DEEP AND WIDE
- May 2024
I have loved this day since I was a little girl. The first day of May.
Twenty years ago, I received my very first paid writing gig. Sass, one of those free local monthly magazines, not the glossy bound kind, but the folded newsprint things that you’d find in the paper stands, took me on as a personal essayist. I’d been reading Sass for a few months, always excited to find a new issue in the rack by Metro, A Coffeehouse. on Broad Street in Augusta, GA. Andy and I frequented Metro most Saturdays that first year of marriage, often meeting up with his best friend JT there. Sass was for women, and I enjoyed flipping through it while the guys talked about guy things.
I don’t know how many Saturdays it happened, but enough that the guys got tired of it. I’d interrupt their conversation to hold up the paper and declare, “Y’all, I could write better than this.” One Saturday, JT plopped down his big plastic glass of iced mocha, looked over the table at me, and called me out:
“Well do it then.”
Andy had been encouraging me to write more since our dating days (and, okay, there weren’t that many dating days since we got engaged and then married kind of fast) and he grinned in agreement with JT. They were on to me and I’m grateful for both of them.
I spent the rest of that weekend reminiscing and writing about how I first learned to love the arrival of May, and then I bravely emailed Editor Rebecca Murphy. She asked for one revision. I was ecstatic. Its acceptance alone was a confidence boost, but $75 was huge to me. Sandbox Dreams appeared in the next issue, Sass May 2004. Here’s a bit of it:
Mom taught me the basic rules of how to dress as a Southern lady. Never white after Labor Day. I didn’t mind that one. But Ginger, the resident nanny of sorts at the daycare I attended, handed out the tough ones. There was one Ginger rule that all of us children at Laddie and Lassie Nursery School hated. No going bare foot before May 1st. From somewhere around the middle of March, we’d start counting the days. But finally, come May 1st, the world was made new and everything in it was good.
You wanted to be the first to arrive, but you never were. Already in the playroom, there would be a group of friends sitting on the floor, untying laces. There would be the smell of sweat that comes from anticipation, a full winter and half a spring, the body covered and cramped. After, there would be the row of sock-stuffed sneakers and unbuckled sandals covering the top of the old black piano. It was all a flurry of unwrapping not seen since Christmas morning, and in the end, feet were naked and unashamed.
We girls had one destination in mind, but knowing the limits of tender, uncalloused feet, we took the long way there. We scurried down the porch steps and straight into the yard, bypassing the rough sidewalk for soft grass instead that tickled our toes. We lingered in dew drenched clover fields that clung to our soles and when we knew our feet were wet enough with the morning, we stepped into the sandbox.
We squirmed. We squealed. We danced in delight, like pixies pouncing into the pliable earth. We cooled ourselves in shallow dips, toes separating, sand exfoliating, stretching deeper until only ankles were left on top of the ground. And when we were sufficiently refreshed from the lifetime of winter, we sat down to dig and dream.
The sandbox dream was always the same and we began each year with determination. We would dig to China. I had never been.
I imagined new friends, how they would appear as we came up at their feet, what surprise would show on their faces, and who would help us to learn their names. I daydreamed of news headlines in a language that I could not read, describing our feat to the entire world. On occasion I wondered what the center of the earth was made of and if it might be dangerous, but laughter drowned out the trickle of fear.
The joy would last until almost lunchtime when I was five, six and seven years old. After a hot meal and a lazy nap, we usually decided we would not be able to make it to China in a day. By afternoon, we dug just a little and played a lot.
By eight or nine years old, doubts began to destroy my dream. If you could dig to China, then someone would have done it already. With every scoop of sand, I repeated this negative mantra to myself. Such pessimism slowed progress.
At ten years old, I knew too much about geology to even start digging. I waded through the sandbox, but never sat down. By eleven, I worried more about having to wear a bra than about getting to take off my shoes…
Some people ask me how long I’ve been writing or how long I’ve been working on this memoir. The first draft included Ginger and the sandbox, and the revision likely will, too. But I’ve been taking a break from book revisions. This May 1st I’m celebrating. This afternoon our son Ian will graduate from Midlands Technical College with an Associate of Arts degree. (He’ll get the high school one on May 22nd. He took dual enrollment classes in high school.) We are oh so proud of his accomplishment, but we also want him to play and dream - always. And I hope I model a little of that.
What are you enjoying to the fullest this month? I’d love to hear!
(Thanks to Zayda C from Pixabay for that barefoot image at the top of this post.)
I’ve been reading
I was a reader for both RIVER AND SOUTH, my grad school’s online lit mag, and THE JAMES JONES FIRST NOVEL FELLOWSHIP. Being on the other side of submissions is eye-opening! I’m especially proud of the group of poems that River and South will publish in June. Congrats to those authors!
And, sssshhhh. I peeked at the most recent standings of the forty submissions I read for the novel contest and my fave is now listed in the finalist round. It was a blind reading so I have no idea who this fantastic author is that I’ve fallen in love with. I hope I find out one day! I think it’s a man - ARE YOU EVER SUPRISED by the author’s gender?
I’ve been watching
A trip to visit my friend Becci isn’t complete without some Netflix chick flicks. Calendar Girls was a good Saturday night.
And, because so much on at the theater seemed like horror, we chose this when we went out. I’m not sure what to say! Interesting - and also true?! Acting and cinematography were superb.
I’ve been listening to
Beau of the Fifth Column is usually playing in my house somewhere in the morning hours - and sometimes in the evening ones, too. Someone in my house is watching Beau’s youtube, but I’m just listening from afar. I told y’all a month or two ago to send me some MUSIC RECS!
Each month I’m leaving you a poem right here at the end of this newsletter…
Not this month! This month I am inviting you to join me on ZOOM for a 20-30 minute workshop for Mother’s Day. It could turn into a poem… Or just the perfect one sentence text to send her on May 12th. More info here
You can choose this Friday or Saturday at 10am. But you have to ask for a zoom invite.