Author: CeceD

Cece DuBois is a modern day Polymath. She is a writer of prose, verse, and song. She paints portraits, builds furniture, sings, laughs, and prays. She's a designer -- of homes, and wardrobes, and ideas. She's known a life of being locked in a cage so small that her wings were stunted. But through the past few years she's broken free, traversed the shattered familial ties, and soared to the higher ground of a healing Spirit. In high school, Sister Edith told her to "choose one" of her many creative talents and discard the rest. Instead, Cece became determined to breathe life into every one, as long as she herself drew breath. Cece lives in Middle Tennessee, but has the heart of a gypsy, and loves the richness that adventures of the creative mind provide. She sees each day as a blessing, and all things as happening for good.

::Upsy Down::

ADIRONDACK

“Those chairs are upsy down.” His shrill young voice echoed across the water, hovered in the air, trailed the heron down river.

I opened one eye to try and locate him. His red hat bobbed in the tall grass and disappeared. I sighed and settled back against the Adirondack.

“Whatever,” I murmured to no one. The sun was hot and high, the locust buzz was steady. I felt a bead of sweat let go and travel slowly down the center, between my bosoms. My fingernail played with the peeling paint on the arm of the chair.

“UPSY!” he crowed. I raised my head, squinted both eyes open.

“What?!”

“YOU! You’re upsydown!” Oh, for god’s sake. I settled back.

“Jasper, STOP. I’m tryin’ to relax.”

“Well, you’re relaxin’ but…” he trailed off. I heard him laugh, then saw him jump in the water, watched him stream across like an alligator, right before the chomp and roll. Just as I started to shut my eyes, his head popped up near my feet, gasping for air.

“You’re upsy down!” I raised my head and looked at him, then noticed something floating down stream.

“There goes your hat.”

He let out a shriek and started paddling madly toward it. He caught up to it, wrestled it for show, poured out the water, and slapped it on his head. I closed my eyes, and listened to the splashing rhythm as he slowly made his way back to shore.

He climbed out, dripping, and slopped his way up to me.

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you’re upsy down.”

I sat upright and stared at him.
“For god’s sake, Jasper, what in hell are you talkin’ about?”

He shrugged his tan shoulders, turned and walked over to the water’s edge. He peered at his reflection.

“Well,” he said, “from here you can’t tell. But from over there,” he pointed a bony finger to the far shore. “Everything is upsy down.”

He looked back at me and grinned.
“In the water.”

photo credit: http://www.catherineandersonstudio.com

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::Don’t Leave::

Don't Leave

I read a quote today from Jamie Lee Curtis. She was answering a question about marriage. She and husband Christopher Guest have been married over 30 years which in this day and time is some sort of record. In Hollywood it’s such a rarity that I guess a couple of that standing could pretty much sit in their lawn chairs and charge admission.

But when she was asked about their “secret” to marital success, she answered in three words: “Don’t get divorced.”

Later in the discussion, Jamie Lee said she was tempted to write a book about marriage and call it, “Don’t Leave.”

I rolled that around in my head for a couple of hours. I’ve been divorced for 23 years – almost as long as I was married. I’ve slugged through nearly a quarter century by myself. I take out the garbage, I roll out the trash cans, and I roll them back. I pump my gas. I put oil in my car. I paint my shutters, and walls, and trim, and doors. I shove my furniture around. I cut shelves, and I install them. I hang pictures, and brackets, and hooks, and blinds, and window treatments. I found a scrubby thing with a handle so that I can wash my own back. And at the end of the day, I climb into the bed and sleep with my arm by my side.

I’m tired.

And so, okay, I was thinking about Jamie Lee and Christopher, and thinking that building a marriage is sort of like building a house. You get together, and you talk a lot, sharing dreams about that house. You each have some ideas in your head you think are the best, and so together you bring a bunch of lumber, a couple of great hammers, a saw, and you start.

My Daddy was a builder. He was a master builder. And my Granddad was, too. They made building beautiful things look easy. They measured, and carefully considered the straightness of each board. They drew out, with exact precision, what the plan would be. Every fraction was checked and accounted for. Blueprints.

They never got ahead of themselves. First things first. I used to watch my Daddy frame in a wall: he’d use his carpenter’s square, his level, and he’d be certain the wall was framed straight and plumb. Then he and my Granddad would lift it up off the ground, and settle it into place.

It was all slow and painstaking, sometimes I watched and thought to myself, What difference does that make? That quarter of an inch? But it did, indeed, make a difference. Letting a tiny fraction slide on the front end, can send you off a cliff at the other.

So their patience always paid off. Eventually, one step at a time, something beautiful was constructed. And each creation has endured through the decades.

So going back to Jamie Lee and Christopher I’m guessing they, like anyone else, have had their rough spots; their places where the measurement was off by a quarter of an inch, maybe more. But rather than throw in the hammer, they corrected and carried on. That’s what’s required anytime we’re building a thing of beauty. Part of the beauty in that thing is the commitment to it. The willingness, the steadfastness, the refusal to cut and run when things aren’t quit lining up straight and plumb.

Maybe the marital ceremony should start to include a small stone, or relic each participant hands the other. On these are inscribed the words:”Don’t Leave.” Because, in the end, that’s what we’re saying after all.

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::Bread Heels on My Family’s Table::

BREAD HEELS

We called them bread heels. The ends on loaves of bread. Once a loaf was opened, it was each user’s responsibility to keep the end slapped up against the next slice inside the plastic bag, so the remainder would stay fresh.
When there were no slices left, the two heels took on a life of their own, and a sort of bread heel caste system was born.

Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon my daddy would slather two heels with Miracle Whip, and make a sandwich with slices of raw potato and purple onion. This was the working class life of bread heels.

Then there were the heels that were lined up on a baking sheet, covered with cheese product, and slid under the broiler just long enough for the yellow stuff to char around the edges. Middle class bread heels lived through fire in a gas oven to become the cheesy toast served with potato soup on a Friday night.

Other times they were thrown into the skillet with the broken handle that lived in the oven. The ones that piled up in that skillet got hard as a rock. When there were enough of them, my mother clamped the food grinder to the kitchen table, and ground the petrified heels down to a powder.

She took that bread heel flour, mixed it with eggs and vanilla, buttermilk, molasses, spices, raisins, poured it into a cake pan, and baked it in the oven. This was bread crumb pudding; dark, dense and moist, it was just about the best thing you’d ever want to put in your mouth.

It’s been said that bread heels the world over have talked amongst themselves, and considered with reverence the fact that the heels of breadcrumb pudding had indeed lived the upper crust life of bread heels everywhere.

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::Shoeless Joe and Me::

SHOELESS JOE 2

“God knows I gave my best in baseball at all times, and no man on earth can truthfully judge me otherwise.” – Shoeless Joe Jackson

I got up this morning, flipped on the TV, and discovered−happily−that Field of Dreams had just started.

Field of Dreams has to be one of my all time favorite movies. It’s about listening to that voice inside, following your gut, and discovering that the dreams you dream are often found in places and forms you least expect.

The movie centers on a family who lives on a farm in Iowa. The man−Ray−plows under a huge portion of his land and turns it into a baseball field. He goes all the way, with flood lights and bleachers. His extended family and the town community are skeptical, they say he’s lost his mind. But his wife, Annie, and his daughter, Karin, stand by him.

Ball players who’ve passed away show up on Ray’s field. But the only people who can see them are Ray, his wife Annie, and daughter Karin. The ball players are invisible to the cynics. Which only reinforces their contempt for the whole set up.

One of the ball players who shows up on Ray’s field is Shoeless Joe Jackson. That jogged my memory, and I started thinking; I knew there’d been a scandal that forced Shoeless Joe out of baseball, but what was it? What did Joe do?

So I read up on what’s called, “the Black Sox Scandal.” Joseph Jefferson “Shoeless Joe” Jackson and seven teammates on the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Joe claimed that his teammates gave his name to the gamblers even though he never agreed to participate. And the teammates admitted that Joe never attended the meetings where the fix was discussed and arranged.

There’s no debate that, during the games in question, Shoeless Joe played his ass off−throwing nothing, and hitting everything.

Joe and his teammates were acquitted following a jury trial in 1921, but newly appointed baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis barred them all from professional baseball, for life.

Jackson always claimed his innocence. He contended that teammates got him to sign a document of confession he didn’t fully understand.

That is very likely; Shoeless Joe could not read or write.

Ever since the 1921 ruling, folks have continued to fight to restore Shoeless Joe’s name.

People who knew Joe were clear: he couldn’t be guilty. Joe was the kind of guy everybody wanted as a friend. He was an honest man with a huge heart, and his love of kids was even bigger.

Today I was told that an appeal sits on the Commissioner’s desk right now, to clear Shoeless Joe Jackson from the lifetime ban. This would allow Jackson to take his rightful place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Many fans are waiting for word on the decision, eager to see the ban removed, and to gather in Cooperstown to at long last celebrate Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Shoeless Joe died on December 5, 1951. So he will not be present for any induction. But he lived his life, and died, knowing the truth about himself. I trust that gave him some comfort in the dark moments.

So I’m watching this amazing movie, wiping my eyes when Ray meets his departed dad, John, and thinking of my own situation.

I feel passionately for Shoeless Joe Jackson, in part because I know what it’s like to be falsely and publicly accused. And I know how, even after being declared innocent, the stain of accusation remains.

Many people you once knew as close friends look at you through that distant lens of “guilty even though proven innocent.” It is a buckling burden; a yoke I’m still getting used to.

I remind myself that the wheel turns slowly, but it does turn. Sometimes it seems like it doesn’t. But it really does.

In the movie I hear Ray’s dad, John, ask Ray,
“Is this heaven?” Ray says,
“It’s Iowa. Is there a heaven?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s where dreams come true.” Ray responds,
“Maybe this is heaven.”

I muffle a sob, and remind myself that it all evens out in the end.

And if Shoeless Joe could bear up under all that till he finally reached his own Field of Dreams − I will, too.

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::TRUTH LIVES HERE::

Hand World

Truth is something I think most claim to be aligned with. Many people swear they are always on a quest for truth. But I wonder: does anyone know what they’re saying? And if they do, do they really mean what they say?

I go through deliberate periods of brutal self-examination. I’ll confess, I don’t do it as often as I should. But when I’m in the process of it, I have a “no bullshit” rule; I force myself to face the true things about me and how I view life. It’s not fun. It can be exhausting, and humbling. But to live authentically, or “in truth,” isn’t it crucial? For me, the answer is yes.

I think we want to believe we are who we claim to be. But pretty much always, in many ways (sometimes most ways) we’re just not; it’s very easy to get off track and not even know it. And to not even think about that possibility.

We often choose positions and embrace opinions about things, and then “back the information in” that will support what we’ve already decided. It’s true. We all do it.

And we gravitate to others who agree, because it’s so much easier to surround ourselves with people on every strata who reaffirm our stories. … Then we can convince ourselves that what we’ve chosen to believe is authoritative; good, and noble. Being a member of such a group renders us reassuringly superior. It’s great to feel so right.

With the best of intentions, we dress our parsing, our denial, in beautiful stories … stories of bravery and justification; stories of righteousness and independence.

And yet, truth just sits there. It does not shout. It does not defend itself or try to convince. Nor does truth move, or shrink, or change, based on our opinion about it, or our unwillingness to acknowledge it.

Every night, when the darkness comes, and we lay our heads down on our pillows, that truth … that quiet, unassuming truth that lives at the center of every good thing … revisits our hearts. We know. In that deepest part, we all know.

And every night, in each of these quiet, private moments shimmers an opening; the chance to say “yes” to the rattling of our tidy preconceptions. Relaxing our hold is the willingness through which we can climb, into a world fraught with things that were, things that are; a vast universe of open-ended questions and limitless possibilities. The mysterious and miraculous are waiting for us there.

It only takes one brave, courageous moment to let it pull us out of our defensive rightness.

Just once, let’s refuse to roll over, turn our backs to it; let’s refuse to continue the nurturing of our own self contempt.

This one small choice; this different choice – when applied in enough hearts – is sure to transform this weary, broken world.

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