Snapshots of the Past: Flashes of Memory

The miles slipped away in flashes of lush, verdant green as we drove through the three counties, over the Suwanee River twice, up the windy road to Airline Baptist Church. Trees heavy with thick rain fed growth lined the roads. Fields flashed by, two with fully loaded tobacco rows waiting harvesting, others full of field corn and peanuts. The river at both crossing was higher than past years, another witness of the blessed rains which have fallen this year.

As we crossed the Hal W. Adams bridge, a picture of the bridge on opening day over half a century ago flashed in my mind. There were speeches and ribbon cutting, but the thing which remains with me was the terror I felt walking over the grating at the edge of the bridge. I do not know why this was so frightening, but I know that it was. Nothing my mother could say lessened the fear. She did finally get me off the bridge. Driving over it was fine.

The first road to the left is somewhat different from the way it was when we would turn onto it to take Granny Jackson to Aunt Onie's house. It still has crooks and turns, but it is a little wider and has recently been repaved. I think of my mother's stories of when she lived on this road and walked a mile or two to the school. The school building is still there, now painted a light yellow and used as a farm building.

Off to the left shortly after the turn off state road 51, is a road which goes to New Hope Baptist Church where my great grandparents Brown and their toddler are buried. All three died of some type stomach flu within days of each other, orphaning my granny Jackson.

I always knew that when we hit the crossroads with US 27 that we would be close to one of my favorite places in the world, Uncle Wilbur's store. I knew that I would find there two of my favorite people in the whole world, Uncle Wilbur in his wheelchair and Aunt Onie of the big laugh and big hug.

As we would turn on the road, I remember Granny Jackson's statement, "They say it is just as close to go by town." Now, half a century later, I know that what they said was pretty much true. It is about the same mileage to skip the turn off and go to Mayo and turn left. I also know that the road probably frightened my granny whose eye sight had been failing for years.

As we travel the road, I see a memory shot off some of my uncles and their cousins as young men out for a little fun driving this road long before it was paved. I see them leaning out of their car window to scoop up some of the sand with their hats, laughing and whooping as they feel the night air rushing by.

As we pass by where the "boys", my uncles, lived before they left home I remember my mother's tales of the barrel of plum wine they made out back of the house. I see the swept yards, the wide boards on the porch, worn smooth by years of scrubbing, the rosebush by the steps. I hear their laughter.

As we near Airline, memories come quickly: my cousin Glenda playing the piano at church, the slatted pews, the warmth of the church on a summer Sunday morning, the funerals of many of those people out in the graveyards. I remember the coming together during these times of grief and the guilty pleasure of seeing those we didn't keep in contact with except at these sad times.

We arrive at the new building and admire the loveliness of the design, the utility of the new nursery, the comfort of the chairs and the air conditioned air. It is a lovely facility for a church teeming with young families who have outgrown the place across the road.

These people, also, will make memory snapshots of days around this building. The efforts of all those who have walked before them make this possible. The past is very much a part of today.

Summertime

Gershwin included a lovely lullaby in Porgy and Bess that began with the lines, "Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high." I first learned the song as a teenager at 4-H Short course on the campus of Florida State University. The song catches the easiness of summer, the feel of the warm air, the smells of the honeysuckle, and that feeling that the most difficult thing one wants to do is sit quite still in a porch swing and wait for the wind to blow.

I, unabashedly, love summer. I love the smell of it, the feel of it, and the colors of it. The things which others find the most distressing are trivial in my estimation. The good far outweighs the bad. So, the humidity is so high and my clothes stick to me. At least this is the summer when we can get away with wearing fewer clothes. I grew up before air conditioning. I can remember the joy of walking into Hamilton County Bank and feeling the cool air. It was a treat to go to town with my mother as she did her Friday shopping just to go into the bank! Now, I can get that same joy coming into my house after summer morning chores.

Another advantage to the days being hot and sticky is that there is no guilt to heading indoors shortly after noon for an extended rest time. After all, it would not be healthy to labor through the "heat" of the day.

No other season gives us the lushness of color that summer does. We have the great globs of blossoms varying from deepest red to precious pink, lavender to deep purple, and pristine white on the Crepe Myrtles. How appropriately the Japanese have named these summer beauties as "the flower of a hundred days." If cool is desired, there are the cool blues of the hydrangeas. The summer annuals just gloat on color: zinnias, marigolds, sunflowers!

The smells are best during the summer. Each week we have the new mown grass smell. Moon flowers give out their perfume at sunset. Four O'clocks send out their light scent in late afternoon. No wonder butterflies abound around here during the summer!

Even the foods are better during the summer. We tend to have more fresh things to use in salads. What can equal the flavor or a true garden ripe tomato? or blueberries right off the bush? or a fig ripe on the tree? or a peach? Barbecue is done more. And, we need to remember that homemade ice cream is a summer thing. Of course no one is going to complain if we take a little of this summer into all four seasons.

Summer is also "water" season. Floating around a cool pool gazing up at a true summer blue sky with a few fluffy clouds is one of the great joys of life. A day at the beach making sandcastles is a memory maker, especially if done with a good companion. Summer is the time to turn the hose on your head on a really hot day or time to run through the sprinkler. Who would think of doing this during the other more mundane seasons?

The sounds of summer are with us from early to late. The serenade of the birds bring in the day. The sounds of frogs and crickets follow the setting sun.

So, I say, forget the heat and humidity, summer is wonderful. I plan to enjoy every glorious day of it.

Special Days; Special Times; Special People

Saturday Klep and I spent the day in Tallahassee. It was a very special day full of laughter, conversation, and joy. Did we take in the sights? spend the day shopping the malls? Take in a concert or movie?

No, we simply enjoyed the day, sharing some work, some good food, and some quality time with Rob and Traci. Rob has been planning a water feature for Traci for several years now. Because of their work schedules, it had never progressed beyond the hole stage. We had planned to go over last summer and lend a hand, but with one thing and another, we hadn't gone and the pond was still primarily a dream. Now, having been married to the father of this eldest son for over forty years, I know about dreams deferred! I know that things always, in our family, take longer than we think when we are in the eager anticipation stage.

So, as we sat in our chairs at home midweek, we decided to see if they were free for a work day; they were. So, early Saturday morning saw us headed in Big Blue for Tallahassee. The guys worked for awhile and then made the inevitable trip to Lowe's. I am a Home Depot person, but our men seem to prefer Lowe's. They were gone for a while. Traci and I whiled away our time with the cats. Jasmine, particularly, needed a little love.

After their return, we finalized the hole, spread the liner, and threaded the electrical wire through the conduit. Then the hot work of digging the trench began.
After a break for a really good curry chicken citrus pasta salad and all the trimmings, we went back out. Klep scooted himself under the deck to do the hookup to the electrical while Rob glued conduit and started the water into the pond. We all got a good laugh when Klep had to be dragged out by his feet from under the deck!

The guys worked on switches and outlets and such most of the rest of the afternoon as the water rose in the pond. We topped off the afternoon with a frozen orange dessert served in a scopped out orange complete with orange lid. When we left, the project was to the landscaping stage. We look forward to seeing it soon as the dream becomes reality.

There are other days which share in our joy folder. One that immediately comes to mind was the last day we spent with Kevin, Reagan, Ava Grace, and Leila Kate as we celebrated Ava Grace's third birthday. Another was the day we met our most recent granddaughter. Other days have been joyful as we floated around the pool together, taking in the colors, sounds, and smells of summer.

What is remarkable is that our really big joys are not our trips and events. Now, don't get me wrong, we enjoy travelling, but it isn't equal to this type joy. Big joy times are the hours spent with people we love. Some of our most joyful moments have been spent with Anne in the yard or sitting in the clubhouse on top of the swing set with AG blowing bubbles, watching the airplanes and birds, and just laughing.

Sometimes we look for the joy too hard; it is a close as someone we love.

The Fence

Robert Frost wrote, "Good Fences make good neighbors." Our fence has given our friends and neighbors something to talk about when we meet. Klep is in the process or replacing the old cypress fence that the boys built during the last year Rob was at home. We used untreated cypress lumber from a sawmill near by, and now, twenty years later it needs to come down.

We need the fence across the front of our yard because we live on a busy state road. It has become busier each year we have lived here. The fence gives us a little delineation from the sidewalk and the traffic. It has also, a couple of times, kept a speeding car from ending up in our yard.

Klep has changed the design and the materials. We are using all treated materials. He says that twenty years down the road he is not going to be ready to do this again. The palings are four inch dogeared and are slightly less than four feet tall. The design team decided that we liked the looks of it as well as we did our original which was a curved top. I think that the engineer in Klep likes the level aspect of the new design. He is using a level as the spacer between palings and a line of strings from post to post to insure that the line is true.

Slowly but surely the fence is marching east down our block. It is approaching the one hundred foot mark which is an important point. Tomorrow he will probably reach the sidewalk leading to the front door of the house. The gate over this, of course will be the last thing built and placed.

We look forward to the visiting that will come when we start painting the fence. If it is anything like the other times we have painted the fence, both strangers and friends will stop to say something about the painting. There, evidently, is a little Tom Sawyer in all of us when it comes to fence painting.

So, even if Robert Frost could not foresee the interest in building a fence as a chance to socialize and come together, it seems that ours has that effect.

Happiness

Recently two items jumped up on our internet home page. One was "Americans are not happy." The other was a question from a Time article, "Can the American marriage be saved?" These two things have been going around and around in my head ever since. I think the answer can be found, at least partially, in the fact that we as a nation have forgotten how to wait.

I am as guilty as the next. I find it taxing when there is someone ahead of me on the rare occasion that I go to the bank. I resist the urge to tap my foot as I watch the teller count money, answer questions, and finally move the person who has impeded my progress out of the way. I shake my head with all of you when I approach the long line of checkout stations at Wally World and find all closed except the one with the line gathering numbers as I push my cart into line.

Unfortunately impratience pervades our lives in ways that are more serious than our fuming in line. We see it in the quick decision to toss a marriage aside if we "are just not happy anymore." We see it financially when we can't wait to save for something we can't live without and run up credit card bills that we will never have the ability to pay. We see it in the number of people who buy more house than they can afford. We see it in people who want everything now. We see it in a sense of entitlement.

What is particularly sad in all of this is that we are robbing ourselves of blessings and joys which come with anticipation, dreams, and plans. When we get too much, too often, too soon, we lose a part of what makes life fun. We change our level of expectation, often to the point that there is simply nothing that can satisfy us. We lose the simplicity of living.

Let's look a little at some of life's waits. Babies take time. From the time we know they are coming until they appear, we have about nine months of anticipation. Of course with modern technology, the parents no longer wait to know whether "it" is a boy or girl. Now, by five months in, the baby is named. It all takes away a little of the wonder and anticipation, but in their place, we can color coordinate wardrobes and get everything monogramed.

Bringing up children still involves a lot of waiting as we watch the little helpless baby turn into the toddler, the child, the preteeen, the teen, and then an adult. We see efforts to circumvent some of these steps as we watch four years old dress and mimic teen stars.

Good bread takes time. First the yeast must flower. Then the dough must rise and be punched down and shaped. Then, there is the second rising. Only then are the loaves placed in the hot oven and the payoff, smells of baking bread, waft through the house during the last wait until it comes out of the oven. Yes, bread can be purchased, but the pleasure of smelling the bread as it bakes and slicing off that first piece to be covered in butter and eaten can not come from a loaf of bought bread.

A tomato picked from the garden from a plant put in the ground three months earlier, watered, and cared for is another sweet reward in life. A garden eaten with the warmth of the sun still on it is an all together different joy from a tomato picked green and shipped to market where it is gassed and turned red.

Our lives have been enriched by the conveniences of modern America, but when we allow ourselves to become slaves to the things and the pursuit of things, we lose too much of the joy in learning to live. We are often so busy in our going and our doing and our pursuit of fun, that the joy of living day in and day out escapes us.

That is sad; that is very sad.

Birthday Season

When the first day of July rolls around in my life, it ushers in Birthday season. It amazes me that I share this season with so many who have become friends and important people in my life. My earliest birthday season buddy is my cousin Molly.

The stork dropped me off in the middle of Brushy Hammock, an area close to Mayo, Florida, late in the afternoon of July 6th. Three days later he made it to Decatur, Georgia to drop off my "twin" Mary Elizabeth. I can only assume that the reason it took him so long to get there was due to the fact that it was war time and gasoline was being rationed. Perhaps the headwinds were not favorable. We must also remember that this was during the days before interstate highways were even imagined. Anyway, from the time that we were aware of each other, we became fast friends as well as cousins. We each lived through the days of pig tails, older brothers, growing up, college, and marrying. To this day we share a special bond.

Another sharer of my birthday season is my friend Ginger. Although her birthday doesn't come until the tenth, she did beat me into this world arriving the year before in Boyd, Florida. We met in an American Literature class at Florida State University when I changed my major from home economics to English. Our friendship has grown and survived the years of graduate school, work, husbands, children, and retirement. We have a store of memories which include long lazy days at the beach when our children were young and enough laughter and secrets to fill several books.

Another friend with whom I have contact only shared a year of my life, but she was a very important friend during that time. Not only did we share birthday season, we shared the same first name. Barbara and her husband John came down from Virginia to teach in Orange County during my first year teaching. We hit it off immediately although she was several years older and taught French. French in college had been one of my truly humbling experiences! During that year, I almost made one of the worst mistakes of my life and she kept me from doing it. Interestingly, her son was born on my birthday several years after they returned to Virginia.

Two other young men that I know share my birthday. One was one of my Academic Competition Team members who placed second at state competion, Greg. The other is a young man, Shane, who is the son on one of the kids who grew up with Rob and Kevin. Each year Shane expects cookies from me on his birthday. How could I forget since I share it with him.

I do not believe in Astrology, but I wonder if there is some relationship to the way we are related to the seasons which help to shape us. I do know that I am a summer person. I glory in the green of the trees, the laziness of the afternoon, and the richness that is July, my birthday season.