As God is my witness, I thought eggs were for eating.
I'm up here in north Florida, visiting my sister on her 20-acre hobby farm. She has horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, geese, turkeys, peacocks, and chickens.
I do okay with the four-legged residents.
I've learned not to flinch when the horses crowd me when I'm carrying a feed bucket.
I've figured out how to judge the impact and brace for it when Alex, the full grown and wildly energetic bloodhound, comes bounding my way. I've learned which barn cats like to be petted, and which will shred any appendage you extend to them in friendship.
But the birds? I can't stand the birds.
I nearly wet myself the first time one of the bantam roosters came at me all claws and attitude, nearly scarring my shins for life.
I clench my teeth every time I put down grain for the geese, because they have the mistaken notion that pecking at my butt is somehow an incentive for me to get the food down faster.
The peacocks and turkeys run all over the place, and the stupid peacocks sleep in the trees and ... well, you don't want to lean against the trees at night with peacocks overhead.
The hens are OK. Hens lay eggs, and I like eggs.
Now, I know I'm not much use here on the farm, so when I find a way to do something to save Tracie a little bit of time or energy when I'm visiting, I do my best.
A few months ago, she mentioned that "the girls" were pretty productive, and that she needed egg cartons so she could share the largesse with some of her friends. I started saving egg cartons. Brought them with me this trip.
The morning after I got here, I decided to help by tackling the morning feeding ritual. I noticed there were about a dozen eggs ready to be gathered. Great! I could do that! I got an empty egg carton, filled it up, and put it in the fridge.
When Tracie got home from work, I let her know that I'd saved her the trip to the henhouse to gather her eggs.
The horrified look on her face told me I'd just made another "city mouse" mistake.
Seems Tracie was planning to increase her flock, and these weren't eating eggs. They were breeding eggs, and I'd just committed mass murder.
The chances of my getting the hang of country living don't look too good ...
Today would have been Mom’s 78th birthday, so I’m looking through old family photos trying to find one to post here that will do her justice.
See, Mom was always the one taking the pix at family gatherings and celebrations, so if we have her in the photos at all, it’s usually her thumb that was accidentally planted in front of the lens. When one of us caught her on film, there was a better than even chance that we’d cut half her face off, jiggle her out of focus, or have crummy timing and get her just as she made a goofy face and spoiled the effect. We have a lot of those goofy ones …
Doesn’t matter. Mom tended to leave an impression, so having pix to back up my very vivid memories would just be icing on the cake.
When she was a young woman, she was a ringer for actress Ava Gardner. Dad used to regale us with stories about taking her to some of the hot night clubs in Chicago and watching people try to cozy up to her with free drinks and show tickets in hopes of meeting other “stars.” Did Mom point out their errors? Heavens, no! She loved playing the part!
Mom had a rapier wit, too, and it sliced through conventions and pretensions with equal ease. When the show “Maude” was popular, people used to swear that Bea Arthur’s character was based on Mom. New friends often slipped and called her “Maude,” the similarities were so uncanny! Mom being the same sort of statuesque presence as Bea Arthur only added to the connection.
Even though she recognized the foibles of friends and family, Mom was fiercely loyal. She never hesitated to help if someone she loved needed her to back their play.
And, oh! Could Mom throw a party! There were huge, hilarious parties for St. Paddy’s Day, Hallowe’en, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. After we moved to Florida, friends planned their vacations around those parties, and the new friends blended so well with the old that you couldn’t tell the difference.
Mom was artistic, and used to draw goofy caricatures on notepads scattered around the house. Why she never ventured far from being a keypunch operator, I’ll never know. She and Dad were both gifted sketchers, and Tracie is, too. Me? I can barely draw my name.
Mom was creative in so many ways: Tracie and I both have beautifully hand-knit sweaters, and afghans and bedspreads of broomstick lace. I can’t remember a time when Mom wasn’t knitting nail polish covers in the shape of poodles, or liquor bottle covers in the shape of pink elephants with floppy felt ears. She liked fun, kitchy things. There isn’t a friend or relative who doesn’t remember the first pair of pom-pom slippers or mop slippers she made for them (well, OK, the guys didn’t get the frills, but they got the slippers).
Tracie still has the riding habits Mom made for her, and I have a Garfield Christmas wreath and one with teddy bears that Mom designed when she had her floral shop up in Kentucky.
Mom had a flair for interior design and created striking rooms with almost nothing to work with. Friends never knew what to expect if they went a few years between visits, but they always went home inspired.
It wasn’t all sweetness and light, though. Nothing ever is.
Early on, Mom learned that she needed to be able to stand on her own two feet, and that colored the way she let people into her world. She delighted in her relationships, but if something really serious was going on in her own life, you’d never know it till it was over.
So when she learned she had cancer, she kept it from everyone for as long as she could, and when she had to share her diagnosis, it was only with family.
In her last year, she went back to Illinois in 1990 to attend her 40year high school reunion. She wanted to see her old friends one last time, but she never let on to them that she was ill. In fact, in the class photo, she’s the picture of health and humor. She looks much younger than her years, and that Ava Gardner look-alike thing is goin’ on, too. And I know that she took to heart the words of Joni Mitchell’s song, “Both Sides Now”: You leave them laughing, when you go … don’t give yourself away.
Well, Mom didn’t give her secret away, but all her life, with her laughter, her friendship, her creative flair, and her love, she gave enough of herself away to fill three lifetimes.
And still, it’s not enough.
Mom died in March of 1991, and the night before Mother’s Day that year, I wrote this poem in her memory. I wish I’d written for my mother while she was still here to read it.
First Time Alone
(the Mom poem)
I hold your life in my hands:
small squares of time, caught out of context.
“Picture this! “ they say, tempting me to remember,
and I do.
I remember a chubby baby’s face,
caught in heavy sepia tones:
my twin, ‘though of another generation.
Years later,
Fujicolor would reveal our only real differences
in auburn hair
and emerald eyes
that I loved too well to envy.
An Ava Gardner look-alike,
who looked at me with a mommy’s eyes.
Emerald eyes
that cried when I hurt
and sparked with a humor that never faltered.
I remember a strong-willed woman
holding a family together amid shattering dreams,
emerald eyes that grew jaded,
and a humor that colored your pain.
And I remember loving you
(‘though God knows liking you came hard!)
The two of us, strong-willed women
with nothing but a shade of hair and hue of eye to separate us.
I’ve held off writing this one for more than a month because … it hurts.
For Father’s Day, I posted a tribute to my father, Richard Noakes, who adopted me shortly after marrying my mom. I was six, and he’s the father I know and love. A BUNCH.
A few days later, and entirely unrelated to that blog, I got a Facebook message from a complete stranger. She is my biological half-sister, and she wanted to make contact with the “big sister” she’d heard about her whole life.
My first reaction, once I realized who was writing to me, was puzzlement.
What could this woman want from me at this point in our middle age? She said she’d understand if I just wanted to ignore her message, that she wouldn’t bother me again, and I was tempted to leave it at that.
There was too much water under my bridge to give me any room to float a relationship with “those people.”
Both my parents were dead and it seemed inappropriate, somehow, for me to suddenly go looking for the birth father who had severed his parental rights. It felt disloyal to my own parents, even though they were long past being affected by anything on this earthly plane.
And there was my younger sister Tracie. We were born from the same womb, and share the same mother’s blood. We grew up together, and together we shouldered the anguish of watching both our parents leave this world. Nobody else on this planet has the same kinship with me that she has, and never will.
But the gal who wrote to me seemed very friendly, very cool, very nice.
So I sent a polite reply and WHAM! We were trading messages like they were going out of style. We were becoming pen pals despite my “better judgment,” swapping stories about our day-to-day lives, our interests, and our work. It was … pleasant.
I wasn’t all that surprised. I already knew a little bit about her from talking with my mom’s cousin about 20 years ago, and I knew we had many similarities. Like me, she writes the way she talks, like someone born and bred in the Midwest. She was bright in school, loves to read, loves to write, and ran a coffeehouse at the same time I was running mine.
So I kept answering her messages. But then she tried to tell me I might want to meet the man Tracie calls my “BioDad,” and I became exasperated and resentful. I told her that the man she knew and the one I knew were lifetimes apart. I allowed as how I’d like to know more about our mutual grandma, but I wasn’t going to go much further than that.
Then BioDad’s wife wrote, and oh! She wanted me to know that there was a lot about my mother’s and (biological) father’s marriage and divorce that I didn’t know, since I’d been so young.
I wasn’t buying it.
But I didn’t want to write anything that would reflect poorly on the way Mom and Dad raised me, so I remained civil, challenged remarks that I felt warranted it, and soon found that this…this…WOMAN who was married to BioDad was becoming, if not my friend, then at least a friendly acquaintance.
And then—you guessed it—a letter arrived in the mailbox. From BioDad. Dear Jesus.
Ah, but I had that curiosity thing goin’ on. I left the post office and went straight to lunch, where I had to read this missive in full view of strangers. No reactions allowed.
He’d sent me a letter about his tractor. He didn’t want to write anything so personal that it would “scare me away.”
God help me, I wrote back. Equally polite, equally noncommittal, equally curious.
My letter no sooner got to his mailbox than he was at his table, crafting his reply.
He’s pretty careful not to step anywhere near the toes that form my defensive line. He’s offered to tell me more about the Cherokee woman who escaped the Trail of Tears and is my great (or great-great—I’m not sure which) grandmother. And he says I’m also a blood relation to a past POTUS.
Tracie and I have discussed the revelations that BioDad’s wife and daughter have shared about my biological background. We talk about what I’m getting out of these exchanges, what I’m giving in return. Tracie found out Elvis Presley’s mom had the same last name, and now she’s hoping that I may turn out to be a blood relative to Elvis, in which case she thinks a meeting is in order, and she’s volunteered to drive. I think she’s kidding.
As for me, I’m surprised and bemused. I still don’t want to disrespect my own parents’ memories, and I don’t want to give this man a pass for all the pain I saw in Mom’s eyes when she talked about him.
But it’s been 53 years since we parted ways, and I’m curious.
And it seems that we do have something to offer each other, this mystery man and I, even at this late date and with half a nation to separate us.
He likes to write and receive letters, real letters, sent through the mails and containing all the starts and stops and rephrasings that go along with them, especially since they’re penned by a stranger who draws from him half of her DNA. I think he wants to know that I’m OK, and that the first child he fathered bears him no ill will.
And me? I want to know about the other half of my genealogy, and come to terms with the realization that maybe, when he was 26 years old, he really didn’t understand what it meant to sign those legal papers that said I wasn’t his daughter any more, and didn’t know that he was drawing a question mark that would punctuate both our lives for more than five decades.
I like to imagine that Mom and Dad would understand.
I used to run a coffeehouse and art center where musicians and poets gathered to practice their new work, encourage each other, and just jam or talk. In time, I became a "clearinghouse" for connecting worthy causes with talented people who would perform for free. The musicians and I both fell for the the idea that the "exposure" was payment enough for their efforts.
You know what? All those people who were so eager to call me and ask for free talent had no problem paying their printers, sound technicians, clean-up crews, and insurance carriers. Everyone but the performers.
I realized that by finding my friends a multitude of non-paying gigs, I was working against their success, and I decided not to do that any more.
Instead, when event planners suggested that they were "supporting" the arts by giving performers exposure, I suggested to them that "the best way to support the arts is to BUY some," whether that meant buying a chapbook, CD, or painting, or hiring a musician or other performer for their events.
It took a little while to sink in. I wrote a couple of letters to local papers, pointing out that it would be a shame to have wildly talented burger flippers and checkout clerks who couldn't afford, any more, to subsidize every event that needed a performer. I suggested that everybody quit asking for handouts and start looking for sponsors to cover the cost of fostering these talents.
It worked. Several musicians who were about ready to throw in the towel on their creative endeavors finally had the financial means to keep afloat as creatives, and were validated by seeing that others placed a value on their work.
It helped to increase the quality of performances, too.
Why?
Because freebies give the public no basis for evaluation. A free show can't be criticized for not being worth the money.
If an adequate show is available for free, then it's too easy to "settle," and keep the really good stuff, that has to be paid for, from ever being seen.
This doesn't mean that creatives should never use their talents to support the causes they embrace.
But it's just as easy to collect their fee and then donate it back to the organization that hired them.
In this way, the value of the work is acknowledged, and the performer is recognized for his or her valuable contribution.
My sister Tracie lives in rural Florida, on 20 acres of pasture dotted by a bunch of pecan trees.
She has horses, cats, barnyard fowl, a couple big dogs, a couple little dogs, and ... Queenie.
Queenie is what? Six years old? She looks like a cross between a Welsh Corgi and a beagle, and has the sweetest disposition of any dog you'll meet.
She followed Tracie home one day while Tracie was out for a bike ride.
Tracie has acquired a couple of dogs this way. And no, she's not hijacking someone else's pets.
Sadly, a lot of people drive out to the country to drop off unwanted animals. Queenie was left in the middle of nowhere to fend for herself against wild animals, the too-fast-for-caution drivers, and the older, more weather-beaten cast-offs of the canine world.
Anyway, there was Queenie, a furry little bundle of love and bad luck. And there was Tracie, who never met a stray puppy she didn't like. Tracie tried (not too hard) to discourage Queenie on the bike ride back to the house, but Queenie was persistent.
When Tracie got home, she took the puppy over to meet Dad, who lived on the other side of the property. Queenie and Dad made an instant connection, and she proceeded to lord it over his part of the property from then on, acting every bit like royalty. Which is how she got her name.
Queenie loved roaming all over Tracie's 20 acres, and seemed to understand that the fence surrounding the property defined her safe zone. Nobody was going to bother the homestead with big girls Bess and Tippy and a bruiser of a bloodhound, Beau, all on watch.
Queenie ran with the big dogs, but she always came home to sleep close to Dad's RV at night. As Dad's health failed, he liked to bring her inside for some company while he watched TV.
When Dad died in 2008, Queenie mourned the loss of her best friend, and because I was starting to be a fixture up there, I became her "occasional human." When I go up to visit, Queenie always rushes up to greet my van, and she shifts her attention from hanging out with the current crop of big dogs to keeping close to me (and an abundant supply of treats).
She has friends her own size, now, too. When my bro-in-law's rat terrier, Li'l Bit, had puppies, Tracie kept one of them for her own. Penny quickly glommed on to her Aunt Queenie, and Queenie takes abuse from that puppy that she'd never tolerate from the big dogs. When Penny got old enough to play outside, the three of them were constantly on patrol around the pastures. Indoors, they rough-house just like a passel of little kids.
Queenie's become a fixture in my life, now, so when Tracie called about a week ago to tell me she was gone, I felt a huge empty place open up in my heart.
"She's just not here," Tracie told me. "Queenie's not one to miss a meal, and when I went out to the barn to feed, she wasn't waitin'. Didn't come when I called. I've been lookin' in all the buildings and walkin' the property for the last couple of days, hollerin' and whistlin'. Nuthin."
Tracie combed the roads near her farm, thinking Queenie might have darted past the fence after all, and been hit by a car. She did a more thorough search of the property, concentrating on the wooded areas to see if Queenie had stumbled across a snake or some aggressive animal. Nada.
It would have been better to find her chunky little body. At least we'd know she wasn't suffering.
What worried us both was the idea that someone had snatched her up to train fighting dogs. It's evidently a popular "sport" in the area, and the fighters always need fresh meat to tear apart. Queenie is too small to be a serious threat to them, but feisty enough to be an interesting moving target.
Every hour that Queenie didn't come home was an hour that she could be in torment.
More than a few tears were shed over the thought of that sweet natured girl being used for blood sport.
Whatever angels caused Queenie to follow Tracie home six years ago must have been on duty still.
Queenie was back in the barn at dinnertime two nights ago, looking none the worse for whatever had kept her from home so long.
Tracie called me right away, of course, and we celebrated together as much as you can on the phone.
And Queenie? Who knows where she was?
I'm just glad that she discovered "there's no place like home."
We're coming up on Memorial Day, so I wanted to post something special for all those who protect our country and the values it represents.
My friend, the late Peter A. Jacobsen, told me about a fellow veteran who came back from Viet Nam. The guy was Pete's neighbor in St. Petersburg, FL, and came home from combat with what my parents' generation called "shell shock." He looked OK, but his heart and mind were never the same after his hitch.
Pete was a really talented blues guitarist and composer who used to perform at the open mic I ran at CAMS (the coffeehouse I had in Pinellas Park). He wrote an essay about his neighbor, and I wrote this story based on that essay, from the point of view of the girl who waited for her soldier to come home.
To all those now serving, to those whose service is complete and who have returned home to a grateful nation, and to those whose lives were lost or irretrievably altered in serving our country, I offer my deepest gratitude.
I remember when I was a little girl, and my grandma and grandpa would take me downtown to see the Fourth of July parade.
Grandpa would wear his old, stiff Army uniform, and stand on the curb with Grandma and me ’til it was time for him to join the other veterans, young and old, all lining up to march. It made me proud to watch my Grandpa, standing and marching shoulder to shoulder with men who may not have served in his war, but nevertheless served the same ideals.
As I grew up, my family’s dinner table discussions gave me a fuller understanding of the meaning of our country’s birthday, and our duty – no, our privilege – to honor those who lost their lives in her service.
Maybe that’s why I was so taken with Tommy, a boy who always stood up tall and covered his heartwhen our flag was carried by. He was so proud whenever a soldier glanced his way and acknowledged his earnest salute.
Tommy was what you’d call “true blue,” a boy who was always ready to stand up for the little kid on the playground, even if it meant taking on the schoolyard bully. He was a skinny kid, but he was strong enough to admit when he did something wrong and make it right. When he got older, if anybody in town needed a hand, well, Tommy’s was always the first one offered.
By the time we were in high school, I was sweet on Tommy, and we started keeping company. We were a good match and it wasn’t long before we were talking about the future, our future. Tommy wanted to go to college and study business, then work in his dad’s hardware store. We’d get married, and have kids of our own. But in our senior year in high school, there was a war on. I wasn’t surprised, after graduation, when Tommy put our plans on hold to join the service. His country needed him, and that’s all Tommy needed to know.
I tried not to cry as Tommy kissed me at the bus station. Tried not to worry. After all, he’d be surrounded by young men much like himself, who would protect his life like it was their own, and somehow they’d bring each other back to their sweethearts and their wives.
Well, they brought Tommy back, all right, but transport ships, airplanes, and buses can only take you so far. When I saw the look in his eyes as he stepped off that old Greyhound, I knew Tommy would never be coming all the way home. The shrapnel and the scars left Tommy disabled, but they didn’t cripple him the way his memories did.
He never talked about those memories, and I didn’t want to make things worse by forcing the issue.
I sometimes wonder, now, if I was right.
I waited for Tommy to call me, to pick up where we’d left off, but he never did. I tried calling him, but he never returned my calls. He didn’t go to college, either. He was taking medicines that made it hard for him to concentrate, to study, or even to have a good conversation. He didn’t go into his dad’s hardware business. He didn’t marry me.
Instead, Tommy became part of our town’s landscape, doing odd jobs to keep busy, staying close to his folks’ home, and getting by on his disability pay.
I finally quit waiting for Tommy, and when I did, I met Jeff. He’s a good man, but he was never in the service; his dad was gone, so he went to college while he helped out at home, then started his own accounting business. Jeff and I got married after a few years, and we raised a nice family. Our kids are grown, and I love to babysit for my grandkids, now.
Tommy? He never did marry. His dad died, and Tommy lives with his mom, the two of them alone in that big old house on Main Street. Tommy stops in for a beer every couple of nights at the VFW hall. He listens to the friendly banter about drill instructors from Hell, reckless nights on leave, and the zany antics of comrades-in-arms. Sometimes he even joins in. But he grows silent when the talk turns to battle, and he leaves his beer on the bar and goes back home.
To this day he doesn’t complain. Not about the pain, or the medications, not even about the way people stop and stare, sometimes, when he shambles by. Never about being changed forever by the war, and the things he’s seen … things he’s done … things he’s endured.
Today, it’s another Fourth of July, and I’m getting my grandkids ready for the downtown parade. I'm proud that their parents made sure they learned to stand tall when they meet a man in uniform, and I'm helping teach them the meaning of this day, and why it’s important to remember those fallen in battle, how precious our way of life is, and how dearly it’s been bought.
The three of us hold hands as the honor guard marches past. Bella’s eyes are wide as she takes in the flags and the uniformed soldiers, and she bounces on her tippy-toes to get her first glimpse of the colorful floats. Mikey stands very still and straight, with his hand over his heart, and my mind drifts back through the years to another little boy I used to know.
My eyes wander over the crowd, and I’m surprised to see Tommy looking at me with his never-coming-home gaze. With a start, I realize it’s not Tommy. This veteran isn’t close to his age, doesn’t look a thing like him. I look around, and I see more than a dozen pairs of eyes with that million-mile stare, forgotten soldiers gazing out on the neighbors they protect, even now, by keeping their private hell inside.
I look around more carefully and suddenly I see him, standing on the other side of the street. For the time it takes the honor guard to march past him, Tommy is standing tall again, unmindful of the metal embedded in his back and the door he keeps locked tight against his memories. Then Tommy looks right at me, as though he’s always known just where to find me, and his eyes are quickly drawn to the little boy and girl clutching my hands. I know we’re both thinking of the family Tommy and I might have had, and I see him take a deep, slow breath before his eyes meet mine again.
We nod to each other across the Miss Hometown Pageant float and the Shriner’s Club mini-cars, and as Tommy turns away, I see the weight of pain and loss push his eyes, then his shoulders, back down toward the pavement.
I watch as he makes his way down the block, and I think about all of the men and women who have lost their lives in service to our country.
The last time I visited my sister, we went through a box that had been stashed in her storage shed for years.
Talk about a time capsule! For a couple of hours, we felt like we were on an archaeological dig, delighting in the discovery of cards, photos, and keepsakes that had belonged to our maternal grandparents.
It was good to see so much family history, sad to see the shape it was in after 45 years of being shuffled from Illinois, to Florida, to Kentucky, and back to Florida. Forty-five years of being top, then bottom, of the heap. Forty-five years of dust and bugs and mice and poorly weatherproofed attics and sheds.
So when we got to one of the last items, we weren't surprised to see the shape this one old book was in, pages darkened with mildew, leather cover in tatters, disconnected from the pages it was designed to protect.
Lutheran Church Book. 1901. Grandpa's name all but buried under 109 years of dirt and grime and neglect. Grandpa would have been 13 years old in 1901, so we're guessing it was given to him for his confirmation in the Lutheran Church.
Gads, but it looked rough.
Tracie let me bring this relic home, and I called Mike Slicker's Lighthouse Books. Mike is my go-to resource for all things old-bookish. Mike's daughter referred me to Griffin Bookbinding, and David Barry.
I was much encouraged by the way David examined it but I expected the man to tell me the book was too badly damaged for any meaningful restoration.
Not so! He said he'd have it back to me in four weeks, at a price that didn't make me want to die.
He called me two weeks later and said it was ready.
Ready? It was beautiful:
I hadn't realized the pages were gilt-edged. David restitched the pages to the cover, restored the leather, revealed some beautiful tooled engraving, and lo! Grandpa's name had been printed in gold leaf, not simply pressed into the leather. David even made pages whole that had been eaten away by time and the occasional hungry vermin.
I'm going to debut the book this Sunday, at the Lutheran Church in Starke, when I go back to show my sister David's wonderful handiwork.
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