My uncle Arvy could be a tyrant at home, as was true for all of the six adult children of Lawson and Eunice. In some ways, all of them were reared to be hard, to expect too much of themselves and those for whom they felt responsible. Maybe that was why all of them seem to have chosen favorite nieces and nephews with whom they could let down the standard and let out some tenderness. Uncle Arvy was always more than good to me. When I was a young girl, he embodied all that was dashing and romantic, like the hero of best-loved novels. Handsome, charming, risk-taking, generous with money and praise, he was the first man who made me feel that I was special, that I might grow up to be lovely.

He drove everywhere on two-lane highways at a minimum 90 mph. He invited me along with his family on sales trips, to New Orleans, to Biloxi. He was an executive who dressed well, who knew about things. At what seemed to me the finest restaurants, he introduced me to lobster and scallops and Bananas Foster, foods his own family wouldn't touch. His wink told me we were the ones with real taste. He let me have a sip of wine as if I were was mature beyond my years. He showed me how to reel in a huge marlin. He was tall enough, strong enough, and believed in me enough that I let him teach me to swim. He'd let me be silly, too. laughing as Linda and I wailed all the latest hits from the back seat as he passed another car, a red blur as we flew by.

At home, things weren't so good. He and my beautiful aunt danced in the living room on some nights; on others they poured gasoline on each other's wounds. The many episodes and evolutions of my aunt's continual headaches and seclusion progressed into depression and countless shock treatments. Eventually, she developed a full-blown schizophrenia with occasional violence and, after paying for years of expensive private care, he finally committed her to the state mental hospital in Jackson, MS. After my cousins left home, my uncle lived alone in Memphis, continuing to work, helping my cousin to launch his business in Jackson. He was quieter, lonely, I thought. Then one year he brought a woman with him to the family reunion. I waited to see the response of my mother and her siblings, but apparently they already knew. This woman worked somehow in connection with one of the blue-print businesses my uncles owned, as most of my relatives have and do. Soon, the two were always together, glowing and laughing. His kids didn't like it, but I couldn't expect them to with their mother ill and shut away apparently for life. There's always some jealousy as well.

I was thrilled to see his face alight but somewhat disappointed in his choice of new love. She seemed to me far too conservative and boring for such a gallant hero. But he clearly loved her. Just about the time we expected a marriage, though, my uncle retired and built a home on the old family property in Mississippi. The doctor said his heart was enlarged. Once established in this remote place, he went back to church. For many years, he had ignored and, I believe, even resented the religion of his family. But he went back and became close friends with the preacher of the small country church I can remember visiting on Sunday nights, the entire place slightly rocking with the movement of funeral-home fans. This preacher convinced him that he had become a dreadful sinner, to the extent that he must be baptized again. Then he told him that he could not divorce his wife on any grounds because of her illness; it would be an unquestioned "putting away" that could never be forgiven.

My uncle gave up his beloved; it was apparently difficult enough that my mother even commented on it. I think perhaps he told her that, besides the sinfulness, he was going to die soon, which wouldn't be fair to her. But he didn't die, though I know he prayed for death or the Second Coming. For the next 17 years, he spent most of his hours sitting at a window that looked out on the woods, chain-smoking, silent and alone. He'd break this vigil if a visitor came by or twice a day to eat his unvaried diet of frozen foods: Jimmy Dean sausage-and-biscuits and Eskimo pies. At some point during this time, it was pointed out that, if he divorced his wife, he would not have to pay for her care. So he did. This was not sinful, he was assured, since he was not going to remarry and since it was demonstrably practical. He exchanged his sharp suits for a uniform of plaid shirts and chinos. He did not walk in the forest. He did go to church. This continued until one day he was found on the floor beneath the window, literally felled by a severe stroke, his cigarette burned out in the ashtray. Then began the succession of VA homes and private nursing homes that kept him in an undignified suspension until his painful death, all contributing to a widespread relief among those who loved him and a desire to remember him from the days before his retirement.

Still, my mother gets great comfort from the long confessional conversations she had with her brother during the window years, from his evident repentance, from his promised reward. The preacher, praising himself as much as my uncle, traced the journey at the graveside service. Arvy was a sinner, but he shaped up. He cut off his limbs; he plucked out his eyes. He made himself blameless enough to be redeemed.

My mother's comfort is my sorrow. My uncle's life seems to me a tragedy, especially the latter part of it. During the past few days I have read several times from the Sermon on the Mount, quoted in that service, and from all the other speeches of Christ in the gospels. I find it hard to believe that the very rebukings of the Pharisaic idea of what religion is, of what God wants a life to be, have been so terribly converted into ever-more-rigid law. "You've got it all wrong," Jesus says again and again in the parables, the stories, the hard sayings, the strange utterances. "It is what is in the heart that matters." I think that if I am wrong about this, about the way God loved my uncle, I don't want to know it.

And a beautiful heart can be wrung dry as stone, even in the name of good. But my uncle's was not. I was selfish in his last years. He cried when he saw me and would not stop. I found it hard to take. But it wasn't about what I could take. It was about what he wanted to give.
posted by Sandy at 2:18 PM

On a Funereal Journey

It seemed if I could get out of Nashville, I might make it fine. The traffic was heavy through Belle Meade. And right in the middle of Bellevue, not far from the interstate, the car in front of me ran over something plastic. My car is too low to skim it. So I dragged it to a service station--no service of course. So I stopped over close to the vacuums, hoping to knock it out somehow without getting oil all over my dress. I'd barely bent over to look when my Good Samaritan came loping over, saying, "Do you know you're dragging a bucket?" Before I could answer, he was under my car and the bucket was free. A man can be a handy thing.

Sometimes it's pure joy to drive, knowing you'll be driving awhile--to get your speed up, turn the sound up, listen to your own music, think your own thoughts. Sinead O'Connor and Iris Dement:

Went to the doctor and here's what he told me:
He said, Girl, you better have some fun no matter what you do,
But he's a fool, 'cause
Nothing compares,
Nothing compares 2 U.

Good bless the day that you came round
And upset my apple cart
You make me hotter than Mojave in my heart.

Exit at Waverley (that's the Loretta Lynn exit. Never been there but it's the one place in TN that my son-in-law wanted to visit. Some kind of dirt-bike track). Attraction for me is Log Cabin restaurant. Two things: breakfast and pie. Everything else as ordinary as any roadside cafe anywhere. Don't know who cooks breakfast but best maple bacon, omelets that could float away, pancakes big as the plate, tender as bowl of grits. When I used to commute to Vanderbilt, I'd stop there at 5:00 for breakfast and coffee to keep my eyes open the rest of the way.

And pies are the best I've ever eaten. Same woman has baked them for twenty-odd years. Coconut cream pie is the nearest-heaven food to me, if done well. Can be awful, takes a practiced hand. This is the best I've ever tasted. So I treated myself to a slice with coffee for an unhealthy but soul-feeding lunch.

Exit I take to bypass part of Jackson is called Christmasville Rd. Best-sounding street name in that area, as far as I know. Always made me smile to hear it mentioned. Now, this is like Nolensville Rd. It means there's actually a Christmasville somewhere down it if I turned right instead of left. The closest I've come is when I took Christie to a babysitter out a little ways when she was four. You can be sure I won't go on to Christmasville if I can help it. This is West Tennessee, after all, and the only pretty town I've ever found is La Grange. If Christmasville was worth seeing, I would have heard it. I don't want my image of Christmasville to be spoiled by reality.

Jackson looked worse than ever this time, for some reason. I thought at first it was because, after all the rain, the greenery is trying to cover some of the broken things. But it could have been only because each time I look farther and see more damage. The trees are gone, and you can see that countless houses are still plastic-clad, sometimes a roof, sometimes a corner or a porch. All sitting there in band-aids waiting for Federal Aid, I guess. Contrast always illuminates: next to the two historic African-American churches that were demolished (all that's standing of one is the engraved cornerstone) there's a dreadful housing project, the ugly civic center, and a monstrosity of a "park"--all still untouched. Somehow my eyes are drawn to the buildings that look intact except that all their windows are boarded up: multi-story buildings, many of them, but older, built solidly of brick and stone. Yellow caution tape circles them, a fragile barrier against entry. I know that all of them have been judged damaged beyond repair. Floors and stairwells have collapsed, hidden within. Having stood so long, standing still, they await a wrecking crew.

I can see a little cafe where I used to pick up lunch for everyone at the blue print when I worked there with my cousin and my uncle. Dixie Cafe, famous for take-out plates. Looks like they'll have to rebuild. Every since I've heard of my uncle's death, I see him as I did so many times, opening the back door of the blue print, coming in from the sun in his suit and sunglasses, teeth white against his tan, handsome as they come. It was only a few yesterdays ago.

There's a station that has cheap gas near the "Y" intersection where I turn toward Bolivar. I stopped to fill my car and, preoccupied, nearly sat on my sunglasses. Just past the intersection toward Henderson, if you turned right and drove back into the woods, you'd find a property my cousin owns, where they lived until recently. The house is a marvelous combination of rustic and luxurious, sprawling all over its hill like it grew there. I knew that they has moved to a more fashionable part of town, renting this place. It seemed a shame but I've heard now that a Super Walmart will be built next to the property, just beyond the gas station.

Hills roll all the way to Bolivar and there aren't good passing places anywhere on the drive to Middleton. You can count on trailing at least a couple of forty-mile-an-hour drivers for a good distance. Good practice in patience. Too many people have been killed who couldn't wait. And what am I rushing toward?

My mother has asked my aunt up to lunch before we start out for the funeral home. Of course, she didn't mention it to me. I figure she put the lunch on the table about 11:00, just about the same time I left Nashville. But she's left it out for me, and she waits at the door with a kiss of welcome.

posted by Sandy at 11:46 AM

The qualifications for entry to the Fur, Feather and Fin Art Show are [1] that each entry must contain in some form (you guessed it) fur, feather or fin and [2] the unwritten but understood rule that all work must be rated G. i.e, pass Church of Christ censorship. I also learned that there must also be a community understanding that art means something two-dimensional that can be framed.

Every year my mother says, "If it didn't have to have fur, fin, or feathers, I could get that drawing of Tommy's and enter it."

She means a charcoal drawing that my brother made when he was in high school. I'm pretty sure it's a horse. He's left it behind since he married in a closet in the room that used to be his, along with some video games that are likely antique by now, several t-shirts size Small, and some crushed architectual models from his days at Mississippi State.

I always say, "Mama, all you'd have to do is make a couple of V's in the background and say they are birds."

Never say that I don't have the gifts of a sibyl. Having seen all five rows of art (covering both sides) in the Community Center that day, I can tell Mama now that she won't be alone in qualifying the picture by the insertion of such birds. I'd say fully one-fifth of the paintings and drawings qualified in that way--and by paying the exhibiting fee which will keep the Women's Club in punch and cheese straws all next year. Most of these were floral in theme, but a couple from the high school made me wonder if goth culture had made its way even into Hardeman County.

I won't spend too much time describing the art we viewed. I'll just say that I don't think that much of it was intended to be abstract. Quite a few works made the most of the letter and spirit of the theme: quail, wild turkey, possums, squirrels, deer, ducks, and every kind of fish except shark bled onto paper and canvas surfaces all over the room. It was all we could do to stay long enough to be polite and smile as we edged out the door and walked fairly quickly back across the wasteland to our car.

It was, all in all, a festival to test the mettle and the loyalty of any native daughter, much less an Australian legal alien. But it was better than a visit with my father. I remember it somewhat fondly, in fact. But you can tell that this is the same kind of fondness I usually give to all things Middleton, one dose of get-me-out-of-here and another of hometown in the rear-view-mirror storytelling.

One thing I noticed that day at the art exhibit, though, was how few of the names I recognized. My dad's always referring to someone and saying, "You know him, don't you? You remember her, don't you?" And I simply don't. The population's still about 500, but there must have been some fruit-basket-turn-over. Now, if this were Paris, site of that catfish feast, and my dear friend Helen were telling this story, I'll bet she'd know almost everybody who entered that art show, even though she's lived in Memphis and Nashville since high school.

I love to listen to Helen when she talks of visiting home. She knows what happened to everybody she knew in school. Hey, I've seen pictures of these people, then and now. I feel like I know them. She knows every house and who used to own and who does now and what they've done with it. I know Paris has more to offer than Middleton, but the essential difference here is not in the town. I'm sure Helen has to put up with lots of small-town stuff to keep this connection: family wranglings and gossip and boring visits and all kinds of things. It's in Helen's lovely exuberant ability to love that place and to make the effort to keep on loving it. It's also in her courage: she found out where to go to dance when she's home.

Something happened not long ago to make me think about all of this. I'll tell about it in the next installment.
posted by Sandy at 9:01 PM