Michelle Lowery Combs's Blog
April 5, 2024
Good Words
Writer and poet May Sarton once opined, "What is there to do when people die, people so dear and rare, but bring them back by remembering." Translated for the writer, Sarton may have stated, "What is there for the writer to do when people die, people so dear and rare, but bring them back by writing." Over the course of the last twelve years or so, I have come to write a number of obituaries and quite a few more eulogies--most of them delivered myself, some written for others to deliver, but all for people I deeply cared about. People I care about still.
So far, 2024 has been a season of loss for me and many others. I attended two funerals in a single afternoon one blustery day in early February: the first for the mother of a friend who lost an incredibly brave but mercifully short cancer battle, the second for a college classmate, JSU Marching Southerner alumnus, and beloved teacher at my children's middle school, who died unexpectedly from a heart condition. A few days later on Valentine's Day, I lost a close friend to a car accident. And, just last week at the end of March, my first cousin died unexpectedly at home. I was honored to be asked to deliver eulogies at two of the four funerals, but I can't say that it was easy. It never is. The Greeks recognized a eulogy as an encomium given for one who is either living or dead, with an encomium defined as a "piece of speech or writing that praises someone highly." More simply put, "good words," as clarified by Reverend Anthony Cook, who so eloquently officiated our classmate and fellow bandmember Sherry Anderson Cunningham's memorial service in February.
Good words to honor someone dear, to bring them back, if only for a few moments, the way we remember them, the way we hope to remember them all the days of our lives.
It is a deeply held personal conviction of mine that people should speak on behalf of their dead. While the religious elements of a funeral or memorial service are important and comforting for the devout, with prayers, hymns, and reading of scripture, equally important for the bereaved can be "good words" spoken about those they love and have lost, especially if that loved one didn't have a personal relationship with a religious leader. My own grandmother hadn't attended the church she was a member of in over two decades at the time of her death, but she often talked about growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, and she frequently sang herself to sleep with Amazing Grace until I was a teenager. The pastor who officiated her funeral service didn't know that. The scripture he read instead was appropriately comforting--it gave her children and grandchildren something to revisit when looking for peace in the days to follow. I hope the essay I read about her hands did, too. If given the opportunity to deliver words of praise and remembrance for a loved one who has passed, I hope you'll find the strength and courage to do it. As a matter of fact, maybe you shouldn't wait until they've passed--the Greeks didn't. I can say pretty confidently that most of the people I've eulogized left this world never knowing how special they were to me. Maybe I thought I had more time with them? Maybe I was too embarrassed to ever say to them in person how much they'd impacted my life? My cousin Barry certainly didn't know how much I loved him. I never told him in life how important our relationship as children was to me, how closely I carried those memories in my heart. I left his parents home the day we learned of his passing consumed with memories and regret. Writing it all down was the only way I was finally able to sleep that night. Reading those words to our family and all those who gathered to say goodbye the following week was the closest I'll ever get to letting Barry hear just some of the good words I have to say about him, and I wish that weren't so.
I'm including Barry's eulogy here.
Barry was born December 28, 1969, the 4th wedding anniversary of his parents Linda and Larry Morris, and joining another Christmas Baby, his older brother Danny, born on Christmas Eve two years earlier. Recently, while looking at a family portrait of the Morrises, taken in probably late 1978 or early 1979, when Danny and Barry were around nine and eleven, I was struck by how much Barry looked like my Aunt Linda at that age, if you replaced her jet-black hair for his tow-head blonde. While Barry was tall and lanky like the Morrises in stature, he favored our Clark family in other ways. I offer our shared, prominent chin cleft as Exhibit "A".
By all accounts, Barry was a sweet and sensitive little kid. By the time I was old enough to have many memories of him, he was approaching this teenaged years, but still kind to his little cousins. For most of our childhood, Aunt Linda and Uncle Larry had a swimming pool, and the first Spring day the temperature ever broke 80 degrees, my younger sister Stacey and I would start on Aunt Linda. "When can we swim, when can we swim, when can we swim?" we'd beg.
I remember one late spring when Uncle Larry was working long hours at Goodyear and Danny had his own summer job in town. Barry was probably around 14. When we started in, "When can we swim? When can we swim?" Aunt Linda said, "You'll have to wait for Barry--the pool has to be cleaned before we can open it."
So, then we started on Barry. When he finally gave in, Stacey and I sat perched on the deck watching Barry in cut-off jean shorts down inside the pool, standing in ankle deep muck while he scrubbed the liner, as if our laser-focused, beady little stares could somehow speed him along. It took him two or three days to open the pool, and each day Stacy and I would return to watch. I'm sure we annoyed the t-total crap out of him, but I don't remember Barry complaining too much. Even when he had to swim with us afterward and for the rest of the summer as our lifeguard.
There are many pictures of us together--Danny and Barry, Stacey and me--some of which you've probably seen scrolling on the televisions in the chapel today. In some of them, the boys are lifting us on and off their bikes, some are of us gathered around birthday cakes, some are of us playing in the grass or swimming. In all of them, Stacey and I are never far from the boys. It seems like because there were two of them and two of us, we paired up: one little girl for each bigger boy. We followed them around like little ducks, and they let us.
Growing up in Alexandria, Alabama, Barry was a cub scout, played baseball and basketball, and marched in the band. While any of us juggling multiple children in multiple activities can relate to the stress of balancing all that with work and home life, I would say that my Aunt Linda has always looked back on those years as some of the best of her life. She was always good at and enjoyed being the Den Mother, the game chauffeur, the PTA Mom, and Band Booster for her boys. She wanted them to be involved in whatever they wanted to pursue, and she was there, quite literally, along for the ride.
Because Danny and Barry were in band, Stacey and I followed them into band, and even though I would go on to march at the college level at Jacksonville State University, I still don't think I've ever heard anything as cool as Barry Morris on quads. That "clack, dunk-a-dunk, dunk-a-dunk, clack" cadence he would play for us as little kids thrilled our souls! Barry was nothing if not cool. He and his Senior prom date were the first formally dressed young couple Stacey and I ever saw in person--Barry in a tux and dark sunglasses, his date in layers of silk and lace. They were quintessentially 1980s, and they looked like movie stars! So, Barry was cool even before his blue, t-top Camaro and motorcycles, but boy was he even cooler with them. Our shared grandmother, who we called Mamaw Rose, was exceptionally proud of all her grandchildren, and I'd often overhear her on the telephone exuding our various virtues to other relatives far and wide. "Danny is an artist," she'd say. "He has a degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Atlanta." Then she'd go on to describe whatever the latest thing Danny had designed and produced for her on her mantle. More than one I heard her threaten a relentless telemarketer with her attorney grandson "Alvin Donald Scott, Jr., Esquire." (She liked to throw Donnie's name around a pretty good bit. He was her ace in the whole!) Anyway, the things she most often bragged on Barry about were how smart he was, how hard he'd worked to be so successful to afford the absolutely best toys. She talked about his sports car. She talked about his motorcycles. She talked about the other vehicles he suped-up and modified that she probably didn't fully understand. She talked about that blue Camaro so much to her sisters in Ohio that Barry was finally persuaded to drive it all the way up there for a great-uncle's funeral.
The story goes that after the funeral, Barry decided he would take our great-aunt Bonnie, who Stacey and I would finally learn to call Aunt Bonnie Flaig and not "Old Aunt Bonnie," home. It was long before the days of MapQuest or GPS, and Barry wasn't entirely sure how to get Aunt Bonnie Flaig home. "You just have to get her to the Big Chicken in Hamilton, and she can find her way home from there," Aunt Linda told him.
Barry described the following trip as a raucously good time for Aunt Bonnie Flaig, saying she'd even hung one of her legs out of the passenger side window, probably while he blared the L. L. Kool J and Two Live Crew music he often played back then. "So you got her home okay?" Aunt Linda asked for reassurance. "Well, I only got her to the Big Chicken--you said she could find her way home from there!" he answered.
There's also another story about Mamaw Rose convincing Barry to whirl her down Alabama Hwy 204 in a side car attached to one of his first motorcycles, and there should be pictures somewhere, but those details are fuzzy to me. I only remember Mamaw being addiment that she be provided a pair of googles to protect her eyes from the bugs, though we all suspected she just liked the way they looked.
In the waning days of Mamaw's life, as Aunt Linda, Aunt Bonnie (the young one), Danny, Stacey and I sat vigil for her, Barry wanted so much to be supportive of all of us, but he didn't really know what to do. Finally, one day, several days into what was truly a physically and emotionally exhausting experience, Barry showed up with a case of liquor--the good stuff--maybe even Crowne Royal, I can't remember--at Mamaw's front door. "I thought y'all could use a drink," he said. He wasn't wrong. There were other times during my life that Barry did his best to be there for me, as well. When I was going through a divorce (my first one, for anyone keeping count), he showed up at my door unexpectedly during a particularly difficult time with some encouragement and a little tough love that helped to pull me through, while reminding me that I was, in part, suffering the consequences of my own choices. "You're gonna be okay. Now cut it out," he basically told me. I always loved him for that.
This "looking out for" wasn't something Barry reserved for just me and Stacey, by the way. He was especially close with his only Morris first-cousin Kim, who he thought of as more of a little sister, and because he and Kim were closer in age, they had a lot more fun. I've heard tales of some of their adventures, but even if I knew all the details, I probably wouldn't be able to tell them here. Barry loved Kim. He trusted her with parts of his life he didn't always share with the rest of us.
Barry also had a special relationship with his Morris grandparents, PawPaw Roy and MawMaw Say. Being with them at their farm in Webster's Chapel was something that Barry enjoyed most. Because, like many people in his family, including PawPaw Roy, Barry was a gifted storyteller, I remember family holidays on Aunt Linda and Uncle Larry's back porch listening to Roy and Barry tell farm stories. As a result, I remember thinking as a twelve-year-old girl that I probably knew a lot more than some of my peers about how to free a wayward calf from a tower of hay bales, or an irrigation trench, or a barbed wire fence. Most of Roy and Barry's stories involved cattle ending up in places they really ought not to have been.
The challenges of livestock farming were firmly in Barry's wheelhouse of knowledge, as were so many other things. He was incredibly smart. Like Uncle Larry and Danny, he could probably fix or make anything he set his mind to. I remember as he grew more into his teens, he stopped traveling with the rest of us sometimes on our summer treks to Florida and Ohio to stay home with Uncle Larry instead, to build something as a summer project. From go-carts to bulldozers, they were always building or rebuilding something. It was this closeness with his dad and all that time spent in his shop that eventually propelled Barry into his chosen career as a machinist.
Barry loved riding: from across the country to Daytona Beach, to his own backyard on Mount Cheaha. It was his passion! After every mishap or bike wreck, no matter how broken or battered, we all knew that as soon as he was well enough and the weather was fine, he would be back on his back. Sometimes even if the weather wasn't fine...or it wasn't even daylight...or he wasn't exactly well enough. After his stroke in 2023, it was when he'd be able to ride again that most occupied his thoughts. He worked hard to regain his mobility and had come so far.
As he grew into middle-age, Barry kept a small circle of friends. When not with them, he preferred time riding or alone in his shop. The last few years of societal turmoil affected the way he saw the world. He'd worried for a while about where we were headed. It weighed heavy on him. As an extended family, we saw him less and less, but when we did, he was always friendly, always kind. I will forever remember Barry as he was at twenty, though. Handsome, healthy, funny, and one of the coolest guys I, or our grandmother, ever knew.
So far, 2024 has been a season of loss for me and many others. I attended two funerals in a single afternoon one blustery day in early February: the first for the mother of a friend who lost an incredibly brave but mercifully short cancer battle, the second for a college classmate, JSU Marching Southerner alumnus, and beloved teacher at my children's middle school, who died unexpectedly from a heart condition. A few days later on Valentine's Day, I lost a close friend to a car accident. And, just last week at the end of March, my first cousin died unexpectedly at home. I was honored to be asked to deliver eulogies at two of the four funerals, but I can't say that it was easy. It never is. The Greeks recognized a eulogy as an encomium given for one who is either living or dead, with an encomium defined as a "piece of speech or writing that praises someone highly." More simply put, "good words," as clarified by Reverend Anthony Cook, who so eloquently officiated our classmate and fellow bandmember Sherry Anderson Cunningham's memorial service in February.
Good words to honor someone dear, to bring them back, if only for a few moments, the way we remember them, the way we hope to remember them all the days of our lives.
It is a deeply held personal conviction of mine that people should speak on behalf of their dead. While the religious elements of a funeral or memorial service are important and comforting for the devout, with prayers, hymns, and reading of scripture, equally important for the bereaved can be "good words" spoken about those they love and have lost, especially if that loved one didn't have a personal relationship with a religious leader. My own grandmother hadn't attended the church she was a member of in over two decades at the time of her death, but she often talked about growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, and she frequently sang herself to sleep with Amazing Grace until I was a teenager. The pastor who officiated her funeral service didn't know that. The scripture he read instead was appropriately comforting--it gave her children and grandchildren something to revisit when looking for peace in the days to follow. I hope the essay I read about her hands did, too. If given the opportunity to deliver words of praise and remembrance for a loved one who has passed, I hope you'll find the strength and courage to do it. As a matter of fact, maybe you shouldn't wait until they've passed--the Greeks didn't. I can say pretty confidently that most of the people I've eulogized left this world never knowing how special they were to me. Maybe I thought I had more time with them? Maybe I was too embarrassed to ever say to them in person how much they'd impacted my life? My cousin Barry certainly didn't know how much I loved him. I never told him in life how important our relationship as children was to me, how closely I carried those memories in my heart. I left his parents home the day we learned of his passing consumed with memories and regret. Writing it all down was the only way I was finally able to sleep that night. Reading those words to our family and all those who gathered to say goodbye the following week was the closest I'll ever get to letting Barry hear just some of the good words I have to say about him, and I wish that weren't so.
I'm including Barry's eulogy here.
Barry was born December 28, 1969, the 4th wedding anniversary of his parents Linda and Larry Morris, and joining another Christmas Baby, his older brother Danny, born on Christmas Eve two years earlier. Recently, while looking at a family portrait of the Morrises, taken in probably late 1978 or early 1979, when Danny and Barry were around nine and eleven, I was struck by how much Barry looked like my Aunt Linda at that age, if you replaced her jet-black hair for his tow-head blonde. While Barry was tall and lanky like the Morrises in stature, he favored our Clark family in other ways. I offer our shared, prominent chin cleft as Exhibit "A".
By all accounts, Barry was a sweet and sensitive little kid. By the time I was old enough to have many memories of him, he was approaching this teenaged years, but still kind to his little cousins. For most of our childhood, Aunt Linda and Uncle Larry had a swimming pool, and the first Spring day the temperature ever broke 80 degrees, my younger sister Stacey and I would start on Aunt Linda. "When can we swim, when can we swim, when can we swim?" we'd beg.
I remember one late spring when Uncle Larry was working long hours at Goodyear and Danny had his own summer job in town. Barry was probably around 14. When we started in, "When can we swim? When can we swim?" Aunt Linda said, "You'll have to wait for Barry--the pool has to be cleaned before we can open it."
So, then we started on Barry. When he finally gave in, Stacey and I sat perched on the deck watching Barry in cut-off jean shorts down inside the pool, standing in ankle deep muck while he scrubbed the liner, as if our laser-focused, beady little stares could somehow speed him along. It took him two or three days to open the pool, and each day Stacy and I would return to watch. I'm sure we annoyed the t-total crap out of him, but I don't remember Barry complaining too much. Even when he had to swim with us afterward and for the rest of the summer as our lifeguard.
There are many pictures of us together--Danny and Barry, Stacey and me--some of which you've probably seen scrolling on the televisions in the chapel today. In some of them, the boys are lifting us on and off their bikes, some are of us gathered around birthday cakes, some are of us playing in the grass or swimming. In all of them, Stacey and I are never far from the boys. It seems like because there were two of them and two of us, we paired up: one little girl for each bigger boy. We followed them around like little ducks, and they let us.
Growing up in Alexandria, Alabama, Barry was a cub scout, played baseball and basketball, and marched in the band. While any of us juggling multiple children in multiple activities can relate to the stress of balancing all that with work and home life, I would say that my Aunt Linda has always looked back on those years as some of the best of her life. She was always good at and enjoyed being the Den Mother, the game chauffeur, the PTA Mom, and Band Booster for her boys. She wanted them to be involved in whatever they wanted to pursue, and she was there, quite literally, along for the ride.
Because Danny and Barry were in band, Stacey and I followed them into band, and even though I would go on to march at the college level at Jacksonville State University, I still don't think I've ever heard anything as cool as Barry Morris on quads. That "clack, dunk-a-dunk, dunk-a-dunk, clack" cadence he would play for us as little kids thrilled our souls! Barry was nothing if not cool. He and his Senior prom date were the first formally dressed young couple Stacey and I ever saw in person--Barry in a tux and dark sunglasses, his date in layers of silk and lace. They were quintessentially 1980s, and they looked like movie stars! So, Barry was cool even before his blue, t-top Camaro and motorcycles, but boy was he even cooler with them. Our shared grandmother, who we called Mamaw Rose, was exceptionally proud of all her grandchildren, and I'd often overhear her on the telephone exuding our various virtues to other relatives far and wide. "Danny is an artist," she'd say. "He has a degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Atlanta." Then she'd go on to describe whatever the latest thing Danny had designed and produced for her on her mantle. More than one I heard her threaten a relentless telemarketer with her attorney grandson "Alvin Donald Scott, Jr., Esquire." (She liked to throw Donnie's name around a pretty good bit. He was her ace in the whole!) Anyway, the things she most often bragged on Barry about were how smart he was, how hard he'd worked to be so successful to afford the absolutely best toys. She talked about his sports car. She talked about his motorcycles. She talked about the other vehicles he suped-up and modified that she probably didn't fully understand. She talked about that blue Camaro so much to her sisters in Ohio that Barry was finally persuaded to drive it all the way up there for a great-uncle's funeral.
The story goes that after the funeral, Barry decided he would take our great-aunt Bonnie, who Stacey and I would finally learn to call Aunt Bonnie Flaig and not "Old Aunt Bonnie," home. It was long before the days of MapQuest or GPS, and Barry wasn't entirely sure how to get Aunt Bonnie Flaig home. "You just have to get her to the Big Chicken in Hamilton, and she can find her way home from there," Aunt Linda told him.
Barry described the following trip as a raucously good time for Aunt Bonnie Flaig, saying she'd even hung one of her legs out of the passenger side window, probably while he blared the L. L. Kool J and Two Live Crew music he often played back then. "So you got her home okay?" Aunt Linda asked for reassurance. "Well, I only got her to the Big Chicken--you said she could find her way home from there!" he answered.
There's also another story about Mamaw Rose convincing Barry to whirl her down Alabama Hwy 204 in a side car attached to one of his first motorcycles, and there should be pictures somewhere, but those details are fuzzy to me. I only remember Mamaw being addiment that she be provided a pair of googles to protect her eyes from the bugs, though we all suspected she just liked the way they looked.
In the waning days of Mamaw's life, as Aunt Linda, Aunt Bonnie (the young one), Danny, Stacey and I sat vigil for her, Barry wanted so much to be supportive of all of us, but he didn't really know what to do. Finally, one day, several days into what was truly a physically and emotionally exhausting experience, Barry showed up with a case of liquor--the good stuff--maybe even Crowne Royal, I can't remember--at Mamaw's front door. "I thought y'all could use a drink," he said. He wasn't wrong. There were other times during my life that Barry did his best to be there for me, as well. When I was going through a divorce (my first one, for anyone keeping count), he showed up at my door unexpectedly during a particularly difficult time with some encouragement and a little tough love that helped to pull me through, while reminding me that I was, in part, suffering the consequences of my own choices. "You're gonna be okay. Now cut it out," he basically told me. I always loved him for that.
This "looking out for" wasn't something Barry reserved for just me and Stacey, by the way. He was especially close with his only Morris first-cousin Kim, who he thought of as more of a little sister, and because he and Kim were closer in age, they had a lot more fun. I've heard tales of some of their adventures, but even if I knew all the details, I probably wouldn't be able to tell them here. Barry loved Kim. He trusted her with parts of his life he didn't always share with the rest of us.
Barry also had a special relationship with his Morris grandparents, PawPaw Roy and MawMaw Say. Being with them at their farm in Webster's Chapel was something that Barry enjoyed most. Because, like many people in his family, including PawPaw Roy, Barry was a gifted storyteller, I remember family holidays on Aunt Linda and Uncle Larry's back porch listening to Roy and Barry tell farm stories. As a result, I remember thinking as a twelve-year-old girl that I probably knew a lot more than some of my peers about how to free a wayward calf from a tower of hay bales, or an irrigation trench, or a barbed wire fence. Most of Roy and Barry's stories involved cattle ending up in places they really ought not to have been.
The challenges of livestock farming were firmly in Barry's wheelhouse of knowledge, as were so many other things. He was incredibly smart. Like Uncle Larry and Danny, he could probably fix or make anything he set his mind to. I remember as he grew more into his teens, he stopped traveling with the rest of us sometimes on our summer treks to Florida and Ohio to stay home with Uncle Larry instead, to build something as a summer project. From go-carts to bulldozers, they were always building or rebuilding something. It was this closeness with his dad and all that time spent in his shop that eventually propelled Barry into his chosen career as a machinist.
Barry loved riding: from across the country to Daytona Beach, to his own backyard on Mount Cheaha. It was his passion! After every mishap or bike wreck, no matter how broken or battered, we all knew that as soon as he was well enough and the weather was fine, he would be back on his back. Sometimes even if the weather wasn't fine...or it wasn't even daylight...or he wasn't exactly well enough. After his stroke in 2023, it was when he'd be able to ride again that most occupied his thoughts. He worked hard to regain his mobility and had come so far.
As he grew into middle-age, Barry kept a small circle of friends. When not with them, he preferred time riding or alone in his shop. The last few years of societal turmoil affected the way he saw the world. He'd worried for a while about where we were headed. It weighed heavy on him. As an extended family, we saw him less and less, but when we did, he was always friendly, always kind. I will forever remember Barry as he was at twenty, though. Handsome, healthy, funny, and one of the coolest guys I, or our grandmother, ever knew.
October 30, 2019
Saying Goodbye: It's okay to laugh through the tears
I've delivered two eulogies in my lifetime--both extremely difficult, both among the top honors of my life. It's hard to speak to a large group of people when you've lost someone you care deeply about, but I believe the dead should be spoken of and remembered by those who knew and loved them. I try to live my life with that in mind, the knowledge that when I'm gone someone, hopefully someone who knew me well and loved me...warts and all, will be called upon to speak of me and they'll answer the call. And, I want them to laugh through the inevitable tears when they're able. Death is sad, but it isn't our deaths that people should remember most about us.
County singer LeAnn Womack has a song lyric that goes, "I'm just tryin' to live so that when I die, the preacher won't have to lie." I won't mind if my friends and family lie a little--they can say I always looked thin and talk about how positively charming and hilarious they always found me to be, for example. (Those are words sure to reach me all the way in the hereafter.) I just hope that when the time comes, someone will do it, because it's important. It's important for those left behind, those too heartbroken to speak themselves but desperate for the comfort only memory can bring.
I recently lost a childhood friend who I loved very much. He had closer friends who'd spent more time with him in the years since our high school graduation. They no doubt knew him better than I, but I don't believe they loved him any better. When one of them asked if I would speak at his services, I was touched and honored. My friend had served as a pillar of support for me in our youth, asking virtually nothing in return. Remembering him (and subsequently his identical twin brother who he survived less than two years) for his friends and family at his funeral would be the only way I'd ever have to repay him that debt. I also knew that by speaking for our friend group, I would spare one of the others from feeling they had to. It isn't an easy thing to do by any means.
I didn't plan on publicly sharing the words I spoke that day in this forum, but today, October 30th, is Matthew and Andrew Ballard's birthday, and I wanted to share with our friends who didn't make it to Andy's services my remembrance of him...and his brother Matt.
Happy Birthday, Matt and Andy! It was a joy to know and love you. We miss you dearly!
When Sarah first asked if I’d be willing to speak, while deeply honored, my first thoughts were of how, among all us of that would gather today, surely there would be so many more qualified—so many more that were closer to Andy over the last few years, so many more that knew him even better than I. Looking out at all of you now, I am happy that’s true. What a legacy—to have counted among your closest friends and family so very many. Today feels especially tough, because while we gather here to say good-bye to Andy, in many ways it feels like a final goodbye to Matt as well. As long as Andy remained here with us, a part of Matt did, too. If we glanced at Andy from afar or as he darted in and out of a room, it was possible to pretend, even if for only a second that he was Matt, and wasn’t that something? That trick we still willed them to play on us?If loosing Matt was hard on us, it was excruciating for his family…and unimaginable for Andy. We all knew his bereavement would be different, that he would feel the loss of Matt more deeply. How would he go from a lifetime of beginning sentences with “we” when there was only him? He had never known an existence without Matt, and until Matt’s passing, no one except for Mrs. Reatha for 60 seconds in 1977 ever knew Matt without Andy.On the last night I spent with Andy and Matt together, the night of our 20th high school reunion, I remember getting a kick out of them looking for one another between Sarah and Patrick’s kitchen and back patio. “Twin, twin?” they would call and it was like watching them at nine or ten versus almost 40. I remember the day—the very moment even—that I met Matt and Andy Ballard. While I had briefly attended Kitty Stone Elementary, I left Jacksonville for a few years but returned in October of our 7th grade year. And there I was, in Texann Dixon’s 7thgrade homeroom, delivered at last from the wilderness of Ohatchee, back to civilization within the City of Jacksonville. The tardy bell had rung a good twenty minutes earlier, when Matt and Andy virtually burst through the door. “Sorry we’re late,” Andy said. “Some cows got out and we had to catch them,” Matt added. Mrs. Dixon sighed as she noted her attendance record. They didn’t look like cattle wrustlers, they looked like city boys except for the fact that Matt was slightly muddy. We weren’t driving yet, so I believed their explanation to be true: it was a random Tuesday before 8:30 a.m. and there were cattle to be wrangled in Jacksonville by a couple of identical 13 year-olds. Years later, when we were however old enough to drive, the Ballards would be a factor in almost every single one of my “tardies”, and there wouldn’t be a single cow story to offer up as explanation…or another teacher as forgiving as Mrs. Dixon. The boys entered my life in a mini-explosion of excitement, chaos, and adventure…and that was what it was like to be in their presence forevermore: to never know exactly what might happen because anything seemed entirely possible.For much of our teenage years, I believe Matt mostly tolerated me. I was Andy’s friend, a tagalong. Matt and I grunted at each other when he’d answer the front door and find me standing there looking for his brother. Sometimes jokes would be exchanged. “Sasquatch,” he would offer. “Bilbo,” I would counter. That changed when we became parents and our boys ended up on the same little league soccer team. Andy was in the Carolinas and Matt and I spent evenings at the practice fields catching up, talking about our sons, and laughing about old times. Those were the days before pervasive social media, when being with Matt was really the only thing that made Andy feel less far away.I’ve wondered countless times over the past several days if Andy ever truly realized the importance our friendship held for me. Leaving Sarah’s sometime around 3 a.m. after our 20threunion, another classmate and I had a conversation on the ride home, deep and uninhibited the way only 3 a.m. conversations can be, about the way our high school relationships and friendships had ultimately shaped us, for better or worse, as individuals. I know that I never made the kind of indelible mark on Andy’s life that he made on mine. Andy never NEEDED me. Not like I had needed him, anyway. When thinking about what I would say here today, I revisited my senior memory book, looking for the words I knew Andy would have left among its pages, hoping to find the classic “thanks for being a good friend” inscription or some variation. Not a single word of what he wrote to me back then is appropriate to share here. Not a word. I take some small comfort in knowing that I at least entertained him, but he did so much more for me.I spent most of my high school years under the guardianship of my depression era grandmother. She was loving, but tough. Her family had survived some of the harshest years in American history and she never got over it. It was completely reasonable in her mind that I should make due with a single pair of “long pants” during cold months and a single pair of “short pants” during the 8 months known as Alabama Summer. This was how Andy came to clothe me for most of our eleventh grade year. It was the 90’s after all—I fit right in wearing his Gap jeans and t-shirts. In one of my favorite pictures of the two of us, I’m even wearing one of his button down shirts. I can’t tell you how many times he called me up before a basketball game or other event to ask, “Where are my jeans? And no, not those, those are Matt’s.” (Maybe that’s why he was grunting at me all the time?)When I needed a job that same year, Andy helped me get hired at Gregerson’s in Anniston where he’d swooped in as a seventeen-year-old to take over their seafood department. He had middle-aged men and women who’d worked in the grocery industry for years deferring to him, and he carried himself like this was absolutely the norm. He was confident and self-possessed in a way that I’m not even sure I am today. At Gregerson’s Andy taught me that with determination, the right plan, and hard work anything was possible no matter our youth. There was a wider world waiting on us outside of high school, he’d tell me. As long as I was taking steps toward my place in that world, I was going to be okay. He was probably the most reliable and responsible teenager I ever knew.Andy also shaped me as a thinker and activist. In part, because of him I will always stand up for a person’s equality and their right to protection under the law, no matter who they love—even if who they love is Nick Saban...I know, he was so weird.I wondered who an old Andy would be without Matt, and the truth is I was never able to wrap my mind around the thought of it. I would have liked to have known them both with white beards and eyes that still twinkled when they smiled and laughed, but there is nothing sadder on this earth, at least not that I’ve encountered, as a twinless twin. There’s no doubt that we will miss them forever, but we can take comfort in the knowledge that Matt and Andy are together again. I hope that we leave here today more committed than ever to our friendships and that we do so in memory of Matt and Andy Ballard, the best friends many of us will have ever had. Thank you.
County singer LeAnn Womack has a song lyric that goes, "I'm just tryin' to live so that when I die, the preacher won't have to lie." I won't mind if my friends and family lie a little--they can say I always looked thin and talk about how positively charming and hilarious they always found me to be, for example. (Those are words sure to reach me all the way in the hereafter.) I just hope that when the time comes, someone will do it, because it's important. It's important for those left behind, those too heartbroken to speak themselves but desperate for the comfort only memory can bring.
I recently lost a childhood friend who I loved very much. He had closer friends who'd spent more time with him in the years since our high school graduation. They no doubt knew him better than I, but I don't believe they loved him any better. When one of them asked if I would speak at his services, I was touched and honored. My friend had served as a pillar of support for me in our youth, asking virtually nothing in return. Remembering him (and subsequently his identical twin brother who he survived less than two years) for his friends and family at his funeral would be the only way I'd ever have to repay him that debt. I also knew that by speaking for our friend group, I would spare one of the others from feeling they had to. It isn't an easy thing to do by any means.
I didn't plan on publicly sharing the words I spoke that day in this forum, but today, October 30th, is Matthew and Andrew Ballard's birthday, and I wanted to share with our friends who didn't make it to Andy's services my remembrance of him...and his brother Matt.
Happy Birthday, Matt and Andy! It was a joy to know and love you. We miss you dearly!
When Sarah first asked if I’d be willing to speak, while deeply honored, my first thoughts were of how, among all us of that would gather today, surely there would be so many more qualified—so many more that were closer to Andy over the last few years, so many more that knew him even better than I. Looking out at all of you now, I am happy that’s true. What a legacy—to have counted among your closest friends and family so very many. Today feels especially tough, because while we gather here to say good-bye to Andy, in many ways it feels like a final goodbye to Matt as well. As long as Andy remained here with us, a part of Matt did, too. If we glanced at Andy from afar or as he darted in and out of a room, it was possible to pretend, even if for only a second that he was Matt, and wasn’t that something? That trick we still willed them to play on us?If loosing Matt was hard on us, it was excruciating for his family…and unimaginable for Andy. We all knew his bereavement would be different, that he would feel the loss of Matt more deeply. How would he go from a lifetime of beginning sentences with “we” when there was only him? He had never known an existence without Matt, and until Matt’s passing, no one except for Mrs. Reatha for 60 seconds in 1977 ever knew Matt without Andy.On the last night I spent with Andy and Matt together, the night of our 20th high school reunion, I remember getting a kick out of them looking for one another between Sarah and Patrick’s kitchen and back patio. “Twin, twin?” they would call and it was like watching them at nine or ten versus almost 40. I remember the day—the very moment even—that I met Matt and Andy Ballard. While I had briefly attended Kitty Stone Elementary, I left Jacksonville for a few years but returned in October of our 7th grade year. And there I was, in Texann Dixon’s 7thgrade homeroom, delivered at last from the wilderness of Ohatchee, back to civilization within the City of Jacksonville. The tardy bell had rung a good twenty minutes earlier, when Matt and Andy virtually burst through the door. “Sorry we’re late,” Andy said. “Some cows got out and we had to catch them,” Matt added. Mrs. Dixon sighed as she noted her attendance record. They didn’t look like cattle wrustlers, they looked like city boys except for the fact that Matt was slightly muddy. We weren’t driving yet, so I believed their explanation to be true: it was a random Tuesday before 8:30 a.m. and there were cattle to be wrangled in Jacksonville by a couple of identical 13 year-olds. Years later, when we were however old enough to drive, the Ballards would be a factor in almost every single one of my “tardies”, and there wouldn’t be a single cow story to offer up as explanation…or another teacher as forgiving as Mrs. Dixon. The boys entered my life in a mini-explosion of excitement, chaos, and adventure…and that was what it was like to be in their presence forevermore: to never know exactly what might happen because anything seemed entirely possible.For much of our teenage years, I believe Matt mostly tolerated me. I was Andy’s friend, a tagalong. Matt and I grunted at each other when he’d answer the front door and find me standing there looking for his brother. Sometimes jokes would be exchanged. “Sasquatch,” he would offer. “Bilbo,” I would counter. That changed when we became parents and our boys ended up on the same little league soccer team. Andy was in the Carolinas and Matt and I spent evenings at the practice fields catching up, talking about our sons, and laughing about old times. Those were the days before pervasive social media, when being with Matt was really the only thing that made Andy feel less far away.I’ve wondered countless times over the past several days if Andy ever truly realized the importance our friendship held for me. Leaving Sarah’s sometime around 3 a.m. after our 20threunion, another classmate and I had a conversation on the ride home, deep and uninhibited the way only 3 a.m. conversations can be, about the way our high school relationships and friendships had ultimately shaped us, for better or worse, as individuals. I know that I never made the kind of indelible mark on Andy’s life that he made on mine. Andy never NEEDED me. Not like I had needed him, anyway. When thinking about what I would say here today, I revisited my senior memory book, looking for the words I knew Andy would have left among its pages, hoping to find the classic “thanks for being a good friend” inscription or some variation. Not a single word of what he wrote to me back then is appropriate to share here. Not a word. I take some small comfort in knowing that I at least entertained him, but he did so much more for me.I spent most of my high school years under the guardianship of my depression era grandmother. She was loving, but tough. Her family had survived some of the harshest years in American history and she never got over it. It was completely reasonable in her mind that I should make due with a single pair of “long pants” during cold months and a single pair of “short pants” during the 8 months known as Alabama Summer. This was how Andy came to clothe me for most of our eleventh grade year. It was the 90’s after all—I fit right in wearing his Gap jeans and t-shirts. In one of my favorite pictures of the two of us, I’m even wearing one of his button down shirts. I can’t tell you how many times he called me up before a basketball game or other event to ask, “Where are my jeans? And no, not those, those are Matt’s.” (Maybe that’s why he was grunting at me all the time?)When I needed a job that same year, Andy helped me get hired at Gregerson’s in Anniston where he’d swooped in as a seventeen-year-old to take over their seafood department. He had middle-aged men and women who’d worked in the grocery industry for years deferring to him, and he carried himself like this was absolutely the norm. He was confident and self-possessed in a way that I’m not even sure I am today. At Gregerson’s Andy taught me that with determination, the right plan, and hard work anything was possible no matter our youth. There was a wider world waiting on us outside of high school, he’d tell me. As long as I was taking steps toward my place in that world, I was going to be okay. He was probably the most reliable and responsible teenager I ever knew.Andy also shaped me as a thinker and activist. In part, because of him I will always stand up for a person’s equality and their right to protection under the law, no matter who they love—even if who they love is Nick Saban...I know, he was so weird.I wondered who an old Andy would be without Matt, and the truth is I was never able to wrap my mind around the thought of it. I would have liked to have known them both with white beards and eyes that still twinkled when they smiled and laughed, but there is nothing sadder on this earth, at least not that I’ve encountered, as a twinless twin. There’s no doubt that we will miss them forever, but we can take comfort in the knowledge that Matt and Andy are together again. I hope that we leave here today more committed than ever to our friendships and that we do so in memory of Matt and Andy Ballard, the best friends many of us will have ever had. Thank you.
August 23, 2019
Wuv is Wuv
Some readers may remember a post I made a few summers ago in defense of marriage equality. I'm passionate about it, y'all. So much so that when my hometown probate judge became one of a few probate judges in the State of Alabama who refused to conduct marriage ceremonies for any couple henceforth, I went out and got myself ordained. It was a mostly self-serving gesture...I still dream of walking into well decorated, fabulous spaces, and shouting, "Where my gays at?!" ala Kathy Griffith to nothing but adulation, but I'm not there yet. Don't get me wrong--I don't have delusions of being some kind of hetero-savior, I just want to be a good ally...and I want the community to love me as much as I love them.
So, I had the honor a few weeks ago of performing my first same-sex marriage ceremony. It was lovely, and the brides were so tender in their love for one another as they traded their personal vows in front of their friends and family that I was in tears by the end. I looked over at my own husband sitting among the guests and my heart swelled. I fell in love with him a little bit more then and there, so moved was I by the emotion of the women I'd been brought there on that day to join in marriage. It was truly beautiful.
[Brides Elizabeth and Priscila Watkins-Carvalho de Souza with their officiant on their happy day.]
Fast forward to today, when an old friend asked if I would preside over her nuptials. Actually, she asked a few days ago. Of course, I agreed and we communicated mostly via text over the course of the week, ironing out what she and her groom wanted to incorporate into the ceremony.
My friend explained that she and her boyfriend are both agnostic and as such wanted to keep the ceremony as secular as possible. I asked if they wanted to incorporate a poem or some other reading in place of any scripture. Did they have a favorite author or book? The bride said she would think on it, consult her groom, and get back to me by Thursday evening, the night before we had scheduled to meet at the courthouse for the ceremony.
Driving in at 7 a.m. this morning, I finally heard back from the bride with the last minute details.
"I would like you to quote the Princess Bride...when Buttercup and the Prince are getting married. Could you say it in the way [he] did?"
I was perplexed. I have read the Princess Bride, seen the movie more than once. I've read Cary Elwes' As You Wish, Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride. I've read the entire original movie script. I met Chris Sarandon, who plays Prince Humperdink, last month when we both appeared as guests at Alabama ComicCon in Birmingham, Alabama. And still, I didn't understand at first what part of the story she was asking me to quote from...and not just quote from but PERFORM.
And then the bride-to-be sent me this helpful little meme, and all became clear:
What to do, what to do? This was "her day." I'd said that very thing to her over and over as we texted back and forth about the ceremony. The ceremony was an elopement--the relationship is new and they wanted it to be an intimate affair. Good choice. They wanted a secular ceremony in accordance with their agnosticism. Good choice. They'd decided we'd walk from the courthouse to the fine arts museum across the street, where the ceremony could be preformed in a lovely alcove garden. Good choice. The ceremony would be short and sweet--they weren't even bringing any witnesses so I could scrub any language that referenced others. Good choice. And now they, or at least she, wanted me to play the role of the Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride. Hmmmmm, how did I feel about this choice?
The bride and I have been friends a long time, since childhood even. It was possible I was being punked. I called my trusted adviser and aunt, GDR, the woman who first introduced me to the Princess Bride on VHS way back in 1989. She howled with laughter but confessed the only quotes she clearly remembered from PB was when the grandpa is reading from the story book and tells his grandson, who is seemingly worried about the princess's fate but doesn't want to seem worried, "She doesn't get eaten by the eels at this time." GDR said I should go for it.
Then I called my husband. "What?" he asked. "She wants you do do what?" I could feel his embarrassment radiate through my cell phone. To be fair, the man is easily embarrassed, largely by my behavior it would seem. This was something I didn't fully realize until that Alabama ComicCon appearance I mentioned earlier. When he found out I'd be presenting a panel at the con, he'd insisted I practice what I would say over and over. "Would you chill out?" I'd finally told him. "I have done this before. I promise, I got it." "I don't know," he'd answered. "What if you get up there and there's all these 'ums'? Should you do it again for me and this time I'll count the 'ums'?" Um, hell no!
In the end I went with it--committed fully, or at least as fully as a forty-something year-old woman can commit to the role of a medieval priest with a speech impediment. Turns out, the groom had no idea what was about to happen as we started. I could tell by the way he burst into laughter after the first "mawwiage."
For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, here's the reading in its entirety:
"Mawwiage, mawwiage is wat bwings us togeder today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam...and wuv, twue wuv, will fowwow you foweva...so tweasure your wuv--"
I was probably red as a beet. I'm easily embarrassed, too. Shocker, I know. To my horror (is that a word I should be associating with such a happy occasion?) the couple brought a witness after all, and she RECORDED THE ENTIRE THING. My aunt GDR is scouring the internet for it now, hoping it will go viral or something.
It all turned out okay. The bride was happy, the groom was happy. We laughed and enjoyed the moment before moving on to slightly more traditional vows. They seemed to have gotten their happily ever after.
So far, I'm enjoying my role as officiant. I'm learning a lot about love and all the forms it takes. Marriage laws change again in Alabama later this month. Blinded by their disdain for equal opportunity and protection under the law for all couples regardless of gender or sexuality, the Alabama Legislature has scrapped marriages entirely, and now couples who wish to be wed will merely fill out a form in front of a notary public and file that form with probate court. Because they wouldn't call them marriages for LGBTQ couples, they won't call them marriages for anyone. They aren't calling them civil unions, either. Truth is, I don't know what they'll be called. When I phoned the Jefferson County Probate Office yesterday, their chief clerk told me she hadn't been briefed on the changes to date. Welcome to Alabama government. **sigh**
Ultimately whatever it's called, love is still love. Whether it's wrapped in frills and clasped in trembling hands that clutch at note cards scribbled with the sweetest, most romantic professions of adoration, or whether it wears a funny hat and speaks with an exaggerated-for-Hollywood lisp, love is love, or in some cases wuv is wuv, and I'm always humbled and honored when asked to take part.
[Birmingham Museum of Fine Art]
So, I had the honor a few weeks ago of performing my first same-sex marriage ceremony. It was lovely, and the brides were so tender in their love for one another as they traded their personal vows in front of their friends and family that I was in tears by the end. I looked over at my own husband sitting among the guests and my heart swelled. I fell in love with him a little bit more then and there, so moved was I by the emotion of the women I'd been brought there on that day to join in marriage. It was truly beautiful.
[Brides Elizabeth and Priscila Watkins-Carvalho de Souza with their officiant on their happy day.]
Fast forward to today, when an old friend asked if I would preside over her nuptials. Actually, she asked a few days ago. Of course, I agreed and we communicated mostly via text over the course of the week, ironing out what she and her groom wanted to incorporate into the ceremony.
My friend explained that she and her boyfriend are both agnostic and as such wanted to keep the ceremony as secular as possible. I asked if they wanted to incorporate a poem or some other reading in place of any scripture. Did they have a favorite author or book? The bride said she would think on it, consult her groom, and get back to me by Thursday evening, the night before we had scheduled to meet at the courthouse for the ceremony.
Driving in at 7 a.m. this morning, I finally heard back from the bride with the last minute details.
"I would like you to quote the Princess Bride...when Buttercup and the Prince are getting married. Could you say it in the way [he] did?"
I was perplexed. I have read the Princess Bride, seen the movie more than once. I've read Cary Elwes' As You Wish, Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride. I've read the entire original movie script. I met Chris Sarandon, who plays Prince Humperdink, last month when we both appeared as guests at Alabama ComicCon in Birmingham, Alabama. And still, I didn't understand at first what part of the story she was asking me to quote from...and not just quote from but PERFORM.
And then the bride-to-be sent me this helpful little meme, and all became clear:
What to do, what to do? This was "her day." I'd said that very thing to her over and over as we texted back and forth about the ceremony. The ceremony was an elopement--the relationship is new and they wanted it to be an intimate affair. Good choice. They wanted a secular ceremony in accordance with their agnosticism. Good choice. They'd decided we'd walk from the courthouse to the fine arts museum across the street, where the ceremony could be preformed in a lovely alcove garden. Good choice. The ceremony would be short and sweet--they weren't even bringing any witnesses so I could scrub any language that referenced others. Good choice. And now they, or at least she, wanted me to play the role of the Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride. Hmmmmm, how did I feel about this choice?
The bride and I have been friends a long time, since childhood even. It was possible I was being punked. I called my trusted adviser and aunt, GDR, the woman who first introduced me to the Princess Bride on VHS way back in 1989. She howled with laughter but confessed the only quotes she clearly remembered from PB was when the grandpa is reading from the story book and tells his grandson, who is seemingly worried about the princess's fate but doesn't want to seem worried, "She doesn't get eaten by the eels at this time." GDR said I should go for it.
Then I called my husband. "What?" he asked. "She wants you do do what?" I could feel his embarrassment radiate through my cell phone. To be fair, the man is easily embarrassed, largely by my behavior it would seem. This was something I didn't fully realize until that Alabama ComicCon appearance I mentioned earlier. When he found out I'd be presenting a panel at the con, he'd insisted I practice what I would say over and over. "Would you chill out?" I'd finally told him. "I have done this before. I promise, I got it." "I don't know," he'd answered. "What if you get up there and there's all these 'ums'? Should you do it again for me and this time I'll count the 'ums'?" Um, hell no!
In the end I went with it--committed fully, or at least as fully as a forty-something year-old woman can commit to the role of a medieval priest with a speech impediment. Turns out, the groom had no idea what was about to happen as we started. I could tell by the way he burst into laughter after the first "mawwiage."
For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, here's the reading in its entirety:
"Mawwiage, mawwiage is wat bwings us togeder today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam...and wuv, twue wuv, will fowwow you foweva...so tweasure your wuv--"
I was probably red as a beet. I'm easily embarrassed, too. Shocker, I know. To my horror (is that a word I should be associating with such a happy occasion?) the couple brought a witness after all, and she RECORDED THE ENTIRE THING. My aunt GDR is scouring the internet for it now, hoping it will go viral or something.
It all turned out okay. The bride was happy, the groom was happy. We laughed and enjoyed the moment before moving on to slightly more traditional vows. They seemed to have gotten their happily ever after.
So far, I'm enjoying my role as officiant. I'm learning a lot about love and all the forms it takes. Marriage laws change again in Alabama later this month. Blinded by their disdain for equal opportunity and protection under the law for all couples regardless of gender or sexuality, the Alabama Legislature has scrapped marriages entirely, and now couples who wish to be wed will merely fill out a form in front of a notary public and file that form with probate court. Because they wouldn't call them marriages for LGBTQ couples, they won't call them marriages for anyone. They aren't calling them civil unions, either. Truth is, I don't know what they'll be called. When I phoned the Jefferson County Probate Office yesterday, their chief clerk told me she hadn't been briefed on the changes to date. Welcome to Alabama government. **sigh**
Ultimately whatever it's called, love is still love. Whether it's wrapped in frills and clasped in trembling hands that clutch at note cards scribbled with the sweetest, most romantic professions of adoration, or whether it wears a funny hat and speaks with an exaggerated-for-Hollywood lisp, love is love, or in some cases wuv is wuv, and I'm always humbled and honored when asked to take part.
[Birmingham Museum of Fine Art]
March 13, 2017
The Magic of a First Kiss
*This post originally appeared on Teatime & Books*
“You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…” Except for when it comes to a first kiss. As all lovers will tell you, the magic in a relationship sparks or fizzles with that first kiss. It is a dealmaker or breaker.When a first kiss burns hot, love blooms. According to a 2012 ABC Science poll, 90% of lovers, irrespective of age, can remember when and where their first kiss occurred. When a first kiss goes badly—as 60% of first kisses do according to the same poll—all hopes for a lasting romance are lost.I was ten years-old the first time I fantasized about holding a boy’s hand—a very specific boy with blond hair parted by a cowlick on the right side of his forehead, tiny freckles dotting his perfectly upturned nose, and grey-blue eyes that reminded me of the sky before a summer storm. I daydreamed about walking past him one day and letting my hand brush his. In my daydream, he would take my hand and we’d stand there together. That was as far as my ten-year-old mind had worked things out. Having accomplished my goal, I supposed we’d just stand there holding hands for eternity. I wanted it so badly.When I was twelve years-old, that same boy—who was by then fourteen and over six-feet tall, gave me my first kiss. As we sat together in a wooden porch swing, he reached out to lift a strand of hair that the gathering wind had blown into my face, and as he leaned in to tuck the hair behind my ear, he kissed me. “I want to remember you just like this,” he said, “with the wind and that strand of hair in your face, always. You’re perfect.” I could have died! It was the most romantic moment of my life. At twenty-seven, I married that boy and he hasn’t said anything half as sweet to me since that long-ago summer of 1990. It was the kiss that did it, though. It was a kiss with the potential to see us through many of life’s storms, and even at twelve and fourteen years-old we knew it.
In Solomon’s Bell, the second installment of the Genie Chronicles, thirteen-year-old main character Ginn Lawson contemplates bartering her first kiss for what she hopes is information she needs to save her family. Caleb Scott, an older boy and Ginn’s longtime crush, is a descendant of Grimms, members of the Order of the Grimoire, who’ll stop at nothing to possess a genie as part of their magical menagerie. Caleb turns from the Order in hopes of proving his devotion to Ginn, but when Ginn asks Caleb to return to his Grimm roots to help save her family from the clutches of a golem, Caleb has but one request: a kiss. Ginn agrees, only to worry later that it’s been bad luck to barter her first kiss for intel on her most dangerous enemy. As the story progresses and Ginn is swept up in the adventure of battling golems both at home and in 16th Century Prague, she forgets about the promised kiss; but that’s never the case for Caleb. Will their romance burn bright or is Caleb’s past and their new mission too dark to let in the light?
What do you remember about your first kiss? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
“You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…” Except for when it comes to a first kiss. As all lovers will tell you, the magic in a relationship sparks or fizzles with that first kiss. It is a dealmaker or breaker.When a first kiss burns hot, love blooms. According to a 2012 ABC Science poll, 90% of lovers, irrespective of age, can remember when and where their first kiss occurred. When a first kiss goes badly—as 60% of first kisses do according to the same poll—all hopes for a lasting romance are lost.I was ten years-old the first time I fantasized about holding a boy’s hand—a very specific boy with blond hair parted by a cowlick on the right side of his forehead, tiny freckles dotting his perfectly upturned nose, and grey-blue eyes that reminded me of the sky before a summer storm. I daydreamed about walking past him one day and letting my hand brush his. In my daydream, he would take my hand and we’d stand there together. That was as far as my ten-year-old mind had worked things out. Having accomplished my goal, I supposed we’d just stand there holding hands for eternity. I wanted it so badly.When I was twelve years-old, that same boy—who was by then fourteen and over six-feet tall, gave me my first kiss. As we sat together in a wooden porch swing, he reached out to lift a strand of hair that the gathering wind had blown into my face, and as he leaned in to tuck the hair behind my ear, he kissed me. “I want to remember you just like this,” he said, “with the wind and that strand of hair in your face, always. You’re perfect.” I could have died! It was the most romantic moment of my life. At twenty-seven, I married that boy and he hasn’t said anything half as sweet to me since that long-ago summer of 1990. It was the kiss that did it, though. It was a kiss with the potential to see us through many of life’s storms, and even at twelve and fourteen years-old we knew it.
In Solomon’s Bell, the second installment of the Genie Chronicles, thirteen-year-old main character Ginn Lawson contemplates bartering her first kiss for what she hopes is information she needs to save her family. Caleb Scott, an older boy and Ginn’s longtime crush, is a descendant of Grimms, members of the Order of the Grimoire, who’ll stop at nothing to possess a genie as part of their magical menagerie. Caleb turns from the Order in hopes of proving his devotion to Ginn, but when Ginn asks Caleb to return to his Grimm roots to help save her family from the clutches of a golem, Caleb has but one request: a kiss. Ginn agrees, only to worry later that it’s been bad luck to barter her first kiss for intel on her most dangerous enemy. As the story progresses and Ginn is swept up in the adventure of battling golems both at home and in 16th Century Prague, she forgets about the promised kiss; but that’s never the case for Caleb. Will their romance burn bright or is Caleb’s past and their new mission too dark to let in the light?What do you remember about your first kiss? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
March 8, 2017
The Marathon of Novel Writing
This post originally ran with World Weaver Press on March 8, 2017.
[image error]
http://www.worldweaverpress.com/blog/crossing-the-finish-line
February 21, 2017
Guest Post: Kelsey Ketch on Conducting Research
{GUEST POST} Kelsey Ketch on Conducting Research
To quote Uncle from the Jackie Chan Adventure:
I take these words very seriously. Whether working in the field (during my day job as a biologist), or learning about the settings, timelines, ecosystems, and mythology for my novels. Unfortunately, when writing historical or mythological based novels, not every topic is well known or understood. And unless Doctor Who shows up with the Tartus at your doorstep, we may never really know how general people lived or what they believed during past eras or what an environment/setting might have actually looked like. That’s when the author takes on the role of Sherlock Holmes, using the resources allowed to us and piece together a fictional world that is still real and believable. There are several medias I use for my work, each playing a vital role in bringing a sense of reality to my fiction: the internet, books, documentaries, and in field research. 
InternetThe internet is usually my first step, especially for high level research. This includes finding the right calendar on timeanddate.com to build my outline, Google Maps and Street View to get an idea of the setting in which I wish to write, and general topic searches on Google and Wikipedia to give me a general direction in which to conduct my research. I even do my best to research terms and slang that my characters might use. However, there are other sources on the internet I use for more in depth research as well. The first are news media sites, which I use to keep up with the events, technology, and latest archeological discoveries that might relate to the novel’s theme. Other sources I use from the internet are online articles and journals. These can be easily accessed sources such as National Geographic or History Channel Facebook feeds, or if you have access to a database, peer-reviewed articles on science and history. But, if you are writing a historical based setting, one of my favorite resources is online archives, where you can find historical documentation and maps of different regions and states. I’ve used this source when researching for my work in progress, Death Island, when researching Gregory’s home town—a minor portion of the novel, but still vitally important. You can also go into online libraries to discover books, papers, and other documents on the topic you’re researching. 
BooksMuch like Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, published reference books are my best friend. I have two bookcases dedicated to my reference books—particular books on Ancient Egypt I used for my first published series, Descendants of Isis. I also kept all my old text books, applying subjects such as chemistry, ornithology, mammology, ecosystems, and climate change to other works in process manuscripts. I also have religious and philosophical reference books taking my writing into other dynamics. Books are just great for some in depth studying of the topic you wish to focus in. And there has been many a time where a new concept or twist clicked into my mind while reading a new reference book. 
DocumentariesGrowing up, two of my biggest role models were Jeff Corwin—and you wonder why I became a biologist—and Digging for the Truth’s Josh Bernstein. They taught me to always be curious and to always ask questions. Since then, my documentary DVD collection has grown with programs from National Geographic, History Channel, A&E, and Discovery Channel. Many I have watched several times and know by heart. And I always stay on top of the latest releases, making sure I have the most recent data on hand. Then, while writing my novels, I’ll run a related program running in the background to inspire the imagination. At the same time, I’m learning something while I write. 
Field ResearchYou’re probably wondering what I define as in field research? Basically, any research that is conducted in a location (other than at home, school, library, or bookstore) where you can interact and learn about the subject you’re focusing on. This could be while on the job, studying biology, working with wildlife, and learning about different environments. Or visiting museums with exhibits on what I’m writing about, such as our local art museum’s Ancient Egypt display. Or participating in themed festivals like the Tall Ship Festival in Michigan. Or even visiting a family owned restaurant that hosts their homeland cuisine, or cooking a foreign dish yourself. Field research is talking with people and learning their culture. The best way to do this is actually visiting the locations and historical sites your novel is based in. Unfortunately, for Descendants of Isis, I have yet be able to visit Egypt. I’m hoping in the next year. But for Death Island, which is based in the early seventeen hundreds, I have been able to visit many period-based villages and towns across the east coast to learn what life was like for my characters. I’ve watched carpenters and blacksmiths, I’ve helped raise a sooner’s sail, I’ve asked questions and learned period superstitions and systems, I’ve learned about their medicine and the meaning of the colored glass. Without these amazing people, I’d be writing blind. This is the kind of research that makes every moment worthwhile. To conclude, all this research does take time—along with my day job—and I will admit that I am slower in publishing my novels than most self-published authors. But I focus on my novels’ quality and push out of my mind the quantity, using research as one of my major writing tools. Now, even with all these resources, I will never say my writing is one-hundred percent accurate or that I don’t take literary license. Which fiction author doesn’t? But before placing pen to paper, my advice to anyone writing a paper or novel would simply be: 
Daughter of Isis
(Descendants of Isis #1)
By Kelsey Ketch
Release Date: October 26nd, 2013
Upper Young Adult Fantasy
Summary from Goodreads:
“Her mouth parted slightly, waiting for Seth to breathe life into her own body, just like in the story. She wanted him to awaken her senses.”
Their worlds collide in California’s high desert.
The last thing Natara “Natti” Stone wants to do is to start anew at Setemple High School. She wished she had never left London. Yet the brutal murder of her maternal grandmother has made her life very complicated. The only clue related to her murder is an ancient, encrypted necklace Natti discovered after her grandmother’s death. And if trying to adjust to American life is not enough, Natti is being stalked by a mysterious, charming high school senior, Seth O’Keefe, who is annoyingly persistent in his attempts at seduction.
Seth O’Keefe is secretly a member of the Sons of Set, an order that worships the Egyptian god of chaos. Seth’s blessing from Set, his “charm,” never failed, except with one person: Natti Stone. Her ability to elude him infatuates and infuriates him, and he becomes obsessed with the chase. But the closer he gets to her, the more his emotions take a dangerous turn, and he risks breaking one of the most valued covenants of his order. The punishment for which is a fate worse than death.
The adventure this unlikely couple becomes engulfed in could cost them their lives and their souls.
*Note: Content for Upper YA*
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***Praise for Daughter of Isis***
“Daughter of Isis is an addicting and enthralling read brimming with Egyptian mythology. Readers will be pulled into the story after simply reading a page!” —Emily, Reader Rising
“I always enjoy a good book about Mythology and Daughter of Isis brings a thrilling modern day spin to one of the tales. Kelsey Ketch wove the story perfectly and sucked me right into her magnificent world.” —Naomi, Nomi’s Paranormal Palace
Son of Set
(Descendants of Isis #2)
By Kelsey Ketch
Release Date: May 2nd, 2014
Upper Young Adult Fantasy
Summary from Goodreads:
“. . . the Sons would never just let him go—alive.”
Seth O’Keefe has broken the laws of his god. He never thought he would sacrifice his own future to protect a Daughter of Isis. But when the Sons of Set discovered Natti is the Secret Keeper, he had no choice. Now, Seth and Natti are on the run from his father, who wants nothing more than to see Seth dead. With no allies, Seth turns to the Daughters of Isis for help, hoping they would protect Natti. But when they meet the Daughters, he discovers a secret that puts both their lives in more danger. Low on options, Seth sees only one possibility for survival. He must help Natti solve an ancient puzzle and find the secret name of Ra.
Natara “Natti” Stone is having a hard time swallowing the truth. She can’t believe what she has learned in the past twenty-four hours: Seth is a Son of Set blessed with charm; she is a Daughter of Isis blessed with a sliver of Ma ‘at; the locket her grandmother gave her holds an ancient Egyptian secret linking to Osiris and Isis. That along with being tortured and brutalized by the Sons of Set, she can hardly hold herself together. Thank God for Seth’s touch! That warm, tingling sensation that drowns it all out. Yet her heart struggles to stay focused. She must quickly embrace her destiny before the secret name of Ra falls into the wrong hands.
*Note: Content for Upper YA*
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Name of Ra (Descendants of Isis #3)
By Kelsey Ketch
Release Date: November 11th, 2015
Upper Young Adult Fantasy
Summary from Goodreads:
“Set has risen.”
After being on the run from a psychotic cult for a week, Natara “Natti” Stone has finally come to realize she and Seth are the only two people standing between the Sons of Set and the secret name of Ra. Holding a part of the key that unlocks Ra’s power, they relocate to a more isolated location in the California mountains. While laying low, Natti becomes even more determined to understand her mother’s bloodline and her blessing from the goddess, Isis. But when she starts seeing the truth behind her destiny, she begins to doubt her role in the events that are about to unfold.
Then the unthinkable happens . . .
All Seth O’Keefe wanted was to get Natti as far away from his father and the Sons of Set as possible. Unfortunately, after hearing of Natti’s destiny from Isis’s own lips, he realizes they have bigger issues to worry about. Especially when one stupid slip up leads the god of chaos himself straight to their doorstep. Now Natti is the god’s prisoner, and Set holds the key to unlocking the location of the secret name of Ra. Can Seth save Natti from her own destiny and thwart the demented god’s rise to power?
*Note: Content for Upper YA*
Author Bio:Kelsey Ketch is a young adult/new adult author, who works as a Wildlife Biologist in the state of North Carolina. During her free time, she can often be found working on her latest work in progress or organizing the New Adult Scavenger Hunt, a biannual blog hop. She also enjoys history, mythology, traveling, and reading.
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February 16, 2017
Magic vs Miracles: Genies vs Golems
The countdown to the March 7th release of Solomon's Bell has begun! You can find me today in a guest post for Young Adult and New Adult Author Kelsey Ketch where I write about the mythos and folk figures you can expect more of in the book. Check it out!
Magic vs. Miracles: Genies vs. Golems
August 25, 2016
Organic Recycling? How 'Bout No!
Imagine, if you will, that fresh from the carwash happiness and restored pride of ownership you feel when pulling away from wherever it is you have your car washed and detailed. Everything is polished, shiny, and smells like the "New Car" scent you paid extra for.
You're in this white, seven passenger minivan a lot, and it shows. Your daily three hour commute isn't kind to your vehicle, you accumulate a fair amount of highway grit and dirt every week. Your five children no longer do all their traveling with you, like a wondering pack of nomads forever in search of the next rest area or fast food stop, you could downsize. But Big Bertha is paid for. You own her outright. So you keep putting lipstick on that pig. Settling for at least a clean ride if not a new one.
So you've just gussied up that old girl, even had the spaghetti sauce and mud clods vacuumed off the back seats. Your windows and mirrors are sparking clean, you can actually see through them instead of small finger prints, stick figures, and misspelled curse words drawn into the dust. You're holding your head up high in the driver's seat a mere 10 hours later on your way to your first work stop of the day, a rural county courthouse off a state highway, when you pull up to a red light. A behemoth of a truck pulls up beside you. A red Kenworth with a garbage truck type trailer attached. From the corner of your eye the truck's signage catches your attention. Organex Recycling, it reads. You barely have time to contemplate what those words mean before there is a loud popping noise, like a liquid explosion, and you jump in your seat. Immediately, the most foul smell you have ever smelled fills the air of your cabin. It is a rotting, acidic stank. You think Satan himself has just taken a dump in your very nostrils.
You gaze around wildly to discover the windows and mirrors along the entire passenger side of your van covered in what can only be described as chunky vomit. You realize Organex Recycling has just lost its gaseous load all over Bertha.
It will not stand! It will not stand! Your light turns green and you wait for the Kenworth that has just violated you to proceed through the intersection. You're getting this guy's truck numbers. Somebody is going to answer for Bertha.
In the mean time, you begin to feel the stank settling like an oil on your upholstery, skin, and hair. How can you go into the courthouse smelling like a pig trough?
Kenworth knows what he has done to Bertha and he just idles there beside you, unwilling to proceed. You accelerate slowly through the intersection. The cars behind you give you a wide berth. You're like the kid in the lunch room who has puked all over herself. Everyone feels bad for you, but they are grossed out and you stink so no one's coming over to help out.
For 3/4 of a mile, Kenworth refuses to come close enough for you to get any details from his signage. Dude has obviously pooped on someone else before.
You see a carwash up ahead on the left. The stank is making your eyes start to water and you can see next to nothing through the ruination that is the glass along your passenger side.
Agonized but desperate, you whip into the car wash. The attendant is startled by the stank and chunks of putrifying organics dripping from your vehicle.
"It isn't vomit," you blurt as you trust the young attendant your debit card. "Well, not exactly. I mean, it's food, mostly, I think, but it wasn't digested."
He backs away from you like you could possibly ralph all over him at any second. "It costs three dollars more to scrub the windows," he practically whimpers.
Silently, you gag. You want to cry for him, but he's wearing muck boots and you have on ballet flats. "God bless and good luck," you whisper through the two inch crack in your driver's window as you hear the sweet sound of the water jets roar to life in the wash tunnel.
[Big Bertha, tubbed and scrubbed]
You're in this white, seven passenger minivan a lot, and it shows. Your daily three hour commute isn't kind to your vehicle, you accumulate a fair amount of highway grit and dirt every week. Your five children no longer do all their traveling with you, like a wondering pack of nomads forever in search of the next rest area or fast food stop, you could downsize. But Big Bertha is paid for. You own her outright. So you keep putting lipstick on that pig. Settling for at least a clean ride if not a new one.
So you've just gussied up that old girl, even had the spaghetti sauce and mud clods vacuumed off the back seats. Your windows and mirrors are sparking clean, you can actually see through them instead of small finger prints, stick figures, and misspelled curse words drawn into the dust. You're holding your head up high in the driver's seat a mere 10 hours later on your way to your first work stop of the day, a rural county courthouse off a state highway, when you pull up to a red light. A behemoth of a truck pulls up beside you. A red Kenworth with a garbage truck type trailer attached. From the corner of your eye the truck's signage catches your attention. Organex Recycling, it reads. You barely have time to contemplate what those words mean before there is a loud popping noise, like a liquid explosion, and you jump in your seat. Immediately, the most foul smell you have ever smelled fills the air of your cabin. It is a rotting, acidic stank. You think Satan himself has just taken a dump in your very nostrils.
You gaze around wildly to discover the windows and mirrors along the entire passenger side of your van covered in what can only be described as chunky vomit. You realize Organex Recycling has just lost its gaseous load all over Bertha.
It will not stand! It will not stand! Your light turns green and you wait for the Kenworth that has just violated you to proceed through the intersection. You're getting this guy's truck numbers. Somebody is going to answer for Bertha.
In the mean time, you begin to feel the stank settling like an oil on your upholstery, skin, and hair. How can you go into the courthouse smelling like a pig trough?
Kenworth knows what he has done to Bertha and he just idles there beside you, unwilling to proceed. You accelerate slowly through the intersection. The cars behind you give you a wide berth. You're like the kid in the lunch room who has puked all over herself. Everyone feels bad for you, but they are grossed out and you stink so no one's coming over to help out.
For 3/4 of a mile, Kenworth refuses to come close enough for you to get any details from his signage. Dude has obviously pooped on someone else before.
You see a carwash up ahead on the left. The stank is making your eyes start to water and you can see next to nothing through the ruination that is the glass along your passenger side.
Agonized but desperate, you whip into the car wash. The attendant is startled by the stank and chunks of putrifying organics dripping from your vehicle.
"It isn't vomit," you blurt as you trust the young attendant your debit card. "Well, not exactly. I mean, it's food, mostly, I think, but it wasn't digested."
He backs away from you like you could possibly ralph all over him at any second. "It costs three dollars more to scrub the windows," he practically whimpers.
Silently, you gag. You want to cry for him, but he's wearing muck boots and you have on ballet flats. "God bless and good luck," you whisper through the two inch crack in your driver's window as you hear the sweet sound of the water jets roar to life in the wash tunnel.
[Big Bertha, tubbed and scrubbed]
Organic Recycling? How 'Bout No!
Imagine, if you will, that fresh from the carwash happiness and restored pride of ownership you feel when pulling away from wherever it is you have your car washed and detailed. Everything is polished, shiny, and smells like the "New Car" scent you paid extra for.
You're in this white, seven passenger minivan a lot, and it shows. Your daily three hour commute isn't kind to your vehicle, you accumulate a fair amount of highway grit and dirt every week. Your five children no longer do all their traveling with you, like a wondering pack of nomads forever in search of the next rest area or fast food stop, you could downsize. But Big Bertha is paid for. You own her outright. So you keep putting lipstick on that pig. Settling for at least a clean ride if not a new one.
So you've just gussied up that old girl, even had the spaghetti sauce and mud clods vacuumed off the back seats. Your windows and mirrors are sparking clean, you can actually see through them instead of small finger prints, stick figures, and misspelled curse words drawn into the dust. You're holding your head up high in the driver's seat a mere 10 hours later on your way to your first work stop of the day, a rural county courthouse off a state highway, when you pull up to a red light. A behemoth of a truck pulls up beside you. A red Kenworth with a garbage truck type trailer attached. From the corner of your eye the truck's signage catches your attention. Organex Recycling, it reads. You barely have time to contemplate what those words mean before there is a loud popping noise, like a liquid explosion, and you jump in your seat. Immediately, the most foul smell you have ever smelled fills the air of your cabin. It is a rotting, acidic stank. You think Satan himself has just taken a dump in your very nostrils.
You gaze around wildly to discover the windows and mirrors along the entire passenger side of your van covered in what can only be described as chunky vomit. You realize Organex Recycling has just lost its gaseous load all over Bertha.
It will not stand! It will not stand! Your light turns green and you wait for the Kenworth that has just violated you to proceed through the intersection. You're getting this guy's truck numbers. Somebody is going to answer for Bertha.
In the mean time, you begin to feel the stank settling like an oil on your upholstery, skin, and hair. How can you go into the courthouse smelling like a pig trough?
Kenworth knows what he has done to Bertha and he just idles there beside you, unwilling to proceed. You accelerate slowly through the intersection. The cars behind you give you a wide berth. You're like the kid in the lunch room who has puked all over herself. Everyone feels bad for you, but they are grossed out and you stink so no one's coming over to help out.
For 3/4 of a mile, Kenworth refuses to come close enough for you to get any details from his signage. Dude has obviously pooped on someone else before.
You see a carwash up ahead on the left. The stank is making your eyes start to water and you can see next to nothing through the ruination that is the glass along your passenger side.
Agonized but desperate, you whip into the car wash. The attendant is startled by the stank and chunks of putrifying organics dripping from your vehicle.
"It isn't vomit," you blurt as you trust the young attendant your debit card. "Well, not exactly. I mean, it's food, mostly, I think, but it wasn't digested."
He backs away from you like you could possibly ralph all over him at any second. "It costs three dollars more to scrub the windows," he practically whimpers.
Silently, you gag. You want to cry for him, but he's wearing muck boots and you have on ballet flats. "God bless and good luck," you whisper through the two inch crack in your driver's window as you hear the sweet sound of the water jets roar to life in the wash tunnel.
[Big Bertha, tubbed and scrubbed]
You're in this white, seven passenger minivan a lot, and it shows. Your daily three hour commute isn't kind to your vehicle, you accumulate a fair amount of highway grit and dirt every week. Your five children no longer do all their traveling with you, like a wondering pack of nomads forever in search of the next rest area or fast food stop, you could downsize. But Big Bertha is paid for. You own her outright. So you keep putting lipstick on that pig. Settling for at least a clean ride if not a new one.
So you've just gussied up that old girl, even had the spaghetti sauce and mud clods vacuumed off the back seats. Your windows and mirrors are sparking clean, you can actually see through them instead of small finger prints, stick figures, and misspelled curse words drawn into the dust. You're holding your head up high in the driver's seat a mere 10 hours later on your way to your first work stop of the day, a rural county courthouse off a state highway, when you pull up to a red light. A behemoth of a truck pulls up beside you. A red Kenworth with a garbage truck type trailer attached. From the corner of your eye the truck's signage catches your attention. Organex Recycling, it reads. You barely have time to contemplate what those words mean before there is a loud popping noise, like a liquid explosion, and you jump in your seat. Immediately, the most foul smell you have ever smelled fills the air of your cabin. It is a rotting, acidic stank. You think Satan himself has just taken a dump in your very nostrils.
You gaze around wildly to discover the windows and mirrors along the entire passenger side of your van covered in what can only be described as chunky vomit. You realize Organex Recycling has just lost its gaseous load all over Bertha.
It will not stand! It will not stand! Your light turns green and you wait for the Kenworth that has just violated you to proceed through the intersection. You're getting this guy's truck numbers. Somebody is going to answer for Bertha.
In the mean time, you begin to feel the stank settling like an oil on your upholstery, skin, and hair. How can you go into the courthouse smelling like a pig trough?
Kenworth knows what he has done to Bertha and he just idles there beside you, unwilling to proceed. You accelerate slowly through the intersection. The cars behind you give you a wide berth. You're like the kid in the lunch room who has puked all over herself. Everyone feels bad for you, but they are grossed out and you stink so no one's coming over to help out.
For 3/4 of a mile, Kenworth refuses to come close enough for you to get any details from his signage. Dude has obviously pooped on someone else before.
You see a carwash up ahead on the left. The stank is making your eyes start to water and you can see next to nothing through the ruination that is the glass along your passenger side.
Agonized but desperate, you whip into the car wash. The attendant is startled by the stank and chunks of putrifying organics dripping from your vehicle.
"It isn't vomit," you blurt as you trust the young attendant your debit card. "Well, not exactly. I mean, it's food, mostly, I think, but it wasn't digested."
He backs away from you like you could possibly ralph all over him at any second. "It costs three dollars more to scrub the windows," he practically whimpers.
Silently, you gag. You want to cry for him, but he's wearing muck boots and you have on ballet flats. "God bless and good luck," you whisper through the two inch crack in your driver's window as you hear the sweet sound of the water jets roar to life in the wash tunnel.
[Big Bertha, tubbed and scrubbed]
December 15, 2015
Worst Mom Day Ever
There will be days as a mother that you look down at your (probably) sleeping baby and wonder if you were ever truly happy before becoming a mom. The days your child throws their arms around you and tells you they love you--or thanks you for something as simple as making a favorite meal--you may swear that you've never known greater fulfillment or joy.
And then there will be other days: days you look at your offspring and think, "WTF?" It's the bad days no one warns you about.
The day I developed mastitis and my right breast swelled to the size of my head, I thought I’d experienced my worst day as a mom. For any of you non-lactating people out there, mastitis is a crazy painful inflammation of breast tissue caused by a plugged milk duct accompanied by redness, fever, and body ache.
I didn’t experience the condition of boob abscess meets swine flu until baby #3, despite having nursed my first two biological children for thirteen months each—the oldest inadvertently until I discovered like a tiny alcoholic she was secreting a few drinks in the dead of night while everyone else in the house, including me, was fast asleep—and having (or have not) nursed my nephew on at least one occasion when I became convinced his mother was trying to wean him at the age of two months over the course of a half-hour shopping trip. When he wouldn’t stop screaming, my milk let down. You non-lactators may not be aware, but a nursing woman’s milk “let down” can be triggered by the cries of any baby (and possibly any small mewling animal) within earshot, the smell of Johnson & Johnson baby lotion, and chest contact with any object or substance with a surface temperature greater than 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
The evening I sat in the most intense pain I’d experienced outside of childbirth, trying to nurse a fussy five-month old who didn't understand why she wasn’t being offered a second course, I couldn’t imagine a worse day of motherhood.
(The Milk Thief Today. Good Hair. Great Teeth. Clearly, it did her well.)
(Boob Squad. That's my nephew on the left. He turned out alright, considering I only ever fed him the one time.)
Then came a day our entire family will never, ever forget: a day we refer to as PukeFest 2008.
The day of PukeFest 2008 began innocently enough. We spent a few hours visiting a cousin's family and later watching the kids play in the indoor playground of a burger restaurant. Late that afternoon, we said our goodbyes and loaded into the minivan for the two-hour ride home. It was as the last light faded from the sky and the van was plunged into darkness that we heard the first tiny heave.
I've never been sure if it was car sickness or some super-charged stomach bug lapped up by my five-year-old as he crawled and slobbered his way through the majestic plastic tunnels of the Newnan, Georgia Burger King PlayPlace. Looking back, what I do know is that his vomiting spread through our magically shrinking mini-van faster than a Kardashian selfie on Twitter. I’ll never forget sliding the side door open in an attempt to reach and render aid to my ick-covered youngest son only to be met with a river of half-digested milkshakes and Whopper Jrs from the mouths of his ten and thirteen year-old brothers. We rode home, in the dead of winter, with all the windows open. It didn't help much. The boys threw up another two or three times. Each time my husband, who has the gag reflex of a newborn, would have to stop, get out, and walk around the van a few times as he attempted to draw in giant breaths of fresh, vomit-free air. It took us almost three hours to get home. I shampooed the upholstery until late into the night. PukeFest 2008 was a Sucky Mom Day, for sure.
Those other “bad” days have paled in comparison, however, to a more recent experience. And although none of my children were even present for the event, rest assured they deserve 100% of the blame for the day now know as my Worst Mom Day Ever.
So, here it is: I pissed my pants at the public library. In front of my entire writers’ group. I’m not talking about “I coughed and wet myself.” I freaking peed my pants. And then continued to do so the duration of the drive home.
Yes, there was coughing involved—I’d had a cold for a couple of weeks that was revived with a vengeance when I aspirated some barbecue sauce slurped off a cocktail weenie at the library's Christmas Party for which I was in attendance—but I’m placing my unfortunate incontinence on the shoulders of the human passengers that sat atop my bladder for a combined total of twenty-seven months. They did this to me!
For years my sister and I have cackled at our own poor mother, who’s basically asked us to huddle with her over a toilet if we feel the need to tell a funny story. We’ve taken turns bouncing our grown asses in her lap as she laughs and screams, threatening all the while to kill us if we make her pee in her favorite suede recliner. But I think we may have both finally learned our lesson.
My younger sister has often attributed our mother’s weak bladder to excess weight. Similarly, she has correlated her own fitness with an iron bladder. All that changed a couple of weeks ago when she pulled into our parents’ driveway to find our mother awkwardly trying to heave our brother’s wheelchair into her SUV. Like a good daughter, Little Sister sprang into action to help. She and our mother squatted to lift the chair with their knees, but it wasn’t long before our mother’s bladder felt the strain and she began to, as she put it, “empty herself all the way up." In response to this event, Little Sister began to convulse with laughter so violently that she too, for the very first time in her adult life, peed her pants. I pulled into the driveway to find them both bent double, their knees clasped tightly together, and my sister panting over and over again, “I’m peeing. I’m peeing. Right now. I’m peeing!” I peed a little too. And there we all stood, like a family of knock-kneed imbeciles watering the gravel.
Still, my embarrassment on that day had been confined to those women closest to me. The "library incident" was different. There were so many witnesses—though some of them may have merely attributed my dashing from the room as just more weird introvert, writer behavior.
I’m convinced that no amount of Kegel exercises could have saved me. I’m religious about those suckers. I have a three hour commute every work day, after all, and nothing better to do at all those red lights along Hwy 280. I can tell you that the lady garden isn’t gettin’ any complaints. But it didn’t save me.
Perhaps if I’d been sitting when the flood gates opened I would have had more control of my faculties, but when “it” happened I was hovering over a sandwich tray choking on honey barbecue.
I’m not letting the little beasties off the hook for this one. They owe me!
Perhaps I’ll repay them by visiting their houses when I’m old and pretending to sneeze as I soil their living room furniture. Or maybe I’ll just sucker punch them in the chest before gorging on fast food and demanding to be taken on a two-hour car ride along Alabama and Georgia’s curviest back roads. I’ll think of something. Until then, I'll try to remember the good days: those days I was so in love with them and hadn't thought twice about an adult diaper commercial.
*After reading this post, Little Sister has asked me to inform my readership that there may or may not have been some flatulence associated with our mother's power squat that contributed to Little Sister's unfortunate accident. She also wants it noted that it was of the "road hog variety and not the less innocuous unicorn sneeze variety" she prides herself on. Mother denies she pooted.
**Please note that I do not take lightly or seek to marginalized any mother who has suffered true and enduring pain as a parent. Those who have children facing life-threatening illnesses or situations or those who have lost a child to some tragedy have surely experienced worse days. My anecdotes are not intended to offend.
And then there will be other days: days you look at your offspring and think, "WTF?" It's the bad days no one warns you about.
The day I developed mastitis and my right breast swelled to the size of my head, I thought I’d experienced my worst day as a mom. For any of you non-lactating people out there, mastitis is a crazy painful inflammation of breast tissue caused by a plugged milk duct accompanied by redness, fever, and body ache.
I didn’t experience the condition of boob abscess meets swine flu until baby #3, despite having nursed my first two biological children for thirteen months each—the oldest inadvertently until I discovered like a tiny alcoholic she was secreting a few drinks in the dead of night while everyone else in the house, including me, was fast asleep—and having (or have not) nursed my nephew on at least one occasion when I became convinced his mother was trying to wean him at the age of two months over the course of a half-hour shopping trip. When he wouldn’t stop screaming, my milk let down. You non-lactators may not be aware, but a nursing woman’s milk “let down” can be triggered by the cries of any baby (and possibly any small mewling animal) within earshot, the smell of Johnson & Johnson baby lotion, and chest contact with any object or substance with a surface temperature greater than 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
The evening I sat in the most intense pain I’d experienced outside of childbirth, trying to nurse a fussy five-month old who didn't understand why she wasn’t being offered a second course, I couldn’t imagine a worse day of motherhood.
(The Milk Thief Today. Good Hair. Great Teeth. Clearly, it did her well.)
(Boob Squad. That's my nephew on the left. He turned out alright, considering I only ever fed him the one time.)Then came a day our entire family will never, ever forget: a day we refer to as PukeFest 2008.
The day of PukeFest 2008 began innocently enough. We spent a few hours visiting a cousin's family and later watching the kids play in the indoor playground of a burger restaurant. Late that afternoon, we said our goodbyes and loaded into the minivan for the two-hour ride home. It was as the last light faded from the sky and the van was plunged into darkness that we heard the first tiny heave.
I've never been sure if it was car sickness or some super-charged stomach bug lapped up by my five-year-old as he crawled and slobbered his way through the majestic plastic tunnels of the Newnan, Georgia Burger King PlayPlace. Looking back, what I do know is that his vomiting spread through our magically shrinking mini-van faster than a Kardashian selfie on Twitter. I’ll never forget sliding the side door open in an attempt to reach and render aid to my ick-covered youngest son only to be met with a river of half-digested milkshakes and Whopper Jrs from the mouths of his ten and thirteen year-old brothers. We rode home, in the dead of winter, with all the windows open. It didn't help much. The boys threw up another two or three times. Each time my husband, who has the gag reflex of a newborn, would have to stop, get out, and walk around the van a few times as he attempted to draw in giant breaths of fresh, vomit-free air. It took us almost three hours to get home. I shampooed the upholstery until late into the night. PukeFest 2008 was a Sucky Mom Day, for sure.
Those other “bad” days have paled in comparison, however, to a more recent experience. And although none of my children were even present for the event, rest assured they deserve 100% of the blame for the day now know as my Worst Mom Day Ever.
So, here it is: I pissed my pants at the public library. In front of my entire writers’ group. I’m not talking about “I coughed and wet myself.” I freaking peed my pants. And then continued to do so the duration of the drive home.
Yes, there was coughing involved—I’d had a cold for a couple of weeks that was revived with a vengeance when I aspirated some barbecue sauce slurped off a cocktail weenie at the library's Christmas Party for which I was in attendance—but I’m placing my unfortunate incontinence on the shoulders of the human passengers that sat atop my bladder for a combined total of twenty-seven months. They did this to me!
For years my sister and I have cackled at our own poor mother, who’s basically asked us to huddle with her over a toilet if we feel the need to tell a funny story. We’ve taken turns bouncing our grown asses in her lap as she laughs and screams, threatening all the while to kill us if we make her pee in her favorite suede recliner. But I think we may have both finally learned our lesson.
My younger sister has often attributed our mother’s weak bladder to excess weight. Similarly, she has correlated her own fitness with an iron bladder. All that changed a couple of weeks ago when she pulled into our parents’ driveway to find our mother awkwardly trying to heave our brother’s wheelchair into her SUV. Like a good daughter, Little Sister sprang into action to help. She and our mother squatted to lift the chair with their knees, but it wasn’t long before our mother’s bladder felt the strain and she began to, as she put it, “empty herself all the way up." In response to this event, Little Sister began to convulse with laughter so violently that she too, for the very first time in her adult life, peed her pants. I pulled into the driveway to find them both bent double, their knees clasped tightly together, and my sister panting over and over again, “I’m peeing. I’m peeing. Right now. I’m peeing!” I peed a little too. And there we all stood, like a family of knock-kneed imbeciles watering the gravel.
Still, my embarrassment on that day had been confined to those women closest to me. The "library incident" was different. There were so many witnesses—though some of them may have merely attributed my dashing from the room as just more weird introvert, writer behavior.
I’m convinced that no amount of Kegel exercises could have saved me. I’m religious about those suckers. I have a three hour commute every work day, after all, and nothing better to do at all those red lights along Hwy 280. I can tell you that the lady garden isn’t gettin’ any complaints. But it didn’t save me.
Perhaps if I’d been sitting when the flood gates opened I would have had more control of my faculties, but when “it” happened I was hovering over a sandwich tray choking on honey barbecue.
I’m not letting the little beasties off the hook for this one. They owe me!
Perhaps I’ll repay them by visiting their houses when I’m old and pretending to sneeze as I soil their living room furniture. Or maybe I’ll just sucker punch them in the chest before gorging on fast food and demanding to be taken on a two-hour car ride along Alabama and Georgia’s curviest back roads. I’ll think of something. Until then, I'll try to remember the good days: those days I was so in love with them and hadn't thought twice about an adult diaper commercial.
*After reading this post, Little Sister has asked me to inform my readership that there may or may not have been some flatulence associated with our mother's power squat that contributed to Little Sister's unfortunate accident. She also wants it noted that it was of the "road hog variety and not the less innocuous unicorn sneeze variety" she prides herself on. Mother denies she pooted.
**Please note that I do not take lightly or seek to marginalized any mother who has suffered true and enduring pain as a parent. Those who have children facing life-threatening illnesses or situations or those who have lost a child to some tragedy have surely experienced worse days. My anecdotes are not intended to offend.
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