From Kitty Hawk to the Moon

From Kitty Hawk to the Moon

I turn(ed) 66 on December 16, 2024. I read somewhere recently that in just 66 years humankind went from the first flight at Kitty Hawk to the moon. I then as I am wont to do, looked up first flight. It was 17 December 1903. The first moon landing was 20 July 1969. So it was actually 5 months shy of 66 years. 

I feel at times my years are passing excruciatingly slow, like the hours and days and weeks that led up to those few moments on the sand in NC must have seemed to the Wright brothers. Then, it is though I merely blinked and went from 9 in 1967, as I was in this picture:

to this, taken just a few weeks ago:

I see little of 9 year-old in 66 year-old Ellen, but all of those memory Polaroids and Super-8s from my life are the milestones and wee pebbles along my life's journey.  

I never thought I would see and do some things I have experienced, and yet there was so much I reached for that never came to be. 

Marriages, childbirth, too many deaths. So many jobs, so many satisfied impulses and missed opportunities. Is this the end, then? A swansong, a final act, the beginning of the ending? 

Lord, I hope not. 

The 10 days preceeding and 10 days following the winter solstice are called the Halcyon Days, a time out of time. I like that. Inside, I have often felt a person out of time, out of step or sync. An intellectual Benjamin Buttons. When I was the age of 9 I was prone to seek out the company of the older adults in my neighborhood. I would "visit" with them often. I loved hearing their stories of the past, looking at momentous and photos. Like an old woman in a little girl's brain wanting to remember what was...

I have a good life and am looking forward to seeing what the next decades bring me!

Winter Memories

 I can remember icy cold and snowy Christmases when I was a child. I can also remember the Christmas I was in the second grade, that would have been December 1966 I believe, when it was so balmy we played with our superballs and roller skates on the sidewalk Christmas afternoon. We got so warm we took off our jackets. At thar time my family rented a house from a Mrs. Mullins on E 1st Street in Richlands,Virginia, the 4th house on the right, beside Ewell and Goldie Baisden. That street is right beside the Clinch River, and we didn't live there long. Our house had a basement ans was heated by a coal furnace. The winter was mild all season and the river flooded that spring. Floated Momma's washing machine and put the fire out in the furnace. There were earthworms and mud puppies all over the years and street when the water went down.

Once we moved up to the house on Virginia Avenue, there were several Christmases when we had Norman Rockwell holidays. Packed snow and gravel  the side streets in  town. My father's brother, Norman and his wife Irene "Red" lived a block from us at the corner of E 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.  One Christmas we walked up to their house in knee deep (if you were a child) snow and had Christmas dinner with them. I believe Frank and Terri, my cousins,  were grown and living elsewhere by then.

Virginia Carol, Ed and I earned pocket money in several different endeavors as children, and the most dependable and lucrative for us was delivering the daily paper,  The Bluefield Daily Telegraph,  in Dalton Addition, where we lived. When it was real cold in winter, regardless of how bundled up you got, legs and cheeks would get so cold they burned and tingled.  I can recall putting on long johns, jeans, then sweatpants.  We would wrap scarves around our faces and my nose would run and the snot in my nostrils would freeze. We also wore bread bags over our socks in case the snow got in our boots so our feet would stay dry.  Each of us had between 25 and 35 customers. On Sunday's Daddy would take the car and  drop the papers at different spots so we didn't have to carry so many at once. We rolled and bagged them.

We also had a widowed aunt, Zelma Woody who lived next door to Aunt Sue and Uncle Bob Harris on Lee Street in town. It wasn't uncommon for there to be family gatherings at their homes during the holidays. One memorable time we carried home a pie pan covered with aluminum foil that had jello salad squares on it the Aunty Z sent because we begged off seconds because we were 'full as ticks'. In actuality,  it was what she called perfection salad. Lime Jell-O with black walnuts, sandwich dill slices, carrots and celery served on iceberg lettuce leaves. It may have had cottage cheese in it as well. I 'accidentally ' tripped going up the walk to our house and darn if that pie plate didn't tip sideways and the salad fell into the snow. After the thaw there were dill pickles and celery in the slush.  Even the stray dogs wouldn't eat it.

Well, there are other winter and holiday memories clamoring to get written down but I think that is enough for now. This is Christmas Eve 2022 and the weather in coastal NC is cold and windy but thankfully not white or icy. May you each bask in the warmth of Christmas memories and make new ones this year. 

Stained Glass Windows

Stained Glass Windows

Stained and tattered

Bruised and worn

Any pretense at beauty

Callously shorn

Glass so fragile

Shards so sharp

No ground to shelter

Nor flourishing harp

Windows on the naked soul

Shudders the graze

Of life’s sharp thorns

Such are my vagabond ways

~ Ellen Apple

19 January 2017

New Month, Another New "Normal"

It has been forever since I blogged. As in years.

Losing Roger broke a part of me, and I suppose I have spent the last three years trying to figure out how to fix me. Again.

After Roger died, my brother Larry died. Then my sister in law  Kathy. Then my mother in law Ann. Then my mother last March.  If our reality, our beingness as people, is irrevocably defined by our connections to one another, then what happens when we lose these connections?

There is a ponderous weight to grief that pulls you down, that drowns you. Then there is the after. The dawning knowledge of a severed cord, a rope that tied you to the here and now. Then the weight of that connection is released and suddenly the lack pushes you up and away, into thinner air and fewer connections. A bit of dandelion fluff just adrift on unseen currents, no destination or plan. Just floating.

So here are some of my days...

1 May 2020

Drove to the park at the water. The park is closed but was able to sit in the car and gaze at the gentle movements of the water in the Cape Fear River. Bald Head Island looks so serene across the way. The sea gulls were raucous but entertaining.  There were a few people fishing from the public access. I suppose the pier was closed as well. I count the afternoon a success.

2 May 2020

6ws⁷

Contemplating-
Quiet
Respite
Restores
Quarantine
Rankles

3 May 2020

7WS

Cerulean Sunday
Quietude reigns
Sacred contemplation
Meditation

4 May 2020

5 May 2020

Stepped outside to an encompassing aroma of sweetness.  There are at least 3 varieties of clover currently blooming around the front door.

My langniappe of the day.




6 May 2020

So there was the time I told Roger I was making BLTs for lunch and I make BECs instead.
Because somehow my brain considered Bacon Egg and Cheese = Bacon Lettuce and Tomato.
He looked so puzzled...


7 May 2020

Jasmine
Honeysuckle
Wisteria
Clover
Heady aromas waft through the air
Then ...
Stench from the paper mill
Keeps it real
🙄

8 May 2020

In the rebirth of the day
May birdsong chase your blues away
And should no birds begin to sing
May grace a time of respite bring

Tree of Life

More

Kind

Grace

remember

One day at a time

One way at a time

One person at a time

We each have the capacity

To be the change we want to see

And make the life we want to live

By extending

And receiving

More

Kind

Grace

I found this picture on Facebook earlier

I really liked it

So I am sharing it with you today

were it not for us

Who would have thought 
the unthinkable
Who would have dreamed
the impossible
Who would have sought
the unattainable
Who would have seemed
unknowable
Were it not for 
the dreamers
the schemers
the artists
the writers
Were it not
for us?

~ Ellen Apple
13 January 2017

war in the basement

we played war in the basement

when I was a young girl

with an ancient doughboy helmet from WWI

liberated from my grandmother's attic

and empty ammo clips and many pairs of earplugs

that came from the first television war -

you remember that one?

the war that wasn't a war

Vietnam

old red ink from a corner shelf

cloths from the ragbag for bandages

Stat!

Incoming!

our hardware was an old bb-gun

that never did shoot right

and cap pistols - of course

we had parades in circles around the washing machine

blowing on a recorder and banging

on a toy xylophone with sticks as hammers

I fear we were rather eclectic in our

historical appropriations

all conflicts were sourced for

our tailor-made assaults

but movies and Walter Cronkite taught us well

the words and deeds we emulated

now I watch

Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow

and fear for the future of

the precious wee ones in my life

weighs me down

and I wonder how our parents and

teachers did not expire from the weight

so much sorrow poured in their souls

all the while we played

war in the basement

~ Ellen Apple

12 Jan 2017