Ziegler House

Sunset On The Verandah

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:33:47 -0500

I owe Alabama an apology. Exactly one year ago I wished a pox on this place for being so stinking hot during the month of August. I mocked all those who said, “It’s just never this hot here!” and wondered at the sanity of a people who could tolerate that kind of heat and humidity every single year.

Well, this summer has been perfectly blissful. Can you believe that? One year to the date that I wrote about last year’s summer, I am sitting outside, on the verandah, without bugs and enjoying the most gorgeous, sunset-ey breeze you could ever wish for. I can hear the train passing through at a distance, and the cicadas are singing their sketchy summer song to me as I sit out here and watch the sun sink below the limbs of the trees. How could it be so different?

From what I understand, this area broke both cold and heat records during our first year here. Welcome to Alabama. Do we know how to enter a room, or what?! It snowed here in February. It hasn’t snowed here for some 15 years. And last summer broke heat and drought records held for decades. We were all wondering if this summer would be as bad as the last - so hot I thought I’d never know cold again - but it rained on July 1st. Connie’s Mama, Mrs. Lindsey, used to say if it rains on or about July 1st, it will rain all summer long. So far she’s been right. Connie (& Georgia’s) Mama also said you should plant your garden right after Easter, as It doesn’t usually freeze after Easter. My father used to say the same thing.

I startled one of my church-going friends recently with the news that Easter is a moon-based holiday. Passover and Easter are on different days every year because they are based on the cycle of the moon. Of course it makes sense to plant after that cycle of the moon, after the risk of freeze, and it makes sense to mark that date annually as the beginning, the planting season, the re-birth.

We are so much more tied to the earth here; We are subject to the weather. We HAVE weather. We are waiting right now for “Fay.” She will come our way, but we don’t know if she will just dump the rain we need so badly, or if she will also bring her nasty boyfriend “Wind,” who tends to cause the most trouble. It sounds so ridiculous to say, but I have never changed my plans because of weather until coming here. How could a little bit of rain change anything? Here, the storms come with a soundtrack and a light show and all we want to do is be at home when they hit.

We can watch their march towards us in the sky. I rarely looked at the sky in San Diego. What was there to see? Blue? Fog? Now, put me in front of the ocean any day of the year and I can tell you what the weather is by the way the sea behaves. We lived according to what the sea told us there. We live by what the sky says here.

Lindsey Road is so named for the Lindsey family that lived here on this road and still do. Mrs. Lindsey passed away last year, but two of her daughters live on this road still. Connie and her sister, Georgia (called “Sister” as so many girls are here), are part of this land. Mary also lives on Lindsey Road, as does her mother, and Shannon and I are here as well, representing our generation. That’s everyone on Lindsey Road. Except for Shannon, everyone on Lindsey Road is related to someone else on Lindsey Road. Of course, we consider Shannon family. Never in your life have you met such a beautiful, strong group of women all on one street.

I wish you all had a tree to sit under, like the tree I sit under at Georgia’s house. Under that tree we sip white wine and watch the trees sway on the hillside. This evening we watched the cows wander the fields while Connie’s grand daughter fed them and the donkeys watermelon rinds from the garden. (Remember the donkeys Bridgett??) This little girl had them whimpering under her touch as she scratched their ears.

I wonder if my little city kids will ever be interested in the fields and the cows, or in taming a stubborn mule with a little scratch behind the ears. Or perhaps those first formative years claim a person. When my sister and I were home this summer, we got lost in old pictures of our childhood and my parent’s childhood. We come from farmers. My first home and many after that were houses on farms, out in the country. It should be no wonder that this city girl feels such bliss at these hills, these crops, these trees and ponds. I wonder, though, if my kids will escape to some urban setting as soon as they can. Probably. But they’ll miss this. I know they will. And they will love coming home, sitting under a tree, with a glass in their hands, shooting the breeze.

Home

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:50:02 -0500

Eighteen months after moving away, we went back to La Jolla for a visit. It was blissful to see our friends again, but strange to be a tourist in what used to be our home. Before vacation I kept catching myself saying we were going “home” for a visit, but the word never sat well on my tongue. I’ve lived longer in San Diego than anywhere else, but the moment we left it ceased being home. it has surprised no one more than I that I feel so at home in Alabama, but we wondered what “going home” to La Jolla would rouse in us.

We were there for four days and everything felt familiar, but not my own - like borrowing a favorite pair of jeans that I’d long since given to a friend. We spent every minute of those four days visiting with very dear, very much missed friends. In order to meet with as many friends as possible, we sent out an email to everyone telling them where we would be and when. On Saturday afternoon we gathered at “our beach,” La Jolla Shores.

We told our friends to find us by looking for the Alabama flag. Of course none of them had the slightest idea what an Alabama flag looks like, and many asked if it was the rebel flag (not kidding).
Southerners may wonder why we needed to fly a flag at the beach in order for our friends to find us. For my SoCal friends I will explain their confusion: Below is a picture of a beautiful and popular Florida beach that we went to with some friends the weekend before we went to La Jolla. This is a typical, busy summer Saturday. If you haven’t been to a southern California beach, you have no concept of the knocking elbows, share a wave, beach experience of the west.

Our friends eventually figured out what an Alabama flag looks like. It felt surreal but appropriate to sit under that flag in what used to be my home. We tried not to brag (much) about how much warmer and clearer and cleaner the beaches are near our new home. (However the waves are much bigger & more fun in CA!) San Diegans of course think a three hour drive to the beach is just crazy! Crazy! (Almost as crazy as fighting for a parking space a half mile away in order to share the sand and the cold ocean with fifteen hundred of your fellow countrymen.)

Ack! Did you see what I just did there? I gave praise to my new home at the cost of the old! You are witness to the internal struggle of making a new home! I have heard the same struggle in the voices of the military families who come in and out of Montgomery, for whom “home” is where they lay their head. They seem to long for roots, but at the same time seem to enjoy the lightness of the more spore-like lifestyle they have chosen. I have made a decision to call Alabama my home - to set roots here, to adopt it, or to let it adopt me.

It was a surprise to me to feel the most at home in our old pew at St. James on Sunday. We sat in our usual pew, in the back, to the left of the aisle. I hadn’t realized how ungrounded I’d felt until I walked into that church and felt at home. It has been the one constant for me in San Diego, since the flux of my early twenties. Peter and I met there, were married there, baptized our children there, and knew most of our friends from there.

I realized during that service how hard the transplantation process has been for me. I finally felt my roots at St. James. I felt myself at home and grounded there. During my first year in Coosada, with my roots abruptly cut and living in someone else’s home, I felt hydroponic; My roots waggled weightlessly, trying in vain to grasp at anything. The tree that was me stayed alive during that year, but it did not grow. In fact it lost its leaves, lost its way, and poorly weathered some of the greater storms that pass through The South. Now in our permanent home, my roots have wiggled their way through the slick, red Alabama clay, sunk themselves deep into the rich black earth, and have found holds strong enough to keep me upright and strong.

A friend asked me, just before we left for vacation, if I thought we’d stay in Alabama “fuh evah and evah?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I think we will.” My roots are here. The branches of my half of the family tree are not, but I have sunk my roots into this soil, and this is where I’ll stay. As I told my friend, there is an apartment in Paris with my name on it, which I’ll inhabit some day, but not today. For now I am grateful to have my roots among the great, old green trees of The South.

The trees

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:12:51 -0500

As we were landing in Los Angeles, the approach into the airport was horrifying. It was one of those awful, sickly, stereotypical Southern California smog days. There were no trees and there was no view. Once we were on the ground, I realized that the trees there have no voice. This may not make sense to you, but the trees there felt like slaves. I had not realized before how much Southern California is landscaped to within an inch of its life. Every tree, every flower, every bush is placed there with purpose. California is a desert ... there are no trees there without irrigation. Not even palm trees. The trees felt like mannequins to me, standing in place as they’re told. In this part of the world, our life is built around the trees. The trees are everywhere, and we have to work hard to make sure they don’t overtake what we’ve built. We are the accessory here, not the trees, and the trees have a voice here. They sing! The trees speak here and they emote, and you may not even know that if you live here, until you take a plane to Southern California and wonder why it is so deathly quiet once you land.

Abundance

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:16:45 -0500

I stopped shopping for groceries about two weeks ago. I was looking for something in the pantry and couldn’t find it because I apparently had at least two of everything stuffed into those rows of shelves. In a moment of shocked clarity I confirmed suspicions of gluttony with a glance inside the refrigerator, only to find the same, sad state of abundance.

Around the same time I was taking the long pants out of Peter’s drawer, to replace them with the pairs of shorts more suitable for an Alabama summer. He had so many pairs of shorts that seven pair had to be left out of our long, wide, deep dresser drawers. Four of them were nearly identical blue docker shorts! Why?? And of course, if you know me, you know about my shoe closet, and know that I am not without blame in the arena of excess.

So I stopped shopping for groceries. In two weeks I have bought only milk - and a half gallon at that - and have served three meals a day at home. My fridge and pantry are still full and I’ve still had to throw out food that has rotted because it went un-eaten. I have felt a great deal of shame at having to throw out food. It has set me to thinking quite a bit about how much we have, and how much we feel like we’re lacking.

I noticed yesterday on television a commercial for something you spray inside your garbage can to mask the smell of garbage. What do you get for the nation that has everything? Spray to make the garbage smell like flowers, of course! (Not dump the garbage, wash the can?) What’s next? Pills that make the poop smell like freshly laundered towels? Where do we go from here with so much in abundance?

I was reading a book called “The Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenberg. He talked about an old term called “the third place.” The Third Place is somewhere that is not home and is not work or school. It’s your hang out place. It’s the diner, or the cafe, or the pool hall. It’s where you meet your friends and just relax. It is one of those European concepts that I think the pilgrims forgot to bring with them. They are more prevalent larger cities - cafes mostly. My third places have all been cafes - Linnea’s, Miracle’s and The Pannikin. Here in The South the third place seems to be the church. If you’re not an active church member, though, you spend a awful lot of time at home...buying things.

Ray Olderberg says that with a lack of a place to go we spend excess hours and dollars decorating the places we live. There’s not much else do, is there? I bring this up because it seems to me that much our excess is a result of boredom. We are filling our lives up with the newest things simply out of boredom. We are lonely and having something that others have connects us with those others.
 I am in the process now of trying to figure out how not to live to excess. Too many groceries, too many TVs, too much eating, drinking, sleeping, spending. Wanting, wanting and always wanting more. It is the wanting that leaves that doggone empty space. It is not a desire to fill the empty space, I actually create that empty space inside of me by wanting. Like the obese man ... he doesn’t eat to fill his stomach; his stomach grows to accommodate all with which it is filled.

But how do we stop wanting?? I am going to try the groceries approach. When I am tempted to go home from the grocery store with a couple of nice, juicy steaks, I will take a mental inventory of my fridge and decide instead to have any of the myriad food items already purchased and waiting for me. When I become frustrated with my job and want another, I will take inventory of it as well, and recognize how many ways it is good for me at this time. When I obsess about having a patchy lawn, I will turn to that same mind’s eye and remember the mud field my yard was only six months ago. When I see that really, really cute pair of shoes on sale at Nordstrom’s this weekend... Well, I wonder what my mind’s eye will say about that. It will surely take inventory, as it does. It will scan the full shoe closet. It will scan the bank account. It will come back with the very logical pronouncement: “You have an abundance of shoes already.” But will the wanting stop? Will I ever stop wanting to be skinnier or more successful? Will I ever stop wanting my gorgeous children to be more athletic or my fabulous husband to be more romantic? Will I ever stop wanting more wine, more time, a new sofa, or that doggone really, really cute pair of shoes? Will that empty space remain forever, increased daily by wanting?

It’s tempting to point to those with less or those without, and to tell ourselves to be happy with what we’ve got, but that doesn’t help. You know that. Knowing one person’s tummy has been grumbling for two days does not stop my tummy grumbling at lunch time. I do wonder, however, if there is a way to fill the emptiness with giving instead of acquiring. Seems unlikely, but what would that look like? Can I give seven pair of shorts (or shoes) to Goodwill or a rescue mission somewhere? Yes, and it would ease the abundance side effect of lack of space. (How many of you reading this have something in a storage unit right now?) But would giving away stop the wanting? Not likely. It would, though, ease someone else’s wanting. What if we go through our closets and desks and pull out all of the extra notebooks and pencils that the children get in birthday and holiday goodie bags? (I did this recently and came up with nearly 100 brand new, never used pencils, 76 “Color Wonder” pens, 47 washable markers, and god only knows how many crayons, but let me tell you it took a good sized box to hold them all.) What if I gave those, or even half of those to a school nearby which is wanting for supplies?

I’m wondering ... can I assuage my abundance guilt by simply giving away part of what I have? Surely so, but will it stop the wanting?? I think it might. What if I kept a bag or a box (or a crate!) next to the front door and put one thing in it each day to be given away? Would that daily reminder help me remember just how much I have? What about the non-tangibles? Will that exercise sufficiently remind myself of how much I have in order to ease the wanting for what I don’t? Could the crate by the front door be a sufficient reminder of abundance in general, tangible or not? I don’t know. I’ll give it a try.

Now announcing ...

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 23:37:38 -0500

www.elmsevents.org

Come and see our new web site!!

How To Sing "Sweet Home Alabama"

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:44:34 -0500

As sung by a great cover band we saw... Roll tide, roll.
Or ... you might want to watch it sung by the Leningrad Cowboys & The Red Army Choir:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014

Spring

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:44:14 -0500

There are breezy, warm spring days in Alabama when I alternate between feeling sympathy and pity for Californians who think they know beauty. This was one of those days.

Anne’s 80th birthday party

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:59:43 -0600

Click here to see birthday photos...

Ode To A Good Time
by Anne Waldo
January 2008

* O Muse, fill me with words to speak of the joy that enfolds me!
* In wordless gratitude I embrace all of you, who wrapped me in love
on and around my milestone birthday.
* What sparkles of fun light up my memories
*The trips to the airport to hug warmly my arriving family
* The special surprise of Sally’s coming - so rich a gift - my sister
* Meals at The Elms, Happy Greetings sung over and over, vigorously
* The open arms of hospitality
* The community of family and friends
* An orchid for our house, a corn casserole,
and three birthday cakes from old friends for the big feast
* Donning my mother’s 80th birthday dress and my pearls (fake)
* Admiring he beautiful flowers all around, the expectancy
of sitting together with three friends and our family
at the banquet table in the bright happy light;
* The ring of the old fashioned doorbell;
David Bronner and his driver in tuxedos;
David coming to wish the Little Old Lady a Happy Birthday,
(she who opposed his building plan in a TV interview)
presenting two dozen yellow roses in courtly fashion on his knees,
complete with a kiss on the cheek, and then his departure;
(all plotted by my beloved husband, and executed by his friend, David)
* The Hall was filled with much merriment an laughter,
as we thanked God for his grace and many blessings, and sat down
And there is more …
*Church and Hold Eucharist together;
* Andrew’s arrival late Sunday, and more meals together; such happiness
* Our final feast – breakfast at the Farmer’s market Café.
Thank you, Lord, for tying us together – we are blessed.

Broken Crystal

Sat, 5 Jan 2008 20:34:19 -0600

When we were married ten years ago, we received twenty four wine glasses ( 12 white, 12 red) and twelve champagne flutes. Over the years, as they’ve broken, we’ve thanked the guests who’ve dropped or spilled or snapped a stem. We quipped to them, “Thank you! If we had a full set of crystal, people would think we had no friends!” And in fact, we believe that. If you have all of your crystal and all of your china, you’re not entertaining enough. Tuesday is a special occasion, if your family is intact, healthy and together at the the dinner table. Break out the china.

This has been a rough year for our crystal. As of today we have six wine glasses left and seven champagne flutes. Ouch!! Yes, we’ve been blessed with many friends, but we’ve played part in the destruction as well. Moving across the country we lost none. Moving across the street we lost three. My fault. I packed them very carefully, walked them over, then dropped the box on the front porch. I couldn’t even open the box. Peter had to do the post-mortem. I was surprised it was only three.

The crystal, that ubiquitous wedding gift, it occurs to me, is a perfect metaphor for marriage itself. When empty, they are transparent. When full they can sing and make you drunk. But crystal - for all it’s beauty and shine, it’s functionality and tradition - is remarkably, unfortunately fragile.

We were told, when we began our remodel, that we should hire a contractor and a marriage counselor. Good advice. I think similar advice should be given to newlyweds: “Hire a housekeeper and marriage counselor.” It’s what I plan to tell my children. It’s been a rough year for our fragile, beautiful crystal.

Peter and I have decided not to replace our crystal. Once the dust settles (and there’s a lot of dust) we’ll pick another pattern and start again. We might search for a more durable pattern, though, knowing now that our life together will involve a lot more dropped boxes, a lot more fabulous dinner parties, and a lot of really good friends to share our crystal with.

When we got married, our families processed in with us. First Peter walked down the aisle with a parent on each arm. Behind him were his five siblings and their families. Next down the aisle were my four siblings and their families, then I processed in with my parents on each arm. We were presented to each other by our entire families. The bishop who married us made it perfectly clear to our guests (at our request) that they were part of our ceremony. He told them that they were not observers but participants in our marriage. It was up to them to ensure that we maintained our wedding vows to each other. It’s a massive responsibility to place upon a wedding guest. We invited to our wedding the people we knew would help keep us married.

It occurred to me very recently that we left our wedding guests in San Diego. There are exactly four people in Alabama who were present at our wedding. It’s like flying without a net. You know us though, like a spider in a storm, we are building another web. It will be as beautiful and intricate as the last, but it will be stronger. We’ll buy another set of crystal soon, and we’ll spend the next ten years happily breaking those in toasts, at parties, and at home together over dinner on Tuesdays.

Move In Date: Tomorrow

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:22:55 -0600

I could just kiss our contractor. He has moved heaven and earth to get us into our home for Christmas. We’ll move in tomorrow, Friday, and the family will start arriving Saturday. The house may not be entirely clean of dust by then, and we certainly won’t have anything unpacked, but the beds are made and the bathrooms work. Hallelujah!

Thank you to all of you who have sent us Christmas cards from near and far! It means so much to us to feel connected to you while so far away. Please accept this as our Christmas card this year. I’m sure you’ll understand. (Here we are again, moving at Christmas time. Somebody get me a drink...)

We’ll have a house blessing at Epiphany, and a REALLY BIG house warming party - just as soon as I can unpack all those boxes and catch my breath. We send you all much love and great wishes for a joyful, relaxed Christmas & a happy, happy new year.