Hello Delta

I can honestly say I never ever ever ever in a million years expected this to happen. This is my therapy, putting it all down in words. Also the picture above has nothing to do with this post. I just fancy it.

Clint had been in town visiting for a few days and was packing up his things to head back to Starkville. I was attempting to help but honestly just ended up walking around the yard and saying “Need any help with anything?” every five or ten minutes. Luke was shooting the target with his new bow he had purchased over the weekend and the dogs were out on the lawn wrestling. It was the most gorgeous Tuesday afternoon you could imagine. The weekend had just ended for us (we always drag them out through Monday) and it was a blur of laughter, singing and playing air guitar in my kitchen. We had worn ourselves out and so on Tuesday, we were just relaxed-to-the-max.

The reason I have to tell everyone that we were very relaxed and nothing wild was going on is because I have this tiny itty bitty reputation for losing things, usually on weekends where I stay up too late. But in this case, I swear to you, I was calm as could be, soaking up the fall afternoon in my own backyard.

The last time I saw my diamond I was in the yard sitting on Luke’s lap and he was sitting on top of the bow target. Clint was standing in front of us and they were talking about ducks or deer or something hunting-related, and I remember glancing down at my left hand and noticing how sparkly the diamond looked in that moment.

Here are the events that happened after, leading up to the moment that I realized the diamond center stone to my ring was in fact missing.

-Clint asked me to help him hook up the trailer so he could bring it back to Starkville.

-Clint and I played with Foxy, the new puppy, for a few minutes and then he left for Starkville.

-Luke and I walked to the storage room to grab a fishing pole.

-Luke and I walked down to the bank and fished for about twenty minutes.

-We walked back up to the house and I chased the dogs around for two minutes.

-I walked up the stairs, into the kitchen and sat down at my computer.

-I glanced down at my hand while I was typing and realized my center stone was gone and there was a huge, empty hole in my setting.

Immediately I looked at Luke and no words were necessary. I held up my left hand and he saw the empty hole and said, “There is no way.” I froze and told him to come stand by my chair and when I stood up to check the floor and listen for anything that might fall out of my lap. I thought that just maybe the diamond might have fallen out when I was inside my house–but there was nothing.

Luke ran downstairs immediately and started scanning the lawn. I was already hopeless. I had been down by the lake, over in the side yard helping Clint with the trailer, in the storage room, chasing the dogs around the entire yard–it could have fallen out anywhere! Even if we were going to scan the yard, it wasn’t like I knew exactly when and where it fell out. We’d have to scan all 2.5 acres and there was just no way.

“Is my ring insured?”, I asked myself. Yes. Yes it was. We had it combined with our homeowners insurance and that gave me some peace of mind. I’m sure it would be a pain in the butt to file the claim, but at least we were covered. Luke was still in the yard scanning but I was sitting at the kitchen counter just staring at the empty round hole in my beautiful antique setting.

The next morning I woke up and the first thing I thought about was my ring. It felt so weird to not have it on my hand and I swallowed the reality that it was gone forever. Luke, however, woke up and started scanning the yard again. I teased myself with thoughts that the sunlight would hit the diamond and Luke would see a sparkle through the overgrown grass. We would rejoice and forever tell the story about the day I lost my diamond and Luke found it laying by the oak tree in the side yard. I went on with my day and by that afternoon, I had accepted that the diamond wasn’t coming back. I picked up the phone to call our insurance agent and begin the claim process.

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“Hi Rob! Can you pull up my wedding ring insurance? You’ll never believe but my center stone fell out while I was in the yard yesterday.”

“Sure…one second. Actually I don’t have that account anymore. I was insuring the ring through your old house but when you and Luke moved into your new house,  you must have switched over to a new provider.”

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My heart sank. I had a gut feeling. One of those feelings that you despise because you know something just ain’t right. Did we remember to put the ring on our new insurance policy? Oh please please please tell me that we remembered. I called Luke frantic.

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“Honey, I just got off the phone with Rob. He said the ring was covered in our home insurance but when we sold the old house we switched providers. Did we remember to add the ring to our new policy?”

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Luke was silent. My stomach hurt, my heart sank, my eyes filled with tears. We had just sold the old house three months ago. THREE MONTHS. Luke and I had moved into our new home on Lake Whittington last October, but we still owned the old house until it finally sold at the end of the summer. How could we overlook the ring? And why would the diamond not fall out during the three years that we had been insured? Why would the diamond have to fall out during the three months that we were not insured? Why why why? That was my beautiful engagement ring that meant the world to me and I simply could not live without it. Thousands of dollars, lost somewhere in the yard or by the lake. It is just gone. Gone forever. How would I get over this?

Later on that same day, I got a text from my best friend Kathryn. She had attended a funeral earlier that morning for a young man, around our age, that passed away this past weekend. I know several people who knew him and from what I hear, he was an amazing friend and husband. She told me that the funeral was deeply emotional and we talked about how moments like that really put things in perspective. All I could think about is the wife of the man who died. The thought of losing someone so close to me, like my husband or my mother or my best friend–well honestly I can’t even imagine. And every single day, people lose their loved ones and are forced to find the strength to be at peace and move on.

Talk about putting things in perspective…

I lost a ring. Actually, not even the ring. Just the diamond that goes in the ring.

It is so small and insignificant when you compare it to losing a loved one.

I’m not going to worry about that diamond ring anymore. If someone finds it one day then I will rejoice and know it was meant to be. But in the meantime, I’m just going to be thankful for what I have and wrap my arms around the things that really matter in this short time we have here on this earth.

It was Thursday morning last week when I got a call from my sister at 8:30 a.m.

Actually, wait a minute….

It was Thursday morning last week when I woke up and had 14 missed calls from my sister at 8:30 a.m. For some reason the women in my family don’t understand the whole “I’ll call you back when I see your missed call” concept. Instead, if you don’t answer your phone, they will just call 900 times until you pick up. If I still don’t answer, they start calling Luke. It’s a vicious cycle.

This time, I promptly called my sister back and I’m so glad I did…

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Hi, Carrie. I haven’t had my coffee yet so beware. What do you want? Is something wrong?

Mike is so busy with work and finishing his MBA and he really needs me to take the kids and get out of town and out of his hair for the weekend. 

Okay well go to Beaumont and stay with Mom and Dad?

Actually I just got off the phone with Mom and we were thinking about leaving in 30 minutes and driving to Mississippi to stay with you!

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Spontaneity. It is one thing I have always loved about our family. We could be bored stiff just sitting on the couch, playing cards, watching re-runs of Friends and eating popcorn, when all of a sudden my mother would say “Hey! Let’s all drive to Austin for the weekend!” and an hour later the entire family would be packed and going on a 5-hour road trip that was planned in fifteen minutes. It made life so interesting (and completely annoyed the crap out my Dad) and apparently, the spontaneous spirit had not died.  An hour after I spoke to my sister, she had already packed and picked the kids up from school and was headed east on Interstate 10 to pick up my mother in Beaumont.

Seven hours later, they arrived in Mississippi.

This picture sums up our weekend perfectly.

At my house, there is a drop-off when you are walking to the lake and it creates a steep slope. We sent Uncle Buck outside to entertain the kids for awhile, and those creative little punks decided to pour buckets of water down the slope to create a mud-slide.

Things escalated quickly….

And within a couple of hours, the entire family was outside playing in the Mississippi mud.

I had completely forgotten what it was like to play like a kid….

Not just fishing or hunting or going out on the lake, but using your imagination to create fun…

Climbing trees, wrestling, creating mud-slides; out of breath, sore and tired from playing so hard for so long.

Only a child could create this kind of fun…

Only a child could have four grown adults, all plagued with chronic arthritis and bad knees, climbing up and sliding down a slippery man-made-mud-hill over and over and over again until their butts were numb.

And I love these children more than words can say.

Here’s a little snippet from the beginning of my week. I drove to Oxford for a photo shoot yesterday, stayed the night for dinner at City Grocery with two wonderful friends and on my drive back to Benoit today, pulled over in the freezing rain to photograph these messaged modules. My boots were muddy, my hair was frizzy and my nose was runny. I looked awesome.

Have a kick a$$ week!

One of my best friends Win just moved back to the Delta from New Orleans. I’m so excited to have her an hour away in Greenwood! We were on the phone the other day just chatting about weekend plans and she mentioned that on Saturday she and her mom were going to drive to Jackson for the day to lunch, shop and do the big-city thang. I can’t remember exactly what she needed to do in Jackson that she couldn’t do in the Delta, but for most women it usually includes shopping for new clothes and replenishing our makeup and beauty supplies. That next week, I drove to Greenwood for the night and I met Win for drinks at Giardina’s. She talked about how fun it was to have her mother so close again. ”Oh she just drove over and spent the night on a Tuesday and we had lunch on Wednesday! So fun to have her an hour away!” As she talked about how much she loved spending time with her mother, I immediately missed mine.

I started to think about the days I spent with my mom and sisters back in Texas. What I wouldn’t give to wake up in the morning and meet my mom for lunch. And the thought of calling my sisters, raving about the Deena Harness over-the-knee Frye boots that I had just spotted online and begging them to go to Nordstrom with me to try them on, makes me miss them even more. We’d decide that spending $500 on one pair of boots is absurd and tell ourselves that we could find the exact same shoe cheaper if we kept looking. That of course would never happen, and I would forever blame them for talking me out of buying them.

If my mom were there with us, we’d all walk over to the cosmetics department and buy our favorite lip-gloss by Mac called “Orgasm”. Not sure why Mac felt the need to name their lip-gloss something so racy, but it was the best lip-gloss of all!  It was the only lip-gloss we had ever found that looked great on every girl in our family. Then all the sisters would cry laughing as we overheard our mother telling the sales woman that she would like two orgasms, please! That one would never get old.

An hour later we would still be laughing about my mother’s request for two orgasms as we split fajitas at Pappasito’s. The waiter would ask what we would like to drink and I would say “A coooooooooold margarita, please!”. My mother would immediately interject with some comment about how she wished I would not drink. The entire family was raised in the Baptist church and my mother and I would never agree on the matter of drinking. And then after a solid twenty minutes of me arguing the point that there is nothing wrong with having a cold margarita with your fajitas, she would lean over and ask me for a sip of my drink and I would rejoice that I beat her, yet again, in one of our silly arguments.

Having three older sisters and a mother is like having a readymade group of friends. I miss the days when my oldest sister Casey would tell me something about my other sister Katy and make me swear that I would not tell my other sister Carrie. I would tell my other sister Carrie during a weak moment but make her swear that she would not tell Casey that I told her. A few weeks would pass, Carrie would let the secret slip and we would all get in an enormous fight and cause a huge scene. My mother would play referee and ask to hear all four sides to the story and I would apologize for spilling the beans and beg them to please stop telling me secrets.

Even the fights are something to miss.

Having a hard time keeping up with all of our names? Me too.

my mom

My mother is the worst. She never called us the right name when we were growing up. I was a combination of Carrie and Kallie. Carrie-Allie. She’d remember my name half way through saying Carrie’s. She had five children so she could barely remember her own name in the morning, much less all of ours. But I do have to ask, what was she thinking naming her first four children Casey, Katy, Carrie and Kallie? Too many K’s and C’s.  She set herself up for that one….

Casey, Katy, Carrie, Kallie and Buck.

This is the only photo I could find of all the siblings together. It’s not the best quality but at least we are all dressed normal with our hair fixed. Just about every photo my sisters and I have together, we have no makeup on and we are all sweaty from a tennis match. And even better, in this particular photo we are in order of birth! From the left, oldest to youngest.

I’ll always miss Texas and I’ll always long for my family. Butttt if I was going to have to move far away from home and be stuck in a cypress lodge on the Mighty Mississippi with a deer feeder in the front yard and fishing lures hanging from the curtains, I’m glad the man I’d have to share it all with had an ass like this in a new pair of Dickies…

Just saying…

The End.