Nothing by chance…

​Sometimes a young girl has been told a story so often that she feels like she lived it herself. Such is this tale of how my grandparents met. At one time I was lucky enough to have a little pink corduroy diary written in the up-and-down, spiky handwriting of my gramma. Minnie Samantha Syester was 19 years old when she traveled with her sister-in-law Lula to visit with Lula‘s husband and gramma‘s brother Jimmy. I have no idea how they made the trip from Brazil, Indiana, to Louisville, Kentucky, but the heart of the story begins in Louisville. The two young women took a tram through Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville with instructions to arrive at the barracks or tent of my uncle. Then fate, Kismet, God, chance, coincidence stepped in, and these two accidentally got off the tram at the wrong corner. Lost in a sea of soldiers and identical buildings, I’m sure my grandma was overwhelmed. That’s when my Paw-paw , Emanuel Herrington, stepped up to be a courteous, young gentleman.

My grandfather decided he would like to help these two lost women, and he accompanied them to find Jimmy Syester waiting somewhere in his own tent or barrack. However, my grandfather didn’t stop there. Emanuel went that extra mile and lingered while the three others met, hugged, exchanged  news of the family, and decided to go have some supper at a local eating place. Well, yes, my grandfather believed he could. That is, he waited long enough for them to finally include him in their nightly plans. According to the little diary, Minnie and Emmanuel talked long into the night.  The camp was very near the Ohio River, so they walked down beside the water and watched the moon rise over the countryside. My grandma wrote that they fell in love that night.

There is no record of the two corresponding, visiting, or seeing each other until September 1, 1919. On that day Emmanuel Herrington arrived in Centerpoint, Indiana, and he must have asked my gramma to marry him that day. The two wandered off from the rest of her family, boarded a mail hack, and headed into the little town in Indiana. Wandering still, they looked for a judge who said he could marry them right then. Inside the judge’s chambers, my grandparents discovered they needed something. They needed witnesses, and of course,they had left an entire family at home. So they had none. The judge stepped out of his home and into the alley behind, and he called down the street to two men who were unloading coal for the city. Well, yes, the two strangers agreed to be witnesses for my grandparents – coal dust and all. 

I used to have the large, beautiful marriage certificate they acquired that day. Grandma and Pawpaw, Mr. and Mrs. Emmanuel Herrington, returned to my grandma‘s childhood kitchen. Here my gramma expressed just a tiny bit of understanding for her own mother. She wrote that during supper her younger brother found the marriage license rolled into the pocket of Pawpaw‘s coat. He flashed the wedding certificate around through the hands of her family, and my great grandmother, Candace Valera Morgan Syester, began to cry. This woman with the beautiful name was no doubt crying because she missed the wedding, she didn’t know my grandfather, she understood that the couple would probably move to Missouri, and it was just too big of a surprise for a daughter to keep from her mother. 

Gramma and Pawpaw lived in Moberly, Missouri, for a while before moving to Terre Haute, Indiana for many years. My mother was born in Terre Haute, and my grandfather hauled ice for the Home Ice Company there. Finally, when my mom was in her senior year of high school, the family moved to Excello area to be with Emmanuel‘s family in Jacksonville, Missouri, where they lived the rest of their lives on a farm with cattle, chickens and eventually a darling little granddaughter named Gayla. Minnie and Emmanuel were married until his death in 1971.

So … whether or not a person believes in love it first sight, Kismet, or a Divine Plan, I certainly have a story that fills all the blanks. Getting off a horse-drawn tram a stop or two  early changed my life by allowing two people to fall in love. No wonder I’m such a romantic. Happy Anniversary , Gramma and Pawpaw.

Never worked and never will

It’s back-to-school time again.

The buses roll along dusty country roads.First-day pictures appear everywhere—little children stand on porches with backpacks almost as big as they are, holding signs announcing a new grade, while mothers and grandmothers wonder how another summer disappeared so quickly.

And every year at about this time, some part of me goes back to school, too.

This year, I found myself remembering a story I first read when I was probably seven or eight years old. It was called “Never Worked and Never Will,” by Margaret Wise Brown—the same Margaret Wise Brown who wrote Goodnight Moon.

I had no idea who she was then. I only knew I loved that story.
It was about an old woodcarver named Jim Bailey who made wooden ducks and wild geese. Above the door of his shop hung a sign:

NEVER WORKED AND NEVER WILL.

That sign puzzled people because Jim Bailey worked all day. He carved and painted and made beautiful things with his hands. Children watched him and wondered how a man who worked so hard could possibly claim that he had never worked a day in his life.
Eventually, some of the children understood his secret.
He loved what he was doing so much that, to him, it did not feel like work.
You can read Margaret Wise Brown’s story here: Never Worked and Never Will⁠

That little story caught my imagination in a way I could never have explained at seven years old.

I remember choosing it when our class was asked to speak at a PTA program for our parents. We were supposed to tell about a book or story we especially enjoyed about school.

I chose Never Worked and Never Will.
Unfortunately, when it was my turn to speak, I also chose to giggle.
I have a vague memory that a boy nearby started it, and apparently I was highly susceptible to contagious laughter that evening. My mother was not amused. To the best of my recollection, that may have been my first and last episode as a public giggler
But I never forgot the story. 

Many years later, when I was asked to say a few words at my first retirement party, I remembered that old woodcarver again.
By then I had spent years in a classroom. Teaching had certainly required effort. There had been long days, papers and plans, meetings, problems to solve, children to worry about, lessons to invent, and more work brought home than I could ever count.
But I had loved it.

And I realized that somehow I had managed to live the life that had appealed so deeply to that little girl reading about Jim Bailey.
I ended my retirement remarks by remembering his sign.
After all those years of teaching, I could say that I had been fortunate enough to spend my working life doing something I loved.
So, in Jim Bailey’s sense of the words, I have never worked.
And since that happened to be my retirement day, I supposed I never will.
I still love that idea.

Retirement and age have changed what I am able to do, and these days accomplishments are considerably smaller than they once were. But I think the old lesson still holds.

There is something wonderful about finding the things that make us lose track of the distinction between work and pleasure—the things we make, teach, write, grow, mend, cook, crochet, arrange, learn, or share simply because something inside us comes alive while we are doing them.

Maybe that is why, after all these years, I still remember an old man carving wooden ducks in a story from an elementary-school reader.
He knew something worth learning very young:

A good life is not necessarily a life without effort.

Sometimes we live a life filled with endeavors that we love. For me, teaching proved to be just that.
So I never worked and I never will!

For those of you who are lucky enough to be headed back to school or hugging a child who’s looking forward to a day in the classroom, have a great year.

Under the August moon… Where memories bloom

​The little park that holds a lifetime…

The focus begins on the moon. It has watched oceans and mountains, cities that never sleep, lonely stretches of Prairie, and little towns that hardly anyone outside Missouri has ever heard of. Then it begins its slow descent slipping past the clouds, finding Missouri, finding Macon County, coming to rest on one little city park in Bevier, Missouri. To a stranger, it’s just a park. A band stand. Grass. During most of the year a person can stand there and honestly wonder how Bevier Homecoming could ever fit inside it. It doesn’t seem possible that one city block can hold carnival rides, Nashville entertainers, family reunions, class reunions, parades, baby shows, lawn chairs, politicians, hamburgers by the thousands, and nearly everyone who has ever loved this little coal mining town. 

And yet, every August, that’s exactly what happens.

That’s one kind of Homecoming magic. The other kind takes a little longer to discover. If we sit beneath that August moon long enough, something begins to happen. At first we simply notice who’s there this year. Friends wave from across the park; children dart between the rides; teenagers circle the midway flirting a little, pretending not to notice one another. The smell of onions on Homecoming hamburgers drifts through the warm evening air, and a country song floats over the loudspeaker. Then, without realizing it, we stop looking with our eyes. We begin looking with memory’s heart. We don’t just see who is there. We see who used to be there. —The grandma digging through her purse for another dollar for one more ride. A friend who quietly hands your little boy a whole roll of ride tickets. The teacher who always worked beside you in the homecoming stand. Some are gone now, and some are sitting only a few rows away. Under that moon, time gets wonderfully confused, and the little park becomes larger than life. Homecoming doesn’t simply gather the people this year, but it gathers every version of ourselves that ever came before.

The Homecoming begins days before anyone hears the music. Carnival trucks rumble into town, and giant rides arrive, folded into impossible – looking puzzles of steel. One by one the rides unfold until the Midway takes shape. Workers string lights, and extension cords snake across the grass. We can barely wait to see this extravagant festival finished. The “Welcome Home” banner goes up over the stage.

Away from the park … Homecoming begins with brunches in small cafés, family reunions spilling out of restaurants, and classmates standing around, laughing over stories they have told 100 times. Around the community groups decorate floats, parade cars, bicycles, and little trucks. Many times children are already counting the tickets in their pockets.

The natural order of growing up can be explained by the way children navigate the Midway at the Homecoming. At first children walk with their parents. A few years later, parents  congregate nearby while their children go from ride to ride— within eyesight. Much later parents tell those children that they can just check back every hour. Eventually those little “toddlers” miraculously start arriving at Homecoming in their own cars, and they drift over to see their parents who are sitting in lawn chairs and bleachers in the crowd. 

Like moths to a flame, people come to the Homecoming for many reasons. Sometimes it’s the carnival, sometimes the parade, sometimes the Nashville performers. Many come because it’s the one weekend every year the family can count on being together.

The stage has welcomed some wonderful entertainers through the years: “Little” Jimmy Dickens, TG Shepherd, Ronnie McDowell, Kitty Wells,— others whose songs became part of the soundtrack of our summers. Many of those performers came to Bevier and almost became part of our families. They smiled, visited, signed autographs, laughed with people, and made everyone feel glad to be there. Just a very few acted as though they were doing our little town a favor by showing up. People remember which was which, and kindness has a much longer memory than fame. 

However, if I’m being perfectly honest… The greatest entertainer ever to walk across that stage never had his name on a poster. He was just five years old. On the night of that performance the official program for the evening had ended, but homecoming wasn’t finished. Homecoming never really ends when the last concert is over because many crowds stay, sit in lawn chairs or on the bleachers, and talk until the wee hours of the morning. Their children run themselves nearly to exhaustion. We can all remember little toddlers stretched out on the hard, wooden bleachers, a carefully tucked sweater spread over them, the dew gently falling on their sleeping faces while the grown-ups laughed and visited beneath the stars. On this particular night my little hot, sweaty boy wandered up the steps of the grandstand and ventured out center stage.  My little boy reached for the microphone, and then we realized no one had turned that off. Suddenly, clear as a bell, rang the voice of Bruce Springsteen.

“Born… In the USA…”

Now, I can’t carry a tune to any recognizable conclusion, but my son could. Even then, he wasn’t pretending to be a singer. He simply was one. He settled himself right in the middle of that great big stage as though he’d been performing there all his life. Then he sat down, crossed one little ankle over his knee, sang with complete confidence.  when the chorus came, he stretched the microphone toward 30 or more grown adults.

He boldly sang— “Born…”

We naturally responded— “In the USA!”

He grinned. A little louder. “Born… “

“… In the USA!” Soon every one of us was singing backup for one little boy who had us completely eating out of the palm of his hand. For years afterward Homecoming never let my son live this down. As he grew older my son was a wonderful, friendly, optimistic young man, but he was also just private enough that he probably would’ve been perfectly happy if everyone had forgotten about that night, but nobody ever did. He told me he couldn’t walk 5 feet through homecoming without somebody laughing and saying, “Hey! Aren’t you that little Bruce Springsteen?” 

The reputation of a homecoming hamburger has grown through the years to dynamic proportions. The concession stand is a legend in itself. If you’ve never wrapped, cooked, or sold a homecoming hamburger, you’ve missed one of the finest examples of organization you’ll ever see. Workers in the little kitchen may line up 30 hamburgers in wax paper, place in the warmer, stand back and think that they have things covered. Then someone says that they’ll take 12. Another voice announces they will take five, and somebody reaches in and announces that they have sold four more. Looking down, the worker realizes that 30 hamburgers have completely disappeared in a flash. 

I worked in the kitchen with fellow teachers on Saturdays after the big parade. It was blistering hot inside that screened kitchen the health department required, and by afternoon we all looked as though we had been cooked right along with hamburgers. But I’ll tell you something.

Theoretically – and I’m only speaking theoretically – stepping into that walk-in cooler for a moment with an icy cold Diet Coke in one hand and a hot Homecoming hamburger fresh off the grill in the other hand might have rivaled just about any vacation I can imagine. Only in theory, of course!

At night the lights come on across the Midway, and Homecoming settles into its evening rhythm. The Ferris Wheel turns against the sky, and children carry prizes nearly as big as they are. Wednesday night brings an ice cream social. Thursday night delivers local entertainment, the queen contest, little Mr. and Miss contest and other delights. Friday and Saturday bring Nashville entertainment. 

Many years ago my little gramma celebrated a birthday during Homecoming. She announced that her big desire was to go see “Little” Jimmy Dickens perform on stage in Bevier, so we set off with our lawn chairs to make that happen. I thought we’d leave after the first concert, but Gramma had other ideas, and we stayed until after the final drawing. My gramma, Minnie Herrington, was not much over 4 foot 11. By the time this particular Homecoming came around, she was well into her 80s, and we would’ve understood if the night had worn her out. My gramma had other plans. As we drove home, she announced that she believed she could stand a little birthday cake. I had the cake at my house, so we stopped and enjoyed it, and then she saw her presents in the corner of the room. Grandma decided it would be OK to open some gifts. Now grandma always took her pains opening presents, and she never hurried. I think we finished Homecoming birthday celebration about 3 o’clock in the morning.

Bevier knows how to put on quite a parade. On Saturdays an hour long extravaganza has just about every kind of entry you could hope for. We find floats displaying hours of work, hometown tractors, the fire truck, queens waving from convertibles, and decorated cars put together with imagination and inspiration. My son was always thinking of a new way to appear in the parade. As a toddler he and his cousin dressed in lederhosen and traveled in a little wagon covered in grapes to display their German heritage. One year we created a posterboard costume that looked very much like a ladybug, but my son insisted it was a “boy bug.” Walking with him through the homecoming parade route was a hot, overwhelming task. Most years he talked my dad and his into creating a vehicle wrapped around our lawn mower. He was Radar with the MASH Jeep; and he drove the “Heavy Chevy.”

Homecoming makes me think of lifelong friends, and I have to remember my teacher /lifelong buddy Doralee. She might be sitting at a brunch before the Homecoming with a familiar happy smile. She might be decorating her Camaro for the upcoming parade, or she might be displaying a ribbon proudly after riding with former students in the parade. And she might just be laughing and flirting in a flapper-fringed dress with Ronnie McDowel on the homecoming stage. People who know her story understand why these pictures make me smile.

In just a few days that old moon will look down again over the whole park as it becomes a little square of light. Only the moon and those of us who have caught the Homecoming spirit will realize how much life has been lived inside that little square. We really have to belong and have the spirit to understand. Years ago Doralee had the privilege of traveling with her students to Europe— Paris, London. As a new teacher she took a group of Bevier students to places people dream about seeing their whole lives. One evening those students were standing in Paris, France. The Eiffel Tower glittered above them, and people from all over the world surrounded. A hush was quietly developing within the group, and Doralee and her sister could not understand the sadness that seemed to issue from these young people. One of the kids looked at them and said something that stayed with all of us forever.— “You know we’re missing the Bevier Homecoming for this.”—  Imagine that? Standing in one of the world‘s greatest cities— and wishing you were back in that tiny park in Bevier, Missouri. I guess that makes perfect sense to those of us who know.

Every year babies make their very first trip to ride a merry-go-round, and little boys probably carry plastic swords they won at the carnival. Unlucky goldfish try to survive in their plastic bags until they can go home and swim in bowls of their own. Teenagers quietly become young adults and propose on the Ferris Wheel. Someday they’ll come back with children of their own.

Very soon Homecoming visitors will hear an old country song, catch the smell of a grilled hamburger, or see a banner stretched across the stage. Without warning they’ll be surrounded by people who really aren’t standing there anymore. That’s when they’ll understand Homecoming was never just something to attend. It quietly became part of who we are. Even if some of us don’t attend any more in person, we still go there with our spirit. We see old classmates, former students, friends, and family. We see people who are still there, and we see people we miss with all our hearts. Somehow they’re all there together, and that’s the miracle of Homecoming. It’s a place that somehow became a container for a lifetime. A place where one city block can hold generations, and yesterday walks comfortably beside today. All of it fits together under the same August sky and that old moon. And under that August moon, nothing else really matters. For one wonderful weekend, we all go home again.

Pull up a chair

Sometimes people talk about “getting over” grief, but I don’t think that’s really possible.

When someone we love dies, grief doesn’t knock politely. It simply moves in. It sits in every room of the house. It waits at every holiday, every birthday, every empty chair. For the rest of our lives, it can feel like an intruder determined to make itself known.

Grief usually isn't sadness. For me, grief is a wicked, sprawling monster. From the very start I believe I told a friend that I would never feel any worse, but I would never feel any better. I have had lots of sweet counsel, and one sweet mama who lost her daughter way too young told me that I would never be myself again. She said I would learn to be a different person.

Grief was an attack. In reality, grief is still an attack.

Grief doesn't come carrying a handkerchief. It comes carrying weapons. It feels as though it has me surrounded with pitchforks and spears, slashing at my heart, opening wounds that never have time to heal before they are torn open again. Every memory becomes another cut. Every sunrise reminds me of another day to fight through without my son. Every ordinary sound has the power to ambush me. There are mornings when simply waking up feels like losing him all over again. I usually feel less like a grieving mom than a hostage.

I sense that grief has me locked in a cage with no door I can find. It deprives me of peace, steals my appetite for living, and whispers that nothing beautiful will really ever exist again. It isn’t content merely to make me cry. It seems determined to wear me down until there is nothing left of me but the memory of the girl I used to be.

For a long time, I believed my only choices were to fight grief valiantly or be defeated and killed by it.

Lately, however, another revelation has been quietly growing.

I am learning that grief isn’t leaving the building. What if, instead of trying to throw it out of the house every morning, I simply acknowledge that it has become a permanent resident?

Not a welcome one.

But a resident nonetheless.

So instead of meeting grief at the door with another battle, I imagine saying, 

“Well… You’re here again. Pull up a chair.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee. Let’s sit on the porch together. Let’s watch the trees. You don’t have to torture me today. You don’t have to reopen every wound, but we can simply remember.

“We can remember my daddy’s insulators and the delight they brought him.

“We can remember my mom's celebrations and ordinary afternoons that never seemed extraordinary until they were gone.

“We can remember Gerred, not only in the moment I lost him, but in the thousands of moments I was blessed to have him.

“We can remember without being destroyed.”

As I have thought about this, I have realized something else. Grief didn’t move into my house alone. Love came with it. There is no grief without love. The deeper the love, the more brutal the grief. For a long time I only noticed the grief because it was the loud one. Grief demands attention. It fills every room with its dark sadness. Grief is loud and greedy… and ugly and thoughtless.

Love is quieter. Love is the beautiful inhabitant.

Love simply sits beside me. The truth is…  

I would never choose to love less just so I could hurt less.

Not for my parents. Not for my grandparents. Certainly not for my son. If the price of loving them deeply is carrying grief, then I would rather carry grief than erase a single memory.

Maybe that is what grief really is. Love with nowhere earthly left to go.

So maybe grief and I can learn to share the same porch. Some days we’ll sit in silence. Some days we will smile at an old memory. And some days we will cry. And perhaps, over time, grief will stop feeling like a stranger who invaded my home, and grief will become a quiet companion who reminds me, day after day, that I had people worth missing. Asking grief to pull up a chair is not a pleasant image. After the battle, it’s an act of quiet courage. To me, this is what survival is really about.

Sometimes people tell me that I am doing better. It’s OK my friends think that, but I don’t believe that can ever happen. I’m slowly learning to become a different person.

Although I have an uninvited heart guest, he is not alone.

A sweeter fact remains. Grief didn’t just waltz in and steal my happy life, and it can’t destroy a single memory. I am learning that Love never moved out. 

Pretty is as pretty does

​I am sitting here in my living room, dreaming about the 250th celebration for America’s birthday, and I realize my place is pretty quiet. However, celebrating America doesn’t have to include a big picnic, a huge firework overlay, or even the traditional things we associate with the Fourth of July. I think for me this year, it’s going to include something special to watch on TV, an afghan in my hands to crochet, and burnt hotdogs. Yes, I love the burnt ones. A novice at the grill, one not used to those of us who adore burnt hotdogs, will never cook one long enough. He sees a little hint of char on a hotdog, and “my goodness, here it is…” 

I became the owner of some new, very lightweight, cooktop pans for my birthday. Here you see them sitting on top of my stove, but you also will notice a little, old pan I have saved out just for the purpose of burning a couple of hotdogs.

Some families have recipes. You won’t need mine for hotdogs.

Some families have old photographs. 

Some families treasure special sayings. My family has all of the three. My son and his buddies had one saying that made them laugh every time: “It cannot be unseen.” And that saying didn’t even have to apply perfectly. Something odd, something funny, something a little ridiculous would happen, and one of them would say, “Well, it cannot be unseen.” They took turns seeing who could drag out the E the longest ………..(unseeeeeeeen)

I was thinking about that because I made an afghan called Adrienne’s Philly Rose. I have a habit of naming every granny afghan, and I try to match the colors to a thought to the person. Adrienne grew up in Philadelphia with the last name of Rose, but now she lives with her son in Boca Raton. When I asked her what color afghan, she immediately chose a pink one. So I saw pinks and greens and love. She had shown me the Atlantic ocean years ago, so I made her a card with Ai, a shot of my stitchery, and an imaginary palm tree on the beach. When my creation arrived in Boca, her son looked at it and said he didn’t know his mom had wanted a watermelon afghan.

And there it was. Pink centers, the image of seeds where the spaces are,  and cream and green rind. It could not be unseen.

Now I still know what I meant when I made it, and she loves it, which is what matters, but I will admit when somebody said watermelon, my eyes did start cooperating with them.

My mother used to say “pretty is as pretty does.“ I think she wanted me to remember that beauty is not just what people see first. It is what they discover after they know you a while. I made Iona's Ozark Dawn for my beautiful cousin’s special birthday. If ever there could have been an image of both "pretty and pretty does,"  these girls are it! My cousin placed it near a picture of our grandmother, that beautiful woman you see who is crocheting at the Lake of the Ozarks. Seeing it there felt just about right: A handmade creation under a photograph of a handcrafted life.

My Gramma Herrington always advised if we were happy…or maybe even sad, to go paint something red. Today I’m thinking about the time we went out and painted an old pump on her porch. I sure don't remember why I was angry, but I do recall how much that vivid, red country pump accented a heavy, wrought iron pot hanging from it. Gramma planted our therapy full of petunias, pink and red, with an occasional bachelor button thrown in for fun. Now..  the place my gramma lived belongs to a new couple, dear friends and neighbors. I made them a housewarming afghan called Marshall Road Morning. I wish them many happy Marshall Road mornings in their future.

This spring we welcomed a brand new, baby cousin into our family, and I created a little orange, cream, and tan afghan called Bodie's Dinosaur Dream.

A saying doesn’t have to belong to us first to become part of our story. Sometimes it just settles in. Sometimes it makes us laugh, but sometimes it brings comfort or advice. Some phrases become a little thread running through the whole blanket. And once you see that, I guess it cannot be unseen. If you have watermelon at your picnic on Saturday, think of my little pink afghan in Boca Raton. Have a Happy Fourth…. Paint something red, white, and blue! 

   (Not my photo)