Beautiful Flowers

Cousins are different beautiful flowers in the same garden.

Anonymous

Today is the birthday of my first cousin on my father’s side of the family. She is closer in age to my sister, however, as we have grown older that difference in age seems less. She was a marvelous pianist; I do not know if she still plays the piano or not, however, I always wanted to be able to play the way she did. She made every piano come alive with beautiful sound! Not only was she a great pianist but also a very intelligent and beautiful young lady who grew up to do many neat things, always remembering her roots; always helping others; always practicing the principles we grew up with that you give a good day’s work for a good day’s pay.

You have heard me speak of her mom who was  a nurse. I remember how proud Aunt Ethlyn was of her daughter; I remember how lucky I thought she was to live with our grandparents and  to have the undivided attention of so many adults who adored her. They dressed her in the cutest dresses and her hair was always shining like a halo around her head. She was valedictorian of her high school class. It was expected of her.

Life brought many challenges as well as opportunities to her. She not only faced them with integrity and grace but also with intellectual honesty while keeping true to her core values. She set an example for others to follow.

As the years passed, we did not see each other except at funerals. The age of growing up surrounded by close family has long since passed and now it seems that we see each other only when someone dies. I find this sad and wish for the days that we lived and played on brown dirt roads in the backwoods of Mississippi. It seemed a simpler, happier time.

Times change and we change, however, as she stated today “we have good friends but in the end family is who we want to be with.” I agreed with her. We seek out old friends and family because we share all the collected memories of our lifetime. As Robertson’s, we tend to find one spot and stay there…this seems to be in our genes….not for all of us but for some of us. Yet we wonder why we stay in towns where we have no family; we tell our self that we stay because we have so many good friends who are like family. Are we simply trying to convince our self of this? Why do we stay when life is so short and so little time seems to be left now to hear the stories of the past and what we did with our lives?

We have reunited through modern technology yet wish to have a physical reunion with what is left of our family. Will we choose to do this or will it be another funeral that brings us back together in the old cemetery across the road from the little church in the woods where all our ancestors keep watch? I wish I knew the answer.

I am reminded of “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder, where the third act is set in the graveyard. Emily has died and the people in the graveyard are asking her if she were happy when she went back for her 12th birthday and she replies first to the Stage Manager…”No, take me back up the hill to my grave…” and to the people she states: “They don’t really understand, do they?”

Having directed “Our Town” three times in my lifetime, it seems that I still remember every line, every character. As I think of my cousin today, our place in time was very much like Grover’s Corners.As children we did not see our world from the “present” perspective. As old people now, we can see the world in the past tense and understand that we appreciate the past by understanding that we did not appreciate it while we lived it. As Emily asks the Stage Manager: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? –every, every minute?”

I never realized until recently that this cousin and I have more in common now than we did in the past. Our lives had twist and turns yet brought us back together at the right time and place for us to understand that we both lived and loved the past yet cannot go back because that place in time only exist in our memories. All the ones we loved wait and watch for us on that brown dirt road…to come home.

I think that Thornton Wilder’s point in this play is that whatever we do in this life we should do it with those that we love.

This is a strange tribute, perhaps to this cousin whom I love. However, my fingers have a mind of their own and this is what they wrote tonight.

May she have many more birthdays!

Hydrangea Bloom

My sister and I think that the original cutting came from our great Aunt Am’s garden at our grandmother’s house. Hydrangeas like partial shade (I have found) and rooted from dead wood (one can see this when cutting the blooms….part of the stem is green and part is brown). I have many bushes now using this method.

This is a daylily I dug up from my mom’s garden; a young friend of hers grew daylilies to sell to the public, however, she always gave Mother day-lilies of every color. Mother loved flowers. I noticed yesterday, that now I have more than one clump; also that they have cross pollinated with the old everyday orange daylillies which are in the same bed with them.

These blooms remind me of simpler times; innocent times. I miss seeing my family; I treasure the memories of growing up on a farm in Mississippi. I miss that farm.

What reminds you of your childhood years?

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Lights Out

Cover of Jesse Stone: Night Passage

Last night I was watching this movie: Jesse Stone with Tom Selleck. It was not very good and I thought I could probably have written the script. The words were few; and it was almost like “Who’s on first?” because the speakers would repeat what the other had just said.The dog had the best role.

Not much else was on worth watching. Purely my opinion. At 9:14 everything shuts down and it was darkness everywhere; no not everywhere. The little garden solar figures kept right on changing colors as if nothing was amiss.

Found my trusty flashlights in the utility room by using my cell phone lights; left one on to shine out the panels on the upper part of the front door; carried two to the bedroom; went through my nightly routine…forgetting the Metamucil so back to the kitchen with the phone and flashlight to drink the cholesterol cleaning vein stuff; phone in hand back to the bathroom to brush the remaining teeth, potty and off to bed to dream.

Wish I could have watched the rest of the movie; I rewrote the script for an hour in my head. Woke up at 10:34 according to the cell phone; got up and turned out the lights; headed back to bed after another short bathroom break; to dream the ending of the movie over and over again.

It was not a good night. Waking at hour intervals, I finally took a panic attack pill and went back to sleep; not to dream. This is going to be a long day.

Do you have these nights?

 

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Leftover Lemon Peels

Huntsville’s Museum of Art (Photo credit: origami_potato)

No vampires here as on Lake Superior Spirit! the first bicycle race in Huntsville, yes; streets blocked off; sitting in a bank parking lot wondering how one manged to get through all this mêlée to get to the Museum of Art where one could see and participate in the wine and cheese and other goodies preview party before the opening of The Red Clay Survey Exhibition.

Here to report…. I made it after staring down a bicyclist, his wife, young baby, daughter and another couple… for their parking place in the Museum parking lot, no less. This was after touring downtown Huntsville at least 5 times; passing my church, St. Mary’s (where I had missed mass for the day) to happily foil everyone trying to find a parking place; waiting patiently as they loaded the bike; talked and gestured to each other; noted I was waiting and others were having to go around me; finally, yes finally, they left. I hope they were one of the winners of this first bicycle race. However, who gave them the right to take up all our Museum parking places. Oh, well, I’m sure they had trouble finding a place to park, as I did. They probably stared down a little old lady, like me.

I was an hour early, even after touring all of Huntsville and sitting in a bank parking lot. I know, cause the lady in blue at the Museum’s front door told me so. Therefore, I strolled on down to Big Spring park and watched the ducks. I had a camera but remembering ColderWeather’s beautiful photos of these creatures, I would not dare even one shot to show I had actually been there with the ducks. I watched the children running barefoot through the grass down to the edge of the pond, playing with the fish and talking to the ducks. One young lad kept saying “bye-bye; bye-bye” to the ducks. The joys of youth.

Finally, after watching eclectically dressed young ladies, kinda like in The Quotidian Hudson’s photos, go up the down steps to the Museum, I, too, decided to wander back up to the front door, wearing my Gloria Vanderbilt brown jeans with a brown satin top with pearls (no less) and carrying a sparkly hand bag which did not sell for fifty (.50) cents in my yard sell…so I  retrieved it from the handbag cart in the garage and used it to highlight my upscale outfit. Wonder what J9 would think about this?

The Red Clay Survey started in 1988. I remember it well. Now it is a recurring juried exhibition open to established and emerging artists in 11 Southern states. There were really neat pieces of art, i.e. one stunning work called “Party Dress” by Huntsville artist Katherine Purves is  a 36 inch tall “dress’” assembled on a fabric-covered wire frame and made entirely from lemon peel and thread sewn together; another, a self-portrait of the artist covered with dirt from the graves of her ancestors. My favorite was the large mechanical sculpture simulating a swaying field of grain. In total there were 80 pieces of art, all as unique as we all are here in our little blogging community! We do make a difference, don’t we?

Now, that is not all to tell. I rarely go out, if it means driving home in the dark, so this was to be an adventure. The new Museum Director and I met at St. Mary’s when he first came to town last May or was it June?  I was the first person he met in Huntsville (other than the people who hired him away from Vermont). We occasionally go out for coffee and such after Mass. Now don’t go getting the wrong idea; he is in his early fifties so I am close to his parents age!  (He is very nice looking and knows all the big names in NY…he is also the curator of Gloria Vanderbilt collection). I kept wondering where he was. Finally, he appears just in time to point me to the sign that clearly and plainly stated: NO FOOD BEYOND THIS POINT and I had, yes you guessed it, I had passed this point. On Two Minutes of Grace, Debbie pointed out that constructive criticism is criticism, no more, no less, which I heartily agree with…my friend asked me ever so gently, as he steered me back beyond the sign, “does that sign say no eating beyond this point?” ….no criticism…just asked me in a very unique way…”Dummy, can you not read?” as I quietly looked at him and grinned. I was only sneaking past to go sit on a bench to listen to the jazzed up jazz music by a band I had watch grow up. Caught in the act…so to speak.

I think for my indiscretion, my punishment was to help put all the used wine glasses left on the table with the sign: DROP OFF TABLE FOR WINE GLASSES…..into plastic carts for glasses to be carted behind some mysterious door to be cleaned. Being the gentleman that he is, he helped some; and, I kept at it until 8 p.m. As he looked at his cell phone, he innocently said, “Only an hour to go…” I jumped right in and stated very clearly (that is for me), “Oh, no, I have to go…I have been here a looooooong time; you just got here.” I left after volunteering to work the next event…just for good measure.

The lady with the blue dress who had clearly given me the time at the beginning, remember her?…was once again at the front door to thank me for coming and to ask:  “Did you have a good time?” I assured her I had and would be volunteering at the next event.

P.S. I made it home in time to see most of my Brit Com shows! Yahh!

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Reading to Write

It seems that I wait until Saturday to read your post and then there are so many I race through.

Stop

I read and fail to write.

Stop

Writing 101 begins

Stop

 

Worlds within Worlds

As  internally you watch your life winding down; as you place your life on exhibit by having garage sells to sell the things you purchased in the past from other yard/garage sales; as you listen to the stories of the ones who come and look at your life within your garage and either choose to buy some beloved item or not you wonder how many of them realize that their lives are now forever intertwined with your life. They carry with them a piece of you.

Did I make a difference? I knew as a child I would change the world, but whose world would I change?

We will not all be great authors, sportsmen, movie stars or world leaders. However, we will interact with others all the days of our lives, unless we are hermits, and even as hermits we may interact with virtual friends who seem more real than the real friends at times. You become involved in lives of persons you may never see, and know that it is not really necessary to do so to know them. We could be accused of sharing more of our thoughts with virtual friends compared to visual, everyday friends….it may be easier that way.

We all have worlds; my world has intersected with so many other worlds; my parents, my siblings, my cousins, my students, the church members, the postman, the stranger I smiled at on the streets of New York who wondered what I might be up to because I smiled in a world of so few smiles at strangers…my world touched that world for only a second. Perhaps it made a bad day brighter. Perhaps.

There are worlds of science fiction; lost worlds of native people; dream worlds; worlds in outer space; new worlds to conquer under the oceans; under ice caps; and deep forests; worlds of animals, insects and trees; the grass talks; the birds listen and pull worms from their worlds; the ants scurry to and fro within their world of constant labor. Worlds of war and whispers of war. So many worlds.

I believe in concentric worlds or worlds within worlds. For a few seconds, a few minutes or perhaps for years, I touch and change lives as they change mine.

We do not have to be great at anything except being ourselves and sharing what we have with others whether it be a thought, a flower, a story or a smile to change that world.

One person at a time; the stone strikes the water and the ripples flow out until they are caught by a great wave which flows around the world and back to me.

As we die a little each day; as we move forward to the ending of this world to cross to the next world let us remember that we changed the world; we left footprints where we walked; we will feel the world shift ever so slightly as the door closes behind us and opens to a new world as we pass from this world of illusions to the real world of intelligence and being; as we walk out into the blinding world of reality; all  in the blink of an eye; not fearing the last breath because:

We changed the World.

 

 

 

Cupcakes and Muffins

After reading two blogs on Cupcakes, I decided to make a version of cupcakes called muffins. Not ever finding “scratch” in the grocery stores, I end up with Martha White. She has helped me through many hard times as well as fatten me along the way. Living alone, making cupcakes, it would not be fair to the cupcakes not to eat all of them the same day; all six of them. Today, I made a new version of the old stand by blueberry muffins. I tossed in some raisins and slivered almonds. Turned out yummy and I have 4 left for the rest of the day. Did I take a photo, you ask? No, of course not. I ate them. Perhaps I will go back and find the story on the Chocolate Covered Rebel Raising Raisins in a very early post on this blog…in the beginning.

It is raining today. I love the rain and the quietness of the house.

I shall write another post today. It will be called worlds within worlds. I needed the cupcakes; the coffee, the hum of the dishwasher; the settling of the mind to write the next one.

Hope you read the re-blogged post from Lake Superior Spirit. One day I shall write why re-blogging this post was important to me. Susan knows. Perhaps that is enough.