Georgia in the springtime
\nMagnolia trees
\nBell the hound dog
\nSouthern charm and art galleries
\nTennis and the swimming pool<\/p>\n
Bell was a bad-tempered dog.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, we grew up together, in some ways, so she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too mean to me, or maybe she sensed that in my innocence, I would pamper her.\u00c2\u00a0 She always ran ahead when Granddaddy took us for walks, and would loops back around, nearly knocking me over and scaring me half to death in the dark woods.<\/p>\n
My southern accent disappeared, but it struggles to come out from hiding when I am with these relatives.\u00c2\u00a0 Natives of Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia, half of the family still has the Southern roots strongly grounded in the soil\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6atheistic roots, for the most part, which made things interesting at times.<\/p>\n
Granddaddy and Grandmommy met in art school after World War II, and they made a living on their art throughout their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Granddaddy did illustrations and portraits, Grandmommy painted landscapes.\u00c2\u00a0 Our home is filled with their paintings and drawings.<\/p>\n
The creek and trees behind their house used to be a dark, cool place full of mystery, but housing developers turned that magical place into a sad stand of pine trees as I grew older.\u00c2\u00a0 We caught crawfish and threw them back, and I will never forget my awe at a tire wrapped around a big old tree.<\/p>\n
Everything in their house has been in the same place for the last 40 years.\u00c2\u00a0 I can still remember where the phone books are, the cereal, the board games, and the cookie drawer.\u00c2\u00a0 The furniture is in mostly the same configuration in their ranch home on the top of the hill.<\/p>\n
We would play with the neighbor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kids, and in the summers go to the neighborhood pool, where Grandmommy swam and Granddaddy played tennis.\u00c2\u00a0 They did this into their 80s.\u00c2\u00a0 They had their 50th Anniversary in the clubhouse there.<\/p>\n
Dinner table discussions could almost be guaranteed to turn into a minor debate or intellectual discussion of some kind.\u00c2\u00a0 I mostly learned to hold my own, but have never gotten over my dislike of contention, and so did not enjoy them as much as others may have.<\/p>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t draw.\u00c2\u00a0 A cousin recently told me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This monkey does NOT look like a monkey.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Hey, best I could do, kid.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t inherit the ability to capture life on canvas.\u00c2\u00a0 My uncle taught me to whistle through my teeth and quack like a duck\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6thanks for passing on those skills, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been quite handy.<\/p>\n
Great-uncle and great-aunt had a wonderful house near a swamp, with a small barn and horses.\u00c2\u00a0 Great-aunt would let us ride the horses around the field, and I always felt so loved in their home.\u00c2\u00a0 When they passed away, I mourned them in quiet silence.<\/p>\n
Grandmommy painted in the basement, and sometimes I would sneak down the long stairs to sneak looks at unfinished paintings, the bright oil paints smeared on painting boards and brushes, and the pile of animal skulls in the corner that my uncle collected in college.<\/p>\n
We always came into the house through the kitchen door.\u00c2\u00a0 The front door hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been used in so long that there were giant cobwebs around it.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything was always casual\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember any sort of formality in all the years we visited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia in the springtime Magnolia trees Bell the hound dog Southern charm and art galleries Tennis and the swimming pool Bell was a bad-tempered dog.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, we grew up together, in some ways, so she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too mean to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-personal","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1394,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/1394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}