Just flown on by and we have had Halloween and Thanksgiving and are pushing 90 to nothing towards Christmas in the middle of all the STUFF going on in the world.
The wind is blowing and the leaves have dropped except for one that clings to it's red leaves right outside our window. It's always the last to let go. The die-hard tree.
I have been both home in Nashville and tripping to the backwoods of Saints in Limbo land. Want to see? okay - just for you I'll upload some photos here of that good creek where the mullet swim deep in dark, spring waters, and the ghost of my past hovers near and dear. Fact is, as a child . . . (okay fact is I was just burning something in the kitchen because I cannot write and cook at the same time and this has been proven over and over again and I don't know why I still try!) Alright back to where I was - fact is - as a child I would like awake at night in the dark, dark place known as the country while it seemed EVERYONE else in the house - that would be grandparents and parents and cousins galore had gone to sleep. And I would watch the heat lightning out the window and smell rain coming through that open window and hear the frogs calling out and the crickets screaming and think - Lordy, lordy, I sure have to grow up and get outta here.
Now you know what I am ahhhemmmm - older, and all grown up (on most days) and I do so miss that muddy swamp and just don't sleep well unless I can hear the scream of frogs and crickets. Little by little - I'm returning to the age of my earlier days. I'm searching for a water wheel down by a mill pond. I'm looking for the shadows of my people walking near and dear to me. And I find them over and over when I run my fingers through the stories that surface in my mind. The'y're all about heat lightning and summer nights and the deep south and the way that life once was and is no more.
So even the pictures are short on substance. They don't tell the stories about cold winter morning hovered around a wood stove where my Great Grandaddy had built a fire and started breakfast. They don't tell of freezing ground and trying to catch barn kittens just born four weeks old. They don't tell about the smell of the seasons passing or the sound of my Memaw's laughter. How one dimensional they are yet how full of life. That's the way it was. Life ran through those pictures. Footprints better than anything you imagine. My daddy's bare feet stopping off to go fishing. An old plow horse getting ready for work. Acres of corn, peas, and butter beans.
When the new novel arrives I hope you can catch of taste of the way it is and the way it used to be. And the magic of the moment. Of treasuring every blessed moment.
In the meantime - a few snapshots I happily share with you. 'Tis the season to be grateful and today I am grateful for you - good reader, thank you for your time, your life, and valuing a story lived and told.
