To Catch a Thief

I stole this toy from Isabelle. What fun!

Darn! Here comes the lady of the house. I'd better hide it.

I'm sunk.

Family Tradition

The George-Wilson Literary Club has been meeting each month for over twenty years now, and we charter members are hoping our literary-minded children and grandchildren will carry on the tradition. We are always happy when they join us, and Saturday's meeting was no exception. It was held at Mother's.

All the way from Mississippi: Gina's grandchildren, Corinne & Luke

Granna prepares her presentation as Luke looks on.

Luke gives his presentation.

And after showing us her lovely drawing, Corinne combs Granna's hair with a rolling pin.

Gone

I had a nice visit with Mother and Pitty Pat today. Dudley was very well-behaved; he didn't stick his nose in their faces and try to kiss them, as he usually does. (Might be because I gave him a Dingo bone; that kept him busy roaming here and there, looking for a place to hide it!)

We talked about all sorts of things; what's going on in Carlisle County (and how great it is that they now have a museum), politics (???), the flu pandemic (scary!), and music. Fifties music, in particular.

Pitty and I consider ourselves lucky to have been teenagers when Elvis, Fats, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, The Platters and numerous other rock & rollers burst on the scene. We loved them all. But we agreed there is one song which most reflects that teenage excitement, that anticipation, that "waiting-for-something-to-happen" feeling you get only once in a lifetime.

"Each time I heard that song, a feeling of euphoria swept over me," I said, "His voice seemed to be echoing everything I was thinking and feeling and what I would be thinking and feeling in the future!"

"Yes, everything," Pitty said, a faraway look in her eyes, "But I never hear it anymore"

"Me, either."

I found it on YouTube tonight:  Gone.  And as I listen to Ferlin Husky's soulful voice, I'm back in the fifties in Carlisle County, experiencing those innocent, carefree days again. And glad, so glad, that Pitty Pat and I experienced it all together.

Fun-Filled Days

Chase at three

* * *

Although he is a fine young man today, and I love spending time with him as a grown-up, sometimes I wish I could go back and re-live those fun-filled days with my grandson when he was a little boy. That's him above, holding a Polaroid picture I had just taken of him. He was usually laughing and tearing around the house at break-neck speed, but he was quiet and serious that day. We were watching Charlotte's Web.

"Granda," he said, "I wish Charwott didn't die."

Maw Maw's Front Porch

I love front porches. But they seem to have been replaced by redwood decks with hot tubs; patios with fancy furniture, gigantic grills. And fully-equipped outdoor kitchens.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy the amenities we have today. But I miss things of yesteryear.

Like my grandmother's porch.

Maw Maw Wilson's porch ran all the way across the front of her house. Two swings hung at each end; one was Maw Maw's, the other Uncle Bob's. Maw Maw never sat in Uncle Bob's, and Uncle Bob never sat in Maw Maw's. (Although Charlie Reeves, their farmhand, occasionally sat in Uncle Bob's.)

When no one else was around, Pitty and I sometimes sneaked out and jumped into Uncle Bob's, swinging as high as it would go, giggling all the while. (Don't know why we thought we had to be secretive about it. Maybe we thought we were sitting in a "man's" swing, or something like that!)

On both sides of the porch sat several ancient rockers with sagging seats. When I sat down, I had to brace myself with my elbows. The woven bottoms sagged lower each year, and it became a game to me: Would this be the day I crashed to the floor?

I never did.

When I was a tot, I spent a lot of time on the porch with Paw Paw Wilson, often crawling onto his lap, grabbing the brim of his hat with both hands and pulling it down as far as it would go. After admiring his eyebrow-less face for a few minutes, I pulled it from his head, laid it on my lap, and pounded it with my fist until it was squashed as flat as a pancake. Then I punched it back into shape and sat it on his white head.

I did this over and over, never tiring of my game. Apparently, neither did Paw Paw. He never complained.

I was too short to reach the screen-door handle, so Paw Paw decided I needed one of my own. He had Maw Maw find him a bald thread-spool, and I stood watching as he hammered it on the door. It was just my height. He gets up, hammer in hand, and smiles. "Now you can open the door yourself, Gaily!"

Paw Paw died when I was three. And from there on in, I thought of him each time I approached the steps to the porch. Almost thirty years later, when Maw Maw died, the spool was still there.

Maw Maw and Uncle Bob usually discussed the crops, when they were sitting in their respective swings. Or the weather. But when we were alone with Maw Maw, she often told us about happenings of long ago: traveling with her family, when she was five, in a covered wagon all the way to Texas and back; her trip to the World's Fair in New York City in 1939; stories about her midwifery, trips in her Model-T to Tennessee to visit her father, whose stepsons made moonshine (of which she strongly disapproved). And the sad story of Doyce, her 26-year-old son and my uncle, who was killed on the railroad tracks near Laketon before I was born.

I loved big family dinners at Maw Maw's house. Especially during the summer, because all of the adults usually ended up on the front porch. I was supposed to be playing in the yard with my siblings, but I always lurked here and there, listening to the adults. A thrill coursed through my body as I hid among the rosebushes. Particularly when Uncle Leo visited from New York City. He talked fast, unlike the soft, thick drawl of the voices I had heard all my life. He was familiar, yet alien, like the handsome, quick-talking actors at Milwain's: "I bought some more land on Manhattan Island," he says, "There's a lot of money to be made there!"

Pitty and I often spent hours in the swing, looking at Maw Maw's photo album of Uncle Leo's 1935 wedding. Aunt Victoria wore a fitted satin gown and a long veil and train circling her dress and ending in a swirling cream-colored puddle around her feet. Her bouquet of white lilies was the largest I had ever seen. Uncle Leo wore tails and a top hat. "When I get married," I say, "I'm going to have a big wedding just like theirs." "Me, too," says Pitty Pat.

After church and sunday school, we often had dinner with Maw Maw. And after the dishes were done, she generally took a nap on her big Victorian lounge. It faced the porch window, so Pitty and I sat in the swing, staring through the window at her sleeping face, wishing she would wake up. (Once we even prayed she would wake up, because she had promised us a trip to the pond.)

We had to walk through her peach and apple orchards and all the way across another field through horse weeds and cow dung to get to the pond. We loved to swim and fish there, and one time Uncle Bob caught a fifty-pound catfish.

But that's another story.

Have a blessed Easter, dear friends.

Our Lord has written the promise

of the resurrection, not in books alone,

but in every leaf in spring-time.

~Martin Luther~

Mille Lune Mille Onde

I admit it. I am a romantic. I enjoy candlelight dinners, walks in the moonlight on sandy beaches, movies like The Way We Were. And heart-wrenching songs about love and loss.

I first heard Andrea Bocelli's Mille Lune Mille Onde on a Barilla pasta commercial. And although I could not understand a word he was saying, I knew he was singing about love.

It took some searching, but I finally found it. Hope you romantics out there enjoy it as much as I.