to gallop off to a scary place where one day he won’t be here. Will not be on this earth. See, one day I will lose my dad.

One day I will only have memories and a few of those little knickknacks to remember a great man. A great life. One we shared. So now I see some value to all of that stuff that was only allocated to the den or basement. I feel sentimental about the prospect of him packing up his life. My husband, Brandon, understands. If his own father, heaven-forbid, left us suddenly or simply downsized to a condo for some retirement living, Brandon would be on the first flight to Wisconsin in order to make sure that the contents of his father’s tool shed and garage were not yard-saled away into oblivion. I need to do the same. I need to talk with him about those mementos and the memories they represent. One day they will be all that I have to remind me of the complex, complete man that is my father.

 I do not need a lot of material things, just a few special ones. It would be wonderful if some of the items were able to serve a function here, some book ends maybe.  I am also fine with them only serving as a spark for a dear memory, though: a votive holder from his old desk, or maybe a navy print of the ship he sailed on to show where his love of the ocean began. My boys are magnetically drawn to the ocean, to the endless horizon it offers each morning, maybe they got that love passed down a couple generations from my father. Maybe they will one day set sail themselves.  

So, today I will hunt down a few thousand frequent flyer miles, book a trip out to Montana, and reminisce a bit with my father. I can share with him a few of these memories while he is still around to hear them. He can gift those small items to me rather than some estate person doing the same after the business end of his life is taken care of. I’ll enjoy this more. Less bittersweet and more simplysweet.

So, Dad…get ready for some good times. A few tears, maybe, while we pour through your old stuff, but also an excitement as we prepare you for your next step in this life: where Georgia is your home, Montana is your past and Wisconsin is your vacation destination.

Dedicated to my father, who may inspire my bestseller one day.

Wine Book Barn

Okay ladies, we all read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Upon reading it, we realized that we all wanted to eat to our hearts content, that we should all be praying more, and that somewhere there is a hot Brazilian guy that would sweep us off our feet if this marriage thing does not work out. That is all fine and good except 1) my twenty year reunion is coming up and I want to fit into my skinny jeans 2) praying is hard no matter what and 3) I kind of like my husband and prefer to keep it that way.

So I have come up with Wine Book Barn, instead. This little cluster of words is far more than just words. They are the things that keep me from stomach ulcers, panic attacks and from ringing my kids’ necks. They are my refuge when I am overwhelmed and my lifeline in case I swim out too far from shore.

I know women who hit the pavement for a ten mile run with a group of their best gal pals, and others who seclude themselves in a quiet room and practice yoga. Moving, breathing, and exhaling our troubles are the general idea, of which most of us humans need to do from time to time. That is, unless we fall into the group of people who deny our troubles and worries and wind up stewing in them until we resemble green beans in a southern buffet: limp and lifeless, tasting only of the salt we have simmered in for the past twelve hours.

To read the full post, click on this link http://www.peachstatemomsblog.com/. I am their guest blogger today.  : >