Allissa: A baker's dozen

Erica and I had the opportunity to spend a few days "watching" two-year-old Allissa while her sister, five-year-old Melanie, was in the hospital for surgery.

Watching turned to impromptu photo sessions ... and here are a few of the results.

I ask for this hair bow by name. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

See? I can sit quietly. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Follow the yellow brick road. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Exactly where are the french fries? Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Whose idea was it to paint this bench? Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

This is more like it. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Hang on Sloopy ... Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Swing sets, a cuppy and fries, oh my! Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

My blanket and passy're looking good right now. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

They can't leave my hair alone. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

So ... you think I need a manager? Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

My mind is on puppydogs. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Bye. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Art in architecture

TG, Erica, and I went downtown today for a wedding. After leaving the reception we drove a few blocks to the salmon-hued wonder of gothic architecture that is First Presbyterian Church.

The sky was so blue at first, but the light was quickly fading! I snapped photos until a horde of hungry mosquitoes attempted to bear me away to scratch-it land on their gossamer wings.

(TG says the skeeters don't bother him. What's up with that?)

We discovered that the parents of President Woodrow Wilson are buried in the churchyard cemetery.

Of course I got pictures! Of the headstones, that is.

I'll save those for another day.

Established 1795. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Gothic mystique. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
A cloud piercer. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The cemetery side. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Misty mullions. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Busking to beat the band

Tourists thronged Savannah's riverfront last Saturday.

There to keep them entertained was this young busker who, though his repertoire was limited to Joy to the World (the Christmas carol) and a second, unrecognizable (at least to us), tune, was raking in the dough.

Long live Capitalism ... all the more beautiful when your capital is yourself.

Boy busker. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Bonny, bony Bonaventure

Threshold. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010Thanks to Stephanie Lincecum at Southern Graves, I now know there is a word for those inordinately fond of cemeteries.

Taphophile: One who enjoys wandering amongst the tombs.

Like Stephanie and many others, I am a taphophile.

It's not weird! Really! I am normal.

My girls explore Bonaventure. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

(Even if Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers is my current bedside table reading.)

(Great read. Fascinating and funny.)

The truncated column symbolized a life cut short. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The thing about cemeteries is the stillness. You step onto that ground and the world with all its confusion falls away. Immediately your mind clears.

Brooding angels abound. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

It's as though there's a thick angel-feather barrier around a cemetery; the pulsing clamor of life may be only a few feet away but somehow the sound is muted.

Watchcare. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

As raucous as things may get out on the street, the din rarely pierces the calm of a cemetery.

Resting place of Mrs. Carrie Dixon. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

There, the worst has already happened -- and for many, it was the best because upon death they gained heaven -- and what remains is peace.

The Morgan angel. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Preternatural peace.

And quiet. So quiet!

So many tiny graves. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

I'm all about that.

Even I -- a confirmed yammerer -- do not yammer in a cemetery.

The Remshart plot: graves like cradles. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

For nearly a decade we have lived less than a three-hour drive from Savannah, Georgia -- one of the most beautiful cities in America -- and until last Saturday I had been there only once.

Serene views and comforting nature. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

That once was in April, 2009, and on that day when I reached the gates of Bonaventure Cemetery, they were closed.

Last Saturday TG, I, Audrey, and Erica went to Savannah specifically to wander the lanes of Bonaventure.

A grave as small and innocent as its occupant. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

It was a treat.

If you have to decompose, take my word for it: This is the place.

Overwrought. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Although my companions weren't necessarily fellow taphophiles, they are good sports. TG's a sweetheart ... his tacit mantra where I am concerned is "Whatever makes you happy, baby, tickles me plumb to death."

Like a doorway to another world. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The girls knew they'd get fed lunch on Savannah's bustling riverfront at the conclusion of tomb-meandering, so they made the best of it and, I think, ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

TG chills at the Mercer family plot. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

We all like history and Bonaventure is history on hallucinogens. Almost at once you get high on it. Fantastic feeling; a little spooky and a lot heavy.

It's the afterlife on performance-enhancing substances.

The faith of a child. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Like many people, I have read John Berendt's bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, about Savannah antiques dealer Jim Williams, who murdered his boy-toy assistant, Danny Hansford, in the library of the Mercer House in Monterey Square on May 2, 1981.

The grave of Johnny Mercer. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Jim Williams was acquitted of the crime -- after no fewer than four trials -- but died shortly afterwards, of pneumonia and heart failure, at the age of 59.

The Mercer House in Monterey Square. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

An evocative photo of the Bird Girl monument -- which stood for half a century in Bonaventure Cemetery less than five miles from the Mercer House -- adorned the book's cover.

So do I. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The book and the statue gave Savannah -- and, as an unexpected corollary, Bonaventure Cemetery -- a life beyond its charming centuries-old southern somnolence.

It tolls for thee. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The Bird Girl eventually was removed from Bonaventure and placed in Savannah's Telfair Museum of Art, to protect her from damage done by touchy-feely tourists.

Pedimented like there's no tomorrow. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

So we didn't get to see her. Telfair Museum will be our destination on another visit to Savannah ... and the sooner the better.

Allured to brighter worlds and led the way. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The Mercer House was the ancestral home of American songwriter Johnny Mercer, who was laid to rest at Bonaventure in 1976.

The roads seem to go on forever. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

(Mr. Mercer wrote hundreds of songs, including Moon River. The song was inspired by the Wilmington River, which runs alongside Bonaventure's 160 acres. Johnny Mercer and several family members are interred within sight of the river.)

Angelic vigil at Mercer family graves. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

I had done a fair amount of research on Bonaventure Cemetery -- described by Oscar Wilde as "incomparable" -- but I found it somewhat different than I had expected.

Sentinel of the shadows. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

A bit less lush as to landscaping and caretaking in certain sections.

A bit sadder overall, with too much an air of the forgotten.

A great deal more breathtaking in its mystique-shrouded ambience.

An impressive temple vault. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Stephanie Lincecum wrote to me that there are "no words to describe it" ... and she is right.

But I'll keep trying.

Eerie detail of Mrs. Lawton's spectacular marker. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Superfluous to mention the Spanish moss, but to be sure, that lacy veil dripping and drooping from hundreds of live oaks is the thing that makes Bonaventure otherworldly. It is what makes it unique.

Contemplating eternity. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The granite and marble grave markers are larger than any I have ever seen or heard of. Many are staggeringly huge.

Several feature columns flanking massive doorways that would accommodate a gaggle of giants.

Marble and live oak. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

One wonders whether these were intended as portals into the next life.

At any rate, they're out of this world.

Mr. Myers was wealthy or loved or both. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

I lay on my back at one point attempting to get a shot of an obelisk, but even from that uncomfortable angle the whole of it would not fit into my camera's viewer.

Clearly the sculptor -- or the family -- suffered from Washington Monument envy.

Back view of Morgan monument. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The Morgan monument stupefied me for at least fifteen minutes. The angel's stance, her attitude, her wings, her lifted hand, the plaintive sigh of leaves and moss ... divine.

Laura. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The family vaults with their ornate doors oxidized to rich verdigris are each more lovely than the last.

They'll stop you dead in your tracks.

A pity they lead nowhere. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Corinne Elliott Lawton's fabulous -- and famous -- contemplative figure sits as she has for a century and a half, the river flowing at her marble back, guarding the poignant epitaph allured to brighter worlds and led the way.

Amelia. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

I would venture to say that once upon a time, folks put a great deal of effort into outdoing one another when burying their dead at Bonaventure.

"What kind of ego?" Audrey exclaimed at the forty-foot obelisk.

Beautiful repose. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

Fragmented syntax notwithstanding, I knew what she meant.

What kind indeed?

And what kind of devotion?

We will stand and guard tho' the angels sleep. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

The questions -- and their answers -- are borne tenderly aloft on hot whispering breezes at bonny, bony Bonaventure.

Inkling

I dream. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010It has been my desire for many years to be a writer. A "real" writer.

As in, make my living as a writer.

I'll thank you not to snicker! Lots of people do!

For ages the one item on my "list" of New Year's resolutions has been "Published."

I've wasted a lot of time. Why doesn't matter.

Now I write every day.

As with any dream that is so close to your heart it basically is your heart, sometimes it's interesting when it comes -- however undramatically -- true.

Not exactly my first rodeo.

In September, 2009, I was published in Reach Out Columbia, a local faith-based magazine.

I know it's not exactly a book deal, but you know what they say: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single delusion of grandeur.

My article was about the tree that fell on our nephew's truck while it was parked in our yard. 

Of course I drew a spiritual application! Wouldn't you like to know what it was? I can't remember.

Through a set of circumstances beyond my control, however, I never actually saw the issue of ROC with my article within its pages.

Seeing is believing.

This time is different ... this time, they sent me a copy. I am, after all, a contributing writer!

So thank you Reach Out Columbia, for publishing an expanded version of my original essay A Rune for June in the June~July~August 2010 issue.

And thank you, Editor Sue Duffy, for your too-kind praise of an emotional piece I wrote several Junes ago, never thinking it would enjoy a life beyond the friendly confines of my blog.

A Rune for June.

Although it probably should be, June is not my favorite month; that would be October. For reasons unknown to me, I am enamored of autumn above all other seasons. But on a recent evening as I walked in the humid gloaming, I considered the many faces and the sure fate of comely June.

June traces the lightning bug's glimmer, the cicada's whir, and the susurrus of warm wind in full-leafed overreaching branches to where time lapses into a pink-hued memory of effortless days. June at its coolest is a languid float in sparkling water; June at its hottest is the ronron of the pool pump and the clack of busy squirrels in tall pines.

June of all the months casts the tenderest, most wistful glance backward, and does it with dewy singing eyes. Sequestered in the soul of June is all the poignancy of all the love that ever was. Its roses, its moons, its skies, its blossom-scented air, its very existence summons belief in the all-wise God who put into motion all of June's excesses and all of its romances.

My Savior found me on a June night in 1972 at Camp Stallion in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. I had never heard the gospel presented until the moment when Brother Miller, Youth Director of Weller Avenue Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, told the group of teenagers assembled around a marshmallow-roasting fire of The One Who had died to take away their sins.

I don't remember if anyone besides me believed on Him that night; I only know that I did.

When June moved on, so did our fractured little family ... to Atlanta, that is, where at Forrest Hills Baptist Church I was baptized in obedience to Christ's command. On June 16, 1979, I became a happy bride only a few feet from the baptismal waters where I had professed my faith seven years before.

For thirty Junes it has been my privilege to be the wife of a precious Christian man ... and the fortunate mother of our four children, who serve the Lord even as adults. June, the midpoint of every swift-footed twelvemonth, distinctly reminds me of something I cannot afford to forget: the miraculous goodness and longsuffering of God.

And so to me, June's beauty and grace softens the calumnies of mankind ... if only for a moment. In an untouched June morning resides the clear light of forgiveness. June with its eager ambivalence embodies the siren call of wanderlust, the promise of adventure, the happy fact of a lengthy journey completed.

A June dawn beckons. A June day bestows. A June evening blesses. A June night beams. June's outrageous lambency and utter truthfulness increases flagging faith and soothes the bitter gall of heartbreak.

June's plangent song rides smoothly on its own fragrant breezes, heavy with nostalgia. June coos to its infants, laughs with its children, whispers to its brides, counsels courage to its aged, mourns with its dying. June inspires the poet, the lover, the artist, the builder, the naturalist, and the child of God.

When June at last languishes it lays to rest a measure of summer's innocence. June is a trembling novice, a brave knowing soul, a seasoned conspirator. June's gentle advances tune our beings to July's intemperate excesses, prepare us for August's overbearing and overlong contention.

June remembered is an unhurried embrace, a beseeching look, the final caress of a departing love. June forgotten is still, silent bells and an empty shell-strewn shore.

In June's going is the first peeking tendril of winter. Where Junes go, down light paths and dark, we follow.

And the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people. Isaiah 28:4-5 (KJV)

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The pics are now clickable and they embiggen ... some.

The cover. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010Sue calls it "ethereal" and "stunning." Photo Jennifer Weber 2010

A Rune for June Photo Jennifer Weber 2010