Middle of the Night

I really enjoy being up in the middle of the night. When I was growing up on the farm in Mississippi, we had a large window fan that "cooled" the whole house. However, on hot summer nights, the open windows were narrowed to four or five inches to make the breeze stronger. On those nights, I would awaken and slip between my brother's bed and the window and put my face in the breeze. Silent and still, I would hear the crickets and the frogs, maybe a screech owl in the distance or the barn owl. Sometimes I could hear animals drinking water from the tub under the handpump. Most nights I couldn't see much, but the quiet sounds filled my life with a serenity that the daytime didn't bring. I was my own person, unafraid, calm.

Perhaps my dark early morning hours help me regain the composure and resiliency that I need for day to day living. I rise quietly and drink water; then I go to the kitchen computer where I play games for a bit. My bones and muscles are stiff; stretching brings creaks and cracks and ease. I drowse a bit in the chair after I turn off the monitor. Then the silence is broken by a 16 pound cat who wants me to come back to bed. So, I visit the bathroom, settle my cpap mask on my face, and slide into bed, nestling my head on the edge of pillow. The cat gently climbs onto my side and settles hindpart on the pillow beside me and front part draped over my side. As we both sleep, we shift into comfortable positions until reasonable morning is come.

I close my eyes now, and the nighttime smells from the little house on the farm are with me - the damp pump tub, the dusty cotton, the green smell from so many growing things.

Mom always wondered why that windowsill never got dirty.

Christmas stories

Growing up on a small farm in Mississippi in the 50s, we heated with wood stoves. The only time the living room was heated was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...and maybe the day we put up the tree. Seems like it was colder back then, but, of course, my Dad built the house out of green (unseasoned) wood and it crackled and popped as it dried - for years. Anyway.

The tree always went in the front window. We did string popcorn for it and used the fragile glass balls inherited from my grandmother. We always added things like the little mouse candle by tying a string around its middle. The 5 and 10 cent store where Mom worked also provided some red and silver balls. And, tinsel. Some years we were allowed to just throw it up and see where it landed. Other years we hung each strand piece by piece. But, in the earliest years, I remember that getting the strands of tinsel apart was almost impossible; so small globs were the rule of the day.

My brother and I were sent to bed at a reasonable time on Christmas Eve - usually some time after 10 pm because Mom had to work until 9 pm. Since we did not have a mantle, our stockings were pinned to the back of the sofa, and Santa arrived during the night to fill the stockings and lay out our unwrapped Santa gifts. Sometimes, we could hear noises in the living room after we went to bed, but we never got up, never peeked - especially after we realized that Mom was Santa and that she had to work until 9 pm, drive out into the country where we lived, feed us second supper and then put out all the gifts. After David and I were much older, Mom made us stay in the kitchen while she put out gifts; then we could have them. We all slept late on Christmas mornings then.

Of course, finding where she had hidden the gifts was a real challenge. She usually left the larger gifts at the store, hidden in the back among all the stock. But, our stockings were not always full; sometimes Mom forgot where she had hidden our stuff. When I was 15, we moved away from the farm and, in moving, found some coloring books that had been destined for our stockings when we were much younger - also some blunt pointed scissors and a few other things. What a laugh we had!

My Mom loved fine china and silverware even though we were "dirt poor". I usually got a plastic set of dishes and plastic or aluminum silverware. My first set had fluted edges on the dishes with flowers in the middle. I don't know how many sets of silverware I got but I have remnants of at least four. Finally, when my Dad was stationed in Cuba, I got a set of real china toy dishes. They had a deep red border with flowers, and I loved them. I still have them in the original box with not a single piece broken. That was the year that Mom got her Bavarian Linen tablecloth and a set of silver plate flatware...with daffodils. Getting real china took much longer for her. If I felt like ironing, we'd use that tablecloth for Christmas dinner, but the embroidery on it is so detailed that we had to hire someone to iron it when I got married.

My Uncle Lester and his wife Aunt Clyde loved me dearly. Aunt Clyde sewed beautifully, and she made a lot of my clothes. But, Uncle Lester was a farmer. He learned something of the carpentry trade the year I was six, and he made me a wooden stove. Each detail was carefully painted on and the door opened to reveal a wooden rack inside the oven. That year I got aluminum pots and pans with the baking pans being actually usable...still have at least one of those, too. Uncle Lester was kind and gentle hearted. He also made one for Mother's step-niece.

Aunt Edith also cared about me - I was the only granddaughter in the family. She gave me silk pajamas and then - one year she gave me a large jewelry box - black with two small and one large drawer and a top that opened with a mirror. It was not a gift for a child, but I loved it. And, I suspect that it's in one of those tubs in the garage marked "MM childhood junk". I used that jewelry box for years and years - well into my 50s.

One year, David got a horse for christmas. The horse arrived early in the Fall and David had learned to ride passably well enough for both of us to ride the horse. After Christmas one year, we rode down to Grandma Woods' house so that I could show her my new tea set. I didn't repack the tea set well, and it rattled loudly on the way home. The horse was spooked; David was a relatively new rider, and the horse dumped us. Mom was so frightened that she sold the horse. I cried and cried and apologized to David for making him lose his horse.

me with David's guitar

David wanted a guitar, and his first one was from Sears - a big ole thing with clef note holes. Later, after he learned to play well, Mom went to Memphis to the pawn shops on Beale Street and bought him the sweetest little Martin guitar. I've forgotten who went with her, but he was so pleased with it...and such a great sound. He and his two buddies, Jimmie and Jack, played for hours on our front porch or in the kitchen in winter. The only songs I remember from their practice was "Maybelline" and "Thunder Road", but they tried all the country/western songs. And, they played at Jimmie's pentecostal church on Sunday nights; so I learned a lot of good gospel songs.

Peace, Prayers and Love

When I am writing to internet friends or leaving comments on other blogs, I often sign off with "Peace, Prayers and Love" - I wish you peace, I will keep you in my prayers, and I send you love.

As sharecropper, my responsibilities are to care for those and that leased to me by the owner, to increase the wealth of my trust, and to return a portion of that wealth to the owner. I never capitalize sharecropper, for I am not unique, only one of the host of the world, who are also sharecroppers even though they may not know it. Coming from the farming world of the deep South, sharecroppers were not respected even though they served well. They gave much more than they got; some, however, were able to buy land and become landowners instead of sharecroppers (and I'm not sure how that plays into my metaphor). We did own our little bit of land, and I sold it to go to seminary - such a little bit that about all it did was to get me there.

First and foremost to me are the people in my life - my partner, my friends (those present, past and cyber), my co-workers, acquaintances, and so on throughout the world. What I do best is to love people. My love is not boundless nor is my energy to love. I am human (and sometimes I have to remind myself that I am). I get angry, I harbor angers from the past that spit out at inappropriate times. (12 steppers will recognize this as resentments.) Ridding myself of these angers and the fears that go along with them is a lifelong process. The steps don't do it for me, and God's time in removing them (with my help and the help of other sharecroppers) is not my time.

But, what I farm is the growth of Peace, Prayers and Love. Some years the crops are bountiful; some years not. The more I can multiply this wealth I've been given in trust, the more I am blessed with the same things. Some days I have peace in the kind we all consider - the quiet contentment of being that includes safety, fulfillment of my basic (and not so basic) needs, and love. Some days, I give love in abundance, and some days I turn the cell phone off, stay away from the computer and knit.

As a sharecropper, my leased land is not the earth, is not the wealth of things (although I seem to hoard lots of things), but my leased land is people. My energy goes into loving people. I'm a pretty good sharecropper; I've known about my leased land for most of my life. I've picked up bad habits and good practices along the way. My return to the owner has been good; I consider myself a successful sharecropper. Nonetheless, I am sharecropper. I do not own. I am a servant who is truly blessed with the return from my leased land.

Why?

A good reporter always asks five questions (at least that's what I was taught in 1963): Who? What? When? Where? and Why? The first four are often easy to ascertain, but that fifth questions leads us into places that are unsafe - physically, mentally, emotionally, psychically. Often the places that Why? leads us are untrod ground.

Growing up on the farm, we called it new ground. First the trees would be cut, and the timber used in appropriate ways. Then the brush would be rooted up and piled into huge piles that were burned (remember this was in the 1940s and 1950s). Some of it was undoubtedly saved for kindling because we used a wood burning stove for heat in the winter. Stumps were included in this burning. Rocks were pushed and lugged out of the field. Only then could the tractor with it big turning plow get in there and make deep furrows in the land. The soil that turned up from below was black and wet. But, when it dried, it was as hard a brick...gumbo, it was called. The fields were turned and disked and harrowed. Then the rains came, and the ground was like black glue; it stuck to anything that touched it. When it dried, it cracked open in geometric shapes. Beautiful to a seven year old, but dreadful to our father farmers.

Except near the bayou, the soil would be turned, disked, and harrowed until it was black sandy loam - the stuff that farmers hold in their dreams. New ground. Lots of work went into creating new ground.

Lots of work often goes into answering Why? - the new ground of our minds...and lots of time. The answer doesn't always come. I will die never knowing why I like red so much or why I seem to need more...more of everything. Each time I answer a Why? question about myself, I change the answers to the other four questions. Who am I? Where am I? What am I? Yes, I realize that's only three of the questions: When? Time is so elusive for me. I understand God's time a little better as I remember the past and as I look to the future. I live in the present (most of the time), but When?

When am I in my life? Am I really a senior citizen? How do you measure years? Do miles count in that measurement? Does creativity count? How about love? When am I in the course of loving people? Near the beginning - the middle - the end or somewhere that I don't even really know? What I do know is that my computer (attuned to the atomic clock somewhere in the world) says that it is 8:13 pm on May 21, 2008.

My question then is So What? or Why does that matter?

Musing about the farm and its critters

This afternoon as I looked at the webcam of Zhen Zhen, the panda cub in San Diego, and pictures of Flocke, the polar bear cub in Germany, I was reminded of the dreams I had before arriving in New Bern. I dreamed that black bears were all over my yard and came into my house and just wandered around - not bothering anything. I was concerned in the dream but not very frightened. I tried to lock them out, but they just kept appearing. They didn't do anything except appear. The logo for New Bern (which means New Bear) is a black bear like Bern, Switzerland.

Then my cat made a plaintive cry and I remembered sitting on the bank of Coldwater River in Mississippi and watching several bobcat kits playing near a large pile of driftwood where their den was located. Mama Bobcat knew I was there, but I was very still and she didn't bother me. My smell was all over that area since I frequently spent large amounts of time there. Some of that time was on a bluff overlooking the river where I watched for the old gar to turn up - and I saw it a few times - huge and silvery on its belly. I often wondered that it didn't rob my Dad's trot lines.

We had pet cats, some outdoor, one indoor/outdoor, and a large pack of wild stray cats - some very large - began roaming our area. We tried to scare them off in various ways and make them leave the area. Some of our neighbors killed a couple of them as they attacked various farm animals. One of our outdoor cats disappeared. And, another showed signs of a great fight. Then, the cat food on the back porch began disappearing. We were poor and cat food was a luxury item. I worried about our cats. Night after night the dogs growled and the cats fought and the cat food disappeared. It was summertime and the windows were open. So was the back door with the screen closed to keep out the bugs. As we sat eating supper, I saw one of the wild cats come onto the porch and I shooed it off. This happened two more nights. The fourth night, I set my .22 rifle beside my chair at supper. When the wild cat appeared on the porch, I slowly lifted the rifle, aimed and fired through the screen. The cat flew off the porch and Mom would not let me go outside to see. The next morning, the cat was a few feet from the porch, dead.

I have never felt good about killing that cat, but I do understand why soldiers fight - to protect those they love. It's no cliche. And, no options existed in rural Mississippi for a pack of wild animals except death. The farmers and stockmen couldn't risk the threat to their livelihoods. And, youngsters like me didn't want to keep losing their pets. Cruel, yes, but I would do it again - and perhaps less cruel than a gas chamber in a shelter.

We were required to care for our animals, and, when the time came that their lives were over, we were expected to take care of that, too. Quickly, even with tears.

On the brighter side of farm life/country life, I've had the pleasure of petting raccoons, being almost bitten by an opossum, watching deer graze in our yard, seeing the bobcats at their den, being amazed at the size of that old gar in the river, digging for river mussels and finding ones with beautiful irridescent shells.

I've stripped bark from birch trees and written messages on it with sharp sticks. I've eaten fried catfish and hush puppies cooked in a dutch oven over a charcoal bucket at the river. I've walked from the river through the woods to our house at night, alone. I picked dewberries for the most delicious pie I've ever eaten. I've seen foxes slinking along the top of the levee. I've found rabbits under the shed out back, and I've dug in the corn crib for baby mice.

My brother, the hunter (ha, ha) killed a cardinal once. Mom told him that we only killed to provide food and to protect ourselves. So he cooked it over a fire in the back yard. Brave me tried to eat some of it - ugh. We were both sick.

I've been up close and personal with most kinds of snakes and never bitten. I've gathered moss and mushrooms and soft lichen and colorful leaves to take home as centerpieces for the table. I've leaned against a Jersey milk cow named Betsy and told her my troubles (just like Mom did every morning), I've fallen off a horse, I've stolen watermelons. I found my grandfather's and, subsequently, my uncle's still - fascinating mechanism. I lost a shoe in gumbo mud down in the new ground where I shouldn't have been. I've been chased by a bull and I've ridden a big sow whose name was Whitey. She didn't like me much after her babies were born.

I've shelled corn with a hand-turned corn sheller, which is probably in the garage. I've picked up pecans until I thought I was a permanent u-turn. And, I've snapped and shelled and canned every kind of bean and pea that will grow in Mississippi. I've eaten tiny ears of corn right off the stalk.

Ah, some very good memories. And, for these memories I am truly grateful. Amen.