June 29, 2010
This has been an experience.
Of course, the nerd in me got all giddy and googley eyed when I thought about going back to school for the summer. I was making lists and filling up my planner before I’d even gotten accepted into the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Project’s Invitational Summer Institute. (Just typing that long title makes me feel all important and smarty-pantsy. I’m not really. I just feel like I am.)
Anywho, I eventually did get accepted (typed letter. on letterhead. in a fancy envelope. SO important.) and I got to use all of those lists I’d made and I got to pack my life into a laundry basket and put it in the backseat of a car that cranked right up (unlike that 1995 model Mazda 626, may she rest in peace).
In no time, I was driving onto the campus of MSU for my second stint as a student in Starkville, MS. Sure, I was a little more world-wise and I little less fraternity row and do-I-look-fat-in-this-animal-print-halter top obsessed, but I was still nervous.
Nervous about leaving The Hubs and our Beagle pup, nervous about my flowers dying of drought, nervous about pigging out on Papa John’s pizza and gaining 30 lbs (not that I would EVER, have EVER done something like that) nervous about walking into a classroom full of strangers, nervous about my ability to keep up a student paced life.
But here I am at the end of June on my last day of class headed toward 6 hours of graduate credit and an A to boot. My laundry basket’s in my backseat, my dirty clothes are in the floorboard, and the snazzy hot pink bedding my mother-in-law bought me is folded neatly, too.
Now, does anyone need a shower caddy? Shower shoes? Anyone?
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June 21, 2010
365 days make a year.
A year ago.
It’s hard to believe that I was sitting there, alone in that airport a year ago.
But I was.
It seems like eons and yesterday all at once. I can still conjure up the smell of rich, Colombian coffee with ease and although my Spanish has more gaps in it than I remember, I’m still able to speak up to help the Hispanic man in line at the post office who asked for stamps and keeps getting an envelope.
Inevitably, one of those things happens– the man in the post office, a picture of the mountains stuck in a book, the Spanish word in the middle of yesterday’s conversation, the synchopated step I sneak into The Swing.
And I am taken back there.
To that town in the Andes where morning fog is magical. To the one room apartment with a wall of windows. To a bar on the avenida with mis amigos, a band, and bottles of rum. To the fruit stand on the corner and the man that knows my name.
To that horrific bus that wound down the mountain that took me to that school on the hill with the bright yellow doors and bright brown faces.
I am taken back there.
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June 18, 2010
It had been nineteen glorious days of adventure and snacks and plans that failed. The three girls from Rice Hall, 6th floor had managed to survive a bound-for-vomit snorkeling trip and a lunch buffet of fried alligator and mystery meats of other origins on what should have been Granny’s Christmas table.
They stood there in the airport—the three of them– holding hands and holding back tears.
No words. None needed.
Three of them.
Waiting.
Two backpacks thrown over four well-traveled shoulders. One straw cowboy hat, bent and torn and weathered and seven million brand new memories between them.
Waiting.
“This is the final boarding call for flight 594 Sydney to Los Angeles. This is the final boarding call.”
And then there was one.
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June 17, 2010
The new highway came through Gran’s homeplace the first time in the 60s. The hayfield out front was bisected by two lanes of asphalt and cattle ambling were replaced by Mr. Ford’s moneymakers “driving like bats flyin’ die-rectly outta hell” as Gran says.
Thirty years later two lanes turned to four and twenty acres were barely five. But her house is still sitting there giving shelter to old memories and stories of children long since raised and days long gone by.
Today cars whiz by thoughtlessly in a hurry to get who knows where.
Just further on up the road.
Somewhere that’s not here.
Because here—time stops.
Gran and I are sitting in the porch swing– her arm around me, me nuzzled in the folds of her thick, wrinkled skin. Acorns fall haphazardly onto the rusting tin roof each ping waking us from our heat-induced stupor. The smell of cabbage cooking has managed to sit atop the humidity and ride the ceiling fan breeze.
“You wanna go in, sweet thang?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say and up we git.
“Mind them steps now, child.”
“Yes, ma’am, “ I say as I mind each cracking one. The floor creaks beneath Gran’s weight and I shuffle along behind her.
“Go on and set the table now and set it good.”
And I do.
Plates. Silver– mismatched at best. Napkins. The tea pitcher– full and fresh and sweating on the outside.
Gran, in her slow, deliberate way, lays out our Sunday dinner spread. Roast and rice, that strong smelling cabbage and rough-as-the-Rocky-Mountain-tops biscuits.
We’re family here like we are in every other place. But at Gran’s heavy leaden table, we’re a family at rest in stiff wooden chairs.
We’re a family who bedazzles gossip with “bless her heart”s and “Lawd, help us all”s.
Here we are at home in deep-rooted histories, cotton-pickin’ stories, and old home place memories. Here we are full as ticks on squirrel dog collars. Here we are anxious children on birthday mornings.
Gran’s making us wait again. She does that a lot. Her familiar hand is holding firmly to that old metal cake top– keeping the treasure beneath it hidden for a moment more. We all pretend that we don’t know what’s there, but we do.
Twenty years working in the public school cafeteria have made her a master of many things, but her specialty is mounded beneath that metal top. Saltine crackers with peanut butter on one side, salty, creamy, and crunchy topped with a marshmallow- fluffy, white, and melted to that point right before brown. Another Saltine sits on top and has been smushed until the marshmallow just peeks out the sides.
Finally, she lifts that lid and we smell her secrets, her stories, her love. We each wait our turn, afraid of a good Gran scolding, and wait on the word. “Go on, now. Eat ‘em up,” she says and we do.
Marshmallows stretch out in front of mouths and cracker crumbs fall onto her sagging floor, but no one notices.
Because here—time stops.
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June 17, 2010
We are head strong and gentle. Loving and crude.
We are courageous and meek. Beautiful and scorned.
We are temperamental and stoic
And a river meandering through a shaded place.
We are reckless abandon and silliness
A flower bursting with pack-of-Skittles blooms.
We are mushy in the middle places and hard around the heart.
Calloused hands and ungroomed eyebrows
telling the stories of yesterdays.
A wanna-be-hippie and a shotgun wedding.
A yes, sir-no ma’am history and a passport-full-of-stamps future.
A monogrammed teacher tote on a made-for-backpacks shoulder.
A used-to-be-surfer and an ought-to-be-loner.
A weepy, celebrating, wondering, settled nomad of sorts.
Searching.
Longing.
Making.
Finding
out the many things.
We are.
I am.
What are you?
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June 10, 2010
So, I’m in this writing workshop. And it has been proven to me– over and over again– that I’m not nearly as smart as I thought I was.
Grammar and language and mechanics have always been things that I just knew. I couldn’t name parts of speech or figures of speech or diagram a sentence to save my life. I couldn’t point out a participial phrase even if you told me to do so or I’d never have chocolate again. And a base clause? Puh-leeze. Nominative modifier? Get over yourself. I ain’t gotta clue.
I mean, really? I write. And if I’m lucky it sounds okay. Sometimes.
Back toward the topic, I’m in this writing workshop and I’m learning all of these things. And I don’t hate it.
Just like I didn’t hate the color of my laundry room the first (of 4) times I painted it. Just like I didn’t hate The Hubs after our first (I-meant-to-be-our-last that turned-into-forever) date.
And again, back to the topic. That’s part of the MS writing rubric: staying on topic. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Bet you did know that I’d fail miserably if someone assessed this bad boy right now.
Ahem. Last try. Here goes.
This word and grammar nerdiness– I’m digging it. So, yesterday we had these two guest speakers, highly published in educational writing, world renowned in instruction, beautiful ballroom dancers, come and share with us the effectiveness of using cumulative sentences in writing.
“Cuma que what?” I thought to myself. But it turned out, I loved it. Adored it.
Used it.
And you’re going to tomorrow. Just you wait.
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June 10, 2010
“If there’s a thug within a hundred mile radius, you’re gonna date him,” Daddy told me late that afternoon. I tried to pretend like he wasn’t right, but I knew better.
Daddy was always right.
He was an about-to-be Marine– tall and handsome with hands as big as nighttime. Not Daddy, the thug, I mean. His truck growled and groaned like a retired and dying hound dog and I sat right over next to him in it as we drove down my parents’ curvy, gravel drive.
He lit a Camel one handed and I simultaneously choked back a gag from the stench and the heart that was in my throat.
I saw Daddy in the rearview mirror of that loud, gray Chevrolet. He was shaking his head just so and waving with one hand. A hand that was strong and rough from bread trays and tractor wheels.
A hand bigger than nighttime.
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June 7, 2010
Nimbly she played.
Quietly she sang.
Songs of river stones.
Stories of time.
The sounds echoed through the forest in their gentle way, each sweet trill leading him.
Toward her.
As she played.
Songs of river stones.
Stories of time.
Until the boy was there beside the moving water. Awestruck and frozen in his wonder.
Seeing her.
As she played.
Those songs of river stones.
Sweet stories of time.
Suddenly she is aware. Her pale blue sprite eyes seeing him seeing her.
Then she is gone.
And there shall never be
more songs of river stones
nor stories of time.
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June 6, 2010
Somehow I managed to weasel myself into this invitational summer writing institute. I’m in no way, form, or fashion of the intellectual capacity to be a member of this elite group, but I’m BSing with the best of ‘em.
My momma would be so proud.
Still, the institute has embedded within my day a time to write and I’m enjoying the journaling, editing, revising nerdiness. It’s fun to see my own handwriting again in my own notebook with scribbles and scratches polluting the pages. It’s all part of the process.
Or so they tell me.
Today we were given a picture. We studied it. We asked ourselves questions. We wondered.
“What if he found her on purpose?”
“I wonder what made those ripples in the water.”
“What if he’s lost?”
“I wonder…” “What if?”
And then, we wrote.
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June 4, 2010
Writing is one of those things that takes momentum. And time.
At least for me it does.
Honestly, I haven’t had much of either lately– I’ve been sort of stagnant. Stuck. Like water pooled in the low-lying corner of my daddy’s shop.
But just so you know, I’m fighting tooth and nail to get them back– that motion, those minutes– that give my writing voice.
And its hard.
But people keep asking me about it, telling me about it, pushing me about it.
“Emily, just write.” (Effin love you, Monda!) “If I pull up your blog one more time and don’t see something new, I’m coming after you!” (Chicago Cat at her best.) “Make it a habit. Make it your time.” (Howlie Baby’s my writing hero.) “Punkie, I check your blog 759 times a day. Ahem.” (A big hey to y’all in NOLA!)
“Earth to Emmm-a-lee! Are you still alive?!” (Fatty Munchers reign supreme. No pun intended.) “Em, I went to the county library today. Mrs. Taylor misses reading your blog.” (Yes, Mom. I’m on it— and Hey, Mrs. Taylor!)
So, I’m here. Writing.
For you.
And for me, too.
Let’s hope there’s more of it.
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