a cure for dreams

lydia and i have been getting into mischief since we made onion soup from the wild onions in her front yard when we were five and promptly forgot about it. it was spring, and the sun beat down on the bucket of onions, water and sand until it was ripely rotten. the smell lasted for days. 

we sent love letters (she did, i was just her accomplice) to the boys next door, bathing our mouths in her mother's lipstick, planting kisses all over the envelopes, then we ran through the bushes to put them in the box.

we did something else that same year that i can't confess, even now, because my mother reads this blog and would not approve. 

we'd slip into the darkened Dixie Theatre with too much popcorn and drink in our hands and get the giggles. once we (she, really) spilled half her drink down someone's back in the row in front of us. 

one day when we walked home from town, Miss Hooker, an elderly woman who took care of her mother, ran out of her house toward us and shouted: help me! mother is dead!

i will not say that we rushed into the house, but we did go in, rubbing the old woman's legs until she moaned and we knew that she was indeed NOT dead. i remember calling daddy that day, asking if we had done the right thing. 

'as far as i can tell you did,' he said. years later, when miss hooker visited my daddy's office, she looked fondly into my eyes.

things like this always happened to lydia and me. i have used some of it for fodder in my fiction, and i will tell you that each episode makes for a good story.

as lydia and i grew older, we built huts out of wheat straw gathered from the field next to her house. we slipped on our rain boots and crept into the dark woods that by night were inhabited by millions of grackles and starlings swirling above our heads. by day we stomped through knee-high bird droppings, just because we wanted to see for ourselves what the whole bird story was all about. writing about it in fiction, i made it night, though it was pretty scary to go there by day.

when we were in junior high school, we got into decoupage and antiquing furniture in her playhouse, not knowing that we were ahead of our time. we sneaked scuppernong wine her grandfather made from the attic. we set up a beauty parlor on her side porch and i actually let her give me a perm, promising i wouldn't take the curlers out for 24 hours. hours! 

on to high school and boys and once, when we stood talking in her back yard as a storm loomed miles away, we watched (and felt and heard) as a beam of lightning shot down and struck the chimney of her house, sending bricks flying toward us. years later when we were together and a thunderstorm approached, i don't know who headed for the car first. we have not liked to be together in storms since.

in college, lydia lived right across the hall from me our first year, down the hall the second, and she was like my sister. applauding me when i did well, putting me in my place when i disappointed her.                                                                                      

when daddy died, almost the first person i heard from was lydia. 'i'm coming,' she said, 'and i'm staying, even if i have to put up a straw hut in the back yard.' and i knew she would do just that.

at the visitation, she came through the back door, telling the folks in the kitchen that she had never used the front door and would not start at that moment. she worked through the room, visiting with people she had known her whole life, and when all the visitors left, she took over the kitchen, pulling out homemade sweet potato ham biscuits (made just that morning), passing them out to all the grands, saying something under her breath like: lydia is gonna take care of things.

the next day, after we buried daddy's ashes, lydia called my cell. 'let's take a ride,' she said, and i said of course, sure. she picked me up, and we drove around the old hood, trying to name who lived where, though neither of us has lived there for more than 35 years. 

put two country girls together who have not been in the country for awhile, and they will surely take a ride, out, toward the fields, the open air. i knew where we were headed, a few miles out of town to the country club where our daddies had played golf for so many years. this trip was for lydia, i thought, to see a place her father had helped build.

as we drove into the club, i saw some men fishing on the edge of the pond and there it was in my head, the picture of the huge bass i'd caught with a cane pole, lydia next to me, so heavy that fish was that the two of us had to drag it across the ground up toward the woods. we had no net. we were maybe 13.

Lydia drove around the clubhouse, noted the wood fence post her father's business was known for years ago, still standing guard against the putting green. on we went, down the hill toward the tennis courts where she had tossed her first serve — this was still her trip, mind you... i never played tennis — toward the club house.

lydia plays golf, is married to a pro, so again we were doing this for her. her mother died just last year, her father a few years before, but they lived away from our town for years. and while the week for me had been catching up with folks i'd known much of my life, lydia didn't have that chance when her parents died. i was more than happy to share our grieving.

humm... she said. i'm thinking maybe i'd like an ice cold beer.

so we sauntered into the pro shop and she told me to put my money away. it was quiet, only a golfer or two on #9 next to the shop, another on #10 teeing off with his son. she asked the pro for two cold ones, and i asked his name. suddenly, i felt a tightness near my eyes and throat and said this: my father was dr. byrum.

'was?' he asked. 'i had no idea.' and then he told me that daddy always came into the shop, golf shoes in hand, and sat right in that chair there — and he pointed to it — to change his shoes. same thing every time. 'i knew he was sick,' he said. 'hadn't seen him in awhile.'

then we talked about how lydia's daddy used to bring her through a back gate on weekend afternoons when the course was under construction, how daddy use to bring me out, too, so we could watch it all being built. the pro showed us a aerial photo of the course being built, then talked about the hundreds of oaks felled during hurricane irene almost two years ago. then this:

'why don't you girls take a cart and go for a ride.' 

back outside, lydia hopped right in the driver's side and i took my place beside her.

we wove down the path toward the front nine and drove down that first fairway. and then i realized it. yes, this was her trip, but it was mine, too, for when daddy was not in the office or hospital or home, he was here, walking up the #3 par 3, across the little bridge and over the small pond to the green. i had done that very thing with him myself as a girl.

daddy didn't have much time off, but if he couldn't get to Nags Head to look out over the ocean to clear his head, he was here, swinging the ball, knocking it in, walking. thinking.

we looked out over the course and sipped our beer and made a toast to our fathers, cutting across one fairway after another, until we were back in place, both of us healed, a bit, from our short time with our daddies again. 

'lydia knows just the cure,' she said as we drove down the back roads toward home.

i don't see lydia often, and i miss her. miss the mischief, the giggles in the night over a spilled coca-cola or a secret wish shared only with each other. 

years have put life and distance between us. but on this day, we were at it again, our lives whole for a few minutes, despite all we have lost.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

our light has come

ok, so i haven't written daily during december, at least not here at writemuch. but i have been writing a lot in my job and in my head. why just a few days ago, in the wee hours of the morning, i dreamed that i had found the characters and plot to the next harry potter (well, HP wannabe)... literally dreamed up the world and had actors taking parts in the screen version, even setting it up for the sequel.

if only i could remember it. in the middle of the dream i dreamed that i was thinking now this is a great story, so great in fact that it is unforgettable. apparently not so unforgettable that when i woke just minutes later, the whole thing had vanished more quickly than dear ol' harry under his invisible cloak.

and so i have vowed that i will wake myself up from a dream of this sort again and write the whole damn thing down (even if i can't read my own handwriting, which is hard to do in the middle of the day, much less in the wee hours with the lights off.)

sometimes, though, it's not about my writing at all. sometimes the joy of words comes through the people i love writing and reading their own stories — stories i admittedly helped pull out of them — but their words, their dreams, beautifully rendered on the page.

today was that kind of day.

each sunday during Advent, i've had the privilege to mentor a group of writers who share the pews with me at my church. we've been gathering for years, off and on, during sunday school, to put ourselves into the stories of the Bible and write our way out. i think we are in our 8th year, though we've departed the text and written about Lent from time to time.

it's been a remarkable journey. and i have grown to love and respect all the people who sit at the table with me, churning out their personal stories with great enthusiasm and humility. some of them have been with me for years, others new to the table, but all are searching for the role God plays in their daily life, in their struggles to be good people and parents, to work through their grief, to accept life when plans go awry. you can't know how much i admire how they put it right there on the table, when too often their instructor is not yet ready to do the same. they have written about their marriages, children and siblings they have lost, riffs in families and the struggles and joys that come with this busy season. they've written with humor and with grace, and we have made good use of the box of Kleenex that sits in the middle of our table.

and today, this group of writers shared their stories with the larger congregation. i felt like a mother watching her child perform, take her first steps or riding away from me with her back to me as she peddles away on her bike. in the words these dear friends read, i saw growth, too, as writers and as Christians who have come to understand that God is there, even in the middle of sadness.

it's funny. we set out each season with a set of readings and no idea what we will write about or if our stories will connect in any way to each other, as any good collection should. and every single year, as i begin placing the stories in our collection, it's a goosebump feeling, because stories set apart by circumstance, gender and generation are woven together as if from the same cloth.

this year's collection is all about light, the aha! kind of light that comes when we finally understand we are on the right road.

advent: noun. "coming into being or use."

i'd say that's what this year's collection is all about. but why don't you see for yourself? our light has come, and you can read all about it here.

but that's not all. this afternoon i sat in the audience to hear my mentor, poet Sally Buckner, read from her collection, Nineteen Visions of Christmas. i was sally's student almost 40 years ago at peace college, and one of the joys of the season throughout the years has been to receive a Christmas poem from her as her card. she has collected some familiar to me, and many not, and listening to the cadence and clarity of her words today reminded me of why i want to be a writer, and how much she has taught me about the craft. i can only hope i have taught my own students half as much.

what a joy, in the midst of this season, to be both teacher and student in one single day. but come to think of it, shouldn't every day be just like that?












writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

susan hooks is here

my sister and i have never shared well. sleeping in the same room for forever, she inexplicably moved to the guest room when she turned teenager. and sometimes she would go into my closet and take a favorite t-shirt without my asking. (though younger, i was larger than she was so i couldn't steal her clothes without stretching them, and alas, getting caught.)

but then 30 years ago today, something changed.

i woke up to a phone call. 'hello susan!' pamula shouted. 'susan hooks is here!'

susan hooks. it took me awhile for this to sink in. my sister had just had a baby. a girl. and she had named the baby after me. (and my grandmother, but still.) wow. i called pamula daily after that, wanting to know who she looked like (her mom), did she cry (not much), how it felt to hold a baby in your arms that was your own. (one day I would learn myself.) in short order i was driving my mustang from augusta,ga to greensboro,nc, where my mother and my sister had spent the week babykeeping in a little house with kelly green carpet on the family room floor.  

the small bathroom in my sister's house had no vanity, as i recall. just a sink, and since there was no room to stretch out the giant baby bathing sponge, the first thing i saw on my arrival at the house was this: the two most important women my life dangling a tiny, wiry, slick-wet frame over the sink. and her eyes were WIDE open. freaked out, i would describe it. wet baby wet hands wet grandmother and mother... i was scared half to death that they would drop her. 

but they didn't. i am sure she was dry, dressed and fed by the time i got to hold her myself, looking into her large blue eyes, marveling at her chunky cheeks — she looked a little like Tweety Bird — counting her toes. a baby. a real baby. my sister's baby, and somehow — because she was named for me — by default my own. we were sharing at last. and something way more important than a t-shirt.

(my sister remembers this week not just because it marked the birth of her first child, but for the fact that beety jean, who thought that kelly green carpet could use a shampoo, sent my just-days-post-partum sister to the grocery story to rent a carpet cleaner — and didn't even help her get it out of the car. or clean the carpet. she probably did help clean it...that's our beety jean!)

being good Southern women, pamula and i started out calling our new baby susan hooks, but as she grew, just 'hooks' seemed to stick. two months later i got married. my sister moved our little baby to just outside St. Louis, but we talked every day about what raising her was like.

the next spring, i had become her godmother, and so i boarded a plane for illinois and her baptism. while i was there, we went to the zoo and the Arch, watched the roaring mississippi close up. and i took a lot of pictures.

on sunday, we dressed hooks up in her finest bonnet and headed to church. no other member of my family was there (another story: my brother's daughter was christened the same day, in a town much closer to my parents, so they were there.)

80s hair... what can i say?

i wish everyone had been with us, though. we stood in front of a congregation of strangers while the priest marked our baby as Christ's own. and then the choir turned to her and sang the most beautiful song i had ever heard, saying her name over and over, 'susan, susan...' as if she were the only one in the nave (and as if she understood). her wide eyes made us believe she did, for sure. I wish i could remember the other words, but pamula and i were both in tears and one thing you need to know about dear pamula is that she just does not cry.

i will spare you more of this story, which my sister describes as the happiest and saddest day of her life... how we drove all over Illinois look for a place for lunch and ended up in a dingy pizza parlor sitting all alone — pamula, her husband, hooks and me — celebrating the very fact of this baby.

when she was two, pamula called to say hooks had said the cutest thing. 'she asked me if a cloud sleeps. isn't that so cute?' that question led this writer on a dreamy literary journey that continues today. (to celebrate my tweety bird, i have been working on do clouds sleep, the bedtime book she inspired, much of the day). 

hooks grew older, gained a couple of brothers, and by then i had a baby of my own. 

hooks & her worm

she moved a couple more times until the fam finally settled in the Great State of Iowa. she came back to n.c. for school, where people just couldn't understand a name like hooks, so she started using susan. she met a tar heel boy (a demon deacon) who, oddly enough, had a nickname: worm. hooks & worm. there was nothing left to do but to marry him.

and now our little susan hooks is here and grown (though she is still little.) she looks like her mother and her great-grandmother (though she smiles much more than Hazel Estelle Hooks ever did.) and she is learning to make beety jean's caramel cake.

happy birthday, tweety bird. maybe by the time you have your own tweety bird i will finally be able to hand you your book.

can you tell they are kin?