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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?

In an educational leadership conference about 12 years ago, the keynote speaker took the podium and began, “You all will not remember my name, and you won’t remember my message years from now.  But you will always remember this:  when I get in the shower, the first thing I do is lather my washcloth, and using my right hand, I start washing myself beginning with my left shoulder.  I work my way down my arm and then wash the other shoulder and arm.  Then I go from there. How many of you also begin on the left shoulder?” 

Almost every hand in the room went up.  He pointed out that those without hands in the air were probably lefties who began with their right shoulder, opposite side of the body.

He was right.  How many times since that conference a dozen years ago have I thought of the showering process?  His message was about the process of doing things. I remember that, too.  But I have forgotten his name.  And, if I must be honest, I have (thankfully) finally forgotten the imagery he created letting loose first thing like that.  I’d made a note to myself:  never, ever, under any circumstances, conjure up the thought of nakedness in any public speaking engagement. 

I think it’s a lot like that “favorite stove top burner” revelation.  It has to do more with our handedness.  Starting with a shoulder has a lot to do with the way we would drizzle a cake with icing – gravity works well when we start at the top and let it seep its way down the sides of the cake, the same way suds making their way down our bodies in the shower give our legs a pre-wash.  It just makes perfect sense that the only place in life where we really start a thing at the bottom is a climb. 

I think organizationally a good bit of the time: that top-to-bottom, left-to-right approach works for me, just like the words on the page of a book. Always has. And I think the speaker knew that most of those in the room were leaders who have systems and processes in place that tend to use sweeping strategies so we don’t leave any dirt on the floor.  Choose a corner spot, begin there, move from one side to the other, and don’t miss any spots of dirt on the floor or words on the page. 

Wordle, too, has a logical process. Begin with the vowels in a word like adieu and keep track of the shading of the letters already used and their green correct positions.

As a testing coordinator, I often administer one-on-one testing, as I will today to begin the process of closing out the school year.  And I will begin at the top of the roster and work my way down, checking off each name as we complete this work.  I will not start at the bottom and work my way up, nor in the middle in a random hit-or-miss fashion.  I will start with the left shoulder, as I have learned works best.

1 Corinthians 14:40 

But all things should be done decently and in order.

Ollie barks at his brothers

spins, rests rump-risen, 

front legs flat-on-floor,

tail wagging, watching

for one whisker-twitch

,,,,,too early, Ollie

Ollie whimpers, whines to play, 

pesters his people, 

peppers us with ankle-nips

drops his pink ball

at our clean-showered feet

….it’s 5 a.m., Ollie

we throw the ball

down the hall

he runs

looking back like

an NFL receiver

….too early, Ollie

slams into the door

every.single.time

slides sideways

his ice hockey ways

full-force as he plays

helmetless

no mouth-guard

all boy, all heart

Ollie knows no clock

with all twelve 

padless pounds

seeking traction 

on the wood floor

to bring the ball back

for another replay

…..go, Ollie, go!

Zechariah 8:5 

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.

We were driving along a short stretch of forested Highway 354 on the north side of Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia, where we were camping for the weekend on site 107.   We’d gone to The Corner Store to get a couple of longneck Blue Moons and an orange to enjoy by the campfire after dinner as we searched for stars through the smoky haze of evening. We know this place – we forget something every time we camp here, so we know where to buy essentials like water hoses, beer, aluminum foil, fruit, and matches. 

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha

You can listen to the engine moanin’ out its one-note song

“See, I just never hear any music coming out today that’s really good like this,” my husband preached, shaking his finger at the dashboard screen revealing in large blue letters: Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band Turn the Page before looking at me for agreement.

“You’ve got that right,” I confirmed from my AMEN passenger seat of his pickup truck. 

But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do

“This generation will never know the good stuff.  I know every generation says that.  My parents said that.  But it’s true,” he went on, as we crept campward along the drive.

Earlier in the afternoon, I’d proposed a game – knowing full well he does not like games.  But I thought he might play this one.  

Here I am, on a road again

There I am, on the stage

Here I go, playing star again

There I go, turn the page

I’d turned the page of my journal and explained the rules (there really weren’t any to speak of, but still…). “I’m going to start.  We’ll each add a song for a campfire playlist, and then pass it back and forth until we’re finished. And then I’ll load the songs.”   

He’d agreed to this one, this man of mine who comes home from work and unwinds by pulling up music videos on YouTube to songs of the ‘70s on his iPhone in his recliner, dogs flanking him on both sides and the back of his chair behind his shoulders – listening, too, immersing themselves in this afternoon routine of his. 

And so it went, until we had the playlist completed; we were listening to it on the way to town and back to our peaceful little haven on the backside of nowhere. 

Out there in the spotlight you’re a million miles away

Every ounce of energy you try to give away

Red sockeye salmon grilling, broccoli florets and wild rice simmering, and one single longneck into dinner, we rethought the evening campfire since we’d enjoyed one all morning. We decided instead to call it a day and finish watching another replay of Expedition Happiness on Netflix.  

Here I am, on a road again

There I am, on the stage, yeah

Here I go, playing star again

There I go, there I go

And I realized – – we have become our parents’ generation.  We’ve turned the page.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 

But test everything; hold fast what is good.

Our Current Campfire Playlist (growing):

Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer – Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes

Rock Star – Nickelback

Love Can Build a Bridge – The Judds

Lowdown – Boz Skaggs

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves – Cher

Smoke from a Distant Fire – Sanford Townsend Band

County Roads – John Denver

Calypso – John Denver

I Love – Tom T. Hall

Silly Love Songs – Paul McCartney & Wings

Could I Have this Dance – Anne Murray

Magnet & Steel – Walter Egan

Welcome Back by John Sebastian

Fooled Around and Fell in Love – Elvin Bishop

Shannon – Henry Gross

Kiss You All Over – Exile

Sooner or Later, Love is Gonna Get Ya – The Grass Roots

I Go Crazy – Paul Davis

Knock Three Times on the Ceiling

Turn the Page – Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

Joy to the World – Three Dog Night

Life’s Been Good – Joe Walsh

Southern Cross – Crosby, Stills & Nash

Hooked on a Feeling – BJ Thomas

Constant Craving – K.D. Lang

When You Say Nothing At All – Keith Whitley version and Allison Krauss version

Don’t Close Your Eyes- Keith Whitley

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys – Willie & Waylon

He Thinks He’ll Keep Her – Mary Chapin Carpenter

I Love the Way You Love Me – John Michael Montgomery

Into the Night – Benny Mardones

I Hope You Dance – LeeAnn Womack