New Album by the Wailin' Jennys

Click the link to play the music to their new album.  It's the whole album, so don't think you're finished after the first song:

https://www.prairiehome.org/story/2017/10/12/fifteen-wailin-jennys

Heritage and Family Get-Togethers

Families are interesting. You have his relatives, her relatives, his kids, her kids, their kids, assorted spouses, partners, grandkids, step kids, all with different backgrounds and expectations. My family, from five, six or maybe more generations has been in Kentucky (arrived between 1797 – 1835). Kentucky was not “technically” a southern state, but my relatives in western Kentucky considered themselves that. They were sharecroppers, coopers, bricklayers, farmers, shopkeepers, preachers, keepers of the poor house, soldiers, tobacco growers, prison guards, and politicians. They came to Kentucky from South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Vermont, New Jersey, Maryland, and Tennessee. My husband’s family has been in the south just as long. They were in Tennessee before 1800. His family ended up in Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. They came from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, New Jersey, West Virginia, Missouri, and Mississippi. His family members were farmers, mechanics, ministers, millers, soldiers and railroad engineers. My family was more rural. His family held more “city dwellers”.

What you call your parents or grandparents might be a regional thing or it might just be something that started because of what the first grandkid called the grandparents. My niece’s sons differentiate between their grandmother and great grandmother by calling one “cat mawmaw” and the other “dog mawmaw” because one has cats and the other dogs. My cousin was called “Dolly” (real name Mary Francis) all her life because her sister thought she was a doll the first time she saw her. One aunt has always been Aunt Shorty (real name Mary Agnes). I’ve never asked why on that one, but she IS fairly short. With blended families it can get interesting too. His kids call him Dad. Her kids call him Dave. Their baby calls him Dave instead of Dad (usually) because that’s what she hears her sisters, living in the same house, calling him most often. The first grandkids called me Mawmaw and the step grandkids are torn between calling me the same thing and adapting to a more non-southern name. I’ll still be Mawmaw on cards and in speaking about myself, since that’s how the “first” grandkids named me. I called my grandmother Mamma and grandfather was Papa. Other cousins called them Mamma Gray and Papa Gray. My kids called their grandparents Mawmaw and Pawpaw (they still do). I hear others calling grandparents Nanna, Nonnie, Grandma, Grandmother. I hear parents called Mom, Mother, Dad, Daddy, Papa. Where you live plays a part in these things too.

I’m proud of our heritage and our family. We smile and speak to strangers on the street. We take cookies to new neighbors. We say ya’ll. It’s our way of life. Folks should learn there’s a difference between southern and redneck; a difference between slow and laid back; between humor and sarcasm; between taking yourself too seriously and laughing with the crowd. Our family is very well represented with intelligence, education and opinions. There aren’t many afraid to express their opinions, but they all respect the others by listening to those opinions and then by expressing their own. We have very lively conversations. It’s so much fun to watch the younger generations find their place in those discussions. I like to think that those same discussions were going on around an oil lamp in Kentucky (or Texas) farm houses one hundred and fifty years ago as they debated the issues over the civil war or crops, just as we debate wars, economy, education and every other topic now.

Everything is always changing. We incorporate all these new visions and heritages into our family, and they bend and change as they blend in to the existing family structure. It makes everything very interesting.

It Brings Tears To My Eyes

Twice in the last couple of weeks I've teared up at the sight of two different frail little old men in one piece jumpsuits leaning on their grocery carts, all alone, in the grocery store. Their thin, short, white hair and their bruised, wrinkled arms and faces and the shuffling walk as they tried to find what they wanted in the newly reorganized grocery store that was probably familiar to them last week.... Yeah, it's been one of those weeks and those little old men reminded me of my dad who died in 2003. Then I remember how impatient I was with my mother (who died in 2000), as I hear the same impatience in my own son's voice and wish there were "do-overs". Then I was re-reading my daughter's blog (she posted this entry last year) and the dam of tears broke. It's very eloquent and I'm going to post it here - I'll tell her later. She wrote it so well and it speaks of a captured moment of time, regret and happiness.

"If I could take a snapshot of my 20 year old self that would encompass everything I thought I was at this point in life this is what it would look like:

An above-average height girl, still slim, but without the athletic edge to the look anymore. Fair-skinned and proud. Eyes more green than ever. Her mother's nose, still dotted with some childish freckles. Slender fingers just beginning to show age. Two crooked pinkies from years of basketball. Thick golden brown hair with a slight red hue in the right light, barely touching the middle of the back when straightened. A comfortable smile . . . and semi-straight teeth thanks to high-school braces :-). An aura that lets you know things have, if even for just a little while, fallen into place. Call it my own paranoia, but those laugh lines and crows feet have started to show. I personally, find them endearing. They show that you have actually lived-and enjoyed it! But, I will note that I purchased my first tube of anti-wrinkle face lotion: gasp!

There are so many stories that only my eyes and soul can tell, and they too will one day be lost with time. I could write out a poetic or catchy paragraph about all the profound things I've experienced and seen, but that wouldn't suffice. Overall, I realize that I too have stories and images shaping my thoughts that no other person has. I never knew my grandfather as anything but the good ol' Kentucky man, who loved his wife, loved his religion, loved his one piece jumpers and his buttermilk with cornbread. He lived a whole lifetime before I knew him. I didn't know him as the war veteran, as the prison guard, as the boy flirting with my grandmother and playing ball with other kids, and teaching my mom how to drive a Volkswagen bug up a hill in Tallahassee. I remember him as an avid Cardinal's fan, a man who cried because he couldn't fix his own meals because his wife was no longer there to do it for him. A frail, right shoulder slightly drooped, man who had trouble holding conversations with his own brother in the same room because he couldn't hear him very well. That's not the man he was in his own eyes. In his eyes, he was still the man that I never got a glimpse of.

I won't always be the still slightly slim girl with a freckle dotted nose, and red hue to my long hair, but to me, that's who I am, that's who I'm going to always be. My eyes and soul will always have the same stories and experiences to share . . . until I no longer can." -- by Riley Atchley