the bluebird

When God had made a host of them

One little flower still lacked a stem

To hold it's blossom blue;

So into it he breathed  a song,

And suddenly, with petals strong

As wings, away it flew.

Emily Dickinson

(I think!)

My Sad Christmas

Nine flowers standing in a row,    

God has said one must go.

Who shall it be said each one

Can it be him of who we are so fond?

On Christmas Day down came the hand 

and pulled the flower from the sand.

The sand was the suffering he must bear. 

God took him away with gentle care.

The other flowers they will weep

While down from heaven he will peep.

The flower was Jr. my little brother

He who loved both us and mother.

I know now he is happy and gay 

And he will remember the day he was taken away.

He had lots of toys from us

But he received a gift with no bother no fuss.

God knows best others say

But I will always remember that sad Christmas Day.

 

Dedicated to God's Darling Angel Jr who was just lent to us. 

Love, Jane.

poem written at age 11 on the death of my brother , December 25, 1950

                                                       

CHRISTMAS MEMORIES

A stiff, bristly, good smelling cedar tree, cut from Papa's woods. Shiny red and green punch-out ornaments from a sack of flour.

A string of lights, red and green and yellow and blue, and some spotted where the paint had peel off from the pointed bulbs. When one blew they all went out.

Each bulb unscrewed, replaced with a new one, and suddenly the connection is made and the lights, filling your lap and trailing on the floor, light up with the magic of Christmas.

A crate of apples, each in its nest of green paper. A bag of tangerines, so easy to peel. A box of chocolate covered cherries, mama's favorite, Pecans and walnuts to crack on the hearth.

A box of dried grapes, they were awful, your teeth grated on the seeds and your hands got dirty holding them, but mama always bought them.

Fat, rough skinned oranges, with holes cut in the top to squeeze the juice through.  The acid from the peel made our lips and around our mouths, red.

Daddy showed us how to use peppermint sticks for straws to suck the juice through, until the sticks became hollow and filled with little caves.

Cakes, lop-sided layers turned out to cool on brightly printed feed sacks. Coconut and chocolate and buttermilk filling decorated with pecan halves, carefully arranged on top. And always, an apple sauce cake for Daddy.

A red cellophane wreath hung in the window. It's light didn't burn and it was dusty and torn from spending the year on top of the chifferobe but it was Christmas and the old wreath was beautiful to me.

There were presents, a book, two tiny dolls in a blanket, a head scarf printed with dancing ballerinas, a play telephone and a wind up freight train that spit out sparks in the dark.

Christmas meant a visit from Uncle I. L. and Aunt Hattie. My uncle laughed and told his funny jokes. He always told me I looked like Eleanor Roosevelt and that my feet were so big they breathed and had guts in them.

Mama playing Christmas carols on the piano, Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Hark the Hearld Angels Sing and my favorite, Away In A Manager.

The ride downtown in back of the truck, wrapped in old woolen army blankets, our excited breath looking like cigarette smoke in the cold air, on our way to see the Christmas lights.

And the Merry Christmas's came and went. And then one came bringing death, like a crushing hammer blow and all the bulbs went out at once and destroyed the magic of Christmas.

 

 

Letter G

This is my entry for the letter G. Gravestones. Taken in a cemetery in Marion, Ohio.

Mother's day continued

I did go home for Mother's Day, the year 1993. It was just like I had planned, the front porch swing and coffee and curling smoke and laughter and memories.  The old tree's trunk still lay on the ground, covered with a pretty green vine. There were no lightning bugs and we were too lazy and content to go to Sunday School but the red roses were blooming and I was not a wife or mother or friend but just Jane, my mother's daughter.

I did not know what the next Mother's Day would be like. If I had I would have lingered longer with my mama that day.

I can still see her standing in the road, watching,  as we drove off, her arms crossed over her stomach, the belt to her dress slipped up too high, her feet in her old shoes. I wondered as she stood there what she was thinking or seeing in her mind. Was she seeing that black hearse taking her little boy down that road, to bring him back in a little white casket? Was she thinking about the last time Daddy went down that road to the nursing home, leaving her alone in the home where we had lived for over fifty years.   I almost told my husband stop and go back as I saw her standing there.

Mother's Day

I want to go home for Mother's day. I must go home and look into my mama's face again and see her smile.  I want to sit on the front porch and listen to her memories flow like a song with the voice of the porch swing singing along.

We will drink coffee and she will smoke her cigarettes and I will watch the smoke curl away just like I did when I was a little girl, Mama sitting at the sewing machine making me a new feed sack dress while I lay across the bed, thinking how pretty I was going to look.

I will miss the silver popular tree at the corner of the porch, next to the rock wall, the tree where my brother carved his initials so long ago. When the dress was finished my sister Betty posed me in front of that tree and made my picture.

The tree blew down this past winter. I felt sad when Mama told me but now the morning sun will light up my old bedroom.

We will sit on the porch and watch the birds bathe in the birdbath and hear the trains go by on the tracks across the valley. The air will be filled with the smell of honeysuckle and if we sit late enough, we will hear the whippoorwills. If the lightning bugs are out I will jump off the porch and catch some before they fly too high. I will pinch their light off just at the right moment and put one on mine and Mama's finger for a glowing ring just like I did when I was little.

Yes, I must go home for Mother's Day and wear a red rose to Sunday School. I must go home and be a daughter, Mama's little girl, again.

Out Doors

When I was growing up, just about everyone I knew still had outdoor toilets. You could kind of judge people by their toilets. The shiftless, don't much care kind usually built theirs on a slope and let the waste pile up and tumble down the hillside.

My mama said that in her day, men came around town in a "Honey Wagon"and shoveled out the waste of the people in town.

The more industrious people dug pits underneath their toilets and from time to time put in lime to keep the odors down. My daddy built us a very fine toilet. He dug a deep pit and poured a cement floor around it. He took a big piece of pipe and embedded one end into the floor and on the other end he fitted a wooden seat just like the ones in the restrooms at the picture show. It even had a lid to let down.

 The seat was very comfortable and you could sit and think your thoughts away from the noisy house.  There was a bit of newpaper on the floor which had a story about a horse who fell into a cistern. The paper lay there for months and to this day everyone still living in my family can tell you nearly word for word about the horse and the struggle the people had getting him out.

It was very nice when we got a real bathroom, but I kind of missed the little house inside the pasture down across the road. I missed feeling the heat of summer and the occasional sound of gentle rain on the rusty tin roof. I missed the cold of winter and the sound of the blustering wind blowing around the corners and through the boards.  I missed the nosing around of the old cow who came to the door as if to say hello. And best of all, we never had to clean it.