Hard to Choose

Pin It When I was a kid, I was invariably drawn to books that were "above my pay grade." The librarian would be offering a shelf of Apple paperbacks or Choose Your Own Adventure, while I'd be perusing Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. After a while, they gave up and let me have at it. The thing was, I truly loved those books, and for some odd reason, considering it was the nineteen-eighties and I was a little material girl, I identified with the heroines in them.

It's difficult to identify just one book to call my favorite. In looking back, I can see some trends in my literature preferences. They began at an early age, with Grimm's fairy tales, and tend to linger even now, with the occasional (I admit it--I'm a sap) romance. They all seemed to have that Heroine In the Tough Spot...an orphan, perhaps. She was in need of a hero, or at the very least, a happy family. She, while not conventionally beautiful, was possessed of an unconventional intellect that picked her up and carried her forward. She really didn't need that hero...he was just whipped cream, you know?

After Grimm's, I found these conventions in such wonders as the Anne of Green Gables series and Jane Eyre. I devoured Wuthering Heights, but didn't like that one as much as Jane Austen in general, which I would discover toward the end of middle school. And then there was that one book that was just a little different from all the rest, the one that captured my heart, somehow, to my family's unending amusement.

Gone With the Wind. Three inches thick. The cover: a torrid depiction of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler caught in a clinch, Scarlett's green curtain dress falling away. The back: words worn away by the rubbing of my fingers as I held the book to read, a hole literally worn through the paper cover by the placement of one finger in particular.

I read GWTW thirteen times in my thirteenth year. With distinct, deliberate intent. I could quote whole passages. I knew full family lineages, had all but been to Tara and Twelve Oaks. I wept when Melanie died, each and every time. I wept when Bonnie died and Rhett went a little crazy, each and every time. I cheered when Scarlett got herself together and grew up.

This book was my soap opera. It was a history lesson, however inaccurate. It was a lesson in Hollywood, as I was also inspired to watch the film several dozen times. (Poor Vivien Leigh.)

I guess GWTW fits the conventions of my other preferred childhood books--a heroine in need, a hero, a sharp intellect. The difference, and the thing that drew me more than the others, was the flaws. The characters in Mitchell's work were so human, and so beautifully, painfully flawed.

Bottom line--it's genuinely hard to choose, but I guess the book whose cover I wore a hole through would best qualify for favorite.

The Four Perspectives - We're Back...and Better than Ever

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Dear Friends,

To those of you who’ve faithfully kept us in your readers—and maintained your subscriptions over the stint where we all went to radio silence—we thank you.

You’ve probably been wondering where we’ve all gone; well it’s been life you see. Each of us has been so preoccupied with our own daily happenings that Four Perspectives was kind of put on the back burner—but not forgotten.

This is a post to let you know that Lori, Mel, Gerb, and I got together and rethought the purpose of Four Perspectives. We wanted to freshen it up—as well as give ourselves topics to write to. You see, in the past we all wrote whatever we felt like and very seldom—if ever—did our topics coincide with each other’s. Well, we decided to start rotating a job of picking topics between the four of us, and then each write to that area of focus—every other week (or more often if we feel up to it).

I know, crazy isn’t it?

We’ll let you know a week in advance (just under that amazing top bar) what the upcoming theme will be, and we invite you to write to whatever it is as well. The readers’ posts that are selected will be run on Friday, as well as days of the next week when we aren’t running our own posts. If we only decide to run one guest for the ensuing week then yours—if chosen—will ride the limelight until we upload our posts to the next topic.

Sounds like a trip to Wonka’s chocolate factory, doesn’t it?

So what’s our first topic?

I’m so glad you asked: “Tell about your favorite childhood book and why it means so much to you.”

Our first posts to this subject will run next week (starting on the 30th) and we’ll go in the same order as our photos on the sidebar. If you feel like submitting a post geared to this topic, we’d love to read it...and you never know, it could wind up getting picked for a guest post. We’ll update the topic for the following set of posts once these start to run.

Also, if you would like to suggest a topic for the perspectives to write about, either email us at fourperspectivesblog.gmail.com OR simply click on the ‘submit topic’ button under the topbar photo. 

Until next week,

The Four Perspectives

Change

Pin It Nearly every day, I drive down a particular road to reach my home, Perrowville. We pronounce it "pear-a-vil" here in our Southern parts, but that's kind of beside the point of this story. Toward the end of this road, before I make the right-hand turn onto Coffee, which is "my" road, our Pearavil tops a slight hill and makes a gentle curve around to the right, and a driveway springs up on the left. Fields, which usually lay pale and fallow without so much as a cow to dot their expanse, fold out on either side of the drive, lined along the road by black board fence. The drive itself travels back into the depths of the fields until no longer visible, the house hidden from sight by a distant treeline.

There was, until fairly recently, a lovely old cherry tree on the left-hand side of the driveway, and a low, whitewashed brick wall that curved along either side in invitation. The tree budded in spring, its gnarled old branches curving low and heavy over the wooden slats of the fence and asphalt, and turned pink and riotous quickly thereafter. It was was thick and green in summer, and shed beautiful burnished tears in fall. In winter it was a skeletal and oddly elemental part of the landscape, the branches twisted and reaching out, it seemed, to say hello as I drove past.

The wall was its companion. Some of the bricks were loose and unmortared, crumbling in places. The base was no longer fresh and white but stained with dirt and age. They were a picture--the wall, the tree, the drive, the fence--a snapshot I framed in my mind each and every time I topped that swell and drove past that residence.

Until recently. It happened in stages. First, the tree. I came home one day and it was gone. Not even a stump to mark its passing. I felt an almost physical pain at its passing. Next, the wall. The wall took a little longer. It was removed first from one side of the driveway, and then, several days later, the opposite. Neat scars of red dirt where once the wall had rested--tombstones in reverse, I remember thinking.

Around a month or so later, construction began on pillars. I've been watching their progress with interest. They're mostly up now--a stucco-look, with iron protruding, I suppose for some sort of gate that may eventually be erected. There are plates inset, with the name of the farm inscribed.

They're pretty. They bespeak wealth, and class.

But they're not an elegant, elemental old cherry tree, and a wall that has witnessed thousands of passers-by. I miss them.

Christmas, in January

Pin It I made a promise this year…

That promise was NOT to take down any of my Christmas decorations or the tree until it snowed.

To me, it seems that Christmas and snow are synonymous; snow is the proverbial icing on the cake when it comes to Christmas. It’s the glittery star placed on the pinnacle of the tree. Snow is the marshmallows floating in a cup of steamy hot chocolate.

Unfortunate for this holiday, there wasn’t any icing, glittery stars, or marshmallow froth.

To be honest, it was kind of a letdown.

However, when I awoke this morning, I had a migraine. It wasn’t yet light out, and I stumbled downstairs for some new medication that I got from my neurologist yesterday afternoon. When I got to the kitchen, I glanced out the window to see that it was lighter than it should have been at this early hour.

I drew in a gasp of wonder.

Crystalline flakes were drifting from the skies, and the park behind my house was laid out before me, beneath a blanket of snowy white.

I watched the snow for a few moments and felt a smile creep up my cheeks.

I ignited the lights on my Christmas tree, and I sat in my living room with a slew of music from the holidays wafting about the house.

And so this morning I share the photo I captured, and a playlist of Christmas music just for you.

Merry Christmas…but better late than not at all.

  

Love That Kid

Pin It Here's what I've been up to the past six months...his name is Truitt:



Although I certainly didn't intend for it to happen in quite this fashion, he's kind of taken over our lives. It's All Things Truitt here in the White House.



And that's okay, because we've managed to journey from the hellish land of colic to a veritable funhouse. Truitt is a jolly baby, most of the time, which is fabulous because it helps the fact that he refuses to sleep during the day.

He has just started his attempts at crawling, which are hilarious to watch.



Who can resist a bear on the bootie? Not me.



In all seriousness, we've been busy. To give you the short version of the past six months:
--Truitt arrived.
--He cried.
--He puked.
--I did massive amounts of laundry.
--He cried some more.
--He puked some more.
--I washed more clothes.
--He cut some teeth.
--He stopped crying when he received his share of magic fairy dust.
--He started to chortle at the dog.
--And recently he started trying to crawl.


That's pretty much it. And, oh--he believes he can fly. He believes he can touch the sky.