Day 3: C is for Cousins
Growing up, I didn’t have girl cousins for quite awhile. In fact, since my mother and father only had one sibling each, we didn’t have a huge extended family anyway. Because I have four sisters, however, my own children and theirs have hit the cousin jackpot.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the nuances of kinship. I didn’t figure out the principles of “third cousins, once removed,” until we had a guest speaker at school whose name was Edgar Allan Poe. He was able to explain the principles as he traced his own kinship to the famous author. Over the years, I have accumulated a treasure trove of cousins this way.
From the time I was a little girl, I idolized Christy and Cathy, my mother’s first cousins, hence my first cousins, once removed. One of my favorite pictures has the two of them standing beside a chair where little baby me sits between their two baby dolls of the same size. They were just old enough for me to adore them. When my sister Amy and I played make believe, we often pretended we were Christy and Cathy. As we’ve gotten older, I see that weird principle of aging that makes people closer to the same age. Five or ten years is a huge difference in childhood, but barely worth noticing in adults. Now, even though we live states apart, we are able to keep up, to share pictures of our children and grandchildren, as well as old pictures we uncover of our grandparents.
My next cousin discovery was a teaching colleague. In the small school where I began my teaching career, I covered all sophomore and seniors; Karen taught seventh and eighth grade, as well as art. We were able to travel together to the NCTE conferences several years in a row, allowing us to bond over books and food and museums. We hadn’t spent much time together before teaching, but Karen’s maternal grandfather was a brother to my great grandmother. In fact, when she found an old tattered quilt that their mother had made–weaving the backing herself and dying with walnuts–she brought me some pieces, which I framed for me and for my grandmother. Sharing interests as well as history cemented our cousinship.
The most serendipitous cousin discovery, though, occurred in Chicago (she remembers it as Atlanta) at another NCTE conference. Standing in line for lunch, I struck up a conversation with the women beside me, and as our conversation naturally led to where we were from, I learned that she had family–no longer living–from my hometown. Something made me persist, wanting to know who. Putting two and two together, we realized that her grandfather, as a young widower, had married my great grandmother (the same one from Karen’s line). My Mama and Papa Cheatham were Sandy’s Mama and Papa Cheatham. That made us–well–first step cousins, once removed.
At least fifteen years have passed since our chance meeting, and Sandy and I keep in touch regularly. I live in North Carolina, and she lives in New Mexico now, but she’s visited my home, and I’ve been to hers. From the first conversation through each visit or phone call, we feel more and more like real cousins. We have taken writing classes online together; we are both participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, and we email or call each other often.
We may not have spent Thanksgivings and Christmases together or competed in egg hunts, but I think we have this cousin thing working for us.
Day 2: Books
“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” –Anna Quindlen
For me today, the B is a no-brainer. I have loved books as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, my Easter basket held Nancy Drew mysteries instead of stuffed bunnies. I still have letters from childhood friends in which we exchanged notes about what we’d been reading. I spent hours in the summers at the public library, working my way through all the books by my favorite authors. I remember being so disappointed to learn that Daphne Du Maurier was not going to be writing anything new.
Even in high school and college, I can remember hiding books behind my textbook or in my lap during classes. Not having time to read was never an excuse. I made time to read. I still do.
I tend to develop an attachment to my books, wanting to own the ones I love. Consequently, I now have books in every room of our house. My bedroom shelves hold most of my signed books, many I collected at readings and conferences. My poetry collection is there as well. In my office, the shelves hold all the books I own from my years of book club. My craft books (quilting, photography) are there, along with the plays, particularly all my Shakespeare. My YA novels are on the office shelves. I also have the classics, many of them paperbacks I taught in English classes. My favorite copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Huck Finn, and Cold Mountain are all held together by rubber bands and marked heavily.
Sometimes I consider the possibility of culling them shelves, seeing about selling some of the books to which I feel less attached. When I try to sort them, though, I usually end up sitting in the floor in front of the shelves, flipping through the pages, trying to decide what to read next.
A to Z Blog Challenge: Day 1 A is for April
No, Mr. Eliot, April isn’t the cruellest month–unless, of course, you county the income tax deadline–or allergies. I’ve always liked April, the month of my “half birthday.” I prefer the moderate seasons autumn and spring so much better than the heat of summer or the cold of winter, and since I’ve spent most of![A2Z-BADGE-000 [2015] - Life is Good](https://alabamatarheel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/a2z-badge-000-2015-life-is-good.jpg){kind=icon}
my life living by the school calendar, spring means summer vacation is near. As soon as the daffodils (or as we always called them in Alabama, buttercups) push through the ground and the hyacinths bloom, as soon as I can pull my sandals out of the closet and put away my real shoes, I’m a happy woman.
Every April for the last 8 years, I’ve also participated in Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem a Day Challenge on Poetic Asides, where I’ve made so many poet friends from around the world.
This April, even though I maintain my book blog, Discriminating Reader, I plan to use this blog site for more personal posts. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how many women, like me, are reaching those years when calling it “midlife” is perhaps misleading (unless I plan to live to 116, which I do). With all the “mommy” blogs these days, I’m interested in our particular demographic–with children and grandchildren and jobs and hobbies, bucket lists far too long to complete in this lifetime. During this A to Z challenge, I think that’s the direction I plan to take: the mid-menopause set, proud of the silver in our hair or beholden to Lady Clairol. Either way is great.
For now, I have to think of an April Fool’s Day joke that will work. No one buys my standard “Guess what? I’m pregnant!” anymore.
Yeah, yeah, the book was better!
I know sometimes I’m just contrary, telling people I just don’t care that much for television. Honestly, I could live without one. When my husband is out of town (or the house), I just don’t turn it on. I know I could probably find lots of shows that would get me hooked, but I just haven’t–and I haven’t missed it. I will admit that I watch Jeopardy regularly (almost on the level of Rain Man and Judge Wapner), but not much else.
Movies are about the same. I like the experience of going to the movies: popcorn and Cokes that cost most than a nice meal out, the forty-five previews before the real show begins. Actually, that’s the part I don’t like.
Nevertheless, I fell into the Facebook trap today and started clicking on the right side of my page where all the movies appear with the question, “Have you seen this movie? Yes? No?” The problem is that I know I’m feeding some kind of unreliable information about myself to invisible marketers somewhere. These kinds of questions don’t tell anybody much. They are more like Scantron tests instead of essay tests.
Just because I’ve seen a movie doesn’t mean I liked it; just because I haven’t seen a movie doesn’t mean I wouldn’t. Clicking away, I didn’t respond to some–simply because I didn’t like the lead actor perhaps. More often, though, I wanted to add comments. Some movies I’d seen so often I could quote the lines with the actors. (That, by the way, was the subject of the poem I wrote for Poetic Asides this week.) Others I have seen only because nothing else was on television, and I wasn’t driving the remote control.
These days I tend to avoid rather than seek about movies based on books I love. I have also realized that the remake of any movie I love will fail to measure up. I’m sure I’m showing my age when I prefer Robert Redford’s Gatsby to Leo’s, for example.
I will, however, watch To Kill a Mockingbird, O Brother! Where Art Thou? or Dr. Zhivago–any of those old favorites that stand on their own, whether they make me cry (just a little) or laugh at loud. Maybe one of these days, I’ll even figure out how to find a good movie at the Redbox!
On Class Reunions
I’m a great fan of reunions. It may be part of my gregarious nature, but I’m always game when someone suggests, “Let’s all get together.” I went close to twenty years without missing my college homecoming (and only started missing when they stopped offering anything for the alumnae for awhile). I haven’t been as consistent with high school reunions because I changed schools in tenth grade and then skipped my senior year. I have continued to attend the reunions of my former school with the people I have known since first grade. In fact, last year, I even attended (and played mandolin at) the reunion of the class ahead of mine, since we’d spent several elementary school years in a “split class”—half them, half us.
Facebook offers even more opportunity to reunite—not just out in cyberspace but in real time. A few years ago, some of my hometown friends and family decided to plan a reunion of members of the church where my father preached when I was a teenager. The congregation had changed buildings and names, and many of the former members had gone elsewhere, but with a little Facebook planning, we managed to bring together about 250 people for an event since repeated.
Last weekend, my husband and I traveled to Nashville, where we both attended college, for the fortieth class reunion for his year (1974) and for the class of 1975. Evidently, the group didn’t have a lot of advanced planning time and decided combining the two years made sense. It certainly did for me, since I had graduated in 1976 but knew as many people from his class as from mine. In a brilliant stroke of marketing, the planners mailed reminder post cards shortly before the event that announced: “Guess who’s coming?” and then listed the names of the couples—quite a few of them—serving as hosts. This assured us that we wouldn’t be the only ones to show up and that, indeed, many of our old friends (and I use the term “old” in both senses of the word) would be there.
While our mood getting ready for the evening was a few notches below the anticipation level of prom, for example, we still had those questions—What should I wear? Can I lose ten pounds in a week? Will we recognize the others? Will we be able to see the name tags without looking obvious?
No need to worry. When we arrived, the woman at the registration desk was the wife of a former roommate of my husband. The next person who spoke up asked my husband (and subsequently told the story to everyone else there), “Do you remember when you saved our lives? Did you ever ride a motorcycle again?” While I hadn’t seen many of these college friends in almost forty years, some are Facebook friends. We didn’t have to catch up on children and grandchildren; we’d seen the pictures. We didn’t have to cast a sly glance at the name tag first.
Ten-year reunions—especially ten-year high school reunions—can be tense affairs. Everyone still feels there is something to gain or lose. Some old cliques are still in place. Levelling has not yet occurred. With the passage of more time, though, I think, reunions become much more fun. Everyone can laugh about our former, younger, naïve selves. The wallflowers have often bloomed. Often, he Homecoming queen and the football quarterback have seen their better days. (Rob Lowe’s caricature of himself “peaked-in-high-school Rob Lowe” doesn’t stray far from the truth.) By the time forty years have passed, we are all glad to be alive, to have survived. We have pictures of our children and grandchildren to share. Talk of retirement enters the conversation. We have stories to tell—the ones our families tired of long ago but that this fresh audience is ready to hear repeated.
I can’t wait to see what’s happened to the Bicentennial class of 1976.
Back to School
I’ve already heard the buses run through the neighborhood this morning, but since I’m catching a ride with a colleague today, I’m still sifting through the books and papers I need to wag to campus for the first day back. We won’t have students or classes until Thursday, but for now, the frenzy begins–putting together new syllabi for all my classes, evaluating what did and didn’t work last semester.
I most dread figuring out how to teach two sections of freshman comp (“Writing and Inquiry”) in three 50-minute classes a week, and the same course in one 1 1/4 hour class–especially since we’ve been teaching the same course five days a week until this school year. This semester, too, since we’re hosting our Writers Symposium, I get to work a 380-page work of nonfiction into the course as well. At some point, I need to finish reading it myself.
I wonder if students know that teachers face the beginning of a new school year or semester with the same anxiety they do. I honestly feel as if I develop new year’s resolutions twice a year–in January and in August: This year, I’m going to keep up with the paper load, I’m going to use fresh examples, I’m going to hold the line on late work. I’m going to inspire. I’m going to fight burn-out and avoid toxic faculty lounge conversations.
My greatest resources are my colleagues (although that number has dwindled considerably in the years of “doing more with less”). It helps to know that my own department supports one another. I experienced that firsthand last semester when I had to be out of school two weeks for my husband’s heart surgery. I also have good work friends in other disciplines–math, landscape and gardening, communications, music, and art. This semester, I’ve begun making plans with a few of them to take the time to start our days right, getting our heads in the right place, paying attention to what matters most.
I have always found ways to nurture my other interests–reading, writing, music, art, and exercise–and I don’t plan to stop that. Those are my survival techniques; they keep my brain firing on all cylinders.
I wonder if people outside of education return to work at the beginning of the year with the same mixed emotions. I’m sure accountants are feeling the approach of April 15. For furniture manufacturing, there’s another market in just a few months, and the new season’s fabrics are already piling up on tables. No wonder Baby New Year ages so fast every year.
For now, I just hope to remember to write 2015 instead of 2014. So far, I haven’t done so well.
It doesn’t have to be a part of my new year’s resolutions. I just need to get this house decluttered. After I removed most of the evidence of Christmas, I started on the guest room, which had served under duress as the gift-hiding-sorting-wrapping room for a few weeks now. It also happens to be one of the rooms in my house where I stash some of my craft projects. While it’s still not one-hundred-percent purged, it’s close. I need to do some picture hanging and to tote a few more bags or boxes upstairs (to the other places where I put my stuff).
Now, though, comes the big challenge: What to do with all these books. I have a full wall of bookshelves in my study and in my bedroom. I have a cabinet of books in the living room, and shelves in two or three rooms upstairs. I have resorted to double stacking. One would think that since I do quite a bit of reading on my iPad that my book stacks wouldn’t grow like they do; one would be wrong.
I can’t help it. I am a Libra. (Look it up: Same root words as library.) I just love my books. I do admit, though, that something has to be done. Maybe someone can help me figure out how to sell my duplicates at least online. The first step, of course, is deciding which ones I can let go. I’ve also tried sorting them differently, looking for a plan. While I should be thinning out the stacks, though, I find that I am instead just moving them around. I remind myself of a mother cat moving her kittens.
Since something has to be done, I’ve come up with a few solutions:
- This coming week (or however long it takes) will be my book amnesty days. Any book I find on my shelf that I identify as someone else’s will be returned with one stipulation: You cannot ask me if I read it or not. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. Most likely I meant to read them all—except for a couple I took just to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. I try not to do that. Rest assured that if I didn’t read it, I’ll write it in my book book—the list of books I will eventually read. For now, just be grateful you got yours back.
- I am also starting stacks of books to lend. Right before Christmas a box of books arrived in the mail. My books. They were returning after a short visit in Johns Creek, GA. Don’t worry, Beth. I have a new stack just for you. I also have found some books the grandkids are aging into. These I’ve moved up to “their room.” The only problem: Those shelves are already full of children’s books. Oh well.
- I have boxed up some devotional type books, Bible study guides, some for teens, some specifically for women, some for anyone. I’m taking them to church Sunday to share. I’ll leave my name tucked inside of each. Some may find their way back.
- I have a box of paperback classics—lots of Shakespeare, some others I’ve taught—with the notes penciled in the margins. Since literature has been gutted from the curriculum, I hardly need to put my hands on one copy of these, much less three or four. For the time being, I’ll store them upstairs until one of the kids in the family needs a copy for school, and I’ll start on the classics I haven’t read yet—or lately.
Maybe with a little shelf space loosened, if not emptied, I can organize better. Already, I have shelves of my signed books, my poetry books, books of and about music, books by favorite Southern authors, books on writing, books about reading, books of plays, Christmas favorites.
Once I get through this task, I plan to sit right down and start reading some more.
Putting Away Christmas
Both rituals belong to me—decorating for Christmas, taking it all down again. Just as I took over the checkbook temporarily twenty-eight years ago and I’m still doing it, the Christmas tree by default is mine. From time to time, I get a little help. When the grandchildren were too small to be any kind of real help, they helped, leaving the bottom of the tree heavy with ornaments, marking their height as surely as pencil marks on the closet door. Most of the time, though, I’m the one dragging the boxes out of the attic, testing strands of lights, lifting out each ornament, remembering its origin.
Never one for decorator trees, mine has the handmade ornaments—construction paper and Polaroid pictures from third grade, cross stitched and smocked ornaments marking my hobby phases. The Beatles, Shrek, and the Pink Panther hang alongside the Christ child. Many of the ornaments were handmade gifts, more beautiful because of the giver than for face value. Long ago, I learned that the best souvenir from any far off place is an ornament small enough to fit into my purse.
Some years—the alternating years when the kids go to the other grandmother’s house—few people even see the tree but us and the neighbors bringing the loads of sweets we swap back and forth. It’s more for me now. For us.
Taking everything down after the holidays is just as much work, though perhaps more satisfying because I can tell when I’m finished. I may find the occasional ball fallen and rolled beneath the sofa in February, but completion is obvious. When I decorate, I have a hard time making myself stop. I remind myself of my World Lit professor who looked as though she just kept putting on lipstick all day long until what was once the shape of her mouth began to resemble a circus clown’s. My tree’s like that too. Just a few more balls—the one from the Biltmore, the Christmas Story leg lamp that plays, “Fra-gi-le!” when I open its box.
Today I have no Christmas music playing. I’ve retired “O Holy Night!” and I’ve moved on to Jerry Jeff singing “Sangria Wine.” I give thanks that I inherited the tradition that leaving the tree up after New Year’s brings bad luck. I know folks who believe otherwise. I think their mothers just didn’t want to fool with the clean up yet. By the time I am cooking my hog jowl and collard greens, the house will be swept free of Santa figurines and rein deer. This year, I’ll even try to pack the tree skirt I uncovered too late in a place where I can find it next Christmas, so I won’t have to resort to using a tablecloth again next year.
Before I finish this wearisome ritual, before Max comes to drag the tree—a fire hazard now—out to his truck, leaving a trail of needles and glitter, I’ll read Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” and Davis Sedaris’ “Santaland Diaries” once more, evoking my favorite line from Steel Magnolias: “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.”
2014: Fresh Starts and New Plans
One thing we can count on about this time every year is an abundance of articles, cartoons, editorials and more about the unlikelihood of keeping New Year’s resolutions, generally a self-fulfilling prophecy. I resist that way of thinking and look for better ways each year–twice a year actually–to keep mine. I realize that many on this year’s list resemble all too closely items on last year’s list. I prefer to consider that tendency evidence of consistency.
My own list begins not only every January but every August as well. First as a student and then as a teacher, I get to start anew twice, especially living on a semester-by-semester schedule. Every year, I plan to do better, quit procrastination, put first things first. This year, this upcoming semester is no exception. I do believe in the wisdom of writing things down.
Just before 2013 began, I read a suggestion to keep a record of accomplishments all year, to be read at the beginning of the next year. I had been given a gift in a nice sized box with a clear lid and velcro closures that suited my purpose. All year long, I fed little slips of paper into my box, mostly minor triumphs, accomplishments, good deeds, happy circumstances. The stack that resulted feeds my desire to make the most of this new year too, seeing that while I may not have kept every resolution perfectly, I have measurable success, countable moments, days of happiness, love, friendship, music.
This year I’m trying to decide how to schedule some things I want to do in order to keep them manageable. Here’s the rough draft of my plan:
1. I want to submit at least piece of writing a week.
2. I want to practice music every day.
3. I want to read one chapter or article or essay on writing for motivation every week.
4. I want to write and mail one handwritten letter every week.
5. I want to improve my teaching, with a focus not on what I do, but on what my students learn to do.
6. I plan to start my McArthur’s daily Bible reading in the middle this year. While I plan to keep up with the Bible studies in which I am engaged with others, I want to finish what I started last year.
7. I plan to get ahead of the holidays before they overwhelm me this year. If I see a gift that is perfect for someone, I will buy it. If I hear a great gift idea, I will write it on my calendar. I will start early and finish without discouragement and disappointment.
8. I plan to start seriously looking at an MFA program in Creative Writing, following Ann Patchett’s advice in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.
9. I’m going to do things for fun, even if I have to do them myself. I let too many wonderful opportunities pass me by because I can’t enlist anyone else to join me. No more.
10. I plan to read The Happiness Project this year and write a companion devotional guide.
11. I am going to try new recipes and keep a record of them. (In fact, I’m going to look for the login for a wiki I started last year!)
Onward Through the Fog
This photograph inspired my poem for the December 4, 2013 Poetic Asides prompt (fog). When we visited the unusual graveyard in Madrid, NM, we were amazed at the markers and mementos left behind (and untouched–and unstolen).
Alabama Tar Heel 