happy birthday, mh.

aunt mary helen is 85 today. she is my dad's big sister, and one of my dearest friends. she is my history. she remembers.
i've always known her as garrulous and full of mccarthy-style stories. grandmothers. grandfathers. cousins and friends. all are carefully chronicled in her head. dad was the same, and offered all stories to anyone who would listen. i never listened. and then his stories were silenced with his death. but. aunt mary helen is very much alive.

i asked her to tell me everything she knows a couple years ago. and she said yes. six months later, i had in my hands a notebook full of her life. i'm still transcribing it. the family journal. my mccarthy people are resurrected by her words. do you know what that means? (i still have my family.)

in honor of mh and her birthday, here are a couple exerpts:

Let’s see what bull I can remember today. Anne, I know you are mostly interested in your Dad and I’ll admit he was an interesting fellow. There is so much family stuff that I want you to know about. You are really the first family person to want to know these things. I’m sure some of the stuff affects all of us but I also think some of the old stuff is worth repeating...
After a few years Uncle Bert built a 2 car garage that faced the driveway. He decided to build a new outhouse and put it behind the garage. The inside bathroom was used for night visits only. Before he started he was going around having everyone sit on brown paper and he circled the sitter. He was –he said—getting the size of its hole. When they finally got the outhouse built they had to have a dedication. Uncle Jim was home from Congress at that time and he was asked to speak. Of course, we had to have a parade. Can you imagine getting away with that today? Everyone was dressed up and we closed off a main highway for a length of time. Having a politician in charge helped. My Uncle Bert was grand marshall. He had on a white bathrobe and wore a small wastebasket on his head with a head of string mop over it and carried a broom as a baton. My mom wore a pair of Uncle Bert's BVD’s –she had a red jacket on and a hat with a bunch of flowers. Her nose was really red. Must explain about the BVD’s. they were a summer underwear for men made out of thin cotton, not knit, more like a handkerchief. They had buttons down the front and a slit in back for use. My mom was about 5’6” but Uncle Bert was 6’3” and probably had the largest size made. She was a beauty I’ll tell you. The crotch was below her knees. All of us kids were parading with pots and spoons. What fun.

This is the stuff, friends.

my friend susan OR the physics of tuesday.

i'm listening to my friend, susan, sing on the cd-r she made me:

bring on the wonder/bring on the song/i pushed you down deep in my soul for too long.
she makes me miss ireland. she makes me remember wonder.
(we often confuse amusement with wonder, i've been told. the former is cheap and the latter, real)

so.
last night we had these fantastic lightning storms. for a few moments, i was trapped in my car in the driveway under the deluge.
and i remembered the days of childhood and science class and wonder and fear: metal + lightning = bad. so, in my anne-head, there would be no eating with forks (or any other silverware) during thunderstorms, of course. i had many such theories about storm safety.

anyway, tonight in class this question was posed: can you recall an instance in your life when all was well with your soul?
we were then given 10 minutes to write. would you like to know what i wrote? sure. of course you do. well then; here you go:

I. i was 10, i think. winter. december probably. i'd been outside playing in my backyard, rolling heaping mounds of snow for snowmen--covered in leaves from the recent autumn underneath the white. i was tired. hot in my snowsuit. i lay down flat on my back for relief, snow covering my ears. the whole world was muffled. i could hear myself blink. i stared at the blank grey sky through barren maple branches and simply sighed. i held my breath, thinking that if this kind of quiet was what death is, i'd be ok.

II. ireland. "close your eyes; i want to show you something," jenna says. ok. i follow blindly. with permission to open eyes, i look down. and at my feet is the glorious rock and green of a north sea cliff, with hundreds of seagulls swarming and nesting. six feet below me, a mama gull nestles into a mossy nook and she stares at me head on. i stare back. "i'm no threat," i think to her. "I'm just looking." she continues to stare me down, unblinking. this is a bit awkward. it feels like ireland is staring at me.
i look up and around. the sea. the meadows. the green on blue and the sheep. it's all really real. no, really...it is. i look back down at the still-staring seagull, and she dares me not to believe.

(the end and goodnight.)

what we got.

morning class was cancelled. evening class dismissed after 10 minutes of syllabus review. i had unexpected free hours in my very hot and humid day. i spent both at bongo java, quietly. my morning hour and my night hour were both wonderful. this morning, i caught up on my nashville independent film festival details, and this evening i spent writing my june installment of 'anne's journal' for findingbalance.

jim called tonight. jim is my stetson hat-wearing, boot-n-spurs clad cowboy friend: grandfather i never had; the man who taught me to ride horses.
lately, there has been scandal at the stables: jim was fired. and for no good reason. and now my life at the stables feels tenuous.

jim doesn't know that he saved a big part of me when he taught me to ride. last summer was a summer i'd like to forget. except for jim. with a smoky, texan voice and clear blue eyes looking through a weathered face, he'd tell me, "you'll be alright, babe."

i believed him.
(and i'm alright.)

so. jim called me tonight. he's got a gig leading trail rides at big south fork park in jamestown, tennessee. he invited me down for a weekend, with this promise: "we'll get ya fixed up with a bed and a pony under ya, and you can help me lead trail rides and you can have some time to write."

he told me that he wants me to be whole. i sniffled a bit. he said: "babe, the good is good. the bad is good. it's all the good lord's grace. and that's whatcha get."
i think i'll be heading east to jamestown next weekend.

photos. photos.

HERE are some of the pics from the england/ireland trip, taken by curtis' digital camera.
they're fantastic.

xo

touchstones.

today has been one of those lonely sorts of days (aside from being so friggin hot) where i've been in my car a lot, distracted. sad. hot. but i've touched fingertips with people, which is nice.

at 23 years old, i pulled my first grey hair this morning, while cat-sitting for a friend in green hills.
also pulled a tick off my face. i don't know where that came from, but i'll bet it has something to do with horseback riding yesterday.

i went to church. a 7 year old girl named tanisha asked me to hoola hoop with her. i sucked.
ate triscuits and cheese with tanisha. enjoyed a homily from a guest priest, a hobbily old man who--sitting down as he preached--asked, what, friends, are pulpits for?
i liked him, although he kind of hurled the host at me during communion, like a frisbee. sudden burst of energy? not sure.
(the body of christ; the bread of heaven...GO LONG!)

i had lunch with my boston-dwelling friend, vicky, who has graced nashville with her presence for the past week. before wednesday, i hadn't seen her in two years, so it's been such joy to have her around. we've spent some good time together, talking hard things and beautiful things, as well as the silly. (insert cats and horses here.)
we planned the movies based on our lives today: winona rider or carrie-anne moss will play vicky, and angelina jolie or kate winslet will play me. (we're hot girls, apparently.)

vicky went home. and i'm sad.

am i boring you with my day yet? good. read on. it doesn't get any more exciting...

drove around listening to the bootleg of patty griffin's silver bell cd, which was never released, looking for the cheapest price for moby's new cd. i've never been into moby all that much, i confess, but after spending days with dear, moby-obsessed jude in london, i hear we are all made of stars in my head all the time, and i almost believe it. and for $13.99, i now own it.

then i saw my dulcimer-playing friend, linda, in her nashville dulcimer quartet, as they debuted their cd at jj's market. had a beer, ate some cheese and crackers, and left. the quartet was great, but i was feeling incredibly antisocial and tired and hot.

and then i watched mulholland drive with the cats, but stopped when it started to get all the more creepy, because i wanted betty/diane to be happy.

and now, i'm in bed with the cats. vicky just called to say she's arrived in boston safely. and patty griffin was playing in the background. it is the soundtrack of so many people's lives right now. we're all experiencing this collective heartbreaking hopefulness. i like it like that.

tomorrow is another day. it is monday. my sister, peggy's birthday. jim and kim's anniversary. my first day of summer classes.
goodnight now.

yaccs, et cetera.

so. you can leave comments again, if you are so inclined. (please be so inclined. your comments validate my existence.)

a big, fat thank yew to the bracketed and slashed one for being online at the precise moment which one can sign up to use yaccs comments. you see, they only take 100 new users a day, starting at midnight, and since i have not recently been online at precisely midnight, i've had to wait. one more day. one more day. but, sweet jamesy helped me out. and here we are.

KEITH once tried to be amongst the first 100 people on the jelly belly website in order to win some free jellybean goodness, but he never did succeed (it would have helped to have known [jp/p] at this point in life, eh keith?)

oh, friends, there is much to tell you, but it's so friggin hot in nashville, and i'm too lethargic to do much more than eat my maggie moo's lemon sorbet.
mmm.

more later.
(and don't forget to comment. it's good for you. like vegetables.)