To serve and protect

Tonight I finally had my ride-along with a Brentwood Police officer. It's late now, so I'll just say that these two photos perfectly illustrate the range of stuff I saw during an 8-hour shift this evening.

Whirlybirds of doom

This is a photo of the seedpods that are about to rain down on our yard and our neighbors' yard the coming week.

I cannot overstate the number of these things that fall from our massive maple tree and cover our grass, the sandbox, the trampoline, the gutters and the car grill.

Then the little seedlings pop up.

All I can do is send a preemptive apology to the Cothrans for our tree trash.

A case of the Mondays

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit

to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can meet fun people at funerals

My entire family traveled to Jackson, Tennessee, earlier this week for a funeral. My grandmother's husband Clyde had passed away unexpectedly. Even though he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, we all were just adjusting to the news and preparing for a long battle. Instead, his heart gave out.

I wasn't sure who would be at the funeral home, since Clyde didn't have any siblings and my grandmother's only sister had been dead since 1946. But when we arrived, my dad, after greeting his mom, went straight over to an older man and woman, and they all hugged and looked really happy to see each other.

It was my dad's cousins, Donny and Sookie, who had always inhabited the stories in my grandmother' phone calls over the years. Her niece and nephews had remained close to my grandmother after their mother's death. Donny and Sookie lived in Halls, Tennessee, a tiny town in between Millington and Dyersburg. North of Nutbush, south of Cat Corner. They were always in visiting distance, even when my grandmother moved to the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky. And from her stories, I could tell they kept in touch.

I only remember actually meeting Donny once, when I was probably 8 or 9 and staying with my grandmother one weekend when she still lived in Memphis. Donny dropped by the house one evening, as my grandmother was making dinner. One reason I always liked staying with her is because she bought that Parkay squeeze margarine and let me put as much as I wanted on corn on the cob.

We were in her kitchen, and this man knocks on the carport door. My grandmother was all excited to see him. He came in and acted like he wants to show them something. He had this .44 Magnum pistol that he showed my grandmother and her husband, and the room got real reverent, which put me on alert because they were never reverent.

I have no idea why he had that gun. I'm not sure if he worked in law enforcement or security or was simply a permitted carrier. But I do remember how huge it was and how it changed the atmosphere of that room.

At the funeral home, Donny's wife Sookie had a quick smile and a great sense of humor. I don't know how this could be surmised at a funeral, but I noticed it about her right away. We joked about my grandmother because she has an, um, strong personality that's easy to, uh, joke about. Sookie told me her granddaughter worked in Brentwood, and I found myself living a cliche when I started to say something about how it's a shame that it takes a funeral to get us all together and how it would be so great if we could visit more often. I didn't say it, though. I kinda knew it wouldn't happen.

Once I'm in this rut here, with kids and schedules and bank statements and vacation days, it often feels like it would take TNT to blast me out of it.

Still, I heard my dad say something about a reunion, so I have hope to see them again soon.

We'll see.

I have to, though, because my goal is to find out Sookie's "real" name.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

I had to put on business clothes recently. For real! Read all about it here.

You thought airports weren't fun anymore

Ashley Klinger is my new hero!

She was stuck overnight at the Pittsburgh airport during the recent blizzard, and luckily for us, she recorded herself having fun in the deserted gate area.

Promise me you'll watch till the end. It's SO worth it!

The ties that bind

A friend of mine has been sharing via Facebook her experiences with her mom as her mother endures the final stages of bladder cancer.

As my friend catalogued a list of memories that flooded over her while sitting with her mother in the hospital, she wound up thinking about a time only a couple of weeks ago before the illness worsened, when she took her mother to get some groceries on a recent frigid evening. They got separated in the store, and she looked for her mom by walking aisle by aisle, just the way she used to when she was a little girl and her mom would let her look at magazines while she shopped.

My friend seemed surprised to relive that memory after so many years.

Naturally I thought of the times in my own childhood when I'd look for my parents aisle by aisle in a store, and how my panic would grow with each row I'd pass without seeing them.

Even if I stretched it as a teenager and have neglected it as I've become a mom, the connectivity between my parents and me perseveres.

Now that I have kids of my own, though, I experience it from both sides. Last Mother's Day my husband and I took the boys to Orlando. The entire time we were there, my whole purpose in life was to keep the five of us together as we navigated the theme parks. Of course, Walt Disney World and Seaworld were jam-packed with families, and I devoted all my energy to keeping a hold on that invisible rope that linked my kids and my husband to me. At nearly every transition, Tim and I would even say aloud to each other, "I've got Owen." or "Is Henry here?"

As long as we all were together, everything was fine.

Sometimes the twins would ride a huge coaster without us, but I always felt such relief when I'd see them ambling toward us afterward. It was the same relief I'd feel as a kid when I'd see my parents in the grocery aisle.

It was love.

I love Carrie Fisher

If it weren't for Star Wars, most people probably wouldn't think of Carrie Fisher very often. She did play that awesome wicked ex with a flame thrower in The Blues Brothers, but even that's not enough of a legacy to rest upon.

The thing is, Carrie Fisher is an insanely hilarious writer. And even when she's not trying, she says stuff like this:

"I'm not as cooperative as you might want a woman to be."

Which is pretty much the story of my existence.

It's just that I have watched A LOT of Star Wars in the past two years, since my youngest discovered it, and because of that I keep thinking about Carrie Fisher. When the first movie came out, in 1977, she was a pretty actress, but not a babe by today's standards. And thank goodness. She gives Princess Leia substance, and the more of her stuff I read, the more I understand how.

She also happened to utter my new personal mission statement:

"If my life were not funny, it would simply be true, and that is unacceptable."

Words to live by.

One way to tell if someone loves you

Yesterday morning as I used the last bit of butter on Henry's toast, I noticed that my fancy Provence-style butter dish looked pretty glommed up with butter. I planned to wash it later that day after I dealt with all my kids' mouth issues, which can only be detailed in a later post.

My mom came over to watch the youngest boy, who was still recovering from giving up his tonsils and adenoids on what will probably be the only snow day we'll have all year. She ended up staying most of the day.

Later, as I prepped for dinner, I opened the butter dish to clean it and noticed that the lid didn't stick to the bottom as it had that morning. My mom had already taken care of it.

And she never said a word about it.

Heaven and nature sing

This is Owen's choir teacher, Ms. Deanna. He really loves her and has always wanted to go to choir practice, even on weeknights, because she is so sweet and makes it fun.

So, big ups to Ms. Deanna for making choir cool!