Susan Writes

John Stories

Posted on November 29, 2012 by susanrray

Sunday morning. I stood in my closet choosing clothes for church when the phone rang. “Susan, do you have a minute to talk?” my college roommate asked. I sat down as she spoke. John, her husband of 40 years, was breathing his last breaths. John, whose doctor had just a few days before declared his heart valve replacement a great success and told him to carry on with normal life. John, who had planned an evening out with friends to celebrate. His passing was quick.

I first loved John because Jo Ann loved him. She and I had shared a 10’ x 12’ dormitory room for three years at Tennessee Tech University. Sisters by choice. In 1972, I stood beside Jo Ann when she and John promised to love each other until parted by death. For four days, I stood behind Jo Ann while she made difficult decisions and received condolences. And I heard stories.

A ten-year old neighbor boy hugged Jo Ann and said, “I liked when he threw the ball with me. I’ll miss him.” The next-door neighbor cried as he told me that just two days before he and John had stood in their driveways. “He hugged my girls (ages 2 and 3) and said ‘How fast can you run?’ When they ran to him, he laughed and told then they could run faster. The girls wrapped their arms around his legs and John pretended to fall. He made everybody laugh.”

Jan and John had an on-going joke about birds flying overhead. John didn’t want to sit at the outside restaurant table under a tree. Surely there was a place inside for six people to eat dinner that May evening. Jan teased him that his bald head would be a perfect target, but she’d make sure that birds didn’t deposit anything on it. When John turned his back to her, Jan poured water into her hand and dumped it on his head. John stood, hollered words that his mother would’ve washed out of his mouth, and swiped his head with a cloth napkin. His friends laughed, and John laughed loudest.

Only his generous heart surpassed John’s sense of humor. January 1976, a snowstorm hit the Nashville area at rush hour and immediately turned roads into parking lots. My fifteen- month-old daughter, Alicia, and I were stranded on a neighborhood street, miles away from our home on the other side of Davidson County. After two hours, my new best friends, whose cars were parked on the snow-covered, icy street, pushed my car into a driveway and watched as I knocked on a stranger’s door. I asked to use her phone and stay inside her warm house. The snow finally stopped and the main roads were cleared. John left his workplace in downtown Nashville. He drove out of his way to rescue Alicia and me from a stranger’s house and took us to his and Jo Ann’s home. Midnight supper never taste so good.

‘John stories,’ Jo Ann calls them. Stories that remind me to laugh and hug. Stories that make me happy that John was my friend. Stories that help heal hurting hearts.

Filed under: Friends | Tagged: Friends, Hugs, Laughter | Leave a comment »

First Time Hostess

Posted on November 22, 2012 by susanrray

I lay in bed mentally checking my to-do lists. Tables set. Were the card table legs fastened? Cut a lemon for tea. Put the turkey in the oven at 5:00 a.m. – just five hours from now. Bake two pecan pies. Wipe the bathroom sink. Would the kids (ages 3 and 5) agree to wear the cute new outfits that my mother had made?

I’d written, checked, and rechecked lists for three days. It was Husband’s and my firsttime to host a holiday dinner for my family. And it wasn’t my idea. Mother and her two sisters had rotated Thanksgiving and Christmas meals in their homes for 35 years, and they’d decided it was time for the younger generation to take over.

“We’ll help,” Mother had said. “I’ll make the cornbread dressing and you know your Aunt Nell and Aunt Doris and I always make the gravy together. Save the turkey drippings. And everybody brings food. You just put a turkey in the oven and make tea and coffee and maybe a dessert. It’ll be fine.” I told myself that these were the people – all 22 of them – who loved me best. Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, brother, cousins. If things weren’t perfect, they’d understand.

But I was determined that Husband and I could host the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. I’d take pecan pies out of the oven just after everyone arrived. Wouldn’t that make the house smell good? By tradition, I had covered the tables with white tablecloths, and set them with my best china, crystal goblets, silver, and floral centerpieces.

Thanksgiving morning, 5:00 a.m., I shoved an 18-pound turkey into a 325* oven and climbed back into bed until daylight. I rolled and turned, but didn’t sleep. I got up. The morning passed quickly. How many times can one adjust plates and forks and napkins? Our children were cuter than cute in their new clothes. Bathroom sinks sparkled. Husband promised that the card tables wouldn’t fall. I rolled out piecrusts – no store bought crusts for this feast – and used the family recipe for pecan filling. Turkey out of the oven and pie in, right on schedule.

Our guests arrived carrying sweet potato pudding, corn, asparagus casserole, green beans, pumpkin pies, and more. Mother and my aunts filled my small kitchen as they stirred and tasted the giblet gravy. Husband sliced the turkey. We could’ve been models for Norman Rockwell’s November magazine cover. The oven buzzer sounded. “That’s the pecan pies,” I announced.

“You even made pies this morning?” my cousin asked. I opened the oven door, grabbed two potholders and carefully set the first pie on a cooling rack. When I lifted the second one out of the oven, it was a slippery sliding disk. The hot pie flipped out of hands and landed upside down on the floor and splattered onto my shoes. Tears ran down my face, and everyone assumed that the hot pie filling had burned my feet. Not so. The pecan pie oozing under the refrigerator erased all pretense of a picture-perfect Thanksgiving.

Now, some thirty years later, I make short lists, check them once, and don’t bake pies. And it’s just fine. And I’m thinking maybe it’s time for the younger generation to take over.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family, Food | Tagged: family, food, Thanksgiving | Leave a comment »

Children Just Watch

Posted on November 15, 2012 by susanrray

My Grand was 4 1/2 years old and she beat me in a second game of UNO. The first game, I’d played to her hand to make sure that she won. The next game, I played my cards. Lou had announced, “UNO. Red,” and laid a Draw Four card on the table. I drew four cards. She played her last card and beamed. “I won again. Two for me. None for you.”

“Lou, you’re a really good UNO player. How did you learn?” I asked.

“I watched Mommy and Daddy and David (her older brother) play and I just learned how. I just watched. I do what they do.” Her answer hit a nerve that’d been burned into my brain many years earlier when I taught fourth grade.

Melody was one of my best-dressed students. Her mother curled her hair every morning and tied it with ribbons that matched her outfit. No jeans and t-shirts for her. Her infectious greeting, “Good morning, everybody!” lit our classroom. She hurried to my side after hanging her red wool coat on a coat hook. “Mrs. Ray, will you please roll up my sleeves?”

The long sleeves of her plaid blouse hung unbuttoned. “Sure. Didn’t your mom have time to do it this morning?’ I asked.

“She didn’t know how. I want my sleeves just like yours and she didn’t do it right.” Just like my button-cuff sleeves that I rolled up because they were three inches too short for my long arms. What else did Melody do just like me?

My Grand, now 5 1/2, and I agreed last week that some things in her craft box needed replacing. “Bring it with you when you spend the night and we’ll clean it out and then go shopping,” I told Lou.

She sorted trash and treasures, putting loose stickers in a zip lock plastic bag, while I put a pot of water on the stove to boil pasta. “I’m ready to make my list. How do you spell tape?” Lou stood at the kitchen table, with pencil and paper in hand. Ten minutes later, she had her list. Tape, glue, stickers.

“This glue,” she said and put it in our shopping basket. She laid her list on the store floor and drew a line through the word glue. A dozen packages of stickers hung at her eye level. “These two,” she said within ten seconds. The tape was high, out of her reach. “Can you get the one in the middle?” She drew lines through two more words: stickers and tape. I complimented her on being a fast and good shopper. “That’s because I do it a lot,” she said. Lou shops with her mother who writes a grocery list and crosses off items that she puts in her shopping cart.

A hand scribbled sign hangs over my writing desk. “Children watch. Children learn.” A sign that I moved from my school desk to my home desk.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family, Grandchildren | Tagged: family, Grandchildren, Grandparents, Learn | Leave a comment »

Back on Real Time

Posted on November 7, 2012 by susanrray

Papa would be happy. Now we are back on real time as opposed to new time. My grandfather, Paul Bertram, was a no nonsense man and somewhat set in his ways. He was 31 in 1918 when Daylight Savings Time was first introduced in the United States, and now almost one hundred years later, I still think of him every time I move my clocks to spring forward or fall back.

I never heard Papa complain about Daylight Savings Time. He made his statement by the clock that hung on the wall beside his and Grandma’s kitchen table. It stayed on real time. They ate on real time, and they went to bed and got up on real time. Another clock hung on the living room wall close to the big console television. Set on new time.

Papa was one of six children and lived his whole live in Pickett County. He built his and Grandma’s home within throwing distance of his parent’s home. He was a carpenter and some say a self-taught engineer. No problem was too great. Solving a problem just took time and thought and work and patience.

Papa worked in Oak Ridge during the building boom, designed a water tank in Byrdstown in the 1950s to equip the new shirt factory with a sprinkler system, built houses to rent, and many by contract. His houses were high quality, built to the owner’s specifications. One house had electrical wall sockets three feet above the floor. When he asked the homeowner where she wanted the plugs, she walked throughout her wood-framed home and pointed her finger at that level. Papa penciled each place with an x and followed her directions.

One Christmas I didn’t understand why there was money in the pocket of the shirt that Papa and Grandma gave my daddy. They had three daughters and three sons-in-law, and they treated each the same. Dad’s shirt cost $2 less than the other two sons-in-law’s. Papa expected everyone to be fair and honest, but sometimes he double-checked to be sure no one made a mistake. More than one family member was embarrassed when he stood in the drugstore, poured the pills that the pharmacist has just put into a pill bottle into his hand, and counted.

Papa drove all over Pickett and the surrounding counties looking for good land. Some he bought and later sold. Whether his work for the day was building a house or trading land, he was always home by suppertime – five o’clock. During the summer months, he ate fast so he could see the end of the evening news on TV. When Daylight Savings Time ended, he could eat supper, take a little nap, and watch all of the 6:00 news. And both clocks, the one in the kitchen and the one by the TV, were set on real time.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family | Tagged: Daylight Savings Time, Grandfather, Papa | 2 Comments »

Halloween Costume, aka The Yellow Dress

Posted on November 1, 2012 by susanrray

When your doorbell rings tonight, expect to find Spiderman or Angry Bird or Izzy Pirate standing on your porch. Halloween costumes have morphed into the big time. When I was a kid I carried a bag, knocked on doors, and shouted, “Trick or treat,” every October 31^st, but I remember only two costumes that I wore. A ghost and a princess.

It was a classic ghost costume. An old white sheet with cut out circles edged in black for eyes and a rope tied around my waist. My princess dress wasn’t really a Halloween costume. It was my spring piano recital dress when I was seven years old. A beautiful dress – yellow satin, with a narrow covered binding at the waistline and spaghetti shoulder straps. Mother sewed tiny iridescent and white sequins on the top and she gathered yellow net fabric to cover the floor length skirt. A shawl, made from the same net, covered my bare shoulders and was tied through loops at my waistline.

I wore that same dress in my 3^rd grade class play, entitled The Yellow Rose of Texas. My classmates wore cowboy boots, blue jeans or long full shirts, and shirts with fringe, and they square danced around me while I stood in the middle of the stage, still and smiling. The only reason I was the Yellow Rose was because I had a long yellow dress.

I don’t know whose idea it was that I dress as a princess for Halloween. Probably Mother’s – after all, she’d spent many hours stitching my yellow dress and no doubt wanted it worn for every possible occasion. We made a tiara and magic wand from cardboard covered with aluminum foil.

All the neighborhood kids walked together from house to house to Trick or Treat. And we tricked, even when we’d been treated with good treats – popcorn balls, caramel apples, full size candy bars. It was expected that goblins would soap windows. With slivers of soap, saved just for the occasion, I drew circles and stick people and trees on windows, even at our own house. Our huge living room picture window got cleaned twice a year – in the spring before Easter and the day after Halloween. I had to help clean the big window so why not soap it?

Because we walked, the hemline of my long yellow dress got stained and worn –from dirt and the blacktop roads. Mother must have let the tucks out of the skirt, cut off the hem, re-hemmed it, and let the seams out of the bodice because I wore a yellow dress for another piano recital.

Will a princess ring your doorbell tonight? I hope so. She’ll remember the Halloween that she was a princess and stood beside Spiderman and Angry Bird. But I wonder if she’ll be wearing her handmade yellow piano recital dress.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family | Tagged: Costumnes, Halloween | Leave a comment »

Play or Work?

Posted on October 25, 2012 by susanrray

I’ve noticed that adults work and children play – even when they do the same activity. Ask a child who’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle what he’s doing, and he’ll say, “Playing with a puzzle,” or “Putting a puzzle together.” Ask an adult the same question and you’ll hear, “Working on a puzzle.”

Several years ago as a student in Leadership Putnam, I toured the Senior Citizen’s Center and observed an art class. The teacher explained that everyone was working on paintings, using different types of media and different scenes. “But we all work together here in the same room.” My five-year-old Grand often asks to paint. But she’s never worked on her paintings. Why does she like to paint? “It’s fun. You can make anything you want,” she told me as she painted a bright red swirl across paper. The art students at the Senior Citizen’s Center seemed to be having just as much fun.

Last week, I watched my three-year old Grand, at the Children’s Museum in the kitchen play area. Her eyes wrinkled in concentration. She filled a small shopping cart with plastic apples, celery, and green peppers. She picked up a carrot, laid it down, and chose grapes. Then she emptied the cart, placing her groceries in a small wooden refrigerator and in pots on a pretend stove. When I said that we’d have to leave in about five minutes, she responded, “But, Gran, I’m not done playing.” Somehow, I’ve never considered grocery shopping as play.

When my seven-year-old Grand wants to ride his bike in the woods beside our house, he clears a path. He spends thirty minutes moving sticks and raking leaves to create a circular trail among the trees – all in the name of play – and another thirty minutes riding. But he’s catching on. When I suggest that he helps me pick up sticks in the yard, he’s quick to decide it’s time for him to go home.

Children play. They arrange furniture, set a dinner table, and cook supper when they play house. They ‘teach’ their dolls or pets or younger siblings how to say the alphabet. They hammer and attach a bolt to a screw on kid-size workbenches. They mold and create bowls and flowers with play dough and clay. Using connecting blocks, they construct cars and airplanes and build fortresses and houses.

When does play become work? When do we adults begin to describe what we do as work? According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, play is the state of being active or relevant and work is an activity in which one exerts strength to perform something. Being active and exerting strength. Being relevant and performing something. Close enough to be the same for me.

I’d rather play than work. So I’ll play when I cook supper and when I knit a scarf. But I just don’t think I can play with an iron and ironing board.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family, Grandchildren | Tagged: family, Grandchildren | Leave a comment »

Fall’s Biggest Social Events

Posted on October 18, 2012 by susanrray

How about the tailgating at TTU? Lots of food and fun. A bounce zone for the young and young at heart. Fathers and sons playing football. Corn hole games. Frisbies. Some folk bring their own food. Some dine on the free food and beverages that are provided by local churches and businesses. Tech cheerleaders pump us up for the game, and my favorite, the TTU Marching Band performs.

When did tailgating begin? The American Tailgater Association, on its website, details the history of sharing food and drink before events and says the first documented tailgate probably took place in 1861 at the Battle of Bull Run. It states, “At the battle’s start, civilians from the Union side arrived with baskets of food and shouting, ‘Go Big Blue!’ Their efforts were a form of support and were to help encourage their side to win the commencing battle.” The Romans ate and drank outside the Coliseum before gladiator games. Doesn’t that fall into the broad definition of tailgating? Surely, they shared food and spirits and talked about the upcoming sports events.

In 1869, a group of Rutgers fans and players, wearing scarlet-colored scarves as turbans, paraded before the football game between Princeton and Rutgers. This was one of the earliest recorded celebrations before a sporting event.

There are all styles and levels of tailgating. Tailgating was simple when we drove a big wood panel station wagon. We lowered the tailgate, spread out a plastic tablecloth and food. Pimento cheese sandwiches, chips, and store bought cookies. Then came vans. We packed chairs, coolers with drinks, upscaled to ham rolls, fancy dips for chips, and cupcakes decorated with our team’s mascot. Or we picked up a family-pack barbeque dinner on the way to the game.

For some folks, RV tailgating is the ultimate. As good as life gets, I’ve been told, and an event that can go on for several days. No need to go to the game. RVers park close to the stadium and watch the game on big screen televisions. They relax in their comfortable chairs, eat and drink all through the game, know there’s been a big play when they hear the roar of the crowd, and maybe even the game announcer, and celebrate when their team scores on the big screen.

Football fans on the Ole Miss campus take tailgating to the extreme. And when I tailgated in The Grove, I made a check mark on my bucket list. Ten acres in the center of a campus shaded by oak, elm, and magnolia trees. Thousands of fans under a sea of red, white, and blue tents. And the table settings and fare were fit for a southern girl’s wedding reception. Elaborate centerpieces, silver candlesticks, tablecloths, fancy hor d’oeuvres, barbecue, fried chicken, shrimp, and all the fixings.

Tailgating isn’t just about the food. It’s getting ready for the big game. Food, friends, and fun —what’s not to like about one of fall’s biggest social events?

Filed under: Food, Friends, sports | Tagged: food, Friends, tailgating, travel | Leave a comment »

Muddy Pond Field Trip

Posted on October 11, 2012 by susanrray

I’m not sure if I load up my Grands in my van and go on Field Trips for them or for me. As a retired teacher, I remember field trip days as fun days, and I choose places I want my Grands to know about. Museums. Fire department. Post Office. City Hall. Cookeville Performing Arts Center. Emergency Management Agency. Cane Creek Park. Pet stores.

My Grands don’t always like my choices, but they were excited about going to the Muddy Pond General Store. That is, until they announced that they’d take their own money to buy Legos, and I told them that this store probably didn’t have Legos. We were making this outing because they’d read When I Was Young in the Mountains, and they didn’t know what a general store looked like. As we drove through Monterey and toward Muddy Pond, I stressed that we’d compare and contrast (teacher words that naturally flowed and I explained the meanings) a general store with the stores where we usually shop.

My Grands had $2.00 each to spend. “What kind of toys do they have?” asked three year old Ruthie. I didn’t know what kind of toys – if any – the Muddy Pond store would have. I explained that most general stores sell everything that a family needs. And this store would be like that. Food, clothes, tools, pots and pans. Everything that everyone in the family needed.

“If they have everything, they’ll have toys,” said Ruthie.

“If they don’t, it’s okay,” said Lou, age 5. “Momma said they’d have sprinkles and we can buy some. But she said we can’t buy candy.” Spoken like a reigning Sprinkle Queen.

We made mental lists of goods displayed on the shelves. Peanut butter. Tomato sauce. Plastic bags of flour, sugar, noodles, cornstarch. A whole aisle of candy. Kitchen goods – knives, plates, pots, pans, dishcloths. Oil lamps. “Come back here,” David, age 7, called. “I found the toys.” Crayons, coloring books, small metal tractors and cars. “Let’s go upstairs. I bet they have more stuff.”

Lou looked through a rack of long-to-the-ankle dresses. “Do they have my size?” I explained that many women and girls who live in Muddy Pond wore this type of long dress every day. “Even when they play outside?” Ruthie asked. We tried out the hand made wooden rocking chairs, stood on stools, admired the quilts, and my Grands rocked on the rocking horses. They found hand carved wooden boxes that Lou and Ruthie thought would be perfect for keeping private stuff.

Back downstairs, near the check out counter, we found the sprinkles. Packed in small plastic boxes and every color of the rainbow. My Grands spent their money on red, green, and yellow sprinkles, and I couldn’t resist the homemade peach fried pies and peanut brittle.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked when we were all buckled in our seats in the van. “Is the general store like the stores where you usually go?” I forced a discussion identifying the differences and similarities.

After several minutes of silence as we journeyed on the unmarked paved country road, Lou said pensively, “You know what I think? I think what they need is different from what we need.”

And that’s why we take Field Trips.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family, Grandchildren, Travel | Tagged: family, Grandchildren, Grandparents, travel | Leave a comment »

Motion Picture Show

Posted on October 4, 2012 by susanrray

A cool, rainy day during our family beach vacation wasn’t a bad thing. An excuse to sleep late, to get out of the sun, and to explore the area. A day to browse a bookstore’s shelves. A day to drive seven miles for a special hot dog, one with sweet potato mustard. A day to shop the big box stores that we don’t have here at home. And best of all, a day for the monarch butterflies in South Carolina to realize it was time to fly further South.

For a couple of days, we’d seen a few lone monarchs fluttering near the vegetation on sand dunes. Beautiful, bright orange butterflies with black markings. But when I walked on the beach in the early morning after our cool no-beach day, I had to dodge to avoid a butterfly that tried to sideswipe my ear. They flew in small groups, three or more together, with an occasional single one fluttering fast to catch up. They weren’t a mass of orange, like the film produced by National Geographic, but they created a calming motion picture show along the shoreline. Right where I had my beach chair and my Grands played.

I knew enough to tell my Grands that these creatures were flying south to Mexico where they’d live through the winter and then fly back to their northern homes next spring. And that they didn’t need a map; they flew by instinct. After my Grands ran out of hearing range, Husband asked, “But don’t butterflies have a short life? Just a few weeks?” That complicated my explanations. Would these same butterflies make the long 3,000-mile flight to Mexico, winter in tall trees for several months, and then fly back?

The migrating butterflies we saw, appropriately called migrates, are the great great grandchildren of the monarchs that flew north this past spring. Monarchs go through four generations in one year. Four generations from eggs to adults. Next March or April, the butterflies we watched will return from migration to lay eggs on milkweed plants and die. The first generation will live only two to six weeks after laying its eggs. Same for the second generation that will be born in May and June, and the third generation, born in July and August. And then the long lifers, the migrates, will be born in September or October.

“Look at the monarch that landed on my toe,” I said. He sat, still, with wings outstretched. My Grands weren’t impressed. Maybe because I’d talked about monarchs all day. I was amazed. These small insects were imprinted with an inherited behavior that would bring them back along this same beach next March or April. With lots of luck, I’ll remember how to make the 500-mile trip from Cookeville, without a map or a GPS, and meet them there.

After all, monarchs are the only butterflies that migrate. Someone should greet them to celebrate their successful journey, and the sequel promises to be a picture show worth seeing.

Filed under: Nature, Travel | Tagged: Beach, Nature, travel, vacation | Leave a comment »

When? How? Why? Will you?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by susanrray

“When can I open my first bag?” my Grand asked. Just like all five year olds, she likes surprises, and her mother had packed five bags for her to open while she rode with her Pop and me to the beach. A five hundred mile car ride. Her mother’s suggestion was that my Grand open a bag, filled with snacks and quiet sit-in-your-seat activities, to mark each hundred miles, 100 to 400, and one for whenever I thought she needed it. She needed it to mark twenty miles travelled. And her question was the first of many that my Grands, ages 3, 5, and 7, asked during a week’s vacation with their parents, baby sister, Pop, and me.

How big is the beach? How much water is in the ocean? How far is it across the water to land? How long would it take to get there? In a boat? On a plane? Where did all this sand come from? How far can we see? When do the waves stop? Do shrimp have bones? Does a starfish have meat? What lives in those little holes on the beach? Will the dolphins swim close to us? How come high tide isn’t the same time as yesterday? Why don’t we have little tiny frogs at home? How long does it take a monarch to get to Mexico? Do we get a special treat (such as ice cream) every day while we’re on vacation?

Some answers were easy, some a guess, and some required research, and all were answered to satisfy each Grand’s curiosity. I don’t intend to repeat the answers – except a few. I answered that starfish do not have meat, but they do. They are best eaten after they’ve been boiled, and several should be served since there is only one small bite of meat in each.

Those little holes in the sand? I’d assumed they were critter holes, and I was wrong. I googled coastalcare.org and learned that while some tiny sand fleas jump into them, these holes aren’t homes for sea life. They are formed by the rising tide. As waves crash onto the beach, the airflow under the sand is so strong that air is pushed above the surface and makes small openings. They are often called ‘nail holes’ because none are larger than the diameter of a large nail.

Of all the questions my Grands asked, my favorites required no thought, no research, and a simple one-word answer. “Gran, do you want to jump in the waves with me?” “I’m going to make a blueberry sand cake with drippy icing. Wanna’ help?” “Gran, will you come play with me?” I couldn’t get out of my beach chair fast enough.

I hope my Grands never stop asking questions.

Filed under: Everyday Life, Family, Grandchildren, Travel | Tagged: Beach, Grandchildren, Grandparents, vacation | Leave a comment »

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