My Southern Heart

Our birthday…

Today is the first day of December…our birthday, Bill’s and mine…and, perhaps, the best time to begin telling our story.

The first time I ever saw his face was on an Autumn afternoon in 1964. I was sitting on the sofa by the fireplace in the BSU with some friends, when he walked in the door. He was wearing his Air Force ROTC dress uniform. He removed his officer’s cap and placed it on the top shelf of the coat rack. I couldn’t help watching him as he walked over to another group of friends and immediately became the center of attention…talking and laughing. I remember thinking he was handsome, very sharp and self-assured, almost cocky…much like a young Tom Cruise in Top Gun. He had beautiful green eyes and dark brown hair clipped short in the ROTC required style. There was something about him that I definitely found appealing.

His name was Bill. I had no way of knowing at that moment that I would spend thirty-nine years of my life with him. Life is a remarkable gift, but unfolds just one brief moment at the time; and at that time, I was dating Mike (the young Sean Connery look-alike), and Bill was dating a redhead named Linda, who was at least as tall as he was or maybe a little taller. Linda was a home economics major as I recall and it would, in the months to come, be a comment made by Linda that made me realize my true feelings for Bill…but that’s later in our story.

The exact moment that Bill and I met is lost in my memory, but over the Autumn of 1964 we became friends. At some point during that season, Bill asked me to go to a church banquet with him which was held at a beautiful campgrounds. Memory is a funny thing…laid down in so many transparent layers…but it almost seems I can remember the drive out there in his little black VW bug. There’s a canopy of brilliant colors flashing past as we drive along those winding roads…laughing and talking all the way. Many years have passed, but I remember the beautiful gardenia corsage he gave me. Gardenias would be one of his favorites for years to come.

As the months and seasons came and went, our friendship continued to grow. We would find an empty picnic table on the grounds of the BSU when the weather was good and enjoy our lunch together. He would share his Mom’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies with me, which I loved. After lunch, we’d go for long walks in the neighborhood surrounding the MSU campus. Looking back now, I realize we were wanting to get away from the crowd at the BSU…we wanted time to talk and get to know one another.

Little did I know that while I was growing up on Victor Drive, Bill lived just a few short blocks from me all that time. We went to different schools and different churches, so we had never met until that day in the BSU.

For years to come, I would tell Bill that I had been his birthday gift when he was only two years old…

Traditions…

Family, My Southern Heart, Reflections

Mama cherished the holidays each year, because it meant we would all be together once again. Of course, there were other times throughout the year that the family gathered in one place, but the holidays were special. First, there was the Thanksgiving feast and just a few weeks later…Christmas.

Sometime during the week or so before Christmas, we would go to a small grocery store on Jackson Avenue that sold cut Christmas trees looking for that special tree. As I recall, it was usually a fragrant Cedar. Compared to our next door neighbor’s tree, which looked like Martha Stewart would have decorated it, our tree looked a bit like a Charlie Brown tree. There were only the large colored lights, a little red or green garland roping, a few ornaments and icicles, but Sharon and I thought it was beautiful.

As I recall, there weren’t a lot of presents each year, but I do recall one special gift. I must have been about fourteen that year. I had wanted my very own shoe skates and had actually found them hidden away a week or so before Christmas. Unfortunately, Mama forgot about them. She forgot to give them to me, and all the time, I knew where they were. I don’t remember now when she finally remembered them, but I did, finally, get them that Christmas.

Looking at the elaborate felt stockings I have now, I remember our Christmas stockings all those years ago…nylon hosiery stockings filled with oranges, apples, walnuts, pecans and candy. I remember all those little stockings filled and arranged in front of our Santa gifts under the tree. Looking back now, it seems we opened our gifts to one another on Christmas eve, and then Santa arrived on Christmas morning. Santa didn’t bring very much, but it was special all the same.

Our Christmas eve tradition was to have our evening meal, open gifts to one another and then drive around looking at all the spectacular displays of Christmas lights. There was one particular wealthy neighborhood that put up amazing displays of lighted Christmas decorations each year…all across their front lawns, trees and houses. My nieces, nephew and I could hardly wait for our meal to be over and gifts to be opened so we could go see the lights. It seems so simple with the telling, but it was a special time and a treasured memory.

As the years passed and we all grew up and had our own families, the traditions evolved. We took turns hosting the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. Eventually, the next generations arrived, families grew larger and distances separated us…as it does now. Even so, the memories of those special times live on.

Saying goodbye…

My Southern Heart, Reflections

The last semester of my freshman year was almost over. I had finally accepted the fact that I would have to transfer to a state university there in Memphis for my sophmore year. Financially, there was no other way. I could work through the summer and save enough for my books and tuition and live at home. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it seemed the only solution.

Jimmy, Linda, my roommate, and all my other friends pleaded with me to apply for a school loan. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t. Perhaps, transferring seemed the “easiest” thing to do at the time, and so I set the paperwork in motion.

It’s odd that I don’t remember how I got home from college those 45 years ago…there were obviously clothes and boxes to pack, but I don’t remember that part. I do remember being sad to leave.

Those were the days before email and instant messenger. So over the summer, Jimmy and I wrote letters. Jimmy also came to visit me several times. He invited me down to visit his family in Florida sometime during that summer, but my parents said no. I suppose it was the distance from Memphis to Florida, for they liked Jimmy. It wasn’t easy being the youngest daughter of overprotective parents.

Fall came and I registered at the university there in Memphis. I had close friends from church who were also going to school there and I would be riding to campus with them. It took several weeks before I began to stop missing my friends I’d been so close to for the past year. I became involved in the Baptist Student Union there and slowly began meeting people and making new friends.

Jimmy had been hurt and upset with me that I wouldn’t at least try to find the funds to return to college there. Over the weeks that followed, we exchanged a few letters, but slowly grew apart. In February 1965, I had a school break and went back to college to visit my roommate and other friends. Evidently, they had told Jimmy that I was coming. I remember seeing him and briefly meeting the girl he had recently been dating in the cafeteria.

After supper, Jimmy came over the dorm and walked me to the campus movie that night. According to the old diary I’d found, we also stopped at the library for some reason on the way over to the movie. Later, after Linda and I had returned back to her dorm about eleven o’clock, Jimmy called. The dorm was situated around an interior outdoor courtyard. The telephone was in an old-fashioned phone booth on the second floor balcony – outside. We talked for a good long while. Jimmy wanted to talk longer, but it was very cold outside and I was freezing. He wanted to come over, but it was past visiting hours in the lobby…remember this was 45 years ago and boys weren’t allowed in the dorm rooms.

I‘m trying to remember if when we said goodbye that night was the last time that we ever spoke…I do believe that it was.

Roses in a fruit jar…

My Southern Heart, Reflections

Spring had come and with it, the warm days that felt like an early summer. The campus was ablaze with color…beautiful pink and red azaleas, flowering dogwood and fragrant magnolias. Yellow daffodils lined the historical brick streets in the nearby town and all the brick walkways across campus.

Everything on campus seemed in high gear. My weekly routine continued to include 18 hours in class, working 15 hours and trying my best to find time to study. I continued in the BSU choir and kept one mission trip a week in my schedule – to the nursing home. Trying to find time to even do my laundry was a challenge, and Jimmy continued to make sure that I didn’t have any “down” time.

We frequently double-dated with his friend Raleigh and Raleigh’s girlfriend. Jimmy was on scholarship and certainly didn’t have much money. He was creative and found interesting places to go that didn’t cost that much…like the zoo, movies and plays on campus, fishing, flying kites. The photo below was taken at the college swim and picnic day at a large nearby lake in late Spring. It was very warm that day and felt more like summer.

One day after work as I walked into the dorm, the student desk clerk said, “you have flowers”. There were a couple of bouquets there – one that closely resembled a funeral arrangement and a beautiful bouquet of wild pink roses. About that time she giggled and said, “yours are the ones in the fruit jar”. Thank goodness I thought. They were beautiful…tiny little wild pink roses…dozens of them. I took them to my room and put them on my desk. I was sure they were from Jimmy and certainly meant to thank him as soon as I saw him.

Two or three days passed and each time we were together, I would forget to mention the roses. That Saturday, Jimmy said he had something special to show me. I was swamped with work and needed to spend the day in the library. One look at his face though, and I said yes. He drove to a little lake surrounded by a grove of trees. It seems I remember hiking a long way around the lake to get there and then he said, “look”.

There it was…an absolutely enormous wild rose bush covered in hundreds of tiny pink wild roses. I’ve never seen anything to compare to that bush since that day. I felt two inches tall. I’d forgotten to say thank you, and he had gone to all this effort just for me. I hugged him and thanked him for the roses. I assured him that I had loved them. He said “I thought you hadn’t liked them because they were in a fruit jar…that’s all I could find”. “That was the best part,” I said.

I learned a hard lesson that day and one I’ve remembered all these years – a gift from the heart is not to be taken lightly…especially if they’re roses in a fruit jar.

Feeling the wind on the end of a string…

Family, My Southern Heart, Reflections

After meeting Jimmy, life on campus changed. He made sure I was never lonely or bored…not that I had time to be bored. With his energy and pure passion for life, he celebrated everything.

One day, not long after we’d met, Jimmy asked me if I’d ever flown a kite. I had to think for a moment, and then I realized that I’d totally missed that experience in my childhood.

“We’ll soon take care of that” he said, and that Saturday morning, he picked me up at the dorm armed with two kites, each with a long tail, and lots of string. It was perfect kite weather…warm with a wonderful breeze. We walked to a large hill behind the campus where he proceeded to attempt to teach me the basics of launching and flying a kite. I’d run as fast as I could and try to get my kite off the ground, and he’d end up laughing at my antics.

Finally, my kite caught an updraft and the wind took it…higher and higher and higher. I felt the strong tug of a kite hundreds of feet in the air and realized what an amazing thing I’d missed as a child.