Sweet Tea

In the midst of a summer heat wave, a few friends and I went to a Saturday night baseball game. It was hot. It was stinkin’ hot. Hair frizzed, program books soaked up sweat and even the flag couldn’t find the energy to fly. I don’t know who we played, how we played or if we won but I remember the heat leeching onto my skin. I recall my mind wandering to the upcoming season of ice hockey and crisp autumn days of football.

I heard the food vendor before I saw him. “Sweet tea,” he cried. “Sweet tea. Who wants some sweet tea?” In plastic cups filled with melting ice, he carried the entire southern culture in his hands. He sold to men wearing sleeveless t-shirts and to women wearing loose cotton frocks and cowboy boots. He sold to men and women carrying gun permits and holding the fear of God. He sold to a multi-generational crowd who grew up on sweet tea and church suppers; sweet tea and family reunions; sweet tea and green beans slow cooked, with just a touch of bacon grease, all day long.

The strains of the national anthem played over the noise of cicadas and the crowd rose in unison. Baseball caps and cowboy hats were removed and without athletic skill, we formed a team bigger than pageant hair and longer than a southern drawl. On that sweltering summer night, in a diverse crowd eating corn dogs and fried pies, we united around country, baseball and our prized sweet tea.

Broken Promises

I went to the pool today and watched both time and neighbors lazily move under the azure sky until puffy white clouds dotted the horizon. The star attraction was a little girl with wheat colored pigtails wearing a pink bathing suit with pink tulle. She topped off her outfit with bright aqua sunglasses and a shy grin. Her nerve grew bigger than herself and she proclaimed her readiness to splash into the deep end of the pool as long as her mother held her hand and jumped in unison. Holding hands, mother and daughter stood poised above the sparkling water and leapt into the clear depths. Mid-air, the mother let go.

The little girl cried herself into exhaustion screaming, “You let go. You let go. You promised you would hold my hand.” The mother shared her logical rationale. She told her daughter that she was a big girl and could jump by herself the next time. I didn’t see the little girl get any bigger. She was the same little girl experiencing the big pain of a broken promise.

In our hearts, we are all little pink tulle princesses but in the mirror, we are indeed bigger and we typically don’t cry in public. We’ve experienced a lifetime of promises made and broken; friends who have come and gone; love lost and found. The biggest difference between us and the little girl is choice. We can choose to live in the brokenness shutting ourselves off from others or we can choose to live with hope linking arms with others before leaping into the vast unknown. When we choose hope, we again interlock fingers with those we trust won’t let go. We hold hands with like minded people who keep getting up for more even if our tulle splits and we land with a resounding splat.

A friend recently gave me a booklet entitled Eat Your Peas. It contains several promises stating in different ways that she would never let me down. She never has –- she never will. I believe her and two big princesses choose to brush off our tulle and use the strength of combined hope to leap into a world where fairy tales come true for those who believe.

Life's Closet

Some closets are masterfully designed works of art displaying clothes by color, drawers for jewelry and an array of wooden hangers softly lit by the glow of chandeliers. I know this to be true because I’ve seen them pictured in magazines. I wonder if these people carefully put their secrets in shoeboxes and gingerly take them out on rare reflective occasions before sliding them back into place. Or do they lock treasured moments in cases and then throw away the key? Do they believe that time can be stored in places and spaces and revealed during whims of fancy?

I don’t know about other people and their closets. I only know that my closet will never be featured except perhaps in the before shots of a professional organizer. Life crashes on my shoulders when I go into my space. Lit by a single bulb hiding baking soda and foot deodorant, my closet contains pieces of life crammed in bulging dresser drawers, clothes sorted by size, and disaster preparedness items.

Life is captured in worn moments: a dress at a wedding; a suit at a funeral; faded Levis during a past marriage. Dreams are contained in the poster filled with cherubs wrapped around letters spelling Love. Beauty shines in the eyes of wild rain forest animals on a calendar. A mountain cabin on a creek in a 2006 Thomas Kincaid calendar symbolizes my family’s farm in the country. Bike gloves, weights and heart monitors await a sudden urge to exercise. A picture of Central Park crystallizes the fulfillment of a dream to visit New York City. A suit hangs ready for my sister to try on when she comes to town for an interview. I am mirrored in a Grandmother’s golden gift similar to the one resting in her aqua room lined with placemats of the Smoky Mountains.

Standing on dirty carpet, I reach for one box in my closet and everything falls down. Memories and time simply cannot be contained and blur together in an onslaught of emotion. Under a deluge of time’s mementos, I feel the textures of my life. Some fabrics sparkle and my laughter is reflected in the shine of sequins. Scratchy wool brings tears to my eyes as I remember times that are best forgotten. I stroke the softness of fleece and think about a recent trip to my mother’s home.

My closet isn’t so big but it’s not too little to fit life within. It will never be featured in a photo spread but it’s my closet, encasing me in warmth, filled with my life, my past, my present and my dreams for the future. Memories and moments tumble into my heart and arms as I rise on contented tiptoes with outstretched hands and fingers.