Month: May 2022

I first discovered back in the late 1980s that Pike County, Georgia had a quaint charm and a certain magic about it that made it different from anywhere I had ever lived.  My college roommate, Stacey, grew up in this town, and the stories she told made it even more appealing.  When I divorced in 2006, I decided to relocate from Hilton Head Island, SC to Zebulon, GA with my youngest child. We both needed this Little House on the Prairie to heal and pick up the pieces of our shattered lives.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that we were, as characters and readers, moving directly into the pages of the most interesting book I’d ever read.

Rolling hills and fences contain plush meadows filled with cows and mules, donkeys and goats and horses.  Countryside barns of Pike County take me straight back to my childhood dreams to the farm of Fern and Avery, with Charlotte and Wilbur at the core of this idyllic, pastoral setting that is a hidden gem my husband calls “God’s country.”  He says it every time we’ve been off rambling somewhere out of county and pass the sign coming back in: “Ahhh……we’re back in God’s country.” Then he’ll crack the window and take a deep breath. Roosters ask and answer back and forth from neighboring farms at all hours, doodling their warnings on red tailed hawk sightings. And that song my mama always sang when I was little, that I still sing to my grown children today – early in the mornin,’ bout the break of day, you can hear the donkey, and this is what he’ll say….hee haw, hee haw…. You can hear those donkeys, too, here in Pike County.

When folks talk about a place so remote that they can pee off their own front porch, they are talking about right here.  There is something forever lingering about this way of life when little boys grow up fishing in ponds and jumping dirt bikes from hill to hill ~ they never, ever lose their joy of peeing in the great outdoors.  Take my word for it.  

On one visit as I was preparing to make my move here, Stacey was driving down Reidsboro Road when she slammed on brakes.  I looked up, bracing myself for a crash, and saw a goat with a red collar standing squarely in the middle of the lane, with no apparent plans to be anywhere.  Stacey put on her flashers, exited the car, and took the goat by the collar, leading him well off the road to a grassy patch. That was the moment I knew for sure that I was moving to the right place.

Still today, on our community discussion page, “Someone’s bull is loose over on Pedenville Road, so if you know the owner you might wanna let ‘em know.”  “A miniature pony is running around over on Chapman Road, and he won’t let me close to it.  No idea where it is this morning, but if you’re missing one you could check the area for it.”  “A pig is running down Shady Lane, and I almost hit it.  If this pig is yours, come get it before it gets hit.” 

Every.Single.Day some critter makes a break for it and winds up on social media.  

There was that one day, too, when our neighbor’s bull got loose and wandered into our front yard. I had no idea he was visiting until my youngest child came home.

“Mom? There’s a bull in the front yard? Why??”

As if I had put it out there as a pet (and, to be fair, my children never really knew what to expect out of me – – I did once capture an alligator with my bare hands and a rubber band when it was threatening to get into a neighbor’s pool in South Carolina, and held it until DNR arrived to take it and relocate it). I called the neighbor, who showed up a few minutes later and took his bull by the horns and led it back over to his pasture.

Shortly after I moved here in 2006, a headline in the once-a-week newspaper reported that a cannon had been fired over in Meansville and the cannonball had ripped through a wall of a house a half mile away as the residents were out to dinner.  

And everyone’s a character.  One deacon in a church talks with such passion about everything, his favorite word “onliest.”  The onliest way to Heaven is accepting Jesus, he’ll say, further squeezing more superlative status out of the already-narrow-laned word. The English teacher in me cringes every time he uses that word, but when I step outside my teacher skin and sit back and listen, I feel the pulse of the onliest place I ever really want to be.

And then there are all the typical busybody southern ladies who can’t keep their noses in their own wadded purse Kleenex to save the queen, and who rarely even call ceasefires on gossip for Sunday services.  Those prayer lists in the women’s Sunday School class? Are usually veiled gossip sessions.

There are mudboggin’ jacked-up pickup truck types who take their Saturday night shower and slick their hair back on Sunday mornings, wipe the tops of their boots off, and wear their best Wrangler jeans and bolos, reverently removin’ their cowboy hats before passin’ through the church doors to find a pew and sit with their grannies to harmonize in the hymn-singin’ as they praise the Lord.  

Every small-town southern character who has ever appeared in any book is here, in the flesh, in Pike County, Georgia.  Story lines play out right in front of me, so that’s why I try to listen far more than I talk – – I’m busy watching the next writing ideas take root.  

Some characters are scandalous, so scandalous I can’t mention them here, like the local convenience store regulars who show up for the undergarments hidden in the pizza boxes.

You can’t make this stuff up.  

Maybe my favorite was the day I was scanning Facebook for a moment right before a serious meeting and came across this post:  I’d like to apologize to anyone who was at Pedro’s.  I showed my white tr@$h a$$ last night.  My bad. 

Not only could I not focus on the meeting for having to cover my face as if I were about to sneeze several times to cover the laughter, I kept thinking to myself, …..and this is why I love living here in this sauna of sin, where self-deprecating confessionals plummet like waterfalls all around in the natural beauty of the rural countryside. And…..why wasn’t I at Pedro’s to see this spectacular show??

God’s country. Like nowhere else on earth.

2 Chronicles 7:14 

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

For several years now in late spring or early summer, we have found black rat snakes on our front porch. They like to get in our windows and look inside to see what the humans on the Johnson Funny Farm are up to.

The first time it happened, Boo Radley was barking a high-pitched bark, nose to nose and separated from the snake only by the windowpane in the living room. Its body was wound up in an oval shape like a garden hose, lying side to side in the two foot span of the window, raising its head and staring straight at Boo.

Last year, there were two of them all intertwined under our kayaks that we had placed on the porch temporarily while we cleaned out the garage. That took some wrangling to get that pair under control.

This morning, I noticed one in the window, climbing the house to get to the bird eggs in the nest at the corner of our front porch roof.

We got our snake trash can and our trash picker-upper and contained him before putting the lidded can in the truck and relocating this fellow to the west side of the Funny Farm to help control the field mice population over yonder where the sun sets.

Once we got him over on the Turner Road side of the farm, we turned him loose into the rugged side of the wild, where he slithered for cover once he realized that his life was going to be spared. On the way back, we saw a second black rat snake of the day about fifty feet from where we had released our prisoner, so it’s safe to assume that maybe the resident west-ender was coming to greet the east-ender and show him all the best field mouse spots.

We don’t kill our snakes unless they are venomous, and then we do so only to avoid young snakes that may threaten our dogs. We did kill the copperhead all coiled up and ready to strike, hiding in the barn under the tractor last year.

One time when a rat snake got in the chicken coop, I leaned in to get him and got my hair caught in the chicken wire. Fortunately, my stepson was home, so I called him to come and help as I had the snake trapped between an upside-down metal mesh garbage can and a campaign yard sign. I couldn’t release the pressure without the snake getting loose, so there I waited, with my head stuck in the coop, face to face with the snake through the mesh until Andrew arrived to help untangle me.

For today, the bird eggs have survived, the snake lived, and the dogs never even figured out what was happening. We high-fived our continued relocation teamwork, satisfied that we had done our part to protect the life of this eco-friendly serpent.

But once we’d seen two snakes before noon mid-May, we concluded that it is going to be quite a year for snakes.

Luke 10:19 

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

The letter arrived Thursday, May 5, postmarked May 2, 2022 in Salt Lake City, Utah from my writing friend Glenda Funk, who lives in Idaho. I observed every square inch of the envelope – her return address seal, a blue circular sticker the size of a half-dollar with a bird surrounded by leaves, put a smile on my face. Next, I noticed the handwriting – exceptionally beautiful, especially for someone who has had two recent eye surgeries and has NOT let her less than perfect vision sap even one ounce of the hunger she has for passionately living a full life of travel and making a difference in the lives of others (she is a private person, but listen up: there are some people who work tirelessly behind the scenes by choice to lift others up every day, and she is one of them). Finally, I noticed the stamp – a Women Vote 19th Amendment Forever stamp. Yes, everything about this envelope addressed to me built my anticipation for what was inside.

When I opened it, the first thing I saw was a red and white bookmark with the image of Mark Twain at the bottom. Travel is Fatal to Prejudice, it said. “Found the perfect bookmark for you,” she wrote. She knows from all of our shared writing that we both have an insatiable desire to see the world and to make every day an adventure. I read this in her writing, see it in her posts. Here’s a woman who drives out to go get her new glasses and ends up in Red Butte Garden and Arboretum with her husband while she waits for her lenses to be switched.

And as I read her letter, touching tears pooled in my eyes. The letter was personalized to me, but was sent to a group of people to share that she had decided that her monthly theme would be a postcard project to share the postcards that she has collected from her many years of travel. She explained that she has purchased lots of postcards during her journeys, and while she intended to mail them then, she never did – so she would embark on a Postcard Project for the month of May, reliving memories and bringing smiles to friends as they checked their mailboxes across the country. She’d also be writing in response to reading (she gave me a perfect June theme, so I’m going to take this and run with it, starting today in May in a hammock in F D Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

At the end of her letter, she explains that her Postcard Project is about her commitment to continued daily writing, so recipients should not feel the obligation to write back. I believe that, and I also know this: these postcards are a way of sharing self, of offering a moment of connection, of bringing a smile to the faces of those who will receive them, and most of all – of saying you matter to me. And there is not a single soul anywhere who does not need to be reminded that we matter.

Thank you, Glenda!

Proverbs 16:9 

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

My school system has been working with our Family Connection in partnership to bring Elia Moreno  to our community collaborative meetings virtually each month.  Elia lives in Texas and works tirelessly with those in poverty to help empower them to effect positive change in their lives. She leads us in discussions about how to make a difference in our rural Georgia community as we strive to be good neighbors. 

In our May meeting, there were a lot of tears; Elia’s sister Dee, diagnosed a couple of years ago with cancer, had passed away the day after our previous meeting in April.  Elia is known for her powerful words and thoughts (I often jot down quotes as she speaks).  In our May meeting, I wrote this:  “In the two years leading up to my sister’s death, we made it count.  We wore the dress, we bought the shoes, we took the trips. And I’m so glad we did that.  We spent time together and had no regrets.”  Her words brought to mind the Tim McGraw song Live Like You Were Dying, about the man whose father is faced with a life-threatening illness and gives the message that we should do the things we’ve always wanted to do today – while there is still time.

I recently visited Monroe Memorial Gardens in Forsyth, Georgia, where Ronnie Hammond, lead singer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section (my husband’s favorite band), is buried. On that same day, we visited Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia, where the members of the Allman Brothers band are buried. We were both deeply moved by the beauty and peacefulness of these places, but the finality of life, the certain eternity of death in this life and promise of eternal life in heaven, was strongly felt.

As we searched for Ronnie’s grave, we noticed an older gentleman sitting in a folding chair on the far side of the cemetery, next to a grave. When he saw us walking the rows, he asked my husband, “Who are you looking for?”

Briar shared his stories of concerts and interactions with the Atlanta Rhythm Section and his more than half-century fixated fandom with the band and their songs. I watched these two – this older gentleman and my husband – walking side by side toward a grave near the entrance to the cemetery.

Briar spent some time there, reflecting and thinking, considering. What goes through our minds as we pause with graves at our feet is a deeply personal thing, caught as we are in our own blips on the dash at an unknown point between birth and death.

I looked back over and noticed that the gentleman had returned to his chair. “What’s his story?” I asked Briar.

“I don’t know. Let’s go find out,” he said, heading in that direction. I followed.

Turns out that the man has come here every evening for the past 8 years, except when weather or his own illness prevented his coming. “This is my wife, right here,” he explained, pointing at the grave at his feet.

I read the name. Hall. Juanita, born in 1936, had died in 2014. Frederick’s future plot is right beside hers; 1940 was etched in his birth space. Frederick, 82 years old, is in a strange sense, warming his own space pre-burial, as he had been for 8 years already. I wondered how many people on the face of this planet spent this much time next to the place that they would eventually be buried. And what he thought about as he sat.

“I just buried my daughter in the new section a month ago,” he told us, suddenly misty eyed the same way an unexpected rain shower moves in, pointing just beyond where our truck was parked. “It’s not supposed to work like this. We’re not supposed to bury our kids. They’re supposed to bury us.”

I looked at my feet. There was nothing to be said, and any words might take away the power of his feelings. So I stared at the ground.

And I thought a lot about Elia and Dee. Sisters who made a conscious choice to live with joy even in the face of death. Sisters who wore the dress, bought the shoes, and took the trips. Sisters who parted with no regrets, knowing that their time apart would be but a blink of an eye before they are reunited in heaven.

I thought about Frederick and Juanita, and their daughter, and wondered whether there were regrets, whether they’d known ahead of time to wear the clothes, buy the shoes and take the trips as they faced a finish line. I imagine that Frederick’s family was his entire life – folks who sat around the table together every Sunday after working hard all week, folks who celebrated every birthday and Christmas together, steeped in tradition with each new journey around the sun, contentment at its peak in their own living space.

I wondered about the regrets that Ronnie Hammond and his wife Tracey had ever felt. Ronnie’s last days involved surviving a bullet and ending up with heart failure.

And I stopped and took a quick personal inventory. For some of us, avoiding regrets means wearing the dress, buying the shoes, taking the trips and living like every day is our last – to live like we were dying (which, let’s face it – that’s how we are all living; from our first breaths, we inch our way toward death). I have an insatiable desire to travel, explore, see the world and write as I live like I am dying. For others, like my husband, having dinner at home around our table and spending time together, staying close to one’s roots – spending every moment in our own walls, cocooned safely in the familiar places – is how they would choose to live like they’re dying.

Moments in a cemetery have the power like nowhere else to shape the ways we think, to help us forgive, make decisions, and spend our time. After all, it is not our money that is our most valuable resource in this life; it is our time.

I think of Aunt Sook’s words to Buddy in A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, feeling assured that every one of us will, in fact, leave this world with today in our eyes.

You know what I’ve always thought? I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark. And it’s been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself…..as for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes. – Capote

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James 4:14

He’s done it again, this little hunting schnoodle of ours.  Or so I’d thought.

Every dog has a purpose, and Fitz’s just happens to be hunting lizards.  On our afternoon walks, he’s not looking in the grass.  He’s likely to walk headfirst into bushes and posts, even his two brothers, as he watches the brick sides of the house for lizards – green chameleons, red-headed skinks, striped skinks, and the brown ugly gecko-looking kind that resemble jagged pieces of pine bark.  

Bless his heart, his eyesight is failing him terribly, but his passion never wanes.  Sometimes he misses what is right under his nose, so I confess – – there are times that I do the equivalent of what drug enforcement agents do for their drug canines to boost their confidence- – I catch a lizard and plant it right in front of him so he can continue to be the dog he was born to be.  My precious protector needs to believe that he will always hold aggressive baby killer dinosaurs at bay, far from his mom.  I watch through finger slats over shielded eyes as he rips the tails and other appendages off, and plug my ears so I don’t hear the crunch – cheering silently for him in his relentless innate sport.  

One night last week, we noticed a huge dragonfly flitting through the garage, clearly lost and trying to find his way back outside.  He was stuck above the opened door and couldn’t quite figure out that lowering his altitude would have made a world of difference.  We opted not to try to help him, fearing we would damage a wing.  We trusted he would find his way out once the lights were off and he could adjust his focus in the dark.  

When I came back inside from filling the birdfeeders early the next morning, all three dogs were huddled in a circle in the middle of the living room rug like they were at Wednesday night prayer meeting. They didn’t scatter off as I approached to see what was up.  They were all staring at the giant dragonfly staring back at them, belly-up on the rug.  Even Fitz, his hunter instinct in check, seemed to show concern for this beautiful creature who had apparently darted in the house, unbeknownst to us.  

I held a faint glimmer of hope that he would recover.  I took him outside and placed him carefully on the front porch coffee table and gave him a pep talk.  He seemed to be bidding the world goodbye, just as Charlotte did, waving her front leg as she was languishing, and I tried to shove the memory of grief deep back inside and bury it under fiftyish years of time. Yet still, half a decade later, the Zuckerman Farm has become the Johnson Funny Farm, and I still believe I’m part-Fern who never grew up. Today, a dragonfly replaces a spider, and three schnoodles replace a pig, a goose, and a sheep – and I’m still humanizing every creature that dwells here with us as I consider the impact that E.B. White’s beloved story Charlotte’s Web continues to have on me.

Hosea 4:3 

Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

At the south end of Beeks Road between Hollonville and Williamson on the backside of Nowhere and just a little over a quarter mile from my front door, there is a pond positioned directly in front of the stop sign at the T intersection. It puts a smile on my face and an incredible feeling of joy in my heart each morning on my way to work when I see the still undeveloped rural countryside, this little lily pad edged pond with mist rising as birds dart down to catch minnows. I know it’s a pond teeming with life, undisturbed and simply there for its sheer beauty.

I’ve always been that early bird, catching moments, seeing the world through rising sunlight and steamy mist and wondering why anyone would choose to sleep late and miss all the beauty so full and rich in these hours. To be fair, though, I miss whatever beauty happens after my 9 o’clock bedtime each night.

When we are camping and I don’t have to spend my morning hours getting ready for work and rushing out the door, these scenes of nature – God’s paintbrush at work in real time – are what inspire me to get up, get dressed, and get outdoors to hear the birds, to watch the woodpeckers kissing the trees, to see the sun and steam rising, to admire the way the strokes of sunlight bathe the morning landscapes. Some call it a curse, this internal clock of mine that rarely lets me sleep past 5 a.m.

I call it a blessing.

Psalm 113:3 

From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised!

Broken Sanddollar

tiny stars spill forth
offer possibilities
in such brokenness

Thanks to Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche for her prompt on This Photo Wants to Be a Poem, featured in May 2022. The broken sanddollar photo is by Kim Douillard.

Psalm 34:18

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

I’ve never been one to stop everything like the British and steep tea between 3 and 4 o’clock straight up, but I think I was in fact meant to be a proper sipper. Maybe it started somewhere in my childhood at Christmastime when my mother made instant spiced tea with Tang, tea, lemonade, and spices that awakened all my senses. 

About four years ago, I developed a sudden surge of fascination with hot tea, and realize that despite my denial, I am in a strange coffee-to-tea transition at this stage of my life.

On my kitchen counter, I keep a large woven basket heaped with three tiers of tea bags (from trying new ones all the time), yet I always reach for the same variety – the orange box of slightly spiced Constant Comment by Bigelow.  Does it go back to my mother’s instant hot spiced tea with orange?  I wonder.  

Imagine my surprise when the Amazon Treasure Truck’s daily noontime feature of a steal of a deal offered a tea sampler 3 weeks ago.  Twinings.  A full box of 6 bags of 8 flavors, presented in a colorful cardboard box kind of like those fancy dark mahogany wooden tea boxes you see in Europe and on cruise ships where they walk around and show you the selection and you pick one and tell them honey or lemon, or one lump or two.

I bought the tea sampler and left it wrapped in its shiny cellophane for the feelings of hope and discovery it offers in its newness.

It thrills me, it does.  

My 23 and Me Ancestry spit results explain my persuasion for tea:  I’m 99.5% European (97.5% Northwestern European, predominantly British and Irish).  My life is coming full-circle as my plane circles the airport in a holding pattern the way a teaspoon swirls and sweetens. I approach retirement age and consider the china tea cups and saucers of my future sitting room beverage.  It simply wouldn’t do for a proper British descendant to sit around drinking soft drinks from a can or water from a thin clear plastic bottle when the chromosomes scream otherwise.  

And so I’ll sip, pinkie extended upward, as my ancestors from across the pond straighten their hats with their white gloves and look down approvingly with their tight-lipped smiles of pride at me on the davenport, spine straight, feet crossed at the ankles, celebrating my true heritage.

Ezekiel 47:12 NIV

Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

There was a wind advisory in effect until 9:00 p.m. for PIne Mountain, Georgia on Friday, May 6th as storms made their way east from Alabama.  All day, the weather had been threatening our weekend plans, but we decided to hold out hope that the sun would punch holes of light through the clouds and the weatherman would be wrong again.

We arrived at our campsite, leveled the camper, set up our chairs, built a fire, and lit the grill to cook our steaks.  I’d left the A-1 at home just to keep the peace with my beef bully, and was delighted to discover that these tasted good enough without sauce.  We sat on opposite sides of the picnic table as we enjoyed our meal together.

About halfway through dinner, something green and glimmery caught my eye in a tree on a neighboring campsite.  

I decided to keep it to myself, wondering whether I was seeing things.  I didn’t want to tip my hand to any hallucinations just yet, but I suddenly began to understand after all these years how Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched felt every time she hollered out to Abner to come see if he saw what she was seeing.  

But it happened again.  

And again.  

The little flickers of light looked like tiny green fairies dancing on the tops of the leaves.  I kept watching, thinking maybe it had rained and the water was sparkling at a reflective angle on some ultra-green leaves as Mother Nature was putting on a show.

Maybe the steaks had come in contact with some kind of hallucinogenic mushrooms or something. Surely not. 

Fireflies!  They had to be fireflies.  Mystery solved.

But why were they swarming that one tree and nowhere else?  

My husband caught my expression of wonder and asked what was happening behind him.  

“Turn around,” I urged him, wiping my eyes, “and see if you notice anything in that tree right behind you.”  

He looked.  “I see little green lights.  Hmmmm…….looks like some sort of a laser show…..wait, now they’re turning red.”  

Fireflies and ladybugs?  Red and green laser lights?  What was happening?  

As it grew darker, the lights danced faster and more brilliantly.  Dog walkers and cyclists stopped to admire the tree of lights.  

“It’s a laser projector” the campers next door explained to a passerby. “They’re really for Christmas, but we like them all year.”  

My husband and I sat for hours, mesmerized by these lights.  They were fascinating.  Thrilling, really, like a troupe of magical fairies dancing, skipping across all the leaves, clinging to some before hopping to others.  

“Think I can find it on an Amazon search?”  I asked my husband.

“Ha!  Is that even a question? What have you never found on an Amazon search?”  

In less than two minutes I had the laser projector in my cart.  “Happy Mother’s Day to me,” I announced with delighted anticipation.  “It’ll be home before we will.”  

Years ago, I told my children to save their money and not to buy anything for me. It gives me the freedom to pick something I’d like to have and order it for myself, taking the pressure off of them to try to figure out something they think I would like. I usually call them and thank them for something very practical, so this year they will be surprised to discover that I bought a box full of magical emerald green dancing fairies to unleash on the breeze of the nighttime trees.

Genesis 1:14 

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years….

take a walk with me

just outside in my front yard

deep in the country

where pine forest touches sky

there’s no one around

just us and two does

on their feeding path at the

edge of the woods….shhhhh!

stand still and listen

~they’ll stomp those front feet

in protest of us

they think we don’t know

that they were here first

they harumphhhhh,

showing annoyance ~

then, white tails up,

they’ll take cover in the brush

….they’re clearly fed up

they’ll go trash-talk us

to their herd,

the rude house humans

who infringed on them

Job 39:1 

Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does?