HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, SWEETHEART

PAPER HEARTS


An envelope of hearts
made out of paper
mean the world to me.
They bring back memories
of a Valentine's Day
when we were poor as anyone
could be.

Hearts drawn on ruled paper
colored with crayon, red so deep,
A scattering of words on each one
proclamations of love, vows to keep.

On that special Valentine's Day
I found them scattered all over the room.
A shower of your loving ways
more precious than dozens of roses in bloom.

Money can now purchase those lacy tributes
with flowery verse, sold on racks each year.
But none mean as much to me as those paper hearts
You made for me long ago, my sweet dear.

(c)2007

"Homecoming"

For a Texas girl raised on sweet corn, baking powder bicsuits, and sweet iced tea in a small-town atmosphere I had known all of my life, it had been quite a jolt to find myself uprooted to live in south Louisiana. The strangeness of the moss-hung, swampy landscape, the French patois in conversations behind me, and the taste of spicy, okra-laden gumbos, was almost enough to send me on a search for shock therapy.

I didn't make a good transplant. I wasn't unhappy actually; I enjoyed Terrebonne High, friends I made and church activities, but there was a great deal that I yearned for. I missed the rolling Texas hills, my grandmother's flower garden, the kids I see-sawed with at age five and cheered on at sports events later, and everything that meant home. I could hardly wait until I graduated from high school to go back to my home state. But, as life's lessons often show, sometimes we rush off in all directions, not knowing how memorable, how uniquely special those times of our youth were.

Several years ago (before Katrina)I traveled across country on Amtrak's Sunset Limited. The tracks carried me across state lines and into Louisiana, past ripe rice fields, cutting machines scooping up sugar cane and the swamplands of the Atchafalya River Basin. It even dashed through the small town of Schriever where I had lived, a place I hadn't seen in over 45 years. From somewhere deep inside me excitement bubbled up. I pressed my face against the wide club car window and held back joyful tears.

New Orleans offered wonderful sights, favorable scents of sugar-coated beignets and the clarinet of a Pete Fountain concert, not to mention the impromptu jazz sessions around Jackson Square. The artists at that same location offered priceless images of scenes from the past.

But this had not been my home through those teenage years. Our tour carried us into that area, the heart of Acadiana or Cajun Country. Huge oaks dressed in moss shawls filled front yards and city parks. Slow lazy bayous flowed through small towns, in front of houses built at the waters edge, and boats at their docks with engines sitting in the water. Tiny, colorfully painted shotgun houses dotted the streets. Draw bridges still crossed the waterways, opening to allow shrimp boats to head down the Intercoastal Canal to the Gulf of Mexico. French names graced businesses, streets, billboards and newspapers, bringing back names of classmates--Bourgeous, Arceneaux, Haydel, Devereaux--to name a few.

But it was the night in Lafayette that brought me home. Over a meal of fried fish (including alligator) with red beans and rice, hot home-baked French bread, and Jack Daniels Bourbon sauce poured over bread pudding, the sounds of those sweetly accented Cajun voices surrounded me. The strains of accordians and fiddles playing, "Jole Blon," "Corina," and generations-old Cajun tunes floated around the room.

The familiar, so long forgotten, brought me comfort. I realized on that night how fortunate I was to have been emerced in this extraordinary culture, to have made wonderful friends who loved me even though I talked "funny," and to have learned so much from these hardworking, fun-loving people who have always been more in tune with the world of nature that surrounded them than the rest of us.

While preparing to board a bus to the station for my return journey, a smiling, elderly black hotel bellhop, sent me off with a light heart. "Come se vaux," he chirped.

And I returned the same, dredging up the proper accent from the memory of my youth, "Come se vaux, cher."

Good morning, dear, how are you, have a good day, dear . . .the phrase can mean any of these. To me it said, "Welcome, you've come back home."
***
Next year I will once again return. This time I will drive into that little town, Schriever, where I will be a real participant in the giggles and gossip of a group of my female classmates calling themselves "The Steel Magnolias." I will once again visit Terrebonne High, only this time at a 50th year reunion. I still have lessons to learn from those who made me one of them, no matter how much I protested.

And one of them will surely say to me, "Come se vaux, Cher."

VOICES

I hear them again. No matter what I'm doing, especially if it's not at the computer, they are there. Sometimes they whisper little pieces of advice in my ear, other times they yell because I'm not doing what they think I should. Several weeks ago I addressed their little problems for awhile; one group of them shut up. Then the others started yakking at me, telling me I was unfair, that I'd better start paying attention to them or else. Or else what, I don't know.

The voice that really drives me nuts is Aunt Lutie. Now, she's supposed to be the dearly departed aunt of Mary Margaret Butler, better known as MM, and should have been satisfied to settle herself up there wherever to tend to new experiences. Instead, she pops up now and then to jab MM about not being married, and for almost getting herself killed when trying to root out a murderer in the small town of Harts Corner, Texas. I thought I had ended that with the completion of her story but. . .well, the book hasn't been snatched up by an agent or a publisher so Aunt Lutie is still yapping at me.

The gals who are getting even with all the men who done them wrong in Pink Poodle Pie are a bit upset with me since I pulled their stories from a publisher I didn't think would do them right. I kind of got a bad taste in my mouth over the whole deal and those ladies are just resting, not too happily I am finding out, and their voices are getting pretty shrill. I'd best find the time to research some other publishers or I will have a chorus forever singing in my ear, driving me to distraction big time.

BJ is stuck in her Lousiana hometown after returning from California. It was okay to be a widow but she now has her eye on an old classmate, Pete. Maybe her eyes are what she should have been using because she plum ran right into his shiny new truck with her U-Haul as she steered into town. She really gave me a fit when I allowed her grandson to drive her right up the wall and almost let her daughter fix it so she couldn't have a home of her own. After all, Candy liked to come home from the Boudin Sausage Plant to find her home clean and supper on the table. Now, to add to Candy's whining, I have BJ rather indignant because I haven't let her get on with her life. I stopped the story right when Pete is lurking around her boat dock in the dead of the night and finds a dead body floating in her bayou. I've got to find the time to get this hot pepper off my back.

Callie is on the run. She was perfectly happy to be safely hidden in that small village in Mexico and then I dump Rafael into her kitchen, the Federales at her door, the landlord in a jealous snit, and some balding guy with a ponch (and a shiny new RV)watching her. I've reminded her that both the good and bad guys are afer her--and she doesn't know which is which.

To make matters worse, I'm hearing voices from above. Yep, The Old One is stomping his foot at me, telling me I need to get back to Danny who slipped out the Red Door and wound up back on earth, on a Navajo Reservation, of all places. That should be incentive enough for me to bring him home but Danny is scared he's never going to complete his search, he's mad because I've saddled him with a girl and he has no idea how he'll ever make it back up there where he now belongs. The Old One's cat, Marmalade, hisses at me each time I bring up the computer screen. I guess I'd better offer him some tuna delight before he sinks his teeth into my fingers clicking these keys.

Voices. Lacey, the traveling accountant, hears a tiny voice--one that belongs to a little girl wrapped in a sheet-covered package left in a vacant life--a voice begging me to find out what caused her to be there, left alone with tiny feet sticking out of a shroud. Sweeney, a ghost child, trying to make an old wrong right.
A woman in the Witness Protection Plan running again--with a wounded man beside her and a dead boss behind her.

Voices. Too many of them. And it's all my fault that I hear them. I created the people they belong to--and the only way I can shut those voices up is to do my job--share them with the reading world.

Just a Poem

Sometimes it is good to look back on a time in your life when you were satisfied completely with your world and what you were doing. There have been many of those times for me but one of my favorite times and places was during the years I lived in the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains. Over 7,000 feet up in the sky with lovely four seasons, I was as close to heaven on earth as I figured I would ever be.

During this time we built a new home on an acre of land in the trees with no close neighbors but within walking distance of one of the largest ski runs. In order to build our home there, we had to cut some of the trees--I insisted that we cut as few as possible. When the men had completed the job, they came to me and pointed out a sapling bend in almost an upside-down U-shape. They couldn't understand why I wanted to keep that weird looking tree. Later I wrote a poem that satisfied the reason why.

"Tree Circus"

Upon seeing the tree
bent so low,
Almost in half
to the ground,
He asked if I
didn't want
it pulled out,
chopped up,
tossed away.
How could I let
someone destroy
the woodpecker's center ring,
the squirrel's trampoline,
the chipmunk's high wire.

Barbara Deming (c)2001

**

I will be sharing some of my own answers to assignments I give my students from time to time. I never know what to expect but have had some pleasant surprises from my prompts--even from myself.