Memories of Home; Things to Do Undone

If you love me you will probably read this. If you don't, you might not bother. I have the idea that though it hasn't been particularly or specially formed, the writing that I did yesterday might give someone an idea about how to access their own memories, their memories of home. I took me all day to write this, in the moments here and there:

I told Michael that I had figured out I was going to have to do some autobiographical writing, and start working with all my hang-ups and insecurities in order to get them out of the way, so that publicly I could begin to write about less personally situated things. Though I have begun thinking more autobiographically, and have started thinking about processing feelings poetically instead of narratively, I have not set about the project as I discussed it with him. Neither have I set about the voice training project that he had devised for me. Yesterday I played an Ella Fitzgerald CD while I folded laundry, but I was unable to listen closely enough to find the three kinds of songs he had described. I also never found a time during the day yesterday to set to work on it, though it would have taken only fifteen minutes according to our current parameters.

I'm sitting here right now, on the sofa in my living room. Isaac is beginning to stir. I've tried to awaken Michael, but he's still in the bed. I can't tell whether or not Parker is still sleeping, but I imagine that he won't be for long. The day is about to begin. There is a pause, and a holding of breath. What will this one be like? Will it be a good day? Will I do well? What sort of work is required of me today, and will I do it or not? Yes, I had a thought that I was holding out for, and since the children came in asking their questions, I don't remember what that thought was.

Will we take a walk together this morning? Will I sketch a meal plan? Will I go to the grocery store? Will laundry be done? What all needs to happen today?

I've been thinking about my grandmother lately. I look up at the tiles in my ceiling and I think of her, that room in the back of her house where the family always sat, barely remembering the day we showed up at her home and the room was new. Every time I make an afternoon cup of coffee I think of her, sitting at the table in her kitchen, with coffee cup and saucer before her, stirring it quickly in small bursts before setting her coffee spoon down to make a point. I remember her avid brown eyes, the way she looked at me when she was enthusiastic about something. I remember what she said the day that she took my new large journal from me and read it without asking permission. She told me my writing reminded her of her. I can pull out that journal in a moment and find out what the date was and what it was she read in my journal that day.

In thinking of her, I remember a woman I used to work with, a woman who reminded me of her. It makes me rather sad that I wasn't able to keep up with her, even though the two of us had many an argument. Her name was Mary too, and the other girls were impressed by the way I held my ground when we each were certain we were right. I visited her house one time, all the way out in Fayette, and it had a ceiling like ours, like my grandmother's.

I've been thinking about my father's mother today, but on Sunday my mother told me that she misses her mother every day. I felt like I smelled her house last night, my mother's mother's, at the house of a friend who has a septic system. There was something about the smell of the water in the bathroom. What a funny thing to associate with my grandmother's house. When I think of her I think of banjos and listening to the police scanner late at night, and thinking how curious it was, how I would watch the lights on the scanner, as though the act of listening weren't enough, as though I were watching tv.

Repair Bear, We Hope

A few days ago I posted on facebook that Isaac had thrown his bear into the toilet.  This morning, from a seated position on the floor, in my husband's lap, Isaac lobbed his brother's bear across the room and into the toilet.  Yes, it's true that the bear now smells of pee, but I can't just throw it in the washing machine and here's the reason why.

A few days ago Parker's bear began hemmoraging filling beads from a hole in it's lower back.  This bear is so loved that he has been stitched up numerous times already, and there are runs like you'd get in panty hose all over his back.  His fur is long gone, as is the brown neck ribbon that Parker used to pull at with is teeth.  My husband is now attempting to restuff the bear with filling beads using a drinking straw, which works much better than the paper funnel he originally fashioned.

My son cannot sleep all night without his bear.  He's done it exactly once.  The second time we tried it he woke up in the night looking for his bear.  We are not ready to try the experiment again so soon.  When he finishes the refilling, we'll sew up the hole using travel sewing kit thread.  Then I'll stick him in a lingerie bag and throw him in the washing machine using Tide with Bleach (because that is what I have) and cold water.  I plan to repair the bear with a scrap of fabric held on with semi-permenant fabric glue.  I'm not exactly the patch and mend type, which is why Michael is doing the sewing, and I'll be using whatever fabric I can scavenge.  I'll have to figure out a way to cut the fabric in whatever odd shape is required for fit, keep the fabric from unravelling, and convince Parker not to pull the fabric away with his fingers.  My genius idea for repairing the bear on Thursday was with masking tape.  We really seem to know what we're doing here, don't we?

Timing-Provision/God has been Very Good

Isaac, gentleman that he is, waited to arrive until after Michael's immediate obligations as special events deacon at Grace had been fulfilled. He chose to come before my Dad had to commit to whether or not he would travel to New Orleans to lecture for the Marine Corp. He waited until after Michael and I had the opportunity to go to lunch alone together just that afternoon.

I have often been disappointed in thinking about the neat ways God hasn't provided for us and for our needs. He's never given me an automobile out of the blue (something I have always dreamed would happen). He's never given us a specific amount of money immediately before or after we have needed.

But here's what He has done.

We needed a baby bed and mattress for Isaac to sleep on. John and Linda are loaning us a bed. Cori has provided a mattress. We needed a place for Isaac to sleep until he's old enough to make it through the night without nursing, when he'll join Parker. Shelly bought us a bassinet for a dollar at a yard sale. We needed a cover for the bassinet. Elizabeth had that would fit.

The automatic breast pump I need to establish nursing has been provided without cost beyond it's use of electricity. Heather and Anna Grace were available without question to spend parts of the night with Parker the night Isaac arrived.

Isaac has diapers because Michael's office gave us a diaper shower the Friday before Isaac was born. Linda watched Parker while I got my driver's license renewed only the weekend before.

Anna gave me clothes to wear the last couple of months of my pregnancy. Isaac has clothes to wear because Laura and Tina and Elizabeth and others gave us their old ones. Isaac has his own new blankets thanks to Pam and others. My parents live close by so there was never any question of where Parker would stay while Michael and I were at the hospital with Isaac.

Our kitchen range was dying, and so Michael's parents helped us to purchase a new one over Thanksgiving. My parents have bought us groceries since Isaac has been here, as well as various household needs. My mom often buys me clothes when I need them and she's available to help me with the boys until I adjust to nursing with a two year-0ld in the house. Daniel and Shannon were able to be here the day Isaac arrived.

Our mortgage is low, which as been a tremendous help in coping with the rising costs of living. We get the dependant tax exemption for 2008 even though we had no expectation. God didn't exactly GIVE us a car, but in reality He did, because we were able to buy a mini-van this year from someone we know and trust, who provided a complete maintenance history and even had the oil changed and the tires rotated after the sales agreement had been made. Best of all, two car seats fit in it easily, which they never could have in our other car.

We have our own washer and dryer this time around to cope with the tremendous amounts of laundry a new baby generates.

Michael has been able to take time off work to be with me and Parker and Isaac with very little difficulty, and he's off again tomorrow for New Years.

How has God not provided for us?

He is good anyway, by the way, apart from anything He may or may not do for us. I have to tempt disaster and thank Him because this is His due.

An Old Post, Never Before Published

The reason why I haven't been blogging recently (This is how it goes):

I'm pregnant, and when I am pregnant I have trouble stringing words together. Maybe I'll get together a paragraph in my head while I'm supposed to be working on something else, but then I'll start to write it, and... There's an interruption of some sort, or I can't get it to work the way I want it to. It happens over and over again until I finally decide that I'm not going to do this for a while.

In graduate school just before Parker was born my inability to write proved disastrous. Three papers due at the end of the semester--the one I turned in to my Black Women's Metaphysical Fiction professor was total crap. I couldn't come up with anything interesting to write about, and what I finally did write about was incoherent and possibly offensive without any sort of redeeming usefulness. Seriously. I've tended to feel like an outsider a lot of times in the past and tried to write about being disappointingly marginalized by Ntozake Shange's expressed intent concerning the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

The paper I turned in for my Shakespeare class that semester, I don't even want to think about, and to this day I turn over and over in my mind possibilities for completing that incomplete earned in Theory of the Novel because I simply couldn't do anything with it. The incomplete haunts me because as long as it exists I damage my chances of ever being able to go back to Graduate School, even though by now I don't know whether or not I really want to go.

At this point I've said way more than I meant to say when I'm supposed to be posting pictures. Anyway here's a post I started at the beginning of May, and so instead of throwing it away, I'm posting it here, almost eight months late:

Parker slept late this morning, which turned out to be a good way to start the day. Especially since I wasn't in the mood to put anything away last night; so there were toys to redistribute, dishes to add to the dishwasher, and others needing personal attention. He atypically slept through one and a half showers, giving me the opportunity to do some devotional reading. I'm slowly and inconsistently working my way through Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith. Today's selection was from Jonathan Edwards, and I confess that it did not get the attention it deserved. Maybe I'll have better success with comprehension tomorrow.

Parker has lately become a hugger and a cuddler and a climber and a talker. He doesn't blab, blab, blab away all day, but he is saying more and more words.

I've emailed two different people blog worthy material this morning, so I'll lay aside the guilt I feel at not revisiting those subjects afresh, and reproduce what I have already written here.

The first item I considered blog-worthy on May 2, 2008 was a story about how pregnancy hormones affect the mental faculty:

Two coffee cups. One has residue from yesterday's coffee because I found it this morning under my bed. The other has been freshly used then rinsed because I've decided to make a cup of tea. Which cup do you think I chose to put the tea bag and hot water in?

My used-to-be perfectly-good brain says, make sure you use the right cup. My perfectly-good brain does not say, put the old cup in the dishwasher before you do this. Thankfully the tea tastes okay anyway, and Parker is temporarily placated. Unfortunately I just realized that I forgot to put a bib on him, so he has oatmeal down his shirt.

Honestly, I no longer remember what the other blog-worthy post was meant to be.

Animals

GG got Parker the cutest little stuffed monkey (with bellybutton and long weighted tail). Parker hasn't shown any interest in it just yet, but I'm in love with the thing.

I was never really the stuffed animal type myself. I had a teddy bear named Bear Bear that I slept with every night, but little else. I tickled that bear so often that he had bare patches all over his back and stomach, much as Parker's black bear has bare patches where his tag used to be. I would get upset when my mother tried to trim my fingernails because, I said, "I can't tickle Bear Bear anymore."

When I was pregnant with Parker, Carol (that's GG) bought a green and purple dinosaur stuffed animal that I also loved. There's something about being pregnant that makes me care more about stuffed animals. I slept with Parker's monkey tucked up in my arms most of Saturday night.

GG and Grandpa, I want you to know that Parker played with his lion, tiger, elephant and giraffe this morning. He came into our bedroom where I was dozing, with plastic lion in hand saying, "Roar, Roar, Roar." I roared back at him and he laughed back at me.

Also for the sake of the record, Parker has begun practicing the word "No." He said no to everything today whether he meant it or not. My sister asked him "Parker, do you love me?" and he said no every time. And we know that's not true.

He was so tired before his nap this afternoon that he tried to hold every piece of sidewalk chalk in his tiny little hands, and he cried as though his heart were breaking every time he dropped a piece. Michael said it was as though he thought the chalk were being taken from him if he couldn't hold them all in his hands. Eventually we convinced him to return the pieces to the plastic zip-lock bag in which they are stored and hold the bag while drawing with one piece of chalk at a time. He likes to draw on himself, the cement slab in our backyard, and on the Spalding basketball that rolls away every time he lets go of it.

I got some good pictures over the weekend (some of him playing with a water sprinkler in GG and Grandpa's backyard). I'll try to post some of these sometime in the next few days, but we've got a busy week ahead, so I make no promises.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Already

It was the last day of kindergarten, and we were allowed to bring the unused supplies that we had purchased at the beginning of the year home with us. It was a light brown gum eraser, never used. It's edges were perfectly square, the shape of it rectangular. It was perfect, it was beautiful, and I was in love with it.

My father drove me home that day. Full of joy I said to him, "Look at this gum eraser."

"A gum eraser!" he exclaimed, sinking his teeth into it. I cried and cried.

When I buy a new book, if the quality of the paper and its formatting is good, I am awed by the perfection of its pages. The crisp angle of its corners is my delight. I am loathe to do anything that would mar the perfection of its cover.

After a book has been read, if its pages have become creased, its spine bent, or there are paper lines across its cover, a different sort of bedraggled beauty is revealed. Books that have been read by many have a different beauty of their own. Use is a good thing, creases and lines a mark of honor, because it means that an object's purposes have been fulfilled.

There is little worse than purposes unfulfilled.

Can't You Just Imagine Us, All In Our Formals, Going to County High Prom Together?

Parker and I spent the morning Tuesday with my friend Joy and her son Joshua. As an added bonus, Chris was with us for part of the time. Now, Chris and Joy and I have known each other since Joy and I became friends as sophomores in high school. I've been close friends with Chris since college

There we were, sitting around her parent's kitchen table with our babies, talking about our babies and other parent-like things. Years ago, before any of us were married, you would have found us all sitting right there, talking about Audio Adrenalin. Sort of a strange feeling; it's amazing the way things change even while some things stay exactly the same.

Season's of Life That Do Not Last Forever

Last night we had a friend over for dinner. It's the first time we've done that in a while, not because we are unwilling, but mainly because we forget to invite anyone to come and eat with us. It was fun.

Whenever I'm around Ben I'm reminded of the really great hanging-out that was done during my college years. Very good memories.

On a Thursday night my friend Jenny would call me on the phone to see if I wanted to come over. Most Thursday nights I'd get to her apartment and my friends Jeremy and Steven would already be there. We'd spend the evening sitting on the floor, watching tv and conversing with whoever else might happen to come by. Usually several other people would come by. I miss those days of casual socialization.

Other favorite memories.

Sitting outside on the porch of the Chi Alpha Girl's House, either in Chanda's cool leather chair or the swing, reading, listening to music, talking to Ken about deep-seated things until 3:00 in the morning. The Spade's games that used to go on until all hours, those were not my favorite times, but sweeping off the front porch, being outside, feeling cool breezes coming in off the street, and hearing the noises of cars going by, these were some really beautiful times. I loved that kind of atmosphere, when you never knew who might show up at your door. I loved my tiny white room at the Girl's House, and the window unit (both heat and cool) that kept my personal living space snug. I have happy memories that involve Mavis coming to my room to bring me sliced apples while I worked on some huge Interior Design project, bringing them because we'd just had an argument. I miss the sort of communal living that is possible in college as it is at no other time.

Whenever I'm around Ben I'm reminded of those times.

I wish sometimes that I could foster that sort of casual communal spirit in my life as a wife and mother, but I haven't figured out yet how practically to do so. And community isn't a talent I particularly have.

Pictures of Parker, and A Visit with Miss Alice

Many of you know this lady. We got to visit with her on Thursday. A good time was had by all, even though Parker wasn't up to his usual brilliant, friendly and charming standards because he was unwell.

He walked into Alice's living room, wherein he found a candle shaped like a ring of angels. It impressed us that he identified this foreign object as a candle immediately, walking up to it and sniffing away.

I wish that I could visit Alice every day. I am happy to know that I can look forward to seeing her more regularly. She in fact lives within reasonable driving distance from the Fox's soon-to-be-completed new home.

Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfq_A8nXMsQ

This was my first encounter with anything by Baz Luhrmann. It was played on the radio a lot in 1998, so during my Sophomore year of college, though don't quote me on that. The highlight of this track is the text, in the form of a commencement address that was anecdotally mis-attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I thought it was wonderful at the time, and while I don't completely subscribe to every bit of advice that is offered, I still think it is wonderful. I remember being very impressed that such a message was being carried over commercial radio.

I'd never seen the video before this morning, so I can't vouch for all of its images. There are a few sexual images, but nothing more offensive than the Dove body wash commercials I've been seeing on television lately.

This song won my loyalty as a Baz Luhrmann fan.

An Unflattering Portrait of the Author as a Little Girl, or Why I Always Get a Box of Chocolate Covered Cherries for Christmas

It was a Baptist Sunday School Christmas Party. I don't know how old I was, only that we were already living in Alabama. The party was at an adult's house.

There were gifts to be exchanged based on numbers to be drawn. My memory of the event is vivid. The little girl who's gift I drew, and whose name I clearly remember, said to me, "I hope you like it. I think you will. I don't know anyone who doesn't like these."

What do you suppose I found when I unwrapped that present?

Chocolate Covered Cherries. I don't know whether I even knew what Chocolate Covered Cherries were, but I knew I did not like them. They most certainly were NOT my idea of an appropriate gift. My disappointment was overwhelming and I threw an absolute fit, a tantrum. I cried and cried and my parent's had to come and take me home.

I remember the event and the little girl from time to time. For many years the memory filled me with guilt and shame, and I know that I have worried about how I made that little girl feel, just like I've worried about that little old lady whose groceries I once accidentally took home ("Walmart and My One Year Old Do NOT Mix Well", 11/17/07).

The part of the story I think is funny follows:

I worked almost four years as secretary at a local law firm, during which time I discovered that one of the attorney's there had hosted that Sunday School Christmas Party so many years before. I do not know whether he had any memory of the event--I believe it was his wife who actually handled all of the arrangements. When I discovered this connection I did not hesitate to mention it to the attorney in question. When I had laughingly finished my story he said to me, with a perfectly straight face, "Oh, you're THAT girl. My wife still talks about that."

While I am honestly ashamed of my behavior on that, and other similar occasions, I realize that God has used all of my experiences to make me who I am today. While I know that I have not consistently pleased Him through the years, I do know that He has consistently loved me, and that the hard heart of a difficult child can be transformed into the soft and malleable heart of a child of God.

Something to Think About

One of the first things I learned when I entered the Interior Design Program at The University of Alabama was that in certain philosophies of interior design ornamentation should carry meaning, an idea which certainly appealed to me. This was a response against those earlier design philosophies such as French Rococo which said that if a little ornamentation was good, more ornamentation was even better.

The subject came up when I was on Spring Break Outreach with Chi Alpha at Florida State University my Senior Year of College.

We had done a mime routine a bit earlier, and were fitted out in black clothes and white make-up. I wandered with one of our guys around the green searching for students to talk to.

"Why the white make-up?" a young man asked. We explained to him what we had been doing, talked a little bit about University life, as well as our designated courses of study, those things all students have in common. There was a pause, and I said to him, "You know, in interior design I learned that all ornamentation should carry meaning, and yet here I am wearing white make-up. It has no meaning. In a sense this make-up is a violation of my principles as a Christian, one of which is to be honest and transparent in the way that I face the world. What do you think of that?"

From the outside this may not seem like much of an evangelical message, but I believe it opened up the conversation and showed this guy that we were willing to treat him like an actual person we had met instead of as a stop on some imaginary evangelical pilgrimage. (It must have been the work of the Holy Spirit, because I am not very evangelical as a rule.)

I'm thinking about this incident in a couple of ways as we approach the subject of relationship evangelism at Grace Church in the following weeks.

In one sense I'd like us to discuss how ornamentation carries meaning in our lives as Christians as we face the world from day to day. Lauren Winner has a lovely little book called Mudhouse Sabbath that applies to this in some ways. It talks about ways that certain Jewish traditions can be profitably incorporated by the Church.

The other way I'd like to discuss this is in terms of different evangelical techniques that we have tried, the ways that they have been effective, when they are appropriate and when they are not. Mime, for example, can work beautifully in some cases, and in others it may be offensive (in a detrimental way: remember not all offense is detrimental) because it uses artifice to convey an extremely didactic message.

Discussion?

Memories of "A Christmas Carol"

Fifteen years ago, my brother, Daniel, and I appeared in A Christmas Carol. The show wasn't put on by Children's Theater back then. It was a Theater Tuscaloosa production.

Paul Looney was the director. I thought he was wonderful. He would sometimes smoke and yell and curse and I loved it. I ran in to him somewhere several years ago and he still remembered my name. I get excited about seeing people like that like most people get excited about celebrities. I have the same feeling about an old art professor of mine. Knowing they are in the world makes me happy.

I was Frances and Daniel was Peter. The first thing I remembered when I started thinking about that long ago production was that Tiny Tim used his cain to try and look up my dress while we waited for our cue to run down the theaters aisle. I remember being friends with the man who played my father (Bob Cratchett). He worked at the Tuscaloosa Candy Company downtown and I imagined him with a giant taffee pulling machine every time I drove by, not understanding that cigarettes and alcohol are called "candy" as well. I remember going to a cast party at someones house near downtown Northport, and being advised to try the chicken salad at the Globe Restaurant. I remember working on the blocking of that scene where Martha hides to surprise her father inside the Cratchett home, and the turkey (or was it a pudding) we used as a prop.

That was the last time I had the opportunity to participate in an actual production.