This is the last regular post for me as the A to Z posts are lined up like little soldiers heading out into blog land. No overall theme, just observations and recollections, family stories tinted by time.
Now, if I could only figure out how to read as many blogs as possible….
My Reflection of the A-Z 2011 Challenge is being posted on the following site A-to-Z Challenge 2012
(Click on the purple letters!)
I encourage you to go there to see my thoughts and feelings about that tremendous Challenge.It forced me to grow as a writer, think outside my comfort zone, and meet new people.
Many thanks for Arlee Bird and his dedicated team for creating this new site!
Dorothy had seen the phantom bride of Bog’s Creek many times. She was only six when she had skipped towards the creek, seeing the shimmering white form with lighted candles in a silver candelabra. “Whatcha doin’?” Dorothy had called. The bride had disappeared in a mist.
Over the years, Dorothy had called to her. The bride would hesitate for just a second. Then she began to turn her head ever so slightly.
Each time, the bride remained just a little longer, turning her head just a bit more. The candles flickered and glowed.
When Dorothy was almost 20, she again went to Bog’s Creek. Twisting and turning the diamond ring on her finger, Dorothy’s steps were heavy and reluctant. The ring was heavy, a burden almost, and a reminder of her looming wedding.
As Dorothy stepped within arm’s reach, the phantom bride turned, looking full into Dorothy’s eyes. The candles illuminated her pale visage.
Dorothy gasped in recognition. “You! Your face is my face!”
The bride gestured to the water and then held out her hand. Hand and hand, Dorothy and the phantom bride descended into the water’s depths.
p.s. This is the third story in the Bride stories. It has been greatly entertaining, and challenging to look at the same photo three ways! Susan
wedding rings
wedding small stones
This is the html to copy into the 'source' or 'html' page of your blog post, to see how this looks click here.
Kaspa & Fiona have taken over my blog for today, because they
need our help.
They are both on a mission to help the world connect with the world
through writing. They are also getting married on Saturday the 18th of
June.
For their fantasy wedding present, they are asking people across the
world to write them a ‘small stone’ and send it to us using this form. You can also post the stone on your blog, or facebook or on twitter using the #aros hashtag.
A small stone is a short piece of observational writing – simply pay
attention to something properly and then write it down. Find out more
about small stones here.
If you’re willing to help, we’d love you to do two things:
1) Re-post this blog on your own blog any time before June the 18th and
give your readers a chance to hear about what we’re doing. You can
simply copy and paste the text, or you can find the html
here.
2) Write us a small stone on our wedding day whilst we’re saying our
vows and eating cake, post it on your blog, and send
it to us.
The past year has been hard for my family. Over the past 15 years, we lost two brothers, our father, and now our mother. The rural area that had been ‘home’ for generations dating back to the 1820s, now has no ties for us. When our mother died in April 2011, there went the last reason to return to the farmlands and small towns. Most probably, we would never again drive down those country roads we once knew so very well.
All this made me realize how truly wonderful life is in general, and my life in particular. The things and events that have made me stop and reflect have been small in the large scale of life, but significant. This list may not make sense to anyone but me, but here goes:
1. The smell of angel food cake baking.
2. The sound of a violin solo and getting goose bumps
3. The jasmine blooms winding over the front door
4. Holding hands with my husband in a dark movie theater
5. Churning homemade ice cream under a maple tree on a hot summer day
6. That first cup of coffee (or tea) in the morning
7. Holding a baby
8. Walking on the beach with the tide washing over my feet
9. Watching a smiling young couple pushing a baby stroller
“What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?”
courtesy of Bing.com
This is from Hamlet, and is one of the few lines I can remember from high school English class. It was an enigmatic line to me then, being all of fifteen years old, and having seen little of life or death.
Now, of course, that has changed. Life and death—those are much more real to me. You might be expecting me to expound on death and how it surrounds us all. Nah, I want to share dreams of life with you.
I taught first through eighth grades over a twenty year span. I restarted my teaching career when my youngest child began second grade. By that time, I was almost 37 years old, with a load of life experiences in my backpack that most of the younger teachers could not have had. My first class was a fourth grade class whose teacher had to take sick-leave mid-year. Up to the time I came, there had been 18/eighteen different substitute teachers who went and left after one day.
It was a rough class, a broken class. More than that, it was a group of 10-11 year old children who felt abandoned in the one safe place where they could count on being cared for and taught what they needed to know.
Not an endorsement--but it looks good.
God knows what we all need, and He certainly knew what these children needed: someone to love them, to slug it through, to stay the course with them.
To say that we endured and came out winners would be too light-hearted. It was a struggle, almost mental hand-to-hand combat. Each child had their own issues of pain, divorce, poverty, gang-pressure, and abandonment from home. They needed—no, they absolutely were desperate for someone to hold onto and to show them the door to a better world.
Teachers must be warriors for their students. I was a soft mother type, who made quilts and baked brownies, who taught Sunday school and played the church piano. But I was also a tenacious and stubborn woman, who saw into the hearts of these hurting kids. It was a daily test for all of us, and in the end, we were drawn together. On the last day of school, we were all teary eyed to see school end and our relationship to change.
Months before, I had entered that classroom as their adversary, another teacher whom they thought would leave them. My promise was that I was staying, and they were not going to be left with someone else. I kept my promise.
Now, I have dreams of my students, over 600 of them, in different situations with me as their teacher. Sometimes I am driving a bus on a field trip along a crazy Bolivian mountain road. Sometimes we are in a classroom put together in a bombed out bunker. In other dreams, teacher friends and I are going to somewhere like Haiti to set up classes for other abandoned children.
There are places I plan to visit, beautiful places.The National Geographic shaped my mind to desire to see these places for myself.
I must go to Yellowstone National Park.I don’t have to see Ol’ Faithful geyser, but I must see the mountains, the buffalo, and breathe the pine scented air.
I must go to Mount Rushmore, where someone with a great vision of what could be carved into granite and produced the faces of some of America’s most honored presidents.
I must go to Alaska, and gaze at ancient glaciers, listening to iceberg size pieces ‘calving’.
I probably will manage trips to these amazing natural wonders God created.
But, being greedy, I will wish for one more, knowing that I will never ever go there:Victoria Falls in Africa.Why won’t I go there?Well, I really do not enjoy plane travel, and Africa holds too many questions for me to feel safe, at this point of my non-adventurous soul.But, still I will always wonder about Victoria Falls.
After writing about “UP!” in the previous blog, it is natural for me to think about Victoria Falls, I suppose:V is for Victoria Falls.
To hear the thunderous roar of the water, to feel the spray of the mist rising up from the gorge, to follow the rainbow to its end--these things I will dream about some quiet night.
Thank you, Arlee Bird and your team.
Please check the link below to see what other bloggers dream about when considering the letter "V".
There are fragments of memories that float around in my head, things from the earliest years in Preacher’s Creek.Smells and sounds of a big family dinner, ham with scalloped potatoes.Being surrounded by giants, and seeing only their knees, or looking up their noses.My father’s soft aroma, being nestled into the crick of his elbow, while he read the newspaper.The security of my little sweaty hand in my momma’s warm hand, her fingers caressing the top of my fingers.
These quick snap-shot float through my brain with no words attached to them, only deep reactions of emotions to events that swirled around me, before I had learned words and could attach meaning.
But then, almost overnight, all those images settled like lime Jell-O in a refrigerator, going from hot sweet sticky liquid to a jiggling solid.All those fragments became a moving picture in which my family was the stars and Preacher’s Creek was our stage.
It was Memorial Day, I was told, and we went to the Hunter Cemetery.We spent a lot of time there, visiting headstones, laying out flowers, and telling stories about the dead people who were lying peacefully under the grass.
I had been given some pretty straight forward instructions, a face to face with Momma, where she looked deep into my eyes, with her hands on each side of my head.“Now, Ellen Jo Carter,” she had said.When she used the whole name, it meant serious business.“You are going stay right here, in this spot, and you will keep your clothes, your shoes, and your socks on.”Momma had covered all the bases here, which was important when dealing with a legalistic four year old.
I had tried her out, just to see if she was really paying attention to me when she moved on to another headstone, leaving me on that spot.Took off my shoes, and was just starting in on the socks, when swoop Momma came down from the sky, like a giant eagle snatching up a helpless baby lamb.SMACK!her hand descended on my scrawny cute little butt, leaving a pink hand print under my panties, the ones with little yellow chicks.
Tears never worked with her, I would learn over and over in the years I was with my mother.She pointed dispassionately, wordlessly, to my discarded shoes and lone sock.Whimpering and looking up at her with big pleading eyes, I went ahead and put them back on.I had been so close to clothes-free romping through the vibrant green grass of Hunter Cemetery.I would have left panties on, but everything else would have been tossed behind my great-grandmother’s headstone.
Placing my hand-pink butt on that spot, I gazed longingly at my two brothers, Ron and Kent.Ron was almost a giant, since he turned nine years old, and he knew absolutely everything, and he could even read.Kent was only a year older than I was, but he was a big kid.His slicked down black hair never moved a hair as he chased Ron, “I’m gonna get you this time!”His glasses were steamed up, so I don’t know how he thought he would have any luck catching Ron.
I swiveled around tenderly, the prickly grass grinding into the little yellow chicks, and faced my great-grandmother’s headstone.Tracing the carved letters, I had no idea that my name was the same as hers.
After the W.I.P. blogfest, I received so much feedback, that I felt invigorated to approach my book from a different angle. This is the result.
Many thanks! again to the A-Z Blogfest team.
Please hook up to the link below, to access the other entries!
The dictionary is one of the favorite bound books in my house.I have always randomly looked for interesting words.That, of course, made me a bit of an oddity in rural environments.I looked for the words with the most syllables, words with the fewest vowels, words that had a Latin base, etc.But I never looked for the words that scared me the most.
Through intense research and years of child-experience, I have found the ONE word that absolutely sends chills through me.It is the word, “OOPS!”Its close cousin is “OH, NO!”, and a first cousin-once-removed is “UH-OH!”
I can feel you all nodding, because you understand.Anytime someone says either of those words, and it is heard from another room, a variety of images pop up.An old vase inherited from a great-grandmother, who received it from Queen Victoria?On the floor in pieces, and your cat saunters away.The Hans Solo limited edition something-or-other?The four-year old boy leaves in a blur, as he runs out the room, a leg in each hand.The fantastic Italian veal something that you spent a fortune of time and money on, and which you are taking to a very important dinner in five minutes right after you change your clothes?Spilled all over the living room carpet, by some one who thought he/she would help you by loading it in the car, since you are fifteen minutes late and he/she is really pissed off at you for taking so long.
Or, how about this?You just spent a few hours on a re-write of a re-write, creating a query letter to the publisher, who expressed extreme interest in your writing.You hear the famous “OOPS!” and rush in to find your coffee spilled over the keyboard, sparks flying, and the computer crashing, while your teary-eyed child/grandchild/spouse/casual friend/beloved friend/neighborlooks blankly up at you.
Oh, yes.Forget about names of monsters, diseases, horrific imagined events.On the everyday level, where we usually operate, the scariest word of all is “OOPS!”
Many thanks to Arlee Bird and his awesome crew of fellow bloggers. Please go to the following to check out other posts!
No, not the Stratford-on-Avon, although that would also be a good choice for the April 1st post.
I am talking about Avon, the maker of women’s cosmetics.
At least, it used to sell only women’s cosmetics. That was back in the 1960s, when I was a
child. Living in a rural community where cornfields surrounded our farm on all sides,
and shopping was something we did on Saturdays at the local grocery store in our small
Thank you, Toulouse!
town, cosmetics were a rarity in our house.
Then the Avon Lady came on the scene. She visited our house, with her catalog of lipsticks, lotions, perfumes, facial cream, and whatever. She carried a sharp briefcase that opened out to display the rainbow selection of everything. I stood behind my mother, looking over her shoulder, and audibly gasped whenever Mom took a minute tube of lipstick and streaked it across the back of her hand. It only took two or three streaks before she selected a color, and placed her order. Mom always chose a vivid red.
Then we kept the sample miniature lipsticks.
To some this may seem a “So what?” But, in 1960 in a remote rural setting, cosmetics
were not widely available or commonly used. Grocery stores sold groceries, meats, and
the personal items like shampoo and Kotex. (The Kotex boxes were wrapped in brown paper bags, for discreet purchases.) Drug stores sold health items and some make-up.
Cosmetics didn’t have a big following.
The Avon Lady knocked at doors, and transformed the lives of farm women and small town housewives nationwide. They looked forward to the Avon Lady’s visit, and a chance to sit down with someone else besides the farmer husband. With coffee and pie
on the table, ladies of the house (and their daughters) saw how they could look, and it was a touch of glamour.
I salute you, Avon Ladies of the World.
Many thanks to Arlee Bird and your amazing crew, for having such a great idea, and being the instigators! http://tossingitout.blogspot.com
There are few foods in the world that I truly enjoy. Yes, it is absolutely true. I have become jaded in the food arena, whether it’s an indicator of a health problem, or if it is simply true that food is food, some better than others.
When I think back, I remember the first professionally made pizza I tasted. It was in the fall of 1972, in Carlinville, Illinois. Before that event, the only pizzas I had eaten were the box mixes called ‘Appian Way’ or something. But, this 1972 pizza had the best of all elements that make great pizzas.
Why can’t I feel that way again?
I even re-heated leftovers and ate them for breakfast.
I remember my first bite of “Christmas Pudding”. It was Christmas of 1985. Oh, my goodness. And it had hard sauce.
Why can’t I recapture that taste and wonder?
However (there is always a however, isn’t there?), there is one particular product, put out by the Girl Scouts of America:
Life is good
The Thin Mint cookie!
I hear you out there saying, “YES! Sing it, sister! Hallelujah!”
As I sit here polishing off a box I found in the freezer, bought a month ago, I am relishing every single crumb of the Thin Mint. How could I not? The Thin Mint has all the elements of fine cuisine. The texture is smooth, and then crunchy. The mint flavor slowly invades the taste buds. The chocolate goodness lingers in the aftertaste
In checking the nutrition facts, it is low in carbohydrates, has zero cholesterol, and zero trans fats. There is even a little protein thrown in, alone with some iron. The ingredients are typical lingo facts, but there is cocoa and oil of peppermint, which is basically all I need to know.
After all these years of eating Girl Scout Cookies, the thrill is still there.
We went to the Getty Art Museum north of Los Angeles on the day of the huge rainstorm. We sat restaurant, eating our sweet potato fries, and watching the water.
My husband John bloviated about natural disasters, rambling on about weather. We told the waiter Henri that we would like the braised rabbit and deep fried fuliguline to be served now.
My son-in-law Richard perused the wine list and selected a nice Sonoma Valley merlot. “It will cut through the gaminess of the rabbit like a hot blade,” Richard explained in his refined English accent. We nodded in understanding.
John’s napkin fell unnoticed to the floor. I watched that napkin, almost shaking with my compulsive nature to pick it up and strangle him with it. He finds this compulsive habit annoying.
The wine came, and Richard did the oenophile thing. He nodded his approval. Henri came with the heavy tray of our order and prepared to place the steaming plates on the table. That was when he stepped on that damn napkin and slipped, falling to the carpet with the entire order.
It is my nature and an essential character trait to help and be compassionate. So I leaped from my seat, and began mopping up the floor with my own napkin. I picked up every last morsel; call it a quirk, but once I start something, I have to finish it.
With a new order on the way, my daughter Mary commented on a William Hopper piece in the gallery. Visiting an art gallery is my idea of heaven, and we began talking about the different paintings. She noticed I was squirming uncomfortably. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. Looking around, I whispered back, “ Hemorrhoids!” I answered. There, she knew my secret.
I may have revealed something about me that isn’t true; can you guess what it is?
