Ours is not a very PC (Politically Correct) family. This hit home the other night as I watched a news segment about making Christmas, and especially Christmas music, PC.
I’m all for respecting the differences that make us strong, but who is really helped by “Frosty the Snow Person of Indeterminate Gender”?
Rudolph, too, will be sanitized for political correctness. The PC title is now “Rudolph the Reindeer with a Facial Appendage of Different Color.” Try playing that on your banjo.
Our family, on the other hand, shows no mercy where reindeer are concerned. Our favorite carol three years ago was “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Indeed, this song was so important that I paid $4 for the sheet music. It’s a good thing I got it before it went PC, or the cost would have been doubled to get all the words in. The proposed PC title, of course, recognizes the right of deer to run over grandmothers: “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, But It Was Grandma’s Fault for Being in the Space Set Aside for Woodland Creatures to Run Free without Interference from Human Beings”
There’s more where these came from. “The Little Drummer Person” speaks to the politically correct. And in that same spirit, “We Wish You a Merry December” is a harmless way to wish you nothing at all.
These PC titles and many more are readily available by searching for “politically correct Christmas carols” on the web. NONE of these revisions will ever take hold in our household.
Maybe it’s because we are a family made up primarily of persons of the opposite gender. They live hard and they sing hard. Even my Daddy, a Baptist preacher, believed that “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” was the best one of them all. Each Christmas he would put on his overalls, remove his false teeth, and lip sync this song before lip sync had been invented.
It’s not PC to say so, but I think it’s their hormones.
Of course, Daddy’s favorite Christmas song is now passé. But the torch has been passed.
Our sons prefer “The Santa Claus Boogie,” by the Tractors. That’s not boogie enough for the farmer, who prefers the Tractors’ “Santa Claus is Coming to Town in a Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train.” Not only is it his prized CD, it’s about the only CD in his Ford pickup.
Then George Strait got into Christmas music and the rest is history. Now the farmer’s all-time holiday favorite is Strait’s “I Sure Do Like Those Christmas Cookies, Baby.” My husband says it’s a keeper, explaining that that’s due to the last verse, which goes like this: “Now there’s a benefit to all of this that you might have overlooked or missed…So now let me tell you the best part of it all…Every time she sticks another batch in the oven there’s 15 minutes for some kissin' and a-huggin' …That’s why I eat Christmas cookies all year long!”
Go figure.
What about me? My favorite Christmas music is the traditional carols. “O Holy Night” is a classic favorite, which takes political correctness to the next level: love.
“Truly he taught us to love one another … His law is love and His gospel is peace.“ In a world like ours, may that love and peace be yours.
A reader recently commented that her favorite column was the one about our driving to Mama’s several Christmases ago – only to pop the trunk and discover we’d forgotten our gifts. Being the real man and culprit that he was, the farmer persuaded a friend to meet him halfway with the gifts.
The reader and I chuckled. “Well, we’ve certainly learned our lesson,” I bragged. I was still laughing as we headed to Mama’s for Thanksgiving, with the farmer at the wheel.
That was Wednesday night. As Thanksgiving evening wound down, the farmer said his goodbyes, catching a ride back to Boiling Springs with Baby Miles and wishing my sisters good luck in the after-supper Scrabble playoff.
A couple of hours later, as we were drawing our Scrabble tiles, the farmer rang my cell phone. He said and I quote, “Surely you keep a spare key to your car in your pocketbook.”
To which I said, and I quote, “*%^&, *%^&*, *%^&.”
“Where are you?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Well, we just got to Boiling Springs. And as I was getting ready for bed, I discovered your car keys in my pocket."
About that time Mama came running, asking would I please look through her junk mail and tell her what she should keep and what she should shred. I suggested she shred my husband.
Two of our 4 sons were at Mama’s when the cell call came. They knew immediately that we were having another Hamrick family crisis, one that threatened the fabric of things. They said for me not to worry, that they would call my drivers’ association.
“This type of emergency is not covered,” the driver’s association smart mouth said as he asked why my husband left me high and dry on Thanksgiving without car keys.
Jason and Spencer said there were other alternatives: they would hot-wire my new Highlander if necessary so that I could drive home.
By now, Mama and my sisters had joined me in having déjà vu all over again. “Do you mean,” Mama began, “that this time Cline drove off with your car keys?”
Spencer said please not to get upset, that he’d gladly drive 2 hours to Boiling Springs, 2 hours back to Spencer with the keys, and 2 hours back to Boiling Springs.
As the wife, mother, daughter and sister in this soap opera, I finally said, “No. We’ll do what we did when we forgot the Christmas presents. I’ll call home and have them meet us halfway.”
To his credit, Baby Miles agreed to be the courier for the drop off. To their credit, my 2 sisters said they really didn’t want to play Scrabble anyway and would drive me to the appointed I-85 exit.
We got to the convenience store off Billy Graham Parkway first. Finally, we heard and saw our salvation, the pickup truck with the bumper sticker “Catfish Ain’t Ugly” on it. I reckon the farmer was scared to come, but he’d sent his dog Bonnie, who rode shotgun into Charlotte with Baby Miles.
As we drove back to Spencer very late Thanksgiving night, my sisters laughed. A lot. “This is almost as fun as playing Scrabble,” they said. “Your whole family is crazy.”
It’s a possibility.
One of the strategies for staying young is to spend more time dreaming of the future than reliving the past. Holidays, however, are the exception.
Everyone has favorite Thanksgiving memories. My memories are of singing “Over the River and Through the Woods” as Daddy drove us from our home in West Asheville, over the French Broad River, and up a rocky drive to my grandparents’ house.
Granddaddy and Grandma Sayles lived at the foot of Cedar Cliff, the mountain topped with rocks that is plainly visible at the Intersection of I-40 and US 74, east of Asheville. Mama and her parents were mountain people -- in every sense of the word.
Thanksgiving Day was full of adventure. Occasionally Granddaddy grabbed his shotgun and directed a hike up Cedar Cliff. The shotgun was for any rattlesnakes that might still be out.
Back at the house, the rake Grandma kept at the back door served a dual purpose: she handed it to us as she told us about her rheumatism and persuaded us to rake the yard – and she used it to kill the rattlesnakes that strayed down the mountain and into her kitchen.
I always felt a kindred spirit with Grandma, who much to Granddaddy’s chagrin, was earthy to the core. He never got over her joining the Republican Party. We forgave her for that because she made gravy to die for. Although she was very sparing with luxury ingredients like sugar, at Thanksgiving she baked coconut cakes and egg custard pies using the full measure of ingredients.
While she grated coconut, she let me play in her bedroom with her jewelry. Grandma had had a brief stint as a “Sarah Coventry” saleslady, which surely explains where she got such large rhinestone pins, earrings and necklaces. She liked bright colors and wore her jewelry proudly with the dresses she sewed for herself.
As Thanksgiving Supper approached, Mama’s brothers from Gatlinburg and Asheville brought their families “Over the River and Through the Woods.” How we cousins laughed at our uncles’ stories from the hollers, the stories poking fun at their parents, and even their stories of The War. (WWII)
After the meal, Granddaddy was ready for music. He would get out his banjo, fiddle, and gospel songbooks. When the singing ended, we would beg for the other entertainment. So Granddaddy would place a roll on the player piano and let the piano roll out its ragtime piano tunes.
That’s not all. Grandma would wind the arm of the ole-timey Victrola and put on our all-time favorite, “The Laughing Record.” This record, cut in the good ole days before the country went to the dogs, consisted of 1920s folks making embarrassing body noises and then laughing for the rest of the long-playing 78.
Somehow, remembering the holidays of the 1950s, I realize that we were not deprived after all.
To have a goodly heritage, rich in family, food, and simple pleasures, is a lifelong blessing – and a source of inspiration and strength for the future. My hope is that this holiday season, we’ll find time not only for savoring old memories but also for creating fresh memories to bring joy to those who follow us.
After a year like 2003, I’m feeling more thankful than usual as turkey flies on sale at the grocery store.
First of all, I’m thankful for turkey itself. If it weren’t for fish and fowl, fresh pineapple and angel food cake, what would we cholesterol fighters splurge on during the holiday season? I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hard to get excited about a soy burger and raw carrots for Thanksgiving.
Although it has taken some getting used to, I’m thankful that turkey is no longer a seasonable bird. You can buy it several different ways, year round, even in Hot Water Town.
The farmer, too, is developing a taste for all things poultry, although I have occasionally come home early from work and caught him grilling a juicy steak instead. I reckon that’s kosher enough. His cholesterol is 90.
In this blessed land, we have food choices galore to go with our cholesterol. Over the years, thanks to the American farmer and conglomerates, the foods we’ve been able to choose from have gotten both healthier and unhealthier.
Also at this season, we celebrate having the freedom of choice: we can eat aright or we can pig out and take Prilosec. This is a free country; it’s up to us. For the same grocery store offers us both French onion dip and fat-free salsas – to go with fat-filled chips or fat-free chips.
In some ways, the pilgrims and Indians had it made. They grew and/or hunted down their food. They cooked, shared, ate and gave thanks. Their wives didn’t have to run the dishwasher twice on Thanksgiving.
Thanks to American ingenuity, we have additional challenges. In addition to keeping up with coupons and food chain cards, we have to investigate our food. To be politically correct, we must read the labels. By law, every label spills the beans on the chemistry of foods we buy. Even Moon Pies and RC colas now offer full disclosure.
Full disclosure doesn’t stop in the store. Newspaper recipes now include a tag line with the percentages of protein, fats, carbs, ad nauseum, we’ll ingest.
Are you concerned about the chemical makeup of Grandma’s chocolate sheet cake with fudge icing? If you really want to know what’s in your family recipes, you can buy computer software that spits out their percentages of nutrients and fat.
What a country! What a blessing to have a bounty of foods from which to choose – and the education and information at our fingertips to choose wisely.
From the time we learned to talk, our parents taught us to say a simple blessing of thankfulness for food to eat. Most of my life, however, I have given lip service to the blessing of food. I’ve taken food for granted, eating and later cooking whatever I wanted.
This March, awake during surgery to remove the blockage from a neck artery, I promised the Good Lord that if He would just let me live, I would never eat macaroni and cheese again. Even over a holiday.
As I’m sure He’s used to, I’ve learned to fudge on this vow. You can substitute with fat-free cheeses, cholesterol fighting margarine, egg substitutes and skim milk.
Just don’t tell the family. Say “Bon apetit!” and “Happy Thanksgiving” instead.
On the brink of Christmas, many of us regret breaking our New Year’s Resolution about not putting Christmas off until after Thanksgiving. If this sentence appears nonsensical to you, page forward to sports.
Last year, as we hauled the trappings of Christmas 2002 either to the dump or to the attic, we vowed (or swore) to do better in Christmas 2003. Visions of “The Perfect Christmas” swirled in our heads. We would start early.
Note: although I am using the pronouns “we” and “our” generically, anyone with a lick of sense knows the pronouns refer to women.
Certainly the men in our family have dreams of “The Perfect Christmas.” These dreams first appear at 5:45 PM on Christmas Eve as thoughts of Christmas shopping appear on the radar. Amazingly, the guys I know are not in a state of panic as they search for a store that’s still open. Shopping done, if they are served home-cooked turkey and dressing and are given a pair of new wool socks, Christmas 2003, on a scale of 1 to 10, will be remembered as a 10.
Since we know this, why do we women go berserk over this holiday? Frankly speaking, we give in to the pressure to please other women, whose visions of “The Perfect Christmas” demand, at a bare minimum, homemade divinity, a Williamsburg pineapple and/or apple centerpiece, and a healthy poinsettia.
To have a hope of doing it perfectly, women have to start Christmas early. No man reading this column waked up last week, in the middle of the night, worried about Christmas – unless he’s in the fruitcake business. However, a hefty percentage of the female readers have already lost sleep over their paucity of holiday preparations.
For we know that if we haven’t finished 75% of our Christmas shopping by now, it’s too late. Ours will be a harried Christmas. There just isn’t enough time left to get our shopping done, our gifts wrapped, our treats baked, our cards addressed, our homes and tree decorated – all by the target date, the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Approximately 18% of women will hit the target. Several friends are already crowing about having finished their Christmas shopping.
How do they do it? Specifically, how can you shop in advance of the family’s talks with Santa?
Let’s say that I did get myself organized around Christmas in August, what would I buy Baby Miles? I might opt for a turkey fryer, only to learn on December 22 that Santa had promised him a bow and arrow. Or I might select a gorgeous necklace for Mama, only to hear her announce at Thanksgiving that the very last thing she needs is more jewelry.
Yet, as far as I can tell, early shoppers do about as well as those of us who wait until Santa picks everyone’s brains.
Do early shoppers use ESP? Do they secretly exchange their purchases when family members produce their wish lists? Or, are they so attentive to our needs and wishes that they know us better than we know ourselves?
Like everyone else, I made New Year’s Resolution regarding Christmas 2003. To date, I have bought a Christmas cactus. And it is blooming now, ahead even of Thanksgiving.
Ladies, does this count?
Thanks to the Patriot Act, the HIPPA Act, and Do Not Call legislation, the government can ask us whatever they wish, but no one else had better dare. That’s why I was so surprised when, in filling out a non-governmental form, this question appeared: “What are your hobbies?”
Is this against the law? Can I sue?
Wishing to avoid perjury while protecting my rights to privacy, I anguished over the matter of hobbies. Hobbies are a throwback to the good ole days when people actually had time for non-electronic pastimes.
Although several lines were provided for me to list my hobbies, I was clueless.
Thinking stereotypically, we expect grandmas to have hobbies. And at one time, I had multiple hobbies: sewing, embroidering, quilting, gardening, playing the piano, and reading. In my day, Southern girls were introduced to these hobbies at the age of 8.
As a grown woman, much to my mother’s chagrin, though I persevered with these activities, I also added an unorthodox hobby: refunding. Eventually this hobby consumed an entire upstairs bedroom, where boxes and boxes of labels and coupons were stored -- until one day I’d had enough.
How to explain that, thanks to computers and labor saving devices, today’s grandma has little time for hobbies?
My first love, sewing, is a dim memory. For I locked up my Singer one stressful day in the 1980s, when Baby Miles and his 3 brothers pushed the last nerve I had by playing war with my pinking shears and seam rippers. Sorry for the sexism, but sewing for a household of boys is not particularly enthralling.
At least I tried. In the 1970s, I even tailored a plaid, polyester sports coat for the farmer. When he crosses me, I threaten to post the pictures on our website.
Eventually the boys discovered other war weapons, i.e., my crochet needles. As for quilting, the boys fought military battles under the quilt suspended on frames from the hand-planed ceiling in the old farmhouse.
What about cooking, you ask? Like most women, I have a love-hate relationship with cooking. Some days it’s a duty; other days it’s a hobby; and too often it’s a nightmare. Though I have enough cookbooks from Baptist women to start a church, I probably ought to start a bonfire with the cookbooks instead. I can hold in one hand, and possibly in my brain, the recipes suitable for keeping the blood moving through my arteries.
In the interest of time, I considered buying stuff as a hobby. Friends collect Beanie Babies, gnomes, and Precious Moments. But this hobby didn’t pan out, either. Maybe that’s because what I chose to collect is ceramic blue cows, in pairs.
There’s always reading, you say. No matter whether I read great religious treatises or true stories on serial killers, the result is the same. I wake up in the morning, asleep on the couch with my glasses buried under the cushions.
As a last resort, there’s exercise. I do walk on the treadmill. Truly, however, this is not a hobby. It’s a necessity if I want to live long and enjoy life.
But enjoy what? Maybe the time has come to dust off the accordion and try again.
In the old days, the answer to “Who am I?” was “You are what you do when no one else is watching.” Or, on tithing emphasis Sunday, the answer was “You are what you write in your checkbook.”
Then computers and debit cards came down the pike, making many of us wonder if we are nothing more than ATM-punching, E-mail forwarding twits.
When no one else is watching, i.e., when my husband has fallen asleep in his recliner, what I do is head for the computer. I reckon this makes me a computer guru. In fact, I can no more imagine evenings without computers than I can imagine mornings without coffee and Cheerios.
Our Sunday School ladies swap prayer requests and share answered prayers via e-mail. Thanks to the Internet, I easily communicate with high school classmates, folks abroad, folks next door, and long lost cousins.
However, most of us have one e-mail buddy who comes close to blowing our modem. Mine is a first cousin who e-mails such vital stuff as digital snapshots of our grandparents’ headstones and the latest updates from the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
One son searches the Internet for camouflage. Baby Miles checks test grades and registers for classes on NC State’s website. My job is to pay his tuition on time and on-line.
And whatever yard sale savvy I have should be attributed to the computer. After checking the classifieds online, MapQuest shows me the quickest route to your junk. The computer enables my sister-in-law and me to average 15 yard sales a Saturday.
In a serious vein, this year as I awaited artery surgery, I psyched myself up by viewing med school .jpgs (images) of the procedures ahead. Totally psyched out after the surgery, I searched the World Wide Web for recipes low in saturated fat – and found them.
During a recent family weekend, though, I couldn’t remember my old recipes. Finally, I announced to the stunned women in the kitchen, “Excuse me while I run upstairs and look up my turkey dressing recipe on the computer.” I couldn’t blame the old Gateway, however, for what happened next. I inadvertently moistened the dressing with a saved quart of asparagus juice instead of with turkey broth.
This is a family secret; i.e., the men must never know.
In addition to dressing, everything you ever wanted to know about rhubarb is also just a mouse click away. Ditto for collards.
Despite these advances, the farmer has kept his distance from the computer. However, thanks to a newfound e-mail buddy, who’s a Florida organist for the Eastern Star, the farmer begrudgingly admits that one can reap rich harvests from the computer.
When this organist, a Ms. Slopovsky, stumbled across our simple website, she learned that the farmer’s favorite secular song is “Won’t You Ride in My Little Red Wagon?” Out of the blue, she snail-mailed him the sheet music.
Ecstatic, the farmer immediately telephoned Ms. S. in Florida, inviting her up for a weekend and a carriage ride. He then called each of our sons, making them listen to my rendition of “Won’t You Ride in My Little Red Wagon” on the baby grand.
With joys like this coming into your home, who can begrudge Bill Gates his billions?
When I invited the entire family for the weekend to celebrate Mama’s 81st birthday, Mama came but said she hoped I wouldn’t make it an annual tradition. She’s young enough to want us to celebrate at her house.
Last weekend, as the entire family was leaving, I gladly passed the birthday party torch back to Mama. For her part, Mama was pleased with the attention and the gifts but was even more pleased with the home cooking.
The farmer had launched the birthday weekend by inviting everyone to come for supper on Friday. “Kathryn would love to cook a country ham supper, with corn, turnips, okra, buttermilk biscuits, and dessert.”
By the time I got my invitation, 18 people had committed to get off work early in order to arrive while the biscuits were hot. I should have decked the farmer, but I needed him to supervise the slicing and trimming of the ham. Not liking the heat in the kitchen, the farmer opted to grill the ham outside.
The family arrived and ate in shifts. By 10 PM, the third table had had supper, and the farmer wanted to know where he was going to sleep. Thank goodness I had a spare air mattress. We blew his bed up and he tucked himself in, with visions of more country ham for breakfast filling his dreams.
Saturday morning, my cousins and sister dragged themselves out of bed at 6 AM. Having heard my tales of yard sales finds, they did not want to be robbed of this adventure, and they were not disappointed. We found toys, makeup remover, Halloween monsters in coffins, and Monet pictures galore.
Mama didn’t go with us, admitting she was concerned the early morning air would make a mess of her hair. She needed to look good to walk in Sunday’s CROP walk for world hunger.
For a nickel, I bought Mama a thrifty paperback entitled “Don’t Throw It Away.” This gift, of course, was right on the money.
The rest of the day, after a country ham and grits breakfast, we talked, we walked, we scouted for Tums, and we prepared for the meals to come. When the others conked out, my sisters and I even sneaked in a game of Scrabble.
As a grand finale, our boys hosted a Cleveland County, Saturday night catfish fry with all the trimmings, including a bluegrass band.
Mama said that Granddaddy, who died in 1963, would have felt so proud. A mountaineer, Granddaddy played banjo and fiddle, wrote gospel songs, and organized singing schools. This probably explains the origin of our family’s bluegrass tendencies. If it twangs, we play it or sing it.
Because we wanted to honor her appropriately, we gave Mama a ring to replace the one stolen in a break-in a year ago. The ruby in the center symbolizes Mama, and the 4 little diamonds clustered around it represent her 4 children.
Although the special ring touched her, Mama says the greatest way we can honor her is by the way we live. Specifically, she wants us to give the right answer to that great question, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?”
It gives me great peace, as well, to know we’ll all be together in the sky – and with someone else the Host.
Though I was one of the nerdiest girls in the Class of 1968 at Wake Forest University, since I am also a sucker for nostalgia, I almost always return for class reunions. This year several close friends agreed to attend, so I bought myself a new outfit and sweet-talked the farmer into going with us.
As it turns out, he was definitely glad he had chosen to participate. He met a classmate, who is the Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and an Ahoskie farmer, who had chilling tales of Hurricane Isabel. The men enjoyed tall tales about droughts, crops rotting due to rain, and government price supports.
The alumni spoke of other things. It was sad to hear the stories of divorce, of illness, of widowhood and other hard life experiences that have come our way. Our faces show the marks of having lived and loved.
At Saturday’s game, our class celebrated its 35th by tailgating outside Groves Stadium. Tents were set up for the classes celebrating their fifth-year anniversaries. Our homecoming queen lamented, “Look at us. We’re only 2 tents away from the Last Tent, the Half-Century tent!”
Over the BBQ, a classmate (now an area judge) brought up, bless his heart, the gender inequities of our day. I wish he hadn’t reminded me of what I inevitably remember as I decide on the size of the check for the University’s Annual Fund. It infuriated me that my beloved university paid maids to make the boys’ beds and to clean their rooms. Over on the female side of campus, however, if a girl failed to make her bed, she got a demerit. This was checked EVERY day. Five demerits and you got kicked out of school.
We remembered other stories: of girls being forbidden to wear pants on campus, except in case of emergency and then only if covered by wearing raincoats. We remembered compulsory quiet time, when girls had to study quietly in their rooms, with dorm mothers walking the halls to catch rebellious talkers.
Now, after all these years, reunions allow us to remember, to hug old friends and to form first-time friendships with classmates we never knew. It’s encouraging to see the diversity of the paths we’ve taken. There is the Latin major who is now a professional cake decorator; the female math whiz who sails the oceans in her sailboat; my close friend and Latin major who married a Wyoming sheep physiologist. Then, there’s my situation – Spanish major wedded to NSCU dairyman.
“No one can really relate to my lifestyle,” I thought the day we returned to campus. Then as we entered the main campus building, Reynolda Hall, I heard these melodious words ringing out, “That’s why all the folks on Rocky Top get their corn from a jar.” Although I rejoiced to hear the Faculty Bluegrass Band singing the songs I’ve come to know and love, surely Founder Samuel Wait was turning over in his grave.
Of course the farmer and I parked ourselves, clapping and singing until the profs played their favorite,“Angel Band,” followed by a bluegrass, foot-stomping rendition of our alma mater, “Dear Old Wake Forest.”
I reckon this means I’ll have to triple this year’s Annual Fund Gift.
Claiming they wanted to do something extra-special for their wives, several friends came up with the idea of a 17-mile bicycle ride down a Virginia mountain.
What could we 3 girls do but set out with our husbands for Damascus?
Damascus is where we emerged from a Suburban and turned into Bikers. After selecting our “rides,” a shuttle took our bikes and our senior-six-some to White Mountain Station, the jumping off place.
Never mind that 2 in our group are post-surgical: one having had the nerves to his heart cut and a pacemaker installed, and me having had the arteries to my brain reamed out. Obviously, they didn’t get it all.
However, being a dutiful wife, I was far more concerned about how my husband would fare. Although he exercises aplenty corralling horses and fixing fences, was he a match for a Mongoose bike? I wasn’t sure but what he didn’t need training wheels. So I broached the subject carefully in front of our friends. “Cline, have you ever done any bike riding to speak of?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ve ridden everywhere lots of times.”
“Name one place,” I dared him.
He answered and I quote: “Well, mostly I’ve just ridden around trees.”
As it turned out, Mr. “Around Trees” rented a bike with fancy gears, listened to the instructor warn him never to apply the left hand brakes, and applied the left hand brakes everywhere lots of times.
What saved him is that our maximum coasting speed was 2.6 miles per hour.
For the first 5 miles, the sun shone on us and we were in high cotton.
The rains started at Mile 6. It would be 8 hours before we would change into dry clothes. In the meantime, there were 12 hard miles to cover.
The rain created a multitude of problems, the primary one being keeping our bifocals clean.
If you had chosen to wear white clothing, you had a serious image problem of a different nature. The rented bikes aren’t equipped with fenders and the Virginia Creeper trail is covered with fine black coal cinders – possibly from its days as a railroad bed.
What this means is that the longer we rode, the blacker and wider the wet stripe up my backside. By the time we got to Shatley Springs for a late supper, I slunk in, looking like a wet skunk in reverse: white with a black stripe that extended right to the top of my head.
In fact, the only smart decision I made last Saturday was to rent an old-timey bike – gear-less but with wide tires, wide seat, and pedal brakes. This meant that I, the biggest klutz ever to come out of the mountains, was the most in control of her bike.
Unable to spook me, the farmer turned to our companions. Instead of hollering “Passing on the left,” which is proper biking etiquette, he whizzed by hollering “Boo” at one of our friends as he came off a railroad trestle. The next thing we knew, our friend and former football coach, had flipped over into the sumac. Coach as in Shelby High Golden Lions. Sumac as in Crimson Red.
I dread payback.
In the meantime, if you’ve ever ridden a bike around a tree, you’ll love the Road to Damascus.
The more birthdays I have, the more there is to celebrate.
This year I was ecstatic to wake up alive on my birthday. What a simple joy to soak in the beauty of the morning and to marvel at the gift of life. My first question of the day was not how many presents but how many more birthdays might be a-coming. And I thanked God for good health and undeserved blessings a-plenty, including a first granddaughter who shares my birthday.
But if you’re wondering how old I am after last week’s birthday, the answer is, “Old enough to quit telling my age.” Hint: I’m 5 years shy of Social Security eligibility – and trying not to wish my life away by counting.
Eventually, of course, the day’s thoughts turned to self-indulgent thoughts. How would “my day” be celebrated? I reckon no matter which birthday it is, we all turn into prima donnas for the day.
The weekend before, we had already celebrated the 4 immediate family birthdays that occur during the week. Our sons felt led to honor their aging, semi-vegetarian mother with a beef tenderloin roast and strawberry cake. What was a dutiful mother to do except gobble up the forbidden food? And walk an extra hour on the treadmill to do penance for the fleeting joy the feast provided.
After 9 months on near fat-free eating, it seemed that the best gifts I received involved food: a fruit basket from my Sunday School class complete with scuppernongs and muscadines; a Mexican meal courtesy of the office; and dinner with friends, where I threw all thoughts of cholesterol down the tubes and ordered fried oysters.
I reckon my arteries were shell-shocked by this culinary blast.
As my birthday wore to a close, before I fell asleep on the couch, I reflected on the overall meaning of life. My hair stylist and I had just had a conversation on a recent book dealing with the subject of God’s will for our lives. While I was sitting under the dryer, she loaned me her book long enough to pique my interest. “Where, Ann, can I buy a copy of the book?” I asked, hungering for more.
Her answer: “I think Wal-Mart carries it.”
“Why not,” I laughed. “They say you can find everything else at Wal-Mart, so why not God’s will for your life?”
With the money I’d gotten for my birthday, why not splurge on the book right now. Or, I could wait till a copy turned up at a yard sale, but with winter coming on that could be a long wait.
Maybe it would take me that long to digest and to get past the very first sentence in the book. The meaning of God’s will for your life? The writer had begun with this shocking, life-giving statement: “The purpose of your life is not about you.”
I’ve lived 57 years all too often behaving differently. However, the more birthdays I have, the more I am coming to know that the greatest joys in life are found in our relationships with other people.
So much more to learn…and the calendar is a-flying.
For people who live with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the farmer and I did a heap of unnecessary worrying about last week’s hurricane.
Don’t get me wrong. I am relieved that Isabel didn’t blow us off the top of our granite hill. Memories of the close call we in the foothills had with Hurricane Hugo have marked us all. So for days before Isabel’s arrival, every TV set in our house was tuned exclusively to the Weather Channel, lest we miss a tidbit of information while dashing from the den to the kitchen and back. The farmer, normally a laid-back, congenial senior citizen, became indignant when the weather coverage switched to some irrelevant part of the world, such as Utah.
Wednesday night, on the Eve of Isabel, the farmer planned his evening around Channel 3’s hour-long hurricane special. He hung onto every word. If he had had a legal pad, I believe he would have taken notes.
Once the hurricane special ended and regular news returned, the farmer commented, “Isn’t it amazing how life goes on anyway?”
And he called our sons in Raleigh – to see if the storm had possibly arrived early. It was sort of like calling on Dec. 24 to see if Santa Claus is in town.
One son said that his plant, Caterpillar, located in Sanford, would possibly close down. Before Isabel was halfway across the Atlantic, Caterpillar, maker of the biggest earthmoving equipment the world has known, was battening down the hatches.
Our youngest son, Miles, was also making weather-related choices. In fact, at the first hint of a hurricane he had called home with this request: “Daddy, get my chain saw ready and send it to me in Raleigh. I’m fixing to need it.”
Sure enough, when we checked with him Wednesday night, NCSU had already called off classes and Miles was dressed to go a-chainsawin’. Isabel, however, was still 450 miles from shore.
For my part, the only hurricane-related concession was the cancellation of a trip to Greenville, NC. Mama had been planning to go with me, neither one of us admitting to being scared. The farmer, who wisely thinks twice before ordering either of us around, said, “You and your Mama cannot drive to Greenville on Thursday. Period. That’s when the eye of the storm will hit. Just think what will happen to your Mama and your new Toyota when Isabel pitches you to the winds.”
These scare tactics worked. I parked myself at home.
And I worried. Should we stock up on water, batteries and Raisin Bran? Should we hoard medicine? What about buying a transistor radio, a hand-cranked can opener, and/or a generator? How much cash should we withdraw, just in case the ATM crashed?
It takes a lot of money and planning to stock up for catastrophes. After so many false alarms, from snowstorms to hurricanes to new millennia, I decided to let someone else go home from the grocery store with the prize: the last loaf of sliced bread.
If the hurricane were to devastate us, I’d just boil twigs, gather figs and crack nuts.
After 9 months on a stringent low-fat diet, my stomach would hardly know the difference. v
Before agreeing to keep our 2 grandchildren last weekend, I had to check on the farmer’s availability. Just as it takes two to tango, at our age it takes two to care for the grandchildren. How in the world do single grandparents do it?
After raising 4 boys, you would think that keeping a granddaughter and grandson, 4 and 2, would be a walk in the park. Actually, it’s a walk on the wild side.
Our grandchildren arrived in time for an early supper. No problem. I had gone to the grocery store for hotdogs and buns, and the farmer had fired up the grill. No sooner did Morgan smell the charcoal than she said, “PaPa, Aaron likes corn dogs, not hot dogs. And I like applesauce.”
The farmer smiled and said, “You’ll like NaNa’s hot dogs.”
Fifteen minutes later, we managed to get our charges into their car seats. We were headed for the grocery store, with corn dogs and applesauce on our list. Each grandparent took responsibility for one grandchild. Unfortunately, no one assumed responsibility for the groceries. We had to return to the store, pretending we were in control of the situation.
Back at the house, the farmer said he’d grill the corn dogs in just a minute. “No, PaPa,” said Morgan firmly. “You have to cook them in he microwave.” They microwaved nicely.
On a normal evening, the farmer and I crash after supper. Not Saturday night. The children wanted to ride trikes, play croquet, and ride the pony. They wanted to play with, and fight over, toys, tool sets, and the farmer’s dog. In between they “snuck” in the house for treats.
You’ve heard the myth that if they are left to their own devices children will choose healthy foods. Maybe your grandchildren will, but once ours learned to crawl, they could get to the candy corn, marshmallow peanuts, and boxed orange drinks. Four years into grand parenting I’ve never heard either child ask, “NaNa, I found your carrots. May I please have one?”
According to an e-mail I received this week, approximately 12 newborns a day are given to the wrong parents. There is no doubt, however, about the genes that Morgan and I share. We are earring freaks. She loves to sift through the dozens of pairs of gaudy earrings atop my dresser. Young as she is, she has even asked and has been told that she can have them “one day.” I reckon I can only be buried with one pair – thank goodness I won’t have to decide. Morgan will know. Ask her.
At 10 PM, too wired to sleep, Morgan suggested a bubble bath. I turned on the air jets. Bubbles spilled onto the floor and up the wallpaper. We ran the air tub through two cycles, getting out just in the nick of time – before NaNa fell asleep in the bubbly deep.
The weekend was, of course, a wonder-filled time. When Morgan left the next day, she looked back and simply said, “I’ll miss you.”
The farmer said, “Come back real soon. We’ll have enough corn dogs to feed a hog and enough bubble bath to float a ship.”
It’s a promise.
Following surgery in March to remove the blockage in my neck, I finally internalized a great truth: good health would require a commitment to a low-fat diet and a high-energy workout.
“Duh,” you rightly say.
A kind-hearted daughter-in-law rose to the occasion and made the supreme sacrifice: she loaned me her treadmill. Indefinitely.
Basically she said that after jogging hundreds of miles on the machine, she had a bad case of “treadmill burnout.” She added that the treadmill not only dominated their den but it also had become a catchall for jackets, boots, and other non-decorative items.
So our son Leif dropped the machine off in our den, where this “loaner” greets visitors who come to the back door. Aesthetically speaking, it’s a decorator’s worst nightmare.
The first couple of months, I got on the treadmill sporadically, mostly as a result of guilt trips after visits home. If Mama could walk 5 miles a day outside, surely I could walk one mile inside an air-conditioned den. To be honest, however, mostly I avoided making eye contact with the treadmill, playing the “out of sight; out of mind” game.
I even nobly suggested to Leif that we should return the borrowed treadmill to its rightful owners. His comment at the prospect of taking it home? “Looks like I’m the only one getting any exercise from the treadmill, hauling it back and forth.”
His words cut to the heart of the matter – exercise – but first I had to work on my attitude.
You won’t read this in a novel or a poem, but it takes a heap o’ inner fighting to make a treadmill welcome in your home. It takes even more soul-searching to admit that changing one’s diet, as commendable as that is, is only half a commitment. Exercise is the gold standard for good health. If I could commit to a diet constructed around Omega 3s and eggplant, surely I could walk on a treadmill.
First plus: we had placed the contraption in view of the TV. Second plus: there’s plenty on TV to distract you these days. However, the shows that suit me just fine in my “couch potato” mode hardly work at all when I’m in my “treadmill torture” mode.
Mama, who takes her daily walks outside, says walking is her quiet time. Walking provides her with opportunities to pray, to plan her days, and to prioritize her options.
Praying, planning and prioritizing are infinitely harder on a treadmill. It takes every ounce of religion I have to refrain from cussing the machine out or turning it off after 3 minutes. Unlike walking outside, the treadmill forces you to develop one other muscle, the one I call your “true grit muscle.” No wonder Oprah advocates having a trainer to assist with the mental part.
Taking a cue from her, I asked the farmer to be my trainer. First he said he couldn’t believe that I was only walking for 25 minutes on the thing and couldn’t I go any faster? Then he flipped the speed from 4 mph to 6 mph, and said as I flipped off backwards that it was a crying shame he didn’t video me for America’s Funniest Home Videos.
What was I thinking, inviting the farmer to be my trainer? I had forgotten his favorite pastime: milking every situation for the laughter it provides.
