Tag: legacy writing

Legacy Writing 365:153

The circle that is creating…

This month I’m doing the sketches for my 30 Days of Creativity entries in this sketchbook.

I had to dig it out of a bin in the garage. It’s something of Steve R’s I saved after he died. He’d only ever doodled on the first two pages of it, I think planning Christmas cards he made.

I’m also using this artist kit that someone in Tom’s family gave him many years ago.

It’s funny how often Tom and I have both used it, yet it’s still in great condition. Whenever I use crayons, I remember a Christmas when Lisa, Aaron, and Alex were flying to Utah and had a layover of several hours at Houston’s airport. Tom and I drove out to spend the layover with them in their terminal. I realized how bored kids must get during a time like that, so we took them a giant-sized box of crayons and a couple of sketch pads. This aunt had forgotten how boys can be, because it didn’t take them ten minutes to have nearly every one of those crayons broken. It cracked me up.

I’m including this photo of Aaron with his mom especially for my brother because of the way Aaron’s goofing with his sunglasses. Hmmm, wonder where he got that from?

Several years later, Lisa had to work a few days in Houston and she brought the boys to stay with my mother. When they’d walk over to visit me, I plunked them down on the sofa in front of the TV (aunts don’t forget everything!) with a box of colored pencils and my angel books.

It was Steve R who originally introduced me to the angel books. Though I have only one of his drawings–unfinished–many people have done others for me through the years. Alex finished his that first day and gave it to me.

The next day, Aaron decided to take his home and finish it.

Being a kid, he never sent it back to me. But that’s okay, because I still have the memories of those days to cherish.

When he visited in March, he talked me into downloading Draw Something to my iPhone. We played it the entire time he was here, sometimes sitting right next to each other and giggling at our bad drawings and how we had to give each other clues to guess them. I asked him how we were ever going to manage when we weren’t in the same room, but he said we’d figure it out.

I have a screen capture of only one of my drawings for him:

Nothing cracked us up like a drawing he sent me one night as I was on my way to bed. I was so tired that I couldn’t figure it out–even though just from the letters, at different times I picked out “king” and “lion,” but never put them together. Thus I ended up passing and taking our game back to zero. Fortunately, he took a screen shot of that one and shared it on Twitter. When Jen saw it, she tweeted, “Surfing guy holding a yellow Peep!” Whaddya mean “incorrect,” Draw Something?! Aaron insisted that what I saw as a blue cowboy’s sacrifice of an Easter Peep on the back of a whale was unmistakably Rafiki holding up Simba on the cliff in The Lion King.

I was actually in the middle of drawing something in a game with Jen that morning when Geri called to tell me about Aaron. A few days later, when I wrote a letter to be buried with him, I included something that I knew he’d understand:

Legacy Writing 365:152

One time when I was reading about early portrait photography, I was fascinated to learn about the “invisible” mother. Because it took cameras so long to shoot, and kids couldn’t sit still that long, mothers would be hidden under blankets or rugs while their children sat in their laps and could be held still. I believe that’s exactly what happened in this photo of my mother when she was a toddler. There’s even a hand on the right side of the photo. How much more would she have loved a photo of her mother holding her?

Another thing I notice is the embroidery on the hem of her dress. Most likely her mother made the dress and did the embroidery. It reminds me of a story Mother told me late in her life that was still bothering her.

The two siblings closest to her in age were both boys, and in order to tag along with them, she had to be a tomboy. She often compared herself to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, always wearing the boys’ hand-me-downs and playing as roughly as they did. One Christmas her mother made her a dress with a bodice full of painstaking hand-smocking. My mother was reluctant to put it on, but her sisters finally convinced her it was okay to wear a dress. When she walked into the room, her brothers all began to tease her. They hurt her feelings so much that she pulled the dress over her head and threw it in the fire.

Oh, how she squirmed when she told me that story, regretting that she’d been so hateful and broken her mother’s heart that way. Finally I said, “Mother. If Debby or I had done that to you, how would you have felt?”

“I’d have been furious!” she said.

“And then what?”

She thought about it a minute and said, “It would have become one of those stories we told every Christmas and laughed about.”

I think she finally realized that her mother probably forgave her before that dress was even ashes, and she was finally able to forgive herself.

It amazes me how long we can carry self-inflicted guilt. When those who love us forgive us so readily, why won’t we forgive ourselves?

Legacy Writing 365:151

Good days, bad days. Wednesday wasn’t so great. I kept myself occupied doing business things that needed to be done. I also organized the stories I need to read again before adding edits with Tim (so writers, and you know who you are, you should be hearing from us soon). And I started putting stuff together for my plans for this year’s 30 Days of Creativity in June. If you click on that link, you should be able to see the suggested themes for each day if you’d like to create stuff, too. Even if you can’t do it every day, one of the themes might inspire you to create something and post it to Create Stuff’s Pinterest board to share with others. It’s fun to create and see what other people do with the same theme.

Anyway, what with having a bad day, I opened a photo album late and spotted this photo, which I swear I’ve never noticed before. It was just what I needed to make me smile.

My mother wrote on the back of the photo, “Watching TV.” I don’t know what was on, but clearly it had David’s and Debby’s attention. Though I was known to shout, “Eight-thirty! ‘Wagon Train!'” in my wee years, my interest was on the photographer and not the TV.

Notice that it appears my thoughtful mother provided each of us with our own ashtray. Actually, I still have the big ashtray in the middle. I was going to shoot a photo of it because I thought it was in a kitchen cabinet, but I must have packed it away since no one smokes at The Compound.

Legacy Writing 365:150

Yep, I used to be one of those people who said, “I regret nothing!” But ultimately, I realized that’s bullshit. I regret all kinds of things. And it’s heartening to know that even though people like to say, “Live your life without regrets,” to live is, in fact, to make a million choices, and some of those choices are stupid and bad. I may as well accord them a little regret so I’ll know I lived, screw-ups and all.

Over the last month, I’ve seen a bunch of prom photos online, and I had an epiphany: Prom exists so we can be sure we’ll have something to regret on our deathbeds: BAD FASHION. Because even though as years go by, you’ll see your youth recycle on the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, or Marie Claire, that doesn’t mean you were right. It just means you’re getting old.

So do not mock my prom fashion. You know yours was as bad. And if you’re young, give yourself a couple of decades. You’ll cringe one day.

Happy birthday on May 29 to my date for both my junior and senior proms.

Legacy Writing 365:149

Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library on the University of Alabama quad

I realize that for those of you who live in cooler climates, a holiday kicking off the beginning of summer must be very exciting. But for those of us who’re already sweltering–and knowing worse is on the way–the memory of one of our rare snowfalls is a welcome thing. This is for my friends who enjoyed the great snowfall of my junior year at Alabama with me.


Tiny dancer Carreme, whose snow-encrusted bell bottoms weighed more than she did.


Softball champ Debbie was winding up to pitch a snowball.


Joe was more of a snow frisbee guy.


Carreme, do not mock Steve G’s failure to catch the frisbee!


Because then it became a new game: tackle frisbee.

But I win, because a Volkswagen drove into my brain AND I LIVED. It’s still lodged there–true story.

Legacy Writing 365:148


This photo is from Mother’s Day weekend in 1979. My mother was probably trying to get Josh (left) and Daniel to pose. They’re holding a tiny decorative globe (that I wish I had now) and acting silly, which probably annoyed her as she aimed the camera, but they couldn’t help themselves. When they were together, they egged each other on, running through the house, knocking stuff over–one time they pulled the upper section of a hutch down on top of themselves. Consequently, they were yelled at a lot. But rarely by me. They had the same effect on me that they had on each other, and my face usually hurt from laughing at their antics. They still have that effect on me.

Born sixteen months apart, they were–and are–great cousins. And though their mothers and grandmother might have scolded them now and then, we look back on those days as being some of the best times for our family.

When I see photos of the next generation of our family’s kids having crazy fun together, I hope their parents are reminded of these times from their own childhoods.

Bonus photo:


Daniel’s wearing his Close Encounters T-shirt and holding a toy shuttle–two years before the first shuttle launch–standing next to his banana seat bike. Definitely some cultural references there.

Legacy Writing 365:147

Back in April, I spent some time driving by and taking photos of places where I’ve lived and worked since moving to Houston in 1989. When Tom and I first came here, we lived in the suburbs northwest of the city in a two-bedroom apartment. The complex was actually pretty nice at the time. I don’t remember using any of the amenities like the swimming pool or the party room, but it was a good place to walk Pete, and there was a post office, large grocery store, and mall all very close to us.

We had two good-sized bedrooms and a little patio for our grill. But my favorite thing about the apartment was the fireplace. Though we don’t get extended periods of cold weather here, there are a couple of months when it’s nice to have a fire–and I built one every time I could.

The WORST thing about the apartment was the family who lived upstairs: husband, wife, and infant. We rarely heard the child, but the couple fought like crazy–not just screaming, but physical fighting. That would drive me out of the apartment in nothing flat, and we, as well as other neighbors, consistently called the constable and complained to the apartment manager until they were finally evicted. It was easy to assume that he was the aggressor, but I’m not so sure. Judging by some of the things we heard, it could have been her. The sounds of that kind of fighting are awful.

I think during the time we lived in that apartment, the only visitors we ever had were Mother, when she came for Christmas, and Lynne, Craig, and Jess. We didn’t really know anyone else except friends of theirs, who we usually hung out with at their house, and people we worked with and saw mostly at work. The reason we ultimately moved was because when we filed our income taxes after our first full year as a married couple, the money we owed was catastrophic to our tight budget. Craig and Lynne graciously let us–and Pete!–live in their guest room for a few months until we could pay off our tax debt and save enough for all the deposits necessary for a new place.

It’s a recurring theme, I think, the times others have helped us, and we’ve helped others, over the decades. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but for Southerners, that’s what having family, and friends who become family, means. You can always set another plate at the table, provide a bed when one is needed, give somebody a ride somewhere, or sit in a waiting room for them or with them.

And also–at least with my family and Lynne’s–there existed the love match I haven’t mentioned. It began in this big field which is still next to that apartment complex.


It’s where our boy Pete used to run with his girlfriend Heidi. Well, sort of. Remember, Pete weighed in at about ten pounds.

And this is a photo of Heidi, who was Craig’s dog, Lynne’s companion, and Jess’s protector.

Heidi would run in big sweeping circles around the perimeter of the field, and Pete would run from the center in whatever straight line took him closest to her. She was infinitely patient with him–he could even hang off her lip and she’d just walk along and let him. They ate together, napped together, rode in the car side by side: Wherever you saw one, you saw the other.

Love’s a crazy thing–and no one ever had to call a constable or landlord about those two.

Photo Friday, No. 296 and Legacy Writing 365:146

Current Photo Friday theme: Of House & Home

This is one of the first photos I took with my iPhone when it was new. It’s not fantastic quality, but it’s the picture connected to “Home” in my phone’s address book. Everything I see in the photo says home to me: art on the walls, dog hair on the rug, lots of books, photos of people I love on the far wall, and a table where so many friends and family have shared meals and holidays and birthdays. In this particular photo, there are cards on the table, because it’s the same place we’ve played many games of progressive rummy and Yahtzee through the years. And almost every weekend, a plastic cloth is stretched across that table for Craft Night.

It’s home.

Legacy Writing 365:145

The chances are slim that the players of this story will ever visit this blog, but I’m still changing the names to cover my ass pretend it’s fiction protect the innocent (me).

Cousin Skipper and I lived in the same city. Cousin Midge, her brother Ken, and his wife Barbie were driving through on their way to somewhere else. When Cousin Skipper was a young girl, her widowed mother took her to a far-away state, so she didn’t grow up knowing our family, even though her late father was a sibling to one of my parents as well as to one of Midge and Ken’s parents. Skipper had always longed to know more about her roots, so though I had some misgivings, I agreed to meet them all for lunch.

The first problem: Cousin Skipper was a no-show. I didn’t mind spending time with my cousins, even though they were decades older than me and the conversation went along predictable lines. Cousin Midge rehashed old (imaginary) wrongs. Cousin Ken embellished past exploits of dead family members to make them seem more heroic, noble, or flawless than is possible outside novels and old movies. Barbie asked probing questions about my life even though the answers only caused her distress as she worried for my immortal soul.

It was a blast!

But finally this staid and sober group needed to get back on the road, and we walked outside the restaurant to say our goodbyes. This is when Skipper came wheeling up, hair and makeup a little crazy, and renewed the acquaintance of cousins she hadn’t seen since she was a child. She lit a cigarette and suggested we all go back inside for margaritas, and trust me, in ONE MILLION YEARS, this was not going to happen. So instead we stood outside awkwardly talking.

Then I was moved when Cousin Midge, famous for hoarding a basement full of family treasures and mementos that none of the rest of us were allowed near, took something from her purse and held it toward Cousin Skipper.

“I wondered if you’d ever seen one of these,” Midge said.

Skipper took it and her eyes got wet when she realized she was looking at the announcement of her own birth, written in her late mother’s hand more than sixty years before.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen this.” She held it to her heart for a moment then looked at it again as her tears spilled down her cheeks.

That’s when Cousin Midge snatched it from Skipper’s hand and said, “I’m not GIVING it to you!”

I literally and quite audibly gasped, but that didn’t deter Midge from putting the birth announcement back in her purse.

This became a joke between my mother and me whenever I’d admire something of hers or vice versa: “I’m not GIVING it to you!” we’d say, followed by a crazy cackle.

After Mother died, I tried to remember all her suggestions through the years about who should get what, and I’m delighted to say that as far as I know, none of her children or grandchildren argued over stuff–possibly because in times past, she’d given us many of those things that held meaning for us.

However, she did swear she’d given me an engraved silver tray that was a gift to my father when he left one of his jobs. When she found out I didn’t have it, she was sure I threw it away. Anyone who knows me knows this isn’t possible (I do share genes with Cousin Midge, after all).

So to my family, if anyone has that silver tray, I think it’s time you ‘fessed up and let me off the hook.

And Debby wants to know: Who’s hiding the blue willow platter?

I hope Mother didn’t give it to Cousin Midge.

Legacy Writing 365:144

With this post, I am back on track with my once-daily legacy writing entries after almost a month.

I didn’t get behind simply because of the eight days I didn’t post when Aaron died. Even after I eased myself back here with a Photo Friday picture and gentle-on-my-system posts about Jess, Lila, the dogs, there were days when I simply couldn’t string thoughts together, much less words. I couldn’t possibly delve into the past with my heart breaking over the present. Or it seemed almost callous: This terrible loss has happened, and I’m going to talk about…what? What wouldn’t be trivial and meaningless in the face of a tragedy that’s broken the hearts of people I love so profoundly?

I know those days are far, far from over. Anyone who has grieved knows how long the process is. Years. Grief eventually weaves itself into the rest of your life, a part of it, but not the dominant part. But in its infancy, grief gives you days when you just can’t…anything. You can go through motions of those things you have to do. I hear myself making mental lists: just get up, brush your teeth, take a shower, eat something, sit outside with the dogs, sweep the floor, read your email, cook dinner, answer the phone, go to the grocery store… Some days I can’t do even those things, beyond the ones I have to do, which mostly involve the dogs. The adults around here, even though they also are grieving, willingly deal with take-out and dusty floors. The dogs depend on me, and they don’t know grief. They know only the moment and the needs that have to be met, so they keep me tethered to a bit of normalcy.

A harder thing is to stay focused even on passive entertainment, like watching a show, reading a book, listening to a conversation. My mind wanders. Or worse, it locks on remembered words or images I wish I’d never had to see or hear, and suddenly I’ve read ten pages without having any idea what they said, or the show is over and I’m not sure what happened, or I try to catch up with what the people around me are saying and I can’t. My brain is in Austin, in Nevada, in Utah, in Ohio, in Alabama, in Indiana, tuned in to faraway hearts that are aching, hearts that are ever connected to mine by blood and by love.

So…

Two lessons my father taught me when he died.


The first… Kind words and actions will not fix or erase grief, nor should they. I mourn because I love. You can’t take away one without diminishing the power of the other. I would not give up love to spare myself grief. But kind words and actions do recognize and honor my loss and my love. In that way, they help connect and heal me. It’s been twenty-seven years since he died, and I still remember who sustained my family and me.

The second… The only way not to be paralyzed by my grief is to express it creatively. My father’s death and other events in my life at that time left me almost incapacitated. I was scheduled to take my Masters comps and was so removed from that process that I knew I couldn’t pass. During a two a.m. study session, I shoved my books aside and wrote a poem about my father. It didn’t matter whether it was a good or bad poem. It opened a mental door I’d been keeping locked; going through that door was my first step toward healing. Sadly, because I’m getting older, and because I’ve known people with diseases that ended their lives, I’ve used this lesson many times: processing my way through grief through creating something, whether it was cross-stitching, painting, sewing, shooting photos, making quilt panels…

And yes, writing. So that’s why I will keep coming back to this environment I created, my little corner of the Internet, because no matter what I talk about or what I say about it, it’s all an affirmation of a life and a family and a group of friends to whom and for whom I’m grateful every day.

ETA: Related post: Aaron Buchanan Cochrane