Kitchen Art

I like to cook.  Seriously like to cook.  I love the smell of onions when they hit hot butter, garlic in anything, the soft scent of vanilla can calm me like few others.  I need to remember this everyday when I drag my feet over dinner.

I get it, the day is long, I am tired, I feel uninspired when I think of the meal.  I have been known to wail, "Do we need to eat dinner EVERY DAY?"  However, I need to remind myself that no matter how stressed out I am, how pressed for time, how tired and sore I am, the moment the cutting board is on the kitchen counter and my knife is in my hands poised to chop an onion I can feel my heart rate settle and my mind quiet.

The quiet and interesting thoughts that wander through my mind as I chop, peel, slice, and arrange are nearly meditative.  It is a way to clear all the clobber out that has built up through the day, or puzzle at a particularly sticky situation I am facing.  That moment when I hit a rhythm and my movements become more like a dance is pure magic for me.  Of particular joy is that spot in time when a little voice in my head will begin to whisper ingredients I hadn't thought of that are the perfect addition to what I am working on.

I don't draw, paint, write poetry or compose music.  I cook.  It is my art, my expression of love, the way I show my care and they way I find peace in a noisy world.

Music of Midlife

I can't remember a time when I wasn't enthralled by music.  I gravitated toward it, savored it, desired to make it.  I was the kid that agonized through elementary art and beamed through music class.  I couldn't wait to get the little plastic recorder and learn "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie."  As soon as I could make a choice in my extracurricular activity at school, I dropped art and joined the choir.

So I think I have made it clear I love music.  What should also be clear is that I play no instrument other than my own voice.  I have always wanted to play an instrument.  I begged for a guitar for Christmas, which I got, and then was given no lessons and the strings were cut to render it silent.  I tagged along on my friends piano lessons, constantly hoping to get my own.  My mother bought an organ and told me I could figure it out on my own, but yelled when I got near it.  That plastic recorder I got each year would last only until a part went missing, or it was "accidentally" broken.  In the fifth grade we had the chance to get free lessons on a musical instrument and I settled on the flute.  My grandmother arranged to rent me one and for the next 9 weeks I lived in a state of torture.  If I practiced with the flute my mother berated me, if I didn't practice she screamed at my lack of effort.  When time came to renew the rental she yelled about the cost, never mind that it was my grandmother paying for it.  No, when the time came to renew I silently let it go.  Silently.

That is when I learned that the one instrument I had, that cost nothing, that went everywhere with me, that never needed tuning, never broke a  string was my voice.  It was mine, all mine and nobody could take it from me.  That is when I settled on singing.  It made me happy.  It made me free.  It healed my insides.

From 6th grade, until I was well into my twenties I sang in one choir or another.  I sang in the car.  I sang in the shower, I played records on my stereo and sang into my hairbrush.  I sang with my friends and we recorded it on our tape recorders. I sang on stage, I sang in the hallways, and I sang in the woods at home.  I sang Christmas carols, classic choral music (thanks to Mrs Smith), rock and roll, country, mountain music, operettas, rock operas, folk music, bird song.

Singing continued to be something I did with gusto for many, many years.  Long after the last practice with a church choir I still sang in the car or while I cleaned the house.  Then, in my mid-thirties I had my first son, lost my first son, and lost my voice.  Suddenly singing, any singing caused me such pain my throat would close.  For the first time in my life I had no music.  I had no song.

It took years for the song to return.  I had Connor, and singing to him was a joy that closed my throat and brought tears to my eyes.  Slowly, oh so slowly, the song returned to me.  I began singing again.  Only for Connor or myself, but singing all the same.

The music has expanded for me with Connor's arrival.  He and I whistle with each other.  We whistle all the time.  We whistle together, we whistle between, and we whistle at each other.  He loves music too, though he professes to not like to sing.  I see myself in his young desire to fiddle with music.

Now, at the age of 46 I find myself wanting an instrument to accompany myself with.  For years a secret desire has lived in my heart.  For 42 long years I have wanted to own and learn to play an autoharp.  Crazy, silly, and will not let me go desire to learn the autoharp.  So, this week, on Friday, November 8th I will drive to New Jersey and buy a used autoharp to see if I can learn.  Will this become another instrument, all my own, that cannot be taken from me?  Only time, and my determination can tell.

Capable Hands, Lazy Nails

For the last couple of months I have been taking the time to paint my nails and take better care of them than I am usually likely to.  The regular manicures, with filing and cuticle treatments and polish have been nice moments of relaxation in which I focus on myself, and enjoy the results of the rest of the week.  I have an ever expanding selection of nail polish, and am forever on the hunt for new and different.  I'll pain my nails anything from the candycorn-style I attempted for Halloween, to traditional pink, red, purple, green, blue, silver, lavender.  I like them all!

However, as this habit has reasserted itself after a few years of neglect, I find myself remembering something my mother used to yell at me when I was in high school and in my early 20s.  See, back in those days I spent a lot of time on myself, what girl that age doesn't??  I styled my hair, put on make up, painted my nails.  My mother ridiculed the make up as trashy, the hair as overdone and the wrong color, and the nails as lazy.

Yes, that's right.  I had lazy nails.  According to my mother, if you had the time to care for your nails, paint them, and not have them torn to shreds as you worked, you must not be working hard enough.  When I first got a job as a secretary, she swore the days of "lazy nails" had to be done.  No employer would take me seriously if I didn't take myself seriously and ditch the "lazy nails" for "capable hands."

That really hurt. I thought my hands were perfectly capable.  I wasn't one for the ultra long nails, just nicely painted and cared for. I worked as hard as the next person.  Still, the site of my nails, freshly painted was enough to set her off on a tirade.

My mother died when I was 25, so she never got to experience the years in which I indulged in artificial nails and regular pedicures.  Nor was she there to comment on  the months during my pregnancies when I went for twice a month mani pedis.  She also wasn't there to nod smugly when my nails spent years brutally trimmed and unadorned while Connor was a young child.

So now, as I have periodically over the last 5 years or so, I am on a kick of painting my nails.  Each time I do it, I hear my mother shrieking at the laziness of it all.  Yet, when I see my neatly painted nails encrusted with dirt from the garden, gloppy with the meatloaf I am forming for dinner, dripping with soapy water from the floor washing, I silently tell her to stuff it.

These days, I see that my "lazy nails" rest on the most capable of hands.  Those hands deserve to be cared for as they care for others.  Why shouldn't my strong and capable hands be pampered and decorated?  I paint my nails because my hands work so hard.

Mean Girls

If you are a female of the human race you have been a mean girl or been a victim of one.  They are inevitable and unavoidable miseries that dot the landscape waiting to wound and main the unsuspecting.  You can tell yourself any number of little white lies to make them seem like the walking wounded, or something to be pitied, but that allows them to behave in hurtful ways with no responsibility for the damage they do.

I had hoped I had left mean girls long behind me when I left school.  For a few years it truly seemed that way.  It wasn't that I didn't have conflicts with women, of course I did. But a mean girl, that is a particular creature capable of so much damage.  How sad to find that some girls never outgrow being mean.

Grown women who are mean girls fall into a couple of categories.  There are those who were mean as children and never outgrew it.  Then there are those women who were victims of mean girl in their younger years and now they have found themselves an opportunity to claim perceived power and be mean girls themselves.

These days I am dealing with the later breed of mean girl.  A woman I have come in contact seems to so clearly have been one of those girls in school victimized by mean girls. I can picture her being teased, picked on, embarrassed, humiliated.  I can see it when I look at her because I was her once. I can see it in her eyes the same that I can see it in mine sometimes.  Unlike me, she wants to make others hurt the way she hurt.

This woman is toxic, to herself and all those around her.  I watch her belittle others, frighten others into being her "friends" and generally making any situation she is in all about her.  I have no patience for this crap, none at all.  I spent so much of my youth victimized and crying because of girls like her that I have no intention of fannying about with it now.

So, mean girl, you are on notice.  You aren't frightening me and I won't stand silently by as you tear others down.  The day will come when you will find that those you think are your friends are really just frightened of you.  When they realize that others feel like they do, they will join together and you will be powerless to stop them.  You will be alone in your meanness and we will be happier to be free of your nastiness.

Mean girls suck.

Phone Home

When I was younger and I went on a trip my mother always insisted that the first thing I do on arrival was call to let her know I was there safe and sound.

As a very young child, I didn't think anything of it and happily checked in on arrival, and sometimes once or twice while I was away depending on the length of the trip.  I even have a picture of me, freshly showered and in my nightgown in the Polynesian Hotel, phone to ear and my suntanned face glowing as I fill mom in on all the fun.

As I got older, it got a little more trying a promise to keep.  How embarrassing to be on a choir trip and have to walk in the hotel and pick up the phone.  Irksome and I felt unnecessary, after all I was FINE. Of course, I called anyway, I didn't dare not to.  Mom insisted and if I wanted to make any more trips, I'd better make that call.

Well, as time went by the habit became ingrained. I keenly felt the need to check in with someone on arrival at a vacation destination.  I would walk in to an number of hotel rooms, and walk to the phone to make my check in.  I shudder to admit it, but I did it on my honeymoon too.  It meant the world to my mother, just to hear that we arrived and were happy and safe.

Of course, now my mother has been gone for nearly 20 years.  Yet, the habit remains.  I walk in to a hotel room and I itch to pick up the phone and tell her we are fine.  Honestly, to tell someone we have arrived and are fine.  I have bewildered many a person with that call to say, "We're here!"

It happened yesterday as we walked in to our hotel room in Washington D.C.  I just wanted to touch base with home, to say we were here and all was well.  It still seemed crazy to not pick up the phone and dial my mother's number.  An empty feeling in my heart and my hand.

Maybe because with the passing of my mother some essential sense of home is lost forever.  My home, the place where they watched me grow up and made sure I was safe and sound (on occasion) is gone forever.  I have a wonderful and full home now, but it is different.

I can never arrive at a destination and phone home again.  Miss you mom.  By the way, we got here safe and sound, the hotel is lovely, and Connor is loving Washington D.C.

Like August

Here I am, at the end of July. ACRA is ended and August yawns before me, the last hurrah of Summer before the onset of Fall. The air is heavy with humidity, but tinged with the promise of cooler days to come.  August is the down slope of Summer, the relaxation of everything before the harvest to come.

This morning I stepped out on to my porch and the chorus of lazy crickets sang the song of late Summer.  Too tired to play individual parts in a square dance, they lazily droned a dirge in unison.  I could feel the moisture in the air,and yet just a hint of chill that wanted me to pull my robe closed.  It smelled of the tired green of the yard, the fading flowers of the garden.  We aren't quite to the reckless abandonment of Autumn, but past the blowsy fullness of Summer.

August is a month for the pool, the beach, day trips, and afternoons in the hammock.  It is the scent of chlorine and sunscreen, the sound of surf, and the grit of sand underfoot.  The trees sag under the weight of Summer dust, the flowers droop for want of water.  Nights are devoid of the magic of fireflies, and the crickets sound frantic in that late Summer way.

I feel the lazy, slow, dying in my bones.  I want nothing more than to dig my toes in the sand and meditate on the ceaseless waves, or to stretch out and listen to the sounds of the local pool.  Gardening holds little allure, cooking even less.  I want to relax, stretch out and soak in the last moments of Summer.

I feel like August.

Moonshine and Murder

I always knew that there was moonshine in my father's family background. I even got tricked into tasting some when I was younger. (Word to the wise, when a crowd of guys gathers in the backyard and passes a mason jar around, it is NOT spring water.) Stories of uncles, grandfathers, fast cars, product hidden in beehives, and thump barrels silenced in a creek were told and listened too over and over. One story I was told seemed too fantastic to be real.  It goes like this.....

According to family legend, as told by my father's mother (who was just over a year old when it happened), her father had a contract with the federal government to produce moonshine for the military and the government during WWI.  Now, Prohibition being the law of the land, this made local producers who didn't enjoy this protection jealous. They joined together, ambushed the cabin one night and shot her father, gravely wounding him.  They took off into the night and she was placed in the dying man's lap, where she remained all night long as he died.  Two men were eventually tried and convicted of murder and were executed for the murder.

So, what did this give me to go on?  A location, a time period, a potential individual, and a story that must have made local news.  I decided to start with the individual, trying to pin down a name for my grandmother's father. Not as easy as it would sound.  There is no father listed on her birth certificate, nor on that of her older sister.  Hmmmmm..... I kept plugging away and finally I had a name, John White.  The only name more mundane and difficult to confirm would have been John Smith, but still how many John Whites married to Delia Easters with daughters Bertie and Annie could there be?  Only the one as it turns out and he appears marrying Delia in 1914 and by 1920 she and her daughters are all shown in the census as "Whites" and living with her widowed mother, no John in sight.  This was promising, he disappears at the right time. I "googled" everything I could think of to track down the story from there and got nowhere, for years.  Then I had a flash of insight, maybe somebody else had another part of the story.

I was off to my ancestry.com account looking for someone else that had John White in their tree.  Lightening struck and I got in touch with a lovely lady living in North Carolina who's MIL is actually my relative, a cousin counted and removed (I haven't quite worked it out yet, but my great-grandmother Delia and her MILs mother were sisters).  This lady's MIL was actually friendly with my grandmother when she was a young woman!  From here the story resolved quickly.

Turns out, it wasn't my great-grandfather John White.  Nope, it was Delia Easter's father William Riley Easter who was the victim of the story told so many times.  My new friend/family in North Carolina sent me the newspaper articles and a couple of pictures and here is how the story really goes.....

William Riley Easter was a man who made stills, really good stills, and he repaired stills that law officers had attempted to destroy. He was also an exceptional producer of shine.  According to the newpapers his son (and maybe he) had a loose aggrerment with the sheriff in Mount Airy, NC (of Mayberry fame) in which he would turn in stills for bounty money.  In July 1918, William Riley Easter's son, Jim turned in a still to the local sheriff, Belton that belonged to the Cain brothers.  The sheriff confiscated the still, and the Cains took serious exception to this.  Threats were leveled about the return of the still or else violence would be done.  William Riley walked into town and further inflamed things by turning in the product of the still that had already been destroyed.  That sealed his fate.

On the night of July 22, 1918 he was hosting a family party at his "small mountain home" with children and grandchildren in attendance.  His wife, my great-great grandmother Margaret and her daughter, my great-grandmother Deelie Easter WHITE were in the front yard when a large group of men appeared in the moonlight.  William Riley Easter, thinking they were revenuers came to the door and asked them in, and then the shooting started.  Riley was struck in the stomach and was dragged into the home while fire was returned from inside the cabin.  A woman screamed that the men had killed "her pap and her baby" and the gunfire stopped, the men melting back into the night.

The law was fetched and a doctor brought to tend to the wounded and sort out the story.  The doctor, insisting that Riley would not die, was contradicted by Riley, who insisted otherwise. He gave testimony and identified those that had shot him.  Gut shot and in pain, he lingered 13 hours, with his granddaughter (my grandmother), Annie Easter White on his lap.

The Cain brothers were caught quickly, along with several others identified by Riley as he died and confirmed by other family members.  They were taken to jail, tried for the crime and the two Cain brothers became the first men electrocuted in Surry County, NC (hanging having been the method until then).

So there it is, a story that belongs in a book or a movie, but not my history. It is surreal to me that my grandmother was a baby in the middle of all of that, that my great-grandmother had to be a witness to the murder of her own father.  I have seen pictures of Delia, she seemed so stoic and grim, she had good reason to be. My Grandmother Annie Easter White Secrest Prazzo could have her moments of deep negativity, and who can blame her?

Moonshine can have such a romantic and daring aura about it, but this story shows the underbelly of it all. Rivals, cheats, anger, retribution, gunfire, and women and children screaming and cowering in the midst of it all.

I am still researching, still reading and still digesting, but I wanted to get this out on the blog to begin sharing it with others in my family who will want to know.