Southern Treasures

For several years Being Dead Is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays has been a staple in Southern homes.  Why?  Because we recognize ourselves in the stories.  We take funerals very seriously and put on the dog with great old Southern recipes like those included in this book.  I was particularly fond of the comparison of Episcopal and Methodist funerals Down South and found hilarious truths in the descriptions.  I also found the perfect coconut cake recipe there which happens to be my Mama's favorite.   

I am thrilled to report that Metcalfe and Hays have moved from funerals to weddings with Somebody is going to die if Lilly Beth doesn't catch that bouquet.  I haven't read it yet, having only found it today in Atlanta.  But if it is anywhere near as good as Being Dead, I have great expectations of  laughs and more good recipes to come.  

Nothing...but nothing...beats a good laugh, a good recipe and "doing thoughtfulness right" in the South.

Mockingbirds

Kymulga Grist Mill near Childersburg, Alabama

A Southern classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is required reading in the South. Published in 1960, the story is a vision of the summer of 1936 when the Alabama author was ten years old. A brother and sister, Jem and Scout, along with their friend, Dill, run around a small town in overalls, playing the hardy imaginal games taught by freedom to roam in the heat of a Southern summer, learning the lessons of injustice and mercy. Southerners always seem to identify with one or other of the characters, and, like the characters in Gone with the Wind, they might as well be real people who live down the street since their actions and inactions are discussed accordingly.

When the children’s father tells them that it would be a sin to kill a mockingbird, a neighbor, Mrs. Maudie, explains why. A mockingbird is one who

“…don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.“

A mockingbird was revealed to the children in the form of a reclusive, downright odd neighbor, Boo Radley, the town spook, so to speak, with a tragic past, a man scorned and feared. Boo watched over the children without their knowing. Unable to relate to the children, he loved them nonetheless, and left them presents in the hollow of a tree. Treasures left by Boo included: two pieces of Wrigley's Double Mint Gum; two scrubbed and polished pennies; one ball of gray twine; two “almost perfect miniatures of two children” (Scout and Jem); one whole package of chewing gum; a tarnished spelling bee medal; and “a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.”

Ultimately Boo’s greatest gift was saving the lives of the children and bringing them home. Boo was, in the end a mockingbird, doing no harm, giving without expectation, singing his heart out in his own odd way.

Boo wasn’t such a strange man. I would imagine that many people make containers similar to tree hollows in which they give others their druthers.  Love is seldom melodramatically grand. Often its symbols are little, unpretentious, tentative, yet faithful. Gum, pennies, twine…that’s the stuff with which we sing out our apprehensive, worn out hearts.

Middle-aged Furies

Sylvia Plath folded a dishcloth upon which to place her face deep in a gas oven on a cold winter night in 1963.  She died there while her small children slept upstairs.  

According to Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negrev in A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill, Plath's friends inevitably blamed her husband, Ted Hughes, and his affair partner, Assia Wevill.  Assia and Ted became involved when Assia and her husband visited Sylvia and Ted's home.  Prior to the visit Assia boasting to her boss that she would seduce Ted.  And seduced him she did until she and Ted publically flaunted their affair.  Days prior to Sylvia's suicide she and Ted had conversed. 

Following the suicide Ted and Assia moved into Sylvia's apartment to care for the children.  Assia pilfered through Sylvia's  things, slept in her bed and, in stereotypical "other woman" style, complained that Plath killed herself to destroy her and Ted's happiness.  She complained that "It was very bad luck that the love affair was besmirched by this unfortunate event." 

How inconsiderate of Sylvia. 

But Assia's lack of conscience and failure of empathy came home, eventually making her into "The weak mistress, forever in the burning shadows of their mysterious seven years."  She came to mourn the loss of her "third and sweetest marriage… What insanity, what methodically crazy compulsion drove me… to this nightmare maze of miserable, censorious, middle-aged furies, and Sylvia, my predecessor, between our heads at night."

As Ted worked toward publication of Sylvia's writings, Assia wrote that "Sylvia [is] growing in him, enormous, magnificent. I shrinking daily, both nibble at me. They eat me."

She wrote "She (Plath) had a million times the talent, 1,000 times the will, 100 times the greed and passion that I have. I should never have looked into Pandora's box, and now that I have, I am forced to wear her love-widow's sacking, without any of her compensations.  What, in five years' time, will he reproach me for? What sort of woman am I? How much time have I been given? How much time has run out? What have I done with it? Have I used myself to the hilt already? Am I enough for him? AM I ENOUGH FOR HIM?"

When Hughes began dreaming of Plath, he referred to the phenomena as "dream-meetings with Sylvia," and these images found their way into his poetry.

Assia asked one of Sylvia's friends "Do you think Ted and I can be happy together?"  The friend replied  "Look at him. Sylvia's spirit will always stand between you."

In 1969 Assia died, taking her daughter with her, on a mattress in a kitchen where she had taken sleeping pills, sealed the door and windows and turned on the gas stove.    

Assia was evil at worst and stupid at best.  Incapable of comprehending the human toll of her folly extracted from another soul, she eventually found the price of human suffering in her own soul.  The woman who was determined to seduce Ted Hughes did not know that love unfinished is a spiritual energy with consequences.  

Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents

I found the most beautiful book, Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents, by Molly and Don Glentzer.  Everything about this book is simply pleasing.  The photography is gorgeous, and the writing is downright poetic in its imagery and charm.  An example:

"In its sensuous form and color, 'Rubens' celebrates - as the master himself did - Helena's voluptuous spirit.  With a heady fragrance like well-steeped tea, it's a rose that invites you, charmingly, into its dewy bosom."

I am partial to books that give the history of plants, especially roses; this one meets my expectations and will provide history to increase my appreciation for these beautiful antiques and help me see them as the individuals they are.  

Get this book, savor it, wallow in its sensuality and thumb your nose at Cure d'Ars .