Milepost 6: What The World Needs Now

“Blueberry Cobbler, II”

charcoal & acrylic on canvas

18” x 18”

2023

It’s August in Mississippi. It’s hot, and I’ve had my fill. I’ve earned a cocktail. I fling my groceries onto the counter, grape juice and bread, and abandon them there. Reaching for the top shelf, I pull one of Louis & Christine’s rocks glasses down from the cabinet, drop in a big ice cube, and top it with bourbon. After a quick once-over, I add a little more. It was a long afternoon.

This drink needs a napkin to pair against the heat and humidity. Inevitably, they’ll bring condensation to the glass. Sipping, I mosey over to the hall bar to grab one. There are dozens of options. Each has a humorous saying or illustration, a little something to encourage conversation during Happy Hour.

This was Mama’s thing. She, Aunt Paula, Uncle Kenny, Aunt Ellen, and their Happy Hour crew loved gifting these little packs of paper cocktail napkins to one another. Though Mama’s been gone years now, we still have a supply that should last us through the apocalypse (including the drinks served that evening). Years worth have accumulated in the bar, and without looking I grab one from the top of the stack. It reads, “Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again.” Involuntarily, I chuckle and then mutter, “Isn’t that the damn truth,” as I wrap the paper napkin around the base of my glass.

My cocktail and I make our way into the backyard to my studio. As the door opens, cool air rushes out to greet me. Finally, I am back. I pull the door behind me and shut out all the unpleasantness in the world. This is my happy place, Jamey’s Dream House, two hundred and ten square feet of privacy and climate control. I knock the AC down another couple of notches for Mama. She felt true happiness resulted from witnessing frost appear on the windows in the heat of summer, and I, wholeheartedly, agree.

I need to throw a dessert together for that thing tomorrow. It shouldn’t take too long, but I need to be writing or charcoaling on this new piece for next month, too. How am I still so behind? Flip a coin? Get the dessert out of the way first? Or forget it and get busy catching up in the studio? Neither. Not yet. I set a timer on my phone for ten minutes with the intention of sipping bourbon and basking in the relief of the cold air until the alarm sounds.

Reclining in my chair, I sip and look out the window above my desk at the glowing colors of the day’s end. I think of Mama and of Ellen. Gone ten years now for Mama, five for Ellen as of last week. They’d get the dessert done first or, at the very least, prepare all its parts to assemble in the morning. It really won’t take too long if I just get it going now.

God, who am I?! I hardly recognize myself anymore. Regularly attending church services, preparing communion with Sadie, making a dessert for a covered dish? How Mayberry will I get before my former self is unrecognizable?

Without a spouse, kids, or pets to care for, my only responsibility has been to myself. Not attending, preparing, or participating has been my modus operandi since striking out on my own with my painting, plus, I’m just not keen on organized groups, and well, I’m naturally wary of do-gooders.

But the older I get, the more I find myself following Mama’s example in all things, and Mama’s thing was church. In the early years of my childhood, she felt called to seminary, enrolling in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, just minutes from our home. Upon her ordination as a Diaconal Minister in the United Methodist church, she was granted the almighty authority to marry, bury, and baptize after years of study and service. She served first in Atlanta, and then, upon my parents’ return to Mississippi, she served in her home church in Natchez before being forced to retire early to address developing health issues.

The alarm on the timer sounds, and without thinking, I automatically reset it for another ten minutes.

Since I was a kid I have preferred the company of women, so naturally, it’s their example I have faithfully followed. While my brother was content to march off with my cousins to shoot things, I was lingering in the kitchen watching the activity and listening to the ladies. For guidance in achieving a dark roux, feeding a crowd, stocking a bar, and decking the halls, I’ve deferred to the experts, the women that came before me, Junkins & Hudnalls. And like Mama, those ladies were all about church, too. They dependably showed up to prepare communion, deliver Wednesday Night Suppers, play the piano in Sunday school, visit with the shut-ins, and organize toy drives at Christmas.

So in an attempt to give Sadie some responsibility, I filled out the “Talents & Skills” survey the church sent home asking for volunteers to help with a variety of needs like communion which she and her mother, my Aunt Ellen, used to manage before Ellen fell ill. Suddenly, Sadie and I found ourselves in charge of the task for the year, and thus, Sunday services with Aunt Paula and her godchildren, Ellen’s girls, my cousins, Lara Lee and Sadie, were cemented on the calendar (at least for now). After all, despite my Georgia upbringing, I was baptized in this Mississippi church, my parents married here, and many a family member memorialized here, Mama included.

It’s quite surprising, really, because I had no intention of returning to church. Although the son of a Methodist preacher woman, I struggled with my faith after Mama died. Throughout her illness, I was hesitant in prayer, fearing that any response short of a miracle was a line in the sand for God and me. Understanding the reality of her medical situation, I could not ask for her to be healed, and so I lost faith in prayer and God’s ability. That was profound.

Upon her death, I realized that once I had made it through her services, once the phone calls and sympathy cards stopped coming and the world began to reveal its new normal that God and I were facing a reckoning of sorts. Why, after all this, should I expect anything from Him when the one thing I needed, my mother, healed, I couldn’t ask for?

The timer runs out again. I should get busy, but instead, I sip, recline, and reset it again.

These women, Uncle Kenny included, have been my role models and guides in this life. Living without them has been my deepest sorrow — So many good times not enjoyed, grandchildren unmet, holidays that don’t feel whole, even still. Yet, I persevere because of the women who led by example.

When we lost Uncle Kenny unexpectedly, Mama was tasked with settling his estate. Though overcome with grief, having lost her lifelong friend, confidant, and cousin, she managed the fallout with grace, even leading his funeral service herself, a task she would repeat for her own mother as well as other family members and friends. And the same was true of Mama’s sisters, Kaye and Ellen. They showed me how to keep moving, keep living, keep loving, leading by example, even stepping in to officiate a cousin’s wedding for Mama just days after her death.

At the end of my first Happy Hour as a new Natchezian, Aunt Ellen and I found ourselves alone in her car in Aunt Paula’s driveway. Paula had just walked into her house and was closing the door behind her when Ellen turned to me saying, “You know, Faye named me your godmother. It’s the job I hoped I’d never have to do, but here we are.”

I nodded knowing where this was headed, and immediately, I felt my eyes begin to swell.

She said, “I know your mom was your everything, your confidant and greatest support,” and began crying, but continued, “I will try my best to be that for you,” barely getting the words out before bursting into tears. Both bawling, we embraced across the cup holders of her Ford, and in that moment, I saw our new normal for what it was, a life without Mama but one where we still had a piece of her in each other.

Ellen made good on her promise to her sister, and I’m endlessly grateful for the four years we shared in Natchez before we lost her, too. I needed the support of a strong woman, and she did what she could to fill the space Mama left. She hired me to do yard work, covered my tab at Happy Hour when short, patiently listened, covertly volunteered me to deliver Wednesday Night Suppers to the shut-ins, and loved me unconditionally.

Heroically, she kept the party going in her sister’s absence. Then, when her health turned, I was here in Natchez to drive her to Jackson for chemotherapy, distract her girls from her illness, and keep Happy Hour on schedule. Before she died I made her a similar promise, that I would always be there for her girls, and it was that promise, inadvertently, that landed me back in church.

The alarm on the timer sounds again. I stop it and get up to grab a stack of dulled charcoal pencils and a sharpener. I have to get busy doing something, and I’m not in a writing mood tonight. Not sure I feel like throwing a dessert together either. Thankfully, I don’t have to prepare the communion bread until Saturday night or Sunday morning. (This is my task, not Sadie’s, because it involves a sharp kitchen knife. She’s responsible for filling all those tiny communion cups because she has the patience and skill for the job.) At the very least I can prep my studio for work tomorrow. I take another sip and begin sharpening, thinking through my to-do list.

I find the less I question my motives and simply move forward in faith, the more I feel as though I am on the right track. I can’t promise that I’ll always go to church, but I’m okay with the fact that I’m going right now. Besides, that’s not what’s important. Showing up is what matters, and you don’t have to go church to do that for somebody.

Three and a half years into this journey of supporting myself with my art, and yet somehow, I’m still going. These years, post-paycheck, have been a master class in faith. The realities of this challenge should have blasted me out of the studio and back into restaurants, waiting tables and tending bar for quick cash or just calling it quits and finally leaving Natchez altogether to find employment at Any College Campus USA, but grace has stepped in more than once, enabling me to keep going, time and again.

Faithfully following Mama’s example, undoubtedly, she’d both love and belly laugh over the new responsibility Sadie and I share, but without question, she’d expect the linens to be pressed and spot-checked and the communion implements to shine.

But how strange to have deviated so far from what Mama and I planned for my life only to find myself exactly where it seems I belong. For neither of us ever imagined my path would intersect with Mississippi (or that I’d revel in the happenstance). I guess that’s what these last few years going it alone has taught me, to trust it will all work out in the end regardless of grand plans and harsh realities.

For now I’m just going to go back in the house and refresh this cocktail, set aside the grape juice and bread for later, put frozen Georgia blueberries on the stove with some sugar, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt, and then, throw together some dough that can just chill in the fridge ‘til morning. Tomorrow, I’ll be grateful that I made it this far tonight.

Just Because

Because friends are sweet and precious and hard to come by

Because of humid summer days, cocktails, and porches

These things change us

Or perhaps shape us

But just because is why

A poem scrawled into a copy of A. E. Houseman’s, “A Shropshire Lad” 

JJH, 2003