On Community

I use the word community a lot for a person who doesn’t have a great definition for it. It’s more of a feeling in my bones than something I can put into words when called upon to do so. It is one of those education buzzwords that’s often given in job interviews, like differentiation or graphic organizers, “I want to build a community of learners.” Boom. You’re suddenly entrusted with teaching 75 teenagers the importance of democracy. But in my personal life community has come to be what I am constantly seeking.

I have found community in church and I’ve found it at work. I’ve seen community play out in small towns-the coming together in crisis or rallying around the local basketball team. I’ve been host to community over shared love of books, wine, or Jesus depending on the season of my adult life.

I was raised by community. Small and isolated. Community with big hearts for their own but that rarely extended far beyond town limits. I’ve left community and its comforts many times and inevitably experienced a pang of regret.

And with each move I’ve also experienced isolation, at parties where community is present and I am not a part of it. Having been in this new city for only a few months, my community is only starting to form. It could easily be lost as I attempt to build trust and share experiences. I am grateful for it but always hesitant.

Instead my community lives in Mississippi and Virginia. East Africa and Kentucky. Selfishly, I want community in my immediacy-next door for shared days and meals. But then I wouldn’t be able to experience and give love to a global community of people who do amazing work in their own cities, following their passions and extending our collective community by adding more-building a longer table and not a higher fence-as the saying goes.

Whatever community is I hope you find it and hold tightly to it. When you move or they move, through change and growth, differing opinions and seasons of prolonged absence. May you always come back to your community, not expecting too much of each other but loving each other just as hard when you reunite.

A Day of Menial Accomplishments or Bryce's First Birthday

With hair like mine, I didn’t wash it myself until I was nearing adulthood. Hence, the scene: a head full of shampooed curls and my mother leaning over me in the bathtub breaking her back to complete a task most children my age had accomplished years before. With mom and I occupied by the nest atop my head, the task of keeping an eye on my baby brother fell to my younger sister. If you knew my sister you’d know that this plan was set up to fail from the beginning. My sister, even now as an adult, cannot be relied upon for the most basic tasks because of her propensity for distraction. And at six years old with Rugrats on TV, she was doomed. My mom had poured exactly 1 plastic cup of water onto my head when catastrophe struck (catastrophe in this instance is relative to a mother on her son’s first birthday).

Mom jumped up and ran to assess the situation while I sat watching my feet shrivel in the chilly bath water. I heard plenty of banging and yelling followed soon by my sister appearing in the bathroom informing me that she had allowed our brother to pull his birthday cake off of the table. He had proceeded to play in it and while already in his birthday outfit leaving both the cake and his clothes ruined. All of this occurred while she stood inches from the TV laughing at Tommy Pickles get into a fun kind of TV trouble unaware that she would soon be facing the kind of trouble they do not show on Nickelodeon. Furthermore she informed me that mom was after her, I believe she even uttered the phrase “help me.”

Children who live in solidarity with their siblings have always been heroes to me because in that moment I knew which side I wanted to be on and it was not the losing side of my poor sister. So, because I am my mother’s daughter I called upon a look of disgust and shook my head at her while rolling my eyes to ensure she understood what a disappointment she was not only to mom but to all of us.

Seeing she would receive no sympathy from her big sister, she retreated to her room. In the meantime I was left to rinse my own hair for the first time in my life, my brother still managed to turn 1 despite the lack of cake and my mother’s wrath grew less intense after she threw a chair across the kitchen that day. The mystery of whether the chair was thrown at someone is still heavily debated each holiday when we are together. But overall, that was a day of accomplishments: hair-washing, birthday party, and self-reflection. However, the guilty party accomplished nothing and she will still ignore your every word if there is television anywhere near her. 

A conversation with Granny pt. 1

A while back I got to sit down and record a conversation with my granny. I'm so lucky to still have her to tell her stories to me. There's quite a bit of transcript I'm still working through but this is one of my favorite parts. I've left in her dialect because it's authentically granny. 

Meg: What do you remember your daddy doing most?

Granny: Well he farmed. I guess he enjoyed it that's all he done. They worked hard. Daddy worked hard but Daddy used to be a drinker now he loved moonshine.

Meg: Did he make it?

Granny: Yeah. He just never did get caught but he made it. He sold it. And Mom sold whiskey till she said they was coming across, they carried it outta Boggs Creek. They'd have to go up there and get it and carry it out. And she said one time her and Estel was carrying a load out to sell for the next day you know and it was dark. And said they set down to rest and said Estel was always the type of person that never said any bad words they set down and he never had anything bad to say about anybody. She said they sat down on that log and he said "mom, don't you think there's another way that we could make a living besides this." And she said, "well Estel we'll try it." And she said she never sold another bit after that... 

But that's all they had to do, I mean they had to do something to even survive. And I know she said the ones that used to buy the whiskey from her, I think one of the men was ***** ******** and people like that but anyway said they come to buy some day or two after she said she wasn't selling no more and said he said "Well Pearlie I guess you think you're too damn good to sell whiskey." And she said no I'm not too good but I can make a living another way and she said that right there was the turning point, said she never did sell no more. But my daddy sure did drink it. She used to go up there at the barn and unscrew the cap on the whiskey and let it leak out so he wouldn't drink it. Cause he was the hatefulest man ever lived when he was drunk. God, I was scared to death of him. But then when he wasn't drinking he was a good person. That's just the way they lived. 

Laurel Fork

When you move away it’s always hard to pick and choose what events warrant a six-hour round trip and someone always thinks you should’ve come home when you didn’t. Birthdays, church homecomings, reunions, weddings, etc. As we’ve gotten older and busier we go home less but we try to choose those prime events where we can see the most people and get the most bang for our buck. Some holidays win out over others.

For us, Christmas has always been the constant. We’ve never skipped it. My mom’s entire family is always in Pound for the holiday and both of my dad’s brothers along with their closest cousins are there too. One Christmas, as often happens during holidays, my dad started romanticizing his younger days. His brothers and cousins soon joined in waxing poetic about the Laurel Fork trail near the Pound dam. They hadn’t been up there in years and truth be told it’s entirely possible that not a one of them had ever been there sober. The days when they ran through the hollers and trails of southwestern Virginia were long gone. They got it in their head that come spring when they were all back in town for Easter they’d get on that trail again.

The cold months passed and April arrived, cooler than expected. Easter was never a given for us, we remained non-committal until the last possible minute and always made a game-time decision. This particular year we packed up the dogs in the Subaru drove South on I-81 until we reached Abingdon where the dogs know it’s time to lay down because nothing but curves lay ahead for the next hour while we trekked as far as one can go into southwestern Virginia.  The Pound. 

My husband went ready to hit Laurel Fork with both dogs and some of my dad's family. When it came time to put their money where their mouth was only one of my dad’s cousins and my husband were going to make the trek. These men had hunted, fished, camped and carried on in places like these and maybe they didn’t want to relive it.

I had, personally, never been on the Laurel Fork trail and were it not for the events that transpired that Easter weekend I likely never would have. After not hearing from the husband for several hours I knew something was up and when I called he informed me he'd lost one of the dogs. 

Our Dolly is a rescue who had been a part of our family for only a few months. She’s part hound and part demon, her heightened energy and penchant for whining make her a lot of work. Word soon spread through our tiny town and when family members learned that the closest thing I’ll ever have to a child was missing in the woods it didn’t take long before they rallied to me. Relatives showed up in droves, some of them simply to sit in my car while I cried and threatened to divorce my husband if we didn’t find her.

My dad hiked up on one trail and his brother, Tim, drove up and to walk back down in from the other side. For hours we all traversed the trails and former trails of Pine Mountain. Night fell and still no Dolly. Cut to resurrection morning and my family in the woods calling for a dog instead of at the sunrise service. After a break for Easter dinner, night fell and still no Dolly.

Monday morning held a happy ending for us and Dolly. She'd had her fun and waited to be found in the parking lot at the Laurel Fork trail. Still wearing her hiking backpack and a bit worse for the wear she was ready to go home. 

I like to believe her antics were a ploy to get my daddy and his brother in those woods again but maybe she is just ornery. 

Mamaw's Yard pt. 2

Mamaw never knew what she had bought us for Christmas. After opening gifts on Christmas morning she’d often say, “Let me see what I got you.” She’d give mom the money for us and trust that mom would get us what we needed. This particular year she’d bought me a pair of American Eagle khaki pants and I was pleased as punch.

Another of our family talents is our penchant to make Christmas last as long as possible. Growing up I always enjoyed this tradition of making the holidays last longer. First of all it gave me more opportunities to wear my new Christmas clothes over the holiday break (hello new khakis!)  But also I loved holding my relatives hostage in Pound at Mamaw’s house, once they all left I’d still be there and I appreciated the company. Therefore, Osborne Christmas dinner is not held until December 26 each year.  

No one gets to sit around waiting on dinner, everyone’s given a job. In the last years of Mamaw’s life she’d encourage me to hone my domesticity around the holidays. For example, the year I got married when she pronounced this would be the year she would let me make the chocolate pies. But in my middle school days the tasks entrusted to me were much simpler though still never anything I looked forward to.

On the third day of Christmas and no doubt thanks to the confidence I possessed in my new pants I was sent to the dairy on the hill to fetch two jars of something I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. Chow chow? Kraut? Whatever it was I knew it would not make its way onto my plate.

The back yard is a hillside with 5 little rinky-dink steps on the steepest part. I carefully took the steps up and opened the creepy door to the dairy, ducked my head to enter and pulled the chain so the single light bulb could illuminate the spider webs and mystery jars. I retrieved my treasure swiftly and with jars in both hands headed toward home.  

Although disgusted by their contents I knew that much like pimpin’, cannin’ ain’t easy. So when I missed one of those pathetic little skinny steps and began to fall my priority was securing the jars! Unfortunately, this made a casualty of the Christmas khakis.

The only thing injured was my pride, Christmas dinner was served (complete with the mystery canned goods from 1980) and Mamaw patched the knee of my pants with a stiff piece of fabric that never gave the way the knees of pants should. A sobering reminder of my clumsiness each time I wore them and attempted to sit down.

Even now, grown and with a garden of my own, I’m still a disappointment to her (she is a mountain mamaw after all).  I haven’t learned to use the sewing machine she left me so that I can patch my own clothes. I’ve never mastered pie-making and my canning recipes come from Pinterest. But each time I use my water-bath canner, gather eggs from the chickens or slice a cucumber I’d like to think she notices and is proud. 

Mamaw's Yard pt. 1

 My family owns its own Santa suit. In some ways that tells you everything you need to know about us but another of our more brief holiday traditions may help create a better-rounded picture of us.

My grandmother’s house, where all holidays were celebrated, sat in a cozy little neighborhood in our small southwestern Virginia town and her front yard was home to many a game of kickball and freeze tag. Whatever image you’re conjuring up of her yard, it was smaller than that. Long, skinny and sloped. Also if you kicked the ball too hard it’d go rolling down route 83 never to be seen again.

We went through about a ten-year period where my cousins and I had all aged out of wanting to hide and hunt eggs on Easter. Our mothers still insisted we color eggs so come the day of resurrection we were left with three to four dozen multicolored eggs sitting in the refrigerator with no real intention of doing anything with them.

Boredom was not a word any of us were allowed to use and that made us resourceful. Hence the scene that lay before me that Sunday. Before I could comprehend how it had come about a gutsy cousin was on the pitcher’s mound i.e. middle of the front yard (again whatever you’re imaging it’s too big) tossing eggs underhand toward my brother who waited at the opposite end of the yard with a bat. When the egg made contact with the foam t-ball bat the pitcher’s reaction time was key to shield their eyes and mouth from the egg debris.

This went on for some time considering the number of eggs we’d been forced to color. The pitcher was exchanged every time someone needed to go remove the boiled egg and purple shell from their hair. Each of us had our turn at bat leaving a carpet of boiled egg all over the front yard.  

Video cameras rolled while we laughed our asses off at each other and soon Mamaw emerged from her perch on the couch inside to stick her head out of the door and take in the scene. Mamaw, never one to mince words, waited until she had everyone’s attention so she could demand “Who’s gonna clean this shit up?”

Today we have lots of babies to hunt Easter eggs so some of our traditions have returned to the more conventional. My husband still dresses in that red suit with pillows stuffed in his pants every Christmas Eve speaking in an unidentifiable accent (Jamacain?) but our batting eggs tradition died with Mamaw. There was an unspoken understanding that there would be no way to top that opening game with her most sincere reaction. I keep a pack of Marlboro Lights in my sock drawer to light up when moments like those get foggier than I would like. I take a long draw and close my eyes hoping to hear a bit of her sass and relive those moments on Beech Street. 

Life leading to another move

We are Floyd residents!!! Unfortunately we cannot yet receive mail because our mailbox is infested with bugs and I refuse to take anything out of it. So hold off on sending us any love letters or free money for a few weeks till we can fumigate the mailbox.

I'll do a moving post later but first the haps before the move....


I spent a week at 4-H camp at Smith Mountain Lake which was lovely. Not having gone to 4-H as a youngster I had a lot to learn but by the end of the week I had most of it figured out. I built a planter box for my new porch:

So much of camp was like a little vacation, aside from the waking up early (which I like to do on vacation anyway) and the small responsibility of ensuring 70 some odd girls are in bed on time. As long as I survive my first year of teaching I definitely think I'll return next year.

This is a little over half of the kids doing the Wobble. 

When I returned from camp most of my family was in Roanoke for a family reunion at my aunt's house. It was a treat to see everyone and catch up.

Someone has good pictures from the reunion of the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. That person is not me. But you get the idea. There's a lot of us.

After spending the weekend with family we were happy to have Sunday afternoon with our ever-dwindling Blacksburg family.

Drew and I were just discussing last night how much a part of God's plan it was for us to meet the Taylors. Drew and Ben worked at the same facility but had never met one another. Had we not both agreed to help a former professor of mine and Sarah's on some home remodel work (which frankly only Ben is qualified for) we never would have crossed paths. Couples friends like these are once in a lifetime and we are so lucky to have found our perfect counterpart couple. And we are honored that we are going to be little Arlo's godparents and we are so excited to welcome him in the fall...in Pittsburgh where they will be residents very soon.

In posts to come: composting 101, cursing in front of the cable guy, cursing at the water hose, cursing at the movers (Drew and David), and transplanting tomatoes. It's been a ride, friends.

Holiday in Pictures

As one dear cousin put it "we made it through the holidays kids." It may not seem like much but with each passing year I am more and more impressed with mine and Drew's ability to simply survive the holidays. We were home for almost a week and we were booked up non-stop till today. But plenty of fun was had by most:

 

 

The highlights: Christmas jammies, Drew was Santa, made some ornaments, babies, friends. There were other notable occurrences that do not have a picture but just know it was a lovely holiday, we enjoyed it and we are happy to be back home. Hope your holiday was merry and bright!

The Big 5-0

My dad is turning 50 this week so we spent this weekend with him in Asheville, NC at a lovely cabin in the mountains. Honestly, the mountain could have been on Bold Camp (the holler my parents were raised in back home) and it wouldn't have matter because we didn't leave the place for 3 days. We stayed in our comfy clothes, ate lots of yummy food, napped, read and played games. It was just what the doctor ordered for my no frills Deno.

 

 The puppies opened their stockings while we were there:

 

 There was no Christmas tree so Drew cut down this beauty and we decorated the best we could:



 

 

 

Mom wanted to take our "tree" home with her

 

 

 

Getting to the cabin was a bit tricky:

 

Looks like he had a good time to me, what do you think? 

 



 

The rental company we went through was Carolina Mornings and I was sold once I found out they would allow our pups. The cabin was simply lovely and had so many extras. We had no reason to leave! 

When the sting of death won't leave

I never know when days like yesterday and today will creep up on me. Some days it's the smell of her clothes that I brought home with me. Or her powders that I keep in my bathroom. But days like these throw me because I don't know what it is. I tell Drew that I'm missing her and the next thing I know I'm a cliche' crying in the shower.

She left us in the April when most things were springing to life and now summer's ending and those things are starting to die it's like I'm losing her all over again.

But I'll go on missing her. When I listen to Waylon, Conway, Merle, Loretta, and George and Tammy and cry like a baby. And when I see one of those insulated cups with straws in every store imaginable.

I guess the Christian thing to say is that I can be happy because I know I'll see her again but on days like these I just want her here, in front of me. I don't just want those things that remind me of her. I want her. Folded up on her couch watching the Young and the Restless asking me to heat up her coffee.

Is "blood is thicker than water" gospel??

Confession: Sometimes I don't pay attention in church and I have my own little mini-sermon quietly in my seat where I research different topics in my Bible. This is the result of yesterday's sermon which occurred in my lap:

Families are a powerful force in the church. "Honor thy father and mother," isn't really something that we have the option of since it is, after all, a commandment. But what Jesus says about families might surprise you, it surprised me after what I'd been raised to believe.

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you." He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 13:46-50

When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead." Matthew 8:18-22

In my bible the previous passage is titled "The Cost of Following Jesus" and it rings true. There is a cost of following Jesus but just think of what joy you will have by making your family grow and having them all together in Jesus' kingdom one day.

I'm asked frequently if I'll be moving back home to be nearer my parents once I'm done with school, but if I'm following Jesus' calling that should not be my priority. I should be following Jesus' lead which means I will have no home and my family changes according to where I live.

I think this is a harsh truth that many Christians choose not to acknowledge because it gets in the way of their "creature comforts" of being near family. A common theme in the church is how important family is. But is it more important than following Jesus? Doesn't being away from those comforts force us to rely more on God?

 

Recently

I was figuring it up the other day and in the two years Drew and I have been married, he's been on 4 guys trips. One fishing trip each spring. And a hunting trip each fall. Ask me how many girls trips I've had.....until last week the answer was zero.

My gal-pal and female soul-mate and I made a quick girls trip to Charleston and it was just what the doctor ordered.
She's one of the few people who I can cry with over dinner in a snazzy seafood restaurant and not feel ridiculous.
We continue to request Bob Seger at every bar we go to even though no one ever agrees to play it.
We have a knack for laughing at the most inappropriate things and time and we attract the most interesting characters.
She shares my love of food, beer and a comfy bed all of which we enjoyed there.

In other news...
I got to spend some time at home last week as well for the annual Relay for Life my family participates in and just some relaxing family time.

 



Also while home I finished this book which is so unlike me but I like to keep people on their toes. I had heard my friend Colleen suggest it and compare it to the Hunger Games but by Stephen King. It was heart-wrenching. It has settled on me and I can't seem to get it out of my head.

And lastly I recently got this tattoo for my mamaw. It turned out perfectly and I'm so glad to have her with me always.

 

And these are our most recent veggies:

 



You are now officially caught up on every aspect of my life. Thrilling, right?

I'm going to try to make the most of my next 3 weeks because they are the only honest-to-goodness summer weeks I'll have had with no school work. What shall I do???....