I din’nt call you!
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Nope, Not Me
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Author Archives: Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author
You Can’t Rush the Blush
The conditions, in its favor
The moment of magic, short-lived
But when it happens, we all stop
to look
to admire
to take pictures for safe-keeping that will always be a reminder –
There might not always be a pot of gold, but if you remember to look,
there will always be something that will blush for our benefit.
via Blush
“Eternity Don’t Sound So Good”
It’s Sunday, revival time at the Baptist church. I don’t like it much, but the punch and cookies are good, that is if I can hold my patience until the end when all the “amen-ing” is done.
I stuff those cookies in my mouth two at a time. “Gracious me, Cono,” says Mrs. Allridge, “looks like you ain’t eaten anything for a month.”
Almost every time I get to one of those revivals, the grownups say, “Cono, don’t you want to be saved?”
“From what?” I say.
“Why the Devil hisself,” they say and then they add a bunch of amen’s to go along with it.
Unless they’re thinking about my Dad being the Devil, I just say, “No thank you.”
“But what are you waitin for? We could baptize you right now and all your sins would be forgiven and you would have eternal life.”
As far as sinning goes, I guess I’ve done my fair share of it, Amen.
“What’s eternal mean?” I ask.
“Well, it means you’ll live forever with Jesus right next to you.”
I picture Jesus standing right next to me, while I was thunk, thunk, thunkin’ on a woodpile forever and ever into eternity. And it doesn’t appeal to me one iota. Last year when we lived with Aunt Nolie, I didn’t have much chopping to do. But now, I have to chop all the time, Chop, chop to make sure Mother has enough wood for the cookstove at the Tourist Court. Chop, chop so Dad won’t lay into me.
Anyway, I’ve heard stories about how some churches take a poor person’s last dime, so they can put more gold up by the Jesus statue. Then, a penny-less old woman with only one shoe and five starving children crawls away with her head all covered up, as if she’s ashamed of being broke.
It doesn’t make no sense to me whatsoever. It seems to me that Jesus would want you to keep most of your money, so you don’t have to starve and die and can at least make it to church to pray. What gets me is watching them churchgoers and knowing that they talk all big about Jesus, but when they get home, they just keep doing their sinning anyway, like they’d forgotten every word they’d learned.
Maybe all you have to do is say you believe in Jesus and then you’ll be saved no matter how you act. But what do I know? I ain’t been saved yet.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham
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via Patience
Be Open to the World
I wait for you to come out of your shell
for you to incubate and percolate
into your perfect self
The world is not always a scary place
Concentrate
Communicate
Fear will dissipate
You can become the Goddess of Love
Just open your gate
Make this your world to punctuate
And we will celebrate your glory.
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via Incubate
Not All Noise Hurts
But if you prefer silence …
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I Will NOT Be a Blank Page
Meet Me Half Way
Meet me half way.
Without compromise our heels will blister
our feet will tear, crack and falter
We will stumble and crumble
and the road will rise and swallow us whole.
The demons will tug on our insides
until nothing is left but slivers of ice
cold and unforgiving.
Meet me halfway
and the rocks and cactus needles will subside
the path will straighten
the surface will be shed of it’s splinters
the shards of glass will dissolve into sand.
Meet me halfway
and together we will weather
each strenuous road
as we take turns carrying cargo too heavy for one.
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via Uncompromising
This Ain’t Us
This Ain’t Us
I didn’t grow up with “Good morning, Cono” smiles or quiet and calm conversations around the supper table. Maybe, we just learned not to speak our mind. Especially since one or two of the minds around the kitchen table might not like our notions.
If somebody were to peek in the window at suppertime, they’d have seen four mouths that moved due to chewing, not from that risky pastime called “talking”. In fact, if we tried to catch each word that came out of our mouths, especially at suppertime, there wouldn’t be enough to fill a soup bowl. And if we were counting on words for our nourishment, well then, we would have starved plumb to death.
I grew up believing that conversation cost money and since those were hard times, Mother and Dad tried to save every penny they could. So if Dad were to tell me, “Son, please leave the pie in front’a Ike’s plate,” it would have cost fifty cents and we could have put that half dollar towards new shoes for Delma.
“Son, the woodpile’s low so I need you to chop the wood today please,” would have cost seventy-five cents and we’d have been chewing on lambsquarters for the rest of our poor lives.
Now on the other hand, when he looked directly at me, pointed to that woodpile and said, “Get busy!” he’d just stockpiled a bundle of money. And if it weren’t for him buying his liquor, we would have had enough money for several good meals and maybe even a new dress for Mother.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham
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via Fact
Step Away from the Ledge
What are you doing way up there?
Are you trying to branch out? Expand your horizons? Or deaden them?
How many ladders do you need? Are two not enough?
Really, you don’t need ladders.
Get down off that ledge. It won’t solve anything and, besides, it makes me nervous.
Perhaps you could climb the shadows instead. Climb them until their dark is gone. Climb them until all you see are those useless ladders. The ones you don’t need in order to arrive safely at the place you want to be.
Don’t be afraid. The ground will support you.
And it’s amazing how high you can jump if you try.
photo by C. Dennis-Willingham
via Branch
He Ain’t Normal
Although I’d thought about it many a time, I made it through half of the summer without killing No-Account. So has Aunt Nolie for that matter. Her and that dead-beat husband of hers seem be back to some kind of normal — which for them means the typical bed grunting.
I see No-Account out the window. He’s brought Dad home from another hot springs pool that was supposed to help with his arthritis.
No-Account walks through the door. He’s supporting a man under his arm that looks nothing like my dad. Looks like he weighs no more than a baby bird. Ninety pounds is what they say he is now. Skinny as a rail, not worth a grain of salt. Definitely not strong enough to lift a hand on me — barely strong enough to lift a word.
Excerpt from the novel, No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham.
painting by Edvard Munch – image credit
via Typical
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 