Tag: memories

Legacy Writing 365:332

YAY! Today is Lynne’s birthday. Happy birthday, Lynne! We’ve celebrated a few of these together. Who’s counting? Certainly not me; my math doesn’t go beyond thirty-five.

I first published a couple of these photos on my blog back in 2006. They’re from the surprise party my mother helped me give Lynne when we were in eighth grade. Her birthday was on a Friday that year, so I was allowed to have a slumber party! My father was in Korea. My sister was dating the man she’d marry and have three children with. My brother and Terri were living in Colorado, and there was no Daniel yet. I liked ten boys–at least.


Surprise! Things I notice: You’re wearing your black onyx ring. I’d forgotten that we had another table and chairs in the kitchen/breakfast room (behind you).


Make a wish. When I used this photo the first time, I photoshopped Liz and Susan B right out of it. I’m not so polite or energetic anymore. YOU’RE ON MY BLOG–and you’ll never know. I wonder: Did we all plan to wear white shirts? Or was that just a thing?

The sad thing is that Lynne doesn’t like coconut cake, but I didn’t know so didn’t tell Mother that. Sorry, Lynne! I’ve never inflicted coconut cake on you again–only on Rex, who secretly scarfed down my sister’s coconut cake in 2008. We all know how that ended.


Presents! I loved that plaid chair of my mother’s in the background. It was my favorite chair to sit in for years.

Sorry, got distracted. Open your dune buggy!


How cool are Susan’s embroidered jeans?

Legacy Writing 365:331

It’s time once again to break out the story of the Angel Books.

I first became acquainted with these through my friend Steve R in the early 1990s. Though I’d been a fan of Christmas in my younger years, the luster of the holiday faded for me after my father died. My two biggest Christmas advocates, Lynne and Liz, lived far away from me, as did most of my family. It really took Steve, whose excitement about Christmas never wavered even when he was sickest, and our friend Tim R, who went all out for the holiday with his decorating-passionate mother, to melt the holiday icicles encasing my heart.

Steve had found, at Bookstop, one of these books of angels, based on women in Renaissance paintings, to color. That was a period when I’d developed a passion for Renaissance art, thanks to Houston’s museums and a past-life regression I experienced. The angels intrigued me, so Lynne and I bought a few books and began coloring, painting, and otherwise decorating angels. After Steve died, the tradition continued. Though the books are out of print, one year Marika found several and dispersed angels among some of our friends to color and surprise me. I was thrilled to receive new angels from around the globe, and they’ve joined the many angels that Tim arranges throughout the house each Christmas season.

Thank you to everyone who’s ever colored one of these angels for me. There are still angels left to turn into art if you’re interested in contributing one to this festive band.


Dining room windows.


Living room window.


Double windows in living room.


Angels now spill over to nestle among stones and crystals.

Legacy Writing 365:327, 328, and 329

Here are pictures from my ‘tween years forward of many Thanksgivings that include lots of family and friends. These pictures don’t really need words to show why every year teaches me again how much I have to be grateful for. This is what Thanksgiving means to me: being together for a few hours with people we care for, reaching out to those who need to be included, sharing what is abundant in our lives–whether that is food, time, or love–with our neighbors.

I hope all of you find good and safe ways to celebrate the Thanksgiving holidays, and that we can all offer our best to one another, in stores and airports, at work and at play, on roads, in front of TVs, at tables, and online.

Taking a break: I’ll be back for sure by time to post Button Sunday!

Legacy Writing 365:326

It’s too bad this photo is blurry. It’s from Lynne’s photo archives and is a picture of my father with his faithful shadow Dopey trailing behind him. She took it the first year we became friends in seventh grade. Daddy was still in the Army then, and we’d just moved into this house that my parents had built. There was a little white door in the foundation on the back of the house that led to a surprisingly spacious crawl space under the house that was a favorite hideaway for Dopey and me.

The first time Lynne came to our house when my father was home, she and I were sitting in the living room, listening to music, cutting up, and giggling in the way of ‘tween girls. All of a sudden my father, in the den, bellowed in his best drill sergeant voice, “SHUT UP!”

Lynne’s face flushed and her blue eyes were as big as saucers. I glanced at her and said, “What?”

“I didn’t know I was being that loud,” she whispered. “I’m TERRIFIED of your father.”

I started laughing so hard I almost fell off the couch and finally assured her, “He was hollering at Dopey to stop barking under the house.”

Legacy Writing 365:325

Lately I’ve been seeking and reading short stories by Virginia Woolf. I’ve read several of her novels, but somehow I neglected her shorter fiction. And any writer, especially a female writer, should be familiar with her 1929 essay “A Room of One’s Own.”

It’s always interested me how writers in fiction carve out space and time to write. And it’s always interested me how writers of fiction do the same.


Looking through photos, I spied this one of Lynne, and I knew exactly where she was. For a time, she and her sister shared a house with three bedrooms. The extra bedroom was a guest room, but they also let me make a space for myself in that room, even though I wasn’t living there. It was a place where I could write. And I did write. None of it was very good writing. In fact, most of it is long gone, and the world is better for its absence. Trust me.

But I see Liz’s typewriter there, for my use, and I remember listening to music in that room, and just breathing and struggling my way toward creating. These places, so important, remain part of us always. And we are lucky when we have friends, family, and other artists who encourage and make room in their lives, too, for our struggles.

I’m thankful for you all who have helped me dwell inside those rooms.

Legacy Writing 365:324

I’m a little annoyed with myself. This is the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the film To Kill A Mockingbird. In honor of the occasion, they showed the movie in select theaters one night only–November 15. I had fully intended to see it, but somehow I forgot the date. Of course, I know I can see it any time on DVD, but still, I’d have loved to have seen it on the big screen.

I don’t know what year I first saw the movie, but I know I was quite young and my mother watched it with me. She explained some things to me. I understood what was happening, but she elaborated on some of the implications of the scenes in the movie: the subtext. I acquired my own copy of the book–a paperback–and read it to tatters over the years. I remember the first time I read it, some parts made me cry so hard I had to put the book down and walk away from it. It doesn’t hit me quite as hard now–though I still shed plenty of tears about the movie and the novel. I always loved that Jem and Scout made my mother think of her and Uncle Gerald growing up. Now all four are linked forever in my mind.

A favorite William Faulkner quote: “Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.”

I guess Harper Lee has been doing a lot of reading through the decades, because she gave us only one novel. It is a masterpiece. Though my poor paperback is long gone, Tom’s mother was kind enough to buy me this 1960 book club edition one year when we were antique shopping together.

The copies with “First Edition” printed in them are worth a lot of money, and mine does not have that. However, to me, it’s priceless: a gift from Harper Lee, my mother, and my mother-in-law.

Legacy Writing 365:322

When we moved to Alabama, my father bought an old Ford Falcon to drive to work so my mother wouldn’t be left at home without a car. It looked something like this.

It was painted light blue, and either the original paint was flaking off, or it had been badly repainted. It had bench seats in front and back. The radio played even when the car wasn’t running and without the key being turned at all. Daddy’s drive to work was about ten miles, and Debby and I went to school in the same college town where he worked. The heater would finally start to warm up the car about halfway there on winter mornings, and the car always smelled faintly of gasoline. And cigarettes, because he smoked then.

He’d drop Debby off at the high school. My school was just across the street from the ROTC building. In the afternoons, Debby would walk there from school, and we’d sit in the car and wait for him to get off of work an hour and a half later. Sometimes she had after-school activities, and sometimes I went to my friend Pam’s grandmother’s house, which was just down the street from his building, and Pam and I would watch TV or feed apples to her horse–or someone’s horse–who was pastured nearby.

On the days that Debby and I sat in the car and waited for Daddy, we’d listen to the radio and she’d sneak cigarettes. One day I glanced toward the building and gasped. “Debby! Here comes Daddy!”

She hurriedly stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and slammed it shut. It wasn’t time for him to go home; he was just coming to check on us, he said. He leaned his hands against the outside roof of the car on the driver’s side, where my sister sat, and talked to us for a few minutes. It wasn’t long before I realized that the fire from Debby’s cigarette had relit some of Daddy’s old cigarette butts, and smoke was starting to pour from the ashtray. While she kept him talking, I surreptitiously tried to wave the smoke toward my open window.

Finally Daddy went back inside his building and we almost collapsed from relief that he hadn’t noticed the near-fire that was going by that time in the ashtray.

Many years later, we were sitting around telling stories. Debby mentioned that she used to smoke in his car after school but he never knew it since he was a smoker, too.

“I could see you smoking every day from my office window,” he said. “Of course I knew.”

Ever The Snitch, I said, “Yeah, but you didn’t know about the time she set your ashtray on fire.”

“No,” he agreed. “Why would I have noticed plumes of smoke coming from the dashboard and you waving your arms around in the background?”

THEY ALWAYS SEE EVERYTHING.

Legacy Writing 365:321

This is my paternal grandfather Ellison Gustavus, also called Ellie Gus and E.G. throughout his life. We called him Papa. He was born in 1870, so that gives you an idea of how old this photo is. On the back, someone has written, “This print made from a tintype.” I don’t recognize the handwriting.

His face looks so sweet. And speaking of props (referencing comments to a previous post), he’s clutching an umbrella. Or perhaps his mother’s parasol. It would have been great if succeeding generations of mothers of Cochrane boys had seen this and let their sons be photographed in a similar pose–with an umbrella. I think that’s a newfangled trend, though, in family photography.

Have you ever heard the phrase “saucered and blowed?” It has a few meanings, but its origin is from the action of pouring a little of one’s hot coffee (or tea, I suppose) from the cup to the saucer. You blow on it and take little sips, and by the time the saucer is empty, the beverage in the cup has cooled enough to drink. If you want to read more about the phrase, you can find information here. I particularly like the story of Washington and Jefferson.

Every time I ever ate breakfast at Papa’s table, I watched him do this. It always seemed perfectly normal to me, and I never questioned why no one else did it. Maybe I thought it was just something special about my grandfather, like his whole wheat bread, the long walks I got to take with him, and his eyes that never dimmed right up until he died at age ninety-six. I loved him so much.

Legacy Writing 365:317

The November 12 that you were born was pretty much the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. That’s saying a lot, because I’d had a life filled with some stellar moments up to that point. Your parents stayed with us for a few days when you came home from the hospital, and I couldn’t stop going into the room where you slept in your bassinet to stare at you.

You had a good, strong cry, but I didn’t mind when you woke the house to let us know that you were hungry, wet, or just needed to remind us you were there.


It was smart of you to be born so close to Christmas. You REALLY racked up in the gift department at your grandparents’ house. Like you cared. Though you have quite a grip on that little red stocking while your dad holds you. And you liked that shiny tree in the house, too, that your mom was showing you.

We all noted every one of your growing and learning milestones as if you were the most extraordinary creature in the world. Actually, you were the most extraordinary creature in the world. You still are. Though we can’t hold you up to a Christmas tree anymore.

Happy birthday, Daniel. I’m glad the planet is giving you lots of snow to celebrate with.

Legacy Writing 365:316

This is a brief video on the history of Veterans Day. Thank you to all who have served our nation in times of war and peace.

Mentioned in the video is the Tomb of the Unknowns. Here are a couple of photos from my visit there in 1995–one of the quietest places I’ve ever been. The sentinels on guard ensure that the area stays quiet and the visitors respectful. While they are standing sentry or walking the mat, the guards don’t wear any of their rank insignia, so that they’ll never outrank the unknowns interred there.

To my father, my brother, and my nieces’ and nephew’s father: Your family is grateful for your service.