I have this new book. It is Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes.. It is called A Southern Memoir. It looked so lovely and I had to bring it home. I read the flyleaf and she is going to talk about growing up in the town of William Faulkner and about her complicated Southern family (as if there is such a thing as an uncomplicated Southern family) - and about the Southern authors we love - or ought to love or, sometimes in my case, I want to love but am not quite smart enough to understand the deep meaning. Anyway, I brought this book home knowing it would speak to me - and then, I knew, it would make its way to some of the young Southern women I love - and you all know who you are. It seemed to be a book about our parents and grandparents and friends and the places we loved and still love and the memories we love and the memories that break our hearts. I picked it up last night. I turned to the Preface and read the first two pages. I closed it and took a deep breath. In a little bit, I picked it up again and read the next two pages - and stopped because of the tears making it impossible for me to read. It may have to sit here for a long, long time. I wonder if, as silly as it will sound to some but not to all of you, the basketball tournament has unhinged me a little bit. I am homesick when I watch my team. I think of the thousands of Kentucky basketball games I listened to on the radio - with my brother and my parents.When I went to Ohio for my own true love to go to graduate school, sometimes I had to stand in the tub and lean the radio out the window to hear the Voice of the Wildcats, Cawood Ledford. I never missed a game. Once in high school, I was grounded (very unfairly, I might add) and couldnt listen and my dad would sneak to the bottom of the stairs that led up to my room and whisper the score: Big Blue up 15 - 25 points for Cotton Nash so far. I thought about listening in my Daddys car and we would stop at this little grocery store toward Nicholasville and get a Grape or an Orange Nehi. You know, the old cases where the bottles were in one of those old things that had ice at the bottom and the row of bottles were all lined up. Everywhere, people would talk about Coach Rupp and the Cats. People said he was afraid to play Louisville but, no, he said he didnt want to take the University of Kentucky team anywhere in the state of Kentucky where they would hear boos. But, he would take them around the state to play scrimmages. I remember seeing an old man with two little boys - they all had on overalls and worn out shoes. The reporter asked him why he had come and he said, I wanted, just one time, for my boys to see the Cats. Why I felt to need to say all this, I am not certain - maybe to just say, for me, it isnt a just a basketball game. I was thinking of the lovely young women in the generation after me - how much I admire them and the way they have careers - and raise their children - and are strong - and tough - yet tender. I like the way they think. So I will hang onto this book for a little while and see if I can read it and, if I can, then, after I have finished, I will send it on to one of you on my list. If I become certain that I will never be able to read it, then I will send it on. I would say that, to some, this entire post will seem very strange but, to the girls I am thinking of, I know it will not - it will just be a note from one Southern girl to a dozen more.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 21:17:32 +0000
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