Category Archives: family

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A Southern great-grandmother: “If they were gay and whatever, so what. She was one of us.”

I’ve asked my grandmother several times over the years to tell me about Maude Pick, her aunt Pearl’s lifelong companion and housemate.

Maybe because the issue has been discussed so persistently lately on the cable news networks she watches between Andy Griffith reruns from her easy chair on her lake house porch, but this Easter weekend – following the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing of arguments on the Defense Of Marriage Act – she seemed more relaxed when talking about the relationship between Pearl and “Pick” (as Maude was known).

The video here was shot by my daughter on that lakeside porch in teeny Dadeville, Alabama. My mom and I are in a few shots, as is my parents’ golden retriever. It’s a little grainy and jumpy, and I wish I had photos of Pearl and Pick, but I love this all the same. Regardless of what you think about this issue, I hope it inspires you to ask your grandparents interesting questions, and to record their responses.

Life is short. Love is always.

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The Link Between Hardship and Success

She was 12 and in junior high school and had a problem of falling down at inexplicable times. Kids were mean.

To prevent herself from collapsing all the way to the ground during these falls, she carried herself on crutches. That way, when she fell, she fell only as far as the rubber arm rest.

During class, when she sat at a desk, the crutches lay beside her on the ground. If a teacher left the room, the boys in the class would tug the rubber arm rests from the crutches and wag them lewdly in her face.

That was pretty bad.

But the worst part of this is she could not explain to anyone – not her friends, not her teachers, not her parents and not her doctors – why she was falling. She did have a growing sense that certain things prompted the falls – blinking Christmas lights, staying up too late, slumber parties at the house of a friend who played really loud music.

She was tested for things that scared the hell out of her parents. MS. MD. Something called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which – like severe forms of muscular dystrophy – paralyzes its victims rapidly and ultimately causes organ failure.

This was 1989, and before the internet, so she couldn’t do much research on her own.

When the junior high boys began with the sexually-charged arm rest bullshit, she decided she’d rather risk a fall to the ground. She gave up the crutches.

That Christmas, she sat at the dinner table with her extended family. Her aunt – a child psychologist familiar with neurological disorders – had a striking moment of realization when she watched her niece uncontrollably fling a fork across the table.

“Test her for epilepsy,” she said.

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Your Tween’s Perspective: The Five Most Annoying Things Parents Do

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I have a tween. I annoy her. See this picture I’ve posted here from a building that used to be a strip club before it was a church before it was a motorcycle shop? I love it! She does not! Therefore, I feel qualified to write a blog post for other people who want to annoy their tween children.

Here are five great ways to annoy a tween girl (girl, because I am pretty sure boys don’t pay enough attention to get annoyed).

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Why life is better when you can’t control it

Right now my family is waiting for my grandfather to die. He had a heart attack two weeks ago that tore an irreparable hole between ventricles. Doctors put him on hospice care and we have all been gathering in Birmingham, Alabama, to say goodbye.

Waiting for someone to die is in some ways waiting for someone to be born. You know the time will come. You may have an approximate idea of when that will be. But no one can tell you for sure, nor exactly how, nor what will happen next.

It’s natural to feel anxious by such lack of specificity, in death or any other human endeavor.

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In Due Time: ‘The Story I Finally Feel Ready To Share’

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The following is a guest post written by my lovely friend Catherine. She writes about the longing to be a parent, her struggle with infertility, and the closeness she has developed with her husband, Joe. Catherine and Joe are my daughter’s aunt and uncle, which is one of the great lucks of my own life during good times and bad. Continue reading →

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The Top Seven Rainbow Bright Moments of 2012

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I’ve decided 2012 is the Year of the Rainbow.

For my friends and me, some of the happiest moments have come at the tail end of some deluges, both figuratively and literally.

Here are the top seven. …

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The Truth About Santa and Sex

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Do you remember when you learned the truth about Santa?

I don’t, but I am certain my daughter will.

She was in fourth grade, maybe the last kid in her class to believe.

The two of us were eating dinner at a restaurant I frequented in the months after her father and I decided to divorce. I didn’t yet have it together enough to cook at home.

A paraphrased recollection of the conversation:

“How was school today, Lily?”

“Okay, I guess. Actually, maybe not.”

“What happened?”

“Just kids saying stupid stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Nothing.”

“What stuff, Lily?”

“Mama, I have a very important question to ask and I want you to tell me the truth. Do you promise to tell me the truth?” Continue reading →

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Risque Photo Leaves Much to the Imagination

Dad and me, ca. 1978. This was not a surprising photo to find stashed in a box of family snapshots... But there is one that was...

Dad and me, ca. 1978. This was not a surprising photo to find stashed in a box of family snapshots… But there is one that was…

A couple years ago my dad gave me a big box of photos his own dad gave him after my grandmother died. I think I was the first to sort through the box.

Among the hodgepodge of unorganized snapshots:

  • My grandparents and another couple at a Chinese restaurant in the 1960s.
  • My grandfather, who served in Europe in World War II, in his Army uniform. He is small, with pronounced ears, and vaguely resembles Humphrey Bogart.
  • A series of faded, ghostly shots from a formal dining table stacked high with china and with a woman in an A-line dress standing to the side. It looks like the bounty from a bridal shower. I think the woman is my grandmother, but it’s too blurry to know for sure.
  • A girl (Dad thinks she’s his aunt) showing off an engagement ring to another girl (perhaps my grandmother).
  • And, then… My grandmother – definitely my grandmother – wearing lingerie and posed seductively on a coffee table.

That last one caught me off guard. My grandmother posed for sexy photos? Did my grandfather take them??

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Perennial Christmas

The sedum bloomed beautifully, taller than most sedum and full but tightly constructed like a cheerleader’s pompon, just like it did the year before and the year before that. The difference was that as it grew, the stalks separated from the middle of the original plant, spreading all over that part of the garden and leaving a hole in the center that mildly annoyed the gardener but not enough to propel her to do anything differently.

She cut stalks and decorated her home with them, arranging them with sprigs of rosemary, a plant with the same sort of beautiful, unwieldy but predictable center-holing attributes.

The best thing about the sedum was that when it dried, it looked almost exactly as it had when it lived. The other best thing was that the seeds were easy to harvest, and the gardener did so each holiday season, tucking them into Christmas cards (real Christmas cards, often homemade) that she wrote for people she loved.

She found many people to love each year.

The most precious people were the same ones as the year before, and the year before that.

She knew good people and she knew good plants, with annoying habits and otherwise.

One night she sat alone in her house, a little sleep deprived and a little buzzed on red wine she’d enjoyed with one of those good people, and she realized that people and plants were the same because the world – lovely as it is – does not allow for too much deviation from what has already grown.

A Christmas tree glowed in the background.

A year ago she found herself alone and wrapping presents, feeling 50% sentimental and 50% melancholy, in a state of wonder about all the ways she and the world around her had changed in 12 months. That refrain would repeat, and repeat again. Fundamental change, when it happens, takes many lifetimes.

The sedum flourished. The gardener flourished.

It was Christmas.

The people who loved each other toasted another year, and were surprised at their surprise.