While It Is Still October...

Photo taken at George Ranch Historical Park in Fort Bend County, Texas - just down the road from our house.

Autumn here on the South Texas Gulf Coast does not always have the range of vivid color experienced by areas with more intense seasonal change, but it displays a wonder of softening light and a whole new palette of green.  It is no surprise that poets choose to write about these days on the calendar.

 

I have long liked poetry, but I came to love it in the last few years, and began writing poetry again after years of sticking mostly to prose.  This year, I have found many poems featuring this lovely time of year, so I wanted to share a few with you before the month is gone.  Today is Halloween, October 31, so, while it is still October...

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 - 1864

Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
Humbert Wolfe

I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring...W. S. Merwin, "The Love of October"

Leaves rip from the trees 

still green as rain scuds

off the ocean in broad grey

scimitars of water hard

as granite pebbles flung

in my face.

Sometimes my days are torn

from the calendar,

hardly touched and gone,

like leaves too fresh

still to fall littering

sodden on the bricks.

But I have had them—

torrents of days. Who

am I to complain they

shorten? I used them

hard, wore them out

and down, grabbed

at what chance offered.

If I stand stripped

and bare, my bones

still shine like opals

where love rubbed sweetly,

hard, against them.

"October nor'easter" by Marge Piercy, from The Crooked Inheritance

Opal

                                                   Opal Antionette Terrell  in 1914

October 19, 2013

Tonight I am in Tyler, Texas – the city of my birth almost 73 years ago. As I stand looking out on the busy street below my hotel room window, I think of my mother and father and the small clinic where I was born. Tomorrow would have been Mother's 100^th birthday so we will go to visit her grave in a small cemetery in Bullard, Texas -  a small town south of here where both my maternal and paternal grandparents lived, and where Mother and Daddy met and were married, and where their remains lie, marked by a single piece of granite.  The cemetery is the burial place for many others of my relatives, and is a place I visit not out of obligation or of belief that I am visiting them, but as a sign of respect and a way of keeping our family story. A way of saying “I remember.”

Today is also a day that I gave birth to our second son, who was born only minutes before midnight the night before what was then my mother's 67th birthday. She came shortly after his birth and welcomed her newest grandchild and splendid birthday gift.  Birthing day and all his boyhood birthdays, these too, remembered.  

                                  Opal and her oldest brother, Vinnon Terrell  in  1914

                                         Opal, her oldest brother Vinnon, and younger brother, Travis

                                                            Opal Terrell

Crepes!

For my first ever Mother's Day in 1968, Joe bought a gift for me.  When I walked into the kitchen on that Sunday morning, there was our baby son, propped in his infant seat with a tall box beside him. It held an Osterizer blender, the first of several we have used and worn out over the years.  Part of the gift was a small booklet of recipes, which Joe used to choose a breakfast to make for me.  He made French Crepes with a rich orange sauce.  A few weeks ago, I told him I had been thinking about how good those crepes were, so he offered to make them for me again.  Here is the result!  These crepes have a delicious mixed berry sauce, but since then, he has once again made the orange sauce for crepes. He even made them for Jeremy and our granddaughters, Maddie and Jordann, when they were here last weekend.

He decided he wanted a new crepe pan, too, so I think I can look forward to being treated to breakfast again soon. With our 50th wedding anniversary coming soon, I am often asked how you stay married that long.  Treating each other with love and kindness is one of the ways.   I have often said that one of the ways I like to show friends and family they are special to me is by cooking good food for them.  This time I am the one feeling special!  Thank you, Joe!

How Did You Say That?

I grew up in East Texas with one sister, and Mother and Daddy owned a cafe, but it wasn't named after us. When I saw this,  I couldn't resist thinking about the way we talked, so here's to " putting a little south in your mouth"

In 1960,  I was traveling by train from Texas to California in order to work for several months for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.  It was the first time I remember being noticed for the way I spoke.  I asked a conductor a simple question - "Can you please tell me the way to the dining car?" And he laughingly replied, adding "...and what part of Texas are you from, little lady?"  I was shocked because I didn't think I sounded different!  Yes, growing up in East Texas gave me a drawl that has only diminished a little in all the years of living away from there. But many East Texas influences on my language have stayed with me.  Whether you define unusual regional words and phrases as idioms, colloquialisms, vernacular, or just plain peculiar, sometimes they require explaining to someone "not from there."

There are a lot of words and phrases used differently from dictionary definitions that are common in East Texas.  I mean a whole bunch of them!  Just a few examples are:

Sorry - a particularly important Texas adjective meaning worthless, no-count, useless, bad. Enhanced inflection makes it more emphatic.

Place - an individual's farm or ranch.

 Swan – as in “I swan” - used instead of "I swear."

All worked up - in a state of aggravation, arousal of some type, in a state of deeply offended pride, offended sensibilities, 

Frog strangler, Gully washer as in “It came a frog strangler and a gully washer.”

This refers to a very heavy rain. 

Come hell or high water - shows determination to proceed, regardless of the problems or obstacles.

You done stopped preachin' and gone to meddlin'. - You're sticking your nose into my business. -

And other words that may not be in the dictionary at all:

Larrapin - a few fingers tastier than finger-lickin' good.

Over Yonder - a directional phrase meaning "over there."

Hissy fit, also called conniption fit - state of extreme agitation and not a pretty thing to see.

Downright  - very, very

Plum good -  delicious!

the cat that ate the canary -  a guilty countenance

I grew up with these admonitions:

Beauty is skin deep.

Pretty is as pretty does.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Save a penny, save a pound.

Waste not, want not

You needn't get on your high horse! - Don't take offense.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  - be sweet, not sour!

A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down - almost like saying the donkey needs a carrot!

He is walking in tall cotton.  - This can refer to someone who has "made it" -  and is "living high"

Use it up, wear it out.  Make it do, or do without.  This is kin to "waste not, want not."

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.  You get the message!

There are many more I could work on remembering. I think about what makes these rise to the surface of my mind so quickly. It is not the words or how crazy they sound or how they are put together.  It is the context in which I heard them, and the people who spoke them.  Today I smile, and am glad to add this to memories of those years.  Try a little south in your mouth!.