Tag: memories

Legacy Writing 365:352

Mother lived in Houston three different times. During one of the Christmases following her last move here in 2004, we went to Green Acres to have Christmas dinner with Lynne’s family, including Craig’s daughter April, son-in-law Nick, and their two sons. It had been probably ten years since the last time Mother saw Trey and Tyler. Tyler was either a teenager or about to be. When Mother said to him, “Do you remember that I used to hold you on my lap when you were a baby?” he gave her that look that means (1) I never saw you before in my life and (2) I hope you don’t think I’m going to sit on your lap now, Crazy Lady.

At the time, I couldn’t remember if she was mixing up the boys–because it was hard for me to keep up with her many moves and what years they happened. But today, going through photos, I found her proof.


Mother with Tyler in 1995.

Too bad I didn’t remember this photo at the time. I’d have coerced him into sacrificing his dignity and letting me reshoot the two of them all those years later. I think his expression would have been the same.

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What is more smile-worthy than a handsome man on his way to shower a princess with lots of pink-wrapped presents? Tim was kind enough to let me get a quick photo before he left for Hanley’s fourth birthday party. Throughout the event, he Tweeted photos and showed me a few more when he returned to The Compound. Life looked pretty good at Hanley, Inc. on Sunday.

There was another birthday party happening this weekend, a little more to the northeast of us. My beautiful grand-niece Morgan turned eleven on Sunday. My sister was able to be there for the event. She called me Saturday night sounding just a bit exhausted. I think it’s because she’s not thirty-five anymore–she can’t keep up with a posse of partying ‘tweens. I was able to snag this photo from Morgan’s mom’s Facebook page.

I remember the first time I saw Morgan. She was the last baby born to our family in 2001 after Abby in April, Camden in August, and Steven in September. They gave us so many reasons to celebrate in a hard year, and being able to snuggle a baby at Christmas again was the best gift I could have received.

Cherish the children in your life, and if you’re child-free, try to help create a safe place where they can be children. Sometimes it isn’t an easy planet.

Legacy Writing 365:350


“You mean this is all for ME?”

I’m not sure how old Daniel is in this Christmas photo. He’s sitting on the hearth in my parents’ house, and yes, probably most of those presents were for him. And that’s the way it should be.

The stocking hanging behind him is mine, and I still use it. It’s hanging from my own mantel right now. Some of those ornaments pictured are hanging on The Compound tree.

These are the things I need to think about right now. The wonderful memories. The traditions. The familiar. The children in our family–the ones grown and the ones still kids–and all the joys they’ve brought our family through the years. I have to remember the laughter to make more laughter. To cherish those good times to create more. To hold those I love close to my heart, even if I can’t hold them close in a hug.

Legacy Writing 365:349

I think it’s interesting when I look at photos of my mother’s that were taken the same time as photos in my own collection. I have a photo from the day featured below of my father looking very frail in his wheelchair. She doesn’t have anything like that.

It was the last Christmas Daddy was alive. Mother spent all day, every day, at the nursing home where he was a resident. She left at dusk only because her vision didn’t allow her to drive at night. I’m sure that time was nightmarish for her, so when her grandkids came to visit, they are who she needed to focus on, and I don’t blame her at all.

The first photo is cut because she had it in a circular frame.


Daniel, Mother, Josh
Gina, Sarah
The boys look so solemn. Probably we’d all threatened their lives if anyone did the bunny ears thing.


Debby, Mother, and me with weirdly similar hairstyles.


Josh looks like he’s up to something. I’ll bet bunny ears were creeping up behind his mother’s back, and Mother just took the photo before he was ready.

These last two are from my photos, and I rest my case.

Legacy Writing 365:348

‘Nathan, Anna, and John–all booksellers–decided to read A Coventry Christmas again this season, a chapter a day. They’ve Tweeted back and forth to one another about it, and ‘Nathan has been blogging it–the book has actually found new readers thanks to this–as well as enticing some former readers back. I think it has something to do with the retail storyline in the book, but regardless, I’m beyond flattered. Also, though it’s been years since I’ve read any book I had a hand in writing, there were times I didn’t remember plot points they were discussing, so I spent a few hours reading it again. That led me to reread A Coventry Wedding. I don’t think I ever read it after publication other than a quick survey to check for errors. There’s a sadness that runs through that book, and through its character Jandy, even though it’s a romance. It was where I put some of the sadness of things going on in my life during that time. I do find that I still love Keelie and Jandy, but Jandy hurts my heart a little.

‘Nathan and I play Draw Something on our phones. Well, HE plays on his iPad, and I pretend that it’s his larger drawing surface that enables him to send me masterpieces while I send him stick figures. The other night, he had the word “book” to draw for me, and he did this:

Not bad, huh? By comparison, I once had to draw “novel” in Draw Something for Timmy. I don’t think ‘Nathan has much competition, frankly.

To get back on topic: On ‘Nathan’s most recent blog entry about ACC, he shared his cover drawing, and Lisa in Iowa decided to poke me with a stick and tell him she thought that cover would have been better if the author name were “Betsy Cochrane.” Of course, she’s referring to the panel I moderated at Saints and Sinners, when this happened:

Now y’all know I’m accustomed to being called Betsy, Betty, Peggy, and Debby. But at least I always knew one thing would be right. When we were asked to come up with a single author pseudonym for the four writers who collaborate on the TJB novels–Timothy, Timothy, Jim, and Becky–the name Timothy James Beck made perfect sense. We were all included. It was an easy name, and lots of authors use three names, so it wasn’t weird to say or remember.

Or you wouldn’t think so. When we received the ARC (advance reader copy) of He’s the One, our second novel, we all loved the cover. And then we turned it over…


Notice anything wrong?

Fortunately, the real cover was fine, and I was no longer Black (for no apparent reason).

Legacy Writing 365:347

Wednesday night I couldn’t stop laughing when reading the feeds for the Twitter trending topics while the 121212 concert for Hurricane Sandy relief was being shown live worldwide. No one would call a lot of the talent hot and happening, and there seemed to be a universal consensus that Roger Daltry needed to button his shirt. But I think classic rock and roll transcends generations, plus I suspect the organizers were aiming for a demographic who’d be willing and able to donate. I had no complaints because I saw some of my favorite performers and heard some of my favorite music. I even forgave them for including Roger Waters because Eddie Vedder sang “Comfortably Numb” with him. (This is no judgment against the music of Pink Floyd. That music just happens to be irrevocably tied to a bad time in my life.)

I relished every bit of Sir Paul McCartney’s performance, and dang, he and the reunited Nirvana sounded kickass together. Plus Michael Stipe made a surprise appearance to sing with Chris Martin, and I love R.E.M. and don’t hate Coldplay, so that was cool.

But really, what will always make me giddy is seeing that no matter how old the Rolling Stones get, Mick Jagger still struts like it’s 19-sixty-something, and good on him. I’ve seen the Rolling Stones live twice. The first time was in 1989 for the Steel Wheels Tour. Here’s the ticket, and forget everything else except THAT TICKET PRICE!

Just for the sake of comparison, if you’d been able to buy a ticket directly from New Jersey’s Prudential Center for the Stones’ December 13, 2012, show there, you possibly could have gotten it for $95, if all those tickets hadn’t already been purchased by resellers. If you tried to buy one right now, the cheapest seat in a section similar to my seat is $373.

Sure, my seat was “limited view,” and by limited view, they meant, “You will be sitting so high in the Astrodome that you’ll be required to shoot a beam from the top of your head to warn away aircraft approaching Hobby Airport. But whatever, it was the ROLLING STONES, and they had huge screens so I never missed a minute of Charlie Watts looking dapper and cool, Ron Wood looking like Rod Stewart with dark hair, Bill Wyman looking like Bill Wyman, Keith Richards looking–yep, still dead–and Mick looking like a rooster on speed.

I don’t remember when we bought our tickets, but we already had them when I began working at the bookstore that fall. I was sitting in the office with our manager, Tim W, and the other assistant, Christine, and they were telling me horror stories about what the holiday retail season would be like and how we’d be working all the time, etc., and I said, “I don’t care. I can work as much as you want me to, but I have to be off the night of November 8 because that’s the Rolling Stones concert.”

Up to that point, Christine and I had gotten along like gangbusters, but at that moment, fire came to her eyes. See, I liked the Rolling Stones, but what I didn’t know was that Christine and her husband John LOVED the Rolling Stones, probably more than I ever loved any band, maybe even the Beatles. They probably did NOT have limited view seats, and they probably paid a lot more for their tickets than we did. And here was this new assistant manager asking for the one night off that Christine had counted on getting.

For a few moments, I feared for my life, then Tim W said, “No problem. I’ll work that night and do the turnaround.” (Turnaround being our term for what ‘Nathan calls “clopen”: close that night, open the next morning.)

“I’ll be glad to work the morning shift on the eighth so Christine can be scheduled off!” I hastened to say.

So it all worked out, and Christine and John remain in our lives all these years later, and I still adore them, and I still poke Christine with a stick about Keith Richards being dead every chance I get.

This is me, sitting at the desk in the bookstore office. Christine is in red, and the girl in green–or is it blue?–is Alison, who was in high school then and working part time. Alison was British but had no accent unless I begged her to, and I used to call her my daughter, even though I’d have had to have given birth to her very young. I wish I had photos of all my favorite people from Bookstop, but those were the days before digital cameras, film was expensive, and if you knew what my salary was then, you’d wonder why no one put on a concert called Becky Aid.

Legacy Writing 365:346

I didn’t ask my nephew if I could steal this photo from him, but I think my family expects such larcenous behavior from me now.


Daniel was thrilled to get this early Christmas gift from his mom. I’m serious; he loves it! So do I, and probably so would anyone who grew up seeing the Peanuts Christmas special every year. I see this tree and I hear the Snoopy dance music and can visualize the scenes from the show as if I’d just watched it.

Back at the beginning of April, I told the story of the little Christmas tree I put in our house in Tuscaloosa to surprise my roommates. I was going for the Charlie Brown effect.

Except Joe came over for dinner, and it made him sad for us, so a few hours later, he showed up with a tree that filled half of our dining room. We had no ornaments. So we had a tree decorating party and made some of our own. And do you know, I only have a couple of photos where you can almost see that tree in the background, because I was taking photos of all of us–I forgot to immortalize the tree!


You can see the top of it behind Carreme, me, Debbie, and Pat. Looks like the Pink Panther became the tree topper.


Mary Ann may not look happy in this photo, but I don’t think I ever saw her in a bad mood.


Eat it, string it, put it on the tree, or wear it; whatever works!


Here’s Joe with Debbie, who’s striking a pose and eating a graham cracker. Traditional holiday fare of students everywhere.

Legacy Writing 365:345

Monday morning, I was having a long, convoluted dream (as many of mine are). One of those cast of thousands dreams. Just before I woke up, I dreamed I was sitting in a room and my mother walked in. She was laughing, and in the other room, I could hear Debby telling our father a story, and he was laughing, too.

“This was a good idea,” Mother said, “us coming here. She always makes us laugh. We’re so proud of her.”

I was smiling when I woke up, and I could distinctly remember a day when I was either at Mother’s, or she was at The Compound, probably in the year or so before she died, and she was talking to Debby on the phone, sometimes hollering with laughter. “I’m SO glad you called,” she told Debby. “You always make me laugh, no matter how I’m feeling.”

Debby has that effect on me, too, and the dream and that memory reminded me of one of my favorite photos. It was 1990 and we were all in Salt Lake City. David had taken his brothers-in-law skiing, and Mother, Debby, and I had lunch out, went to a movie, did some shopping in the mall. On a whim, one of us said, “Let’s get our picture taken with Santa!”

As soon as we received the photo, Debby said, “Look at the expression on Mother’s face. She looks like Santa’s goosing her!”

“Gave me a chill all over my body,” Mother said and cackled.

Legacy Writing 365:344

Around the time I was in the fourth grade, I was given several Dakin stuffed toys. I can’t remember what they were now, though I seem to recall a skunk, maybe a donkey, and a dog. The only one I held on to through the years was my reindeer, because he stayed with my Christmas decorations. I would put him with my Santa’s Workshop display each year. However, when he was stored in the same place where a lot of my books were lost because of some kind of destructive bug, my poor reindeer’s antlers and eyes, made out of felt, and some of his spots, were all eaten.

I still displayed him though. If you look carefully at this photo from 2008, you can see a lone wire hanging behind his head. And I sewed green beads on to give him some eyes, even though I thought the final effect was kind of creepy.

Sometime between then and last year, I took pity on his antler-free state and fashioned a silver pipe cleaner into festive head gear for him.

Then Steve B posted some photos to Twitter of his holiday decorations, and lo and behold, there was his reindeer, who he called Zombie Rudolph.

It made me feel sad for my little red friend. After all, he’s stuck with me through a lot of lean years, hard Christmases, and bad haircuts. How could I possibly leave him in such a deplorable state year after year? So on Craft Night, I removed the stupid pipe cleaner and the scary eyes. Then I put some red wire on his little head.


Apparently, my camera was set to “Alabama National Championship” focus, so Rudy is a bit blurry.

I could see by the faded circles where some spots should be.

I could still remember the colors that were on my original reindeer, so having gone to the felt farm earlier, it was time to create: new antlers! Eyes! A nose! Spots!

I decided to leave his tattered ribbon intact. After all, there’s nothing wrong with evidence that he’s a Reindeer of Many Years and Adventures.

Now he’s nestled between Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, a happy boy. I have a little of my childhood back. And isn’t that one of the best parts of Christmas?

Legacy Writing 365:343

Since today’s the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, I think of Riley. The other day when I posted about my high school band director’s death, an old friend from high school commented, saying she’d checked my blog to see if I’d heard the news. It made my heart ache a little, because I know she’ll never forget what happened in 2008.

I’d mentioned Riley in a post I wrote about the Beatles, because their music was all over the manuscript I was working on (which would become A Coventry Wedding). Susan happened to read it and sent me an email to tell me she was sorry about Riley. When I answered with panicked questions, she was horrified. She thought I wrote the post knowing that Riley had died. She didn’t know that no one was sure how to find me, so I hadn’t heard the news. (If you read this now, Susan, I hope you never feel bad about that. You had no idea, and without your telling me, I wouldn’t have known to get in touch with Riley’s mother and a friend of his who could tell me all that had happened.)

David was visiting, and he and Tom were in the living room watching a ball game. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell anyone; that would make it true. I couldn’t breathe. I walked out of the house and stood outside, blind and stupid. Finally I went inside Tim’s place, walked upstairs. I stared at him a few seconds, then I broke down. Tim thought something had happened to my mother. I don’t know how long it was before I was able to tell him that Riley was dead.

I haven’t lost as many friends to death as some people I know, but I’ve lost too many, and Riley’s death took something from me that I’ll never get back. No one outside my family and Lynne knew me so long, and I’m not sure anyone has ever known me as well as Riley did and STILL loved me. He was part of my soul. He always will be.

John Lennon… I never, ever forget hearing that awful news on the radio that late night when I was visiting Tuscaloosa, cutting my trip short, and getting back home to Riley as quickly as I could. I remember every one of those days afterward vividly. Riley and I had endured such misery in 1980, and still we’d never imagined the year could end with something so shattering, something that would make us feel like all the things that youth offers–resilience, hope, giddy excitement, promise–would vanish on one cold December night.

Today, I decided to open up the bin of my old journals and see if I’d managed to write anything worth reading about that December, that event.

In all that mess–of course not! Why write about something profound when you can instead be a stupid girl and waste pages and pages and pages on some guy who broke your heart and whose memory means absolutely nothing to you now and you wish you’d never even met? Or worse, some boy who you THOUGHT broke your heart that now you don’t even remember knowing and have to struggle to see a face with the name you’ve wasted so much ink on?

Maybe the real heartbreaks are written somewhere deep inside us, where no one else can ever read them by accident, but only if we choose, after time has tempered them and given them context, to put them on paper. I don’t know. But while going through all that stuff, I did find a bunch of Riley’s poems and songs. I smiled over a song he’d written for me, that I’d typed for him, which is still so, so dear to me. Then I flipped through a few more pages and found two versions of that song in his handwriting–one with strikeouts and one final draft.


“Becky’s Song (I Knew You When)–dedicated to a best friend” he’s written on the top and bottom of the page.

Like the world, Riley and I lost all the music John Lennon still had left to write. I had twenty-eight more years of Riley after that, and I’m grateful for every one of them. If I close my eyes, I can hear his guitar and hear him singing “Becky’s Song” to me again, and like a world grateful for what we were allowed to have from John Lennon, I’m grateful for these words, music, and memories I still have from Riley.

The last two lines of the song:

I wrote this song for you
’cause you knew me then.

I wrote this post for you, ’cause you knew me then.

I miss you.