It’s Never Too Late

My friend Henry Mitchell’s first short story collection, Dark on the Mountain, will be available November 10 in print and the Kindle edition can be pre-ordered now from Amazon. His other books are all available on Amazon.com. Check him out. You'll be glad you did.

Henry’s venture into fiction writing is an inspiration to any and all writers, no matter what the age and/or background.

It’s Never Too Late

After working for fifty years as a visual artist (sculpture and painting), I began to experience difficulty in discerning colors. When my opthalmologist diagnosed macular degeneration, I told the Main Muse, “I want to spend my declining years doing something I can get better at.”

“I’ve been telling you for years to write. Now or never,” she said.

I wrote a novel. I had no earthly idea what to do with it, knew even less about how the publishing business works. Two years and two hundered queries later, I read in a trade journal about a new publisher in the UK wanting short stories. I wrote a short story. They accepted it, and I began my continuing education about surviving editors.

A year and a dozen stories into our marriage, Alfie Dog Fiction decided to begin publishing novels. I sent an e-mail. “I have this novel manuscript.”

My editor, Rosemary Kind, replied, “Send it.”

Two published novels later, with a collection of short stories coming out Nov.10th, and a third novel set to launch next fall, I think I might be a real writer after all. I just wish I’d started at least a couple of decades sooner. I’m not likely to be in the world long enough to write it all down. Some readers might claim that a mercy, I suppose.

My advice, which you haven’t asked for after all: If you have any thoughts about writing fiction, don’t wait until you know better. The stories are out there. They will find you unless you hide.

What To Do About Mama?

Dr. Frank Crane (1861–1928) penned a set of ten volumes of "Four Minute Essays." One of them touched my heart.

“She is my mother, said the young man, but I call her my baby. She is 85 years old. Old people are very much like babies and we ought to love them, for such is the kingdom of heaven.

I have an idea that life evens things up. When I was young and helpless she took care of me; now I take care of her. I am paying my debt.

She never left me alone when I was an infant. Now, I do not leave her alone. She was patient with me then; now I am patient with her.

She fed me; now I feed her. I clothe and keep her. “She sacrificed her young life for me; now I am glad of every chance I have to sacrifice for her. She loved me when I was ignorant, awkward, needing constant care and all because I was hers, born of her body and part of her soul. Now every feebleness and trait of childishness in her endears her to me for no other reason except that she is my mother.

By so much as she is a tax on my time, attention and money, I love her. She shall not triumph over me on the day of judgment for my tenderness shall equal hers.

She watched with me until I grew up; I shall watch with her until she steps into heaven.”

Not so long ago, the accepted practice was that Mama would live out her golden years with her grown children. Her role would be that of looking after small children or helping out around the house. Family responsibility was shared back in the day.

But times they are a’changing. For many reasons, Mama’s option to live out her last years surrounded by a devoted daughter or son may be a thing of the past, her presence more of a tempest in a teapot than a calm transition. Factor in her potential for stroke, broken bones, or God forbid dementia, Mama’s tempest has the makings of a perfect storm.

While she may be happy living with her son or daughter, it is a huge adjustment for everyone. In the beginning, Mama is self-reliant and capable of taking care of minor aches and pains. In time, however, her small issues will become large problems.

One of my friends told me that her eighty-seven-year-old mother took a bus to a barbershop and told the barber to shave off all of her hair. I asked if she was on chemo. My friend said, “She doesn’t have cancer. She just wanted to look like Sinead O’Connor.”

Another friend complained that her mother-in-law wanted to cook her son’s favorite meal but ended up catching the kitchen on fire. When she was subsequently banned from cooking, she became belligerent and blamed my friend for the accident— in four-letter words, no less.

My friend confessed that living with her husband’s mother was a nightmare, that everything revolved around her quirks and mood swings. “I love her,” she said, “but she makes my life so hard. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I resent my husband because he’s an extension of her. We argue over the things we dismissed as trivial in the past. The stress is killing our relationship.”

Sharing one’s home with another woman is tough duty. It’s even more difficult feeling helpless as your other relationships disintegrate before your eyes.

The question remains: What are we going to do about Mama?

Do we hire a qualified caregiver to live with her in her own home, or in our home?

Back in the day, Mama would have lived with one of her grown children until she died. That may still be a possibility if Mama’s growing needs do not tear apart the fragile fabric of the Twenty-first Century family.

Do we ship Mama off to a reliable facility with the promise to visit every Sunday afternoon? If so, who pays for it?

Mama ain’t getting no younger. Let’s encourage her to maintain some independence by planning her own future. If she wants to remain in her home with a caregiver, tell her to carve it in stone.

If she prefers to live with her grown children, they need to have conversations about what her role in the family structure should be.

If Mama chooses to live out the rest of her life in a graduated living facility, the choice needs to be made early enough so that when the time comes, it’s a done deal and she can make the move knowing she has the support of her loving family.

“She watched with me until I grew up; I shall watch with her until she steps into heaven.”

The Macon Blues

Wake up momma, turn your lamp down low… What a night. I was in Macon, Georgia attending a Newspaper Columnist Conference when my friend Joanie fell. She had been dancing to the sound of … who else but the Allman Bros Band. I drove her to the ER where we spent the equivalent of several lifetimes. The black-hearted reception nurse glanced at the papers Joanie had filled out while in horrible pain, but was too busy arguing with a chicken wing delivery guy about the price he charged to pay Joanie the attention she needed While she writhed in pain, I morphed into my Nancy Grace mode. "Enough with the chicken, Nurse Wretched,” I barked. “Can’t you see this woman is in pain? You get her some help right now or I’m calling 911." Ten minutes later after threatening the entire hospital staff with Obamacare, Joanie was wheeled into what they actually called the fast lane. Seriously. Three hours later, a sleepy intern proclaimed that Joanie’s wrist was broken. “Unfortunately,” he added, “there will not be an orthopod available until Tuesday.” Unfortunately? Joanie lives in Illinois and had been planning to travel on to Fairhope, Alabama after the conference for a few days of R&R. “Nuh uh,” said the ER vampires. “She absolutely must have her wrist set no later than Tuesday.” While Joanie and I were trying to figure out what kind of drugs the intern was on, he presented her with a sling and a prescription for dope. I was dismissed and told to go to the waiting room until someone could dismiss Joanie. Meanwhile back in the ER waiting room where Chicken Little and the delivery boy were still arguing, three policemen hauled in two barefoot prisoners in dire need of treatment for something. I have no idea what. The prisoners were not overjoyed and I was not thrilled to see them either. Soon after that, a middle-aged man, a throwback to the Sixties, rushed in with a catfish fang stuck in his right hand. He was bleeding all over the floor but they wheeled him to the other side, not the fast lane. Go figure. Just when I thought I had seen more ER drama than I ever wanted to see, a morbidly obese woman with splotchy purple legs the size of a barker lounger waddled in. Her hips looked like huge scallops and when she sat down her behind hung over the sides of two chairs. No fast lane for her, either. When my friend Joanie was finally paroled from the treatment room, she was clutching a prescription for pain meds and honestly? She looked like she had aged twenty years since dancing earlier that night to the Allman Brothers, “Southbound,” like nobody was watching.  She looked up at me from the wheelchair and said, “I want to be Northbound, like ASAP.” The hospital’s pharmacy was closed, of course, so we drove around Macon in search of a Walgreen's. The search was made more difficult because the Macon police had set up roadblocks throughout the city. I figured they were looking for the gang going around inserting catfish fangs into over-the-hill hippies. It was July and my friend Joanie and I felt like strangers set adrift in Macon, Georgia, the hottest little town on the planet. By and by, Joanie couldn’t find her reading glasses and suggested that she had left them at the hospital, so after an hour or so of looking and finally finding a Walgreen's, we returned to the ER to look for her glasses. That hospital was batting a thousand. No Joanie’s glasses, no orthopod, no pharmacy and probably no chicken wings for Nurse Wretched. What the hospital did have plenty of when we arrived was a driveway stacked with four ambulances, two of which sailed past my car. The catfish gang was super busy that night. Finally back at the hotel, I searched around my car for Joanie’s lost glasses since she can't see squat without them. Then she about scared me to death when she let out a shout that sounded profane. I thought she had fallen again. Nope. She had simply discovered that her glasses were hanging around her neck on one of those old lady chains. I parked my car and when I got out, the hotel sprinklers popped up to baptize me. I didn’t move. I just stood still and let the water drench my clothes and cool my heels. On a Saturday night in Macon when the temperature is a thousand degrees, that's not a bad thing to do.

A Lust Named Wanda

When did it start? I’ve racked my addled brain for the answer but for the life of me I can’t come up with a definitive time when Wanda Lust became my new best friend. I only know that it was a long time ago and that we have remained in step all the while.

Almost four years ago, I was enjoying an infrequent day of relaxation. I actually allowed myself to gaze above my keyboard and out through my office window. I heaved a contented sigh. A turbo sigh. The laundry was done and the clothes were folded and put away, the groceries were bought; a tuna casserole was baking in the oven that Babe would complain about because he’s not into casseroles although he’d probably eat enough of it to feed a small country. Best of all, I had jump-started my deadline.

That’s when Wanda shoved her pushy self into my day.

“Are you meadow gazing, girlfriend? Seriously? Come with me.” Her seductive voice cut a path straight to my brain. “We have hills to climb, roads to cross and beaucoup fun stuff to do.”

Having little desire to move from my comfort zone or the chair molded to my derrière, I poo-pooed the idea of going with her. Had I not done it all already? Did I not deserve a day of rest? I told her to take a hike — alone.

Wanda Lust is a relentless temptress. She was in no mood for me to enjoy the rewards of my past treks. She forced me to find photos on line (in color) of a beautiful house not far away from my own. She grabbed my reading glasses and made me put them on.

“Look at that, girlfriend. Doesn’t it make your heart flutter?”

Holy Dream House!

Seeing things in real time is so not the norm these days so I was not surprised when I fell in love with that Internet photo. Wanda’s lusty moveable parts and her relentless attempts to pull me away from my keyboard worked overtime on my psyche. She convinced me that we owed it to ourselves to see the other house, not just the photo.

It was Wanda Lust, not me, that placed a call to our real estate friend, Bill. It was Wanda who supplied him with a pathetic excuse for our wanting to see a house that might very well turn out to be the last we would ever live in. While Bill made the viewing appointment, I stared at the online color photos of that particular house and my imagination took off on a mind’s eye trip.

I pictured myself in a rocking chair while seated on the wraparound porch sipping whatever concoction Babe chose to serve for our five o’clock social hour.

I saw myself waking up each morning to the hum of an overhead fan turning slowly enough to make me snuggle under light covers and yawn with contentment.

I imagined serving meals I had prepared in the large kitchen, the exotic dishes I created to the constant amazement of my always hungry husband. Smiling at the thought, I think I even heard him say Yum!

Holy House Hunt!

The three of us, Real Estate Bill, Wander Lust and I, walked into a foyer that immediately wrapped itself around my heart and soul. I knew without even seeing the rest of the house that Babe would fall in love just as quickly. It was the home we both had dreamed about for over twenty years. The large kitchen, the bedroom big enough to house a king-size bed, a real stone fireplace and a yard with enough trees to make us feel we were living smack in the middle of a forest.

Babe and I are no longer young; we are freakin’ old. We have no business buying more real estate at our age. We already have one too many homes. But what choice did we have after stepping into a space that felt as though we had returned to the womb?

We made an offer and they countered. We countered back. They said, “You just bought yourself a house.”

Holy Moving Van!

That was almost four years ago. It has been thirteen hundred and thirty-eight days since we unloaded twenty years of collected stuff into our new home. Since then, I haven’t heard a peep out of Wanda. 

Attention Ladies and Gentlemen. Wanda Lust has left the building.

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.”