The first time I met Jabez Jackson MacLaughlin, my hands trembled and my heart fluttered.  I had heard of his gruffness, his stubbornness, and his old-fashioned views.  I winced a couple of times at the dinner table, remaining mute, holding my tongue, looking down at my plate.  His flan redeemed him to a large extent; his flan, and the warm light cast his way from the other side of the table, where the love of his life traditionally sat.

Over the five years that I’ve known Jay, I’ve had to hold my tongue a few more times.  He and I have strongly held and wildly different views of many things, but we share a love of the people in our lives, a sense of loyalty and determination, and a tender regard for each other.

Today I visited my favorite curmudgeon at The Sweet Life, a place where we spent many hours together or tag-teaming — along with his children, Jim and Virginia — during his wife’s last illness.  We sat in the hallway, he in a wheelchair with oxygen, me in a comfortable chair somewhat lower than his knees, a posture which allowed him to smile on me and gently touch my hand.  We talked about his plan for his last months, about the love he has for his children, and the gratitude he felt for the decent way that everyone is treating him as the cancer takes its toll.

After an hour, he had grown tired.  We moved into his room, and I settled him on his bed with the television turned low.  I leaned down, kissed his strong face along the lean line of  his cheek, and promised that I would return tomorrow.  I told him that I love him; and he responded that he loved me as well.  As I left, a facility doctor moved into my place beside his bed and started the mildly invasive process of questioning Jay as to the reason for his presence in their facility.

I called him later, after he had slept, and visited with his son, and eaten his evening meal.  His voice seemed more clear than it had after our visit.  His fatigue comes in waves, he says; sometimes he feels quite well, other times, he knows that his strength ebbs.  But my favorite curmudgeon still squares his shoulders, and flirts with the pretty women, and still gazes on the face of his beloved Joanna, present in spirit and in a photograph taken a few hallways from where he now sleeps.

Jabez J. MacLaughlin, my father-in-law and my favorite curmudgeon.

Today would be my mother’s 88th birthday.  We lost her in 1985, and rarely a day passes that I do not have some thought of her.  The memory of her brings a smile to my face even though I miss her.

I would like to share two photographs that I took this morning, with inferior technology and a shaky hand.  But combined, they tell you more about Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley than my feeble words could ever convey.

Happy birthday, Mom.  I hope heaven did not disappoint you, and that your time here on earth gave you joy amidst the pain.  I remember so well when you found, and later wrote about, your unexpected bounty discovered as you dug your garden.  Your pleasure still resonates; your smile still shines; though only in our hearts and in our memories.  I love you.

This article appeared in Organic Gardening, the editor of which kindly sent a copy to me.

One of the unexpected bounties. In this photo, it sits on a ring cut from Eric’s tree; on a trivet that my mother made from a tile leftover from the time she re-tiled her kitchen counter.

Note:  If you click on the picture of the article, it should enlarge for you so you can easily read it.  Enjoy.

In loving memory of my mother, who lives in her children and her grandchildren.

Yesterday afternoon my favorite curmudgeon told me, “They’re taking me to respite, tomorrow, at 10:00 a.m.”  I said, “I’ll come see you on Wednesday, after the commotion settles.”  He replied, “I’ll want to see you by then.”  I wasn’t sure I had heard him.  “Would you prefer I wait, to come visit?”  He raised his voice a bit.  “No, no.  Come tomorrow, come Wednesday.  I will want to see you.”  I told him I would be there; I told him I loved him.  He said, “I love you too, honey.”  I don’t know if he was crying but I most certainly felt tears on my own cheeks.

Last night my dear friend Cindy called to see how I felt.  She wanted to know more than just whether my heart still beat as it should; she wanted to know what pain sat on my soul.  We shared worries, we shared yearnings.  We connected with one another’s spirits and soothed one another’s anxieties, not just for the space of the call but beyond.

This morning, I drove to court in fresh sweet morning air, 76 degrees, the wind blowing through the open window of my car.  My cares hovered just below the surface.  I suddenly remembered a gathering in my senior year of high school — Ring Day, I think; or baccalaureate, possibly.  I know my mother attended.  The song played at that event as the seniors processed onto the stage resounded in my mind as I drove.  My cares receded, for a time at least, giving way to a resurgence of hope and belief.

Here I give you links to two different but equally marvelous renditions of the song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, from the musical Carousel, by Rogers and Hammerstein.  Enjoy.

The incomparable, original, Mahalia Jackson singing as you’ll rarely hear the song done:

Mahalia Jackson, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”

And I don’t usually like mix videos, but the singing on this is pure and clear, and k. d. lang has the voice of an angel:

k.d. lang “You’ll Never Walk Alone”

I must be dancing.

I’ve taken one step forward today but two steps backwards.  I had a good day at court, but  I received word that the Mayo Clinic is not offering me an appointment, and I found myself being a gloomy girl, struggling with the blues.  I tried making a list of all the things that aren’t wrong with me, all the things that are right with me, and all the things that I’ve managed to overcome.

It wasn’t until my friend Cindy Cieplik called tonight to check on me that I got to feeling a bit better.  I listened to her lovely, husky voice; let myself take in her kindness; and connected with her insightful way of looking at the world.  While we talked, I went out onto the porch and began stretching. I held the cell phone to my ear with one shoulder while I reached high above my head, then brought myself forward, mimicking one small part of the Sun Salute.

I breathed in the cool night air, talked with Cindy about art, and living alone, and the burdens that other people have combated.  She described a documentary that she watched about a doctor and his nurse who survived the Ebola virus.  I thought again of how blessed I am to have a connection to Cindy. She stands next to me and I can’t help but smiling.

Maybe it was one step backward, and three steps forward.  Cha cha cha.

CC and CC at the opening reception for TIMELESS CONNECTIONS by Heather Roman, 05 September 2014, FIRST FRIDAYS @ SUITE 100, A quarterly event.

I awakened before the sun peaked over the neighbors’ trees and into my window.  My knees and calves protested a long weekend filled with standing and walking.  My heart, however, surged with song.  Between the art reception on my birthday, the woman-talk afterwards, and the Wine Walk in the Astor Place neighborhood last evening, an otherwise endlessly drab weekend has pulled itself from a tailspin and soars among the clouds.

I had never heard of a “Wine Walk” but I’ve been to progressive dinners and imagined the Wine Walk would be similar.  Close, it turned out; the hosts never left their houses, but neighbors journeyed from one to another.  I invited my friend Brenda to join  me.  She technically now lives south of Astor Place, but used to live in the ‘hood and more to the point, has walked down my street nearly every day for many years, en route to her job at UMKC.  In fact, she and I met early this summer as I got out of my car and she passed by on the sidewalk.

I didn’t think I could walk to each of the houses, with my wobbly legs, especially if I tried more than a few sips of wine.  We decided Brenda would drive us around the four- or five-block radius, but met a couple at the end of my front walk who  were bound for the first house, so we strolled with them.  Neighbors, some known to me, began to gather on the porch of the first participants, who poured Australian wine and invited us to judge its virtue.  My neighbor Jeanne arrived, a strong, lively woman in her seventies.  We spoke of her husband of many, many years having just been moved to a care facility.   She asked after my son; we spoke as we have not done in a long time, since my son and I walked the dog past her house every day, our habit until he started college.  A long overdue breaking of the silence, I told myself.

We drove to the next house and tried Chianti in a crowded but beautifully redone kitchen.  There we met a woman recently moved to Brookside from Liberty, who told us, five times running, that the porches here sold her on the house.  Sold her. On the house. The porches.  We smiled; I have a porch, and Brenda wants one.  We understand the appeal of porches.

My favorite wine of the evening came at the next house which featured the wines of Spain.  And in that house, I saw the most extraordinary painting.  Our hostess said she found it in an antique shop in Florida.  It seemed to depict a Hindi priest, or perhaps a warrior.  Maybe Chinese.  I can’t summon the details from the swirl of the emotions which I felt in reaction to it.  I want to go back to that woman’s house, knock on her door, and ask to see the painting again.  I think she would understand.

We skipped the champagne house and finished at Jean and Anton’s home, four doors down from me, who bade us to participate in the Missouri/Kansas border judging war.  Brenda and I exchanged a  glance which said, “No problem; I don’t even have to try the wine; I’m a Missouri girl.”  We climbed the stairs under the purple lights and held out our wine glasses for the small sampling to which we had confined ourselves at each stop.

The night drew to a close.  We settled on Jean and Anton’s porch.  Brenda had discovered that their daughter lives at her end of Brookside.  We sat near Charity, talking about the lovely noises of the children playing in the school near their houses.  Jean and Anton pulled chairs over to us. We talked of Jean’s cancer, and she held high her head with its new fine growth of hair.  A badge of survival.  Anton talked about taking his grandson to Japan.  All readers, one librarian, one professor, one writer:  we spoke of books.   I felt a release, a falling away of the tendency to whine which has entwined my soul for many months.  Perhaps its grip merely yielded  to the soothing influences of the wine.  Perhaps, though, my heart responded to something less tangible and more lasting: the ministration of friends; the gift of their warm smiles; and the enfolding protection of their tender embraces.

My birthday present from Brenda Dingley.

I started keeping a gratitude journal with online posts to Facebook or here in this blog but in the immortal words of ten-year-old Will, “Sadly, no”, I am not good at journalling.  So I have no idea what day it is in my gratitude journal but it is day 249 of my increasingly misnamed year without complaining.  (To avoid plagiarism, I’ll acknowledge that I stole the phrase ‘increasingly misnamed’ from the late, great Douglas Adams).

Today, I find myself gazing on extraordinary flowers — rivaled only by those supplied at last night’s opening by Elliott Cardozo and his wife Cathy Hammer Cardozo of Roses Only, the official florist of Suite 100 and the Corley Law Firm.  When I first spied these flowers, they preceded a woman almost smaller than the floral arrangement, approaching me down the hall outside Suite 100 at last night’s art reception.  Their bearer leaned forward to embrace me, then in turn I embraced her husband who hovered behind her, smiling, with no trace of artifice on his face.  In that moment, I realized that these two people, whom I have known for only five years, truly cherish me.

Today, then,  day one of the sixtieth year of my life, I am grateful for the people who nourish and sustain me, among them Paul Becker and Sarah Noll, who gifted me with these beautiful flowers.

My birthday flowers from Paul and Sarah.

One wintry night late in 1954, my mother sat at her vanity, brushing her auburn hair.  My father stood behind her, looking at the image of his wife in the mirror.  He said to her, “What would you think about another baby?”  My mother contemplated her three girls and two boys.  Driven by her desire to have the same number of boys as girls, she responded that it might be nice.

In the cold light of the next morning, racing around attending to their parental duties, my father said to my mother, “Maybe we can’t afford another child.”  She eyed him, arched one fine brow over liquid brown eyes, and remarked, “Too late.”

My mother told me this story during her last days.  I already knew, from both of my parents, that they had quarreled over my name.  She wanted “Mary Kathleen”.  He wanted “Bridget Corinne”.  They compromised with “Bridget Kathleen”, and so I was named — for a week or two, until my father decided that “Mary Corinne Corley” sounded better and — so he told me — convinced an admitting clerk to discard the first round of papers and rename me.

I came into the world at 9:05 p.m. on 09-05-55, an event celebrated by my father with 9-0-5 beer. (For non-St.-Louis natives, 9-0-5 was a chain of liquor stores, one of which was located near our home in Jennings.)  My mother would not get her even-numbered family until four years later, with the birth of my brother Stephen Patrick, whose first name, we were told, derived from the expression “even Stephen”.

Looking back on the 59 years since my birth, I realize that I’ve woven an incredible tapestry.  My days have been crowded with opportunities, some of which I’ve squandered but some of which I’ve embraced.  I’ve lived in seven cities if you count Jennings and St. Louis as separate places.  I’ve had three marriages, five pregnancies, one child, two post-secondary degrees, and a full deck of face cards.  I’ve stood on the brink of a glacier and the edge of a canyon.  With my son and one of my husbands, I’ve explored caves and gone off-road to discover parks filled with ancient woods and giant stones.  With another husband, I’ve lived in a town so small one could count the houses on the water line.  With a third, I’ve seen a beautiful lake in Oklahoma and serene paths in Michigan.  I’ve borrowed other people’s daughters to get my share of girl-mothering, and stood in the kitchen of a fifth-grade parent’s home socializing with the “boy-mothers” at a back-to-school dinner.

I’ve seen the dark depths of self-hatred and the giddy heights of being loved despite my own inability to love myself.

A lawyer once threatened me with a sanctions motion.  Wearily, I said to him, “Sir, I’ve been shot at, run over, raped, robbed, beaten and left for dead.  I think I can handle a motion for sanctions.”  And all of those things were true.

At present reckoning, my eyesight and my hearing have faded more rapidly than my age would warrant.  My hair should be largely grey but I am too vain for such folly.  A reactivated virus invades my cerebellum, probably my heart, and most certainly other places that I’ve yet to discern.  This same critter damaged me in toddler hood and lurked in my genes until menopause, an irony that did not escape me.

But I awakened at six a.m. to find a couple of dozen birthday wishes already posted to me on the internet and a personal Google doodle wishing me a very happy birthday.  The radio tells me that Bob Newhart turns 85 today and I can think of worse people with whom to share my birth anniversary.  Two friends spent last evening with me, eating salads and making posters for today’s art reception at our professional suite.  I do not live in a war-torn nation; I do not have a fatal disease; I am not homeless; I have many friends, people who love me in spite of myself and perhaps because of myself, a great son, a host of wonderful shared-children including my current stepchildren and two stepdaughters from my first marriage, one of whom was the first to post birthday greetings to me on Facebook.  I’ve been blessed, and I know it.

When I was 18, a doctor told my mother that I would be bedridden by 25.  I let that prediction mix with untamed ghosts of a rocky childhood, and the resultant cocktail poisoned my college years.  I drank gallons of Scotch, embraced self-destructive alliances, and paid short-shrift to an excellent opportunity for a good college education.  When I awakened from a self-induced stupor at 22, I scurried around to salvage my life.  I landed in law school, a path that I did not seriously contemplate but which I nonetheless followed, and here I am, at 59 and counting, still practicing law, still practicing life, still hoping to get it all right some day.

The best advice my mother gave was that if I walked every day of my life, I would walk every day of my life.  My father, on the other hand, doled out more practical suggestions:  “Always play the house odds.  Never draw to an inside straight.”  I have taken these and other tidbits given to me over the years, and tried to apply them to cobble together a road map with cautionary signs.  Sometimes the way befuddles me, and I sit on the shoulder of the highway, lost, alone, with a folded map and an empty water bottle.  Sometimes the engine races and the pavement falls away behind me as I climb to the scenic spots and cast my eyes over gorgeous landscape.

So here I am: the sum of all I’ve known, and done, and all the people whom I have met along the way.  I once promised that I would live to 103, and I’m more than halfway there.  I have done some things of which I am stubbornly proud, and others that I’d like to undo if I could only find a way back in time.  I do not know what I have left to do, but as I still breathe, as I awakened this morning, I can only assume that something remains to be accomplished.  So I shall keep walking, every day of my life, just as my mother encouraged me to do.  And, as I was advised by my maternal grandmother, Johanna Ulz Lyons, I intend to put my best foot forward from here on out.

A friend gave this to me long ago.

I feel quiet this morning.  I have no complaints.  I’m surrounded by a growing freshness in this home where I’ve lived for 21 years and I find the sense of newness very inviting.  I stepped out onto my porch this morning to coolness despite predictions of high heat index.  So far, the day pleases me.  Here is a view of my morning for everyone, and hopes for a good day, for me, for you, for all.

Coffee, 89.3, and beautiful impatiens.

I’m a recovering victim!  And grateful for the recovery process!

I keep forgetting; but my reminder today has helped.

Pulling up my big girl panties and getting ready to stroll to the sunny side of the street.

Just because she’s so adorable, here’s a picture of a happy girl: Nora Wandfluh, daughter of Jennie and Brett Wandfluh, and one of the little angels in my life. Nora always smiles when she sees me and says, “Hi, Auntie Corinne!” So this picture of her just makes me smile, too.

One of the people who cares about me observed today that I was sort of having a little pity party.  Well, it might have been a pity party but it wasn’t little.  I expressed feeling bad to this person, thinking I was confiding, processing, not complaining.  It sounds the same, I realize.  Complaining about one’s cares and expressing how bad one feels mirror one another, especially if you repeat yourself like a broken record rather than searching for ways to make lemonade with the sour things that plague you.

So let me say this, to the people who love me, to whom I have been voicing lament:  I’ll take a little cheese with my whine, thank you very much.  If I sink too far in my own depths; if I seem to be wallowing in the muck rather than looking on the bright side, you’ve got my permission to kick me in the backside and rattle my cobwebs.  To the person who gave me a little slap today — who shall remain anonymous — thank you.  I needed that.  Message received.

Gratitude all around, friends.  I love you all.  All.  Without exception.  The bunch of you have stood by me.  All of you.  Even folks who have no obligation to do so.  And I am humbled, and grateful.  My guardian angels, sometimes in disguise, have not deserted me.

Angels all around me; this is a guardian angel hanging on my house, given to me by Marcella Womack. When I see it, I am reminded of all the people who love me and watch out for me — sometimes with tough love. How blessed I am!