2006-06-03 - 2:33 p.m.

Rode deep into the south of home and heart and hope. Raymond, Mississippi will always be the place that signifies peace and security and contentment to me. Right now Mammaw is napping in her swivel-rocking chair at the kitchen table while a baseball game plays in the background. She is a huge baseball fan and her favorite team is the Atlanta Braves - go figure :). Dad and the kids are sleeping in the back bedroom that is part converted darkroom closets for Mammaw's photography, part library and part a seeming shrine to my Uncle Will, their eldest son who died when I was two. It is always night in that room due to the heavy drapes over blackened windows. The sun is spilt all over the mass of yard and tangled in the cattle pen. Blue Herons wander the lake edge and Red-Winged Blackbirds dip and dive in a nesting tizzy over the backyard. Everything here always feel like time has stopped and there is nothing to do but breathe in the beauty of now. Because now is all you have and it goes on forever.

This is the first time I've stayed here since Grandaddy died two years ago, really, and I think I needed to come and see that nothing changed. I still feel him everywhere, but it doesn't rip my heart apart and send my soul streaming through my eyes anymore. Sitting with Mammaw in the kitchen after cooking a big breakfast, and swapping stories with her was a really amazing and healing experience. (Leesa, I told her about your hair and Nurse Betty and the rubber chicken chalk outlines, and she almost choked she was laughing with such delight. She made me show her the picture of Sarah and Sophie so she could see your hair color in the background.)

A story from my Mammaw:

Mammaw: Well, I can remember when I was in first grade and I had been sent to the principal's office..
Me: Mammaw! You got sent to the principal's office?
Mammaw: Oh yes, I do remember I would take my report home and I would have a D in Deportment, and my mother used to say "Now Mary Evelyn, English is one thing, but I do believe you could behave!"
Me: Well I guess I can tell Mama now that not all of our bad behavior was caused by our outlaw ancestors on Dad's side of the family.
Mammaw: (laughs) Oh no! Well, this one time in the principal's office, he had all these huge maps that you could pull down and look at, hanging on the wall. Well I went and tugged on one and four fell down from the wall all at once!
Me: Causing controversy so young. I never would have known, Mammaw.
Mammaw: Well, I did like to talk some.

My Mammaw is 50 years older than me, and will be 79 next month, a couple of weeks after I turn 29. I said she was still a spring chicken and she said she thinks the spring sprung on her and left but she'd take the chicken.

I hope she lives to be 100.

ulterior motives - fortune telling