Life goes on

Si I have not written a word in two months - what have I been doing? Slogging through life, wondering what the next stage will bring, whether anything interesting will happen. We are in a holding pattern, depressed over various situations such as the southside house not selling, and just blah. Still, there are good things every day. I am finally having time to finish some quilting projects started long ago. We went up to the Lodge last Friday night and enjoyed that as always - the weather was great. Sunday night we had Wes and Amanda over for dinner and we all love them. But truly, we are all tense and angry and wondering what to attribute that to. I have made an appointment with the grief counselor for Wednesday, just wanting to talk to someone, trying to decipher whether a lot of the feeling really relate back to that. It seems like most everyone I know is currently disturbed. Except Jerry, I guess, - we ate with her and Jerome Saturday and she seems very happy. And while I am happy for her, I had hoped to have someone there that I could cry with, and that is not possible. I cried a couple of times yesterday - once when I heard a piece on NPR about a group of women who meet together regularly to talk about their sons who have died in the war - it made me wish so bad that I had someone to share that with. Donald and I are going to the cemetery this morning - that may not help but I just feel like I need to. After crying so much yesterday I felt sick and wimpy, and still feel rough this morning, but hope that enough crying will help ease some of the bad feelings - we will see.

Working on a Wedding Dress - by Mom

Working on a wedding dress is kind of like constructing a building (or a life!). This is the fourth one I've made (I made Carla's, Sierra's, and Alison's), and there are some elements in common that seem metaphorical to me. Parts of each construction are very solid and supportive. For Ashley we have a heavy fabric that will wrap tightly around her and contains boning to be supportive. We have a big crinoline that will fluff out that heaviness and make it more airy. These parts are like the solid parts from which we build our lives, things we can lean on or into, things we know will hold up against the vicissitudes of real life. We try to build these things to be beautiful also, but they are solid. Other parts, like the bolero I have been working on this morning, are as gossamer as butterfly wings. The bolero and the beaded fabric are the stuff of dreams, meant only to be beautiful. Much of the wedding finery and the wedding process is like the bolero - they are designed to symbolize our dreams and only to last long enough to get us through this lovely transition. Such is life - gossamer dreams as trimming on a solid foundation that supports us through life!

The Sorrow and the Smile posted by Ashley

Everything bursting with beauty and life. A new flower, new animal, new breeze across each spring day as it comes. And yesterday the sorrow. In the midst of the wedding preparations, spring, love, family and fishing: sorrow. Shane and I stole away to Black Creek in the dark and watched the glittering waters under the park's lights. Our feet cold where we slipped in darkness when we crossed the creek. And he wants to know why I am so sad today. And I want to know why I am so sad today. Ultimately my brother, my sweet Shane, in my head. Many things have passed and I look forward not backward to the best of my ability. I weep aside night's creek and Shane just rocks me gently. Never angry at my contradictions nor frightened by my dark side. Only this great gift to ease this sorrow that is a part of me as much as any joy can be. I don't drink it away; I don't drug it away. I feel it fully for a moment and then turn my face away with will towards my love's smile.

The Ultimate Wild Goose Chase - by Mom

Donald and I went up to The Lodge at Locust Fork to retreat and enjoy a night in the wild. It was a beautiful 24 hours! Four great blue herons flew into the trees right at dusk, looking like ancient pterosaurs. We sat out back in the total dark and listened to the night sounds and watched the moon and stars. I think we heard a Whipporwill even though I know they shouldn't be this far south. We awoke to an amazing bird chorus and a sunrise as gorgeous as the sunset the night before. I was thinking today that "The Property", as we called it so long, is the ultimate wild goose. It has been a place to hang our dreams for quite a few years. It has yielded returns more spiritual than physical, even though much physical labor has gone into it. Mostly we relaxed and enjoyed our retreat but this morning we went down to the river and there was work to do, as always. Dad cut a tree off the path and used the DR to cut the path. I used the nippers for awhile and tried to get some of the privet cut that blocks that beautiful back path where all the wildflowers bloom. The privet is going to hurt the wildflowers eventually. But I couldn't even get enough cut to get all the way through. Constant pruning, cutting, just to survive. It's a place that will never be domesticated, and surely we knew that - didn't we? I was thinking about what I had written earlier about our ancestors and their hard-scrabble existence - did we inherit genes that allow us to draw sustenance out of a place this raw and harsh? Along with it were we given some gift that lets us see the wonder and beauty all among the privet and kudzu? In a recent book I read, on theological stuff, the author quoted some lines from a Bruce Cockburn song, something like "here I am after all these years, bowing before this beauty, understanding nothing". That about says it all.
But also I sat and watched the river flow this morning and these lines came to me:

As Hulseys,
The River takes us down.
We flow through space and time
To be reborn
Into another world.
Some of us must come back.

In sensing the glory that lies behind it and ahead,
We glean intimations of divine immortality.
Forced to return
To the unnatural, the unspiritual world,
Fragments of what the River teaches us
Cling to our hearts and sustain joy.
So we hang our dreams and invest our faith
In that eternal flow.

Poem posted by Mom

"I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great" by Stephen Spender (@1920)

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered their soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

I thank God for a family who can appreciate this imagery!

Easter Dinner - Family History - posted by Mom

Instead of turkey, it is ham that is the family Easter dinner, instituted by Grandma Tommie, along with her famous potato salad and green beans. I arose and cooked that meal today and thought about her. I had been thinking about her in church on Maundy Thursday when we sang "The Old Rugged Cross" - one of her favorite hymns. So I got up about 5:30 and had a ham in the oven by 6:30 and picked green beans and thought about family traditions. Today I wish more family could have been here, but Carla came after the glorious church service, and brought a friend, and me and Donald and Ashley ate that good meal! And I often think about the trouble that it is to cook, when you can go to the store and buy all things ready-made, but how cooking it with my own hands is an expression of love in my life.
It's not because I think I'm not always going to be here, but just because I want you all to have some perspective on your own lives that I want to tell the family story, even if it dribbles out in bits and pieces. Life is harsh. It's hard and gritty in some way not matter who you are or where you come from. It's just because we think we are privileged and have so many choices that we think it is possible to live a perfect life.
We can't. That's where grace enters your life. You look back at your family history and you know that perfection is not attainable. We just bumble along and do the best we can, cross ourselves and thank God when our mistakes produce consequences we can somehow live with and move on.
Where you come from: I grew up not really poor but nearly. My family grasped at money, maybe not nickels and dimes, but certainly quarters and dollars. Now my philosophy is : "If it's a problem only about money, it's not a real problem." Since I first wrote this I have experienced a real problem and now I know this to be the real truth.
Your ancestors: Just a couple of generations back, your ancestors did hard physical labor on hard scrabble farms that never really produced a good living. Each generation that could get out left it behind and chose a different form of hard grind.
On your mother's side: hillbillies from the hills of Tennessee and the South Carolina-Georgia border. Descendants of indentured servants from Europe? - England maybe? Indian blood mix was claimed. Your mother's grandfather, William Redmon Fowler, worked in the hosiery mills in Clinton, TN and then retired to Chattanooga. He was good with machines and invented things. He was a good gardener and canned homemade vegetable soup. He and Annie Mae Fowler lived in Clinton, where Tommie was the youngest child. She had an older sister, Marion, and an older brother, Raymond, whom she idolized. Tommie had polio when she was 2 years old.
That's all for today- Easter is a good time for just watching the sunset and that is what I plan to do!

Chasing the Wild Turkeys posted by Sierra

The Equinox has come and I welcome Spring and the beauty of the cycle of seasons- returning always to full bloom... Turkey hunting season is on and Jimmy and I rise early in the dark morning hours to listen to the joyful gobbling of lovestruck birds seaching for mates. Some mornings we hear nothing and walk out a trail in the woods, setting up in some shrubbery, Jimmy clucks and yelps and when there is no answer, still we feel the shapes shifting in the woods- are reminded of the life and beauty hidden out there. This morning, I stayed home, back at the Elliott's Creek cabin in Moundville, I stepped onto the screened in porch at sunrise and heard the turkey's joyous gobble from my porch. I will look for blooms hiding in the woods today at work.