say what you need to say
"I learned ... that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness." Brenda Ueland
from an email sent to me by Lynn Jones Ennis, Ph.D. Associate Director
Curator of the Collection, Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University
Curator of the Collection, Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University
say what you need to say
my friend lynn had a way about her. loved soft hats, that girl did. and clothes with such texture you could almost see the voice of the maker in the stitches. diminutive hands. soft in voice and countenance. in her best eastern nc lilt she would often end our visits with: i can't wait to see you aGANE. (caps my emphasis, pronunciation hers.) aGANE, like gain, as if every single time i saw her was her gain. i know it was mine. she used words like SWELL and sent us SMOOCHES by email. things like that.
every so often, an email would show up in my inbox from her, as she hoped to gather three of our friends and me for a seasonal meet up. and somehow we would merge five schedules into one night just long enough to share our stories and our dreams.
i don't remember exactly when we met, but yoga had something to do with it. my friend miriam had met lynn through yoga and introduced us, and somehow lynn talked this muffin top into participating. she assured me that the creativity would just pour out of me if i gave my mind an hour to settle into the ommms. my neighbor candy and i bit, but pretty much everything but creativity poured out of me after my yoga sessions. at home, after, i poured my well-plied body into a soft chair and promptly fell asleep.
lynn and miriam and i, all writers, found other ways to gather, and in time, candy and diane — writers,too — joined us. we met for energy and support, not so much to share our work but to celebrate the fact that we had our work and our links to each other. lynn, an expert in creativity, softly encouraged us, aGANE and aGANE, and we encouraged her, too.
whenever we met, she would turn to us one by one and say: now, what's going on with you?
when last we met, we talked about her work at the museum where she was curator, about diane's recent breast cancer and surgery, about miriam's plans to teach a seminar on cooking, writing, painting and eating. candy had finally landed an agent for her middle grades historical novel. all good. all hopeful. so good to see you aGANE, said lynn as we parted in the parking lot.
only i wouldn't. never again. no gain. only loss.
yesterday lynn died. all of a sudden, maybe as she stood at her kitchen sink and told her husband that the headache that had been plaguing her for the past few days had worsened. died. right there. in an instant. in the house she loved, with her tea cups and her plants and the pictures of her granddaughter nearby.
it does not seem real to me. though i work at my church, i avoided going into the nave for prayer because it would become truth, then. i thought about lynn, who had come to my church in february for a gathering of creative women like herself, sitting not far from where i took my seat yesterday in the pew, there alone I prayed for her family, and for the gift of her life on this earthly walk.
the four of us left in our circle have talked on the phone, wept, wondered. two in our group have lost family members in the past two weeks. we are not in that closest of family friend circles, but we are connected, and so we hurt.
last night i called my friend grace and said: you mean to world to me. i emailed barbara and my sister, said the same. and instead of television, i asked my husband to hold me while i cried.
today i got my hair cut (too short) but... my hairdresser is an effusive Christian who wears his faith right out there, joyously, sometimes a little uncomfortable for me. as i told him about lynn, he said this: the Lord does not guarantee us a tomorrow. no. indeed.
after that, as i headed into work, john mayer came on the radio urging me to 'say what you need to say...say what you need to say."
You better know that in the end/It's better to say too much/Than to never to say what you need to say again/Even if your hands are shakin'/And your faith is broken/Even as the eyes are closin'/Do it with a heart wide open/A wide heart
Say what you need to say
say what you need to say.
my faith is not broken, but i know i need to say what i need to say.
i love you. you mean everything to me. you did a wonderful job. thank you. thank God. i'm sorry. i should have done a better job. i will change. i hope.
and thank you, lynn ennis, for being a part of my life.
dear me
i opened my trusty old mailbox that sits at the street and
found among the junkyard of paper, three letters.
letters. handwritten. stamped.
all addressed to dear me.
all in one day.
letters from three of my favorite people,
each thanking me for the small gesture of friendship,
on an early spring day
blueberries in hand, i visited two of my friends the week before,
for no reason in particular, except i had not seen them in awhile.
we sat, listened, laughed, remembered
and the gift was mine —
time to study not the clock but their faces, time to meet not a deadline but our minds, after an extended absence.
what treasures these friends are to me, i thought as i drove home,
unaware that both would that day
set down on paper in their own scrawl what
my gesture meant to them.
and send it on.
the third note, filled with colorful squiggles
drawn by my favorite three-year-old (and the pen of her mother)
was in celebration of something good we had done together.
those squiggles on envelope and note tell me that one day when that funny three-year-old can write words,
she, too, will set words to paper in
her own scrawl, seal, stamp
then send it on,
for someone dear to find
in a rusty old mailbox at the street,
for no reason in particular
which is reason, well enough
sbr
Sense of Wonder
I thought I had posted this. Didn't I?
Reverb10:
Reverb10:
Backtracking. Maybe it's better if I work backward, then forward again. Will I catch up?
Prompt: How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
By: Listening to my favorite two-year-old's giggle, coloring in the jack-o-lantern stamp on her little boyfriend's hand. Sharing my life in the purple office with Lee. Kissing my godchild, even when she doesn't want to, marveling at her sparkle. Watching my dog run through the snow (and not just today), taking pictures of the sunrise (a lot), of the peonies in my yard, of my daughter dancing with her dad in the kitchen, of my son, even when he didn't want me to. Walking the dog as he sniffs at the air, (watching him sniff at the window..why?). 
Looking at a friend I have known for a lifetime and wondering just what is really on her mind. Searching for a four-leafed clover but not finding one, hearing the world for the first time in a lot of years (it is LOUD), watching my mother stir the gravy with my grandmother's spoon.Watching my Dad sleep with his dog in his lap. Cheering as my daughter learns to make my rolls. Watching my dog with his friends. Watching the weather.
Hearing the people in my church talk about God. Seeing my friend Nell bury her husband (who had Alzheimers), and listening as she celebrates the joy of doing his laundry.
Remembering two friends who died this year, too soon. Scouring my kindergarten picture on Facebook. Reading. Anything. Absorbing the roar of the ocean in my skin. Singing a favorite hymn, too loud. Finding old friends and old boyfriends on FB. Praying with Martha and Ryan on the pew, four days before Ryan leaves for Afghanistan. Shopping for his Christmas package now that he is there, and celebrating that first phone call. And the next one. And the next.
Holding his hand while we sleep. Celebrating 29 years. (That's an old picture!)
Watching my niece's baby bump by email. Celebrating a baptism. Praying for a friend. Discovering a friend has prayed for me. Searching for the gift of surprise. Wondering what my children are up to. Smelling potpourri.
Walking with Grace in the mornings. Questioning God. Looking at the clouds, listening to Joni Mitchell, watching GLEE. Searching the stars, the grass, the dust as it swirls through my house on a sunlit morning.
Making my rolls. Remembering my dreams. Trying hard, to open my eyes. sbr
Take a Giant Staple
Karen and Libbett always held fort on the front row because they were short. Here they are in Miss Williams' 5th grade, Karen on the right in navy knee socks, Libbett (for Little Bit) to her left in the navy jumper. Betty Keeter stands between these two girls who never really got the message— as my good friend Anne Boone said recently about Karen — that they were short. They were together in their defiance, both of them growing larger in life than their frames portrayed. And now, at age 52 and 53 respectively, Karen and Libbett are dead, Karen from cancer in November, and Libbett on Saturday, from complications of a lifelong battle with juvenile diabetes.
This seems fairly impossible for me to imagine. Two girls I grew up knowing throughout my childhood — Libbett from birth and Karen from kindergarten, are not here anymore. Even if I didn't think about them as I drank my morning coffee or on my drive to work, they were there, somewhere. But now, how can it be that they are not anywhere, anymore? Except of course, in heaven.
Today memories flood my mind, particularly of Libbett, who lived just down the road, four houses from my own.
The fourth child— and first girl — in a family of three older brothers, she must have grown up fighting for her own space. I spent many a Friday night at her house, playing 'Murder in the Dark' with her brothers, down the long narrow hall of their house, scared more than half to death. In the morning, we woke up to Lon Cheney's Mummy on Sunrise Theater, watching the flickering black and white screen from the floor of the playroom of her house on the hill.
We didn't have a playroom at our house. But her house was all about play, from the playroom to the tennis court, from the horse barn to the handmade dough ornaments on the Christmas tree. Even the tenant house way out back where the maid lived with a daughter named Queen Ester was our playground. A real queen, living in an unpainted house with a wide front porch. Nobody else had that in their back yard. (I seem to recall the maid's name was Irene — I remember how she talked, in a low rasp that sounded like she had swallowed too much snuff — and that she was left-handed, which I am, and how she told me one day that her teachers wrapped her hand up so she would be right-handed, but she was ambidextrous instead.)
Saturday mornings in Libbett's house meant her mother would be in the kitchen, humming as she poured blueberry pancake batter onto a sizzling pan. After breakfast, it was to the bathroom to check her blood sugar with little strips of paper that turned color when dipped into the little potty she kept there. She even let me pee in it a few times. Her diabetes was as much a part of our lives as my left-handedness, a fact that made her who she was. I marveled, watching her bravery, as she stabbed herself in the thigh with a hypodermic. Who could do that at seven? Doctor's child that I am, I ran screaming at the sight of one, except in Libbett's little bathroom.
She was as creative a child as I was gullible — the tooth fairy lived in a tiny castle built in the woods that separated our houses with the teeth she gathered from beneath our pillows. Libbett said so. I imagined Tinkerbell, flitting about, a little dusty from the sandy soil, her toothy front door framed by tiny cotton boles gathered from the fields all around. But somehow we never found this magical home amid the stumps, wiregrass and kudzu in our woods. (Why the tooth fairy would want to live in a house made from missing teeth, I never understood, but she left a quarter under my pillow, so I dared not challenge her. Or Libbett.)
At the base of the hill in front of Libbett's house, there was a pond shaped like a footprint, and across the street in front of the old churchyard, another. Oh, the hours I spent trying to fall to sleep, imagining a giant strolling down the highway outside my house, deciding not to take that giant step in my yard but in hers instead — she was the lucky one.
And I will never forget the day she told me that Santa Claus was not real. My mother was ironing when I came home from her house with this most unsettling news. (I think I was probably 11 by then! He is who you choose to believe he is, my mother said, and so I have never really stopped believing.)
Born an artist, Libbett had the largest box of Crayolas in first grade that I had ever seen, the thin ones with violet and flesh for colors, and a sharpener on the side. The rest of us had the flat box of six giant ones to fit our nubby fingers. She drew full figures to our stick ones, girls with curled hair and eye lashes, window boxes when the rest of us could barely sketch a window at all.
And what a Barbie collection. I admit that I coveted her Barbie nesting mixing bowls. I believe — though I can't rely on my memory — that she had a Barbie mixmaster to go with them. And a kitchen.
Libbett's family had horses, and I learned from her not to go barefoot in the barn because I might catch hookworms. Sometimes we'd head out to the pasture beside her house, and she'd saddle up. She could ride, but I could not, and I distinctly recall her galloping down the dusty road behind our houses, as I labored, lopsided, to stay on the horse, scared that I would surely die that day. I wonder now if she failed to fasten the saddle on tight enough for me.
In thinking of what she taught me — childhood friends always teach you something —perhaps it is best to say this: to explore. The woods for the tooth fairy, the colors in the Crayola box, the complications of friendship — and ours was complicated. Sometimes we got into trouble. Sometimes we didn't get along. And sometimes I did stick up for myself.
But she is there in so many memories, at church, home, school, on the back road, in the old tobacco barn, in her room at night, watching the shadow of trees scrape across the window. Today, as I browse photos of her on her 50th birthday on the Facebook page set up for her by her family, I see something in there of the girl she was. I know nothing of what her adult life was like, nor she mine. I suppose we are both at a loss because of that.
She told me once that I could write about a paper clip and make it interesting. I don't know this to be true at all. The paper clip. If you filtered through my file cabinet now, you'd see that I favor it over the staple, though I am not sure why. It is a temporary fix, looping a hold on things that can too easily slip away.
I am thinking now that I want to staple myself to the people I am still connected to in the picture above by virtue of Miss William's fifth grade. I don't want to lose anyone else. We have a past together. I have kept up with some of you. But you can't know how often I wonder about the rest.
Bottom row: Mark Faithful, Woody Pridgen, Bobby Keeter, Johnny Hudson, Otis Cocker, Ralph Leggett, Libbett Gregory, Betty Keeter, Karen Todd; Second row: Robbie Mosley, Scott Allsbrook, Elizabeth Stallings?, Lydia Bray, Parks Boyd, Paul Oglesby, ??, George Johnson; third row: ??, :?? Sandra Coward (where are you?!), Betty Rufty, Susan Byrum, Toni Harrington (she had her hand slapped with a yardstick by Miss Williams!!); Charmaine Lofton, Billy Cook; back row:Douglas Pickette, Lanny Lawrence?, Ricky Payne, Bill Whitehead, David McLawhorn, Lee King. (please correct my memory if I have gotten a name wrong:)
(This is not our whole class. I don't have a copy of the one from Miss Holton's class. Miss Holton... now there's a story. She deserves a story all by herself.)