Remembering.......

 On this final day of 2012, I decided to busy myself with an activity that brings back floods of memories. I baked homemade bread. Aunt Rhoda (wife of my mother's oldest brother, Paul Jones) was affectionately called the Betty Crocker of Cedar Mountain. She baked bread, rolls and cakes...at first for the Cedar Mountain Curb Market every Friday during the summers and later, year-round as an extra income. Norma & I spent almost every weekend during our college years at Western Carolina University at Aunt Rhoda & Uncle Paul's house. Uncle Paul was a real mountain man...hunting, fishing and making a little moonshine. He looked out for the "widow ladies" in the community, supplying them with firewood and digging them out of the snow during the long winters and helping them with household repairs during the rest of the year, because that is what the Bible said to do. He had an infectious laugh, a dry wit, and a warm smile. During my family's summer visits to the 3 Bears' House, he would walk out to our cabin around 5 o'clock every afternoon with his soap in one hand and his towel over his arm to take a cold shower, because his house was only equipped with a tub. He winterized our cabin when we left at the end of the summer and opened it up before we arrived each summer. Aunt Rhoda was a Heath...one of the well-known families of Cedar Mountain...and was not only a fabulous baker, but a great cook. Her fried chicken on Sunday was to die for! She suffered from crippling arthritis, but that didn't stop her from baking and canning or anything else she wanted to do. She would go to Brevard every Friday (Uncle Paul called it "Push Cart Day" because most of the ladies of the county went to town and pushed a grocery cart around the stores) to re-supply her pantry for the week's baking. The recipe that I use for my bread is her recipe. It was never written down. Years of baking had seared it into her memory. In fact, when she gave it to me, I had to follow her around the kitchen, measuring each ingredient as she put in in the bowl. My written version actually calls for two handfuls of salt, around 4 tablespoons of yeast and 2/3 of a five pound bag of all-purpose flour! As the aroma of the baking bread filled my house, I closed my eyes and was swept back to those wonderful years of growing up in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina, and the happy days spent at Aunt Rhoda & Uncle Paul's house...playing Set Back after supper, helping Aunt Rhoda clean and hiking the woods with Uncle Paul in search of Blacksnake root or Ginseng. The person I am today is a direct result of the influence of those strong pioneers of Transylvania County. How grateful I am to have known them!

 Gather your ingredients: eggs, yeast, sugar, salt & oil.

 

 

Mix in scalded milk.

After rising & kneading, shape into loaves & place in pans to rise a second time.

 

After baking, remove from pans and cool on racks. This is the hardest step, because it smells sooooo good that it is hard to let it cool before slicing and eating!

Rhoda & Paul Jones on the occasion of their 50th Wedding anniversary in 1972.

 

 

My 2013 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions because I very rarely keep them.  I have all good intentions of following through with my lofty goals and I usually do for most of January.  However, I soon lose interest and energy and forget all about my enthusiasm for changing my life for the better.  So, you must be asking yourself...why is Melody announcing to the world that she is making a resolution for 2013?  And you must also be wondering how long this is going to last because judging from my history of infrequent posting on my blog...well, you get the idea. 
My 2013 New Year's resolution is to make a positive change in my life.  I know that sounds very nebulous and would allow me an easy out in case I had to "prove" that I was serious about this resolution thing.  So let me expand on it just a little.  Since Steve's death in 2007, I have had to re-invent myself.  Being alone after 29 years of dedication to someone else makes one think very deep thoughts.  I had just about worked through my grief, anger, fear and despair when 2012 rolled around.  During this year, I have faced three more life-changing events...the sudden death of my 31 year old son-in-law, my retirement after 37 years at the library, and the death of my 102 year old mother.  I have asked God many times during the past year why he hates me.  He must hate me for piling all these events on me in one year.  It has taken many hours of prayer & reflection to realize that God didn't do all of these things to me.  They have happened because of the nature of being a human being.  On the last day of this overwhelming year, I have realized that to keep myself out of a very dark place, I need to force myself into a positive attitude.  
So here is my plan.  I am a huge fan of "Pinterest".  I saw an idea a few months ago on someone's board that really intrigued me.  The person started the year with a large jar and scraps of paper.  Every time something worth remembering happened during the year, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and put it in her "memory jar".  On the last day of the year, she took out all of the papers and read through her memories.  I thought that was such a neat idea and decided that I would try it sometime.  Well, "sometime" is here.  During 2013, I plan to use this blog to record my memories and then review them at the end of the year.  I also plan to take it one step farther.  I want to post something EVERY DAY.  That's why I am blogging instead of using a jar & paper.  I figure that if I have announced my plan to the world (or at least to my friends), it will add the pressure necessary to keep me motivated.  But be forewarned...since I will be posting every day, some of the days will probably not be very happy and therefore, the post might be a bit of a downer.  But I hope that this journal will be a journey for me from sadness, insecurity and hopelessness into joy, confidence and optimism.
I hope you will follow my journey this year and encourage me when I need it and congratulate me when I grow.  Happy New Year!

A wonderful wedding

On October 23, 2010, I was witness to a marvelous event...the marriage of Melissa Boyd and Stephen Webb.  Melissa is a college friend of my daughter, Maggie, and I met Stephen several years later when the two started dating.  These two young people have been through alot in their lives, individually and separately.  There have been tragedies, disappointments, surprises and triumphs for both of them.  However, no matter what has happened to them, they have retained their joyous and hopeful outlook on life.  They are parents to a marvelous 2 year old named Cooper and they have taken the duties of parenthood in stride with confidence and great maturity.  The wedding was so "them"!  It was casual, warm, loving and happy.  I was expecting to feel very emotional during the ceremony, remembering Steve and all of the emotional trauma that I have been through in the last 5 years, but I was not expecting such a joyous emtional high.  It has been a little over 3 years since Steve died and I have been through some very low periods during that time.  Going to his 40th high school reunion last summer and listening to his high school friends talk about him with love and admiration really took me to a deep valley of sadness.  GW's college graduation was very painful because Steve would have been so proud to see that both of his children earned the college degree that he never did.  Just going to the Colquitt County football games on Friday nights brings me down.  Remembering how much he loved playing football and being in a huge crowd of people who all seem to be in "couples" has a devasting effect on my psyche.  So attending the wedding of two people who are like my children...well, I was expecting the worst...a depression that would send me to that black hole of a feeling from which it is very hard to escape by yourself.  As I walked the length of the pier to the dock where the ceremony would take place, I had a long time to think about what was going to happen.  I could feel my heart in my throat and was afraid that I might break down right in the middle of the ceremony.  But to my surprise, something wonderful happened.  When I saw the joy and love on the faces of Melissa and Stephen and heard the excitement in their voices at the prospect of sharing a deep committment for the rest of their lives, I could only think about all of the happiness that Steve and I had shared in our lifetime together.  I realized that we had promised to love, honor and cherish each other until "death do us part"...not until we were both 90 years old.  Our life together had been cut short and for the past 3 years I have felt cheated because Steve died before I was ready for him to die.  We had so much more that we wanted to do together...plans that we had dreamed of for 29 years of marriage.  But we had 29 glorious years as man and wife, lovers and best friends and we loved each other more on the day he died than we did when we said our vows on May 20, 1978.  I realized what a wonderful gift we had been given and happiness flooded my soul instead of depression and anger.  I guess that means that I am making progress, at least, I hope it does.  And to Melissa and Stephen, I can only say "Thank You" for including me in such a momentous moment and showing me what true happiness means.  I wish you all the best that life has to offer.  I hope that life still has good things for me to experience also, not the least of which is true love.

So...what does the title of your blog mean?

I guess I have left you hanging long enough wondering what in the world does the title of this blog mean.  In fact, I have probably left you hanging for far too long.  I had intended to get back to blogging in just a few days, but I did not count on 2 employees at the library getting sick, conflicts between Windows 7 and several State of Georgia agency websites, open enrollment for the employee health care plan and the library's annual report.  Believe me, all those obstacles have not been overcome, but I decided to post a short blog before everyone (including me) loses interest.  So...back to the title of the blog.  Back in the late 1980's, a singer/songwriter named Mary Chapin Carpenter hit the charts with several very catchy songs.  Billed as a country singer, but sounding more like a folk singer, Carpenter was named the 1992 & 1993 Female Vocalist of the Year by the Country Music Association.  Her biggest hits included "Shut up & Kiss Me", "Passionate Kisses", "I Feel Lucky", "Down at the Twist & Shout", and the song from which the name of my blog came, "The Bug".  This song is about the ups and downs we encounter in life.  Sometimes we are on top of the world and then we fall to the depths of the valley.  As Mary Chapin Carpenter puts it "...sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug."  Since my life has taken lots of unexpected twists and turns in the last five years, I thought that this philosophy would be a great title for my blog.  However, not to leave you with gloom and doom, here are the rest of the lyrics:

"You gotta know happy - you gotta know glad

Cause you're gonna know lonely and you're gonna know sad.

One day you got the glory and then you got none

One day you're a diamond and then you're a stone

Everything can change in the blink of an eye

So let the good times roll before we say goodbye."

How did I get into this?

So...what ever possessed me to start writing a blog?  Don't I have enough to do already without adding one more thing?  Well, apparently not because here I am.  The Librarian in me loves the written word.  The artist in me loves the creative part of the writing process.  The dreamer in me hopes that by sharing my thoughts, I will grow as a person.  The last five years of my life have been...what's the right word...tumultuous, life-changing, traumatic, eye-opening, overwhelming, unexpected, and challenging.  Many more words come to mind, but most of them are unprintable.  Starting with my near-death experience in an automobile accident in 2005, through Steve's diagnosis of lung cancer and his eventual death in 2007, and right up to my life today, my life has taken turns that I never could have imagined.  The inner strength that I thought I possessed simply evaporated when Steve died.  Now I am trying to rebuild my life and for some reason, on a Tuesday afternoon in late September, writing a blog seemed like a good way to start.  I have been reading the Brys family's blog since they moved to Switzerland last fall.  Jamie is my daughter's sister-in-law.  Her insights on raising two children have been heartwarming and her tales of traveling in Europe are enlightening.  This afternoon, I received a message from my daughter, Maggie, telling me that she had started a blog.  Reading her thoughts and observations just made me feel good.  So, I thought that I might give it a try.  What am I going to say in my blog?  I have no earthly idea!  I will probably ramble alot because I am still trying to "find" myself after everything that has happened in the last 5 years.  I hope to come to a new understanding of what it means to live and grow through adversity.  I will probably throw in a few interesting and entertaining stories about the happenings of a day in the life of a librarian.  That part will always be entertaining, because you never know what will happen at the public library where I work.  I hope this journey takes me from darkness to light, from despair to hope and makes us both smile along the way!