When Summer Days Seemed to Move in Circles

I asked the guys at the shop last night if they know anyone who has wild blackberries that I could pick in a couple weeks. I offered a cobbler or a jar of jam as thanks. It got them going and one said "I don't know anyone, but that sounds good." I said a jar of jam had floated around the shop a few weeks ago. Another one said that they were out of bread *wink wink*. I said I'd immediately get up and feed my starter. I did. I had a guest and I just got right up anyway. I'd do anything in the world for those men. My brothers.

Another said that he didn't get any bread at all. I told him I'd bring him a loaf all his own. And I will. He's the one who verbally offered the support I knew was there. Said the words. The words help me so much to feel safe. I know that about myself now. Then he hugged me, after asking for consent. So if you think these guys who don't always think the same way as folks like me are not the kind of good people we love like our own, you're mistaken. They're tough and crass and jaded, but they're also gentle and emotionally intelligent and kind and accepting and so loving. I think I've surprised myself as much as I ever could, and that's a lot. 

I still have this feeling in the back of my chest that says that when I'm not useful to them anymore, they won't treat me the same way. Everything in me except that little sensation of anxiety tells me that it's wrong. I think they know as much as I do that we are stuck together forever now. Feast or famine, good times and bad, sickness and health, the whole nine. I love them so. And they love me too. Even if only a couple have ever said so. They say it in their own ways.

I began this post because this morning, one of the first things I did was pull the framed, type-written recipe from the bookshelf and make up the dough for Nanny's bread. Because it will always be Nanny's. And I'm sharing it with my family in my way. She only got to meet one of them and she didn't like him. That gentle, tender, respectful, kind, unwell man with the sharecropper eyes. That's what got her. I thought surely she'd love those blue eyes; she always has. She says "I don't like his eyes." She didn't hug him goodbye. She's maybe not always the best judge of character, but certainly a good judge of outcomes. 

She's touched every place in my life. I forget sometimes how much she is in me. I guess that's what happens when someone is that much a part of who you are. I forget that I mention her as often as I do. It saddens me to know how much I forget. I try so hard to notice and to hold on to every moment and every person, but you can't hold on to it all. 

Baking has always been a kind of prayer for me. It's like meditation or prayer or any of those things you do to soothe your heart and quiet your mind. And if I bake for you, it's for absolute love. That's how I say I love you. One of the ways. I can love people in any way they will let me, but baking is my language. It's the way I love that isn't a response to someone showing me how they need to be loved. My own giving love language.

I stood there with my recipe and that bread starter that's older than me, putting all the pieces together and actively praying. Praying and crying. I have no idea what I will do without that lady. My steadfast, loving, tough, resourceful, funny, clever, talented, nurturing force in my life. When it's over, they'll sell my home. I'll never walk that land again, never turn the earth and plant it, never pick those tomatoes off the vine, or shuck that corn, or snap the beans we grew. There won't be any more sweltering summer days with the air turned off, all the women gathered in the kitchen to make blackberry jelly and slice and pack up okra for the freezer. I'll never have another holiday knowing where to go home to. I'll never get another off-key happy birthday song left on my voicemail or another card in the mail in that familiar writing. I'll never be able to go home and ask her for her advice, all those years of gentle, abiding faith and love to look to. Whew. I'm going to fall good and apart.

"God didn't tell us to judge each other, he told us to love each other." That's the one piece of advice I'll take with me to the end. And I have tried so hard to live it. And people tell me now that I'm so accepting, while still holding them accountable. Fierce, tough, nurturing, gentle love. And that's all her. She held me to a higher standard than I ever held myself, and that's lofty. I've realized lately that it's because she believed in me that much. She loved me so hard, even if she really didn't know how to like someone like me. She was proud of me. She is. And she will be for the rest of my life. Every accomplishment I ever managed is because of her and every one I took back to her like an offering. I spent my whole life trying to earn the opinion of me that she already held. Funny how a little age will show you things like that. I just hate that she won't get to see that piece of paper with my name under "University of Georgia" on it. I recall some of the times she beamed with pride and some of the times I surpassed even her expectations of me. I told her when I took my current job what my salary would be and she did actual Pikachu face. Anyone who knows her knows the one. I could have died happy right then. To her, money was always success. And I guess she thought that I'd arrived.

Today I'll go see her for what is probably the last time. I don't think she'll know who I am. Mama says she's not talking sense. Everyone tells me to go. I don't want to. It's way too much like that last time I saw my Daddy and he looked up at me and didn't know me. Why would I want that instead of remembering that the last time I saw her, she wouldn't have anything but to get up and hug me. I could smell her hand cream and her face cream and her clean hair. I could feel that hundred-pounds of bird bones and years in my strong arms. I've been avoiding this. But I also trust the people who love me and tell me that I'll regret not going. So here we go.

And so today, I'll pray and cry. I'll do it quietly. That's who I am. Suffer quietly and then let it all out when it's over. No time to fall apart in the moment. There's way too much to do.