Matriarchal Mind Meld

There’s really little I like better than visiting with matriarchs. I wouldn’t say this without including their men, except most men of the matriarchs let their women do all the in-depth discussion stuff, or they’re no longer around to tell their tales.

I love to get male viewpoints on life, especially from men who have well-learned life’s lessons, but trying to get a man to spill what he knows without another man present is really like pulling hen’s teeth, or trying to herd cats; and I don’t know which is more difficult.

I got a double matriarchal mind-meld yesterday; it may take me a while to process all the wisdom I collected. I began the day with a call from Mamie informing me that she’s following my example and leaving Coker Creek for a while. I admitted that I knew wanderlust was contagious and asked where she was heading. She was delighted to tell me that she decided to break with the rest of us who fled the mountains during the cold weather and go south now that it’s getting warm.

When I expressed concern that she may not return in time for the ground to be dry enough to plow, she wasted no time in giving me an garden preparation assignment “for Richard” while she’s away. I guess she really has given up on me ever being useful in the manual labor department. I dropped by her house to tell her bon voyage, and then headed to Vonore to meet the inspiration for Jack’s publishing efforts.

What a delightful woman! Mary is eighty years old and still going strong. Even though she walks with a cane, there’s nothing pitiful about her. Her eyes and mind are as lively as one could ever wish to have, no matter what one’s age. When I asked if she was still tutoring GED students, she revealed that she’s not tutoring, but is substitute teaching. Can you imagine the drive that she must have, still entering the classroom at age eighty – with the help of a cane? She says she may give it up this year – much like Mamie threatens yearly to give up her chickens and egg empire, I suspect.

One of my favorite topics to discuss with these lovely ladies is the partnerships they had with their husbands. Both Mamie and Mrs. Mary are long-time widows that are quite in love, to this day, with the men they married. It’s so refreshing and informative to hear how they over came life’s challenges and celebrated life’s successes together.

Mamie still loves to recount the nights they planted the crops necessary to she and her husband Frank Sr.’s , and their family’s survival by the light of their truck and tractor lights. Even though I just met Mrs. Mary, she shared beautiful memories of her childhood on Citico Creek, her education at the Quaker school in Tennessee, her chance meeting and subsequent courtship and marriage to the love of her life and some of the challenges they overcame as a couple.

What generous souls! I need to keep these stories coming; I can use all the advice that I can get on keeping my hero happy– or he may stop waiting for me when I go on my adventures without him.

Fun With Our Freezer

Richard was really my hero yesterday. He went out to our large freezer that we keep in the “cat house” (so named because, when we had two cats, they claimed this outbuilding as their own). One of the great losses of our lives in Coker Creek was silently creeping into our reality, and we would not have known it until it was too late without Richard’s foraging for fish in our freezer.

Our freezer was in the process of a mysterious meltdown! My twenty-five pounds of head-on Gulf shrimp, months of Jack’s banana peppers that we had so lovingly pared and blanched for use in interesting hors d’oeuvres, gallons of greens and Buffy’s beans all at the edge of annihilation. Richard was clearly on the verge of panic – I don’t know if this was because he could see all of these culinary creations of the past year being hauled to the dump, or because he really feared my meltdown, along with that of the freezer. Richard never really panics, but he does get close occasionally.

It seems that all this winter’s rain and snow not only dampened the earth and her inhabitants, it also shorted out the electrical cord connecting the freezer to the source of its power. This should have been a simple, fast fix – plug in another extension cord, right? This is easier said than done when the freezer in question is several hundred feet from the closest electrical outlet.

Not only is that, but the power to the cat house is in a daisy chain from the house to the RV to the cat house freezer. Nothing that hooks up to an RV is of the household variety; therefore, no maintenance or repair parts are available anywhere near locally. This would be the case even if we lived in a major metropolis, but it is even less likely that we’ll find parts within a one hundred mile radius living on a mountain top in the forest in South East Tennessee.

Richard was able to locate enough power tool extension cords connected to his various projects to temporarily get juice flowing back into our treasure trove of frozen foods while he went in search of heavy duty electrical cord repair parts. All the while, there was nothing I could do but stay at my computer avoiding the issue. I just couldn’t bear to face the freezer facts.

With great trepidation, after several hours of denial, I finally determined to go see if I could do some damage control. Richard had said that there was still ice on some of the shelves even though the food felt defrosted to him. There was some slim hope that I could carefully salvage at least a bit of our bounty by immediately cooking it and inviting all our neighbors over for a food frenzy feast, like we’re used to doing after the freezers defrost in the power outages connected to hurricanes.

I took a garbage bag with me on the hundred yard walk; I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. I slowly opened the freezer, expecting the worst. My eyes went immediately to my treasured jumbo shrimp. They were not only still solidly frozen; they hadn’t even melted and refrozen into a great glob. If the shrimp were still individually frozen, the rest couldn’t be too bad. I looked for reasons for Richard’s report of impending dietary doom. A couple of sugary sauces were indeed still soft, but they never get solidly frozen. Our friends will just have to wait for their food fantasies to be sated, one dinner delight at a time.

Rummaging in the Refrigerator

It really all started with Josie saying she was tired of chicken, and that Adam was going to, hopefully, (if it didn’t keep raining) grill some good burgers. This put hamburgers into my mind – not new ones, but the ones leftover from the previous night’s supper. Nether Richard nor I had been terribly impressed with the quality of the meat, so I wasn’t looking forward to eating them reheated “au natural.”

It was a chili kind of day, one of those damp days where, whatever the thermometer says the temperature is, your toes don’t believe it. Time to take out the chili ingredients, which, in my case almost never starts with a trip to the grocery store. It usually starts with rummaging through the refrigerator to see what leftovers I can re-imagine as a new dish, in this case it started with those hamburger patties.

As I rummaged, I found a bit of a jar of salsa, several onions that had long-since spouted green tops, some chopped jalapenos that I had frozen several months ago, and a few cloves of garlic that were getting a bit past their prime. I also found two beautiful, crisp bell peppers, one yellow and one orange that Richard had bought for his sumptuous salad-making.

I did want some bell pepper in the chili, but I had two challenges in using these peppers. The first is that these peppers probably cost as much as everything else in my refrigerator combined. The second is that Richard would have to drive a minimum of twenty-three miles each way to replace them. Our local grocery store (only eleven mile away – one way) doesn’t carry such “exotic” ingredients. I opted for a jar of roasted red peppers from our pantry.

It was a bit of a challenge unearthing all these ingredients, as both our refrigerator and freezer are regular sources of avalanche activity. But, in these matters, I’m much braver than Richard; and a woman’s sometimes got to have mercy on her man. The only thing I asked of him is that he fetch the tomatoes that I had canned last summer.

He was happy to do so, and inquired as to how many jars I needed and where he would find them. He was a bit incredulous when I told him to look under our bed -- until I informed him that the reason our marriage was so fruitful is because we sleep on top of so many of the fruits of our labors. At this point, he just went to get the tomatoes, but still looked surprised that they were actually where I said they’d be.

While I was busy stirring my witch’s brew, Deborah called asking which day we wanted her and Charlie to come over for dinner. It seems that Richard had invited them over, but didn’t give them a date. How nice that I was already cooking enough for company (like I even know how to cook for only two.)

The chili got Charlie’s seal of approval, but since Deborah prefers not to eat meat I did a bit more rummaging and came up with the ingredients for spaghetti squash tossed with sun dried tomatoes, a bit of feta cheese and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. We all loved Richard’s salad, and had a grand old time talking at our table.
See what can happen when we’re open to anything…

"Deep-Doo"

If you’ve ever heard two cats fighting, you have a pretty good idea of what’s been happening I my head recently. I’m a rather impassioned speaker even if I’m reciting my grocery list. Okay, maybe that’s not a good example because we all know how passionate I am about food. Anyway, Rachel agreed to come up to the holler for a “just us” visit. She has known me for almost thirty-nine years, so she knew what she was signing on for. She refers to my favorite conversational topics, things like “the meaning of life,” as “Deep-Doo.”

It had been a couple of years since we had this much “just us” time, so I had kind of stored up the “Doo;” it was pretty deep. Not to mention that I’ve lately been torn between two “lovers,” Coker Creek and New Orleans. Rachel understands my struggle because she’s often longing for the Louisiana lifestyle. I also am sorely distressed by the climate of fear in our political discourse in the country. We took on all these topics, and then some, including religion – you know all the things we’re taught not to discuss in polite society.

Poor Richard; he must have thought there were two tigers in a big sack in the living room. As we talked, my voice got louder and louder, which is, I think part of having grown up in a family of eleven passionate people. First, he retreated to the kitchen, then he headed to his office, and finally he closed the office door – all the while suffering in silence as Rachel and I took on all the problems of the world.

In the early days of our relationship, quiet spoken Richard would stop my arguments with, “Just because you can talk louder than me doesn’t make you right.” Even when I’m in agreement with a person, the greater my feeling for whatever the topic, the louder my voice gets. My daddy used to call me “Mighty Powerful Woman, “probably on the strength of my voice. He also called me “Y” –because I always wanted the “why” behind every statement of rule or belief.

When Rachel went back to tell Richard good-bye, Richard came out of the room shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m glad you had a good time,” he said, rather quizzically. “If you call that a good time, which I don’t understand.” Rachel replied, “I wouldn’t call it a good time, but it was fulfilling.” “Yeah, I’m full to overflowing,” I said.

This was only partially true. I did feel filled with Rachel’s love for me, but I felt empty of all the grief and anguish I’d saved up. I don’t know how Rachel felt when she left, but I felt purged, and utterly exhausted.

Richard is a brave man to have two matriarchs in his house at the same time. He seems no worse for the wear; in fact, he calmly proceeded to the kitchen after Rachel departed and made sumptuous salads and burgers. What a man!

Crazy Cajun Catholic

It’s very important to folks around here that people profess their faith, and they distrust anyone not attending a church. They’re not particular which church you attend (as Mamie says, “It’s all the same Bible,” as long as it’s a Christian church. I’m not sure how they’d feel about attendance at a synagogue or mosque because we don’t have any in these parts.

This was made very clear to me when I offered my (and by extension Richard’s) services to a recently widowed woman. When she seemed reluctant to take me up on my offer, I told her that, since Richard and I don’t attend church, she could help us to salvation -- not that I think that simply through good works will I be saved. I was just trying to get past the natural reluctance of the independent mountain people to ask for help from outsiders.

She rather quizzically replied, “I don’t know that that’s how it works.” Without stopping to think, I answered, “I’d rather try to live like a follower of Christ than to sit in church and listen to somebody talk about Christianity. But the real truth is I just can’t sit quietly that long. If there was a Black Baptist church with all the shouting of ‘Alleluias’ and ‘Amens’, I might be able to attend that church.” I didn’t mean to imply that all the people sitting in churches weren’t walking the walk of Christianity; I hope she didn’t take it that way. It did leave her speechless -- but much that I say and do leaves a lot of people speechless.

I was driving to Maryville when I found my faith, and I began laughing so hard I had to stop the car and call Gayle, who wasn’t home – but Chuck was. I can’t remember what I said to him, but I knew he wouldn’t “get” my elation. I had been a Catholic all along – I wasn’t Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Catholic; I was what we are taught is the true meaning of the word “Catholic,” which is to say, “Universal.”

At first I thought it was a Cajun thing, so I labeled myself Cajun Catholic. (I seem to have a lot going with the whole CC thing: Coker Creek, Crazy Cajun, Cajun Catholic.) I wasn’t brought up on the bayou, even though I spent summers there, but I’ve always felt that my nature is very molded by my Cajun family. They are very “live and let live” people.

Now, this isn’t to say that they allow you to do whatever you want in their homes. My Cajun grandma used to make the rules for her home, and then say, “If you don’t like it, there’s the door.” My aunt (my Cajun grandma’s daughter) is much the same way, but much more soft spoken about it. Her husband is the one who shows you the door if you break the house rules.

It’s just that, on some basic level, they have always understood that the church is there to support them in their journey through life, not the other way around. They’ve always had a healthy skepticism for anybody’s teachings that came from books without any life experience to back it up – much like mountain folk. Somehow, I can’t imagine my grandma or aunt going to the parish priest for marriage advice, or advice on raising their children.

I live by words; the words spoken to me affect every aspect of my being. I’m a firm believer in the saying popular with psychiatrists and social workers in the seventies, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me crazy.” The words of the creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church” are said in (I think all) Christian churches. Now, by the commonly held definition of Catholic in Christian churches, catholic means universally Christian. So I looked up the definition and the origins of the word catholic. This is what I found:
catholic adj
1. universal; relating to all men; all-inclusive
2. comprehensive in interests, tastes, etc.; broad-minded; liberal
[from Latin catholicus, from Greek katholikos universal, from katholou in general, from kata- according to + holos whole]

Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/catholic

This may not be earth-shaking to most people, but to me it was life-changing. As soon as I find the church that’s truly catholic, I may join the congregation. Now, why did it take me so long to read the dictionary?

Putting the Puppies Away

I know that in the cities, the young women run around “half-nekkid” with their bellies hanging over their britches, and the young men have half their boodies bared, but that dog just won’t hunt in the holler. Since nothing else in such a small community can be kept secret for long, folks here try to at least keep their body parts hidden. Besides, between the cold weather in winter and the yellow jackets and copperheads in summer, there’s little incentive for baring your body on a farm.

One reason many of us move to rural areas is for the privacy it affords us. For we women this can give us the opportunity to let our bodies breathe. We all know that there used to be rules for what women wore and when they could wear it, like no white shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. And we never, ever, let a man not our husband see us without our undergarments. I’m of the age that took these things seriously growing up, and our husbands were raised with women covered-up, unless we were cover girls or on the beach.

There’s a bit of a problem with making the transition from close-quarters city life and drop-in-anytime rural routines. Most of us women don’t like to be up-tight while we’re hanging (literally in some cases) around the house. We have to insist that the husbands call before coming over so we can, as Adam says, “Put our puppies away.”

Well, Mountaintop Mary’s husband Don was coming by to borrow some computer software. I knew I was getting into the shower, so I hung the software in a plastic bag on the front door knob. Several hours had gone by with no sign of Don. When he finally arrived, Gypsy met him at his truck and wasn’t looking like letting him past her. It didn’t seem right to have him hobble all the way past our ninety-six-pound “pet-me” machine—what with knowing he’d been knocked down by one of their four-hundred-pound “pet-me” machines (one of Mary’s horses)just last week, and is still limping from his bruises.

My puppies weren’t in their pens, even though I was fully clothed, and it was long past lunchtime. I was in the kitchen, so the first thing I saw when looking for something that would sub for a burka was my aprons hanging on a peg. I grabbed one, and tied it on. What a perfect solution to our ongoing girl issue! Now I know why the maw-maws used to wear aprons, whether they were cooking or not. Why, oh why did June Cleaver have to mess it up for all of us?

There are some women who are always dolled up every time I see them. This is not at their houses, but at the grocery or drug store. For all I know, they may be fully dressed for only an hour a day; even I could stand being controlled for that period of time – I think so anyway.

Princesses and Professions

Many mamas might understand this, but many may not. My daughter is coming for a visit, and I’m so excited I’m like a girl waiting for her first date. I guess this needs some explanation…

My daughter and I spent her life doing everything together. I used to try to get her to go outside and play with someone closer to her age, but she insisted on staying with me. I never knew what she found so interesting about me, but we sure were attached at the hip.

Fast forward to her entry into adulthood.

First there was her boyfriend that she met at McDonald’s. Then there was college – with her boyfriend. The trip that started at McDonald’s progressed to marriage. As soon as she finished college, she conceived her first little angel – a very high-strung child. Just when her first was looking like her weaning was a permanent condition, along came her second daughter, a very intellectually demanding delight.
Her children became the end-all and be-all of her existence, so we never had a moment alone. (Well, almost never –the alone moments were always subject to interruption with one childhood or husband emergency or another.)

Then, Rachel heard the call of her other vocation. She became a teacher, as her University of Georgia degree decreed she should be. But, being just a teacher wasn’t enough for my little matriarch; she had to sign on with a Title One school, with a predominantly non-English-speaking population. Imagine the extra hours it takes to grade third-grade papers from children who have no English-speaking parents at home to help with editing their homework!

Rachel’s daughters are now almost fifteen and almost twelve. They have trained their daddy to be a sensitive and caring dad of the twenty-first century – or else. (Remember the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?”) Now Rachel is free to come see me – without husband or children in tow. I guess the girls gave her a hall pass to come see their granny.

I’ve warned Rachel that Richard is incapable of cooking without a menu plan, a recipe, and a targeted trip to Ingle’s and other good grocery stores. She says, “It makes me no never mind” – this from a third grade teacher! I told Richard that we’ll be happy foraging for our food; I hope this keeps her happy, as she also said she doesn’t want to “run the roads.”

It won’t surprise me if Rachel and I end up in the kitchen. I like to think that her reverence for experimentation began with our kitchen capers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn that so many of our pre-Women’s Lib domestic skills sowed the seeds of our princesses’ professions?

Richard has agreed to make himself scarce, as there’s no telling into which part of his house we may wander (wonder-braless, at that.) I’ve informed him that we may want to watch “chick flicks” or other emotion-provoking episodes, like the series on our nation’s national parks. He may just move into the RV and suffer in silence.