It was the Kiss
“Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was hello, sexy, and wow….” ― Rachel Caine, Glass Houses
I’ve got Betty Everett’s “Shoop, Shoop” song playing in my head. If you don’t remember it, there is a Cher version that is slightly younger. The reframe, “It’s in his kiss, that’s where it is” is on auto repeat in my head. I am changing the pronouns from his to her.
Today would have been thirty-eight years…our anniversary. Unfortunately, it is exactly three months to the day since you left me. It is exactly three months not using the “d” word. Saying you “left” implies there is a possibility of reunion. Using the “d” word implies finality and I can’t use it. The truth hurts too badly.
This past weekend I decided to take a drive. I needed to get out of the house and a walk in 95-degree weather didn’t seem prudent. I decided to retravel some of the old pig trails we once traveled together in the comfort of our air-conditioned Jeep. It was a mistake. The pig trails mean nothing without you.
My drive did trigger memories of a time now past. The good old days…late 1984. Pig trails meant something then.
I danced around you for a year or more while you dated Jim, my roommate. We became great friends that year. We grew close but there was no dancing together. You tried to “fix” me up with all your friends, but all your efforts failed. The joke was that you failed so badly you took mercy on me. Thank you for that mercy.
I think my subconscious knew you were the one. I recognized there was a spark, a tingle whenever our fingers might touch but you belonged to another. That’s not true, you never belonged to any one person, not even me. The problem was that I was loyal to a fault even to a person who didn’t deserve it or you.
Later that year, there was the inflatable pumpkin on your head in the fall and a major reaction when I came home and found you helping Jim wash his boat that spring. That two-piece… ala Jimmy Carter I sinned in my mind. In between there was the ice storm power outage and Jim’s stupidity putting a puppy dog under the house to keep warm with a five gallon can of kerosene. I don’t know when we laughed so hard, and Jim didn’t appreciate it or deserve the puppy…or you.
With summer came the road trip from hell. I was a tag along…a third wheel as I had been all that year. If a film or fifties TV show had been made of the year, I would have been Pat Brady to Roy Rogers or Jingles in Wild Bill Hickock…funny but safe.
Jim was forced to move to Charleston because of his job but your relationship with him was already unraveling…had been unraveling for a while and that trip to Charleston brought it into focus. I had nothing to do with the fraying even though Jim believed otherwise.
I don’t remember what threw us together without Jim that Saturday afternoon in Charleston, but I took you to the market. What an afternoon. That is when it dawned on me that you might be special. Confirmation would have to wait until Jim’s final straw broke your back.
After your breakup, I continued to dance around until you took the initiative. We found ourselves dancing together for the first time at Bennigans. Serendipity put us together, and like the stray animals you love to adopt, I followed you home. The pretense was to get you safely home but there was the goodnight kiss…and I knew. There might have been several kisses at your doorway, but I knew after the first one. You were the best kisser…the best friend…the best lover…the best everything. I think heaven will be like that first kiss.
Dusty Springfield has replaced Betty Everett, “That ever since we met you’ve had a hold on me, it happens to be true, I only want to be with you!” And now I can’t. I can only remember your kisses…and the way your body fit perfectly with mine when I held you close. You took spooning to a grand level.
I think about all the mistakes I made before we found each other. You made a few mistakes too. Our mistakes were fate’s way of preparing us for kismet. We talked about it often, sometimes karma isn’t a bitch.
The night I followed you home I wanted to protect you. I have wanted to protect you for thirty-eight years. When it came down to it, I couldn’t protect you from what I couldn’t see or touch. It isn’t logical but I still feel guilty.
Happy Anniversary my love. I miss you terribly. Truely, the guilt is real. So is my love.
Just Hush Up and Enjoy the Holiday
“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
I made the mistake of searching for local Juneteenth celebrations or rather made the mistake of reading the accompanying comment section from my local news station. This was after I made a mistake of reading earlier comments made about Pride Month from the same source. Ah, the joys of living in a Red State.
Some of you bigoted folk need new material. Most of the comments were the same recycled stupidity I read when I previously clicked on last year’s comments about Kwanza and Black History Month…and this year’s Pride Month. Along the same lines, I’m sure many of you are cheering our state board of education’s decision not to offer AP African American Studies. Actually, I know you are, I’m a glutton for punishment and read those comments too.
Why are you so upset over something that isn’t bad? Don’t want to celebrate Juneteenth? Don’t. I’m going to celebrate with slow cooked pork, a crisp pilsner or five and the traditional piece of red velvet cake. Don’t want your child to take AP courses. Don’t sign up for them, AP courses are not required. Not gay, don’t say yes if a gay person asks you to marry them.
As far as Juneteenth, do some research…people on both sides of the argument slept through history class or were taught by “Lost Cause” instructors. You need to utilize our public library system or at least Google. For example…and if you don’t want a history lesson you should back out now.
Many concerns centered around July 4, Independence Day….
“Juneteenth is just a made-up holiday. We were all free on July 4.” The celebration of July 4, 1776, is also a “made up” holiday and freed us from nothing. We weren’t freed of anything other than Merry Old England and that wasn’t until September 3, 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. By the way, the Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed on July 4.
“We don’t need a second Independence Day!” It is true Juneteenth is considered by some to be a “second” Independence Day. By others it is celebrated as the Day of Jubilee. Still others celebrate January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation as the Day of Jubilee. Why is that bad? I want to point out that when the Declaration of Independence was signed a large segment of the soon to be United States was not free and would not be free for almost one hundred years.
Another frequent comment, “Slavery still existed in the border states and in the North after June 19, 1865.” You are correct. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end slavery in the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation only ended slavery in those areas involved in rebellion. Chattel slavery existed into 1866 in a couple of Border States and until new treaties were made with Native American tribes that had slaves.
Addressing the previous comment, “Why don’t we celebrate the Thirteenth Amendment instead.” I don’t know but it was ratified on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18th. That is a little close to Christmas don’t you think?
A comment about indenture, “What about my Irish slave ancestors?” Indentured servitude and chattel slavery are not the same. There is no evidence of widespread enslavement of the Irish indentured servants in the United States. Were some forced to work past the end of indenture? Probably, and in some cases, they were brutalized, but it wasn’t widespread and indentured servants signed contracts, usually for four to six years, and had rights. Chattel slaves did not and that form was generational and for life.
“Making Juneteenth a national holiday was just a political move to gain votes.” Juneteenth as a national holiday might have been a political move. Possibly…probably…but it still isn’t a bad thing to celebrate and occasional good things occur from political moves.
June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the Civil War. Can you imagine the emotions that swept through the formally enslaved when they found out they were free. Juneteenth is Freedom Day for those whose ancestors were enslaved. They aren’t hurting or taking anything away from you. Join in and enjoy.
“Why did it take so long for word to get to them?” It really didn’t. Emancipation occurred piecemeal as the Confederacy was overwhelmed. While Lee surrendered his army in April of 1865, it didn’t end the war. On June 2, General Kirby Smith signed the surrender of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi making Texas the last Confederate stronghold to surrender. The final Confederate land forced to surrender did not come until June 23, when Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie gave up his command in the Oklahoma Indian Territory.
Juneteenth is not new and originally wasn’t called Juneteenth. It is new as a national holiday, but the first Juneteenth celebrations occurred in 1866. Festivals popped up across the South until the Great Migration took it across the rest of the nation beginning in the 1920s and 1930s.
While there was a decline in celebrations during the Jim Crow era (wonder why?), since the 1970s, Juneteenth celebrations have become numerous and have centered on African American freedoms, history, arts, crafts, and food. How is this bad?
Not historical, my least fravorite comment was, “When can we have a Whiteteenth?” Okay. Irish Heritage Month is in March, Scottish American and Scot Irish Heritage Month is in April. Italian Culture and Heritage Month is in October. Get my point? I know they aren’t national holidays but there is plenty of opportunities for us to celebrate our fish belly whiteness while gripping about Asian American Pacific Islander Month, May, Mexican Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, and Native American Heritage Month, November.
So, please just hush up and enjoy the many diverse cultural celebrations…not just Juneteenth, celebrate them all. Go to a festival. Enjoy art, music, or food. Try to learn something so you don’t seem so dense and bigoted. If you refuse, just hush up and stay in your lane.
***
Many diverse recipes are included in Don Miller’s latest book, “Food For Thought” and can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2
Do I Want it to Get Better?
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
It has been two months, ten days and a double handful of hours, minutes, and seconds since you left me. I do miss you like hell. You were my sunshine, and the skies are much grayer since you left.
Family and friends check in to make sure I’m okay and always ask, “How are you doing?”
I appreciate their concern, but I don’t know how to answer the question. “I’m okay” is the lie I often tell them because I don’t think people want to hear, “Somewhere between numb and devastated.” Whatever I answer, I usually get the unsolicited but well-meant comment, “It will get better over time.” Will it?
I appreciate the advice but one of the voices in my head asks, “Do you want it to get better and for clarification, what is ‘it’ exactly?”
An honest question deserves an honest answer. I don’t have one. I’m at a loss. I want the pain to go away but I honestly don’t think I want the hole in my heart to heal. I think for the pain to go away memories must fade like an old black and white photo. You were so much more than a faded black and white photo. You were my “technicolor” darling.
My life was without color, and I was never whole until I met you. You were the tie that binds and a colorful psychedelic painting. I’ve gone back to incomplete and unraveled and as bland as boiled chicken. I don’t like the feeling that I’m not dead but not alive either. I am in a halfway house for grievers it seems.
Truthfully, I don’t want to not be thinking about you. I don’t want to not be missing you. I want you to be the first thing I think about when I rise in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. You deserve that along with the thoughts that come to me throughout the day and in dreams at night.
I’m sure people are worrying that I’m spending too much time alone wallowing in self-pity. I’m not. I’m not alone. You are still here. I carry you with me, right next to the hole in my heart.
I remember going to parties or gatherings and following you around like one of our puppy dogs. We would always find ourselves in an unpopulated corner of the room talking to each other, ignoring everyone else. You were always the most interesting person in the room and tit was comforting feeling your hip pressed against me and your arm hooked in mine. I carry you with me but the thought that I will never hold your hand or hug you brings back the unfathomable pain.
I try to stay busy. You certainly left me with a gracious plenty to do but as I work my way through bins and boxes, it is like one of our adventures. I never know what I’m going to find next, I just know it will remind me of you or something we did.
“So”, the nagging voice in my head asks again, “do you want it to get better?” No, I don’t if it means the memories of you will diminish in any way. Maybe I can just hope for getting different rather than getting better.
***
Just before my wife’s passing, I published a “cookbook of stories” described as being Southern fried in the renderings of fried fatback. These are short essays and recipes from the South. Download or purchase in paperback. Food For Thought. http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2
Bumping into Memories
“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
It has been a month and a half since Linda left me. I struggle most days…attempting to come to grips with my new normal. Friends and family check on me. I say what I think they want to hear but truth be known, I am struggling.
I try to stay busy putting one foot in front of the other. It is easy to stay busy…I lived with a hoarder. Just a fact. Not recrimination. I allowed it. Thunder just rumbled. I’m sure it is just Linda’s “heavenly” reaction to hearing the word “allowed.”
We often talked about decluttering but never moved past conversation. I once attempted to put my foot down and exclaimed, “You can’t bring in anything new until you take out something old.” It had no effect because I could never say no to her. She just stomped the foot I had put down.
Linda could throw nothing away and why buy one item when a dozen of the same item is a dozen times better. A bag full of broken sunglasses, other bags with the remains of broken drinking glasses or dishes. A bag with a dozen brand new baseball caps. Bags full of…bags.
In my head I heard, “It didn’t matter if I needed them or not, it mattered that they were on sale and I might have needed them.” I admit the thought brought a smile to my face.
I have taken garbage bag after garbage bag of clothes to a women’s shelter. Most were sweats or active wear and many still had tags, clothes she intended to wear but never got the opportunity to. Clothes she put away for a rainy day not knowing that day would come too soon. I still have many garbage bags to fill.
I pause to look at a beautiful purple dress with a colorful, matching wrap and a butterfly necklace hanging on a door frame. The outfit still has a tag on it. I’ve paused every time I’ve walked past it. It is so beautiful, so Linda. I can’t give it away…at least not now. I wish I had had a chance to see her wear it.
I took two large trash bags of stuffed animals, still with tags, to be given to the needy. I cried. I know there is a reason she bought them. I just didn’t know why. She never told me why.
In my head I ask for the hundredth time, “What did this (insert whatever) mean to you? Why was this little curio important to you and what should I do about it? I’m as bad as you are. I can’t just throw away for the sake of throwing away.” I should have paid better attention. I should have asked more questions.
I still have five rooms of memories to work my way through. I wonder what I may find. Blackbeard’s lost treasure may be lying under one of the beds surrounded by the other treasures you stuffed under them.
I bump into memories every time I turn around as it is. Bumping into memories is not a terrible thing. Sifting through the “treasures” saved by a hoarder is not a terrible thing if that hoarder’s name was Linda Gail. One woman’s garbage is another man’s treasure.
“For where thy treasure is, there also will thy heart be.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version
It’s Alright Baby
“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl
Memories are odd as I am finding out. Memories will turn a frown into a smile or, just as quickly, a smile into a frown.
I am fortunate. I am surrounded by memories. I am also cursed. I am surrounded by memories. I can’t turn around without bumping into something that reminds me of you. As painful as it is, I don’t think I want it to be any other way.
To paraphrase your favorite NCIS character, Mike Franks: When talking about ghosts. Franks said to Gibbs, “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories.”
My space is filled with memories but Franks said nothing about the emptiness that shares the space. The space I live in is filled with both memories…and emptiness. When you left me, you left behind wonderful memories but there is a tradeoff. There is a huge hole of emptiness where my heart once was.
Franks didn’t mention the bad memories, either. The last eight months have been hell on earth for you…and for me. I watched you fight and struggle. How many times did you try and uplift me? “It’s alright baby.” Those memories try to elbow their way in and are too successful.
I found an old flash drive with a folder labeled Photos and decided to relive the memories from days past thinking that if I filled my head with those, there would be no room for the bad ones. There would be no room for the emptiness. I was wrong.
I found out that I am a lousy photographer and that you just didn’t smile enough. You smiled for the photo but it was your fake smile. Your “say cheese” smile. You had a wonderful smile when you let yourself go, when the camera caught you unawares, playing with the grand babies or the puppies, smelling a flower or showing me a butterfly.
As I ruminated, I went to the more recent photos and videos, the bad memories, and found that you smiled more when you were at your lowest, when you were trying to convince me, “It’s alright baby.” You lied; it is not alright. Not alright at all.
So many mornings I came in to your hospital room and you smiled. Your true smile. When a visitor or a nurse came in, you smiled and tried to convince us that “It’s alright baby.” Even those terrible shots in the stomach earned the nurse giving it a, “It’s alright baby.”
I don’t know what to do. I try to busy myself but you elbow in between the words that play in my head. I spent thirty-seven years trusting you. I’m going to trust you one more time. I’m going to allow the memories to sustain me until “It’s alright baby.”
***
Thanks to all who attended and participated in Linda’s Celebration of Life. It was a special celebration for a special woman.
A Letter to the Love of my Life
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
My Dearest,
I walk through the door hoping I will find you sitting up and smiling a hello. Once again, my hopes are dashed. I watch you as I wait. My heart is breaking. I listen to your breathing, my life hinging on your next breath.
You look so peaceful and youthful. It is as if you have lost thirty years. During the thirty-eight years I have loved you, peaceful is a word I would rarely use, beautiful, a word I always used.
You once described one of your players as your “bull in a China shop.” It is a description I could apply to you as well. Remember your little red VW Bug? When I questioned the safety of your brakes you shrugged and said, “Who needs brakes? I have a horn.”
There was only one speed with you and it was Warp Factor Nine, wide open. Somehow you managed to pull it off with grace and elegance…even dressed in your ten-year-old sweats and always wearing purple.
You always waltzed to the music only you heard. You did it in a genteel and lady like manner, even when coaching. Everyone knew who was in charge and knew when your mind was made up you would not be dissuaded. Right was right even if it was your right.
It was kismet meeting on the press box at Eastside High. Later there was the Halloween pumpkin on your head and a brutal trip to Charleston with your ex-boyfriend. I thing I knew then but it took nearly a year of dancing around each other before we decided to dance together.
Neither of us were looking to fall in love. I had been bitten twice and you thought you were looking for the perfect man. For some reason you asked me out after trying to fix me up with all your friends. It may have been pity; I like to think it was by karmic design.
I asked a question I swore I would never ask again. You decided perfect was not what it was cracked up to be and said yes without hesitation. For thirty-seven years I have been blessed with your love, support, and enthusiasm. For thirty-seven years you have been blessed with an imperfect mate. I’m sure my most redeeming quality was allowing you to have your head like the unbroken filly you were.
Our life was a life easy to laugh about. Stories of biddies falling out of trees, a baby goat being raised in our only bathroom. A fully grown goat falling into our well or a naked woman being chased from the bathroom by an equally naked rat snake.
Epic road trips on a whim, many using your “shortcuts” to make sure the enjoyment would raise questions such as “Are you sure you know where you are going.” One that ended at a warm Georgetown bar on a windy, bitter night. A warm bar that included shrimp and grits, Jack Daniels, and a bluesy singer behind a grand piano.
I could go on but instead I will promise that our grand babies will hear about their grandmother. I promise they will remember their Grandmommy Linda.
Everything was not laughter and giggles. We had our share of what I called “clearing off showers.” Thunderclaps and torrents of rain would give way to freshly cleansed air. Life would settle down and it was good.
I’m not ready for you to leave me. This wasn’t the way it should be. Still, I am thankful for the time we had together.
You have fought hard. It is time for you to rest and lay your burden down. It is time for you to step into the light. Time to start your next great adventure. Time to prepare for when I join you.
You are loved more than you could ever know. Rest now, my darling, rest now.
Your love, Donald.
Linda Porter-Miller passed March 29, Good Friday.
Food For Thought
“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods
Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller
While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.
Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”
There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States.
There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.
None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.
Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.
Food For Thought: From the Musings of a Mad Southerner may be purchased in Paperback or Downloaded from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVF3PFTB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CYH7YGW5PD0N&keywords=Food+For+Thought+Don+Miller&qid=1707591751&sprefix=food+for+thought+don+miller%2Caps%2C438&sr=8-1
Hope Eternal
“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett
Just a few days ago I was mired in depression. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, felt I was being assailed from all sides while trying to minister to my bride, Linda. There was a leak in the upstairs bathroom, home therapies and doctor’s appointments galore. And, AND…she wanted me to apply fingernail polish to her nails. Oh, the pressure. I was having a real pity party.
My wife had some issues, setbacks in her recovery from a stroke and chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. I was just a step away from despondency when “BAM!”, said by the John Madden voice in my head, hope reared its beautiful head. We are still on the defensive end of our field, but we are moving the ball forward.
Her stroke has caused changes in personality along with vision and balance issues. There is a slight weakness in her right side, but her balance issues are as much a vision issue as it is a weakness issue. I mean, with my steadying influence, she gets around okay…maybe too okay.
One personality trait, aside for her needing purple fingernail polish applied, that has not changed is her bull headedness. She is and always has been a type A personality. Linda is going to do what Linda wants to do when she wants to do it. She has always been the poster child for self-reliance.
She is not to get up and move around without assistance. Right? Wrong. How many times must I ask you not to get up without help? Bull-headed self-reliance.
“Now baby, I’m going to the bathroom. Stay where you are until I get back.”
She nods her head and smiles sweetly while saying, “I won’t move” but has rearranged the furniture before I can get back from a thirty second piss. The rearrangement is due to her falling onto the couch sending the puppies in two different directions. Thankfully, it was on the couch.
I sleep on the same couch next to the recliner she sleeps in. “Don’t you have a bed?” Why yes, we do and a bedroom that houses it. We have found it is too far from the bathroom. The bedroom with a close by bathroom is up fifteen steps which are not navigable currently. I sleep on the couch so I can assist should she need to get up…if she takes the time to wake me up.
Two nights ago, I awoke to find she had taken herself to the bathroom, cleaned up, changed her clothes and was standing in the kitchen making toast and jelly. Bad news, it was three in the morning, the witching hour. Good news, there were no new bruises because she hadn’t fallen. Remember, I said I was exhausted from lack of sleep and as good a reason as I can produce for not waking up on my own. The puppies were no help either. I must believe her guardian witch was looking out for her.
Part of me, the logical side, was mortified. The hopeful side was celebrating.
I reminded myself, there was a time when I mentioned how bad the brakes were on her ’73 VW Bug. She commented, casually, “I don’t need them, I have a horn.” That is not a lie. “Damn the torpedoes, Linda is on her way.”
On a safer note, this morning as we returned from the bathroom, Linda stopped, bent from the waist, and without bending her knees, picked up a dime I had missed when sweeping the floor. I’d say her vision and balance have improved. My cleaning skills have not.
Life is full of mysteries and mine is full of little hopes to hang my hat on. Her vision has holes in it that will never improve, but she is learning to navigate around them. Her balance is better, and she is physically strong. The best is that she is hopeful, and her hope sustains me.
Don Miller writes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3vLExkIeP5kMTh-isZEUoByY0dey7OFK_G1WGQZF5QokB_dWBC5Wihzcc&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Check back, he will be releasing a new book, “Food for Thought”, soon.
And Just Like That……Poof We’re Gone
My Brother’s reflections on death.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 