some kinda good

The first house I owned had a half bath tucked under an upstairs eve. On the mirror over the rust-stained sink was a sticker that read, “Don’t floss all your teeth, just the ones you want to keep.”

I want to keep all my teeth. I use them a lot, I like them, and I like what they do for me.

Is there an excuse these days not to glide the slick white thread between the teeth? Space-age polymers and the like mean there’s no getting stuck and shredding like back in the bad old days of dental hygiene. So, for my pearly whites, the answer is “no.”

Dental floss starts with D, and on day four of gratiblogging, I am appreciative of it.

(my brand, with space-age polymers)

(Catlett's Station, around 1862)

Catlett was a little village when I was born and raised in there in the 1960s. The kids all went to church together until age 6, when they started going to school together, too. Our elementary – grades one through four – was four classrooms and a long cooler in the hallway for three-cent lunch milk. The building was wooden, painted white, with huge tall windows that opened to the breeze, and with a huge bell swinging in the belfry.

My great-great-grandfather had moved to the village when it was called Catlett’s Station, and he put a general store right on the railroad in 1866. Just four years earlier Jeb Stuart and his men had raided John Pope’s supply lines there, during second Manassas.

My father, who was born in 1931, farmed the same land his great-grandfather and grandfather had farmed. His father ran the mercantile, then still spitting distance from the railroad tracks. When dad was a kid, the business sold everything there from caskets and crackers to moonshine.

My grandmother and I walked hot rolls and soup to the shut-ins. Two curious men, Chicken and Preacher Parsons, strolled together all day, never working, living their lives to mystify me generate conversation around Catlett’s 6-o’clock-sharp dinner tables. Every summer the community had a fireman’s parade and a July Fourth celebration with fireworks and a hamburger stand.

Catlett held all manner of entertainment to a small child: fishing and digging and playing with friends. And it was the most boring place on the earth to a 16-year-old.

Catlett is still on the map; you can drive through it to places with names we’d never heard back then – Fair Oaks Mall, Nissan Pavilion.

But Catlett is gone, too. And I am grateful to have been there.

Winterbrook Farm

My friend Shannon proposed 26 Letters in 26 Days, in which one blogs for the first 26 days in November about 26 things one is thankful for and using the ordered letters of the alphabet. Sounds like fun and a good way to take stock of the good stuff. November snuck up on me or my mind is slipping or whatever; I’m a day late starting.

And, I’m starting now:

When my children were little, they had three little books their dad had from his childhood years in London. All were about Ant and Bee, an ant and a bee who were dear friends and who lived together in a Cup. Ant and Bee had adventures that took them on 26-page-or-so tours of the alphabet. They met a Dog, they had Tea, they walked by a Yew tree, they turned on a Spigot.

These were sturdy little volumes with homespun illustrations that made me feel grounded and safe. I loved the words, and I loved reading them to my kids. Each volume felt comfortable in my hands, manageable while I snuggled a child in one arm and carefully pointed out words and drawings.

Bee

Ant

I’m grateful for Ant and Bee, for grandparents who once were parents who read to a son who became a father who saved some books from long-ago London to read in 1980s Mobile and 1990s Fredericksburg to the children I cherish – Always.