Stormy

I’m snowed in and reflecting on all the storms that have crossed my radar. What better time to recall the Classics IV, and that song that Cobb and Buie gave us in ’68 called “Stormy.”

Yesterday's love was like
A warm summer breeze
But like the weather, you change.

First tornado: Louisville, Kentucky, April 3, 1974
The change in barometric pressure triggered a migraine and my mom picked me up early from St. Athanasius Elementary School. Our home bordered the southern entrance to the General Electric plant, land that had previously been used to grow apples and corn. The higher elevation in our suburb allowed a view of downtown Louisville from my second floor bedroom window. The skyline twinkled at night, and the twinkling could be enhanced by earphones full of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. But on this particular day, we remained on the first floor and stood at our sliding glass patio door and watched as the tornado swept across the horizon. I will never forget the absence of sound prior to the tornado or the civil defense sirens that I heard not that day, but for years afterward when the county met the need created by the tornado and tested the sirens with regularity.

Oh Stormy, oh Stormy
Bring back that sunny day

First snowstorm with power outage: Louisville, Kentucky, January, 1994

The guest bedroom in my Rock Creek Gardens home had a view of pine trees in Cherokee Park. When my surgeon husband was on call, I often slept in this room. On this particular night I did not hear my husband climbing into bed in the wee hours, but I woke early the next morning to the sound of icy precipitation outside the window. The cold motivated me to check the thermostat, and flipping the switch in the hall did not illuminate a path.

As a busy mom and resident, I often had an empty refrigerator, and unfortunately, all I had left in the house to eat the morning of the power outage was a sour cream coffee cake that I baked late on the eve of the storm.

My toddler woke about an hour after I did and complained of cold hands. I called my friends the Higdons, and Steve picked up the three of us in his SUV and drove us to their home in the Highlands.

All of a sudden there is
Rain falling down

First tropical storm: Allison, Houston, Texas, June 2001

I wore something very edgy to the hospital the morning before Allison, and in retrospect, what was already in the air that morning when I paired a navy and white geometric print skirt with a silk blouse in a contrasting print?

Fridays at work usually dragged into the evening hours, and at 7:30 my husband picked me up from Hermann Hospital. En route to Rice Village for dinner, in pouring rain, we agreed that fatigue had surpassed hunger. At home we fell into bed and slept well thanks to the sounds of rain and the snoozing toddler that lay between us.

The following morning my scientist husband headed to Baylor and noticed some things just weren’t right. By the time he filled the lab freezers with liquid nitrogen, the entrance to the medical center was barricaded.

Back home we didn’t have any food in the house, and we drove over I-59 via the Mandell Street bridge to get to the Westheimer Randall’s. Cars abandoned by motorists had floated up the swollen interstate to within ten feet of the overpass. In the grocery, we waited to check out for hours. I struck up a conversation with the woman in front of me—the chairman of pediatrics from the med school in San Antonio who was visiting her Houston grandchildren.

Amazingly, we still had power, despite the flood, and we watched on national news as the piano in the lobby of my hospital floated up two floors. The hospital struggled to move patients before closing. I stayed home on paid leave for over a month.

Now things are dreary, baby, and it's
Windy and cold

Second snowstorm with power outage, Carrboro, North Carolina, December, 2002

My Texan son had never seen snow, and I billed the white stuff as one of the fun features of North Carolina in the buildup that led to our move. And sure enough, two weeks after we unpacked in North Carolina, snow fell one afternoon. I photographed the children on the deck. Because Sam did not yet have the proper outerwear, he was wearing hand-me-downs from his sister. That night the ice storm downed trees all over the Triangle, taking the power lines with them.

The previous homeowners had left enough firewood for the season, and we heated cans of food at the fireplace. A few days later the power returned. What does my son think we’ve gotten him into in North Carolina, I wondered.

And I stand alone in the rain,
Calling your name.

First hurricane (Isabel), September, 2003, Carrboro, North Carolina

School had been cancelled so I had to take the children with me to a radiology appointment on UNC’s campus. I left the Gravely Building with good news only to find that a horrific storm awaited us in the parking lot. It poured the rest of the day.

My biggest concern was the butterfly bush. I stood at the front door and watched as the rain pelted it. After only one season I had become so fond of its purple blooms and its yellow and orange winged visitors. Against the odds, the bush survived over the years and has actually grown stronger.

You were the sunshine, baby,
Whenever you smiled,
But I call you Stormy today.

Third snowstorm, Carrboro, North Carolina, January 2010
This time the weatherman gave me time to get ready for a power outage. I planned, shopped, stocked, filled, watered, salted, treated, vacuumed, laundered, ironed, flat-ironed, baked, boiled, mailed, posted, paid up, checked, and e’ed.

Now I’m a shut-in, enjoying electricity and breaking in a new pair of Sorels in eight inches of snow for the upcoming trip to the Canadian Rockies. My son watched the Miss America pageant for the first time, and I had an acoustic memory--my mother used to sing the pageant song at our house.

Oh Stormy, Oh Stormy, Bring back that sunny day

Seems like it's been stormy for years now.

Saturday Howling

Does Saturday night have a soul? Tom Waits says it has a heart.

Fess up now: If you were going to write a song about any weeknight, would you write about Thursday night or Saturday night?

At almost every stage of life it seems there is some anticipation of Saturday night. As a youth, I dreamed of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games come Saturday night. When I was old enough to be dragged out into the world with my parents on a Saturday, we went to Catholic baseball fields where the smell of beer and sweat blended with cigar smoke. In high school it was a night of cruising, looking for a party or congregating in Cox’s Park until the police arrived. As an adult with cash, Saturday was a night to dine.

As an adult with kids, Saturday night excitement is lacking, and for that reason I qualified the word every with the word almost. I wouldn’t dream of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games now because the Dr. Pepper would keep me up all night, and really, what’s there to do? Although with your own teenager out cruising, you can never really sleep soundly because you wait for the sound of the garage door opening, and upon wakening at two to realize you haven’t heard it, you have to pad down the hall and open the teenager’s bedroom door to make sure the bed isn’t empty.

Dan Zanes suggests in “Carelessly” that Saturday is a special night for couples. Unfortunately, “Carelessly” was the theme song of my divorce. My ex and I had separate but equal copies of the CD:

Could every night feel like Saturday night?/
Could every word come from the heart?

For most, amorous expectation defines Saturday night. It’s a night where hope springs eternal, even for the betrothed. My sister once sat at the bar at Two Keys Tavern in Lexington, Kentucky, eavesdropping on a man who told the bartender that his Catholic wife would only have sex with him one night of the week, and it was, yes, Saturday night. If I could put one footnote in this blog, that footnote would tell that the man at the bar identified his wife as a graduate of my own esteemed high school.

On Saturday, as a high schooler, I never stayed home. Now I see my Facebook friends (who were my high school classmates) status updating about quiet evenings at home on Saturday. There’s comfort in knowing that my status is not so unusual--maybe other people who consider themselves social are indeed a la casa on Saturday night. Yet there is something inside me that yearns on a Saturday night, something that can’t ever be quite satisfied by sitting on the sofa even if I am watching Austin City Limits.

So while you’re sitting at home tonight on your sofa, open your window. Listen for the howling of my soul. It’s another one of Sam Cooke’s Saturday nights. The restless voices deep down inside me, they bark the loudest about domesticity come Saturday night.

Hollywood has already diagnosed my yearnings as Saturday Night Fever. Steve Marriott says I don’t need no doctor.

Play Any Song About Roses Today

My mother and I shared some things in common, but then again, she was a bit more down to earth and had a higher vocal range.

She and I were different:

• She would drink Falls City beer.
• She could sing “Amazing Grace” as a soloist for a wedding. In my two years of chorus class at Sacred Heart Academy, I lived in my mother’s shadow because Mrs. Cassady had heard my mother belt "My Old Kentucky Home" at Churchill Downs.
• She would eat pork rinds.


But we both had:

• The charm for striking up a conversation with a stranger. I remember being at my uncle’s wedding reception at Hurstbourne Country Club and seeing her chat with a new acquaintance, Denny Crum. She was in her prime in her thirties and brighter than the sun in her yellow summer dress.
• A history of posing with high school classmates on the Daniel Boone statue in Olmsted’s Cherokee Park.• The knack for entertaining with a big ole pot of red sauce.
• A complete inadequacy for controlling a temper. My mom almost threw her engagement ring off the Belle of Louisville and she torched her tulle wedding dress after a fight with my dad.
• A weakness for any song mentioning a rose. She was the daughter of Rose. One of her favorites was “Bring Me a Rose.”

In loving memory of JoAnne Farmer Hoffmann, July 16, 1935-January 16, 1987

John tells us of a time when time will be no more

In the day when the trumpet shall blow

We'll meet over yonder in that heavenly place

There, we'll see each other face to face

“Lights of the City”

9-1-1 What's Your Emergency?

My husband didn’t waste any time telling me what to do when I called him from my car Monday afternoon. I followed his advice and called 911. I was feeling worse by the second. Not as bad as the bloke in Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, but you get the idea.

Two days later all I can think about are the words of this Old Ceremony song:

Yeah, cause in a flash, the car will crash, the heart will give in/
And the levee breaks; our one mistake was never ever really living.

Having been reminded of my own mortality, I grow convinced of the wisdom of my resolution to have more fun this year. Well, resolutions are always tough, and if you thought mine were crazy simple, I guess the hard part was more about the more and less about the fun.

“Can you tell me your name?” the operator said.

My name--so much to say--a heathen name the baptismal priest would not tolerate even though my mother assured the priest I would surely do some many good deeds in my life that I would be the first person in heaven with the name she had chosen to call me. So a biblical middle name was added as an afterthought, giving me four names to go along with my original middle name, the last name of my dear grandfather George. After all that, I was given a nickname by my father, as a joke about my need for a biblical name. So I became Hez, to a small but select group, including my father and my Texas mother-in-law and one of my best writing buds, Garrison Somers. I only gave two names—my first and last--to the 911 operator. Time was of the essence.

The questions people ask you when you might be on your last breath! “Can you tell me what kind of vehicle you are in?” the operator continued.

What is the last question you would ask me if you could? Please tell me you won’t ask me about my car even though it is one of the tools of my trade as mom extraordinaire. Ask me about my son starting a paper airplane club, or my daughter learning five foreign languages, or me, the fraidy cat, jumping into the falls at Dripping Springs. Ask me about my new favorite song about a flying squirrel. Ask me what happened one night (or another night, or another night) in the Mucky Duck in Houston. Ask me who sat in that night with the Resentments at the Saxon Pub. Ask what it feels like to hold a beating heart. Ah, so close to the heart of the matter of this blog.

“Are you pregnant?” the fireman asked. Now that’s an interesting question. A bit personal, too. If you were pregnant, would you ever think of confiding that to a man with a bullhorn in his truck?

“Do you want to ride with me to the hospital?” Wowzers, this was the best pickup line any man ever tried on me. And he was fast, too. We’d hardly spoken for a minute. Just my type! I thought about saying, “Aren’t you a little young for me?” but bit my tongue, the same way I did that night in the Mucky Duck when my husband asked me to dance to a Hollisters song. So instead of telling the fireman I was married, I proclaimed loyalty to another man, my family practice doctor. I promised to call him right away, even though he gave me a clean bill of health two days before Christmas.

The short of the story is that I’m fine, but call me if you’re planning something fun, and I’ll bring on the more!


“And I want to do so much more before we get there.”
Django Haskins, “Our One Mistake”

A Little Bit of Resolve

I just couldn’t come up with resolutions.

I’m going to take some cues from gifts received in December to find my resolve. Last year I was trying to be fearless; this year I want to have fun.

Fay gave me Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns’ illustrated history of US national parks. This gift reminded me of my father’s love of the national parks and the stories my grandfather told of his CCC days. Think I’ll try a park this year. Hopefully this summer I can go horseback riding through the hills of my roots in Shenandoah or canoeing through the cypress trees at Congaree Swamp.

My sister wrapped a copy of Jacques Pepin’s autobiography in beautiful floral paper. His inscription says, “cook with love.” I’d like to move out of my comfort zone this year in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll take a class at A Southern Season.

My mother-in-law sent an apron and a scouring pad. Hmm.

My husband gave me a camera. He heard my gnashing of teeth even though I never complain too loudly. (Did you believe that lie?) The one I used last year let me down on a couple of important occasions in Austin. This year I’ll include more photos in the blog.

Moving on to the next gift, I received a fantastic hat from Susan the first week in December. The note in the box said last year’s hat was country and this year’s is rock n’ roll. Last year’s hat put me on horses and this year’s hat puts me back in the mosh pit with a backstage invitation. It’s time for more acoustic memories.

Have a great year. I’m off to find some fun.

Acoustic Decade

2000: Dr. Binder says, “It’s a ten-pounder, and it’s a boy!”
Despite spending the last two weeks of 1999 in some potato sack, zip-front lounger, lying around eating pies and watching Monday night football seven days a week, I was not able to have the “millennium baby.” At least I was not able to have one of the first ones born in 2000. Sam was inducted into this world the second week in January. Dr. Gary Binder delivered Sam, in what would be the good doctor’s last year of practice before he succumbed to lung cancer. I had told Dr. Binder that Ella was almost too big for my small hips and made him promise to induce me if he had any inkling that this baby was over eight pounds. He is lucky I did not throw anything at him when he said, “It’s a ten-pounder, and it’s a boy!

2001: Beckley says, “A plane flew into the World Trade Center.”
I was dressed in a suit for the hospital, holding Sam in my arms at the edge of our drive, waiting for Beckley to drive down the street in the Jeep to pick me up for work. It was a changing of the guard. Some days he went into the Rich lab at Baylor early in the morning, returned mid-morning to take me to the med school, and he then stayed with Sam until one of the Polish sisters could come take care of Sam. September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day in Houston. Beckley seemed a little late. He pulled up, and I put Sam in the car seat and then took my place in the passenger seat. That’s when Beckley said, “A plane flew into the World Trade Center.” Later I was in my office, at the microscope, diagnosing cancer on glass before I learned of the second plane. The other doctors in my department and I went about quietly doing our work, shaking our heads at each other when we would pass in the hall hospital corridor. This was the day that it became hard to live in this world without tears.

2002: Mamaw says, “I’m praying for North Carolina.”
We were in a cornfield drive-in theater in southern Indiana, passing the phone around, talking to my mother’s mother, aka “the belly rubber” because she once walked up to Beckley at a party and rubbed his belly apropos nothing. My kids had picked the movie Stuart Little. We had traveled to the Louisville area for my 20-year reunion at Sacred Heart Academy. That summer we still didn’t know where we were moving for Beckley’s post-doc. All we knew is that we were leaving the Enron-ravaged Houston. The choices were Scripps or UNC. No one in my family favored Cali. When we hung up that night, Mamaw said, “I’m praying for North Carolina.” Those were her last words. She had a stroke and spent the next days in Baptist Hospital East. We did move to North Carolina, several months later. Mamaw always got what she prayed for when she prayed to the Virgin Mary, as her neighbor, Babe Fisher, told me when I was a kid. She was right. So put your hands together.

2003: I recall that in 1987, my dad said, "Father Time gets us all in the end."
We were leaving Resthaven in 1987, in the back of a limousine, having just buried my mother, and my father says to me, “Father Time gets us all in the end.” In 2003 Father Time took my father. As I drove through the Smoky Mountains on my way to Kentucky for his funeral, I recalled all the trips to the Smoky Mountains with my parents. Once we neared the southern Kentucky border on I-75, my father would begin the chant: One-uh-see, two-uh-see, three-uh-see… until he got to Ten-uh-see. I hold onto those Smoky Mountain memories.

2004 Jesse says, “I remember that night better than entire years.”
Before Sunset is one of my favorite movies, and Ethan Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Delpy (Celine) have one of the best on-screen chemistries ever, "even if it doesn't seem quite right."

2005 Dr. Richard Deichmann says, “There’s no need to euthanize anyone. I don’t think we should be doing anything like that.”
In 2005 friends of mine who had been working over a decade to get the training they needed to return to their beloved Louisiana and practice medicine had to pack up their belongings and leave their dream house on Lake Ponchartrain. He was the head of his department at Ochsner Clinic. In the days following Katrina, he told me that he was sleeping in his office at the hospital. I contacted a practice in Austin and found someone willing to talk to Gregg about hiring him in Texas. He was offered the job and took it. Other physicians made more difficult choices, and this article is about the doctor who had to decide what to do with the patients who could not be evacuated from Memorial Medical Center. The article, written by a Pro Publica physician journalist, recreates the ethical dilemma weary caregivers faced while tears were rolling down the street.

2006 Walter Tragert says, “You can only have two requests.”
It’s a dark and stormy night, and I’m in Westlake, between an Okavango Delta lion and a Kalahari Desert lion. You’re thinking Africa and I’m describing the in-law compound in Austin. Backstory here is that my in-laws are hunters and they go on safari each year. I was in their heavily holiday-decorated media room, where the stuffed animals wear Santa caps, but two of my faves, Scrappy Jud Newcomb and Walter Tragert, were playing my Austin birthday party. Scrappy gave us unrefined sugar from Turbinado and songs that would later be released on Byzantine, and ironically Walter played a song about a man with the heart of a lion. I made a special request for “Sleepless Nights in Shining Armor,” and then another for a cover of Jimmy Cliff's “Many Rivers to Cross,” but then mentioned that it might be nice for them to play the Stones “Beast of Burden,” given the beasts in the room. Scrappy immediately said that they could do that, but Walter told me I could only have two requests. After their performance I found out that Scrappy was in the Highlands during the Louisville snowstorm (15.9 inches) of 1994, because he was going to play Snagilwet. Where did the time go?

2007 Al Gore says, “We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency.”
I spent the last days of 2007 in the nation’s capital, on a museum run with friends from Louisville. Susan and I spent a wonderful day in the National Gallery’s Turner exhibit. The beauty of the sun in the clouds through Turner’s eyes left a lasting impression on me. Earlier that year, in Oslo, Al Gore accepted a Nobel Peace Prize and urged us to think about global warming. If we can't get together on the issue, there's no way to feel alright.

2008 Jeff Eugenides says “How do you get to the point where you won’t sign your own books?”
I like to call the summer of 2008 the summer of my second Pulitzer, but first let’s go back to the summer of 2007. On 7/7/7 my sister and her boyfriend read Shakespearean sonnets to each other on their neighbor’s porch in Groton, Connecticut, and declared themselves mated. They hosted a party at the Brown Hotel in Louisville in the summer of 2008 to celebrate. For dinner my sister seated me next to her mate’s brother, Jeff Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, for which he won the Pulitzer in 2003. Jeff’s favorite author is Saul Bellow, as has been previously reported, and mine is, of course, Larry McMurtry. When I talked about the sign that is purportedly taped to McMurtry’s bookstores doors that says he will not sign books, Jeff said, “How do you get to the point where you won’t sign your own books?” In his nonfiction Mr. McMurtry makes no apologies about his bum moods in the land of steers. I met him at one of his bookstores in Archer City, Texas, in June of 2001, the summer of my first Pulitzer. He did sign my copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. Despite these brushes with literary giants, I'll still settle on being a paperback writer.

2009 Mike Leach says “I steadfastly refuse to deal in any lies and am disappointed that I have not been afforded the opportunity for the truth to be known.”
It’s the year of the college search for my daughter, and I’ve been devoting an inordinate amount of attention to college athletics this fall. My daughter wants to attend a college with a vital athletic department. Some people in my family think athletic programs should not be affiliated with schools. I’m starting to wonder. The issue of football head injuries and dementia has been on my mind lately. If Adam James really was mistreated after his concussion, I’m happy to see Mike Leach walk. This fall I heard a story about a college wrestling coach that makes this one seem trivial. Let’s see, now we need to decrease our carbon footprint, lower the cost of medical care, and reform college athletics. I’m tired before the new decade begins.

It’s been a challenging decade. I think I’ll end it on an encouraging note. If in this decade we can’t all make it back to the top, maybe we could settle for the top of the bottom.