Farmer "Brown"

                                                           Mom, Granddaddy & Me
                                                                       Circa 1988

"He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it that counted – and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone." ~Ellen Glasgow

http://youtu.be/khxx3sCVhtE [Oh Shenandoah/"Tennessee" Ernie Ford]
http://youtu.be/TFBpIsFdHH0 [Color My World Instrumental/Chicago]

My grandfather died 20 years ago today. It seems like forever since I felt the embrace of his big, strong hug. I was 28 years old when God called him back, and heaven took him away from us. It was the first time I’d experienced the death of someone with whom I was extremely close. I’d lost a couple of friends – one had been born with heart problems and passed when I was in 6^th grade. Another was killed by a drunk driver the week after school let out when I was in the 9^th grade. Those were sad occurrences for me, but this was different. When my grandfather died, it was the first time I truly understood the "Oh my God! I’m never going to see him again as long as I live!" sentiment. It was a hard loss because my grandfather was my "Granddaddy" and all that role entailed. He was the only grandfather I had left, and now, he too was gone. It didn’t matter that I was 28 years old. I wasn’t ready to lose him! It didn’t matter that people marveled that he was 85 and had lived a good, long life. That was of no comfort to me! I’ve never found any comfort in him being "up yonder", as he called it, and the rest of us being down here.

He was a character! I loved him to the moon and back and round and round out beyond infinity. I miss him more. He was born Ryland Brown Whitlock - September 30, 1907, and he left us on June 7, 1992. The irony of his middle name, "Brown", and the fact that he was a farmer doesn’t escape me.

I remember when I first learned of his middle name. He was taking me to the henhouse to gather the eggs for the day. It was one of the highlights of the farm chores that I got to do – going to the henhouse around three o’clock, taking the small basket that was hung outside the door, and going inside that sauna-esque wooden structure that smelled of hot hay and sweaty chickens. It was dense, musty inside there, but I loved it. Granddaddy would toss chicken feed on the floor away from me to divert the chickens’ attention, so that I could get to the nests and retrieve the warm, golden-brown eggs. He taught me how to carefully collect them and place them in the basket so that they didn’t crack or break.

On one particular summer day, before I got inside the enclosed exterior of the chicken coop - the place where they could come out and walk around, my grandfather noticed a nail that had come lose from the fence. It was sticking out from one of the posts just waiting to scratch someone who moved too fast beside it or stumbled upon it. It was slightly rusty, which spelled instant trouble.

"Martha Jhill!" he called, in his loud, sometimes gruff voice. "Move away from there and come on over here," he directed. He lifted me over the fence, before he unlocked it and walked through. He took hold of my hand, making sure I didn’t venture over to the danger spot.

He and my grandmother only called me by both of my names if they were fussing at me over something I had done that my parents would have spanked me for, or I had ventured into a danger zone that might wind up with me getting hurt. Even being a, sometimes, gruff, old farmer, he had panic moments when it came to his grandchildren and something unanticipated, like a rusty nail that had cropped up in our path, which could do us harm. He reminded me in many ways of my father: there was a soft, marshmallow center deep inside him.

After I had gathered the eggs, I looked up at him and asked him what his whole name was. He called me by mine periodically, but I didn’t know his. Suddenly, I was very curious to know that detail about my grandfather.

His hand fisted over mine, swallowing it up as we walked out of the henhouse to make our way back to the house. He made certain to steer me clear of the rusty nail, until he could tend to it. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, as I held tightly to both his hand and the basket.

"Ryland Whitlock’s my name," he told me.

I made a silly face. "I know that Granddaddy!" I told him. "What’s your middle name?"

He trudged along, pulling me along with him. "Brown," he said.

I remember my face scrunching up. "Brown?" I repeated back in shocked disbelief, uncertain if he was pulling my leg. "What kind of name is Brown?"

"It’s my name," his voice rumbled as he claimed it.

I looked up at him, needing to see his eyes to make sure he wasn’t kidding me. "That’s a color not a name!" I said with emphatical skepticism.

"Well, it’s my name!" he repeated unwavering.

My brows came together letting my mouth engage before I thought about how the next comments would be received. [Kids and their brutal honesty!] "Wow!" I said, still surprised by the fact. "That’s really your name?"

He nodded that it was.

"That’s not even a good color!" I remember my tone inflected on the good as I mumbled it.

He looked down at me, slightly amused by my observation. "What’s a good color?"

"Purple!" I said without a thought.

"Ah," he grumbled in a tone that was comparable to a hand swatting at something.

It didn’t stop me from continuing. "Purple is the best color, then blue!" I enlightened him. "Pam would say pink first, but it’s purple!" I wanted to make sure he understood the hierarchy, in my world, of color importance with purple being at the top of the list. Brown and beige were down near the bottom close to black.

He was silent as I rambled on.

"I think I would rather have purple as my middle name over Brown," I told him.

"Mm hm," he replied, letting me know that he heard me regardless of whether he agreed or not.

We walked in silence for a bit more before I looked back up at him and asked in complete seriousness. "Why don’t you change it?"

"You don’t change your name, Shorty!" he replied with certainty, then amended his thought. "Unless you’re a girl, and you get married. Then, you can change your last name."

I thought about that for a minute. I didn’t think I’d like being named ‘Brown’. To me, Ryland was a funny enough name without having to attach the unappealing color of Brown to it. I truly felt sorry for him. I liked my name. I was named after my grandmother, then Daddy added the Jhill along with it. My mother stuck the silent "h" in there, making my name seem a little funny too. I wondered if he liked his? I asked him as much.

"Never really thought about it," he mumbled, as we reached the farm house, and he opened the door for me.

The opening of the door and his comment ended further discussion on the matter, as my grandmother came to collect the eggs, and the conversation turned to the cobbler she was about to make using them. I, however, have thought a lot about it over the years.

Shakespeare said that "a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet." I get that. My grandfather by any other name would have still been my grandfather: big and tough, non-talkative, loyal, dependable, honorable, and good. He would have still been a husband, a father, and grandfather. He would have still risen at the same time every morning - long before dawn – dressed and ready to begin his many daily chores by six a.m. He would have still been a farmer.

He worked hard, but he didn’t play much. Occasionally, he’d take his pole and go fishing. Once in a while, he’d take his shotgun and go hunting. There were a few television shows that met with his approval. Fame and wealth didn’t impress him. He reserved his admiration for a good harvest and a fair price for it. He was impressed by a new Ford car. He admired a country singer who could carry a fine tune. Ernie Ford was one of those. Don’t think for one minute that I didn’t notice his favorite vehicle and one of his favorite singers both carried the name "Ford".

There were things about him that impressed me however. I was in awe that he could tell simply by thumping a melon whether or not it was a ripe one. I don’t recall ever tasting anything other than a sweet one that came from his picking. He could whittle too. But, one thing that impressed me the most was late on a Sunday afternoon, long after the supper dishes had been cleaned and before we headed back to evening church service, as we sat on the porch amidst the buckets of shelled peas and shucked corn on the cob, he would pull out his mouth harp, cup his one hand around it and begin strumming it with his thumb. The music he produced from it was incredible. I’d never heard a sound such as that, and my grandfather could play the heck out of that thing! He wasn’t a college graduate, but he was smart. He knew the land. He knew how to work it and how to yield from it. He understood weather, and how to make the most of whatever came–how to plan around it. He understood seeds – when to plant them, how to plant them and what he could expect from them. It sounds easy, but it wasn’t. It was hard, back-breaking work. It wasn’t a job that paid well, but it was vital for the survival of our society, much like teachers.

I don’t think he would have considered himself a teacher, but he was. His lessons involved instructing when to pick a crop and when to leave it on the vine a little while longer. He could peel a tomato in one motion, then turn the skin around until he’d made a rose. I found it an amazing trick because I could never make my peel look like a rose. He could have you take a card from an unmarked deck, then tell you what it was you drew. [Years later, I learned how he did it, but it was a "wow" moment when I was a little kid.] The biggest lesson he taught me was from playing checkers. He always let whichever grandchild was playing against him win the first game to prove to each of us that we were winners. After that first game though, he wiped the floor with us, which made us try harder to be better and smarter at how we played the game with him. It’s amazing the life lessons that are offered in the simplest ways, unbeknownst to you at the time.

He called me "Shorty" because I was no bigger than a minute, as he use to say.

There was nothing any better than sitting in his lap as he drove the tractor - his one, strong arm around my waist, securing me to him while his other steered that humming machine that plowed the land in which we planted those seeds he knew so much about. He truly was a master at what he did. At the end of the day, all of his buckets and pails were lined up to get ready for market, and there was nothing more beautiful than the rainbow he had made with rows of food. There was deep yellow squash; ripe, red tomatoes; bright green bell peppers, watermelons, cucumbers, peas and sugar snap beans; pale yellow ears of Silver Queen corn; dark, violet blue eggplant and the list went on and on. Then, the rows repeated in another rainbow using all the same colors but with fruits as the star attraction. At the end of it all, after he’d removed what he needed for his family, was the basket of those delicious, golden-brown eggs.

His idea of success differed from the vast majority of people. If he had a roof over his head, food on his table, clothes on his back and had provided the same for his family, he was a successful man. He was.

When he died, I asked for three things that belonged to him. I received one of his mouth harps, I got the old, worn checkerboard with the plastic red and black disks, and I got one of his favorite ties that he wore to church. I placed his tie on the quilt rack alongside the quilt that my grandmother had made for me years ago. Upon clearer inspection of it, I noticed a small speck of gravy, no doubt, from the lunch he’d eaten shortly after whichever service he’d been to. A friend had mentioned to me a solution I could put on it to remove the stain, but I wasn’t inclined to do that. It meant more to me in the state that it was in: brightly colored with its slight imperfection. That was my grandfather.

He left us 20 years ago, and I can still feel the pain in my heart as if it was yesterday. I’ve thought about him a lot today – had a few laughs and shed a couple of tears.

The last words I ever said to him were, "I love you, Granddaddy!", and the last words I ever heard him say to me were, "I love you too, Shorty!"

Everyone who knew him though thought the same as I did: that he was a very colorful character. I know that he colored my world with so many shades of the rainbow - from his artful way of saying things to his beautiful array of fruits and vegetables that he spent his adult life growing, cultivating, and harvesting, which I happily got to partake of even when we weren’t visiting the farm. He changed my opinion about the color brown. It’s a great color: understated yet strong, like him. What can I say, it grew on me.

In the 20 years that he’s been gone, I’ve found that some things have not changed as it pertains to him. I still love him to the moon and back, round and round out beyond infinity. I still miss him more...

Take It Easy

                                                               

"Don’t confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them..." ~Jackson Browne from These Days

http://youtu.be/TJ6kzfj0tRM [Bright Baby Blues/Jackson Browne] *

* Indicates the Holy Trinity of Jackson Browne’s songs for me. The last one is at the end of this post. They are all, however, perfect gems, each in its own right.

I love music! I’ve a varied taste for it, and, as I’ve gotten older, it’s become more important to me. It outweighs the television now in order of importance. I can hear my mother saying "Wow!" as she reads that statement, but it’s true. Music, at this point in my life, is a soul provider; a nurturer; a healer; a comforter; a celebratory tool; and, a good source of entertainment. There are many artists who are on my list of favorites – those "go to" people I seek out when I need a lift, a peaceful, easy feeling, a comfort, a momentary diversion....whatever the need, I fill it with their incredible music.

I have been known to pull into my driveway and sit in the car while I finish listening to a favorite song, regardless of the ice-cream melting in my backseat grocery bag. Some tunes you just can’t cut off in mid-stream. I don’t know, it just seems wrong. There’s one man whose songs, when they come on, if I’m in my car, and find myself nearing my street, make me change course and drive a little longer until it plays outs. The funny thing is that my husband knows this is my practice too. The singer is Jackson Browne. Case in point, Sunday we were coming home from the movies [Snow White and The Huntsman [fabulous movie that gets two thumbs up from our household] and were just about to turn into our development when The Load Out/Stay came on the radio. It’s a longer song, and I knew we’d not even get to listen to a quarter of it, given where we were in correlation to our house.

"Shoot!" I muttered under my breath.

Without missing a beat, Tom glanced over and said. "You wanna drive around for a bit?"

I looked at him and smiled. "Yes, please!" I replied, happily.

And, we did.

As always, his music didn’t disappoint. It brought about a smile and a sway and a softly sung "join in", on my part. When we finally pulled into the driveway just as the song was winding down, I sighed, content and said, "Ah, that was good!"

Moments like that–the peaceful, easy, good vibration kind–are ones that we must take when they are presented to us, because there isn’t a vast surplus of them hanging around. They’re more like grace notes to be taken as a special blessing when offered. Whether one takes them or not is entirely up to one’s discretion, but I find myself taking them more and more the older I get when they’re made accessible to me. I have no qualms about stopping whatever is going on in my life, just for a brief moment, and indulging in the feel good that comes with such a blessing.

I waited 35 years to see Jackson Browne in concert. I started listening to his music when I was 10 years old. He’s one of a special few who have staying power, in my opinion. I know it’s a grand statement to make, but it’s a true one: he’s the one who brought me the most comfort on the night my father died.

I’ve written about this before, but some things bear repeating, and some stories merit a re-listening, if you’re so inclined, and I hope you are. For me, this is one of them. I hope you think so too. As I said, it took me 35 years to finally have the opportunity to see Jackson Browne in concert. I’ve often heard that anything worth having is worth waiting for, and the longer you wait for something, the better it is. I can honestly say that both of those statements hold true in this case. So, we begin:

In March of 2009, it was announced that Jackson Browne would be in concert in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 4^th, which just so happens to be my husband’s birthday. Tom was sitting on the love seat working on his computer when the announcement was made via the television. He glanced over at me and saw my eyes light up and widened as large as saucers. My birthday is nine days after his. He knew what I was thinking.

"Do you want to go?" he asked.

"Do I?" I replied in a do birds fly tone, then offered. "But, it’s your birthday."

"I wouldn’t mind seeing Jackson Browne on my birthday," he told me. [I was going to take him to a baseball game.] "We can postpone the game for a few weeks."

Is he a GREAT guy or what? Yeah. I know. I’m lucky.

My hands dialed that phone number quicker than a speedy mcgreedy, and I had those tickets ordered [good seats too] within 15 minutes. Oh, I was a happy girl!  I couldn’t wait.

The remainder of the story, I’ll condense, and if you’re interested in all the little details, you can find it in my blog entry from last August called "A Joyful Sound". In a nutshell, my husband and I were vacationing in Maine, when my mother called to let me know that my father was in the hospital. He had been taken in the day before. Immediately, I responded by telling her that we could be there in a few days. She encouraged me to finish out our vacation in Maine and come as originally planned, which was at the end of July. Something gnawed at me for a day and a half, and we ended up cutting the trip short, driving home and doing laundry so that we could re-pack the car and head out for Jacksonville. It was July 4^th when we left Maine – one month to the day of the concert; one month before my husband’s birthday; and, one month that my father had left to be on this earth. Little did I know how fortuitous that gnaw in my gut turned out to be. Always listen to them when they come to you, because they’re whispers from God to pay attention. Danger could be lurking. Misfortune could be hovering. Change could be coming for which you need to prepare. It’s an awareness signal. I was so thankful~grateful that I’d taken heed and listened to that gnaw in my stomach. It told me to go even though the situation didn’t appear initially to be a dire one.

It is a gift when we are given time with a loved one whose time is suddenly limited. It is an opportunity to right all the wrongs that have happened between the two of you, and say all the things that need saying, and forgive all the wounds of hurt that need addressing and express all the love and appreciation that needs to be the final say on the relationship. It is a golden opportunity. I would not trade that month for anything. It was a time of complete reconciliation with my father – complete honesty and open conversation. It was a heart song-heart healing month! As Dickens wrote, "it was the best of times and the worst of times", because we knew what was coming, and it wasn’t a finish line that any of us wanted to get to no matter how much a part of life it is. My father offered his last advice to me over the course of those few weeks, before he slipped into that place of twilight where he had one foot here and one foot in the next place, teetering between the two worlds.

The concert had all but been forgotten until a week before its scheduled date in Virginia. Late that Tuesday night, my mother heard my husband and I talking about it, trying to figure out a way that someone could get into our house, take the tickets off the refrigerator and go see Jackson Browne on us. My mother, who at this point in my life doesn’t interject herself into our-my business, budinskied. She had remembered how excited I was the previous March when I squealed to her about those concert tickets. She knew how long I’d waited for that moment to finally get to see him live and in concert. She knew how much it meant to me, and how much I’d wanted to go. She spoke up.

"You’re father wouldn’t want you to cancel those plans," she gave us her food for thought. "You’ve done all you can do here," she told me, as I began to softly cry. "You know it’s just a waiting game at this point, Jhill. You don’t need to stay here waiting for that, and you’re going to have your hands full making arrangements when it comes time for us to bring him home to rest in the family plot. I think you should go to your concert, and I know your father would tell you to."

After a lot of crying, considering, soul-searching and honest evaluation, I listened to my mother, and we left on August 2^nd after stopping by Hospice to visit with my father one last time. I knew I wouldn’t see him again in this lifetime, and it was hard to leave! I did what I knew my father would have encouraged me to do [what my mother already had encouraged] - I looked ahead and moved forward with my life.

I remember late into the night of August 3^rd, praying fervently to God to please keep my father twilighted for, at least, one more day. I wasn’t thinking about the concert. I was thinking about my husband’s birthday, and how I wasn’t certain we’d be able to bear up under the harsh reality of my father leaving us all on that particular day.

On the morning of my husband’s birthday – the morning before the concert, Tom and I spoke of Daddy and wondered how he was doing? I didn’t want sad thoughts to detract from his special day or permeate into it, when there was nothing we could do to make that situation any better. Still, he urged me to call my mother and check on how Dad was doing. She told me that my father continued to hold his own, and that she and my sister were there with him. She spoke to Tom to wish him a Happy Birthday, and reminded us to have a good time. We’d speak the next morning, or so we thought at the time.

Off we went to take Tom for his birthday lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant. Within the hour, my father had taken flight and left for his return engagement in heaven. The phone call came just as we were walking out the door to leave for Charlottesville. I saw my mother’s number on the I.D. window and took a deep breath to brace myself. Even a steel brace isn’t strong enough to support one from hearing the news that one’s father has died, on their husband’s birthday no less. Surreal doesn’t begin to describe that moment then or now, nearly three years later.

I remember on the drive over, mentioning to Tom my grand idea: that if Jackson Browne sang my favorite song of his, For A Dancer, then I would know that Daddy was safe and sound. Tom wasn’t comfortable with the odds of that statement, because that song wasn’t one that JB typically preformed in concert. He’d begun to perform it in recent years, but it wasn’t a given that it would be part of the set offered that night. Tom didn’t want me to suffer another painful disappointment for the day.

"Sweetie, why don’t you pick another song?" he gently broached.

I knew what he was doing, and I loved him for it.

"I’m not expecting him to sing it, Tom!" I replied, praying that he would, even as I said it. "I’ll be okay if he doesn’t."

"What’s your second choice?" he pushed a little.

"Don’t have one."

The discussion on that particular subject ended there.

It was a beautiful summer evening when we arrived at the amphitheater. It reminded me a lot of the Wolf Trap venue further north where we’d experienced many other great concerts. It was an indoor-outdoor setting. We had great seats indoors in the first section-center stage. I remember Tom getting me situated before he went to purchase me a program. The night was cool and clear. When mountains surround you, even in early-August, the evening is a wondrous time of day – cool. The sky was a lovely shade of bluish-gray with lots of white, fluffy clouds. No one could have believed from looking at that setting that something sad and life-changing had happened earlier in the day. No one that is except for me with my puffy eyes, and my husband with his heavy heart.

But, when the music began, it chased those sorrows away for the briefest of moments. I felt a peace come to me as the sun began to set on the day. I felt a heaviness lift as Jackson Browne’s music soothed and comforted my broken-hearted soul.

Do you believe in miracles? I know I’ve posed that question before. I do. I believe in the mighty awesomeness of God, and I believe in our darkness hours, spectacular gifts can be found if we’re open to the receiving of them. When I heard the first chord of For a Dancer, I gasped with a squeal as tears came to my eyes, and I grabbed my husband’s knee, crying, "Oh, my God!"

My husband repeated the sentiment back to me. We looked at each other briefly, tears in our eyes as I smiled at him, then nestled against him to listen to the song that was about to tell me that my father was okay and safely home.

As if that moment wasn’t glorious enough, the sun and its rays did a move that can only be defined as divine. The setting sun was behind us, and in that moment when Jackson Browne began to sing For a Dancer, rays shown down on him for the entire duration of that song! It was unbelievable to witness that sight and the glorious sound that came from beyond it.

I don’t know who squeezed whose hand harder – me or Tom. I just know that we were both in awe that this moment that I had asked for, dreamed of and hoped would happen, not only happened, but did so in such brilliantly spectacular format.

As the saying goes, "oh the comfort....the in-expressible comfort...."

I never hear a Jackson Browne song now and not think of that moment.

I guess that memory has been on my mind especially these last few days because, he’s coming to Richmond the end of July. I’d like to see him again without a heavy heart~we’ll see. I’ve also been thinking about it because Father’s Day is just around the corner, and how could I not? I think the main reason I’ve been thinking about it, though, is because a family friend lost her father a few days ago. He’s blazing his trail of glory homeward now, and we’re going to his viewing tonight. I wonder if there’s a special song that would bring his daughter a modicum of comfort and peace as she embarks on this life-changing moment that she’s just entered? It’s made me remember mine.

A friend told me that I should write to Jackson Browne and tell him this story. I haven’t a clue how to go about doing that –reaching him, and it’s not my practice to chase down a celebrity. They get enough of that from the paparazzi! It’s enough to know that it happened. It’s enough to know that he was part of something so much more profound than his profoundly penned lyrics. That being said, I hope someday he learns of the inexpressible comfort he gave to a good man’s daughter on the night that he left his life and jumped aboard that blazing light of glory that connected heaven to earth–the one that shown down on Mr. Browne as he sang a song to my father’s grief-stricken daughter, while she rested her head against her husband’s shoulder as we celebrated not one but two birthdays - my husband’s earthly one and my father’s birth into heaven. And, I hope that one day he learns that there’s a woman in central Virginia who will not turn his music off until the song is completely sung. When I find myself in a car close to home, and a Jackson Browne song comes on the radio, I do two things: I take a drive, and I take it easy...

http://youtu.be/IU1rZa8Ur_Q [For A Dancer/Jackson Browne]

O Captain! MY Captain!

* Please indulge me and listen to each clip attached to this writing.  Thank you.

                                                                    Dr. Judith Chambers
http://youtu.be/u_N6ezGK8XE  [O Captain! My Captain! Scene from Dead Poet’s Society]
http://youtu.be/tKQSlH-LLTQ [Both Sides Now/Joni Mitchell]
http://youtu.be/IbBwDi9RIgM [Fred Rogers 1997 Emmy Speech]

Excerpt from We Speak Your Names, by Pearl Cleage

...Because we are wise women, born of wise women, who are born of wise women, we celebrate your wisdom.
Because we are strong women, born of strong women, who are born of strong women, we celebrate your strength.
Because we are magical women, born of magical women, who are born of magical women, we celebrate your magic.
My sisters, we are gathered here to speak your names.
We are here because we are your daughters as surely as if you had conceived us, nurtured us, carried us in your wombs, and then sent us out into the world to make our mark and see what we see, and be what we be, but better, truer, deeper because of the shining example of your own incandescent lives.
We are here to speak your names because we have enough sense to know that we did not spring full blown from the forehead of Zeus...We know that we are walking in footprints made deep by the confident strides of women who parted the air before them like the forces of nature that you are.
We are here to speak your names because you taught us that the search is always for the truth and that when people show us who they are, we should believe them.
We are here because you taught us that sister-speak can continue to be our native tongue, no matter how many languages we learn as we move about as citizens of the world and of the ever-evolving universe.
We are here to speak your names because of the way you made for us...
Because of the prayers you prayed for us.   We are the ones you conjured up, hoping we would have strength enough, and discipline enough, and talent enough, and nerve enough to step into the light when it turned in our direction, and just smile awhile.
We are the ones you hoped would make you proud because all of our hard work makes all of yours part of something better, truer, deeper – Something that lights the way ahead like a lamp unto our feet, as steady as the unforgettable beat of our collective heart.
We speak your names.
We speak your names....

Have you ever had a special teacher – someone who touched something within you and made you want to learn?  Have you ever had a mentor who took you under their wing, and helped you navigate through both the calm or unsteady seas of your life?  I have been blessed several times with special teachers whose memory and lessons I still carry with me.  I have also been blessed with one very special teacher~mentor whose presence in my life has been monumental in terms of influence and impact.  I met her 30 years ago, when I was a Sophomore in college.  It was an auspicious meeting that has greatly affected my life with regard to how I think about things.  I have an openness of mind that I credit her, in part, for instilling in me.
Before I met her, I spent my freshman year of college out of state in Georgia, and while it was a good experience for me, some things that happened during that first year, as well as the expense of not being a Georgia resident, made me re-think being and staying there.   I decided to go to Tampa and get my Associate of Arts degree.   I could have easily stayed in Jacksonville and gone to Jr. College at home, before I ultimately transferred to the University of Florida, but part of the college experience for me was being away from home and learning to make my own decisions and stand on my own two feet.  I went to Tampa with my parents’ blessing and shared an apartment off Fletcher Avenue with a friend.    Karin went to the University of South Florida, and I chose to go to Hillsborough Community College.
I’ll never forget the day I went for registration.  I stepped into a building with a line two halls deep with people waiting to schedule their courses. 
“Good Lord!” I groaned, shocked by what I saw.  I hadn’t planned on spending the entire day at registration. 
I was informed by someone that the line I was looking at wasn’t the registration line, but a registration line to get into a certain block of English Literature classes.  
I remember making a face and replying to the person who’d informed me of that fact, a disbelieving, “You’re kidding!” 
“No,” came the reply.  “She’s really good.”
How good could she possibly be? I wondered to myself with a chuckle, then reassessed my thought gaged upon the long line that went down one hall and around another, that she must be pretty doggone good.  I’d already had my English classes at Mercer University where I transferred in from, but I also had several electives that I could use at my sole discretion.  I knew I had to take the class again and see what all the hoopla was about.   I mean a line like that merited investigation.  So, I went to the end of it and patiently waited my turn to register for a course that I’d already taken at another university and gotten an A in.    I don’t recall exactly how long it took to register for that particular class, but I know that it was more than an hour, and I remember thinking to myself, this had BETTER be good! 
The memory of that first day of class is as vivid as if it was yesterday.  I took my seat in the middle of the room.   There’s an unspoken perception that comes along with sitting in the first row in a class, namely that you’re a nerdy, goody two-shoes type.  There’s also that same type of perception that comes from sitting in the back of a classroom which evokes images of someone being the exact opposite of that first impression.  I was neither.  I’ve always been somewhere in the middle – a good girl with a little wild streak in me, not the other way around.  But, I digress...
Back to that first day of class.  So, I’m sitting in my chair, when in walks a petite, pretty, blonde-haired lady.  Okay, actually pretty is an understatement.  She was striking–beautiful.   I remember adjusting in my seat.    I now understood why all the guys were in the class, because it had never been my experience that guys [except for extremely studious ones], cared much about English Lit.   If they were going to have to have an English Literature class to graduate, and they were because it was a requisite course, they might as well take it with someone who was easy on the eyes.  AJ was easy on the eyes.  There were no ifs ands or buts around that fact, but she was SO much more than just a pretty face, as everyone in that classroom would soon discover.   I remember watching her glance around the room, taking note and stock of who had come to partake in the experience she was about to give us.  At that point, we were only a mass of faces to her.  Quickly, she rectified that.  She did something that no other teacher I’d had in any class during any stage of my education had done.  She told us who she was and gave a little history about herself, then she asked for each of us to stand up and do the same. 
She did with each person who stood up what she did with me: she smiled and said “hi”, addressing each of us by name.  Then, she listened intently to whatever little detail about ourselves we wanted to share with her.  I don’t know if all these years later that’s still her practice, but, at the time, it was amazing.  She didn’t just want to teach us.  She wanted to know  a little bit about who we were.   This wasn’t just for her benefit.  It also allowed us to get to know about the other students we were sharing this course with – an ice-breaker, so to speak.   I’d never had a teacher give me that kind of respect before.  I now understood why the line had been two halls deep to get into her class.
Her teaching style, as I remember it, was unconventional.  She didn’t parrot back a teaching outline that probably came along with the voluminous book that was her manual.  She interjected everyday events to demonstrate or clarify a point she wanted to make about whatever the writer of a particular work had been attempting to impart in their story.  Sometimes, it’s difficult to understand what certain writers are trying to convey.  Shakespeare and Chaucer spring to my mind.  AJ [my term of endearment for her] would often times mention a current movie or an old song to help us grasp something riddled with metaphor or esoteric symbolism to bring it to a level we could comprehend.
She was masterful in her ability to clarify things that were, on its face, sometimes difficult to understand.    She understood the difficulty and made the reading and deciphering of some of these works less daunting to young people who found such things as 100s year-old literature or even current literature to be a very intimidating prospect.  AJ was the first college professor I had who actually challenged me.   You may be wondering what she did.  It was very simple.  She expected me and everyone in her class to bring something to the class, and take something away from it.   After all, we had chosen to be there.  I thought I had done that, until I got my first essay back.  It had a big red C+ on it.  To say that I was stunned or shocked would be a HUGE understatement.  I was upset, and I had a brief moment where I was mad that she hadn’t appeared to have the good foresight to have seen what all my English teachers who had preceded her knew about me: I wrote a pretty damn good paper.  Why hadn’t SHE seen that?  I was truly perplexed! Once I saw past the red, I requested to meet with her during office hours the following day.  Graciously, she told what time she’d be in. 
I recall stepping nervously into her office the next day with paper in hand.  I remember telling her that I thought she’d made a mistake in the grading.  I wasn’t entirely certain how the mistake had been made, but I knew when I re-read my paper, it was clear and concise regarding the facts of what I’d read.   I needed for her to explain to me what she was missing, because I couldn’t find it.
She looked at me for a minute, considering what I had said.  Then, I recall her simple yet direct question to me:
“Why do you think I made a mistake grading your paper, Miss Bosher?”
“I don’t get C’s on English papers,” I informed her.  “Math and Science, yeah, but not English.”
She nodded, accepting my declaration.  “What grades do you normally get on your English papers?”
I held her look.  “A’s,” I stated with assurance.  “Occasionally a B but never a C!  I don’t understand why I got a C?”
“Did you read my comments?” she asked, curious.
I bit my lip.  I distinctly remember my front teeth clamping down into my bottom lip when she asked me that. 
“To tell you the truth,” I told her.  “I didn’t get much beyond the glaring, red C+.”
The response seemed to surprise her a little, because I saw her eyes reflect as much.  She had taken the time to give me a great deal of feedback [there had been a lot of red writing on that paper], but I had not taken the time to read her comments and directives.  Looking back, it must have seemed like a huge disrespect, which had not been my intent.  The truth of the matter was that my brain had shut-down when I saw that red C+ at the top of my paper, and I couldn’t see anything beyond it.
Thankfully for me, I didn’t strike her as a disrespectful, young woman, and she didn’t take exception to my oversight when I offered her my truth.    When she explained the grade to me, it changed how I approached my schoolwork and my work in general from that moment forward.   She told me that she wasn’t interested in an overview of what I’d read.  She knew what I’d read, because she’d read the story many times and would read it many more.  What she was interested in was my reaction to and thoughts about what I’d read.  She wanted my insights and opinions.   She wanted answers to such questions as why I thought the writer approached the subject matter from a specific viewpoint; what did the themes or underlying themes mean to me and how did it relate to a specific element or style of writing that we were learning about.  She was interested in whether I agreed or disagreed with this or that regarding the story.  If so, why?  If not, why not?
I wasn’t accustomed to that expectation of learning before.    My thoughts?  My insights? My opinions?  Until that moment, learning, to me, meant reading a specific document; processing my understanding of it; and, storing it to memory so that when asked, I could state the facts that existed.  That was the play-book with every other class I’d ever taken until hers.
Putting my spin on it – offering my take was a whole other bailiwick.  It required something more of me–much more.  Her expectation brought forth a huff.  A huff is an expression beyond a sigh, in case you don't know.  A huff is a combination of disappointment and frustration.  In that moment, it’s exactly how I felt.  I heard what she was saying.  I understood now what she would demand of me in this course.  Still, it didn’t remove the sting of the grade.  A subject matter that had always been easy and comfortable for me was suddenly new and different.   Her expectation removed me from my comfort zone that I had previously existed in regarding English class, and I realized that I wasn’t going to simply coast through this with the ease that I’d always coasted through English classes before that moment.  I had not imagined that I would begin this class with a C+.   It was unacceptable to me, given that it was English, something that I intended to major in before I went to law school. [Story for another day] I felt deflated and no longer confident in an area that had always been my one area where I shined.  I nodded my head once again that I understood what she was asking of me, and thanked her for her time, before I rose to leave.
I’m not sure what her thoughts were as she watched me leave, but I knew what mine were as I was leaving: I wanted to cry.  I was away from home; starting a new semester at a new college; and, I had just bombed with a subject matter that had, prior to this class, been a piece of cake for me.   As if sensing my upset and realizing how much this grade truly mattered to me, she called after me, knowing that I needed something more to make this situation alright.
“Miss Bosher,” she called, with a sensitive compassion in her tone.  “Had I wanted a well-crafted paper simply giving an overview of what you had read,” she offered me hope – a thing with feathers, like Emily Dickinson once wrote about.  “You would have gotten an A.  That’s not what my classes are about.   I believe you understand now what I’m looking for regarding essays submitted to me, and if you’d like to re-write it, then I’ll be happy to reconsider the grade.”
I stopped at the door, trying to collect myself – trying to keep my tears that were creeping to the surface at bay.  I glanced back at her and smiled. 
“Thank you, “Ma’am,” I replied, relieved and grateful for the opportunity of a do-over.  “I’ll look it over again.”
She smiled back and nodded.  It was in that exchange that I felt the connection. 
I don’t know if you’ve ever met someone who you had a special, unexplainable connection with, who you felt you’d known before, but that’s exactly how I felt with AJ.  Later, she told me that she had felt it too, which is why she took a special interest in me and encouraged me regarding my writing.  She saw something in me that needed nurturing, and she nurtured it.  
I re-did that paper, and I got an A with three words written in red ink at the top of it beside the grade: Clap! Clap! Clap!  She had wanted me to not only find my voice, but to own it and write with the authority of my convictions on whatever opinions I was giving.   To her, my thoughts and ideas were as important as the most important writers in literature.  It was an extraordinary lesson–gift, but AJ is an extraordinary teacher.
From then on, I regularly visited her during office hours if no one else needed her help, not because I necessarily did, but because I wanted to talk more in-depth ideas with her about what we were studying.   The conversations branched out into world events, music, movies.    She knew that I was away from home, living in an apartment without a lot of friends in Tampa.  She had two children of her own, so she understood what it meant for me to be alone in a big town, especially given that I was more the studious type than a party girl.  As a result, she took me under her wing with regard to my courses, offering me sage advice on things that had nothing to do with stories or essays.    She was my constant during the year that I worked hard to earn my Associate of Arts degree.   I looked to her for direction, advice, and feedback.  I declared her my advisor and confidante, and she graciously and lovingly accepted that role.    She is one of the smartest women I’ve ever known; she has been one of the greatest influences in my life; and, one of my most valued teachers.
The second literature course I took with her was no less challenging, insightful or informative as the first.  AJ’s style of teaching is something that one must experience to truly understand and appreciate.   The best I can liken it too is Professor Keating in the movie The Dead Poet’s Society.  She wasn’t wild and crazy like Robin Williams, but her approach was unconventional and her classes were fun.  Rarely was there an empty seat in her classroom.   She had a unique ability to engage her students and make them want to participate in the discussion, which says a lot about her, given that some students aren’t comfortable with doing that.  No one seemed to have a problem joining in the discussion in AJ’s classes.  There’s something about her that draws one in.  Thirty years ago, when I was her student, I remember watching how she interacted with us and thinking how cool she was.   It wasn’t a sentiment I shared alone, rather, it was the general consensus among her students.  Being cool, by the way, isn’t a trait that a teacher can develop.  As Frank Sinatra once said, “being a cool cat is something you’re born with.  You either have it or you don’t, but it ain’t something you learn.”
There is a style and grace about her that’s unique.  Some might classify it as a Bohemian flair, but whatever it was, it made her stand out as a teacher and securing a seat in one of her classes was a coveted spot to be in.    I’ve often thought about the things I’ve learned from her, and how best to describe it, and I always come up short.   Profound is a word I continue to return to when I think of AJ: profound affect; profound insight; profound intellect.   She gave so much of herself to so many of us in her fervent desire to make us better, smarter and wiser than when we’d first stepped foot into her classroom.  As much as there are students with a passionate desire to learn, there is equally a number of teachers with just as much passion to educate.    Each is distinguishable.  I believe the reason that AJ’s classes were teaming with both eager and uneager English students was because each of us knew that she cared about what she was doing, and it mattered to her that we did well with the lessons she imparted.   I guess that’s the difference in someone who seeks that profession as a job versus those who accept it as their calling. 
All I know is that I embraced Shirley Jackson, Nikki Giovanni, Oriana Fallaci and Eudora Welty, to name but a few, in a way that I’d never thought possible: I savored them.  For most of us as students, we take a class and when it’s over, it’s over and long forgotten.  I remember in vivid detail the lessons and discussions we had in AJ’s class about most of the things we read. 
The day after we read Shirley Jackson’s, The Lottery, I remember AJ leaning against the front of her desk as she looked at all of us, folding her arms and asking with a Cheshire cat smile, “That was a surprise wasn’t it?” 
She laughed when one of her male students in the back of the room called out that it was a Stephen King surprise.  In one of the stories we read of Eudora Welty’s that exposed us to a style of writing full of rich imagery, I remember her asking who of us had realized that the old woman lying in her bed and fretfully complaining to her familial caretaker that there were ants in her bed biting her, was really a dying woman who was fading in and out of consciousness, and the ant bites weren’t ants at all but the sharp pricks of needles administering intermittent medication?  Oh, it was good – like a delicious apple dripping sweet juice down your face kinda good.  Then, there was the poetry of Nikki Giovanni.    I love poetry and have read a great deal of it in my lifetime.  But, until that class, I’d never heard of Ms. Giovanni or of her Cotton Candy on A Rainy Day.  Let me offer you a little taste:

“Don't look now
I'm fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night.
...It seems no matter how I try,
I become more difficult to hold .
I am not an easy woman to want ...”

Mm.  Good stuff.   The only thing that made it better was AJ’s teaching of this material.  My favorite assignment we had during the summer of 1982, when I took that second Lit. class with her, was the reading of Letter to A Child Never Born by Oriana Fallachi.  It was both a beautiful and powerful story about an unmarried feminist who discovers that she’s pregnant.  Her feelings about it are conflicted, ambivalent, – uncertain.  The father of the child wants her to have an abortion, but she doesn’t want to do that.  The story is a series of conversations she has with this “child” as she works through the reconciliation of mixed emotions that this pregnancy has brought about for her, only to miscarry the child in the end, which came as no surprise because of the title.  Yet, it was a surprising conclusion, when it reached that climax.  It was sad and raw, tinged with confusion and finally resignation, and I wasn’t sure why it resonated so strongly within me at the time – the part regarding the miscarriage? [I have since suffered two of my own.]
It’s a book that I kept, because it was one of the most masterful things that I’ve ever read.  It’s out of print now, and I consider it among my literary treasures.   AJ brought her own eloquent ideas to our discussion about it.  I’ve never forgotten it.  Like a superb movie [To Kill a Mockingbird], a song that’s lyrically perfect [Imagine], or a speech that’s flawless in its message and delivery such as JFK’s ‘61 inaugural address or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, I Have a Dream speech, when something remains with you for decades, and you can recall with precise detail the lessons that contained those same thought provoking synopses like the examples listed above, but in the case of Letter to A Child Never Born, it was coupled with her personal pearls of wisdom, and you remember it as though they were given to you just yesterday, you have experienced a form of excellence that is uncommonly special.   I wish that every person could have a year of education and learning like the year I had in a junior college classroom in south Florida 30 years ago.  It wasn’t just a learning experience.  It was a life-grooming of sorts.  I have always had a great love of books, but I learned to have a deeper appreciation for them because of a woman who didn’t accept what I thought was my best but, instead, challenged me to reach beyond myself to something that was greater within me. 
I remember when my time in Tampa and HCC was over, she walked me to my car and we hugged in the parking lot.   I had packed up my car the previous night so that I could drive home to Jacksonville for a few weeks directly after final exams, before I returned for fall semester at The University of Florida.  I buried my face in her shoulder and cried.   It was the kind of cry you have when you know that something exhilarating and wonderful is ending and you aren’t ready for it –  you want to hold onto it for as long as you possibly can, if only for a minute longer. 
She patted my back and said in her gentle, reassuring voice, “Sweet Jhill!  Our friendship isn’t going to end simply because your time here has.”
I nodded into her shoulder, unable to find that adult voice that she had helped nurture.
“Gainesville is only two hours away,” she continued.  “You’ll come back and visit, and we’ll go to lunch.  You have my phone number, and you can call me anytime,” she said, trying to soothe my angst.
I nodded some more as she kissed my cheek and told me to be careful.   I looked at her in that moment with a deep and abiding sense of gratitude and respect.   She had given me so much in that last year, more than I think she is even aware of, and opened me up to deeper level of reasoning and understanding.  It seemed odd and un-familiar to me that I wouldn’t be seeing her that following Monday morning.
However, true to her words to me on that last day that I was a student at HCC, we did keep in touch.  I drove down, periodically, and we had lunch then would go back to her house and have coffee and talk for a couple of hours before I headed back to college.   She turned me onto Joni Mitchell, and I turned her onto the poet, Merritt Malloy. That was a GREAT quid pro quo!   I learned that John Lennon was her favorite Beetle, and she learned that George Harrison was mine.
At that time, she was one of a handful of people who knew the worst thing that had ever happened to me. [In the ensuing years that worst thing has changed.]   She is also on that same hand of people who knows the worst of my sins.  Like a deeply flawed parishioner desperately needing and seeking absolution from their trusted priest, I told her one day with mortified regret something that I had done which was selfishly uncharacteristic of me, certain that she would send me away, not wanting to hear from me ever again.  Much like she had done when I told her of the worst thing that ever happened to me, she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a good squeeze.  Yet, when I told her of my transgression, she didn’t look at me with anything but compassion, taking into account all that she knew I’d been through in my life, and she assured me that I wasn’t the horrible person that I was painting myself out to be. 
“Sweet Jhill,” she replied, offering her soft-spoken grace.  “You’re human not horrible, and the important thing here is what you learn from this ‘mistake’ more than the fact that you made it.  We all make mistakes.  You can’t truly learn and grow unless you have a few of them in your mea culpa column.”
I remember feeling the weight lift off of me as I hugged her and sighed with relief that I’d not become an ugly ogre to her in the telling of my faux pas.  “Thank you, Aunt Judy!  Thank you.”
It is a gift when you have someone in your life who can see the good in you no matter how bad your picture, in that moment, looks.  She has always been one of those people in my life.  She has a discerning eye, but not for seeing my flaws.  Rather, she’s always found the beauty in me. 
She was the first person I called after I had my first date with my husband.  I remember telling her that I’d found the man I was going to marry, and if I didn’t marry him, I probably wouldn’t settled down like that.  She told me that she hoped, if that were truly the case, that I’d found my prince charming. [I did.]  She was the second person I called after Tom proposed to me.   I remember her telling me that she was very proud of the woman I’d become.    That comment made me feel good because her opinion has always mattered to me.
I wrote to her years ago, after I’d seen The Dead Poet’s Society, and told her how much that movie impacted me and made me think of her.  It put into perspective what she’s meant to me in my life – the significant role that she has played.  She is my Captain!  I told her as much, and I’ve loving referred to and held her in that context ever since.   She believes and has stated that I have given her too much credit.  I believe and have stated in response that I have not.  I informed her of my position with that confident, assured voice that she helped me find and cultivate 30 years ago.   She thanked me for the gift of that sentiment, because I gave it to her at a time in her life when, apparently, she needed to hear it.
It’s like that old poem states: 100 years from now, it won’t matter how big the house you lived in was, the kind of car you drove or how much money you had in the bank.  What will matter is if you were in important in the life of a child.  To this child of the world, her one-time student, her always friend, she’s been important.  She’s been very, very important.
Today is her birthday, the day when we celebrate the exceptional people in our lives for the special someone they are, and the journey they have come through to reach this point in their story.  Today, my 10 seconds of remembering “someone who cared about and wanted what was best for me in MY life,”  are reserved solely for her with heartfelt love and gratitude.  Today, I speak her name: Dr. Judith Chambers, with reverent love and appreciation.
The imprint of her hands went deep into the clay of me.  She helped to shape and mold many of the ways that I look at things, and I wear the lessons she instilled as part of the uniquely dimensional fabric of my character.   She, like my parents, loved me into being the woman I am today.  She graced me with her wisdom, inspired me with her knowledge and enlightened me with her words and insights.    She is my teacher; my mentor, my sister; my friend; and, I am all the better for having been gifted by the presence of this rare and brilliant light in my life.
O, Captain!  MY Captain!  Happy Birthday to you!  You are such a treasure!  I hope your day and the years that remain are filled with rich and glorious blessings tailor-made just for you.  I hope that they are all both beautiful and joyful, no less than what you are and have been to all of us who know and love you...

http://youtu.be/yRhq-yO1KN8 [Imagine/John Lennon]

For those who would like to read the Walt Whitman poem from Leaves of Grass:

 O Captain! My Captain! 

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Good Mother

                                            Me with my mother, circa 1980                                                           

"There's nothing like a mama-hug." ~Terri Guillemets

http://youtu.be/irNOZLUuR_k [Good Mother/Jann Arden]

"She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along." ~Margaret Culkin Banning



When I was a little girl, I always wondered what kind of mother I would be? It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to find that out. I practiced and practiced with my dolls, mothering them the way my mother did with me. I kissed them and gently coddled them. I scolded them when they misbehaved. I tenderly put them to bed at night, making sure to cover them with the blanket so they wouldn’t catch cold and hugged them tightly when the crier inside sounded, alerting me that "my baby" was in distress. I knew to do these things because of how my mother treated and nurtured me. Because of her example, I knew in my heart that I would be a good mother, when it came time for me to step into that miraculous role.

I’ve written of my mother before, and sung her praises. Yet, when it’s a good song, and the verses are many, it bears re-singing. I was my mother’s last child – her baby, and she’s never let me forget that fact: that I was her baby. [I think she called me that well into my high school years.] As such, I was blessed like my brother, her eldest, to have some alone time with her – bits of the day when no other children were around. Jeff had it because it was two years before my sister came along before he had to share Mom. I got it because I was two years younger than my sister, and when they went to school, I got to have my mother all to myself for a good portion of the day, five days a week. I don’t know how my mother felt about that, but I was in heaven!

My mother was a good sport. She didn’t plop me down in front of the tv and go about her chores. She was an active partner in my activities and made me one in hers. She watched my favorite morning show with me every Monday through Friday. I remember she’d sit with me and watch Captain Kangaroo, and when the crafting segment came on, we’d move to the floor with paper, glue, scissors, crayons and pipe cleaners in hand. If she was bored out of her mind, I hadn’t a clue. I just remember her making things with me, probably ad nauseam. Then, she’d always hang my masterpiece on the refrigerator. Some days, it was cutting construction paper and making rows of endless chains, other days it was coloring, which as those of you know from earlier posts wasn’t my strong suit as a child. I loved to color, but my sister was the Picasso of the family. Still, my mother proudly displayed all my artwork along with my brother and sister’s. No mater what art project Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans threw at us, we were game, and we had fun. At least I remember it as fun. I giggled up a storm when Mr. Moose came on, and Mom would hold my hand as I danced around the den along with Dancing Bear. There was a sketch that had an animated Grandfather clock with a "man in the moon" type face on it, and it was then that I became fascinated with Grandfather clocks and told my mother that I was going to have one some day, and I do. I think about those days sometimes when I pass by it in my living room. I pause and look at it, and I remember another place and time, when such a grand statement of time and such a magnificent presence adorning MY home was just a dream.

After the show went off, she’d let me help her clean our house. It’s amazing how much fun that chore can be when you’re a child. Mom would hand me the silverware to stick into the slots of the basket in the dishwasher. She’d also let me sit on my father’s desk beside the ironing board and spray the starch on his shirts, after she’d showed me how to do it – pressing lightly and quickly moving the can all over, making certain not to spray too much. Or, she’d spray the furniture polish and let me follow along with the dust cloth, reminding me to rub the lemon Pledge in until there was nothing left but a shine. Doesn’t sound like much, but to a five year old, it was great fun and excitement.

My favorite chore, however, was when we’d go to the grocery store. It was my favorite chore for two reasons: after Mom had lifted me into the seat at the top of the cart and secured me there, I was given the important task of holding her purse, while we shopped. However, before we began shopping, she wheeled the cart to the cookie aisle and got me a small box of animal crackers – a little purse in and of itself to a kid, because it had a string attached to it like a handle of a purse that kids could hang onto their wrists. She opened the box for me and pulled a cracker out to get me started with my snack, before we went about our way. [As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that this was her clever tactic to keep me quiet and occupied while we shopped.] The other important job I got to do, in addition to holding her purse was hold the carton of eggs. I knew how to delicately handle eggs because my granddaddy had taught me how to collect them from the henhouse in the summer when we’d visit the farm. Grocery shopping was my favorite time, because it was an adventure of sorts, and I got to help my mother look for the cans and bags of food that would feed our family for the week. It also taught me that doing mundane chores with someone helped the time go by quickly and wasn’t as tedious as doing it by yourself. [My husband and I now grocery shop together. Lesson learned...]

Time spent with my mother wasn’t just about watching tv shows and doing chores though. The most important thing about my mother was that she was always there when I needed her. From holding me during the awful moments when I was sick or had injured myself during play, to being the home-room mother for my first grade class, which meant that she went on all our field trips, to taking me to college when I left home for the first time, to helping me in my catering business, to planning my wedding with me and a whole host of things I couldn’t have done or done right without the assistance of my mother. These are the defining moments that stay with a child, if your mother was an active presence in your life. Mine was.

She has been my greatest teacher, which isn’t taking anything away from my father. However, being a woman, my mother has gone through the things that a little girl growing into an awkward teen then turning into a young woman went through, and was able to advise me and guide me in certain ways that my father could not simply because he carried a Y gene, and I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, my father had plenty of advice on the subject, but my mother has always been identifiable to me, as I’ve changed and grown. When I talked to her about "girl issues", I knew she knew and understood what I was saying or questioning. She showed me how to be a lady AND a woman. Trust me when I tell you that there is a difference. It’s important to be both, and just as important to know when to be one versus the other.

My mother helped me set-up my first home, and it was my mother I wanted when I experienced the greatest loss of my life. It was her arms and hug I needed to reassure me that I wasn’t the ginormous failure I was feeling that I was, because my body had failed me–betrayed me when it miscarried my first child. The comfort from one’s mother is different than the comfort from one’s husband. As a woman, my body was made to carry a baby. It is one thing that distinguishes us from men. I had dreamed of being a mother my entire life, and when the moment came for me, I wasn’t able to make it to the finish line. It was devastating, and though I knew walking into her embrace that this was something that unlike my childhood "owies" she wasn’t going to be able to kiss and make all better, I still needed her arms around me. I still needed to nestle my head into that space between her shoulder and neck and cry until I was able to gather my bearings so that I could face the awful loss that had befallen me and Tom.

It was the first time that I truly saw in her eyes and felt in my heart how much she wanted to take the loss from me and carry it solely as her own. It pained her that she couldn’t. I sensed the helplessness in her that this was something that she really couldn’t fix for me. But, her strength along with my husband’s helped me bear up under it. When it happened a second time, I heard the genuine sorrow in her tone when she asked me what she could do–what I needed. There was nothing she could do; I just needed to know she was there so that I could cry or rage or mourn whenever the need in me arose to do those things. And, she was.

We’re both a little older now, and I’m lamenting with her about gray hairs that are creeping into my locks.

"It’s shocking, Mom!" I told her the first time I saw a collection of them spreading through the light brown and golden strands and roots where blonde highlights should have been. "My hairdresser asked me this morning what I wanted to do about all the gray that was coming in, and I replied with a Scooby Do, ‘huh?’!"

Oh, she laughed. It was such a humorous moment for her coming from the daughter who said to her when her hair first began to turn varying shades of color that were not her original own, "What’s the big deal, Mom? It’s just a little gray hair!"

She didn’t remind me that payback is hell. She simply asked if it truly bothered me, because nothing about aging had ever distressed me before. I was always the one who truly didn’t have a problem getting older, because from where I sat, it beat the alternative. I didn’t have the "pause" moments that most women have when they turn 30 or 40, and I think it humored her that a few little gray hairs had now put me into a tizzy-tailspin.

So, when she asked me that question, I paused to consider it, and realized that, yeah. It really kinda bothered me a little bit.

"Then color it, Honey!" she told me. "Until you decide that it doesn’t bother you anymore!" Have I mentioned she always knows what to say and when to say it?

In the last few years, my mother has decided to embrace her seniority and allow the gray to come to her in full throttle-mode. She stopped coloring her hair about a year ago. I remember when she told me she wasn’t going to color it anymore, because she was coming up for a visit and wanted to "prepare" me for her new look, I gave her that same Scooby Do ‘huh?’. It seemed inconceivable to me that my mother, who had always been given the divine gift of looking 10 years older when she was a teen and 20 years younger the entire rest of the time of her life, would no longer be fuss-budgeting over her hair color. 

"What?" I asked in disbelief.  "Who are you and what have you done with my mother?"

She laughed and told me she'd finally reached the age when it was more trouble than it was worth, and she didn't care to maintain the upkeep of it anymore.  I remember her explanation that she was at an age in her life when she didn't feel the need to impress or bedazzle anyone anymore.  [My mother STILL impresses and dazzles anyone she meets, just so you know...]

BUT, I know my mother as well as she knows me. It’s that double X chromosome that we share that enables us to have a handle on the other in funny little ways like that.

She laughed when I called her out with an "I’m onto you!"

"What!" she demurely laughed. "are you onto?"

"You’re doing that so that when people find out that you’re 71 [she stopped caring about people knowing her age too], their mouths will drop open and say in shocked disbelief, ‘71?! My God, you look FABULOUS!’"

"Martha Jhill!" she playfully chastised, laughing all the while. "You are terrible!"

"But, I’m right, Mother-Dear!" I laughed in return.

She didn’t deny it one way or the other, another lesson she’s taught me: when someone asks you something you’d rather not answer or something you don’t particularly take issue with, turn the question around to them and ask them why they want to know? Or, simply don’t acknowledge an observation one way or the other. It says something without having to state it. Good advice.

I remember back when I was in my 20's, I’d read an article in something that stated that the older we get, the more our mothers become our friends. I have found that to be true.

I talk to her every day on the phone, and if I can’t get a hold of her, I send out the Jacksonville police to make certain she’s not stuck on the side of the road somewhere with a flat tire or someplace she’s not suppose to be ;-) [That’s a little joke between us...the child DOES become the parent in terms of worry. It’s one of those "turnabout" things that come into play as we enter the stages of our lives that we’ve now stepped into.] What can I say? She lives in Florida, and I live in Virginia. If I can’t get a hold of her within two days, I’m going to send the National Guard out to look for and find her. It’s no less than she’d do for me, if the shoe was on the other foot. Her health and well-being matters to me, just as knowing that she’s safe and alright matters too. I make no apologies for it. I’m a lioness when it comes to the protection of my mother. Then again, I get that trait from her, you see...

I like my mother – the woman she is-who she became. I hope my evolution is as interesting as hers. She’s a far cry from the little country girl from Virginia she started out being. I’ve never considered myself to look like her. My sister was always the spitting image of my mother who was the spitting image of hers. But, I see more of her when I catch my image in the mirror now - it’s in the eyes and the smile. I am my mother’s daughter. I come from a hearty stock of good women, so it’s no surprise that I would think of my mother in that light. She’s a good mother too. As the song says: "I’ve got a good mother, and her voice is what keeps me here - feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward to be myself...."

Myself is pretty good. I owe that fact to my mother for the wonderful example she set for me by showing and teaching me how to be a lady and a woman. I owe her heartfelt thanks for being a good mother. However, there aren’t enough "thank yous" in existence to let her know how much I thank God that he chose her to be my mother! My heart is grateful for the blessing of her – especially on this day.

I remember being a child and beginning each prayer with "God is good! God is great!" Yes. That’s an accurate statement. And, so is my mother ~ good and great. Let me thank her for everything...

Mothers Like Me

For all the mothers just like me,
whose little ones weren’t meant to be
a breathing, joyous part of our life,
I feel your pain.  I know your strife.
There are no hand-made cards for us,
no little ones to make a fuss,
no breakfast trays brought to our bed,
decorated with a single rose of crimson red.
There are no loving hugs topped with a morning kiss,
one more injustice that we have missed,
No uttered words of “Mom, you’re the best!”
Or tiny bodies to cuddle during an afternoon rest.
There are no gifts sent home from school,
those hand-made treasures made of glitter and glue.
We don’t have little hands to hold our own,
No squealing voices fill our home,
There are no pictures for us to take.
No “Mother’s Day memories” each year to make.
We don’t get to experience that angst-filled evolution,
of our tiny tots moving into the teenage revolution.
No journey through those transition years,
When they think we know nothing, yet we continue to cheer,
for every made accomplishment, both large and small –
a minor role in the school play or a home-run hit baseball...
There are no awkward birds and bees “talks”,
nor pride-filled memories of their graduation walk.
We don’t get to assist with the college scout,
or enjoy a simple afternoon out.
There isn’t a college fund to fill,
There isn’t a career-major to help them mill.
No wedding bells will celebratorily chime,
For our children who didn’t get to live out their prime.
We won’t get to bounce grand babies on our knee,
There’s an entire life we’ll never see.
Because, we are mothers who never got to hold our child,
and weren’t blessed to be on the receiving end of their happy smile.
We’ve never heard an uttered, “I love you, Mom!”
Or exchanged any presents to and from...
This day is always bittersweet and beguiled.
I’m blessed to have my mother, yet grieved not to have my child.
Such is our life – there’s no child to say,
an honor to us on our Mother’s Day.
Most times, it’s an insult to injury that downright smarts,
This sorrow that can only live on within our hearts....
Because society doesn’t often understand,
How a woman can grieve over a modified plan,
That didn’t actually result in the birth of our child,
It’s a thought I’ve heard that really gets me riled.
There isn’t anything that can take that child’s place.
The only salvation for us is God’s amazing grace....
And, knowing that our children are safely in heaven’s splendor,
Is the only thought that makes this loss the slightest bit kinder and gentler.
But, it’s never an easy blow to take,
When you can’t have your child to tenderly tuck in or gently awake.
No mornings to start off or evenings to wind down.
No tears to wipe away or attempts to upturn a frown.
It’s hard, this position of not getting to mother,
my little baby girl and her big, older brother.
It’s the hardest cross I’ve been asked to carry,
And, I drag it along through the years as I tarry.
They were real and alive, if only for the briefest moment in time,
Every stillborn and miscarried child decorating heaven’s playground, like mine.
So, to all of you mothers who sadly know how this story goes,
Let me wish you a blessed Mother’s Day from a mother who knows...
One day, we shall get our heavenly embrace.
Until then, we must be content with this note of grace:
Our children are safe, they are loved and they’re whole.
And, they’re with us~ just pay attention to the whisper in your soul.
They’ll send you a message or a sign in some miraculous way...
To let you know they’re thinking of you on this Mother’s Day.
It’s the best we can hope for, and they’ll do their part,
To send a message if you open your heart.
So, today, let me offer you my wish and a prayer.
Our little ones are near even if you’re unaware.
And, they’re sending much love  - embrace it.  It’s there.
It’ll be delivered to you on a wing and a prayer....

Happy Mother’s Day to the Moms who have lost your children either through stillbirth or miscarriage.  You have not been forgotten!  Embrace your day, because you, too, deserve it!
Blessings,

© Jhill Perran
Written May 12, 2012

To Have and To Hold...

April 28, 1995

      
                                                           　
"If you love something, set if free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was..."

"Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair...you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back..." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery from, The Little Prince

http://youtu.be/Ttd1yDbjUpY [On Golden Pond/Dave Grusin]


Today has been a happy day – a reflective day. You see, it was on this day, 17 years ago, that I married my best friend on the sixth anniversary of our first date. That first date, and the night that followed it several years later, are perfectly etched in my mind with such clarity that if I close them, I can be right back in its moments. They were beautiful days.

It rained here today, however, but it didn’t dampen our mood, our thoughts or our reflections. We’ve traveled a long way together on this road of life we share. I’m his co-pilot, and he rides shotgun for me or vice-versa, depending on from whose vantage point the view is seen. Hopefully, we’ve got a longer journey yet ahead.

Looking back on the road we’ve traveled thus far, we couldn’t help but note all the changes in our world, our families and our lives in the nearly two decades we’ve been married. Loved ones have left us and gone to their eternal rest as have a few friends; marriages of loved ones have broken apart; physical limitations have risen; and, the changes continue coming. The "best of times and worst of times", I have shared with Tom. The greatest joys I’ve ever known as well as the deepest lows, are tied to him. The joys are too many to count. The sorrows are few, namely, the deprivation of raising our children who we had for only a few golden months each, before heaven called them back...burying my father and several other family members, some illness here and there that have crept upon us...yet we understand that life cannot realistically be lived without a few painful moments. Thankfully, ours have been few, and we are blessed.

I think back to that first April 28^th we shared 23 years ago. It was a great night, much like the one that came on the night that changed my life forever, when Tom added to my name and who I am as a person. On the first April 28^th, we went out with a group of friends for a meal, then went to play pool. I’d never played pool. I didn’t understand the rules of the game, and had no idea that when I shot the 8 ball into that coveted hole that pool players are suppose to shoot those solid and stripped balls into, that I’d actually lost us the game. All I knew was that balls were on the table geared to be shot and dropped into those dispersed holes around the table’s circumference, and I’d dropped the 8 ball. It seemed like an omen: 8 is the symbol of infinity, and I had bagged that one. I was ecstatic as were those on the opposing team. Within a minute, I had been informed by several friends who were enjoying my accomplishment as much as I was [those on that opposing team] that I’d actually made a huge faux pas. Immediately, my sense of joy sank into a black hole much as that black 8 ball had done only moments before. I looked to Tom to tell him I was sorry, but instead of being upset, he was smiling at me and clapping – genuinely proud that I had accomplished what the object of the game was, regardless of that fact that it was the wrong ball that had slipped down into that hole. He appreciated the fact that I had done what I thought I was suppose to do, and that was good enough for him. Little did I know that it would become a metaphor of our life together. What I mean by that is that it doesn’t seem to matter if I fall short in task, he’s proud that I tried–made the effort. That night, he made me feel like the best thing since Wonder bread. It is a feeling that I wish every person could know once in their lifetime.

I remember a friend told me that a first date isn’t when you go out with a group of friends. I agreed with her. That’s an outing. The first date part came later, when we sat in his truck until four a.m., talking about everything under the sun – important things, and mundane things. We’ve always had great conversation, and it began on that very first night we spent together talking until the dark night turned into a faint dawn. Later that day, I called my Aunt Judy, who was anxious to hear all the details of that first date. I remember telling her that I’d met the man I was going to marry, and if I didn’t marry him, then it wasn’t going to be in the cards for me. It wasn’t a moment of drama. It was an intuitive knowing.

I’ve heard often in life that timing is everything. At the time we first connected, the forever dream, though discussed, wasn’t in the cards for us. We were 3/4 of the way on the same page, but we both knew that to make something work and be successful that we had to be 100% on the same page. We weren’t ready, and we couldn’t stay together in that state of unreadiness. It was a painful breakup because no one was "the bad guy", but it was painful nonetheless. It was the first time in my life that I’d felt a pain in my heart that I didn’t believe it could withstand.

During the four years that we were apart, we never truly lost contact with the other, proof that the ties that bind us are strong ones. Periodically, at different times of the year, we’d call the other just to say hello and see how the other was doing. Ironically, during all that time apart, we’d both each only had one blind date. I remember telling my mother once, when she asked me why I didn’t seem interested in dating, that I didn’t know where one went after they’d met their soul mate? It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, because she wanted me to have the kind of life that’s she’d always wished and envisioned for me. She said as much to me, and I remember telling her that I hadn’t given up on Tom just yet.

My faith in holding out and holding on paid off. Tom and I reconnected on Valentine’s Day 2004, and the rest is history. Fourteen months later, I took the most important walk of my life. As with our first date, I remember that night so vividly. One thing that sticks out the most in my mind was walking, on my father’s arm, into the doorway of our church as "The Wedding March" played and everyone stood up. Tom stood at the end of that aisle smiling at me–waiting for me. All I wanted to do was get to him, but I recall my father squeezing my hand that was looped through his arm and whispering for me to wait.

His hushed tone slowed me down because he wanted to make certain that I had my full moment. [We get so few in life]. "Hold on, Sug!" he directed. "Let everyone get a good look at you."

I glanced over at him as tears came to my eyes, much the way they had in the vestibule when I teased him about finally being able to give me away, and he cleared his throat, trying not to let his own emotion get the better of him, and told me that he wasn’t giving me away, he was merely "passing me along...."

I wasn’t accustomed to comments of that nature from my father. I knew he loved me. He told me so, but these particular comments were sweet, tender moments that let me know this event wasn’t as easy for him as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong. My father adored Tom. He use to say he couldn’t have done a better job if he’d picked him out himself. Still, until I became engaged, my father was the most important man in my life, and that was changing. Another man was taking that spot, and he knew that my place within our family was shifting. I understand his comments and feeling so much better now as I’ve gotten older and wiser. I remember he seemed to relax a bit when I cheerfully told him that he wasn’t losing a daughter but he was gaining a son. No truer words were ever spoken, because Tom truly has been a son to my parents, and they both considered him in that light.

I heeded his advice and was so thankful for it in that moment, however, as well as the advice of a colleague who told me to make certain that we walked through our reception room at The Comus Inn, situated at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, before the festivities began and take time to look at our cake, food table and decorations, because she had failed to do that, and her memories of her night were a blur. I did both of those things: I stopped in the doorway of our church’s sanctuary and took a deep breath as I looked around at all who were in attendance. I remember seeing friends like Ginny, Linda, Dawn, Carolyn, and my friends from my days working at the hotel. I saw my boss and the president of our union. I saw my mother and Tom’s family – my soon-to-be new sister, Kathy. And, I can still see the look on Tom’s face as I stood there, waiting to join him.

I also remember our beautiful cake, the large basket filled with birdseed with the lavender ribbons and the display that had the tree saplings that were our party favors. I remember the gorgeous mountain views outside the window of the restaurant, and the beautiful day that faded into a spectacular evening. It was a perfect night - the most perfect one I’ve ever known. I was Cinderella at the magical ball and the carriage didn’t turn into a pumpkin when the clock struck midnight. The room was filled with laughter, love, smiling faces, great food and dancing late into that Friday night as it eased into early, early Saturday morning. I wish everyone could be the lead character in a night such as that.

So much as happened in the ensuing years: our dream to become parents and raise children didn’t work out very well for us. Our babies weren’t meant to live here, and though that’s not and has never been okay with us, it’s one of those "unfortunates" that life sometimes adds to one’s story. Tom, however, went back to school and became a Special Education teacher, something that is his true calling. We moved to Virginia a few years ago, which was another surprising twist in our journey, because I never thought I’d leave Maryland. My father, his two sisters, my grandmother and Uncle Ed are gone now, as is our beautiful minister, Anne-Jeanne Quay. Carolyn’s "Darling, Sweet Larry" has also gone to the "next place"; our country has been involved in two wars since we said our "I Do’s"; and, it seems like Tom and I are living in more similar economic times like my grandparents lived during the depression of the 1930's, though technologically, we’re living the scenario of the 1960's cartoon, "The Jetsons". It truly has been a wild ride, and we’re only about a third of the way into that 50 years we promised each other.

Our hair is a little grayer; our waists are a little thicker; our wisdom is a lot broader; and, our outlook continues to be positively directed outward – together, looking toward the future.

This evening, I looked over at my husband snoozing in his recliner with two puppies lightly snoring in his lap, and I had to smile. I got my brass ring! This is the good life, and though we’ve settled in a bit and don’t do all the little romantic things we did when we were courting, as my grandmother used to say, he still makes my heart go pitter pat. We struggle; we disagree, we laugh; we cry; but, we continue to hold hands and stick together....this is our life, and I will be forever grateful that God blessed me with such a good one...

http://youtu.be/3gziSnkICbk [This Is Our Life/Mary Beth Maziarz]