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Saturday, December 24, 2022

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. 

Monday, May 24, 2021

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


Friday, January 13, 2017

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




Thursday, January 12, 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

when given naught



Who would have thought
E'en when given naught
On which to build a dream
Which to others might seem
Just a child's whimsy
"Banking on hope is just ... flimsy"
That letter on letter
Word on word
A tome for the ages is just so crafted
Lost to the masses if not first drafted
In the soul and the mind
That but for happenstance we find
In the dark hours of sorrow
When others joy we borrow
It pulls us to joy
Like a a squeaky wooden toy
Tied with a red string
Just an insignificant thing
That one act of grace
Humankind's face

~ Ellen Apple 
12 Jan 2017