HATS

Sometimes a girl just has to have a hat. Not just to cover her head but to say what she feels. A hat can express joy and playfulness, help you hide from the world or give you confidence when you need it desperately. It can be fuzzy or floppy or funny or frilly--but is always an expression of innate "girlness," Here are some pictures of my girls in hats--Hats are the thing!

The Edge

I love to stand on the ocean shore
Where the edge of the continent,

The very end,

Meets the edge of the sea

And then bubbles and froths with bits of seafoam and sand.

The shells swim in the surf

Caught between one edge

And the other.

Tumbling frantically toward the sand

Clinging for a moment till the wavelets pull them back.

The dance is constant,

The foamy water, the rolling shells,

The sand waiting warm and deep to rest them.

Till the waves finally toss them too high for the sea to reclaim

And they are safe.

I often feel like the silvery shells

Escaping the vivacious surging of the sea

Tumbling toward the warmth and rest of the earth

A buoyant bit of flotsam forever caught in the shallows,

On the edge

written by me around 2006, after a visit to Nags Head, N.C.

Spindrift

I do not live by the ocean

But I can conjure up it's sounds and smells

At will.

I see the pelican patrol wheel by,

the morning sun glinting on crests of gray-green water,

shadows in the surf, swimming silently.

I hear the high thin trill

Of seabirds floating on currents of air

and I inhale the scent of salt and seaweed

Sun and wind and sand combine

and create a breathtaking backdrop

for a surging sea.

written by me about the same time
(feeling a little homesick for the Outer Banks)

I took the picture when Robert and I took a little pleasure trip this fall.
Dedicated to the Beach Lovers in my family-'specially the Williams

Gentle Ben

Afterwhiles

My Daddy died on December 2 of 2010. Seems so odd to write that down and know that it is true--that the battle he had in that hospital bed in the living room at their home is over. Even more odd that as days have passed I don't think of him as in that bed--- but as the man who played guitar and sang on the front porch after we went to bed at night when I was little.

When my sister Adrian made strange strangled noises in her sleep and I was frightened and insisted the man across the street was stalking us (I was too young to know a pre-sleep apnea snore when I heard it)--Daddy would stomp out on the front porch in his underwear and shout across the street for Drummer New to go to bed and leave his children alone. He knew Drummer was asleep but didn't waste time arguing. Just saving the day for his eldest daughter (who was a chicken) as Daddy's everywhere do.

Remembering is the greatest gift. I remember Daddy bringing home a pony which we later found out we weren't zoned to keep. That pony nearly decapitated me when he ran through a clothes line with me on his back. I remember him building a tree house for us in the woods beside our house, then giving us twenty minutes of instruction before we were allowed to play in it because we might fall out. I remember him taking us to the beach, although he was afraid of water and wouldn't let us venture out more than shin deep . If it hadn't been for Mama we would never have learned to swim. I remember him waiting under the street lamp in front of our house because it began to snow while I was on a date and he was unsure of the driving ability of my young escort but didn't want to embarrass me by coming to take me home. I remember him telling me goodbye as he left for work the morning I was scheduled to catch a plane to Hawaii. He informed me I was not to go--it was too far and too dangerous---knowing full well I was going anyway and he would worry the whole time I was gone. I remember him going to the Doctor's with me when baby Robyn shoved a piece of cotton up her nose and how calmly he held her so the doctor could extract it while I cried and she screamed.

Daddy and I had the same ups and downs that most daddies and daughters had. We certainly didn't always agree. But he loved us and I knew that even when I didn't know much else--and depended on it. Being the youngest in his family made him a little rebellious in his own life and a little cautious about his children's lives. He loved to laugh, which is a good memory--maybe the best memory.

Lying in bed on a warm summer evening, listening to your Mom and Dad harmonizing on the front porch while he plays the guitar is a wonderfully peaceful way to drift off to sleep. "A long steel rail and a short cross-tie" or "On the wings of a snow white dove" still bring back the warmest, most secure feeling when I hear them. Editing, as someone once said, is necessary when remembering your childhood--I find that is true when a long illness has changed your perceptions of your father and turned him into a shadow of his former self. I like remembering. I like those nights of music and laughter. I like my Daddy becoming the man I knew before he was sick, though I learned a great many things from his illness too. I'll hang onto those memories--good and bad--and use my editing skills wisely.

The man don't come to our house anymore

He used to come around

And knock upon the door

We still live where

We always lived before

But the man don't come

To our house any more.

We each had a verse of that song and that is perhaps my fondest memory of my father--his playing and singing each verse for us as we sang along--Me and Addie and Andy and Mike--with Mama harmonizing, as usual. 'Night, Daddy.

Afterwhiles

Bobbie and Gladys were young when they married. She was 15 and had to have her father's permission to wed --her mother never gave hers---and he was only 19 and still lived with his parents. But they took the giant leap and lived together nearly 50 years. She still sat right beside Bobbie in the truck when they picked their son Robert up from high school, something that embarrassed him dreadfully at the time--but he now finds charming and remembers with a smile.

Their first date was in an airplane--Bobbie was the pilot. If it had an engine he could propel it--on the ground, in the air or in the water. Gladys was a game little thing and trusted his ability--so they flew--again, no parental guidance. She was dating another boy at the time but quickly decided that this young pilot was the boy for her.

I love seeing pictures of them when they were starting out as newlyweds--adventuresome and daring and full of fun. Robert came two years later and grew up in the boat-racing world that they became a part of. Bobbie's boat, "Soakin' Wet" was a winner. Hundreds of trophies found their way back home with them and Bobbie set speed records throughout the northeast--while Gladys and Robert traveled with him and camped and made friends with the close-knit community of boat-racers and their families. Many of them are still friends today; the Browns and their lively brood and the Temples and the Weavers.

So many years have gone by--what a journey! Gladys became a wonderful cook (our children loved to walk across the field and get cinnamon toast for breakfast) and lover of felines, collectible dolls and antiques while Bobbie continued to be fascinated with mechanics and machines his whole life.

Many people would consider their start in life unfavorable, untimely--but they loved each other and made it work--through the usual good and bad and ups and downs of marriage. Times may have been different then but the commitment they shared was solid and firmly grounded--and a good example for us all.

When we pull out the old pictures in faded tones of gray and laugh and wonder who this was or where that was taken--- I can sometimes see that boat hanging in the wind, engine whining, while a young woman with a small boy's hand in hers watches from the shoreline. Go, Bobbie --go!

Visiting the temple today makes me think of new beginnings. The quiet and peace there calms me in a way no other place can. I actually have the wit to think and "ponder"--not something I'm very successful at, generally.

The "grands" have some new beginnings tomorrow and I wish them strength and happiness and a successful year of learning new things and making new friends--the dreaded first day of school! Travis begins kindergarten--if he goes, which right now is iffy--Lanian will begin too but has some experience in pre- school. Spence and Alex begin at new schools and Aidan will begin a pre-school program for the first time this year. Jack-Jack will too. Maylon and the twins begin a new year in a new town and my heart goes out to them--especially May-May who is feeling a little lost. And Mya the Bee begins another year of home school in a new state. But there is strength in families--and in the gospel--and new beginnings for us all! Happy Autumn--think of Tom Hanks saying to Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail--"in the fall I would give you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils--" --what a perfectly lovely thought--BJ

The Stick Brigade

We live in the woods--well, practically. The mighty stick brigade patrols here. They are a force to be reckoned with. Some come with red hair and freckles, some have smooth hair and blue eyes, some are tall, some are smaller, some are grinning, some come with a faint whine--but come they do; to carry, throw, peel bark from and march with --sticks.

Yes, we do have toys here. Trucks, cars, dolls, soccer balls, basketballs, you name it, we have it on hand--but nothing compares to the joy each Jones child gets from carrying a stick--the bigger the better. And if they can garner a tick somewhere on their person while finding just the right stick to accidentally hit someone with--that just makes their day. "Mama, I have a tick!" "Get the alcohol and the tweezers!" "Don't touch it!" "I have to pull it out..." "No, don't touch it!" I'll leave you to imagine who says what to whom--you'd be surprised.

The joy of a stick to play with we thought would pall with age--not so. They just find bigger, more lethal sticks as they get older--it's a curiosity to see what they can do with 'em! So far they still have all their eyes and teeth. I'll keep you posted---

After the goodbyes were said and the soldiers left for the day there was peace. Next morning as I walked the dogs while the ground fog still covered the fields I saw a carefully constructed arrangement of new sticks waiting for the brigade to strike again another day.

Afterwhiles

My mother spoke of being a child today, something that always makes me homesick. How is that possible? How can you be homesick for something you never knew? She was a blonde little thing with tip-tilted eyes and a mouth shaped like a gerber baby's mouth--like waiting for a bottle.

Her dark-haired sister is holding her tightly in the picture I have--they are both staring at the camera which snaps the pose for posterity--for me, her daughter. And my daughter. And on and on.

Mirrors fascinated her when she was small. Her sister said she would play for hours with just a hand-mirror, pretending to be a princess, a fairy, a pirate, or just dreaming of places unknown--places beyond the backyard of a small North Carolina mill town. I see the houses now, shabby and dilapidated and see the reflections also of a child under eight who peopled her world with imagined adventure.

One of the mirrors in my grandmother's bedrooms was large and round and attached to a dresser. Some magazine picture of a beautiful lady in a long red dress was pasted in the middle of the mirror. Did my mother speak to her, play with her, smile at her? Did I?

We remember the lady in the red dress, my mother and I and I am glad she was a child of fancy and mirrors were her playmates--I am homesick to know my mother then and I see her tip-tilted eyes and gerber baby's mouth mirrored in my granddaughter's face.