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The Only Day
Today marks the ninth anniversary of the day my mother departed this life and went on to the next one. My sister and I chatted about this last night, remembering some of the happy times and some of the not-so-happy times we shared with the stoic, flinty old woman who gave us life and fed us and sheltered us and tried to guide us. I miss you, Mother, and I love you. I hope to see you again when my own time comes to sail into the west. *** It’s still hot here and will reach 90 today and for the remainder of the week, but the mornings have been…
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The Thirteenth of August
Today would have been her 103rd birthday, and her absence these nine years has left a divot on my life’s surface. I miss her, and I am glad she isn’t here to see what has become of her country and her region. Seeing such ugliness would have grieved her tough, hidden old heart. Her middle name was Viola, which she hated. I always loved it, thinking it had a Southern literary lilt to it, like Eudora or Flannary, and I would sometimes address her by it, which enraged her. “Viola,” I’d say, “Reckon what it would take to get you to make me some bacon for supper?” And she would…
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Before Winter’s Solstice
Early this morning, I dreamed I was standing at my mother’s grave, down there in the flat delta where the cotton fields stretch like bolts of corduroy for monotonous miles. In my dream, I wanted to say some words to Mother, because I knew that she would be able to hear and understand me, but I could not bring myself to speak. There were leaves blown against her little tombstone with the hummingbird carved into its sleek surface, and they seemed to be telling me that it was all gone, my life and difficult relationship with that haunted little woman, that no matter what I might say to her, none…
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Fourth Sunday in Advent
I was thinking today about the year when we didn’t think we’d have a Christmas. We saw my daddy between two and four times a year. One of those visits was always between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He would show up and slam his truck door loud enough for us to hear it, and my sister and I would run outside to greet him. He would stand there, fists on hips, that devious, smiling, lean, dishonest devil of a father, laughing that completely delighted laugh of his, his weather-bronzed face split by an enigmatic smile, and scoop us up in his arms and swing us around as he loped to the…
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Because It’s Sunday
That Sunday gloom has settled in on me, which is a common lifelong thing. I’ve learned to accept it as part of my genetic makeup, and I’ve learned to ride it out rather than seek solutions. Today’s somberness was probably brought on by an extended period of thought about my mother, that unknown and unknowable woman who shaped me and with whom I fought and argued all the days we had together. I was looking out at the leaves dropping from the branches and listening to Jinx snore softly at my feet, and I could see her so clearly, with her sad expression, and I wondered again at how she…
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Century Plus
My mother was born one hundred and one years ago today, in the shadow of a small mountain. Tough, taciturn, and tortured woman that she was, she never did anything the world would call notable, but she did something that impressed me. She endured. My sister and I were discussing Mother this morning. We agreed that we’re glad she’s no longer in this world, that she’s not here to see what has become of the country she loved. It would have grieved her beyond measure to see the horror show called American life today. I comfort myself with the hope that I’ll see her again someday, on the other side…
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Hard Old Life, part iv
Mother, I was watching my dog this morning and thought of you. Jinx is his name, and I’ll risk saying something foolish and declare that I think you’d like him if you knew him. He’s goofy and affectionate and spastic, with eyebrows that Laurence Olivier would envy in their expressiveness. He’s the clumsiest dog I’ve ever seen, and the most graceful when he leaps and runs, seeming to be more deer than dog. He spends long periods sitting in front of me, staring into my eyes, and if I put a blanket across him when he’s on the floor, he falls asleep in about eight seconds, which is why I…
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Hard Old Life, Part iii
Dear Mother, Gone are the days, and can this really be? Six years to this very day since I got the call and learned that you had slipped out of this life and into the next. My strongest memory of that day is not of a sense of grief, but rather the self-centered thought, “Now what do I do? I’m an orphan now.” And also, “I can’t talk to her anymore. Where did she go?” And that’s the question, isn’t it, Mother? Where did you go? I have no way of proving it to the satisfaction of the refrigerated bean-counters of today’s Christianity, but I know that sometimes you are…
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Hard Old Life, Part ii
One hundred years ago today, my mother entered this life in a tiny hamlet called Adona, a thousand miles from where I now sit. She was the first child born to my grandparents Floyd and Willie Mae, and she never lived more than one hundred miles from the sharecropper’s shack in which she drew her first breath and opened her eyes. To my knowledge, she had exactly one birthday party in her life, an awkward affair hosted by my wife and me at her house in 2001, also attended by her daughter, her son-in-law, and all of her grandchildren. But that is another story for another time. ~ SKO Dear…
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Ninety And Nine
My mother used to sing a hymn when she did housework. This was when I was a small boy; when I was older, she never sang, though I don’t know why. The hymn I remember her singing often was “There Were Ninety and Nine,” and I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone sing or play this old chestnut. It’s a strange sort of dovetailing, me thinking of this hymn this morning, because today would have been my mother’s 99th birthday, and in the dark silence of the predawn, I heard a neighbor’s sheep baaing down in the holler. In the ancient world, such things would likely have been…