At the Top of the Hickory Nut Gorge

              

               Follow US 74A from Lake Lure up through Chimney Rock and Bat Cave as it climbs its winding way until you come to the upper end of the Hickory Nut Gorge.  You'll find yourself in Gerton, an unincorporated community that traces its roots as deeply into North Carolina's history as some of the oldest trails that thread through these mountains.

               Here there are hardy citizens whose families have lived in this spot for centuries.  Here, too, are newer folks who came into these wooded hills to find the peace of nature only to find that its beauty captivated them and they couldn't leave it behind.   Some live here just part-time, when they can get away from other places where they have found work, places where most of the residents walk upright on two legs and don't know a hemlock from an oak.  But here is where those lucky city folks really live, coming fully to life here amid the tall trees and steep slopes, here where that sound outside isn't the newspaper boy, but just might be a raccoon or a fox or even a bear.

               It would be easy to treat US 74A just as a way from Lake Lure to Asheville.  It's a pretty drive, though its hairpin turns are not for the queasy.  But it's worth taking your time to savor both the roadside points of interest visible from the highway and the special places that you'll find by wandering down some of the side roads.

            

The "Welcome to Gerton" signs going toward Asheville are followed in short order by the Post Office on the right and a fire station on the left.  Though unincorporated, Gerton has its signs of order and civilization.

               

                       In no particular order, you might want to stop to take a photograph of the Bearwallow Baptist Church.  It's a picture postcard opportunity, this little white clapboard church with a wooden bridge across a rill in the front yard.  If you check out their Facebook page before going, you'll see their slogan, "Searching for Souls since 1868," prominently displayed.  There's history here for sure.

               
              Just up the road is "Hillbilly Sam's" place.  It has the look of the backwoods about it though it sits immediately adjacent to the highway.  Sam's sign says that photos are possible; we've heard small fee for the pleasure might be appreciated.  Sam, who is most often shirtless, clothed only in his jeans and a prodigious beard, was not in sight on our last trip, so no hillbilly photos for us.

              

            The Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Community Center building once held a small store that we visited years ago.  Though the store is gone now, the center remains.  A sign at the door says it was home to the first Adopt-a-Highway program in North Carolina as designated by Governor Jim Martin in 1988.

              

               On up the road a way (just were you leave Henderson County and enter Buncombe County) is the marker for the Eastern Continental Divide.  It marks the height here as 2,880 feet at the crest before the highway descends on the other side of the ridge toward Fairview, Reynolds and Asheville.  The Eastern Continental Divide is an invisible line separating the two watersheds of the Atlantic Ocean, one whose rivers flow over 2000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico and the other whose rivers flow about 300 miles toward the Atlantic Seaboard.  You can see other such markers through these mountains, each marking the height at its particular location.

               Now, back to those side roads.  You can take Bearwallow Mountain Road and follow it over the mountain to end up on US 64 between Bat Cave and Hendersonville.  Parts of this road are unpaved, leading to a hiking trail that will take walkers up to the summit.  The pavement picks up there for a beautiful drive past both bucolic scenery and a very high-end development with those coveted mountain vistas seen for miles around.

              

              Our favorite side road thus far is Bearwallow Cemetery Road.  Up the road a short distance we found the cemetery of Bearwallow Baptist Church.  Rising above and around the grave markers are trees that reach for the heavens and create a natural cathedral vault.  Though you can hear the sound of cars on the highway nearby, that noise is muffled and peace settles over the hillside as you step into this resting place.

              

As with such cemeteries the world over, history is written in the family names on the tombstones, each marker telling a story of its own, however simple.  There are stories of love and loss, touching memorials to marriages and births followed too quickly by deaths.  There are stories of service and sacrifice, including those who served in the American Revolution, the U.S. Civil War and World Wars I and II.  Whatever their battles in life, now they find only peace here.

               This is a place of remembrance, lovingly kept, its grasses mowed, stone walls gently bringing order to the ground in which loved ones have been laid.   It tells the history of this place and its people. including those who have farmed, fished and hunted in these mountains from the birth of our country till today.  It seemed to us the soul of this place lies here at the top of the Hickory Nut Gorge.

           Photos by Mike  Lumpkin    

Becoming Myself

          

"It's not the years, it's the mileage." --  Indiana Jones

           

So the latest birthday behind me, candles extinguished, love shared with friends and family and now I'm 68 years old.  It's a number that would have horrified me when I was younger, but one of my discoveries through these decades is that it is just a number.  Sure, I've entered what some call the "Golden Years," but our friend Ackie calls the "Medical Years."  Yep, there's a touch of arthritis, the "heartbreak of psoriasis" (as the TV commercials used to call it) and other assorted anomalies of the body.  That said, I wouldn't be any other age than the one to which I wake up each morning.

            [As a quick aside, I need to put this blogging thing in some perspective.  I don't write out of a sense that I have any particular wisdom to offer, but just because I've always been verbal and enjoy writing a lot.  I share the blog because any writer likes to be published in some form.  There's a lot of other writing I do that doesn't fit this venue, but maybe someday I'll do something with that, too.]

            Now back to this aging thing.  I like the age I am as well as any that has gone before.  It seems wise to do so since there is really no alternative, but I've never spent a great deal of time wishing for the past.  If I could have more time with loved ones who are no longer here, I would absolutely want to do that.  I certainly would ask them many more questions about their lives and I would take notes to remember.  Having no chance of that, I cherish the memories and realize how lucky I have been to know and love those who have been part of my life.

            The mileage has been instructive, sometimes fun and joyful, sometimes sad and disturbing.  I have learned from all of it, sometimes forgotten lessons that had to be relearned, but always have been affected by the experience.  I've learned enough to know I'll be learning all my life and that makes me happy because curiosity has driven my life's journey.

            Thanks to my parents Billy and Frances for giving me the gift of reading.  Books have taken me all over the world and into times before I was born and a future we can only imagine.  Authors have inspired me to try new places, not to fear taking chances and, of course, they inspired me to express myself with the words I learned to love so young.

            My sister Pat, about whom I've written many times, set the odometer of my life turning when she allowed me to accompany her on her own teenage adventures.  She taught me to drive in the sand dunes and state parks around Albany, Georgia where we grew up.  She neglected to share with Mama and Daddy the story of how I got the 1948 Chevy stuck in the sand and we had to get help to get it out.  She prevaricated when Daddy wanted to know how the car's bumper got dented, avoiding telling him that I drove into a pine tree at Chehaw State Park. I suspect he wondered how I learned how to drive without his help, but he agreed to take me to the Driver's License Bureau when I turned 16 with one caveat.  Though he had never ridden in the car with me driving, he said that if I could get him there without incident, he would support my getting the license.  I did and he did. 

            Not every part of the journey has been smooth sailing.  I made misjudgments, as most of us do.  Luckily those cost me less than I gained.  A first marriage that went awry gave me the gift of a cherished son. The second marriage gave me a husband who has loved me and forgiven my foibles for more than three decades while loving our son and parenting him with love and guidance.  Some choices that seem so right prove to be wrong.  Sometimes that which seems a devastating loss turns out to be a lesson that heals and nurtures. 

            There are days when my curiosity and thirst for life create anxiety.  I don't want to miss anything.  I can never seem to get enough traveling done to soothe my wanderlust.  Other days I find the comfort of home so appealing that I can't imagine leaving for even a short while.  But this, I believe, is life, that seesaw between desires yet unmet and the satisfaction of having found serenity in one's nest.

            I have few regrets.  None of them has to do with what I've missed.  The only things I rue are the times I let someone down.  Some of those probably happened without my realizing another's disappointment.  I'm convinced that the true gift of experience and aging for me is this awareness that I have had -- and I continue to enjoy -- a life in which I'm learning every day.  How can I regret a moment when the joys so far outweigh the sorrows?  I cannot.

            So I celebrate becoming 68.  The number is insignificant.  The journey that brought me here is what I cherish.   I look forward to whatever lies ahead and plan to embrace each day as it comes. 

Photo by Mike Lumpkin

Recipes and Memories

              

So I decided it was time to clean out my recipe box.  The way I figured this out was I realized for the umpteenth time that I could not only not put any additional recipes in it, but it was so full that I couldn't get any recipes out of it without extreme effort.  And with that decision, I opened the box and the memories flowed out of it.

               This lovely wooden box with its hand-tooled leather top was a wedding gift from our friend, Stella, almost 32 years ago.  It has decorated our kitchens through the decades since, slowly filling up along the way.  We enjoy using it because it reminds us of a dear friend whom we love and of the place where she bought it, a wonderful shop in Chattanooga, TN, called Plum Nelly.

               The Plum Nelly shop took its name from a "clothes line" arts and crafts festival that took place for 26 years on the back side of Lookout Mountain at a place that was "plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia."  The name lives on, evoking a time and place where creativity came alive.

              

The woman who began that festival was named Fannie Mennen. Fannie was an artist of great talent, working for many years in block printing.  The Chattanooga shop delivered a couple of other wedding gifts to Mike and me that we cherish.  There are two pillows displaying Fannie's block prints on fabric, attached trapunto-style to the pillow covers.  There is also a beautiful wall hanging of lilies. Her gifts grace our home all these years later, long after her death.  I am sure that many other folks still treasure the works of Fannie Mennen.

               The shop in Chattanooga was begun by Fannie's sister, Celia Mennen Marks, a longtime food columnist for the Chattanooga Times.  Celia, who passed away in 2005,  had an eye for arts and crafts and stocked the shop in Chattanooga with an array of items that was as much fun to browse as to own.  She favored the work of artists who were members of the Southern Highland Crafts guild, but found pieces from as far afield as Texas. The Plum Nelly shop is still in Chattanooga, now with different owners.  We proudly display in our china cabinet the dinnerware set begun there, what our son calls the "good pottery" from  the Texas clay artist, Michael Obranovich. You can see Michael's current work at http://www.obranovichpottery.com. 

              

But back to the recipe box and the memories inside it.  As I cleaned through its collection of recipes, both those used and those considered but never tried, it was a trip through time.  Alongside the items snipped from magazines or scavenged from cookbooks were the recipes given to us by family and friends, including a couple that have become family favorites passed on to an ever-wider circle of friends as we shared the dishes with others.

               There's "Miss Marcia's Quiche" recipe.  This has become one of Mike's favorites.  He has found a myriad of twists on the basic ground beef recipe that was originally given to me by our friend Marcia Kling with whom we worked at WTVC in Chattanooga.  After 50 years on the air in many roles, Marcia retired recently, an icon to generations of Chattanoogans.  She remains one of the people I consider influential in my life, a mentor and friend, a model of grace and goodness.  Her quiche recipe delights many folks she hasn't met, but we faithfully give her credit.

              

There's a little piece of paper in the box that holds the hand-written recipe for Mike's mother's chocolate cake, his favorite.  The secret to this one is the frosting with sugar as its preponderant ingredient.  This recipe was apparently one passed down by Mike's paternal grandmother who was famous for the frosting and its more liquid equivalent that is still revered as "chocolate syrup," served by multiple generations of mothers on biscuits and pancakes.  For chocolate lovers it puts maple syrup to shame.

               There's my own mother's recipe for cheese straws, a simple mix of butter, flour and Kraft Old English cheese that came in five-ounce glass jars.  I'm not sure how easy this cheese (actually a cheese "spread," which is code for processed) would be to find today.  Despite my having become a bit of a cheese snob in my adult years and an enjoyer of fancy cheese straws from various bakeries across the South, I have never had any that tasted more special than Mama's.  She had a knack for getting just the right amount of red pepper in them.  Her recipe calls for "red pepper to taste," but there's where the magic comes in.  Her sense of taste rested on the perfect edge between just enough and not too much.

              

Another treasured and much-shared recipe in the box is one for Corn Casserole, still used on the original recipe card from Linda Eller, a co-worker at WFAA-TV in Dallas.  She brought this sinfully yummy dish to a potluck luncheon in the Channel 8 Promotion Department, circa 1983.  It is a bit like corn pudding, but thicker with its added touch of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.  We've served it many, many times over the years, distributed the recipe and been told by more than one friend that it became a  Thanksgiving dinner tradition at their table.  Thank you, Linda.  You started something that has taken on a life of its own.  [The recipe is available at the Jiffy website.]

               Thumbing through the box further, I found several of those recipes passed along by moms and aunts that remind us that the "Greatest Generation" also lived through the Great Depression.  We, their children, grew up on meals that might have been light on the meats that were too expensive to feed several kids, but were heavy on the starches that would fill our little bellies.  There were one-dish meals with a pound of ground beef and three cups of rice with home-grown tomatoes, onions and peppers to spice them up. 

              

There were also, it seemed, dozens of variations on Jell-O salads.  Many of these recipes came through church cookbooks and included a wide array of ingredients added to the requisite fruit cocktail.  These "unique" additions to Jell-O included the much-loved Cool Whip enhanced variously by nuts of every stripe, cereals and even pretzels.  I think there were probably contests to see who could come up with the most outlandish yet edible combination.  The "J" section in my recipe box contains none of these.  I ate enough Jell-O as a child to last my whole life without ever having more.

               Truth is, the recipe box is a tribute to those Great Depression survivors.  They learned as children that food is, in fact, love.  After their generation, most of those who followed have not known the widespread hunger that left so many vowing never to know that feeling again.  We not only have more food available, but more varieties of food are shipped from near and far.  Meals that would have taken our mothers hours to prepare could be quickly readied in a microwave or even made in a slow-cooker while we were off to work outside the home. 

               Despite the fact that I don't spend the time in the kitchen that my mother did, I relish the memories of the dishes she cooked and the recipes she left me.  We memorialized even more of her dishes in a family recipe book that my sister and I put together for Mama's 80th birthday almost 20 years ago.  Like the recipe box, that little spiral-bound book is filled with love and memories of good times gathered around the dinner table.  I am grateful for the recipes, but even more for the memories.

Photos by Mike Lumpkin

              

               

Poetic License

            The trees in the photo above immediately brought to mind the words of poet Joyce Kilmer, first published in 1914, still ringing in my memory.  In the simplest of words, he captured a thought that would  last long beyond his death at such a young age, fallen to a sniper's bullet in World War I when he was just 31 years old.

"I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree."

            As I've reflected on the death of Maya Angelou in recent days, I've been reminded how much poetry enriches our lives.  It's an art form that some find off-putting, much as some find Shakespeare's plays troubling.  Poetry, like Shakespeare, makes us think.  That's not an activity we always come to with enthusiasm in today's hurry-up, get-it-done, ASAP world.

            Angelou's words do make us think.  But even as they are provocative, they are beautiful, singing with the rhythms of her struggles and her victories.  In "Still I Rise," she wrote:

" Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide."

            Poets tell stories with words that paint pictures, words that evoke feelings and stir us to follow them in their thoughts.  As I read Angelou's words, I think of the poems that have been part of my life, from childhood to today, from the simplest verses that spoke to me of things seen, but not yet understood, to the more complex stanzas that urged me to interpret experiences that I've not had and may never know except through the words of others.

            The first poem I can remember hearing and memorizing was a child's prayer. 

"Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take."

            This prayer, recited nightly as we were going to bed,  was comforting initially, not because I knew what it meant, but because its cadence was soothing.  As I grew up, I began to reflect on its somewhat morbid tone. 

            In conversation with friends, I found that others had found this a frightening prayer.  The specter of death was not a comfort to them.  My early lack of fear was, I think, engendered by the fact that we were taught to end the poem with asking for blessings on our family.  We learned to extend the list of those blessed to include little-known relatives and pets, alive and dead, thus attempting to delay bedtime.  When I researched the words later in life, I found only vague references to its origin in the 18th century.  Some say it was written by Joseph Addison and first appeared in 1711 in The Spectator.

            Another childhood poem comes to mind whenever I lift my eyes to the night sky.  It is yet another perfect connection between rhyme and meter that will stick in our minds forever after just one or two recitations.   The origin of its words reputedly come from an Englishwoman, Jane Taylor, who published it with other nursery rhymes in 1806.  The music it has been set to is attributed to Mozart as an adaptation from an old French tune.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are."

            My father, a man who was born and lived all but a very few years of life in Georgia, loved his state and its most famous poet, Sidney Lanier.  Thus I heard Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee" many times through my young life and can even now recite its first few lines.  Aptly named a "song," it still speaks to me as a soaring tribute to the river for which it is named and the path of that river from Georgia's mountains to the sea.

"Out of the hills of Habersham,

Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall."

            I was thrilled when I was given a small volume of poetry in high school to find Lanier's "Song" there along with other famous poems.  I was moved again to remember its words when we became part-time residents of Lake Lure and, while roaming the countryside in Western North Carolina, came across a roadside plaque marking the home near Tryon where Sidney Lanier died.

            Poetry often drives the songs that we sing for decades, remembering words and verses when we can't even remember personal information that would be useful to keep in mind.  The strength of rhymes and poetry, according to those who have studied this more than I, is the combination of rhythm and imagery that simplifies information by putting thoughts together in a form we can recite and thus remember. 

           

            One of my all-time favorites is the Eagles' "Desperado," its haunting lyrics certainly aided by  an equally touching melody, but its words are among those I can never forget, such as the stanzas that say:

"Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?"

            Written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, the song is said to have been about the trials and tribulations of being an artist, but the word pictures drawn in song always evoked in me the sense that it was a cowboy's lament.  Its words captured a solitary life that was meant to be free, but was instead achingly lonely.

            Angelou's passing encourages me to  seek anew the words of poets, those who find the way to touch my heart and move my mind as Maya Angelou touched and moved so many with her honesty and her passion.  Perhaps even a few well-crafted lines each day are the best medicine we can find to slow the frenetic pace that technology allows and fill the tiny spaces that we allow ourselves for reflection.  As written long ago, there should be "A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..." and perhaps a time to breathe in beautiful, lyrical words that touch our souls and linger in our dreams.

Musing on Spring and Marriage

           

Daffodils symbolize new beginnings

         Spring is a time of beginnings, a season of renewals and a time when engagements are announced and the traditional wedding season begins.  This year is no exception within our circle of friends as a dearly-loved and unofficially adopted son shares his happiness that his girlfriend said "yes." A newer friend, marrying for the first time just after she retires is preparing for a May wedding.  Our son and his wife are soon headed for Texas for a friend's wedding.  And so it goes, the daffodils and crocuses rise from the earth with new beginnings, new commitments are made, new partnerships begun.

            So I find myself reflecting on my own marriage of more than 31 years.  It was somewhat

daunting to be asked by our bride-to-be friend to share those things that I think have made our partnership happiest.  We're flawed humans, after all.  Ours is a good marriage, but I hesitate to offer anything that might be construed as advice on the subject of marriage.

            Because she asked, I thought about what I would say.  The first thing that comes to mind is laughter.  Mike and I make each other laugh every day.  While we see the world differently in many instances, our senses of humor drew us to one another at the beginning and we continue to find mutual amusement again and again.  From chuckles to chortles, silly giggles to belly laughs that leave us gasping for breath, laughter is definitely a hallmark for us.

            The other thing that makes our marriage happy is the simple joy of sharing.  Ours is, in word and deed, a partnership.  We became a family like the families we were fortunate enough to be nurtured by.  Our parents partnered, working both at home and in their jobs to provide for the family.  They found ways to support each other through "thick and thin," as the saying goes.  They set examples that we have followed .  I am grateful to them every day for the role models they were.

            Sharing includes voicing our thoughts honestly and as kindly as we can muster. Sure, we have those moments and days when we are not happy with one another for some reason.  There are angry and ill-conceived words occasionally.  We share a faith that we will work through the downtimes because we can't picture life without each other.  It's as if we have always been family, so there is no question that we will be family as long as we are alive.  We grouse sometimes, tease about leaving or even shooting one another, but we know that we are not serious.  That, too, is a part of our shared humor, playing the "Bickersons" from time to time.

            However familial we are, we remain thoughtful about showing gratitude.  When he cooks, I thank him.  When I do the laundry, he thanks me.  It's a little habit, now ingrained, that I didn't even consciously notice until a friend pointed it out, surprised that we do that after all these years together.  It's a way of not taking anything for granted.  It's pretty easy in a long relationship to let one's partner feel unappreciated for doing the routine things.  We've found it's just as easy to protect the give and take of daily life by acknowledging it. 

            Not least in those assets that keep us moving forward is the fortunate circle of family and friends who support and encourage us.  Their contributions range from being the shoulders we lean on in times of trouble to the loving hands we hold in times of joy and celebration.  Like seeds that fall in fertile ground, our lives are enriched by those we hold dear.

            As we've grown older, we've continued to learn how to be together, while each maintains a comfortable independence.  We will be learning as long as we are together, as years bring new opportunities and new challenges.  As one of our friends complained recently, these should not necessarily be called the "Golden Years," but maybe better named the "Medical Years."  We will hope that love and patience will counter any pain and frustration that comes.

           

A final, but important ingredient is that we are lucky in love.  When we first met, I would not have bet a dollar that we would fall in love and marry and stay together for decades.  I had a failed marriage behind me and a toddler to raise.  Mike was a 33-year old bachelor.  We were strong-willed, opinionated and independent characters, some might say brash and mule-headed at times.  We were also friends who had mutual respect for each other.

            When love came it came because we wanted what we have had through these years -- a partnership of equals and a family to nurture, love and protect for the rest of our lives.  The luck was in the timing that found us in the same place at the same time.  It turned out to be the right place and the right time for us to start our family life together. 

            On our 25th wedding anniversary, our son, Michael, and the amazing woman who is now

his wife, Heather, presented us with a book of photos chronicling our married life till then.  Michael's beautiful  dedication on the first page , included this:  "...you taught me that true love is alive and well through compromise, consistency, trust and unselfishness.  Romance can take on many forms in the real world, but your story is getting what every fictional one deserves...a happy ending."

            We fall short too often of living up to his words.  But we blush with pride in the man he has become.  I smile with each memory that our family has made together and look forward to those we've yet to make before an ending that I hope is many, many years in the future.  And as I conclude, I must say thank you to our friend, Alice, for asking the question that prompted me to remember and pay tribute to my good fortune.

Now and Then

So it's the year for my 50th high school reunion and I remain ambivalent about whether I'll attend

High School Senior Lee

or not.  My lack of commitment comes not from bad feelings about the people I might see there or the way we might judge one another's changes over these 50 years. What I'm uncertain about is whether I want to relive those days of teen angst again.  Now so much more comfortable with myself than I was then, I have no desire to attempt a recreation of those days as if they were happier than I remember.  I find myself resisting, pushing away a commitment.

            In these five decades since graduation, I have kept in touch with the few who have  remained friends through all the changes that life has brought.  We have found love and have had our hearts broken.  Through it all, we few have been compelled by our affection for each other to make contact in some fashion, at least from time to time.           

            On any given day as I think about the gathering of those of us who dressed in robes and mortarboards to say goodbye to high school in 1964, I think about someone specific that I would like to see again, someone's story of the past 50 years that I want to hear.  The very next day I find myself returning to those years when we were alternately trying just to fit in and trying to be our own independent personages and I am reluctant to revisit the past at all.

            It was a frightening time.  We were grown, but not grown-up.  We were coming of age, leaving behind the innocence of childhood and its relative lack of judgment by our peers to face the paranoia of the teenage years.  Even as we sought to prove ourselves as burgeoning adults, the vulnerability of our dependence on friends, parents, teachers and others for approval and protection was still with us.           

            It was an exciting time, fueled by growing in stature so that we were as tall as our parents and beginning to believe that we were as capable as they to make decisions about our lives.  Our hormones raged, drawing our bodies toward physical intimacy with our peers while those same hormones perversely attacked our complexions with the humiliation of acne.  We sought to attract, but found ourselves repellent, faces marred by zits.

            We were, of course, our own worst enemies.  We stared into our bathroom mirrors, attempting to get our hair into just the right style.  If we had straight hair, curls were in.  If we were blessed with curls, we ironed our hair to emulate someone deemed more popular, the pretty girls with straight hair.  If nobody asked us to the dance, we agonized about ourselves, playing morose LP's until we fell asleep, grateful that the event would be over when we awoke.

            Our male classmates had their own similar struggles.  Only so many could make the football team; the others had to find a different way to demonstrate their manhood.  Like the girls, most kept any long-term dreams to themselves rather than risk the derision of their peers.  They tried so many ways to make themselves attractive.  I can almost smell still the overabundance of Old Spice that a classmate splashed on, probably cadged from his  father's dresser.  Some found being cool in learning to play guitar or drums to join a band.  [Brad Paisley and Keith Urban released a duet in 2004 called "Start a Band" that speaks to this.]

            There were, thank goodness, those who followed their own paths even then.  Some had musical talent and enough passion to play in the school band even if that did not improve their "cool" ratings.  Some simply couldn't quell their passion for debate, taking unpopular positions not because they wanted to be different, but simply because they were different.

            We had limited appreciation for different.  It was okay to a degree, but the herd mentality of adolescence sought common ground in behavior and in attire.  Our tendency was to mock differences, rather than embrace them.  Only in retrospect do I see the hurt we must have caused and I wonder what we missed when we chose to avoid those who were different rather than get to know them.

            In a public school where there was no dress code, we created one of our own.  Girls who were "in" wore Villager dresses in that time when pants were not the norm for girls.  Boys wore slacks, but not jeans to school except on the rare "jeans" days that were allowed.  A look through our high school annuals tells a fashion tale of another time, that time before today's "anything goes" styles.

            Now reconnected to some of these people via Facebook, I see them as they are now and I am drawn to their life stories after high school.  We've had careers, some more than one.  Some of us have married, had children, divorced and remarried.  Some of us have grandchildren and, I suppose,  some have great-grandchildren.  We have gained and lost weight, gained wrinkles and lost hair.  Some have battled serious illness.  We mourn some who lost that battle.

            And so I continue to waffle.  Will I go to this 50th reunion and learn where lives have taken us?  Even as I write this, leaning toward the decision to go, there is still ambivalence.  It remains a choice for another day, one that will continue to provoke reflection on a time that seems long ago and far away.  

A Form of Grace is Seeking and Finding Your Joy

      

           

           (Written Thursday, January 9, 2014)  --  On any given day there are those moments that touch us.  We respond to various events with a variety of emotions: from happiness to sorrow, from the purest joy to the most heart-rending sadness, from the serenity of peace achieved to the fire of anger erupting.  These feelings tell us we are alive, that we are sentient beings whose time is measured in a myriad of sensations.

            My day today has caused me to think (and babble in print) about how we often say that something "made my day." Some days, like today for me, it's hard to choose which of the day's happenings might have been the "one."  The truth is that there have been many and the day isn't over yet.  As I reflect on these moments, I realize that a big part of finding the joy is acknowledging it when it is felt.

           Many of us can relate to the joy and magic we feel when we watch a perfect sunrise.  Though I didn't see a spectacular sunrise this morning like thos, I did begin my day today with a view of the sunrise through the window in our front door in Charlotte.  Our house is positioned to see the sun come up through that little half circle that perfectly frames it.  On many days, like this one, I have that early morning joy of seeing the sun's early light there.

            Then there was the phone call with a longtime colleague and friend that I've not spoken to in a few years.  He is brilliant and eloquent and shared his newest venture with me.  He has found new challenges in his life, living in a new city, reaching new goals.  His voice was filled with all the positive spirit I've always found there and enjoyed.  Our chat was thought-provoking and nurturing, inspiring and engaging.  I've missed our talks and relished the minutes we spent catching up and moving our thoughts forward together.

           

There was our puppy, Sassy, happy to see me when I picked her up from her grooming appointment, wriggling madly to get into my arms.  She bounced into the house when we got home, showing off her new "do" with zest, prancing and unwilling to stay still to have her picture taken, though Mike persisted and finally captured her new look.  That done, she has spent every waking moment since in pursuit of her toys from one end of the house to the other.  She supplies so  many reasons every day for joy and laughter.

            Then we went to see the movie "Nebraska," a marvel in black-and-white.  A moving story and a great cast make this one not to miss.  The bleakness of the landscapes and the almost bitter reality of the circumstances might be grim if it were not for a script lavishly laced with humor, directed and acted with sensitivity and authenticity.  It's a winner.

            Drifting throughout the house this day is the smell of a roast in the Crockpot, a mouthwatering aroma that's part of a favorite dinner to be shared with our son and daughter-in-law this evening.  Some sensations, like the smell of good food, bring an almost primal joy.

            Now the sun is down and I missed the gorgeous red glow that I often see through the trees on the back of the property.  I was reliving the joys of my day at the laptop, so missed that one.  Those sunset memories are clear from many days past, so I have no regrets.

            I've been lucky enough to travel all around the world.  Those are sweet memories that I cherish.  What I appreciate more each day are the everyday joys and a contentment--feeling all the feelings, knowing that I'm capable of all these emotions because I am fully alive.  While I have the aches and pains that come with age and the inconvenience of psoriasis, I am experiencing the grace of retaining and even increasing my joy in living.  That is, indeed, an amazing grace.  My goal in this new year is to seek and find the joy and be grateful for the gift of its awareness in all the days to come.

All photos by Mike Lumpkin