A Second Slice of Pie

 

Sunday lunch is an event I look forward to every week.  No matter what kind of mood I am in, I always leave the table in a better place.  There are five of us “regulars” who meet at Homestead, a local restaurant with an extensive buffet that includes desserts – soft serve ice cream and various cakes, pies and banana pudding.  Fried chicken is always one of the choices, usually baked ham, and homemade yeast rolls and cornbread muffins.  We each have our favorites, especially in the dessert category and some of us have been known to eat dessert first.

Last Sunday buttermilk pie and fudge pie were on the dessert table.  Margaretta and I love buttermilk pie.  We love caramel cake too and Japanese fruit pie, but on this day, it was buttermilk pie.  Brenda loves chocolate and always chooses the fudge pie when it appears.  We all like ice cream.  Face it, we all like dessert.

Our lunchtime includes not only heaping plates; it also brings out the latest news around town, storytelling and lots of laughter.  It’s not a lunch hour – it sometimes stretches to almost two hours, unless there is an important football game on television.  There were no early afternoon football games Sunday.  Margaretta and I made short work of our buttermilk pie, Brenda enjoyed her fudge pie and John was eating chocolate ice cream.  “That pie was so good,” I said, licking the last bite off my fork.  “I could eat another piece.”  Margaretta made encouraging noises.  I decided to have ice cream instead.  When I returned to the table, Danny decided he would have some too.  “I wasn’t going to get ice cream,” he said.  “But Mary Beth’s and John’s looked so good.”  Someone else mentioned a second piece of pie and the next thing I knew, Brenda was up and back with another piece of fudge pie.  “Y’all kept talking about it, so I just decided to do it,” she said.

Margaretta pointed out that the slices were really small and I agreed.   I suggested that we could split a second piece of pie, but that idea was quickly shot down.  They were small slices, after all.  I finished my ice cream and got a second piece of pie.  “Do you want me to bring you one?” I asked Margaretta.  She shook her head.  But when I returned to the table, she was the next to get up, returning with her own second piece of pie. 

We were laughing almost too much to eat by then, and a couple of people stopped to mention that we seemed to be having way too much fun.  This is not the first time that comment has been made to us.  It’s not the first time I’ve had two desserts either.  And I might have eaten pie for breakfast once or twice.  Hey, it was strawberry pie, so it was fruit.  Right?  You only live once – sometimes you just have to do what makes you happy.  Eating a second piece of pie is a very small thing in the grand scheme of things.  But if you can’t break out of the norm with small things, how are you going to ever break out with larger things?  Extra dessert is just practice for bigger adventures.

Some of my best memories are from times I stepped out of my comfort zone.  The first time I took an airplane flight, I traveled to Denver for a livestock related competition, as a high school senior. (I expect this was a little out of my parents’ comfort zone, too, and I am grateful that they had the courage to let me do it.)  I flew to New York, alone, to a writer’s conference, where I knew not one single person.  It was a week full of new experiences, learning, getting feedback from successful authors and meeting people who shared the same dream.  I took my new horse, one I was still not quite comfortable with, to a show and decided to enter a class I had never tried.  Musical sacks, it was called, the equine version of musical chairs where you had to race to a sack on the ground when the music stopped, jump off your horse to stand on the sack, and repeat until only one horse and rider were left.  Sometime during the chaos of that class, I forgot to be nervous with her and won a good ribbon.  I drove to hundreds of horse shows, many times alone, and drove back late at night with only the radio for company. I made some of my best memories with friends I would never have met in my other “normal” life.  I was in my first play when I was almost fifty and uncovered a skill I didn’t know I had.  I drove to Memphis to visit a high school friend and see a concert.  I hesitated at first because it was a non-seated concert and it was a long drive, but we were captivated by experiencing the show from the edge of the stage.  I was inspired to go to another concert just like that one, this time alone in a strange venue.  I scored a spot on the edge of the stage, sandwiched between strangers, and had one of my best nights in years. 

 I have learned a valuable lesson from all these things. Don’t hesitate to eat the second piece of pie, or the extra cookies. Have birthday cake for breakfast, even if it’s not your birthday.  Take the trip, buy the new dress, use the fancy towels you got for Christmas, go to the concert, even if you have to go alone.  Ride your new horse in an untried event, jump in the deep end.  And be sure to hang out with people who will join you in a second piece of pie – those are the people you need in your life.

 

It's Going to be Cool!

 

I have noticed over the years how themes recur in our lives, sometimes just when we need them.  The last few days have been like that.  I’ve been suffering a severe case of writer’s block, or whatever you want to call it.  I’ve started a dozen things, gotten stuck, started more things, stared at the computer screen and walked away. 
Sometimes it’s like that – a flood of words gives way to a period of drought.  As Willie Nelson says, sometimes you have to wait for the rain to fill up the well again. So, I resigned myself to waiting until something opened the sluice. 

I saw an interview with Ashley McBryde, just after her Grammy win.  The last question was an interesting one – if you could go back to a time in your life with the knowledge you have now, what would you say to yourself?  Obviously, she has already given this some thought because she has a pretty quick answer.  She mentioned learning guitar at age 9, and then she said, “I would go back to my 16-year-old self, when I was angry and frustrated and trying to figure out how I was going to do all this.”   She went on to say that she would not tell herself what was going to happen, but she would tell herself that it was going to be cool.  She would say that she was going to get a text from Reba McEntire and she wouldn’t say what it was about, but that it would be cool.  (Ashley had gotten a text from Reba saying congratulations on her Grammy.) I thought this was a great answer.  All 16-year-olds need to hear this – all teens are wrestling with their future.  They all need to hear that it’s going to be all right;  it’s going to be cool. 

Just a few days earlier, I saw the documentary just released about my great-aunt Ophelia, better known as Minnie Pearl.  Facing the Laughter looked at her life and her career and included a whole bunch of her peers who spoke kindly and emotionally about their memories of her.  Almost every single one talked about her advice and support and the love they shared.  Ophelia has been gone from this world for almost thirty years now, but they still treasure the things she brought to their lives.  What better legacy can you leave?  She grew up in a small town, in a family that had never had a member in show business.  They didn’t know exactly what to think when this plain little girl announced that she was going down that path.  It was an unusual and treacherous journey for a young woman, especially in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  But she never looked aside.  Her path diverged, from a career as a dramatic actress to a flamboyant country comic.  I wonder if she ever thought of those words of Robert Frost, “Two paths diverged … and I took the one less traveled by.”  She took what she thought was a road that was not her final destiny, a road that turned out to be just the right one for her.

Her childhood dreams came true in a way she didn’t expect, and she not only became famous, she became an inspiration and an encourager.  Amy Grant told the story of Sarah Ophelia Cannon speaking at her eighth grade graduation.  She said it was the first time she ever remembered a speaker turning around to directly address her and her classmates about their future and their dreams.  She said that with her attention to them, she made them feel “seen” and that they were important.  Years later, they met again, when Amy was becoming a star herself, and they became so close that she named her own daughter “Sarah.”

As I was thinking of all these things and trying to get them in some coherent form on paper, I saw a Facebook meme from a page I follow – “some of the best days of your life haven’t happened yet.  Keep going.”  I think this is advice Ophelia would have given.  And I think Ashley McBryde would embrace it too.  Two very different women from different generations who both have seen their dreams come true, in the same industry, on the same stage, but in very different ways and at very different times.

I was lucky to have a lot of people who encouraged my dreams and plans.  Even if they didn’t tell me in so many words, my family always made me feel I could do anything I set out to do.   They encouraged me to try things, and if they had private misgivings, they never let me see them.  I had teachers that encouraged me, even though they thought I was making a mistake when I chose marriage over college. 

I wish all young people had someone to tell them these things.  I wish someone would tell them to try all kinds of new things – to not be timid or unsure.  Not to worry about failing or not measuring up to perfection.  To keep searching for the thing that can ignite passion and bring joy.  I wish I could tell every sixteen-year-old to hang on - that it’s going to be cool.

Minnie's Night

 

I really didn’t know what to expect last Thursday night, when my friend David and I drove to Belmont University’s Fisher Center.  I had received the invitation in December for what was called a screening of a new movie about my great-aunt, Minnie Pearl, who I knew simply as Ophelia.  I had been so obsessed about my clothes, I hadn’t given much thought to what was going to happen once I got there.  It was there, in small letters just under the date and time: “cocktail attire.”  I wasn’t exactly certain what cocktail attire is these days, but I was absolutely certain that I didn’t have any.  I didn’t even have dressy shoes since I threw away my only pair when I stepped into a mud hole and decided they would never be the same again.  I called my friend David and told him I needed a date.  “Where are we going?” he asked.  (Everyone needs a friend like that!)  “Do you have a suit?” I asked. 

I don’t know what I would have done had David not agreed to go with me to the Fisher Center.  It is a beautiful place, although a little intimidating.  I realized soon after entering the building that I needn’t have worried about my clothes because there were so many people there, no one would have noticed what I was or wasn’t wearing.  Other than my family members and a couple of friends, I didn’t recognize a soul.   “Who are all these people?” I kept asking.  David didn’t know either.

As we found our seats in the theater for the program, I looked around in awe and thought of all the lives Ophelia had touched and all the laughter she brought to us.  I thought about her early career, during the 1940’s, when her stories of the folks at Grinders Switch brought a brief respite to those worried about family members fighting in a faraway place.  I thought about the service men she entertained in her travels during the early USO tours and the hospitals she visited.  She didn’t start out to be a comic, but she came to embrace her calling, realizing fully what a gift it is to make people laugh.  “Facing the Laughter” is the title of the film.  I think I can guess why they chose that title.  Learning to laugh at yourself is not an easy thing.

The night honored both Minnie Pearl and Ophelia Cannon, with Ophelia taking more of the spotlight than her alter ego in the funny dress and hat.  Person after person stepped up to talk about her kindness, her class and how she inspired and encouraged them.  One spoke of advice she gave during a low point in his career, advice that he put in a song he shared.  Another told about a speech that touched her; others spoke about long friendships that sustained and brought great joy.  At one point during the evening, David leaned over and asked if I remembered the night a bunch of us went with her to one of her television appearances  and when the show was over, she said into the microphone, “Mary Beth, y’all be careful driving home!”

She was a celebrity, known the world over.  And she was my family. My great-aunt, who sat at our dining table and told stories with her sisters and our family.  My great-aunt, who served fancy Christmas dinner at her dining table and gave a little girl from the country a taste of “society.”  My great-aunt, who encouraged me to be who I was and showed me how to follow my own path.  My great-aunt, who sat with us at the hospital when my mom had surgery for breast cancer.  My great-aunt, who modeled class and grace, even when the world wasn’t watching. 

My great-aunt who gave me a bridal tea, and who called me after my young husband’s funeral and shared words I never shared with anyone else. 

I can look at videos of Minnie Pearl now and remember a 50-year plus career.  I can look at picture in an old album and remember a dear family member.  I just wish I could sit at our dining table again and experience the love and laughter we were privileged to share.