Her Voice Was Changing…

Everything I…or anyone else for that matter…write has a voice…I hear it very distinctly as I read the page…I know the voice I like to write in…it has a soothing melody…a bit like rolling ocean waves…a friend of mine who sees life in colors…sees turquoise and lavender when reading those pages…

I like that image…I like that someone can see my voice as a color…and it’s very cool…that my favorite voice takes on my favorite colors…

To write in that voice…I have to be in a certain mood…a certain place in my life…confident…sure…true…and then it just flows…and I love it…I love writing…I love living…

I haven’t been there lately…I’ve been out of sorts…and my writing has reflected it…even though I tried…I tried really hard…to give it the same voice…it came out with a twang…a bit nasally…like singing with a cold…

Why am I out of sorts…nothing dramatic…it’s just as easy for me to get out of sorts when things are going well…than when they aren’t…sometimes it’s actually easier…I’m not always sure how to handle the good times…strangely…they can be frightening…

I found myself engaging in other people’s drama…seeking it out…at least that's what Bertha said…explaining that I wasn’t comfortable with my life at the moment…I was seeking distraction…instead of letting my life evolve as it was meant to…

So…I’ve struggled with my writing…trying from my place of frustration…to get my voice to sound like I wanted it to…

Bertha…gently…and when I say gently…I mean she hit me over the head with a skillet…explained that rather than trying to force my voice…it would be so much easier to do the things that I know will help me back to the place where the turquoise and lavender voice flows…

Nothing gives me hope like Granny's Buttercups!

Time in the contemplation chair…this time sitting in the sunshine in Granny’s rocker…visiting Granny’s buttercups…picking a few…digging a few…I feel my voice changing…softening…thank you Granny…

Jane 

Granny’s Buttercups…

Granny Turner loved buttercups…well…I assume she did…she had lots of them…for as long as I can remember…there were two rows going between the pecan tree and the outbuilding we called the garage…then…there were clumps and clusters scattered around the yard…like rays of sunshine popping through clouds…

There was a heavy frost last night...love the ice crystals...

Like most of the old-fashioned buttercups in the south…Granny’s usually bloomed around the end of January…when there had been just enough warm days to wake them up…sometimes to find themselves dusted with snow a few days later…

Granny passed away late one Saturday night at the end of January…I’m trying to figure out the year…I think it was 1992…the year really doesn’t matter…but it frustrates me that I could forget it…and…even the exact date…

What I do remember…is that her buttercups were blooming…

I remember calling the florist at home on Sunday morning…to make my special request…then going back to her house…in the rain…picking huge armfuls…to be used in her flower arrangements…

I like to think that she smiled…when she saw the arrangements…I know the family did…it was comforting and somehow fitting to celebrate her life with her own buttercups…

Some twenty years have passed…Granny’s house is gone…the property stands empty…long since sold…

Some years…it has been mowed…and the buttercups are easily visible…and pickable…I still have to have a bouquet…

This isn’t one of those years…this year…the pecan tree has fallen…and the rest of the yard has followed it into disrepair…tall grass and broken limbs would make it difficult to even see the once stately rows of buttercups…much less…pick a few…

Buttercups...in all that brush!

But…these are Granny’s buttercups…they evidently have her determined spirit…AKA…stubborn…and can be seen peeking their stately yellow heads through the debris…for all the world to see…and as a sign for me…

Even when things look bleak…even when there seems to be no way…there will still be buttercups…and they will still find a way to bloom…

Jane

Christmas Eve…

Jim Jenkins died on Christmas Eve…that’s about all I remember about him personally…that…and that he cut his hand on the tin roof when he was building our barn…I remember there was a lot of blood and he acted like it was nothing…

Granny's rocker at my current home

He was a strong man…a good man…who loved his family…and did the best he could by them…

I sat in Granny’s rocker on my porch this morning…and looked out at his home place…contemplating Jim…and the family that binds us…his father and my grandfather were half-brothers…

I imagined my great-grandmother sitting in the same rocker…on this same porch…looking out at the same home place…I wondered if he lived there as a boy…I have no idea…

I have no notion why I feel compelled to write about this…what is the lesson that I have to learn…what is the feeling that I want to express…

I remember being in Granny’s living room with all the aunts and uncles and cousins when the call came about the wreck…they were on the way to Rachel’s in Tennessee…

I never knew that people died on holidays…I never knew that Christmas could be a time of sadness…and forever hold painful memories…but then…I was only a child…there was so much that I didn’t know at the time…

I remember how quiet the room got after the call…I don’t remember the funeral…I don’t remember ever talking to Melba about losing her Daddy…I have no idea how her Mother managed to make ends meet after his death…

I feel remorse for not knowing those kinds of things at the time…but I was only a child…

Many Christmas Eves have come and gone since then…and somehow…I’ve grown to expect Christmas to be a time of sadness…at least part of the time…and…I reopen my painful memories like presents under the tree…passing them around for everyone to see…

After all…I’m no longer a child…

Jane

PS…now for…the rest of story…I wrote this piece a few years ago…when I was living in my great-aunt’s home place…my great-grandmother…she would have been Jim’s grandmother…did indeed live with my great-aunt and uncle in her later years…and my grandmother sent her the rocker to use while she was there…

I’m still not exactly sure why I wrote this piece…but it’s one that has stayed with me…through thick and thin and numerous computer crashes…so…I’m sharing it today…Christmas Eve…thankfully I don’t feel the need to reopen the painful memories this year or pass them around again…in fact…I think I’ll see what new things are under the tree…