Category: ESSAYS

A person holding an umbrella over their head

Get Under the Umbrella

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.Southern women are nothing if not nurturing.  We learn it at our mother’s knee. And it’s a good thing.  The love and support of the women in my life have sustained me through many rough spots.  But, speaking for myself,  it’s easy to overdo it.  Last week while getting a manicure (my first this year…) the  manicurist said to me in her lovely Jamaican accent,  “You are carrying a large and beautiful umbrella, with many people under it… but you are not under the umbrella yourself!”

Her comment took me by surprise since I had just met her.  I didn’t ask how she knew that.  Perhaps coming from a more tranquil culture makes her more intuitive or maybe my appearance gave me away.  No matter; I knew she was right.

Self-care is hard work and takes time!  It’s easier to get instant gratification by making cookies for that grandchild than to do the cardio workout;  simpler to “do it myself” than let someone else struggle with the chore while I take that needed rest,  faster to answer the cell than to  let it go to voicemail, more expedient to run that last load of dishes than to get to bed on time.   I could go on, but if you’re reading this, you know the drill.   It’s insidious.  I don’t even see it happening until I’m caught in the downpour. And  I get lots of warm fuzzies for holding the umbrella over others.  But the Jamaican lady was right;  if I neglect myself, in time I will collapse and become someone else’s problem; the very last thing I want. It’s my responsibility to take care of myself.  Thanks for the reminder, pretty lady.

 

 

 

The South Travels With Me by Sally Whitney

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.Being southern is a vital part of who I am, a part I’ve never tried to disguise or discard. Growing up in North Carolina, I absorbed southern culture as easily as I inhaled air, and I thought about it just as much. It was my life; there was no need to question or remark on it.
The first time I realized southerners could be regarded as different, I was an undergraduate at Duke University. Although Duke is a southern school, many of its students come from other states and other countries. Not meaning any harm, they seemed unable to resist pointing out the oddity (to them) of our food, our wardrobes, and our accents.
Not long after college I left North Carolina and began a decades-long journey that included living in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, and New Jersey. I loved the people and the experiences I encountered in each of those states. My friends who live there will continue to be friends for the rest of my life. I learned from these women that we are more alike than different. Any preconceived ideas they had about me or I had about them were purely superficial. As co-workers, as elementary school parents, as church volunteers, we respected each other, even though our speech may have been peppered with different expressions and our food with different spices.
But that’s not to say I never had to defend my southern heritage. A New Jersey co-worker once asked me, “Why do southerners talk so slow?†Of course, the answer to that is easy: “Because we think before we speak.†Not a bad idea for anyone.
Most of the time—in fact, all of the time—my southern heritage is a blessing. Interest in people (chatting in the grocery store line always delivers entertaining tidbits), acceptance of the unusual (everybody in the south has a bizarre relative), reluctance to be rude in any situation (my mother would’ve disowned me if I ever ignored a comment made directly to me), and enduring patience (you don’t cut off somebody in line at the grocery store or on the way to the exit ramp) have served me well personally and professionally. As my son said when we were discussing the importance of manners in business: “You know, Mom, good manners are just treating other people like you want to be treated.â€
So I keep my southernisms with me all the time. I live in Maryland now, but no matter where I’ve lived, my sensibilities and my imagination live in the South. The short stories and novels I write are all set in the South, usually in North Carolina. And my leading characters are southern women. They’re intelligent, educated, perceptive, like many women everywhere, but they also have a vulnerability and compassion that I think are distinctly southern. Lydia Caton, protagonist of my new novel SURFACE AND SHADOW (coming from Pen-L Publishing in 2016) fights for her right to uncover the truth about a wealthy man’s suspicious death. Along the way, she’s drawn into helping the dead man’s mentally challenged granddaughter and his professionally trapped grandson.
She’s a complex southern woman—just like me.


Writing the real stuff

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.I write about southern women in the decades from the Civil War up to the advent of civil rights,  and let’s face it, that was a deeply troubled period in Southern history.   So  when one of my favorite characters loses her way  in one of the many conflicts and controversies, I want to rescue her,  to keep her strong,  to make her story prettier than I know it really was.  I love these women!  I want everyone to know how wonderful they are.  What if I get hate mail?  What if my friends desert me? What if my family thinks I’m disrespectful of them?  Maybe just skip the hard stuff.  Write a feel-good story.

Of course, this is the worst kind of hypocrisy.  And just the kind of platitudinous nonsense about the South that I rail against to all my friends who will listen.  What’s more, it’s insulting to  readers to assume they would prefer a one dimensional character to one who is flawed, who hurts, who is real.

Writers don’t talk about this much, so maybe I’m alone in balking at dragging my favorite characters through the literary mud.   But just in case,  when the story takes you to a painful place, like me, you find yourself staring at the blinking cursor and hovering over the backspace, I say,  let’s suck it up, hit the spacebar and tell the truth.   We owe it to our characters, our stories, our readers, and most of all, ourselves.

Artwork by Angela Marie Henriette 

From the Fast Track to Appalachia, by Lissa Brown

Posted on by Louise Canfield




A person sitting on the ground in front of water.After forty years of satisfying careers in teaching, marketing and public relations, I decided to follow my body parts and head south into retirement. I’d always imagined living in a log cabin in the mountains, so I unleashed my inner Heidi and drove to southern Appalachia where I’ve lived for ten years. It’s been an adventure, one that I had to document in my first book, Real Country: From the Fast Track to Appalachia. A fellow writer who is a native of the North Carolina mountains warned me not to put my picture or real name on the book because, “Them boys will burn you out.†I’ve since learned she’s prone to hyperbole, but I used a pen name.
I was born and raised in New Jersey and lived in the Washington, D.C. area for twenty years before this latest, and what I hope will be the last, move. My spouse and I live in a log cabin in a mountain holler surrounded by the best that nature has to offer. Most of our immediate neighbors are also transplants. The local residents down the dirt road are pleasant but rather reserved. We wave and occasionally chat about weather, but it’s clear we’re regarded as ‘foreigners.’ There’s a clear delineation between the ‘been heres’ and the ‘come heres’ in this part of Appalachia, but we share a love of the mountains.
Our urban backgrounds weren’t much help when we arrived. Despite three years of bluegrass banjo lessons that I’d hoped would help me adjust to this part of the South, I still faced challenges with the language, food and customs. But now, I’ve become so accustomed to this bucolic rural life that I dread going back to the metropolitan areas where I used to live. Being retired certainly accounts for some of my new relaxed state, but the slower pace of life in the region plays a major role. I’ve pretty much gotten over ignoring strangers and charging into stores intent on getting out without having to speak to anyone. Once in a while I still grow impatient when someone takes twenty minutes to get to the point of what they want to say, but I’ve learned to wait politely and smile. Depending on what they finally say, I might even reply with a heartfelt ‘Bless your heart.’
At age seven I penned a newsletter that antagonized half the neighbors in my New Jersey neighborhood, and writing has been part of my life ever since. I’ve been a columnist, speechwriter, ghostwriter and anything else that allowed me to earn a living. I still write because I need to, but now it’s for my own satisfaction and enjoyment. That’s so much more fun. Since moving to the Southern mountains I’ve found my muse. I’ve written three novels and several essays that appear in a variety of anthologies. I’m honored to have received awards for my books and am certain that I could not have written them in any other place. I use my real name now. www.lissabrownwrites.com

Telling Our Stories

Posted on by Louise Canfield


 

A person sitting on the ground in front of water.
There is a mystery surrounding Southern women.  Many see us as different from other women somehow; mysterious, romantic, and well.. frivolous.   But in fact, we are not so different.  We drink green tea as well as “sweet tea,” we are as likely to stir-fry as deep-fry chicken and most of us haven’t had peach cobbler in years. We go to college. We have the same career challenges, relationship boggles, and unpredictable children as everyone else.  We get the same diseases.

But the stereotype persists.  And I get it; it’s highly entertaining; it’s funny. But it’s untrue. And dangerous. Read the headlines, people. We’ve got to learn to get along.

As Patricia Neely-Dorsey put it (this blog; 3/10/15) “I believe that we can bridge many gaps of misunderstanding across regional, racial, cultural, generational and economic lines by simply telling/sharing our stories.†http://patricianeelydorsey.webs.com I agree, Patricia. Our stories are a powerful agent for understanding and healing. They make us real. So let’s get them out there.

The mission of this blog is to promote understanding of Southern women through their stories.  The first stories were of rural women of my grandmother’s generation.  They were too poor and too tired to write their own stories, so most of what we know about them survives  only in the memories of their grandchildren.  The time to save their stories is running out, and my commitment to them has not diminished.  But writing RealSouthernWomen has given me unexpected opportunities to meet wonderful, stereotype-smashing, real live Southern women with fascinating stories.  Theirs are the authentic voices of today’s Southern woman.  If you listen to them, you will understand who we really are.

The first storyteller is Lissa Brown, a New Jersey native who retired from the fast track in Washington to the mountains of Appalachia. http://www.lissabrownwrites.com Lissa is a real Southern Woman with a fascinating story to tell. She’ll be “guest-blogging†the next post.

 

 

 

 

Freedom to bloom

Posted on by Louise Canfield


A person sitting on the ground in front of water.

 

The Jasmine along the lakefront fence was an unruly mass of twisted vines when we arrived.   When we left just a few short weeks ago,  it was still winter.  All growth had stopped and the dormant vines  clung to each other for protection against the storms.   But with the sunshine and spring rains had come new growth.  Bright yellow blossoms had burst open and their intoxicating fragrance hung in the air.  The tangled vines, energized by new growth,  crowded against each other, seeking freedom.

I spent the first sunny morning carefully untangling and coaxing  vines into place along the fence, smiling to myself as they seemed to literally jump for joy as they sprung free.   But some defied any attempt to free them.  They were so  tightly wrapped around each other that they had become brittle, barren stems, virtually fused together.

Perhaps  we are like that, too.  When we cling too tightly to another person,  an object, or ideology for protection, we lose our taste for freedom and miss the chance to bloom.