Beach House in the Burbs

Clowns, jugglers, mimes, these were all suggestions from the double-wedding committee (family friends who had been giving opinions our entire lives) 22 years ago when my sister and I were planning our wedding. People look at us funny when Susan and I talk about "our" wedding, but given the outside committee we had to deal with, the grooms didn't get to have a lot of input. On this anniversary, as I look back at pictures, there are so many things I remember I about that day. The videographer (and member of the wedding committee), the late, great Harry Watters, rendered almost invisible, just like my mother insisted. The wedding brunch. Daddy was presented with a trophy by committee chair Judy Watters for surviving (and paying for) the whole ordeal. The trophy reads, "Life's work well done; rest thee now." My dress, which had been my aunt's when she got married in 1956, hanging from the ceiling fan while guests milled around in Mom and Dad's living roo...

Twenty-two years ago today was wedding eve. The day before an event the likes of which Huntsville, Ala., still has not seen duplicated. But the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner also stick in my mind, not only because they were a lot of fun, but because the dinner marked my introduction to daylilies. The wedding was double, my sister and I got married together. Here we are at the rehearsal dinner, (Chris, Karen, Susan, Gregory) with the spectacular daylily centerpiece that my in-laws and their friends created. We inherited those daylilies, which are blooming profusely this year thanks to a fair amount of spring rain. These are photos I took this week. I wrote the following piece about our daylilies several years ago as public radio commentary. But the sentiment still holds true on this day when I find myself thinking about them and that very special time 22 years ago. When I'm in a good mood, I look out at the thousands of daylilies blooming in our yard and think about our wedding...

For the past few years when we've been to the beach, we've hit uncrowded, uncommercialized, less developed places like Jekyll Island, Ga., and St. George Island, Fla. But this year we went back if not to the heart of kitschy Florida, which is probably Weeki Wachee and the mermaids, then at least to its liver. We traveled to Ft. Walton Beach, the home of sugar-sand beaches, emerald-green water, Big Kahuna's water park, the Gulfarium and a main street called the Miracle Strip. I've loved our low-key beach vacations, but driving past Cash's Liquors and Fudpucker's restaurant on the way to our beachside condo, I found myself getting caught up in the Fun, Fun, Fun that pounds you from all sides before you even see the Gulf. A high point--two meals in three days at the Back Porch , an open-air beachfront place where shirts and shoes are optional, but the seafood is fresh and fabulous. Their grilled amberjack (a white fish caught off the coast there) sandwiches in...

Nothing says summer in the South like the sight and aroma of boiling pig heads in the backyard. Okay, so this little adventure had nothing to do with being in the South and everything to do with having a sister with a dead-animal fetish (and I mean that in the most wholesome sense of the word). A student in one of her anthropology classes bought pig heads from a butcher, shot them with bullets, hacked at them with a machete, then buried them to see what would happen. Susan (the sister) was very pleased at the student's ingenuity. Then, joy of joys, when the class was over, the student told Susan she could keep the pig heads! Rapture! Unfortunately they still had a little tissue attached. And nobody wants that. So, she brought them over to boil in Chris's outdoor, turkey-frying pot. (Thanksgiving will never be the same.) The smell of boiling hog fat--it reminded me of the old-timey candle-making smell on steroids--permeated our yard and house for hours, but look at the payoff. T...

I actually have the world’s greatest mom. Ask anybody who knows her. She’s smart, kind, sweet, loving, fun, interesting, caring. The list goes on and on. But one of the best things about her is how good a teacher she is. She taught for a living, and over the years she taught me many important things, like … 1. Food is not the most important part of a dinner party. (Thank goodness, because I am not a cook, but I love having people over.) 2. Love really can be unconditional. She’s been mad at me, disappointed in me, unhappy with me, but I’ve never, ever felt like she didn’t love me. 3. Tolerance is the most important part of any long-term relationship. 4. If you want your children to care for you in your old age, you better be really good to them when you’re young and able and caring for them. (She was. Now we are trying to be especially good to our gaggle of nephews, since they will be stuck with us in our dotage.) 5. Having your nose buried in a good book is a great way to spend the da...

We live in Georgia, work in the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain--home of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, site of the Civil War Battle of Kennesaw--learned the story (at the least the white Southern version) of the War of Northern Aggression before we could speak. But a Civil War trench, right in our own backyard? Doesn't seem likely. We own a of residential lot, left over from Chris's days as a remodeling contractor/builder. We've had it on the market for a while, not really expecting it to sell in this economy, but as our agent says, "it doesn't hurt anything to keep a sign in the yard." Well, we got a contract this week. A very nice surprise. A bigger surprise was one of the special stipulations on the contract. If a Civil War trench exists on the property, the buyers don't have to close. The picture that jumped into my mind when I read that was of Indiana Jones-type archeologists trooping through the wooded lot, then suddenly dropping into a tr...

... OK, not into a bar. It's not a joke. Chris walked into the alternations shop the other day, wearing a cap because his bald head gets cold, to pick up a pair of pants he'd had hemmed. He looked quite handsome in his cap, apparently, because Sandy, the owner, said, "You a very handsome man. You need more hats." So, along with his pants, she handed him a large shopping bag full of a bizarre collection of hats and scarves. I know because he brought them all home. Inside the bag were such treasures as a pink and white baseball cap with an after-market elastic chin strap sewn on, a black straw hat with bright red band, a couple of straw driving caps, two fluffy burgundy hats that you'd have to be really cold to wear out in public. Picture Phyllis Diller-style hats. There were at least a dozen. As I tried on hat after cap, I noticed that they smelled like little old lady, in a good way. A way that reminds me of my great-grandmother and maybe a little of my grandmothe...