Flossie Mae Goes to the Prom

Does anyone really like going to class reunions? This was my tenth anniversary since graduating from high school, way before the days of Facebook and social media. Seeing as we had three youngsters, one of whom was only a couple of months old, I had been very busy, too busy to worry about a lot of things. I felt fat, frumpy, and wasn't sure I wanted to face my classmates who hadn't seen me in 50 pounds or so. But I signed up anyway, paying out the nose for Ken and I to attend. I don't know why they do these events this way: they bring in liquor, a DJ that plays the music way too loud, cheap food that isn't cheap, and in a hotel that ends up costing an arm and a leg. This was the only one I've ever gone to. I have decided that if I want to hang out with old friends from high school, we'll meet up at the barbecue joint in town, where we can hear each other talk and don't feel compelled to drink and dance in front of each other. 

Suffice it to say, it was too late to do anything about the Mommy body, but there's always the hair. My Mama agreed to pull my long, stringy mess through a cap and frost it. A little lightening, a little brightening and maybe it might distract from the lower fourty. I know a lot of you ladies have had that old-school experience where somebody takes a rubber cap with little holes all over it, they squeeze it tightly onto your head then extort small batches of hair through it with a crochet hook. That takes an hour, and then there's another hour of processing and pulling off the cap. It sounds barbaric and it is barbaric. I had to nurse the baby while the goop was on, so it took longer than usual. So from either the heat or the hormones, when the cap came off, my hair was the consistency of overcooked vermicelli. White as cotton and melted.

I said there ain't no way I'm going to the prom, reunion, whatever you want to call it. My Daddy was there and said, let me help. He called the beauty parlor and Mama and he rode up there with me and the kids. I had wrapped a towel around the mess before I left the house. There was no way anybody was seeing me like this. Once I was seated at a station and unwound the turban, the beautician said "Honey, I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. You'll have to come back tomorrow, when our color specialist is here." I made sure I was dead asleep when my husband came home at midnight after his shift that night, and I slipped out early to see the "specialist." He chopped a lot of my hair off and persuaded me to spend a boatload of money on products that promised to heal my hair in a few months. Meanwhile, I was pretty sure I still wasn't going to that reunion. That afternoon, I trolled over to my parents' house. They wanted to see if I still had any hair. I got there and started crying. It was still white, even though it had a nice, fluffy cut. Daddy said we needed to head on over to Rich's department store. To town, to town, to buy a fat dress. 

So we did. I found a gorgeous, royal blue formal and bought a whole set of jewelry to go with it. New shoes too. We actually did go to the soiree, where Ken promptly split his pants and had to go back home for another pair (you can't make this stuff up). He left, then I ducked into the hotel bathroom, where they had a big, beautiful lounge area. I kept running into one friend and then another and another, until an hour and a half had passed with us having a nice party right there in the ladies' room. We laughed and talked, like no time had gone by. The dinner was good, then more of us crowded in the back so we could hear each other talk. We gabbed for hours and had a grand time.

So Flossie Mae, with her white cotton hair, perty party dress, thoughts of Elvis coursing through her mind, had the most wonderful night ever, thanks to Ma and Pa, Ken and the McEachern class of 1978. The Mommy body? Pshaw...

Old Black Water

I wonder what's going on with the Okefenokee Swamp now? Once in awhile I'll remember it from my youth, with fear and trembling. It was a scary, murky place, with moss dripping over black, oozing mysteries. The boats that took you on the tours sunk deep, deep into the water. You dare not let your fingers dangle. There were glossy eyes peeping out from the depths. Nobody believes me now, but there were skulls way on up in the trees. My Daddy said the Indians put them there to scare away white people. It worked for awhile. My sister screamed when she saw them. I bit my tongue when I saw a thick, long snake glide into the water not a foot from our boat. The air was hot, thick, full of mosquitoes. There were alligators everywhere. I thought for sure we were about to die.

They don't let you get so close to the water anymore. The boats don't sink down, the pathways are higher, they took the skulls out of there. The people who civilized anything from south Georgia on down must have been either superhuman or crazy.  I cannot imagine the determination it must have taken to carve a world out of those impossible places. Now the coastlines are the preferred landing for the gentrified. We are far, far from the rattlesnake's warning and the bayou shack. But on lone, quiet Southern nights, when everyone's gone to bed and the sleepless ones find their way outside, there still runs a shiver down the spine. We are not as far away from the wilderness as we might imagine. And that's probably true, no matter where you are.

Beach Brain

The sun was hot but the breeze off the ocean was cool. The water was ice under my toes. It took ten minutes to get up to my waist in the surf, each tiny wave bringing another shock. Finally I dunked under and my grandchildren laughed as I was upended by an unexpected roll of the water. We danced like ballerinas and swam like mermaids. Three-year-old Titus talked about the "fithsh" in the water and brayed when he had to submit to sunscreen. When I asked him his favorite part of the week, he said "when my Daddy took me crabbing." Five-year Annabelle said, "when my Daddy made me swim without my floaties." Funny that, because she screamed and wailed as he coaxed her to let go in the pool. Big girl Eden is only five too, but has been diving in the depths for years. Fearless 18-month-old Tatum, apparently feeling no pain, jumped gleefully into any body of water with abandon. The 7-month-old twins, Addison and Bennett, only cried when they weren't allowed to be in the middle of the party. Each child, so unique from the other, all precious. With six of our eight grands with us, there were lots of those moments that you never forget. Plenty of exhaustion, plenty of naps, lots of laughter. Now that we're home, I miss them all terribly, though I'm glad it's not my job to raise them. 

I don't know why we don't take two weeks of vacation. It starts with seven days at the beach and then we need another seven to recover. Days later, and my clothes still aren't unpacked, there's a film of sand on everything, and I mysteriously need a nap every afternoon. I'm already thinking of next year's trip and what it would take to lose fifty pounds before then. Maybe I'll start exercising, eating right and throw my old bathing suit out while I'm at it. These themes keep turning up in my mind. Then there's another theme: I'll think about it tomorra...

Panhandle Memories

The Florida of my youth was nothing like where I'm sitting this morning. We are basking in clean, air-conditioned spaces, where we can shower off outside or inside, choose to stay cool and sweatless or roast out on the beach and then dunk in a bath-like swimming pool. But as a child, no, these things were not options...

We rarely braved the trek to Florida. It took decades of hours, in a non-air-conditioned vehicle, with sweaty sibling bodies pressed together in the back like sardines in a tiny Volkswagen Beetle. Lunch was out of a cooler or a sack, pulled over to the side of the road. Brief, as there was no respite from the heat when you stopped moving. When I think of the panhandle of my girlhood, it sounds like the hot sizzle of cicadas buzzing. It was blazing and miserable. But at the first sight of moss hanging from trees, our spirits began to lift. By the time Daddy announced the ocean, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. We were rednecks and this was our Riviera.

I remember one particular trip, actually a very late one, as far as childhoods go. My sister and I were college students by then, my brother a middle-schooler. We were both working, me a full-time job, her a summer stint. Through work, I was receiving free Ramada hotel stays. Melanie and I decided to take the whole family to the beach, thinking we were big now. It was just for a long weekend, but we headed down in a bigger, air-conditioned car, much improved from our childhood trips. That whole jaunt is like a sweet place in my history book. Everyone was relaxed and the miles flew by as we talked and laughed. The ocean came into view. We were miles from our hotel but Daddy pulled into the sand and all of us piled out. I'll never forget the wonder of that one impulsive move. One of those rare times in your life when things like wetness, sand, agendas, schedules, and the cares of the world were thrown off in a moment. The sun was low in the sky and the tide was coming in. Swimsuits were discreetly changed into in the back seat and we threw ourselves into the surf like lemmings off the cliff. The water was as clear as crystal, bluer than I'd ever remembered. As we swam out, we saw thousands of sand dollars deep down. We dove over and over, bringing up handfuls. The sun went down as we reluctantly moseyed over to the hotel. 

The whole weekend was blissful. Everyone ate, slept, played. Melanie and I linked arms on our floats and talked for hours while the water lapped around us. I think we somehow had a sixth sense about our lives. Little did we know that by the time the next summer would roll around, we would both be happily married and experiencing our own massive sea changes. The carefree days of youth would be left behind. There were husbands, jobs, our own homes to manage. We had experienced the mystifying blessing of a good Mama and Daddy, with relatively little suffering or hardship. Life spread wide and large before us. There were many babies to be had, joys to be experienced, tears to be cried, burdens to shoulder, depths to be plumbed. 

All these years later, I remember that small patch of days with a sweet surge of nostalgia, bittersweet, mixed with pain and joy. Time goes by. I'm a fat Yaya surrounded with myriads of grandbabies, a good husband and a good life. I'm thinking of those days: my little sister's simple trust, my baby brother's sincere brown eyes, the black-and-whiteness of my parents' rules along with their ardent love for us. That's a serene place, with my precious people, in the center of my soul that time can't erase. I'm so very grateful.