Meet my mom: July 7, 2002

As a teenager, I once broke up with a boy because he said I was too close with my mother. He said it was weird that she and I were best friends. Whatever. I still think that guy was a jerk. My mom has shown up regularly in my columns for as long as I've written them. Writing about her is an absolute delight because she is hilarious and brilliant and, incidentally, still my best friend.

It’s hard to leave this nest

    For about 10 days last month, my mother took four young blue jays everywhere she went.

    She fed them canned kitten food, poking it gently down their tiny gullets on the end of a pencil. She changed the newspaper in their makeshift nest every day. She washed her hands so much her skin started to crack.

    When she drove to school to teach her night class, the blue jays rode shotgun in their cardboard box. She put them in her office, returning during the class break to give them a feeding.

    "When will they learn to fly?" I asked after she’d had the birds about a week.

    "Not soon enough," she said.

    My mother inherited the birds from a dead tree. She had the tree in her yard cut down, only to find the squawking jays and their nest scattered among the branches on the ground.

    She called some wildlife experts and described the birds, who were fully feathered but still in some early, ugly stage of bird development. The experts told my mother she could probably get the birds to survive if she kept them fed and safe. When the little jays were ready, they said, she might even teach them to fly if she took them outside and tossed them gently into the air.

    On the other hand, the experts warned, the birds might not want to leave. Even if they flew, they might turn directly around and head for her house.

    It wouldn’t be the first time.

    My mother has a knack for making it hard to leave home. She doesn’t set out to do this, mind you. She just gets a thrill out of taking care of other creatures — the needier the better. When it’s time for them to leave her, the world can be a shock to those she has nurtured.

    When I was about 13, my mother taught at a private girls high school in Virginia. Years later, after we had moved to Chattanooga, a former student decided to come here to attend UTC.

    She lived with us, of course. During my growing-up years, my mother’s friends and old students rotated through our house, moving in when things got tight, moving out when things got better.

    This young woman came and lived and dubbed our home the Hotel California. "You can check out any time you like," she said, "but you can never leave."

    About the same time, when I was 18 years old, my mother converted a storage area in the basement into an apartment with a kitchen, bathroom and private entrance. She said she did it so my grandparents could live with us if they ever needed to. In the meantime, it was mine.

    So I lived with my parents until I was 24 years old, which is more than a little embarrassing to admit. I lived with them during college, and I lived with them after I graduated, commuting from their house in East Brainerd to Dalton, Ga., for my first newspaper job. At 23, I used to tell co-workers I was the world’s oldest teenager.     

    After I left home, the apartment housed a parade of friends, family and former students. These days it’s usually empty, save for the occasional weekend guest. But any time money gets scarce at my house, my mom brings it up.

    "You should sell your house and live with us," she says, grinning, trying to pretend she doesn’t mean it. "We could have a little commune — you and Jim and the baby downstairs, your dad and me upstairs. It would be great."

    There are days when I am tempted. Anyone who knows her would be.

    When her blue jays started hopping out of their box and flapping furiously, my mother took them outside. One by one, she tossed them gently into the air. Three of them flew, flapping awkwardly away from her and out into the world. The fourth, who had always been the smallest, fell like a stone.

    Mom scooped him up and took him back inside. After another day and night in his nest eating kitten food, he seemed ready. Mom took him outside and tossed him up. He flapped and struggled, getting as far as the back yard before lighting on the ground. Mom went after him, but couldn’t catch him as he fluttered into the woods.

    "I figure that’s a good sign," she said. "If I can’t catch him, maybe nothing else can."

    It was a relief to be rid of the little jays, she said. They were messy and demanding and noisy. But she’s still looking out for them. She scans the trees, watches from the windows for a glimpse of blue feathers.

    Mark my words, they’ll be back. 

The little house where we started out: June 9, 2002

Because we had absolutely no idea what we were getting into, Jim and I spent nearly a decade improving and expanding a dumpy little house we bought together in North Chattanooga. We haven't lived there in years, but whenever we're in the neighborhood we still drive by and make sure it's still there.

It sure looks small. But it also still looks like home. 

Chaos makes our house a home

    People often ask me, "When will your house be finished?" In low, sympathetic tones they say, "I'll bet you can't wait until it's done."

    The truth is my house will probably never be finished.

    Our to-do list is years long, and every time we cross something off, we add three more things. It's all OK with me. I love making a crooked little house no one much cared about into the home where our family history begins.

    My 2-year-old son will grow up watching his home take shape, and the work is already part of who he is. While his father toils downstairs, Jack tilts his head, listening.

    "Table saw," he says as the screech of metal on wood echoes up from the basement.

    Ours is not an exceptional house in the ways that matter to the outside world. It's a two-bedroom bungalow circa 1925 -- which means it's old and small. It is not special architecturally. It's not even pretty, really. It has old aluminum siding and flat green paint on decrepit trim.

    In the last five years, we have gutted the kitchen, rebuilt the porch, shored up the sagging floors. We've overhauled the bathroom, installed central heat and air. We have painted and painted.

    A house like this becomes a way of life, and it's not always easy. But for all the challenges our house has presented, it also has given us gifts.

    Soon after Jim and I moved in, we found a high school diploma on a piece of rolled-up parchment paper in the attic. On May 17, 1918, Mary Jo Thompson graduated from Central High School in Hamilton County. She took sewing, stenography, bookkeeping and commercial arithmetic. Also algebra, Latin, literature and something called Caesar.

    I don't have what you'd call a high school diploma -- I got my GED when I was 18 and then went to community college -- so I adopted this one. If I ever have an intact wall in my bedroom, I'll hang it.

    I like that the original owner of this diploma was named Mary, and that she took sewing, stenography and Latin. I wonder why her diploma was rolled up in an attic instead of hanging on a wall somewhere. I'll probably never know. But I like wondering, and I'm grateful to our house for giving me something like this to ponder.

    When we first toured the house in January 1997, it was filthy and cluttered and every room was painted dead gray. The kitchen hadn't been touched since the 1940s. The plumbing needed replacing, as did the wiring. The plaster ceilings were cracked and stained.

    But it also had a cavernous basement, a pretty fireplace and a small price tag. It was a mile from Jim's job, and two miles from mine. I was too young to know I was supposed to feel discouraged by all the work ahead. The house just felt to me like home.

    So we bought it, and we started working. After a few years, things started to improve. Then we had a baby, and the house was suddenly too small. So we took out a new loan, added on a family room and a master bedroom, and kept on working.

    I've had more than one friend tell me it's dangerous to get too attached to a house. You never know what might happen, they say. You might have to move. You might find a better house.

    Of course, to most people, any house probably would be a better house than this one. But this house feels benevolent to me, and I like to think there is more to that than just my own good memories here.

    A neighbor tells me a woman named Mrs. Parker lived here for decades, and that she had an elaborate garden in the back yard, complete with a fish pond. By the time Jim and I got here the garden had been plowed under. There was nothing left but an impenetrable tangle of weeds higher than our heads.

    You can tell someone once loved this place, though. When we penetrated the weeds and turned over the dirt in the back yard, we found hundreds of old flower bulbs, a deep layer of rich soil and the remnants of a stone patio.

    Knowing that we're not the first people to care about this house comforts me on the days when the whine of the table saw is grating, or the check to the lumber store missed clearing by $3.76. It helps me realize that what we're doing isn't just for us.

    I hope the people who live here when we're gone enjoy this house, and that it becomes part of their family, too. Maybe when I leave here -- whenever that may be -- I'll put something in the attic for those people to find.

    Maybe I'll leave a copy of this column. And my high school diploma from 1918. 

My first column for the Times Free Press: May 12, 2002

When the features editor of the newspaper where I worked asked me in early 2002 how old I was (30) and whether I'd be willing to write a column about my life, I went all beauty-queen-hysterical. I was doing that thing where I fanned my face with my hands to try to keep from crying and I was making these little involuntary squeaking noises. That is absolutely not the kind of chick I am at all, but y'all I had always wanted to write a column. Always. This was the first. Ten years later, I still get a little goofy about the fact that I get to do this.

Driving solo in the truck is somehow different now

    30.

    I'm not used to it yet. I still go blank for a second when anyone asks my age. But it's a small change, really, compared to others I've seen in the past few years.

    College flashed by in a blur of tests and parking tickets. Work began.

    My boyfriend became my fiance, and my wedding, a year in the planning, became a memory. My new name stopped being new.

    Then, after an autumn mountain bike ride, things really started to change.

    "I don't feel good," I told my husband, Jim, as I flopped on the couch. "I'm dizzy. I feel kind of sick."

    Seven months later, on Mother's Day, our son Jack was born.

    "I can't believe he's ours," my husband whispered the night we brought our child home. The baby was sleeping on Jim's chest, breathing deeply and curled tight.

    "He's not ours," I murmured, watching my husband and my son in the dim light of our bedroom. "We're his."

    That was two years ago. I was 27 when I married, 28 when my son was born. And in February 2002, I turned 30.

    There ought to be classes on how to get ready for all this, but I'm finding it's pretty much a learn-as-you-go proposition. And, really, I'm not sure the woman I was at 24 could have made much sense of what the woman I am at 30 would tell her.

    At 24, I drove with the heel of one hand on the steering wheel, bouncing my pickup truck through turns just a little too fast. I felt impatient, on the verge of everything, as if my life was just ahead if only I could land the right job, meet the right man, make the right choices.

    I was in a hurry.

    At 30, I pilot an aging Volvo station wagon with both hands gripping the wheel.

    From the backseat, my 2-year-old tells me what he sees. "Dump truck," he says. "Big van. Police car."

    I am far from my days of squeaking through intersections as the light turns red -- but not far enough to have forgotten.

    Every now and then, I leave my husband with the station wagon and the baby, and I go for a drive in the truck. I turn up the CD player, crank down the windows and howl along to the music in a way that makes other drivers change lanes to get away from me. I go nowhere. Not shopping or visiting or to get the oil changed. I just drive.

    That truck was mine for years. I drove it 3,000 miles a month during my first job at a small newspaper in North Georgia. I covered its back window with stickers that said things like "Karma Happens."

    But my truck became my husband's when we bought a Volvo station wagon.

    Don't get me wrong -- I like the wagon. But sometimes I miss my old truck. So, every now and then, I take it. And, for a while, I forget the names of the Teletubbies. I don't use my turn signals. I drive with my shoes off.

    Things are different now, though. After the initial rush of solitude wears off, my life at 30 crowds back in. I wonder if Jim knows the baby is due for his snack. Did I remember to bring the cell phone in case they need me?

    I start to miss my husband -- the way he rests his hand on my knee when we're sitting side-by-side in the car. How he turns the radio down so he can hear me when I talk.

    I miss my son, who chatters constantly about the view from his carseat.

    I realize that I was happy in my truck days, but that I am a whole lot happier now.

    At 30, when I encounter a traffic jam, I don't curse or scowl. I crane my head toward the backseat and say "Jack, what's that?"

    "Backhoe!" he squeals.

    He loves all the road work around here. Sometimes I kind of like it, myself. There's nothing like a 2-year-old in the backseat chirping "Track excavator," to make delays fun.

    And I'm really in no rush now, having discovered that life comes at you from all sides whether you hurtle madly toward it in a rattling pickup, or just roll calmly through it in an old station wagon while your firstborn comments cheerfully on the chaos.

    At 30, I'm still on the verge of everything. But I've discovered that we all are, all the time.

    While I was busy getting somewhere, my life unfolded all around me. Now I'm learning to appreciate the ride.