October Blessings

 

 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year on our precious island, y’all.

It is fall, after all, and with the mighty month of October comes three of our most prized and esteemed customs.

Number one, well, it’s the ability to finally crack a window without withering in the gosh forsaken South Georgia heat.

Number two, the McGladery Classic starts October 22^nd. This PGA tournament is a labor of “Love”- get it- of two of our hometown heroes and Georgia boys, Davis and Mark Love. But let’s face it, it’s our labor of love as well, seeing as everyone from our community shows up to show off our beautiful seaside pearl of an island to people from all over the world. This, folks, is where we shine; this is when the universe gets to see Southern hospitality at its genteel and absolute best.

Now, Number three, GA/FLA weekend starting October 31st, is and has and always will be one of my favorites. But I know there are many of you out there who disagree. This is because, for locals at least, it’s the time of year we hold our collective breath…and noses…and hope for the best. Because every blessed year-after the coeds, “party like it’s 1999” alums and rabid dawg fans have left the island in the dust with their UGA flags waving in the slightly cooled ocean wind- we are the ones who have to smell, pick up and step over all of the fast food trash bags, crushed beer cans and the occasional drunk person sleeping one off on “frat” beach.

I will confess; it is a bit frightening; pondering that these keg-standing, trash-wielding young people are, in fact, our future leaders, the movers and the shakers, the ambassadors if you will for the new generation who will someday decide our fate.

But I don’t look at it that way at all. It’s funny how with time we all forget we were once were keg swilling coeds, still are “party like it 1999” alums every now and then, and always will be rabid dawg fans just like we were in our youth.

I enjoyed a few outings myself at “the world’s largest cocktail party” as a UGA student 20 some years ago and still tell stories about it. I actually think Rex Edmondson, a 1950 UGA grad and famous newspaper man described it more accurately when he said GA/FLA weekend is, “the annual celebration of the repeal of prohibition.”

And speaking of famous newspaper, UGA grad, dawg loving Georgia boys, you can’t talk Georgia football without talking some Lewis Grizzard. Or, as I recently learned, golf. And golf on a Sea Island course, in particular.

I know most of you know Forest Brown, long time island resident and owner of the UGA loving establishment Brogen’s. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know him, and he tells the best stories about the bar, the football games and the fight songs, the rich island history and its folklore. But my absolute favorite Forest story is how Lewis Grizzard, after a round of golf, would play for hours on end on the same shuffle board that’s stood in Forest’s restaurant in the village since 1983.

Yes, our Lewis Grizzard also loved golf and the Sea Island courses that now host the big PGA players from all over the world. I think they would appreciate this story, from a column he wrote about a round he played at the Island Club, right across the street from Seaside, the site of the McGladery.

Here you go:

 It was a lovely morning, having warmed to the low 70s as I approached the tee. I was wearing an orange golf shirt, pair of Duckhead khaki slacks and my black and white golf shoes, the ones my dogs have not chewed up yet.

I was first on the tee.

“What are you going to hit?” asked Matthews.

“None of your business,” I said.

We were playing for a lot of money.

O.K., so we weren’t playing for a lot of money, but you never tell your opponent what club you’re hitting.

“Tell us,” said Jarvis, “or we’ll tell everybody how you move the ball in the rough when nobody’s looking.”

“Nine-iron,” I said.

The green sloped to the right. I said to myself, “Keep the ball to the left of the hole.”

(Actually I said, “Please, God, let me get this thing over the water.”)

I hit a high, arching shot. The ball cut through the still morning air, a white missile against the azure sky. (That’s the way Dan Jenkins or Herbert Warren Wind would have described it.)

The ball hit eight feet left of the pin. It hopped once. It hopped again. It was rolling directly toward the hole.

An eternity passed.

It has a chance to go in, I thought. But that’s not going to happen, of course, because I’m terribly unlucky and I’ve done some lousy things in my life and I don’t deserve it to go into the hole.

It went into the hole.

A “1.”

It was a joyous moment when my first hole-in-one fell snugly into the hole. But the best moment came at the next tee, the par four, 13th.

For those non-golfers, the person with the lowest score on the previous hole gets to hit first on the next hole.

I strode to the tee with my driver, teed up my ball and then said to my opponents, “I think I’m up, but did anybody have a zero?”

Love that man. Not just because he is, of course, one of THE best Southern humorists of all time. But because he bled Red and Black no matter what and loved Georgia, our island and the South as much as every single one of us.

He was the fan who on game day, “said the blessing before lunch and thanked the Lord for 3 things: fried chicken, potato salad and for the fact that He allowed me to be a Bulldog. And dear Lord, bless all those not as fortunate as I.”

Lewis was also the only man who could describe a Hail Mary pass, a last minute 60 yard field goal or a comeback bulldog win from the trenches like this: “I hugged perfect strangers and kissed a fat lady on the mouth. Grown men wept. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Stars fell and joy swept through followed by a hurricane of unleashed emotions.”

Enjoy October, friends. And don’t forget to say your prayers…..and count your blessings that we are lucky to live in a place as great as this.

Misery: An Open Letter to Stephen King

     It finally happened.

And just as I was on the brink of losing my ever lovin’ mind…..or deciding to pack up a house full of junk, dogs, kids and unmatched socks and move north.  (Actually, I believe these two things are mutually exclusive.)

Thankfully, my brain delivered a cease and desist order to the rest of my cranky and irritated self when I stepped out onto the porch this morning and didn’t break out into an all over body sweat.

My hair didn’t suddenly turn damp even though I had just blown it dry.  Beads of salty perspiration did not form down my back, nose, or thighs the minute I locked the door behind me.  I didn’t have to inhale a burst of hot, humid air right after inhaling my Cream of Wheat.

I glanced at the ladybug thermometer by the front door.  Twice.  I couldn’t believe my own eyes.  Sure enough, the little red line miraculously and quite frankly, just in the nick of time, finally dipped down past 90.  I cried out in joy.  I was going to make it.

I had seen a sign early in the week but dismissed it as a hallucination due to dehydration seeing as it was noon and I was sweeping the driveway and had lost two gallons of water weight when I saw them.  See, I had read somewhere that when you spot butterflies flapping around, it means fall is here.  But at the time I was too busy muttering like a crazy person, mopping the sweat off my brow, and telling two yellow monarchs to get a room, when I saw them shamelessly flirting and fluttering on the hood of my car.

Obviously they can’t stand the South Georgia heat either and are happy to be foot loose and fancy free.  Just like us sub-tropical living humans who have long ago given up on getting to wear the latest fall fashions of skinny jeans tucked into riding boots under chunky cable sweaters and have settled for just being able to step our flip flopped feet outside and not pour buckets after a long and sweltering summer.

A lot of people come down here to escape the harsh winters and the very real diagnosis called Seasonal Disorder.  Evidently not having a view from your window because snow is covering it up does crazy things to people. 

My friend Jennifer, from Jasper, Alabama spent one winter in upstate New York and high tailed it back down here to the island as soon as the ground thawed and she could pack her car without losing her fingers.  Her bulldog, Bogart, however, is now in psychotherapy and on a strict diet of Prozac and exercise.  I am happy to report he’s been here a year and a half is finally getting better.

One of my favorite authors, Robert Goolrick, was actually inspired by stories he found published around the early 1900’s in a small Wisconsin town paper and wrote A Reliable Wife based on his findings.  Apparently, during vicious months-long, white-out, lake effect snow storms, a whole lot of people tended to act abnormally.  You know, like severing their own limbs and taking out their entire family with an axe over an argument about what’s for dinner. You can’t tell me crazy doesn’t make for some really good fiction.   

Just imagine the scary genius of Stephen King and would it exist if he lived in a sunny bungalow in L.A. instead of the blistering windy winters of Bangkok, Maine.  Which reminds me, I was excited to find out Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining, out next year.  Cannot wait, let me tell you. 

But after reading that this novel, like 90% of all his other ones, would once again be set in a snowy New England town, I felt like he should know it doesn’t have to be winter and it doesn’t have to be up North for someone to lock themselves in their house for months, stop shaving, and start having conversations with imaginary people or, at the very least, the weather reporters on the TV.  It happens at here at my house every summer. 

Here’s my letter:

Dear Mr. King,

First off, let me tell you I am a HUGE fan.  But not the stalker kind you are used too, I’m sure, so please don’t stop reading and send the cops to the return address.  It’s just thanks to you I am deathly afraid of clowns, identical little twin girls, walk-in freezers, and anyone who closely resembles Kathy Bates or shares her last name.  This is most certainly not a bad thing since I enjoyed every sleepless night and terror induced dream.

I also enjoy the detailed descriptions of your snowy New England: the howls of the relentless wind against the glass-paned windows of a creaky old Victorian, the snow banked steepness that surrounds a dark and dangerous remote mountain road, the candle-lit silence in strange rooms rendered dark by downed power lines and frozen limbs off trees.  I feel closed in just by simply reading what’s written between your pages, suffocated by the frosty isolation you pull us into like a secret trap door that opens in the vast whiteness that protects your world, then shuts, leaving us secluded and alone teetering on the brink of a quiet sort of madness.

But, see Stephen, even though it’s been 35 years since Jack’s been a very bad boy and went on to become that great, big alcoholic care taker in the sky, or at least for eternity at the Overlook Hotel, doesn’t mean you can’t take his tricycle riding, scarred for life, psychic son, Danny out of your freezing New Hampshire and place him down here for a summer.  There really it’s much of difference.  Trust me.  They’re both a different kind of hell.

See, Steve, down here people are driven to their own kind of slow boiling insanity that sneaks up on them around May like a swarm of sand gnats starved since early spring. It starts as a simmer, this unyielding heat, a tease, a tickle that gets you going outside in the morning, but then causes you around noon to make a hasty retreat back inside where you then never leave.  Down here in coastal South Georgia, the extreme heat, much like your freezing winters in Maine, brings out the crazy, if you know what I mean. 

I have seen normal, sweet-loving children’s heads spin with their teeth bared and finger nails clawed in.  I have watched conscientious mothers take their bed, doors locked; pints of ice cream the only things they let in.  I have witnessed yards over-grown, beer bottles strewn, and grown men sitting in baby pools to avoid the wife, the crushing heat, and the terrors they helped spawn without caring who sees. 

   There’s the creak of the ceiling fan that taunts you overnight while you try and sleep on top of the sheet.  There are the bugs, the lizards, and the marsh crabs that let themselves in without knocking first to escape the scalding sun, scaring you half to death.  There’s the lifeless, flat, hot air that rushes through the holes in your screens and under your doors, leaving a $600 dollar electricity bill that makes you want to let out a blood curdling scream.  

See, scary stuff really does happen down here in the South, Steve, when the heat’s 110 degrees.

Just a thought.

Anyway, thanks for your time and good luck on the new book.  If you need any help, you know where to find me.  Actually, I will finally be outside now that my driveway isn’t giving off steam and the heels of my feet won’t burned off walking to out get the mail…(not looking for your responding correspondence, of course.  Remember, I’m not that crazy.)   

Talk to you soon,

Laura 

 

I’ll let y’all know if I hear back from him.  I’m not holding my breath, but at least the blustery gasp of ocean air has cooled a bit and I can safely say I have survived another hot and humid summer.  Looks like fall on the island has saved my sanity once again.  Bring it on.

It's a Green Thing

 

           Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Envy is ignorance.”  And of course, he’s right. 

          We all envy, or tend to covet, that which we are unaware and don’t know a whole heck of a lot about.

            For me, I’ll admit, it can be a daily occurrence.

I smile outwardly at the guy who hops out of his car in the Harris Teeter parking lot, his hands gripping the torn piece of notebook paper like it was a winning lottery ticket on a windy day.  I nod my head as he looks up in intense concentration from trying to memorize his wife’s grocery list, grabs his cart and heads inside.

I think how lucky his wife must be.  How my own husband hasn’t set foot inside a grocery store in the ten years we lived here except on the 17^th of October, 2010 for a gallon of fat free milk and a loaf of Wonder Bread.  I remember the exact day three years later because of the texts, photos and subsequent Facebook posting from friends and family documenting his epic maiden voyage.  I also remember because we ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a week on rye bread downed with a hearty glass of buttermilk.

I sigh in frustration as my husband…again…leaves his plate exactly three inches from the two contraptions that were built to clean them.  You know, the dishwasher and the kitchen sink.  Not to mention, his half glass of milk is left sweating on the island, his balled up napkin is on the floor and he’s now having fun swimming with the girls while I mop, bleach, bake, sterilize, sanitize and sweep. 

I feel envious; I do, of all those women out there whose significant others lend a helping hand with the day-to- day doldrums.  I know they are out there.  I’ve seen them with me own eyes.  The ones who help clean up after birthday parties, plan cookouts and dish out food they’ve cooked all day with a smile on their faces.

I feel jealous and bad too, most days, about just being a mom.  Surely, there are women out there that can get their kids to school on time, handle deadlines and PTA meetings and remember to bring two dozen water bottles and three bags of pretzels for snack at school.  I know these moms have never been yelled at by their own kids, never told they had “ruined their lives,” or heard a request for adoption with a family of traveling trapeze artists because at least, “their life turn out to be somewhat interesting and a whole lot more fun.”  Yes, I want to be one of these women who can do it all and never feel like a failure.

But then I think:

The man at the grocery store’s wife is terribly sick.  He has no idea how to help her get better or if she ever will get better.  All he knows is this is what he can do right now.  In this moment. He can make her something she probably won’t be able to keep down but it’s the only thing he can think to do.  To show her how much he cares about her, to nourish her, to hang on.

While my husband ignores his plate by the sink and plays in the pool with his daughters, there is a single mom down the street.  She’s worked all day, already cried silently in her car before pick-up, wondering how she is going to do this all by herself.  She washes dishes as her kids play without her in the backyard, already stressing on unanswered work e-mails, backed up laundry and mounting bills.  She knows it’s almost time to call them in for bed, another day gone- just like that.

And as I go to bed, feeling defeated, feeling like a failure as a mom, there is a women not too far from me who turns in for the night wishing her child was still with her.  Even if it were just to tell her she was “ruining his life” because at least she could hold him and hug him-breathe in the smell of him- and tell him she didn’t carry about any of that- never did.  She only loved him with all and every molecule of her being.

Yes, envy is ignorance just as the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

But as Walt Whitman believed, “a leaf of grass is no less than the journey- work of the stars.” 

It takes just one, single blade of grass- not an acre, forest, slab or crate- to see the magic which is humanity.

We shouldn’t keep count of how much or how little we have. 

            We should only reflect and be grateful for each others’ blessings

Trophy Wife

Lucas Glover- 2009 US Open Champ

“What’s the meaning of this?”  I asked my husband as I balanced his cell in one hand, stirred the burnt spaghetti sauce with the other, and tried to keep the cat off the counter with my foot.  Speaking of cats, that’s exactly what my husband looked like, a very sneaky cat that had just swallowed a very big canary.

“What?  Are you snooping through my phone?” He snatched it out of my hand, at least freeing it up so I could scrub my hands with a healthy dose of Dawn and a bucket of hot water.  I felt dirty.

You asked me to look up a number,” I replied.  “Trust me, that picture of you is the last thing I want seared in my memory!”

“So what’s for dinner?”  He leaned in over the sink to give me a kiss, trying to change the subject---like that was ever going to happen.

“Sorry, but you’re not going to be getting any for ten days, or at least whatever the incubation period is for the Swine flu, or H.flu or whatever nasty disease that thing might be carrying.”  I turned off the faucet and took a few steps back.

“But, baby, it’s the US Open trophy!  What was I supposed to do to it?”

“Certainly not kiss the thing!”  At this point, I’m scrambling through the drawers looking for my Echinacea pills.  “Do you even know where it’s been?”

“I wasn’t the only one who did it!” he whined.

 “That’s exactly my point!”

Now, I mean no offense to Lucas Glover, who won the trophy fair and square and was nice enough to bring it over to my husband’s golf club for a few weeks.  He seems like a really great guy and I’m real proud of him, but even he wouldn’t have kissed that thing until they cleaned it, inscribed his name on it, cleaned it again before delivering it to the eighteenth green with white gloved hands.  Since then, who the heck knows how many lips have touched it.

If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m a germaphobe. 

There I said it.  It’s not something I am proud of, but I’m certainly not ashamed of either.  Case in point, there was this exchange with the waiter when I dined with my kid’s at Applebee’s after a Wal-Mart run not too long ago.

“Someone smells great,” the waiter exclaimed after I order an Oriental chicken salad, a basket of chicken fingers and an order of French Onion soup without onions, or cheese, or bread for my eight year old, who’s like Sally from the movie When Harry Met Sally.  So basically, I ordered a six dollar bowl of broth.

“Thanks,” I told him, handing him back the menus. “It’s my hand sanitizer.  Purell has a new one that just came out in Cucumber Melon.”  I swear he rolled his eyes.

But ya’ll tell me, who wouldn’t grease themselves and their loved ones with a few dozen coats of heavy anti-bacterial gel after leaving, along with 20,000 other people that day, THE great American superstore.  I always say the only way I’m going back in is with a tank of oxygen and a bio-hazard suit, but it’s pointless. 

Some day in the future, in a weak moment, I’ll need a garden hose and a box of strawberry cake mix.

But it’s not just that I’m a germaphobe, I’m a Mom.  And unless you’ve ever ran back and forth between bedrooms and the laundry room, washing sheets and towels continuously while two kids are upstairs throwing up at the same time, you shouldn’t judge.  Especially since these kids are little Petri dishes full of thousands of virus and illnesses I can neither spell or treat with 2 tablespoons of Children’s Tylenol.  I know last year alone, we had fifths disease, an ear infection, 2 strep’s, 5 staphs, and a few “mystery” ailments that I’m sure could stump the CDC. 

Take my friend and stylist Kelli, who owns Bayson Salon, has two small children and comes into contact with tons of people every day because she’s so good at her job.  When one of her boy’s came down with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, she spent the week reassuring her clients the disease sounds worse than it really is and she wasn’t contagious.  Finally, one client got to the point, held up her hand and put it all in perspective: “Honey, that’s the last of my worries. Have you seen my roots?”

Even I have to agree.  Life goes on.  Hair goes gray that must be covered up, laundry hampers and milk must sometimes be bought at the same time, and children must actually venture outside the house.

 I know we can’t all live in a bubble, but my husband still has four days left before I know we’re out of the woods. 

While we wait, at least he can look at the nice picture of the intimate moment that Lucas Glover was so nice to let him have with the US Open trophy.

Paper Crumbs

 

       I miss notes.

   Not the pastel multi-colored Post-It ones that are scattered all over your desk to remind you of all the things you’d just as soon forget.  Or the notes left on the front door by your Pest Control, Cable, Heating & Air, “Fill in the Blank” guy telling you you’ve missed your appointment….again.  Oh, and I can’t forget about the ones from your kids.  You know, the notes scribbled in neon crayon on your precious computer paper that say things like “you’ve ruined my life” or “if I had my own ATM card and knew how to drive I’d be so out of here.”

  No.  Those are the kind of notes I can live without.

  I’m talking about the notes from my own childhood.  The ones scrawled in blue ball point pen on torn out pieces of notebook paper that were then passed, pitched, or planed with the highest of hopes you wouldn’t get caught.

  Those were the “daze.”

  Evidently, in High School I really liked to write notes.  As I was reading over a few of them again the other night from my old Holly Hobby keep sake box, someone named FODOBC once jotted down “I feel like you live to write notes.”

  FODOBC, you were right.  And my secret hoard of stacks and stacks of them from the 90’s is undeniable proof.

  There is nothing particular juicy contained within their tattered pages, I can promise you that.  They were all about the mundane day to day existence of a teenager:

  “I screwed up the Vocab. Test.  I’m so stupid.  Tomorrow I am going to Applebee’s.”

  “Your brother sounds weird on the phone.  What do you want for Christmas?  I want everything in the world.”

  “I guess I’ll tell you what is bothering me.  It’s going to be straight to the point.  I like you a lot and you don’t like me.”

  “I watched some after school special called “Sometimes I Don’t Like My Mother.”  It’s pretty good.”

  Kind of sums it all up, doesn’t?  The insecurities of youth; the weirdness of family and how you feel about yourself; not yet understanding your parents had to actually parent in the most difficult of times and not be your friend; and the naivety of not knowing that one day….all of those things you wanted so desperately…. you will never really need.

  I read something the other day.  I’m not sure who wrote it but it made me pause and think.  It went something like this: “Don’t not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and lead a trail.”

  Yes, it’s a grand thought.   The world needs more trailblazers; more individuals and free thinkers.  But if each one of us is different, a one-of-a-kind and our own life unique, then we are all trailblazers by birth making our own personal and particular path through life.  The questions is then- how do you mark your trail, carve your initials into the root of it, and leave something behind to show you were there in the trenches slowly making your way towards the light?

  Paper crumbs.

  Every journal, note, scrap, torn piece of paper tells a story of where we have been and where we would like to go.

  And least that’s what I like to think.  But I am old…fashioned, that is.

  I feel sorry for our children.  They live in a new world of 130 character Tweets, abbreviated slanged texts, and a paperless trail of thoughts and emotions sent out in the big, black void of cyber-space; a scary place where you never know who will end up seeing your most sacred wishes.

  Not-to-mention, their vernacular looks like battle code for a nuclear submarine.

  NAGI- Not a good idea.

  J4F= Just for fun.

  JSYK- Just so you know.

  IKR- I know, right?

  FTF- Face to Face.

  4EAE- Forever and Ever.

  The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently reported that texting is ranked as the number one mode of communication with the 12- 17 set, with a median average of 60 texts a day. 

  Why is there a constant need to be in touch with someone, everyone these days when you really don’t even have anything to say?

  “What R U doin”

  “Nothin U”

  What happened to appropriate distances of space and time, to looking forward to the moment when you could actually formulate a whole sentence and an entire thought- let alone, spell out the words “you” and “are” and put pen to paper?

  I know, I know.   It’s fast and it’s easy. 

  I just hope they realize 4EAE might stand for forever and ever, but it doesn’t represent it.

  Forever and ever symbolizes your word, your honesty, and your character that you’ll spread like seeds as you blaze your way through your individual path of life.

  I just hope our children learn to leave the right kind of crumbs so everyone will know who they sincerely are.  Not just some quick and easy abbreviated version of their true selves.

  Write on, my future trail blazers.  Write on.

Big Bottom Girls

Hold the phone, y'all.

Stop the presses.

Sit down cause you are never going to believe what I am about to tell you.

A researcher in Australia recently conducted a study that shows..... Wait for it.... Wait for it.....

Trying on swim suits tend to make women depressed. 

Yes, that's right. It seems tugging a teeny, tiny, tight piece of fancy, fake fiber up over your hips can make you feel down in the dumps, objectified, and plain old mean.

Seriously.  Don't we all already know that? I think the earliest study was done in the Garden of Eden when Eve stared at her figure in the reflective light of a shallow tidal pool under that apple tree and wondered if the fig leaves made her butt look big.

Who really needed 102 female grad students, a four page questionnaire, and a forty dollar stipend to uncover that piece of earthshaking news?  Find me someone who just loves, and I mean loves, to try on bathing suits in the crippling light of fluorescent bulbs while  imaging themselves bending over, squatting, running and chasing after kids, a Frisbee, a floppy hat, and/ or a dog day all day and I've got some gorgeous beachfront property in Ohio to sell them.

This is how it really goes down:

After two hours, lots of tears, and a dozen different sizes, styles, and "how ya doing in there”s...most women find a suit that'll do, hold their nose, and surrender some serious cash before marching straight on down to the outdoor food court for an iced mocha and a cinnamon sugared soft pretzel and a serious dose of fresh air.

Though there was one interesting part of the study, that when I read it, made me pause, take a sip of my morning Chocolate Royale Slim Fast shake, and say out loud "well, you could have fooled me".  It was the part explaining that women were more upset and disparaged in the dressing room than wearing the suit out on the beach.  This is because, once they are out having fun in the sun, these lab rats said they get too busy and kind of forget about being stuffed in, tied up tight, and lodged into a garment about as big as a industrial size glue gun.

But I don't buy it for a second.....even if you did have a couple strawberry daiquiris and a Miller Lite before you unrolled your beach mat and sprayed on your SPF 50.  You simply don't fail to remember, especially when a nice easterly breeze flows by, that you don't have a whole heck of a lot on.

See, imbibing or not, I find them both equally terrifying and depressing.....the trying on and then the subsequent wearing of the overpriced slip of shiny looking material masquerading as a slice of artificial second skin.  But hey, that's just me. 

Trying to chase down a seagull (who just snatched my baby’s favorite sand toy) does not make me overlook the fact that I just might have a wedgie the size of one of those Styrofoam pool noodles in my sand packed bathing suit bottom.  Or as I run...well, jog...alright, walk quickly after the pesky bird, I am probably exposing the very parts of me that I have no personal desire for the rest of the world to see....even if I shaved my legs the night before and am sporting on all-over body spray tan.

Cause let's face it, y'all.  When you peel on your one hundred and twenty dollar swimsuit, we all know we're just putting on a more expensive and fancier pair of glorified underwear and no marketing genius from Madison Ave is going ever to change that.

But all this pity and malaise is not particularly fair to me and my self-image.  At least, that's what all the experts keep telling me.

They say I should love me for me.  I should embrace my curves; every hairpin and harrowingly steep-sized one of them.

Better yet I should work it like I own it, strut my stuff, put a little swagger in my step.  Basically, I should show it all off with aplomb, confidence, and a hefty helping of attitude.

I don't do that in my regular clothes.  Most people I know don't do that either.

So as we now enter into one of the most disheartening and irritating times of the year, fear not fellow ladies.  For no fluorescent lightening, flimsy fabric, or forceful sales girl can keep us down.

Go ahead, girls.  Get moving and go gracefully towards that good night ....uh, I mean ....towards that rack of swimsuits at your local department store or boutique. The inanimate and microscopic sack of quick drying spandex might make you testy but it's not going to bite.  That's what the May flies, gnats, and overpriced frozen drinks are for.

See all of you bathing beauties out on the sand this summer.  I’ll be the one covered up to my neck in it.

Staying Still

"Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true."- W.R. "Dean" Inge; Anglican Priest and Cambridge Professor (1860-1954)

 I am hardly, if ever, bored.

 I don't know if it it's because I love to read (anything), eat (same answer), nap (anywhere), daydream (all the time) or just plain think.

 I am perfectly comfortable doing nothing- as my motto for these past few decades is time wasted is not wasted time.

 I don't worry if the early bird eats the worm, I miss the midnight train, or the world passes me by.

 I am not really in an all out hurry to get anywhere.

 I have always been comfortable with where I'm at in the moment.

 My children.  Not so much.

When I was their age, when I was bored, I would pick up a volume of my grandfather’s collection of burgundy colored hard-covers-Shakespeare’s As You Like It, was one of the first plays I ever read.  I would look for signs in the clouds during the day; the big dipper and fireflies at night.  I ate crabapples from their backyard and flung the skinny cores over the fence so their neighbor’s goat had something to eat.

I never complained.

My girls are evidently not on the same page; the one mapped out of my childhood.  Theirs is a much different narrative.  I often wonder where I went wrong.   

See, they are bored at the drop of the hat, let down by the shake of the empty cereal box, and dejected at the dreaded depleted power button on their wireless palm held players of DVD’s.

There is no doubt I am doing them a disservice.  If anything, I want them to grow up knowing the world owes you not a damn-excuse my language-thing.  It’s up to them to seek out adventure, fill up their proverbial cup, and let the tides of life soak through them.

I want them drenched and wet.  Not scared to go out into the rain.

So, I am going to change a few things up, shut down the whiny, relentless sleepovers, put the ke-bosh on all the complaining, and will- from this day forward- refuse to be privy to their demands to be entertained 24-7.

I survived.

Didn’t you?

So, for me, I implemented …..  The Bored Jar.

It’s simple, really.  Whenever your dependents complain there isn’t a single thing on God’s green earth to do- have them stick their little hand in this:  A mason jar, tin can, or shoe box (really, anything will do) filled up with the following “random” choices written in stubby crayons on torn-off pieces of scrap paper.  Here’s a quick example:

·         Play Lego’s with Mom for hours, after which she will clean the whole mess up, make you cookie’s and care-less about what time you go to bed.

·         Organize, with absolutely no help from anyone over the legal age of 18, the entire house full of Lego’s into color coordinated bins, labeled to size and description, including all classification and lamentation of said instructions.

·         Two hours with any craft-any time-extra glue-moderate glitter with zero complaining of “remember the last time you did that, it took a good 5 inch chunk out of my Oriental rug.”

·         Two hours of peeling two years of super glue off the table, vacuuming a decade’s worth of sparkles from the carpet, and cleaning all the toilets and litter box to boot.

Even the 12 and under set know that’s a crap shoot-it’s 50/50.  It’s the equivalent of thinking you’re going in to construct a fairy princess or a matchbox hot rod out of a few pipe cleaners, a handful of tooth picks and spun sugar, only to be folding the whites, sifting out your winter socks, and wondering what is Mom (since you had to scrub and wash the fridge) cooking for dinner.

Mine, I shake that Bored Jar and they are out playing ball in the cul-de-sac in a New York minute.

Where they should be.

If I can teach them anything, while I still have them, it’s to: be still but still seeking, be contemplative but never complacent, stay reflective in spirit so they may always shine, and lastly, be spontaneous but wise so they will find what they need and be happy with what they have.

Bored is, like everything else, a word…not a state of mind. Beauty and Truth…words, too…but in their natural stripped down essence.  Well, those are for my girls to find. 

Happy Hunting.

Now, go out and look for them.

Everything's Coming Up Daisies

Spring has sprung.

Then clocks were flung- when some of us realized we’d lost an hour’s worth of sleep.

Where does the time go, really?

 If only I could find it, I’d like to get some of it back, please.  And it’s not like I’m asking for too much.  It’s only time, after all…not carb-free calzones, roomier airplane seats, or world peace.

My oldest daughter, who refuses, like me, to grow up, always seems to have the right answer for questions such as these.

Her: “We need magic beans.  Are magic beans in season?”

Me: “I don’t know.  Let’s Google it.”

See, Livi, because she is so acutely aware of her surroundings, is in no hurry to hurl herself directly into the harm’s way of life.

If you were to tell her- go on, the world is waiting for you- she’d ask if it’s some sort of trap.  You know, a place filled with heartbreak, hunger, unrealistic health care premiums, and 5 dollar gallons of unleaded gasoline.

I get you, sister.

I, like you, want to live in a slice of space where joy is eating Chick-Filet Polynesian sauce with your finger, love is unconditional, and freedom is sleeping in and watching Saturday morning cartoons while eating buckets of Captain Crunch topped with whipped cream.

Sometimes when I watch Livi turning cartwheels barefoot in the grass, her long wavy hair trailing behind her, she reminds me so much of my Aunt Beverly.  I adored her as a child. 

I adore her still. 

As the wife of my mom’s youngest brother, Beverly seemed more of an older cousin to me even though she was 19 years older.  On the weekends we would drive to Colbert, GA, I couldn’t wait to see her making the hour and a half drive seem twice as long.  As soon as you were sprung free from the car, she would chase you around and around the house, tickle you until you were utterly exhausted, and let you brush her lush long, blonde hair for hours on end without complaint.

Beverly was light and air and pixie dust.

She was beautiful.

She loved daisies, too.  I remember them in vases at her house, loosely arranged and lovingly picked.  They embodied her, as well, with their simple elegance and innocent beauty.  Like Beverly, they signify kindness, patience, loyalty, and love.

I still think of her whenever I see a daisy.  And if I were to close my eyes, I can picture her running through the woods, laughing, her long blonde hair flowing behind her, forever young. 

See, I never did get to see her grow old.  She lost her battle with breast cancer at 38 years-old, when I was a freshman at Georgia.

She never got to see her two young kids, Kimberly, 11, and Chris, 9, grow into adulthood, either.

Time, that tick tock span of inevitability, can be cruel, sometimes too. Well, a lot of times…..if we’re honest.

But what if that makes the young at heart, the youthful spirits, the Beverly’s of this world the wisest of us all?

What can we learn from those who have the insight and sensitivity to know the heartaches and pains of life, but instead embrace the joys and small wonders of the world all the same?

Her son, Chris Butler, is getting married here on the island at the King & Prince on the 30^th of March.  It’s hard to believe time has flown by so fast. 

If I could say anything to Chris and his bride-to-be, Erin, it would be to enter into your new lives together with the same wild abandonment, love of life and curiosity as your mother.

I’m reminded of the song Forever Young written by Bob Dylan around the time Beverly was 18.  He wrote this after taking a break from touring and had become a father: 

 

“May God bless you and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young.”

 

“May you grow up to be righteous

May you grow up to be true

May you always know the truth

And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong

May you stay forever young.”

 

“May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young.”

 

Congratulations, Erin and Chris.  May your song always be sound, honest, pure and full of light and lots of love.

And once you walk the aisle and stand together, ‘building your ladder to the stars’, just know how proud she’d be of the both of you. Together. Always.