Three Films

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming, director

This film speaks volumes about my upbringing. I don't mean the theme of valuing home and family.  I am not referring to the parallel of a little girl out wandering the countryside with animals for her only companions.  It's not even Dorothy's fears, although there is certainly something there. 

The Wizard of Oz points out how integral church was in my life.  Yep.  Church.

I lived right behind Keeling Baptist Church.  I could roll out my front door and wind up at the bottom of the hill up against the church's back wall.  We were church-going peeople...well, my mother and siblings and I were. My father wasn't a churchgoer.  His membership was recorded at the Cypress Hut, a beer joint down in the Hatchie bottoms.  But we kids went to church.  Oh, yes.  Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday prayer meeting.  And we didn't miss for anything.

Well, there was one thing.  Sometimes.  Every once in a while there was The Wizard of Oz.

Once a year, the local tv station would show Dorothy and her pals on a Sunday night.  As soon as we heard the promo, we would beg to be allowed to stay home to watch.  Julie got the privelige way before I did.  My mother felt I was too little to tolerate the Wicked Witch without nightmares.  When I was old enough to stay, Julie still poked fun at me about hiding my eyes during the scary parts. 

Who killed my sister?   It terrified me.  I inevitably had trouble sleeping.  And yet, I couldn't wait to watch it again the next year.

Funny how the real life terrors never got that much attention. 

My father was a terror.  He delighted especially in scaring Julie on the way back from the outhouse.  Our little house on the hill wasn't equipped with a flush toilet.  We used the outhouse at the back of the church property until I was in second grade.  She used to ask me to go with her.  I wasn't as afraid of the dark as she was, even though I was four years younger.  With Daddy out there to torment her, who can blame her?  He was tall, well over 6 feet and Ichabod Crane thin back then. 

He would alternately pound on the walls of the stinking shithole or lay in wait for her on the way back. Sometimes he would say, "Something is gonna get you out there," with a gleeful grin on his gaunt face.  And then, he wouldn't do a thing.  The trip to the toilet would be full of anticipatory fear and nothing would happen.  He was clever about his terror tactics.

Dorothy walked a scary road with her companions too.  The witch was always there in their minds, with her threats hanging in the air like fog.  I'll get you, Pretty, and your little dog too.

Sometimes the wait for the Wicked Witch to pop up was worse than the reality of her appearance in a cloud of hellish smoke.  Same for Daddy.

Dorothy left Oz.  I left Tennessee.   

There ends the parallel, though.  When Dorothy went back to Kansas she found her truth: There's no place like home.  When I left Tennessee, I prayed there would never be.

~~~



All three of my films are The Wizard of Oz.  I first viewed Dorothy's story as a way to learn to take my eyes down from my face and see my fears without letting terror control me.  This was a handy skill to have.  I wasn't done facing the dangers of the road when Daddy left my life.  It's a lot easier to fight a witch when you can see where she is and find a big pot of water. 

Next, The Wizard of Oz became something else for me, as I focused on Oz, the Great and Powerful.  Oz, it turns out, is just a man and not even a very accomplished or erudite one.  He did what he could with the Emerald City and they benefitted from it, even after he flew away on a balloon.  I have tried to do that along the way...leave a little something behind.

Finally, TheWizard of Oz is for me a story of home and how to make home with those you find along the way.  It's embracing the misfits of life and finding that they have your back and will go right into the witch's castle to rescue you. It's looking back on that life later and saying it was a good one.  It's appreciating how a life's story can turn out.

All those other Sunday morning and nights were filled with stories.  They provided a kind of map of the road.  Turns out all that church attendance was useful.  I would hide out there and the other local church to escape from what was at home.  Church saved me, and not just in the usual sense of the word.  It was a place of sanctuary for me.  It modeled a safe haven that I used later to create family. My road would have been much longer without it. 

Thanks for meeting me at this place on the road.

And you were there.  And you, and you...

Story Books

Four books. 

This is impossible.  So I will give you four stories about books.

***

Book Story One.  Baptist Hymnal. 

Today, Kyndall gave us a sermon at Covenant with the topic of All Saints Day.  As a part of the service, we could go up and light a candle in honor of someone who has died that embodied Christ's presence for us.  For Baptists, this is pretty unfamiliar territory.  We aren't the standard brand of Baptists. 

Just before and during the candle lighting, we sang a capella "Be Still My Soul."  This is one of the old traditional high church hymns that I find particularly meaningful.  I love the melody and hearing the congregation sing the various parts.  Singing it makes my mouth, my heart, and my head feel in right relationship. 

After lighting my candle for Granddaddy, I went to the back door to look out at the green growing things.  All I know about the land and animals I learned from Jim Thompson, Sr.  While the rest of the congregation sang the last verses, I just listened.

It occurred to me that I was hearing the song I want the ones I love to hear when I am remembered after I die.  That is very appropriate for the day.

 Book Story Two.  Bible.

Specifically, 1 John 3:1-3.  "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are." 

And that is what we are.  My granddaddy was a loving man.  He would allow me to give him a manicure on his gnarled arthritic fingers. I could brush his lush white hair and put a bow in it.  He could run a farm and keep everyone fed.  He never made me afraid.  Jim Thompson, Sr. is the reason that I can hear the word Father in connection with God without throwing up. Jimmy Junior did not ever give me one minute of the calm, ordered presence that Jim Senior did.  That, my friends, is the embodied presence of God in a work shirt. 

***

Book Story Three.  The Book of My Life.

People show up in the scenes of my life for a while.  I have lived a long time and moved a lot, living all over the world.  Marriage to a military man has made my book of life one of short chapters, with characters popping up for too brief appearances.

Liz and Jason, and now little Sarah Rose, are two of those people.  They came here because Liz was stationed with the Air Force as a Psychiatrist at Wilford Hall at Lackland Air Force Base.  Liz is a Christian.  Jason is Jewish.  Sarah Rose has the religion of preciousness, and I hope she learns more of that as her life's story progresses.  Covenant is one of the places that the family lived out their respective faith traditions while here in San Antonio.

Liz has completed her active duty.  They are moving to Virginia to work and grow in that place.  It is a great move for them, but it means that they are no longer going to be available for cameo appearances in my life.  I was sad about that today.  We all were.

We sang the song we always sing for them, putting hands on their shoulders, standing very close. 

Traveling Mercies --

...take bread for the journey and strength for the fight



comfort to sleep through the night


the wisdom to choose at the fork in the road


and a heart that knows the way home

And for the faithful, and for the weary, and for the hopeless, here is our prayer:


go in peace live in grace


trust in the arms that will hold you


go in peace live in grace

trust God’s love.

You can hear a bit of it here as recorded by Billy Crockett.

***

Book Four. A Thousand Wonders.

I am writing a book.  It has become something more than just the words I use to create sentences and move plot.  It is becoming one of those things that defines a life.  I don't have enough time to work on it and keep up with my work for grad school.  I manage to combine the two in a fiction writing workshop this semester. 

I am learning things from myself as I write the stories that make up the larger work.  It is doing things for me that I am grateful to experience.  I want to write in support of this work all the time. 

You might wonder why I am writing about four books for a blog meme when I have papers to write and the book is calling me. 

I wonder too.  My only answer is that I promised I would do this every week.  I have already fallen one week behind once in the ten assignments. I don't often miss a deadline.  Hardly ever.  And I find something in this writing too.  It has opened me up to write publicly since 2007.  It is part of the way I spend my life.

This is my Sunday.  Remembering Saints.  Singing songs for my own funeral.  Saying farewell.  Writing.  Always writing.

Food Moves Me

I'm late for dinner.  I should have posted this last Monday.  It's past time to blog about five foods.  I have read some of my other friends' work.  They make me hungry and make me think.  I think I will refer you to my other blog, A Thousand Wonders, for this week.  A Thousand Wonders is the place where I am blogging my writing process as I craft some stories into a novel.  This week's prompt here goes well with my last post about going home while thinking about the food of that place. 

Here's a bit, with way more than five foods:

Pecan and chess pie for holidays. Homecoming meant pimento-cheese sandwiches, fried chicken, potato salad, and deviled eggs. Every time someone set down a platter or dish, the wood would sag a bit. I always worried for the food. Brunswick stew cooked up in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire under my tree. Grandy stroking and stirring and scraping with a boat paddle he used just for stew. People would come from all around on a Brunswick stew day, bringing Mason jars and appetites. Nobody ever went hungry at Grandy and Memma’s house. Bourne, back then, saw too many hungry people though.

To read more you can visit A Thousand Wonders - Food Takes You Back.  To start at the beginning of my writing process, go here instead and read up.

Places of Me

Six Places of Me

back of my neck - your mouth

left ring finger - Lyngby, Denmark

tummy stretch marks - Sacramento, California

nerve fiber network - The Web

amygdala - Keeling, Tennessee

feet - here, here, here

What Makes My Dress Fly Up...

Nine loves.  Easy.

9.  I love being able to walk again without crouching down like a crone or holding onto a cane.  I love being able to sleep.  I love being able to attend to the important things in life without worrying if I can stand up without help or get off the toilet.  There are still issues.  But these things are pretty nice. (Update:  Hiked for the first time since getting sick.)

8.  I love having a daughter.  I wouldn't have minded a son.  I just have no experience.  But a daughter.  It's so good I have no words for it.  I don't want to jinx perfection.

7.  I love being married to someone who does not give me reason to worry that he will drink up my earnings, bring sluts into my yard, beat me with a bone-in ham, shoot at my children in a thunderstorm, take my daughter to beer joints and a) take her into the place so that drunks can paw her or b) leave her in the car to worry that someone will see her and paw her, talk one way to strangers and a whole other way his family so that strangers think his family got a real smart guy for a daddy when he was a bum who couldn't keep a job, or, and this is key, make me lose a minutes sleep worrying that he would do something heinous to my daughter. You don't, in my experience, often find a man who is that "lacking" and Adrian deserves my loyalty and undying gratitude.

6.  I love that I am weird and yet still have people who are willing to be in my life. 

5.  I love cats. 

4.  I love my brain.

3.  I love being 51. (I have loved all my years since around 30, but not so much before that.)

2.  I love psychotherapy and good friends.

1.  And lastly, I love writing.  How else would you know all these keen things about me?

Stepping on Graves

I painted my toenails acid green for summer.

After slogging through the the 19th Century American Literature in June, I couldn't wait for a little rest, a little fun.  And what could be more fun than acid green toenails?

And they did cheer me up.  Every time I looked at them, I giggled a bit.  My neurologist joked that I must be doing better if I could reach my toes to paint them green.  He said he knew I had painted them because no one else would have done it to me.  I don't know.  They looked kind of spiffy.  I was intending to take a picture to show you and write about that. 

I didn't get the picture taken and now they are really needing to be redone. 

See, I went home to Tennessee for a few days to see the old home place that got out of my family for a few years, something like 30 years, really.  My sister bought it last month, and we were all tickled to see the place back in the family.  So I went home to inspect it and to bring my mom back here in San Antonio for a visit.  She's here now.  It wasn't her home place but the other side of the family--my paternal grandmother's home.  Lots of history there in that old ramshackle house by the pond.  I lived many years across the road from the farmland part of that piece of land.  Not such good memories for me there.  I have exercised demons from some other family land on previous trips home and by signing some of it over to a church for land for the kids to play.  I hoped for a positive experience last week.

Sherry couldn't wait to show me the place, so we went there on the way back from the airport.  I was wearing my brown flip flops and sporting my green toenails.  Not exactly good farm shoes.  A good neighbor farmer had cleared us a place to drive right up to the pond.  Getting out, we took some pictures and walked the place.  The old home where my grandmother was born had been moved by a previous owner to the back of the property for use as a shed for hay and feed for cows.  It was surrounded by a little woods that was thick with poison ivy.  Sherry is allergic; I'm not.  I blazed the trail, so I spent a lot of time looking at the ground and at my feet picking their way through to find a safe path for her.  Payback for many times when my big sister did the same for me with people much more nefarious (although just as toxic) as poison ivy.  I learned early to watch my step.  Snakes, rotten boards, sharp sapling stumps, bad relatives--pretty much the same.  Our Uncle Tuck killled himself in the room that had been turned into a shed for the cows to escape a storm.  No floor, three walls down, just a shed.  The 80-some-year-old man who bought the farm once fell through the roof putting up tin and was laid out with broken bones for hours until he finally crawled to the road for help.  Sometimes, it can be a long road.

My mom did come home with me for a visit to San Antonio.  She is 82 and has whipped lymphoma but has weakened considerably.  She has a bad back with more metal than bone holding it all together.  All this meant she needed a wheelchair assist through the airport.  You'd think with all the security complications that a wheelchair would add to the headaches of air travel.  Surprisingly, the skycaps, the fast lane for wheelchairs, and the early boarding made it easier to travel with a wheelchair-bound mommy than without one.  Sometimes, it all evens out. 

So here we are in San Antonio.  I am a little later than I had hoped writing from my "Write, Eat, Post, Bathe" group's prompt about feet. 

I thought about feet all week--in the airport, with green toenails, dusty with ancestor dirt, up on the footrests of a wheelchair in the Memphis airport.  I also thought about some other feet.  One other day when we were in Tennessee, I did some research for a book of short stories I am writing and for some genealogy I am doing.  My flip-flop-shod feet walked over the bones of the Thompson family members who came in a group from Alamance County, North Carolina to Dancyville, Tennessee around 1850.  They spread out and married and had children.  One of the grandchildren of that bunch, James Rawlin Thompson, married the woman who was born in that house up by a pond, Emma Sue Bourne.  They had my daddy, who, with a little help from Mom, had me.  He held on to me in more ways than one for many years after I had crossed an ocean to make a new life for myself.  My feet have carried me all the way and walked the floor with a daughter of my own.  It's almost too much to take in for a little posting on a blog.

Now, I am listening to my husband and my mother talk about the TV program they are watching on the Hallmark Channel about pioneers.  I just want to hit the "publish post" button and go change my toenail color to shocking blue.  I am having fun this summer.  And I am getting somewhere.

I hope your feet take you to interesting places as well.