as in, yurtsgiving (2013 edition)

yurtsgiving, as in thanksgiving that happens in and/or around and/or near a yurt.

three years ago, when we were still living out in portland, the madison family said, hey! let's camp! let's camp for thanksgiving! and we said hey! let's camp! let's do it! though we feel we should tell you something. we've never camped before.

which is maybe the first time we'd admitted it out loud, while living in the pacific northwest. because, and maybe this will come as a surprise to some of you, this is not something you openly admit when you live in the great pacific northwest. you do not openly admit to not liking coffee. and you absolutely do not openly admit to never having camped. you just don't. believe me.

and it's not that we didn't want to camp. we just didn't know how. neither of us had ever gone as kids, neither of us had grown up camping. we didn't have any of the stuff. and you need the stuff. you can't just show up and camp, you need the stuff. furthermore, you need to know how to do the stuff. and we certainly did not know how to do any of the stuff. and so this is how we went almost seven years living out in the great pacific northwest (the unofficial camping capitol of the free world) without ever having camped.

clearly, yurtsgiving changed all that. for the record, I do realize yurt camping is maybe not the same as, ahem, real camping. though I'm here to tell you it sure as hell is when you've never been camping before. as the people say, you've got to start somewhere and that little yurt nestled in a forest along the oregon coast was our gateway drug. that little yurt in nehalem bay is where we fell in love with bacon cooked over an open fire and crazy camp raccoon shenanigans and midnight stargazing and campsite turntables and picnic table thanksgiving dinners and, well, camping.

twas our last thanksgiving while living in portland, twas a heckuva way to go out.

tradition

this will always be one of my all-time favorite thanksgiving memories: my friend jon madison with that turkey, that tub of spice, that vinyl. the year we camped in yurts on the oregon coast and ate turkey at a campsite picnic table.

thanksgiving changed for us the year we moved to portland, oregon. one of many casualties of the big move across the country, a move that put us hundreds of miles from family. the first couple of thanksgivings, we tried. we really did. we worked hard to recreate what we'd had back home with family. and we did all right, I guess. the kids were young, we didn't really know what we were doing. the first couple with just the four of us were sweet but, undeniably, a little lonely. 

then, one year, we decided to throw out the regular plans, trade them in for shiny new ones. which led to a last minute road trip to astoria and our first thanksgiving meal at a fancy restaurant. the next year we hosted thanksgiving for friends at our house, a first for us. another year, we camped in yurts on the oregon coast with friends and prepared the whole thanksgiving meal mere steps from the pacific ocean, another first. and last year, we found ourselves in florida for thanksgiving, yet another first. 

so this is our tradition, I suppose. thanksgivings that move around. there will always be mashed potatoes and fresh cranberry sauce, I will always bring out my mom's little ceramic turkeys. they just might not always be set out on the same table.

after a couple of days in the mountains we'll head back home for our first legit thanksgiving since we moved back to atlanta. but who knows where we'll be next year? I'll tell you, that's just the way I like it.

prince forever

preteen saturday nights, 1999 on little white casio boomboxes. cheerleading routines that begin with dearly beloved, nervously performed underneath fluorescent lights during junior high basketball games. small town saturday night junior high dances, lavender sweaters with puffy sleeves and faded guess jeans. I would die 4 U and 13 year-olds who feel like they could dance forever, live forever. 

post-football game friday nights, beth's house. under the cherry moon on cassette tape, blackest eyeliner, frostiest lip gloss, phone calls from boys, multiple so many phone calls from boys. new position over and over, again and again and again.  anotherloverholenyohead screamed out car windows, 15 year-old girls who feel like they could sing forever, live forever. 

late monday night drives in old white datsuns through cincinnati streets with cute college boys. mix tapes with extended versions of prince songs, endless forever rarest of rare extended versions. college boys who play phantom keyboards on navy blue dashboards with one hand and drive with the other while you pretend to like clove cigarettes. cute college boys who turn into boyfriends who turn into husbands who end up as best friends. adore on repeat during early dating days, adore on repeat during newly wedded days, adore on repeat through all the in between days, adore on repeat for always. 19 year-olds, 21 year-olds who feel like they could love forever, totally, forever and ever.

sweaty tuesday nights at star bar, dj romeo cologne and the sounds of early prince, rushes of sweaty, happy people onto tiny dance floors, 27 year-olds who feel like they could probably dance forever, live forever. sweaty sunday afternoons at dancespace on sixth avenue, alexandra beller's class and the sounds of new-ish prince, rushes of sweaty, happy people across generous wooden floors, 33 year-olds who feel like they could probably dance forever, maybe live forever. or, at least until the end of the song.

rainy thursday night drives into the city with your best friend for purple rain tickets. when nothing else can be done. prince on the radio, the internet, in the newspapers, on your phone, in your texts, for all the wrong reasons. prince in the news when you wish he wasn't. starfish and coffee as loud as it will go, feet on the dash, fingers interlaced. 45 year-olds, 47 year-olds who wish prince could live forever, know that he can't. wish they could be young forever, know that they can't.

RIP sweet prince. singer of the soundtrack of my life. you will be so sorely, so terribly missed.

motherhood with a camera

her hands are my hands are my daughter's hands.

strong, capable. veins like little green rivers, skin like butter and butcher paper. and that ring she wore, that sterling silver dogwood ring, the one I can't ever remember not on her middle left finger. on that day, she took the hands of her mother, my grandmother, and danced. grandma's cheeks pink with rouge, a creamy coral dabbed on just before mom slipped strands of plastic yellow beads around her neck. this was the ritual: rouge, necklaces, music, dancing. I watched from the edges, willed myself to ignore the scent of lysol and urine, concentrated instead on the faraway radio sounds of dolly parton and the two dancers in the room. they lit the place up, spilled light into dark nursing home corners for a few minutes, corners no one likes to talk about.

in just two short years, just one year after her own mother, she would be gone. how could I have known this? how could any of us have known this? in those last days, I held her hands in mine, sat by her bed while she slipped in and out of sleep, in and out of that deep, unknown place morphine takes people when the pain is too much, the world is too much and the cancer is about to swallow them whole. I sat by her bed and held her hands, tv flickering and murmuring in the background, toddlers and tiaras and wild gyspy teenagers on repeat while my worst nightmare played out in real time. I held her hands like she held mine on the first day of school, on the way to my first dance class, the first time I had my heart broken. I held her hands the way she held her own mother's hands the day they danced at the nursing home. I held them and I pleaded with her to live. quietly, desperately. please, please live. I pleaded with God for the miracle of all miracles, pleaded in shameless, messy ways, over and over and over again.

a few months after she died, I found her jewelry pouch. tucked beneath a tangle of polyester slips and snagged pairs of pantyhose, there it was. all my favorite pieces were there; the bracelet with the little silver charms she'd collected while traveling through europe when she was in college, the oval locket my dad had given her for christmas one year, the one that held the teeny tiny baby pictures of us inside, the collection of silver bangles with turquoise stones and the ring. good lord, the sterling silver dogwood ring, the one I can't ever remember her not wearing. as much a part of her appearance as the small, crescent-shaped scar on her cheekbone and the amber brown color of her eyes. I slipped it on my left middle finger and gasped. there she was. in the shape of my hand, in the color and texture of my skin, in the way her signature ring looked on my left middle finger. she was as close as my left hand, I could see her, feel her, any time I stopped to look down.

my own daughter's hands look nothing like mine. her fingers are long and slender, her skin noticeably smoother and fairer in complexion. hers are the hands of a possible concert pianist, an aristocrat, further proof of the mysteries of genetics. though once interlaced with mine, the differences mostly fall away. ava held my hand on some pretty unthinkable days, through some pretty unthinkable weeks and months, through the endless before and after. she held my hand when I shut down and pushed everyone else away, and then when I pretended I was fine. she was quiet but sure about it and acted with the same gentle tenacity as her grandmother, my mother, did for so many years.

her hands are my hands are my mother's hands.

she'll slip the sterling silver dogwood ring on her middle left finger one of these days and she'll see me, feel me. she'll remember her grandmother too. she'll look down when she needs to and know. we're as close as her left hand. closer, even. she'll know this. the ring on her hand will remind her.

(first written for motherhood with a camera, a space lovingly carved out by the luminous amy grace)

ten years ago today

ten years ago today, I started this blog.

exactly 1,185 posts later and here I am. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how long this thing would last or where it might take me but I didn't care. I didn't know and I didn't care. I just wanted the space. I needed the space.

ten years ago today, ava was four, ezra was a baby and I was in the trenches of motherhood. knee deep in the place where you weep with exhaustion one minute, are swallowed up with love the next. when you feel at once like you are both drowning and flying, when you are consumed with love, absolutely transformed by it but also sometimes find yourself on all fours beneath the dining room table, scraping peas off a dirty floor at three in the morning. you live for sleep, for freedom but you want them to stay little forever. you can't imagine them any other way, are sick to your stomach at the very thought but dream of the day they become completely self-sufficient beings so you can go on living a normal life, whatever that is. if you are a creative, you struggle to find where your creative self begins and motherhood ends. or, where motherhood begins and your creative self ends. the truth is this: there is no beginning or end. instead, the two things co-exist in a way you previously thought impossible. they run from the same faucet, folks. from slow trickle to gush, depending on the day, the hour, the minute.

and so I was deep in the trenches of motherhood, grappling with said things when I found my way into the blog world. no rules, no schedules, just show up, write, share work. so I did. and almost instantly, I fell in love. it was the one thing in my life at that moment that didn't expect a thing from me. it was just there, exactly when I needed it and not a minute sooner, when maybe a minute was all I had, when I was nursing ezra with one arm and typing with the other, when all I could manage with my free arm was a hunt and peck lowercase situation. no rules, it didn't matter.

and if no one cared, if no one read, that didn't matter either. the having of the space was enough for me. but ten years and 17,959 comments (really, 17, 959!) later and I would be remiss if I did not properly acknowledge just how profound the interaction here has been for me. that people even read, take time to comment, this still surprises me, humbles me. if this is you, has ever been you, thank you. a hundred times over, thank you.

I wish I had the numbers, I wish I'd done the work. number of words written, hours put in here. number of photographs shared, polaroids, photobooth fridays. creative projects started, finished, not finished. number of lists posted, number of collaborations. times I've been right, times I've been wrong. number of shamelessly maudlin posts, number of times I used all caps to yell at the internet, times I've been forced to both explain and defend my lowercase habit. number of posts that mean something to me, number of posts I'd love to delete. number of actual real world jobs landed via this weird little place, number of experiences, adventures, people I would not know in real life were it not for the blog, people I absolutely cannot imagine my life without. from the blog, of all places, the blog.

in the ten years I've been here, my children have nearly grown up. ava's a teenager, for pete's sake. ezra is poised at the very edge of it. we moved to the opposite end of the country, found our way out to the great pacific northwest, to portland, oregon, and then seven years later, found our way back home to the south again. somewhere along the way, an old polaroid SX-70 camera cracked my personal work wide open. my words and photographs have been published in both books and magazines. teaching happened, workshops happened. ward turned forty, I turned forty, our marriage turned twenty years-old. and my mom. I lost my mom.

still, the blog was here, is here, through everything, here. undeniably, the landscape is changing and I am probably not unlike the stubborn little house in the city, dwarfed by high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, sorely out of place. the one who refuses to give up her little plot of land no matter how drastically things continue to change around her. after about a year of blogging I can so clearly remember thinking, how long can this thing go on? I mean, really? how long can we keep this blogging thing going? five years? ten years? surely not. surely we will not all still be blogging ten years from now. I mean... what would that even look like?

well, I guess this is what it looks like. at least, one little piece of it. I still don't know what I'm doing, not really, but I like it here. and I think I'll stick around. probably not for another ten years but you never know, you never really know. so here's to the ever-changing fantastically lovely, undeniably goofy blog world. here's to ten years of the unknown, the unchartered and here's to the future of this here crazy place, whatever it may look like a decade from now.

365 days ago

one year ago, we stood in the jardin du luxembourg, at the edge of the pool where all the wooden toy boats with the bright-colored cotton sails float back and forth, back and forth. on our last day in paris, we stood in that afternoon sun and she pointed the SX-70 at me and I pointed the holga at her and there we were. paris. still, we ask each other if it was real, if it really happened. and then we take out the photographs and we look and we remember.

because, christmas

am currently steeped in that lovely thing they call christmas. am back to pinching the ends off christmas tree branches for the smell of the sap, falling asleep with all the christmas lights on. am sneaking bites of leftover red velvet birthday cake in the middle of the night, waking up with teeth tinged pink. am realizing just how much I love the smell of scotch tape. scotch tape= wrapped presents.

am teaching my kids the carols I grew up singing, the ones that celebrate the birth of jesus. the ones I used to sing so loud I thought my ears would pop off, thought my cheeks would burst from the happy. am remembering my big part in the church pageant, my one big line and how I tripped over the hem of my floor-length ivory dress on the way to the microphone stand. am remembering the way I popped right back up, how the adults in the audience struggled to stifle their laughter while tears burned my eyes. I delivered that line anyway. LIKE A CHAMP. nothing could destroy my christmas spirit, I tell you. nothing.

am not suppressing the sadness. but I'm not swimming in it either. am setting out her little trees, baking her cookies, singing her songs. am remembering just how special she made each christmas, how much of a gift that was. am doing everything I can to keep that part of her alive. am celebrating even when I feel like crying because, christmas. christmas.

tricks or treats

from the archives: a five year-old ezra, an eight year-old ava and two old school (moderately creepy) halloween masks.

(happy halloween, y'all)

hense

six years ago, I wrote about a piece of graffiti on the walls of a car wash on dekalb avenue in atlanta. it was something I looked for everyday as I drove back and forth. the color inspired me, cracked a little something open in me. everyday, I'd race by that car wash and everyday that piece was there, singing my song. and then one day it wasn't. such is the nature of graffiti and street art, nothing is permanent, everything is fluid. work gets painted over all the time (comes with the territory) but still. I've never really forgotten it, for whatever reason. the graffiti writer behind that piece, hense, is an artist I've been following since the early nineties. billboards, overpasses, buildings, train cars, he was up all over the city. his work is as much atlanta to me as dekalb avenue and the majestic diner, as the civic yard and marta trains and MLK.

so of course we took a little drive down dekalb avenue while we were home for christmas and dang it if we didn't stumble onto spectacular new work by hense. I wrote a little bit about it today over at poppytalk, hop on over if you like. a shot in the arm, fresh new work, color for days, all these things. it's like driving by that car wash all over again.

the year in polaroids

january


february


march


april


may


june


july


august


september


october


november


december

first 2010, now 2011. I'm coming for you, 2012.

wigwam redux

it was just about this time last year we found ourselves in cave city, kentucky at the wigwam village inn. right smack dab in the middle of an epic southeastern/midwestern road trip. I'll tell you, these are the kind of road trips I live for, these are the ones I hope ava and ezra talk about someday. hopefully, with something akin to fondness. my own childhood family road trip stories are nothing short of legendary-- long sweaty hours spent in the brownest station wagon, florida and all matters of the atlantic ocean in our sights. packed to the gills with a motley assortment of items-- mismatched luggage, boxes and bags of groceries, neon inner tubes. and probably a small toaster oven. I will never forget the look on the bellboy's face at one fort lauderdale hotel as we loaded up our luggage cart. horrified would be the word I would use to describe it. but we didn't care. all we could see was a turquoise ocean, a pretty high rise hotel and nothing but an entire week of vacation laid out before us.

we tell the stories over and over again, me and my brothers. we love to tell the corrona family vacation stories. I hope ava and ezra will tell stories someday. of road trips and adventures and mishaps and magic things. of wigwam inns and dairy queens and souvenir shops. I'd like to think that they will.

and speaking of summer

taken last summer in the small illinois town where my parents live and I swear to you, when I look at this, I can practically hear the cicadas. I can feel how thick the air is and I want to get on a plane and go home.

the moment is

when I was a kid, I used to wonder if it was possible to hold onto ordinary moments. you know, if you tried hard enough. if you closed your eyes and memorized every single thing about it, painted the scene in great detail in your mind and then just willed yourself to remember. could you? in twenty years? remember the way you bent down and scratched your knee while you waited for the school bus to round the corner. remember the way that peanut butter and jelly sandwich tasted while you watched an episode of good times. remember the way your skin stuck to the back of the station wagon seat while fleetwood mac played on the radio. because where do they all go? all the seemingly forgettable everyday moments? the thought of losing them all terrified the ten year-old me. no matter how unremarkable they were, I wanted them. I wanted them all. I still want them all. thirty years later and I have really only managed to hold onto what feels like a few measly scraps. for whatever reason, only certain moments stick.

so I thought about this earlier as I sat in the parking lot of the grocery store waiting for my husband to pick me up. I thought about how hard I tried at age ten to hold onto things, how hard I still try to hold onto things-- how I take photographs and make lists and scribble thoughts onto the pages of a hundred different notebooks, how carefully I've integrated this practice of preservation into my daily life. I am indefatigable. and then I sat there in that parking lot and did what my ten year-old self used to do. I memorized the moment. cool concrete beneath me, sun on my face. left hand on a cart filled with groceries for the week, giant bin of watermelons just a few feet away. old squeeze song coming from the grocery store speakers, me singing along. quietly, under my breath. one moment folds into the next and then it's over. and I am left hoping maybe this one will stick.