The Crab Chronicles

My Scary Weird Bucket List

There's a great movie called The Bucket List and before I saw that (years ago) I only had a vague idea of what a "bucket list" is, and although it's a terrific movie it didn't make me want to run out and write a bucket list.

Most bucket lists have things like "travel to Europe" or "skydive" or "meet the pope," etc. 

My bucket list is completely different. First of all, travel is not all it's cracked up to be. I cannot imagine anything that would entice me to sit on an airplane for hours, stuck in a big metal tube in the sky, in close proximity to a hundred strangers, exposed to their coughs and farts and sharing a tiny bathroom with all of them. BTDT when I went to Russia 4 times and Kazakhstan 2 times between 2003 and 2007. I am not scared to fly, but I hate flying because I hate crowds.

For the record, I hated crowds before Covid but I now utterly loathe crowds and I will never willingly expose myself to them. No game, concert, or church service will ever entice me to be around crowds.I am a homebody, and that's not uncommon for folks my age.

My son and I had a very late lunch yesterday at Honeybaked Ham and there were no other people in the store as customers, and just 2 guys behind the counter. It was lovely.

I will never willingly skydive. Somebody very big and strong, holding a gun, would be necessary before I would jump out of an airborne airplane and even then I would hesitate. I fear no diaper would save me from the dire consequences of that jump, because unlike lighter people my fat ass would plummet me straight to the ground long before the parachute would open. The mess would be terrible, unless I was dropped into the ocean.

No, my bucket list will likely have to wait for some scientific breakthroughs or a resurgence of elemental magic before it will ever be possible, any of it. It's below, in no particular order.

1) time travel to 1978 and leave a note for my high school self saying "give up all carbs forever and join a gym asap and workout every.single.day"

2) have a nice long lunch with Tom Hanks

3) move into my own house which has a screened-in back porch and sits on at least two acres

4) spend the day with all of my Thompson first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

5) spend the day with all of my Hasty first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

6) eat a big piece of chocolate cheesecake with no gastric consequences

7) spend a week at the beach, slightly off season like maybe in September, with my kids and my best friends, all in one big house with a pool

8) have a weekend visit with my only sibling, who hasn't visited me in years

9) time travel back to 1957, to just after my parents get married, and tell my parents to get some counseling

10) time travel back to 1970 so I can talk to my grandfather (Bob Hasty) and ask him to tell me about the scandal that cost him his major league baseball career. [I tried to write a book about it, a novel, Return to Marietta, but it didn't sell]

11) eat a nice long lunch with my favorite singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter

12) have some private lessons with the Dalai Llama on meditation and inner peace

13) write a bestselling novel

14) spend a few days in the mountains of East Tennessee during the Fall, with one of my friends and no crowds [this is the most farfetched of all my list items!]

15) travel across Canada, through the Canadian Rockies, by train

 

I just re-read my list and realized a lot of the items have to do with spending time with family and friends. I think at the end of my life that's what I will regret most, not spending more time with family and friends.

#weirdbucketlist, #postcovidbucketlist, #timetravelshouldbereal, #ihatecrowds, #canadianrockiesrock, #writinglifewoes, #regretsinlife, #timetravelisreal, #magicsolveseverything

 

Traveling Then and Now

As a child, I used to wonder why my mother never set off on a trip without a really big straw basket filled with kitchen supplies and snacks. I went through that basket one day after my mom and I moved in together and it still held coffee, Vienna sausages, straws, wet wipes, Woolite, paper napkins, salt and pepper, a jar of nuts, plastic cutlery, and I don't recall what else. I asked Mom why she had always carried all that on trips and she looked puzzled and said well her mother had carried the same basket on all trips, plus blankets, and it made a lot of sense.

My grandmother Memaw Hasty was the greatest grandmother a future paralegal could ever have. She was meticulous about being prepared for any situation. Travel by car was seen by her and my grandfather as a grand adventure. Of course, cars back then were prone to flat tires and they might sit on the side of the road for hours if there was no spare, or the jack didn't work, etc. Restaurants were not always available, even if you'd been traveling for hours and were ravenously hungry. My memaw's travel basket meant if she and her fellow travelers were stranded they could survive on the side of the road for hours or even a day or two, if necessary.

While researching for my book Return to Marietta, Mom told me that when her oldest brother Bobby was a baby, Memaw missed her family terribly and a couple of times she drove by herself with infant Bobby from California to Georgia to see the family. She packed the travel basket and blankets and canteens of water, and of course a loaded pistol.

I had forgotten about canteens. They were small tin water bottles carried by soldiers. Before bottled water, one carried a canteen of water. We always had one around the house, though Mom was more fond of a thermos.

I thought I would reminisce a little about how much travel has changed in the last hundred years or so, since the summer is when most of us take long car trips. [below, my mother and grandparents, sometime around 1942 or thereabouts, on a trip]

This is from my mother's memoir, Singing to the Cows:

"Fast food as we know it now did not exist until less than 50 years ago. There were no expressways. We drove on two lane roads, through small towns or through big cities glutted with traffic. So if a family was traveling, they might find something to eat or drink at a gas station – or maybe nothing but a soda and package of peanuts at best. My mother always carried snacks, water to drink, wet wash cloths, first aid supplies, etc. Most often, we had a thermos of sweet tea mixed with fruit juices. For a longer trip, there would be a full meal. Back then, the food was certainly better and cheaper and no waiting in line. I carried big beach towels because they could serve as tablecloths, wraps, etc."

I remember my dad packing the station wagon for us to take on trips and getting all the suitcases in the car, and then his look of consternation when Mom came out carrying the travel basket for him to put in the car. "We don't need all this stuff!" he would fuss.

Sometimes the trips were much shorter - basically day trips. My grandparents loved to picnic. Nowadays people don't picnic that much, probably because of the proliferation of fast food places. Even as a child [1960's] I remember driving back and forth to Atlanta and there was a little restaurant somewhere on Highway 78 where we always stopped and ate, but it was a regular restaurant and there was nothing fast about it.

Anyway, here are some of Mom's picnic memories.

"My parents, as well as the rest of the family, just loved going on picnics. They had a system of what to carry and just how to pack it. This was mostly before Tupperware, Styrofoam, canned drinks, and lots of convenience items. We did have a large thermos jug which would be filled with a combination of sweet tea and fruit juices - delicious! Also, there was no plastic wrap or foil – but waxed paper was fine. The food was about what one would expect: fried chicken, potato salad, ham, fruit salad, slaw, cold biscuits, usually a pot of green beans with ham hock, and someone always brought a wonderful home baked cake, and cobblers, and pies. They kept the old tablecloths for picnics. We always met at the Atlanta area parks that had nice picnic tables, most often with thatched appearing roofs, or a pavilion. The adults would sit around and visit and the young folks would take long walks around the park, after the meal."

I remember Mom sometimes persuading my dad to take picnic foods on trips so we didn't have to eat fast foods, but he was always impatient and grouchy with the whole idea. Standing outside and eating sandwiches out of the trunk while cars whizzed by and Dad grumbled was not fun, at all. (Maybe that's why I have never understood tailgating. Eating out of the trunk of the car just doesn't appeal to me.)

Even just in my lifetime, taking a trip has changed dramatically. I can remember driving for hours without a gas station in sight, and my dad pulling the car over so I could squat and pee, with the car door and Mom hiding me from the sight of anyone coming down the road. We always carried paper napkins and/or toilet paper in the travel basket, for potty emergencies.

My dad taught me how to change a tire when I was 18. I was amazed to learn later that not all girls could change a tire, or check a car's oil, or add water to a car, or use cables to jump start a car. Dad wanted me to be prepared.

Here's what prompted me to write this blog.

My son Michael was asked by a friend, a chef, to drive to SC this weekend and help with the cooking for his niece's quinceañera. Michael had never driven 2.5 hours alone before and I tried not to freak out. I was driving 6 hours back and forth to college at the age of 19, but Michael has just never needed to drive anywhere alone before. I asked him if he wanted to take cold drinks, a flashlight, etc. but he stopped me before I recited a long list of stuff and said "Mom, if I need anything I will just stop and get it?!" like DUH, Mom.

He called me when he reached his destination, as I had asked.

Even today, when I travel I take my version of the travel basket, for emergencies. I advise y'all to do so also. Picnics are nice, too.

#travelinglongago, #twentiethcenturytraveltips, #familypicnictips, #familypicnics, #packingfortrips, #cartripslongago, #cartripsofyesteryear

Errors That Nobody Caught, A Rant

I feel the need to launch a rant, y'all.. We live in a world where sloppiness is the norm rather than the exception. My pet peeves are errors in the written word that obviously indicate the writer or his editor didn't proofread carefully enough, and errors in TV shows and movies set in the past.

I have a cousin who is a wealthy and successful real estate investor and a recent interview with him contained grammar and usage errors in EVERY paragraph! I was horrified. I went on the writer's website and sent him a message. I have no hope that writer will correct all the errors. My cousin still looked handsome and his remarks were intelligent and thoughtful but the errors really bothered me.

Last year I worked briefly for a company whose website contained a lot of content that was filled with errors and just bad writing. I tried to fix all the errors and make the writing better. My efforts were not appreciated and we parted ways. I see they just hired a new writer -- some kid right out of college who undoubtedly works cheap -- and her stories contain a lot of errors, so they didn't learn their lesson, which is too bad.

Maybe I am a super unusual person because I am the daughter and granddaughter of teachers. When I see typos or grammar or usage errors they jump off the page and hit me in the face. I don't claim to be perfect. Every so often I post a blog without realizing there are errors, despite my careful proofreading. I immediately get on the blog and fix the problems. They bother me. A LOT. 

When my mother was alive I always asked her to proofread everything I wrote. She would see typos and problems I just hadn't seen. I miss that, and of course I miss her terribly.

I worry about the fact that computers are relied on more and more to edit and they really can't. The piece about my cousin is a prime example. The computer left the word "August" because it's a legitimate and correctly spelled word. However, it should have been AUGUSTA -- with an A -- because that was the subject of the sentence, Augusta Georgia. Further down in the article the word "air" was used when it should have been "err."

Computers also make mistakes. I've typed Word documents many times and been forced to see something I've written questioned. For instance, Word would have corrected "smocking" to "smoking." Two very different things. Fortunately, I am not relying on the computer to correct my work. I know more than the computer. Many young people, however, do not.

I belong to a number of book lovers' groups on Facebook and there are constant debates about whether or not readers care about books that have grammar errors or punctuation issues or typos. Many people just say they don't even notice, which is a bit frightening, to me.

TV shows or movies set in the past that have characters talking in an unrealistic way also bug me, a lot.

There is a wonderful series on Amazon Prime called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel which I have loved from the beginning of its broadcast. Mrs. Maisel is probably the best series available on any streaming service. Much of the dialogue is brilliant. Not all of it, though. I know Amy Sherman- Palladino and her husband write most of the shows. Amy is just a little younger than me. However, she clearly hasn't spent countless hours watching old movies and TV shows because she writes like the story is set in the present.

The show takes place from the late 1950's to early 1960's, but the dialogue doesn't always reflect that. For instance, people in the early 1960's didn't say they were going to "hang out" or just "hang." Nobody would have said someone "needed closure" or used the phrase "freak out." In 1962 a waiter would not say a wine is “fruit forward.” I am re-watching the series with my son and there are constantly issues like that. People in 1962 likely would not refer to cigarettes as causing cancer because everybody smoked then and the big push for people to stop wasn’t until 1964. [Side note: Both my parents smoked, my entire childhood, and so did a lot of other people. I spent a lot of time cleaning ashtrays and not hearing anyone talk about cancer until the mid 1970's.]

The crux of the problem is simple. The world is divided into people like me who HATE to see errors in writing, and people who think it doesn’t matter at all. I don’t t hink there is much middle ground.

It's clear which side the Palladinos are on. In season 5 we see Midge's father, a theater critic, misspell Carol Channing's name and go WAAAAY overboard with self-loathing, for spelling her last name "Chaning." It shows him trying to call all the magazine subscribers and apologize, and almost having a breakdown over that one little typo.

Maybe I am just a perfectionist. Maybe I get too worked up over errors. I just hate seeing writing that is close to being good but then gets spoiled by mistakes. To me, it's like this: I could be offered the most expensive champagne in the world and seeing a dead fly floating in my glass is going to stop me from drinking one drop of it. I know a lot of people who would just scoop out the fly and forget it was ever there and drink that stuff right down...

 

above, my mother around 1956 looking a bit like Mrs. Maisel

#mrsmaiseldialogue, #typossuck, #proofreadingisimportant, #editingisimportant

Art from the Heart

I asked my son the other day why he never reads any of my books and he just shrugged. I was reminded of a time when I was young and I hated hearing my mother sing. My mother was a professional singer when she was young. She had a wonderful voice. People would often come to our house for parties and since we had a piano and she was an excellent accompanist for herself, they would ask Mama to sing. I always made myself scarce. 

When I heard her sing it made me profoundly uncomfortable.

A few years ago I was trying to re-learn the guitar and my son walked into the living room when I was playing a song and singing it. He listened for a moment, then turned and fled upstairs to his room, and slammed the door.

I have several close friends who refuse to ever read any of my books, and my own brother won't read my books.

I've had a lot of time to ponder this and I don't have any well-researched or definitive answers but I have a few theories.

I sent one of my novels to a cousin I've always been close to and his email to me when he had finally finished it was complimentary but then again, sort of not? He said as he read he just kept finding little things that reminded him of me, and it made him uncomfortable.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but I appreciated his honesty.

When I sing, I try to sing the correct notes and to breathe properly because I studied voice for years. I try to sing with feeling, of course, but I probably worry more about singing correctly. My mother sang with more feeling. Hearing her voice was like opening a window and seeing her heart. She was a VERY tender-hearted person. I needed her to be strong. Marriage to my father was never easy for her, for a lot of reasons. After we started living together and raising my children together her voice didn't bother me. We often sang together. I have a couple of recordings of us that I cherish. I didn't need her to be strong any more. I was strong enough to take care of us both, as she grew older and more fragile.

A book is different from a song, but probably often even more intimate. Every novel I write has a lot of me in it. Not in every character, but I figured out years ago how to tap into what I know in order to create believable worlds and characters. I also research, of course, but I have not been able to physically travel anywhere for years, for several reasons, so my imagination and the internet often have to suffice for actual research.

I have started trying to imagine sensory details when watching movies. I try to imagine what the characters feel when they are touching someone or something. For instance, when you hug someone who is wearing a cotton dress shirt, I know what that feels like. I know what a ripe peach smells like when you cut into it. I remember the sensation of riding a horse because I took riding lessons for years. I know how it feels to hold an infant, the sweetness of it and the terror that they might be dropped because they can be so wriggly.

A great writer invites you inside their heart and their head.

A great artist in any medium causes you to feel a certain way, because they know their art, either through instinct or training.

I have a new manuscript I am trying to use to get a literary agent, which is a frightening process. You have to send out queries to agents, which they then read -- and often decide in a matter or seconds how they feel about your work. It's like an audition, but for a writer. I hate auditions.

I always want to say look, I am not great at marketing myself, but I am a pretty decent writer. That's not allowed, though. I always wish the first thing read would be my biography:

I earned an MA in Creative Writing and I have worked as a freelance writer, a journalist, and a paralegal. My essays have been included in the award-winning books Call Me Okaasan [2009] and The Divinity of Dogs [2013].  This is my sixth novel. The first five were self-published on Amazon, to wit: Ghosts in the Garden City [2019], Leaf Season [2019], Heart of My Own Heart [2020], Return to Marietta [2022], and Dancing in the Wreckage [2023]. Additionally, I’ve published numerous articles online and in print, [portfolio] and I’ve been writing a personal blog, The Crab Chronicles, since 2005.

Then again, it seems like some agents get a thrill out of championing a writer who has just finished their first novel. That's okay. If the writing is great, that's entirely fair.

I just wish some agent sometime would see that I've self-published five other novels, and each one has been better than the one before. I have literally taught myself how to write by actually writing. I'll keep publishing as long as I keep writing and I likely won't stop writing until I die. Maybe all my work will have to be self-published and I will have to continue the painful process of figuring out how to market myself. I would like to try the traditional method of getting published, though.

I keep envisioning an agent reading my query and recognizing that my novels are not just about stuff happening or filled with poetic descriptions, but they are filled with details from my heart, from all the life I've lived for the past sixty years. If you want to know what dogged determination feels like, or what a broken heart feels like, or the agony of watching your child screw up their life, you need to talk to someone over forty.

One final thought... so many agent bios I read online say the agent is looking to represent BIPOC people or handicapped people, those whose voices are not heard so often. How about older people? Not like Stephen King or Diana Gabaldon but older people who are not wealthy and/or famous? Do you not want to hear our voices because you think it will be too uncomfortable? Older people have lived and loved and suffered and we have a lot to share. I remember what it was like to fall in love. I remember what it was like to be belittled because of my gender or because I am southern. I remember every slight and every triumph.

Another crucial point: we love to read books written by our peers or older folks -- so we are a great untapped market...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A GREAT GIVEAWAY!

If you want to win a free copy of one of my self-published books, go to my Facebook page and share the post on there and you will be entered to win a free copy of one of my already-published novels -- your choice!

The drawing will be held on July 4th!

bookgivewaway, #freebooks, #novelsbyolderwriters, #novelsaboutthesouth, #novelssetinthesouth

Love a funny tee shirt or hoodie?! I have started a side hustle! Check out the merch: Bellybottom Tees

 

Stories from The Past

My dad grew up in a tiny town near Augusta Georgia, Hephzibah. As a child, the word "Hephzibah" was always associated with my uncles and funny stories. The stories were simply part of my Thompson life, and I never realized how lucky I was to be related to three very smart, very funny, Southern men. My father Tony Thompson and my uncles Lewis and Bobby were what might be called "old school" today. 

I shared some memories of our family in a story published in Salvation South today, Cordelia's Giggle.

My uncles both served in World War II. Bobby was in the Navy. Lewis was in the Army and fought in the South Pacific. I was born years later. Both of the men I knew were tall, easygoing, affable, guys. It's hard to imagine them in a war, getting shot at or possibly shooting at someone else. Now my dad was a very different guy, a dynamo of energy. It wasn't hard to imagine him in a war because he loved all thing military and pushed my brother to go in the Army.

However, unlike his two brothers Dad was never in a war. I always assumed he was in the Korean War but when I was cleaning out my house to move a couple of years ago I found letters he wrote to his parents while in the Army and they were dated 1954, after Korea had ended.

Dad spent most of his mandatory military service running around Europe every time he got leave. He was stationed in Germany. The photo at left shows him and two friends on the French Riviera. The letters are hilarious, because he was so young [24] and from a tiny town, and he missed his parents a lot.

When I was a kid, I noticed that whenever Dad was with one or both of his brothers, the Hephzibah stories would often get told. Whiskey was often consumed during the telling.

The most memorable storytelling occasion happened in 1974, just after Christmas. My cousin Chris was visiting his father's family and Lewis and his family had been to Rome, Georgia to see his wife's family, and we all converged for an afternoon at an Atlanta hotel, for lunch. Below is one of the black & white photos made by my uncle Lewis that day.

I was 12 years old. All my cousins and my brother were older. It was the only time we were all together, unfortunately, because Chris lived in California and his visits were sporadic. At the time, Chris was working as a plumber or carpenter or something, but he later went on to an illustrious career as a TV and movie writer and producer. I don't know if he realized that he got a lot of his humor from the Thompson side. 

In the article I wrote about my grandmother Cordelia, I got a kick out of talking about the funny Hephzibah stories, but I wanted to also carefully explain that she raised three fine men.

Cordelia Henderson Thompson didn't have an easy life. She was an "old maid schoolteacher" about 31 years old when she met and married Grandaddy. In those days, if a woman wasn't married by age 25 she was an "old maid" and unlikely to ever marry, according to the social rules of that time. She was very smart, loved to read, and loved to make photos. Dad said she always carried her little "Brownie" camera everywhere, and because of that I have some wonderful old family photos like the one below, of Cordelia and her youngest son Tony, my dad.

She married my grandfather in 1923. He was not educated and he didn't have any money, but it was a true love match. They raised three sons during the Great Depression, watched two of them go to war, and died in the late 1950's. Thompson had been a professional soldier for many years and although he was a small man [about 5'7, 135 lbs.] he was fierce and he had a temper.

Cordelia was gentle. She was very ladylike, and proper. Although she married her opposite, she loved him very much. Mom said she used to talk about him all the time after he died, and her heartbreak was evident. They were married for 34 years, until his death from emphysema complications in 1957, a few months after my parents' marriage. 

Most of what I know about Cordelia I learned from my mother. She only knew her about 2 1/2 years but she grew to love Cordelia and happily named me after her, three years after Cordelia's death. My name, Dee, is a shortened version of her name.

Some people -- including my own cousins -- think I am really weird for finding my family so fascinating. I feel like I am lucky to be a product of two old Southern families, and stories of my ancestors fascinate me. I got that from Dad. He was always organizing family reunions, always on the hunt for old photos and memorabilia, and very reverent about family history and lore. There's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like all of us are products of the DNA of all our ancestors stretching back for generations. We may look back at them and think they lived such different lives  than we did but that's not entirely true. My grandparents lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression. Life was a lot harder in 1923 when all four of my grandparents got married, but they wanted the same things we want. Home and children were important. Faith was important. Good manners were very important. Stories were important. I am proud to be a product of all of my grandparents, the ones I knew (Bob Hasty and Wilma Butler Hasty) and the ones I didn't know, Thompson and Cordelia. I carry their genes in my body, but more importantly, I try to carry on family traditions and tell the stories, so the next generations will never forget them.

Working Women

The older I get the more I realize that there is a serious issue with what young people today know and what they should know. In these days of Google, so often nothing is learned and retained. Many folks under 30 don't know the capitol cities of their states, the name of the Vice President, what countries fought in the American Revolution, or basic science like the fact nobody can visit the sun. Watch this video and you will be horrified.

Most Generation Z's have no idea how hard women have worked, historically.They cannot envision a world without microwave ovens and dinners delivered to you at home, and going without meat because it wasn't affordable. If you say the word "feminism" to them they don't even understand what that is, because they don't live in a world where women have very limited choices. They can choose what career they want. They can get a bank account or credit card in their name without a husband or father's approval. They don't automatically make less money than their male coworkers.

 

My mother chose to stay home because she grew up with a working mom and she was often scared or lonely at home by herself. She wanted her kids to have a mother who was around most of the time.

Her staying at home was a financial sacrifice and a personal sacrifice. She was very smart, yet working women often put her down for staying at home. The implication was that she was privileged or lazy but that was far from the truth.

Like generations before her, Mom worked non-stop. She fixed 2 or 3 complete meals every day, for 4 people. She didn't give us TV dinners or takeout food. My father expected meals fixed from scratch, every day.

I asked my mother once about my great grandmother, Granny Butler, who grew up in a prosperous home with servants and who married a wealthy man. I pictured Granny as a lady of leisure. My mother gave me a withering look. "Granny always said even with servants there was a lot of work to run her household and raise twelve children."

She went on to point out some facts I had never realized. For instance, most clothes when I was a kid were cotton and had to be ironed. We didn't have a dryer until I was in elementary school so wet clothes had to be hung on a clothes line, dried, and then brought in and ironed.

We were lucky, she said. We didn't have to churn butter, or kill chickens, or can vegetables for the winter. We had running water and indoor toilets.

Buying food and preparing meals was complicated and tiresome when I was a kid. Mom had a strict food budget and it didn't include eating out. She had to buy meat, vegetables, fruit, foods for school lunches, etc. My brother didn't like to eat breakfast so she was constantly trying to find foods he would willingly eat. I was super picky and refused to eat most veggies except lettuce and green beans. Dad had high cholesterol so she had to use vegetable oil and margarine and trim the fat off of meats. She had a number of food allergies so that was another factor.

Schedules were fun. My brother was on sports teams. I was taking piano lessons and going to church activities. She belonged to organizations like AAUW and taught Sunday School for years. Before my brother learned to drive she had to be really organized to get everyone everywhere. Dad usually didn't get home until 6 and couldn't help.

Maybe once a week we would get to go to a cafeteria like S&S and eat, or we would have Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. All other meals were on Mom.

I made my bed every day and helped her around the house but my brother created more work. His room was always a disaster and he hated being made to take his turn doing dishes, or vacuuming.

My father grew up during the Depression and he ruled the checking account. Mom had to beg him for money to buy school clothes for me and my brother, or a new dress for herself. He saw no reason for us to have extensive wardrobes. I wore dresses homemade by my grandmother for years, or hand-me-downs from my cousins.

Dad never wanted Mom to call a plumber or handyman to do anything at our house. So she saved back a little money from her household budget to quietly pay the plumber to fix Dad's screwups. As soon as he was big enough to work a screwdriver my brother was drafted to help around the house.

I remember Mom and Dad buying furniture at yard sales that we would then refinish or paint. The desk I have my computer on was once a garage sale find and I remember refinishing it, as a little kid.

When we bought our little cabin at Douglas Lake I was 8 years old. I helped Dad with the cleaning, the painting, and putting down linoleum in the main room. There was no air conditioning in the cabin.

My parents bought me a new notebook and some pencils every September before school started. My father would have pitched a fit if he had been given a lengthy list and forced to come up with $100-$300 worth of school supplies. (I was in sticker shock the first time I had to do that, for my daughter.)

Dad liked to entertain and throughout their marriage he would announce to Mom "We're throwing a party!" -- usually giving her a few days' notice, or maybe a week if she was lucky. He often invited 10-50 people, and he didn't want to hire a caterer, so she had to prepare all the foods, on a limited budget. Sometimes he would just bring work colleagues home and she would have 30 minutes to ensure each guest had adequate and delicious food.

My mother worked VERY hard.

Mom also couldn't have a credit card in her name until the mid 1970's. Sometimes salesmen would only deal with Dad. Dad himself never told her how much money they had and he never let her write a check without his okay.

Even if she had wanted to work, babysitters would have taken most of her check because there was no other option. One time my mother did substitute teaching but the money was so bad she didn't do it for long.

Young women today have no idea how hard life was for a woman before they came along.

To Know the Place

It has taken many years, but I am finally learning how to really see and feel the glories of this beautiful place, earth. The journey was worth it.

When I was 8 years old and my family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, we started spending most Sunday afternoons in the car. Mom liked to “go to ride” on Sundays, after church and after Sunday’s big lunch, we would typically go to ride and stay gone all afternoon, exploring beautiful East Tennessee. The mountains were everywhere, even at home. Knoxville is in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and you could stand at the back windows on the second floor of our house and see the foothills in the distance.

I hated going on Sunday drives. I was always bored. My parents couldn’t figure out why I didn’t appreciate the beauty of the mountains.

[left, me in 5th grade]

Soon after we got settled in, Mom and Dad realized there was a terrific little town an easy drive from home. We often drove to Gatlinburg, which in the early 70’s was not the congested tourist mecca it is now. I loved to go to the candy kitchen and watch the mesmerizing machine that makes taffy, or go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum, or the tacky gift shop known as Rebel’s Corner. Even before we got to Gatlinburg there were fun places to explore. On the way to Gatlinburg we went through Pigeon Forge, which had a restaurant in an old train car, a mill that still milled cornmeal, and a little family-owned restaurant where you could get a wonderful meat n’three -- of course that was years before Dollywood. I found places where I could put my face close to what I was seeing far more fascinating then the hulking shapes of the mountains.

In fourth grade, I failed the eye exam given to all the kids. The ophthalmologist discovered I was quite nearsighted, and I got glasses. Suddenly, the mountains were not just a blur. Mom told me later she felt terrible because she and Dad hadn’t realized that my vision was impaired and that’s why I found the Sunday drives so boring. Of course, I was a kid -- and sitting in the car staring out the window was boring even with my glasses, I reassured her.

I could never understand, until the last ten years or so, why anyone would want to just sit and stare at mountains or anything else in nature. I found sitting and staring at anything [other than a book or movie] incredibly boring.

My dad used to come home from work [he was a bank VP] and fix himself a drink, and go out into the backyard and just stare, and sip. He was usually out there at least half an hour before he would be ready to come in for dinner. I had no idea why he did that. Of course, as an adult I understood the importance of unwinding after a busy day. Mom usually joined him, and I know she liked being outside in the quiet, too. Her life as a SAHM was stressful but just different from Dad’s life, of course.

I realize now that those middle years of life, roughly from ages 20-50, are the busiest times for most of us.

Now, having sold my house in 2021 and living in an apartment since then, I realize that the lovely backyard of my house, with it’s trees and flowers, was a haven. Why didn’t I stay out there more, staring at the yard, the creek, the hydrangeas, the great magnolia tree, the squirrels and cardinals that lived there? Why didn’t I enjoy that peaceful place more?

[right, the blooming apple tree in my yard]

There are several lessons here. Really seeing nature is a great gift. I have friends and cousin/friends who literally crave getting outside and away from their busy lives. They feel a pull, a longing, to see mountains up close, to see flowing water and huge trees up close, to feel the sunshine on their faces while they hear only bird songs and insects drone. I wish that I could easily slip away to bask in the places where I feel most peaceful.

The folks of my mom’s generation are almost all gone now. I don’t have the luxury of staring down the road and seeing scads of time left to calm down and appreciate this amazing world God designed for us.

As the years have passed, I’ve slowed down a good bit. I am far less of an energetic dervish like my dad and far more able to sit and just be still in nature, without constantly checking my watch or worrying about getting insect bites. Now, I am not so impatient. I pay attention to blooming things, to birds, to the subtleties of nature and the peace that’s found by water.

One day my ashes will go back into the soil and water of this place, of North Georgia, where I will join the crowds of my ancestors that worked hard all their lives before finally being able to rest. The thought doesn’t frighten me in the least. I welcome it, in fact.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” T.S. Eliot

Labels for Children

As a child, I was a female nerd, long before I ever heard that word. I was also a tomboy, a bookworm, Miss Priss [Mama's nickname for me], The Dee Dee [Dad's nickname for me], Doll [my grandfather's nickname for me] and An Early Bloomer. My mother and my memaw were constantly on my case about being a Little Lady, but eventually they gave up on that. I preferred playing in the dirt to being ladylike, any day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We love to label children. My teachers told Mom and Dad I was precocious, conscientious, creative, and sometimes my attention wandered. Newsflash: my wandering attention was a result of me not being challenged in school. (I learned by 4th grade to always take a book to school so when I finished my classwork I could just read.)

I was also a bedwetter, for many years. It was embarrassing, especially when visiting someone else's house. At my own house, I woke up wet, got up and cleaned myself off and put on a fresh gown, and got in bed with my parents. I was reminded of that reading Sean Dietrich's column, Sleepless in Nashville.

I had stopped wetting the bed around age 11 but I was very sympathetic to the child who wrote Sean. It's super embarrassing. It's also, though, an instant barometer of the adults around you. Mothers tend to be sympathetic and kind, but fathers aren't always so nice, at least in my observation.

I wet the bed for the last time at age 15, while trying to sleep in a hotel room with both parents, who snored like crazy. Thank goodness I was on a cot.

Being a bedwetter also, I am convinced, makes for a more compassionate adult. If you are a bedwetter you feel intensely sympathetic to the child who is nerdy, or who wets the bed, or the little bookworm who hates being the last chosen for a sports team.

I always felt self-conscious and freakish in elementary and middle school. I could never feel good about myself except in the spelling bee or sometimes when onstage singing or doing plays. I grew fast and was taller than all my classmates until 8th grade. Then some of the boys started sprouting, so I didn't feel like She-Hulk by the time I got to high school. 

Parents, if your child wets the bed, trying to make them feel ashamed does.not.work! Set an alarm and get the child up to tinkle in the night. Or restrict liquids before bed. or whatever works. Children need to feel empowered and safe in their worlds. Shame and humiliation don't work.

Being a kid is tough, but being a nerdy kid, a bedwetter, a giant -- those make childhood a real trial by fire. I was also chubby so I got those labels too, which hurt.Try to always speak to your child with Love -- that's the quickest was to effect change.

Feel Good About Aging, Ladies

I used to have an argument with my mother all the time that went something like this:

Elva: "Dee you need to wear some makeup and fix your hair."

Dee: "I hate makeup and I'm not going to wear any."

Elva: "At least wear some lipstick, then."

In my mother's opinion, no woman should leave her house with natural looking lips. She wore a bright red lipstick called Love That Red and I could always tell when she didn't feel well because she would fail to put on lipstick and eyebrow color.

My mother felt like she truly was unattractive without makeup. She colored her hair for years, but then got tired of it, cut her hair short and let it go gray. I liked her gray hair a lot better because it looked natural.

She didn't budge on the makeup question, though. She felt like wearing makeup made a woman feel better about herself. It certainly worked for her. 

I spent years carefully planning what I would wear to work each day, fixing my long hair, and carefully applying my makeup. I was trying to catch a husband. I had to bait the hook, if I wanted to catch one. [above, a photo of me next to Mom, in full hunting gear]

When I adopted my daughter, though, I was 41 years old and I decided the Great Husband Hunt was OVER. My family was almost complete. I didn't feel the need to impress anyone. I started wearing stretchy pants, big comfy tops, and Crocs. I quit wearing makeup.

My mother lived with me and was appalled.

I could never get her to understand that for me, giving up all the fuss was a HUGE relief.

I tried to explain to Mom once that in her life, she had been conditioned to feel that if she looked natural -- without makeup, without a hair "DO" and wearing comfortable clothes [not a girdle and stockings/pantyhose] -- that she looked BAD. Furthermore, she was taught that once she had caught a man she still had to keep him. She kept a little basket of makeup, including a comb and perfume, right near the front door. When she saw Dad's car turn in the driveway she would run comb her hair and freshen her makeup so she could greet him at the door with a smile.

Maybe she had the right idea. She was married 40 years. Most of the women of her generation didn't get divorced. Books and magazine articles in the 1950's advised women that if they let a man come home to a messy house and a wife without makeup they would probably wind up divorced.

What sparked this blog was this article about how wonderful Cher looked at a recent event. She is 76. She has always had her own individual style and always flown in the face of critics and anyone who thought she should look conventional. I've always admired her outspokenness and independence. I remember watching her variety show when I was a kid. However, seeing her clearly trying to look much younger, with the long dyed hair and the face that has clearly had every plastic surgery procedure one can have, makes me feel sorry for her. She is trying so hard to fight natural aging. She looks very unnatural and fake. She's also dating a guy 40 years her junior -- so technically young enough to be her grandson, which is super creepy. [I would say that about a man dating someone 40 years younger, too.]

Now, before you compose your hateful comment, know this: I fully support women doing whatever they want to do in terms of makeup, hair, who they date, etc. We still live in a free country and everyone should look whatever way they want to look. Wouldn't it be great if all women were happy to look their age, though?

I just feel like the media is constantly glorifying women who "defy" age and as a result, women spend a huge amount of time and money to look younger. How often do you see the media celebrate the beauty of an older woman who has gray hair and wrinkles and doesn't turn herself inside out trying to look a lot younger? Not too often.

At left, Jamie Lee Curtis. She is 63, so more than ten years younger than Cher. Jamie looks normal, though. She is still attractive but you don't see her dressing like a biker chick and hanging all over a man young enough to be her grandson. Of course, Cher is still trying to attract lovers and Jamie has been happily married for more than twenty years. If she were divorced, would she be trying to "defy" aging? I don't know. Hopefully not.

I also feel like women in Hollywood get celebrated for looking younger, and held up as examples all women should follow, and that's completely unfair. I cannot afford multiple plastic surgeries. I don't want to inject poison in my face (aka Botox). I cannot afford fashionable clothes. I cannot afford a cook, or a personal trainer, or to eat seafood every night. So there's literally no possibility that I can hope to look like Halle Berry or Jennifer Anniston.

That's okay. I'm not crying about that. I am happily single and likely to remain that way. I have always been very independent.

As a society, we need to un-do all the media pressure to look younger. The emphasis should be on looking and feeling healthy.

Celebs like Demi Moore, who say there's nothing wrong with aging, also say things I find quite disturbing. Moore has designed a new line of swimsuits that no normal woman over 50 will look good in! It "...includes bikinis, one-pieces with deep V-necklines, and high-waisted two-pieces inspired by vintage designs. "We don't want to look matronly or not feel sexy." She says her own grandmother at 60 "seemed resigned to being old." Uh, that's called accepting reality. What's wrong with looking matronly, Demi? You're reinforcing the idea that women have to starve themselves, dye their hair, and try to compete with younger women for male attention. Shame on you. The next thing you will see is Demi dating some guy 10, 20, 30 years younger. In Hollyweird that is celebrated. And they wonder why so many of us in the flyover states do not admire them.

In researching this blog I found a lot of articles quoting celebs like Demi and Gwyneth Paltrow and Andi McDowell, etc. saying how wonderful it is that women can look their age, and yet every one of them looks carefully sculpted and groomed to look younger. They clearly don't understand the hypocrisy inherent in their bizarre mixed messages.

The bottom line here, as I see it, is this: I cared way too much about looks when I was younger. Now my only real concern is being clean and wearing clean clothes. No amount of makeup or hair dye will make me look ten or twenty years younger and that's fine. I'm comfortable in my own skin. I'm not worried about catching a man. I want to feel well and one day have enough energy to play with my [future] grandchildren.

I am so much less concerned with what anybody thinks of me, now. I don't let minor stuff upset me. I get a lot of pleasure out of simple things like a nice meal, a wonderful song, a great movie. I tell people I love how I feel, without fear. I cherish my friends. I like me.

I hope and pray future generations of women will stop feeling so much pressure to "defy aging." It's inevitable and we should embrace it.

#womenshouldembraceaging, #wrinklesarebeutiful, #celebsshouldshutupaboutaging, #agingisnormal, #embraceoldage, #loveyourselfatanyage, #grayhairisbeautiful, #stoptryingtolookyoung

It's Out of My Control

One of the blessings (or perhaps it's a curse) of being me is that I always look for patterns in my life, and I always find patterns.Most of us rock along in our own individual patterns in our lives and we don't even realize what they are or why we cling to them.

I just realized yesterday that of my 5 novels -- four published and I am still working on the 5th -- 4 of them center around death and inheritance. My first novel [Ghosts in the Garden City] is about a young woman whose father dies, and she inherits an old suitcase. The contents of that old suitcase cause her to start trying to solve a mystery involving her paternal grandmother, and while doing so she unravels a dark family secret. My second novel [Leaf Season] is about a man who inherits a house when his uncle dies, and the house holds a mysterious trunk in the basement. My third novel [Heart of My Own Heart] is about a woman who travels through time to help her descendants understand the gifts that she has passed down to them. The novel I am still working on involves the search for a missing beneficiary after a wealthy man dies.

[right, me and my father, about 1988]

So why am I obsessed with death and luggage and missing or mysterious things?

My dad was a trust banker. Most people have no idea what that means. Dad was head of the Trust Department of several different banks during his career. "A bank trust department is a specialized group within a bank that focuses on investing and administrating assets left in a trust fund."

I recently wrote a short blog post about what a Living Trust is and why it's a good way to leave assets to your descendants. It basically puts the control over assets [money, real estate, a stock portfolio] in the hands of a trustee, who makes distributions according to the terms of the trust. It's a smart thing to do because it prevents someone from just inheriting a bunch of money and blowing it all.

Dad often had to tell trust beneficiaries "No, I'm sorry you've spent your allowance for the month, but I cannot legally give you any more money." He used to get calls late at night, early in the morning, when we were on vacation, etc. from people frustrated because Dad wouldn't violate the terms of the trust and just hand over a bunch of money to them. One guy called Dad in the middle of the night and said he was in Las Vegas and he owed money to the mob and they were going to kill him if he didn't pay them what he owed them. Dad said I'm sorry but you spent your monthly allowance already. The guy was a cokehead and Dad knew he was being played. Dad was really good at not giving in to those kinds of demands.

Anyway, I sort of digressed from my point. Control is something most of us crave and we panic if we don't have it, but control is often not a good thing.

In my own life, I have noticed that when I let go of trying to control a situation, good things always happen. It's hard to let go, but that feeling of truly getting out of my own way and turning over a situation to God always results in a solution presenting itself to me. I wrestle with really "turning it over to God" however. I love the feeling of being in control of a situation. I relish it.

Why do humans always crave the feeling that WE are in control?

Simple. We feel powerful and strong if WE are in control. There's an arrogance to it.

"By releasing control over circumstances, you gain more control over your life." - Kyle Maynard

At the end of the movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks' character gives a wonderful speech about control [LINK]. "I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow, I had to keep breathing, even though there was no reason to hope. All my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. Then one day that logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail. Now I'm back..."

I love that movie. It's about a man obsessed with time and with control and he has to learn a huge life lesson about letting go.

If living through a pandemic for the last few years has taught us anything, as a country, it's that this notion of us being able to control the narrative is a delusion. All WE can control is how we react to things that happen to us, like covid, or high prices, or employment, or even love.

I have two friends I love dearly who choose life alone. I think that they choose to live that way because being in a relationship means giving up control. When you love someone, really love them with your whole heart, you have to relinquish some of the control in your life. You have to compromise, and often do things you don't really want to do. The payoff is that you are loved and cherished and [usually] not lonely. I pray often that my friends will unlock their hearts and allow someone to get in and fill their hearts with love, because in my humble opinion

Love = Magic

Sometimes I write blogs to remind myself of things, and this has been one of those blogs. Trying to control everything in my life has always led to negative and painful situations. I have to let go of the illusion of control. I have to open the doors and windows of my heart and let in light and air. I have to concede that by letting God [or The Universe or simply Love] control my life I am not giving up or giving in, but I am embracing the change that needs to happen. I have to not freak out if that change is scary or it makes me uncomfortable. Faith in God helps tremendously. Maybe letting go means accepting some pain, but it's only when we experience pain that we experience growth.

Here endeth the lesson...