Saturday
10.14.23
I’ve enrolled in a writing course entitled, “Beginning Memoir”. It is being offered by one of my favorite authors, Janisse Ray. For 10 weeks we will meet via zoom once a week. Our homework is to write…everyday. So until mid December, I’ll be sharing these essays. They’re short and sweet glimpses into my life from a different writing prompt she gives us for each day of the week. I look forward to developing more in the craft of writing.
Childhood Beach Trip
I remember the ocean breeze on my face as I sat watching their acrobatics. It was so magical and I was transfixed. It was my birthday and I thought it was the best one ever!
Every year a few weeks prior to my birthday, my Daddy would ask what I wanted. It wouldn’t be long before back to school time. Usually all I asked for was a fish fry at the Maypop, my favorite swimming hole in the river. A family fish fry involved everyone coming together, wading and pitching to catch fish, gathering oak limbs for a fire to cook them over, and if we’re lucky, homemade ice cream. It truly was a special event. But this year, I said I wanted to go to the beach—I’m not sure why. I think up until this point in my life, I had only been once to Tybee Beach with my aunt and cousins. We’re country folk and a 2 hour trip anywhere wasn’t very common for us.
At first Daddy was hesitant, but he finally agreed to take me. Granny, my brother, Daddy, and I went to St. Simons Island. It’s south of Tybee Island along the Georgia coast just above Jekyll Island. It seemed like the longest ride. I love that you can always smell the salt marshes and know you’ll be at the beach soon.
It was like the country came to the beach that day. I’m not sure I even had a bathing suit. It was a cloudy, breezy day so I don’t think I was planning to get in the ocean. I just wanted to see it and feel the sand under my feet and between my toes. Then I saw them—they were magnificent. A pod of dolphins jumping and playing just off shore. I felt tears welling up in my eyes because I couldn’t go out into the ocean and be with them. Then people were coming out of the water yelling, “Shark, shark!” And it started misting rain, so we all piled back in the car and headed back home…over the ‘Hoopee.
A River Runs Through Us
The river runs through my memories and my soul. Its tea colored tannic waters are full of refreshment on a hot and muggy afternoon and full of fat bream and speckled perch when it rises after the winter rains. Some of my earliest memories are in it. Following behind the grown ups as they fished under logs and in the caves up near the bluffs. All us younguns trailing behind, splashing and playing in the shallow clear waters and on the pristine white sand bars. Fish fries at the Maypop were my favorite. My family had names for all the little fishing holes. Those never stuck in my memory. I guess I better talk to my brother and get those written down.
Same river, different landing, is where my Hubby grew up playing and where we would skip school with his cousins (my best friends). When we were teenagers, we would spend the weekend camping down there. It’s where we’d spend the 4th of July with family and friends, teaching our kids to love the river. It’s where we sprinkled his mother’s ashes after they had spent too many years on a shelf in our home and I told him she was begging to be free.
The river is how I talked my loved ones into letting go of this world. I was at the death bed of my Grandpa, Daddy, and Granny within months of each other. Each one of them I described a scene at the river for. A fish fry where their most cherished loved ones awaited them since all of them had a deep love and connection to the river.
The river is where I want a portion of my ashes spread when I depart this earth. A portion at the family cemetery, a portion on the farm, and a portion in the heavenly Ohoopee River.
The grand boys were introduced properly to the river this year. Baptized by it with family love. I look forward to many more years of memory making with them so they have a strong connection with the river as well.
Our little farm is called Over the Hoopee Farm because anytime we’ve ever lived away from here, crossing over the Ohoopee river meant coming home.
Grief Work
Beneath my feet the leaves crunch softly as I travel down the old bridge road. I’m running or perhaps jogging or perhaps we should just call it trotting, as I am not very graceful at the activity. The sound and the feeling of the ‘Hoopee swamp overtakes me. The smell of earthiness surrounds me. This is where I feel the most at peace. Something about this swamp eases the painful heartbreak and grief that comes with loss. I’ve been lost for several months in it. Afloat in a sea of sadness without a life raft and feeling like I was sinking fast.
Then I started walking every afternoon, which eventually led to this trotting. I was making loops from my little river house, up the sandy hill, up the dirt road, out beside the highway, and down to the bridge, then through my swamp, up the old bridge road, then start all over.
The swamp is where I would reconnect with something, where I felt most alive. Not sure if it was because my blood was really pumping by then or if there is some sort of magic in that swamp. That is where I would end my trots, in the swamp. I would do some light stretching and then just take it all in. The tall majestic trees. The hollowed out tupelos. The swaying cypress trees with knees that appeared to be little gnomes on the edge of the water. I would sometimes imagine at night that these little folks would come to life after dark.
I would wonder how many people made a river crossing here. The name of our dirt road ends in “Ferry”, so I supposed even long before they had built a wooden bridge, there was a crossing. As the river rises and falls, I often find little treasures that were buried in mud long ago. Bottles from the 1930s and such. I have a picture of my great uncle on the old wooden bridge with his car. That must’ve been from around the same time as the old bottle.
There is one old cypress on the far side of the old bridge road that looks like it has an eye carved into it. I’m not sure if that was meant to be some kind of sign as the crossing but I like to imagine all kinds of things about that eye. Sometimes I can get really otherworldly in these imaginings. Perhaps it’s a portal to another dimension or time and we’re being watched from some other place through this eye. I like to go down and talk to it.
This swamp, covered by water through most of the winter, is one of my most favorite places because it healed the hurt of a really dark time in my life.
Life Shift Thanks to Covid
So much for that autumn seemed increasingly difficult. We both came down with covid at the same time the end of August. It wiped us out. Took all our energy. We are two people who grow and raise most of our food, and we’re rarely sick. I can’t remember the last time either of us had a cold or the flu.
Autumn is meat season for us. We grow a big, beautiful garden full of cabbages, collards, kales, broccoli, and lettuces. We raise meat birds that go from being small chicks to freezer ready in 7-8 weeks. We usually have a group of pigs that are also finishing for processing in the colder months. We also hunt and process our own deer.
But last autumn, all of that went to hell with the onset of this new virus. The virus itself was uncomfortable to get through but we were well prepared. It was the lingering fatigue that threw us off the way of life we had been growing into the past 6 years. A more fully agrarian way of life. We’ve been gardening and deer hunting as long as I can remember but the past 6 years we’ve been learning and practicing more intense gardening styles and raising our own meats.
We had a batch of meat birds coming that would be ready to butcher the day after Thanksgiving. There were other families who were depending on this meat, so we had to push through. So we did. However, every little virus and sniffle that we were exposed to after having the ‘vid, pulled us back down again. Our immune systems had never been so weak.
The seedlings I started in August were destroyed by our wandering flock of juvenile turkeys. So there wasn’t a fall garden. I was blessed to find someone local who was selling some mighty fine greens at the red light in town though. I believe those meals helped fortify us and we pushed on.
By spring we were still dragging and the weather was weird. A late hard freeze zapped my spring tomato and pepper seedlings. My no-till garden lay fallow all season. Hubby did grow some potatoes, peas and corn in his garden. But I didn’t want anything I would have to spend a lot of time preserving, as I still just didn’t have the energy for it. We processed another big batch of meat birds in May. By June, I was headed back to “the real world” to my old job.
Chaos
Some people love chaos and I avoid it like the plague. I prefer calm, thoughtfulness, and peace. But, let’s explore this further. I despise chaos and uncertainty in the outside world around me, yet the inside of my mind is a chaotic nightmare most of the time. You see, I have an extremely busy mind. It’s constantly flitting from one idea to another. “Oh look, this beeswax here reminds me that I need to finish my salve and lip balm projects.” Or playing out scenarios of upcoming events or replaying events of the week and how I could’ve handled them better. It’s worrying about whether my Hubby is still happy with me, after all these years and in a different phase of life. It’s worrying over the happiness of my son & grand sons. My mind is thinking about, “What if I died tomorrow?”. Have I left behind enough information for them to figure things out. Did they know how much I loved them? Will they keep me in their memory forever? Oh, and let’s not forget the never-ending wondering of things that cannot be explained or understood. Spiritual things like feeling the presence of lost loved ones and seeing the trees and flowers they planted all around. Chaos, I tell you, utter chaos is my mind.
Which is why I believe I crave the quiet, peaceful places and covet my alone time. Chaos can be found in large groups of people and events, but it also abounds on social media. Lately I’ve been making a conscious decision to limit my use of it. I started by deleting the apps off my phone during the week. Now I’m attempting to go the weekend without accessing Facebook or Instagram on my phone or computer. I feel like I’m pulling my psyche back from a world filled with chaos.
Thanks for reading and being here. Let me know in the comments below how your free write sessions are coming along and if you are learning anything new about yourself. See you next week!