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I don’t know when I decided to celebrate an entire month for my August 8th birthday, but I’ve loved doing it for a long time now. This is Day 1.

This year, I’ve decided to do something that I “should” do every day of the month. Now, I make the rules here, so I get to decide what I should do. If I miss a day doing something I should do, so what? I do not have to do penance, or extra, the next day. No, it’s all my call. What?????? It is MY birthday month!

Today, I threw out some clothes. I’ve been losing a little weight lately, one whole size now, so I have some things I can alter and some things I can’t. I should throw out the ones I don’t want to alter! I started the process, and I have a stack in my bedroom.

I really should get my hair done. See, my birthday is August 8, and I want my hair to look, well, really good. And then, I’ll need to get my hair done again before a trip to Las Vegas in September, so the timing is right. I called Tuesday and moved my August 13 appointment to today!

My hairdresser Amber and I share a birthday. She told me today that her friend from Florida is coming to Tennessee for her birthday. They’ll go to lunch at some wonderful place (there are a lot of those in Nashville) and they’ll visit and laugh and laugh. My hair turned out pretty good.

I should take Mom grocery shopping today. It’s a regular Friday occurence. So we made the trek to Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, and Piggly Wiggly. It’s exhausting.

Mom picks up prescriptions from the pharmacy, loads up in the bakery and deli, and then waits for me on a bench in the valet parking area. That’s right, I said “valet parking”–at Wal-mart. It’s the only one I know of. We know the attendants well and they give us special attention.

It took almost three hours to fulfill Mom’s list and pick up what i might need, too. This place would not be my choice but I’ve learned to do it well. Then to Ace Hardware for turnip seeds.

Dad planted turnips–for seed– and we harvested a couple of weeks ago, my daughter-in-law Vicky and I. After we mowed down most of the leafy greens, the resident groundhog (Gordo, we named him) gleans and cleans the remainder. I’ve called him every vile name in the book, yelled at him, and baited a live trap almost every day with over-ripe cantaloupe, but Gordo is too smart for me. So far, he eludes capture.

I should set the trap again tomorrow.f

Every morning, Gordo–and another smaller version of Gordo–graze in the back yard. I just looked out and Gordo is still eating. It’s 7:30 P.M.I wonder if he will ever fall for my garden-fresh cantaloupe. He likes it, but he pushes the trap in complete circles to try to reach the ripened fruit. He doesn’t go in the door. Damn groundhog!

I intended to weed the second half of the front beds. I finished the first half yesterday.

Dave watered it all down so that the ground would be soft. It’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. I’m too tired. Wal-Mart has done me in.

Here’s the thing: If Mom didn’t want to shop at Wal-Mart, I don’t think I’d set foot in the place ever again. It’s exhausting.

In the fabric department, I chose some lining and interfacing for purses my friend is making for her online shop. I’m managing the online shop. Was there anyone there to cut fabric?

I nabbed a young man in a company shirt as he walked by. I heard him call “…..associate needed in fabric department.” No one came. I saw a “Co-Manager” coming with someone else looking for something else. I nabbed him in a moment when no one else was asking him anything and he promised to send someone pronto.

It wasn’t pronto, but a woman finallly came and cut the three pieces of material that I wanted.

After checking off every item on Mom’s list, and most of what was on mine, I headed toward check-out. Uh-oh. I forgot to get Cesar dog food, so before I brave the hazard of the check-out lane, I traverse the store to lay in the supply of twelve little Cesar cartons with names like Filet Mignon with Potatoes and Gravy and Senior Chicken with Rice and Herbs.

Murphy had surgery a few weeks ago, had her ACL’s replaced. She’s getting special treatment around this house. It’s debatable if she will ever go back to dry food. At this point, who cares?

As I was choosing the flavors to complete the dozen, a blonde-headed woman (who, at the time, appeared to be about my age) informed me, “I’m so mad at my fiancee, I could wring his neck.”

My reply: “Hmm.”

“We just bought a new car, alright? It’s a [I’ve already forgotten what it was]. Now, I had to lay out the downpayment and now, he doesn’t want to pay wunnnnnnn little bill of mine??? You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“I told him, ‘Listen, you SOB, if I leave, I’ll take the car AND the baby.'” I noted that she mentioned the car before the baby. I also observed that a sixty-five year old woman would probably not be having a baby. I’m still in a quandary as to what I should have said to her.

It’s okay that I am sixty-five. Today is my first day of Medicare. I signed up for one of those fancy Advantage Plans.

And I’m glad I’m not having a baby.

This morning, it was 65 degrees when I first went to the porch. July 29, and 65 in Tennessee. What in the world?

Murphy stayed inside. Anna, our groomer, cut her hair very short for surgery three weeks ago and it hasn’t grown out yet, so our dog was cold. I wrapped her in a fleece blanket, a routine occurrence, and she lay close enough to the door to make sure I didn’t leave.

The hummingbirds finally came to the feeders. I’ve had a theory for a couple years that our feeders get way too much sun for the hummingbirds’ enjoyment–but not today. I’ve seen lots of hummingbirds this year, but they’re all feasting on the beauties in the butterfly garden. One friend told me, “Maybe they think they have so much to eat in the gardens, so why bother with some old sugar water?”

Maybe she’s right, but this morning they buzzed my head several times, chattering about owning the feeder and my being too close and why are you on the porch, anyway?

The first thing I do every morning is look into the back yard from the bathroom window. Gordo, our resident groundhog, is always there. He grazes on the lawn, doesn’t bother any of the flowers. Well–he’s already mowed down the morning glories on the bird feeders, but since then he’s full on grass with an occasional trip to Dad’s garden. Turns out he likes turnip greens. At least he didn’t eat the cantaloupes. I glanced to the back yard several times to see Gordo calmly eating across the lawn.

I read on some website that groundhogs just l-u-v-v-v cantaloupe, so I set the live trap with cantaloupe. The advice was to put the cantaloupe under the trap so that the groundhog has to work to get it. The first morning’s sunshine, there was a terrapin, a Southern box turtle, in the trap. He wasn’t “trapped,” but he had eaten all the cantaloupe. Since then (several days, maybe weeks), the cantaloupe is always gone and the trap is always pushed just a few feet away from its starting place. Groundhogs eat about a third of their weight in vegetation every day. I swear our Gordo must weight at least as much as Murphy, or more, maybe eighteen pounds. That would be…too much, but he would be plenty large enough to scoot the wire would-be container.

Last year Dad decided Gordo was just too smart for the trap. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we just need to relax and go shopping for a collar and leash. Somehow we’d have to keep Gordo and Murphy separated, though, because Murphy has heard me yell at Gordo. She knows Gordo is a bad, bad boy.

So Murphy is good, Dad is better, the hummingbirds feel welcome, I’ve given up on Gordo, and the weather is perfect. I want to do everything. I want to sit on the porch and write. A new chapter in the current novel. Or maybe I better  take that last trip through the finished novel, just to make sure before I query another agent. Or, oh, I could read! And read! I dare not tell you what I have stacked up to read. Or catch up on “office work”–doctors’ appointments, correspondence, planning. And then there’s the gardening. Oh, how I love digging, weeding, and such. It’s perfect gardening weather. I want to do everything, at once.

The decision is made for me. The veterinarian is on the line. We will send the biopsy from Murphy’s knee surgery to the lab for analysis. Dr. Roche believes that Murphy may have some sort of auto-immune issue that is manifesting in the knees. And then the human doctor office calls began.

I trotted next door with my breakfast and left Dave at the dining table. Dad was feeling very well today. Good news! Mom was ready for water aerobics. Dave would take her to the community center and do his workout in the sparsely-equipped gym. Dad was on his way outside to his garden.

“What do you and Dad have to eat?” I asked Mom.

“Not much,” Mom answered.

“I’ll cook lunch,” I said. “We’ll have some tilapia.” See you later. I’ll be outside.

When I dipped into Mom and Dad’s freezer in their garage for the tilapia, I noticed that Dad had harvested the butternut squash. Out of about thirty five or six were green. I lifted one of those and took it back with me to my kitchen.

After I rescheduled a hair appointment, moved appointments with a urologist, pulmonologist, and primary care physician, and then scheduled new appointments with an ophthalmologist and dermatologist, it was time to cook. Actually, I was waiting on a confirmation call from Dr. Vito Rocco’s nurse. He’s the urologist. She, the nurse, called just as I was dusting the fish with a light coat of New Orleans Fish Fry.

There was more. My elder son called. He was at the peach orchard.

“Mom, did you get peaches from Pratt’s?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, and they were wonderful.”

“They’ve got two varieties today, the Rustin Reds and the Contenders. Isn’t that what they had when you came to the orchard? Now, those Contenders are the red ones, funny, because the Rustin Reds aren’t that red. Which one did you like best?”

“I think I like the Contenders the best.”

The talk turned to birthdays. Anjie (Jade’s wife) and I have August birthdays less than a week apart and we usually share a family celebration. I’ve reconciled with the monumental nature of my birthday this year. I’ll start Medicare August 1. Anjie will turn forty, so both of us have these big birthdays. What shall we do for the party? And when?

For lunch, it was tilapia with fresh tomato-caper sauce. Oh, yum. And leftovers from a hash brown casserole in the freezer. That turned out to be just okay, not that good. I baked the green squash with garlic and panko. Was it good? I liked it, but it wasn’t fabulous. Just not all that, although I did love the tilapia’s sauce.

We took it all to Mom and Dad’s apartment. They ate a few bites of each dish, Dad more than Mom, and both announced that they just could not eat any more. Except they did save room for a chocolate sundae each. Dave cleaned our kitchen and I headed outside. Joy, oh, joy!!!

It was the perfect gardening weather. I dumped all the weeds and came in the house at 7:00 P.M. I really wanted to go to the porch.

 

 

The blackberry vines are loaded. Dad planted them our first spring here in The Compound. He built a sturdy arbor for them to grow in, through, and on. They’ve thanked him more profusely every year since then.

Night before last, I played “cocktail hour sub.” Dave takes Dad his one-per-day bourbon and Diet Coke promptly at 5:00 o’clock each evening–or he sends someone else with it if he’s bound up somewhere. I took iced tea in my favorite Mason jar sippee-cup. Mom delighted Murphy with the usual half-dozen (or more) bacon skins.

“Dad says there’s enough blackberries down there for a pie,” she said.

“A small one,” Dad added.

“Okay, bring ’em on, I’ll make you a pie,” I told him.

So last night, while Dave and I watched the PBS American Experience documentary “Freedom Summer,” I washed and cleaned the berries, and warmed them up to melt the heavy sugar I’d added. Then I put the butter in the long glass pan and slid it in the oven while I mixed the batter.

The smell of hot blackberries is summer, or heaven, or both, and the aroma of the sweet fruit’s cobbler wafting through the room always takes me back to the last time I picked blackberries on the Smith County farm before we moved to California. That was before Freedom Summer, a few years before I ever went to school with a black classmate, and a long time before I thought seriously about the sad consequences of racism.

We started out to the first berry patch early in the morning. We had to get to the berries before the sun got hot. I remember there were several of us picking, but I can think of only one specifically. That was my Aunt Virginia.

In those days, berry-picking was the only time you’d ever see the women in pants. All of us sported outfits borrowed from one of the men in the family, Aunt Virginia included. I wore a long-sleeved work shirt and my grandfather’s overalls. Pa Blair was a small man; even the length of the legs was perfect for me. We doused our ankles, wrists, and necks with coal oil to ward off ticks and chiggers, and then tucked the pants legs into long socks. We buttoned the necks of our collars and complained that someone was choking us.

I dropped my berries–Don’t throw ’em, just lay ’em in there soft-like–into a lard pail tied to my waist with a chain of rag strips. The bucket’s edges were rusted, the brand barely showing on the outside. Who knows how long it had hung around? I carried a tobacco stick and beat the ground under the briars in case there were any snakes lying in wait, and then propped it against a thick section of a bush. I needed two hands to pick berries. When we moved to the next patch, I reached for my stick.

We always tried to finish up by 11:30. I can almost feel the sun on my back through that chambray shirt, the clear signal to head to the house.

I found Dad’s berries on the kitchen counter, in a plastic gallon milk jug with a large hole cut in the side and a length of twine tied to the handle.

Dad eased into the kitchen. “So, Sis, do you think I got enough for a pie?”

“A small one.” I looped the loose twine around the milk jug’s handle and tied it in a bow. “I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve seen a lard bucket.”

“I think I left two or three up at the farm,” he answered.

Let me tell you about my mom. She was seventeen when I was born–about to be eighteen that winter–and she already had my brother twenty-one months before. She was smart, so smart that she skipped a grade and graduated from eighth grade a year early.

Her parents were having all kinds of trouble. Her daddy wanted to preach–felt called–and her mother just couldn’t see it. She wanted him to continue farming, the life that she had always known, to be the man she’d married. Was she scared of being a preacher’s wife? Lord, I would have been. I’ve seen what that’s like…

In 1946, nobody divorced; well, it was rare. The papers were filed. Pa had a lawyer, but Granny Bessie didn’t. What would happen, would happen. A neighbor lady called my mom aside.

“Ethel,” she said, “your daddy and mama are going to split. He’s suing for custody. It’s just trouble a-brewing. I know you’ve been courting Toby Blair. If y’all have any idea at all that you’d marry someday, you need to go ahead and do it and get yourself out of this mess.”

“I want to marry him,” Mama told the neighbor lady.

“Well, I’ve already talked to Toby. Y’all get your plans together. We’ll help you ever’ way we can.”

They did, these neighbors. They helped to hire the taxi-cab to drive Mama, Daddy, and Granny Bessie to Ringgold, Georgia, on Halloween, where they were married by a Justice-of-the-Peace. My grandmother signed for my mother to marry. Mama was fourteen years old–about to be fifteen that winter.

Mothers come in all sort of forms. Every Mothers Day, florists and card-makers get rich on children trying to express their undying love for the one who grew life inside of her. Sometimes it’s just crazy, this outpouring of…well, CASH…to try to say something that just can’t be said.

If I were to offer a blessing this Mothers Day weekend, here’s what I’d say:

God bless my mama. She didn’t have a clue what she was in for, but she did it anyway. And then she started growing and never stopped. She’s eighty-two and she’s thrilled to learn something all the time. God bless my dad for encouraging her, for pushing her to conquer the world. She certainly conquered her world–and my world.

God bless your mama, and what she means to you. God bless her if she’s perfect. She’s not, but God bless her, anyway. God bless you for thinking she’s perfect.

God bless your mama if she’s gone. Some mamas leave you–and some leave this world. God bless you, in either of those two cases.

If your mama left you, God bless whatever caused her to fly–Just remember, there was some reason, so don’t go thinking your mama was a total mess. She might have been–but you don’t need to go there with the mess. You be you–with all your connection to the world around you. Be you. She might not ever be able to tell you, but she loves you for it. Love her for her struggle and her pain. Love her because, in loving her, you will love you.

If your mama went to Heaven, God bless her for her life that set her on that course. God bless all the people who helped her get there. God bless you as you try to be what your mama was. God bless you for being who you are. God bless you for being a motherless child. God bless you if you gather the strength to mother a motherless child….God bless you if you become a mother, yourself.

If you are a mama, God bless you. God bless you for realizing that you’ve been favored, and God bless you for realizing you’re really not all that special.

If you want to be a mama and it hasn’t happened yet, God bless you. God bless you for wondering if it will ever happen, and God bless you for not realizing that you’re already a mama, just for the longing.

If you’ve “been like a mama” to somebody, God bless you for what act of selflessness drew you to a child that wasn’t yours on the onset. That child is yours now…not to the exclusiveness of her own birth mama, but she’s yours somewhere deep inside you and her.

Whatever kind of mama you are, God bless you. Being a mama doesn’t come with an instruction manual. You do what you can. You learn from the ones who went before you–and sometimes you have to UNlearn what they told you. You learn from the book on raising children–and sometimes you ignore it. You try being the authority–and you shrink into uselessness. You try being their friend–and you fail on the first effort. You strive to be perfect–and you realize you don’t know what perfect is. You aim for being strict–and you hate yourself. You turn toward permissible–and you don’t know where permissible starts and “don’t care” takes up. You pray for your children–and wonder if anybody hears that prayer. You stop praying–and start again when you’re scared that your reluctance might doom them to Hell. You accept what it is you can do with whatever resources are available to you–and you often admit failure.

And then you take a look at those kids–yours, mine, somebody else’s–and you know they’re okay. They could be in diapers yet, or they may be mothering and fathering children of their own–or grandchildren. One of the bunch comes along and tells you, or sends you a card with roses on it, or lily-of-the-valley, or sparkles to say, “You’re wonderful.”

You are. You’re not perfect, but you’re a mom.

If you want to say something to your mama this Mothers Day, you could probably save some dollars by just showing up. Forget the cards. Forget the roses, the lily-of-the-valley, and the sparkles.

Just show up. Let her look at you. And ask her to tell you about becoming a mama.

Surprise! Flat Emma T. arrived in Mid-November to spend some time with the folks in The Compound. Flat Emma T. is modeled on my great-niece, Emma, who is in Ms. Shivley’s class at Blue Oak School in Cameron Park, California. Cameron Park is in the metropolitan area of Sacramento. If you don’t know about “the Flats”, just google Flat Stanley and  you’ll get the whole story.

Flat Emma arrived just a wee tad late to enjoy a fun trip to the Biltmore Mansion in North Carolina, but just in time for some fast-paced activity with Aunt Diana and Uncle Dave, Grandmama, and Grandpapa. She was very helpful and considerate–a wonderful guest. 

First order of business: second-eye cataract surgery for Aunt Diana. This picture was taken quite early in the morning. Looks like Aunt Diana is wearing her jammies! The next morning, it was off to Dr. Rebecca Taylor’s office to check the new lens. Dr. Taylor showed Emma how to do an eye ex-

amination and was impressed that Emma learned so fast.

That day was also Uncle Dave’s birthday. Emma offered to bake a lemon pie, his favorite, but Uncle Dave said he’d pass this time since he and Aunt Diana were doing WeightWatchers and Thanksgiving was going to be hard enough without adding another day of stress. On Thanksgiving Day, all of us piled into the van to drive over to the home of Emma’s mama’s first cousin, John. John’s family–

wife Vicky, Jameson, and Carly–served Thanksgiving brunch. Emma met the youngest (and most popular) member of the clan, Jaxton. Jaxton’s parents are Jade and Anjie; Jade is another “mama’s cousin”. On the left, you see who’s holding Jaxton? Why, it’s Grandmama! We all tried not to eat too much because we were having Thanksgiving dinner at 4:00 P.M. When we got home, Emma helped decorate the dining table. Grandpapa was all dressed up for Thanksgiving, and he said the blessing.

After dinner, Emma was so tired that she just flopped on the recliner in Aunt Diana’s office. All of a sudden, she remembered that she was supposed to be helpful, and she got right up and helped dry and put away the silverware.

After that, she said she just really had to go to bed so she went right back to the recliner and slept all night, never did even put on her nightgown!

On Friday evening, Emma was asked out to go to see the Christmas lights at Opryland Hotel. She borrowed our camera to take some pictures. Wow! And one day she got to see The Parthenon, a full-size replica of the ancient Greek Parthenon–and it is right in Centennial Park in Nashville.

What a good time Emma had in Nashville–and so did we. Early during the next week, Emma said her goodbyes to Uncle Dave, Grandmama, and Grandpapa.  Aunt Diana said Emma could do one last thing before she left: she could go to the insurance lady’s office where Aunt Diana was going to sign up for one of the new ACA exchange plans (Affordable Care Act–some people call it Obamacare). Aunt Diana says she was fortunate to already have health insurance but it cost way too much. So Emma listened in when Miss Linda explained the exchange plans and found out that Aunt Diana was going to save a whole bunch of money by going on a new plan, something that would not have been possible before the ACA.

“Emma,” Aunt Diana said, “I think we better get you on your way. You know, you really need to get to your next stop in order to get your holiday shopping done, if you’re going to do any.”

The whole family enjoyed Emma. We hope Emma has many more adventures on her trip around the country. We wish all good things for everyone in Ms. Shivley’s class!

Dave and I rarely go out to see a movie. We’re like a lot of other “old folks” who prefer to watch movies via Netflix or Amazon in the comfort and slouchy dress of our den. But, Tuesday, when I was on the way home from an appointment with the eye guy, Dave said we were going to see the 1:40 showing of Captain Phillips.
He added that Mom would be serving lunch at 12:30 so we would need to eat and run. 

I said okay. I was already in something of a daze. Dr. J had dilated my eyes and, furthermore, had informed me that his surgeon friend would take my cataracts out and put new lenses in before the end of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I want cataract surgery. I’ve been praying for cataracts for twenty-five years, since the day the ophthalmologist told me that’s the only way I’d get my wonky vision fixed.

At my May appointment, Dr. J did not change my prescription. Instead, he said that the beginnings of cataracts were causing blurring and glare and all the typical cataract symptoms.

“Can I have surgery?” I asked.

“Not yet,” was the answer. “Come back to see me in six months.”

I was supposed to go back in November but things couldn’t wait, and yet, after he gave me the pronouncement on Tuesday, I said, “I just can’t believe it’s my cataracts causing these problems.”

Dr J answered, “And now we know why I’m the eye doctor and you write stories.”

We both laughed out loud, along with the practice administrator who was acting as my nurse/tech for the day. (The clinic was overrun so the boss had to come out of his office.)

I was shocked, surprised, flummoxed. I expected to get a new glasses prescription, and maybe-oh-maybe get lens implants sometime in late 2014. Dr. J explained that the earlier cataracts start, the faster they seem to progress. He also said some of the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ pills I’ve swallowed during the last couple of years hurried things along. I shyly admitted that I also went outside and stood in the sun without sunglasses, too, another aid to cataract progression. (I said I wanted cataracts, okay?)

“Dave,” I said, “I’m going to have cataract surgery.”

“When?”

“Soon. Before the end of the year.”

“Huh. Well, you know what Captain Phillips is about, don’t you? It’s the story of that ship the Somali pirates hijacked, remember?”

“Yeah, okay. Well, tell Mom I’m on my way.”

We ate a leisurely dinner of chicken and dumplings, one of Mom’s specialties, and headed for the theatre. I drove, and wondered why I would want to do that since I really don’t see so well.

We saved fifty cents each at the box office as we got the senior rate. When we smelled the popcorn, we knew we had to have it. There was ample time for Dave to calculate the best option between a small bag and one large drink, or the medium combo of a bigger bag of popcorn and two medium drinks. He can’t help it. He’s a retired accountant and he counts everything. We got the combo.

When we got to our seats, I asked Dave, “This turns out okay, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t you ever watch the news?” he asked.

“Yeah, but sometimes they change the story in the movie,” I answered.

“Everything turns out alright,” he said.

In the opening scene of the movie, Captain Phillips and his wife are in the car together, on the way to the airport. He’s going to sea. They talk about whether their children are fit for this new world we live in. When they get to the airport, Andrea assures her husband that everything will be fine and they kiss goodbye. 

Fifteen minutes into the movie, we were done with popcorn. I set the half-full bag on the seat beside me and Dave said we could take the extra home. I told him he could have it because I don’t like leftover popcorn.

The head hijacker’s name is Muse. Muse, saying that he knows Phillips is American, asks the captain, “But what’s your tribe?”

“Oh, well, I’m Irish,” Phillips says, and Muse calls him Irish for the rest of the movie.

Just about the time Muse reassures Phillips for the first time, “Everything gonna be okay, Irish,” Dave punched me with his elbow.

“Give me the popcorn bag,” I heard him say.

He buried his head in that popcorn. I wondered how he could be hungry. Just a couple of minutes later, he got up and left with the popcorn.

It finally occurred to me that he wasn’t hungry, but was using the popcorn bag for, well, you know . . . He was sick. I got up and met him in the hallway on his way back. He was carrying the bag.

“I didn’t know what happened to you,” I said.

“I said, ‘Hand me that popcorn bag, I’m going to be sick,'” he said.

“Didn’t hear you. Are you having chest pains?”

“No. It’s my stomach.”

“Is your arm numb?”

“No. It’s my stomach. I’ll be okay. I’m just going to stand down here for a while where I can watch the movie.”

“Let’s go home.”

“No. I’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

“Then I’m staying with you.”

“I guess we won’t be taking any popcorn home,” he said.

“Don’t make me throw up,” I said.

“Why don’t you go on back to our seats? I’ll be up there in a few minutes.”

“No. I’m staying here with you.”

We leaned our heads over the handrails, mostly hidden from the audience, until he said, “Oops, I need . . .” and left again for the restroom. I heard Muse say, “Everything gonna be okay.”

Five minutes later, Dave was back. “I need a new bag,” he said. “The bottom of this one is really soggy.”

“We need to go home,” I said.

“No. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll go get one,” I said.

At the now-quiet concession stand I explained, “I need a large, empty bag. My husband is sick.”

The dark-headed young man, so cute, said, “Oh, no, we can’t do that.”

“What? You can’t give me a bag?”

“How about I give you one of these medium sizes?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.”That’s great.” It’s just the large he can’t give me.

“But you’ll have to bring it back.”

“Bring it back. You know why I’m getting this bag . . .”

“Yeah, but they don’t let us give anything away unless we account for it.”

I nodded my head.

Dave was still leaning on the rail. I gave him the new bag.

“I have to take that back,” I said.

“Really?”

“Something about having to account for all the bags,” I said.

“It’s to keep them from giving free popcorn to their friends,” he said.

We both re-assumed our leaning position.

“We need to go home, Dave.”

“No. I’m not going. I’m seeing this movie.”

“Then let’s sit in those front seats there,” I said. “You can run right out here if you need to leave again.”

“Yeah. I’m going to be okay,” he said.

Muse said something similar just as we sat down.

“You could go get our Diet Cokes,” Dave said.

“No, I am not running around, up and down this theater. I have some water in my purse.”

“Okay, I’ll have some.”

I handed the water to him and it might have been another thirty minutes before he said, “I gotta go.”

I knew he didn’t mean he had to go home. I just stayed put and tried to figure out where we were with the captain and the pirates.

Muse knew his hours, and perhaps his minutes, were numbered. And still he persisted in assuring his hostage–and himself, “Everything gonna be okay.”

Dave got back in turn to see the finish.

When they rescue Captain Phillips from his captors, a real-life Navy Corpsman, Danielle Albert, treats him and asks him questions about his injuries. Phillips, in shock, overwhelmed physically and emotionally, wants to know if his family knows that he is okay. She says they know.

Then, I swear, she tells him, “Everything is going to be okay.”

Dave and I were first out the door. I told him I needed to return the bag. “Or,” I said, “maybe I should just toss it. What are they going to do to me?”

Remember I said Dave is an accountant? “No, no,” he said, “if they have to count it . . . Here.” He handed me a folded popcorn bag. “This is the first bag. I’ll keep the other for the car.”

I found my cute boy and held the bag up by one corner.

“I can’t believe you want this yucky bag . . .”

“We have to account,” he said. “Inventory, you know.” He took the bag over the counter with a napkin.

“I still can’t believe you want that.”

“Well, we’re not going to use it.”

“Ohhhh, good,” I said.

I got to the van at the same time as Dave. He climbed in the passenger seat and I drove.

I fussed for a few minutes. “I just wonder if the health department knows they collect bags of vomit in the same place they serve popcorn.”

Dave said, “We’ll have to watch it again on Netflix. Then I can see the parts I missed.”

I didn’t wreck, run a red light, or veer off the road. 

Everything gonna be okay.