simmer2sizzle

Mid-60’s. Hendersonville NC. A small youth group from Binkley Church spent a few weeks at a migrant workers camp helping out at the day care center and small store.

While sorting donated clothes one day to hang in the store, I found a denim railroad jacket and bought it for about $2. It was well-worn, raggedy in places, and I loved every stitch of it.

Back home in Chapel Hill, my mother was horrified by the jacket and my insistence on wearing it everywhere. I ended up sleeping in it for months knowing that if Mom had a chance at getting the coat, that it would end up in the trash.

I still had it in art school evidenced by this drawing (which I clearly romanticized by ignoring the tears and rips – it’s how I saw it), but I’m not sure what happened and where it ended up. It’s surely out there with the baby blue suede Frye boots that I lost somewhere too.

The sweet memories often outlive the belongings. Such is life.

Shufflin’ through the vault
On That Train – Jude Johnstone
Coat of Many Colors – Dolly Parton
Last Train Home – Pat Metheny

Yes, today’s the day. Those posts. You know the ones. Almost written. Half written. Today they’ll see the light of day. You’ll get lots of emails. Apologies for that. Stay with me.

A cold day in February 2017

1 year. 7 days. X hours. That’s how long it’s been. Longer really since I’m trying to sneak in and count a little piece written for Durham Magazine. Sometimes you get so caught up in life – the living of it, the recovering, the making sense of it –  you don’t have time to stop and organize letters into some semblance of sentences and paragraphs.  Seeing that of the last three posts, two of them are about my Mom and Dad is extra bittersweet.

My Dad’s death in December 2014 completely untethered me. (Reveal: flapping in the proverbial wind comes easy for me. I don’t much like to be tethered.)  This was an excruciating separation full of murky permanence. Holding his hand for hours, then one tight squeeze. That was all.

In a chair at the foot of the bed, and mindfully unaware through her own curtain of Alzheimers, Mom just nodded and whispered a slow, drawn-out “yeah,” her go-to response to everything, even death. Her own death a year and a half later on their 65th wedding anniversary was unsettling and different. She fought ’til the end. Determined. Unknowing. Unaware. At the last minute, she turned toward me. Glaring into my eyes. Now THAT’s an imprint.

It was a gift being with them in their end days, at their last breath. I tried to soften it for them. Making phone calls to all the kids and grand-kids so they could tell Dad they loved him. Mom’s favorite classical music playing softly. A long-time friend brought in a mountain dulcimer. Another with the voice of a million angels and a 12-string guitar sang Amazing Grace. Somehow fitting since my Mom’s name was Grace.

Kinda shaken and stirred in all that was the news that my ex-husband Bill had died. Sad that in a recent email, he hadn’t told me he was battling cancer. Our separation/divorce took many of our friends by surprise, the close ones not so much. He had an edge and I was never totally comfortable in the marriage. I had always thought/ hoped we’d have time to sit across from one another and make things right. Not reconcile, just stop being angry with the other. I was surprised at how emotional and saddened I was by his death.

And at the end of the muddle, there was Lindsay. As if I’d dreamed him up – and I had. An entire lifetime of dreams. A complete surprise. Bringing the sweetest love I’d ever known. And for the first time in over 20 years, I was a family again.

A friend nudged me yesterday, asking about Simmer2Sizzle’s radio silence. That’s why you have S2S in your mailbox. I promise to do better.