Do faeries die?

"Do faeries die, Daddy?" "Well. I think they may live so long and have such interesting lives that in their end they just fade away." "Oh." She believes me. No doubt." But this question lingers. "Did my grandpas fade away?" This is serious. Grandpas have been a part of Sadie's dreams and questions for as long as she has been. They both died in their early 60s, victims of disease. Both, before she came into this world and our lives. I should be good at questions like this. Rowan had them when she was little, which seems like a forever ago now. "I don't think so Sadie. I think they left all at once, because they were tired."

In the shelter of each other

This old book I pick up from the pile of old books because of its title. In the Shelter of Each Other. Rebuilding our families. I remember that time when my daddy carried me upstairs from the coach. I had fallen asleep reading a book. My daddy, dead now since Rowan was a newborn, some 15 years. He gave me shelter. No doubt. It's been a long time out in the sun and rain and I long for that kind of shelter. Unyielding. Strong to my weak, warm to my cold, clear to my fuzzy. Don't we all want that? Daddies and shelter.

What I don't know

I am 45. I feel it in my left knee. In my eyes when I read the small print. In my back when Sadie jumps on me, with all of her 5-year-old spunk. In my brain when Rowan questions everything I say, with all of her 15-year -old rebellion. I know a of lot things. Not as much as Luther Riley, who died this morning, at 97. Luther was my mother's friend. An old man, who retired from working at the Duke University bookstore, and delivering clear and magical moonshine, in the old days, to the good folks of Durham. Luther told me, when he was 91, that he knew I went to Carolina and liked the light blue of Franklin Street. He'd forgive me. If, I could tell him about Ellicott City, Md., now. He'd visited Ellicott City when he was building warplanes in Baltimore in WWII. Your mama doesn't understand why you would live in Maryland, but I do, he said. That was Luther. He died this morning, in his little house on that little island slightly off the coast of North Carolina. I know a lot of things, now that I'm 45. What I don't know, is what I will know, when I get to that point that Luther got to this morning.

A sense of place

At a gathering of folks discussing faith, the question is asked: "tell us something about yourself." It's an icebreaker. Tales of conversion. Knowing that there is a God. Fighting for redemption. Fighting disease. My addition seems lame, but as true as I can tell it. I describe a sense of place. A knowing of a bit a land, in perspective, in finding a purpose in the geography, an old history, people gone and forgotten, people coming and unknown, all here, near the Chesapeake and the Choptank. It is a faith. The native Americans knew more about it, when land was less commodity than special for simply being. I spend many minutes thinking about "me." Not enough about faith, love, hope and what is special. Today we place a geocache in a remote place near the Choptank. A bridge once stood here. A ferry was nearby, carrying people since Colonial times. Now it is marsh and hot and filled with biting flies. The Moses for her people, Harriet Tubman used this place as part of the Underground Railroad. The pain they felt. The terror they fled. It is all here, still. The Native Americans forced to flee before them. I feel there is a remnent yet. God must know about this place. He must know about a sense of being part of a geography. It's that simple.

Mobile

I'm listening to Neil Young "Live at the Riverboat 1969." I am back to the hotel room in that fancy hotel in Mobile, Ala., two years ago. It was a late, muggy night as I landed in the airport in Mobile. The ride from Detroit was bouncy. The ride from the airport was long, me on the last shuttle, with an older African-American lady who had spent her entire life in Mobile. Mobile has the very first Mardi Gras ... "it would be good for your babies." Family friendly. I brought up my youth in North Carolina, one Southerner to another. To her, though, North Carolina might as well be the Maryland I call home now ... North. South is here in Mobile and down that long road to New Orleans. We talk. I listen, a lot. I learn that she worked in a factory that closed. She has one son, who has moved away to South Carolina with a girl. Now it's just her and a grandniece in need of mothering. "You want to call ahead when you go back to the airport, the shuttle doesn't run all the time." Good advice that saves me at the end of this trip. I tip with every bit of cash I have in my pocket. Not much, but she is overly grateful. I feel guilty for being able to tip, the dark lining in every bright cloud, that guilt. So tired, I make it to my room. High up above Mobile Bay. I see twinkling lights of ships out there in the humidity. The air conditioning is the real thing. Thank goodness. I turn on the radio. Neal Young. Turns out to be an all-night Neil Young station. "Sugar Mountain." "Whiskey Boot Hill." Stuff with Crazy Horse. New stuff. At 2 a.m. It's enough, I turn on the alternative setting ... ambient sounds. I pick Southern thunderstorm over rainforest stream. Seems appropriate. Like me, being here, right now.

Today

It's a rush.

Run.

Push.

Beg.

Plead.

Make the case.

These are hard times.

People.

Most of them.

Have a harder edge.

Me. Me. Me.

Survive.

Make it out whole.

Soul intact.

Remember the end.

Of this life.

Brings another.

Slow down.

Mother's Day

Her hands are freckled. And chubby now. Old age swelling.

She's been thin and heavy. I've seen her crawl out of bed with arthritis. I've seen her cry like the world was ending. I've heard her laugh like laughing was enough to make the difference. I've seen her crazy and sane. It's a slight shading of difference.

Those hands have shelled field peas. Threaded needles. Washed collards. Held hymnals. Spanked me. Praised our Lord.

She grew up rough. A sharecropper's daughter. A farm of tobacco, rice, cotton, corn, pigs, cows, survival. Oil  lamps. Books, once every two weeks from a library in a spot of a town up a dusty road in southeastern North Carolina. 

She traveled. Lived in Japan, Italy, England, Spain. Taught me how to read. Taught me to respect -- everyone, not just the Governor and the preacher, but that man picking up the trash, that man who could be you.

She grew up in the church. The grand-daughter of a Baptist preacher. His face is now in a tiny photo on a tombstone in a weedy graveyard next to a church he preached at. In Bladen County. He was famous in that time, long ago. A way with words and telling the revealed truth.

She is South. Her great-grandfather and great-uncle signed up and fought in Antietam, Gettysburg and surrendered with Lee at Appamatox. Signed a book saying they would never raise arms against the Union, again.  The story left from them was of hard times, dead men and hatred for the North.

She held me. My sister. My brother. She loved us. She's old-fashioned. Hard. And sweet. My mother.