Whitehall

Tonight we packed a picnic and took the boat to Whitehall. We docked out on this teensy little island and the kids swam for a little while. Delta fished and I spent some time communicating with a school of kivvers who identified themselves as "The Angry Anklebiters" and gratefully shared my chicken salad reciprocating by blowing oily purple bubbles that spread along the laketop like fireworks. Eventually they lured me into stripping down to my unmentionables and diving in the water much to the surprise of Delta and my children who thought I was some sort of sea monster when I came around the other side of the island. Here are two pictures I took with Delta's phone. The sun set on the right side of the lake and the moon rose over the left as we zipped through the water. We were extra-zipping when I took the moon picture hence the special effects.

Home Again

I'm glad to be home, if only for my kitchen. After two weeks, restaurants all taste the same and there's always that little niggling paranoia that I'm going to get salmonella or e coli from something somebody else cooked. Or hepatitis c. or Ebola. Boy am I glad to be done dodging bullets. Besides, the kitchen is a place for witchcraft. Outside, on vacation, I am a mere mortal but back home I am a sorceress. Food Alchemy is my medium and my meditation and the most direct way I can pray for the people I love. And, to paraphrase an apron I saw once, most of the people who eat my cooking go on to lead perfectly normal lives.

Yesterday we stopped by little house on the side of the mountain because it had a sign outside that read "Gifts by Lavender." Delta said that sign's been up since he was a kid but he's never been in there. So we stopped. I wanted to find a face jug made out of local pottery for my mom Face jugs are jugs made from pottery that have scary, twisted faces made into the belly of them. Making the jugs is a traditional craft as old as moonshine and potters and the purpose was to scare children away from the poisonous substances inside. (i.e. moonshine, whiskey, medicine) Face jugs were, literally, the original skull and crossbones.

Anyway, we stopped by this little Lavender shop to see if the local crafter inside had any to offer. The shop was attached to the house, right inside a little carport and there was a sign asking you to wipe your shoes and ring the doorbell. When a little old lady in a wheelchair wheeled up to let me in, I knew that pottery or not I would have to buy something before we left. She had a houseful of old lady crafts. You know, crocheted afghans and doilies and stars for Christmas trees. She had handmade quilts selling for $500 a piece. She had teddybears and baby booties and dishrags. But no pottery.

So I uncomfortably engaged her in conversation, checking the prices of everything, cringing because the prices were all up around where I'd have to write a personal check. Somewhere in our conversation I ceased to be a customer and she ceased to be a crafter and we became sisters from opposite ends of the spectrum.

"I'm 84 years old already," she said, "And Harold's already 88." She gestured to outside where Harold was mowing a portion of the hundred acres they owned. "And I still clean this house every Thursday."

She also held mortgages for as many people as a bank, owned a campground, two farms and half a mountain, did all her own bookkeeping and crafting, found her way into a half a dozen most notable women books and received a personal Christmas card every year from the Reverend Billy Graham.

And she'd lost 3 out of four sons, one husband to infidelity and later death and both her parents.

All I could ask was, "How?"

"Don't think about things too much," she said, looking deep into my eyes, transcending roles. "Or the panic will get you."

Instead of a face jug I bought a doily and a few dishrags and hoped that Delta wouldn't blurt out that I made the same old lady crafts myself and I thanked her. When we pulled away, I had the serendipitous feeling that nothing happens by chance. There really IS a sisterhood and during this trip I've been embraced and comforted. The same for at home. It's the sisterhood who carries you when you fall.

I promise never to take that for granted again.

All my sisters-in-law but one are the biggest warmest, sweetest, most Didi-mind-readingist people in the world. One is nuts. Certifiably. I wish I could bottle her up and bring her home so you all could see just what kind of maniac the North American Redneck is but sadly she'd stab someone.

But back to the others. They can all cook and they give you that fresh baked bread feeling.

Oh, wait, I forgot the other other one. SHe's kinda nuts too but in a different way. She channels daytime drama and sprinkles it on everything she touches. '

But the others. They just hug me and tell me exactly how to deal with the crap I've been going through and no one even ever told them! Two of them lost a parent themselves and so they pulled me aside and said things like, "Do you get them there palpitations or that paranoid panicky feeling?" and "Don't you worry girl, you ain't gonna feel this bad forever." And they know it for sure. It's like someone standing a little bit closer to shore and saying, "Come on, you'll be able to touch soon." Plus they're nurses.

Yesterday we went to the place we call Chez Swann. It's a big farm out in the foothills and it belongs to my eldest brother-in-law. There's horses and four wheelers and a pool and dogs and miles and miles and miles of paths. The kids go wild there on the horses or the bikes. Last night we swam in the pool while the sun set streaky pink over the mountains. But then poor old Bambi had some wild idea that the horses wanted to play with her. Then she got stompled. But she's ok, just a little stiff and limpy and beat up. At first I thought she was done for. I thought she was strolling down Old Yeller lane. When she finally dragged herself over to me I told her, "I guess those aren't really big dogs after all, Bambi." Maybe that's a lesson we ALL need to learn.

On Vacation

Hey y'all! We're in NC right now, high up in the Appalachian Mountains where the only radio waves that reach are from country music stations. If you want to know what it looks here, watch The Last of the Mohican's or Dirty Dancing. Both were filmed here. I'd add a link but I'm working on an air card here and it takes forever plus three minutes to change pages. Reminds me of the days of dial up or when you had to type in http//: before you went anywhere.

We're having a good time. The house we're staying in, a house that's been in Delta's family since the family rowed here from Scotland and England and mixed it up with the Cherokee's who were here first, is most assuredly haunted. There's been a series of unexplainable footsteps and the presence of a woman named June who pretends to have been a dream but who I know is real. And there's the cranky old great aunt who tortures me while I go to the bathroom. One of the ghosts told me the rest of my story while I was dozing in the upstairs room and now I can finish (ok, start) writing it. One day when it's a bestseller (in hardcover no less) and I'm negotiating over the movie rights I will publicly give thanks to the ghosts of the mountains.

My in laws are as colorful as a sky full of balloons. I come from a family only in theory and to marry into a family of this many - more than I can count on all my fingers and toes - is a trip. My one sister in law (she's a redneck. She'd insist that I tell you that. Really.) has a house that was struck by lightning seven times. And just last week her little doggie was struck down a nd killed by lightning too. There are times when the noise level alone sends me running for our little whitewashed room in the attic. You should hear the way they say my name. I'll teach you how to do it. First, stand up. Now take a deep breath in, open your mouth so wide that the person in front of you can see the punching bag in the back of your throat and now holler "Down" as loud as you can and mostly through your nose. Then cock your head and make a little sarcastic face and think about the myriad ways yankees disintegrate the fibers of American culture. But don't use big words when you think about it.

I love my in laws and I love coming down here. And I DEFINITELY don't think southerners are all named Bubba or need a diagram to tie their shoes. I admit, the first time I came here I kind of thought it. But all the years of Mason Dixon hopping have taught me why that is. It all boils down to the speed of speech. Our northern vowels are crisp, fresh, snapping lettuce, crunchy apple. Southern vowels are long, meandering, bottle of molasses, katydid song, mountain brook. To us, fast is the way to be. Slow speech mean slow mind. To them, fast speech means uptight, in a hurry, know it all.

Today we're off to Asheville. The check engine light in my car came on and we have to go see what the problem is. Then we're off to Chimney Rock or Cherokee or up to Grandfather Mountain. We've got an appointment to look at some property in Blowing Rock, the place that the fictional town called Mitford was based on. It's the only place other than Massachusetts that I could ever see myself living. It's about as close to perfect that a town could be.

Talk to ya'll later.