The Crab Chronicles

What Do You Love?

What makes life worth living? The people we love obviously have a lot to do with that. I think what we love plays a big part, too. There are certain sights, sounds, and smells that fill me with love, and make life worth living.

What inspired this blog? I won't lie, Sean's blog inspired me. If you want to get to know a person quickly, ask them what they love. Their answers will be very revealing.

Obviously there are people I love. Family, friends, my dog. I love laughing with an old friend. This draws us together as much as anything, laughing at the same things. 

OLD PHOTOS

Time travel is real. I feel it every time I look at an old photo. Below, my mom Elva at age 16, already looking glamorous and gorgeous. The photo on the right is me, about age 13 or 14, up at our cabin on Douglas Lake, with my dad. We must have been up there for a while for Dad to be bearded. He always grew a beard on vacation. The little girl was a friend's child.

BISCUITS

I never realized until I grew up and arthritis claimed my mom's hands that the sight of her making biscuits with White Lily flour and buttermilk is one of the greatest memories of my childhood. I can't make a decent biscuit to save my life, which makes the memory of her biscuits all the more magical.

 

LOOKING AT WATER

There is something magical and soothing about looking at the vast expanse of a lake, the incessant rush of ocean waves on the shore, even the movement of a creek. My brother and I put my dad's ashes into a swiftly moving creek out in the country on a beautiful sunny November day, and we laughed and reminisced about him. Water is soothing. Water is healing. No wonder baptism is such a powerful experience.

 

KISSING LOLA'S HEAD

Few things in the world are softer or more velvety than the top of a Basset Hound's head. When I get to heaven I will revel in kissing the heads of all the sweet Basset Hounds that have preceded me. (Do not tell me there are no dogs in heaven. You would be wrong. Dogs are pure love.)

 

THE SMELL OF THE STREETS AFTER A RAIN

I don't know why this smell affects me so much. I think of being a child, feeling outrageously happy because the rain is over and Mama will now let me play outside, and maybe I can splash in the puddles when she isn't looking.

I remember one day walking up to the door of the building where I lived when I was in graduate school, and it was a hot day and we had just had a downpour. The steam was rising off the street and the smell was intoxicating. Then I got near the side door of building and smelled another favorite smell - laundry. Don't laugh. I love the smell of clean laundry. It's homey and comforting.

Those were such hard days, trying to work thirty hours a week and take three classes every semester. There was no time for fun, so I appreciated little boosts where I could find them.

 

WRITING

I can sit at my computer and write the scenes my imagination conjures up and express so many things I just can't express any other way. It's a very healing activity, writing. Now that I'm not afraid to try writing novels, it's so freeing. I can write pages and pages and then if I later decide they don't work I can cut them and not feel bad. Everything has to serve the story and the story reveals itself in its own time.

Check out my new novel, Leaf Season, if you're looking for a good read. If you prefer short stories, check out a new anthology available on Amazon that has one of my short stories in it -- Family Friendly Halloween Stories! I also just published a novella with a suspenseful story, Rivals. You can read the whole thing in one evening. Check it out!

 

READING

How do you deal with discomfort? With heartbreak? With a bad day? Read. I read to know I am not alone and I read to travel, mentally. Reading a good book is a great joy. Some of my favorite books: Gone With the Wind, The Prince of Tides, The Journeyer, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

 

SUNDAYS

I don't go to church any more. My feelings about God don't fit into any particular orthodoxy. I will probably go back one day, when Mom and Michael no longer live with me. I think Christian community is important. I may be challenged to find a church that steers clear of politics. I think the two shouldn't mix but apparently I am in the minority on that.

There is something magical about a Sunday, though, even now when I don't work a regular 9-5 office job. Sundays are the days I try to relax and catch up with myself. I listen to music a lot, and sing along.

 

GREAT QUOTES

I know, seems trivial, right? Great quotes can start me on a mental journey, though, of love, faith, or inspiration. Words are powerful things and certain quotes have stayed with me my whole life. It probably stems from the fact that my mom loves quotes and she used to copy out favorite quotes in her beautiful handwriting and put them on our fridge. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent" (Eleanor Roosevelt) is one of my all-time favorites.

"Life is what happens when you're making other plans," (John Lennon) is another fave.

 

MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER

If you aren't familiar with her music, you're missing out. She is classified as country, but she is that and so much more. She is a poet of the highest order, a singer/songwriter in the same vein as James Taylor, with poetic lyrics that paint vivid pictures and are impossible to forget. Probably my favorites of all her songs: This Is Love and Late for Your Life, and Stones in the Road and I Am A Town and Only A Dream

I saw her in concert once, at Chastain, which is an outdoor amphitheater here in Atlanta. She only sang songs from her new album. I didn't know those songs. It was a disappointment, that concert, although I don't blame her at all. I simply realized that I prefer the experience of listening to music that's been perfectly recorded. I don't really like a live human being singing on front of me. It makes me uncomfortable, frankly -- probably because, as a singer, I hear every flat note, every messed up entrance, all the flaws. Then I get nervous on behalf of the artist and the spell is utterly broken.[In my youth I studied voice and sang in choirs and did some solo work. I love to sing, but I can't bear to watch American Idol or any show like that because I become too nervous, and I can blame my training...]

I will leave you with one of my all-time favorite songs of Mary Chapin Carpenter's -- click on the link to hear it.

Where Time Stands Still

Baby where's that place where time stands still?

I remember like a love can. I forget it like a leaver will.

It's noplace you can get to by yourself.

You gotta love someone and they love you.

Time will stop for nothing else.

 

Employment for All

Some years ago I was delighted to hear about a relative of mine who had found employment as a stockboy at a gift shop. Why was I so thrilled about that position? My relative was born with intellectual disabilities and had the functional capabilities of a 5 year old, despite being a grown man. The store that employed him knew his parents, knew he would be a great employee, and took a chance -- a highly unusual move in the 1970's. He held that job for many years, until the store closed.

A new business in Montrose Colorado, Buckaroos Slices and Scoops, deserves similar praise. The owners of the business adopted 5 children from Kazakhstan and Kyrgstan and realized only after the children came home that most were affected, to varying degrees, by FAE [Fetal Alcohol Effects]. Their birthmoms drank while pregnant, causing permanent brain damage. [It is never safe to drink ANY amount of alcohol while pregnant, in case you were wondering.]

One of the children, Angela, was in my son's orphanage. Her mom Cindy and I have been online friends for many years.

Cindy quit work and stayed home to homeschool her children because the local school system couldn't educate her children as effectively as she could, giving them the one-on-one attention they needed, and tailoring lesson plans to each child's particular limitations. It took some time, nonetheless, for Cindy to discover that many of the issues she was seeing were related to in-utero alcohol exposure. One of her kids simply cannot remember math facts from one day to the next. Another one of her children is so severely affected he cannot remember, from day to day, to take a shower.

The myth, though, about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is that it's one-size-fits-all. Nope, it's more like autism - a spectrum of issues, some minor, some major. Cindy writes candidly about her children's struggles in her blog. 

Buckaroos Slices and Scoops is a little cafe serving pizza and ice cream. More importantly, it employs the LaJoy children and others in their town who struggle with a variety of intellectual limitations.

Check out a local news story about it here.

Most of us parents of neurotypical kids will never go through the heart-wrenchingly scary worry of wondering how our kids will ever support themselves. If you are the parent of a child with intellectual issues, it's a constant source of stress after a child grows up. Buckaroos and similar businesses lead the way in addressing that very real concern.

Thankfully, places like Buckaroos will likely not remain unique for much longer. Here in the south [Wilmington NC, Charleston SC, and Savannah GA] we have Bitty and Beau's Coffee Shops. They employ folks with intellectual disabilities too. There may be other places, too - if you know of them, drop me a comment.

I have been reading Cindy's blog for years, and I always finish each post in awe of her ability to write beautifully, and movingly, about topics you rarely see written about publicly. Her courage in handling her kids' issues is awe-inspiring. Excerpt below:

"People with cognitive or developmental delay are FAR more courageous than the world ever wants to give them credit for. For some reason, we tend to apply that thinking to those who "overcome" physical disabilities, and we are dismissive as a society of those with differently functioning brains. We seldom see them as being brave, we infantalize them, we talk over them rather than with them, we don't know what to do with them. People with invisible disabilities face a world in which they will never fit, and they know it. They are bullied regularly, are scared of the impatience they experience from others on a daily basis, and they tackle life with great hope when things are far more challenging for them than they ever are for the average person.

In two heartbreaking conversations, I have already had to reassure two of our employees who approached me privately and haltingly said they were scared because they had been bullied or treated very rudely in the past. I told them that no one was going to bully them or be unkind to them, and if they were, they would no longer be welcome in our store and we would protect them. I was honest, saying that we might not be able to stop someone from saying something initially, but they would always have us to protect them the best we could."

My hope is that one day there will be places like Buckaroos and Bitty and Beaus all over America, and anyone who wants to work will be able to find a job where they can excel.

 

Are Ghosts Real?

Most people fall solidly into one of three camps when it comes to this question: Are ghosts real? I have friends who are scientists and engineers who scoff at the notion, and consider anyone saying they've seen a ghost to be mentally unbalanced. The second group believes wholeheartedly in every ghost story or ghost story ever claimed. They are solidly on the Pro Ghost Bandwagon. I am in the third category. I believe some ghost stories, but not all.

I tend to not believe in anything I have not personally experienced. I make exceptions for friends of mine who I think are normal, rational folks who have experienced things they cannot explain. I have a friend who says she saw her dead fiancee sitting in a chair, big as life, and she talked to him. I believe her. I also personally know of a professional medium who talks to dead folks, and I believe she is the real deal - but not all are the real deal.

I have relatives who not only don't believe in ghosts, they wouldn't let their children read any children's books that feature ghosts or witches, because they think those types of stories promote evil, or Satan worship, or something. I've never been exactly clear on their objections.

How can you say Jesus died and rose from the dead, but you don't believe in ghosts?! I know Jesus was considered to be the Messiah, the son of God, and all, but he was human, too. So didn't he prove that humans can leave behind their mortal bodies and walk again?

Maybe you only believe in the ONE ghost, the Holy Ghost. Seems a bit irrational, though, to me.

 

My grandmother was as fine a Christian as any person ever born, but she believed in ghosts. When my grandfather died suddenly in 1972 she had to face life alone in a new house, in a little town they had just moved to a few weeks before. She had never lived alone. She was really distraught. One night she woke up and my grandfather was sitting there next to the bed, and it was so comforting to her. She realized he was always with her, just not always seen. You can say what you like, but she was a very strong, independent lady, and highly intelligent. If she says she saw her husband after he died, I believe her.

They were married for fifty years. He was the love of her life. He was always concerned about the welfare of his wife and children and grandchildren. So who's to say he didn't come back to see about her? Certainly not me.

 

left - a photo of my grandparents Wilma Butler Hasty and Bob Hasty pre-marriage

right - a photo of them as an older couple

 

My mother taught me to believe in things that seem unbelievable, like faith.

Think about it -- having faith in a god you cannot see or hear or touch seems awfully irrational, doesn't it? If aliens landed on earth and saw us worshipping a guy who said he was the human son of a God nobody could see or hear wouldn't that seem a bit nutty?

Years ago, after I finished college, Mom was upset with me because I told her I felt like I was an agnostic. She asked me to go back to church and act like a believer, which seemed really hypocritical, to me. I didn't want to fool with the whole "Fake it til you make it" thing. However, to keep her from being really upset with me, I did as she asked. I joined an Episcopal church in downtown Knoxville, and I sang in the choir. (It's far less awkward being a single person in a church if you have something to do, like sing in the choir.) I really didn't believe, at first, but as the familiar rituals and prayers came back to me [I had been an acolyte for years, and sing in the choir of our little suburban church for years] I slowly began to regain my faith.

When my father died, as I have often said, I was forced to confront the whole "life after death" idea because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to deal with my terrible grief. I knew instantly, though, that Dad had not left me at all, except in the physical sense. In the spiritual and emotional sense he was still there.

I truly understand that some people cannot make the leap, though, to believe in a god they cannot see or hear, or to believe in life after death. I totally get it. It's a lot to ask, those leaps of faith.

I think all people of faith, though, who have faith in some sort of deity, understand -- whether they want to admit it or not -- that if you can believe in another existence after death, you believe in ghosts, whether you like that word or not. My mom doesn't like it. She prefers "spirits" or "angels." Ghosts sound too silly, too trite, too Halloweenish.

If you are a Christian, though, you have to ask yourself why God wanted Jesus to rise up from the dead and walk out of that tomb?

What was Jesus doing there?

First of all, he was proving that the idea of death wasn't real. Jesus was a real man. He died.

He didn't stay dead, though.

ERGO: Death is not the end. Death doesn't mean a stopping of everything. Death is simply a transition. That's my opinion, anyway.

 

Let's take the opposite argument, that ghosts aren't real. Let's say that perhaps ghosts are just our brains tricking us into believing. Let's say ghosts do not exist at all.

Then how do you explain the soul? How do you explain that it says over and over in the bible that bodies die but souls don't?

I did a little research to see what I could find on this topic, like this blog. It seems that what traditional theologians want Christians to believe is that only the otherworldly things in the bible -- like in Dueteronomy where King Saul tries to contact the dead prophet Samuel -- are genuine. Anything else you hear about is demonic. Mediums and psychics are demonic, or in league with demons, is the idea.

I don't agree with that.

Of course, you can't really end an argument with me by quoting the bible. I think that's only one source, not the be-all end-all source. There is too much room for interpretation. Translating things from ancient Greek and Hebrew into modern English is tricky. I also think you have to read the bible in the context of the history and culture in which those stories were recorded.

If I were able to magically travel back in time to the 3rd century AD, to the time of the Council of Nicaea, and I had a working cell phone -- so I could show everyone how to use the phone, and do calculations, and watch cute puppy videos, etc. what do you think would happen to me? I'm pretty sure I would be crucified or burned at the stake as a witch, because they would have no way of understanding that cell phone. They would view it, and me, as evil and demonic, simply because they would not be able to understand it.

I think God means us to use our brains as well as our hearts.

I also think it's okay to "agree to disagree" when it comes to matters of religion. It's important to be respectful of everyone's ideas and opinions, however.

If someone had told me when I was 18 that I would one day carry around a tiny computer in my pocket that I could use to take photos, listen to music, call friends, and use as a computer, I would have been highly skeptical. Most computers were a hundred times larger than a cell phone back then and I didn't speak the computer language, Fortran.

The point about the cell phone and time travel is simply this, though: it's utterly magical to people who lived even in the recent past, like a hundred years ago. My father, who died in 1996, couldn't grasp the idea of the internet. He kept asking me, as he was dying, to explain the internet to him. He was never satisfied with my answers. Incidentally, 1996 is the year my son was born, and he never thinks about the amazing versatility of the smartphone.

Maybe twenty years from now I will be dying and I will be unable to process the idea of teleportation -- the ability to transport objects through time and/or space. My son may try to explain it to me and fail utterly, because my brain simply won't be able to grasp it. You can laugh, but that's not that far-fetched -- I was born in 1962 - a time when the VCR had not been invented yet.

Ghosts, though, totally won't freak me out when I am dying. 

If you think I'm crazy, or not a "real" Christian, so be it. If you outlive me, though, expect to be converted when I come back to haunt you.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

A Family of Writers

A colleague of mine who is also in the writing and editing business asked me the other day why I write. I don't recall anyone ever asking me that. Anyone who knows me at all well knows that writing is a big part of who I am, and so I don't get that question.

My answer? Because I like it. True. There's more to it than that, though.

I think I realized the power of writing many years ago when I was looking through a box in the den of my parents' house and I found a letter my mother had written to my dad. I started reading it without knowing what it was, because it didn't look like a letter. I should have stopped as soon as I knew it was a private letter, of course, but I couldn't. I had to keep reading. The letter had been written years before and I figured that out pretty quickly, but I couldn't NOT read it. Sometime later, years later, after Dad died, Mom told me she often wrote him letters and gave them to him, because it was easier to write how she felt than to try and verbalize it. She wrote to purge herself of her feelings and to avoid fights. [ Hey, don't judge. They were married almost 40 years, so it worked, the letter writing.]

Another time, I found the yearbook of my maternal grandmother from Bessie Tift College, and she had written several poems that were published in there. I knew her as an old lady who made me clean my room, not a college student, so reading her poetry helped me see her in an entirely new way..

I realized in recent years that in becoming a writer, I was the third generation in my family to like expressing feelings in words.

That's what I should have told my colleague the other day. I write because it allows me to express feelings I can't otherwise express. I can create a character and he/she can do and say things that I can't do or say. My characters can go out in the world and visit places where I can't go. They can have adventures. They can have wild love affairs. They can punch somebody in the face. They can say things I would never dare to say.

I am a southerner, born and bred, and we simply don't express emotions in public the way others do. We are taught from birth to be polite. "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" -- that was the mantra my parents repeated ad nauseam when I was growing up. I can remember thinking in my rebellious little heart Why can't we say not nice things?!? If I don't say it I will explode!

My grandparents were very Victorian and they had a horror of expressing strong emotions in public. My mother has a horror of crying in public -- to such an extent she refused to allow any music whatsoever at my father's memorial service because she was afraid it would make her cry. I remember arguing with her about it and she told me through gritted teeth I will fall apart if I hear music and so there must be NONE. My response: you are newly widowed, so nobody will judge you if you cry! Mother didn't want to ugly cry in front of 300 people. I totally get it, now.

 

A friend/cousin asked me recently how I come up with plots for stories and books. I had never really thought about it. I think in terms of plots all the time. Doesn't everyone?!? Don't you sit and plot out stories in your head? No? Hmmm...

There's another topic for an entire blog: inner monologues. My father told Mom once the only way he could get through long boring meetings was to do math problems in his head. When I was in corporate America I sat and thought about plots in long boring meetings. Ditto for church -- a sermon, especially, is a great time for me to think about what I will write later. (Episcopalian priests are not usually great sermonizers.)

Stories are how we survive, as humans. Think about it. We watch movies and TV shows for the stories. Think about the term "binge watching" -- we do it a lot now. When my mother was in a rehab place a couple of years ago I was upset and depressed and miserable without her, and I coped by watching 1 or 2 episodes of Game of Thrones every day. I thought I would hate it but I got hooked, like everyone else in the Western World. I have binge-watched a number of shows in the past couple of years. At the end of the day when my work is done and my belly is full of dinner and everything is settled down, I want stories. I want interesting characters. I want surprising plot twists.

There used to be rules in writing for television, believe it or not. Shows had to have moral lessons, even sitcoms. That all changed with Seinfeld. I remember reading their motto was "No hugs, no learning." It was ground-breaking, that show. The days of Donna Reed vacuuming while wearing high heels and pearls were long over.

Now we have not just network TV to choose from, we have HBO, Starz, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Lord knows what else. I can't keep up. Michael helped me buy a "smart TV" recently and the remote terrified me. I can use it now but I still get nervous. We have 3 remotes for the big TV in the family room. My childhood afternoons spent lying in front of the TV so I was close enough to change the channel easily are long gone.

If you had told me as a child I would grow up to have a ginormous selection of shows to watch, on what amounts to basically a computer monitor with voice controls, I would have laughed myself silly. My TV picture is better than most movie theater movies of my childhood. I can watch first-run movies a few months after they are released from the comfort of my own couch, and pause the movie to go to the bathroom or take the dog to walk anytime I feel like it. My inner child is constantly marveling at it all.

I digressed from my original premise. It happens.

Women are natural storytellers and writers, even though it's only been in the last 150 years many of us have become professional writers. We see things from many different perspectives, because we have to be versatile. Men are supposed to work and help around the house. Women are supposed to work, raise kids, make meals and do housework, feed the pets, buy the Christmas and birthday gifts, plan the vacations, handle laundry, and a million other little things. We don't get to just check out after dinner and do nothing, most of us. We can't take sick days or days off very often.

We are spinning a lot of plates in the air.

Here's the better answer to my colleague's question about why I write:

I write because it lets me say things I can't say any other way, sometimes in very impolite ways. I write because sometimes I can't find stories that reflect my life and my concerns so I have to write my own stories. I write because like food and water and fresh air, words sustain me. I write because in doing so I honor my grandmother and my mother, who lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression, trying to raise families under difficult circumstances, and more. Their voices have become my voice. I write because my voice, however flawed and imperfect, is MINE. Nobody can take it away from me. Because this is America, nobody can silence me. I write because I am the last in a long line of very strong women, and there are things about that I need to say. I write because it brings me joy. I write because I love when people tell me "I couldn't put down your book!" It thrills me to hear that. I write because long after I am dead people may read my words and know that we are all different, and we are all the same, and we matter, all human beings.

I write because I am in love with words.

Words are powerful. Words are agents of change. Words can spark revolutions. Words can save lives. Words ARE life.

I write to remind myself that I am alive.

 

Leaf Season - My New Book

My new book Leaf Season is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia [mostly], a beautiful area I have long wanted to write about.

I spent most of my growing up years [ages 8-18] in Knoxville, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Seeing the mountains in the distance from almost every window of the house, and frequently while driving down many of the roads in East Tennessee, I grew to take them for granted. They were just there, great hulking giants, always silent. However, when I moved to Atlanta in 1993 I missed them terribly.

As I grew older I began to learn that the mountains have their own culture. The Foxfire books that came out in the 1970's shone a light on mountain culture. I read about how to make a quilt, butcher a hog, churn butter. To me, it was fascinating - a real life sort of time travel. It helped that my parents and grandparents kept things like butter churns, an antique iron, and a mill stone at home, and we talked about "the olden days" a lot. My grandfather Bob Hasty [Pepaw or Papa] grew up on a farm in Cherokee County, just north of Atlanta but a world away in culture [see photo below of him making sorghum as a teenager]. When I went to Cades Cove as a child, or the Old Mill in Pigeon Forge, I would think about how it would feel to live on a farm, to be part of the mountains, to have to read by firelight or make blankets out of scraps of fabric.

For part of her childhood my mother lived on a farm -- not a small family farm but a huge agribusiness my grandfather managed. When I was a kid she talked about those days, and what it was like to cook on a wood stove, and use a slop jar, and "put up" vegetables and fruits for the winter. She still likes to talk about those days. I love to hear her reminiscences. 

In writing my new book, Leaf Season, I didn't attempt to re-capture those old days -- there are no scenes of anyone making moonshine or quilting -- but I wanted to convey the idea that the mountains have always been not just a place of hardship but places of sanctuary. As my paternal grandmother was dying she kept repeating "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help" [Psalm 121]. My mother nursed her through her last illness. Ever since my mother told me that a few years ago I have thought about it a lot. Why did Grandmother Cordelia keep repeating that verse? Obviously it had great meaning for her.

My main character, Wyatt Jamison, is a busy Atlanta lawyer who longs for the peace of the mountains, away from 8 lane interstates and 60 hour work weeks. [I know a lot about being an Atlanta lawyer because I spent more than twenty years in that world.] When Wyatt inherits a house from his uncle in a small town in the mountains, he meets a woman named Sally who lives next door. Sally has spent most of her life living in the mountains of North Georgia. Wyatt wants to be with her but there are several big obstacles in their way. 

FYI, the term "leaf season" refers to the tourists who literally flock to the mountains during autumn, to see the beautiful Fall colors. 

In most novels romance is reserved for twenty or thirty-somethings and I wanted this book to be different. Wyatt and Sally met once as kids but when they re-connect years later it's a powerful thing. Falling in love is never easy, but when you have grown children and careers and houses it can be really challenging. Being in your 50's is a weird time of life. You're not a kid any more. You're not an elderly person on a walker needing a hearing aid. You're a bit past middle age. Some of your peers still have teenagers living at home, and some of your peers have grandchildren in middle school.

Leaf Season isn't just a romance or a travel book, or about history. It's all those things, and more. I like my books to have mystery, and of course there are ghosts.  There are also funny moments and touching moments. It's a very different book from my first novel, Ghosts in the Garden City -- but if you liked that book you will probably like Leaf Season.

Leaf Season is available on Amazon. You can order the paperback here and the Kindle here. If you have a Kindle Unlimited membership it's available on Kindle for FREE right now. If you are on Facebook check out my post about it. I am giving away 3 free paperback copies to folks who re-post my announcement about it.