It was an old book. Not rare or antique, but rather vintage. Just old enough to smell of aging library glue and dried damp, and to have sepia-toned edges and dog-eared corners that marked passages now long-forgotten, in spite of the inspiration they must have once incited.
It was a book my father had given to me, but I don’t remember why. It is titled: “Change Your Voice, Change Your Life.” more “Speaking with authentic voices.”
Nobody wants to travel by air with a cranky flight crew.
Our plane had already been delayed by various unrelated circumstances when one passenger suddenly realized her laptop computer was in her plane-side-loaded luggage (lithium battery and all), and so it had to be found, taken out, and brought into the cabin with us for safety reasons. So the flight attendant made an announcement to that effect, again. And two more passengers came forward, exchanging their chagrin for our safety, and their bags were duly located, unloaded, and unpacked. Happily, nothing exploded, nothing caught fire, nobody got hurt; although we were by then about 45 minutes delayed, and the flight crew was getting rather irked. (I think the rest of us were just sitting quietly cringing with the thought: “Yipes … those batteries are in everything … it’s hard to remember them all … that could have been me.”) more “Traveling with chocolate – in planes, cars, and life.”
If childhood had a flower all its own, I think it would be the dandelion. From the first time we’re plopped down onto a blanket on the lawn one happy spring day, dandelions appear at just the right height and brightness for a young, curious gaze. They nod and dance for us, invite us to touch and play, looking like a thousand round golden faces wearing lions’ manes and green scarves. more “Living like dandelions.”
It was intended to be a treat for him. A play date. One of my neighbors and I had considered the possibility of Quincy the dog staying at their house while I traveled later in the month.
They live just down the street, and there are four dogs in their family. The dogs all greet and interact with us everyday as Quincy and I walk past their house in the mornings.
The leader of their pack is bossy and smart and owns the entire corner inside his fence; he and Quincy trash-talk a great deal through the chainlink fence, but it’s done in good spirit and with mutual understanding. The newest member of their troupe is a girl dog that Quincy has a tremendous crush on; she’s a flirt and adorable and knows it. The third is a misfit who gets by on his personality; he and Quincy have hit it off since he moved in a few years back, tails wagging til they almost fall apart as soon as they see each other (perhaps that accounts for why this guy has only half a tail). The fourth is a Corgi; the oldest, the slowest, the wisest, the real brains of the group.
So we thought it would be a treat for Quincy to be one of the gang – playing with the cool kids, sitting in with the band. At first it was. And then it wasn’t. more “A treat for Quincy the dog.”
I remember dog Sophie was full-grown but still quite young at the time. Sophie was of mixed heritage, carrying the genes of some sort of shepherding breed, which created and crafted her reality primarily through the perception of sight. She navigated the world with her eyes – bush to bush, brick by brick, trees to rocks to houses, between fence lines and lampposts.
When Sophie was very young, and experiencing each new season for the first time, she used to bark and coax me from my desk to follow her outside for something startlingly new, of which she felt I should be made aware – often simply a new blossom on an old camellia bush, or a fallen branch from the great oak tree. After I had been alerted to this newness, she would accept the alteration to the landscape of her life – until the next season (or a new day) brought fresh changes and shifts to the truth of her world.
But this particular day in my memory, when Sophie was perhaps a year and a half into her life, I took her to the grounds of the Aiken County Historical Museum. more “Looking back … living forward.”
Her name was Mrs. Orange Berry. She lived just to the left of the front steps of our house when I was very young. She was a lovely old, plump, slightly prickly bush. And she bore compelling orange berries that were terribly poisonous to humans. I can still see my tiny baby fingers as I would pick the round berries and stir them with water in a toy tin pot with a small tin spoon making “stew.” Fortunately, I was never tempted to actually eat the stew; after all, I had been told the berries were poison and I was a mindful child. But Mrs. Orange Berry and I would chat together about important things and cook our stew in my little tin pot on a rather regular basis. more “Lessons from Mrs. Orange Berry”
I have a friend who is a trained crisis negotiator. I don’t like to think about all the whys and whens of her being needed to act in that capacity. But I’m glad she’s there. The first thing you notice about her is the quietness of her voice. The calm of it. It’s authentic and carries a touch of good humor just below the surface. And whatever she says seems to make good sense and is true and can be trusted. It’s all in there – in just the sound of her voice. more “The power of the human voice; the presence of the written word.”
A rather long time ago, I wrote an article about the ancientness of flowers. It was long before I began to write my stories for you or we even knew each other. It was long before I came to live in this wondrous place of old-world gardens carved out of nature-saturated surroundings. But what I still remember most from researching and writing that article was the image of the earth carpeted and canopied in blossoms of color and fragrance and beauty – ages before there were any people to appreciate it. It was well before there were many of today’s species of animals (most of the very first flowers had to contend with being trampled on or eaten by dinosaurs). more “Flowers, pollen, and other random possibilities.”
I found the young opossum tucked down in a brown paper bag full of light bulbs, inside a storage closet off my kitchen. He was huddled within an empty side of a 2-pack of 40-watt blubs. All nose and ears and big black eyes and tiny toe-tips peeking over the edge of the thin cardboard pack. more “Getting in touch with my inner opossum.”
I wore my mother’s earrings to a party not long ago. They are clip-on earrings – heavy with twisted gold chain, fabricated pearls, and memories.
Halfway through the evening, I found myself slipping these pieces of vintage jewelry off for a moment and rubbing my earlobes. They always pinch and keep me terribly aware of their presence. And I suspect that this was not unlike much of being a woman in the 1950s, when these earrings were made and first worn. A time when women were terribly aware of their womanhood and its attendant discomforts – from fashions to societal expectations and restraints. I wondered if the weight of it all pulled on my mother – like her earrings. Perhaps they were symbolic of the way she saw herself. And I thought to myself: ah, yes … you shall know me by my earrings. more “You shall know me by my earrings.”