Homesick

Bent over a walker, the white-haired gentleman shuffled through the door leading to the restrooms. I smiled at him as he came back into the waiting area of the auto service center. I don't think he noticed.

I should have known that kindly voice when he asked a woman across from me whether she minded him sitting beside her. When he sat down, I looked him square in the face and recognition dawned. "Harold P.," I declared, although I used his full name.

This was the man who baptized me as a 9-year-old girl, who had performed my wedding ceremony and officiated at the funeral of my dad and my maternal grandfather. We hugged for at least a full minute. I was so excited, because I hadn't seen him in 10 years. We reminisced about the time when he was pastor of my childhood church. He and his first wife were good friends of my mom and dad, and our families got together often, even after he left that church.

A funny thing happened as we chatted. The years melted away, and so did the lines in his face and the white of his hair. I was transported back to the time when any problem I encountered could be solved by crawling into my daddy's lap or calling Harold. When I first met my husband, I told my parents that he was a combination of Elbert Hobson (my dad) and Harold. And Jack really did favor Harold, with his dark, wavy hair and receding hairline.

I couldn't believe how much he had changed. The last time I saw him, his hair was still dark and wavy. He had lost a lot of weight, too, and his clothes hung loosely from his large frame. He had always battled with obesity. He explained that the walker was temporary, that his left thigh had been in a cast for several months and he had lost muscle strength. When he got it back, he felt he would be able to discard the walker. When the service man told me my car was ready, Harold and I hugged again, and I didn't want to let go. We exchanged telephone numbers and promises to stay in touch. I intend to keep that promise.

I left his presence with a sense of sadness that I find difficult to understand, much less explain. I was saddened by how old he looked, how fragile, and by the realization that my parents would look like that were they still alive. They were two or three years older than he was. I was saddened by the fact that I hadn't kept in touch with this man who had been such a strong influence on my formative years. I didn't know his second wife had died four years ago. He's 82, so on the way home, I wondered whether anyone would know to inform me when he died.

I wanted to call someone and say, "Guess who I ran into today?" And that's when the sadness nearly overwhelmed me, because there was no one to call. Mom and Dad are dead. My husband is dead. My brother wasn't close to Harold, and my children barely know him. I was overcome with a strong sense of nostalgia. You might even say I felt homesick. What is nostalgia, anyway, but a form of homesickness? Seeing Harold and not being able to tell someone who knew him or who would care made me miss my mom and dad, my husband, my grandparents, even the aunts and uncles who were once such a big part of my life and who I thought would never die. It made me feel so mortal and so alone.

Ever since our chance meeting, a gospel song written by Dottie Rambo keeps playing in my head. "See the bright lights shine, it's just about home time, I can see my Father standing at the door," she wrote. "This world has been a wilderness, I'm ready for deliverance, Lord I've never been this homesick before."

You know you're a country girl

  You know you’re a country girl when...

... you get excited about a barn addition and a shed for your horse trailer;

...you can’t wait to use your new, battery-powered chain saw; 

...you’d rather be mucking stalls than cleaning house;

...next to your horse, your tractor is your favorite ride;

...painting the town means helping your neighbors refinish their barns;

...you get your news at the Piggly Wiggly;

...you can’t leave Dollar General without spending $50;

...your Bach and Tchaikovsky are Haggard and Husky;

...you don’t worry about shaving your legs because you’re always wearing jeans;

...there’s nothing unusual about seeing a horse and goat on your retaining wall;

...you complain about traffic when three cars pass the post office before you can get out of the parking lot.

Guess Who's Coming For Dinner?

For the past two weeks, I've been too busy playing host to write a blog. I've spent time with grandkids, a high school chum and members of the board of the National Federation of Press Women. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I haven't had a moment to call my own.

In an effort to get something posted this week, I'm going to let my camera do most of the talking. The following photos were taken a couple of weeks ago, when I let my  critters out to roam my property. When they are out and about, they usually make their way to my back porch to beg for carrots. As you can see, at least one of them wasn't satisfied with staying on the porch.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this post is more than 2,000 words long. But it's a quick read.

Come on in, Nibbles, she won't mind.

Hey, mom. someone's at the door!

Keep the gates closed, please!

There’s nothing like looking out your window to see a parade of critters marching by. 

Betsy watches as Jazzy & Molly trim the bushes.

Yesterday I let my llamas, horses, donkey and goat out of their three-acre pasture to roam my remaining 25 acres. I used to do this once a week to relieve their boredom and allow them access to the grass by my pond. But I had to stop a few months ago when I got a 6:30 a.m. call from a deputy sheriff at my gates. “Ms. Miller, your horses are out,” he calmly informed me.

Apparently Mallory, Jazzy or both had tripped the underground sensor that opened my gates from the inside. Theoretically, it opened only when something heavy, such as a car or truck, rolled over it. But that blasted electronic gizmo could be as annoying as a toddler in a toy store. Whenever the critters were grazing by the pond, I had to be extra careful, because the sensor would trip going out and coming in. Rather than wait for the gates to close when I left, I would use my electronic key to close them. Coming in, I had to drive just above the spot where the sensor was buried before pointing my key at the gates. All of this to ensure that my critters didn’t escape.

I kept after my gate-man, Fred, to dismantle that widget. Guests can open the gates as they leave via a doorbell mounted in a birdhouse, a clever contrivance that Fred installed when we ran the wiring that supplies electricity to the gates and light fixtures. (Another of his crafty ideas was the doorbell that opens the gates from inside my house. Anyone with a cell phone can call me from outside the gates and I can buzz him in. This sweet little button keeps me from having to give everybody and his uncle my not-so-secret code.)

He finally listened to my plaintive pleas this week and disconnected the sensor wires. Now, my critters can nibble on the fresh shoots of grass by the pond without my worrying about another call from a deputy sheriff. As a bonus, they can keep my azalea bushes trimmed (see photo above). Maybe Betsy the goat will rid my woods of briars on her way to and from the pond. One can dream.

Two-dog nights

My queen-size bed gets mighty crowded some nights. That’s because I often sleep with two dogs. One is the size of a small pony, while the other is just medium sized. I read recently that you shouldn’t allow pets in your bed if you want a good night’s sleep. That could explain why I feel like a zombie some mornings.

Moses prefers to lie across the foot of the bed, and growls when I try to stretch my legs out and wiggle my feet into position. Maggie likes to cuddle so closely I can feel her fur against my cheek and smell her doggy breath. Some nights, Moses wakes me up with the thumping of a hind paw, as he dreams of chasing squirrels through the woods. When I turn over, one of them growls, the other whines. Both shift positions, leaving me a sliver of space about half the size of a crocheted scarf.

The head of my bed is elevated by four-inch wooden blocks due to my acid reflux problem. Sometimes, my dogs have trouble jumping onto the bed, even though it isn’t elevated at the foot. It’s not so bad helping 60-pound Maggie up, but 115-pound Moses is another matter. I’ve thought about getting one of those pet stairs advertised for aged, arthritic dogs. I doubt my dogs would use it, though. They don’t adjust well to change.

I have a log bed with four huge, round posts. For some reason, the posts keep slipping slightly off the wooden blocks. This never occurred before I replaced the bedroom carpet with pine flooring. If I don’t come up with a way to attach those blocks to the bottom of the bed posts, they are going to slide right off one night and I’ll find myself in the floor with two dogs on top of me. What a rude awakening, and probably a dangerous one.

What I really need is a king-size bed. It would come in handy on the nights my two grandsons sleep here, too. No, the dogs don’t share my bed those nights, but two small boys can take up just as much space as two dogs.

It’s a good thing I don’t have a husband. Would husband plus two dogs equal three-dog nights? Just wondering.

In Memoriam: The day the earth stood still

Jack Edward Miller
January 5, 1940 -March 4, 1996

I still get a chill when I recall that horrible phone call on the morning of March 4, 1996. I had just returned from taking our 13-year-old daughter to school. “Jack’s on the floor in the back, there’s blood everywhere, and a note on the door said to call Sheriff Flemming,” came out in a hysterical rush from my husband’s head pharmacy clerk. 

For years, I could recall in minute detail every thought, every conversation, from that day. During the first few months that followed, I’d wake up every morning repeating the same mantra. “Jack’s dead. Jack killed himself. No, not Jack.”

Through the years, a black cloud would envelop me during the month of February, as that infamous day approached. March became a heavy-hearted month for me, too, with the anniversaries of Jack’s death, our wedding  and my father’s death all occurring during that same section of  the calendar. Two years ago, however, the month became a cause of celebration when my second grandson was born on March 14th. (My first grandson was born on Jack's birthday in 2007.)

On the first anniversary of Jack’s untimely death (he was 56), I placed an ad in the local newspaper in Bibb County. That’s where he started the drug store that I continued to run until 2012. Allow me to quote from that memorial piece.

It’s hard to believe you’ve been gone a whole year. A lifetime has passed since we touched you or heard your voice. Or was it just yesterday?

We still don’t understand why you chose to leave us. Perhaps we never will. So we try to remember the way you lived, instead of dwelling on the way you died. You were a loving husband, a devoted father, a generous benefactor to people in need, a compassionate pharmacist and a loyal friend. You were one very special man.

We’ll never “get over” your death, but with God’s help, we’re learning to adjust, one day at a time. We still miss you terribly, and we’ll always love you. We take comfort in knowing that we’ll meet you again some day, and that you’ve finally found the rest you so desperately sought, and so richly deserve.

Reading those words makes me sad all over again. I don’t cry much about Jack anymore, but I think of him every day and sometimes those thoughts do produce a brief shower. At least, they don’t bring on the crushing torrent they used to.

Folks often ask me why I’ve never remarried. I have several quips that I alternate using, depending on the mood I’m in. But the fact is, when you’ve had the best, it’s hard to settle for second place.

The Coffeepot Conundrum

Call me obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive or a coffee snob, but cheap coffeemakers, and a few expensive ones, just don’t make good coffee.

I haven’t been drinking coffee for as long as most people my age. I didn’t start until the late 1990s.  A friend of my youngest daughter gave her a bag of O’Henry’s Southern Pecan Cream for Christmas one year, and I perked a pot for her in the coffeemaker I kept for parties. 

That bag of coffee started my quest for the perfect coffeemaker. A friend of mine, who keeps his Consumer Reports (CR)  magazine next to his Bible, firmly believed in buying a really good coffeemaker. CR said Braun and Krups were tops, so I purchased a four-cup Braun Aromaster. I loved it. 

I nurse a theory about what it takes to brew good coffee. I believe the water must be at or very near boiling temperature. I don’t like the pablum that passes for coffee at restaurants, church gatherings or friends’ houses.  In my coffee-of-the-month-club Gevalia and the 4-cup Cuisinart I purchased for my horse trailer, I have to use more coffee to get the same strength that I did with my Braun. In the long run, that costs more, and still doesn’t make coffee as well as the Braun. I tried a Keurig and gave it away. No matter what coffee I brewed in it, the results tasted like the plastic in the coffeemaker. 

So, when my Braun said, “Alvedersein,” naturally I went searching for one just like it. I visited Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Kmart. I searched major department stores online, along with internet sales sites, including the manufacturer. Apparently, Braun doesn’t make a four-cup coffeemaker anymore. I did find one or two used ones on eBay, but they must have been inlaid with gold, judging from their prices. 

My next step was to find a Krups. Again, I went through the same search process. Imagine my excitement when I  found a four-cup Krups for just $10, plus $4 shipping. It took more than two weeks to get it. As soon as I opened the box, I knew it was the kind you find in your hotel room on a little black tray with pre-measured packets of coffee. It has no permanent filter, only the filter basket, which is shallow and almost square-shaped. You can’t find a paper filter to fit it, much less a permanent one. 

The first morning I used it, I adapted a cone-shaped filter. I figured I was in trouble, though, when the coffee started flowing in less than a minute. “How can it possibly get the water hot enough to make good coffee in less than a minute?” I pondered.  But it was pretty good. Not Braun good, but better than most coffee makers, including the Gevalia 12-cup I had been using until the Krups arrived. The second day, though, my adaptation failed, allowing grounds to plug up the hole in the filter holder. That resulted in half the coffee remaining in the filter basket, half in the carafe, with coffee grounds in both. Ugh! 

When I emailed Krups, I found out that model was 15 years old, and they no longer make parts for it.  I was furious with the eBay seller for not stating it was a hotel-room coffee maker. I was about ready to either send it back or, gasp, try that $25 Black-and-Decker model with a stainless-steel carafe that I had spied at Target. If it didn’t make good coffee, at least the return process would be easy. 

However, I purchased a package of round Bunn-brand paper coffee filters cheaply at my local bent-and-dent store, and thought, “What the heck?” When I put one in the Krups filter holder, all I had to do was trim about half an inch off the top. Voila! It worked.

So, I’m keeping the hotel model...

...at least until I can find another inexpensive, four-cup Braun.