about a boy

just before daybreak, the phone rang and i answered. a woman, asking for my husband. a reporter, she said, for one of atlanta's tv stations i recall. i pictured a well coiffed, sleek brunette in spiked heels just waiting to purr something seductive into my husband's ear. i shook him awake, handed him the phone and looked toward my feet, but couldn't see them.

just then i felt, well, a nudge. and when he hung up the phone from his seductress, i said three words:

don't go far. then four more. 

the baby is coming. 

i could feel it.

my husband dressed for work — he was in public affairs for a utility company at the time and there was some sort of nuclear issue, which is in no way as important as a baby, don't   you know.

i gathered my thick body in my quilted robe and put my alarm clock in my pocket. walked into my daughter's room, wondering what in the world i would do with her in these hours as i waited for this new baby to come.

she found my closet, right after breakfast, and as i timed my contractions with the pocketed tick of the blue plastic clock, she found my honeymoon shoes and pulled my 'Princess Diana' rehearsal dinner dress over her head just so. how i wish i had pictures. 

as my 3-year-old plundered, i crouched on my hands and knees, cleaning all the bathrooms because once again, my mother would be coming and things had to be right. 

a few hours in i called my mother-in-law, who was on her way to the beauty parlor, which would be the perfect distraction for a cute little girl who would greet a new sibling, we hoped, by the end of the day.

i called my husband. it's time, i said, and he left the carefully coiffed reporter and drove the 20 miles home to take me to the hospital and into our new life as a family of four.  

it was one year to the day, i remember, from when the space shuttle exploded on national tv.

+++

last night we sat across from our son and his girlfriend sharing supper and stories. she asked what time he was born, he said: after Guiding Light, which is partly true. there would be no tv in the labor room that day, and GL was my favorite story, so i asked one of the nurses to find some way for me to watch. 30 minutes into Josh and Reva and this boy would have nothing of my distraction, breaking into this world so quickly that his napping dad hardly had time to put on his scrubs. i have to say my son has consistently interrupted my train of thought since. just when i thought i'd have a moment to myself, this quiet boy would say something that made me wish i had been paying closer attention.

he does so, still. 

+++

it seems, looking back on it, as if he grew from two feet to four then to six overnight, stretching his lanky body at times in such awkward ways that you could almost see the paIN in it. as a boy, he craved independence, admired (and practiced) great wit, loved Harry Potter and studied how to build things. he learned how to be a loyal friend to many and a brother to the sister he adores.

some say he looks like me, which is a curse or a blessing, depending upon your perspective (his/mine). the two of us have had our moments. there were days when i thought, well, i will never be good at the mother/son thing, and others when i felt we had just about gotten it right. 

lately, though i don't see or talk to him every day, it still feels tenuous. i want to help him but give him space. want to soothe with my mother thing but give him breathing room. want to say i'm proud but leave space for growth.

in the last year, i have seen my son grow into a man. we walked, hand-in-hand, into his grandfather's hospital room and out again, both of us quietly weeping. we shopped for sofas for the house he was buying. i stood by as he walked my mother to the communion rail on Christmas Eve, her arm in his hand. 

he inherited my father's saw and is building a place to put it using plans he found online. he is kind and funny and quiet, and he can be quite charming, i hear. though he drives me mad sometimes, my love for him is fierce.

+++

today he turned 27. Happy Birthday, G. It's a pleasure to know you.

mom

susanbyrumrountree.com 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.

land, ho!

my father grew up in a country crossroad that when i was a child seemed like the prettiest little place on earth. he spent his first 17 years growing tall and fishing in wooded ponds, later working in the shop where his father sold Fords. when Daddy died, my brother told a story i had never heard. that when Daddy was working in the shop, my grandfather asked him to change the oil on a car, which he dutifully did. only he forgot to put new oil back into the car he was working on. so instead of inheriting the family business, my grandfather decided the boy who would become my daddy would be better off fixing people than fixing cars. so he sent my father to medical school.

i spent my childhood going back to my father's home, visiting my grandparents for a week during the summer. there is so much i remember about the place. the back yard swing where my grandfather used to push me into the sky. the storage house that smelled of moth balls but held a thousand treasures. the garden where we used to dig for potatoes and pick butter beans. the old shop, where we would sit in the showroom cars, turning the steering wheel and blinkers, then get cold cocolas from the old stoop-shouldered machine.

our visits also included 'going to ride,' which meant driving down quiet farm paths so my grandfather could check the crops growing on farms he had owned for some time. to my knowledge he didn't plant the rows himself, but he was overseer. one summer, he took friend Lydia and me down the path to see the largest hogs we'd ever seen in our lives.

over the years, as we headed to and from the beach, i would try to point out that farm but could never quite find it. then a couple of years ago, Daddy asked us to go back. 

though my grandparents have been gone for years, he wanted us to see the landmark of their legacy — the three small farms that are now leased, the land worked. Daddy wanted us to know where they were, so we would not forget. 

so we drove down country roads to the familiar places of my childhood and his. the first farm stands between my grandparents' burial place and their house, and that spring, before the crops went in, we could see their breakfast room window from their graves. 

and then down another road and a surprise. a family cemetery i had never seen, where my great-grandfather Moses Byrum is laid to rest. i still can't figure out why i never knew it was there.

and then, back to the farm where those hogs once grew, an expanse of winter wheat waving at us along the short drive toward the old house and barn. i watched, as Daddy's eyes scanned the horizon, the circle of land his father owned that now belonged, in part, to him. And i wondered what would become of it. 

turns out, Daddy knew. 

a few weeks ago, as we headed to the beach, we made a couple of stops with the kids. first, to the family cemetery where their great-great grandfather is buried. then on to the farm where as an 11-year-old, i had tried to pet a few gigantic pigs.

the kids took pictures, as i recounted my last visit there with their grandparents, Daddy in his favorite yellow sweater, Mama telling me how she tried to convince my grandfather to be more progressive and put indoor plumbing in the tenant house, almost 60 years before.

my siblings and i now own this farm with my aunt, my father's sister. Daddy gave us this land in his will. which i have to say was a big surprise. we did not expect anything... and though i always knew he loved this farm, i never imagined he would entrust its future to us. cityfolk though we all are.

i don't think i have ever owned anything outright. maybe a toaster. a book. a pair of shoes. but not land. 

land.

as i write this i don't know quite what to say. even after close to 25 years in our current house, the bank still owns a small part. cars? all loans, though one is coming close to being paid off. i know people who buy cars with cash, but we have never been able to do that. 

but cars are not the same as land.

land. 

the thing that drew the Israelites from Egypt and

 kept them going, 

the thing that kept Noah and Christopher Columbus in the boat, kept Scarlett O'Hara from losing her mind. (well, maybe not.) 

it is a small plot, considering. 

but it is ours. and it is land our father loved, and our grandfather before him, so there you have it.

we often joked in years past that we would one day own a third of a half of something — this land — just about enough to put a lawn chair on so we could watch the sunset on a summer Sunday afternoon.

guess i didn't count on it actually coming true. and now, though i am pretty sure where the sun will go down on a summer Sunday, i am wondering just where Daddy would want us to place those chairs.

susanbyrumrountree.com 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.

what's the matter?

i've been using my fridays in january as writing days. holidays done, no time-sensitive lists to check off, so there are no excuses not to get back at it. (though i write for a living, this kind of writing i do for my life.)

for three fridays in the past month i actually did. write. i've gone through the umpteenth revision of that novel i have been working on for so long it is now a period piece. but on this friday so far, i have ordered a couple of things online, checked FB for updates, read my daughter's blog, responded to 12 emails, made two phone calls and served my dog a piece of cheese, all the while hearing this tiny inner whine: why are you wasting time?

is the fact that february is here an excuse?

there were many days in the past 35 years when it like felt writing was wasting time. it didn't seem to matter to anyone but me, really.

writers, though, are vain people. we want to be read. so i kept at it, thinking one day somebody would read something i had written, and it would matter to them. i did get a job as a writer, eventually. so though it never really paid my rent, that was something.

as a working writer, i've had my share of articles published, some mattering more than others. i once wrote a story for my college alumni magazine for the anniversary of the nursing school there, and i stumbled on a vocal administrator who revealed the true story in nursing at that time: that every hospital in the country was short many nurses, which endangered patients. a dear nurse-friend agreed to be interviewed about how this heretofore undocumented nursing shortage affected her job, and she almost lost that job because her employer didn't want that particular story told. we rewrote the lede using her story but not her name, and after the piece ran in the alumni magazine, stories about the shortage showed up in newspapers and magazines all over the place.

in the late 90s i wrote a newspaper article about one of my favorite places and soon  began researching a book that led to actually writing one* (and finishing it), which led to a tiny little book tour. i felt pretty much like cinderella the summer the book came out, people showing up to see me. finally, i had the kindergarten storyteller's stool again. it had been a very long wait.

that year, i also reached another goal: my words showed up once a month in the paper i had dreamed of writing for for years. my assignment was to write my life down — something i had been doing pretty much all my life, but now, well, a little over hundred thousand people might actually read my words. and i'd get a check for a couple of dollars to boot. i had been working toward this particular goal for years, finding one editor who loved my work, another who said essays didn't matter to people reading the daily news. so when yet another called and asked me to submit one for consideration for a new column in the works, i thought finally, this will matter to someone besides me.

my first story ran on Feb. 13, 2001, and i (sort of) made fun of my husband — who dislikes Valentine's Day with a passion — and revealed that my favorite flower is the bachelor's button. i shared the foibles of his attempts on our first Valentine's Day to find a bloom you can't find anywhere in the middle of winter. special order only.

late that afternoon when i went to check the mail, i found a giant silk version of my favorite stem stuck in the ground next to the front stoop. as secret admirer perhaps? (it serves as the background for this blog.) proof that at least one person had read my little story.

the next 17 months of columns would take me through college applications and acceptances, a daughter's leave-taking and a son's guitar picking. a 20th anniversary & my parent's 50th. my husband's sailboat and an accident that claimed the life of one of my daughter's classmates, all served as fodder for the story of my life. 9/11 begat two columns — one, me trying to cling to some sense of normal by chronicling the years of my daily walk, the other, at Christmas, when i just didn't feel like doing Christmas at all.

by then i was receiving emails from readers, sometimes more than a dozen if particular words hit their mark. the Christmas column garnered one angry reader, who said my job was to make light of life, not to remind readers of how dark it sometimes is. another said i was depressed and needed medication. a few thanked me for articulating their post 9/11 feelings. somehow my story became everybody else's.

you never know, when put yourself out there, how people will take you.

when i wanted to write about my book being published, my querulous** editor said it would be self-serving. i asked her how, if i was supposed to write about my life could i not touch on finally reaching a life-long goal? she relented, and the story became not so much about the book as my life as an essay writer living in a family who doesn't really care for their lives being lived out on paper. 

what i thought would be the pinnacle of my writing career ended the week the Pea left for college. after 18 months, the column was gone.

"what they don't tell you about babies is that they leave," i wrote then... "right from the minute they're born, they are leaving you. you're ready, of course, because your toes are swollen, their knees crowding your rib cage and you say, if only they would go ahead and come out. and then they do and you say, oh, i didn't realize. didn't realize... that soon enough they'll learn to walk without holding your hand, put on a shirt by themselves even if it's the wrong color, draw out their ABCs in large blocks. later they will learn Algebra, which you never could do, and spell words like plethora, which you can. and while they're learning all these things, they're looking into your eyes, saying 'i will never leave you,' and they are lying. and you didn't realize when you look back and say, 'don't ever leave,' you're lying, too." *

i wrote those words quickly in 2002, not even thinking about them except that i had to get them out of my head or else i would break apart. i was upset that my child was leaving and that a lifelong passion was as fleeting a raising a child seemed to be at that moment. i wasn't thinking about who might read my words, or how my feelings might affect someone else's (except maybe the Pea, that she would say, awww, (lying) i really wish i could stay with you.)

no. i was just being selfish. 

i certainly never expected that i would almost forget i even wrote those words and then 11 years later, would pick up my phone at my day job and the caller would tell me exactly how my words had changed her. 

but that's what happened. a work call one morning this week about an event i'm helping plan, from a young correspondent for the same newspaper where my words once appeared. at the end of fact-checking, she said: i sent you an email — me fully expecting her to follow with: weeks ago, but you never answered — but instead she said: years ago, when you wrote a story about your daughter and how you couldn't wait for her be born and that spoke to me.

so much so, in fact, that she emailed me to say thank you. and that she was a young mom at the time who dreamed of being a writer. like me. 

like me. 

i had been that girl, 30 years ago.

though i don't remember it, i had written her back an encouraging email which she had saved all these years and now she is one. a writer. for several online publications. her 3-year-old is now 12. and doesn't want her mother writing stories about her anymore.

and here i have been thinking these past weeks that i am just to the light side of awful. 

i probably don't need to tell you that a choke took hold in my throat right then, and the tears swelled at the edges of my eyes. and all i could say was thank you. you have changed me with this call. (when i confessed that i don't read her column about being a mom, she said: that's ok, you're old. (old?) 

well, yes, i guess i am. 

'all the stories are written,' she said of her column, which she is thinking of ending, but i say no. hardly. new stories come around every single day, stories of you, with those around you as supporting cast. you just have to start.

later, i shared all this with the Pea. i know how her daughter feels, she said.

mattering matters. whether we are writers or weeders, caregivers or takers, loafers or sprinters, makers or menders, swimmers or water-treaders. all of us want to believe that somehow the ripples we leave even as we tread that water badly sometimes, will mean something good to our little corner.

it is a rare day when we find out that yes, they do. 

so i keep at it, treading through my day, weeding and weaving the stories, about the Pea and her brother, the Skipper and the dog who loves cheese, hoping that as i put one word after another, the story laid there will matter, if just to me.

now... back to that book.

* (the next year i self-published a collection of essays, ahead of my time apparently... and ever the poor marketer, i am now practically giving them away.if you'd like a copy of either book, contact me. both books are now out of print! 
 ** i could probably use her now, though i hate to admit 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.

sing around the campfire, pt. 1

when i was 9 my my sister came home from a two-week sleep-away camp. she talked about the campfires, the dances with boys, the group picture, something called canteen, the sailing and the songs, and about all the people who were now her friends from other places. she didn't mention kp.

i didn't know anyone from another place besides a couple of cousins, and wondered what it might be like to meet folks i hadn't known all my whole nine years.

the week before she left, she packed a footlocker full of shorts and matching tops, sneakers and bathing suits — another thing i couldn't imagine — packing your whole self up and willingly spending 14 days away from family. where you hadn't already figured out that a witch did not in fact live in the linen closet. where you couldn't fall off to sleep listening to the sounds of your parents in the family room. she was the bravest girl i'd ever known.

i must have asked to go. surely they wouldn't have just sent me to camp without my permission. parents didn't do that, did they? but there my mother was, washing and pressing all my clothes into crisp squares (she has this habit), and we packed the metal trunk full, with socks and clean underwear, stationery and stamps, leaving just enough room for the sweatshirt i was bound to want from the camp canteen.

i had never been away from home for more than a night or two.

but we set off through the countryside. it was a long way, turning down a sandy road in the middle of pines, tall and straight. we drove by a spot in the sandy pine forest where my sister said the devil left his footprints. right outside an episcopal church camp? i hoped there was a fence strong enough to keep the devil out.

suddenly, we were there, driving through the gate, and i looked up at the sign: camp leach. leach. would there be leeches in the water? I wondered. (i doubt i'd learned to spell it right by then.)

we were barely passed the first cabin when my sister jumped out of the car, headed to find her counselors. i stayed close to mama, unsure. i could see the river before me, white clapboard huts scattered about, the masts of small day sailers peeking up from the water. 

i don't remember much about that day. just mama making up my bed and me climbing to the top, where i could see into the bathroom and the showers where there were no doors.

i did know somebody — a girl in my class from church — she was supposed to be my friend— but i was scared of her most of the time. i looked around at the strange faces that would be my cabinmates for the next two weeks and missed the faces of my friends from home.

i think it must have been at supper when the end of my adventure began. i don't drink milk, and so when they put a carton in front of me at the table, i ask for water. nothing doing. drink the milk. and then i started thinking i'm sure about how mama would put a little vanilla and sugar in my milk to get me to drink it. that thought led to watching mama fix supper and the softness of her apron and it was all pretty much over by then. and the tears fell.

somehow i got to sleep that night, and by day things seemed just a little bit better. i met a girl named penny and took her picture with the camera i had brought. 

i can't tell you when it turned again, but somehow i found myself on the phone with mama, and i was wailing. despite the fact that the counselors had taken me sailing and swimming and walking around the camp on my own personal tour. we'd had our camp picture made and heard ghost stories by the campfire and i was there for all of it — for a whole three days. but by that time i'd had enough of trying not to miss home, so there i was again on the phone, begging, pleading. come get me. i'm dying here.

and so she did. 

oh i know you're saying right about now that the only thing to cure a homesick camper is to leave her there and make her tough it up. well, that's probably what my mother should have done, but i can pretty much bet that even when she wasn't on the phone with me she could hear my crying, two hours away, through those pines. and you can bet that i was making everyone around me miserable.

she drove the wagon into the camp yard and i was waiting, my trunk packed inside the cabin. my sister once again combed the grounds looking for her counselors, drinking in the smell of the Pamlico, begging just as hard that my mother let her stay in my place. 

go get your trunk, mama said, and her words melted into me. i was going home. finally. I ran up the short steps and somehow filled with a new-found strength lifted that thing up by myself and straggled out the door.

that's when i saw the dust clouds. clouds kicked up by mama's station wagon, headed toward the gate. she was leaving me. it was not her finest moment.

i guess she thought seeing her would be good enough medicine, that it would buy her another three days without me at home. days of quiet. if i had been my mother, that's what i'd have thought, too. 

but that's what you get for thinking. i was what today would be called a high-strung child, and that translated into a loud and crying one most of the time. at that point in my life, i hadn't found my writing voice, but i had found my voice, surely i had.

so i saw those dust clouds, and i used that voice. screaming. don't. go. don't. mama. wait. please. take. me. home. it embarrasses me to admit what a baby i was.

and i ran. faster than i had ever tried, ran to catch up with her. i can't tell you whether i was running with that damn trunk or if i dropped it in the sand. 

then i saw the breaks, lit up like the tree in the early hours of Christmas.

she stopped, and i got in the car, satisfied that i would no longer be held prisoner in this place where i couldn't get so much as a glass of water, and i was going home.

whether you are the mother or the child in this story, there are no good answers. yes, she should have made me stay (probably never should have come in the first place, or shouldn't have thought i was ready or whatever. ) and no, i shouldn't have cried until all that was left was the driest of sobbing in order to get my way. i don't know about you, but i've been that mother who no matter what i did, it would be the wrong choice.

and as for the child, sometimes there are no good answers there, either. no good way to get around what you're feeling except

feel

.

i was grounded for the rest of those two weeks, where i was content never to be too far from my mother's soft apron as she stood at the kitchen sink. i never went back to camp — never wanted to — but i suppose i am glad to have provided my family with a source of laughter whenever we gather around the holiday table.

my children went to camp and loved it, though when i left them each time, i spent the first 10 minutes crying my eyes out, imagining them feeling abandoned. but they never called home.

in the years since, i've found my voice and learned (sometimes) to temper my tears, so i could leave home, finally, for more than a sleepover. and on a warm July day in 2001 i dropped the kids off at camp and went on an adventure of my own. for five days i traveled coastal north carolina and virginia, promoting my first book. 

on the third day of the trip, i stopped in a small bookstore in elizabeth city, where a line had already formed near the door. i began signing books for students at a local school, one of whom had the last name 'spence'. oh, i knew a girl once named penny spence I said aloud. a suddenly a voice near the back of the line lifted above the din.

'i'm penny spence,' said the brown haired girl i had photographed in front of our cabin way back in 1967. 'do i know you?'

'well, probably not,' i said. 'we went to camp together, but i only stayed three days.'

she didn't remember me, but that was ok. that meant she didn't go home from camp telling her mother about the crazy girl who cried all the time and ran after her mother's car, screaming to beat the band.

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.

because you just never know

in march, she was caught by the fluid building in her lungs, unable to get out of bed or dress without assistance. they brought her home, found caregivers, knowing that at 93, her heart was slowing to a turtle's pace. wondered if at some point the ticker that had been ticking since the end of january 1918, would soon come to a full stop. I wrote about her then, about how worried we were for her.

but she kept on ticking, in the best john cameron swazye kind of way.

just a few days ago, we paid her a visit for our annual july 4th weekend with our 'fake family', and there she was, beaproned and standing in the kitchen making her special congealed salad which she makes every year for us. and on another day, she reached into the oven to check on her two perfectly baked lemon chess pies. she sat with us at the table as 11 of us gathered — for all 10 meals — laughing and talking, posing with her grandson, sharing a cocktail in the evening with granddaughters and friends, rocking on the porch in the heat.... sure she was tethered to her artificial breath, but still.

in our time together, we talked about how her unmarried uncle in the 1920s used to take she and her sister to town, dressed in fine feathers and spats to cover their shoes, driving them the 30 miles to the capital city, promising her a new car when she turned 16 so she could drive him instead.                 only he got married before her birthday, and she never got that car. 

she told me how much she liked my husband when she first met him 30 years ago. 'he was a good one,' she said, 'i could tell.' and don'tcha know for the most part, he has been? and he dotes on her, that he does.

as the holiday ended, she was doing this: talking into the face of an iPad, recording her voice into the heart Talking Tom Cat, laughing with her granddaughters at this new technology which was only invented when she turned 92. 

that night she watched The Bachelorette. THE BACHELORETTE. i have never seen the show myself, but apparently everybody spends a lot of time in the hot tub, and the bachelor in question kicked out the prettiest one. and as the fireworks flew and boomed outside, inside her room with the tv on nana comforted the three dogs (two of them large) who cowered at her feet. nothing gets this farm girl down. not a faint ticker. and not something as newfangled as a computer the size of a good book with a crazy kind of kitty on the screen who talks back, surely not that. because there is always something newfangled appearing out there in the world and it appears that nana's ticker is ticking around to see just what turns up next.

11 Things, Mind Body & Soul

12/11 Reverb10: What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)


1) 11 pounds (at least) 
2) failure to launch
3) clutter: mind AND matter
4) dreams about not making it to class
5) dreams about making it to class but w/o my homework
6) one more thingamagig that comes with an online user guide
7) two few completed sentences
8) my muffin top
9) a beachless summer
10) a day without exercise
11) being late


How will I go about ridding my life of these things? 
eat less, move more, rise early, set out, read more, write more, clear out, slow down, catch up, clean up, breathe in (and out), twist/shout, smell the sea, kick the sand, let go, let God. And pray He catches me, when I attempt that launch.


12/ 12 – Body Integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (Author: Patrick Reynolds)


Cohesive me? Now THAT'S funny. Maybe every time I enjoyed that first catchup-dipped fry from Cloos'? You have got to be kidding, right? Maybe next year I'll take a shot at it though. I probably just misunderstood the question.  Oh, and by the way, shouldn't it be "a moment when?" (a place where) — or was I just late to class that day and didn't do my homework? 
sbr