The Power of a Purple Hat

For you, there may be no significance to purple hats. They're just an item, an accessory. A cute bauble slumped on the hat-display at your nearest department store. A purple hat perhaps may catch your eye as you stroll by the accessory section, sticking out from the morass of scarves, jangle bracelets, and fedoras.

You might even pause for a purple hat, intrigued by the shapely curve of the brim or the seamless grace of its ribbon. You model for a moment in the nearby full-length mirror the store has so conscientiously provided on a support column. Your chin tilts this way and that. You give the hat a sassy jaunt, and you ask "Am a purple hat kind of girl?" But then, you glance at the fifteen dollar price tag and crack a rueful smile.  Maybe not today. After all, it's just a hat.

But you see, for my family, purple hats have a special importance. Let me explain.

About a year ago, I was in the midst of writing what basically amounted to an undergraduate thesis. What, your bachelor's program didn't require that? Well, welcome to Piedmont College-- where they most definitely do. Somehow, mine turned into a 50 page behemoth--probably due to my quite annoying, over-achievement issue. Whatever the cause of my verbosity, I had spent two semesters up to my elbows in creative nonfiction and family genealogy research--a.k.a.... spending a lot of time getting dusty. I was either in the library, poking about the little-used but often-needed literary criticism shelves or, in the attic, roving through cardboard boxes full of family photo albums and postcards. Occasionally, when I came up for a brief breath of air and sunlight, I would swing by my advisor's office--for that weekly pep talk. "Yes your project has worth. No, you're not digging a huge hole for yourself. Yes, you're going to graduate. Yes, you're a good writer. Grow a pair." (Not really, but seriously, that's a close summation of how this casptone process unfolds.)

So that's how I found myself sitting in my professor's dim office, discussing the color purple. No, not the book. The literal color purple. Well, I guess if we're going to get technical, we were really discussing family folklore, history, and the great breach caused by the passage of time. As the years whirl onward, we lose so much of ourselves, of our past. For example:

Leaning back in his broad office chair, my professor said, "So much gets lost over time. Even in this so-called digital age. We just don't tell  family legends to our children like we used to. Or pass these things down. The little things about a person's personality ...like someone's favorite food or their favorite color...they just get lost. They're not important, supposedly." He waved a hand my way. "I bet you couldn't tell me your great-grandmothers favorite color."

"It was purple," I blurted.

Then, I stopped. Wait. I just contradicted my professor; am I allowed to do that? Did I just pull a major smart alec move? 

He cracked a grin. "Now, see. That tells me something about your family." At my puzzled frown, he said, "You are keeping people alive. You're telling your stories."

And that's what I'm trying to explain today--with all this ramble and jumble about purple hats.

We once had this little old lady in our lives. Picture her: slumping  in her padded rocking chair, one hand on the armrest, wearing a floral-print apron over her dress, her hair a delicate, wispy confection. And what I can only describe as a beatific expression on her face. She had the smile of the blessed, which she in turn broadcast like a loving blessing onto her family. I knew her for the entire first half of my life. Her passing was like the ending of an age; she had been the lodestone our entire family gravitated toward and around. Family dinners and holidays were typically centered around her; our entire, dispersed family connected at this single root-point. After her death, we divided into our respective family units and generations to celebrate our holidays. The time with Ma at the head of the table had ended.

My own mother often says of her: "Can you imagine Ma's life? She went from horse-and-buggy days to the landing on the moon. Can you imagine what she thinks of the world now-a-days? Wonder if anyone has ever seen so much change in one lifetime."

Like my professor said, the little lady we called Ma--whether she was our mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, or great-grandmother--saw time whirl right past, with all its wild fluctuations and bravado moments. Yet, she remained this quiet, steady presence. A calm solidity at the head of the table. And yet, as if to belie that solidity, her favorite color was purple. Bright, bold, vivacious purple. And she let us know it too, wearing purple dresses and little purple hats, growing blue-purple hydrangeas by her front stoop. As if she was saying for all the world, I'm alive and bright and happy no matter what time throws at me.

So, you see, that's why I'm going to such lengths to explain the power of a purple hat. Because, a little purple hat is more than just a cute accessory available at your local department store. It's a story: a whole life--bright and solid--captured in a little item, a little moment. And its mine to wear and share proudly, no matter the price tag, no matter the fashion.

Silence is Key

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Writing allows for catharsis. It gives us an opportunity to stand apart, to inspect our experiences and moments from an objective, third-party eye. Rather than just experiencing the moment with that visceral, first-hand, what-on-earth-is-going-on perspective, we get to ask questions: what circumstances led up to this moment? How did I react? Why did I react that way? What did I say, how did my expressions change? Did I gasp, start, raise my eyebrows? What was the angle of the sun-slant through the window? What shoes did I wear--why did I pick that pair? Was I sitting, legs-crossed, or standing, hands on my hips, mad and alert?

But why does writing down these seemingly meaningless details relieve the tension? How does recording the moment expunge it from our soul--if not completely erasing it, at least making it easier to bear?

Countless people journal, keep diaries, blog, write poetry, short stories, novels. Perhaps it is simply the mechanic motion of the pencil on paper, the rhythmic flow and scrape of the pen-point, or the ratta-tat of the keyboard, offering some soothing therapy. Yet I think the answer is something else: the key is in those questions. Writing gives us a chance to pick up a moment as if it were an object in the closet of our minds. Flip it around, turn it over, take the batteries out and peer at the insides--what's going on in there? We can break the moment down and recreate it again. And in the breaking down of the tiniest details--from the angle of the light to the lipstick you wore that day--we can find a tiny moment of meaning. The lighting can be a metaphor. Or the way you write a scene--adding imagery or dialogue--can connect your mind to your reader, drawing them into the moment. The moment, then, can be about truth and connection rather than just a confused jumble of firsthand emotion.

But then--here's the kicker.

Something happened--years ago--and you can't write about it. You've picked up your pen...more times than you can count. You close your eyes and pull the day back up to the light. And you start your work....you record--"once upon a time" "in the beginning there was." And then you stop. You realize you've got it all wrong. You know full and well that the event happened on a roasting summer day. You  distinctly remember wearing black and that dark shade being too oppressive for the heat raged that day. You remember sweating and the skin flaking on your shoulders later, burned from standing outside even for those scant minutes. Yet, as you sit and recall, you start to shiver, and you know, you know down to your core, that you were so cold that day. Why else would you remember goosebumps and shaking? How does that coincide with the truth--the August heat and sunburn.

My memory isn't flawed, in this instance. The real obstacle is this: I don't want to write about this experience. While I understand that writing provides an outlet, a release, and a way to take a bad experience and render it something good--a short story or poem capable of reaching out to another--I don't want to write  about that day. I don't want to write about the sun on my shoulders, the grass under my feet, the papers clenched in my fist, or the black sheath dress that I loved, but after that day, crumpled and threw away.

The simple truth is this: sometimes, writing isn't always the answer. Some things need to remain wrapped up and hidden. Not because I don't want to deal with them or because I can't handle them. But rather, because they are done and, now, should be left to lie undisturbed, at rest. Its just simply time to lay it down, turn away, and walk down the path laid out ahead.

And that, my friends, was a very hard lesson for the writer in me to learn.

Peaches: A Story

When I was about 7 years old, my grandfather passed away. At the time, I didn't really understand what that meant. He "passed away"--did that mean he went somewhere? Was it like passing another car on the street or another kid in line at school? You pass ahead and now are in a different place, going further then those behind you. That year had been full of many words I didn't understand--"radiation" "chemo-therapy" "cancer."  To a seven year old, those words meant keep quiet, don't jump around too much, don't bang your toys, hug Granddaddy gently, don't bounce on the couch. Some days, he didn't feel good, and the house remained dark and filled with tiptoe silence; other days, he danced with me to old country tunes spilling out of his radio box, waving his cane to get me to boogie. Somehow with all that, I never thought that "feeling bad today" led to death, to this state of passing. 

I figured it out tho, pretty quickly, what the ambiguous passing away meant. Not seeing someone anymore, no matter how much you miss them and call for them in your mind, a lot of tears from people you never see cry, and wearing Sunday clothes several days in a row.

Several weeks later I discovered that passing away also meant cleaning up and cleaning out. I found myself in my grandparent's crawl space attic, sorting through old boxes. My mom made it a game--like digging for treasure. Who knew what interesting things we would find hidden in the back rafters?

My dad pulled out a wilting cardboard box. The inside was a jumble of odds and ends--including an old fruit-candy box. He handed it to me. I pulled open the lid and found a pile of tiny cards. Postcards, curling inward and shaped now like little bridges. Handwriting flowed across the majority of them, a waving, looping penmanship, much prettier than any I had seen before. The postcards held pictures of places I had never seen. They were stamped France,Germany, Great Britain, and captured the hesitant, squinting smiles of young men in pants that ballooned out at the thighs. Soldiers from the earliest decades of the 20th century.

"These are from World War One," my dad said. He held the postcards to the light and gazed at them with something akin to reverence. Those tiny cards held several years worth of correspondence between Lee and Myrtle--my recently deceased grandfather's parents. I miss you. It's cold here. Can't wait to see you again. 

One photograph slipped out from the stack of postcards. It fluttered to the attic floor, twisting in the air like a little leaf. I picked it up. It was a simple little image: two elderly ladies, leaning against a ladder in an orchard. Confused, I flipped it over. On the back, the word peaches was written in ink faded now to pale yellow.

The word meant nothing to me.

"Who are these people?" I asked.

My parents took the photo, looked it over. "I don't know. Maybe Grandmama knows." We took the photo down to the kitchen, where she was packing up her dishes and cutlery, preparing to come live with us. She too did not recognize the two ladies in the photo.

"Maybe its two ladies your great-grandfather met in France during the war," she suggested. "Or probably just got stuck in the box somehow."

That pretty much ended the discussion. For some reason, however, I kept the little photo of the two smiling ladies. Slipped it into my little backpack of toys and books. I still have it to this day.

I don't know why I kept that photo. Why a seven year old girl felt the need to keep and protect a 70-something year old photograph of two strangers. But there was some pull in that image. Something that reached out to me, touched me, and held me the way nothing else had. Those two smiling, happy women, their baskets full of overripe fruit, represented a long-forgotten summer and sunshine. With my grandfather's death--the first touch of mortality I had known--fresh on my mind, there was something reassuring in  looking at photo of people from long ago. I knew those two ladies had long since passed away. But here I held in my hands proof that this passage did not necessarily mean total oblivion.

My grandfather--and all those other things that become lost, forgotten, or disappear--wasn't completely lost. Some things are intangible--things like memories. Even though we have such few years on this earth, we have the ability to collect this little moments. Moments and memories  of good times, summertime, easy smiles, and trees laden with ripe fruit dipping down into bright sunlight.

Someday I'll share with you what else

these two smiling ladies

hidden among the peach trees

have taught me,

what other lost things

they have come to represent. 

Squares & Patches

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Today- I want to talk about great grandmothers + quilts. 

Unlike many, I had the privilege of getting to know my great-grandmother. She was a very present force throughout most of my childhood. Some of my earliest memories of Christmas and other holidays revolve around her and her home. Easily I can still recall the crocheted blankets flung across the back of her scratchy old couch; a collection of aged National Geographic, pages curled and yellowing;  the sag and swoop of her tiny front porch; her hedge of blue hydrangeas, their heads nodding to the fat-bellied wasps swarming around them;  and especially the little hat always perched atop her white crown, concealing hair like wisps of cloud. Despite her gathering age, she  was the undisputed leader of the family. Given a seat of prominence at family dinners, deferred to, listened to. She was our matriarch-- sitting in her rocker, hands folded, an inscrutable smile playing across her lips. Occasionally, she would just laugh and say that's great. A phrase that quickly became her mantra-- that we jokingly repeated to each other. In my childish mind, it seemed the only thing she ever said-- but looking back now, remembering how she smiled and laughed with us.. the phrase almost seems like a blessing. As if she was watching her family, so many different generations mingling together, branching from different stations and walks of life..as if seeing us together before her...well, it was just great.

Here's something else about my great-grandmother: she made quilts. These weren't just blankets made of hastily patched squares but rather intricately arranged works of art-- composed of triangles, hexagons, rectangles--stitched of fabric exhibiting variant textures and hues pieced into swirls and patterns that reminded me of stained glass, of mosaics, sometimes even of the three-dimensional depths of a kaleidoscope. She stitched these quilts until her fingers became too stiff and gnarled with arthritis to continue. I was lucky enough to receive one of her last creations: a simple design of sky blue, pink, and delicate spring green. I still have it-- its draped across the bed in our guest room now. I remember at the time--even at 7 years old--feeling special for receiving such a gift. Even at such a young age, I knew handmade items carried special value.

This may sound odd to those who just don't understand--but I believe there is truly something special, perhaps even magical, about handmade quilts.

During and before the American Civil War, quilts were actually used as a secret code to warn and guide escaping slaves of the safe havens or dangers ahead. Abolitionists and other "conductors" on the underground railroad would drape ornate quilts over their window or porch ledges. There was a whole language hidden in the quilt stitching. Keep going. Danger here. or You're safe here, stop and rest. Codes and messages hidden save for the eyes of those who had learned to read the symbols.

Although our circumstances of course were not so dire or desperate as those of history, I think there was a message tucked and stitched into my grandmother's quilts. One much simpler: easy for a little girl to understand. It was a message of love and comfort. A reminder of the warmth and strength that envelops you when surrounded by a loving family. A reminder that life is just great 

For more information on the quilt code,

check out Jacqueline Tobin's informative book

Hidden in Plain View

available here

Memories & Milk

Waves of heat tumbled over the pastures, turning the summer grass's bright shoots to prickled dry stalks that  would angrily poke my sandal-clad feet. A small cowherd--the neighbor's stock grazing on my grandfather's land--dotted the hillside. As I leaned against the kitchen window, my whole weight balanced across the  counter on bent elbows and waist, I stared at the slow moving animals. The occasional lowing of a mother calling to her calf wafted to my waiting ears--I watched as the beasts waddled around, fat from spring and early summer eating. As they lowed and wandered across the hilltops, I wondered if they were complaining about the slim pickings, whining at the stick-like blades now poking their thick tongues and broad snouts.

Everything seemed to be turning brown. The grass, the trees--parched with thirst. The cattle and the old draft horse--their sleeky black hides bleached by sun beams. Even inside, the thick, brown heat seemed to fill up the kitchen, coating the oak cabinets and linoleum floor. It was a thick, slow-moving heat--oozing and seeping like honey.

It was a heat that should've slowed me down, but all it did was manage to keep me indoors. My little-girl energy emanated from my skin just like the sweat-steam emanated from the cow's hides outside.

I continued to dangle on the counter , not caring that my elbows were turning red from the pressure, ignoring the dig of the laminate edge into my ribcage. Hold on, hold on, hold on. My flip flops beat a staccato on a loose cabinet door in my effort to cling and balance, but still I slid down with a hmph, one bony knee knocking the door handle as I went. I let my bottom bump onto the floor, hands splayed behind me, and there I stayed, head arched back, looking upside down at the kitchen.

At the top of my vision, I saw my grandmother's slippers moving back and forth. She bustled from the under-the-counter radio across the room to the oven, peeking inside its glowing maw.

"Ready yet?" I called out, then laughed at my own voice--stretched out and distorted from the way my head was still arched back.

My grandmother glanced my way and chuckled at my expression. "Almost ready," she chirped. "Almost ready Freddy."

I straightened and crawled like a baby over to the oven door. The oven window pulsed a yellow-red color. I could just make out the dark edge of a pan before a swift pat to my pant-seat told me to get up.

"Better wash your hands, crawling around on the nasty old floor," my grandmother said.

I looked at my palms. "Your floor's not nasty, Grandmama," I said, holding my hands up as proof.

"Better hurry, if you wanna eat," she said, oven mittens already in hand. Up I hopped.

After what my child clock termed forever, the oven would gape and reveal its humble treasure: a fresh, crumbling cornpone baked to golden perfection and glossed a syrupy brown on top. With mitten hands, my grandmother grasped the skillet handle, lugging its burdened weight onto the countertop. I always marveled at that strength; I knew how heavy that pan was--old, solid iron, rubbed a rusty black. Occasionally, she would let me tentatively lift it, always two-handed, my elbows bowing at the weight. Then she would laugh and toss the pan around, her arms accustomed to the heft and size.

"Whole kitchen sets used to be made like this, honey," she said. "Different from now." Yet, she always moved swiftly and gracefully when, inside the oven, the metal blossomed red.

Quick as a finger snap, a twist made the bread slide onto the waiting surface of a lily-white plate. Using the big kitchen-knife, she then sliced eight, pie-shaped pieces. I clambered into a chair as two bowls and two little spoons appeared on the kitchen table. Bouncing, bouncing in my seat as my stomach gave a quick gurgle.

"You know, some folks eat this with buttermilk but ish"--she squirmed and made a face--"I  don't like old buttermilk with cornbread. Give me regular sweet milk."

She sat the milk carton on the table. I reached for it eagerly and poured until a thick ribbon of white splashed and pooled around the bread in my bowl. My hungry eyes always then searched for the bear-shaped honey jar. Tendrils of honey flowed over my fingers, leaving finger prints all over the carton and lid, a sticky mess later. I'm sure my grandmother grinned at my efforts. But she never stopped me--simply sat down and poured herself a bowl.

Together, we sat--I jabbered, she listened, our spoons clinking little,muted laughs. Until the bright, white belly of the bowls showed clean, until all the sweet bread, milk, and honey was gone.

*

The cast iron skillet, the smooth bowl, the brown cracks marring the top of the pone--ironically, it all wasn't the product of some age-old family recipe. Although, one of those does exist, tucked into some dusty recipe book on a pantry shelf. The secret to those lazy little-girl afternoons was simply a nondescript, little cardboard box. Boasting in bold red to be America's favorite. One box, one egg, 1/3 cup milk. 

Some of the best moments in life are so simple. And childhood memories are glossed and sticky with nostalgia; and mine, like any recipe, are made sweet by the sugar. 

Sampling 1

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Here's a sampling of a creative nonfiction essay I'm currently working on. This is a glimpse of the first rough draft.  Please feel free to let me know what you think. The working title is "Tattoo." 

GENTLE DEAD-BROKE QH gelding. 15hh.  Flashy sorrel. 

Easy keeper. Good lesson horse for beg-int'm rider, great on trails. 

$2000 OBO. 

There was nothing flashy about this animal. He simply wasn't pretty. IF he was eye-catching, it was because of the utter awkwardness of his entire body.: a nightmare of configuration, a failed model in need of a redo. Knobbly-kneed. Skinny-necked. A slooping, protuberant snout. Equally protuberant hips. The worst part, however, was his tail. Cropped abrupt and short, it was a  tattered scrub-brush of a thing. Occasionally it would give a desperate flicker, trying in vain to swat the flies just out of its reach. Too short to do any good. 

Docile and droop-eared, the horse stood on his line, chewing and rubbing the fat coil of his tongue over and under the bridle's bit. Over and under. Over and under. 

"Whatcha think?" the woman at the other end of his lead asked me. Her streaked blond hair was clenched in a ponytail and a cigarette dangled from her mouth, its smoke curling toward the horse. 

I looked back at the gelding. Mud-caked and standing in the thick slop of the riding pen. They hadn't even cleaned him up for a sale. 

"Yea, I'll ride him," I said. 

Thirteen years old and at once fascinated and terrified of myself, I wasn't aware that I had options. I was more acutely aware of all the open space around my elongating limbs than I was about my own voice saying no. 

The woman tossed me the rope and yanked a saddle and pad from the corral fence. She slapped them onto the horse's skinny bare back. Sweat and dust matted the pad's underside, flaky like old dried icing. At the sudden touch of the cloth, the horse's skin twitched and shuddered, as if he were twittering away a worrisome bug, but otherwise his demeanor of mute boredom (or perhaps long-suffering)  didn't waver. 

A jerk and a switch of leather and the saddle cinch was tightened, ready to go. 

The woman's palm slapped the saddle seat. "Hop on up." 

The braided lead left a smear of mud on my hands. I wiped one palm on my jeans but only further embedded the dirt in my skin. I glanced over my shoulder at my mother waiting at the fence. She shrugged. Go ahead if you want. I looked back at my waiting mount and the impatient woman. The skin around the saddle-cinch had puckered and folded, caught in a tight pinch. A wrinkled old grape. My eyes fluttered to the woman as I quickly slipped a finger behind the cinch. A quick tug loosened it. 

I snapped my hand to my neck, pretended to scratch in a pathetic effort to disguise my tampering. I heard a chuckle and felt heat spread across my cheeks. 

"Ok," I said to no one in particular and swung into the saddle. The pointed tip of an ear rotated back toward me. 

"You good?" 

"Yea," I muttered. 

More soon! 

Thanks for reading!