Bangs

A recent assignment from an on-line class was to write something in the voice of a female child. My very earliest memory is of the day Daddy came home from WWII, but not for the reason one would expect. That memory is the basis of the following creative nonfiction piece. Somehow it seems appropriate to post it while I remember Daddy on Veterans Day.

Bangs

“When can I have bangs?”

“When your daddy gets home. It won’t be much longer now, we hope.”

“How long? Will he be here tomorrow? Can I have bangs then?”

“No, not tomorrow. His unit is supposed to ship out soon. In the last V-Mail he wrote that he’ll call us from New York, when they get back from France. We’ll cut your hair after he gets home, but I want him to see how your long hair curls on the ends before we cut it.”

Then Mother showed me the picture again, just like she’s done every time we talk about Daddy. There we are, the three of us. Daddy’s picture is on the left. It’s hard to really remember everything about Daddy, because I was really little when he left. Mother said Uncle Sam called him and he had to go. I still don’t know who Uncle Sam is, because he’s never been to our house like Uncle James and Uncle Warren. She said Uncle Sam gave Daddy the uniform he’s wearing in the picture. It was scratchy when he hugged me goodbye.

Mother’s picture is on the right. She has on her pretty blouse that I like, the one she wears for something special. When she holds me in her lap it feels so soft and smooth. She says it’s made of silk. When I grow up I’m going to have a silk blouse. Sometimes she lets me play with one of her old scarves. I wrap it around me and pretend it is a blouse just like hers. One time when I was playing dress-up, I took her red lipstick so I could be pretty, too, like she is in the picture. I didn’t mean to ruin it, but it broke. When I tried to put it back together, my fingers got all messy, and I had to wipe the lipstick off on the towel in the bathroom. Mother wasn’t happy about that, either.

My picture is in the middle. Before we had our pictures made, Mother washed my hair, curled it, and put a bow in it that matched my dress. Uncle James and Uncle Warren gave me the dress. Mother says it is warm because it’s made from wool. She says wool comes from sheep. I know about Mary and her little lamb, but I’ve never seen a real lamb or sheep. PaPa has cows and pigs on his farm, but no sheep. In the pictures in my Little Golden Book, Mary’s lamb is white. Are some sheep pink? My dress is pink. Grandma says the little flowers on it were ‘broidered, with a needle, like when she made flowers on my pillowcase. I don’t get to wear the dress anymore because it’s too little now. Mother says I’m growing like a weed and that Daddy will hardly know me. She sends him pictures so he’ll know how much I’ve grown in over a year.

I hope he comes home soon, because I really, really want bangs. Some of the big girls have short hair, not long like mine. Mother says we can’t cut my hair until Daddy comes home. One of the girls that stays with me sometimes has bangs. She is in high school. She has long hair, but she has bangs in front. I want some just like that.

***

 Daddy is getting home today! Mother told me that he’d be here today. She was teaching Sunday School at the Methodist Church last Sunday when the call came. Miss Bertha, the phone operator, knew where she would be, so she put the call through to the parsonage next door and sent Mr. Dewey to the church to tell Mother to go to the phone. I was in the Sunday School room next to where Mother and the grown-ups were, so I heard them clap their hands. They were glad Daddy was coming home, too.

Mother and I have been living at Mrs. Clark’s house while Daddy is gone. Two other women and their children live here, too, while their husbands are overseas, wherever that is. Robert is only a little older than me. We play together sometimes, but he wants to play soldier, and I want to play with my dolls. Everyone here is so busy today. They are making a cake because Daddy is coming home. We hardly ever have cake. Mother says it is because they can’t get sugar. She said they all saved their coupons so Robert and I could have birthday cakes. I don’t know how those little pieces of paper have anything to do with sugar. They talk about rationing, but I don’t know what that is, either. Anyway, Mrs. White put a pretty white cloth on the table, and the special plates, too.

***

Daddy got here this afternoon. When he hugged me tight his uniform was scratchy just like when he left. He danced me around and around until I was almost dizzy. “My big girl, you’ve gotten so big,” he said. He laughed when I said I was ready for my cake now, and told me that I would have to wait until the other people got here. It seems like someone is always telling me to wait. When Daddy called me his “pretty girl” and stroked my hair, Mother didn’t even tell him I was getting bangs.

In a little while the house was full of people. Everyone came to see Daddy. Mrs. Clark cut the cake and Miss Doris gave everyone punch in fancy glass cups. After I finished my cake, no one paid any attention to me.

Mother promised me I could have bangs when Daddy got home. He’d been home all afternoon but no one took me to the beauty shop to get my hair cut. So I went to my room, picked up my little scissors, then hid behind the door. I untied the bow, and held the hair that fell across my face. Snip, snip. I had bangs! I held the long section of blonde hair in my hand. Mother wouldn’t like it if I left it on the floor, but I didn’t know where to put it. Then I saw my tea set on my little table. The salmon colored teapot was perfect. I rolled the hair into a wad, hid it inside, and put the lid back on the teapot.

I went back to the living room to show everyone my bangs. When Mother saw me, she said “Oh, baby, what have you done?”

“Baby? I’m not a baby. I’m Daddy’s big girl and I have bangs like the big girls, don’t I, Daddy?”

Daddy laughed. Then he picked me up and swung me around so everyone could see my beautiful new bangs.

Flip Flop

My father had an expression, "A day late, and a dollar short." How often that applies to me! On Sunday a friend pointed out that there is actually a National Flip Flop day, and that it had occurred a few days before. 

So here I am posting something vaguely appropriate more than a day late. But in my defense, I wrote it in April, put it aside, and forgot it until Sunday. So if you, too,  missed National Flip Flop Day, celebrate it belatedly with me. 

Flip-flop

The sandy-haired young man hesitated, turning slightly toward me as he closed the door to his room. Assured that the door had locked, he walked away. Wearing casual shorts and an untucked T-shirt, his clothing was in contrast with his surroundings, the hall with its formal striped wallpaper and floral medallions in the carpet. As he walked, the plush carpet muffled the sounds his shoes made as they slapped the soles of his feet with each step. Though soft, the sound was unmistakable   Flip, flop, flip, flop, or as a friend once described it, the sound of summer.

I knew nothing about the stranger, but from the appearance of his untanned legs and arms, I surmised that he might be visiting Point Clear from a cooler clime, or perhaps he was a young executive usually attired in a business suit and this was his first opportunity to dress so casually. After all, it was still springtime if one followed the calendar. But in south Alabama the daffodils bloomed in late February and early March, fully leafed dogwood trees had lost their blossoms shortly after Easter, and temperatures had begun to soar.

As I continued down the hall, I caught a faint whiff of something familiar: sunscreen. You know the one, the one that smells a little like coconut. Faint in the air-conditioned hall, by the time his arms were warmed by the sun, the aroma would intensify. Did the scent remind him, as it did me, of happy times on the beach?

I smiled. The month of April might be considered springtime by some, but flip-flops and eau de coconut proclaimed that in south Alabama, summer had arrived.  

Is There Such a Thing as Less Than Sporadic?

 My few minutes of fame, well, really not quite fame, happened this morning when Akashic Books published my piece of flash fiction, "Walk Away?" in the Terrible Twosdays section of their website. I immediately called, sent texts, or emailed several people. Several friends have responded to those or to the Facebook post.

When I visited the website myself, for about the umpteenth time, (it really is heady seeing my name and work out there) I actually read the bio and realized that it gives this blog address. Although it said I posted sporadically, when I looked over the blog I realized that might be an understatement. The blog has been almost completely neglected recently,

It wasn't my intent to be so lackadaisical about the blog, but apparently I have been. Sometimes I just forgot that I hadn't posted. At other times I was really busy. More often that not it was doubtful that you really wanted to read about my adventures in installing wall-hung lamps, doing the laundry, or other similar exciting household chores. In other words, I'm still a bit unsure where this blog thing is going or what I have to write about.

So this is my heartfelt apology, especially to those who might be new to me, that we sent you here and you found little. Thank you so much for taking the time to read "Walk Away?" and for being interested enough to see what else I might have written. If you come back later, I'll try to have something more than an excuse, but then again, I might still be resting on my laurels,

Well, hello, Virginia.

Do you ever find yourself doing something, wonder why, then have a moment when you feel connected by that act to someone not there? I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do know that people stay with us in other ways. As I get older, I’m told more and often that I look or sound like my mother. Sometimes I get a glance of myself in the mirror, catch a certain tilt of my head or expression and say, “Well, hello, Virginia.” Even more often I say something and realize that that it sounds not only a little like Mother, but is exactly what she would have said.

Appearance is easy. Genetics will out. But what about how we speak? There again, perhaps genetics play a part, but it could be that we may sound alike because from an early age, we learned to talk by listening to our parents and others around us. Certainly I would not have had my southern accent if I had been reared in another part of the country. As to the content, I suppose many of my views were influenced by Mother, but there still are times when what comes from my lips is so like what she would have said that it is as though she, not I, uttered the words.

What brought on this observation today? Potato salad. Yes, potato salad. I must preface this by saying that I like potato salad, but am not a huge fan. I go for months without making it or ordering it when eating out. The only time I absolutely must have it is on the Fourth of July. Yet today at the salad bar in Fresh Market, I found myself drawn to potato salad.

The spring forward time change always messes me up for several days, so it was not uncommon that today everything seemed a little off. I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather to drive around to see the trees in bloom. I needed an item or two from the grocery store, so I stopped by Fresh Market on my way home. It was then that a growling tummy reminded me that I had not yet eaten lunch, even though it was mid-afternoon. As I passed the salad bar everything looked enticing. Tender green spinach leaves, strawberries, pineapple, and honeydew melon were soon placed in a take-out container. I paused before closing the lid. There was the potato salad. I smiled as I added a small scoop to the side of my salad.

I’ve said before that I heard some of the family stories so often that they became as much a part of me as my own. So often Mother recounted trips to Shreveport when she was young. She and her brothers or friend Mary would be given money to go to a movie, then after the movie they would go to The Big Chain, a grocery store, where for a nickel she would buy a little cup of potato salad.

I think today may have been the first time I bought potato salad at a grocery store, but as I added it to my container I knew why I choose it today. Well, hello, Virginia.

The Permanence of Penmanship

In the past, young children not even out of the scribble stage of drawing began to scrawl marks on paper “writing” a letter or note to someone. Although I do not remember when I began doing this, scraps saved by my mother and grandmother attest to the fact that I did, as do the ones I saved when my children did the same. Lauded for his work in defining the stages of artistic development in children, Viktor Lowenfeld recognized that the time when children begin to name their scribbles is an important juncture.

One of my early memories is of my mother reading aloud to me. Because she was an English teacher with six different preparations a day, she often read from one of the high school literature books. I loved the poem The Highwayman with its sounds of the hooves of horses.  One night as I nestled beside her while she read, looking at the picture-less page, I realized that the marks on the page, the words, not only told the story, the letters could also tell her how to make the sounds tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot.  So it probably comes as no surprise that I was enamored with words and writing them from an early age.

I’ve always loved pencils – all kinds of pencils. The way the different kinds feel in your hand, the curl of wood produced when you sharpen them with hand-held sharpeners, the smell of the trimmings. Perhaps the excitement of using those big round pencils in first grade to practice forming lower and upper case letters and numbers on the newsprint pages printed with pale blue guide lines explains why I still collect pencils. In third grade I was eager to learn cursive writing, then frustrated when mine looked nothing like the beautifully formed letters of the green Palmer Penmanship posters that formed a border above the blackboard in Mrs. Byrd’s classroom.

I’ve followed with interest the quandary of whether cursive should be taught in schools any longer. Will it go the way of the dinosaurs in this age of technology when the youth use computers, often reduced to tablet size, rather than books? It might not be long before everyone will text, tweet, or use whatever the new thing is to communicate. If so, what remnants will remain for future generations? Will there be no faded love letters?

What about the handwritten recipes passed from one generation to another?  Many of the things I cook are from family recipes, however making condiments is not high on my agenda. In fact, I’m quite sure that I will never, ever, make Fermented Catsup. Yes, fermented. The recipe even mentions needing to skim off the “white that forms on top.” Pee-ew. Just the thought of the stench of a peck of tomatoes fermenting in my kitchen deters me from trying that recipe. Yet I treasure the small card. It is the only thing I have in my great-grandmother’s handwriting. The card with the recipe was written in 1930, not many years before Eleanor “Ella” Christopher died, so it is the writing of her elder years, yet it retains the distinctive precision characteristic of the Spencerian method. My great-aunt, Stella Christopher, sent the recipe to my mother with this note: “This recipe for fermented catsup is in your Grandmother Christopher’s writing. It (the recipe) came over on the boat from England with your great-great-grandmother, Jessie Oxley Sams.”

            I remember Great-aunt Stella well, and received letters or notes from her many times. Even after all these years, seeing her scrawling script brings immediately to mind her appearance, her voice, her laugh, her floral-scented dusting powder. My great-grandmother died years before I was born, but I wish I could have known her. My grandmother often compared me to her, saying “You’re so much like Mama,” especially when I did something creative. Great-grandmother Ella’s stitcheries brought me comfort at a difficult time in my life –the designs lovely to see, the sayings so apropos, words of comfort and inspiration when I needed them. The stitches in the embroidery were from her hand, but her handwritten recipe in fading ink is even more personal.

Years from now emails and tweets won’t be found tucked in a box of mementos. They might live in the cloud somewhere, but it is unlikely that, even if found, they will bring the same sense of connection of the handwritten note. Penmanship is personal, and it has permanence. The recipe in my Great-grandmother’s hand endures, not because I’ll ever serve the delicacy, but because it reaches across the decades, connecting me with a chain of women. Jessie, Ella, Ida, Stella, and Virginia, you will be remembered. Kept in memory, stories, and fading scraps of paper.

 

 

           

 

 

 

Synchronicity?

 

Within the last six months, events near me have included the reenactment of the Selma to Montgomery March, the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Capitol of Alabama, and the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

In March of 1965 I brought some college friends to my house for the weekend, unaware until we arrived that it was the weekend of the Selma to Montgomery March. I remember well the concern that my parents had that perhaps violence would break out, therefore the friends I had brought with me and I were not allowed to leave the house. Although I was within only a few miles of the event, my actual experience of it was, as it was for many, through television and newspaper reports, or through what my father had heard about it at his work.

I do not remember the exact time when the Confederate flag began to fly over the dome of the Capitol in Montgomery, nor do I remember the exact year it was moved from above the dome to the capitol grounds, but I do remember, at least vaguely, the events. It was not possible to convey in a recent conversation with a visitor, someone much younger than myself who had never lived in the south, an understanding of the debates and protests swirling around the flag.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Harper Lee, but my college roommate was from nearby Beatrice, and took me to Monroeville in 1965 or early 1966. During that visit she pointed out the courthouse (where years later I attended the local production of the play, To Kill a Mockingbird) and all the locales that inspired scenes in the book.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity in the 1950s.  I can’t say that I really understand his “acausal connecting principle,” nor have I usually put much store in coincidences. But in my reading, I’ve often been aware that sometimes books seem to land in my hands or work their way to the top of the stack to be read at an uncannily appropriate time.

How does this all tie together?  I’ve been a member of the Alabama Writers’ Conclave for many years, and attended the yearly conference for the last four years. During these gatherings I’ve met many authors, heard them speak, and/or bought their books.

Sometimes these books have become lost, or at least misplaced, in the many areas where books end up in my house. Knowing that I would see Chervis Isom at this year’s conference, I was relieved when his book, The Newspaper Boy, resurfaced in time for me to read it before I saw him. He grew up in Birmingham during the civil rights era, and bravely details in this memoir the development and changes in his own attitudes over the years. I finished reading the book on Tuesday, July 14, the same day that Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was released. I began reading it the next day. To read the two books back to back was a very interesting juxtaposition.

Also attending and speaking at the conference were Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Four Spirits, a historical novel about the 1963 bombing at a church in Birmingham that killed four young girls and T. K. Thorne, author of Last Chance for Justice: How Relentless Investigators Uncovered New Evidence Convicting the Birmingham Church Bombers. Since the conference was planned well in advance, it was perhaps a bit of synchronicity that the speakers were lined up months before the events I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Reviews, both good and bad, of Go Set a Watchman have appeared in almost every newspaper and flooded the internet, and I am not trying to add to that number. Someone recently said, “You can’t hold time in a bottle.” Certainly, there are times I would not want to hold, but I am thankful that there are those writers who can hold it in a book.  Their stories, perhaps better than anything else, can help others understand the past and move forward in the present.

           

             

 

 

Happy Birthday to Me!

It was a great day, and more fun when I visited with friends in the evening. So I’m not really having to proclaim “Happy Birthday” to myself out of loneliness – I received cards, calls, texts, e-mails, and numerous messages or timeline postings on Facebook. I have definitely not been neglected.

I have never tried to conceal my actual age (well, not once I was twenty-one, anyway.) A friend of mine says “A woman that will tell her age will tell anything,” as though it’s a bad thing. I’m to the stage when I’m glad to have made it this far. But having said all that, I was a little put off when I opened Facebook the day before my birthday and there it was “Carol Robbins Hull turning 72 tomorrow.” Somehow in cold hard type it seemed, well, I’m not sure what it seemed. Intrusive, maybe. If I choose to tell you my age, that is one thing, but for Facebook to blab it to the whole FB universe seemed a bit heartless. Of course, it probably means only that I didn’t do the settings right and their computer just spit it out to alert people that my day was coming up, and I will admit that I loved reading all the posts that people send me on my day.

I’m not quite through complaining though. In past years I’ve received birthday cards from my insurance agent and sometimes the dentist, and that was fine with me, a bit commercial, but at least I actually have some kind of relationship with them. However I received one this year that offends me. It says that I have something special just for me: a hearing test and a gift card to a restaurant when I order my hearing aids. I guess what my cousin’s husband says is true, that once we get to a certain age we are presumed to be “deaf, blind, and lame.” I am tired of being bombarded weekly with ads for those things you ride around on, hearing aids, and old-folks-friendly phones. I can still hear pretty much all I want to hear. True, I do have to ask people to repeat things sometimes, but that is usually because I wasn’t paying attention in the first place. After cataract surgery my vision is the best it’s been since I was ten years old. And I may not keep up an athlete’s pace, but I’m still getting around pretty well. Not running any marathons, actually not running at all, but then I rarely did even when younger. My mother thought that ladies shouldn’t perspire, much less sweat (a word she never used) and I’m somewhat in agreement.

There are at least a few establishments that I refuse to do business with because I really dislike their ads. Because I am getting older (I refuse to say old) it is possible that I might someday need a hearing aid, but if one more sales piece thinly disguised as a good wish arrives, this place will most certainly find itself on that list. So all you companies that bombard women ‘of a certain age,’ with unwanted reminders that we are not twenty-one any more, take note. I think I speak for most of us when I say, “Stop it!” Outwardly we may appear as youthful as we feel, but don’t count us out yet. We still know our own minds, and we are a choosy lot.