Wintersilver

I jump, as the tiniest touch of a cold, wet nose touches my hand. Curled up, warm and cozy, in comfy chair. Deep in book, joints settled. Supper digesting nicely, a muzzy feeling of contentment as I glance about. Husband nodding on the couch. Daughter's room dark already. The cold nose taps again, more insistent. Why?! Just took you out a bit ago. A nod and another nudge. This time a whine adds urgency. I unwrap myself from the chair, dropping blankets, a sweater and glasses onto the rug. A twist of the doorlock and a tug on the ancient door, the winter air rushes in, cold and mean. I don't bother with wrapping up.

Tiptoe on the stepping stones, missing the still-damp ground that lies between. Hurry! Hopping, stamping, shiver.... I regard the moonlit ground, frosty, mossy, old. The moon shines bold, resplendent, uninhibited. The arms of the trees split into thousands of runnels, silvered escape into the sky. The air is crunchy, biting. And there is nothing, nothing, that can describe the stars. Spitting fire, winter stars that make your eyes water, so sublime. I'm a child again. And every other nighttime, in a life of nighttimes, circles quickly and rests quiet. Like a bloom, starting from seed and ending in seed.

The icy air drives me back to the door. Dog racing by. Cats scatter. I want to stay. Diamond shimmer. Deepest blue graduating to softest gray. Planets showing off. Hung like tapestry, but richer than antiquity. I'm pulled back to the warmth. But the earth stays like a jewel, suspended in a special place in my mind. "O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who has set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the world of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour...O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" Psalm 8

Because a Country Girl Is the Best Kinda Girl....

There's a lot of people who listen to country music. There's a lot of people who wear flannel, hang big flags off their trucks and have those hunting decals on everything they drive and wear. But the truth is, there's not that many true country gals (or guys). Cowboy boots don't make the man. Or the gal. You can pay a lot of money to look like that, but what makes it true is way down deep in the soul.

I grew up in a subdivision, but at the end of it (or the start of it, whichever direction you decided to come from), we had fields beside and behind us, so us kids lived one part of our lives out in the street in front, riding our bikes, playing ball and in mud puddles with our neighbors. The other part was lived out in some sort of other dimension, quiet and serene. Fishing in the pond, stealing rides on horses in the pasture next door, catching tadpoles and sneaking them into our aquarium (where they hatched into frogs and Mama found them all over the house)... laying in the long grass in the fields with the sun on our faces, baby calves all around, lazily dreaming about the clouds above and all the things that life was starting to crack open. Blackberries growing along the fencelines, warm and bittersweet on our tongues. Muscadines bursting from their skins (just a taste of one now takes me back quicker than anything). Many warm, drowzy afternoons spent in solitude out in those meadows made me think, dream, center. 

Apart from a love of all things natural and country, there is a work ethic of a true country gal that goes so much deeper, born of days doing all the things that nobody wants to do: sweating at real work -- lifting, digging, moving. No pretty clothes involved. Scraping, stinking, dealing with refuse produced by animals (poop) and way more . No pink camo allowed, at least no clean pink camo. My sister and I spent days helping Daddy do all manner of work or just hauling along with him at whatever he happened to be doing. There were no real fancy devotions or lessons, just life lived in a real way. Prayers were spoken out loud and often. God was trusted. Money was tight, meals were simple and good, and honorable behavior and superior grades were expected. 

We were lucky. We weren't sophisticated and it didn't really matter, in the end. I saw over time how tragic or silly some of those sophisticated people ended up. And if not, hey, hurrah for them. Meanwhile, I had a wonderful childhood and a foundation to live the rest of my life on.

So, bring it on up to now.... thinking on a plucky girl that we raised (along with three big brothers) out in the country. I thought of a job she and I were working on in recent years...a large painting job in a vacant house. We needed a dishwasher and the owners told me they'd be happy for us to take their old one off their hands. It was clean and rarely used, so my daughter and I began taking it out to put in my work van. We pulled it out too fast, not noticing the really short connection to the water line.  Next thing we know, there was fluid spurting all over the kitchen. While I ran to find the keys to open the laundry room to find the tool to shut off the water at the street (much screaming and running about), said spirited daughter runs around the house to the miniscule space under the house, tosses the door off its pegs, and proceeds to dive in and army-crawl her way across 20+ feet to the area below the kitchen sink. It was 20+ feet of thick spiderwebs and whatever spun those things. I could hear her yelling all the way to the road. Most women would have turned back and squealed. No. She dove in and yelled. I couldn't get the water turned off at the street before she had already disabled it under the floor. She squirmed back out, spitting and slapping at all manner of creatures that had gotten attached to her during that melee. She yelled some more and then grinned. Now that's a country girl. She's near six foot tall, beautiful as a Greek goddess, smart as a whip and loves God like there's no tomorrow. No wonder there's no fella come by who's fit to fight for her. And I'm not even mentioning those three brothers and big Daddy he'd have to get through.

Island Girl

Island Girl

What's the value of a good friend? Immeasurable. Timeless. Priceless. 

I started out my life as a social butterfly. Back then, they didn't have categories for those kinds of things, at least not where I grew up. You were not pigeonholed as being "extroverted" or "introverted" or given labels like ENFP or ISTJ. Not many people pondered their bellybuttons like we do now. They just lived, survived, plugged on through. Or not. When my first day of school started, I was scared but quickly got over it. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. All those people! There were new adventures and lots of children my age to get to know and play with. We had the coolest teacher ever, Mrs. Bell. She was beautiful and fun, but had just the right amount of attitude to keep us in line. She wore white go-go boots. Best of all, she'd play records and let us dance on top of chairs before class started. The early years gave way to high school, where my hankering for socializing found plenty of outlets. I breezed through my studies, but was totally dismayed when I got to college and figured out that I was going to have to study instead of fraternize. This did not go well for me.

I began to understand that there are levels of friendship. Acquaintances, casual friends, temporary ones you meet on vacation, some you like, others you tolerate, and then those you dearly love. Sometimes that happens in a micro-second, almost like love at first sight. Souls are instantly bonded for life. I remember something my Sunday School teacher of many years told us -- that no matter how many "friends" you think you have, you will procure, at the most, a handful of the most intimate ones, and usually just one or two. I have found this to be true. When life hits you like a train and there's desperate venting, grieving or crying to be done, there are only a few people that can fill that bill. It's when we are at our crabbiest, creepiest, most sinful that we can rest on that kind of pal. They accept you no matter what. And you can weather insanely difficult storms, even when you might hurt one other.

Then there's the next level, a larger group, which I call my island friends. These are the ones that are kindred souls. We link easily. We love each other. We are all very busy with our own lives, too busy it seems. We wave across the water, not getting disturbed that we can't be all up in each others' business all the time. Once in awhile, sometimes often, sometimes not, we will get in our boats and paddle across to each other. We'll eat or drink something, spend a few hours, and the months or years melt away and it's like we've not missed a beat. These are precious treasures, not to be taken for granted.

This weekend, my daughter and I were able to pull our boats up alongside two of my old friends (old as in, we were really young when we first become acquainted, mind you) as well as their daughters. It was Friday night. Some of us were late, several had been at work that day, so we straggled in for pizza and salad, then succumbed to popcorn and ice cream. Everyone was relaxed and even tired, but in short order we were sharing and then laughing uncontrollably. As I looked around the table I thought of all the different scenarios represented there.... seasoned marriages, a divorce, college graduations, a baby on the way, new jobs, grandbabies' names on charm bracelets,  fresh wings finding their way and then old wings finding new horizons. We're all so busy, tied up with more life than we know what to do with....but in those few hours we were lucky to bind our boats and our hearts together. In musing about it tonight, I have to wonder what God's got for us in eternity. I have to believe that what goes on down here has a direct connection to the future. He's weaving. Meanwhile I'm singin' a peppy little reggae tune...
Rosemarie Norton is an artist, decorative painter and real estate agent who lives on Magnolia Street in Villa Rica. She loves to write. Thus, "Magnolia Rose" was born. Visit her online atrosemariesembellishments.com.

If You Give A Mom an Idea...

There's a wonderful children's book that I used to love to read to my kids: "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie." It's real life, where one thing leads to another. With the Keystone Kops world that I live in, it sometimes gets frustrating.

I have a confession to make. It is now January 8 and I still have my Christmas trees up. And my decorations. Worse, my huge plans to get eating healthy included purging my pantry. What you might not know is that my pantry is an entire room in my 115-year old Victorian house. We have dance parties and nurse visits inside there, not to mention a chemistry lab, if you count my kombucha culture that's brewing. So I emptied half of it out onto my island and kitchen chairs. Then I had to get a snack. Then the phone rang and somebody wanted to view a house. Then I had to go see not one, but two of my grandbabies who were hanging out at my daughter-in-law's house in Douglasville. And then there was supper and cleanup, back home and falling asleep in a microsecond. That was just the first day. Now I've pulled out all of the pantry and realized that I didn't need the baker's rack that is taking up space in there. I started hauling it to the bathroom, to put towels on, when my hubs had the seriously bright idea of putting it in the studio so I could store paints and art supplies. But there was a rolling table in the way. Brrrrrrring! Which would work perfectly for our new printer in the study! So we rolled it in there while Ken rearranged the desk and trash can. I pulled paints and supplies out of the studio and realized that I need to move two pieces of furniture around to make everything fit. Now the baker's rack is wedged against all the stuff spilling out of the pantry, nothing's put away and every single room in our house looks like a bomb went off.

I need to run to Sherwin Williams this morning and look at some paint for a friend. Company's coming at 10:00. We have our church small group tonight and I have to find and buy five pounds of wild-caught shrimp before 5:00. Real estate contract stuff to finish up. Open house to plan for next week. There's laundry running out everywhere. I desperately need to plan a healthy menu because Papa got paid today and there's no groceries yet. And no pantry to put them in. And I almost forgot, the Christmas trees are still up. 

So I woke up in the middle of the night, dreaming about murder and shrimp. And oh yeah, butter. Maybe I need a cookie....

Pit Bulls, HOAs and Herb Farms

You never know what might be cropping up next door. Particularly when you have lots of trees and underbrush between you and the neighbor....

We were living on five acres of property in Douglas County. Beautiful, sweet acreage that gave our kids lots of entertainment as well as work to do. We built a lovely farmhouse on it that looked like it had been there for a hundred years. There was an old homeplace on the land, with an ancient stopped-up well and remnants of a rock fireplace and foundation still visible. We bred and raised charming and angelic Golden Retrievers, the best friends a child could ever have. Our kids and dogs had a heyday out there. We had kind neighbors all around, people who would give you the shirt off their back but who also appreciated their privacy. Why else do you buy a big parcel of land?

A young couple built a house on the lot next to ours and lived there several years, then moved down the road. A new neighbor moved in. I felt bad because I had been busy and had not walked over to introduce myself. One day, we were working on our fence, with four or five dogs and as many kids helping us, when a huge black dog with a massive head burst out of the woods on the other side of the fence. He was growling, snapping and foaming at the mouth, apparently irritated that he couldn't quite get to us. We all were relieved when a man followed quickly behind with a contraption that he clapped around the dog's neck, restraining him. As we made introductions to our new neighbor, I kept trying not to stare. He was the shortest man I had ever seen. Tiny bone structure, flawless skin, beautiful eyes. And a mass of dreadlocks that threatened to topple him over. They were wound on top of his head like a turban. I imagined they weighed as much as he did. 

He was very nice. Articulate. Intelligent. I asked him about where he worked. He said that he had two homes, one in Atlanta and this one out here, and that he was in pharmaceutical sales. 

That should have been our first clue. 

Then we talked about our animals. I told him that we bred our dogs, and asked if that would be a problem. Even though we kept our females put up during their seasons, we often had male dog visitors who would park outside our windows and howl and cry for weeks on end. I asked him if his dogs were dangerous. He told me that he bred his too, and that his were friendly to people but that they might kill my dogs if they got loose. I told him this was definitely a dilemma, but that hopefully that wouldn't happen.

So when a different neighbor (let's call him Jake, just for fun) called me a few days later, asking if I'd seen two large Pit Bulls running loose, I went into panic mode. But here were Jake's words to me: "Rose, we've taken a straw poll with the rest of the neighbors. We are not abiding dogs like that who might kill our grandbabies, livestock or our pets. We've all agreed that we are shooting those dogs. If you see them, shoot them. If you don't want to shoot them, call me and I'll head over and do it." 

We don't need Homeowner Associations around these parts.
Or maybe even sheriffs.

Mysteriously, those dogs never made it home. He kept a couple of his puppies and raised those up. A few years later, the same scenario occurred. But my encounters with him were always pleasant. You couldn't ask for a quieter, more polite neighbor. Except when it came to his dogs. I began to notice that newspapers were piling up at the end of his long, gravelled driveway and that he had puppies and dogs barking at all hours. I wondered about him, then heard that he moved away, but no details about where and why. Until the day I ran into a sheriff's deputy who told me the tale.... 

His house went into foreclosure proceedings and an official came to serve papers on him. When he knocked on the front door, no one answered and the door turned on its hinges, revealing a giant duffel bag of contraband on the stairs (that's what I was told). The cop called in reinforcements and they raided the place. Turns out it was a five-acre marijuana farm, with crops out back, growing rooms in the basement and all the paraphernalia you can imagine. 

Never assume that all is what it seems. If I'd had half a brain, I should have wondered why he kept breeding all those Pit Bulls and why he let all the underbrush and trees grow up so big. Good night, he told me right then and there that he was into pharmaceuticals...