Another outing my daughter and I enjoyed during our time in Atlanta was the Imaginary Worlds mosaiculture exhibit at the Botanical Gardens. This beautiful show runs through October and features fantastic topiary creations. Some, like the Earth Goddess above, are of immense proportions. We highly recommend a visit, with the note that there are many shady spots to enjoy the interesting, unusual scenery and wide variety of plant life.
This unicorn was being groomed during our visit.
The ogre appeared sleepy and mild-mannered.
One of several charming bunnies.
Nice doggie! Come! Don’t chase that rabbit!
The unique canopy walk is serene and shaded.
D posed with all the Garden frogs. . .
. . .just as she did during our first visit, in the spring of 2005.
We made plans, and during our week in Atlanta we managed a good mix of keeping busy and sitting around doing nothing. Our fun-for-the-whole-family event was a screening of The Birds at the Fox Theatre, Atlanta’s historic movie palace (See Back When the Movies Were Big: Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox, March 2012). Mama joined D and me at the High Museum for the current special exhibit centered on the famous Vermeer painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.D humored me by showing interest in my tales of the Museum as it was in the 80s when I worked there. While we lingered in the atrium before leaving, I could almost see my former boss heading toward the galleries with his characteristic bouncy step. (See Remembering Gudmund Vigtel, November 2012).
For a few outings, D and I were on our own. On these excursions, we drove the unlikely second car, an iridescent gold PT Cruiser that Daddy keeps at the ready for us. Neither of my parents claims responsibility for choosing or buying this vehicle, but somehow, they own it. I’m glad, because it has always made D smile. During our annual tour of the shops of Virginia-Highland, we actually made a few purchases. According to tradition, Mama and Daddy met us for lunch that day at George’s.
D and I spent our last Atlanta afternoon meandering through midtown with one of my dearest friends. Tedd and I were in school and church together from second grade on. We therefore have considerable common ground, and we catch up about once a year. We started our wanderings on the grounds of Grady High, our alma mater, which has been expanded and beautifully refurbished in recent years. Reading the bricks of the commemorative courtyard brought back long-submerged memories and inspired recollections of half-forgotten classmates now dispersed. We crossed the street to Piedmont Park and envied the swimmers at the enormous new sparkling pool. When did the city start looking so good, so clean and fresh? We finished our tour at O’Keefe, our former middle school, now owned by Georgia Tech. What was the name of that band that played at the eighth grade dance? Was it really the Family Plan? Tedd, with his easy, endearing sweetness and unique humor, brought D into our shared past in a way that I alone could not. She has come to appreciate Tedd just as I do, and she seemed to take real pleasure in our swapping of 70s-era stories.
At my parents’ house, our sitting around doing nothing was of high quality, as it should be on a vacation. As in previous years, we passed contented hours on the screened porch. Shaded by trees and edged by dense foliage, the porch is like a cage for humans in the midst of a wildlife preserve. It’s a perfect spot to watch the exuberant acrobatics of squirrels, chipmunks, robins, wrens and brown thrashers. In the evenings, we regularly heard a pair of local barred owls calling to one another.
We spent time simply being there with Nana and Papa, engaged in those free-wheeling conversations that seem trivial at the time, but in hindsight, just might be the lifeblood of family and community. Neighbors dropped by, and D and I went visiting, as we always have. Both Sundays at church, I felt as though I were returning to a second home. We were greeted warmly by caring friends, most of whom are watching D grow up from afar.
If, in my last post, my daughter sounded like an entitled, annoying teenager, during the visit she was rarely anything but gracious, patient and kind, to me, my parents, and to all our friends. No one would have recognized her as one suffering the throes of high-tech gadget withdrawal. Some nights, as I drifted off to sleep, I could hear D and her Nana talking and laughing in the TV room the way they have done for years. It’s a lovely, reassuring sound–the sound of my daughter and my mother, two like-minded night owls, good friends, happy and comfortable together.
Before we left for the airport, Daddy cut us some gardenias to carry with us.
They’re dried and brown now, but still fragrant.
Just before our recent trip to Atlanta, my daughter somewhat reluctantly admitted to a concern about boredom during our stay. This made her feel guilty, because she loves my parents, and she knows how much they treasure her, their only grandchild. But, she wondered, what would we do, for eight days? This worry was a first for her. In years past, she has looked forward nearly absolutely to visiting Nana and Papa. When she was younger, of course, the bar for fun and adventure was low and accessible. Beginning with the plane ride, a sojourn in Atlanta was full of thrills, there for easy picking. Her grandparents’ house was an enchanted place, and there was so much to do. A typical day began with a leisurely breakfast on the screened porch. D could have Papa’s scrambled eggs every morning if she wanted; he was truly happy to make them for her. Later, we’d wander from park to park, sampling the different types of playground equipment. We’d “hike” the wooded nature trail by the creek. We’d visit neighbors, who doted on D as if she were their own granddaughter. She’d feed their fish, play with their cats and dogs. In the afternoons, we’d explore a fantastic sea of old toys in the upstairs playroom, or dress up in Nana’s amazing vintage creations. At night, we’d be back on the porch for ice cream and ghost stories. Every day offered wondrous opportunities.
Home sweet home for Nana and Papa.
Now that she’s a teenager, the magic has mostly dissipated. While I expect she’ll always have a sentimental spot in her heart for her grandparents’ home, the silvery jingle of the Southern Express bell is barely audible. Former childhood pleasures inspire only yawns, wistful sighs and bouts of grumpy melancholy. What makes the situation even worse is that, as D grows up, the rest of us are growing older and more jaded. With each passing year, my parents have less interest in leaving the house for entertainment. They’re not recluses or agoraphobics. Most mornings, Daddy is running errands. He zips out and back to Kroger, to the pharmacy, to the bank, to mail a package, to gas up the car. He returns almost before it seems humanly possible. But together, my parents leave home rarely except to go to church, out to eat, or to do neighborly good deeds. Occasionally they see a movie, and of course there are doctor appointments, which eat up huge chunks of time. Home is where they really want to be, and I don’t blame them. Home is comfortable; the outside world tends to be far less so. In going out, the pay-off is too small, the hurdles too many. Unpleasantness abounds: heat, traffic, crowds, noise. If I live to be my parents’ age, I may well be a hermit. Those aforementioned factors, plus the chance of thunderstorms and the need to comfort my anxious dog, kept me at home last Saturday as H and D went to a Nationals game.
From the porch, a view of summer green.
Another thorny issue nagging at D was the dread of spending over a week in a technology vacuum. Several years ago, we presented my mother with an iMac for Christmas. Because we couldn’t be there to help her deal with the constant minor quandaries, and she didn’t want to be a bother to friends, she gave up. By the following Easter the iMac was back at our house. When I suggested to D that we had a unique opportunity to travel back in time, to experience the life of an earlier era, before household computers, cell phones, cordless phones, or Wi-Fi, she was unmoved. She didn’t want that kind of time travel. Her iPhone would be rendered nearly useless. She would be cut off from her network of friends. And, I realized, with some alarm, she would be primarily dependent on me for amusement. My husband, who is often as restless as a teenager, would be with us only for the first weekend. We needed to make some real plans, or suffer the consequences.
The backyard of my childhood home in Atlanta, like most of those in the neighborhood, is narrow but very deep. It has two distinct sections, which my friends and I differentiated in this way: the area just behind the house was the back; the more remote area was the way back. Sometimes, for emphasis, we called it the way, way back. The same terminology, of course, referred to the seating arrangements in those old station wagons from the 60s and 70s (including our 1965 Dodge Polara, with its rear-facing seat, as well as the one appearing in a current movie of the same name.)
We bought our house from a family with four children who played in every inch of that yard, as the numerous toy soldiers, cap guns, pen knives and dolls with mold-encrusted eyes, found in the unlikeliest places, attest. In 1968, when we moved in, the landscaping left much to be desired. There were a few azaleas and some dogwoods in a wide-open sea of scraggly weeds and spots of bare earth. We didn’t devote much time or thought to real gardening; we had more than enough to keep us busy with the ongoing renovation of the house and the rehabilitation of the extremely patchy front lawn. (See Morningside Begins its Comeback, July 2012.) But a mere four decades plus later, in the absence of an army of hard-charging children, nature has worked its own special magic. Behind the house now lies a sort of enchanted urban jungle.
It’s not that we stood by and did nothing. In that case the house would now be completely hidden by a tangled Sleeping Beauty thicket. Daddy has always been out there clipping and pulling weeds. Since his retirement, he has spent the greater portion of his waking hours combating the constant, determined creeping of the vigorous, semi-tropical plant life that thrives immediately outside the walls. If it’s daylight, Daddy is pruning, pulling ivy, gathering fallen sticks, clearing away the ongoing accumulation of natural debris. Nearest the house, in the back, Daddy’s efforts are keeping nature’s tentacles in check, to some degree. Atop the steps leading from the rock garden, there is a central area that to this day remains recognizable as an actual yard.
Further back, however, the battle has long since been lost. The way back luxuriates in a state of benign neglect. With my every summer visit, it’s substantially lusher, more enclosed, more overgrown. Every year, the vines have thickened, reached higher, delved deeper. Nature’s resolve to have its own way is everywhere in evidence.
When we bought the house, the way back was especially barren, strewn with pine straw and sprouting a few weeds. It was here that Daddy set up my red and green metal swing set. Brand shiny new when I was two, he assembled it behind the small house in suburban Lexington where I was born. While our family bounced around from Kentucky to North Carolina during Daddy’s graduate school years, the swing set found a temporary home beside the chicken lot at my grandparents’ farm. Once we settled in Atlanta, it settled there with us. In the theatrical production of my childhood that runs in my head, that old swing set is a crucial backdrop, an essential set piece. It boasted none of the fancy components seen in today’s typically elaborate play sets–no castle, fort, or climbing wall–just a two-person glider, a couple of swings, a trapeze and a slide. It was nothing special, but it was where my friends and I gathered. Located, as it was, in the remoteness of the way, way back, it was where we met to play, to pretend, to talk, to argue, to make plans. It was our place. A kids’ place.
The swing set, during a rare Atlanta snow, in 1983.
Not all memories the swing set conjures are idyllic ones. Several years during elementary school I struggled with the mind-gripping demons we now refer to neatly as OCD. It didn’t have a name back then. Thanks to the patience and understanding of my mother, who had experienced a similar near-insanity as a child, I managed not to fall apart completely. Mama sat at my bedside every night, when I’d tell her each worry, and she’d tell me not to worry. A general, all-encompassing “Don’t worry” meant nothing. I needed her to respond to each anxiety individually. It was exhausting for both of us, but she never complained. During the school day, when I was occupied, I was OK. I don’t think any of my buddies knew I was crazy. In the late afternoons, if I didn’t have the company of friends, the beasties roared back, preparing for the free-for-all of night. They often demanded my fealty in the isolation of the way back. I can see myself running yet one more time around the swing set, zipping joylessly down the slide again and again, touching the rusty spot on the top bar just once more. I have to do it. No, I didn’t touch it exactly right. I have to do it again. I’m a weary, restless, ten year old nervous wreck. Fortunately for me, that time passed. I either outgrew the demons, or they got bored and went on to torment another, more defenseless child, one without as compassionate a mother.
As a high schooler, having learned a few moves on the rickety uneven parallel bars during gym class, I used the high bar of the swing set to practice. With the picnic bench positioned below, I could propel myself onto the bar and execute back hip circles. I shudder to think how close I must have come, repeatedly, to flying off and breaking my back, my neck, or worse.
Vines, here in their early stages, are covered by snow.
During my college years, there were fewer hours to be whiled away in the way back, and nature asserted itself in earnest. The wooden seats of the glider rotted and disappeared. The slide weathered to a warm, rust red. A few vines, wisteria and grape, managed toe holds and began to wind their way up, across and over. One hard plastic swing was anchored in place by a vine that braided itself delicately along the length of the chain. Year by year, each element became more firmly rooted, more tightly entwined.
The vines might have held the swing set up for decades to come, had not a nearby giant tulip poplar been tossed onto the slide during a lightning storm. While one side is crumpled like a broken toy, the other still stands, held fast in the candy cane clasp of a massive wisteria vine. The glider is locked in place, as well, vine-trapped. Vinca, ivy, Virginia creeper and mahonia flourish along the ground. Unchecked plant growth closes in from every direction. Going on right now, and for the forseeable future, at least, it’s a wild foliage riot in the way, way back. In the midst of it all, my old swing set remains, ever more adorned, yet ever more fragile, a monument to simultaneous decay and growth. A monument to life, and its circle.
The state of the swing set, June 2013.The crumpled slide, embraced by foliage.
Way back when it was almost new: on the swing set at my grandparents’ place, 1967.
Shortly after the end of school, we flew to Atlanta for our annual summer visit. Just as we did last year, we opted for MARTA to save my parents a drive to and from the airport, and to protect everyone from the stress provoked by that alarming ride. (See Fun with Ground Transportation, July 2012.) We waited only a few minutes at the Arts Center station before we saw Daddy rounding the corner from 16th Street in his red station wagon. My generally healthy father had frightened us this spring by catching a persistent bug that required two hospitalizations and prevented him and Mama from traveling to Virginia for our daughter’s school musical. We hadn’t seen my parents since early November, and I had been increasingly aware of their absence. I felt a real sense of delight as I saw Daddy driving up, waving, and I’m sure, whistling. He tends to whistle when he’s happy.
It was the second day of summer, and the temperature was pleasantly spring-like. Atlanta’s signature oppressive heat was blessedly absent. The city was in glorious, fragrant late June bloom. Our visit coincided with an occurrence I’ve been saddened to miss for a decade or so: the blooming of the gardenia bush outside my old bedroom window. In years past, we’ve arrived in early July, just after the heyday, when the blossoms are withered and brown. It’s like reaching the home of old friends, only to find that they left a day earlier for a year-long journey. I found it reassuring to behold those familiar, powerfully sweet-smelling blooms, snowy and velvety white. The idyllic scent of summer, and of long childhood days (without air conditioning) will always live for me in the smell of gardenias.
Gardenia blossoms.Gardenias, seen from the window of my old bedroom.
The gardenias were only one group of voices in the welcoming symphony of fragrance that greeted us as we stepped out of the car. A stand of privet, much enlarged over the years, and at the height of its bloom, bent its dense and shady canopy over the driveway. Tall hedges of abelia, buzzing with bees, hugged both sides of the house. Enormous blossoms of magnolia in the next-door neighbor’s yard could be glimpsed and enjoyed. Leaning over the fence was a mimosa tree, covered with fluffy pink flowers borrowed from a Dr. Seuss book. A few late-blooming clusters of purple wisteria still remained. To my recollection, Atlanta had never smelled better, or appeared more beautiful. It sure felt good to be back in my hometown.
Privet canopy.Abelia.Mimosa.
Wisteria.
All this week, back in Virginia after our return, the words of this melancholy John Prine song have been echoing in my mind. It may be a while before I can lay myself down again the arms of my darling hometown. I hope I’ll go there in my dreams.
Far away over the sea there’s a river that’s calling to me. That river she runs all around the place that I call my hometown.
There’s a valley on the side of a hill and flowers on an old window sill. A familiar old picture, it seems, and I go there tonight in my dreams.
Where it’s green in the summer and gold in the fall Her eyes are as blue, as the sky, I recall.
Far away over the sea there’s a place at the table for me. Where laughter and music abound. It’s waiting there in my hometown.
The river, she freezes when there’s snow on the ground, and the children can slide to the far side of town.
Far away, far away me, hung up on a sweet memory. I’m lost and I wish I were found in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.
With the evening sun settin’ on the top of the hill and the mockingbird answering the old chapel bell.
Far away over the sea my heart is longing to be. And I wish I could lay myself down in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.
It’s the tropical rainy season here in northern Virginia, as it is for much of the east coast. Pounding rain and crashing thunderstorms are daily interspersed with periods of intense sunshine, resulting in a muggy, jungle-like atmosphere. Kiko, of course is distressed. (See Evading the Terrible Thunder Monster, April 2013.) Our once cocky, fearless little dog has become as neurotic as the canine Woody Allen. Should a cloud cover the sun, however briefly, we’ll find Kiko hiding in a centrally located bathroom, cowering in a corner of the kitchen, or repeating a nervous circuit of the house. The Xanax prescribed by our vet just wasn’t doing the trick.
So, we tried the Thundershirt. And, I’m much relieved to say, it works. For tough situations, when combined with an increased dose of Xanax, it really works. Yesterday, July 4th, was just such a situation, easily one of the most miserable days of the year for Kiko. The celebratory fireworks of independence are, to our dog, simply another, perhaps even more evil, manifestation of thunder. When he heard neighborhood children ominously blowing horns and snapping a few poppers, his apprehension took root. By the time the first local firecracker had sounded, well before dark, he was clearly anticipating the world’s end.
I put him in his Thundershirt by late afternoon. It averted the shaking and quaking he usually experiences during his periods of anxiety. At 8:00, Kiko dutifully swallowed the Xanax (.5 mg) in a bit of cheese. My husband and daughter, both devoted connoisseurs of fireworks, collected their extensive stash of explosives and headed out to join the neighborhood conflagration.
I retreated to the den of safety I had prepared for me and my dog: our family room, with the blinds drawn and draperies pulled (to keep out any flashes of light). Kiko, bundled snugly in his Thundershirt, eagerly cuddled up with me on the sofa. I tucked several pillows around us for good measure, poured a glass of wine (a bit of helpful self-medication) turned up the ceiling fan, and tuned into the first episode of Boardwalk Empire, which I had been wanting to sample.
As the sounds of pounding, popping, whizzing, cracking and booming increased outside, Kiko breathed evenly and appeared to be very nearly content. H and D witnessed and participated in a varied and prodigious display of fireworks, I drank a toast to Prohibition and Steve Buscemi, and enjoyed the sweet closeness of the loving lap dog I often wish Kiko really were.
Happy 5th of July to everyone, especially to those who share their lives with anxious dogs!
Kiko, in his Thundershirt, yesterday afternoon. It’s obvious, by the position of his ears, that he’s already alarmed.The Thundershirt wraps tightly, to mimic a close hug.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
