Today, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 1 of the August Open Write inspires us to write poems about hands. Denise Krebs of California is hosting today’s writing. You can read her full prompt here.
Welcoming Magnolia Mae
yesterday, these hands
gripped handlebars, holding on
for the ride with friends
yesterday, these hands
swaddled babies, bandaged knees
as children grew up
yesterday, these hands
stitched a quilt for a grandchild
I will meet today
for today, these hands
will build Legos and fairy
gardens first, and then…..
today, these hands will
swaddle a new granddaughter
in rosettes and sage
so that tomorrow,
these hands will be remembered
this heart full of love
somebody's little ripple is a drama tsunami
because somebody wrote their own life rules
and dictionary about how things are
(here's a hint: we know it's empty)
somebody's "close-knit family" endures Christmas
for a sock swap and all go home disturbed
somebody is rich, too,
richer than you, than I, than all of us,
with money in the bank to do big things
(here's another hint: we know they're undefined)
and somebody has tickets to cruise again soon
and would have gone last week except
somebody's pet squirrel died and
somebody had to bury it and grieve a little
so we might want to tolerate somebody
and act all impressed
because somebody knows how to live
when clearly you don't, I don't, we don't.
(But we know the truth. See, we've done
somebody's laundry
a time or two
so we don't pity that squirrel.)
Our Schnoodle Ollie is not like his brothers at all. I tell him all the time: You’re the smartest dog we’ve got.
Then, just to try to prove me wrong, his hilarious antics kick in.
He naps on the coffee table. He flips upside down in a chair with his feet all quirky and takes another nap. He brings me his ball to throw, then runs off in an entirely different direction like he thinks it’s landed somewhere else. It’ll be right in front of him on the bed, yet he digs through the covers pretending it’s somehow ended up inside the middle of the mattress. His never-ending humor keeps us entertained.
He is campaigning for all he’s worth to be Dog #1. He will trick Boo into getting out of his dad’s lap so he can sit in the favored spot.
He de-thrones the other two in other ways, too. He takes the prized bed spot and then pretends to be heavily asleep when either of the other barks at him.
A colleague shared that she thought I’d enjoy visiting a bookstore she’d visited on her birthday.
The Underground Bookstore is in Carrollton, Georgia on the downtown square.
She was right. This place is charming, and the literary candles that use scents from items mentioned in their namesake books are delightful.
You step down into stairs so old they’re not built to code, and immediately the smell of books and the antiquity of bookshelves greets you like an old friend. Staff reviews line the shelves under featured titles, enticing you to read all the books.
And the poetry section……oh my! The poetry section had a few holes here and there (no Harjo, only one Limon, and only two obscure Collins) but still an amazing collection of those lesser-known poets and titles that sell the books. I came away with a couple of Sarah Kay books (one signed), one Collins, one Macfarlane/Morris (signed), and a book I needed for a book club that is already well underway – – Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
After dinner on the square, we went to the most aromatically-roasted coffee shop ever, the kind with old brick walls and people talking in comfortable chairs around a round table and folks on computers doing work, ……..and right there in the middle of it all, the two of us…….reading books.
We both worked on projects most of Saturday after visiting our own local coffee shop and Savored Sunday afternoon on the streets of another town this week, and the twist-up was a beautiful way to end the weekend and start the week ahead.
Aside from the usual blasts of neighbors’ target practice gunfire and tannerite explosions just to light up the Pike County Discussion Page at 8:00 on any given Sunday morning, the planes from the local airport flying low and the jets flying high along the flight path above the farm from the Atlanta Airport, and the roosters excited to see the sunrise after the long, dark night, the sweet notes of birdsong from the branches of the Loblolly pines brings peace and serenity.
One of our deer families has learned how to enter and exit the old goat pen, where they feast on breakfast and enjoy a little more security and thus a more relaxed dining experience than they normally have, especially with their little ones.
The white-breasted nuthatches laugh like evil circus clowns with their white-painted faces as they climb up and down the suet trees and keep watch while they eat.
And the hummingbirds engage in full-body air jousting squabbles over the sweet nectar at every feeder.
What I love most about my birdwatching time, despite all the best reasons I’d sometimes love a noise ordinance in our county, is that all deadlines and demands are on hold while I sip my morning coffee, never knowing what I’ll see or hear next.
I may not be sporting a Rockport, Massachusetts t-shirt, but I do have this.
Every time I scrub dishes, I think of that cute little Sail Loft in Bear Skin Neck, and it takes me back to one of the most scenic United States towns I’ve ever visited.
The VRBO unit had one of these dish brushes in the sink, and I fell in love with it right there in the standing-room-only kitchen in that iconic New England coastal town that still plays steeple hymns at 4 pm on the church organ, probably to remind everyone walking around in this much natural beauty that it might be the closest place to heaven on earth.
Even before I left Massachusetts, I went online and ordered one for myself from Amazon. The Lodge. They may specialize in cast iron, but they make a mean dish brush, too.
As I scrubbed the two crock pots from yesterday’s Meal Train Mississippi Pot Roast and our own MPR dinner with cooked-on carrots and potatoes, I thought back to my walks through this quaint little New England town to take photos of the rocky shore, the sunrise seaglass hunt, the angel wings I found on White Wharf beach in one of the least expected places to ever find a pair (an unquestionable hello from my mother in heaven), and the little wooden boats that looked like they were sitting on glass as they were anchored like lone ducks in the water.
I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for several reasons.
An Indigo Bunting performs acrobatic moves in a tree
I’m cooking dinner for a friend who is now cancer-free after radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, and I’ll get to see her today for the first time since early June.
I’ll finally finish a quilt for my new granddaughter and get to see the true “rag quilt” look of the final product.
I’ll get to read from the next book in Sarah Donovan’s book club, even though the hammock is out of the question on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend of the summer here.
The weeds that are completely out of control will get handled by someone else.
There’ll be some time for birding before it gets hot outside, when the birds are most active.
There’ll be some time for writing chapters in two books I’m working on with my writing group.
Some pressure washing might happen.
And the other thing that might happen is a trip to an underground bookstore where they sell these candles that use the scents of things in the books they’re named after, like Alice in Wonderland with the unbirthday cake fragrance, and Anne of Green Gables with some lemon and jasmine. A co-worker told me about this place, maybe an hour from here, where she started Christmas shopping last weekend because of all the unique gifts she’d found when her husband took her there as part of her birthday celebration.
For now, I’m settled into my writing chair, enjoying the early morning silence of the house. I’ve taken the boys out for their morning relief romp, and they all came back in and settled back to sleep right away. I can hear a Carolina Wren singing at the top of its lungs through the kitchen window, and the faintest light looks like pinholes through the tree leaves against the eastern side of the Johnson Funny Farm.
Five minutes from now, at a quarter to seven, I’ll be outdoors with a steaming cup of coffee, starting a bird count to mark the species I hear and see.
And I won’t be rushed to get showered and dressed today. I’ll savor my coffee and my own private bird concert on the front porch way out here in our remote corner under the Loblolly pines of rural Georgia and give a thousand thanks for the blessings of another sunrise to enjoy the spectacular splendor of the woods.
Boo Radley had his initial visit with our new vet this week. Halfway down Hollonville Road, on the way into town, he had an accident in the back seat of the car – – he knew something was up when he was leaving the house without his brothers. His ears plastered his neck, his tail stayed tucked underneath him. He trembled and panted the whole time, begging to go home, clinging close to me.
Understand: Boo doesn’t even like me. I went out and rescued this little undernourished, matted knothead, and he came home and declared on DAY 1 that he is his daddy’s dog, which is why we ended up with additional dogs. Fitz is my soul dog, and Ollie is “the guest dog,” requested by one of my grandsons on a visit when he realized that he was the only one without a Netflix-watching lap dog.
The vet offered treats, but Boo is too smart for that. He’s not talking to strangers, and he’s sure not eating any of their candy.
This is Boo – our High-Anxiety Schnoodle, who is as bad as if not worse than a toddler with severe separation anxiety. Only he’s not a toddler. He’s 56 in dog years, a little old grown man, and more curmudgeonly than Tom Hanks in A Man Called Ove.
But we made it through the visit (they decided not to take his temperature and risk displacing that tail firmly guarding the entrance) that consisted of listening to his heart and feeling for any growths, and 48 hours later, we are finally at ease.
Yesterday was the first day of the 2023-2024 school year in my county in rural Georgia, and I left early to avoid the heavy traffic on the one day of the year when it seems every parent drives their kids to school. While my role in the school system has changed from that of a classroom teacher, I still enjoy the energy of the first day of school in any of our school buildings. Backpacks are new, everyone has a pencil, and you can tell by the soles of all the shoes that back-to-school shopping yielded the newest fashionable kicks. Everyone is showered and clean – and mostly well-behaved, since everyone is still outside their comfort zone and a little uncertain of consequence on all the boundaries they haven’t tested just yet. And by everyone, I mean students, parents, teachers, and administrators – all of us!
It’s fascinating to me to read through Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow Sampler from 1950. Seventy-three years ago in Connecticut, children went back to school after Labor Day and got out at the end of June. Although we return in August in the deep South and get out at the end of May these days, the prevailing school traditions and the perceptions haven’t changed by more than a month in timeline or in thinking in three quarters of a century.
As I begin this day, I’m sharing some of Taber’s timeless insights and sentiments that she describes from her own lifetime of school beginnings. As I read her words, I think of my Great Granny Haynes, who was surely close in age as I do the math of the years and their family structures of that time.
Gladys
School begins and the children waiting for the school bus look like migratory birds themselves in their bright jackets and with that traveling look. They are traveling too on some sort of education, and this is a journey too, a migration from childhood to a larger world. I always feel a nicking ache that I am no longer filling a pencil case and getting schoolbooks for my child.
Kim
I know well this feeling of the nicking ache, from both a parent and teacher perspective. Even though I love what I do as a District Literacy Specialist, I miss being in the classroom – – especially on the first day of school. The bumper crop of a whole new harvest of students comes hesitantly creeping into the classroom, checking out the seating arrangements and all their friends in the class. They still have high hopes that some teacher hasn’t had conversations with the previous teachers enough to know that there are those who shouldn’t be sitting next to their best friends who get them in trouble the same way they get in trouble for laughing in church – hence, they take their assigned seats.
Gladys
Now, as I see a new bevy of school children waiting for the school bus, I wonder what changes the world will bring to them. But I hope for them that they may have a backlog of family love. A child that is confident that he or she is cherished is armed against almost anything life can bring.
Kim
I’ve taught all grades except 4th and 12th throughout my years teaching, and some of the deepest discussions I had with my high school students as we discussed “ancient literature,” are the ways it applies to students today. Whether we were reading Shakespeare or Steinbeck, the universal themes of literature rose to the top like cream rising on a fresh pitcher of milk, standing the test of time and transcending years and geography. I experience the same longings for children today that Taber did in her day – – the hope that there is a backlog of love, and the wonderings about what life will bring – – the universal, lingering hope through the years that children have a strong sense of belonging.
Gladys
Nowadays few mothers have time to read to the children and if they did, someone would have to turn off the television. But there is a special pleasure in being read to or in reading aloud. Long after I could read everything except such words as peripatetic, I pretended I had to be read to every night.
Kim
Still, there is pleasure in 2023 in reading books and living lives vicariously that we could otherwise not live ourselves. Take Taber, for example. I’m basically a fly on her walls, listening to her conversations as I read her words and take in the similarities of our lives and perspectives. In Taber’s day, the television was an enemy of academia; today, it’s technology, cell phones, and social media. And, of course, Netflix. And don’t get me started on AI, because I might warn that we should all be concerned that our grandchildren don’t grow up and marry robots.
Gladys
Judging by what I read and what I hear, the excitement has chiefly gone from education, and this is a pity. My opinion is that we have too many tired teachers. No matter how gifted a man or woman may be, teaching three times as many pupils as is normal and always trying to do extra jobs to supplement the small salary, drains the enthusiasm.
Kim
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Teachers are still tired. Educators are still trying to supplement the small salary. Enthusiasm still wanes in a steady stream from the beginning of the year to the end, and today, unlike in the 1950s, there are even memes with owls that look like wise professors sitting on branches showing a first day teacher and then a last day teacher owl looking like it’s been in a fight with a pack of hungry coyotes and barely made it out alive. That’s how the year goes most often in the grand scheme of a school year.
I read through her calendar year and imagine the timelines of our perceptions, Gladys’s and mine, like those striated layers of earth from different eras, stacked in the mesas of Arizona – – parallel experiences, one then, one now, but the same kind of living with the same concerns and excitement, just new layers of soil to live it all on. And the one piece most interesting? My own parents would have been those young school children in the bright jackets in 1950, migrating on their journey as Taber noted.
And I’m here right now in 2023, on my front porch, looking out over this farm as Gladys did her own in 1950. Me – an egg from the nest of two of those migratory birds who has raised her own fledglings, who are now raising their own fledglings.
Common Threads 