Tag: legacy writing

Button Sunday and Legacy Writing 365:253

This is another of Lynne’s buttons, and I don’t know if it was for a particular retailer (maybe the old Blockbuster/Sound Warehouse chain?) or if it’s somehow affiliated with the decades-old Give the Gift of Music campaign.

I’ve talked on here before about some of these music-as-gift moments of my life: when Riley gave me George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and also all the times he sang and played for me; the mix tapes Tim used to send me from NYC and all the music he introduced me to that I’d somehow missed, especially from the 1980s; the time my brother found out I gave Riley the John Lennon photo from my White album and surprised me by opening his White album and giving me his picture; the first albums my mother ever bought me with my new record player when I was a young teen; some of the best concerts I’ve been to through the years with Debby, David, Lynne, Tom, Amy, and friends from high school and college; listening to my nephew Josh play drums in a blues band; the countless hours I’ve spent listening to music with friends and talking about it, singing along, and just being quiet and digging it, as Riley might say.

I have a zillion music-related memories. It would please me very much to turn this over to you in comments and hear a way or time music has been a gift in or to your life. GO!


Riley, December 1980

Legacy Writing 365:252

In an episode of Sex and the City (the one with the Post-It), Carrie Bradshaw is already having a bad morning and she’s on her way to meet her friends for breakfast. A man walking toward her plows into her so hard that it spins her around. As he continues walking briskly away, she shouts at him, “Oh, you’re SO BUSY,” but he never looks back, apologizes, or even acknowledges her. Whenever I see this scene, I cringe, because I know that I’ve been the person who’s SO BUSY, though I don’t think I’ve ever actually run into anyone, certainly not without an apology.

I suppose a parallel in my own life would be from the years when I worked outside my home. There would be mornings I’d stop at the grocery store because I needed to take food for a meeting, or I needed to grab something microwavable for breakfast or lunch, and I’d encounter That Old Person™. You know the one: He or she is watching the register monitor like a hawk, slowly pulling out coupons, writing a check, scrutinizing the receipt. And all the while, I’m there mentally shrieking, WHY WHY WHY are you doing your grocery shopping during rush hour, can’t you just wait until everyone’s at work, you have all day, blah blah blah… And I’m sure I was looking desperately toward other registers for a faster line or rolling my eyes or sighing. In other words, being a bitch.

I’m willing to bet nine times out of ten when someone annoyed me on my way to work or to an appointment or whatever mandated my being somewhere by a certain time, my own time management skills were less than optimal. But oh, let me resent and mentally castigate some person who moves a little slower, with a little more fragility, and with less compulsion to rush around like an idiot who’s just SO BUSY.

I’ve been mostly out of the work force for about ten years now, by choice. Maybe that has changed my perspective. Or maybe it’s just growing older and seeing some of my own limitations develop. Or maybe it’s that I watched my mother struggle with an insidious disease that robbed her of her independence. Because there was no way she could remember passwords and ATM codes. She had to write checks, and sometimes, she struggled to do that, and would have to write two or three before she could get it right. Sometimes she’d go days without having anyone to talk to, so when a store employee was nice to her, she liked having a conversation. And I would think to myself, as I watched her navigate and hesitate and try to get her bearings without exposing her confusion and anxiety, A stranger has no idea who this woman is, the life she’s lived, the things she’s seen, her losses, her triumphs, her spirit. She’s just an old woman slowing them down. And sometimes, I was the person who was hurrying her along, trying to get back to my SO BUSY life, trying to keep her from inconveniencing other people.

I think I know better now. I try to do better. Last week, Lynne told me about an experience she had at a business that was set up almost like a maze. She saw an elderly woman come out of the restroom, and she realized the woman was having one of those moments of feeling utterly lost. It could have been the confusing layout, or she could have been having what gets called a “senior moment.” Lynne offered her assistance, but even so, neither she nor the woman could find where she was trying to get to. So Lynne took her back to the reception area, where an employee was less than understanding, even rude. As Lynne told me the story, I shook my head and said, “One day, if she’s lucky, she’ll be old, too. Then she’ll know what that’s like, how scary and overwhelming things can be.”

Really, so much of the pressure we feel to be somewhere, get somewhere, is self-imposed. And even when we do everything right, we can’t control the train that stops on the tracks, the freeway that turns into a parking lot because of an accident, the business that suffers a power outage. Nothing is going to be fixed with our sighing and eye-rolling, our lane-switching and tail-gating and meltdowns, our rudeness, our Tweeting and Facebooking to the world how much we’re being inconvenienced and thwarted by it all.

Something silly made me think of all this. I like finding people’s lists, and the other day at the grocery store, the woman ahead of me had set her list down while she was paying. I fully intended to grab it after she walked off, but she picked it up with her purse. However, there was another list beneath it, from an earlier customer, so I grabbed that one. And the spidery handwriting made me smile because I believed it came from someone elderly. But some of the quantities led me to think the person is not cooking for one. However, I can’t decipher everything, so I leave it to you to fill in my blanks. (If you need to, you can view a larger version here.)


pork roast, 6 orange roughly filets, 1 1/2 pounds squash, milk, 28 oz Italian [indecipherable], 10 oz package spinach(?), [indecipherable], shebert (sic)–this one makes me laugh because I can’t for the life of me pronounce sherbet correctly–to me, it’s sher-bert, and the list-maker has put the “r” in the wrong place, which makes me think that person has the same problem as me–fruit, OJ, V-8, eggs

I hope whoever was behind That Old Person™ wasn’t SO BUSY that s/he couldn’t be as patient as I’d want someone to be with my mother.

Legacy Writing 365:251

Whenever I used to visit my parents’ house during holidays, or even just hang out there for a few hours, sooner or later I’d always go to the bookshelf where the Doonesbury books were. I’m sure my brother probably did the same, and maybe my nephew Daniel, too. My mother bought the larger editions, which I couldn’t afford, but I frequently found the smaller books used and snapped them up.

I still have them with my other humor books in the guest room. Doonesbury characters have always felt like my real friends through the years, and much the way I relish seeing politics through Jon Stewart’s humor now, I’ve long depended on Gary Trudeau to make me laugh and shake my head over the fascinating animal that is politics, as well as that other animal, pop culture. I don’t buy the books anymore, because I can read Doonesbury online–though I’ve missed entire years of strips. Tom frequently sends me links to ones he knows I’ll love.

As for my mother’s books, they were rehomed in Tim’s apartment. So I can still go over, pull one from the shelf, and think back to all those enjoyable hours of curling up on one of my parents’ comfy chairs to read and then telling Mother which particular stories were making me laugh the most.

It’s fun to be an unapologetic liberal who can laugh at the vagaries of politics, no matter what the viewpoint.

Legacy Writing 365:250

These photos were taken during my parents’ camper years. I don’t know why I never went anywhere with them in their camper. Probably they didn’t invite me! I lived only a few miles away from them then, but my teaching job was year-round, I was married, and I had a lot going on in my brain that I wasn’t ready to explain to them. So I didn’t spend as much time with them as I could have unless there were more family members around–especially the grandkids–to keep the focus off of me.

I think the way they look physically in these photos is how they look in many of my dreams of them. Even in this tiny space, they seem so who they were to me. My mother’s already in her nightgown, legs tucked under her, her book, cigarettes, and coffee close at hand. My father sits across the table reading his paperback. By then, he was no longer smoking, but he has his coffee cup, too–one that says Dad Pop Father, even though we never called him anything but “Daddy.”

There’s a part of me that wants to step inside these photos. The windows are open, and I can hear the crickets and feel the breeze of a Southern night. I can hear him clear his throat. Hear her light a cigarette. I would probably be lying on my stomach, a book propped in front of me. If he put his book down and tried to start a conversation with me, I’d scowl because I wanted to read. She would probably get to something in her book that she thought was particularly interesting and read it out loud–and I would scowl because I wanted to read.

Yep, it’s clearer now why none of us went anywhere in their little camper together. =)

Legacy Writing 365:249


Guinness is snoozing next to First. Or she would be if my camera flash weren’t going off in her face.

The town where we lived when I graduated from high school was so tiny that it didn’t have any businesses other than gas stations, one mom-and-pop burger place, a barber shop, beauty shop, and a convenience store. There was–I’m serious–one red light. And a post office. Everything else was residential. But a couple of miles down the road was a little shopping center where there was a drugstore. That drugstore had a gift section, and that’s where the yellow dog, above, came from. I named him First because he was given to me by The Boyfriend on the anniversary of our first year of going steady.

When we went away to college, some of my stuffed animals went with me, including First. I made the overalls he’s wearing from a worn-out pair of The Boyfriend’s jeans. Here’s the belly side.

I used to cause myself to laugh hysterically by making First play air guitar to the Wings song Let Me Roll It. The Boyfriend tolerated this on our long drives between Tuscaloosa and home. I still love that song.

One of the friends I made on the hall in my dorm loved First so much that when Christmas came around, I picked up his brother for her from that same drugstore.


Kim loved him.


And slept with him.


And sometimes her animals and my animals had a little slumber party. That’s my teddy bear, Dr. Neil, behind her puppy. The pale yellow elephant is also mine. I think he was from The Boyfriend, too. I believe I had him up until a few years ago when the rats invaded the attic. They got into a bag of stuffed animals and used their innards for nesting materials. Since First and Dr. Neil always stay close to me wherever I am, they weren’t in the attic so were safe. But the elephant may have been a casualty.

Rat bastards.

Legacy Writing 365:248

The Brides were out of town over the Labor Day weekend, so Sugar spent the holiday with us. She’s always a welcome guest at The Compound because I don’t think there’s any dog she doesn’t get along with, no matter what sport–or piece of furniture–they make of her. The photo at left of Pixie sitting on Sugar is from March 2011, but other than a change in sofas, it could as easily have been taken on this most recent visit. She plays hard with Pixie and Penny, treats Margot and Guinness with complete respect, and even when Lynne came over on Saturday evening, she played with Minute and didn’t roll her eyes too much when Paco pretended to be the biggest, baddest dog around.

One thing Sugar does at The Compound that she’s not allowed to do at home except by special invitation is get on the bed. I know there are differing opinions on whether dogs should be allowed to sleep with people, and when I was growing up, it wasn’t permitted in our house. Dopey, for example, was not allowed on the furniture, including beds.

Whenever we’d go somewhere and return home, Dopey would greet us at the door, stretching and wagging his tail as if to say, “Welcome home! Oh, what a good long nap I had. Right here on the floor. The floor that I’m allowed to sleep on. Never moved the whole time you were gone. [yawn yawn]” Then my parents would walk into their bedroom and press their hands against the warm circular indentation in the middle of their bed, wondering what alien being could possibly have been there and returned to its home planet just before we arrived.

The first dogs I had of my own in my own home were allowed on the bed, and I just never thought to change that rule, especially since I mostly had dachshunds who don’t take up much space and who as burrowers always ended up deep under the covers at the foot of the bed where they were barely noticeable. Of course, over the years, the dogs have gotten larger, and there can be more of them when we dogsit or have fosters, but we just make a little more room, do a little shifting, and everybody’s good.

Well, mostly. Rex, who didn’t normally sleep on Tim’s bed, always slept on ours, and as he got older and crankier, if he was in bed before me, I had to be careful about how I got in bed. Apparently he thought I meant everyone harm and would growl menacingly at me, so I made a game of figuring out ways to cut him off at the pass.

As for Sugar, she’s the only dog I know who, once she has found the spot she wants and curls up, weighs two thousand immovable pounds. Like any superhero power, we don’t know how it works, but there ought to be a way she can be used for our national defense.

In spite of the fact that my mother didn’t want dogs and cats on our beds, I actually think she’s at fault for this habit of mine. They say we’re shaped by our first three years.

Legacy Writing 365:247

Just had a super long conversation by phone with Timmy, talking about a range of things, including writing. He’s been working on a manuscript that I’m so looking forward to reading when it’s ready. I also told him the current project I’ve undertaken, which involves this:

Since Tim and I have the rights to both of our out-of-print Alyson books, The Deal and Three Fortunes in One Cookie, we’ve thought about making them available as ebooks. However, our electronic versions of the books are pre copy and line edits: What I have on the computer does not match the published novels. So the first step is to get a good electronic version. It’s slow going to compare the minuscule print of the book to the version on my monitor. So far I’ve been surprised by one typo–ours–which no one at Alyson ever caught. I knew there were a couple of mistakes in the book, but this is one that had escaped my notice until now.

It’s been so long since I read Three Fortunes that it’s hard not to get caught up in the story–that slows me down, too. But once this part is over, Tim has said, with an odd gleam in his eyes, that he wants to do a content edit. I’m not sure what this means. I know the plot won’t change, but I’m wondering if he plans to eliminate a friend or two? Scary!

Maybe this is a good time to whip out a photo of Tim sitting beneath the branches of the Friendship Oak in 2004. I just checked on the 500-plus years old Friendship, who got beaten up so badly by Katrina, and she’s growing and thriving. The legend is that those who enter her shadow will remain friends for a lifetime. That’s good news for many people, including Tim and me, as well as some characters in Three Fortunes.

Speaking of friends, that little clip on the copy of the book in the top picture was given to me by my friend/roommate Debbie decades ago. It’s been used as a chip clip, but it’s really a clip for holding a recipe card on the counter while I’m cooking. I’ve used it for that many times. It’s serving a good purpose as a page clip, which should work for a few more chapters.

The best friendships endure when we value the ways we grow and change as well as our history together. So if Three Fortunes needs some changes, I’m on board. One thing you can be sure WILL change on any future edition of the novel:


This cover will be no more.

Legacy Writing 365:246

Last week when Lindsey and I were going through her Aunt Gwen’s sewing box, among the first things we admired and checked out were Aunt Gwen’s pinking shears. They were stainless steel, nice and heavy, and imprinted with the word “ELK.” I checked that out, and ELK was a Japanese manufacturer who supplied cutlery and scissors to the Griffon Cutlery Corp. in New York. Their earliest pinking shears retailed for sixty-nine cents! You can still find used and mint vintage pairs online for a range of prices.

After my mother died, I couldn’t find her pinking shears. I don’t know if they just got so dull that she threw them out or they were misplaced. I bought a pair of my own when I began doing the Runway Monday stuff. Over time, I’ve also found that I needed to upgrade my scissors. I recently took them out and sharpened and cleaned the ones that are used a lot, and some of them have a little history–of course!

  1. The Scotch® Titanium scissors were a gift from Scotch® after one of the Junes that I participated in 30 Days of Creativity. These scissors are probably some of the best I’ve ever used, whether on fabric, paper, or photographs. Going forward, if I need scissors, I’m checking out the Scotch® line first.
  2. I have no idea who manufactured these scissors. I bought them when I first began doing Runway Monday. I like them, but when I realized I was going to be sewing a lot more than I’d expected and invested in a better pair of fabric-only scissors, these became my backup thread and pattern cutters.
  3. These are my current number-one sewing scissors from Singer. Nice and heavy in the hand, but precise on all weights of fabric, these scissors make me feel so bad for my mother because she never splurged on a good pair of scissors. I have several pairs of her scissors and a couple of pairs of my own not pictured here that are tucked in various places where okay-not-great scissors might come in handy (like the garage). Nobody gets to use these Singer scissors but me, and if I see them in anyone else’s hands, I will gently trade them for either numbers 1 or 2.
  4. These are the pinking shears I mentioned buying after Runway Monday started. They are great to keep small pieces of fabric (doll clothes!) from fraying, but these are not the best. Eventually I’ll probably invest in a better pair.
  5. When I was in fourth and fifth grade, my father was teaching in the ROTC department at a South Carolina college. Sometimes on summer nights, he’d go back to work, and he occasionally took me with him. Most of what he was doing had to do with copying lessons and tests for his students on mimeograph and ditto machines, which were in the building’s basement. He set me up at a desk with pens, pencils, and all the paper I could dream of. Besides regular white paper, some of the sheets were onion skin and clear plastic; others were silver and blue papers. I don’t know what they were used for, but I was always cutting them into pictures and shapes with giant scissors like these. He also let me write stories on the big old standard typewriters (none of these survive). I had so much fun with just the two of us being there. One night I was drawing when I noticed something dark moving on the gray-painted cement floor. Naturally my subsequent shrieks brought Daddy running, and it was the work of a few seconds for him to crush the giant palmetto bug under his shoe. As I said in my Button Sunday post, I don’t like roaches, but at least this one was part of a father-daughter bonding moment.
  6. Like number 5, these are also government-issued scissors, and for years, they were the only pairs I remember being in our family’s house. Which meant that my poor mother was not only trying to sew with them, but she had a husband and three kids who were always taking them, leaving them where she couldn’t find them, and making them dull as we cut who knows what with them. Both these pairs of scissors were manufactured in Italy, and even though the insides of the blades are dark and discolored, when I sharpen them, they’re still quite functional. They wouldn’t work at all for fabric, though.
  7. Finally, these scissors and No. 8 should look familiar to anyone who works in or knows someone who works in the medical profession. I probably have a pair of these tucked away with every craft project I ever started and never finished. They’re the scissors that are supposed to be thrown away at hospitals after they’ve been used or damaged, but they end up being cleaned and relocated to employees’ houses or houses of employees’ relatives. I have a set of hemostats that came to me the same way, and it’s amazing all the things hemostats can be used for that are not illegal. One of these pairs of scissors is always handy at my desk; the other lives in the medicine cabinet.

I never ran with any of these scissors.

Legacy Writing 365:245

Barbie wants to remind you that it’s game day. I’m not sure who she’s rooting for…

Though I don’t have time to write a post since game/snacks/card night is happening at The Compound right now, I can at least dip into the photo archives for a game day in Tuscaloosa back in the Tithonian age.

My parents would be so proud of my posture! 😉

Legacy Writing 365:244

When our friend John died in 1996, his roommate Charlie shared a story at his memorial service. He said he’d once been told that when we lose someone to death, it’s important afterward to “watch for the signs” that show us comfort is being offered–perhaps even as messages sent by the ones we’ve lost. The day after John’s death, Charlie was on a transatlantic flight when a woman he’d never seen before placed a small green stone inside his palm. “I can sense that you’re sad,” she said. “This will help comfort you.” Of course it did, because for Charlie, that little stone was a gift from John.

I believe in those kinds of signs, too, and have my own experiences with them. Recently my lifelong friend Riley, who died a few months before my mother in 2008, has been very much on my mind. There are so many times I wish I could pick up the phone and call him. I want to hear his unique perspective on things that have happened this year–the stuff only he would say.

Several times I’ve blogged about Riley and our connections, including the Beatles. One post was this memory about Riley, George Harrison, and me.

Tonight Tom came in and handed me a guitar pick he found on the street outside our house.


Front and back of the guitar pick. Or vice versa.

Who knows who dropped it or when? As a sign, I’ll take it.

Thanks, my old friend. I have an album I should listen to now.

Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for
George Harrison, Beware of Darkness