Tag: family

Tim tweeted a link to an article about Chrysler’s return of the Dodge Dart. I’ve mentioned my family’s Dodge Dart in other posts (2006 and 2011). Really it’s a car my brother and sister know more about because it was before my driving years. If I have the story right, it was customized to the specifications of another guy in the ROTC department of the college where my father was teaching at the time. When he was deployed and either couldn’t close the deal or needed to sell it, my father bought the car. I’m sure the smaller size appealed to my mother, who never liked driving our ginormous Chrysler because she thought it was cursed.

The customizing was what made it the perfect ride for a teenage boy: the engine was more powerful than the standard factory engine. More pick up. More speed. My brother implies that my sister’s making up her stories of terror with David behind the wheel, racing trains and such. I don’t know. He looks like such an upstanding young man next to the Dart.

I have a birthday coming up if someone wants to buy me one of these. The car, I mean. I’m satisfied with the brother I have.

My Cousin Rachel was one of my first role models. I love her laugh and her sense of humor. Her honesty. It’s effortless on my part to summon up her beautiful Southern accent and the way she says certain words and phrases. When I was little, I wanted to do everything she did and be her, with her gorgeous clothes and endless (to me) boxes of shoes. I wanted to play the piano like her, so her long-suffering mother, who also played, would let me bang on it when I went to visit. I even wanted to grow up and marry her boyfriend Charles.

She was always kind to and patient with the little girl who idolized her, and my parents were crazy about her. My brother and sister were in her wedding to Charles. She and Charles are still together and as gracious and fun to be around as ever.

She’s one of the most beautiful people I know and still one of my role models. Happy birthday, Cousin Rachel!

Related: Cousin Rachel’s Wedding

We were sharing stories the other night about vacations or trips we took–or were forced to take–with our families/parents when we were young. At some point I said, “Yeah, I did a lot of eye rolling and complaining because that was my job as a teenager, but secretly I loved those trips.”

One in particular that I remember was when my parents decided to take a car trip along the Natchez Trace Parkway. I think we only did the Mississippi section, and I believe for at least part of our trip, two of my mother’s brothers (Buster and Gerald) and their wives (Annie Mae and Lola) were with us. I got to sit in the front seat a lot while my father drove, which meant I had control of the radio (AM only, back then), and I can still remember which songs played over and over. I’m sure that drove my parents crazy.

In my scrapbook, I have a lot of brochures and postcards from places we visited: in Jackson, The Old Capitol State Historical Museum, where “Miss Charlotte Capers” was Director, the Capitol, the War Memorial Building, and the Wildlife Museum. I have napkins from places where we must have slept and eaten along the way: the Albert Pick Motel in Natchez and the Friendship House Restaurant and Lounge: “Host to the Gulf Coast,” “Six Minutes from Biloxi,” “Six Minutes from Gulfport.” Both are gone now; apparently Hurricane Camille took the Friendship House. (Bitch!)

And in Vicksburg, we visited the National Military Park. Of course. I had two parents who were history buffs–plus my father taught American history and military history. Battlefields were definitely part of any Cochrane Tour, and I remember my father explaining how General Grant strategized and restrategized to take control of Vicksburg from the Confederate forces, which he finally did on July 4, 1863. (Bastard!)

Almost 17,000 Union soldiers are buried in the National Cemetery, and a staggering 13,000 of those are unidentified. They either died in Vicksburg or died elsewhere in the South and were reinterred in this federal cemetery. Because at that time, federal cemeteries were for those who died “in service to their country,” soldiers fighting for seceded states couldn’t be buried there. In the Vicksburg City Cemetery, Cedar Hill, approximately 5000 Confederate dead–only about 1600 of them identified–are buried in the Soldier’s Rest section. Ultimately the rules were changed so men who’d served in the Confederate Army but died years later could be buried in federal cemeteries. The Vicksburg National Cemetery also includes the graves of those who served in later conflicts, as well as some of their wives and children.

One of the stops on our tour included the Alabama Memorial, commemorating the men and women of my home state during the war. (And in the South, when we say it, it’s “The War,” and we mean only one.) Here, my parents and I are tiny people standing on the monument. I just love that my mother was tromping around national parks and cemeteries in heels.

February 23 is Debby’s birthday–or in her case, as we often call it, “brithday.” Family joke.

When she was here at Thanksgiving, I mentioned to her that I have zero memories of birthdays when we were growing up. I seriously can’t remember David, Debby, or me having birthday cakes and ice cream, blowing out candles, opening presents. I know we must have done those things; she assures me we did. But all I draw is a big birthday blank–except that I know if we were together now, I’d make her a coconut cake, because that’s what my mother would bake for her. Maybe knowing that means all the birthdays float somewhere in my subconscious.

I scanned in a few photos.

I planned to write about how glad I am that this face has been a part of my life for as long as my memory stretches back. I love her brown eyes, freckles scattered over her cute nose, and her big smile. Like any sisters forced to share a bedroom, we bickered and tormented each other: the tree-climbing tomboy and the doll-loving girly girl. But no matter what, I always knew she had my back, and vice versa.

However, instead of having the energy to write a decent post, I ended up taking a break from the Internet for most of Thursday. Sometimes I get so disheartened by online behavior.

Every day, when I wake up, I feel I have a choice. I can embrace what’s positive or get mired down in what’s negative. Over the years, I’ve used blogging for many different things. To connect with readers. To keep up with friends. To talk about whatever random thing caught my attention on any given day. To reminisce. To talk about stuff that’s important to me. To be silly and play. To share photos. To share moments in my life or my friends’ lives. To celebrate dogs and books and movies and pop culture.

When I did the Magnetic Poetry stuff last year, it was to engage with words again because I felt like my writing well had run dry. After a few months, when it felt too routine, I began either to find existing photos to match the randomly-drawn word poems, or shoot new photos and try to make those random words match them.

This year, I decided to let photos from my past help me access memories or share stories from my life. Once again, this effort is mostly about retraining myself to write consistently. As in: every day. I’m not sharing all the stories of my life, or my family members’ lives, or my friends’ lives. Beyond everyone’s right to privacy, including my own, it’s also a matter of choice, just like when I wake up in the morning. I choose to celebrate as much of the good stuff as I can. Everyone I know has not led a charmed existence of joy and joyness. Among the group of people who’ve populated my life, we’ve known all the hard shit, too: death, loss, abuse, divorce, miscarriage, betrayal, deceit, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, loss of faith, despair, dementia, cruelty, suicide, disease, adultery, abandonment, unemployment, hunger, poverty, abortion, disability, molestation, addiction, mental illness, broken bones, broken hearts, broken relationships, broken lives, broken marriages, broken families, broken friendships.

In other words, we’re human, with the entire range of human behaviors and experiences and flaws. As I said to Tim earlier today, nobody gets to be born and live and grow old without experiencing pain. But I have no interest in exploiting the pain in my life, or the pain in the lives of people I know, on a public blog. Instead, writing here is most often another attempt to focus on whatever I can that’s positive. That’s who I choose to be publicly, and anyone who wants something grittier can certainly find it in abundance in about one zillion places online.

And if what you need is a support system or therapy or assistance, I urge you to use the Internet to find the phone numbers of organizations and individuals who can actually help you–but also to understand that what passes as help on the Internet is often anything but helpful. You may not have my big sister, but you can always find someone who’ll have your back and not put a figurative knife in it.

As Sgt. Phil Esterhaus always said on Hill Street Blues: Let’s be careful out there.

Nephew Josh, circa 1977

Josh (sings): Take it to the lippet, take it to the lippet, take it to the lippet one more time.

Becky: Limit.

Josh: What?

Becky: Take it to the limit one more time.

Josh: Lippet.

Becky: Okay. What’s a lippet?

Josh (counters): What’s a limit?

Becky: It’s the farthest point of something.

Josh: . . .

Becky: Like when you drive. You can’t go over the speed limit. You can’t drive faster than sixty miles an hour.

Josh: I don’t drive.

Becky: You’ve got a point.

Josh: Take it to the lippet, take it to the lippet, take it to the lippet one more time.