unbind him, and let him go

april finally got here. though on sunday, march seemed to tug hard at winter, come monday the sun came out and by tuesday, there was no foolin', none at all, because the birds woke up with cackling spirits, singing so loud about this new warmth that on our morning walk, we almost asked them to tone it down. 

but we didn't. 

everyone around me —neighbors, family, co-workers, birds, dogs, even strangers on the street looked up at the blue sky and said, well, thank heaven it's april. finally. 

now we take our meals outside and drive home with the windows down, drinking in the warm air deep and quick because soon the pollen will kick in and we'll have to shut the windows again.

april. a good month for me historically. the month of birthdays: my mother's— a birthday shared by a dear, lifelong friend and a godchild — a day that always meant Mama'd get a new azalea for the yard from her children and a bouquet of yellow roses from my father. april meant meeting Lydia on the back road to ride our bikes to school in the bright morning. it meant spring cleaning, when i'd come home from school to find my hair brush and comb soaking in ammonia in the bathroom sink and all my winter clothes put away, my spring dresses hanging crisp and pressed in my closet.

April in college: i was tapped on my mother's birthday to edit the school literary magazine. (it was the best birthday present i gave her, ever.) my first child began life one april day. it's the month of my grandfather's birthday.

last year April took on a different meaning for me. a sadness that it's taken me just about a year to shake. but i can feel myself unbinding, if only a little bit.

my siblings and i have traded emails today. routine things when you're dealing with estates and mothers and whatnot. when i looked at the calendar, i could not help thinking of this same day last year, when our lives took a tumble (my mother a literal one, breaking her femur in Daddy's hospital room.) i wrote about it here and here.

i'm blessed to have the mother i do. in this year we have all marveled, because she is all about April. Just watching her deal — with my father's illness and death, her broken leg and weeks in a wheel chair. in the weeks after Daddy died, when i visited her, each day brought progress. she got up out of the wheelchair. walked with a walker, then a cane. caring for herself. climbing stairs. set up a new home, drove herself, engaged life again. 

so we are celebrating with a party, not a birthday party (though it will be on her birthday), but a spring celebration. we've invited her friends from home to visit, to share a little lunch and see her new house. now when we talk on the phone, planning, her voice is bright, expectant, unbound.

i started a new Bible study this week. I am not one for sitting down quietly and talking out loud about God, but there you have it. there is a long-standing joke that Episcopalians don't actually read the Bible. but i have found when two or there of us gather we actually do know the Bible pretty well. our Book of Common Prayer is filled with it, as is our Hymnal. 

my friends and i met in the early morning before work and spent a few minutes with Lazarus, which is the gospel for Sunday, and well, we found that apparently, there is a lot in our lives to resurrect. 

by the end of the hour, we were all weepy — just like Jesus in the story — considering the hope offered in this ancient tale. we each had different reactions to it, but the Lazarus story reminded me of that holy day last April when we gathered around my father to say goodbye. only i don't think i did, fully. 

but it's time. 

yes, april finally got here, and it seems to me now, the whole month is all about unbinding —  everything from peonies to people, opening up, letting the light in after a winter that seemed to offer little. 

in the past few days i have been thinking of little except my father. the tone of his voice, his grin, all the times i have wanted to call him up and ask him something medical. my family will gather on Easter Day to remember him on the anniversary of his death. we'll picnic at a place he loved to visit and maybe even have a few candied orange slices for dessert. 

it will be a good day, a bright day, and what better day than Easter, to end our year of grieving, to unbind him — and ourselves — and finally let him go?



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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about a boy

just before daybreak, the phone rang and i answered. a woman, asking for my husband. a reporter, she said, for one of atlanta's tv stations i recall. i pictured a well coiffed, sleek brunette in spiked heels just waiting to purr something seductive into my husband's ear. i shook him awake, handed him the phone and looked toward my feet, but couldn't see them.

just then i felt, well, a nudge. and when he hung up the phone from his seductress, i said three words:

don't go far. then four more. the baby is coming. 

i could feel it.

my husband dressed for work — he was in public affairs for a utility company at the time and there was some sort of nuclear issue, which is in no way as important as a baby, don't   you know.

i gathered my thick body in my quilted robe and put my alarm clock in my pocket. walked into my daughter's room, wondering what in the world i would do with her in these hours as i waited for this new baby to come.

she found my closet, right after breakfast, and as i timed my contractions with the pocketed tick of the blue plastic clock, she found my honeymoon shoes and pulled my 'Princess Diana' rehearsal dinner dress over her head just so. how i wish i had pictures. 

as my 3-year-old plundered, i crouched on my hands and knees, cleaning all the bathrooms because once again, my mother would be coming and things had to be right. 

a few hours in i called my mother-in-law, who was on her way to the beauty parlor, which would be the perfect distraction for a cute little girl who would greet a new sibling, we hoped, by the end of the day.

i called my husband. it's time, i said, and he left the carefully coiffed reporter and drove the 20 miles home to take me to the hospital and into our new life as a family of four.  

it was one year to the day, i remember, from when the space shuttle exploded on national tv.

+++

last night we sat across from our son and his girlfriend sharing supper and stories. she asked what time he was born, he said: after Guiding Light, which is partly true. there would be no tv in the labor room that day, and GL was my favorite story, so i asked one of the nurses to find some way for me to watch. 30 minutes into Josh and Reva and this boy would have nothing of my distraction, breaking into this world so quickly that his napping dad hardly had time to put on his scrubs. i have to say my son has consistently interrupted my train of thought since. just when i thought i'd have a moment to myself, this quiet boy would say something that made me wish i had been paying closer attention.

he does so, still. 
+++

it seems, looking back on it, as if he grew from two feet to four then to six overnight, stretching his lanky body at times in such awkward ways that you could almost see the paIN in it. as a boy, he craved independence, admired (and practiced) great wit, loved Harry Potter and studied how to build things. he learned how to be a loyal friend to many and a brother to the sister he adores.

some say he looks like me, which is a curse or a blessing, depending upon your perspective (his/mine). the two of us have had our moments. there were days when i thought, well, i will never be good at the mother/son thing, and others when i felt we had just about gotten it right. 

lately, though i don't see or talk to him every day, it still feels tenuous. i want to help him but give him space. want to soothe with my mother thing but give him breathing room. want to say i'm proud but leave space for growth.

in the last year, i have seen my son grow into a man. we walked, hand-in-hand, into his grandfather's hospital room and out again, both of us quietly weeping. we shopped for sofas for the house he was buying. i stood by as he walked my mother to the communion rail on Christmas Eve, her arm in his hand. he inherited my father's saw and is building a place to put it using plans he found online. he is kind and funny and quiet, and he can be quite charming, i hear. though he drives me mad sometimes, my love for him is fierce.

+++

today he turned 27. Happy Birthday, G. It's a pleasure to know you.
mom






writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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Dreams with Daddy

My father sits in a small metal side chair, the kind you find in a hospital room, a blank wall at his back. He wears his Sunday suit, the silver tie he saves for weddings. He crosses his legs, looks at his fingers like I have seen him do a thousand times. Silent, we wait together, for I know not what. I want to lean into him, and I wonder what he is thinking. 

Daddy’s fingers are thin and nimble, the skin taut, the kind of hands a doctor needs for his work. I notice he is not biting his fingernails or the skin around them, something he has done most of his life. A tiny thing, but significant, it seems.

We wait together like we used to during my mother’s many surgeries. Broken hips — too many times to count — a knee. Her back. In those times I knew he was worried, so I tried to draw him through it with my chatter — about children, neighbors, work, anything but politics.  

This is the first time in many months Daddy has not been lying in a hospital bed, with me trying to keep the one-sided conversation going. I’m talking to him, effusive in my glee at finding him all dressed up and sitting in the chair.

But here’s the thing: It’s a dream. My father died in April.

Right after Daddy died, I was hopeful he would visit me. I climbed in bed each night, wondering when it might be. I had dreamed of others in my life who had died. Why should Daddy be any different? 

I was sure he was coming. It would just be a matter of time.

And he did come, swiftly, standing in the front hall of my childhood home in his Sunday suit, next to the mirror, his hair grayer than I remember. I hugged him, feeling such joy at the warmth of him, telling him I knew he would come, and then he melted away.

But he came again, this time sitting in that chair, in the shadows, while the world goes on around him. And that’s where he has been in a half-dozen dreams since. When I see him there I’m overcome with joy. I feel the knot in my throat, thinking I might cry, just watching him sit, in a room that is neither cold nor hot, so thrilled I am, happier than I have felt for a very long time.

And then the alarm startles, the dream fades, and I am back to day, feeling the ache of a world without Daddy in it.

I am a dreamer. Both night and day. Those who know me well know I often don’t hear the conversation, don’t even know anyone is talking to me. Not solely because I have lost some of my hearing, which I have, but rather I am lost in what I am thinking. 

Daddy knew that about me. Once, when I was about 9, he called me a liar because I had no idea where my sister was. I didn’t. Had she told me? In my memory, I see her form sliding past me in the family room as she says something. I was lost in a book, until his words stung. Was I that? A liar? Is that all he thought of me? I spent years trying to prove otherwise.

We've been looking at the scriptures of Advent during my writing class at church. We're trying to find where we fit in the story of the virgin birth in the manger with the shepherds and all that. Since I was a child, I’ve used my dreams to figure out the world. The ages-old Christmas story takes on a new slant when I read about Joseph, who learns in a dream what he should do with his not-yet-wife-but-oh-so-pregnant betrothed.

So how do I fit in this story? It feels presumptuous to think God is speaking to me in my dreams. Who am I to be that important? Yet Daddy's not the only person in my life who has died but who has come back in my dreams — my mother-in-law, my grandfather, a childhood friend who was not always so nice — and so, I wonder.

In early February, as Daddy lay fighting pneumonia in the hospital where he  practiced medicine for 50 years, he told me he would not get better. “You’ll have to take care of your mother,” he said. I knew then would not survive this fight and that this was his directive to be followed. But how in the world would we manage?

In the months since his death, the days and decisions have been dizzying. A new home for my mother, a new town. Our home, an empty shell. And yet, there are days when I’ve almost forgotten he’s not still there, just on the other end of the phone when I call, sitting in his chair with the dog in his lap. Except the number we had my whole life doesn’t work anymore, and only my mother answers the new one.

I don’t want to live in a dream world. I want to be awake and alive. Occupy the now. But it feels like I am waiting for Daddy to say something, when he comes in my dreams. I suppose I am looking for specifics — Joseph certainly got them. Like what do to when Mama won’t take her medicine correctly. Or the intangible, like what heaven is all about. And has he found the dogs, like we asked him to when he was dying, and our grandparents? 

I’m looking for comfort, too, that despite the fact that he is not with us anymore, all will be well. 

The move was difficult. Watching my mother as her cherished things were boxed up and loaded into the truck proved heart-wrenching. The packers worked quickly, so we worked behind them, gathering up personal items from his desk, tossing some, keeping others. That first afternoon, we found something torn from a magazine in a small catch-all basket on his desk. It was a poem, no given author, that read in part:

You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears. I gave you my love. You can only guess how much you gave me in happiness.... let your grief be comforted by trust . . . I won’t be far away, so if you need me, call and I will come. Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near, and if you listen, you’ll hear my love around you, soft and clear.

We felt him there, at that moment and knew he had left the words for us to find, right when we needed them most. 

So I will keep dreaming, in hopes the next time I need him, he'll show up again and this time be ready to talk. 

+ + + + +

To read daily meditations during Advent from the writers of St. Michael's, visit holymichael.org, and download These Holy Mysteries.

— Susan Byrum Rountree writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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take me home, country road

i set out at dawn, driving down the country road away from the home i have known for  50 years.

the fog lay low against the cotton fields, stretched out like a soft blanket over a child almost ready to wake up. that's what i wish it was, that fog, my own baby blanket draping right around me, whispering to me that it's not really wakeup time yet, that what i know to be true is not. 

what beauty. the vast fields of cotton and soybeans —  even tobacco — shrouded in a white pall that bore no sense of foreboding. just dawn about to happen. hope. 

a mile on, and the sun spilled over the fields onto the side of a barn. how must it feel, to stand at the edge of a field and watch the whole world that belonged to you wake up, the sun's first color shining red on your barn, knowing that your work ahead in that day mattered, was about more than what you had already put on that acre?

you know those moments, don't you, when you sense that your world will never pass quite this same way again? 

this morning a few weeks ago was that. it felt like i was taking in everything. every. thing. the boy waiting by the side of the road for his school bus, checking his iPhone. the hawk perched on the wire looking down on the peanut field, right where i have seen him almost every time i have come this way in the last year or so. the fog. the flat fields sliding past by me one by one — soybeans, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, right ready to be picked. 

i have been trying to write it all down for a month, each day sitting down in front of the blank page thinking: i must do this now. and then i don't. maybe i've been thinking that if i don't put it down it just wont happen. 

and yet, come monday, we will be well into what has until six months ago seemed an impossible thing. 

we are leaving my childhood home. 

moving its contents part and parcel to a new house that has been finely painted and polished, one that will take my mother closer to where she needs to be. one that my father never knew about. had never seen. in these few weeks we have gathered to pack and to ponder. 

what looms, seems soon to me — not yet six months since Daddy died — is necessary. just because i am not yet ready to let loose of the walls that raised me up doesn't mean it's not the right thing. what matters is that Mama will be close to family, safe, where she can savor all the years that have rolled out before her like the fog over the fields did for me on that day a month ago now. yes. safe. but sad.

i remember when i first went to college, i was so bent on being away and not looking back on the road that had brought me to the city. but come fall break, i caught a ride with a friend and when we turned at the crossroad toward home, the twilight set in, and i rolled down the window, sticking my face into the country smells, all the peanut hay and the scent of newly-picked tobacco, the cotton bolls ripening and well, i couldn't wait to get there. home. 

for years after i was married and living far away, whenever my husband and i drove out the driveway, i waved to my parents on their back porch perch and cried for 30 miles down the road. (and now, every single time i leave, just thinking about that memory.) 

every single time i walk in the back door, i see the soft lights of the kitchen, and i feel myself settling in. home. 

i can not imagine not knowing that anymore.

it was not supposed to be this way. my parents were going to live out their lives in this house, in this place — Daddy fairly well did — but things we had counted on just didn't come to be. 

the night before i drove away from home a month ago, i slept in my old room, tossing, waking often, trying to remember the hundreds of childhood nights and days i spent there, becoming me. our winter-weighted coverlets came from Sears, and we loved them. in summer, Mama would rearrange the furniture and drape our beds with paper-thin covers — white, with blue ruffles and tiny blue flowers all over — and we would sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed just to put a new slant on things. 

we found our baby clothes in an old attic trunk and dressed our dolls in them. i played 'school' behind the closed doors, with the chalkboard on the wall. barbies. spend-the-nights. tears. (a lot of those, my siblings would say.) winter nights after lights out, listening to cousin brucie on the transistor, memorizing the words to songs that would define my adolescence — jim croce. james taylor. gladys knight and her pips. the beatles.

Memories that come at night
Take me to another time
Back to a happier day....

i remember the day we moved in. i was 5, and i went home from kindergarten with ralph, our next-door-neighbor in our old house. we had hot dogs for lunch, the ones that swelled when you boiled them, not the red kind my mother cooked, and i couldn't eat them. later, my mother showed me my new room, one i would share with my sister til she was a teenager, with our matching closets and desks that Daddy built that looked like ladders on the sides. somewhere i have pictures. 

ours is a story house, full of sounds and smells. the saturday nights when we'd sit at the foot of my mother's bed and watch her smooth her nylons over her legs, attach her pearl earrings to her ears for an evening out with Daddy. the phone ringing at all hours. days when we would climb the ladder to the attic, playing on rainy days when we couldn't go outside. sitting at the kitchen table as teenagers sharing a dinner of steak fondue. or in the living room, on the sofa with Daddy and his banjo, wanting bill bailey, whoever he was, to please come home. listening to my sister play Climb Every Mountain when she had hit a sour note on some other song. the time Daddy gave me honey and whiskey to cure my cough. or the day i was making potato stamps and sliced the tip of my finger nearly off. (you can still see the scar.) the soft click of the pulls on my parent's dresser drawer when we looked inside to marvel at our mother's jewelry. the crinkle of the newspaper as Daddy shined his shoes. it is both present and past tense, will always be that in memory.

the living room chimney Santa came down that never once held a fire. the family room window the tree fell through when the first tornado hit. (there were two, years apart) the dining room window where just last year the squirrel hid in the drapes after chewing out the mullions. the sand pile where the dogs are buried. the front porch where we take our family pictures. the incinerator, where we burned our Christmas wrapping paper and set the yard on fire. 

opening the front door for my sister's first date with the man who would become my brother-in-law. closing it on the boy i would not marry. 

these are just my stories. my brother and sister have their own. my mother has hers, too. some we have shared, some are private, some only the house holds close.

stories: the bricks and mortar of any family's life, much more, i hope we learn, than the underpinnings of the building we have called home for 50 years. 

in an hour or so, my sister and i will set out down the road again toward home. we have business to discuss, lists to make to help this move be as easy on our mother as it can. but in the silence between our chatter lay all those stories, wrapping us up like a soft blanket in the early morning, warming us as we wait to breathe this new day in.



writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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one saturday with Daddy

the morning i was to be married, i woke up and heard my father crying, hidden behind the bedroom door. 

i honestly thought he'd be happy to be rid of me, to have another man take my mercurial soul off his hands. 

what will we do? i recall asking my mother, who was not crying at all. 

he'll be fine, she said. don't worry.

overnight, Lydia and cohorts had thrown toilet paper high into the oak trees in the front yard, and i remember him coming by my room, asking me what i wanted to do about it. the reception was at home. and then, as i scurried around getting ready for my big moment, i looked out the window, and my father was swatting at the toilet paper with a rake. though he stood more than six feet, his efforts did little to pull the paper down.

by the time he walked me down the aisle he had dried his eyes, smiled a little, and though i don't remember what he said to me i felt certain, probably for the first time in my life, that Daddy would miss my presence. 

a small combo played at the backyard reception, and though i had not yet danced with my new husband, Daddy and i stole a few moments away from the guests for a dance, both of us quietly sobbing this time.

no one was watching, and i don't even recall the song. 


none of that matters now. because the feeling of that moment lingers, still.

10.10.1981

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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reflex

daddy's doctor bag sat in the back floorboard of his Ford for as long as i remember. he'd take it out for house calls, or when one of us was sick, opening up the brown otoscope case, popping on one of the the bluish-green tips before pulling open my ear to peer in it to see if i had plugged a nickle in there somewhere that was clogging me up. then he'd pop off the tip, flick on the penlight and ask me to say 'ahh', me hoping i could open wide enough so he wouldn't have to use a tongue depressor.

it was like an appendage to him, that black bag that never quite stayed shut. when he worked in the office, he'd go from room to room, ink pens lining the top pocket of his white coat, stethoscope and prescription pad deep in the pocket at his hip.  

on some days when Daddy was in the hospital over the winter, i would find myself in the cafeteria alone, waiting for him to to be bathed, to wake up, for the doctors to come by on rounds. on one of those days, i found myself trying to name everything that the black bag held, trying to hang on to this memory since i knew, honestly, that Daddy would never open that bag again and take anything out.

here is the list i made that day:
stethoscope
reflex hammer
prescription pad
blood pressure cuff
rubbing alcohol
Band-Aids

as i made my way down the short list, i could feel the cool metal of the stethoscope on my back as he listened to my heart when i was a girl. i saw myself sitting in the kitchen chair trying hard not to giggle — and to hold my knee still as stone as he tapped it with the reflex hammer.

i couldn't think of the name of that thing he used to look into my ears, but i could see it. 
when i got back to his room, he was awake, and before long the speech therapist came in the room to place the speaking valve on his tracheostomy tube, to see how well he could tolerate it.

they had been doing this off and on, and on some days, usually when my brother or i was there, he was able to talk a little, his graveled voice not sounding much like his pre-hospital one. 

daddy, i said that day, i was wondering: what all did you keep in your doctor's bag?

and in seconds he began the litany: stethoscope. reflex hammer. prescription pad. blood pressure cuff. thermometer. syringes. Penicillin usually. alcohol. ace bandages. tongue depressors. otoscope. 

otoscope. that was what i couldn't remember. in all those weeks, though he seemed in and out of confusion at times, it took only a moment for him to rattle off the tools of his house call trade.

that day, my brother happened to swing by, and looking at him in his white coat i realized i'd never seen him with a doctor's bag of any kind. he was not Daddy's doctor, but even if he once or twice grabbed a stethoscope to listen to his chest, he took it from Daddy's bedside, not from one hanging around his neck.

to treat a patient these days, a doctor might grab sterilized gloves from one of the boxes on the wall, a syringe from a dispenser in the hall (well, usually the nurse does that), log into the room computer to print out a prescription. sometimes i wonder if all that is better than the laying on of hands my father required to do his daily work.

+ + + 

the morning after Daddy died, i went to his car and climbed in the back seat to take in his smell. the rubbing alcohol was there, and i looked around the floor board for the bag, but it was not to be found. made sense, since Daddy hadn't practiced in a few years, that he would have taken it out. seems i recalled that for awhile, it sat on the old chair at the door of my room, where he now kept his office.

back in the house, i looked and it was not there.

a few days later, my sister and i stood in our attic, looking around. there, on the floor was an old doctor's bag, empty and worn from decades of travel, but it was not his most recent bag.

my mother has been looking for the bag for weeks. she has a purpose for it, but though she has been through every closet and looked in every drawer, she's been unable to find the one thing Daddy used every day of his career. it's troubling, like if she opened their closet one day to find his yellow sweater missing, or that someone had misplaced the letter opener that has always been on the desk of the secretary right where he left it the last time he opened a letter. these are the small things that mean much to each of us. especially is doctoring tools.

it was saturday afternoon, and we had gone through closets and sat on the phone to india for 58 minutes trying to get the computer to work, only to find out we couldn't. we had gone through papers and a scrap book i had never seen (that's another post), and my mother, who is back on her feet now, gave me a roll of quarters Daddy had been saving for me since 1968.

then she told me how she had looked for the bag but couldn't find it.

i knew of nothing else to do but begin the search. so we opened the closet in my room and began taking things out.

a portrait of my grandfather from the bank where he served on the board. a box filled with tax returns. old coat hangers, skirts, a robe. a box filled with photographs, still framed, that had come from my grandmother's house. 

and from the clothes rack, a new vinyl satchel i had never seen. 

i lifted it off the rack, pulled open the velcro and the tears pooled in my eyes. the brown case that holds his otoscope— scratched from his own fingers, so many years of opening — two stethoscopes, the reflex hammer, all well worn and placed there carefully by my father's own hands, hung up like carpenter's tools, a long life of repair finally complete.

those who know more about these things than i do tell me that grief is like this. you go for weeks thinking now i've gotten past the worst of it and have worn out the tears and can go on my daily life without thinking of it, and then one small thing presents itself and there you are, weeping quietly over some small memory from childhood that hits your reflexes like a soft hammer to the knee. no matter how hard you might try to fight it, your throat closes tightens and there you are. there. you. are.

to me, it is like the mercurial atlantic. how one day, the air is still and the sea slick as ice, waves barely breaking, tiny ribbons of foam lining the beach where water meets sand. a day later, swells rise and fall but waves don't break, foamy tides climb up the sand, rip tides form, pulling just below the surface. and then you wake the next day and the sea roils, waves crash into each other long before they ever reach the beach, and you barely remember the calm, ice-slick day, from all the roaring.





writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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land, ho!

my father grew up in a country crossroad that when i was a child seemed like the prettiest little place on earth. he spent his first 17 years growing tall and fishing in wooded ponds, later working in the shop where his father sold Fords. when Daddy died, my brother told a story i had never heard. that when Daddy was working in the shop, my grandfather asked him to change the oil on a car, which he dutifully did. only he forgot to put new oil back into the car he was working on. so instead of inheriting the family business, my grandfather decided the boy who would become my daddy would be better off fixing people than fixing cars. so he sent my father to medical school.

i spent my childhood going back to my father's home, visiting my grandparents for a week during the summer. there is so much i remember about the place. the back yard swing where my grandfather used to push me into the sky. the storage house that smelled of moth balls but held a thousand treasures. the garden where we used to dig for potatoes and pick butter beans. the old shop, where we would sit in the showroom cars, turning the steering wheel and blinkers, then get cold cocolas from the old stoop-shouldered machine.

our visits also included 'going to ride,' which meant driving down quiet farm paths so my grandfather could check the crops growing on farms he had owned for some time. to my knowledge he didn't plant the rows himself, but he was overseer. one summer, he took friend Lydia and me down the path to see the largest hogs we'd ever seen in our lives.

over the years, as we headed to and from the beach, i would try to point out that farm but could never quite find it. then a couple of years ago, Daddy asked us to go back. 

though my grandparents have been gone for years, he wanted us to see the landmark of their legacy — the three small farms that are now leased, the land worked. Daddy wanted us to know where they were, so we would not forget. 

so we drove down country roads to the familiar places of my childhood and his. the first farm stands between my grandparents' burial place and their house, and that spring, before the crops went in, we could see their breakfast room window from their graves. 

and then down another road and a surprise. a family cemetery i had never seen, where my great-grandfather Moses Byrum is laid to rest. i still can't figure out why i never knew it was there.

and then, back to the farm where those hogs once grew, an expanse of winter wheat waving at us along the short drive toward the old house and barn. i watched, as Daddy's eyes scanned the horizon, the circle of land his father owned that now belonged, in part, to him. And i wondered what would become of it. 

turns out, Daddy knew. 

a few weeks ago, as we headed to the beach, we made a couple of stops with the kids. first, to the family cemetery where their great-great grandfather is buried. then on to the farm where as an 11-year-old, i had tried to pet a few gigantic pigs.

the kids took pictures, as i recounted my last visit there with their grandparents, Daddy in his favorite yellow sweater, Mama telling me how she tried to convince my grandfather to be more progressive and put indoor plumbing in the tenant house, almost 60 years before.

my siblings and i now own this farm with my aunt, my father's sister. Daddy gave us this land in his will. which i have to say was a big surprise. we did not expect anything... and though i always knew he loved this farm, i never imagined he would entrust its future to us. cityfolk though we all are.

i don't think i have ever owned anything outright. maybe a toaster. a book. a pair of shoes. but not land. 

land.

as i write this i don't know quite what to say. even after close to 25 years in our current house, the bank still owns a small part. cars? all loans, though one is coming close to being paid off. i know people who buy cars with cash, but we have never been able to do that. 

but cars are not the same as land.

land. the thing that drew the Israelites from Egypt and kept them going, the thing that kept Noah and Christopher Columbus in the boat, kept Scarlett O'Hara from losing her mind. (well, maybe not.) 

it is a small plot, considering. 

but it is ours. and it is land our father loved, and our grandfather before him, so there you have it.

we often joked in years past that we would one day own a third of a half of something — this land — just about enough to put a lawn chair on so we could watch the sunset on a summer Sunday afternoon.

guess i didn't count on it actually coming true. and now, though i am pretty sure where the sun will go down on a summer Sunday, i am wondering just where Daddy would want us to place those chairs.





















writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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oh i feel so very happy in my heart

when my kids were little, we used to ride to preschool to the tunes of Sharon, Lois and Bram. we'd turn up the volume and sing along to skinnamarinkydinkydoo, shouting the lyrics at the windows. as soon as the kids were out of the car, i would switch to beach music or top 40, craving a few short hours of semi-adulthood as i ran errands around town.

one morning after drop-off as i drove down a leafy street in Winston-Salem, i realized that instead of hitting the radio button, i kept hitting 'repeat,' so i could keep singing along, alone in the car. never once thought of the radio. the song — and i remember it so clearly — was "there's a little wheel a turning in my heart.... ending with a verse that begins "oh i feel so very happy in my heart, oh i feel so very happy in my heart...."

and i kept singing, even after i'd gotten out of the car to go to the store and come home to make the beds, do the laundry. the words had become a little worm in my head and heart... oh i feel so very happy in my heart. because i did. feel that.

i doesn't matter why, really. i just was. with my happy children on that bright day in that town where all the streets i traveled seemed so beautiful. at the time, there were parts of my life that weren't so happy, but in those few hours, i was not thinking about any of that. i was just feeling very happy in my heart. really.

on sunday morning of this week, i woke well before light and lay there, thinking about that song. that's what i was feeling again, that fullness, the heart so big it feels as if it might just burst open into something like butterflies or a brisk wind or a crashing ocean ...whatever it is that makes your heart feel just like that. a dirt road. a lightning bug. the lap of a grandparent on the back porch. a game of chase. whatever. i felt it. and i had not seen a single ocean sunrise (as is usually my beach week habit), or had the chance to sit alone just watching the surf (also my habit.) but the happy heart was there. in the middle of this very early morning on my last day of our family reunion at the beach.

this, i will tell you, was a surprise. i'd spent the last 9 days with my birth family and their many extensions, and i confess now that on day 1 i imagined that by the time day 9 got here i would feel nothing but relief. family gatherings for me in years past have been somewhat anxiety filled. as the old stories crop up of how much i cried as a child... teen... adult... or how i never stayed at camp always made me feel a bit of an outcast in my put-together family. in the days before we gathered, i found myself with teeth clenched, wondering just when the jokes would rise at my expense and how often i would spend with my head sunk in the pillow crying at the end of the night. (what do they say about self-fulfilling prophecy?)

maybe it was a sign to me when we checked into our rental that there were only three pillows in the whole place, (for 8+ people)— and i had forgotten mine. this time there would be no crying in the pillow.

and there wasn't. there was only this:

9 nights with my sister in the house. i have spent no more than a night with her in the past few years, and really mostly just hours. i know now that we buy the same tea bags though not the same toilet paper (close), the same pre-filtered coffee when we go on vacation. the time with her reminded me just how funny she really is, and it is a gift.

watching my brother — sans 30 pounds — play with his one-year-old granddaughter in the surf. and for days, he just kept walking around smiling. another gift.

reading my nephew John's guest blog

walking to the beach with my nephew Jay, talking about his new job

hearing all the good news everyone had to share :)

just sitting in the room with my nieces

taking pictures of nephew's Kip's surprise (:!) engagement

getting to know the new girls

shagging with my brother-in-law, nephew and son in the kitchen (stay in the box!)

recreating a 90s photo of all the grands lined up on boogie boards

walking the beach at dusk with my brother and sister-in-law

reading (one good book, though i usually read four on vacation)

having my five-year-old great nephew tell me he didn't want me to leave

watching my parents at a sunset photo session on the sound

reading a letter my friend-since-we-were-four wrote to her father one summer when we spent a week with my grandparents

walking through the grocery store with my mother as she fingered everything

watching as the whole family gathered to view the video my son made for my parents

hearing my brother toast my parents

listening to the grands and their jokes with each other

meeting my cousin for the first time in many, many years

watching my parents open the pile of cards people sent

lying in the sun with my daughter and rehashing all the stories of the week on our way home


hearing the stories of how much every one of us enjoyed being together

some sun, some rain

laughing, laughing, laughing

tiny spots of quiet to take it all in 

my family is not perfect. maybe some who don't know us well think we are. but we have been touched by illness and scandal, by grief and by grace. and we are blessed to have each other and we know it.


my husband no longer has his parents. my sister-in-law has lost both of hers. my brother-in-law's mother is living, but he lost his dad years ago.

maybe that's why all of us cling to my parents. i don't know. but as i lay there on Sunday morning early, i felt for the first time in a long time completely folded into the arms of my family. 


and the hug was tight.













  

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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up and away

a month ago, i was asked a question, and i answered just this way. when i look back at that list, i can see that i didn't do such a bad job on the little things, but on the big, not so much.

one of the little things, actually the first thing that came to my mind was "fly a kite." not rocket science, since it was the third day of the windiest month, and for some reason my first thought was of mrs. norfleet's 3rd grade classroom bulletin board, filled with kites, soaring in the wind.

as i moved through the month, more than once, i thought about the question, what if? what if, as i climb into my car to run to the grocery store or work or church, what if this is the day. what if, as i nod off to sleep, i would not wake up? and then, turns out it wasn't the last day, so i moved into another one, thankful that i had another chance to eat tomato sandwiches. to wear blue. to look for shooting stars.

and then, my friend kay, emailed. she was flying down to see her mother, and on her way back to va., she would be more than happy to pick me up, if i wanted to come for a visit.

well. i did want to visit, but when kay says flying, she means flying. in a plane. with four seats. and she's the pilot.

here's the thing. i don't mind flying, when i am up in the air and looking down at all those beautiful clouds and when i get close to home i can recognize the water tower near my house, the marina where my husband keeps his boat, love when all the world becomes a map. from up there, there is not one damn thing i can do about anything, so i read my book. and i am not sitting right next to the pilot. but during those take-offs and landings, well, that's when i know full well i could meet my end. so i pray a lot.

but that's in a big plane... a BIG plane... kay's is a jet, and she travels in it like i travel in my car. and she is good at it, zipping up and down the east coast, transporting dogs for rescue to their new forever homes.

still. as i accepted her kind invitation — because i really wanted to meet her husband and her dogs and see her in her office with the birds fluttering around outside — i thought: could this be the way? could that question about what would i do if i knew march would be my last month.. was it prophetic? would i go out doing something so not like me? something not on my list?

the morning of the flight, i tried to straighten up my closet. i paid some bills. sat a little longer with the dog. paced. and paced some more. on the way to the airport, i called my children. (i would wait to call my parents when i was safe in va.)  i didn't want to be scared. she wasn't scared to ride in the car with me when she came to visit. i wanted to be a new me. a brave one, the one on the charm my friend lee gave me for Christmas.

and so, i walked out on the tarmac with kay, and i climbed in. my husband took pictures. kay and i gave the thumbs up. i need to show you how to open the door, she said, in case something happens, and we need to get out, then added: on the ground.

yes. i would need to know that.

it'll be a little bumpy, she said as we taxied. i could not find a strap to hold onto. 

i prayed... no, don't let this be the day, the way...i really hadn't had a chance to clean out the fridge or my dresser drawers, and i didn't want my friend grace to have to come in and do all that for me...it would just be too embarrassing... and then, we were off, up (and down a few times... yes, it was bumpy.) and as i looked around, i could see the water tower, and in another 15 minutes there was the marina, the tiny speck of a boat down there that we sail from time to time.

i listened as kay talked to the air traffic controllers, a tag team of folks from the small airports between here and there connected by the radio. she turned a lot of nobs, calculated a lot of what might have been algorithms. i was thankful she was the smartest 10th grader i knew all those years ago.

when we were cleared for landing, the controller said: thank you for flying with us today. i hope you've enjoyed flight. "they know me, i fly so much," she said. 

landing was easy. by then i was a pro. we had a great visit. good food. friends. long walks. dogs. even a special visit with my friend mel's 94-year-old grandmother, who just so happens is a client of kay's. (that's a whole nother story.) we even met some cute little lambs. i talked kay into buying meal worms for her bluebirds, and moving their house. (they have since built a nest.)

while i was there, kay's friend left her a message saying there was a rumor on facebook that she had been flying on sunday and had disappeared. she laughed. i wasn't about to.

on monday morning, i woke to thunder at 5:30 a.m. thunder? couldn't be, i thought, then flashes and more thunder. in the dark i calculated where my husband might meet us on the ground, so we would not have to fly. by 7 i was up and dressed, ready to call him. surely we would not fly in this weather.

"oh, it's gonna blow through here by the time we take off," kay said. and thought as she pulled the plane from its hanger it was pouring, she was right. by liftoff, it was clear enough to see the mountains around us. the flight above the clouds was smooth, blissful. but coming back to rdu was more challenging on that monday morning. cloud cover, lots of traffic. we were rerouted a couple of times. i could not see the water tower. kay talked to the controllers, at one point saying: where the hell are we? i found a strap to hold onto. prayed. and then... land-ho! she landed, and it felt like we were skimming. she is that good.

"you were a great passenger," she said as we taxied to the terminal. "the first time i flew with lee (her husband), i was screaming."

what was i to say?

when i met my husband in the terminal, i saw him with new eyes. at home hugged the dog, called my parents (whom i knew had been worrying about me the whole weekend.) let my kids know i was back.

the next week i read about the air traffic controller in dc who fell asleep, causing two jumbo jets to have to land on their own... on their own...how in the world? the whole thing is computerized, but still.

a friend of mine said the other day that she thought i was growing, and she didn't mean growing sideways, but that when she met me over 10 years ago, no way that me would have flown on a tiny plane to visit a friend.

"i never thought you'd do it," my husband said, when i told him about her comment. "do what?"

"fly on that tiny plane." well, when i wrote fly a kite at the first of march i meant a kite. i never once thought: plane. that part was total improv. and i think kay for helping me be a little braver than i was.

today i called my parents, to check in. my dad said: you saw there were two plane crashes this week. (translation: please don't fly again like that, or wait til i won't know about it.) i had seen the news, said prayers for those lost souls, thinking that could have been me. and kay. 

since april has come, i have taken a new look at my march list. like i said, i've done a few things: fed my birds, said yes and, listened, sung too loudly, studied my orchids, filled a vase with hydrangeas, thanked God, worn blue, napped in the sun, added charms to my bracelet, made rolls, driven down a country road (it was too cold to put the windows down), helped a stranger, smelled puppy breath, stared at the sky, believed it's possible, opened the windows, captured the light, forgiven, taught someone, made much ado... i still have a lot on that list yet to do, but i have done so many other things that i never even thought of. I dusted off a children's goodnight book manuscript i wrote 30 years ago and wrote new verses. planted lettuce. hugged my sister (and my brother), played with with my four-year-old great nephew, took my son to lunch. celebrated birthdays and babies- and brides-to-be. not one day did i fly a kite.

mrs. norfleet's april bulletin board, way back in third grade, was covered with umbrellas. and raindrops. today, though the sun pours into my kitchen, i think of girls in yellow rain boots, umbrellas in hand, stomping at puddles. that's what i'm going to do this month. stomp at the puddles, to see how big a ripple i can make.

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Me To the Core

I know we are five days beyond Reverb10, but I am still catching up...


Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)Author: Molly O'Neill, Harper Collins Children's


A few years ago I got an email from the editor of a regional magazine I had been writing for, asking for writers willing to undergo a personal makeover for the sake of the story. I was 49 years old and in that space of life when, as I say in the story, we want Oprah’s people to call and offer to transform us into someone more beautiful than we feel. 


So, I jumped. A freelancer at the time, I was not about to turn down good money, even if it meant being subjected to bleaches and pincers and people poking at my particulars.  I imagined myself under the influence of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, finally throwing out that aqua pique pantsuit I wore for my book tour 10 years ago, because you know,  I might just fit into it one day again soon. Stylist Nick Arrojo with his sexy Manchester accent giving me just the right cut, and makeup artist Carmindy (what kind of name is that, Carmindy? Could I combine my names somehow, Sustella? Stellusan?)... Carmindy telling me what I really need is a smokey eye. Oh, how I wanted a smokey eye.


What I didn't know was that the story required not only a hair/makeup/clothing makeover — which was hard enough — but that I work with a life coach. A LIFE coach! I didn't agree to anything about changing my life. But I had signed on, so I was in. For five weeks (FIVE WEEKS!) I spent time on the phone with my life coach, with my space organizer, with my clothes makeover maven. The organizer came to my house and transformed my office. (And because of her I now have wonderful built-in book shelves.) The clothes maven came to my closet, and I was embarrassed that I don't have a light close enough by  to see what I am trying to find. Even now. 


The final day would be with the hairstylist, then shopping for a new chic image. (Thank goodness the photos are lost to the magazine archive.) I approached each with trepidation. What did those women really feel when found on a NYC street by Meredith and Matt and Ann and Al and taken off for a day of transformation?


I would soon find out.


On the final day, before I was to have my physical transformation, I met with my life coach at a coffee shop. And OMG (though that expression didn't exist in the vernacular at the time) I was thrilled at the outcome of my little treasure map project. But she was not.

"All you have here are words," she said. "Where are the pictures?" Pictures? Well, I had a few. (ok, four.) But I guess the assignment was NO words. 


Imagine. 


When I thought about it, the magazine pictures of women smiling whom I had never met, objects I would never own.. they didn't draw my eye. What I saw before she pointed to the lack of pictures, was art— something I had created that reflected quite by accident the me at that moment, and probably the me of every moment since I could spell out words at all, on the chalkboard lines my teacher drew in front of me in first grade.


I remember that, how my teacher, Mrs. Pippen, used to write the letters out in yellow chalk, spelling plain old words across the chalkboard in fine block letters that looked like art to me. And she could take that old eraser, wipe it all away, and make a whole new sentence, all over again. What magic, that was. (Yes, I do realize how weird that is.) 


How wonderful, to be able to put one letter in front of the other to make a word. And then a sentence. A paragraph. A page. A story.


But according to my life coach, I had not followed the directions. I had made a C. Well, there you also have me. C. To the Core.


And so, in the beginning of my "finding" (my word for 2011,) today I revisited that treasure map, the one that didn't have (enough) pictures.  Looking at it now I am embarrassed at how much I haven't done, but heartened that it still holds the secrets to what I wish for myself, at my core. 


My purple room friend today took a look at the map and suggested I pick pieces of it to write about during this year. What a wonderful idea. My own little Reverb, she said. A goal I will set for myself. When I am stuck, and maybe when I am not.


What my 49-year-old self meant by the words "Sane, polished, and ready for anything," I have no idea. But I am just curious enough about her to dig out the old chalk board and eraser, to wiggle with the words enough, to find out.


sbr

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