In just a bit, I’m off to the airport and on to Tennessee for the gathering of my father’s family, the Taylors of Tabernacle. Each year, 500 or so of my cousins converge on his home town from all over the world. We stay in unairconditioned camp houses, share two communal bath houses, eat too much of the good old Southern cooking that I love, and visit into the wee hours.
It is skeeter-bitten bliss.
I love the smell of rain-settled dust and old wood there. When I was a child, all the camp house kitchens cooked on wood-burning stoves. Waking up to the aroma of wood smoke and biscuits baking was heaven. I would luxuriate in bed, anticipating the hot biscuits that appeared on the breakfast table with country ham and redeye gravy.
Gas ranges finally replaced all the old wood stoves. But when I catch a whiff of wood smoke somewhere, and especially if there’s a suggestion of something baking, too, I’m carried back to those early mornings on the camp grounds. Biscuits are my madeleines.
May has been a tough month. I’m an 8th generation Tennessean and a former Nashvillian, and watching what the floods have done to my beautiful state breaks my heart.
Mystery writer J.T. Ellison lives in Nashville and writes movingly about what it was like to have her world suddenly submerged. Read this piece and find a flood-relief charity to support. Ellison includes this link to a list of charities at the end. The video shows just what folks are dealing with.
Those who have lost everything are too many too count. Recovery is going to take a long time. My strong, brave, good people are equal to the task, but they need your help.
The color pink usually leaves me cold. I’m just not a fan of most of its shades and tints. Bubble gum pink. Sorority girl pink. Pepto Bismol pink. No thanks.
I’m more a blood red kind of girl. Deep, rich, bluish reds like crimson. Scarlet. Ruby. When it comes to roses, my tastes run along the same lines. Francis Dubreuil. Souvenir du Docteur Jamain. Empereur du Maroc. These all smell fabulous, too.
Empereur du Maroc
But never say never. I spend too much time looking at rose catalogues and other garden porn. Last spring, a shell-pink floribunda named English Miss caught my eye. I knew I might never grow a bloom as ravishing and flawless as the one the photographer captured, but she seduced me into ordering her. This morning, I found a perfect bloom in my garden, and I have no regrets.
Sometimes the thing you never thought you could love just is.
And the fragrance? Sweet.
English Miss
I don’t know about you, but when I think about e.e. cummings–and I do think about him from time to time–his humorous poems spring to mind. Today, my buddy Michelle McGinnis posted this beautiful sonnet to her blog, The Gladdest Thing. Thank you, Michelle, for reminding me that e.e. was a man of many gifts.
being to timelessness as it’s to time
being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land
(do lovers suffer? all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad? only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)
love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star
—do lovers love? why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools, all’s well
— e.e. cummings
Michelle posts poems regularly. At her website, you can sign up for email that delivers them straight to your mailbox. I’m always meaning to read more poetry and am glad to have someone send it my way. Or is that gladdest?
Who knew it was possible to love a cat so?
I’d always thought of myself as a dog person. I liked cats–we’d always had both cats and dogs when I was growing up–but I never felt the need to have one when I was on my own. Then I acquired a husband and children. Then we got Cornelia. And Fang. And Fergus.
And Spot. Two years ago, he showed up in our yard, starving. My husband wanted to feed him, and I said OK, but he wasn’t coming in the house. Of course, a couple of months later, Spot was inside and sleeping with us. He turned out to be the most loving, wonderful, funny, absolutely best cat ever.
Spot died tonight. Our hearts are all broken. Rest in peace, sweet boy.
Tonight, I watched the first episode of “Harper’s Island,” and all I could think was “What an utterly repulsive cast of characters.” I mean, really. The women are uniformly tacky and common beyond belief, and the men are a bunch of Neanderthals, but that’s insulting Neanderthals. Even if the script were great, the cast is so completely repellent that I have to wonder who would pay a casting director to round them up.
The lone exception is Christopher Gorham as the groom, Henry. Gorham brings a some of the charm he showed on “Ugly Betty” as Betty’s boyfriend, um, Henry, but the production’s smarm tars him, too. The rest of the cast would have to struggle to bring their combined IQ up to 100. You’ve probably guessed by now that I won’t be watching any more of “Harper’s Island,” not even for the pleasure of seeing these people die horribly.
I can’t remember when a TV show has inspired such revulsion in me. I know television too often aims for the lowest common denominator, but I can’t believe there is one this low. Such stupidity, such complete lack of class should never have made it to any screen of any size. I hope Harper’s Island sinks like a stone.
One of the reasons I married my brilliant husband is because he’s funny. Really funny. Here’s the flash project, Matt Sings, he just finished for one of his classes tomorrow. See if you don’t think it’s funny, too.
Yesterday was my birthday, and I spent it doing things I love, which is what you should do on your birthday. There’s something wonderful and almost decadent about going to the movies in the morning, so I went to a 10:30 show of “Duplicity,” which I thought was fantastic. Such a smart, well-crafted script.
After the movie, I tooled up to my favorite garden center and bought hanging baskets and other plants to festoon the front porch. Restraint where plants are concerned is never easy, but I managed not to go hog wild. I did lust in my heart after too many of the gorgeous things there, though.
Next, lunch at First Chinese Barbecue, where I had an order of their scrumptious spicy fried squid. It’s hard to beat green onions, jalapeños, ginger, and salt. Yum-my! I swear, I could eat it every day.
No birthday is complete without a visit to the bookstore. Or an afternoon nap. In the evening, my beloved husband fixed supper—ribeyes on our new grill he’d assembled, baked potatoes, wedge salad with lots of gorgonzola, and a nice Malbec to go along with it. For dessert, lemon cupcakes and good old Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla with Strawberries.
The children made birthday cards, one of which depicted me giving a book signing and another showing me winning an Oscar for best screenplay. It’s nice to know I have a couple of fans already.
Not a glamorous birthday celebration perhaps—and I have had a few of those—but it made me happy.
I couldn’t post about my cat’s feet last night and not post about one of the great moments in history today.
Midday today, Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States. Watching the inauguration from the comfort of my sofa, more than once I was moved to tears of joy and gratitude. I might as well have been among the 1 million or so people on the Mall, cheering and laughing and crying. I could feel the 5 billion said to be watching around the world.
So many others have written eloquently on the significance of our first black president, and I’m old enough to understand it. But it’s more. It’s knowing the world will get through the frightening times we live in now. It’s being comforted that an intelligent, accomplished, wise, decent man who understands the importance of being a citizen of the world will lead us. It’s feeling hope again for the first time in years. Barack Obama may not be FDR, but I’ll take him.
My baby names book tells me that Barack means blessing or blessed. I don’t what “Obama” means in Kenya, but here in America, it means “hope.” I think it means the same thing for the rest of the world, too.
“The price of parenthood,” my mother likes to say, “is great.” What she doesn’t add is that it extends to human and animal children alike. When I was growing up, Mama saved more than one sickly foal with fluids through an IV. She even put a cast on one filly’s leg when she broke it at age 3 days. The leg healed beautifully.
I haven’t had to set a cat’s leg yet, but I have cleaned up their vomit and wiped off their poopy bottoms when they were sick. I’ve just finished digging balled-up cat litter from between the toes of Fang, our cantankerous senior cat. We thought she’d hurt herself when she hobbled away from the chuck wagon after her dinner. I picked her up to examine her feet and discovered the chunks of congealed litter jamming her toes apart and gouging the pads. I think we’ll be shopping for a different litter.
A 10-minute soak in the sink, several growls of protest, and a couple of scratches on my hand and arm later, and Fang’s feet are litter free. I’m not sure she appreciated my work on her behalf, but I felt better.
I didn’t think about one day being called on to scoop urp, clean bottoms, and de-litter feet when we got Fang and Cornelia at the shelter, but as cat parents learn, it goes with the territory. Considering the joy our furry children bring us and how much we love them, the price isn’t so great after all.
Recent Comments