She was 92!

When someone has lived a long and (mostly) happy life, a funeral becomes not a time of grief, but an opportunity to share wonderful memories and to reflect on how lucky you are to have that person in your life. Our family enjoyed looking through old black and white photos of Grandma Hall as a baby, a young girl, a jodphur-wearing teenager with a piebald horse, a grinning newlywed tucked under the arm of a lanky man in a fedora and a double-breasted suit. He was grinning too! A young mother gazing at her baby with adoring eyes, oblivious to the camera. A proud grandmother surrounded by a motley crew of disheveled kids. A time to be grateful, to feel lucky and blessed to have her.

Grandmother died on August 6th after a life well-lived. Old enough to be born into a family whose chief means of transportation was horse and wagon. Old enough to remember when cotton and corn were picked by hand and loaded into the wagon, which was pulled by the horse, to the gin or grist mill. Old enough to have played in a yard that was filled with flowers instead of grass. Old enough to have used a wood burning stove.... even as a newlywed! Old enough to have lived through The Great Depression (her father lost the farm), to watch a husband leave to fight in World War II and to get confused about "swim, swam, swum" because they changed the rule after she finished school.

Old enough to call jeans "dungarees" and the refrigerator the "ice box". Old enough to remember phone operators and doctors who made house calls, and to have made enough chocolate chip cookies, cheese straws, chewy cake, pimento and cheese, apple salad, banana pudding, fried cornbread, and apple tarts to feed a small army of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Old enough to call earrings "ear bobs" and to say things like: "Pretty is as pretty does" and "sit up straight, like a lady".

She loved and was loved and had a pretty marvelous life. There were no grand trips or thrilling adventures. Much of her happiness came in helping others. She and my grandfather would take widows out for Sunday Drives. She sent meals by our house weekly when my mother went back to work and sent her famous deviled eggs to church suppers.

To me she was this elegant blonde who managed to look beautiful with minimal effort. Who never went anywhere without her nails done, her clothes pressed neatly, her hair done up and a pair of earbobs on. She would show me how to do things like paint my nails (a long swipe down first one side, then the other, then a smooth stroke down the middle to finish the first coat), pluck my brows (ouch!) and to sit with my legs tucked to the side. As my cousin Lisa said, I think I'm letting my grandmothers down on the elegance, stately score. I'm usually a mussed, unorganized mess. Despite detailed lessons at her knee, I still can't paint my own fingernails worth a doodle or sew a button on a shirt. But she loved us anyway. Even if those lessons must have seemed like the epitome of futility at times.

She was easy to love.

Running Faster

... but can't catch the carrot. Too many balls in the air, irons in the fire, cooks in the kitchen, etc.

It has been so long.

I really haven't had two coherent thoughts to string together, much less enough for an entire post. I've been avoiding the blog because I know I'm so far behind on catching up with what is happening in everyone else's lives and maybe I really didn't want to think about how much I've been missing out on in the blogiverse. You, dear readers, know that you will end up with a potluck kind of post I'm sure. So here we go!

It's hot. My brain seems as sluggish as the muggy, humid weather. Blergh. Even the pool isn't refreshing. The water is more like bath water than anything cool and relaxing. We took the kids to Magnolia Springs State Park last week and they declared it "the hottest day ever." We did the picnic thing (of course there were ants), took a short nature walk and packed it in. The stop for ice cream on the way home salvaged the day I think.

The last month has been a whirlwind. We've been away for a trip, the kids have been off with each set of grandparents, we squeezed in a date night and a viewing of Harry Potter (loved it!).

My car has decided to crank only intermittently. All repair attempts thus far have failed. Two weeks of working fine, then it won't crank. Then it cranks for two weeks, then it won't. New battery and alternator, new crank relay (?).... and of course when the mechanic tries, it works just fine. We'd really like to get another good year or so out of it before trading it in on a new one. Stupid car.

Rob's mother lost her keys and swore up and down that Rob had them. He didn't. You all know how organized he is... no way would he be unable to find them if he had them. We looked high and low and under and over and around and then did it all again. No keys. She was still convinced he had them. He didn't. I did. He found them in my purse when he went to get my cell phone out to charge it. Oops. In my defense, that thing is HUGE (think Hermione's bag) and has about a billion compartments. I think she may have given them to me before they left for the airport and in the thousands of events that took place betwixt and between I completely forgot it. Did I say "oops" already?

Abby, who has never met anything that was childproof, managed to open the safety cap on the vitamins and took four. While I was lecturing on pill safety, her brother threw in his own little cautionary tale: "Abby, Elvis DIED from taking too much medicine!!" He even had his hands up in the air and his eyebrows in outrage position. It was so much more effective than anything I could have said. Even if she doesn't know who Elvis is.

Free Me

Currently listening to Joss Stone's Free Me. Serious crush on this song.

Hair down, summer dress, bare feet, dancing in the den, eyes closed, glass of wine in hand.

Playing it loud.

Christine and J.G. A Love Story

In a small blue room on College Street sits a woman who, seventy one years ago, fell in love with a red-haired man whom she knew from her childhood. When they were small she watched him swinging around the columns on his front porch across the street while she played with dolls on hers. When they met again, she recognized him before he ever took off his hat to reveal that red hair underneath. Theirs was a six month courtship that culminated in a wedding at the parson's study.

They built a life in a small house with a wrap around front porch and a screened in back porch. She watched him go to war with a young girl beside her and a babe on the way. She welcomed him home and introduced him to a second daughter. Everyday she polished his shoes and he took the list she gave him to do the shopping. She baked cookies and he delivered them. He sat at the kitchen table and diced and chopped, sliced and cut and she cooked. She shopped and he paid the bills. She fertilized and he cut the grass. She waved goodbye as he drove to his shift as a prison guard, and prayed he would come home safely.

Each Sunday he dressed neatly in the shirt she pressed, the suit and tie she picked. She put on “ear bobs”, touched up her hair with a pick, asked him to zip her dress and off they drove. Three blocks to church and three blocks back. They raised their daughters, Pat and Linda, in the quiet little house with the big backyard. They loved them through thick and thin, though there wasn't very much thin. How could two girls brought up in such love ever raise much of a ruckus?

Eventually they welcomed grandchildren and rocked and read and babysat. She patched the knees of torn dungarees and sewed buttons back on shirts. He bought crickets and packed up the long cane poles so they hung out the car window, a flag that said without words: “Going fishing!” and patiently baited hooks, took off the catch and never once dipped his own line in the pond. Then there were great grandchildren and they repeated all that had gone before with the same books and toys, needle, thimble and cane poles (but new crickets).

And then. He was sick. The recurrent bronchitis turned to pneumonia that turned to something else. And he was in a hospital 60 miles from home. Home being not the little white house with the red columns and detached garage, but her. And then he did come home and he cried to see her again. She was no longer the slender blond whom he had married on a cold day in February, but do you imagine that he had never thought her more lovely? Not long after, his breathing changed. Infection had set in and this time he would return neither to the little house on the double-lined drive nor to her.

Ten years from that day she sits, no longer in the house where they lived together but in a nursing home. A summer wreath hangs on the door. Framed pictures of the girls hang on the wall next to the window. A hummingbird calendar tracks the days and months as they pass. Outside her windows blue jays, redbirds and little black cowbirds swoop to the bird feeder. Linda has updated the magnet boards that hold family pictures with photos of the first great-great grandchild and Pat has made the bed and turned back the covers. She can no longer chat with them as they sit with her day in and day out, morning and afternoon. The life that lit her blue eyes is fading as quickly as their color.

Today, one of them will help the staff use the lift to move her from bed to chair and back again. One of them will take care of personal needs the mother is no longer embarrassed to endure at the hands of others. The daughter, Linda or Pat, will bathe her, gently scratch her scalp, spoon feed her small helpings of yogurt, plump the pillows just the way she likes them. The daughter will call for medicine and tuck a small gift in the breast pocket of the hospital gown, so her mother, whose lips can no longer form the words “thank you” can, nonetheless, say “thank you” to whoever comes to help. And these daughters still search for, and find, the woman who fell in love with a red haired boy so many years ago. And they love her, with gentle words and hands, as she has loved them.

When Life Gives You Peaches...

make peach cobbler!

My strawberry couple gave me a big bag of fresh Georgia peaches yesterday. So this morning, I peeled and sliced them, googled my favorite recipe (below) and coerced the kids into helping prepare a south Georgia summer treat. Note that I used skim milk in mine, which surely cancels out some of the butter? I know, I know... the SUGAR. I just couldn't help myself. I did save three peaches for slicing and eating plain. But there were so many peaches. It would have been so wrong to let them just lay around and ruin wouldn't it?

Dear Kmart,

It's over. You've teased me with your blue light specials. Tempted me with soft Martha Stewart linens. Marked your books down to 25% and added a line of children's dance accoutrements to keep our relationship limping along. Instead of being warned by your mostly empty parking lot, I fell hard for the false promise of short checkout lines, only to discover a single cashier on duty and a line 6 customers deep.

Why Kmart? Why? Was I not disheartened enough with your lack of help, customer service and wonky-wheeled shopping carts? Did you have to add a survey to the electronic checkout? Mr. Bluelight wants to know if I would recommend Kmart to my friends? Highly likely, probably, maybe, probably not, no? You won't let me complete my purchase unless I answer? You've sealed your fate.

I can quit you Kmart. Luckily, I won't need a restraining order.

Sweet Tea

Good sweet iced tea is created by steeping tea bags for at least five minutes, pouring the hot concentrate in a pitcher, adding sugar,and stirring to dissolve before filling the pitcher to the top with cold water. It is impossible to sweeten cold tea! No one wants grains of sugar suspended in their tea glass, which is exactly what happens when you add sugar once the tea is already cold.

It's brutally hot. The first day of summer on the calendar, but the 50th day according to the temperature gauge since early April. A nice cold glass of sweet tea, heavy on the ice, is THE way to cool off. We've been downing the tea by the pitcher.