Writing exercise 2
I remember standing in a forest for the first time in my life. We are on a family camping trip off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. We drive several miles to an overlook that gives a view only of mountains and sky. The world is a bigger place than I have ever known. And it is more beautiful than I have ever seen.
A trail runs from the overlook to a waterfall a mile or so away. We enter the path through balsam giants and I am in a place unlike any I have ever seen. I smell and taste the sharpness in the air, my palette rich with pine and wood and earth and clean. The reverence of the silence is overwhelming. A carpet of generations of fallen balsam needles mixed with the sweet decay of fallen twigs and branches softens every step I take. Trees are around me and above me and I am wrapped in peacefulness and the protection of greens and browns and blues.
My father continues down the path, but no waterfall can lure from this place. I want to be alone for as long as I can; I am entirely alone no matter who is with me. All needs are met here and suddenly I understand the meaning of sanctuary. Leave me here – let me worship in this moment for the rest of my life.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Friday, October 10, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Another Friend of Bailey's
Somehow, my latest copy of Bailey White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind has disappeared. I've loaned it to someone and can't remember who. Somewhere, they are benefitting from the folded corners and post-its that mark my favorite stories, meaning most of the stories.
I read this book at least twice a year after I stumbled across Baily White on NPR. I knew I was hooked from the first sound of her voice, a true Southern Lady, the kind most transplants to the cities of the new South never really get to know. Her voice brought back childhood memories of live tigers in cages at Esso stations in tiny towns a hundred miles from nowhere and mountain people who would take in an entire family for the night when the car broke down in front of their house. I remembered fishing in a metal boat on the lake through an entire thunderstorm with my uncle who insisted it was the safest place to be and my father stopping to let us pick cotton just so we would know what hard work it was. I ached for a sweaty summer day, a cold glass of lemonade and bare feet.
I content myself with finding an isolated spot in the house and reading her stories out loud, laying on the drawl and the accent as heavy as I want. If I don't get it right the first time, I repeat it again and again until I feel like I've had a really good Sunday homecooked meal - two pieces of fried chicken, green beans cooked with bacon and the Southern obligatory spoonful of sugar, fresh sliced tomatoes from the garden, and a hot cobbler of whatever fruit is in season. And tea, lots of sweet tea. By the time I finish reading as many stories as I want to myself, I've laughed as much as if I sat around that Sunday dinner table with family and friends of assorted ages for at least a couple of hours.
I keep a mental list of people I would like to have lunch with and Bailey White is among the top ten. I want to talk about people who were educated by nature, who knew that being respected didn't mean having money, who could greet everyone in town by name, and never labeled their neighbors as anything more than "quirky".
I looked at my favorite online bookseller last night, only to find that Mama Makes Up Her Mind apparently is no longer in print so I ordered two new copies from resellers. I couldn't find anyone with a full case, but I would have ordered it, if I had.
I read this book at least twice a year after I stumbled across Baily White on NPR. I knew I was hooked from the first sound of her voice, a true Southern Lady, the kind most transplants to the cities of the new South never really get to know. Her voice brought back childhood memories of live tigers in cages at Esso stations in tiny towns a hundred miles from nowhere and mountain people who would take in an entire family for the night when the car broke down in front of their house. I remembered fishing in a metal boat on the lake through an entire thunderstorm with my uncle who insisted it was the safest place to be and my father stopping to let us pick cotton just so we would know what hard work it was. I ached for a sweaty summer day, a cold glass of lemonade and bare feet.
I content myself with finding an isolated spot in the house and reading her stories out loud, laying on the drawl and the accent as heavy as I want. If I don't get it right the first time, I repeat it again and again until I feel like I've had a really good Sunday homecooked meal - two pieces of fried chicken, green beans cooked with bacon and the Southern obligatory spoonful of sugar, fresh sliced tomatoes from the garden, and a hot cobbler of whatever fruit is in season. And tea, lots of sweet tea. By the time I finish reading as many stories as I want to myself, I've laughed as much as if I sat around that Sunday dinner table with family and friends of assorted ages for at least a couple of hours.
I keep a mental list of people I would like to have lunch with and Bailey White is among the top ten. I want to talk about people who were educated by nature, who knew that being respected didn't mean having money, who could greet everyone in town by name, and never labeled their neighbors as anything more than "quirky".
I looked at my favorite online bookseller last night, only to find that Mama Makes Up Her Mind apparently is no longer in print so I ordered two new copies from resellers. I couldn't find anyone with a full case, but I would have ordered it, if I had.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Uncle Joe
My uncle Joe always told me that I was his favorite niece. It took me until I was 50to realize that he only had two nieces and that he probably told both us the same thing.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Carrying Coal
Several years ago my sister surprised me with tapes by Michelle Shocked that rapidly became favorites thanks to their bluegrass melodies and the story-like quality of her songs. But, her lyrics about coal cars on the L & N railroad haunt me in a way I struggled to understand for a long time:
“I was born and raised at the mouth of the Hazard holler,
Where the coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door.
But now they stand in a rusty row, all empty,
Because the L & N don’t stop here anymore.”
My family comes from coal country. My father’s father spent his life as a brakeman for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, carrying coal from the mines to the mills and factories of the South. Coal built the railroads and brought jobs, schools, churches, business, wealth, alcohol, crime, poverty, and illness to the small towns through which it passed.
As a child, I could point out the sites of strip mines from the car window. Seams of coal, glossy sides shining in the sun, lay exposed in hillsides and I was fascinated to find the odd lump of coal lying in the parking lot. I was forbidden to pick it up, dirty, nasty, priceless coal.
Mom was born in a coal mine camp in Tennessee where her father ran the mine commissary. He died of alcoholism when she was 8 and my grandmother moved her children into her family home in Kentucky and found work with the railroads arranging shipments of coal.
My great uncle was the assistant postmaster and was legendary in the area. Folks far back in the mountains and the mine camps knew he could be counted on to make deliveries from town when he brought their mail. Local doctors kept his garage stocked with sample medicines and my uncle distributed them to families who had no way into town and no means to buy the medications they needed. They would send whatever they could back with him as barter, determined to pay their own way for their illness if not for their health.
We visited the town where my mother was born only once with my great uncle. I have a picture of it in my imagination – two dusty dirt roads, company-owned homes set back in the trees, the company commissary that my grandfather ran, and, off to the left, a dark yawning hole – the entrance to the mine itself. But, I never seem to picture the freight cars or the railroad in a tiny mountain clearing that was too small to have paved streets.
I knew the railroads carried my father and his brothers away to war, delivered my great aunts to New York City for vacations, and brought my mother, sister, and me into the mountains from our home in Atlanta on summer breaks. And, although it began its journey in camps too small to command passenger trains to stop, coal was always the railroads’ most important paying customer.
The families of miners heated their homes with coal, as did my mother’s family and all the others who lived in the valley. My sister or I would come down with respiratory problems early in our visits to Kentucky and we would quickly resemble the runny-nosed children we saw on the streets of town. My great uncle would lead us to his garage, unlock the door and pull it open to display shelves and shelves of cold remedies, cough syrups, and allergy medications. Mom would locate the products we normally took, the door would be relocked, and we would go on with our visit, somewhat drowsier but less congested. We never really questioned why this lovely valley triggered our respiratory problems with such regularity.
Although we moved to Atlanta well before my mother was 30, her life has been plagued with allergies, asthma, and respiratory infections. Last year, she began to have chronic bouts of bronchitis at age 78. When I accompanied her to the pulmonologist for her initial visit, I was stunned to hear him read in medical records provided by her family doctor that she had COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The specialist asked her only two questions about her personal history and the first was answered simply with a “No”:
1. Have you ever smoked?
2. Have you ever lived in a house that was heated by coal?
She did, of course. She was born by coal, fed by coal, warmed by coal, clothed by coal, and educated by coal. Somehow, its black dust has stayed with her, hidden in places where we could not see it or sense its effects. And, after all these years, it demands a price for its travels with her and the life it brought to the mountains and valleys of the southern Appalachians.
And now I know the words of the song are wrong – the coal cars have never been empty. They brought the very air that my mother would breathe from deep within the mines themselves. Now I sense the railroad is moving toward her, snaking its way toward a landscape we cannot anticipate, coal smoke blowing through its open cars, stopping to collect the riders who must pay its fare.
My mother will take passage. She was marked with coal for the journey long ago.
“I was born and raised at the mouth of the Hazard holler,
Where the coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door.
But now they stand in a rusty row, all empty,
Because the L & N don’t stop here anymore.”
My family comes from coal country. My father’s father spent his life as a brakeman for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, carrying coal from the mines to the mills and factories of the South. Coal built the railroads and brought jobs, schools, churches, business, wealth, alcohol, crime, poverty, and illness to the small towns through which it passed.
As a child, I could point out the sites of strip mines from the car window. Seams of coal, glossy sides shining in the sun, lay exposed in hillsides and I was fascinated to find the odd lump of coal lying in the parking lot. I was forbidden to pick it up, dirty, nasty, priceless coal.
Mom was born in a coal mine camp in Tennessee where her father ran the mine commissary. He died of alcoholism when she was 8 and my grandmother moved her children into her family home in Kentucky and found work with the railroads arranging shipments of coal.
My great uncle was the assistant postmaster and was legendary in the area. Folks far back in the mountains and the mine camps knew he could be counted on to make deliveries from town when he brought their mail. Local doctors kept his garage stocked with sample medicines and my uncle distributed them to families who had no way into town and no means to buy the medications they needed. They would send whatever they could back with him as barter, determined to pay their own way for their illness if not for their health.
We visited the town where my mother was born only once with my great uncle. I have a picture of it in my imagination – two dusty dirt roads, company-owned homes set back in the trees, the company commissary that my grandfather ran, and, off to the left, a dark yawning hole – the entrance to the mine itself. But, I never seem to picture the freight cars or the railroad in a tiny mountain clearing that was too small to have paved streets.
I knew the railroads carried my father and his brothers away to war, delivered my great aunts to New York City for vacations, and brought my mother, sister, and me into the mountains from our home in Atlanta on summer breaks. And, although it began its journey in camps too small to command passenger trains to stop, coal was always the railroads’ most important paying customer.
The families of miners heated their homes with coal, as did my mother’s family and all the others who lived in the valley. My sister or I would come down with respiratory problems early in our visits to Kentucky and we would quickly resemble the runny-nosed children we saw on the streets of town. My great uncle would lead us to his garage, unlock the door and pull it open to display shelves and shelves of cold remedies, cough syrups, and allergy medications. Mom would locate the products we normally took, the door would be relocked, and we would go on with our visit, somewhat drowsier but less congested. We never really questioned why this lovely valley triggered our respiratory problems with such regularity.
Although we moved to Atlanta well before my mother was 30, her life has been plagued with allergies, asthma, and respiratory infections. Last year, she began to have chronic bouts of bronchitis at age 78. When I accompanied her to the pulmonologist for her initial visit, I was stunned to hear him read in medical records provided by her family doctor that she had COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The specialist asked her only two questions about her personal history and the first was answered simply with a “No”:
1. Have you ever smoked?
2. Have you ever lived in a house that was heated by coal?
She did, of course. She was born by coal, fed by coal, warmed by coal, clothed by coal, and educated by coal. Somehow, its black dust has stayed with her, hidden in places where we could not see it or sense its effects. And, after all these years, it demands a price for its travels with her and the life it brought to the mountains and valleys of the southern Appalachians.
And now I know the words of the song are wrong – the coal cars have never been empty. They brought the very air that my mother would breathe from deep within the mines themselves. Now I sense the railroad is moving toward her, snaking its way toward a landscape we cannot anticipate, coal smoke blowing through its open cars, stopping to collect the riders who must pay its fare.
My mother will take passage. She was marked with coal for the journey long ago.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Family History
The stories in my husband’s family come to us as letters and documents dating back to the Revolutionary War. Their tellers include a slave, Revolutionary and Civil War Army officers, members of Aaron Burr’s family, Kit Carson, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General Lew Wallace who wrote the classic Ben Hur, Presidents Andrew Johnson, William McKinley, and Grover Cleveland, and various US Secretaries of State and Secretaries of War. They fill a cardboard box that came from an aunt’s basement to sit on a shelf in our closet.
We’ve been told many times how lucky we are to have these stories. But the truth is that my husband’s family chose to perpetuate the stories of their ancestors rather than live their own. They were crippled by the profound burdens of responsibility and privilege at the stories’ cores. The contradictions they tell are too powerful for us to pass on as legacy to our sons.
My husband and I have decided to put all the family documents up for auction, to let them be studied and shared as they never have been before. Despite the wealth of family history, we find ourselves collaborating by necessity with people who value them for the thousands of dollars they bring. Somehow, we’ll create a new story.
We’ve been told many times how lucky we are to have these stories. But the truth is that my husband’s family chose to perpetuate the stories of their ancestors rather than live their own. They were crippled by the profound burdens of responsibility and privilege at the stories’ cores. The contradictions they tell are too powerful for us to pass on as legacy to our sons.
My husband and I have decided to put all the family documents up for auction, to let them be studied and shared as they never have been before. Despite the wealth of family history, we find ourselves collaborating by necessity with people who value them for the thousands of dollars they bring. Somehow, we’ll create a new story.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Mornings After
The morning after my father’s funeral, the women of the family gathered around the kitchen table for breakfast and ended up talking for hours. I wondered if my grandfather’s name would come up and, suddenly, it did. Just as suddenly, my sister and cousin clutched their arms over their chests and jerked away from the table as if to protect themselves from an impending threat. My sister said, “He scared me.” My cousin said, “I never liked him.”
I was 42 and I’d never told anyone, but I decided this was the time. When I was about 5, we visited my grandfather in the boarding house where he lived in his retirement. My sister and I spent the night in his bedroom. Mom and Dad were across the hall.
I remember it as being “my turn”. I can only assume that’s what he told me, but that morning after my father’s funeral at the kitchen table, my sister indignantly said it certainly never happened to her. My mother said it couldn’t be true because my grandfather always gave her such nice presents. My cousin said our grandfather had molested the housekeeper who raised her following her mother’s death. The only other comments were on the times my grandfather was found alone with elderly women in the nursing home where he spent his last days.
My own memory is selective. My grandfather’s bed is against the wall; my sister is sleeping across the room. The bedroom is dark – the hallway is dark- the wide steps down to the front door are dark. The images from the bathroom are vivid and, thankfully, filled with light - black and white checkerboard tiles, a pedestal sink, a claw foot tub. However, the knowledge of this night is present in every second of every interaction I have ever had with every other adult male until this minute in my life, sitting at this kitchen table at age 42.
The morning after, my family walked across the street to the diner where my grandfather ate breakfast each day. He sat at the counter with other men from the boarding house. The four of us found a table in the crowded restaurant and ate while sunlight flooded through the windows.
But, light can’t expose everything.
I was 42 and I’d never told anyone, but I decided this was the time. When I was about 5, we visited my grandfather in the boarding house where he lived in his retirement. My sister and I spent the night in his bedroom. Mom and Dad were across the hall.
I remember it as being “my turn”. I can only assume that’s what he told me, but that morning after my father’s funeral at the kitchen table, my sister indignantly said it certainly never happened to her. My mother said it couldn’t be true because my grandfather always gave her such nice presents. My cousin said our grandfather had molested the housekeeper who raised her following her mother’s death. The only other comments were on the times my grandfather was found alone with elderly women in the nursing home where he spent his last days.
My own memory is selective. My grandfather’s bed is against the wall; my sister is sleeping across the room. The bedroom is dark – the hallway is dark- the wide steps down to the front door are dark. The images from the bathroom are vivid and, thankfully, filled with light - black and white checkerboard tiles, a pedestal sink, a claw foot tub. However, the knowledge of this night is present in every second of every interaction I have ever had with every other adult male until this minute in my life, sitting at this kitchen table at age 42.
The morning after, my family walked across the street to the diner where my grandfather ate breakfast each day. He sat at the counter with other men from the boarding house. The four of us found a table in the crowded restaurant and ate while sunlight flooded through the windows.
But, light can’t expose everything.
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Moving Pictures
Our son Will is moving, from his student apartment in Spartanburg to an upperclassmen dorm at Winthrop University. The transition is marked by boxes and crates, dirty laundry, and computer equipment painstakingly delivered to safe storage. Tomorrow, we will fill cars and make the two hour drive to Rock Hill to deposit everything that now sits in our hallways, our family room, our garage. Well, probably not everything. The boxes he leaves behind will remind us that he still calls this home.
Our children do tend to come and go. Will, of course, is still a student. Geoff works at Yellowstone National Parks and comes home for the extended closures that mark the seasonal transitions from wheeled vehicles to treaded vehicles for use on snow. Geoff’s visits home are commemorated by piles of ski bibs and boots in the spring and hiking boots and camping equipment in the fall.
George and I are headed for a move ourselves to what was once a Better Homes and Gardens feature home but is now a dilapidated abandoned house that we clearly see as a dream retirement home. The house waits to see the renovation that will mark its return to a home for a family that really wants it. We will have garage sales, make drop-offs at Goodwill, donate items to our favorite school, and throw out trash – lots and lots of stuff that once held some value in our lives. A lot of items won’t make the cut – resources for teaching careers, odd family plates, the few pairs of heels left in my wardrobe. We will ask our sons to help with our boxes and crates, leisure clothes favored by retirees, little boys’ pictures lovingly delivered to safe display, Legos for future grandchildren, and our faithful family dog who will patrol her new borders, bark at new neighbors, and delight in the number of squirrels just begging to be chased.
Our children do tend to come and go. Will, of course, is still a student. Geoff works at Yellowstone National Parks and comes home for the extended closures that mark the seasonal transitions from wheeled vehicles to treaded vehicles for use on snow. Geoff’s visits home are commemorated by piles of ski bibs and boots in the spring and hiking boots and camping equipment in the fall.
George and I are headed for a move ourselves to what was once a Better Homes and Gardens feature home but is now a dilapidated abandoned house that we clearly see as a dream retirement home. The house waits to see the renovation that will mark its return to a home for a family that really wants it. We will have garage sales, make drop-offs at Goodwill, donate items to our favorite school, and throw out trash – lots and lots of stuff that once held some value in our lives. A lot of items won’t make the cut – resources for teaching careers, odd family plates, the few pairs of heels left in my wardrobe. We will ask our sons to help with our boxes and crates, leisure clothes favored by retirees, little boys’ pictures lovingly delivered to safe display, Legos for future grandchildren, and our faithful family dog who will patrol her new borders, bark at new neighbors, and delight in the number of squirrels just begging to be chased.
Monday, December 20, 2004
The Family Craftsman
My husband George recently built a table of antique year old heart pine reclaimed from the ceiling of an abandoned cotton mill in Enoree, SC. The mill was the sole employer in that small community for more than a century. A friend of ours delivered a load of rough pine boards and beams, blackened with decades of grime and tufted with cotton lint, and asked George to transform them into a coffee table for her brother. After George pulled handmade nails and spikes, planed and joined the planks, the rich red veins of the wood were exposed as clearly as the day when the trees were cut and milled at the site of construction.
George is teaching himself woodworking and intends to become a craftsman, evidenced by the growing collection of woodworking tools and machinery in our garage.
He’s made several small pieces for his students in the Family Learning GED program. These include stands for the family fish tank, a coffee table for a family room, and several small work tables sized for a child and parent to play together. His adult students dropped out of high school to marry early, have children early, and go to work early – like many of the generations who preceded them in the mill-based economy that once sustained the South.
They now hope to earn their GEDs so they can find better jobs or continue their educations, but, more than anything else, they hope to break the cycle of school failure before their own children become the newest family members to be entrapped. They bring their infants and preschool children to an early childhood classroom next door to his. Each day the parents, children, and teaching staff meet for lunch and for parent/child activities which help prepare the children and their parents to meet the challenges of the long years of schooling that lie ahead.
George’s tools at work include math textbooks and a guitar, test prep problems and play dough, resources on opening family businesses and picture books. Like teachers everywhere today, he must measure progress by student practice test scores. But he also notes with delight the child who took his first steps or spoke his first words during the day.
Recently one of his families took their two year old son to see Santa. He asked for “Georges” for Christmas.
George is teaching himself woodworking and intends to become a craftsman, evidenced by the growing collection of woodworking tools and machinery in our garage.
He’s made several small pieces for his students in the Family Learning GED program. These include stands for the family fish tank, a coffee table for a family room, and several small work tables sized for a child and parent to play together. His adult students dropped out of high school to marry early, have children early, and go to work early – like many of the generations who preceded them in the mill-based economy that once sustained the South.
They now hope to earn their GEDs so they can find better jobs or continue their educations, but, more than anything else, they hope to break the cycle of school failure before their own children become the newest family members to be entrapped. They bring their infants and preschool children to an early childhood classroom next door to his. Each day the parents, children, and teaching staff meet for lunch and for parent/child activities which help prepare the children and their parents to meet the challenges of the long years of schooling that lie ahead.
George’s tools at work include math textbooks and a guitar, test prep problems and play dough, resources on opening family businesses and picture books. Like teachers everywhere today, he must measure progress by student practice test scores. But he also notes with delight the child who took his first steps or spoke his first words during the day.
Recently one of his families took their two year old son to see Santa. He asked for “Georges” for Christmas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)