rolling in clover

I think somewhere along the line, we must have had some great great grandpapa or grandmammy that had a knack for burning food because quite a few people in our family have a tendency to do that...Well, when I say a lot, I mainly mean Christopher and myself , but still.
He's gotten better over the years, but today I burned my lunch to a crisp and never thought a thing about it until I smelled a pungent odor drifting through the house and jumping up, I ran into the kitchen, though by that time he'd already dealt with the bread, opened the doors, turned on the fan and was working on his car. Sweet brother. We decided to play in clover. After all, what's burnt toast to clover?
Spring - even glimpses of it - are invigorating. Alive and healthy and sweet. I love a spring.

tea track

Brothers were a great invention. I happen to have three exceptional ones and one day this brother took a sister for a birthday outing. They had toast, sunshine, chocolate and tea. Surprises are his forte and Chris has always been a little unpredictable.
When we all lived together in the grey submarine, he would sometimes walk out of his room on his way to work with a suitcase. I remember one day him doing so and my asking where he was going. He said simply, "France" and walked out with a grin and a twinkle for the tide of girls that swept on him with shrieks and "but when are you coming back??"

"why are you going?" "have a wonderful time!!!" "but what about pick pockers?" And as he drove away he waved and honked to the grinning bunch of waving head shakers and jaw droppers on the porch.
Life and tea with this brother are neither typical nor predictable, but they are always an adventure.

Here's to 20

 

It's nice living in a big family. You always have company. As it happened, I got thrown into the line beside Anne, which has turned out to be quite convenient for we have a type of understanding: I amuse her, she keeps me in my senses. And in this fashion we both amuse each other. I like watching her because she's one of those people that can carry on a conversation and accomplish about 15 things during the course of a five minute exchange. She's like a little bee flying in and out very cheerfully all the while being quite diligent. She plays piano and draws and is one smashing cook; she concocts herbal medicinal teas and those who know her have probably been exposed to these teas and herbs (though Daddy almost refuses to forgive her for one instance concerning a friend and echinacea). I love being around Anne for lots of reasons but one is because she can make me laugh like no one else. She can take the driest subject, face, idea - and make it funny to me. I think I've laughed more with her than any one being on the planet. From barbies to homework to traveling and simply experiencing every day life, Anne and I love to laugh at and with each other. When she went to her first year of college, we girls all felt that we'd wither up for she is such a bit of sunshine and happiness to our garden that her absence is always noticed. Well, her birthday is tomorrow and she turns twenty. Moriah laments this fact sorely, pointing out the horrid prospects of being an old lady (for at twenty a girl pracically IS) and also that she will no longer be a teenager. But on the other side of the two decade mark, I look down from my pedestal of age and tell her to enjoy youth for the ag'ed like myself, know the bitter pangs of the frost of life. Mother, weeps with those who weep, however, and in sympathy sings,

'Seventeen last spring
Still without a ring
I'm past my peak
Look at this physique
Just hear the old bones creak
Where there was a glow
Now the wrinkles show
Where art Thou Romeo?'

And Anne - she's just chill. She smiles at our ridiculous crowing. But since she is the one in the family who is not going to create unnecessary drama, we have to do it for her.
Here's to 20, Annie, Ole gal.

the nowhere zone

This is what I call the nowhere zone. Do you know where that is? I don't exactly. I only know it's up in my mind and that I can get lost there many many times during the course of one day. It's where I "zone out" or daydream, and yet, when someone asks "what are you thinking about?" I never can say. It's as if - when that question is asked - some cord of thought or concentration is snapped. Then reality hits and I come from some abyss of nothingness to the present, where things are louder and busier and more colorful than the relaxed, quiet place I've been dazed into. If you've ever been to the nowhere zone, you know what I mean.
Well, it happens to Dawn too and I can recognize the same blank stare - a stare so far beyond anything within sighting distance that you can tell right off she's in the nowhere zone. So I got this when she was nice and dazy - she always is in the morning - especially when Daddy's built a fire.

Tine's de valen

It's Valentine's Day. And I love Valentine's Day. Why? Chocolates? Pink, red?
Yes - that too. Mama has always made this day fun because she will leave us notes and chocolates and gives us all lots of kisses and hugs. But I think I love this day mostly because it's a reminder to me. This morning I got up and was brushing my teeth when a bright red note, stuck to the top of my bathroom mirror, caught my eye. It was from Dawn and she had cut out and glued her card together. I read it. And then I cried. It was so simple and sweet. This day always brings to mind how very much I do not deserve all the love I have been given. I mean, not only has God loved me, but He then designed my life - before I was ever born - to be one full of love. I am surrounded by it at church and with my family and with my friends. It beats me as to why, but He allowed me to be immersed in what I have never deserved - what I never will. Love.

frog - leggin, johnny turner and riding bikes down chattanooga hills

"You know, we're a rare scene in America tonight." Daddy had been telling us stories of "frog legging" and how people would go out with lights at night at gather huge frogs and take them home to fry them and eat the legs. He told us stories from Chattanooga and how he and Johnny Turner would go out in the woods at the base of a mountain and spend hours traipsing around and how that one day they found a set of prisoner's clothes and jetted out of those woods. He told how he and Johnny would go up on a hill beneath the overpass and ride their bicycles down the road - and boy did they fly! Or how he and the boys would lie down on their skateboards and make a chain, latching on to the boy's head in front of them with their feet and rolling down the hill like that. "What if a car would come?" Merry asked, but Daddy just laughed and pulled up his sleeves saying, "Well, honey, how else do you think I got all these scars?" I had been scribbling in my account book of life and its adventures and I looked up to see what had prodded Daddy to say the bit he did about our being a rare scene. It seemed like an abrupt thing to say, so I took a look for myself. At one end of the room, there burned a fire - a nice big one that Daddy built (he builds the best fires). At his feet sat Merry lost in thought and Chattanooga and Mama sat on the other couch reading and interjecting bits from time to time. "You could get pickles at the park? - Oh we paid a dime for ours, but you say you got yours for a nickle? Well, the ones in Paris WERE awfully large. They were the biggest pickles in town." Moriah would come in from time to time and plop on the seat beside me and begin telling a dream, or an idea for a story she had and there was a great deal of laughter and of "pshawwing" while chuckling over something ridiculous and it was so very cold outside and so very bright and laughy and glowy inside that I began to see why Daddy had said what he did. He went on to say "Lots folks in America are stuck in front of a television and will be for a few hours yet." I'm glad. Glad I have a family. Glad I have a Daddy who builds fires for us and tells us stories and makes frog noises and gets red when he laughs. Glad he takes note of these mundane but rare scenes in our lives.

sn'bobbledoh.

Yesterday, I watched blue sky and sunshine fade into grey, downy clouds and a hazy overcast blanket of air. I went to bed last night with dark swirls above, but the ground was cold and bare. When I got up this morning (at four o'clock, but not by my choice - no no. Anne needed someone to drag her out of bed so she could study - don't ask me HOW she studies at that hour, but she does.) Well, as I walked -...no...blundered all wobbly and dazed into the kitchen to put on coffee, I looked out our window and saw our whole yard covered in snow. SNOW! Snow? Really? Yeah. So the fields and houses and trees were all covered with prettiness. Georgia weather. The thing that's nice about this, though, is that this lovely stuff comes and everyone gets excited and the local DG (pronounced by M. BELL's dictionary "deege") gets a heap of business - all the bread, milk and twinkies (the three most important elements in life apparently) are zapped by the beams of panic-stricken locals and then, the beautiful stuff leaves nice and quickly so that we can all mosey on to the drum of our puttering, contented lives where every DEEGE has milk, bread, and twinkies enough to spare.
I like snow. I like it like my Papaw likes his grandkids: he likes' em to come and he likes' em to go.