COWBOY MEMORIES

Mariachi

"Mariachi"

I don't know what made me think of this memory, but it's been floating around in my head for a few days now. Maybe it's because I felt like August would never end, the month full of sad anniversary dates. I flew to Portland on August 1st, ten years after J died and one year after Dad passed.  I didn't really say much about it at the time, but when I mentioned that Portland was hard, that was an understatement. There were moments when I could not bring myself to leave the condo. I couldn't imagine seeing anything I hadn't seen already and I wouldn't run the risk of running into old memories. So I sat in my room and watched TV on my computer. Then I got home and I was happy and things were good with the exception of a little work anxiety, but the month just dragged on and on. I know I am not the only one to feel this way and it's quite possible that sound you heard this morning was a collective sigh of relief. 

Any way...the memory that's been floating around in my head. It came to me while I was in the cafeteria one morning. There was a man trying to maneuver around the cafeteria with a tray in one hand and a baby propped up with the other arm. I thought for a moment of offering to hold that baby while the man finished getting his things. Then I realized that we were strangers to each other and people usually do not let strangers hold their babies. That's when I remembered this story Dad liked to tell. We were on one of our typical Colorado trips. I was still a baby and really fussy. The cottonwood trees had me all stopped up and snotty. The family had gone to one of those chuck wagon dinner shows and I stood on Mom's lap crying, with her arm wrapped around me while she tried to eat her dinner with the other hand. One of the young cowboys performing in that night's show came by and took me from Mom. He carried me all around the dinner hall, picking up empty plates with his other hand and filling glasses of tea all with me tucked in his other arm. He handed me back over to Mom when she was done eating. 

Of course, I have no memory of this. I just thought of Dad's story when I saw this man and his baby. I thought about how no one would do that now, but in the late 70s no one cared. People were still trying to set their babies on bears in Yellowstone for photo ops. That might have even been the same trip where Dad pulled a sizable trout from the river while we were on a hike. He didn't have his fishing license on him so rolled the fish up in a (clean) diaper and stuck it under me in the backpack I was riding in. I never wore a helmet or a seat belt. I have the scares to prove that I never wore knee pans. I can't imagine ever walking up to a stranger now and offering to hold their baby for them. My friends who have kids, I know for sure would never agree to hand their baby over to complete stranger no matter how frazzled they were in that moment. Yet, there I was thinking about making that offer and remembering the time I was whisked away by a singing cowboy. 

IN NEED OF SUPERGLUE

This dog woke me up at 4 am, knocked over Pepaw's ashtray and broke it, terrorized the cat and is now standing on the outside table barking at the neighbors. She's very productive this morning.

"This dog woke me up at 4 am, knocked over Pepaw's ashtray and broke it, terrorized the cat and is now standing on the outside table barking at the..."

The other morning, Josephine woke me up at 4 AM banging and scratching around in her crate. I figured she just needed to go out, so I got up and let her out. By let her out, I mean I opened my bedroom door and then made sure all the dog doors where open. Then I went back to bed. I was almost back into dreamland when a loud crash jolted me out of bed. Josephine had knocked over Pepaw's ashtray while trying to lick the inside of a bowl Michael had used for peanuts.  I did the thing you are not supposed to do in dog training. I swatted Josephine's butt and then picked her up as if she were an unruly toddler and put her back in her crate. The damage was already done though. Pepaw's ashtray was now broken on the floor. 

When Pepaw died, we all descended on his house to clean it out. He hadn't really been living in the house for some time. He preferred the comforts of his camp trailer. He still used the kitchen to store his MoonPies and spare aluminum coffee percolators. There was evidence that he still lounged from time to time in his recliner to watch TV, but mostly he slept in the trailer and spent time on the porch. Yet the house was full of home like things, furniture, old photos. Things that accumulate in a family home. All of this stuff had to be dealt with and the bickering had already started over who gets what. I've never been the type to care about such things. Actually, I hate the whole process. It's gross. I took Pepaw's camp stove because it was in good working order and we needed a camp stove at the time. I also took one of Pepaw's ashtrays. 

Pepaw was the smoker in the family. A number of ashtrays were scattered around all over his house. Most of them full. I wanted the ugliest, goddiest ashtray we could find. I knew that this was something no one else would want and thus I would not hear anyone complain about how that was promised to them or blah blah yuck blah. I also wanted that ashtray because I knew that without a doubt every time I looked at it, I would be reminded of Pepaw and the way he smelled like Old Spice and stale cigarettes.  Which I know doesn't really sound appealing, but I can't think of one bad memory when I think of those smells. Katrina was the one that actually found my ashtray. Her task was to wash all things dish like that day. She lifted the large orange ashtray out of the sink and said "Cindy, what about this one?" 

It was perfect. It was this large rhomboid shaped boat of an ashtray, burnt orange with flecks of black and gold. It begged to be set on a mod coffee table in a wood paneled basement with green shag carpet. It was the kind of ashtray that you could just imagine some hipster upcycling  into a bird feeder by gluing hooks and attaching chains to each corner.  It was so ugly it was beautiful and it was mine. Since then, that ashtray has always had a spot in my home. It has also always been known as Pepaw's ashtray. It tends to be a catch-all for things like nail clippers and keys. Remote controls and junk mail. 

I was pretty upset when I saw it laying on the floor in pieces. Then I realized that only two pieces had broken off and they were clean breaks. I can totally fix this. And I will. Because it's Pepaw's astray.  

THOUGHTS AND FASHION

I am slowly getting back to normal after my trip to New York. At least things are unpacked and clean and the suitcase is put away. For now. I leave Saturday morning for a microscopy conference in Portland. So I really don't know why I put that suitcase away other than I think I want to take my slightly bigger suitcase (?). I'm tired. Nothing really makes sense right now. Our weekend was full of hot sweaty yard work and coop cleaning. We chased chickens and clipped wings again. Matilda is a biter. In case you were curious. Also, there are no eggs yet. When I get back from Oregon and we have a Cabbage free weekend, we're going to make some modifications to the coop like put in some actual nesting boxes and a door on the side. I think this will help with the whole egg thing. 

After cleaning the coop and moving it over to some fresh grass, Michael and I sat under the shade and drank a soda before playing a second round of chicken roundup. We took a break and just sat and watched the chickens happily pecking around the yard. The heat here has finally reached oppressive temperatures and this is punctuated with the roaring buzz of the cicadas. That sound always pulls my brain back to my childhood. That sound means that it is the hottest part of the summer and the grass is dry and crunchy under your bare feet. If a breeze exists it is the hot hair of a hairdryer blowing in your face. Of course it is different here. Oklahoma was dry and hot. Missouri is humid and hot. It's like sitting in a sauna. I don't mind really unless I have to move around. I mean when you sit in a sauna, you sit in the sauna. You don't get on a treadmill and run it out. I'm quite comfortable in this weather lounging in a hammock. 

My mother had a house dress she always wore during those hot summer days. It was like a big mumu, but less Island and more pioneer. The dress always seemed bigger than mom in more ways than one. I have memories of going in for a hug and being surrounded by the blue cotton fabric. It was like playing in the sheets when they're hanging on a line to dry. When I fell and broke my arm that day, I sort of crawled a little ways down the yard before just laying there. I remember that this was the dress my mom was wearing and I can still see it billowing around her as she ran out into the yard. No shoes. Pale face. Panicked voice and that big blue dress. Really that's most of all I remember of that day. I remember one time Mom wrapped a scarf around her head and tied a belt around the dress. She put large hoop earrings in her ears and every bracelet from her jewelry box on her wrists, transforming herself into a gypsy for Halloween. She even had a crystal ball. 

That dress was so bohemian and hippy which my mother was neither of those two things. When I tell people that we only ate food from our garden, usually those people reply with "so..you had hippy parents." No. I did not have hippy parents. None of us were named after celestial beings. My parents where Southern Baptist Conservative Democrats. Almost the exact opposite of hippy. Maybe that's why I loved that dress so much. Contradictory. It softened Mom's hard edges and proper young lady tendencies. I don't know why I've been thinking of that dress lately. I have a black and white maxi dress that I tend to wear on Sundays after I've finally decided to take a shower and brush my teeth. Every time I lift it up over my head and let it fall down my body, I am disappointed that it is not my Mom's old blue dress. Sometimes I look for this dress on the racks in thrift stores or even in the mature women section of department stores. The dresses are never the right shape and the fabric is usually too scratchy, but I keep my eyes peeled any way. 

My billowy blue house dress is out there somewhere. I just know it. 

IMPRINTS

Painting my nails silvery gray while watching Silver Linings Playbook. #365

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

I remember a visit with family in Mississippi once when I was little. I don't remember how old I was. I just remember being little. My cousin Tammy was maybe still in college. I'm not really sure. I know it was before she was married, before she had kids of her own. Which was rare. Most of my cousins were all grown up with brand new babies of their own. I was in this odd place too old to hang out with the adult cousins and too young to hang out with new baby ones. Tammy reminded me of someone's cool older sister or baby sitter. I remember on that trip that she gave me a toothbrush. She had painted my name on the handle with paint pens (remember paint pens?) and added two little daisies. One just before the C and one just after the y. She was the one in the group most likely to sit and color with me or make beaded bracelets. 

On this trip where she gave me the toothbrush, she also painted my nails. I remember that she told me that I had to be really careful. "Never do your nails too close to bedtime. You want to be sure that they have plenty of time to dry before you go to bed because if you don't, you'll wake up the next morning with your sheets imprinted on your nails." I was split on what I thought of this wise bit information. The idea of waking up to Strawberry Shortcake imprinted on my nails sounded cool to me. It took me a moment to realize that she meant the texture of the sheets would leave an impression. I envisioned swirly flowery patterns from sheets on the bed I was sleeping in that night pressed into my thumb nail. I didn't think that this was such a bad thing. But Tammy was so cool and she'd taken the time to paint my tiny nails and share her knowledge with me that I didn't want to mess them up. I spent the rest of the evening moving with care and ease. I went to bed that night plucking gently at the sheets and blankets with my finger tips and sleeping with my hands outside the covers. 

Tammy's tidbit about not going to bed with wet nails would be filed away with the scores of other beauty tips I would receive throughout this life. Mom taught me the importance of always washing your face before bed. From Katrina, I would learn that earrings are essential to any outfit and Janell would teach me to be creative in finding my own sense of style. I am reminded of a picture Misti posted once of a toddler Misti sitting on a kitchen counter as her mother liberally sprayed her tiny locks of hair into curls. The things that women teach girls. Even that old lady in that boutique Mom and I went into to try on prom dresses when she placed her cold hands on my bare breasts to lift them up to put them in my strapless bra. Traumatizing yes, but I always wear a strapless bra properly now. When I wear one. 

These are the things I thought of this morning when I woke up and noticed that my sheets had left wrinkled lines in my freshly painted nails. 

MOTH

No fear

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

I remember there was a time when Chris wanted to do a This American Life Story. I was always on board for this idea. The problem was that neither one of us could ever come up with a story that seemed to fit. We were always brainstorming things to research to build a story. Maybe that's why the Moth Radio Hour has become my new thing. It's just people telling stories. Sort of like TAL but less investigative and more personal. It's more Listen To Your Mother without the mother. That's not really true either. I'm sure there's some stories that include a mother or mention of being a mother. More inclusive may be a better way to describe it. I was listening to the show and thinking that I should do that some day. I should tell a story on the Moth. 

But then I wonder what story it would be that I would tell. I think of all my collections of memories. We came across so much stuff while cleaning out the old house. Mom had a hard time parting with a lot of things. They held memories and value to her. I've never really felt that way about things. The memory and value of the memory is here, in my head. My dad died from complications of Alzheimer's. Near the end he forgot to eat. He forgot how to chew. He forgot how to swallow food. He forgot how to live. This disease is possibly hereditary. I may very well be walking around with the gene carrying a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and disintegrate things remembered. I've always been aware of the temporariness of things. Those tangible objects that we collect and hold so dear can be broken and smashed. Pictures can be torn and burned. Some objects lose memories and meaning completely. There have been times I've looked at one of the many elephants in my collection and could honestly say that I had no idea where that elephant came from. Others, I can remember whole stories behind the gift of receiving them like the elephant Pez Chris gave me that Christmas he surprised me with the pearl earrings. 

I think about my yoga teacher Karen. They used to live in an apartment in NY near the towers. On 9/11 they had to flee that apartment with a diaper bag, a baby under one arm and a cat under the other. They had already packed up their because they were making a life change, moving to a new city for a new job. Their apartment was full of their packed up things. They were told that they would never see those things again and that their building was a total loss. When Karen tells this story she talks about how they mourned their things. She says "we let them go, but we mourned our things." I always thought this was such a good description of emotions over lost stuff. I remember when Chris and I were robbed and how at the end of the day we were just glad it was our things they'd taken. No one was hurt. Later on one of us would reach for something that was no longer there and let out and "aw man! they took the..." We mourned our lost things once we realized it was missing. 

Karen follows up the story by saying that they did actually get all of the their things back. Everything had been boxed up for movers and was so well packed that everything survived. They mourned their lost things, bought new things to replace the old things, and then got their old things back. They shoved all of the boxes up into the attic to be sorted through at their leisure. She said when they finally got around to opening the boxes, every thing inside had a smell, like it had been in a fire, but worse. They ended up getting rid of it all any way. But we tend to hold on to things because they contain the stories. They are a tangible memory of that time you visited the Grand Canyon or ate a 72 oz steak. Except those tangible things get old, break down, take on funky smells, turn into garbage. The thing is not important, but pulling the memory free from the thing is. 

The paradox comes in where to store that memory. All things are fleeting. Maybe it's enough to hold onto the memory long enough to tell the story of it. Tell it just once. Remember that time we... Write it down someplace. Some people scoff at bloggers and their navel gazing. We all navel gaze. Bloggers make their's public. So what. I think of it as cleaning out. Memories are like things. They accumulate. Clutter tends to make me feel like I do in large crowds. I have no qualms in tossing it all out. Sometimes, my brain feels the same way. It gets so cluttered with these memories and they just swirl and swirl around in my head. It gets so overwhelming with them all swishing around there that the only relief is to pull them free and put them someplace.

The Moth Radio Hour is a someplace. Something to think about. 

THE GENETICS OF HANDWRITING

As I filled a garbage bag of leftover bits and pieces in the attic, I came across a bin of papers. From the top it looked like trash. Mice had eaten away at things and most of the papers were so old they crumbled when touched. But I stopped and took a moment to go through the box. I pulled out a crumbling photo album, Janell's very first baby picture and few other things. I realized then that it was time to take a break and go through this container with a little more care. I carried it downstairs so we could all go through it at the dinning room table. 

Mixed in with the garbage and the pictures, I pulled out a few letters. One of the letters was the very last letter that Memaw sent to Mom. It arrived after Memaw had passed away. My mother has never read the letter. She said it was just something she couldn't ever bring herself to do, so I took it. It was opened and had been read by someone at some time. The first thing I noticed about the letter was the handwriting. It's the same handwriting as Mom's. If I didn't know better, if all I had was the letter and not the envelope it came in with Effie McCool in the top left corner, I would think this was a letter from Mom. Except it's not. 

It's a letter from a woman I never knew telling a simple tale of daily life and the current happenings of Louisville MS in November of 1977. They'd all had colds, but were better now. A new Wal-Mart store and a new Piggly Wiggly had just opened. Memaw and Pepaw had spent a day cleaning up the Tucker family grave sites at Mars Hill Church. So and so had a new baby boy and some couple had separated. Memaw wanted to know if we were planning on visiting at Thanksgiving, but then wrote something about having already mostly finished this letter after talking on the phone with Mom about that very thing. At the end she tells my Mom "be good and hugs to all. We love you, Mother". I love that she's still telling my thirty something year old mom to "be good". 

I never knew Memaw. I was one (going on two) when this letter was written and she passed away. I've heard all of the stories from cousins and my brother and even Mom about how wonderful she was. They speak of her as if she were Mother Teresa. She was the grandma that you baked cookies with. She probably was the type that could have brushed my hair without me throwing a fit. I'm sure I would have sat for hours in her lap. Instead I got her wedding rings, her china and now her letter. I inherited her ability to make the perfect pie crust. And, if I take my time and don't rush the words, I notice that I have also inherited her handwriting.