Part 2: A Place Called Trust

I zoomed an author visit with a class of fourth graders recently and had a glimpse into the Covid reality of a classroom. The teacher had to relay the questions students asked because they were masked muffled, even though their interest in what I had to say certainly wasn't suppressed. We had a great time. They asked the usual questions, which book do you like best, why do you write, how old are you... those questions.

My favorite question this time was new. "What is the best thing about being an author?"

Easy answer.

Meeting my readers, which was what I was doing with these students.

That was Tuesday. Then Saturday I did exactly that, and did I ever enjoy myself. I even introduced my ninety-one year old coauthor Jasper to the joy of meeting our readers. We were at a little country store in Western North Carolina's backwoods (Trust General Store and Cafe) along with a huge group of locals and tourists stopping in. As I saw it, Jasper held court. 

He mesmerized the crowd with his stories, and he had plenty to tell. 

He met new friends and ran across people who knew his old friends that long since passed away.

Being an author has introduced me to experiences I never anticipated when I submitted my first manuscript years ago. It's been some ride!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

A Place Called Trust

If I were to pick a spot on this earth to live by using its name alone, not considering any other factors, I'd probably think seriously about a place called Trust. It sounds safe, trustworthy, as if the neighbors have an element of faithfulness to each other.

There is such a place here in North Carolina, and I'm going to be there this Saturday at an Opening Day Celebration at Trust General Store & Cafe. From 11 to 4, fellow author Jasper (JR) Reese and I will be sitting on the front porch, meeting and greeting anyone who stops by.

We have written two books together that we can't wait to share and answer questions about. Both take place in the same valley as this store that's at the corner of scenic NC Highway #209 and even more scenic NC Highway #63. Our first collaboration, Back in the Time, tells the story of the community where Jasper's father practiced medicine in the wilds of the Great Smoky Mountains around the Trust, Hot Springs, and Spring Creek Communities.

Cover picture shows Jasper at fourteen (in the thirties)

driving on the main road in his homemade wagon

Jasper had plenty more stories he collected in his ninety plus years of living, so we wrote a follow-up book, The Way It Was in the Backwoods. Again, the location is in the Trust/Hot Springs/Spring Creek communities, and my bet is we could write a few more books. Yes, there are that many stories to tell. 

Cover picture shows Max Patch in the background,

with inserts of

Jasper and his wife, and Jasper with his great-grandchild

Our goal was to tell "it" like "it" was in the nearly three centuries his ancestors lived off the land there in Madison County. Ancestors can no longer speak for themselves, so we must put them into print before the details of living in the backwoods are lost.

These stories came to him through years of listening to the old folks tell them over and over as they sat on the porch in the heat and humidity of mountain summer evenings, as they worked in the hayfields, as they shucked corn or snapped beans, and as they sat around the wood stoves of general stores of yore. 

Saturday is the next best thing. There at Trust General Store and Cafe, Jasper will swap tales with anyone who sits a spell. 

Come. Join us.

Catch of the day,

 

Gretchen

Found Cat

 Call me soft hearted. Call me bleeding heart, even. Just don't call me a sucker, although I admit that does describe me. I am not apologetic either. Sometimes you do what you have to do, or what fate forces you to do.

When my children first went away to college we didn't have an empty nest. It was filled with their left-over pets. I loved them (and fed them) as much as the kids did, but I put my foot down, and so did my husband. When these are gone, NO MORE PETS. 

The dogs and cats eventually passed away, one by one of natural causes, which broke my heart. The last one was a cat named Sam who endured the teenage years of my children. When I told them Sam had crossed the Rainbow Bridge, I reminded them of our resolution. 

Within mere months a cat found us, kitten actually. We have no idea where it came from, but one day it appeared and forced its way into our hearts. The grands named it Patches since it was a patchwork of gray and white splotches. We forked out the money to have her fixed. No kittens. At least we could control that. 

All went well for a little over six years. We have a routine. She comes inside in the mornings, eats, crawls into a favorite sunlit spot and sleeps until something better comes along. She eats supper and heads outside for the night, assuming the weather cooperates with her. Clockwork. We could set our clocks by her morning meows at the back door.

Then this past week, cat number two appeared. This one was different from the very start. Fully grown. Overly friendly. Would not leave us alone when we stepped outside. However, much to its chagrin, it was shunned by our precious Patches. More than that, Patches hissed and growled at it. 

This was definitely someone's well loved, fully grown fur baby. Its long hair was matted from who knows how long in the wilderness, so matted we couldn't tell if it was male or female. 

And hungry. 

Oh, my, this cat was starving. 

Despite the warnings from my husband, from neighbors, and even from the dog pound (did you know if you feed a stray for three days, you then become responsible for it!) I broke down and fed it. Just enough to tide it over until its owner appeared. Ha!

I advertised on a Lost Pets of Caldwell County facebook page. My post was shared by many others and the network had to have gone out to thousands. No takers. I looked for a no-kill shelter and called. They've not contacted me personally but according to their website as a volunteer organization they must be overwhelmed with cries for help. They go to the county animal shelter and save what they can. First the pet had to be there.

So I called the animal shelter and talked with the lady there. She advised me to take it to a vet to see if it had a micro-chip. They would take the cat, but if it was not claimed after seventy-two hours, then steps would be taken to deal with it. That could mean the no-kill group accepting it. Or not. 

I called our vet and immediately appeared at their door. No chip, but it was, they informed me, a fully intact male. 

So now the question is, can I really take this innocent animal to an uncertain future at the pound and come home to snuggle with my much relieved Patches? Which cat counts most, the one who arrived six years ago, or the newest to arrive, who as fate would have it, is homeless? 

Jesus told a parable of workers in the field. One arrived early in the morning, others began working hours later, one barely by the end of the workday. When the owner of the field paid them, each received the exact same amount of pay. The first arrival complained. Naturally he did. 

This parable always bothered me. How could a fair employer do this to those who got there first! But in his wisdom, Jesus was showing us a loving God accepting us into heaven. Those who accepted the love of God at the last moment of life were no less welcome by God than those who grew from birth in the faith. 

Accept this cat? Yes. I can.

Unless I find the true owner.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

UPDATE:

There are angels among us in the form of cat rescuers who picked it up yesterday evening. This precious cat is on its way to a no-kill adoption shelter. I'd bet it will be re-homed in a matter of days. Things have a way of working themselves out.

Mother's Day 2021

Recently I participated in a six week writing session with North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Greene. From the beginning session she told us it was not a "how-to-write" class. Neither was it a class about her poetry, although we were fortunate that she did share with us. 

Instead this was what she called a "creativity salon," and wow did she pull out the creativity from us. I was fortunate to be among the most talented siSTARs a zoom class could dare to hold. We shared class writing assignments with one another. We had homework and again shared our inmost thoughts after a week of digging deep into our pasts. After all, this was a class based on memoir writing, actually more pulling those memories from the deepest compartments of our brains. We wrote of personal stories we had never revisited. Private thoughts. We became instant kindred souls.

One week's assignment was to write about our mothers. On this Mother's Day of 2021 I want to share a bit of my mother with you through part of what I wrote. She would be one hundred ten years old this year had she lived past 2003. 

She was here for September 11, 2001 and watched the ensuing tragedy. She was also here for the flu epidemic of 1918, so she would have experience to share through the recent Covid pandemic. She was a teen of the Great Depression and an adult of the Greatest Generation. She outlived her husband and her son. She had a wisdom I didn't fully appreciate. Until now, if even.

My mother passed from this earth at the age of ninety-two in the way she wanted to go. In her own bed. On her own terms with her mind fully aware. When the couple that bought her house asked about her dying there and seemed hesitant to purchase because of that, I assured them that whatever aura she might have left behind was pure satisfaction, for she had a happy life despite the struggles. 

I would love to have her back again to answer questions that I'm sure she answered time after time, but I wasn't listening. 

I apologize, Mother. I should have listened. 

That's the key to my disappointment now. I wasn't listening. Tell me again, Mother, about my grandparents. I never met any of them, so you were the lifeline from them to me. What about your childhood and college. I want so much to imagine you and Daddy as a young married couple during World War II. What about the years raising my brother and me? 

I doubt you ever told me, but I want to know if the dreams you had once upon a time ever came to fruition. Did you forfeit any dreams? Were they replaced with a life far better than you dreamed?

Another activity in our Creativity Salon was to write an "I am from..." poem. What I wrote was partially about my mother, or somehow influenced by her:

I am from coal fields and steel mills and smut clinging to the front room curtains.

I am from empty coal mines drained of their worth, silent steel mills and boarded storefronts.

I am from parents moving south, seeking a life beyond unemployment lines.

I am from a mother snatched from her comfort zone and placed in an alien culture.

I am from a family learning new rules of conduct that were on the brink of cracking as the fifties melted into the sixties.

I am from learning to use the appropriate water fountains, swimming pools, theatre seats.

I am from a strictly defined society kept apart from any hope of interactions.

I am from a mother who clicked off the television set when images of fire hoses spraying demonstrators bothered her too much to watch.

I am from parents who fretted daily, every moment, I'm sure, while my brother served his country in Viet Nam.

There was more in my I am from... poem, but here I want to keep the spotlight on my mother, because on this Mother's Day, I want to make sure the world meets her and doesn't forget her. This creativity salon allowed me to see the world from her point of view, and today I'm sharing that. 

I'm proud to be from her!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Hoop Hike Revisited

 

Every so often one of my books comes out of the shadows and says, "Hey, remember me?" I've found this to be one of the most fun rewards of being an author because it pops out of the blue, from nowhere except the heart of a reader. One case in point, Hoop Hike, my picture book I wrote with illustrator Bobbie Gumbert.

This book mulled around in my mind for several years before I actually started the writing process. It came from my taking field trips with fourth graders to the local state park. One of the activities we did was to go on a hoop hike, a simple concept, but one that a teacher could milk for all it was worth. We carried one hoop per three students and when I said stop, they threw the hoop beside the trail we were walking and recorded what they found inside their hoops, charted and graphed the data. 

But I couldn't figure out how to capture this activity into a story, until I was doing an author visit with a group of first graders and we went on a bear hunt, one of my favorite ice breakers. The rhythm struck me. The repetition, too, where children repeated each phrase after me.

Me: "Let's go on a bear hunt."

Them: "Let's go on a bear hunt."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Let's go."

"Let's go..."

...and the children followed my lead and slapped their legs as we "walked" on the bear hunt.

About midway through the hunt, I began thinking about "Let's go on a hoop hike..." and the rest is history. I established a rhythm, and as I wrote I imagined readers echoing my words. "Let's go on a hoop hike."

Except that history has turned on me and come back with a text from my thirteen year old granddaughter, Reagan: 

<Can I use your Hoop Hike book for my book character dress up day at school?>

<Of course!>

Even though Reagan is now in seventh grade and this book is the most elementary of my published books, she had a special right to use it for "dressing as a character day" because the main character in the book is Reagan Roo.

Her.

She's come a long way since then, but I couldn't be happier. I hope the teacher was impressed, too. It's not too often that a student on "Book Character Dress-up Day" can come as herself. 

What fun!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen