Lady Liberty

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” -- Emma Lazarus

Our cruise ship pulls into New York Harbor at 4:30 in the morning. Like the city that never sleeps, I am wide-awake as I worm my way up to the open deck in hopes of finding a space on the starboard side.

The NYC skyline is kicking up her heels with more sass and bling than a chorus line of Rockettes. “Look at me,” she sings, “I’m the most exciting city in the world.”

Hanging onto the side of the ship, I think how my great-grandfather must have felt when first he glimpsed Lady Liberty.

I hope someone told him the story of how the statue came to be constructed from toe to crown, and how ships transported it piece-by-piece from France to America. He probably never heard the story, but I bet he wiped away tears as he stood at the railing and allowed The Lady’s glow to shine the light of freedom on him.

What might he have said to his little brother standing next to him, both of them having recently fled the devastating potato famine in Ireland and both of them scared out of their Irish britches?

“Look ovah dere, lad, at the ol’ gurl hursef. That’s our noo mum. Don’t ye be frettin’ none.”

Lil’ brother likely whimpered at the mention of their mother, a victim of poverty and neglect, buried a mere month before the boys set sail. Perhaps he moved a wee bit closer to his big brother, the one charged with his welfare as soon as they set foot on American soil, the one who would find work however he could in order to feed, clothe and properly school them in their new country.

My guess is they looked across the New York Harbor that day at the torch held high by The Lady and were warmed by her light, just as I am today.

They came here with nothing. In time, their losses would be replaced with fulfilled dreams made each night as they were growing into men and good Americans. Like so many immigrants throughout the history of our country, their earnest prayers were answered, their hopes rewarded.

Many Americans will never have the chance to look upon The Statue of Liberty at daybreak or at any other time of day. Seeing her at least once should be a requirement for citizenship to our great country, but one thing that makes us great is that it is not required.

The Lady’s power too often gets lost amid the information overload we are fed and must sift through day after day. But she is patient. She is willing to stand her ground and remain strong for all of us. Lest we forget what The Lady symbolizes, Emma Lazarus’s poem is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

The Lady lifted her lamp to a homeless, tempest-tossed Irish boy and his brother and because she did, our country was made stronger. My great-grandfather became a proud citizen and later served his country with honor.

The accomplishments of his descendants would have filled him with awe: A talented symphony musician; a NASA Engineer; a Criminal Defense Attorney; an Episcopal Priest; a Psychologist; a Writer; a Teacher. Each one of his descendents is a good American.

Nothing can ever diminish the spark of hope woven into the fiber of our Statue of Liberty, and nothing should ever diminish the humanity of those who come to America seeking a better life.

“Give me your tired, your poor —”

Give A Whistle For Father’s Day

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.~ Gloria Naylor

June is upon us and that means kids out of school, family vacations, cookouts, picnics, watermelons and mosquitoes. June is the month we set aside a day to remember, reflect, and honor our fathers.

When summer sunsets begin to peek through leaf-filled trees or hot afternoon breezes purr up and down shady streets, I become a girl again peddling my bike through my old neighborhood.

Smoke is spiraling up from the Johnson’s charcoal grill. I sniff the thick burgers they’re cooking and my stomach growls in response. Many back yard grilling sessions will take place over the summer because cooking outdoors is what we do during hot weather in the South.

I continue to peddle my bike where down the street, my friend Linda is sweeping the driveway for her dollar a week allowance while her daddy pulls weeds and stuffs them into a basket to mulch his vegetable garden. Linda’s daddy grows the best tomatoes on the block. Every Saturday morning, he and his teenage boys do the picking; that afternoon, Linda and her mother share nature’s bounty with the neighborhood.

I meet up with some friends and we revel in the fact that we have no homework now that school’s out. We talk about the cute boy who’s moved to town from Charleston, the new Revlon lipstick shade, my hot new bathing suit and Friday’s shag contest at the river pavilion. We flap our hands a lot.

Pretty soon I hear the sound for which I have been half-listening. No, it’s not the musical tones of a cell phone interrupting our girly conversations. It is way too early in the century for microchips and fiber optics to govern our lives. Black telephones are the norm, with no dials or touch-tones. Forget about texting. It’s not even on Buck Rogers’s radar screen.

I stop talking and hand-gesturing when I hear a particular sound, and immediately listen for the second one. My daddy whistles for my brother and me to come home for supper.

All the neighborhood fathers whistle, but Daddy’s is unique, used only for calling my brother and me home. With two fingers in his mouth, he rolls up his tongue and somehow blows through his fingers. The whistle has its own timbre and gains in pitch as it reaches a final crescendo. ‘Whew-a-WHEW!’ It’s loud enough for us to hear it a block away.

Although the other whistles are recognizable, it is to my daddy’s distinctive sound that I respond. He whistles twice, allowing ten minutes for us to stop what we’re doing and start peddling.

For supper, Mama has made a big pot of soup and a full steamer of rice. The soup is thick with vegetables straight out of Linda’s daddy’s garden with added chunks of stew meat for even more flavor. My brother and I fill our tummies with soup, corn muffins and big glasses of milk left on our doorstep in quart bottles before the morning sun came up.

If any soup remains in our bowls, we sop it up with the crusty corn muffins smeared with Aunt Polly’s country butter — a sweet, slightly tangy taste of which Land O’Lakes can only dream.

After supper, Mama and Daddy retreat to the living room to quietly read the Times and Democrat newspaper. My brother and I are consigned to the kitchen to do the dishes and try not to kill or permanently disfigure each other.

We say grace before meals; my brother washes the dishes and I dry. My parents read the day’s paper directing only an occasional comment to each other. It is the ritual played out by our Southern family of four and it is how we close the door on another day.

It all begins with Daddy whistle.

Electronics now play an essential role in all of our lives, and cell phones provide a far better form of communication between parent and child. However, electronics can never replace the warmth that fills me on summer evenings when I inhale the aroma of grilled hamburgers, when I recall the importance I placed on buying a new bathing suit every June, or when it’s time to cook a pot of vegetable soup and call my family to supper.

I wish I could hear Daddy’s whistle again. If I could, I would tell him how that small piece of himself has now become a part of me.

It's The Pits

"I been through some junk. It ain't all been peaches and cream." —Timbaland

Mary Sue’s princess training began back in the Sixties when Heloise was the self-anointed Kitchen Queen, the Dr. Oz of housewifery. While Mary Sue read and recited Heloise to anyone with ears including her cockatoo, I tried to memorize  Peg Bracken’s book, I Hate to Housekeep Book. Heloise wrote about bake day bliss; Peg’s chapters included: Dinner Will Be Ready As Soon As I Figure Out What to Cook. Peg was my kind of woman.

Mary Sue quoted Heloise’s every syllable. No matter how ridiculous the hint, Mary Sue’s excitement morphed into a human version of Secretariat, snorting and stomping at the kitchen door with foam gathering around the spoon bit in her mouth.

“I just learned about pants creasers. Do you know about them?” She was so worked up I thought maybe she’d just discovered the multiple orgasm.

“FYI, Mary Sue. My pants don’t need help getting creased,” I said.

She reached across the kitchen table and brushed S’mores crumbs from the front of my coffee-stained T-shirt. She sighed. “Oh girlfriend, you’ve just gotta buy you some. I’ll even remind you to run the pants in the dryer for ten minutes before putting them on the creasers.”

I rolled my eyes. “And I should do that because?”

“Becaauseee … it removes wrinkles so you won’t have to iron the pants, you silly thing.”

“Give me a freakin’ break, Mary Sue. Babe would sooner spread his pants down on hot pavement and run over them with the car than trust me with a hot iron.”

Her fascination with Heloise kept her off the streets and for that, her husband Earle was grateful. He was patient all the while she spouted daily hints as though quoting scripture.

“Thou hamburger patties shall have no frayed edges,” she told me once. “If thou uses a number two and a half can to pull them into shape. Amen.”

I got up and began to search inside closets and under beds for the candid camera.

Mary Sue’s dedication eventually took on a devotion more suited to a monk. Mantovani background music played as she read her housekeeping Bible. She would open the book at random and whichever hint her finger landed became her personal message.

“Save those peach pits,” the Kitchen Queen proclaimed to her one morning. “When placed under pillows, your guests will enjoy sweet smelling dreams.”

Mary Sue felt as though she had hit the jackpot, the loving cup, the mother lode. She dashed to the Piggly-Wiggly, bought four-bushel baskets of peaches and proceeded to go peach pit crazy. What her family didn’t eat, she froze. Ten years later, she served spiked punch at her daughter’s wedding reception, fermented from those leftover peaches. It wasn’t half bad as I recall.

Grinning like Julia Roberts, she announced, “I put a hundred peach pits under my pillows.”

I seriously wondered how long her coffee had been laced with peach schnapps.

“Mary Sue, if I put peach pits under my pillows as you suggest, will it remove Plantar's warts and nose hair? Help me out, here. Give me one good reason to think that you and your peach pits are not tooling down a squirrelly highway on your way to the Cracker Factory.

“Heloise says it’s the best method of freshening pillows.”

“Uh, Mary Sue? You don’t have a hundred pillows in your house, do you””

She leaned toward me, her eyes dancing like Peter Pan on crack. As if she were about to impart the meaning of life, she said, “I like being prepared.”

Mary Sue’s peach pits eventually lounged forgotten under the guest room pillows, abandoned that is, until Earle’s boss, the honcho of honchos, showed up from NYC for an overnight visit.

Mary Sue and Earle wined and dined him royally. She cooked one of Heloise’s best recipes and even shamed the Yankee boss into eating okra.

After dinner, Blotto Boss staggered upstairs and turned down the covers. When he began to fluff his pillow, a nest of forgotten peach pits began to rock and roll. Being from the North, he naturally assumed that they were cockroaches and he freaked. Reeling backwards, he stumbled into an heirloom lamp. The light sputtered and crashed, further terrifying the man.

Earle and Mary Sue rushed upstairs and found him huddled in a dark corner sucking his thumb and crying for his mama.

Mary Sue wrote a nasty letter to Heloise blaming her harebrained peach pit idea, not only for the entire incident but also for Earle’s subsequent unemployment. She didn’t mention his need for long-term therapy.

Ever creatively gracious, Heloise replied. “Life is the pits, Toots. Get over it and move on.”

He Moves Me

All my life I've had a passionate love affair with sports cars. People say being in love is temporary insanity; I wear a size six straitjacket.

My first affair was with Rex, a red English Ford. Rex was a Singer Sewing Machine with wheels, but I was smitten by Britain. Anglophenia pulled at my heartstrings both then and now. It's why I spend my Sunday nights at Downton Abbey.

Rex had a hot temper and when he blew his last gasket, my dad said, "The roads are crowded with the likes of him." It's how he found Ollie, a pea-green Oldsmobile Coupe. Years of transporting hooch gave Ollie a permanent scent: Eau de White Lightning.

I wanted to believe that Ollie was a sports car, not a coupe. He had two-doors and no back seat, but he wasn't the real deal; he was an Oldsmobile and he reeked.

One morning I discovered him gone and I couldn't understand why he'd left. Had he missed those days of hauling hooch till the revenuers put a cork in his job description? For whatever reason, Ollie fell off my personal wagon and never got back up to speed.

I went through several American "caffairs" after Ollie, each one mind-numbing and humdrum. No turn on at all.

There was Carl Chevy and then Frank Ford. Yawn. When Maximilian, a white Mercury convertible decked out in red leather showed up, he peaked my interest in domesticity.

Max was a handsome hunk of engineering but I had to share him with my husband. Even while I was pregnant, Max tootled me around town with his top down. He did this until my expanding tummy could no longer fit under the steering wheel.

Max left me, and after that I went through cars like Sherman through Atlanta on the Perimeter hoping to find the perfect CarFax.

Stanley Station Wagon was the quintessential dog and kid schlepper, but he was so boring that he couldn't get off cruise control. Thank goodness I dumped him before we coasted into Comatose City.

Conrad Comet entered my life the year compacts came of age. Connie gave good gas mileage but was no more a sports car than Freddie Falcon who was monotonous as an unpainted picket fence.

When they all had taken off for that universal junkyard in the sky, my first real sports car, Francisco Fiat, aka Fix It Again Toni, came into my life. Francisco spent more time with Toni than with me, however, so it was no surprise when Frankie and Toni became sweethearts. He was my mancar but he done me wrong.

Nick Nissan Z, was a sporty dude with a tiger in his tank, but way too masculine for this Southern Belle. I tried to make it last but eventually Nick and his mileage roared like a dragon into Blue Book history.

Miso Miata was a good sport. He showed up with the ability to make me laugh, but with one too many glitches. Even a blonde knows that glitches, like jokes, ain't funny after the third one. When Miso began to bomb more often than a drunk drone on high test, I shuffled him off to Buffalo.

At long last my dream, the fantasy car for which I had always longed, came home to Mama. Jacques Jaguar, a carnival red convertible stole my heart. We were happy for a very long time and unlike the others, he gave me no grief. I mourned him when we had to part, but he was old and cranky and could no longer mask his rattling bones. It was time. Fifteen in car years is ninety in dog years.

My true love was gone forever, but when fate plopped the cherry of all cherries on the front seat of my life, Jacques Jaguar was forced to take a back seat.

Wolfgang, a silver Porsche convertible, has never clashed with my golden years. He hugs me with his heavy body each time I turn his motor on. Woofie glides down my road of life indifferent to detours, potholes and roadblocks. His dashboard demeanor is more German than English but do I care?

Ach, Woofie & Ich liebe Dich.

Advice My Mother Never Gave Me

*You have muscles “down there” and you need to train them. They’re called Kegels and believe me, you want to learn how to squeeze those puppies dry. You won’t be aware of the Kegels until after you have born children and even then, muscles will bottom out on the childrearing spectrum. But one day your children will cease asking for your advice and you’ll find yourself  staring into the face of the dreaded menopause. Hopefully, that’s when you’ll say hello to Ms. Kegel and thank your mother for teaching you how to pinch and squeeze before it was too late.

*Keep your maiden name for as long as you can. It’s your identity. There is no MRS law that requires you to replace it.

*Don’t go to bed mad is a bullshit platitude. Sometimes being pissed off feels really good so hang onto it.

*Labor pains hurt like hell. Some say you’ll forget all about the pain once you hold that precious bundle in your arms. Don’t believe that either.

*You don’t have to give the best piece of fried chicken to your husband just because he’s got a bigger stomach. Grab hold of that fat, juicy breast and pass the wishbone to him. Next time maybe he’ll get lucky.

*Never iron the following (no matter what your mother-in-law does).
Your husband’s shirts. Take them to a laundry. You’ve got better things to do.
Tablecloths and napkins (see above). Don’t be an idiot: buy paper napkins. 
Pajamas. Like I said, don’t be an idiot. Sleep naked.

*Keep some mad money stashed away to splurge on yourself. This advice is even better than going to bed mad.

*You won’t always agree with your husband. Smile like you do and nod your head a lot, then go on and think whatever the hell you want. He won’t figure it out because duh! He’s a dude.

*If you sleep with a snorer, buy earplugs. It will save your marriage or keep you out of jail for murdering him in the middle of the night.

*You don’t have to be a perfect cook and/or homemaker. One Martha Stewart is one too many. Deli food is good.

*A regular Mani-pedi is an absolute necessity only if you don’t want to go insane. If you decide otherwise, then use those sharp toenails to stab the snorer next to you in bed.

*Feed your kids ice cream sundaes for breakfast. They will remember it for the rest of their lives. 

*You don’t need to be a volunteer. Some things are good, but others drain your energy, time and patience. If you must volunteer, choose an organization headed by an anal retentive because they won’t allow you to do diddlysquat. If baking cookies for ungrateful rugrats is your thing, go for it. If you’d rather be pummeled to the ground with a twenty-pound sack of flour until you pass out, then learn how to say NO and stick to it.

*Don’t try to please everybody. You’ll wear yourself to a frazzle and it never works anyway. It will only keep you up at night wondering why nobody ever gets you.

*Exercise if you want to. Opt out if you don’t. It’s the 21^st Century; it’s your body. Choose.

*Plastic surgery? Why the hell not? If you are criticized for fixing your nose, remind the critiquer that his or her forty-year-old buck-toothed kid still wears a retainer to bed. Do what makes you feel good about yourself.

*Be kind to your mother-in-law. She is the first woman your husband ever loved and she is not your enemy. He will love you more for loving her and so will she.

*Some men hate cats. It's probably because they never owned one. Get a cat even if he doesn’t like the idea because he’ll learn to love it. Are you not making a super human effort to love his mother?

*If you cook, he cleans up. That’s a no-brainer payback for those labor pains you endured.

*When you’re sick, DON’T get out of bed to cook for your family. If they can’t pour cereal into a bowl, trade them in for people who were born with a lick of sense.

*Don’t feel guilty for taking Me Time. Consider it more labor pain payback.

Advice can be good, bad or so-so. Some of it you’ll remember, some you won’t and some you’ll wish you’d never heard. Advice can make you laugh and a lot of it just flat out came too late to do a piece of good but trust me on the Kegel counsel. You’ll thank me when you’re a grandmother.

Big Mama Pulls the Plug

Big Mama Pulls the Plug

By Cappy Hall Rearick

Hello! Thank you for calling UAM, Universal Answering Machine, the official replacement for a human. Press 1 to leave a message. Press 2 to leave a callback number. With a little luck, a machine will get back to you before you die.

Beep!

(Sigh) "Okay, listen up, people. This here is Big Mama Nature calling and I’m sick and tired of leaving messages for you. This will be the last time you will ever hear my voice but I've got plenty to say and times a'wasting.

"I'm not going to be Big Mama Nature any more 'cause y'all have done wore me plum out. I am so outta here.

"Just so you’ll know, I plan to gather up a few of my things to take with me when I leave. They were always mine, never, ever yours. You took it for granted that my things belonged to you, but you were dead wrong! They were on loan. Consider today as your personal Chapter Eleven Day.

"I'm talking about all of the birds, every last one of them. Sparrows, ducks, egrets, gulls, especially the egrets and gulls. OMG! What you’ve done to my seabirds is unacceptable. And to make matters worse, you went and gave my little chickies and piglets the Flu. Well, you won't get any more chances to hurt my babies 'cause Big Mama Nature takes care of her own.

"I'm reclaiming the rain forests and all of its inhabitants. You never "got" their simple logic no matter how many times it was explained, so just forget about the rain forests. They'll be well protected under my personal supervision and I won't need to worry about them anymore.

"The Mississippi River is high on my list of retrievables. How can I not take back the Mighty Mississip after the way you've treated her? She's been crying out for my healing touch for years. The Great Lakes, the Colorado River and the Pacific Ocean will be coming with me as well. You can have all of New Yawk City and every drop of water surrounding it; it's way too far gone for me to fix.

"Originally, I’d planned to leave the Gulf of Mexico because I figured you learned your lesson after my Katrina wake-up call. Something so devastating should have gotten a big blip on your unconscious radar, but that didn’t happen. Instead of helping with the clean up, you whined and carried-on like a bunch of wussies and then let BP come in and turn the entire Gulf into a deep fat fryer. I'm taking the Gulf. You don't deserve one drop of it.

"The beaches along the east coast of the United States are mine, mine, mine. It'll be another millennium before even I can get them clean again, but they don't call me Big Mama for nothing.

"There are a few mountain ranges I'll collect on my way out, at least the ones you haven't gotten around to leveling. You won't miss them since you stripped away their natural resources long ago. I intend to rescue what’s left of them before your bulldozers turn them into corn meal mush.

"I am also taking back the air you've been polluting for the last century. I need what little is left so that my birds can keep flying and my rain forests can flourish again. Chances are, even I won't be able to undo much of the damage you've done, but I'll give it a shot.

"I should remind you that the minute I take back the air, clouds will vanish before you can say Boo Hoo! That's a fact, Jack. There will be no more clouds in the sky, but you won't miss them because you never bothered to look up anyway.

"I'm willing to leave the moon for now, but the sun goes with me. Don't even think about giving me any lip on this. I created sunrises to wake you up and get you going every morning. Those out-of-this-world gorgeous sunsets? They were there for you to reflect on the beauty surrounding you. But you blew it, Bubba, when you took me and my gifts for granted. I am so not happy.

"You figured the sun would come up and the sun would go down forever, didn't you? Well, you figured wrong. Now you'll have to remember what that lucky old sun looked like and how your skin tingled from its warmth. It won't replace the real deal but you can text the memory of it to your grandkids.

"I'll be back for some other things later, but you won't realize they're gone until you need them. That's when you'll be shocked to discover that they are no longer available for you to abuse. If history is any indication, you'll be more inconvenienced than sad. (sigh)

"I loved you from the beginning of time, loved you with all my heart. For eons, I forgave you your negligence and overlooked your ignorance. I even chalked up your indifference to human evolutionary learning deficiencies. I'm ashamed to say I forgave you over and over for your folly.

"But I will not forgive you for the shambles you've made of my beautiful earth. I trusted you to love, nurture and protect it and I didn't think for a nano-second that you would destroy it. You have broken my heart. (Sigh)

"No doubt, the human blueprint needs tweaking and I wish I had it in me to take you back to the drawing board, but you have drained me bone dry.

"Don't bother trying to get in touch with me. (Sigh) You couldn't be bothered to acknowledge my many calls, so we are so done.

Like the Big Guy says, "It's not nice to fool Big Mama Nature."

Bleep!

Cliché —Touché

I learned the backbone of American language from my mother, aka the Queen of Cliché. While other parents charged their kids with, “Be home by eleven o’clock sharp,” my mother said, “If you’re not early you’re late.”

Language was always a painting to Mama. Words and phrases, the catchier the better, were the brush strokes of finished sentences. While other families played Tiddly Winks and Monopoly, we played word games like Scrabble and Perquacky. Mama invented the Cliché Game, however, and it was our favorite. She always started it off with a well-worn phrase. 

On Mondays, it might be something like, “Well, if the sun is shining and the creek don’t rise, we might go shopping today.”

Then she would look at one of us, eyebrows raised in expectation.

My brother, who would eventually grow up to be an engineer, would quit trying to figure out why Rice Krispies went Snap! Crackle! Pop! Long enough to say, “With any kind of luck, Mama, you just might find those new curtains you’ve been looking for.”

Two pairs of eyes would then look in my direction. My turn to come up with something equally clever like, “Don’t y’all take any wooden nickels.”

Daddy’s mind was never too far away from the family budget. As soon as he heard the word nickels, he would invariably pipe up with, “My pocket is not a bottomless pit, you know.” More often, he would quip, “Don’t y’all forget that money does not grow on trees.”

“Hurry up kids and clean your plates!” Mama would say as she scraped her chair back from the table. “We have to make hay while the sun shines.”

Nothing I have ever learned in an English class allows me to write a blank check by using clichés when I write. Just the opposite, in fact. Yet, just the other day, I read that those same tried and true expressions, the ones that rolled off my family’s tongues back in the day, are being seriously considered with regard to their significance in the preservation of our culture. Some researchers think the cliché may be the backbone of our communication system.

Seriously?

Mama would be thrilled.

As a creator, a very small architect of prose, I have the privilege of typing a distinctive breath of life into one-dimensional men, women, children and animals. It is always my hope that the characters I create leave a lasting impression on a reader. I’m pretty sure my characters (and their creator) will be forever grateful.

In any event, by writing in what is known as Southern Voice, means (at least to me) that I write about things and people I can see, hear and touch. I don’t necessarily need to dig deep into my unconscious to find characters with delightful dialogue. I can easily discover them right here at home, the place where dog-eared expressions are as natural as eating grits for breakfast.

My made-up characters are not always credible, nor are they always believable. Most often I take a little from one character and something else from another. What (or who) I end up with then becomes an amalgam of people with all sorts of characteristics. After that, I sit back and let them go wild, insisting that they do whatever they want to do.

Mama taught me that creativity can be a bottomless pit and that clichés are diamonds in the rough, always blessings in disguise. With that in mind, I will try to keep up the good work and not let it drive me stark raving crazy. I will turn off my computer before I become blind as a bat or worn to a frazzle. I will grab that bright idea before it vanishes into thin air and leaves me sadder, but wiser.