Flu and Bourbon

Why are we so frenetic at this time of year? Does this make us feel superior in some way? I can't imagine that is the answer. On the 21st of December, I refuse, absolutely refuse, to do more than the bare minimum. Oddly this has led me to a better understanding of God's commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, particularly by eschewing non-essential labor. I know several of my dearest friends will shake their heads (I know who you are, don't you laugh!). While they love me, they still think I have a few loose screws - maybe I do. That's alright. What lovely conversations for us in the Afterlife - or maybe not. Possibly most of it will be moot then. I'm almost afraid to post this, Between my ordinary and abiding "craziness," I have flu now for 5 days and have found Old Granddad to work better than NyQuill! One abiding thing is true. You are loved by the Lord our God and you are loved by me! I wish you and yours a Blessed New Year!

At the beach in sunny Florida. Been here for a week. We've had two days of sunny weather and today, thankfully, is one, but it is cool and windy. George and I walked on the hard-packed sand earlier and the sun felt great on my head! Have been unable to get oysters either in a restaurant or at a seafood market here. For that, I suppose, I must go home. I wish you a joyous Thanksgiving and a peaceful Holiday season.   

 "I heard the bells on Christmas Day,    their old familiar carols play,    and wild and sweet    the words repeat    of peace on earth, good-will to men!   ... And in despair I bowed my head   'There is no peace on earth,' I said.   'For hate is strong   And mocks the cong   Of peace on earth, good-will to men!'   Then pealed the bells more loud and deep   'God is not dead, nor doth he sleep,  The Wrong shall fail.   The Right prevail.

   With peace on earth good-will to men'." 

       Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863

Johnny Mercer's English Lyrics "Autumn Leaves"

"The autumn leaves outside my window"are almost gone. Yesterday and today I have done a great deal of research as I watched the leaves come down with each new gust. Winter is here regardless of the calendar date.

There's something so sad and yet so sweet about this time of year...

 

Sara's Talking - Fast

I had a restless evening where I could not sleep until about 4:30 AM. Thoughts kept flying through my head. I always say "Be careful what you ask for..." Well, I did ask for it. It's as if Sara is afraid I'm going to run out of time before she's finished.

I need sun on my head at a more vertical angle than it currently is. It is a beautiful morning out, but cold. Sara will probably talk about an event that happened approximately this time of year. Do you think, maybe, I should ask her to talk of a sunny day instead?

I began work again yesterday on Sara's continuing saga. I need a shot of adrenaline! My best ideas come about 2:30 AM, but I am too lazy to get up and start working even though the desk is at the foot of my bed! Ah, well. I'll procrastinate tomorrow.

Post Publication Relief and Gratitude

The first book in the saga is published! I am relieved and gratified! What was often a wonderfully exciting adventure in telling about Sara's early life became hard labor as I neared publication. Truly. Not as painful as actual childbirth, but much, much longer.

A debt that I feel I owed to Sara and her kin has been paid. I hope I did well by them. I gave it the best effort I could without spending more than the year-and-a-half writing, rewriting, researching, and asking everyone I knew well to assist in the process. Possibly writers with enormous talents find the process easier - possibly not. But it leads me to wonder, how long did it take Tolstoy to finish War and Peace?

Shades & Shadows: Sara's Story Begins (Book One)

The Origins of Sara

Sara's story evolved because of a recurring dream, some genealogical data, and family information my father passed on. The dream came first and it began well into my adulthood and came, I believe, from someone similar to the fictitious Sara.

In the dream I walked down an unpaved country road to a bend. The road and the bend exist. I walked there many times as a girl. In the dream I was alone, unafraid, emotionless, simply walking. The dream always ended when I came to where the road curved. If you round the curve, and walk another mile or so you come to the house where I grew up. In addition to the repetitiveness of the dream, the other puzzle for me was why the dream ended before I turned he curve. It always ended there as suddenly as it had begun about 20 paces back. 

A few years after the dream began, my father told me that he needed to show me where the family slave cemetery was. I was nauseous at the idea that my ancestors owned slaves, but over the course of five years or so, I decided someone should know where those bodies lay. No one still alive would know the names or the stories of those souls buried there.

The next summer when I visited my family, I asked my father to take me to the cemetery. We trudged roughly 150 yards into the woods from an angle about 22 degrees south by southwest from where the road straightened to the east. We left the roadway at the spot where my dreams always ended. We dodged and moved briers, bent bushes out of the way, and watched for timber rattlesnakes and copperheads. My father had not seen the cemetery since he was a boy hoeing corn for an uncle who then owned the surrounding land.

More than 60 years of neglect changed the scenery considerably for my father. The large old white house that stood at the bottom of what was once a cornfield had collapsed in upon itself and had become food for termites. Beef cattle grazed in pasture surrounding the house. The corn field was long overgrown with a variety of vegetation, including large trees. The property no longer belonged to any family member.

Dad remembered a few landmarks: a jumble of rocks, many too large for a single man to move, and a large chestnut stump, five feet or more in diameter. These were near the cemetery. Since the wood of chestnuts resists the ravages of nature for years, he counted on the stump still being there.

Dad looked around for several minutes, moving first in one direction, then another. He was not young, but he was still agile, with memory intact. He located the stump, the rocks, and the cemetery which had been disturbed. I later learned that a neighbor boy had dug there in the 1960's thinking it was an Indian burial mound. That neighbor is dead now and I doubt anyone alive knows what, if anything, he found and removed.

A tremendous sense of loneliness fell on me standing there in those deep woods with an undergrowth as thick as the tall trees would allow, but I never again had the dream. I was called to that lonely place; of that I have no doubt. I have been back several times since with a few people, including a brother-in-law who is a safe guide in woods. The place has a stillness as if the dead are at peace, undisturbed by animals and birds. Someone knows where the bones lie. The dead are satisfied, I think. 

- Mimi Mitchell