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...

And I thought "Up in Smoke" was just an expression...

Poetic justice. That oft-spoken phrase, is often a fact of life. And my life, usually lived like a Greek tragedy or at least a redneck siren song, seems to see it fairly often.

I'm not bitter about this story I'm about to tell. It's just one of those things that can happen when you are self-employed. I have to say, God has been merciful to me and as far as I know, this was the only time someone did me wrong when they went to pay me for a job. I've had virtually hundreds of other jobs where I was paid. Even if it was late, I've always gotten paid what I quoted. Except this day...

This one started with a strangely-located house. It was being built close to the road, with another home almost right behind it. The neighborhood had average-to-lower priced homes. But this one was a palace, compared to the others. It was quaint, one-of-a-kind, with beautiful and unique siding. The hand-crafted front door was flanked by real gas-burning lanterns. When I first saw the house, it was not finished, but it also had to be one of the most resplendent domiciles I'd ever seen. The master bathroom was reminiscent of a Roman bath....a shower that seemed to be 20 x 6 feet, with showerheads coming out from every angle. Tile and marble with custom designs. A massive soaking tub in the middle of the room. A bank of cabinets on either side of the gargantuan territory, one slew of 'em for him, one pile of 'em for her. The bathroom alone was about the size of our first house, and certainly cost more than that little shanty did. 

The job that she wanted me to do included whitewashing two giant antique doors for the master suite that she had had shipped from Paris or somewhere on another shore. I was a little nervous about it because they seemed awfully statuesque and important, you know, coming from France and all. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but I knew it wouldn't be more than a day, so I gave her my day-rate price, plus materials. 

The day arrived for me to work on the doors. I brought my paints and muscles and started the job. These doors were massive, maybe eight feet high. Simply gorgeous. I was having a great time, humming away, when I heard two dogs barking and fighting in the basement. Except they weren't dogs. They were the owners of the house. I don't know that I have ever heard two people go at it that unashamedly in my entire life. I waited for a gun to go off but it never did. Some time went by. The lady came upstairs and asked me if I would also paint a medallion, way up on the ceiling of her (quite high) foyer, after I got through with the doors. I said okay and proceeded to precariously hang off the top step of my ladder to get the deed done. I cleaned up and got ready to leave. She put a check in my hand for 1/3 of what I quoted her for the doors (not even mentioning the materials or the extra medallion that I painted). She said that she didn't have any more money for me and that her husband was mad at her for hiring me in the first place (hence the fight down in the bowels of the house?) I asked her when she could pay the rest and she said there would be no "rest." That was it. Take it or leave it. Wow. 

All I could think was two thoughts: well, at least she paid me something. And, man, I better not tell Ken. I quickly cashed the check and pondered the mysteries of life, money and people with eyes too big for their stomachs. 

Time went by. A good deal of time. I got a call for a large faux finish job around the corner from the palace. As my daughter and I rounded the curve in the road, we saw what was left of it: a stone foundation and black soot and ashes from where it had burnt to the ground. All that splendid stuff, up in smoke. When we asked our new client about what had happened, she said that the owners had burned it down themselves and they were now in jail for arson. Oh. My. Word.

There's really not enough words for that. But suffice it to say, that foundation has been sitting there like a sad, scalded soul for many years. I very recently listed a house down the road from it and saw that someone had started rebuilding it. With the same house plan. So my guess is that they've paid their debt to society and are starting over. I don't know. I hope that somewhere over these last pages of time and through the difficulties of consequences, they found peace and that they were able to stay together. 'Cause that's some redneck Greek tragedy right there. 

The God of Christmas

We live in a media-sodden time, where we are saturated with the latest news and technology. Every kind of entertainment imaginable is at our fingertips. Tonight I'm thinking about the season we are in -- Christmas and the coming New Year. We are bombarded with twin messages of perpetual hope and terrorists blowing up cities. We see all sorts of beautiful, meaningful videos of people doing compassionate things for others. In the next, we are getting locked and loaded to prepare for the coming apocalypse and civil war. 

It seems to be our nature to live like pendulums, swinging from one extreme to another. There is good, bad, ugly, and everything in between. Some decry God, because there is so much evil in the world. The next group denies the fact that man can be evil -- and says we're all just victims of varying stripes. I see people that sugar-coat themselves in cloaks of seeming goodness, and then we discover that they are living dual lives that completely oppose what they say with their mouths. Then still others that don't even try to disguise their basest instincts and simply live like wild hedonists.

When I talk to people along my way, I am frequently told that they are Christians. They go to church, they said a magic prayer when they were 8, walked an aisle. They say they're doing pretty good, so they guess God will let them in when they show up at the pearly gates. They haven't murdered anyone, they try to be a good citizen, pay their taxes, take their turn at grocery aisles. 

Is this all there is? 

When I read the Scriptures, this is not what I observe. I see traitors, adulterers, cheaters, frauds, murderers and some really bad folk, along with a few amazing ones. And such were some of us. God apparently doesn't discriminate about who He has included in that hallowed tome. He puts all of them in there, really embarrassing ones too. If you dig deep, though, there's reasons for it and a larger message than is usually seen at first glance. It just kills me when people pick random verses out to prove a point. You need to embrace the whole book, to really understand. 

And that's what I've been thinking about, these last few weeks of holiday stress, coupled with sickness and too much work piled up. Under these circumstances, my icky self shows itself in new, delightful ways. Hurried, sick, overstretched, over-committed, under-funded, unattended house and laundry... then somebody lobs several containers of Christmas decorations on the living room rug. I can see dog hair floating through the air (she's chewing herself to pieces) and nobody's told my hormones to quit throwing gasoline on the fire. I go from sweating bullets to freezing in ten minute increments. Night and day. So what comes to the surface? All my sweet sugar thoughts of perpetual hope. Now I really am lying. 

Nope. This is when I see and experience the enduring goodness of God. Because He knows what the heart, my heart, is capable of. I am a sinner. A cracked miscreant who came here yelling and screaming and still wants to default to that same modus operandi. I think I'm pretty good, until I muse upon those infamous ten commandments. In some fashion or another, I've broken most of those, if not all. So is my scale tipping just enough that my good outweighs my bad? Really? I want to think so. In the end I know that even my thoughts have cracks in them. 

But this is hope: He came in the form of a sinless baby, child, man. He was God and man, all wrapped up in one. Perfection. God humbled Himself and became a man, and then gave His life as payment, redemption, for the sins of His people. So now I'm not standing in my own stead or my own limp imitation of perfection. He's standing in for me. His life, His death, His resurrection. I trusted Him when I was a child, and I'm never going to be perfect this side of heaven. I mess up, well, all the time. That doesn't excuse it. I don't live my life excusing my behavior or my sin because I've got a pass. But I do live my life now in a place of gratefulness....knowing that any good that I do, He is doing it through and in spite of, me. That's what the Christmas baby is really about.

A Moment in Time

I have heard it said that the most important words in any visit or meeting are done in the last few minutes. I believe this might be true. 

With the flurry that is the holidays, there are meetings, parties, visits.... it's a stressful, fun, hectic time. Depression often emerges. We think of our relatives who are no longer here. Poignant times that we can't re-live. Or bad times that we don't want to re-live but can't help but rewind in our mind. Then there's always the weight of finding the money to buy gifts and all the compulsory trinkets (and foods) that go along with the season. And the worst part: syncing schedules with everybody else to actually make an event happen.

One such occurrence transpired this weekend for us -- our Norton family Christmas party. It used to be a simple affair, Christmas day. Everybody brought food and gifts. And my side, the Slates, was always on Christmas Eve. But now there are multiple marriages and grandchildren that have bloomed from the tree. This year we did the Nortons way early, December 5th, so that there might be a possibility of half of us getting there. After much wrangling, it happened. My sister-in-law worked her fingers to the bone to arrange it and get most of the food there. We all arrived in our Ugly Sweaters. There were those few minutes that occur at any party, where there is some awkwardness as we reacquaint and pass around hugs and greetings. Then the food happens and everyone begins to loosen. The presents are opened, children are bouncing gleefully about. Cake and coffee later, people are shedding their sweaters and their inhibitions. The conversations begin to relax, the walls start coming down. We quit caring what anyone else thinks and start being ourselves again. There comes that special moment when joy begins seeping through the room. The place is buzzing with numerous conversations and I sense an overarching sense of gratefulness, a letting go of self and a receiving of each other. Yes, here we are. Warts, spare tires lopping over our belts, wrinkles, love handles, pimples, gray hairs, forgetfulness, babies crying, old and young all mixed together. Wasn't it yesterday that my babies were the ones needing diapers and a nap? And now I'm one of the older ones, needing a minute to readjust my joints when I first stand up. 

We visit heartily for a good while, then suddenly the announcement is made that we have to clean up and leave, because another party is coming behind us. The whole gang whips the place into shape in a few minutes and then we all start hugging and kissing our goodbyes. If there's something to say, you have to say it quick. There's a general consensus of not wanting it to end. It took us a lot of planning, buying, driving, and arranging to make this happen. But in the end, it's actually only a brief window of clarity and warmth that hangs over the group. A summary of all the buzz and tinsel that conspired to get us here. Sometimes in this life, that's all we get. A brief window. 

It's in these times that I try to force my ever-moving mouth closed and look around in awe at those that God put in my life. Savor it. Savor them. Let go of stupid, petty thoughts and hurts. Really hug them, no holding back. Tell them what I would tell them if I never got to see them again. I don't always do that. But I should. 

In the end, much of my running about, my work and livelihood, doesn't produce those kinds of precious moments. But the fact is, I still have to work, try, produce, clean, show up, make or save money somehow...I don't have the option of just coasting or just enjoying. But if I don't stop and relish the moment and the people, stop and listen, stop and love....then all the other things don't mean a thing. Carpe diem. Seize the day.